A Reckoning in Mercy

Shifting in his saddle, Mercer scanned the horizon again but found no source for the sound.

Alone.  No one followed him — at least not that he could see.  To be certain, he twisted around in his saddle and examined the road to the south.  Barren, save for that dead settlement.

Yet the wind, hollow and sputtering, complained more than usual.

Something was amiss.

While the contentment of solitude never fit him as a bespoke suit should, the wariness of paranoia was tailor cut for him.  He had to see for himself — he couldn't afford to take anyone else's word for it.  Not even the wind's.  Besides, it had lied to him before.

Another tremendous boom rattled the air, hovered over him, then slithered down into the earth — a rat-snake escaping the keen eye of a desert hawk.  All that lingered was the shrill whistle of the wind, still nagging at him that things were not as they should be.  To assure his attention, a gust blasted grit into his face.  He neither thanked nor cursed the wind for that.

The shriek of a magpie startled his horse as its black, white, and blue blur cut across in front of them.  It tangled with a thicket of dried brush then darted away.

Mercer's heartbeat throbbed in his chest.  Pounding, thumping, quick.  Sweat rolled down his skin, dripping down the inside of a soldier's neck stock, soaking his collar.  Sure as all men die someday, the desert was hot, yet stickiness clung to everything.

Heat and humidity.  They were nearing the big river that drew a line in the sand across his path.

His horse snorted and stamped, breaking him out of frozen time trapped inside his own mind, as a river bursts through an ice dam.  Mercer took a deep breath, drew himself up in pride, and patted his horse on the neck.  He was being foolish, after all, it was only him and his horse.  No one was out in the desert, save for maybe a few Indians who had better things to do than bother him.

Sweet sounds of nature.  No voices.  No screams.

Scalding late summer air rushed down the rising crest before him and across the flat lands behind, sending billows of pink and tan dust into the air, picking up the slain foliage of the desert oak, twisting and spraying a pine needle-filled blast down on him.  The soil smelled burnt and yet blanketed in a scent of sage, piñon, desperation, and thirst.  For all the tales told of the arid land, this year's Farmer's Almanac warned that 1888 was going to be the wettest year in memory.

Storms were coming.

Didn't seem likely in northwestern New Mexico where heat rises in waves from the ground and the sun smelts the dirt into hardened steel.

The weather was no excuse to slow down, let alone stop.  A twinge of self-pity tried its hand, but Mercer wouldn't play.  Why me snuck through his thoughts before he commanded the past to leave him the hell alone.

Mercer's big shadow told the old fable of the frontiersmen, which amused him.  He pulled the print cotton rag further up his nose and lowered his head allowing the wide brim of his hat to shield his eyes.  Strings of dull hair clung to the sweat on his brow.

The wind grew tired of nagging and tried to unseat him with a gust, like a joust in the days of old.  He'd read about those.  Experience and expectation kept him astride.  The upturned collar on a brown canvas coat, two thin shirts of differing fabrics, and gray woolen pants completed his only armor against the weather's onslaught.  No Lancelot here — merely a poor Sir Gawain on a godless quest.

And of that godless quest, his foremost weapon was motion.  North.  Hellfire — any direction.  But north is best.  Avoiding towns and people.  Always moving.  An Eternal Wanderer.

The grumpy grade horse he'd acquired on the Texas border had strong opinions regarding the flying dirt.  Nickering and stomping, she shook her head freeing her nose from the kerchief he'd draped over her nostrils to protect her.  Ingrate.  The cloth fell to the ground, whisked away in the next frenzied waft.  The wind was a thief as well as a liar, knowing he sure as hell wasn't going to chase it.

The horse he hadn't named — a pale blue-roan with natural points in a gorgeous black now dulled with salmon colored dust — stamped at the ground again.  Unimaginatively, he called her, "Girl," avoiding attachment to her.  She'd have to go, once they reached Aztec and the stage line.

Persnickety or not, Girl deserved his patience.  She put up with him.

Staring up the steep hill before him, he noted the clouds far, far above.  Fairy-like and sheer.  Such clouds were harbingers of change in the weather, something wise travelers and successful farmers marked with seriousness, or so he was learning.

Yet the rest of the skies above and behind were blue or dusty.  The problem ahead was the hill itself — it cut his view to the north, which he did not like.  Beyond lay a handful of rivers, bluffs, and mesas he needed to navigate, and the specific places he had to get to.  Moving, always moving.  Forward begged him to join in an embrace of hope and safety.  The notion of going backwards riled his stomach.  Backward meant —

The hair on both rider and horse's necks stood up as though a freeze came on suddenly.  The horse raised one hoof, as if to charge forward, yet waited — eyes wide, ears snapping in several directions.  Mercer sensed it too: the wrongness of nature defied.