A HIGHWAY OF DEMONS - CHAPTER NINE

WJ and the Doctor are wandering around time and the universe. The last time we came across them WJ was considering the future. Now he goes back almost a century in time for some repairs and possible healing?

A HIGHWAY OF DEMONS by Whispering Jack

CHAPTER NINE - BLEAKTOWN

"Your breath is sweet

Your eyes are like two jewels in the sky.

Your back is straight, your hair is smooth

On the pillow where you lie.

But I don't sense affection

No gratitude or love

Your loyalty is not to me

But to the stars above." - One More Cup of Coffee by Bob Dylan

I went out one morning to breathe the air around the derelict old town. It was set dreamlike in the far southwestern corner of the Lone Star state known as the "badlands" where one could ride on horseback all day and never encounter another soul. I was warned never to stray too far south across the rugged terrain to where the river marked the natural border between the United States and Mexico but stray, I did.

On this morning, I was drawn away from the ruins of the old township of Bleaktown although I had misgivings about coming face to face with the bad hombres said to be wandering around the area. 

They would slip silently in the night across from the other side of the majestic bending waterway known as the Río Bravo del Norte or the Rio Grande, desperate men lured across the border by their greed hoping to acquire fortunes by plunder. Some others came to work in the silver mines that dotted this part of Texas, many of them simply refugees fleeing from the turbulence and the violence of the Mexican revolution. There was a rule in these parts that you trusted nobody and kept your distance from strangers.

The year was 1913. It was a time when troubles to the south produced folk heroes like Pancho Villa or Emiliano Zapata; dark, swarthy men with pock-marked faces whose sleek mustachioed images  inspired fear as much as did their ominous firepower. 

Legend had it that Villa once roamed in the badlands with eight men, two pounds of coffee, some sugar, and five hundred rounds of rifle ammunition stealing horses and killing innocent men and women at the drop of a hat.  I had more than enough reason to stay close to the safety of home base but I was young,  foolish and bored.

I happened upon him on my way to the valley below where we had settled the Tardis a week earlier to enable The Doctor to carry out routine mechanical repairs originally estimated to take "a couple of hours". They were still waiting to be completed. 

In the long hours, I had little to do but wile away my time playing out boyhood cowboy fantasies of tracking down Comanche Indians and saving frightened townsfolk from deadly enemies. At least I was in the right place and the right time.

On a narrow dusty track in the desert half an hour out of town, I sensed the watching eyes of dozens of large black birds wheeling above in the morning sky, their raucous cawing disturbing  the serenity of the gray-blue canyon and heralding the arrival of the stranger from south of the border. 

He was young, perhaps in his very early twenties walking with the slightest  impression of a limp. There was an intensity in those greyish eyes that never smiled although his pleasant appearance offered little about which to be apprehensive. Still, I sensed both evil and danger.

However, it was his invitation for me to share in the pot of coffee he was boiling that put me entirely at ease. We sat among the red flowering ocotillos shaded by a solitary tree with the sight of the distant Chisos mountains embedded far in the background and we drank coffee while he told his sorry tale of subterfuge, lies and ultimately, tragedy.

The stranger was a bullfighter from a small town near Ciudad de México, a place we know as Mexico City. Chosen for his first bullfight as "matador" while still in his teens, he plied his trade at the city's most famous bullrings and he became famous years before his time.

He was adored in every corner of society, known for his skills at handling the big animals, training for hour upon hour without distraction. The need to bring the large beast to heel in front of those admirers became his obsession. As the stranger poured a second offering of the steaming liquid into my tin cup, I noticed the tatoo image of a skull seared deeply into his forearm. 

His life had changed with the arrival of the man with the long black coat. The man possessed a shiny new motor vehicle, chewed on a long Cuban cigar and uttered fancy words when he spoke. He showed the young bullfighter bags of silver from the mines he owned in Texas and offered him many pieces of that substance if he agreed to join his new enterprise in the north. 

The young man spoke that night with his father who had always been his close confidante and mentor and he became convinced even against his natural inclinations that his future  lay in the promised land on the other side of the river. 

And so he bade farewell to his family, his good friends and his adoring fans. His pockets bulged with greenbacks and with just a nagging, little care lingering on his mind, he crossed the Río Bravo del Norte to ultimately find his doom.

It is needless to say that the reality of what lay ahead could never match dreams built on promises no more substantial than the desert sands that stretched around us as far as the eye could see. 

And it came to pass that on the day of our meeting he was still trying to find his way back to the place from whence he came. Having sold his soul to others, he was hopelessly lost and there we were, both of us with no future and no direction home.

TO BE CONTINUED