We soared on our cat-birdies through the night sky, led on by the golden glow cast from the Giant Chief’s bow. Every short mile forward made the Light Entity Hub a more dreamlike memory, but an imminent future, just as well. I had a sinking feeling that we hadn’t heard the last of Friedreich and Xochipilli.

  Regardless, we were on to Fort cross, and it took less than an hour before the cat birdies prepared for landing over its stone wall. They parked us midway down the bridge, our last stop before the Rio Grande.

  After we descended to concrete, Chip turned to Owl. “The creatures couldn’t be discreet? I don’t think flying animals, giant Indians, and shining weapons are going to attract the right attention.”

  I twiddled my fingers; while the others looked around, seemingly to be anticipating the US military.

  I took a deep breath. Somehow, no sound was heard, until… an eerie whistling from shadows ahead commenced. We crept forward to the source, a guard in full uniform—cap down to yellow buttoned blue coat. He attained eye contact, while laughing manically.

  As we passed by, I said to Chip in a controlled lowness of voice, “Who in our world would a-whistle after dusk? Don’t they know that it calls on dark entities?”

  “Since when did you stop thinking pragmatically,” he replied.

  “Since thinking pragmatically has been made null and void.”

  More guards, whom we dashed by toward the entrance, saluted. “Jed Dunbar,” one said.

  The guard on the right of the Fort’s gates greeted with, “Hallelujar to the one who knows his name.” The guard on the left and Dunbar shouted in unison, “Hallelujar.”

  Dunbar squealed in excitement. “I’m gone wait here with them, until I’m needed. Ya’ll will be delighted and enlightened.”

  ***

  Chip’s boots echoed as we walked through the front room. It’d been empty but for a wooden table with a candle centered on it. Open doorways along all the walls in the room led to three separate bedroom quarters, a curtain hiding a bath, and a stairwell.

  “I’m going to wash up,” Diamond said.

  As buckets of water splashed into the ligneous tub, Chip, Owl, and I took seats. Nobody spoke for minutes, until Chip cleared his throat. He started to say something, then returned to throat clearing.

  “If you don’t have the frog out by now, you never will. Shoot, Luke, or give up the gun,” I insisted.

  “Alright. What I want to ask is that you two go up there to represent us all. I’ll stay behind. Mayor Heck informed me on the blarney that the evangelist espouses. I don’t need my head messed up by this guy preaching that I’m going to die.”

  Chief gave a giant, bacteria filled smirk. “You scared.”

  “No, sir. I’m not.”

  Chief chuckled. “You’re going to soil your pants.”

  Chip stood to his chair scraping backwards. “Alright, I’ve had enough.”

  Chief got up and dwarfed him, then he placed his hand on Chip’s entire shoulder. “I joke. I go represent you, because I shouldn’t have accused you of something.” He got quiet then took a serious tone. “I never should say that you kill my people. Wrestling against you and battling with you, I know that not you.”

  I’d seen this before, Chip struggling to cool his temper. I decided to go ahead and mosey my way to the stairwell, then I waved Chief over.

  Going up and around the stairs, the sound of his steps drowned out mine. He laughed and shouted, “We go represent Sheriff, so he no soil his pants.”

  ***

  As we neared the third floor, muffled singing and commotion broke up what had been a silent, long climb. At the top of the stairs, the voices became clearer. Two swinging doors awaited. Above them, a wooden sign read, S.H.D.E. Saloon. I stopped dead at a wanted poster.

  The face on it bore my resemblance but had no name on it. “Does that person look familiar to you, Chief?”

  “I not know,” he replied, flippantly.

  Chandelier lights blurred out the countenances of the bartenders and patrons, explicitly a sitting cowboy playing an acoustic guitar. It dimly lit the rest of the antique oak filled room, including a table set up for us.

  We took our chairs, blood red rug under our feet with matching cloths on our table. While they left us a-waiting, the guitar player grazed his strings, singing:

  I think the world’s going insane.

  Hallelujar. Hallelujar.

  I cry for the one who knows his name.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Hallelujar. Hallelujar.

  I leaned in and whispered, “Let’s go. There’s something catawampus going on.”

  Just as Big Owl would reply, a waitress holding two drinks came over, swaying her chest. Above a ruffled red and black attire that left a leg, shoulders, and half her breasts exposed, she beamed. “This round’s on the house.”

  She looked just like Bet, big bug eyes and all… It felt like rising shards of glass puncturing my heart. I glared up, head tilted back, sweat breaking from my brow, tone becoming defensive. “I don’t drink.”

  “And I need twenty-three more,” Chief insisted.

  She laughed. “Twenty-three coming up.” Her white gloved finger pointed in my direction. “Drink is free, so I’ll put a straw in yours. At least swivel the ice.”

  I swiveled away, its scent of poison burning my throat.

  Face on the wanted poster looked like mine, face of waitress like Bet’s.

  While my thoughts swirled, twenty-three glasses disappeared one after the other in Chief’s hand, the contents down his gullet.

  I pulled together and asked, “Don’t you have to piss?”

  “No.” He laughed. “You really no drink?”

  “I-I did some things. Got nobody to apologize to. They all deserved it, but I’m not fool enough to partake of that anymore, the way it gets me ill tempered.”

  Chief took my beverage. “Then, you won’t, tonight.” He consumed it like it was trickling from a toy teacup. “Drinking make Chief happy, but if drinking make Doctor sad, then Doctor no drink.”

  I winked. “Thank you.”

  He replied, “You know, Giant Chief usually know right away if he like someone or no like them. Doctor, Chief not know how to read you.”

  “Do you suppose I’m complicated?”

  Commotion coming from upstairs interrupted any serenity we gained.

  Slave men, whose blue coattails and neck cloths were contrasted by their fierce African accents and intense faces, blocked off five scantily dressed saloon girls.

  Chief had downed another tray of drinks as fast as he got them and said, “I go find outhouse.”

  While he walked out, my eyes were a-fixed on the slave men. One ordered, “Out the way, madams, before we strike you. Thee evangelist must be on his way.”

  One of the women took a barstool and crossed her bare legs. “Don’t go, preacher boy. You might save me with only a kiss.”

  A shine hid the evangelist’s face, as he sashayed his way down with legs long like his crown shaped top hat and his coattails. He spoke with linguistics of by gone colonial days, leaving out the letter R.

  “Pay paddun me, foa the tough behavioua of my savvents. You shouldn’t be passecutad foa a quite nattual pacclivity, one to be taken by an ahistacat.”

  Steps down from the blinding light, a huge gold buckle over the brim of his hat became clear, followed by ear length hair, a clean face, and dimpled smile.

  He slid down the rail, bringing saloon girls to throw backward hands over their foreheads.

  Showmanship continued with a tip of his hat and a clank against the floor from his decorative cane. Resting his arm on it, he clipped his cigar and took a draw.

  I chuckled to myself at the extravagance of this preacher, a velvet vest and tie? Frilly white shirt betwixt? He appeared and spoke like a rich lord from one hundred years ago,

  Massachusetts, but seemed far from the hardworking puritans of whose faith he proclaimed.

  Striding toward our table, with a man on either side blocking off saloon girls, he greeted me. “How do you do, Doc Apollo?”

  I raised my eyebrows in mockery. “Refresh me, preacher. Doesn’t the good book comment on pride?”

  “It would behoove you to consida the sin of slothfulness, which I’m nowha neaa. I’ve achieved the expense of my suits with my life's commission that's taken me sea to sea. Even healed Jed Dunba. So, do tell, what in the unavass is ma vatuous than my ethic?”

  I chewed and absorbed what would have been a snigger. Spoke slowly. “You have such a contradiction of boyish charm and an experienced air. What gives, preacher?”

  He retrieved a copy of the wanted poster from his coat. “Oh my, Docta, you scoundal! Whateva did you do to get on this bulletin? I shall infam you. You have gained attention fom the witch, Calamity Dya, and the dak entity, Sam Hill. Hill has clayavoyant spiaits advising him, and it is known wide that you have potential to be very disuptive to his plan, chiefly the pat whea he postulates he will transfam the shadow of Mattin Coffee into his outlaw, Bugga Bill. You only met the infant, Mattin, once, ova at the Shaiff’s office, and you coddled him with compassion. What was in youa mind in that moment that made you known by those who it’s betta to be invisible to?”

  I froze and muttered, “What went through my mind?” Thoughts drifted to the slave cabin on fire, Aminda murdering Bet and my unborn child. When I fled West to act as the Mormons’ doctor, vision blurred by hard liquor, a cow out on the plains turned and mooed directly into my soul, rattling it to no end. How did I let that happen to Bet, to my baby?

  So, the question was, "What went through my mind when I held poor, unwanted Martin?" I only didn’t want the same fate for Martin that my baby fell to.

  I returned to my present mind to snaps from the evangelist’s fingers. “The bahtenda, over thea?”

  Refusing to glance, I whispered, “Looks like Bet.”

  “If you think the choice to swish the ice in you’ liqua instead of ingesting it is difficult, imagine this…” He clanged another drink in front of me. “Sam Hill, like me, has powa and connections with the otha side. He will put choices in font of you that you neva wished foa. Consida Calamity Dya, a woman made bitta and deadly under influence from not only having a witch mom, warlock dad, and piatt captain lover, but in fact, watching them all peaish by the same fate. That fate’s execution, dea boy.”

  The evangelist’s story took me to Florida, turn of the century, a frail Calamity, who’d survived a shipwreck and lived among natives until old age. She was rocking in her chair when a green hand helped her to her feet and led her to the fountain of youth.

  Continuing the tale, he said, “Light and dak entities alike can only gain powa from blood. While laws of his nature fabade him fom killing humans and vice vasa, Sam Hill found a leada in Calamity to do his bidding. Made the lass beautiful and deadlia than she eva was befoae. She’s the catalyst in his plan to give life to his own people, those like Ana Ahote. Those whom are born out of shadows may wield entity powea.”

  The waitress handed him whiskey. He spun the ice, mimicking me with disappointment on his face. Then, he inhaled, took a sip, and laughed wildly, waitress giggling along. “Fine whiskey, miss Bet look-alike. Back to what I was saying, the powea of Ahote, the one Ana which ya posse could not extaminate, is an example of the depths Sam Hill’s life commission will sink us to. Mattin Coffee’s shadow, Bugga Bill, will finalize this plan by seizing Texas and Mexico.”

  I leaned in, glassy eyed, and said, “For all you’ve put me through tonight, I have but one thing to say, and I make this oath on scripture.”

  “Please, do tell.”

  “Fuck you, you son of a bitch.”

  He bent over the table, rocking forward drinking glasses; removed his cigar from his lips; and got so close, I smelt smolder on his breath. “Fuck who? Me? Dea boy, you betta take heed. I took time out of my busy schedule to push back the curtain on youa fate. I suppose, Sam Hill with all his clayavoyant advisas didn’t imagine that you’d take hold of these flying animals and actually get to Mexico. Now that you will, Hill may offa to give Bet’s life back to ba’gain foa youa soul. Altanatively, Calamity has become such a cold leada, she will subject you to unusual physical punishment, lashings you haven’t felt. You betta hope you die.”