El negro, cried the juggler, turning with the card. His clothes snapped in the wind. The woman raised her voice and spoke again and the black turned to his mates.
What does she say?
The juggler had turned and was making small bows to the company.
What does she say? Tobin?
The expriest shook his head. Idolatry, Blackie, idolatry. Do not mind her.
What does she say Judge?
The judge smiled. With his thumb he had been routing small life from the folds of his hairless skin and now he held up one hand with the thumb and forefinger pressed together in a gesture that appeared to be a benediction until he flung something unseen into the fire before him. What does she say?
What does she say.
I think she means to say that in your fortune lie our fortunes all.
And what is that fortune?
The judge smiled blandly, his pleated brow not unlike a dolphin’s. Are you a drinking man, Jackie?
No more than some.
I think she’d have you beware the demon rum. Prudent counsel enough, what do you think?
That aint no fortune.
Exactly so. The priest is right.
The black frowned at the judge but the judge leaned forward to regard him. Wrinkle not thy sable brow at me, my friend. All will be known to you at last. To you as to every man.
Now a number of the company seated there seemed to weigh the judge’s words and some turned to look at the black. He stood an uneasy honoree and at length he stepped back from the firelight and the juggler rose and made a motion with the cards, sweeping them in a fan before him and then proceeding along the perimeter past the boots of the men with the cards outheld as if they would find their own subject.
Quién, quién, he whispered among them.
They were right loath all. When he came before the judge the judge, who sat with one hand splayed across the broad expanse of his stomach, raised a finger and pointed.
Young Blasarius yonder, he said.
Cómo?
El joven.
El joven, whispered the juggler. He looked about him slowly with an air of mystery until he found with his eyes the one so spoken. He moved past the adventurers quickening his step. He stood before the kid, he squatted with the cards and fanned them with a slow rhythmic motion akin to the movements of certain birds at court.
Una carta, una carta, he wheezed.
The kid looked at the man and he looked at the company about.
Sí, sí, said the juggler, offering the cards.
He took one. He’d not seen such cards before, yet the one he held seemed familiar to him. He turned it upside down and regarded it and he turned it back.
The juggler took the boy’s hand in his own and turned the card so he could see. Then he took the card and held it up.
Cuatro de copas, he called out.
The woman raised her head. She looked like a blindfold mannequin raised awake by a string.
Cuatro de copas, she said. She moved her shoulders. The wind went among her garments and her hair.
Quién, called the juggler.
El hombre … she said. El hombre mas joven. El muchacho.
El muchacho, called the juggler. He turned the card for all to see. The woman sat like that blind interlocutrix between Boaz and Jachin inscribed upon the one card in the juggler’s deck that they would not see come to light, true pillars and true card, false prophetess for all. She began to chant.
The judge was laughing silently. He bent slightly the better to see the kid. The kid looked at Tobin and at David Brown and he looked at Glanton himself but they were none laughing. The juggler kneeling before him watched him with a strange intensity. He followed the kid’s gaze to the judge and back. When the kid looked down at him he smiled a crooked smile.
Get the hell away from me, said the kid.
The juggler leaned his ear forward. A common gesture and one that served for any tongue. The ear was dark and misshapen, as if in being put forth in this fashion it had suffered no few clouts, or perhaps the very news men had for him had blighted it. The kid spoke to him again but a man named Tate from Kentucky who had fought with McCulloch’s Rangers as had Tobin and others among them leaned and whispered to the ragged soothsayer and he rose and made a slight bow and moved away. The woman had ceased her chanting. The juggler stood flapping in the wind and the fire lashed a long hot tail over the ground. Quién, quién, he called.
El jefe, said the judge.
The juggler’s eyes sought out Glanton. He sat unmoved. The juggler looked at the old woman where she sat apart, facing the dark, lightly tottering, racing the night in her rags. He raised his finger to his lips and he spread his arms in a gesture of uncertainty.
El jefe, hissed the judge.
The man turned and went along the group at the fire and brought himself before Glanton and crouched and offered up the cards, spreading them in both hands. If he spoke his words were snatched away unheard. Glanton smiled, his eyes were small against the stinging grit. He put one hand forth and paused, he looked at the juggler. Then he took a card.
The juggler folded shut the deck and tucked it among his clothes. He reached for the card in Glanton’s hand. Perhaps he touched it, perhaps not. The card vanished. It was in Glanton’s hand and then it was not. The juggler’s eyes snapped after it where it had gone down the dark. Perhaps Glanton had seen the card’s face. What could it have meant to him? The juggler reached out to that naked bedlam beyond the fire’s light but in the doing he overbalanced and fell forward against Glanton and created a moment of strange liaison with his old man’s arms about the leader as if he would console him at his scrawny bosom.
Glanton swore and flung him away and at that moment the old woman began to chant.
Glanton rose.
She raised her jaw, gibbering at the night.
Shut her up, said Glanton.
La carroza, la carroza, cried the beldam. Invertido. Carta de guerra, de venganza. La ví sin ruedas sobre un rio obscuro …
Glanton called to her and she paused as if she’d heard him but it was not so. She seemed to catch some new drift in her divinings.
Perdida, perdida. La carta está perdida en la noche.
The girl standing this while at the edge of the howling darkness crossed herself silently. The old malabarista was on his knees where he’d been flung. Perdida, perdida, he whispered.
Un maleficio, cried the old woman. Qué viento tan maleante …
By god you will shut up, said Glanton, drawing his revolver.
Carroza de muertos, llena de huesos. El joven qué …
The judge like a great ponderous djinn stepped through the fire and the flames delivered him up as if he were in some way native to their element. He put his arms around Glanton. Someone snatched the old woman’s blindfold from her and she and the juggler were clouted away and when the company turned in to sleep and the low fire was roaring in the blast like a thing alive these four yet crouched at the edge of the firelight among their strange chattels and watched how the ragged flames fled down the wind as if sucked by some maelstrom out there in the void, some vortex in that waste apposite to which man’s transit and his reckonings alike lay abrogate. As if beyond will or fate he and his beasts and his trappings moved both in card and in substance under consignment to some third and other destiny.
In the morning when they rode out it was that pale day with the sun not risen and the wind had abated in the night and the things of the night were gone. The juggler on his burro trotted out to the head of the column and fell in with Glanton and they rode on together and they were so riding in the afternoon when the company entered the town of Janos.
An ancient walled presidio composed wholly of mud, a tall mud church and mud watchtowers and all of it rainwashed and lumpy and sloughing into a soft decay. The advent of the riders bruited by scurvid curs that howled woundedly and slank among the crumbling walls.