Motley City

The city was out of joint, a motley of temporal elements splashed like a collage assembled by a blind man.  On the ramparts were knights in full chain mail, wearing the full spectrum of colors and a jumble of heraldic elements.  Their footsteps clinked as they walked their beat, intermingling with British Bobbies in full helmet caps with night sticks swinging maliciously at would be criminals.

In the town square, next to a well with a rope and pulley system, an Abrams tank sulked, burst and blown out, its turret bent in a previous engagement.  In its shadow, burros brayed, bristling under the heavy armor of conquistadors questing after Dulcineas.  Sage burned in long houses, suffusing the air with smoke, while bells rang from the steeple of a lumpen adobe chapel.

What gods had assembled this cacophonous playground, Asher Stanley did not know them.  He wondered to himself more than once whether this were a mirage or if he had entered some prankster's purgatory.  The woman in the cave had warned him against heading east toward the river, but he had ignored her suggestion.  The land had seemed so familiar as he drank from the cold pool inside her cave, taking a long draw and filling his canteen after he had quenched his thirst.  

He came to this dusty land from the east.  The newspapers had told him that silver had been struck, that all he'd need to do to get rich would be to stake a claim at the local county clerk, head out with a pick, and start tapping the wall of the nearest mesa he came across.  It would most likely shiver flecks of the stuff with each clank.  He'd promised himself that he would just stay long enough to get money together to head back east and buy a home for himself and his fiancée.  

That had been three years ago.  

When his supplies had run out, he measured out his options, tidying up the ledger of his outgoing expenses and incoming profits.  He'd been able to make enough to support the habit of hope, like any gambler might, but even at his most resolute, he couldn't see much point in continuing.  Either he was the unluckiest man in this silver rush, or he was the biggest damned fool out here.  He had thought to himself there was a distinct possibility that it might be both.

That was when he'd decided to pack up everything he had left and head back toward the river.  He'd use what he had left to catch a ride up to the rail yard, and, he prayed fervently though he had never before been very religious, hope that he could find a job there to earn enough to get back home.  

Three weeks in the desert had led him in circles.  He had maps.  He had a compass.  He was experienced at orienteering, but he could never seem to make much progress in what should have been at most a day's hike out of the wilderness.  And then he had come upon the cave.