Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name Read Online Free PDF Page B

There was a fifth hole on the opposite side of the arm where Ormzud’s thumb
had gone in.
    “It
ain’t blackenin’ up the arm like a snake bite,” Purdee said. “Otherwise we’d of
sawed it off. But he says it’s burnin’ him on the inside and it won’t stop
bleedin.’ Whiskey didn’t do nothing either.” He tuned to the Colonel. “I say we
let him.”
    “No!”
Trib groaned.
    The
Colonel stared at Trib, then at the Rider, and he narrowed his eyes as if
gauging him somehow.
    “Alright,”
the Colonel said. “Try it, I guess.”
    “No!”
Trib yelled and began to shimmy. Purdee leaned forward and pinned him down by
the shoulders.
    “Gersh,
get in here,” the Rider called.
    They
made way, Purdee stepping out. Gersh took his place quickly, and held the
thrashing man down like a child.
    “No,
Coronel!” shouted the Mexican, shaking his head vigorously.
    The
Rider placed his palm on the swollen arm, slick with sweat, and jabbed his
salted finger into the first of the bullet wounds, up t0 the cuticle.
    Several
of the men crowding the doorway to the shack looked away, and the woman held
her boy to her breast and crossed herself.
    Trib
screamed, in that unnerving, haunting pitch of a grown man in agony. The Rider
turned his finger all around in the wound, rubbing the salt in on all sides.
Between the sweat and blood, it was difficult to feel what he suspected, that
the shed had secreted some of its septic slime into the man’s arm somehow. If
he had, the salt would burn it away, just had it had
eaten away their malignant bodies in the bar. Of course, it was also doing
damage to the man’s arm, but it was necessary. The fluid of a shed could invade
a mortal body and kill it slowly. Some said it could even turn a man into a
shed himself, though he had personally never seen an infection allowed to progress
that far.
    Trib
shook, alternately blathering curses and sobbing prayers in Spanish and
English.
    By
the time the Rider thrust his bloody finger into the third hole in the man’s
arm, Trib had passed out. Gersh relaxed his grip and the Rider was able to dab
salt in the remaining two wounds with relative ease.
    He
called for a skin and poured water in it, then poked a hole in it with a pin
and squeezing it, flushed the wounds clean. Then he sat back and let the woman
re-bandage the wound. The bleeding had slowed noticeably when he began. By the
time he was finished, it had stopped altogether.
    “He
may still lose the arm,” the Rider said, cleaning his hands with the water that
was left. “But he won’t die.”
    “He
did stop bleeding,” Purdee observed.
    “What
did that?” the Colonel asked, the accusing tone diminished now. “And why did
those men in the bar burn up like that?”
    “Think
of a slug, when you pour salt on it, it shrivels,” the Rider said. “These men
are made of the same kind of stuff.”
    “I
never heard tell of no such thing,” the Colonel said.
    “Yeah
but that don’t mean it ain’t so, Colonel,” Purdee observed.
    They
gave the Rider a respectful berth as he rose and stepped out into the night.
They receded into the dark but stayed milling about as he stood in the light
from the doorway and wiped his hands dry. Gersh came out behind him.
    “They’re
coming,” the Rider said quietly. “Men just like the ones who did this. I don’t
know how many, but they’ll be here soon. They’re coming for me, but they’ll
kill anyone they find here.”
    “What
if we were to just give you to ‘em?” the red head ventured.
    “You
might try to do that,” the Rider nodded. “But I’d fight you, and I’d kill two
or three of you in the process. You’d probably have to kill me. Then you’d have
to trust that these men coming are men of their word. They’re not.”
    “Well
I’m for pullin’ out then,” said one man. “I don’t want to fight nobody.”
    “You
won’t get very far,” the Rider said.
    “I’ll
take my chances,” he answered, and walked off into the