Columns of cavalry approached. John Lourdes veered toward the shoulder of the road. Rawbone swung out of the open truck and stood on the cab seat, holding to the frame with his head above the canvas roofing. As they drove along he pulled off his derby and amidst all that throated dust began to sing to the pa.s.sing troops: That road-tired legion of riders either laughed or hurrahed and others just stared at Rawbone as if he were some sidewalk pathetic to be avoided. Yelling out, "The country is proud of you!" he swung back down into the cab.

He greeted John Lourdes's stare with a burnt wink. "Take a look at those boys, Mr. Lourdes. A good healthy look, 'cause what you're seeing there is as dumb a bunch of mules as could ever be a.s.sembled. And you know what else? They're about as equipped for where they're going as you coming with me."

NINE.

-'OHN LOURDES SAID nothing. He remained fixed on the task at hand. As a boy he had seen this pattern of subversion in the man. The pure willingness to destroy, even when it was contrary to his own best interests. If that's what the father now had in mind for the man named John Lourdes, then the son would meet the a.s.sault with defiant silence. Draw from that well all you want, but it isn't me, thought John Lourdes, who'll drink the water.

"That's right," said Rawbone, "pay no attention. I tend to speak on what I see. That's what comes from being a lifer at this game. Not that I have anything against those soldiers. In fact, I have a particular fondness for our military."

He took off his derby and wiped at the sweat on the inside crown with a bandana. John Lourdes looked at him, and he in turn stared back at the young man with reasoned disquiet.

"Mr. Lourdes, do you believe love can be as much a poison as hatred?"

"Very well."

"It's a wisdom alright. I was born in a place called Scabtown. A filthy pile of sewage and humankind it was. It sat across the river from Fort McKavett. San Saba County. Mostly it was built by Germans. A lot of Germans there. My mother was German. She made her living on her back. The pimp who ran the brothel used to say his girls spent so much time with their legs in the air he was surprised no one had ever tried to hoist the flag on one of them."

John Lourdes watched as the father moved through one room after another of his past. It was part of a shadow world the son had never heard, never known.

"My father, it turns out, could have been a soldier. There sure was a parade of them. Enlisted men and officers alike. Of course, he could have been some creeping Jesus of a clerk with fishbones for a spine. Or maybe some padre who had to bless his p.e.c.k.e.r every time he got hold of it. A crime of chance ... that's what Lawyer Burr calls that kind of being born ... a crime of chance."

Rawbone was overcome suddenly with a grimness. The unrealizable conjoined with the contradictory. Only imagine what is forward, as you cannot reimagine that which has been left behind. He was alone now in a scorching daylight with the secret company of his soul. Bitterness as raw as road dust upon the eyes.

He looked at the young man who was his warden and the young man looked away and reached for a pack of smokes in his shirt pocket. Rawbone saw and leaned over and was ready with a struck match. John Lourdes lit up from it begrudgingly. "By the way, I don't speak just to wander. I'm calling a turn here."

"Get on with it, then."

"Within two days we'll be in Juarez and I'll do my penance and be out. But you have the look of Montgomery Ward's to me and I'm not sure Montgomery Ward's will see us through."

The son stared at the father from under the brim of his hat. The face was shaded away and so the father waited.

"Do you know why you're here?" asked John Lourdes.

"Why I'm here?"

"Yes."

"Is this about my derelict life or-"

"It is not."

"Well then, why don't you tell me."

"Think about it."

"Just give me the sermon."

"You're here because of me. I brought you down."

The father sat back.

"Understand." The son's eyes flared. "You were a free man till I arrived. So I haven't done too bad so far."

East of Fort Bliss were natural springs where a stopover of sorts had been hammered up out of castoff lumber and tarpaper. There was a roadhouse the troops frequented when they were in need of a little d.a.m.nation with its two eateries and a handful of merchandisers and a part-time brothel in a mechanics' shed. It always had its share of travelers, this being the main thoroughfare between El Paso and Carlsbad.

It was here they pulled off the road. And while John Lourdes checked the radiator and filled the gas tank from one of a set of drums lashed down in the truckbed, Rawbone hit the roadhouse to stack up on a few beers for the drive to the Huecos, where he'd hidden away the armaments.

John Lourdes leaned against the truckbed and looked toward the mountains. He was considering how best to preserve himself while carrying an illegal cargo of contraband into Mexican territory.

"I'm G.o.dd.a.m.n envious."

He turned. Approaching was a man with a broad face and stiff mustache. He had a ruddy smile and a laborer's body, but his clothes spoke of someone well appointed.

"Fine truck. One of those new three-tonners, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir."

The man was bowlegged and hitched some when he walked. "Mind if I look her over?"

"No, sir."

He walked the cha.s.sis, admiring the workmanship with an unerring eye and a taste for detail. He pointed to AMERICAN PARTHENON painted on the siding. "That your company?"

"No sir. I'm just a driver."

"Well, you look like a climber to me." He winked. Then he looked over the cab interior, studying the steering wheel and shift, the floor starter. "Keep an eye to the future, son. It's exciting times. G.o.d, what I would give to be your age now."

Rawbone walked up to the truck. He was carrying a couple of bottles of beer and he put them on the cab seat. He'd overheard the man, who now looked at him. "Your partner there can tell you. It all goes by quick as a p.i.s.s. Look to the future, son, like you were at those mountains a few minutes ago. d.a.m.n, what I wouldn't give to take the ride again-"

As the man walked away, John Lourdes came around the truck. Rawbone said, "I hope me buying you a beer doesn't const.i.tute a bribe."

"Get in the truck. We're rolling out of here now. You drive."

The truck rumbled out into the roadway and made for the east. John Lourdes crabbed through his duffel till he found binoculars.

"What's got you, Mr. Lourdes?"

"He was admiring the truck alright, but it was my shoulder holster and the weapons in the cab that clocked most of his interest."

The father glanced back toward the springs as the son focused his binoculars. Through the dazzling heat a tight pack of men on horseback and one on a motorcycle made the road and started their way. The motorcycle sped out and took the lead.

"At least four riders, one motorcycle."

"Was he one of them?"

"Too much dust."

"They could be road thugs."

"Or worse."

"Is there a weapon anywhere in my future, Mr. Lourdes?"

"I'm no fortuneteller."

"Well, I guess I'll have a beer then."

THE MOTORCYCLE WAS far in advance of the hors.e.m.e.n but not so far back it could not keep the truck in sight. A stand would have to be made. That was becoming more obvious with the failing light. John Lourdes decided it should be the place where the weapons had been cached away. They ascended the windswept remains of a cart path into the Huecos. The rocks hulked up in the paling light on all sides to become brooding silhouettes. The silence deepened till there was only the sound of that laboring engine.

On a plat of ground surrounded by shaly hills were the crumbling walls of a village. A single block of adobes led to a roofless meeting hall of two stories. The wind had begun to rise up and that barren range became engulfed in a deepening sense of isolation and emptiness. The sun on a far promontory burned with the last of the day. John Lourdes traced that cart path down through the hills as best he could with his binoculars for any sign of their pursuers.

"It'll be two hours yet," said Rawbone, "before those hors.e.m.e.n catch up with the one on the motorcycle. And that long again to sneak their way up here."

"Where are the weapons?"

"Why, Mr. Lourdes, they're in plain sight."

And they were, in a manner of speaking. The father had the son follow him beyond the meeting house to a sandy incline scarred with creva.s.ses. Then he waved the son to keep step behind as he scaled that crag following a plumb line of fist-sized stones and upon reaching the last near the apex, squatted down.

"Notice the line of rocks. They mark the spot. Now. Stand close, Mr. Lourdes, and watch the magic."

The father reached into the sand and his arms vanished near up to the elbows. As he pulled the sand began to ribbon and twill and the hill face moved like the back of some hidden monster coming to life.

"Kneel down here and light a match."

A vein of light fell upon the stacked crates hidden there in a recess beneath a tarp that had been covered by sand.

"What all is down there?"

"Your garden-variety a.r.s.enal. Carbines, ammunition, hand grenades, dynamite and detonators, and a .50 caliber machine gun. Mr. Lourdes, you could hold off the Holy Roman Empire with all that firepower."

John Lourdes blew out the match.

JOHN LOURDES HAD Rawbone move the truck far back of the meeting house and away from where the weapons were cached. He swung the shotgun strap over his shoulder. He carried rifle and binoculars loose. While he ran to a place from where he would watch the road Rawbone, alone now, slipped down under the cha.s.sis.

Before arriving in El Paso, Rawbone had hammered a strip of flap leather to the underside of the cha.s.sis housing. He'd nailed it into the wood on three sides, leaving the fourth open to form a sort of pocket or pouch where he stashed away an automatic. When that was done he'd hammered the last side closed so the weapon wouldn't shake loose.

TEN.

-HE SKYLINE WAS settling out, the blue softening away till there was only the marked approach of nightfall. John Lourdes sat in silence near the headway of the plat. Rawbone approached and stood near, scanning the moonless world to the road below.

"You have any idea how you intend to make this fight?"

John Lourdes was staring up that street of crumbling foundations to the meeting house. "What was this place? Do you know?"

Rawbone ran the back of his fingers along his cheek. "You never heard and you're from El Paso?" He set the derby back. "It was one of those ... utopias. You know what they are, right? Well ... this one was different. There was only women. Women from all over the world. Anglo women, Mexican. Women from India. China. Even Africa. They lived like a tribe. And they had ceremonies where they went about naked. Naked, Mr. Lourdes."

The son now looked upon those forgotten remains and tried to imagine- The father threw his head back laughing. "Mr. Lourdes, if ever I saw an expression of pure and ridiculous gullibility." He shook his head in comedic despair.

The son was forced to accept the moment and he took it stoically, but not without a smile that he was had. "By the way," John Lourdes asked, "did you retrieve the gun?"

Rawbone c.o.c.ked his head. "Excuse me?"

"The automatic stashed under the cha.s.sis. I checked the d.a.m.n vehicle early this morning."

Rawbone pulled up his shirt where the gun had been tucked away. "Mr. Lourdes, the tide of opinion about you has just risen some." He pulled the weapon and held the black .32 just so in his palm and, mocking, added, "Bat Masterson swears by this gun. Or so says the ad. And another promises ... it's a housewife's best friend against burglars." He tucked the shirt back in his pants and slipped the weapon down into his belt sash. He paused to set his derby right. "Mr. Lourdes, it's a right-thinking world when they start running ads with guns and women in nightgowns."

The son went back to considering how a fight was to be made. The father stood watch. And so the night went about its workings.

"Mr. Lourdes, do you come from a good Christian family?"

The son looked up at the father and in a pointed quiet said, "In part."

"Well, you better pack that good Christian part away for a while ... because they're here."

John Lourdes rose. He looked down into that banded decline of shadows but saw nothing. Rawbone stepped behind him and pointed, his arm resting just over the rim of the son's shoulders. There was a narrow slit of brightness, not even really a light, for one moment. "Far, far down the canyon. There! Did you see it?"

"No."

"I believe it's one of those flashlights with the sliding bridge slip. You know. And they're keeping it near to the ground so all you see is a bit of wash from the light."

The father was so close now the son could feel the weapon he had tucked away pressing against his back.

"You can't look right at a thing at night that far to see it, Mr. Lourdes. The trick is you have to look off just a bit. Use the outer ring of your eye."

The son did as the father said and in the s.p.a.ce of a minute there was a singular emanation so minute as to be barely made out.

"Yes," said John Lourdes, "I see it. You're right."

"That's a trick you learn from years of being on the hunt."

The son turned. "You mean being hunted, don't you?"

"That too, Mr. Lourdes. But when they're as close as you and I are now, hunter and hunted, it's all the same."

John Lourdes studied the man he was born of. "Is that a threat, or a word of advice?"