Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name (18 page)

“This
drunk of a sailor gave me and my brother Sy a matching pair when we sailed on
The Hetty. Sy had this fear of drowning. Used to have nightmares about bein’
pulled under the water. This fella said these were proof against drowning. Lot
of good they do me now.”

“They
may do you more
good
than you know,” Spates said.

“Sailors
are as superstitious as Indians,” Doc said. He glanced at Crazy Horse Bob. “No
offense, Crazy.”

The
Indian shrugged.

“This
is all well and good,” Doc continued. “But I think we’re forgetting the real
impetus of this little diversion. There’s the matter of two thousand dollars
Dirty Dave took off a Spaniard.”

“You
ought to take that up with him,” Dodgy said.

“He
says you all switched bags on him.”

“Then
he’s a liar as well as a chickenshit,” said the German.

“You
don’t convince me, Dodgy,” said Doc, walking over to the bigger man. He frowned
when they were face to face. “I don’t much like looking up at you either. How
about I cut a couple inches off you, bring you down to a more manageable
height?”

“Doc,”
Mather said. “We got more important things to worry about now, don’t we? What
about whatever killed Frank Cady and our horses?”

“All in good time, David.”

“You
promised you’d bring that money back, Doc,” Mather said, his previous
threatening
tone
returning.

“That
jewel might be worth a look, though,” said the Rider quickly.

Doc
looked over at him, and a smile broke out beneath his mustache.

The
Rider smiled back. It was time to appeal to the man’s instincts, to keep them
from killing each other. He had to get a hold of this star-stone.
To keep it away from Adon if nothing else.
By now Adon
surely knew of Sheardown’s death. He might be sending someone to complete the
man’s work here. He could worry about getting it away from these men when he
found it.

“We
didn’t say anything to Hoodoo about delivering a jewel,” he went on.

“Why
Rider…now you’re talking like a proper bookseller.”

Then
Dodgy’s big right arm gave an almost imperceptible flick. Down out of the
voluminous sleeve of his buffalo coat dropped an object that glittered in the
late morning light in a golden way the Rider was quite familiar with.

Dodgy
brought the squarish barrel of the gilded
Volcanic
pistol up and down like a hatchet, and swatted Doc’s gun to the ground.

Then
he grabbed Doc by the cravat and yanked him across his ankle, sending him flat
on his face.

As
if by a previously decided signal none of them had observed, Crazy Horse Bob
grabbed the Rider’s gun hand and mashed his crotch with a swift knee that
forced all the wind up out of him and double him over in a fascinating agony.

On
the ground, Bullshit scrambled over Spates and Cady’s corpse in a desperate
grab for Doc’s fallen gun.

Mather
lit into him with both pistols and sent him rolling and bucking like a rabbit
caught in a fusillade, little bursts of blood erupting in his neck, face, and
hand.

Crazy
Horse Bob and Dodgy wasted no time, but ran into the brush at the opposite side
of the clearing. Of course the Volcanic was useless as anything other than a
gaudy club to the German, as the warded ring that allowed it to be fired still
rode on the Rider’s finger.

But
Crazy Horse Bob had pulled the gun from the Rider’s hands as he dropped to his
knees, and now he fired back at them as he ran.

Doc
dropped flat at the Rider’s side, unhurt, but eager to avoid the Indian’s wild
fire.

Mather
backed away, banging away at his two guns until he disappeared in a cloud of
smoke. The thunder soon dwindled into a series of impotent mechanical clicks as
his hammers fell on empty chambers.

When
it cleared, Dodgy and the Indian were gone.

“Goddammit!”
Mather bellowed with uncharacteristic passion.
“What the fuck were you two lookin’ at?”

Doc
got to his feet, dusting himself off.

“Why
don’t you just shut up and toss me one of those pistols of yours. You can’t
seem to hit a goddamned thing with two. Maybe you’ll do better with one.”

The
Rider caught his breath and limped over to Spates, who was curled up with his
knees under his chin, his hands over his head, and his rear end in the air. The
man was alive and unhurt, but understandably shaken from the sudden explosion
of violence and death.

“My
God,” he
said,
when the Rider helped him to his feet.
“I must say I didn’t expect all this.”

“They
left their horses,” Doc said, gesturing up to the shack at the nickering
animals still tied there.

“Where
are they headed?” the Rider said, stooping to pick up one of the discarded
pistols.

“They’d
be going to that tunnel, if I know Dodgy,” said Mather, reloading his guns.
“He’s a greedy sonofabitch, and will want that jewel before
he
lights out.”

“If
he’s got Rider’s gun, then he’s probably got that two thousand on him,” said
Doc.

“One
of us should stay here and watch the horses, make sure they don’t double back
and try to get away,” said the Rider.

“I
can do that,” said Doc. “Dodgy bashed my knee when he threw me down. I won’t be
much help chasing those two ducks anyway. I’ll see to it your mule doesn’t
bleed to death.”

“It’s
not a mule,” the Rider snapped.

“Where’s
that tunnel, Professor?” said Mather.

“We’ll
need to refill some lanterns,” said Spates. “There’s not much left, and Dodgy
and Bob’s are full. We’ll have to leave one here with him as well.”

“Keep
your damn lantern,” Doc scoffed. “You just bring that two thousand and the rock
back.”

Spates
hefted an oil barrel out of the shack. There was not very much left at all.
Only enough to fill two lanterns.
Bullshit had kicked over
his own when he’d died, and Dodgy and Crazy Horse Bob had run off with theirs.

Despite
Doc’s protestations, they left one of the lanterns with him. Spates, being
unarmed, carried the other.

“Take
these,” Spates said, removing a pair of glass ampoules, one from each coat
pocket. They were the same sort of small vials they had found in the little
crate on the skinned man’s
saddle,
only these were
intact and contained a greenish liquid.

“More
of Sheardown’s work?” the Rider asked, holding the ampoule up to the light
skimming through the trees. The light did not penetrate the stuff, which was as
thick as buttermilk.

“Yes.
Be very careful, these are all we have. Once exposed to the air, it releases an
acidic cloud that will dissolve any flesh it comes into contact with.”

Mather
and the Rider looked at him.

“So
that’s what happened to Bullshit,” said Mather.

“I’ve
no doubt,” said Spates. “After I demonstrated the stuff on a squirrel, he must
have got it in his head to take the whole lot and sell it off somewhere.
A mercenary bunch through and through.”

“But
what’s it for?” Mather asked.

“If
the thing has invisible skin, and we remove the skin, we may be able to see
it,” the Rider reasoned aloud.

“Quite
right,” said Spates.

“Protect
my investments!” Doc called to them from the shack as they left.

“I’m
surprised he didn’t come with to do so himself,” the Rider mentioned.

“We
can’t go anywhere without the horses. He’s playing it smart,” Mather said.

The
Rider raised a hand to him as he left, and the last sight he had of the man was
of him lighting a cigarillo on the red globe of the lantern.

* * *
*

It was not far through the woods to the cave mouth. A deep wound in the
rocky earth, it was cluttered with the dusty and weatherworn remains of the
excavation. Shovels, picks, and broken, empty dynamite crates and stacks of
shoring timbers, lay about like the instruments of a surgeon who abandoned hope
of his case and left the tools of his trade behind in frustration.

One
of the lanterns had been set outside. It was lit.

They
stood outside, considering it a moment.

“Did
they leave it here to keep it out or keep it in?” Mather wondered.

“Our
plan was to herd the thing with the lanterns, but I don’t think they had enough
time,” Spates whispered. “I should think that if they went inside, they’re
still inside.”

“Waiting
to bushwhack us,” Mather agreed.

Spates
knelt beside the lit lantern and rapped on the base with his knuckle.

“Still
half full,” he announced, straightening. “Best to conserve this, then,” he
said, twisting the lantern he held off.

“Pretty
dark in there though,” Mather said, staring at the black cave mouth.

The
Rider took out his borrowed pistol. He still wasn’t entirely sure what the
nature of this creature was. Would normal bullets even hurt it? He had
encountered things in the past that could shrug off lead. There had to be some
sort of spell about it rendering it invisible.
Something by
Lilith or one of her servants perhaps?
Something he couldn’t detect or
counter because of her power over him. The cave made him nervous. It was dark.
He felt as he’d felt before a battle during the war, seeing the cloudy bursts
of shot and the rising smoke far up the line as he walked in cadence. Knowing
there was danger, even the possibility of death, and marching in anyway. There
was an absurdity to it.

He
looked at Mather. The marshal was a hard man, wearing a badge yet straddling
the law, yet he was afraid too. Either two skulking killers or an invisible
horror waited within and by his eyes, Mather couldn’t decide which was worse.
Neither could the Rider. There was an air about Mather. He lived up to his
moniker, ‘Mysterious Dave.’ The Elder Sign tattoo on his arm and his allusions
to strange experiences at sea were certainly intriguing, both to the Rider’s
simple curiosity about the man and his understanding of the alien knowledge
related in Sheardown’s book. Perhaps the ravings of the text could not be so
easily dismissed. If a simple sailor was familiar with it, then it was more
widespread a phenomenon than he suspected. How had he gone all his life and
never encountered these things in his own esoteric studies?

Spates
flashed them a ‘here goes nothing’ smile and crept into the cave abruptly,
dispersing their own hesitation. The man did not seem acquainted with fear. He
had the sort of scholarly enthusiasm that the Rider had seen once in his time
at the yeshiva, in a bright, eager young student who leapt into the Yenne Velt
without taking the time to make the proper preparations, and wound up with his
soul half-dislodged in his body. That boy wound up in an asylum, dead to the
world, yet still breathing.

They
followed Spates in, down the dark tunnel. When they passed out of the range of
the light seeping into the entrance, they stopped, bumping into each other.

“You’re
right, it’s quite dark,” Spates whispered.

The
sound carried quite a long way in the subterranean stillness, and in the black,
they heard an answering scrabble that could have been the shifting of stone, or
a boot scraping the rock floor, or a varmint that had taken up residence, or
something else entirely.

A
match struck in the dark, and Mather appeared. He held the match to a wrinkled
pocket handkerchief and then wound it around the barrel of one of his
forty-fives, where it hung blazing. His face was tense, underlit eyes shifting
in the orange glow. He was a target now for anything lurking in the shadows,
but they just couldn’t see a thing.

“You
hear that?” Mather whispered.

The
Rider looked all about, training his own gun wherever his eyes went. There
were a pair
of side passages on either side of the main
tunnel. All three sloped down into the mountain.

He
had heard, but the sound had been fleeting.

“We
could split up,” Spates suggested.

In
answer, Mather walked down the main tunnel, and the Rider gripped Spates by the
sleeve and pulled him along after.

After
several minutes walking, all three of them leapt bodily as a voice called out
from the dark;

“Oh God!
Over here!
Help!”

Spates
started to make for the sound, but the Rider caught him. It could still be a
trap. Probably was. At least they knew it was Dodgy and Crazy Horse Bob in here
and not the thing.

Mather
pointed with his flaming gun barrel.

Far
down the tunnel was a pinprick of red light. Mather drew his other pistol and
kept the flaming one far away from his body.