by David Boop
But this one was a goner. Some junk had gone in through an eye. The thrashing? Didn’t matter a copper’s worth.
Something moved by the other carcass, though. The feathers on my back twitched. That native, he should’ve been dead. Wasn’t enough of him left to be alive, not any more. But his leg kept twitching irregardless.
No, not his leg. Hers. When the natives raid, sometimes they all raid. If a gal’s got a hatchling, she’ll tie it to her leg to keep it out of mischief and go with the rest.
A shot rang out behind me—Havv, putting the wounded drosaw out of its pain. I wondered if I should smash in the little fella’s head. I didn’t feel bad about killing his mama. She would’ve done the same to me, and given the hatchling my liver to eat. She would’ve had some herself, too. But slaughter someone just out of the egg? Call me thin-shelled, but I couldn’t stomach it.
“Let me have a chunk of that drosaw meat,” I said.
“You don’t want to eat none of her, Rekek. Nasty stuff,” Havv said.
“Not for me. For Junior here.” I held up the hatchling. I named him, too, though I didn’t know it yet.
Havv hissed. “Don’t keep that little monster! Good gods, bite off its head and get things over with.” A couple of passengers peering out the window shouted the same thing, only louder and filthier.
Well, that just made me mad. You don’t want to rile me—I reckon you found that out your own self, didn’t you? I kind of aimed the second blunderbuss at the stage. Stupid passengers didn’t know it wasn’t loaded. They shut up right smart. You bet they did.
“I’ll hang on to him awhile, see what he turns into,” I told Havv. “If he tries biting my tail off or starts stealing or whatever the hells, I’ll cut him loose. If he don’t… I got no hatchlings of my own that I know about.”
“You’re crazier’n a hornface that’s been eating locoweed,” Havv said, but he cut me a nice chunk of drosaw kidney. I fed it to the baby native. Junior gulped it straight down. I gave him more. He ate that, too. Then he licked my hand. When I bent down over him, he sniffed my snout. Then he licked it, same as with my hand. Then he bared his little needle teeth to show he was happy.
Our hatchlings act the same way. They got to know who’ll feed ’em, and it ain’t like they can talk or understand straight out of the egg. To Junior, I was his new mama. He was so little, he’d never recollect the one who laid his egg.
Anyways, that’s how I came by him, and he’s been with me ever since. Yeah, he talks a bit mushy. He can’t help it. But he’s a better person than most ordinary folks I know, and we get on fine. If you want to say one more stupid thing about it, we gods-damned well will take you outside and teach you manners. Ain’t that right, Junior?
See? He said, “Right.” You followed him good, didn’t you? Didn’t you, stranger? Yeah, I figured you did.
The Dead Can’t Die Twice
SAMANTHA LEE HOWE
Sheriff Deane worked the gun free from the corpse’s cold dead hand, breaking two of the man’s fingers in the process.
The barrel was warm to the touch, as though it had recently been fired. It was a double-action pistol, .38 caliber Colt Lightning.
As he held it, Deane started to feel uncomfortable. There was a familiarity. As though it had once belonged to him. The feeling grew stronger the longer he held the gun. This was not his weapon of choice, and so the sensation confused him.
“He’s been dead for at least twenty-four hours,” said Doc Stewart, breaking into Deane’s thoughts.
They’d found him just outside of town. A stranger to these parts. Six foot tall and fair haired—Deane knew everyone in the town and the surrounding ranches and none fit this man’s description.
“A foreigner maybe?” asked Stewart.
“Maybe…”
With a strange reluctance, Deane placed the gun, along with the man’s clothing, money and pocket watch in a wooden box and marked it as belonging to the corpse. It was a relief to put the weapon down.
“If he ain’t, we’ll soon have a relative coming for this…” Deane said.
As if he had predicted the future, a tentative knock announced the arrival of a visitor to the sheriff’s office. Deane opened the door and found a petite woman standing on the dusty wooden decking outside.
“Miss Lacie?” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“I heard a body was brought in, Sheriff…”
“Yes, but…”
“I think it’s my brother…”
Deane stepped back and allowed Lacie to enter.
“May I see the body?” Lacie asked.
“Ma’am?” Stewart said. He appeared to be as surprised as Deane to see her there.
Miss Lacie was the schoolmistress, a spinster almost thirty years old, who barely spoke to anyone other than her students. She was meek and somewhat fragile in appearance with nothing alike in coloring to the dead man.
“We didn’t know you had a brother…” Deane said.
“He only arrived a couple of days ago,” she said. “He disappeared soon after… I thought maybe he’d gone again. Then I heard about the body you brought in.”
Stewart pulled back the sheet covering the dead man. Lacie looked at the face; hers was as rigid as the corpse’s.
“It’s him,” she confirmed. Then she retrieved a handkerchief from her reticule and dabbed at her dry eyes.
Deane didn’t know how to react.
“How did he die?” Lacie asked.
“Looks like natural causes…” Stewart informed her. “Was he sick?”
Lacie shook her head, “Never a day in all his life.” Lacie dabbed her eyes again. “May I take his possessions now?”
Deane experienced that weird sensation again. This time he recognized it as apprehension. Lacie’s request was not extraordinary, but it was sudden. As though this was why she’d really come. Deane wondered if it was the money—a substantial amount had been found in the man’s pockets—or the gun. He assumed it was the former as he had never seen Lacie with a gun, though many women carried them around town.
He asked her to sign a chit on which he listed every item.
Lacie took the watch first.
“Belonged to our father…” she commented. It was solid silver; an expensive piece.
When it came to the gun, Lacie picked it up with her handkerchief as though she were afraid she’d catch something just by touching it. Then she dropped it into her reticule. She took the money from the box, as well.
“You can burn the clothes,” she said. “Or give them to someone.”
She turned then and headed to the door.
“What about the body?” asked Deane.
Lacie paused by the door, then, as though it were an afterthought she said, “I’ll get the undertaker to collect him.”
She left, closing the door behind her. There was barely a creak as her light frame walked on the wooden deck outside.
Deane found himself watching her. She crossed the street and paused at the grain supply store, glancing in the window, where she waved at the owner’s small boy—one of her pupils. Then she strode confidently onward toward the undertaker’s workshops.
“Odd,” he murmured. Stewart had covered the body by the time he turned around. “You really think this was natural causes?”
Stewart shrugged. “What else? No wounds…”
“Then why was he holding the gun?”
Stewart said nothing.
Deane walked back to the body and pulled the cloth from the man’s face as though he expected to find the frozen emotionless expression changed. His refusal to accept simple explanations was what made him the best sheriff the small town had ever had, but the doctor was certain there was nothing to find. Yes, the man’s death was unusual. But people died all the time out here. Starvation and dehydration being the worst offenders. Anything could have happened on the outskirts of town. Maybe he’d been bitten by a rattlesnake…
“She didn’t tell us his name…” Deane
realized.
The door opened again and Kyle Banks, the undertaker, stepped into the office.
“Miss Lacie sent me,” he said. “This him?”
“Yup,” said Stewart. “She tell you his name?”
“Henry,” answered Banks. He checked the body over. “I’ll bring the cart.” He left Deane and Stewart alone again with the corpse. When he returned, the three men carried the body out to the funeral cart.
“She wants it done before sundown,” Banks told them.
A quick burial wasn’t anything unusual. The desert heat soon caused the bodies to stink and disease was rife. They dropped Henry’s body into a cheap coffin on top of the cart and Banks jumped onto the back. He placed a lid on top of the crate and nailed it down.
* * *
The saloon was busy as always. This was a mining town, rapidly growing with more settlers arriving weekly. After long days working their claim, the settlers needed to unwind and spend some of that gold they so proudly mined.
Deane ordered a whisky and took a seat by the window, looking out onto the street. Dusk had come up quickly while Deane thought about Henry’s body in the pauper’s casket, deep in the ground as the dry earth clattered down over it—shovel by shovel. He wondered if Miss Lacie had paid the few coins for the drunken sot of a pastor to say some words over her brother, or whether she had stood alone as the sun set, but for Banks and his gravedigger, solemnly burying the coffin.
He didn’t have to ponder this question long as the pastor came in, his hand grasping the newly earned coin that would go a long way to feeding his drink habit.
Deane knew everyone in the saloon, even the girls, not that any of them bothered with him. They knew better than that. A dutiful husband—God-fearing despite how drunk he saw the pastor get—Deane held his pride on remaining a good man. But Deane was off duty now, and a shot of whisky always settled him after an unexplainable death. His deputy, Felix, would be in the office all night, ready to deal with anything that may happen. Deane knew that not much would, and Felix would sleep in one of the cells until morning. After which, he’d stagger back home to his wife when his shift was over.
Since Deane had taken over, and run off any of the “wrong sorts,” the town had been a safe and happy place to live. They’d acquired new families over the years, and the population had grown in size and respectability. Deane wanted to keep it that way. That was why he didn’t like finding the body of a stranger, dead on the outskirts of town.
Deane sipped his whisky. The liquor burned his throat, but he was hardy to it. He’d been drinking since he was twelve years old. Now at the age of thirty, Deane drank very little.
And, Alice would be waiting for him.
They’d met in Kansas City and Deane had loved Alice right away. It had been a short courtship, and her aunt had given him permission to ask for her hand. They wed quickly and their son, Petey, came along in the first year. There’d been no other children since, but it didn’t worry Deane or Alice.
Deane finished his drink, and picking up his hat, he left the saloon as the music grew louder. The hour was late; soon would be that time of night when the God-fearing forgot religion, and the prostitutes had their pick of customers. Deane needed none of it.
He untied his horse and walked it back towards the stables at the end of the main street. Inside the barn, he stabled the horse before a trough of fresh water and some hay to distract the animal while he brushed it down. Then he left the stables and headed into the back alleys toward his own home.
As Deane turned off the main street, he heard the distinct crack of a gunshot down a side street. He hurried towards the sound, and that’s when he learnt that things had truly changed in his small, sleepy, safe town.
Miss Lacie lay in a pool of her own blood. Her eyes were sightless and Deane knew by the hole in her chest, no sawbones could save her. Deane knelt by the body trying to make sense of what he saw. Why would anyone shoot the mild-mannered schoolmistress? The death made no sense and shocked him, even though he’d seen many a murder during his time as sheriff.
Others came running as he examined the woman’s body.
“Sheriff!” yelled a terrified voice from the house just two doors away. “There’s a gun here. On my doorstep!”
The house belonged to an old watchmaker and his wife—long since retired when his eyesight failed him. The couple led a quiet life, as anyone should in Deane’s town.
The .38 caliber Colt Lightning that Lacie had taken that morning sat on the porch. Deane picked the gun up and stuffed it into the back of his belt.
“Did you see anything?” Deane asked.
“No, sir! We were abed when we heard the shot…”
“Someone call for Doc Stewart,” said a man in the gathering crowd.
The doctor arrived, and Lacie’s body was placed on the same gurney that had carried her brother earlier that day.
Deane found Felix sleepy-eyed in the office. The sight of the body coming in brought the deputy to his feet.
“I heard shots,” said Deane. “Found her dead soon after.”
“You didn’t see anyone?” asked Felix.
Deane shook his head. “Whoever did it slipped away as quiet as a mouse.”
The raucous harmony of the night was ruined for all concerned. There was a killer loose in town and, since no strangers had rode in recently, suspicion would eventually fall on one of their own. It was not a prospect that Deane relished.
* * *
They buried Lacie in the graveyard beside her brother the next day, but not before Doc Stewart dug a .38 slug out of her chest.
Deane suspected that her brother’s gun had been used to do the deed, but it was unclear why anyone would want to kill the quiet spinster. To confirm his suspicions, he examined the extracted slug, and noted the scoring on the side of the cartridge.
“I’ll need to fire this thing to make a comparison,” Deane told Stewart but for some reason Deane never did. Instead he locked the gun up and neither he, nor Stewart discussed it again.
After that though, Deane decided to make it his mission to find out more about the schoolmistress, and her brother.
He started with Mrs. Fairbanks from the church council.
“I heard about the shooting,” Mrs. Fairbanks said when she opened the door to Deane. “Who’d want to do an awful thing like that to Miss Lacie?”
“That’s what we’re trying to determine,” Deane said. “You were on the committee that hired her…what do you know of where she hailed from?”
“She said she’d come from Glenwood Springs,” Mrs. Fairbanks said. “She didn’t talk much about herself though. More about the stuff she’d be able to teach the children. She was a regular at church on Sunday, and we never had a whiff of scandal. My son liked her, too. She was a good teacher. We’ll be hard pushed to find another like her.”
Deane thanked Mrs. Fairbanks and left. No scandal, law abiding, it was just the information he had expected to hear, but he was disappointed that there wasn’t more to go on.
Still… Glenwood… That was a week’s hard riding away.
In his office, Deane found his wife Alice and his son Petey waiting for him.
“Can I leave Petey here for a while?” Alice said. “He’s underfoot now that school is off, and I have the laundry to do…”
“Sit down over there, buddy,” Deane said to his son. The boy took a seat at Felix’s desk, and Alice gave him a slate and chalk to practice his numbers on. She kissed Petey on the head, came to Deane and did the same before leaving.
Deane sat down at his own desk and began to write up a report about the death of Miss Lacie, but there was so little he could say that it barely filled half a page.
He looked out at Main Street and let his mind wander as he watched the occupants of the town going about their daily business. There was the pastor’s wife carrying a basket full of groceries; old Dougal walking his decrepit dog up and down the street until the dog was as confused as the old guy was a
bout his way home. A young prostitute called Celeste, up early considering the night in the saloon she must have had, was coming out of the apothecary shop clutching a bottle of something. Then there was Mikey Craven…
Deane blinked. Mikey was an odd boy, fourteen years old, with only his widowed mother to keep him on the straight and narrow. But he wasn’t a bad sort, Deane knew that. Just had a tendency to find trouble. Like when he stole the apples from Mrs. Fairbanks’s tree—the boy had said they were windfall, but Mrs. Fairbanks said she saw him pick them. Deane had punished the boy—a night in a cell had taught him he didn’t want to get himself in any real trouble.
Now as Deane watched the boy moving through town he knew something was up. Mikey’s eyes were wild, darting all over the street as his head turned this way and that. His face was pinched and snarling, like a jackal. He looked…feral.
Deane got out of his chair and walked up to the window. He watched Mikey go, and then saw him dart down the back, around the saloon.
“Stay here…” he said to Petey. The boy didn’t look up as he continued practicing his numbers.
Deane left his office and walked down the street toward the saloon. Then he dipped behind the building just as Mikey had.
He didn’t see the boy at first. He was standing in the shadows as though he didn’t want to be seen. But a subtle movement, a shift from one foot to the other, gave the boy’s location away with a small creak.
“What you doing here, son?” Deane asked, startling Mikey.
“Nothing, Sheriff. Just avoiding the sun is all,” said Mikey but he was twitchy and appeared guilty, though Deane didn’t know of what.
“Come out here, and let me get a look at you.” Mikey’s eyes widened, and Deane had the feeling the boy feared something. “What’s with you?”
Mikey stared at him as though he were seeing a ghost.
“Sheriff…I…done nothin’ wrong…”
“Then what you hiding from, boy?”
“Sheriff…why you pulling your gun on me…?”
