Natchez Page 15

  “The man with the earring was following someone?” Inkada asked. Montak glanced at him. At the first mention of Wango, they had both known him.

  “Yeah—I reckon. You don’t suppose he meant them harm, do you? I sure would hate to think…”

  “No,” Inkada said, “I doubt it.”

  “That concerns me now,” the bartender said. “Anyway—day before yesterday a tall man, nice-looking blond man wearing black and those fancy silver conchoes on his hatband—he rides in, asking after a fat man and a scarred man wearing an earring.”

  “You told him?”

  “He bought a drink,” the bartender said with a wink, slamming a hand down on the counter. Rolling it over he examined the dead fly. “Been after him nigh two hours. That gonna do it for you boys?”

  “That’ll do it. Unless you’ve got some cold water.”

  “I’ve got some. I got me a deep well out back. That’s where I cool the beer. Dollar a gallon,” he said raising his eyebrows.

  Inkada slipped a pair of silver dollars onto the scarred counter and the bartender picked them up. Inkada lingered a moment while Montak took the water to the wagon.

  “What’s he doing?” the bartender asked curiously. The giant had stepped into the enclosed wagon, closing the door behind him. “There can’t be nobody riding back there! Not in this heat?”

  “I’m not in the business of selling information,” Inkada answered with a smile. He put down his empty bottle and nodded.

  “That’s one on me,” the bartender laughed. “But say—what’s going on? There a gold strike in San Ignacio or something? Where are all you folks going? Ain’t nothing there worth the seeing or the having.”

  Inkada made no reply. The bartender followed him to the door and stood, hands on hips, watching as the giant slapped the reins of the team, setting the bays into motion. The tall one followed them out, yellow dust filling the street.

  Inside the black wagon which had so interested the bartender, an old, gray-haired man rested in a leather chair. In his hand was a glass of cool well water, on his lap maps prepared by the US Surveyor. San Ignacio. Hardly silver country. Nor gold for that matter.

  Spectros pushed back his hair and ran a finger along the trail toward San Ignacio. It was unmarked, crossing deep sands and searing salt playas, populated only by the Chiricahua Apache.

  It was three years since Cochise had been seen; many informed Army people believed the great chief had been secretly buried; his health had not been good for some time, since the brief, bitter imprisonment for kidnapping a white child; a crime for which Cochise had been exonerated. The memory lingered in the Apache mind, and what had been a dangerous situation was now at the boiling point.

  Leaving the Indian situation aside, there was the desert itself, as Dr. Spectros well knew. There was nothing at all thriving in the desert, but those forms of life which had adapted to its harshness by becoming harsh themselves. Poisonous gila monsters, sidewinders, centipedes and scorpions thrived there along with other odd forms of life, both animal and vegetable. Yet all was studded with spines or equipped with venemous fangs.

  The men who survived the desert were hardened by it; they wore thorns as dangerous as those sported by the jumping cholla cactus, carried a scorpion’s sting and wore the hide of an armadillo. Yet here Blackschuster had come. Here Spectros must follow.

  Ray must have caught sight of Blackschuster, or had tracks to follow. He should have waited at Grantville, but perhaps the trail had been too hot to ignore.

  Spectros closed his eyes and leaned his head back, the maps still across his knees. These other people—the two men and the woman—that worried him. Who were they? Was Blackschuster pursuing them, as it seemed? Who were they?

  The wagon swayed on, rolling over rock and sand. Ahead there would be deep sand, and long, sun-bleached salt wastes. Yet there was no turning back. It had gone on too long.

  Spectros fell off to sleep and in his dream he again saw the beginning of the journey, that distant past when life had begun only to be throttled off suddenly.

  The man from across the western ocean presented himself at court. He strode across the marble floor of the palace, bowing curtly before the Yahif, surrounded by courtesans and servants.

  The first minister’s name was Popo, and he scurried back and forth between the Yahif’s opulent throne and the visitor, carrying messages.

  “This is getting kind of ridiculous,” the cowboy whispered, taking the minister’s arm. “Why not let me go up and talk to the man?”

  “No one may speak to the Yahif directly!” The minister was aghast. “Certainly no foreigner.”

  “Partner,” the cowboy said, patting the minister’s shoulder. “I never was known for shyness. I believe in taking the bull by the horns.”

  The tall cowboy walked to the Yahif’s throne amid gasps and excited chatter. He took off his hat and bowed, putting his hat back on so that it tipped back, allowing a few dark curls to escape.

  “Beg your pardon, Yahif, sir. But this yappin’ back and forth with this other fellow ain’t workin’ out.”

  The ruler of this small nation so far away from America was seated in a throne of ivory and gold. The armrests were formed like lion heads. He wore a tall, conical gold crown. He smiled tolerantly and waved a hand to the guards.

  “Perhaps you are right, Stranger. Perhaps I gain nothing by using my ministers so. Yet it is our etiquette. In earlier times men have been slain for breaching our custom as you have.”

  “I’m sorry, Yahif, sir,” the cowboy smiled. “I guess my rudeness comes from being bred in a country where we got no kings or nobles or such.”

  “There is such a country?” the Yahif asked incredulously.

  “Yes, sir, there is.”

  “I would be interested in hearing of it sometime. I can’t understand how there could be any law or order in such a country.”

  “Mostly folks take it on themselves, sir. Them that don’t—well, they’re the losers for it, not knowin’ what freedom like ours means.”

  “How have you come here?” the Yahif asked, bending slightly forward to study this tall man with the odd apparel and the constant smile.

  “Well, it’s kind of a long story too, sir. I got what we call shanghaied—knocked on the head and dumped on a ship. First thing I know I’m at sea far away from Galveston, shipping with a murderous lot.

  “I waited till we come near to land, biding my time those months at sea while this fellow name of Tear Degas—”

  “Tear Degas! The man is a blackguard, a pirate and a butcher!”

  “Yes, sir. I guess that’s a fair description of the kind of man he was.”

  “Was?”

  “Well, sir, this Degas he drowned. You see, when we came nigh to land me and a couple other men we upturned a cannon and blew the hull clean out of his ship. Then we swam for land, holding to some broken rigging. I got separated from these other boys, but I seen your palace up here, looking impressive as all get out in the sunlight, all white spires and gold. Upshot is I decided to see if I could find me a horse here, beg or borrow, or maybe an elephant, something to get me to Calcutta or some port where I can make a westbound ship.”

  “You have come to ask for assistance.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s what I was looking for.”

  Yet he had seen something else he was not looking for. Behind a brass screen a beautiful dark-eyed girl stood peering at the stranger from over the seas. She had dark hair to her waist and wore white, her figure filling the robe to perfection.

  Kirstina. Kirstina was the girl’s name, and she was royalty, the Yahif’s daughter. It was a time before the cowboy left, a long while.

  Then there had been no choice. The girl was gone. Those days of blossoming happiness snuffed out by a single act.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Ray led the gray through the deep sand. Sarah Gambell sat the weary animal, her face burned by wind and sun. It was hot. The soles of Ray’s feet burned, his mou
th was cottony, his hands had cracked and there were blisters on his lips.

  There had been no water at Brea, no water at Alta Tinaja. There Ray had climbed fifteen hundred feet, tearing hands and knees only to find that a dead desert bighorn sheep had fallen into the water, making what little there was unfit for consumption.

  Just above the western horizon bluish thunder heads had gathered, but that meant nothing. Perhaps there would be rain, perhaps not. The area was famous for “ghost rains.” At times rain falling from high altitude simply evaporated before it reached the sands from the arid white skies.

  Yet there was something in the air. The wind had increased and shifted from west to southwest. Ray trudged on, Sarah’s head bobbing as she clung to the pommel. It was a wild, beautiful, not utterly desolate country. Yet Satan may have framed the blueprints himself. There were cinder cones, remnants of dead volcanoes, some seven hundred feet high called “calderas.” Mountains, some utterly without vegetation thrust up and were broken off, amputated at the feet by shifting faults. A rumpled sky spread across red spires and broken arches of sandstone, and the eternal sands.

  “I’ve got to stop, Ray.” Sarah’s voice was a strangled gasp and he nodded. He kept walking until he found the meager shade of a smoketree. He helped Sarah from the gray, and she staggered into his arms. He laid her down and loosened the cinches on the exhausted horse.

  Poking around a clumb of yucca, taking what buds and young flowers the animals had left for food, he startled a kangaroo rat which danced away in three-foot leaps, long tufted tail held high.

  “What’s that?” Sarah gasped as he offered the plant to her.

  “Not much. Something to eat. Indians eat it.”

  She gratefully took the yellow flowers, the young buds. They were nearly tasteless, but it was something to keep the stomach open.

  “Water?” she asked.

  “Not yet. There’s a couple prints left. We’d best stay put until dark, Sarah. We’ll dehydrate in a couple hours in this heat. Stay still a while. Stay still.”

  She tried to rest, but it was not easy. Her mouth was leathery, dry, her head spun with the ache of the heat.

  Ray took the bit from the gray’s mouth and scrounged some nopal cactus. Burning some of the thorns from it, he gave it to the pony to quench its thirst. The horse was gaunt, bedraggled. As Ray finished this last chore he found his own ears buzzing. He was weak from thirst and from hunger. He sagged beside Sarah.

  The sun dominated all, a great white ball hanging dead in the endless white sky.

  “We’ll catch them,” Sarah said.

  “Catch them,” Ray muttered. “I’d be content to be off this desert in one piece right now.”

  “They’re going through the same,” she reminded him. “They can’t be traveling fast.”

  Ray was propped against the smoketree, hands across his chest. His black shirt was sun-faded, salt-whitened.

  That southwestern wind still blew, and the thunderheads drifted slowly in from that direction, yet it was hot, hotter than imagination. Birds clung to the trees and cactus, seeking their thin shade. A lone coatimundi had appeared briefly in a paloverde tree. Wide-eyed, panting, this squirrel-like raccoon had watched Ray a moment then vanished.

  “You really do want them, don’t you?” Ray said finally.

  “I do. We spent years having nothing, going nowhere, my father and me.” Her head spun, her tongue was wooden. Why was she talking of it now? She trusted this man, halfway at least, yet she had promised…

  “Then you had an opportunity to own something and this man took it from you,” Ray guessed.

  “Yes,” she spat. The sun had moved, and she rolled slightly, following the meager shade.

  “Silver.”

  Sarah sat bolt upright, her beautiful blue eyes wide. “How did you know that?”

  “I know the man,” Ray answered. “I know the man.” Silver—it was always silver Blackschuster needed. But silver at San Ignacio? It seemed unlikely. Ray had never heard mention of a strike within hundreds of miles of that sleepy Mexican pueblo.

  “Buried treasure?” Ray asked from under his hat. He knew that there had been a time, many hundreds of years ago when San Ignacio had been a Spanish outpost and a debarkation-point for expeditions going deep into the Mexican interior. Yet he had heard no tales of lost treasure.

  “Sarah?”

  The girl had fallen silent, determined to say no more. Ray grunted and tried to sleep. There was something in the wind. It was like taking a handful of buckshot in the face. Ray sat up immediately, and immediately ducked behind his arm. The sand was blowing, and blowing hard.

  “Sarah!” He reached the spot where the girl had been, yet she was not there. “Sarah!”

  The sand roared through a tunnel of howling wind. Ray drew up his scarf and held his forearm over his eyes. The sand, driven by fifty mile an hour winds stung him at every step like swarming bees.

  “Sarah!” If she were lost in this, unable to take cover, the odds were good she would be lost forever. The sun had gone dark, blacked out by the sand which filled nostrils, ears and eyes. Men have smothered to death under such circumstances. Ray did not intend being one of them.

  Yet the girl was not there. If she was, she could not hear him above the tumultuous wind. Ray worked toward the horse, not wanting to lose it. When he reached the spot where he had tied it—it was gone. Girl and horse were gone across the desert. A desert filled with Apache and sandstorms, with men like Blackschuster.

  Ray took cover from the driving sand, crouching, back to it, coat over his head. The wind roared on, moving the earth, shifting the dunes, erasing all signs of passage. There would be no tracking after this blow.

  She was gone—that pretty red-haired girl—and she had taken his horse. He had no doubt about that. The gray had been tied securely, and he had never been one for wandering.

  Unless someone else had taken both of them. Yet who could have done it? It would have meant sneaking into camp, taking the girl without a sound. Not Blackschuster, certainly, if such a thing had happened. In that case Ray would not be living now.

  It appeared the girl had simply stolen off, taking the horse. She had her secrets. Yet from what she had said, they were secrets which were driving her toward a rendezvous with the butcher himself, Blackschuster.

  Ray hunched deeper into his collar, legs drawn up tight, hands clenching that worn Henry repeater.

  The sandstorm raged across the southern desert, toppling brush, making it impossible to see, to hear, to travel. The wash of hot yellow sand swirled everywhere.

  A pocket mouse peered from his tunneled home inside a saguaro cactus, blinked, sniffed the wind and curled up for a sleep. A kit fox, with its prey, a desert chipmunk in its pointed muzzle, dashed for the cover of its burrow where young waited. The birds huddled together, tails to the pelting sand.

  The fat man pushed his team through the heavy, drifting sand, struggling toward the tumble-down shack ahead, in the cleft of a red wall of stone. The man with the scarred face sat beside him, eyes squinting against the storm.

  “Check it, Wango.”

  Wango nodded and leaped from the wagon, kicking the door to the shack open, allowing the fine white sand to fill the room.

  “Nothing,” he called to Blackschuster.

  The big man nodded and stepped heavily down. Together he and Wango led the team into the adjoining three-sided stable. There were no other horses there.

  It was a rough shelter, of woven brush, with corner poles of cottonwood. The house was a little better. One wall was formed by the face of the red cliff itself, the others were poorly constructed, and the wind pierced the walls easily. Yet they could breathe.

  “Someone is living here,” Blackschuster said. Cautiously he moved around the room, examining the supply of staples on the shelves, the tinned goods.

  Wango nodded, agreeing. Then the scarred man opened a can of corned beef with his razor-sharp knife. There was little chance the owner o
f the shack would be back in this weather. Yet if he came—so much the worse for him. He would bless the sandstorm after that.

  It was thanks to the burro that Garcia made it back to his shack. He himself had seen nothing in the sand. Yet the donkey had a nose for home—it was time to eat.

  Garcia slapped the sand from his hat, wiped it from his eyes as he led the burro into the stable. Company! No one came this way. There was no reason for anyone to come. The sand, he decided, had driven someone here.

  “Company for you as well, Hogazan,” Garcia said, patting the donkey. Appreciatively he rubbed the fine black horses stabled there.

  The wind howled outside, whistling in the canyons. A whirlwind of dark sand twisted past, buffeting the stable. Garcia took the bridle off the donkey and hung it on a rusted nail. Then he noticed the wagon.

  Garcia pushed back his straw hat and scratched thoughtfully at his chin. Looking around he saw no one so he walked to the wagon which had been left in his stable.

  There was a long package on top, some assorted crates, a heavy trunk. Lifting the corner of the tarp which covered the long box, Garcia peered under, glancing again at the door. No one was there.

  Under the tarp was a tent of velvet. Velvet! Garcia scratched at his chin again, then lifted the velvet. He stepped back immediately, mouth open.

  Madre Dios! he smothered his exclamation.

  He could not help himself, he had to look once more. Beneath the velvet was a glass coffin. Crystal, perhaps, though he had never seen crystal. And within this a young woman slept. She was not dead! She slept.

  “Beautiful woman,” Garcia whispered, “What has happened to you?”

  She had long, raven hair, pale, perfect features and a pretty, full figure. Her hands were crossed on her abdomen, one finger wore a square-cut emerald which must be at least a hundred carats.

  Her breast rose and fell in soft, even breaths, yet there seemed to be no air holes at all. Garcia crossed himself and whispered, “I shall release you beautiful woman, do not be afraid.”