Caballo De Los Dioses

Untitled Part

 The old man turned his weather grizzled face toward Juan as he sat with attentiveness in the open air bamboo cafe. The diner had been a local gathering spot for well over fifty years in the little border town of El Obregon. People came here to talk, gossip, eat, drink, and to play friendly gambling games of cards.

The local specialty was tres Tostitose con queso y guacomole, all served up nicely with the best in local ice cold Pulque' Cerveza. The dust covered handmade alpaca hair, Navajo styled sombrero, appeared as if it wilted in the sweltering heat. and sweat that rolled down the old gent's face from underneath the wide brimmed hat as he spoke..

"Si mi joven amigo, many great men have tried to seize him down through the ages, but no one has accomplished this feat, as of yet. The wind is in his mane, my gentle son, and El Diablo flows with great power in his blood."

"What motivates him, mi Senor? What force serves to propel his determination in direction?," gently and humbly asked the youth.

" The spirit of freedom, my dear son. That fierce determination to prevail in one's own choice of direction. That motivation into action precipitating one's rise into glittering prosperity.; or the determination to possess that enlightened spirit propels one to choose destruction, when the precious breath is callously denied and the choices to be taken are only one, made in eternal service to a greed laden secular lord," spoke the old man in a low pitched, mysterious voice, transporting a feeling of great experience and a life soon to end that was lived out to the fullest.

"So then, good sir, why do men bother to even pursue? Why can't they just not leave him alone, allowing him to drift along upon the high plains, taking his abode in the sheltered cave scattered valleys of the Sierra Madre?"

"Oh., my dear son," rumbled the elder, as he leaned closer to the astonished face of the youth . "There is another spirit that possess the soul of men, and that is the spirit of possession, the spirit of absolute control, and repressive authority. This evil phantom is the sworn enemy of all freedom and positive pursuit, conjured up by the specter of creative industrious endeavor; and by its horrible basic nature the free may only choose to submit, or self-destruct by doing battle in the name of liberating determination."

As the elder sat beside the boy, speaking his words of mellowed aged wisdom, the boy gazed outward from the seat of the cafe, into the distance abroad. He could see across the borderline of the small town, far out into the shimmering desert horizon beyond. In the yon distance he heard the wind sweep the standing cacti and mesquite scrub with fine sand, soon to pat his browning cheeks, tossing his unkempt hair across his forehead. With each puff of the wind, he thought he perceived the sound of a proud stallion from somewhere in the desert distance, racing abroad into the wind, bearing the strength of youth and in full possession of freedom's delightful breath, determined to live according to his own will at all costs..

"Yes my dear one," spoke the grizzled elder. "Thine ears hath not deceived you, for his voice has now whispered its sweet enrapturing song into your ear, and that same spirit shall infect your own heart along the way. It is presently infecting., possessing your heart, your impressionable mind, your inexperienced body..; and very soon., even your innermost soul! Once you lay your eyes upon him, then you shall never again be free from his spell. You shall be his, and him, your own obsession, until the very end."

"Oh good Sir., have there been others before me?," inquired the youth in a voice respectful of the elder, with years of life experience.

"Aye, many good men have fallen into his spell, motivated by that spirit of control, that oftentimes is enjoined hand-in-hand, with the spirit of lust and greed, the most base of man-kinds' motivating spectral possessions."