A Cowboy in Tibet, Mike Burns [reading like a writer .TXT] 📗

statue breakin’ up into dozens of fragments, which all burst into flame on their long trip to the bottom.

“The Chinaman stared himself for several moments, fascinated like everybody else when he saw that stone could burn. Then he pulled hisself together, and got ever’body movin’ again, to get their minds off it. He knew his own porters were superstitious, too, and didn’t want ‘em gettin’ cold feet and refusin’ to go on.

“Next thing you know, a woman come ridin’ around a bend in the trail, on a black and white horse with a death’s-head on his forehead, out from behind the far side of the mountain, holdin’ a Gatling gun openin’ up on the column. The Gatlin’ mowed down ever’body but Grandpa Elphick, an’ him standin’ there and starin’ in horror. Also, not one horse was harmed, not a-one scratched. They all stood there lookin’ all placid an’ dopey.

“The woman looked normal enough, except that the heavy-yarn coat she was wearin’ had eight arms instead’a two, but only two hands comin’ out of two sleeves. She came to a halt not five feet from him, blew the smoke away from the barrel of her Gatlin’ (or all eight barrels, I should say!), and spoke to Granpa Elphick. It was a voice like y’ might hear from a sawmill all made out of ice, with icy saw-blades cuttin’ through blocks of ice. It was a terrible sound, he said, but through it all he could hear words in English, unmistakable words. She said somethin’ like this:

“ ‘You! You know what just happened! You know I am Palden Lhamo, and I just killed the blasphemers! I knew all about your plans to kidnap the Ocean of Wisdom! I also know you are a farrier…Mr. Elphick!…AND I know you had a blue-tick hound named Lucas when you were ten! You had forgotten that yourself, didn’t you?!’ “

“Well, this had Grandpa Elphick as scared and as thoroughly convinced as any man that ever lived. He hadn’t mentioned Lucas to anybody durin’ this whole trip, hadn’t mentioned him to ANYBODY, ANYWHERE for years, hadn’t even thought about him, like the…goddess, yes that’s what she must be--like she had said. Her knowledge was supernatural, no way around it! An’ I think that goddess knew he was scared and convinced now, ‘cause now she got to the point of sparin’ him and talkin’ to him.

“ ‘You will all go on, and perform a different mission now…’ “

“ ‘How, lady?’ “ Grandpa Elphick said. “ ‘Y’ killed ever’body but me!’ “

“Then he looked around and saw all the dead risin’ back up, with blood rapidly-dryin’ up, with their faces all ghostly-white with a kinda green tinge to it, wearin’ new expressions, way-different than what the original men wore. These were, like, HER followers, just borrowin’ these men’s bodies. They was all lookin’ straight at Grandpa Elphick, an’ givin’ him these leerin’ smiles that just about made him crawl outta his skin. Tremblin’, he looked back at Palden Lhamo, She was wearin’ her own face now, one more horrible than the Gorgon in that Greek myth I toldjya the last time you was here. A face that looked like the cause of all the illness and insanity in the world, with room to spare!”

At this point, the boys’ mother intervened again. “Grandpa, they’re not gonna be able to sleep tonight! Tone it down a little, PLEASE?”

The old man laughed, and replied, “All right, Ella, I’ll edit things a little better. I promise. “ Then he looked to the boys for support. “Y’all wanna hear more?”

“YESSIR!” the boys declared in one voice.

“Okay,” today’s Grandpa Elphick said, and continued. “The goddess said that the new job that Grandpa Elphick and his new ‘co-workers’ had was to use their guns (includin’ the Gatling) to rob the monasteries and convents of the Red Hats. See, the Red Hats taught things that were different from what the Ocean of Wisdom and his followers taught. The Ocean of Wisdom and his followers were called the Yellow Hats.

“Grandpa Elphick told me that the difference between ’em didn’t amount to a hill of beans--that the color of their hats was probably the REAL reason they was feudin’--but anyway the goddess said that her pal, Strong Lightning, a god, was a guardian of the Ocean of Wisdom an’ the wisdom ’a the Yellow Hats, and that HE didn’t want the Yellow Hats to get misguided an’ start leanin’ too much on what the Red Hats taught, an’ he, Strong Lightnin’, the god who was friend to the goddess, HE thought that robbin’ the Red Hat monasteries of their gold was the way to do it. The gold could be used to build a whole new city, with a monastery bigger than any in the world, bigger ’n even the ones in the city of Rasa, The Place of Goats.

“SO, with Granpa Elphick in tow, this army’a the dead went to robbin’ all the Red Hat monasteries and the villages and cities nearby, and a-killin’ ever’body that stood in their way. They’d ride in, with some of the porters dismountin’ and goin’ to work on the doors of the monasteries with axes an’ dynamite, and once the doors was open, they’d run in with their six-shooters blazin’, or sometimes they’d even just ride in, in the bigger monasteries, the ones with the main street wide enough for six horses to ride abreast--ride in, shootin’ who ever got in their way, strippin’ gold from chapels and storerooms and vaults, desecratin’ idols with bullets and fire.

“They saved up bags an’ bags of gold, enough gold that it took a thousand horses to carry it all--horses that they stole from the Red Hat monasteries and the nearby towns an’ villages that supported ‘em. An’ then this army of dead men and horses, weighed down with gold and pluggin’ every’thing that moved with their .45s, they all came to the place where the goddess Palden Lhamo and the god Strong Lightning said they would build the new city with the biggest Yellow Hat monasteries of all.

“It was a lake, bigger’n the Great Salt Lake, one with islands scattered over it, and the biggest one, the one in the very middle o’ the lake, that was where the city would be built. It had a big natural harbor an’ fresh water streams that came down from springs in the island’s highest hills, and even land on the south side’a the island where you could grow barley and wheat.

“Anyway, when the army came to the shore of the lake, an’ saw this island, and Palden Lhamo announced her plans for it, she sent Grandpa Elphick and the zombie who used to be the Chinee middleman and four others in a canoe made of yak-hides across the water to see the place. The goddess herself went along for the ride, totin’ her Gatling with her.

“Well, who should they run into on the island, but the Tibetan who originally hired the Chinaman to kidnap the Ocean of Wisdom. See, he’d been followin’ the Chinaman and his army from afar, an’ he knew the Chinaman wasn’t after the Ocean of Wisdom anymore, and he’d been waitin’ for a place to ambush him, and the island was the perfect place, once he realized from his spies that there was where they was headin.’

“He and his people had muzzle-loaders an’ matchlocks instead’a six-shooters, but they had good position, an’ knew all the good places to shoot from, bein’ as they’d been to the island before, and used it to hole up in, since ever’body else was too superstitious about the place to go out there--till now! AN’ they had the advantage of numbers. There was only a handful of people with Grandpa Elphick and the Chinaman and the goddess in the canoe, remember.

“Others tried to come out to the island on other yak-hide canoes, but the robbers with the muzzle-loaders had the range on ‘em, and picked ‘em off from the high places in the rocks they’d hid out in. An’ they kept pourin’ fire down onto the beach, where Grandpa Elphick and his little party was hunkered down behind their canoe, and scarcely darin’ to raise up high enough to shoot their pistols, with their shorter ranges.

“Well, Palden Lhamo got sick and tired o’ this, but good, and decided she was gonna fight this thing HER way.

“So, she turned into a bag of wind, carryin’ the smallpox and the anthrax an’ the rabies an’ the cholera an’ the plague, and about six or seven other diseases, and the bag o’ wind had sword blades an’ spear blades an’ Gatling guns’ barrels stickin’ out from it like some flyin’ hedgehog, shootin’ and slashin’ and spreadin’ disease that killed men instantly, and all of a sudden it looked like the end for the robbers that wanted to kidnap the Ocean of Wisdom, and looked like victory for Grandpa Elphick’s bunch. Not that he was all that happy about it, y’ understand? Even if they won, he’d still be stuck with ‘em, and he couldn’t come home as long as he was in that goddess’s army.

“An’ Strong Lightnin’, the god-partner of Palden Lhamo, he was makin’ a hullaballoo, and ran across the water…”

“Oh, like Jesus and Peter?” prompted Chad III.

“Well…” the old man hesitated, then restated things. “That’s a little bit of an exaggeration, y’ understand. See, there was REALLY this bridge, made’a rainbows, that formed in front of Strong Lightning as he went across. An’ he got to the beach, and started throwin’ his gold hat in the air, and singin’ and dancin’ to beat the band.

“An’ the goddess Palden Lhamo said a long spell, in a sing-song way, an’ this city and a big temple in the middle of it, they appeared on top of the mountain, an’ the streams comin’ down from the spring were all of a sudden flowin’ with wine, and gold, and pearls. An’ Grandpa Elphick was gettin’ sadder an’ sadder, thinkin’ how he’d never get away, and never get back to his sweetheart--my great-great grandmother, and YOUR great-great-great-great grandmother, and that’s how things stood just then.

“All of a sudden, there was an earthquake, an’ the mountain fell apart in four peaces, one to each corner of the compass, an’ the city of Palden Lhamo with its great temple fell into the fissure that opened up inside the mountain, an’ a new mountain sprouted up, and on its peak was a church made of golden glass, sparklin’ in the noon-day sun, and from its main doors, a man in a black cassock came, an’ he walked on down the steps, like a thousand steps, in a stairway that reached all the way down to the beach. It took him awhile to get there, but nobody moved or got impatient. ‘Cause they were all riveted on this man, ever’body waitin’ to see what he would do or what he would say.

“He said to ‘em all, ‘Welcome. I am Prester John. This is my kingdom.”

“Well, with that, Palden Lhamo and the whole army