Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name (15 page)

He
stopped speaking and straightened when he saw the quiet man looking down on
them, and shaded his eyes to penetrate the silhouette.

“Well,
well,” Doc said, ever amused. “Rider, let me introduce you to our chaperone,
Mysterious Dave Mather.”

The
man’s fingers touched the neat brim of his hat, but he said nothing.

Doc
shrugged and whispered behind his hand to the Rider.

“It’s
easy to be mysterious when you don’t say anything.”

“Sometimes
it’s best to serve God by silence,” the Rider said.

“Well,
silence is better than not riding a damn horse, that’s for certain.”

Doc
hiked his boot up into the stirrup and swung himself up onto the mare. The
effort induced another coughing fit in him that lasted until the Rider finished
his tending to the onager and waited patiently.

Doc
dabbed at his red stained lips and smiled a faintly bloody smile at Mather.

“Well
our day trip is going to wind up an overnight excursion it seems, Mather. Rider
here is of a peculiar Hebrew sect who favors leading asses over riding ponies.”

“I’m
in no hurry,” Mather said and turned his horse around without another word.

The
Rider got a better look at him as he walked alongside. Mather was a tall man of
spare, almost delicate frame, his dress as dark and austere as the Rider’s own.
He had a long, sweeping mustache that combined with the shadow of his hat brim,
seemed to hide all expression. He wore two Colts, and as he guided his horse,
the Rider noticed the edges of a blue tattoo on the inside of his right forearm
peek out of the edge of his sleeve and quickly
retreat
.
He had a professional manner, and did not strike the Rider as a lowlife the way
Dave Rudabaugh had.

The
three passed northwest out of town, Doc talking enough for both the Rider and
Mather. From Doc, the Rider learned Hoodoo’s pet marshal was an easterner. Doc
had met him through his partner Jordan Webb during the Royal Gorge War between
the AT&SF and the Denver & Rio Grande Western companies over the narrow
eponymous route to the mines at Leadville, and had shared a meal with him once
in Pueblo.

The
country got higher and rockier, and Doc pointed out the silhouetted rise of Elk
Mountain in the red distance before they picked a spot to bed down.

The Rider knelt and put on his tefillin and
said his evening prayers while Doc and Mather brewed coffee and stared at him.
When he had finished, night had fallen, and the campfire was the only light in
the dark mountains.

“You
have got some strange ways, Rider,” Doc remarked, when the Rider had settled
down on his bedroll. “I’ve known a few Jews in my day, but never one like you.”

“You
mean broke?” the Rider asked with mock innocence, as he wound up the
phylacteries. “I’m rich in experience.”

Doc
smirked in answer and shook his head.

“You’re
one of them Hasids, aren’t you?” Mather said over the rim of his tin mug, the
steam curling over his dark eyes.

The
Rider looked at the marshal, surprised.

“It
speaks,” Doc mumbled into his own cup.

“I
spent some time in New York City, seen your kind about.”

“Walking
about,” Doc said dryly.

“You’ve
been to sea, as well,” the Rider observed.

“How
did you know that?” Mather said sharply.

“I
saw the tattoo on your forearm.”

Mather
glanced down and pushed back his right sleeve, displaying the intricate design
of a cross made of rigging spars before a ship’s wheel draped with rope.

“A
Mariner’s Cross. It means you were a deck hand doesn’t it?”

“Just for a year, with my brother.
My daddy was a sailor,
but I didn’t take to it. You don’t look much like a sailor to me.”

“I’ve
been across the sea,” said the Rider, taking a proffered coffee but waving away
a piece of jerky Mather held out to him, “but no, I’m not a sailor.”

“Don’t
you know a bookseller when you see one, Mather?” Doc said.

Mather
closed his eyes at the sound of Doc’s voice, and opened them again only when
he’d finished.

“You
go too long without hearin’ your own voice, Doc?”

“Bad
enough I have to travel at the pace of his jackass, but your idea of
conversation appears to be no conversation at all.”

“Conversation
with you tends to be one-sided,” Mather said.

“Be
patient, Doc,” Rider said, fearful that the frayed nerves of his two traveling
companions might snap. “By the looks of it, we’ll be there by noon tomorrow if
we leave early.”

“We
should’ve been there and back by now,” Doc said. “We hadn’t waited for Hoodoo’s
pet marshal here we might’ve at least been there.”

“The
way Hoodoo told it, you requested me, Doc,” Mather said.

“I
told him to send a man to ease his worries,” said Doc. “I didn’t think it’d be
you.”

“What’s
the matter?” Mather said. “Were you hoping for some fool who’d let you get
close enough to stick a knife in his back?”

“Rider
and I gave Hoodoo our word about the money.”

“I
didn’t mention the money.”

“I
don’t care about any money,” the Rider piped up.

Doc
held up one black gloved hand to the Rider for quiet and kept his eyes on
Mather, who had laid aside his tin cup.

“Maybe
it’d be best if we had this out right now, Doc,” Mather said, setting aside his
coffee, “before we even get to the cabin.”

“Fine
by me,” Doc said, and stood up.

Mather
and the Rider both got to their feet just as a hoarse scream came crashing out
of the dark.

With
the blank rock faces of the mountains, the sound bounced crazily about, like
the irregular hysterics of a lunatic on the dirty walls of an asylum. It gave
the illusion of several men screaming at once—but no, there was another voice
intertwined with the first, like a couple of maniacs pinwheeling about arm in
arm, competing in displays of lunacy. But the second scream wasn’t human. It
couldn’t be. It was shrill and of a wildly varying pitch, streaking high like a
bottle rocket and then shuddering impossibly low, only to rear up again as
ragged breath allowed.

“Jesus!”
said Doc, drawing his gun.

Moments
earlier the action would have had the Rider and Mather both going for their own
weapons, but now the three of them put their backs to the fire and angled their
pistols outward into the impenetrable dark, gripping them hard to keep the
muzzles from shaking as they drew the hammers back with their thumbs.

The
shrill, piping scream of the man and the weird howling accompanying it
continued unabated, and increased in volume. Whatever was making the sounds was
getting closer.

Into
the edge of the firelight there rode a red and gleaming man atop a red and
gleaming horse. At first the Rider thought they were draped in gore, dripping
in blood like men he had seen in the war who had passed through a hard
slaughter. Blood did drip on the ground, black and plentiful, like a pattering
rain of crude oil wherever the horse stumbled. But a moment’s dwelling on them
showed the blood was their own, leaking from the great and terrible wound man
and animal shared; the skin and hide had been entirely flayed from their
bodies, the mirage of bloody covering in actuality was their own muscle and
ragged connective tissue exposed to the night air. The firelight magnified the
sight, glistened on the long white teeth and bulging eyes of horse and rider,
rendering them visions more apocalyptic and terrible than anything any of the
three men, in their combined years of bloodshed and supernatural dealings had
ever seen. This was no phantom, no spirit who had assumed some horrible shape.
This was a mortal man and animal, walking dead but somehow hanging on to life,
the ingrained black pepper grit of what must have been sand blowing off the
mountains now wormed into their unprotected bodies visible evidence testifying
as to the reason behind the agonized screams of man and horse lashed together
in blasphemous, harrowing cacophony that continued to ring through the night.

The
horse walked slowly forward toward the fire on shuddering legs, every secret of
its locomotion on display, every twitch of sinew and precise tug of anatomy exposed.
It shook its great neck, sending blood flying, sporadically shrieking the pain
every step must elicit. Atop its back, the terrible man sat bolt aright,
bloodstained, blue jeaned limbs (for although apparently entirely skinned, he
still wore shirt, pants, and boots, as the horse wore its bridle and saddle)
bouncing on the animal’s flanks, a living, trembling skeleton draped with meat
like something dangling from a slaughterman’s hook. The muscles of his skull
face drew taut and slack reflexively, and the screams piped from behind the
bloody grin. The bulging eyes screwed crazily in its head, darting and crossing
and rolling with madness brought on by extreme agony.

The
Rider aimed first, hefting the unfamiliar pistol. He hesitated, and Mather was
the first to fire. A big .45 bullet crashed between the red horseman’s
horrifying eyes and sent a burst of soupy matter flying out into the night from
which he had ridden. The figure fell back, slapping wetly against his mount’s
hind end, before tumbling clumsily to the dirt.

The
Rider and Doc opened up on the horse, Doc putting so many bullets into the
thing it seemed he hoped to blow the memory of it from his mind.

When
the gun smoke settled, the heaps of smoking meat and viscera lay like skinned
buffalo before their campfire, unwilling to depart from them wholly.

The
Rider bent over the corpse of the man and held gingerly picked the plastered,
stained shirt away from the chest, peering inside.

“He’s
been skinned.”

“And
then somebody put his clothes back on?” Doc stammered, pulling a flask from his
hip pocket and hastily unscrewing it.

“The
horse still has its saddle too,” Mather observed, hunkering beside the carcass.
“And take a look at the nameplate.”

They
looked. ‘Property of William Nicholson,’ it read.

“Slap
Jack Bill,” Doc said, staring down at the skinned man and taking a deep pull
from his flask.

“What
could have done this?” the Rider said aloud. He hadn’t seen anything like this
on the physical plane.

“Apaches?”
Mather suggested.

There
was a pair of blood soaked saddlebags tied behind the cantle. Mather kicked
open the flap with one boot, exposing a small packing crate within, and little
else.

“They’d
skin a white man, sure,” Doc affirmed. “But put his clothes back on him? And I
never heard of ‘em doing something like this to a horse.”

But
the Rider knew it wasn’t Indians. The bodies showed no signs of mutilation
aside from the removal of their flesh, which had been done so expertly that not
a ragged scrap remained. It was almost as if the clothes had never been
removed; almost as if their hides had simply vanished.

The
Rider knelt and slid the crate out of the bag. The inside was filled with
packing straw and a half dozen broken glass vials smeared with a greenish
residue that had the consistency of maple syrup.

“Looks
like nitroglycerine,” said Mather.

“Looks
like,” said Doc, peering down at the stuff. “But it ain’t.”

“If
this man was one of the men we’re looking for, we should assume the rest are
dead,” the Rider said.

Mather
and Doc shared a look.

“Maybe
Slap Jack wandered off from the others,” Mather said.

“So
you don’t think we should turn back?” Doc said.

“I’m
not going back,” the Rider declared.
His pistol, the red
glass lanterns, and now this.
Adon and his man Sheardown had used Las
Vegas as some sort of staging area, by their correspondence. Whatever was
happening on Elk Mountain had to be connected. The strangeness of it all
couldn’t be a coincidence.

“What
about you, Doc?” Mather asked. “You’re the only one without a vested interest
in going up there.”

Doc
took another swig and grinned.

“Tryin’
to get rid of me?”

“You
ain’t gonna get that money, Doc.”

“The
question ain’t who’s going, Marshal,” Doc said. “It’s when?”

Mather
sighed.

“It’s
too dangerous to go up there in the dark, and if we use lanterns, they’ll see
us coming.”

“If
there’s anyone to see us coming at all,” the Rider reminded them.

“What
do we do with these?” Doc said, indicating the dead horse with the toe of his
boot and then grimacing and grinding his foot in the dirt.

In
answer, Mather took out a handkerchief and tied it around his face.

“I
was afraid you were going to say that,” said Doc.

He
took out his own kerchief and did the same, then looked at the Rider expectantly
over the blood speckled cloth.