"Elder Shatner, look," said Brother Carey, pointing to the high country, "thou canst see a horseman, alone."
Hendrik Shatner turned casually in the saddle. In the light of the coming dawn, the lines of the ancient and rugged table rocks were becoming visible. Young Carey saw true. A rider was picking a careful way, silhouetted against red-threaded sky.
Hendrik shivered with sudden insight. If he stopped and dismounted, he could draw a clear rifle bead before the horseman was out of sight. It would not be a certain kill at this range, but he had made more difficult shots.
His rifle hung from his saddle-horn in its soft leather sheath. Store-bought in the East, it had been his companion for a good few years.
In the desert stillness, the report of the shot would carry for miles, probably as far as New Canaan. He could not risk alerting the Gentiles. Still, his gut-twinge told him this bloody business would go better without the unknown stranger drifting through. He wished he had availed himself of the skills of the Brethren's Paiute allies and learned how to bring down a hawk with a silent arrow.
"Is't one of the Indians?" Brother Carey asked.
Hendrik shook his head. The horseman sat on a saddle and wore a hat His gaze was fixed on his rocky path. To him, the deep crack of the canyon would be a river of dark. The raiding party were bottom-crawling creatures of the shadow. Hendrik tried to believe the stranger was unaware of them.
"A Gentile," Carey spat.
"Most like, Brother."
Carey had been raised in the Brethren of Joseph. His parents, early converts, had died on the Path, run out of one town after another, pestered Westward. The young man had gathered up an unhealthy store of vengeance. He was not alone among the Brethren. Each man of this party had made his blood sacrifices.
"We'll see them Gentiles off, Elder," Carey said.
"That's the general idea."
The rider up in the high country would be some ragged mountain man, drifting West, never settling. Hendrik might have gone that route himself at one time or another, before his brother put on the mirrored spectacles and saw the future laid out like a map. The horseman would not be one of the Gentiles who had fixed on the played-out mining town of Spanish Fork. The pioneers had planted their grain and renamed the place New Canaan.
The grain shouldn't have taken, but neither should the crops planted at the Josephite settlement. The Lord made the desert flower for the Brethren of Joseph; now Gentiles picked around the edges of the territory, crowding the outcasts. Of course, it seemed passing strange that the Lord should have placed that deep-water well for Gentiles to find rather than the elect. Hendrik recalled that a similar situation had obtained in Old Canaan before Joshua rode up with his trumpets.
In the dawn quiet, Hendrik heard tiny sounds: hooves on sand and the occasional rock outcrop, the muted rattle of harnesses, the squeak of saddles, the breath of horses.
This was a necessary action. The Brethren had left too many settlements behind, been driven off good land by soldiers and bandits. Here, in deserts no one but an Indian could want, the Path of Joseph petered out. This was where the Shining City must rise to the glory of the Lord. It was either that or a communal grave.
"We'll send 'em runnin' back for the States," Carey vowed, vehemently trying to convince himself. "This be the Land of Joseph. Our land."
"And theirs," Hendrik indicated.
The Paiute rode silently. Hendrik had expected the party to separate into its constituent elements but everyone was mixed in. The Indians were blanketed huddles on scrawny mounts, interspersed with Josephites in broad-brimmed black hats and long, peg-fastened black coats. A sprinkling of Chiricahua was in with the Paiute, wanderers well off their usual trails.
The Brethren of Joseph were at peace with the Indian, if not with the United States. Among the elect was the Ute, who had been at the side of Brother Joseph from the first. He was taken, even by Indians, as one of their number, if rarely welcomed as a red brother.
The Ute had scouted this path and now rode near the head of the party. Even in the twilight, he wore his peculiar mirrored spectacles. It was hard for most to imagine his eyes, though suggestive glimpses troubled Hendrik's nights. The Ute had the coat and hat of a Josephite but his face was burned the colour of blood. Josephites abjured adornment, but the Ute wore a necklace of knuckle-bones.
"Gentiles whipped my pa, back in Kentucky," Carey said, steeling himself. "Tied him to a wagon wheel, opened his back to the bone, left him to die. And Gentiles hanged Elder Joseph. Thou knowest that better'n anyone."
Joseph Shatner, founder of the Brethren of Joseph, had indeed been hanged. Hendrik had heard the verdict handed down against his brother, had tried to raise his voice amid the hurrahs of the crowd. The charge was sorcery, a capital crime in certain backward counties of the State of Massachusetts. The law had lain unused among the statutes since the Salem Witch Trials.
"It has to stop somewhere," Carey continued. "The whippings, the hangings, the bullets in the back. We've found the place where we ought to be, and we must take our stand."
Hendrik had heard this speech before, in the war with Mexico and in the campaign against the Seminoles. Before fighting, each man convinced himself the cause was just, that he was doing the right thing. Trouble was, the Mexicans and the Seminoles must feel the same way, or else why would they bear arms.
A shaft of early light angled down into the canyon. The horseman was gone. Hendrik saw round black hats ahead, bobbing like mushrooms in a pot of water. There were about twenty Josephites, with maybe ten Indians mixed in. It was a fair-sized war party.
"Any rate," Carey said, "we're going to see them Gentiles off."
"Like I said, that's the general idea."
Hendrik Shatner counted himself unfortunate to be in the company of not one but two madmen.
"The only irrefutable argument in support of the soul's immortality," the poet announced, "or, rather, the only conclusive proof of man's alternate dissolution and rejuvenescence ad infinitum is to be found in analogies deduced from the modern established theory of nebular cosmogeny."
The air of Samuel's Tavern was thick with bad whiskey and worse talk. If one took into consideration the storm-clouds of tobacco smoke gathering under the low ceiling, the aromatic powders upon the faces of every woman present, and the natural odour of the male clientele, the atmosphere was hardly calculated to soothe the nostrils.
Hendrik was at least accustomed to the eccentricities of his brother, Joseph. This Eddy, Richmond-bred but currently out of Philadelphia, was some new species of lunatic. Hendrik was afraid Joseph and the poet would lock horns in a contest of drink-sotted feeble-wits which would outlast the night and conclude only with the both of them in their graves.
As debate thundered, Molly O'Doul, whom Hendrik knew to be a not infrequent paramour of Joseph's, pouted and wriggled by his side, failing to distract him. If matters continued, Hendrik would feel obliged to relieve his brother of this particular burden of the flesh.
Hendrik abused his throat with another swallow. It raised stinging tears in his eyes. He had spent too much time in the crowded East; he should head for the open West again, soon. He had not been to California since the territory was ceded by Mexico. There were stories of cities of gold.
He shook whiskey fire from his brain and returned his attentions to the vagaries of the conversation.
Eddy declaimed against the current state of American letters, not a topic of any particular interest to Hendrik, with occasional footnotes as to the essential nature of the universe. The poet and essayist had come to Boston, which he insisted upon calling "Frogpondium", to attend the deathbed of the Pioneer, a monthly magazine that had published his scribblings and then had the indecency to expire before paying him for his efforts. Eddy was aghast to discover that the periodical, published in this very town, had lived its brief life without extending its fame, and thereby his own, to Samuel's Tavern.
"Have you not read my tale, 'The Tell-Tale Heart'? My poem, 'Lenore'? My celebrated essay 'Notes Upon English Verse'? The Pioneer took them at ten dollars apiece, but monies have not, I regret to say, been forthcoming. The demise of the periodical is a most severe blow to the good cause, the cause of Pure Taste."
Hendrik was given to understand that Eddy, a self-declared genius, had not much prospered from his literary efforts. Like Joseph, he could talk up a blue streak but was only minimally able to transform his energies into remuneration.
"I have expectations of securing, through my contacts with the family of President Tyler, a government post, a sinecure in the United States' Customs House. This position will finance my literary endeavours, freeing me from the pestilential need of providing for myself and my dependants. Until that welcome time, so close as to be within a breath's grasp, I'm afraid I shall have to trouble you to settle a greater portion of the worthy Samuel's bill."
Despite Eddy's penury, the goodfellows drank steadily for two hours. Hendrik could almost no longer feel the lump of Mexican shot that had lodged in his leg as he galloped away from San Antone. Usually, he took that as a sign that his evening's liquoring was over and that he should transfer his affections to beer. In the current circumstances, he called for another shot. Ernie, the pot-man, was ready with an unstoppered bottle and exchanged a sympathetic look with Hendrik. Evidently, he was more than familiar with the windy likes of Joseph and Eddy.
At Molly's summoning, a cluster of drab girls gathered around, loitering like coyotes just beyond the firelight. Hendrik was not yet far enough along the whiskey turnpike to discern the attractions of these painted specimens, but he knew well enough that before the bottle was emptied he would make out some startling and hitherto unperceived beauty among the unpromising herd.
Joseph, eyes bright, had taken a shine to Eddy, whom the brothers had come upon when the tavern was a deal less populated than now. Alone and muttering, he had been scattering spittle over the pages of the book he was reading. He was going through a poem by Longfellow, underscoring phrases stolen from other sources, and his first outburst had been a bilious attack on monied plagiarists. Now the conversational topic had shifted, Eddy was arguing mysterious matters with Joseph.
"Our perceptions must perforce be inexact," Eddy said, taking some new tack. "A veil hangs before all things and we cannot push it aside. My belief is that devices can be constructed, poetical devices or physical, which would enable us to see clear through this fog as a telescope penetrates the night skies."
"Aye, there's truth to be seen," Joseph said, taking another gulp of liquid fire. "The Lord's Truth."
Hendrik knew the preaching fever was almost on his brother. It was Joseph's habit to pursue the pleasures of the bottle, generously sharing them with fellows like this poet, until entirely in his cups. Then Joseph would be possessed of a deep revulsion for his sinful ways and would feel compelled to get up on a table and rail against the generality of mankind. His usual topics were those faults that ran strongest in his own character – drink and dissipation.
"If we could but shake the casts from our eyes," Eddy continued, "what wonders would not be disclosed to our revivified sight? We could remake the world on ideal lines."
"Changes are coming, Eddy. The Lord's changes."
While Hendrik had knocked around the territories for most of his adult life, Joseph had stayed in the States. His travels had all been interior, and wayward.
If he had been more given to speechifying, Hendrik would have silenced Joseph and Eddy, criticising them for drawing conclusions about the nature of the universe from observations made exclusively in the taverns, chapels and gaudy houses of Massachusetts. A man had no right to an opinion of the world until he had seen the unpeopled desert stretching to the Western horizon, waded through Florida swamps forever expecting a Seminole blade in his throat, outraced the soldiers of Mexico while comrades fell at the Alamo, passed a year in the wilderness without seeing another human soul, held in his hands a treasure in dust that would shame the courts of Europe, losing said fortune along a punishing trail yet counting himself wealthy indeed to come down from the mountains still breathing.
"This world does not please its maker, Eddy," Joseph said. "It is populated by foul harlots and men of low character."
Molly's comrades were not offended. Joseph always knew girls in Boston taverns. Originally, he had set out to preach to fallen women but at some point, early in his career as a reformer, he had undertaken to fall along with them. He had passed more than a few nights in jail cells on account of his association with soiled doves.
Eddy ignored the painted child who was cosying up to him, though when the polite coughs with which she endeavoured to secure his attention turned into racking spasms that spotted her kerchief with blood, he began to show singular excitement.
Joseph was able to keep up a flow of chatter, though he had a constantly replenished glass in one hand and the substantial bosom of Molly O'Doul in the other. For some reason which Hendrik thought best to leave behind Eddy's universal veil, Molly was providing coin enough to settle the party's bill.
Suddenly, Joseph slammed down his glass, sloshing liquor on the scarred bar, and cast Molly roughly aside. He leaped up from the stool upon which his backside had been perched, tearing his hat from his head and hammering his breast with both fists. His remaining fringe of hair, wet with whiskey-sweat, stood out in tufts from his scalp.
"The Lord is upon me," Joseph shouted, "and I must speak His Truth!"
The hat skimmed, forgotten, through the air and crumpled against the wall. With an agility that always surprised Hendrik, Joseph leaped upon the bar and strutted like a performer upon a stage. Eddy's large, watery eyes goggled and his tiny mouth fell open. At this, even the poet's prodigious flow of talk ran dry. The coughing child – Kitty or Katie or somesuch – looked down as if expecting a thorough chastising.
The regulars at Samuel's had seen this before. Ernie was ready with his cloth to wipe any drink that was spilled by Joseph's boots, and with his leaded shillelagh to silence any unwise customer who might complain at such wastage. A few of the girls clapped; nothing so endeared Joseph to women as his ability to convince them the fires of hell were nipping at their petticoats.
Joseph sucked in a lungful of smoky air and Hendrik assumed the draught would be good for a full hour of sermon. Afterwards, Eddy might feel obliged to counter with a recital of one of his poems. As free shows went, it was one of the more expensive. Listening to rot gave a man considerable thirst.
"Sisters, brothers…" Joseph began.
His flow died and his mouth stilled. His eyes fixed upon a face in the crowd and words became ashes on his tongue. His cheeks and forehead flushed an angry crimson.
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.
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.
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.
"Tekeli-li, tekeli-li, tekeli-li..."
The poet turned and ran, caroming off the wall opposite and tearing away into the night. The Ute bent down and picked up the spectacles. Eddy had dropped them. Hendrik heard him in flight, a clattering of boots on cobbles and an extended garble of terror.
Hendrik stood in the alley with the Ute, struggling with his own panic. The poet's nonsense had in it something of the screeches of the Seminoles, the howling of wolves, the drone of the Mexican degüello. They were all the sounds of death. Moonlight fell all around. Hendrik looked to the stranger, who held out his spectacles, offering them with a sly curve of a smile.
Eddy had fallen silent or was beyond earshot. Joseph was alone inside. Hendrik looked at the glasses, so odd and innocent in the Ute's weathered hand.
The offer was still there.
Brother Carey stripped to the waist, arranging his neatly unpegged clothes in a parcel which he fastened to his saddle. His skin was pink in the early light, unmarked. Hendrik's own chest and limbs were a map of his campaigns, each engagement marked with a scar.
The Paiute waited patiently, holding aloft torches whose growing flames were barely visible in the early morning light. The Ute laid out the pots of paint on an unrolled skin.
Carey finger-streaked his face blue and red, and drew designs on his chest, circling his nipples with angry eyes, drawing a toothy mouth on his belly. He looked like no sort of Indian Hendrik had ever faced.
Pretending to be savages was an American tradition, dating at least to the Boston Tea Party. The pretence masked a deeper truth. Europe was used up; now, America was the battleground of Darkness and Light. His brother had wrapped the whole thing around the Cross of Jesus, but Hendrik knew this was an older conflict and that, in ways he would never understand, it was nearing its end.
Armageddon would be a city in America. The foundations were already marked out with lines of blood.
The Ute squatted by the paints. Hendrik could see his own savage face reflected in twin miniature. He was painted like death, face blackened, black outlined with red.
Today, the Brethren of Joseph and their allies, the people of the Paiute, would ride against the invader. This was the Brethren's territory, no matter how the claim might be disputed. If the action meant war with the United States of America, then the Josephites were prepared to take arms and protect themselves.
The Brethren had been provoked sorely. And the Gentiles had fired warning shots at the Indians.
Satisfied with his war paint, Hendrik returned to his horse. He fastened his belt around his waist. His bowie knife hung heavy on one hip, his .36 Colt was holstered on the other. In a pouch that hung from the back of his belt, his razor nestled.
In all the meetings, the Elders had agreed that the Gentiles were to be run off the land. A good fright should accomplish that. There was no reason to harm them.
No reason.
Clegg inspected the new-painted Brethren, commending them as compleat heathens.
Hendrik took his hat from the horn of his saddle and set it on his head, then mounted his horse. The Indians called the Josephites Black Bonnets. A torch was given to him; he held it aloft, a signal for all. He looked up at the sky and saw no birds. He scanned the horizon and saw no strangers.
"Them Gentiles won't know what's hit," Brother Carey said, laughing with no humour, "they'll keep running till they've sea around their boots."
Hendrik let his torch fall, flame slicing through the air…
After that night in Samuel's Tavern, Joseph Shatner was a reformed man. He permanently and publically abjured drink and dissipation. He persuaded Molly O'Doul to join him in abstinence. Saintliness spread to Molly's sisterhood. Hendrik took the pledge for his own reasons but found little comfort in purity.
Joseph still preached; now his sermons were conducted in chapels and meeting halls, not ale-houses and street-corners. He spoke, eyes burning with the fire of the Lord, of the revelation that had come unto him. The Book was opened. Shining cities would rise in the West, dedicated to the glory of God. Sin was to be obliterated utterly.
The Ute was perpetually in attendance, hanging back, never speaking. Most took him for Joseph's manservant. He seemed to smile now, though it was impossible to gauge whether his stone features actually changed their habitual configuration. He still wore the spectacles.
Always, the offer was there for Hendrik. He could look through the spectacles, like Joseph, like Eddy.
How bad could it be? Joseph had found purpose in his vision, had seen the path to a shining city. He had followers. His congregation donated money. Joseph was better clothed now, always in black. His followers copied his style, his distinctive hat. Even more women clustered around him. Many of the better sort. Sister Molly was among the most respectable of the Brethren of Joseph. Joseph had renounced carnality, but Molly had something of the position of a consort. In order to get to Joseph Shatner, many of the men and women who would most have scorned Molly O'Doul had now to deal with the former drab.
Hendrik made inquiries about Eddy. The fellow had, as he had insisted, some small measure of fame in the world of letters. Having returned to Philadelphia post-haste, his pen was more active than ever. His genius flowed unabated, though it was reckoned morbid and unhealthy. He could not have been seriously harmed by what he had seen, what he imagined he saw, through the marvellous mirror-glasses.
So why was Hendrik afraid?
The Church grew. Brothers wore black frock coats and circular hats, sisters looked like widows in black bonnets and smock-dresses. There were many such sects in New England, all apparently thriving, talking of Utopian communities to be built in the unpeopled West, or giving dates in the imminent future which would mark the Day of Judgment. Creeds flourished: Mormons, Mennonites, Danites, Millerites, Hittites, Shakers, Esoterics, Hutteriah Brethren, Quakers, Agapemonists, Seventh Day Adventists. But, Hendrik knew, the Josephites were different Even the Mormons, who had their own spectacles, were less plagued by miracles than the faith founded by his brother.
When Hendrik and Joseph reoccupied their father's town house, it became the headquarters of the Brethren. Between sermons and gatherings, Joseph Shatner shut himself away with the Ute. Hendrik tried not to know what passed between them but Joseph could not resist sharing the wonders that were disclosed. He was setting everything down in his own testament. The Path of Joseph.
Joseph tried to share his revelation. His Brethren were receptive to the message, so why not his brother? If only Hendrik would look through the marvellous glasses, then he would truly understand.
Hendrik remembered Eddy's cries. If Joseph had seen a shining city, what had assaulted the eyes of the poet?
"Tekeli-li, tekeli-li, tekeli-li…"
The echo of Eddy's babble resounded in Hendrik's skull.
He considered setting out for California, but something kept him in Boston. Perhaps he knew that no matter how far he went, the Church of Joseph would spread to encompass him. His responsibilities, however they had been neglected in the past, were with his brother. He was the head of the family, even if Joseph was head of the Brethren.
The Word of Joseph spread. The Path of Joseph was published, despite vandalism at the contracted printers, and disseminated among believers. Converts flocked to Massachusetts and many found temporary accommodation in the Shatner household. Sister Molly presided over chaste dormitories. Rules were handed down: buttons were forbidden as fripperies, coffee was condemned as an impure stimulant, "thee" and "thou " were required forms of address.
Rumours spread. Irresponsible gossips alleged Josephites practised animal sacrifice, that The Sisters were held as communal property by the Brethren, that Gentile children were kidnapped into the Church. These absurdities reached the less scrupulous periodicals, who hastened them into print. Wild stories gained great currency and idlers competed to embroider the legends with grotesque frills. It was said the Christ that Joseph Shatner worshipped had goat's horns.
Gradually, public meeting places ceased to be available for Josephite gatherings. Brethren were abused in the streets, sometimes severely, and the Shatner household was daubed with paint and filth by unknown vandals. Local ordinances were passed limiting the rights of Josephites to worship, to own property, to hold public office. With each slight, Joseph became more sure of himself.
Hendrik remained on the Council of the Brethren but the true inner circle was restricted. It consisted of Joseph Shatner and the Ute. Hendrik tried to learn more of the Ute. Little that was concrete emerged, though Hendrik consulted frontiersmen who concurred with him that the man in the mirrored glasses was unlike any Indian who ever walked.
In the basement of the Shatner mansion, Joseph built a private chapel. He passed many nights there, secluded with the Ute. Peculiar smells seeped upwards and filled the house. When Hendrik asked his brother what went on in his night rituals, Joseph told him he was seeing further, piercing more mysteries, rending aside the veil…
"You wear the spectacles?"
Joseph nodded and held his brother by the shoulders. "Thou too must look through the lenses, Hendrik. The Revelation was for us three. Poor mad Poe could not understand what he saw. Only I have accepted the gift of sight. It is not too late to see the city, my brother." Hendrik shook Joseph off.
In September 1846, Hendrik returned late one night to find the house afire, an angry mob gathered around. As he made his way through the crowd, Hendrik heard stories from all sides. He could not believe a fourth of them.
Recently there had been a rash of disappearances among children of good families. Investigating the crimes, the authorities, acting upon anonymously provided information, had breached Joseph Shatner's cellars and surprised him in his chapel in the midst of some rite. Hendrik heard a dozen obscene accounts of the scene that had been disclosed. Two children, allegedly, had been recovered.
At the edge of the crowd, watching the house burn, he found the Ute. Hendrik started forwards, but the Ute gripped him by the arm and held him back. The upper windows blew out with the heat, showering glass onto the cobbles. As they fell, the shards sparkled with fire. Hendrik heard his brother calling for him. Joseph, hatless and bloody, was in the grip of stern officers.
He cried out as he was dragged away. The arrest was not easy. Among the mob, many of Joseph's followers impeded the officers. Shouts were raised. Some sang "The Path of Joseph", the Brethren's anthem. Gentiles tore up cobblestones and used them as missiles, putting officers in the uncomfortable position of shielding the man they had arrested. A sheriff discharged a pistol into the air but was not rewarded with silence.
Two empty-faced children, swaddled in blankets, stood with one of the officers, regarding the fire with no especial interest. They were Joseph's accusers.
Finally, Joseph was wrestled into a closed cart. As it trundled off, mobs pounded on the cart and Josephites pounded on the mobs. Running fist-fights spread through the streets. Hendrik heard more shots. A fire engine arrived, amid a tintinnabulation of bells, too late to save the Shatner house but in time to prevent the spread of the conflagration to the neighbouring residences. Water gushed and steam rose.
The Ute released Hendrik and gave him something. The mirror glasses. Fierce indignation burned in Hendrik's breast. The timbers of his father's house cracked and fell in upon themselves. From the heart of the dying fire came a roar as of a stricken lion.
"Yes," he said.
He put on the spectacles.
For an instant, the night sky was a blaze of white and the flames were black. The Shatner house stood not in the city of Boston but on an infinite plain of white sand, of salt baked under a pale sun. Joseph was alone.
No, not alone.
The distant echo of Eddy's "tekeli-li, tekeli-li, tekeli-li" sounded from the throats of horrid, birdlike things.
Hendrik tore the glasses from his face and gave them back to the Ute. He had almost, but not quite, accepted the gift. In that moment, he truly became a follower of Joseph.
Within days, he was calling upon his long-forgotten legal education and fighting in court. No respectable lawyer would undertake to appear in defence of Joseph Shatner, who was accused of disgusting offences. A few wretched apostates drifted away from the Church, but an overwhelming number stuck by their new faith as its founder was pilloried. Hendrik was not surprised when Sister Molly told him the flow of new converts was unabated. Martyrs attract followers.
During the nights before the trial, five Josephites were killed in the city. Only one of their murderers was apprehended; he was later acquitted, indeed commended, by a Gentile jury. Brethren were refused service in stores. Josephite homes and meeting houses were razed.
When sentence of death was passed, half the courtroom erupted in cheering. Josephites sat stunned. Hendrik had expected no less and burned with a cold fury. When the judge's hammer silenced the dancing merriment, Joseph bowed and thanked the court, claiming "I go without regret to Golgotha."
Joseph Shatner was hanged in public on 5th October, 1846. The judge ordered that no member of the Brethren of Joseph should be permitted to attend and officers rigorously enforced the ruling. Hendrik, believing he had a special dispensation, put on Gentile clothing – the buttons, so recently abjured, were already awkward to deal with – and took his place in the crowd.
Joseph died with the catcalls of a Gentile mob in his ears. And a smile on his face.
Driven out of New England, the Josephites followed the path West. The Ute was their scout and Hendrik their wagon-master. From all over, converts came. The word of Joseph spread. There were miracles a-borning in the Western wilderness.
Across desert, mountain, river, rock and plain, Josephites made their way. They faced hostile Gentiles and savage Indians. They were robbed and killed, abused and burned, whipped and battered. Treasured possessions turned to millstones and were abandoned along the trail. Still, the pilgrims endured. With each blow, the faith became stronger. Many died singing "The Path of Joseph".
As he travelled, Hendrik often dreamed of the plain he had glimpsed. It was featureless and white, extended to an unimaginable horizon in every direction. There was no cover, nothing to interrupt the monotony of the landscape. He saw no other moving, living thing; and yet he knew, with the echo of Eddy Poe's screams and of the bird-things, that he was not alone. Westward rolled the wagons, ever Westward …
Hendrik spurred his horse as the party charged, whooping like wild things. Reins held fast in his left hand, he leaned over to one side, trailing his torch through the wheat, leaving a wake of fire. Crackling flames spread and thick smoke drifted from crops that had been painfully wrung from unpromising soil.
He let the torch drop and straightened, urging the horse to plough through an irrigation flue. His steed reared up, hooves kicking, and the water-bearing structure – adapted from abandoned mining apparatus – collapsed all around them.
The human din was incredible. The party screeched like creatures of Hell and rode at the houses of New Canaan like a stampeding herd.
A blinking Gentile emerged from the nearest building, slipping suspenders up over his shoulders, hair awry from recent sleep. Brother Carey side-swiped the man as he rode past, pitching him back at his doorway. As the Gentile's head cracked against his lintel, Carey yelled triumph and wheeled around, coming back for another pass.
Hendrik saw the pistol in Carey's hand kicking before he heard the shots. Bloody wounds burst out of the Gentile's chest.
The United States provisionally ceded tracts of stony land to the Brethren of Joseph, but the persecutions did not cease. In the East and Southeast, Josephites were branded as sacrificers of small children and hounded out of towns. In the South, Josephites were barred from owning slaves. Congressmen railed against the Brethren as Devil-spawn. Gentile parsons preached abomination from pulpits.
Hendrik, seeing the bloody footprints the elect left in their wake, came to understand sacrifice. The Ute led them on and remained at the settlements while Hendrik returned to shepherd the next pilgrims. In the West, the Brethren discovered the savage force of their new faith.
The blood sacrifices began. Hendrik, trying to rid himself of his dreams, offered up his own blood many times. When he had to fight for the Brethren, he did so without compunction.
He fought with a greater conviction than ever before. Indians lay in the wake of the wagon trains, mutilated so their ghosts could never enter the spirit lands. Outlaws were hanged from trees or left where they fell, rotting warnings for their kind.
Don't tangle with the Josephites, people said, whispering. Many of the malicious stories Hendrik had heard, he made true. If a Gentile stood in the path of Joseph, it was no sin to shift him with a bullet or a stone or the razor.
In his own sermons, begun hesitantly but with growing fervour, Hendrik preached that Gentiles were no better than beasts. He spoke of the fire and the rope, and the debt that could only be paid in blood. For every drop of Josephite purple, a quart of Gentile blood must be spilled.
As he preached, Hendrik would open his palms with a razor. Many of his congregations followed his example.
Among the Josephites, an elite arose who carried razors about their persons, always ready for a blood sacrifice.
Few turned aside from the path. Most of them returned eventually. Apostates were scourged righteously.
The blood rose around Hendrik.
Finally, he fell away from the path. The dreams were not blotted out by blood. The Ute's smile seemed to have become a deathly grin. Hendrik was weighted down by the sacrifices. He fled East and ran into an old friend.
Baltimore, 1849
Hendrik was afraid the Brethren had despatched their agents, human and otherwise, for him. He could not see a black hat on the street without running for cover. He kept his razor open in his pocket.
The Ute must have decreed that he be returned to the fold. To the elect, the word of the Ute was as the word of Joseph himself The brother of the founder could not be allowed to turn apostate. Hendrik was determined to be killed rather than be taken back to the settlement. One last blood sacrifice.
He considered his options. If he made his way to New York, he could find passage on a ship for Europe. The Ute's influence did not yet extend to the Old World. He would make a life for himself in England or Holland. He would die before the Word of Joseph reached Europe.
But he was being followed.
The streets were full. Elections were a few days away and corner-speakers campaigned furiously despite the strong winds and soaking rain. Hendrik sensed rather than saw the black hats.
He ducked into Gunner's Hall, a thronged tavern, and there, at the bar, haunted and alone, was Eddy Poe, coughing over drink. The poet saw Hendrik coming and flinched, but was too drained to run. Hendrik understood how he must feel.
It was strange; here was the only other man living, so far as he knew, who might understand his plight.
Eddy, hollow-cheeked and poorly dressed, seemed twenty years older. He wore a moustache now. Hendrik thought his pale face might be powdered. He was living in Richmond, travelling North to deliver lectures on "The Poetic Principle", reciting his own modestly famous verses.
Over the years, Hendrik had sought out Eddy's work, imagining in the fever dreams and horrors paraded across the page what the poet must have seen through the spectacles. His tales were crammed with the unquiet and unforgiving dead, with vast and malignant cosmic entities, with plague and premature burial. He had to admit Eddy hardly seemed the cheeriest of souls in the pieces published before that encounter in Samuel's Tavern.
Eddy, for his part, had followed the careers of the Brothers Shatner. Several times, he admitted, he had felt the impulse to light out for the Josephite Settlement.
Again, Hendrik asked Eddy what it was he saw.
The poet shrugged.
"I believed I beheld the face of the worm. Or the mechanicals of the cosmos. I cannot be sure. The lasting impression is philosophical, not visual. I have come to think we were subject to some trickery of the light, some distortion of the glass, but that a deeper truth was poured into our souls. Not one day has passed but that I have not shuddered at the memory of that accursed night."
Hendrik confessed to a similar affliction.
Eddy was struck with a fit of coughing. Hendrik realised the poet was sorely ill.
"It tore the heart out of me," Eddy managed to say. "Since then I have walked with the dead. I cannot look upon the face of a loved one without seeing the worms burrowing beneath the skin."
Hendrik surveyed the well-lit room. There were several black hats, bobbing behind the sea of faces. The noise of people was oppressive, and the heat, contrasting with the chill of outdoors, hard to stand. The revellers' coats steamed.
"They are here," Eddy said, blankly. "The conquerors."
Faces flowed into one another. The crowd grew thicker. Steam spotted the ceiling. The noise increased. Hendrik tried to stand away from the bar but the press was impossible. More and more people, many in black, poured into Gunner's Hall like sand. He was wedged tight. Smoky yellow light flooded the room. Hendrik blinked, water in his eyes.
He still struggled and listened. The noise was a babble; no matter how he tried, he could not focus on any one voice, or discern any actual words. The sound was human and yet not language, an alien hubbub akin to the rhubarbing of minor stage players called upon to simulate background noise. But this was not background, this was deafening.
Eddy tried to speak, but his words were lost, drowned. Hendrik's ears hurt and his body was pressed against the rail of the bar. Looking into the mirror behind the bar, he saw the crowd had coalesced into one mass, clothed in a vast patchwork of materials. The morass was dotted with distorted heads topped by familiar hats. The crowd, one creature, flowed all around, washing against the corners of the room like water, climbing the walls. Bodies stretched like rubber and merged like melting wax. The level was above the waist already.
Blood trickled from one of Hendrik's ears. Eddy was being sucked under, a checkered tide slipping around him. The noise, a painful yammering, smote Hendrik like a cudgel. He could not fill his lungs. His mouth was full of the taste of sickness. His ribs strained and threatened to stave in.
The mirror bulged outwards, unable to contain such a living mass, and exploded into a million fragments.
The noise shut off and Hendrik was released, falling to the floor. A spittoon overturned, spilling tobacco slime under his palm.
Wiping his hand on his trousers, he stood.
Eddy, coughing still, clung to the bar as if it were the wheel of a ship in a storm.
They were alone with a roomful of statues, looking out through the smashed mirror onto a familiar plain. A thin horizon separated white land from white sky. The remaining spears of mirror fell out of the frame and scattered across the plain, sucked by an unfelt wind.
The tavern doors pushed inward and the company was joined. A man, his head hooded, staggered in, arms stretched out, and wound a way between the statues. The dummies represented the drinkers who had been in Gunner's Hall when Hendrik first entered, posed in attitudes of revelry, grins painted on their faces, prop tankards lifted.
The newcomer's head lolled unnaturally and Hendrik recognised his brother. Joseph reached up and snatched off the hood. His face was discoloured and the top of his spine poked out of the skin under one ear. A waxy mould spread under his face and a red rope-weal ringed the stretched neck like a cravat. The apparition, its voice-box crushed, could not speak. It staggered towards the bar and came to a halt, eyes swivelling between Hendrik and Eddy.
Another had slipped into the room. It was the Ute, dressed as a Josephite Elder, eyes reflecting in the shadow of his hat-brim.
"Not enough blood," the Ute said to Hendrik, "not nearly enough…"
Hendrik knew he was entrapped again, that he must return to the Path of Joseph. He stood away from the bar and Joseph clapped a cold hand on his shoulder.
He surrendered his purpose.
Eddy stayed by the bar, turning to look at the Ute. The mock Indian took off his mirror glasses and held them out again. Eddy was trembling throughout his body. A tiny dribble of blood emerged from between his lips.
Hendrik saw the Ute's broad, black-covered back as he faced down Eddy Poe. The poet looked at the offered spectacles, then up at the Ute's face. His trembling froze.
"Friend," Eddy said, "what can be discerned with these adornments is as nothing set beside what I see in your eyes."
Eddy turned away and the Ute put his glasses back on. The dummies moved again, voices buzzed all around.
Joseph and the Ute were gone. Hendrik was jostled.
"Eddy…?"
The poet shook his head but would not turn. In the intact mirror, Hendrik saw Eddy's stricken face. He looked worse than the apparition of the hanged Joseph. Hendrik backed away, with increasing haste. People got in the way and he could no longer see Eddy. He turned and ran from the tavern. The icy rain outside washed away his fear.
A Josephite party would be gathering soon to leave for the Settlement. He would return to the Path. Only blood could free him.
He pulled his bowie out of the Gentile's neck-vein and was blinded by the burst of blood. Hendrik shook his eyes clear and looked into the dying face. He saw nothing he had not seen before. He scored a deep line across the settler's forehead with his knife-point, then lifted the hair. It came away in a ragged cap. The light went from the Gentile's eyes.
Hendrik gave voice to a shout of savage victory.
Eddy Poe had been discovered in Gunner's Hall, having been missing for some days, by an acquaintance who surmised he was deathly sick. He wore ill-fitting clothes believed not to be his own and was in a semi-conscious state taken for severe intoxication. Conveyed to the hospital of Washington Medical College, he babbled constant delirium, addressing spectral and imaginary objects on the walls.
"Tekeli-li, tekeli-li, tekeli-li..."
All around. New Canaan burned. Hendrik had lost count of those he had sacrificed this morning. His painted skin was crusted with drying blood. Scalps lay strewn in his wake. He did not keep trophies.
When a doctor told Eddy he would soon be enjoying the company of his friends, he broke out with much energy and said the best thing a friend could do would be to blow out his brains with a pistol. Raving for a full day or more, he exhausted himself and, quietly moving his head as he said "Lord help my poor soul", expired. Baltimore newspapers reported that the poet's death was caused by "congestion of the brain" or "cerebral inflammation".
With Brother Carey, Hendrik hunted down Gentile families. He razored off a mother's eyelids and forced her to watch as Carey eased his jackknife into her sons' throats. Her anguish was an offering. Gathering the woman's hair in his fist, he slid his blade around her skull, feeling the razor-edge scrape bone. He scalped her alive then stove in her brains with his boot-heel.
He yelled to the skies, to his dead brother, to goat-horned Jesus. Blood flowed into the American earth around his boots. He waded through the rivers of his sacrifices. Fresh water from the prized well of New Canaan would run pink for years.
His war cry choked and he had to catch his breath. Three Paiute braves stood a little way off, watching the Josephites make sacrifice of the Gentiles. The Indians seemed appalled. The practice of scalping had been introduced to the Americas by the French, Hendrik knew. Savagery came from men's hearts, not their skins.
"From this day," said Crow Who Mourns, the Paiute chief, indicating Hendrik, "you are Bonnet of Death, killer of women and children …"
There was no condemnation, exactly, in the Paiute's naming. Bui there was a recognition that Hendrik Shatner was not of the red man.
"This is a new land," he shouted, a hank of long, bloody hair in his fist, "and we are the new people!"
The Gentiles had been taken by surprise. The men, having invested so many hours of agony in their crops, tried first to save the fields, leaving their families for the knives and guns of the Josephites. They had quickly seen their mistake. There were bloody black hats in the dust and Indians had fallen too.
But Hendrik was invincible. He might have taken another ball in his leg, but he could feel nothing.
Bonnet of Death, killer of women and children, abandoned his bowie in the chest of an old man and continued to make sacrifice with his razor. The blade was thick and slippery with blood but its edge was not dulled.
Animals, freed from pens, ran loose. Josephites put bullets into goats and horses, though the Paiute let the animals pass. Crow Who Mourns had made treaty with the Josephites because a hard winter had carried off too many of the animals of the tribe, and he needed to replenish livestock through raiding. Unheeding pain, Brother Clegg charged at houses, tearing with his hands, scattering stone, uprooting timbers, felling roofs.
In flashes, Hendrik saw the white plain extending around the burning blotch of New Canaan. The plain could absorb any amount of blood and flame.
The Ute strode through it all, approving the sacrifices, silently killing where he could. Eddy Poe had been one more sacrifice, important enough for the Ute to take a personal interest. Hendrik understood that the poet had been some crazed kind of three-fifths genius. The greater the potential that was lost, the greater the offering. He wondered if men or women of genius had died this morning in New Canaan. Was there a child among the dead who would have been a painter, a discoverer, a singer?
In the centre of the nascent town was a half-built church, a raised wooden floor and the skeleton of a tower. A bell, laboriously conveyed through the desert, stood ready to be hauled up. At intervals, Josephites would fire shots at the bell, producing an unresonant dinging.
Brother Carey found a preacher, stripped of his collar but still wearing his black shirt, and pinned him down on the churchless floor, piercing his hands and feet with knife-thrusts. The Josephite had emptied his gun minutes ago. The preacher opened his mouth – to pray? to curse? – and Carey jammed a stone into it. Brother Carey fell upon the Gentile and stabbed him again and again in the belly, ripping free the ropes of his innards, strewing them across the boards.
Hendrik walked towards Brother Carey and the preacher. As he stepped, he froze. Carey was distracted by some sound and looked away. Hendrik saw the perfect circle of his black hat for an instant before its centre became a red splash. Carey fell dead on his still-living sacrifice, his face shot away. At that moment, timbers burned through and the church tower collapsed like a straw house.
Hendrik went to a crouch, alert, taking cover behind the bell. Someone with a rifle had intervened. He remembered the horseman of the dawn and, with a dizzying certainty, knew the stranger was Brother Carey's murderer.
He looked to the fields. They had burned down to stubble. Thinning smoke poured into the air, a veil over the landscape. Through the gauzy wisps, Hendrik saw the horse and the rider. They advanced deliberately through the burned fields. Hendrik lost himself in the shimmer, a great tiredness falling upon him.
The horseman could not possibly reload his rifle in the saddle. Hendrik stood up, ready to chance a bullet, and stepped away from the bell. The boards under his boots were slippery. He was shivering again, shocked awake. The cries of the dead pressed in on him. Again, he had made sacrifice and not been freed. The white pain still waited. He cast his razor away.
No Gentile stood. Josephites had fallen too, and Indians. Animals and men kicked their last, leaking life into the soil, seeding the dirt. Maybe these sacrifices would be the foundation of Joseph's shining city.
The horseman advanced, empty rifle held easily. Hendrik saw a battered face under a battered hat. A long duster lifted in the breeze around his flanks.
To Hendrik, the saddle tramp looked like an executioner from God. He strode past Carey and his kill, stepping off the floor that would never be covered by a church. After a dozen strides, he was walking on the crunchy black stubble of the field. His bootsoles wanned in the thick ash. A ripe, cooked-corn smell hung in the air.
Hendrik thought he must have sacrificed ten or twenty Gentiles He was Bonnet of Death. He stopped shaking. The stench of blood was as strong as the smell of the corn. All his offerings had been rejected. Despite it all, he was not free.
Somewhere, a goat-horned Jesus was laughing, and in his laughter was Eddy's "tekeli-li, tekeli-li, tekeli-li…"
The horseman dismounted and slipped his rifle into a long holster by his saddle. A pistol hung on his hip.
Hendrik unholstered his Colt. It had been forgotten until now; neglected in favour of more personal killing irons. The gun was heavy in his hand. With his thumb, he eased back the firing hammer.
The horseman had also drawn his pistol. A curtain of smoke and low flame hung between them. The heat haze played tricks, making the horseman waver like a reflection in disturbed water.
Hendrik was aware of another in the field. The Ute, a long rifle raised as he paced steadily. Around his knees the flames still burned, but the sham Indian ignored any pain he felt. He waded through fire towards the stranger.
The horseman whirled around slowly, bringing up his pistol. He sighted on the Ute as the Ute sighted on him. The stranger presented his side to Hendrik.
At the edges of the smoking field, the survivors of the war party stood, silent like a congregation. Even the sorely wounded had hauled themselves to a position where they could watch. Crow Who Mourns held up his hand, keeping everyone else out of the drama. This was between the three of them.
The horseman and the Ute were fixed on each other, like a hawk and a snake. Their guns held steady. Hendrik brought up his Colt and sighted on the horseman. The stranger had a thick moustache and a crinkle of lines around his ice-blue eyes. A straggle of white-blond hair escaped from under his hat.
The three men stood, fingers tight on triggers. The moment extended. Hendrik realised his own hand was shaking. He saw the stranger in his line of fire but he also saw the whole scene from above. A triangle of men in a black-burned scar on an infinite plain of white. The black patch seemed smaller, the white sands a continent.
He blinked and focused on his gunsight. Beyond was the red-painted face of the Ute, mirror glasses flashing sunlight.
He glanced away at the horseman, who stood like a statue, and back at the Ute.
In the mirror-glasses, Hendrik saw tiny reflections. His own image was held in one lens, the horseman's in the other.
"Thou must make sacrifice, Hendrik," the Ute said.
Hendrik had been made to kill women and children. He had been made to do worse things than that.
The horseman did not avert his eyes from the Ute. The smoke was almost cleared now.
If Hendrik shot the Ute, would the slate be wiped clean? Was this the sacrifice that was truly demanded?
"On three," the horseman said. His voice was strong, unwavering. The Ute nodded assent.
"One," the Ute said.
Hendrik sighted on the horseman.
"Two," the stranger said.
Hendrik sighted on the Ute.
"Three," Hendrik said, firing…
Three shots sounded at the same instant.
The Ute's black hat flew off, a dash of blood appearing at his temple, smearing into his hair. Two wounds flowered in the stranger's chest.
Hendrik had shot the horseman. His choice was made. It had been made for a long time. He had only deluded himself that things were other than they were.
The Ute lowered his rifle. He did not touch a hand to his wound. A tear of blood ran under his unharmed spectacles and dropped from his cheek.
The horseman staggered, arms out. He looked at the gouting holes in his shirt and dropped his gun. His knees gave way and he fell back in the stubble.
Hendrik had no idea who the stranger was.
The Ute did not make a move to reload his rifle. He stood tall, fires dead around him.
The stranger's horse nosed the dead ground.
Hendrik walked across the ashes and looked at the fallen man. Wounds still pumped and eyes still fluttered. He was alive.
"You're fast," the horseman said, through blood. "Faster'n him," he indicated the Ute. "I'd have holed his evil eye, broke his damn mirrors, only you got me fust."
Hendrik cocked his Colt again and took aim on the stranger's left eye. The horseman was unafraid.
"Finish the sacrifice, Hendrik," said the Ute.
Hendrik looked across at the Ute. He was walking away to rejoin the war party. Hendrik had no idea who the Ute was either, but the man with the mirror glasses believed he owned Hendrik Shatner.
That might not be entirely true.
Hendrik pulled the trigger and put a bullet in the ground by the horseman's head. Dirt kicked and the stranger lay still, holding his wounds.
"Done," Hendrik called out.
The horseman, stilled, looked up with clear, shocked eyes. He must be in great pain, but he might alive. And the Ute might live to regret his assumptions.
"Mighty fine shooting, pilgrim," the horseman whispered.
Hendrik Shatner holstered his Colt and walked away from the man he had not killed.
Brother Clegg had his horse ready. Hendrik mounted up. The Paiute had left to make their own way home. Hendrik looked at the faces of the elect, smeared with paint and smoke and blood. They were solemn, but held no regret.
The war party rode away from New Canaan, not talking among themselves, not looking back. Someone, not Hendrik, began "The Path of Joseph". Soon, all the riders were singing the hymn. The sun crawled higher into the morning sky.