Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name (12 page)

They
told him that anticipation of death was God’s test for men of hidden knowledge,
and the Adversary’s greatest temptation. The counterpoint was that although God
had laid aside an idyllic place for them, they must not abandon life. Life was
the crucible of the Lord, in which the spirit was tempered for the unknown
rigors of its new existence. To cut it short was to impede one’s enjoyment of
the life yet to come.

One
old teacher, a rebbe named Levi, had advised him that the trick was finding one
thing, just one, to savor about the material world; something that could only
be enjoyed in this life. Something one would dearly miss in the next. Levi had
confided to the Rider that for him, it was strawberries.
Plump,
freshly picked strawberries.

The
Rider’s one thing had always been knowledge, and experience of this Earth. He
had as a youth marveled at the breadth of Creation and the philosophies of men.
But that simple joy had lately been replaced with an altogether different
motivation to stay alive.

At
the end of the bandit’s gun barrel was the shadow of Adon, lurking and leering
in the dark with the blood of the Sons of The Essenes black on his hands. The
Order had taken the Rider from a mindless job as an apprentice shopkeeper
sweeping floors, balancing ledgers and putting his mind to the arrangement of
canned goods and opened up the world, the very universe to him. They had taken
away his fear of death.

Adon
had no small part in that, and it was that personal betrayal that aggrieved him
all the more. Shopkeeper his real father may have been, small and
profit-minded, but he had loved the Torah enough to sacrifice his legacy and,
like Abraham, give his only son over to its study when the Sons of The Essenes
came
calling. In the years that followed, Adon had come to
replace his father. The Rider respected and deferred to him at all times,
trusting him with the idolizing love of a boy with no other family. When his
clerk father died, he had barely shed a tear. When he returned from the war and
learned of Adon’s utter, murderous betrayal, he had hardly been able to stand
up under the weight of grief and shame. No, Adon had to answer for that. And so
the Rider had to live.

“You
heard him fine, Dirty Dave,” said Doc quietly at his side.

The
bandit’s attention turned to the dentist.

“Doc,”
said the robber, recognition flooding his blinking eyes.

“Why
don’t you give this man a pass,
Dirty
? He’s with me.”

“I
don’t give passes, I give bullets. Say my name again and I’ll give you one,
lunger.” He turned his gun on Doc.

“Don’t
tease me, you piece of trash,” Doc warned, iron in his voice, as if he had it
in his hand to match.

The
back door of the car clashed open and the Rider heard heavy boot steps and more
spurs.

“What
the hell’s goin’ on in here?” It was a squirrely voice, muffled. “How come you
ain’t grabbed
none
of the lanterns?”

Dirty,
the bandit, stood where he was.

“Lanterns.
Get the goddamned lanterns yourself.”

“Son
of a bitch!” the other man said.

“Get
the other bag,” Dirty said to his cohort, and in a minute the second masked man
came into view, a tall, gangly fellow with a row of extinguished train lanterns
looped and clanking over one skinny arm. He went across the aisle to jerk the
other bulging loot bag from an old man’s hands.

“You
just reach in your coat Doc, two fingers, and pass me that underarm gun.”

“What
do you intend?”

“I
intend to leave peaceably, but I ain’t about to turn my back on you.”

Doc
did as he was
told,
producing a little nickel plated
Colt Lightning with a four inch barrel. He flipped it lightly and held it
butt-first to Dirty.

“You
know I’ll be comin’ back for it,” Doc said as the man took it and slid it into
his coat pocket.

“I
guess you know where it’ll be,” said the other.

The
Rider turned his attention to the second man, who was looking out one of the
windows.

“Let’s
go already!” he whined over his shoulder.

Dirty
snatched the burlap bag of loot from the Rider and dropped the black case he’d
taken inside. He was about to turn away when something caught his eye and he
stopped again.

“Hold
everything,” he said.

He
reached down and grabbed the butt of the Rider’s
Volcanic
pistol and drew it out of it’s holster.

He
whistled, holding it up to the light.

“Look
at this here!” he exclaimed, the smile nearly showing through his mask. He held
the golden pistol with its intricate mystic engravings up for the other robber
to see.

“Take
it and let’s go!” said the other man, who was by now at the front of the car.

The
Rider watched the Volcanic go into the sack with the black valise, watches, and
jewelry. It was irreplaceable, the product of weeks of meticulous engraving and
precise astrological preparation. The rosette token of Nehema protected him
from demons, but the pistol was his greatest offensive tool. He felt his
stomach sink.

Doc
seemed to see it in his eyes, and he touched the Rider reassuringly on the arm
again as Dirty turned away and went after his companion.

The
second man went stumbling out of the car, berating Dirty as he went. For his
part,
Dirty
paused in the doorway and waved his pistol
at the shadowy passengers.

“Hope
y’all like Las Vegas, folks!” he laughed, and then he sent one bullet screaming
down the center of the aisle, thunderous in the closeness. When the flash of
his gun muzzle had subsided on their corneas, he was gone, the door slamming
shut behind him.

People
were screaming and scrambling for cover.

The
Rider looked out the window, and saw Dirty and his accomplice clamber down the
train steps to a pair of waiting horses, being held by a third man.

The
masked rider they had seen gallop for the back of the train returned, and he
was an eerie sight, for bouncing in his fist were a gaggle of red brakeman’s
lanterns, glowing hellish and strange in the blue light. When he joined the
others, his burden cast them all in a scarlet glow.

“One,
two, three, four,” Doc counted, mimicking a pistol with his thumb and
forefinger against the glass and tapping each man out.

Another
pair of masked riders joined the bunch from other parts of the train. The Rider
noticed they were all bearing various signal lanterns.

Doc
counted them as they came.

“Five, six.
Dirty Dave Rudabaugh, Frank
Cady, Slap Jack Bill, maybe Bullshit Jack Pierce, and two others.”

“You
know those men?”

“I
have the displeasure of having made some of their acquaintances, yes,” said
Doc. “Dave Rudabaugh is a friend of a friend, but despite the old axiom, that
does not make him one of mine.”

“That
pistol was dear to me,” the Rider said.

“A
pistol is dear to most men in these parts. If you’ll accompany me when we reach
Las Vegas, I may be able to get yours back for you. Barring that, I shall find
you a suitable replacement followed by swift satisfaction for both our losses.”

“I
don’t have much choice, do I?”

“Choice
was God’s second gift to man, Mr. Rider. A man may choose most anything in his
life. His occupation for instance, or rather what he lets out his occupation to
be.
”

“Do
you mean to say you’re not a dentist?”

“No
you misunderstand. I am a dentist. But you’re no more a bookseller than I am
the Prince of Wales. What use has a bookseller for a pistol and a knife?”

The
Rider shrugged.

“Bookworms and such.”

Doc
smiled.

The
train sat in darkness, for night had fallen in the interim and no one dared to
stand and light the lamps. Women were fanning themselves and fading into the
arms of their men. Rapid Spanish angry or concerned rattled in the gloom, and
the Rider watched the bouncing lantern lights extinguish, melding the fleeing robbers
with the night. The only luminescence in the car was the orange glow around the
door of the potbelly stove the car used for heat.

The
rear door clashed open again and an assistant conductor came tromping in. He
went right to the stove, opened the door and lit a wick, which he then
proceeded to light the interior lamps with.

When
the people realized he was an official of the railroad, demands and
protestations ensued, with the silver-haired man in the pinstripe suit who had
lost his valise the shrillest and most insistent of all. The conductor doggedly
nodded and apologized until he lit the last of the interior lights. Then he
went to the conductor who was sitting in the aisle face to the ceiling
clutching his broken nose and helped him to his feet.

The
conductors conferred,
then
the lamplighter announced
the train would be underway again shortly and ducked out the front door,
leaving the bloody-nosed man pinching his face with a handkerchief to field the
angry questions. The man murmured through the handkerchief and went back down
the aisle toward the rear of the train.

The
Rider caught the conductor’s sleeve as he passed.

“Sir,
I’m required to tell you that the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad
disavows
all responsibility for…,” he droned.

“Never mind that.
How long till we reach
the end of the line, now?”

“Three
hours from the time we get moving again.”

“Out
of curiosity, what was taken, besides the passengers’ personal effects?”

“Nothing,”
the conductor said tiredly.
“Just every damn lantern on the
train, and two boxes of spare brakeman’s globes from the caboose.
This
was the only car that was robbed. Excuse me.”

The
conductor disengaged himself, leaving the Rider to puzzle over the theft.

Doc
heard it too.

“Curious,”
he said.

The
robbery had taken all of fifteen minutes, but it was forty five minutes before
the engineers got the train on its way again.

They
pulled into Las Vegas deep in the night, chugging through dim adobe buildings
and behind sleepy cantinas, passing east into New Town, where the structures
became frame and canvas all aglow,
the
incubating
bones of a civilization too young and rambunctious to sleep. The Rider heard
gunshots in the night as they pulled in, and lit against the rising moon a tall
windmill with a corpse hanging limp as ripe fruit from one of the crossbeams.

End
of the line, thought the Rider, as the train exhaled and the sleepy passengers
rose, quarreled in the candlelight over their luggage, and then jammed the
exits.

Doc
dozed throughout the procedure, and the Rider had to rouse him. They were the
last to step down from the yellow car onto the plank platform, and found that
the porters had led the Rider’s onager down from the live freight car.

“What
the hell is that?” Doc asked, when the Rider claimed the brushy coated,
crop-eared animal from the porter.
“An albino mule?”

The
Rider patted the animal’s withers and shrugged.

“He’s
not a mule.”

“You
mean God granted that thing the ability to procreate?”

The
animal shook its bristly mane and blew out its lips.

The
ability yes, but not the opportunity, the Rider thought, ruffling the animal’s
good ear

They
arranged to have the onager taken to the stableyard, and after the Rider paid,
Doc said;

“My
place is just a block west.”

The
Rider followed.

The
town was lit in more than one way, with staggering, caterwauling men wheeling
through the lamp-lit streets. The Rider saw one drunkard get struck and cursed
by a racing rider bent low over his horse, hat brim flat to the wind. The drunk
miraculously spun on one boot heel and stumbled off in the direction he’d just
come, either making a spontaneous decision to take the encounter as an ill omen
and return to his point of origin, or else being entirely unaware that he had
altered his course.

The
saloons swallowed and regurgitated men by the fistful, a never-ending commerce
of bleary eyed toughs and bellowing boasters that drew slit eyed men shuffling
cards and over-painted women with dull expressions like clusters of iron
filament to a magnet.

They
passed down Centre Street, angling towards one particular saloon, a
single-story clapboard establishment with a simple sign that read Toe-Jam
Saloon next to a small bakery gone dim for the night.

They
went inside, and the modestly decorated saloon was dimly lit, with friendly
shadows and a few tired, quiet men at the bar, in direct contrast to the
raucous, crowded places they had passed on the way.