Black Noon

PINNACLE BOOKS

Kensington Publishing Corp.

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

AND THE BLACK FLAMES RISE INTO THE STARLESS DESERT NIGHT.

 

 

Reverend Jonathon Keyes woke abruptly, stared at the ribbed top of the Conestoga, then at the stirring figure of his wife, Lorna, lying next to him.

“What is it, Jon?”

“Nothing, dear.”

“Nothing?! You're trembling . . . was it that dream again? The war? The battle of Yellow Tavern? The wound?”

This was not the first time since he had come home from the war with a head wound that his sleep had been breached by a bad dream. She reached out and gently touched the back of his head as she had done before.

“No, Lorna. It was a dream, but not about the war. Something different this time,” he tried to smile.

“Then tell me about it. They say that dreams often have some meaning . . . sometimes about something that's happened, or even about what's going to happen . . .”

“Or,” he said smiling, “as Dickens's friend, Scrooge, said, ‘the result of an undigested bit of beef, a fragment of underdone potato.' Let's just forget about it.”

“But, Jon . . .”

“Actually, I thought I heard something, something out there. Probably the cry of a lonesome coyote.”

“Well, I'll never be lonesome, Jon . . . so long as we're together.”

“That makes two of us.” He moved and kissed her forehead. “Now, go back to sleep. It's only midnight, and we've still got a long way to Saguaro.”

It was a long way from Monroe to Saguaro, much longer than they had anticipated as they journeyed by creaking wagon—pulled by a two-up team, through Missouri, southwest into Kansas, across the one hundredth meridian, to the panhandle of Texas, then the desolate New Mexico Territory and its arid, unforgiving terrain.

There had been a few respites such as Amarillo and Santa Fe, too few and too far between, and they had so far averted sudden, deadly threats from hostile red natives, who resented trespassers coming into their ancient domain.

This was Dry Tortuga—although they didn't know it—and no one really knew where it began and ended—a worthless span of earth where God had stomped the dirt and dust off his boots, with little or no water to provide nourishment, no game to provide food, or no fertile fields to provide crops.

And so they faced the vast emptiness between the winds—grassless, barren, rock hard, boiling windless days under a blistering sun, and relentless freezing nights under the worn canvas of the Conestoga.

Still, there were forced smiles, mostly from the young bride, unaccustomed to such trials.

“Jon, tell me more about Saguaro.”

“There's not much I can tell except what was in the letter from the retiring reverend that we served together in the war . . .”

“Served gallantly.”

“Most of those who served gallantly are dead.”

“But not all, those medals you . . .”

“The war's over, Lorna. That's all in the past.”

“But not our honeymoon. That's just beginning.” She smiled.

“Some honeymoon.” Keyes barely smiled. “Hundreds of miles in nowhere, to a place we know little about . . .”

“Except they need a minister named Jon Keyes.”

She rested a soft white hand on his muscled arm that held the reins.

After a strained silence, he spoke without looking at her.

“But, Lorna . . .”

“What, Jon?”

“I've been thinking . . .”

“About what?”

“You and me. You mostly . . . did you make the right choice? You could have had your pick of rich young men in Monroe, of the elite society you were born into, with all the comfort you're used to, with everything . . .”

“. . . Everything except the man I love . . .”

“. . . Maybe your family was right . . .”

“As you said, Jon, about the war . . . all that's in the past. Our future's in Saguaro.”

“Saguaro . . . you know what's been said. ‘There's no God in Saguaro.'”

“Reverend Jonathan Keyes can do something about that.”

“We'll see.” Then he added, “If we ever get there.”

“We'll get there. I have no doubt about that . . . or you.”

But after what seemed like infinite days and nights, the prospect of Saguaro became less likely and more doubtful—much more doubtful.

The parched earth of the desert had claimed countless pilgrims wasted into dried-out meatless bones, picked clean by ravenous, far-seeing blackbirds who preyed on those who had prayed in vain—until they could pray and breathe no longer.

After scores of unnumbered days and nights lost in the no path terrain, with far away mountain peaks that never came closer—but vultures that circled ever nearer, it seemed inevitable that two more bodies and souls would soon surrender to the fate of those who had gone before.

It was a burning day with a bald desert sky, cloudless, as if painted, but pierced by the hot circle of sun that sent shimmering waves across jagged, burnished peaks bleached for a million years by the same immemorial sun.

Nothing moved, until . . .

For the first time there was motion.

Circling in the distance, death's patient sentinels, several black buzzards . . . drifting . . . waiting . . .

And below, the team of horses, unhitched but with barely enough strength to stand on the desert crust. The Conestoga wagon. A wheel broken off. All its contents emptied. Trunks. Tables. Chairs. The remnants of civilization—and the bent figure of a man.

Jon Keyes managed to waver toward the side of the wagon where a barrel was tied. He had a red scarf in one hand, and with the other hand he twisted the spigot of the barrel.

Nothing. It was empty.

Desperately he placed the scarf under the spigot, hoping for even a single drop. He shook the barrel with fading strength—to no avail.

With face parched, lips cracked, he breathed heavily and looked off in another direction.

Lorna lay motionless in the shade he had managed to fashion from some of the wagon's unloaded contents.

Keyes staggered back toward the inert figure of his bride. As he did, his stumbling feet inadvertently kicked an empty canteen on the ground—and nearby was the Bible he had carried for years. He picked up the Bible and moved on, then fell to his knees beside Lorna, unconscious and probably much worse. He placed the scarf on her brow, he held the Bible in both hands.

“Lorna.”

But there was no answer.

There had been none for a long while.

With the Bible still in his grasp, his face tilted upward.

“Lord in heaven . . . we beg of you . . . deliver us,” he whispered.

That was all the prayer he could manage.

He placed the Bible near her, then struggled to his feet. Keyes weaved toward the heavy wheel that was off the wagon. With all the might of his remaining strength, he tried to lift and roll the wheel closer to the Conestoga but lost control and collapsed as the wheel crashed hard on top of him.

He did not move.

But something else did and landed on a nearby jagged rock.

A buzzard, one of the desert sextons, without so much as a blink over its vast graveyard, gazed at the buckled body of Jon Keyes. The gold watch he wore on his vest had fallen out, but was still attached to the button hole by a heavy gold chain.

Before the vulture moved, as the other blackbirds circled, there appeared, as if out of a mirage, through the undulating heat waves, a large buckboard wagon.

Cheated, the buzzard flew off.