David Morrell - The Shimmer

“Trouble, Mr. Nolan?”

“Just do what you’re told.”

Feeling fire in his stomach, Nolan ran to another horseman and gave him the same orders. Stooping, he rushed to his saddle and pulled his Winchester from its scabbard. He always kept a round in the firing chamber, so there wasn’t any need to work the lever. All he had to do was pull back the hammer.

He crouched and studied the lights. They seemed to be five or six miles away. Some floated while others shifted from side to side. They were various colors-blue, green, yellow, red-merging, then drifting apart.

Nolan’s men gathered nearby while the foreman stooped next to him and murmured, “You figure they’re campfires, Mr. Nolan?”

“I never heard of campfires that keep changing their location.” Nolan’s voice was tense and low.

“Maybe whoever’s out there has torches, and they’re moving around, doing something.”

“Like what?”

“Like a war dance,” the foreman said. “You think those are Indians?”

“Those lights are close enough that we’d hear a war dance,” Nolan murmured, conscious of the weight of the Winchester in his hands. “Besides, all the Indians around here are mostly peaceful.”

“As you say, Mr. Nolan, ‘mostly.’”

“Sure, they could be renegades. But those lights are in the direction of Mexico. What I’m thinking is Mexican raiders. If they start shooting, they could stampede the cattle toward Mexico before there’s daylight enough for us to chase them.”

Nolan couldn’t take his eyes off the lights. As much as he felt threatened by them, he also felt hypnotized, drawn. Spellbound.

Inexplicably, he tasted lemonade.

A shiver prickled his skin.

Behind him, the cattle made lowing sounds as they settled for the night.

We caused plenty of noise getting here, Nolan thought. Whoever’s with those lights is bound to know where we are.

“Tell the men to get their rifles. Put them in groups of two so they’ll keep each other awake. Anybody I catch sleeping will be out of a job in the morning.”

“Somehow, Mr. Nolan, I don’t think losing their jobs is what they’re worried about right now.”

“Then tell the men they’ll get a bonus if they keep the herd together.”

“You bet, Mr. Nolan,” the foreman said. Staying low, he rushed to give orders to the men.

Meanwhile, Nolan stared harder toward the shimmering lights. They sank and drifted. They hovered and rippled. Their colors kept changing.

He remembered a couple of years earlier when he’d been in El Paso during a Fourth of July celebration. Chinese vendors had sold firecrackers and skyrockets, but they’d also sold quiet fireworks called sparklers: thick wires that had been dipped in chemicals capable of being ignited with a match. With a hiss that was virtually silent, the wires had erupted in sparks of various colors. At night Nolan had seen children use the sparklers to write their names in the darkness.

Is that what they’ve got over there? Sparklers? But if they’re raiders, why would they let us know they’re nearby?

The answer wasn’t hard to imagine.

To scare us.

Well, they’ll find out I don’t scare easily.

Even so, as the lights drifted and changed colors and beckoned during the longest night of his life, Nolan admitted that his fortitude was being tested.

Troubled, he heard faint music, but its melody and instruments were unfamiliar. Under other circumstances, he might have thought that it came from a town across the border, the Mexicans having some kind of celebration. Possibly a tune from a mariachi band had managed to drift this far but was distorted by the distance.

Nolan didn’t believe that. As he concentrated on the hard-to-hear notes, the lights seemed to brighten, their colors strengthening. The two were somehow connected.

The cattle became restive, their hooves scraping the dirt. Their lowing sounds had a nervous edge. Praying that they wouldn’t stampede, Nolan thought of the land that his grandfather and father had fought so hard to keep, and of the land he was determined to add to it. He thought of the quarter-million head of cattle he’d promised if the railroad built the town and the cattle pens.

He lay on the hard ground with his rifle propped on his saddle. He stared along it toward the lights and silently recited scripture. From the gospel of St. John: “And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not.”

That was the first relevant quotation that popped into his mind, but it didn’t provide the affirmation he was looking for, so he recalled another, this one from Isaiah: “The people that walketh in darkness have seen a great light. They that dwelleth in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shone.”

The shadow of death.

That quotation didn’t provide the affirmation Nolan was looking for, either. Besides, if raiders came for his cattle, the shadow of death would be on them. If the lights and the music were indeed made by raiders.

If the cattle didn’t stampede.

Nolan went on like that all through the long, cold night, trying to calm himself with the word of God. His eyes aching, he kept aiming at the lights until, as dawn approached, they faded and shrank. With the sun finally rising, he stood stiffly and lowered the hammer on his Winchester.

His ears ached.

He told his foreman, “Take the herd all the way to the house.”

“You bet, Mr. Nolan. Just as soon as the men cook something to eat.”

“No. Do it now. The men can eat cold biscuits as they ride. I want to make sure the cattle are safe.”

“You’re the boss, Mr. Nolan.” The foreman looked troubled. “What do you figure those lights were? If they weren’t Mexican raiders…”

“Give me three riders, and I’ll find out.”

Nolan saddled his horse and rode southeast with the men. During the night, he’d estimated that the lights were five or six miles away, but when he traveled that distance, he didn’t find any sign of cooking fires or horse tracks or crushed vegetation that would indicate where a camp had been made.

He was sure that the lights had been in this direction, but darkness could play tricks, so he told his men, “Spread out.” Spacing them fifty yards apart, he rode three miles farther but still didn’t see any sign of campfires or horse tracks.

He was forced to ride around a section of black, ugly, twisted boulders that looked like huge dead cinders. A minister with whom he’d once traveled on a train through Arizona had told him that sections like this were left over from the pyrotechnics of when God had created the universe. But if this area was supposed to represent God’s power, Nolan didn’t understand why the Mexicans called them malpais.

Badlands.

He rode another five miles but still didn’t see any horse tracks.

I was sure the lights were southeast of the herd, he thought. How could I have misjudged their direction?

“Mr. Nolan?” one of his men called behind him.

Belatedly Nolan realized that the rider had been shouting his name for some time.

He looked back.

“Sir, if we keep going like this, we’ll end up in Mexico.”

Nolan suddenly became aware of how high the sun was and how far they’d ridden. Feeling as if he came out of a trance, he stared ahead toward the sparse grassland that seemed to stretch forever. Something wavered on the horizon. Maybe a dust devil. Maybe air rippling as the sun heated it.

I could follow that movement forever and never reach it, Nolan thought.

“We’re heading back!” he yelled to the men. “Pick a different section! Keep looking and shout if you find where somebody camped!”

“Did Nolan ever find an answer?” Page asked.