Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel (60 page)

There was a tremendous quaking
beneath their feet, and before their eyes, the walls of the shaft that were
visible cracked and crumbled, and the whole affair collapsed in on itself.

They stood for a while over the
shallow pit of rubble that remained, but they couldn’t hear the sounds anymore.

At dawn they walked through a
smoldering city, the rising sun blotted out by the clouds of ash smoke, their
noses filled with the rich burning smell, so much that they forgot the putrid
stench of the burning
hundun.

The Grand Hotel was in ruins, and
the Rider said a silent prayer that Faustus’ spell had worked and Spates and
Rice were now on the train back east.

“You know who Lepsy reminded me of?”
Belden said as they walked, kicking up ash.

“Who?” the Rider asked.

“Remember old Liver Eating Johnston?”

The Rider smiled to think on the
grizzled sharpshooter they had fought alongside against Price’s command.

“But for the bald top, they had the
same crazy beard didn’t they?” Belden observed.

Kabede was smiling brightly and
shaking his head.

“Who in the world can Liver Eating
Johnston be?” he laughed.

“He was a sharpshooter in our
regiment in Missouri,” the Rider explained. “He told a lot of stories.”

“Well, you can never tell about
those old mountain men,” Belden allowed. “He was a tough bastard. Took one in
the leg and the arm at Newtonia and still kept on…”

“Come on,” said the Rider.

“Why was he called Liver Eating
Johnston?” Kabede insisted.

“They say he had a feud with the
Crow Indians, over them killin’ his Indian wife up in Montana,” Belden said.

“They, or he?” the Rider added.

“He used to raid the Crow, and every
one he killed, he cut their liver out and ate it.”

“
What
?”
said Kabede, half-smiling, but not entirely amused anymore.

“It was an insult, see. ‘Cause the
Crow would do the same to the game they killed,” Belden explained. “So he was
sendin’ ‘em a message, sayin’ they were no better’n animals.”

“He also told us they caught him
once,” the Rider mused, smiling, “and he got free and killed his guard, then cut
the man’s leg off and walked for two hundred miles in the snow.”

“Hell, I guess you walked further’n
that since, Joe,” Belden laughed.

“Why did he stop to cut off the man’s
leg?” Kabede asked.

“He took it with him and ate it,”
Belden said.

Kabede stared, and Belden and the
Rider both shared an ecstatic laugh at the look on his face.

It was funny, like they were back in
the Army again, laughing over the horror.

“The old man is waiting for us,”
said Kabede slowly. He looked as if they were both lunatics.

“I sorta want to see if any of my
gear survived the fire,” Belden said.

“Go on,” said the Rider to Kabede. “We’ll
meet you.”

When the Rider and Belden came to
the corner of Tough Nut and Third, they saw Johnny Behan come down the steps in
a fresh suit and hat, clean as a whistle.

Where
had he been during the fire?
the Rider wondered.

“You men know there’s an ordinance
against you carrying those guns?” Behan called to them from the steps.

“We’re leaving,” the Rider called
back.

“You know, Joe,” Belden said as they
went north up Third. “Me and Kabede, we did our damndest to try and find you
them ten Jews you needed. Went around all the shops. Made a list. Think it was
in my old cavalry jacket pocket in the boarding house. But it shouldn’t be too
hard to find ‘em again.”

“It doesn’t matter, Dick,” the Rider
said. “But thanks.”

“Well what in the hell do you mean
it don’t matter? You said you was gonna die, didn’t you?”

“If I don’t live, Kabede and Faustus
will do the job,” he said confidently.

“So, you’re just gonna give up tryin’
to save yourself?”

“There’s more important things at
stake then just me.”

They were quiet for a while.

“Hey Joe, what if I was to tell you…Kabede’s
in the same boat as you.”

The Rider stopped.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you told me your ailment was
due to your shadow not havin’ a head. Well I guess you ain’t noticed, but
Kabede’s shadow ain’t got a head either.”

The Rider stared at Belden. He hadn’t
noticed that. Why would Kabede’s shadow bear the mark of a doomed man?

“When did you notice this?”

“As far back as Eckfeldt.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“He asked me not to. But seein’ all
that’s up for grabs, I thought you should know. Findin’ ten Jews is more
important than you think, ‘cause it looks like it might pertain to both of you.”

Maybe not. Maybe a simple name
change wasn’t the cure for whatever doom hovered over Kabede. One thing was for
sure. He needed to speak to the Ethiopian and find out just what was going on.

They came to the boarding house and
photography studio, the Rider’s anxiety over Kabede building with every step.

It was a heap of smoking lumber.

A woman stood in the street beside a
pile of crates, with a camera on a tripod. She was peering through the lens,
taking a picture of the ruined building when they walked up.

“Hello Mrs. Fly,” Belden called.

She straightened at their approach,
an older woman, smoothing out her wool skirt.

“Hello, Mister Belden.”

“I still owe you rent,” he said
sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck.

The Rider shuffled his feet, ready
to go. He had to see Kabede.

“But?”

“My employer seems to have gone the
way of the dodo.”

This
isn’t important, Dick,
The Rider wanted to shout.

“Well, I pray he wasn’t killed in
the fire,” she said tersely. “I suppose you’ll be leaving.”

“I just stopped by to see if
anything of mine had survived.”

She looked meaningfully at the
ruined building and went back to changing the plate on the camera.

The Rider, fidgeting meanwhile, fell
to looking at the crate behind her. Inside was a stack of framed photographs,
including a business license. There was a picture of a mule laden with firewood
standing in the alley to the left of the late boarding house. Another depicted
a trio of dead men in their shining coffins, and another of a well dressed man
who could have been a relative of one of the corpses, posing with his hand
beneath his lapel, leaning on a Brady stand.

It was the face that peered out from
the corner of another photograph beneath all these that suddenly caught his attention
and made him stoop and rummage through the box quickly.

“Those are for sale,” Mrs. Fly said
as she saw his enthusiasm.

The Rider stood, one framed photo, a
studio portrait, in his trembling hands, Kabede’s plight for the moment
forgotten.

“Where was this taken?”

She came over and looked at the
portrait.

“Right here in my husband’s studio,”
she said. “I ought to know, I took it. I take most of the studio portraits,”
she said, pursing her lips as if her next words would have been something to
the affect of her name not having been on the signage.

“Who are these men?” the Rider
asked.

She held out her hand and took the
portrait, turned it around and squinted.

“Let’s see. The man on the left…I’m
not sure I remember his name. I sure remember
him
though. Smoked too much. Would hardly put out his cigars to
pose. I kept warning him about the collodin. One spark and the stuff goes up
like…well, like this place went up last night.”

“Was his name Laird?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Fly. “That was it.
Laird. Carman Elisha Laird. How could I forget a name like that? Almost like a
girl’s name. I guess he compensated with the cigars. The other one is H.T.
Magwood. He runs the Lazy S Ranch over in Delirium Tremens. They said they were
brothers.”

The Rider took the portrait back and
stared at it once more. It showed two men against a painted backdrop, each with
a hand on the other’s shoulder, smiling. There was a distortion between them,
some flaw of the camera. Laird was on the left, just as the Rider had seen him
in Yuma. On the right was a slightly taller, better built man, with curly light
hair down to his collar. He was clean shaven and had bright blue eyes. He had a
large Stetson hat cradled in his hand, and wore a fine striped vest beneath a
drover’s coat, and tall Texas boots with spurs.

They did seem somewhat alike,
thought at a glance there was no resemblance. Something in their attitude, in
their bearing.

“It didn’t turn out quite right,”
Mrs. Fly said apologetically. “That’s why they didn’t buy it. I think one of ‘em
might’ve moved. See the ghost?”

“What?” said the Rider sharply.

“Between them,” she pointed to the
distortion. “I call ‘em ghosts. Somebody moves an inch during the exposure, or
the camera gets jostled, sometimes you get ‘em.”

The Rider looked closer at the
flare. It was vaguely man-shaped. The pit of his stomach dropped out. They were
posing. All
three
of them. Mocking
him.

“I’ll be goddamned,” said Belden,
who was looking over the Rider’s other shoulder at the portrait. “It
does
look like a ghost.”

“Rider!”

The Rider, Belden, and Mrs. Fly all
turned at the shout.

The revolver exploded in the
horseman’s hand, everything going slowly, the smoke mushrooming out of the
barrel, spitting fire.

The Rider almost imagined he could
see the bullet as it struck the portrait in his hands, sending glass and the
frame tinkling in a second miniature explosion right in his face. The bullet
continued through the flimsy portrait and hit the Rider full in the chest, as
hard as a mule kick. It blew him off his feet and into the tripod. The whole
camera set up came down with a smash on top of him.

He lay there stunned, blinking up at
the smoke passing slowly over the blue sky. Was that gunsmoke, or still the
smoke from the fires? It was black. The fires.

“Watch it!” Belden yelled.

The pistol blasted again, a flat and
ugly sound.

Then Mrs. Fly screamed. She was
still screaming as she leapt over him, a dark blur, and he turned his head to
watch her run screaming ‘Murder! Murder!’ down the street to anyone who would
listen.

He turned his head slowly and
blinked. The pain in his chest was fiery, but dull. The smoke tumbled lazily
across the sky. Was his chest smoking?

He tried to look, and that was when
he saw Dick Belden lying beside him, groaning, eyes clenched shut tight. He
could see why. His arm was drenched in bright blood from the elbow down, and as
he rolled on his side, the forearm flopped and twisted around unnaturally. He seemed
to go limp then, facial muscle slackening. His mouth was open, and the ash and
dirt from the street had clumped up, ploughed by his face. There was dirt in
his open mouth.

He wanted to reach over and brush it
out, but just then the world screamed and clattered and he was wrenched
violently up.

The edge of a big blazing steel
knife parted the strap over his shoulder and he almost turned on his face as
the hard leather case which he’d long forgotten about (
although it was important…why was it important?
) during the fight
and the fire slid out from underneath him. He was released and fell back into
the street again, so hard the world flickered like that weird moving portrait
in Lucifer’s quarters in Pandæmonium, where no doubt Xaphan was even now receiving
his punishment at his former chief’s hands.

The world flickered, and across the
flickering frame a man in a dark coat moved jerkily to a waiting horse. A gray
horse.

A blue skinned man on a gray horse.

Now he was turning in the street in
flashes, like a series of identical sketches being flipped through, changed
ever so slightly to give the illusion of movement.

No, he really was moving. Headed
down the street. Going.

Gone.

Where the hell was that idiot Johnny
Behan and his
farkocktah
ordinance?
And his
farkocktah
deputies, where
were they?

He turned his head, watching the
blue man on the gray horse disappear, and the edges of his vision grew blurry
and washed. Things were moving there, or one thing. He didn’t want to see what.
He focused on Dick Belden, with his mouth full of ashes.

“
Zei
gezunt
,” he murmured, his lips curling, the sob rattling deep in his
bleeding chest threatening to split him open.

He wanted to get the dirt of Dick
Belden’s mouth, but his fingers pawed at the ash in the street and he felt
nothing.