Chapter 36
The Mad Major drew Baja Jack close against him in a hug of sorts. Since Jack’s head didn’t come up much past the bulge of Yeats’s sagging paunch, it was a bizarre thing to see. They resembled a father hugging his child. At least from a distance it would have looked that way.
Unfortunately, Prophet was close enough that he could see the pair all too closely—Yeats smiling approvingly down at Baja Jack staring up at him, blushing, that one wacky eye drawn toward his long, hooked nose.
Lou thought that for his many sundry sins, he’d likely be condemned to remember the scene in vivid details on his deathbed.
He looked away quickly, blinking, trying to keep the image from burning into his brain.
Baja Jack cackled his crowlike laugh and bellowed, “Ah hell, Major. I’m just glad you like the stuff, and, uh . . . uh . . . well . . .” He gave a nervous chuckle as he raised his thick little right hand and rubbed his thumb and index finger together. He winked.
“Oh, of course! Of course!” Yeats laughed raucously then turned to Will-John Rhodes. “Lieutenant Rhodes, will you please see to Baja Jack’s compensation?”
“Of course, Major,” Rhodes said, glancing at Jack still beaming like the boy who’d built the flashiest kite. “Right this way, Jack.”
“Right behind you, Lieutenant!”
When Baja Jack had followed Rhodes out of the room and into the adjoining one and then beyond that one, Ciaran Yeats turned to Lou and Colter. He studied each man carefully, frowning suspiciously. Lou and the redhead didn’t say anything, just cut each other skeptical, edgy glances under their quarry’s careful scrutiny.
Suddenly, Yeats raised an arm, gesturing toward the mess of sofas and chairs near the fire, and said, “Please, please, gentlemen. Let’s have a seat and get to know each other, shall we?”
He turned to one of the Mexican girls—the only who’d returned to clear the table and was gathering up more plates and dishes now, tentatively, fearfully.
“Chiquita,” Yeats said, moderating his tone this time, “bring me an olla of the grape pulque and one of the mezcal, por favor. And please apologize to the other girls for me, will you? They should be used to my temper by now, for crying in the queen’s ale. Assure them that I didn’t mean to hurt their feelings.” Like any good bully, he appeared weary at having to sooth the nerves of those overly sensitive enough to be offended by his perhaps headstrong but otherwise benign words and deeds.
A little more of the former steel returned to his voice as he added, “Please tell them to toughen up a little, and for God’s sakes get back out here and get this table cleared. Then I want you all to haul your skinny little brown bean-eating asses outside to the cookfires and rustle me up a decent meal for a change. A meal for me and the lieutenant and for Baja Jack and my new friends.” He threw his arm out again, indicating Lou and Colter. “And please, please, please—a little efficiency for a change? Do not embarrass me this evening—por favor, I beg you, chiquita!”
He clapped his hands together and steepled them beneath his bearded chin, closing his eyes as though in prayer for calm.
With her arms full the girl hustled out of the room.
Lou and Colter shared another furtively conferring glance.
Crazier’n a privy rat . . .
Yeats looked around the table, found a plate that wasn’t as overburdened as the others, and dumped the debris off it. He reached into one of the panniers and crumbled a handful of the locoweed onto the plate. He placed some shredded corn husks onto the plate, as well, and then led Lou and Colter over to the fireplace.
“Sit, gentlemen,” Yeats said, collapsing with a sigh onto the sofa on which he’d been sitting before. “Sit and take a load off. You’ve had a long ride and, apparently, one that was not without trouble.” He glanced meaningfully over the rims of his spectacles at Prophet.
“I reckon you could say that,” Lou said, grimly fingering his swollen left eye.
“Gato, eh?”
“We weren’t formally introduced.”
“Thank you for scouring the trail of that vermin, Mr. Prophet. Any enemy of Baja Jack is an enemy of mine.”
“Call me Lou.”
“All right, then. Lou it is. And you’re . . .”
The redhead shrugged. “Since we’re all getting friendly, I reckon you might as well call me Colter. Or . . .” He cast an ironic glance at Lou. “Red will do, I reckon. Since most folks end up calling me that sooner or later, anyways.”
Prophet hooked a wry half smile.
One of the young señoritas brought in two clay ollas and set them on the low table between Yeats and Lou and Colter, who both sat on the couch that Rhodes had been occupying when they’d entered the apartment. Another girl carried a tray holding three clay cups without handles into the room. She set the tray on the table beside the two pots and then in a voice so soft that Prophet could barely hear her, she asked Yeats if he wanted her to pour.
Yeats didn’t look at her. He merely threw up his arm as though in disgust. The señoritas obviously took that as their signal to leave, which they did, nearly tripping over each other to exit the room.
“Girls that age,” Yeats chuffed. “Good for one thing and they’re not all that good even at that. You have to teach them every damned move. If you take them any older down here, though, they’ve had niños—they drop them at sixteen, seventeen years old, even younger—and their bodies have already gone to seed.” He shook his head in disgust.
“Help yourselves, gentlemen.” The Mad Major tapped each pot in turn. “Mezcal and the obligatory pulque, ancient drink of the Aztecs. The Spanish conquerors turned up their noses at it, preferring wine instead. A superior race, the Spanish. Too bad so many mingled with the Aztecs, giving us the lower class of mongrel now running things—or trying to run things—in Mexico.”
“I reckon I’ll go with the mezcal, then,” Prophet said in a wistful tone, leaning forward and lifting the wooden ladle from the mezcal pot.
He held the ladle up to Colter and arched an inquiring brow.
Colter winced, probably remembering his previous encounter with the thunder juice. Not wanting to seem impolite or worse, weak, he said, “Fill ’er up.”
“Cure what ails you,” Yeats said, apparently having noticed the redhead’s reluctance.
Lou ladled mezcal into a cup and gave it to Colter.
“Mezcal, Major?” Prophet asked.
“Why not?”
When Lou had ladled up one cup for Yeats and one for himself, he sat back in the heavy sofa of worn, cracked bull hide and sipped the smooth liquor. The mezcal did a good job of cutting the trail dust and easing the aches and pains he still suffered from his encounter with the half-Pima, Gato. It did not, however, relieve his tension. That was all right. He needed to keep his edge here in this veritable devil’s den, facing the devil himself and wondering where in hell Alejandra de la Paz might be.
Yeats was fussily grinding the weed buds between his fingers, making sure all the bits of the weed tumbled back onto the plate. He looked up frequently, curiously at Colter. “Besides your non-preference for spiritous liquids, the scar makes you distinctive. You killed the man who gave it to you?”
“Sure as tootin’.”
“A sheriff ?”
“Yep.”
“An outlaw sheriff ?”
“He killed my foster father.”
“I am sorry to hear that.”
Colter didn’t respond to that. He just sat with his knees spread, his hat hooked on one of them, his drink resting on the other one, staring at the man’s careful work with the weed, which Yeats was now rolling into a fat cigarette.
Yeats looked over his sagging spectacles at him again. “You’re wanted by the law? Up north?”
“That’s right.”
Yeats slid his rheumy, uncertain gaze to Prophet. “How about you, Lou? Are you wanted, as well?”
Prophet reflected none too fondly on Buzzard Gulch and Roscoe Rodane. With a weary sigh, he said, “The jake had it comin’—both barrels.”
Yeats laughed as he deftly rolled the big, green cylinder closed. “They all do, don’t they?”
“Some more than others.”
Yeats laughed even louder at that.
He sank back into his couch and glanced over at the table, which all half-dozen girls were administering to once more. It was a long table and, judging by the smell of rotten food that hung in the room beneath the grassy aroma of the weed, probably hadn’t been tended for days.
Yeats barked at the chiquitas for a light, making them all leap with a start. One grabbed a match from a box, scratched it to life on the table, then came over, cupping the flame tenderly in the palm of her hand. Her hands shaking, she touched the flame to the end of Yeats’s stogie.
When he had the big cylinder burning, filling the air with the heavy aroma of fresh-cut alfalfa, the girl returned to her work and Yeats leaned back against the sofa, turning slightly to one side and crossing one of his jodhpur-clad legs over his other knee.
He studied the ridiculously large cylinder in his large, soft hands—hands that hadn’t known real work in a long time—then lifted it to his lips. He drew deeply on the quirley, making the coal glow for nearly fifteen seconds.
Prophet almost coughed, imagining the harsh smoke filling the man’s lungs. Yeats was accustomed to it. His eyes glazed as he stared off across the room beyond Lou and Colter sitting across the table from him. His mouth corners rose dreamily. He held the smoke for maybe ten seconds before he lifted his chin, gathered his mouth into a near-perfect circle, then parted his lips, blowing a thin, transparent plume of the skunky-smelling smoke into the air over Lou and Colter’s heads.
“You can never really tell how good the weed is until you’ve taken the smoke deep into your chest. You really need to bathe the old ticker in it.” Yeats looked at the quirley’s coal again as he held the cylinder straight up and down between his thumb and index finger. He smiled, nodded. “That ugly little mestizo is one hell of a farmer, I’ll give him that.”
He cast his gaze at Lou again, and then at Colter, and again curiosity shone in his eyes. “So, tell me, gentlemen—what brings you to Mexico?” He blinked once then gave a shrewd, lopsided smile as he added, “Me, perhaps?”
A snake hidden in the regal old sofa’s musty cushions slithered up through a crack to lick the base of Prophet’s spine. At least, that’s what it felt like. A momentary chill hit him despite the fire crackling in the hearth.
He didn’t look at Colter, but in the corner of his eye, he saw the redhead fidget slightly in his chair, bringing his knees a little closer together and reaching down to finger the brim of his Stetson.
“You?” Prophet said, frowning. “I don’t understand.”
He’d be damned if he hadn’t sounded sincere. At least to his own ears.
Yeats looked at the coal of his stogie again. “As you must know, being americanos and all, I have quite a high bounty on my head back north in the States and territories. The last I heard, it was right up around five thousand dollars. That’s a lot of dinero for most men. Believe me . . .”
He paused to take a shallow drag on the cylinder then, blowing it out, said in a pinched voice, “I’ve had men after me.” He paused to rid his lungs of the smoke then spoke in a normal, level tone of voice, smiling. “This was a few years ago, back when I was easier to track down. As my legend has grown down here in Baja, the wise country folks, salts of the earth, have learned not to bandy my name about overmuch. Bad things have been known to happen when they do. More than a few have lost their tongues, in fact. Those were the more fortunate ones.”
Yeats smiled proudly at that.
“As for the bounty hunters who came after me,” he continued, still smiling, quite pleased with himself, “their heads ended up used as kick balls for the children down in the village. Oh, what a novelty for them, as you can imagine!”
He slapped his thigh and had an overlong laugh at that.
He sobered abruptly and shuttled his penetrating gaze between Lou and Colter and said, “So . . . is it the bounty you’re after? Shall I reward the village children with two more balls for their kick games?”
Prophet couldn’t contain a grimace.
“Nah, nah, Major—them two ain’t after you.” Baja Jack had just followed Will-John Rhodes back into the room. He held a sizable buckskin pouch in his right hand and was hefting it happily. “I’ll vouch for Lou and Colter my ownself. They work for me, don’t ya know. After I ran into ’em along the trail, I sorta figured they might be cut out for guardin’ my weed runs. It’s hard to get good help these days. Hell, most gunnies would rather prey on me than ride guard for me. After ole Proph there pounded Gato’s head so far down between his shoulders it coulda served as a lamp table, I made it official.”
Jack smiled, a tad shrewdly, from Lou to Colter and back again. “Didn’t I, boys?”
Lou stared back at him, suspicion buzzing around his ear like a pesky fly. What was Jack up to? Not that Lou minded, of course. Louisa had planted in his mind the well-founded suspicion that Jack, realizing that Lou and Colter were hunting Yeats, his primary patron, might have been leading the two americanos into a trap.
That suspicion was now replaced with another one. Why was Jack lying on Prophet and the redhead’s behalf?
Lou and Colter shared another quick, conferring glance and then Prophet cleared his throat and, turning to Yeats, said, “That’s right, Major. Why would we wanna do a fool thing and take down a golden goose like yourself ?”
“That’s right,” Colter said. “If you kill the cow, no more milk!”
Everybody, including Lou, furled their brows at him.
Colter flushed, shrugged, and brushed his fist across his chin. “I mean . . . in a manner of speakin’ . . .”
Yeats studied him closely, suspiciously.
Finally, his thick lips spread inside his tangled, gray-red beard, and he chuckled. He turned to Lieutenant Rhodes standing near where Jack stood staring lustily down at the two clay ollas filled with tangleleg. Yeats said, “Why don’t you roll my guests a stogie each, so they can sample Jack’s wonderful ganja? Jack, too, of course.”
“Oh, now—that’s okay, Major,” Jack said, raising his hands, palms out. “I’ll stay clear. I done sampled the batch when I was concocting this potent variety just for you, and it done made me howl at the moon for hours on end.” He chuckled uneasily and rubbed his hands up and down on his leather vest.
“Nonsense,” Yeats insisted, glancing again at Rhodes. “A stogie for each of my guests, if you will, please, Lieutenant?”
“Comin’ right up, Major.” Rhodes walked over to the table where the panniers were stacked.
Prophet was about to protest. He’d tried marijuana a few times when he’d been down here in Mexico, and all it had done was turn him into an even bigger fool than he already was. But he had a feeling his protest, like Jack’s, would fall on deaf ears. So he said nothing. Neither did Colter. Lou saw that the redhead wore a wary look.
Jack looked at Lou. The little man raised his arms in a shrug as though in apology. Lou wasn’t sure exactly what he was apologizing for, but after he’d taken a few puffs off the stogie, he realized exactly what the apology had been about.
The marijuana was potent. Not at first. At first, it was like riding an old mare in a leisurely lope across a grassy field. It filed all the edges off a fella’s tender consciousness. It made Lou feel very calm and relaxed, and it made the world around him seem uncommonly friendly and beautiful, warm and inviting, with the peace of an old church and the charms of a beautiful, sexy woman.
It made him want to keep puffing the damn stuff until too late he realized the mare he was riding was in fact an unbroke bronco broom tail cayuse, wild as a wolf and bred for hard mountain riding.
Prophet didn’t realize this until several hours after he’d started smoking the stuff, chasing it with the mezcal. He and Colter and Baja Jack and the Mad Major and Will-John Rhodes all dined together on a simple but hearty meal, which was just the right padding a man needed after so many days on the trail. The Mexican-spiced goat meat and frijoles and steaming tortillas went down just fine, accompanied as it all was with more and more mezcal and then the sangria Yeats ordered one of the girls to bring up from the cellar.
The first of the evening was filled with much boisterous conversation and ribald laughter, with the señoritas serving the men at the long table and acting very flirty and teasing and sexy in their low-cut, sleeveless, brightly embroidered dresses that left their brown legs and feet bare.
Prophet talked and laughed with bunkhouse abandon, and so did Colter. They both forgot all about the reason they’d come here and about Alejandra de la Paz, as well. All their tension and anxiety about the mission thinned out and disappeared like fog on a quiet morning pond. They were in a room full of new friends enjoying good food, good drink, and the flashing eyes of the young Mexican serving girls.
It was after the long meal, which must have lasted a good three hours or more, finally wound down and Will-John Rhodes rolled more marijuana cigarettes, that Prophet’s mare made the unlikely transformation. It pitched and whinnied and buck-kicked and took him running off across the violent waves of the evening.
The stallion had no saddle or bridle. All Lou could do was grab two fistfuls of mane and hold on.
Much of the rest of the night was a chaotic dream with only sporadic moments of fleeting lucidity. He remembered more girls coming into the Mad Major’s apartment—fresh girls who were apparently hazed up here each evening from the village, like a gaggle of young geese. Lou wasn’t sure who they were—if they were kidnapped girls from around Baja whom Yeats had forced into his despicable slavery, or if they were girls from the near village he’d forced into the same.
Lou didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything except holding on to the bronco’s mane while the stallion carried him up hill and over dale of his rarefied debauch.
He had another vague, short-lived moment of clarity when he was singing along with several señoritas while he himself was strumming a mandolin, albeit crudely. (He hadn’t known he could play the mandolin even crudely.) There were other such moments when his head bobbed above the waves of intoxication, as when he realized he was stumbling out through the open front gate of the bastion, each arm draped around the neck of a young señorita, each of whom was laughing and stumbling and trying feebly to keep the big man on his feet. (He had the vague sense that the bastion was always open and guarded only sparingly. Yeats must have felt confident that no one would be fool enough to try to infiltrate his ancient garrison.)
Time stopped again. Or maybe it sped up. He became aware mainly of sensations—the brush of a girl’s hair against his cheek, warm lips pressed to his, more drink rolling over his tongue and down his throat. At one point he found himself stumbling through shadowy alleys that stank of privies and trash, and he had no idea how he’d gotten there or where he was going.
Dogs barked.
An old woman cajoled him loudly from the doorway of a mud jacal in rattling Spanish.
A señorita laughed madly.
Then he was in the salty ocean surf, naked as God had made him, and he thought he was making love though he wasn’t sure. It felt like that for a time, but then he was alone and it was dawn and the sun was a bloodred rose rising out of the polished glass table of the Sea of Cortez.
He gathered his clothes, dressed, and stumbled back through the morning-quiet village to the bastion, dead windblown palm fronds blowing against his ankles. Seagulls shrieked in the rookery for breakfast, diving at the water behind him.
That day passed, and another evening that somehow transpired just as the previous one had. It was as though he were sucked into a whirlpool of wanton desire and a revolving intoxication, laughing, singing, having long, seemingly meaningful conversations with Ciaran Yeats or Colter or Baja Jack or some pretty girl who spoke slowly and helped him with his Spanish . . .
More food. More drink. More puffs of Baja Jack’s relentlessly addictive marijuana, which, despite its eventual sledgehammer effects, also made the world make sense somehow and become what every man and every woman from the beginning of time had wanted it to be . . .
And then there was a night of sudden, strange lucidity. He wasn’t sure where it came in relation to his coming to Baluarte Santiago. It could have been the third or fourth night, or the four hundredth night, for all he knew.
He opened his eyes and saw a lovely, redheaded woman in a diaphanous white gown step up to him from the rolling shadows of the seashore. Lou was on his knees in the surf, naked, his clothes bobbing around him in the lacy waves edged with sparkling foam.
He’d been laughing uncontrollably. He’d remembered a young puta being there with him, but she was gone now, it seemed. There was only the redheaded goddess standing over him, staring down at him. Starlight sparkled in her filmy gown, which seemed made entirely of starlight reflected off the water, as the wind buffeted about her long, bare legs.
Her red hair danced in the wind. The moon cast silver streaks into it and reflected off her dark, almond-shaped eyes.
“You have to help me,” she said. “Will you help me?”
She dropped to her knees in the surf beside him, wrapped an arm around his shoulders. In Spanish-accented English she said, “You have to help me, Mr. Prophet,” she begged. “Won’t you please help me?”