THE FIFTH HORSEMAN
The Apocalypse Trilogy: Book Three
G. Wells Taylor
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 by G. Wells Taylor
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****
For Mary and Frank
Thanks for the front row seat.
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1 – The Cabin
The green lizards watched the approaching Rider from a hole in the crumbling sandstone foundation of what used to be a settler’s cabin. They had just scampered in ahead of the sun’s first rays. With luck the cool dry shade would keep them alive for another day. A long night of hunting had scared up little for the hungry pair—a white-ringed moth, a mouthful of fly larvae. Moments before, they had quarreled over and devoured a shiny brown scorpion.
The desert kept them close to starvation and they were always on the watch for food, so their quick yellow eyes were instantly drawn to the distant motion. The thin black line leapt out at them, a twitchy needle of shadow against the shimmering orange dawn. One of the lizards chirruped, raised its tail. The other chased an ant.
A man rode up the rocky shelf that sloped toward the cabin. The gray coating of dust and fine patina of salt from endless days in the arid Savagelands obscured the true color of both horse and Rider. Reining in his mount, the man paused a moment, bent forward in the saddle to study the ground. He raised his hat brim with a thumb then jerked back into motion, angling his horse toward a low stone wall that circled an old well. Dust rose from each weary hoof.
At the edge of the well, the Rider halted with a snap of the reins.
Something—a sound, a sudden burst of air, had traveled through the cabin’s pine door. A cough perhaps, severe—exploding from lungs painful and tubercular.
He dismounted slowly, drawing one of his guns and pulling the hammer back. His spurs clinked as he walked toward the structure. The door was open a crack. The Rider hesitated, staring into the dark gap, before he set a hand against the pine planking, and pushed the door aside.
Sheltering his heart with the doorjamb he peered into the darkness.
The cabin’s poor construction allowed many thin lines of light to burn through cracks in its walls. The effect dazzled his vision and obscured the room within. A dangerous millisecond passed as his eyes adjusted.
The Rider stepped in, gun level.
A man was propped in the far corner. The silhouette pushed itself upright, wheezing.
“Are you the man?” The voice was husky and wet. An oily crackle in the lungs foretold his death.
“Some say,” the Rider rasped, features clouded. His eyes squinted against the glare, then flared in recognition. “I know you…”
“Horseman!” Another voice as dry and dead as bleached bone rattled behind the door.
The first gunshot drove the green lizards from the relative coolness beneath the cabin. Reckless with terror, one was snatched up in the talons of a starving hawk. The other got away.
2 – The Storm
Corrie Orchard had seen a lot of things out in the Territory, but never anything like this. The approaching storm carried clouds on its back that were blacker than pigshit after sunset. The foul weather crossed the plain on crackling claws of lightning that ripped at the earth so hard she could feel it through her boots. The flashing strokes left glowing green stripes across her vision for minutes after.
There was no taste of rain on the wind, just the hot smell of ozone.
It wasn’t a total surprise. There’d been a growing sense of urgency in her since the day before. A sharp, dry expectation had hung in the early summer air that got no release from the setting sun. There’d been a stillness that tightened up the muscles in her shoulders and robbed her of even the troublesome sleep she managed these days. When she awoke that morning to find the tension waiting, she started to guess there was a change of weather on the way.
It wasn’t just Corrie either. Her parents had flown into an argument over the breakfast table, and her oldest brothers cursed and threw punches while saddling their skittish horses.
Something was in the air.
But this storm made no sense. There was no dark haze of rain slung under the clouds, just heat rippling in the blue distance distorting the rolling plains. With that much flash and bluster a downpour had to be coming.
It was spooky.
Corrie pushed the thoughts from her mind. There wasn’t time for fretting with the storm galloping across the prairie, pulling fiery black clouds toward the farm.
She closed the shutters on the henhouse and barred up the shed before pausing by the open barn doors. A glance at the sky went with the thought of twisters, but the approaching mass of darkness lacked the telltale finger clouds.
Well what in hell then? She ran into the barn to grab some lamp oil before closing the doors. Back outside, the ominous black clouds held her again—mesmerized.
Her father and brothers were out along the northern line of the Orchard Farm toward Treeharveston, checking the pear trees planted at the foot of the mountains. So there was no chance that they’d return and help with the closing up. The ride home would bring them near supper on a good day, and this strange weather had run up all of a sudden. It was just too fast and too snarly to risk a lightning bolt on the way home.
Corrie knew her father would find a sheltered place.
She cradled the can of lamp oil and hurried across the yard toward the house. Her mother had finished shuttering the many windows, so it would be dark and scary in there—they’d need the lamps.
A powerful gust of wind pulled on her long dress as she ran and almost tripped her—spun her around to face the south.
Face the south like she did every night thinking of....
And her mind settled on her Joe down there with the Red Rider troop. He’d be right in the teeth of that storm.
But just as quickly, she let the thought go. Corrie already worried enough about the man, and he’d made his choice. He wasn’t stupid, just selfish—and being south of her, the trouble would already be past for him. Her anger fizzled out when a northward gust blinded her with sand.
She hugged the lamp oil against her belly and staggered to the house.
Corrie had never seen the like. But if it wasn’t twisters, then what? Childhood stories of the old times clutched at her heart. She’d heard the legends about fire rains and rocket-ghosts, the lepersickness and flesh-eating diseases.
Go to ground girl!
Shoving the front door aside and slamming it shut against the rushing winds, Corrie turned and snapped her fingers at her own recklessness.
Momma!
Her mother sat motionless on the stairs: a shovel gripped tight in one hand and a candle in the other. The funniest part was, she had managed to do that while keeping all her fingers crossed. If her expression hadn’t been so terrified, Corrie might have laughed.
“Don’t worry, Momma.” She latched the door. “Just an old storm. We’ll have us a little tea party to while away the time.”
Corrie set the lamp oil on the floor and crossed to her mother, slipping an arm around the trembling shoulders as she took a seat on the step. The flickering orange candlelight revealed worry on the older woman’s face.
Corrie patted her cheek recognizing the fret. “Daddy will be fine,” she said, eyes rolling toward the ceiling as her own fingers crossed.
Her stomach cramped with fear as thunder boomed.
Here it comes!
The storm started tearing at the roof like a hungry animal.
3 – PANDORA CITY: The Rider
The five-legged cur dog called the main street meeting to order by barking itself breathless. The townsfolk broke from their daily duties to gather across from Horace Skinker’s Saloon, Pandora City’s least reputable and therefore most successful drinking and dining establishment. They blinked up at the noonday sun, still skittish about the violent storm that had shaken the streets the day before. It had come out of the southeast and charged north, but dropped no rain, so gave no relief from the heat.
Its fierceness had left everyone on edge.
The dog drew their attention back across the wagon ruts to a Rider pulled up to the hitching rail in front of the saloon. The cur had met him coming from the south end of town, and was putting up an annoying fuss around his horse’s hooves—though the mount seemed either too tired, or too stupid to care.
The Rider had no choice but to visit.
Pandora City was a town of just a few buildings set in the hollow between two unremarkable hills. It boasted a church on the eastern hilltop and a schoolhouse on the other. Spilling out from between these humble promontories was a blacksmith and a barbershop and more than one saloon—not to mention a couple hotels and boarding houses, hardware suppliers, a general store and homes. There wouldn’t have been a point to any of it except the lay of the land put them right on the cattle trail. The town was not much more than a crossroads, really, grown up around a meeting place of herds.
And it was only a meeting place because it was easier to drive a cow between the hills than over or around them. There was water there too. An underground spring fed the town’s many wells in a place that seldom got more than a foot of rain each year. So there were a number of coincidences that sent anything going north or south right through the middle of town.
People still wondered if that was good luck or bad.
The strange Rider had to be wondering about that too.
Any courageous cattleman making the terrible journey south across the Savagelands toward the Greenbelt and the sea could dust his pants off in front of Skinker’s Saloon going and coming. Horace made his living by the baked sand flats to the south and he was one of the few men in the Territory who actually took some comfort in its parched air and withering sun. He never made a spectacle of himself but more than a few cowboys joked that after sweeping up he always emptied his dustpans toward the south.
Horace would have known that the Savagelands needed no such offering. There was enough sand and heat to last until kingdom come. The great desert flats ran south for 160 miles and offered little in the way of shade but cactus and rocks. And the nights could bring frost to a man’s whiskers be he dead or alive. So, they were only brave men who would cross the sands and chance its hostile weather in search of wild cattle.
And there was more.
Cowboys came in to town with tales of night creatures sneaking off with cattle and leaving no sign of their passage. And there were stories about strange noises under the cold black skies that sent men shivering to their blankets with an eye on the shadows and a hand on their guns. The more sensible among them blamed the sounds and the rustling on the tricks of the Savages—people of the Wild Path for whom the lands were named. But scouts occasionally found tracks that belonged to neither man, nor recollected beast.
And there were other things as well.
Back in Horace Skinker’s Saloon, right over the bar and the picture of Sally Blisters, was a curious artifact dragged in by a bewildered cowboy who counted himself the sole survivor of old Mathew Herder’s lost drive. He claimed to have found and roped it during his month-long wander in the wilderness, before hauling it north and trading it for a bottle of whiskey.
Dubbed Big Skull Head by the local patrons, it looked like a normal man’s skull, though twice the size, with a pair of long sharp horns growing from the forehead that would have shamed the biggest longhorn bull in the Territory. Most visitors to Skinker’s Saloon dismissed it as a gimmick of woodcarving and nails brought about by Horace’s insatiable desire for business and his showman’s eye.
Most just kept their eyes clear of it until they’d had enough whiskey to chase away their fears. Everyone wanted to discount the mystery as a trick; but its authenticity was propped up by scouts and wanderers visiting the saloon and recollecting seeing other bones like Big Skull Head, protruding in pieces from the sands and baked rock of the Savagelands.
But, there was not one cattleman worth his salt that would let such rumors keep him from crossing those dangerous miles because the prize on the other side was so great.
At the far edge of the Savagelands was a long green strip of grassland about a hundred miles across that stretched farther east and west than any had ever dared to explore. Bound on its southern border by the sea, the Greenbelt, as it was called, was home to vast herds of wild cattle, horses and buffaloes.
These herds thundered east and west along the grassy belt as the seasons dictated—annually grazing themselves from poverty into prosperity and back again. But cattlemen made the journey and rounded up great herds to drive north. And timed right, an outfit could be sure to have a large population of springers in the herd ready to drop their calves within a month of returning home. The Greenbelt stock they wrangled was of a more fertile kind than the poor hoofed animals bred on farms in the Territory.
The local animals that could conceive dropped deformed and dying offspring.
But not in the Greenbelt.
Whatever was in the grass or air down there caused the wild cattle and horse herds to breed like rabbits and breed true. The Territory’s dependence upon these animals created a lively market for them. Beef and horseflesh fetched a high price per head up in Babylon City, the capitol, some 120 miles north of Pandora.
Sadly, though the cattlemen would say different, the new stock grew infertile a year or so after its arrival in the Territory and in time had to be replaced. So the demand for these foreign animals was constant though many believed breeding this healthy stock with the local variety would eventually release the towns from their reliance on the Greenbelt.
A fortune could be earned, though many said that the word `earned’ did not quite describe it, and that another more satisfactory term would have to be created since crossing the Savagelands was the most dangerous task a fool could undertake.
Currently, the locals were waiting for Sticky Pickard’s giant Ironmine Outfit, overdue now and in the possession of almost every cowboy fit to make the crossing.
So the Pandorans gathered in the street wondered if the strange Rider might be one of them—riding point on the herd, perhaps; but none could recognize his face.
He looked like any one of the saddle tramps that rode through town on their way from nowhere to nowhere better. They could be trouble on their own accounts, once they spent their trail pay and seed on whiskey and whores, or gambled away everything they owned—including pecker-rot. And the town jailhouse had known almost every cowboy who rode the Territory.
Everyone knew there were deadly gunfighters who traveled from town to town gambling and causing trouble or visiting hideouts in the Savagelands; but Pandora City had not seen the like since Black Peter met his end the summer past. He hadn’t turned out to be much of a gunfighter really. The former trapper had tried to rob the dentist and poor Bill Puller had settled the business with a shotgun blast to Peter’s face. Afterwards, Puller was saddened to discover that the one bullet in Black Peter’s gun was rusted solidly into place.
Not fairplay at all, but forgivable considering the situation.
But this new fellow, he didn’t look like much. The weary way he hung low over his saddle horn, grizzled beard whiskers almost dusting his mount’s dirty mane, gave him the look of a man more likely to fill a grave than a jail cell. He had broad shoulders that would have been impressive if they didn’t droop so, sloping roundly down to long arms that protruded from his riding cloak and terminated at a pair of fists that were wrapped in the horse’s reins.
The dark hat hid the rest of his face from the street-side meeting.
The locals were all focused on the well-worn walnut handles on the pair of big iron pistols that jutted from under his cloak. That on its own meant little, until it was added to the weary way the horse and Rider moved. There was a haggard quality to both that spoke of desperation and extremity. It was clear that anyone this close to death was unlikely to scruple about who he brought with him to Hell.
The Rider sat there in front of the saloon for a full minute, head tilted forward and down, like he was studying his horse’s ears. The dog that had been barking and dancing around its hooves the whole time suddenly yelped, then put all five paws to work and ran right out of town.
The Rider pulled a long leg over his saddle, dropped his foot to the ground, then tugged the other worn boot from its stirrup. He stood there another minute, leaning on his horse; forehead pressed against its shoulder as his hands blindly freed themselves from the tangle of reins.
Then the Rider’s hat jerked up, and a dark-green eye blazed from under its brim at the people that crowded across the street. He hissed, and snatched a dusty pistol out of its holster, but it swung in his grip as the gathering cried out as if with one voice…
The weight of the weapon was too much. The Rider snarled a curse, and fell after the gun onto the rutted street.
4 – The Walker in the Wastes
Vultures drifted over the Walker in a slow and lazy spiral. Twenty-three in the flock, they were in no hurry. Silently riding the updrafts, they could see the shimmering distance of heat, dry grass and sand that the injured man could never be able to cross. They smelled the blood that had dried on his wounded chest and caked his clothes. It had brought them from miles away, from the craggy cliffs where they’d sheltered from the fast-moving storm the previous morning.
Far below, the Walker called out for his horse again, but he understood now that the Rider had scared it off. There was no knowing how long the beast would be gone or if it could return at all. The storm that followed the fight had spurred it on with thunder and lightning flash, no doubt.
No, the beast has to return—there was no other outcome, but it had never met the Rider before—someone so different.
Growling at his pain, the Walker pulled his hat low against the sun’s burning glare and stumbled on. He could feel the big bullets in his heart and lungs. His ribs were smashed around his mangled sternum. The lead shot tore at the delicate internal tissues and every time he breathed, dark red bubbled from his chest and drooled down the front of his tattered shirt and denims.
He had walked for a day and night and was coming to the end of his strength.
His choice of direction might have been his undoing. True, allies were in the East Peaks past Dry Lake and the Dead Rivers, but the distance would challenge a healthy man on horseback.
Not thinking straight.
The Walker had been injured before, but never this badly. He was the fastest gun in the Territory, yet he had been caught. Now, with his boots full of blood he had to deal with the complicated notion of his own mortality. It had never entered his mind before.
But he had never squared off against the Rider.
Someone so fast.
And the Walker had been overconfident.
He paused, vision swimming, as he struggled for breath. Then he laughed.
Part of an ancient song burst past his cracked lips.
Darkness pulled him down.
He awoke to the hot weight of the sun scorching his cheeks. The Walker opened his eyes, and screamed at the vulture that clutched his breast with a talon and ripped at his ugly black wounds with its beak. Pushing the bird aside, he rolled over, head swimming. Precious body fluids spilled into the sand.
The vulture squawked, then hopped in its stiff-legged way to join its brethren that moved in a noisy, slowly closing circle.
The Walker’s tongue was swollen. His eyes grated in their sockets.
Thirsty.
Pity the storm had brought no rain. Had it come to cover the Rider’s escape?
No matter.
A different song, a fragment in an old language spilled from his parched mouth.
Miraculously, the Walker got a knee up under him and with enormous effort struggled swaying to his feet. Smiling at the birds in horrible triumph he stepped forward and collapsed.
Immediately, the dry sand sucked more moisture from his chest—like the earth itself was drinking his blood, anxious to finish him. With great effort he rolled himself over, flipped his torn underbelly away from the ground only to catch the hard stare of the sun. Unrelenting in its desire to kill him, its rays lashed his face like a bullwhip.
Thirsty.
He needed help. His mount would not return in time and he would die. He couldn’t let that happen, with victory so near.
But his closest allies were deaf to entreaty, only in their dreams could they hear him.
He would have to take matters into his own hands.
The Walker started squirming in the sand and loose earth, scooping and kicking it out from under him, to form a depression—a shallow grave. In fits and starts he struggled with the last of his strength. When his torso and legs arched down into the relative coolness, he used his numb arms to drag the dirt back over himself to cover his mangled chest.
A coughing fit shook him as sand filled his chest wounds and thickened the blood that dribbled over his chin.
He was dying.
The Walker laughed at the irony.
He turned his head and caught the eye of the biggest vulture—the one with scraps of his flesh still stuck to its hooked beak. Its ugly yellow-ringed pupils contracted instantly and it squawked.
The big body shuddered. The bird’s broad feathers vibrated on outstretched wings and its large carrion claws raked the sand. A long screech burst from its gullet, and a hiss.
A final shiver ruffled its feathers.
Then the bird folded its wings and hopped forward, naked red head tilted down studying the Walker’s half-buried body. Its eyes blinked intelligently, surveying the scene. The Walker’s head was exposed; hands and feet were splayed up out of the mound.
The other vultures hopped forward eagerly, their sharp beaks shining, but the larger vulture raised its wings and threw its head back with a hoarse call.
And the other birds fell dead.
Finishing a quick meal of one of its brethren, the remaining vulture cast a final knowing glance at the Walker’s body, then beating its wings and rising, the bird flapped slowly toward the north.
5 – Wounded
About 25 people had gathered on Pandora City’s main street to cast a large anxious shadow over the unconscious Rider. He was on his back in the afternoon sun; the slow rise and fall of his chest the only sign that he lived. His big gun had hit the dirt and bounced a few feet away from his scarred right palm. The other pistol jutted out from under him at an awkward angle.
Someone in the throng said, “Sheriff.”
Someone else said, “John Doctor.”
A third counseled, “Jail” and another anonymously whispered, “Hang him.”
“We shouldn’t involve ourselves,” Martin Stone chimed in quickly, stepping forward and back, wringing his hairy hands. “This is Judd’s job...”
That idea brought a few chuckles from the gathering.
The thought of Sheriff Judd Elliot handling this tall Rider, even near death, seemed a stretch. Everything that the sheriff was in the way of a gunslinger this unconscious fellow looked like he could fit into one boot.
True, the sheriff hadn’t always been that way. There was a time he rode with the Red Riders, but he had slipped some in his years of public service for Pandora City. That fact partnered with every able-bodied man being away with the Ironmine Outfit provoked more nervous laughter than mockery.
Seemed the trail boss, Sticky Pickard, had the notion to combine a number of cattle outfits to form a single company that could drive the biggest herd ever rounded up.
Such a notion promised riches for Sticky, and a boom for Pandora City when the giant herd was processed in the Yards that spread out on the south end of Main Street. A few of Pandora’s wealthiest citizens had parents with the foresight to prepare large barns and huge corrals for branding the livestock and breaking the horses before they were driven north to market.
So until the Ironmine Outfit got back, the town was left short-handed and that meant Sheriff Judd Elliot was the man they were to look to in times of trouble.
And that was never an easy swallow.
Evelyn Teacher looked at Martin Stone and shook her head. How such a powerfully built man, with such a demanding and physical trade, could be such a little crybaby, she would never know. Miss Teacher only understood that his remark had delivered the fence-builder to the lowest position on her list of possible suitors.
“Don’t worry, Martin. You needn’t involve yourself.” She watched his milky blue eyes pale further. “And what do you mean by ‘Judd’s job?’ We all know our sheriff’s often as deserving to be in his jail as the people he puts there.”
A hot flush colored her cheeks when the men in the gathering fired stern looks at her. None would debate her thoughts on Judd, but few of them liked her straightforward ways. She was a woman, and worst of all an educated one, so they often regarded her with a suspicion bordering on the supernatural. Many stories blamed female emancipation for all the trouble that happened so long ago.
Then, though it pained her to do so, Evelyn added: “As the Preacher said, ‘Who can expect Christian kindness that does not give it?’” She was reluctant to quote the holy man because of his stance on modern education. They had spent most of the last three years at odds.
But before anyone could respond, the dilemma was settled for them. John Doctor shouted something from up the street where he and his son, Hank, were loading spools of wire on a wagon in front of Hardware’s Equipment Company.
A question, a salutation, echoed back along the street before John himself followed the sound up to the gathering.
“What have we here?” His black skin shone in the scorching sun as he approached. Keeping a wary eye on the man’s guns, Doctor knelt over the stricken Rider and probed the fellow’s bloodstained clothes.
“Miss Teacher,” he said finally, peering up over his spectacles. “Appears this fellow is gutshot.” He leaned in, gingerly pulling the stranger’s filthy riding cloak and coat aside with a thumb and forefinger.
“In the left side...” Doctor grunted, rubbed his chin, and then nodded as his son joined the gathering. “This ain’t good.” He looked past Stone, then over to Samuel Farmer.
Farmer was a big man in his late thirties. He grew wheat with his family of ten on a farm five miles northwest of town. Only one of his offspring had suffered the curse, and was born with an extra arm and hand—not something his father considered a handicap on a busy farm.
“Samuel?” Doctor said. “Martin? Help me with this man.”
Evelyn Teacher noticed that while Samuel Farmer shrugged his heavy shoulders and stepped forward, Martin Stone lagged—his eyes looking for escape as he twisted his thick fingers together.
John Doctor ignored it. Stone had been a chicken his whole life.
“You boys grab his arms.” Doctor positioned himself at the Rider’s head as the volunteers knelt on either side and gripped the man’s lean wrists. “He might live if we help him now. First I’ll throw that other big gun aside. I don’t want him waking up and putting a hole in anyone. Hold him steady.” He yanked the pistol out of the man’s holster and set it in the dirt by the other.
Then Doctor pulled off the man’s hat and tossed it aside.
Little Johnnie Post yelped, then knelt by the hat and pointed with one of the seven fingers on his left hand.
“There’s nickels on it!” he blurted, as a handful of kids clustered around him.
Others leaned in to see a hatband woven of leather, porcupine quills and horn, set with seven silver coins. The material had a Savage-look to it. The hat itself used to be black, but was worn and sweated many shades of gray.
As Doctor continued his examination, Horace Skinker walked out onto the porch of his saloon. He’d been upstairs enjoying the services of Maria Puta when the commotion began but an arrangement he had with the whore would not allow any disruption once the finer points of the transaction had commenced—and she was a stickler for the finer points.
In truth, he’d hesitated in her room after glancing at the gathering crowd because his first notion had been that the Pandora City Temperance League was forming up for another series of hymns and speeches on vice. Though they could stir up the social conscience with their songs, badges and ribbons, the ladies’ lectures on purity and chastity generally sharpened the thirst, especially when screamed within earshot of the closest saloon.
Skinker peered over the shoulders of Stone and Farmer, narrow forehead furrowing under dark curly hair.
“Who shot him?” he asked, and was hushed. His shrill voice had been the cause of many a cowboy’s next drink.
The strange Rider was barely breathing.
After probing the matted brown-gray hair on the man’s scalp, John Doctor pulled his bloody shirt aside to examine the wound with his fingertips, alternately hissing and clicking his tongue. Finally, he stood up.
“Nobody can kiss that and make it better,” he grunted. “Not gutshot, neither. Looks more like a spear or a big knife’s been stuck in him and pulled out—could have been one of them damn Savages… I’d say Irawk or Apa by the shape of it. Didn’t get the bleeder vein though, good for him. But he’s shed a lot of blood just the same.” He looked around the familiar faces, absently wiping his hands on his pants. “Anybody know him?”
Silence answered Doctor. The gathering was coming to terms with what he had just said about Savages, and some of the locals wondered again if the strange Rider wasn’t from the Ironmine Outfit and if like him, the others had run afoul of Savage attack. Sticky’s crew was already late.
Everyone knew the Savagelands held plenty of dangers: wild bears, cougars and dog packs—not to mention the mystery of the night creatures. But most terrifying to everyone were the Savage tribes, wild men who lived in secret places in the desert and mountains that bordered the Territory and Greenbelt, chased down that way and all but exterminated by the Red Riders during the First Expansion.
But some Savages had survived, and everyone knew of at least one cattle outfit that had failed to return and left no trace.
Evelyn Teacher was the first to recover her courage. She stepped forward and set her palm on Doctor’s forearm.
“He only just rode into town, John Doctor,” she said.
Doctor’s lips flared in a frustrated grin. “Well, it’s something to carve on his tombstone when he dies.” He frowned. Infection killed most folks with injuries to the guts and chest. And his mercury fix was not 100 percent. A dirty Savage spear usually meant death.
“I guess it wouldn’t be fairplay if we didn’t try to save him or at least make him comfortable for his final hours,” Doctor relented. “Or ‘unchristian’ as the Preacher would scold come Sunday. Though I’d be open to hearing his opinion just the same.” Everyone knew that the Preacher was out of town on a pilgrimage.
Doctor looked at the Rider’s horse. Blood stained the saddle and had followed the cinch strap down onto the animal’s underbelly.
Then he glanced at Skinker’s Saloon. “I expect he was headed here anyway—and by his look dying at a drinking hole would fit into his bedtime story. It’s as good a place as any to wash his wounds.” He pointed. “I see his horse could use some water and feed. It don’t look more than tired. Samuel Farmer, would you tend to the beast after you help us get its unfortunate Master out of the sun?”
The big farmer nodded his head, and then glared Martin Stone back into position. The fence-builder had been fixing to Georgie Porgie down the street. The pair of them lifted the unconscious Rider by his arms and legs and carried him up the steps of the saloon ahead of John Doctor.
But Horace Skinker headed them off at the top.
“Hold it there now! Where you going? This is a saloon and ain’t no place for Christian kindness. Not that it ain’t a good place.” Skinker looked the wounded man over. “Who’s going to tend him? And who’ll do his washing up?”
Doctor glowered. “I’ll care for him, Skinker. It’s in my hypnotic oath and goes without saying. My boy, Hank, will help with the washing up since he hopes to take up the doctor-trade one day.”
Skinker continued, “And rent. I don’t run no place for charity.”
“I’ll see that Preacher tends to that from the collection plate,” Miss Teacher promised, though she doubted her poor relationship with the holy man was any guarantee. “If the Rider lives and an extended stay is required.”
Skinker paused a moment more, until something clicked. His eyes blinked, and then a smile passed over his face as he turned to usher them into the building. “It’s only fairplay, Doctor. Just in luck I got a couple rooms open—with two of my whores run off and married to Babylon as they do.”
Doctor turned and told his son to collect the Rider’s guns and hurry along after to “learn a thing or two.” Evelyn Teacher followed with a good number of the townspeople in tow.
Life was hard in Pandora City and making a living in the lands surrounding it almost claimed as many lives as it supported, so any diversion was bound to take the whole population by storm. It had been a good while since the last cattle drive had come through, and there was one overdue, so there had been little in the way of entertainment of late. Even bad news was exciting, especially when it happened to a stranger.
A group of kids that gathered close to the Rider’s horse had worked up the nerve to reach out and stroke at its dusty flanks.
“Hey,” cried little Johnnie Post, “it’s a white horse underneath!”
6 – Sheriff of Pandora City
“But don’t you think it makes sense, Sheriff?” Boto asked from the shadow of his cell; it was the closest of the three. The daylight burned fine lines around the heavy shutter in the front window. The bars in the side and rear windows drew stripes on the drawn curtains. “Don’t you think the old stories are true? About the flying coaches and such?”
Sheriff Judd Elliot looked wearily over the rim of his steel coffee mug and yawned. The action dragged the trailing ends of his long moustache out of the brew and left them dripping, the white whiskers stained orange.
Boto talked too much.
And he especially talked too much to Judd.
All night he did it, and started up again after Becky Cedarbow woke them early that morning when she brought breakfast. An arrangement with the Halladay Inn next door supplied the jailhouse residents with daily meals.
Judd had heard more of Boto’s talk than any guilty man should ever have to bear.
The sheriff leaned back in his chair dabbing at his moustache with a shirtsleeve. His boots were crossed on the desk. He was starting to feel hungry again.
“I liked you better when you was a hermit,” the sheriff drawled.
Boto chuckled. “You don’t know what you’re missing.” He snorted. “I can’t take it like I used to.” The prisoner laughed again. “Because I do remember. That’s why I get stirred up.”
“The only thing I ever seen that stirred you up was standing by the open end of a whiskey bottle.” The sheriff paused to enjoy his own jest. Judd generally was of a serious frame of mind, and preferred his levity dim and shadowy; but there was something about Boto’s social status that made his inhibitions relax a little.
“Now do you suppose you could quiet down and drink your coffee. You talked nearly all night.” Judd climbed wearily from his chair, walked to the potbelly stove in the center of the room. He stared at the steaming coffeepot, decided against another mug.
The sheriff glanced at the door.
The day was waiting.
But he’d managed to sleep part of the morning while Boto slept off the last of the night’s drink.
He’d managed to avoid half the day.
“You were talking too, Sheriff,” the little man said and laughed.
Sheriff Judd grunted.
It was true. He was often drawn in by Boto’s ravings of other times and the legends from the terrible and distant past, if for no other reason than because life in Pandora City was duller than ditch water—and that usually led the sheriff to drink if he wasn’t careful.
Judd was 57 years of age; almost ancient by Territory standards and patrolling the dirty streets collecting drunken cowboys had grown weary on him. After all, he had served with the Red Riders and won a medal in the Last Expansion. By God, he led the retreat when Fort Gregory fell—saved a hundred men.
And lost a hundred more...
Judd frowned at the recollection. That was the thing about the past. It never just flipped one way. Failure was always waiting on the other side of the coin.
His time with the Red Riders was over 30 years gone, and the glories little more than memories replayed—though they had won him the job of Pandora City’s sheriff.
The time in between had been hard to fill.
And the memories harder to forget.
The only proof of better days hung on the wall behind his desk. Tarnished now, it was the longcat he’d worn while sharing command of a troop in the Riders. He’d been quite handy with the double-bladed weapon, and had used it to turn or break many a Savage lance—not to mention the Savage souls he’d sent to Hell soon after. Though the weapon’s steel basket hilt was dented and in need of a polish, he’d never traded the longcat for whiskey or debt—marking one of the few times he’d resisted temptation.
Judd frowned, thinking of the Red Rider troop that garrisoned in Pandora and had left on an eastern course a few days past. Captain Barnstable had been in the lead. Judd knew the man when he was a private of little use—a shirker and scaredy-cat.
How that slug got to be Captain...
But Boto’s talk dragged him out of the recollection. The little dark-skinned hermit was sliding into a long tale about a great desert war.
Here we go again.
There were times the hermit’s stories gave the sheriff a feeling similar to what he experienced while at church during his dry periods.
Familiar, he reckoned.
The Preacher would go on about angels and saints and devils and that kind of thing, roaming chaps with golden single-bladed longcats, sometimes in little wagons called chariots—from back before God got himself killed in the big shootout. Judd struggled with his feelings at such times because the stories sounded like half-remembered tunes pounded out on the piano down at Skinker’s Saloon.
He felt then what he often felt when peering into the past—and it was why he held such mixed feelings for Boto. The bastard got him stirred up too, took him to mental mazes of familiar ideas that got him thirsting for more or drink. Then a shadow would pass across his mind like hate or guilt or shame, as the madman chattered and chattered and chattered.
“Just shut up yer face for once!” Judd growled, walking away from the stove and grabbing his hat from a peg by the door. He pushed his long gray and blond hair away from his forehead and stuffed the hat over it.
“But, Sheriff...” the hermit started.
Judd silenced Boto’s plea with a slam of the jailhouse door.
He stepped out onto the porch where the planks butted up against the building, then walked to the edge and hung his toes over the dusty street. A glance skyward showed a steady throbbing blue—cloudless. Another hot day in Pandora. Barely summer, and the sun was already beating and whipping the streets until folks ran indoors for shelter.
The sheriff had to thank Sticky Pickard for the last couple months of easy work. Taking all the cowboys off his hands and dragging them south left little in the way of law-breakers to deal with. And there was no worry from robbers and bandits. With the dry spell and long time between herds, the Territorial Bank counter at the stagecoach office was closed up pending the Ironmine Outfit’s return. Since no one could afford a loan, and the ready cash was already out in circulation, there was no point in keeping a clerk on hand.
Judd glanced back at the stagecoach office where it was tucked in beside the jailhouse, before he squinted across the street at a sign in the window of Puller’s Dental. “Haircut and tooth removal $1.00.”
On the right, the apothecary windows were shuttered; though the door was open a crack.
And on Puller’s left, bread, buns and pies showed where Ann Baker had set them in the window to cool.
Even as his senses yearned for the smell of sweets and bread, Boto’s chatter continued to rattle against the door.
“Damn it,” Judd cursed the open street in front of him, then cast a glance at the jailhouse door and the hermit still gumming beyond it. “He’ll talk till his jaw breaks off…”
Judd had to get away—had to have quiet. The madman’s delusions were infectious, and all the fevered talk echoed in his own head. Why does that horseshit get me going?
Boto’s droning got the sheriff thinking, and thinking made him thirsty.
Or do you just need an excuse?
Many a night upon finding the madman drunk, Judd had chosen to leave him to sleep off his liquor in an alley or doorway rather than be subjected to his ramblings at the jailhouse. But often, as was the case last night, Judd was moved to pity the hermit.
If he ain’t brimming with drink, he’s full of sorrow.
The sheriff regretted his kindness now—like he always did—too late. The night had passed, and the talk had left him thirsty.
Judd looked south down the wagon-rutted street toward Skinker’s Saloon. A touch of tequila would be just the thing for his nerves, and tequila never made him loco like whiskey did. But the sight of something throttled the urge.
A crowd had gathered on the steps of the saloon.
“Well, what in hell?” He dropped a hand to his gun belt—then flinched away with embarrassment. The town had bought him a pair of .45 revolvers for keeping the peace, but five years ago, the sheriff had returned from a drinking binge in Plentyboats without them, having lost the guns in a poker game. When he sobered up, he had been forced to borrow money to replace them with a pair of rust-pitted and poorly used .38’s.
Mayor Pauley had made him a personal loan of the money for better guns, but the sheriff had used some of the cash to settle up his bill at the saloon and the stagecoach livery stable too. No one ever spoke to him about the incident, but he knew by their looks that word had got out, and worse, the cheap replacement guns drew attention to themselves by rattling when he walked.
Still, Judd was insulated from the scorn.
You think I’m worthless, he’d say to himself.
Imagine how I rate to me.
With a rare stroke of luck, for the sheriff anyway, Mayor Pauley choked to death eating ribs at the annual Ghost Girl Roundup not one week after Judd had borrowed the money. That cleared his debt but also left the sheriff as provisional leader of the town until an election could be called. They’d already been waiting five years for the go ahead from the Judge at Babylon City, and the Judge was always busy running the Territory.
So...
Casually, Judd pulled the ring of keys from his belt, opened the door and tossed them into the jailhouse where they clanged against the bars of Boto’s cell.
“You let yourself out, soon as you ain’t a threat to the public no more.” Judd watched the crowd down by the saloon. “Empty your chamberpot and leave the keys on the desk.”
He pulled the door shut with a bang, walked out of the shadow of the porch roof and into the sun’s heat. Adjusting his hat, he tried to steel what frazzled nerves his sleepless night had left him.
Judd just had to get by their first looks: all those frowning faces and rolling eyes. It was always the first look that threw him.
That look always said: “Well, is he drunk today?”
A shudder ran through him as he crossed the street toward the saloon—the dirt shifted beneath his old boots.
7 – BABYLON CITY: The Savage
Al-geran was a simple Savage of normal height. His hands were strong from hard work, and his back was burnt black by the sun. The air was thick and fresh about him as he raked at the rows of earth. A scent came from the sun-warmed soil and brought a smile to his lips.
The elders in his tribe said the sun had been released from its cloudy prison long ago with the death of the old god, and so its rays freed the life of the land as it was freed. The sun pulled the shoots loose from the dirt, and dragged the blades and stalks after. He did not know much about the times before his life, but things had changed they said and that was good.
Al-geran grew wheat in the field on the rise by the mountain river, and cotton past the line of broad-leafed oaks. His wife made the wheat into food that he ate and spun the cotton into shirts that he wore and leggings that she decorated and dyed for trading.
His rake clanged and shivered in his hands when its blade struck the edge of a hard square stone. He knelt to pull the block loose and turn it over in his calloused hands. His eyes squeezed around a memory.
Was it a city? A road? A palace dead beneath this plot of ground?
No one in the village could remember the days before Old Solomon led the people out of darkness and onto the Wild Path. But it was said that some few of the old ones from that time still lived, ancient and cursed where they hid in their holes beneath the Savagelands or in the ruined cities by the sea.
Legend said that once far past the East Peaks, a giant city grew into the sky on the back of the ocean—a city made for the god that was dead. These stories had crossed the land like birds, and as a boy Al-geran had listened to their songs.
He grew up in a village north of the Inland Sea, where the Western Mountain plateau turned to rolling grasslands. There his people grew corn and wheat on land hidden from the world.
When the people of the towns had come to claim the water and the land around it, Al-geran’s tribe followed the Wild Path into the north, for why invite war when land was plentiful and people so few?
And they made new farms in the farthest places.
And they made no war, for they had learned from war.
Al-geran learned stories of the times before from someone who claimed he was there.
It was a secret he kept from his brothers and sisters but an old one of legend lived in shaggy green mountains a half-day’s run from the new village. Al-geran had stumbled upon the strange creature by a stream one day while chasing deer over twisted roots.
At first he was afraid, but something of the old one’s movements and manners kept him calm. This thing was older than the trees it seemed—for it was made of old oily ropes, twisted over and over, and wrapped in skin like dried split leather.
Cursed, as the elders had said.
But this one spoke in words like plain-talk of the city by the sea where the lights shone across all the land like stars caught in water. He spoke of the days when people walked its streets and lived inside its towers—before the war and the coming of the many deaths, before the great plagues swept the land with sickness, and the locusts consumed the very bread in hand.
The old one had laughed with joy and madness in his cave of stone. He wept with the bitterness of a stillborn’s mother.
And Al-geran as a boy would listen and sip at the distant wisdom and pain. The old one taught him much about the world of the bygone days—though often the young Savage was asked to cross his heart to keep the secrets. Al-geran began to visit when he was a boy of six years and did for two summers more until the old one disappeared, and left an empty cave.
At 14 as was the custom; Al-geran took a wife. Their first child had 12 fingers—a lucky start, and after that came nine more children—with none less than ten fingers each—more good luck. The days of work grew longer, and he thought no more of the old one except for moments such as those when his rake would tear open the bosom of the earth, and the story of the past came spilling out.
His thoughts fluttered away like prairie chickens from the tragedy of myth and legend as memory of his first child brought back the vision of his wife on their first night.
Al-geran stood over the dark rows of earth and smiled.
Roshe was all of 13 summers when they married, and there were few women in the tribe that could boast such beauty. How soft her warm round belly had been, how sweet. Much different from the woman she was now.
Twenty years had passed, and ten children had slid between her legs. Her body once plump with youth was thinner now, and her breasts slack. The work of raising the children and keeping the home had thickened her muscle and hardened her hands.
Still, as Al-geran thought back on their first night, he felt warm welcome stirrings beneath his loincloth.
She may have aged, but Roshe was still a young woman beneath the blankets.
“Al-geran! What next then? Will you work or weave a cozy blanket of memories to curl under and drop your teeth upon,” she often chided him. “You should be planting wheat, not sowing thoughts of distraction.”
Al-geran leaned against his rake a moment more, wiping a thick forearm across his brow. His dark eyes studied the bright blue of the sky. “Why not distraction? What better way to pass the time as my body works.” A part of him wished to lie back on the dirt, like his children did when they finished their chores, to feel the warm hands of the sun upon his chest. But it seemed that his work was never done.
“Work!” he commanded himself. “Work, go home, and eat with your family.” He chuckled, raising his rake. “And see what Roshe thinks of these memories you have conjured.”
A gunshot, and he turned to face the trees at the edge of the field.
Then came the drumming of hooves and the screaming of children.
Another gunshot!
The Savage jerked awake with tears staining his face and shirt. He sat away from the others in a shadowed corner of the room.
Another boom echoed through the Blackhorse Saloon. A drunkard firing his pistol at the ceiling. The barkeep swung a shotgun and the heavy barrel laid the drunkard out.
Roshe.
Sickness filled Al-geran’s breast and clenched at his heart. Roshe. His spirit chased the dream, the memory. The loss. How beautiful she had been.
The Savage looked at the table before him, at the hands that framed the empty glass there. How pale and weak they looked. It was long since they had worked a field.
Long since they had caressed his Roshe.
8 – Blackhorse Saloon
At first look the owner of the Blackhorse Saloon had the appearance of any fine gentleman of breeding and wealth that you might find in Babylon City—embroidered waistcoat over an ample stomach, silk shirt, fine-tailored suit, hat and black calfskin boots. He moved and behaved like the very incarnation of the wealthy man of the towns. His skin was always pale and scrubbed, and his hair was well groomed, slicked over his head like black wax.
But that was only at a glance, and a glance is all the average man ever had the sand to give him. This “Gambler” as the locals called him, the owner of the Blackhorse, rarely left his office and rooms atop the saloon, except for those moments in the wee hours of the morning when tobacco smoke had turned the air a hazy blue. Then, the Gambler would come out and play the late night players at whatever game of chance they chose, be it dice, cards or as you please.
At first the uninitiated might assume that the Gambler came out at such times to use his superior knowledge of the games in an effort to protect the financial liquidity of the Blackhorse Saloon, but his aggressive play and blatant disregard for his own money soon dispelled the notion. He would wager large sums for the most worthless of his opponent’s resources. Instead of the diamond stickpins that protruded from their vests, the Gambler would wager for the hearts that beat beneath them. Or he would bet a small fortune in an effort to win another man’s pledge of loyalty.
On the rare occasion that he lost, he paid no more attention to the parting money than he would to the rising sun. Though he rarely lost. There were whispered secrets about how he collected his winnings, but those who lost to him, if they ever turned up, never spoke of it again. Those transactions occurred behind the thick black curtains that closed on the Gambler’s private room at the back of the saloon.
Upon second look, as such rare moments presented themselves; the Gambler’s true pedigree became something of a greater mystery. Whenever he paused to look over his cards, or stood shaking the dice in his cold, white hands, something came over him. It was as though a north wind blew aside a thin covering of dust, and showed deep-etched lines beneath. He looked as old as the hills at such times but not in any frail or crippled way. Instead, the Gambler had a stony quality to him, hard as granite and just as ancient. And there was a peculiar set to his eyes—they would gleam with a scarlet light.
At those times when the Gambler opened the rigid slit beneath his pencil-thin moustache, his voice came out deep and sonorous, echoing like the words had been spoken long before and far away in a deep place dark and dripping.
The Gambler, on those rare occasions when he did join the gathering, appeared at night. During the day, another of the Blackhorse Saloon’s owners kept his court.
Judge Ash could easily be mistaken for the Gambler; they shared a similar cast of features and movement. In fact, there was a rumor around the Territory that the two were brothers, though none of the gossips had any proof and none accused. But where the Gambler had little to do with the society from which he won his fortune, Judge Ash had very much indeed to do with the fortunes of others.
The morning would bring the Judge from the apartments above the Blackhorse, clucking busily to himself, as he clattered down the wooden steps in his black patent leather shoes. The Judge wore a dark gray suit with white pinstripes, and a hard round bowler hat that clung to his gray-haired scalp like a second skin.
He would step into the street at 7:30 each morning, pause a moment to gaze at his pocket watch, before shaking his head, and making his way along the main street. At the end he would pass the tall gates that opened into Fort Babylon where the enormous red brick courthouse sat in the auspicious company of Government Hall.
He would take his breakfast of toast, eggs and coffee in his comfortable offices behind his courtroom as he reviewed the legal cases that would be tried that day. The Judge worked in close proximity to the Governor’s office, but he rarely saw the ruler of the Territory. Gubernatorial business kept his colleague otherwise occupied.