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  Quillen smoked a minute to gather his thoughts. “I met Botis for the first time in the spring of 1865. Baltimore, it was. I’d lost my practice and was performing abortions for a high-end whorehouse in Locust Point. I was coming out of this particular establishment one morning, via the servant’s entrance, when I encountered yon Botis standing on a street corner big as all life.”

  Quillen had been so engrossed with his story his cigar had gone out. He relit it. “Botis was dressed much as you see him today—galero, furs, mule-ear boots. He didn’t have his beard then. Appears he had experienced some undefined, yet ineluctable difficulty in recent Continental past. We talked for an hour on that street. I knew then he was mad, and yet he fascinated me in a way no other man has since. He was a study, Botis, and is today. Later, we happened upon Lovich and drew him inside our circle. Then came young Spaw, who was turned out of an insane asylum for incorrigible children when he came of age. It seems he killed a governess in St. Louis and had eaten part of her womb. We made quite a fellowship.”

  “St. Louis?”

  “What?” Quillen had lost the thread of his story. “Oh, yes. By that time we decided to leave Baltimore and come west. As I said, Botis was already on the run. Had been for years. I think in truth he was born on the run. He has a foot in two worlds: the world of men and the world of hell. He is a cambion of exceeding lineage. I traced his existence as far back as La Tour des Sorcières in Thann on the mouth of the Thur River. Where he came before that no man knows. But he is a single-minded individual who would crack the world if it were within his power to do so. Witness his furor and obsession with finding Cibola.”

  Quillen rose from his rock and puttered with the plated organs. He stacked them, put them aside for future analysis. He returned to his rock, puffed his cigar a moment, and continued his reminisces.

  “I remember the first night he told us about Cibola,” Quillen said. “It is seared in my memory. Oh, we listened. We listened with the patience of men in the presence of a mad dog. Botis has a preternatural light about him. I have seen this blue aura crackling from his body on nights when no other man experienced the searing touch of St. Elmo’s fire.”

  Quillen tapped cigar ash between his boots. “We came west. There was no place other for men like us. Botis said there are men destined to stand against that which must be faced. There were beings, he claimed, who initiated this work. He called them Eternals. Not of men or God, but things eternal in and of themselves.”

  “The Cambions you mentioned,” Marwood said.

  “Yes. Half-human offspring resulting from the union of demons and human beings. Creatures who take men from places they call home and send them across worlds. Well, this is what Botis believes. But, as I told you, he is quite mad.”

  “He wants to go into Comancheria, Doc.”

  Quillen shook his head. “He will not die there. Botis has foreseen his death. He knows the day. He knows the very hour.”

  “Was he always mad?” Marwood asked.

  Quillen threw down his cigar stub and ground it under his boot heel. “No. I suspect it is a condition that has worsened over the years. He’s eternal himself, you see. I believe it is the weight of this eternal memory that is slowly ossifying his brain. The human memory is being dripped from his mind, falling like black rain into his bottomless soul. It leaves a swollen, empty darkness. It is a hot hell dark which will ultimately consume him, and us, if we allow it.”

  “I don’t understand this,” Marwood said. “I don’t know what he is.”

  “I will put it to you simply,” Quillen said. “Botis is the devil, and we are his apostolic demons. All of us have our parts to play. You’re here for a specific reason, John. The play is joined. Botis stands centre stage. Another will join him there. I believe you know who that man must be. Botis is a man apart. The One Man—a lone man. I have studied him long enough to recognize another of the species, my boy. How you get there, if you get there, and by what tortures and punishments you must endure—I cannot say.”

  Quillen got up and stretched. He came across the tent and placed a hand on Marwood’s shoulder. “You have not asked for it, but I offer you this advice. Or take it as a warning from a learned man. On this earth, there is but one guarantee. God makes the wagons roll on time. Man shoes the horses.”

  Quillen looked at Marwood with all seriousness. “But it is the devil who holds the wagon’s reins, and that devil is Botis.”

  CHAPTER 18

  They followed the Middle Concho River into Santa Angela and bought supplies. They saw Fort Concho in the distance. Not every army fort was necessarily after them, and the danger from cavalry lay mostly in the deep bush. Nevertheless, Lovich cautioned, there was no reason to poke a sleeping bear.

  Additionally, cavalry were always more concerned with depredations from Native American attacks on the frontier, along with Mexican incursions to steal Texas cattle across the border. Bandits and comancheros were left to the Texas Rangers and other civilian law enforcement entities.

  Santa Angela was also small enough not to matter in any political sense for Texas. The company often saw paper on Botis posted outside a town marshal’s office, but that was not unusual, either. Botis had warrants dogging him from Europe, and, as he often claimed, “One more sheet to wipe my ass does not distress me.”

  They rode north from Santa Angela, thinking they might try their luck at Buffalo Gap. There were ranches there, and plenty of opportunity to steal stock in one county and drive it to another for profit.

  They were three days out when Marwood’s horse stepped in a prairie dog hole. It broke its cannon bone and dislocated the fetlock joint. Marwood heard the bone snap and the horse collapsed with a piercing scream. He was thrown off the saddle into a stand of prickly pear cactus.

  Marwood rushed to his feet, ripped his hat from his head, slapped it against his leg, and walked away in disgust. The horse struggled to rise, and could not. Marwood came back and shot the lamed horse in the brain, then stomped across the prairie for fifteen minutes thinking of every swear word he knew, cussing everything—God, Botis, horses all, and prairie dogs in particular.

  The men sat their mounts, laughing and throwing out a jibe now and then to get his blood boiling. He let loose a string of new invective, excoriated them and Texas, and the men hooted and howled and hazed him on to new heights.

  He cut a tall claybank out of the remuda and saddled and bridled the horse.He mounted up, refusing to speak to the others. But during the long day’s ride men warned him of invisible prairie dog holes, or said, “watch that pebble there,” and other broad sallies.

  Marwood rode on in stony silence.

  “Goddamn if you ain’t hotter than a whorehouse on nickel night,” Lovich said. The men laughed anew, but try as they might, they could not draw Marwood out.

  The Tonkawas returned after scouting the country up ahead. They reported a big group of Texas Rangers camped on the South Concho River with guns and horses.

  “How many?” Lovich asked.

  “Six Rangers, twenty hired men, and four Indian scouts.”

  “Dammit. You think they’re after us?”

  Red Thunder shrugged. “They might be looking for stolen stock.”

  “Not a party that size. At least they won’t be able to move very fast if they’re that big. You see anything else?”

  “Large troop movements,” Red Thunder said. “Regiments and heavy patrols probing the southern border of Comancheria.”

  “I can’t believe they are spending that kind of manpower on us. But now we can’t go in that direction, either. It’s plain we are being pushed farther north, much against our will.”

  “Whether it is intentional on their part,” Red Thunder said, “I cannot say. But it would appear the result remains the same. We are left with little else in way of choice.”

  Lovich went to Botis and delivered the news. �
�Looks like we got to keep pushing north, Captain, or they’ll get the bulge on us. If we are not careful they will trap us in a Cannae. We could turn the table on them, ride back into them and fight our way clear in the opposite direction.”

  Botis faced Marwood. “What do you suggest?”

  “I’d rather put off a trip to the Llano as long as we can avoid it,” Marwood said. “But it looks like we’re being forced into doing exactly that. Or turn into these people behind us and fight. Like Lovich I prefer the latter course. But the safe decision is to keep driving north. As far as that goes, we could ride clear across the Red River and hide out in the Nations.”

  “What would you prefer to do?” Botis asked him directly.

  “I hate Texas,” Marwood said. “I want to find the other ranchers who sold us out and kill them.”

  “Lewis?”

  “We could ride out this day and night,” Spaw said. “Put sixty miles under us and burn a couple of farms to the east. That might pull some of the law here off, and we can double back and sneak through their thinned out lines.”

  “Ride through their lines unchecked? But we can do that now,” Botis said. “The problem is water, gentlemen. They will be watching for that and guarding all the holes and springs. As for the rest of your plan, Lewis, we would have to bottom out the horses, and we can’t be certain we will find fresh ones to see us through to safety.” He thought a minute. “We will head into Buffalo Gap and locate what news we can find there. If it looks like a trap, we will head onto the Llano Estacado.”

  “If we do go up there, Captain,” Marwood said, “have you considered what it will take to ride safely across Comanche territory and into New Mexico?”

  “We will have to travel most of it by night,” Botis said. “Unless there’s a moon the Comanche won’t trouble us at night.”

  “Yes, but my concern is lack of water. Water, as you said, is the key. All the creeks up there run east-west. To find water we’ll have to scout north-south. But the quickest way through the high plains is a direct run west.”

  “We cannot make it through Comancheria without finding water,” Botis said, “and we cannot take the time to search for it. Is that what you are saying?”

  “I don’t see how,” Marwood said. “We will have to travel hard and fast, and trust to luck. Otherwise, we will never get out of there alive.”

  “Luck.” Lovich spat on the ground and shook his head. “We haven’t had much of that in our favour so far.”

  Someone had built a line of box cabins on Elm Creek and set them up as a trading post. Botis headed toward them. One of the cabins was a post office established more than a decade prior. Down water stood a mercantile store and the main trading post.

  The men rode past the post. There were hide hunters and Indians in abundance, which the Hydra considered most unusual. Big hide and meat camps ranged up and down the creek, and were sprawled out on the grass. There were hundreds of people here, and they appeared to be waiting for something.

  “What are these apple knockers doing?” Ed Gratton asked. “They got meat and hides and horn stacked up everywhere. Why haven’t they taken it to Fort Griffin and sold it?”

  “I do not know,” Spaw said uneasily. He rode beside Gratton and Marwood. “But I fear something is dreadful wrong.”

  “It’s not right, that’s for sure,” Marwood said. “I never knew a buffalo hunter yet to leave his skins rotting in the sun like that.”

  Buffalo Gap was long a winter staging area for hunters. Buffalo hunters and tradesmen of every sort gathered during the winter months prior to transporting their hides up to Fort Griffin.

  “Why they should be encamped here during high summer, and not out killing the last buffalo of the southern herd, is a study,” Spaw continued.

  Botis dismounted Acheron and walked into the empty store. The shelves were bare. A wizened clerk stood in one corner of the store counting axe helves in a barrel. He was balding, dressed in black trousers, suspenders, and a clean white shirt. He had a pencil stub tucked behind his right ear.

  “Good morning, sir,” he said, straightening. “What can I do you for?”

  Botis stood in the centre of the store, studying the barren shelves and hollow barrels. “What the hell happened here?”

  “It’s the plague, sir,” the storekeeper said.

  “Here in town?”

  “Oh, no, sir, not here. Up in Fort Griffin. Cholera. Killed goddamn near everybody. No sane body wants to go up there now, and you can’t blame them.”

  “That’s what the buffalo hunters are doing outside,” Botis said.

  “You perceive the problem correctly, sir,” the clerk said. “The hunters are skeered to ride into Fort Griffin or into The Flat while the plague is raging. They can’t leave their hides unprotected and go hunting, either. So they stand guard here and watch it rot. Fort Griffin is much worse off than we are. There are entire acres—hell, city blocks, of hides and horn and rotting meat no one can get to. Mountains of it. Well, that’s always the case in Griffin. But now no one wants to go in and bring it out. It’s the goddamndest mess I ever saw, and I am fifty-one years old.”

  Botis nodded at the wooden barrel the clerk had been handling. “What are you doing there?”

  “Well, sir, every morning fair I open my shop and come in to count these here axe helves. As you can see they are all I’ve got left to sell. That ain’t much hickory standing between me and starvation.”

  “We were wanting to buy powder and shot,” Botis said.

  “Good luck to you, sir. The hunters won’t sell the lead pigs they’ve got. They are hoarding gunpowder in the hope the plague will end and they can get back to killing buffalo out on the plains.”

  “How far to Fort Griffin?”

  “Two days hard ride.” The clerk blinked in astonishment. “You ain’t thinking of going up there, are you? Oh, no, sir, you can’t do that. Hell, all the spoiled doves are gone. When a whore leaves a town, you know it’s dead.”

  “What about the Buffalo Soldiers in the fort?”

  “You mean the fort on the bluff? All dead, sir. Well, that ain’t half right. They are keeping to themselves, but the cholera got them, too. Hit them hard. Croaked a lot of the white officers’ wives and children. They couldn’t bury the kids fast enough. Most of the Indians who stay to trade, they’re dead, too. Like I said, it’s a Biblical prophecy. One of the seven seals has been broken, and pestilence is upon the land. You mark my word, sir.”

  The clerk walked Botis to the door. “Are you thinking of going up to Fort Griffin?” he asked. “Excuse me, mister, but if you do, they might let you in, but they will never let you out.”

  “That is what I am counting on.” Botis tipped his galero. “Good day, and thank you for the information.”

  They smelled the dead before they ever saw the fort. Five miles out they caught the scent of rotting flesh and corruption on the prairie winds. The horses shied, afraid to ride nearer. The men rowelled them forward, held a tight rein.

  Marwood came upon torn fields of broken wagons where the dead awaited burial. Men, women, and children. Wagons with thrown rims, shattered wheels, and split crosstrees. The corpses piled like cordwood in buckboards. Cemeteries were full. A self-appointed delegation of whites and Native Americans went from wagon to wagon. They poured kerosene and lit them with flaming brands and stood back. Botis and his men rode between these smoking markers of death into a miasma of putrefaction and pestilence no prairie wind could ever scrub clean.

  The wagon-burners watched them ride for Fort Griffin. They didn’t speak to, or warn the riders what was ahead. If a man wanted to commit suicide by riding into Fort Griffin during a cholera outbreak, he was welcome to do so. But there were other wagon-burners who carried rifles and guns. They would make sure no man left the fort, spreading the contagion to other towns and settlements in Texas.

 
; The company crossed beneath the base of a cliff upon which stood the main army fort—ninety-odd buildings housing Buffalo and Federal Troops, their servants, and their wives. Marwood could see the flat azoteas of the buildings, and the smoke from cook fires, but little else. The American flag flew at half-mast. Two Mexican boys guided a solitary wagon drawn by windbroke mules down the road. Marwood looked into it when it passed by. The wagon was full of dead soldiers, covered with lime.

  They rode into The Flat and saw acres and acres of stacked buffalo hide, bone, horn, and meat. The meat was set out to dry under the prairie sun. But it had rained, which added to the overall misery of everyone in attendance. The meat had rotted, with foul seeps running from the rancid slag.

  The roads were impassable quagmires. Big Studebaker wagons were stuck axle-deep in the ooze. Weary men tried to dig them out, threw down their tools in frustration and quit. Sud’s row, where laundresses did the daily wash, was a ghost town. Empty tubs, bottles, and rags were strewn over the muddy pockmarked ground. Abandoned wash hung in trees to stiffen and sun rot, like the markers of temporary graves.

  There was some life left to the town of Fort Griffin. Three thousand people and 1,500 buffalo hunting crews could not be killed off overnight. There were saloons, bars, hotels, and mercantile shops built of soft cottonwood. But Marwood could plainly see people weren’t living here as much as they were surviving.

  “And damned little of that,” Spaw said, riding beside him.

  Everywhere they went they saw people dressed in mourning black, weeping, praying, hoping for the best. One man went around town with the pages of the Bible pinned to his clothes to ward off evil spirits. Whole families had been devastated by cholera. Entire swathes of townsfolk laid waste, and the disease had yet to burn itself out. A hundred people were dying in The Flat every day. As one old cobber told Marwood around a fire that night, “There ain’t enough open ground left to bury them all in.”