Hendrik turned to discern the object of his brother's gaze. The lump in his leg shifted sharply and he gritted his teeth at the pain.
He could still hear the crack of that rifle-shot. Then, he had thanked the Lord, for if the ball had missed his leg and penetrated his horse's ribs, Santa Anna's men would have brought him down and his pains would have been at an end. Now, he cursed the tiny scrap of dull, unreachable metal.
Standing alone, near the back of the room, was a man in nondescript clothes. His face might be carved of wood: cheekbones knife-edged, mouth a thin line. His eyes were concealed behind extraordinary spectacles, black wooden frames with silvered mirrors for lenses. Whatever Joseph saw in those mirrors, smote him to unique silence.
III
The sky was the colour of flame, scattering bloody light on wind-carved mountains and deep-etched rifts. When the canyon widened briefly to admit the light, their shadows lay before them, spindle-legged and scrawny, dark against reddish dust and rocks.
The party made its way through a narrow fissure which cut deep into the rock. A primordial blow, struck by the hand of God, had cracked the land in two. Another shift might restore the unity, and crush them all like paste between hard faces.
Hendrik had learned that everything was alive.
Brother Carey's horse paced evenly. The young Josephite's long rifle jogged against his back as he bent his body either way to avoid overhangs. Hendrik carefully kept to the centre of the path. The walls of the passage were rough. A scrape against an outcrop could take off clothes and skin.
At the head of the column, the Ute whistled like a night-bird. The sound cut the quiet like a dagger's edge. Beside the Ute, Brother Clegg, who had once been a soldier, held up his hand and whirled it in a signal.
Step by step, the party emerged from the passage and fanned out as if drilled. Their horses stood in the shadow of the mountain, at the top of a gentle slope. Below was New Canaan.
The community was a collection of rough dwellings and fragile, irrigated squares of wheat. There was little timber around; most homes were assembled from old stones, roughly fitted together like cairns.
Still-smouldering hearths allowed smoke to trickle from chimneys into the sky. The party had little time. These sod-busters would rise with the sun.
Hendrik dismounted. His leg thrilled with pain as he came down on the hard ground, but he did not cry out.
IV
The man in the mirrored glasses claimed to be of the Ute, but Hendrik knew he was no Plains Indian. He might be a native of Araby or a Chinaman or an inhabitant of the moon, but he was not from the West. He could just about pass, with his thin face and leather skin, but he had about him a quality not of the Americas.
The back room at Samuel's Tavern was usually reserved for dice or cards. If extra payment were made, one could conduct business with Molly or her sisters in the relative warmth and comfort of this place rather than in the foul-smelling alley outside. The confined space was infernally hot. The only light came from the stove, which cast glowing bars of red on faces and walls.
Fires burned in the Ute's spectacles.
The company was much reduced. Hendrik, Joseph, Eddy. And the Ute. Hendrik was in a fog as to how this party had assembled, and what bargain had been struck between them.
Now, Eddy and Joseph leaned forwards, hellfire striping their attentive faces, each fixed upon the bogus Indian as if held rapt by a speech. In fact, the Ute was silent.
The drink had burned out of Hendrik's brain, leaving behind a ruin of aches. Midnight was long past but dawn was a way off.
From inside his jacket, the Ute produced a book. He laid it, open, on a table. The pages were covered in neat symbols, cipher or foreign script. The ink must be silvered, for the writing caught firelight and seemed to waver on the page.
"Words of fire," Joseph breathed. "The Truth is written in flame."
Eddy shook his head, denying something.
"Do not reject this revelation, brothers," Joseph said.
The Ute took off his fabulous spectacles and laid them on the book. His eyes were deeply shadowed, lending his upper face the empty-socketed look of a skull.
Joseph reached out for the spectacles and picked them up. Hendrik wanted to tell his brother to throw the damned things on the floor and stamp them into fragments.
The Ute turned to look directly at Hendrik. Minute sparks shone in his eyes.
Hendrik was pinned to his chair. The heat hung heavy on him.
Joseph set the spectacles on his face and adjusted them. He gasped in amazement. Tears emerged from behind the reflecting circles and trickled down his cheeks.
"I see," he breathed, "I see…Truth."
He snatched up the book and turned pages, as if absorbing paragraphs of sense in a second. He hurried on, nodding and laughing and sighing. Lenses flashed as his head bobbed.
"Lord," Joseph said, not profaning the name, but invoking, praying…
Hendrik did not know what was happening. The room was stifling, heat squeezing the head and pinioning the limbs. Eddy was intent on Joseph, impatient for his turn.
The Ute sat as still as a stone.
Joseph had been well up on his scriptures as a child, but possessed of a wild streak. He had run with the barefoot and savage Irish. Their parents, respectably Dutch-speaking after generations in the New World, had expected to be shamed by him. But it was their first-born, abandoning law books for the West, who had proved the greater disappointment. They were both dead now, buried in a cold and crowded churchyard.
After minutes that stretched like hours, Joseph took the spectacles from his face and, hands not shaking, laid them down. He was transformed. Hendrik saw a new calmness. His brother had won battles with himself He beamed like a happy baby, but his smile was frightening.
The Ute's gaze swivelled, neck moving like a snake, and he looked to Eddy.
The poet swallowed and took the glasses. He put them on, looking not at the book but at its owner. For a moment, he stared the Ute full in the face.
A scream began deep in Eddy's chest and exploded from his mouth with the force of a cannon-blast. In the tiny room, it was as loud as thunder, as high as the wind.
Eddy stood, stool falling away, and staggered as if smitten. Hendrik was on his feet, arms out to catch the poet. He met surprising resistance. The little man fought like a bobcat, screeching as if dying.
"What is it?" Hendrik asked, seeing his own face in the mirrors over Eddy's eyes. "What do you see?"
They fell against the stove and Hendrik felt searing pain in his hip. The poet broke loose and twisted around, the skirts of his coat flying, upsetting the table. Hendrik smelled his own scorched clothes. The Ute seemed mildly interested in the commotion. Joseph was still transported to the heavens. Words scattered among Eddy's screams.
"The maelstrom at the heart of all," he babbled. "The colossal maelstrom, always sucking, devouring, destroying! The void inside the night's maw, where darkness and decay and death hold illimitable dominion over all…"
The poet threw himself against a door, his whole body shaking, and battered with his fists. He was snivelling and sobbing, liquid tracks pouring down his face. The latch was displaced and the door swung outwards into the alley.
"Tekeli-li," Eddy screamed, a birdlike jabber, "tekeli-li, tekeli-li, tekeli-li…"
A blast of icy air blew into the room, killing the flame in the stove. The heat was exhausted at once. Hendrik's face stung with the sudden cold.
Eddy was a shadow in the doorway, struggling to free himself of invisible things he found in his hair and clothes In his ululation, pain mixed with panic.