9 Tales From Elsewhere 2

by 9 Tales From Elsewhere

  Inky recognized the boy as not much younger than himself, with both of them still between the grass and the hay. Inky quickly took note of Gilly’s countenance… Hum-crafted breeches and a tunic, with a strange stone amulet around the neck, and, most tellingly, a low-slung holster strapped to his leg, sporting a smoke pole of potentially devastating effect.

  “Trapper Timothy Dugan?” Gilly queried uneasily, confused by Inky’s youth.

  “Your voice carries well enough without all that wind behind it,” sighed Inky, as Gilly walked toward him.

  “Oh, my apologies. I’ve just been searching for Trapper Dugan. But you ain’t him, are ya?” said Gilly, with disappointment.

  Inky’s eyes got small and his brow furrowed. “And you think searching for him gives you the right to find him, umgatchni?”

  “Who you callin’ a, a… Umga-whatzis, ya hairy barbarian?” spat Gilly, with indignation.

  Inky kept a hard stare for as long as he could before breaking into a smile. Gilly smiled back. Inky spoke again.

  “Well, I am the only Dugan that you are likely to find in these woods. But if you were looking for my father, you must have something important on your mind. So come along. It is time for the evening meal. We will break some bread, and then you may have your say, before going on your way come morning.”

  Gilly followed Inky back to his winter cabin… a shabby pile of timber amidst the brambles, near a fresh-water stream. Dugan built a fire and started in on searing a pair of rabbits what he had trapped and skinned earlier in the day.

  After dinner, Inky finally spoke. “Well?”

  So Gilly told Inky the story of his life to date, such as he knowed it, and such as I’ve related. Inky responded in kind.

  “Is Trapper Dugan really yer pa?” asked Gilly.

  “So I was told by the squaw that raised me.”

  “I always thought of him as my pa, too. I don’t remember him none, but Sunny told me stories ‘bout him, and I’ve seen him in my dreams, many times.”

  Inky grunted in response. He then sat silent for a while. “Let me see that necklace of yours.” Gilly passed it over. Inky studied it closely, then handed it back. “Humbabian talisman. Useful piece of decoration. Do not take it off while you are in these woods. Especially tomorrow night… the moon will be full tomorrow night.” Gilly was confused, but pretended to understand.

  Inky went on. “You will be followed soon enough by ruffians, so I suggest you get moving in the morning.”

  “But I got nowhere to go.”

  “In that case, one place should be as good as another. You just cannot remain here. I do not want any trouble with the locals. And besides, there are… creatures in these woods… things that I might not be able to protect you from.”

  Gilly continued to eat in silence. “What if I go up into the mountains?”

  “It is coming on winter. You would not last a fortnight up there. I always come down here this time of year, until spring. No, you will want to head south.”

  “How far?”

  “Until you arrive somewhere where nobody knows you and you know nobody.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then you live your life, my brother.”

  Their conversation was suddenly interrupted when they were sprung upon out of the night by a mountain lion of bad temper and even worse judgment. The big cat leapt upon Inky’s back from a high perch, and tried to attach itself with its incisors into Inky’s massive shoulders. But before it could, Gilly had pulled his Colt and blasted that puss into eternity.

  “You are pretty good with that black-eyed Susan,” noted Inky, not put out overmuch by his brush with death.

  “Yup. Gun play and poker are two of my three great gifts!” he chuckled.

  “Well then, with those particular talents, I have a sudden notion as to where you might go.”

  “Where might that be?”

  “Head for Texas, Gilly.”

  The next day, Inky led Gilly to a clearing, whereupon he bellowed a howl up into the morning sky. Soon enough, a wild horse came galloping into the break, and stopped in front of Inky, nuzzling his shoulder. The creature was as big and black as a night sky in Montana. “This here is my friend… I call him “Horse”, though only he knows his own true name. Horse, this is Gilmore Gammesson. He and I are brothers. He needs to be on his way, and you are the only one that can help. So take care of him, and yourself.”

  Inky gave Gilly a bear’s tooth for good luck, pointed him south, and wished him well. And so Gilly and Horse headed off, but Gilly somehow knew he would see Inky Dugan again one day.

  ><><

  The Legend of Mad Gilly Games

  Gilly and Horse arrived in Texas and cut a swath through the killers, con men, cripples, confederates, cattlemen, cardsharps and courtesans that were the primary occupants of that territory in those early decades after the War Between the States. Gilly tried his hand at wrangling and rustling, and was equally adept at both. But he didn’t like being in a herd either way, so mostly he earned his keep by playing cards. His steely nerves, quick mind and unnatural luck, backed up by the lightning thunder of his Colt revolver, made him a legend in those parts. “Mad Gilly Games”, he came to be called. And since that was what they called him, then that was who he was.

  As he growed into a man, Gilly exercised the third of his three great gifts with uncommon regularity, pirooting many a rancher’s daughter, shopkeeper’s wife and saloon gal along the trail. He had a way of treating the ladies like whores and the whores like ladies, which was a tendency oft appreciated by both. But he and Horse never settled down too long in any one place. And, after a while, every new town they’d get to, Gilly would find that his reputation had preceded him, sometimes necessitating gunplay that would require his ongoing perambulations.

  In this way, years crawlt by until a decade had snuck passed. And after all that time, Mad Gilly Games had kilt enough men, bedded enough women, and drawn to enough inside straights to last a lifetime or two. A hankering for something else was growing inside him and stabbing at his innards, as if he swallered a set of red hot silver spurs. Gilly’s skin still glowed bronze, but it had lost its luster. His quick smile had slowed. Too many mornings, it was like he carried a brick in his hat. And so, on one random Texas morning, he and Horse started riding north.

  Mad Gilly was going home.

  ><><

  A Falling Starr

  Gilly got down offa Horse and stood in the middle of Rook, ankle deep in guts and glory. “I declare this town free of Bull Evans, and his master, Newton Starr!” he called out. “You folks is now under my protec--

  Oh, wait. I already done told you that part at the beginning. Sorry, the mind wanders a might at my age. Let me jes’ take another sip from this here jug -- ahh -– to collect mahself. They say Mountain’s blood keeps ya young, but not so’s I’ve ever noticed.

  Anyways, on we go from here…

  There was much rejoicing in Rook on that fine day, which had jes’ seen the sun set a second time on the life of Sheriff Jack Bull Evans. Madame Sunny, so glad to see Gilly alive after all those years in Texas, crushed the boy to her massive bosom. Sid Uhry declared it a holiday, with drinks on the house, and the stagecoach driver, Miss Sharon, pulled Evans’ tin star off his bloody corpse and pinned it on Gilly’s vest.

  Gilly and Horse were a parade all by their own selves, but one that was soon follered by nearly the entire town, right up to the mouth of Newt Starr’s main silver mine, the #7. The townsfolk had themselves a picnic of an impromptu nature, right there and then. In doing so, they might as well have dropped their drawers and waived their privates at ole Newt… which, in fact, some fellers did that night for good measure, after a hog-killing time was had by all.

  Now, Andrew Newton Starr was a great many things, but being the sort of feller at whom you waived your johnson was certainly not among `em. And though most of his men were now most grotesquely deceased, thanks to Gilly and Horse, he was not a man without boun
tiful resources. He summoned his few remaining ranch hands to collect up the body of Bull Evans. He would have need of it at some point, he knew. In the meantime, he sent a telegram to Kansas City, asking his agent there to start hiring some more guns so he could retake the town. And he would summon his daughter, Isabelle, too. At present, she was visiting the family’s holdings back in Scotland, but she could prove useful at a time like this.

  ><><

  The Were-Bear Strikes

  Gilly may have been mad, but he was in no way stupid. He knew that it was one thing to take a town, and quite another to hold it. And so he enlisted the townsfolk in the efforts to fortify Rook from Newt Starr’s inevitable retaliation. His plan: to build a great wall on the town’s eastern border, allowing the unfordable waters to the north, unscaleable mountains to the west, and the dangerous beasts and injuns of Humble’s Wood to the south, to defend Rook’s other three sides. After all, it’s been said that good fences make good neighbors, and Gilly was determined to make Newt Starr the bestest dern neighbor the town of Rook had ever knowed.

  The wall would be a great undertaking, requiring every able bodied man in town to help to cut massive timbers in Humble’s Wood, haul them to the Eastern line, then saw, shape and assemble them into a fence and gate sufficient to hold off a frontal assault. And the townsfolk were willing to do it, too… for a time.

  But with his newfound authority, Gilly had a bit of trouble keeping hisself on the straight and narrow, tending to abuse his privileges at the expense of those entrusted to his protection. So, while fellers were off hacking down trees, he was bedding down their womenfolk with alarming frequency. Such was his charm that he never had to take by force what was freely given; still, `twas an insult not kindly thought of, and made many in the town uneasy.

  He earned further ill will by his nightly drunken rides through the streets of Rook, with Gilly shooting out windows and Horse tearing up vegetable gardens and knocking down porches. Those that objected found themselves on their backs, staring up at a starry sky through bruised eyes, jes’ passed a broken nose.

  Gilly also had a nasty habit of winning poker pots with freakish regularity, much to the consternation of the town’s burghers, who were required to sit in with him for at least a few hands each night, over at Sid Uhry’s Saloon.

  To stand up to Mad Gilly was to get the wrong pig by the tail and, in the days and weeks that follered, townsfolk were starting to miss Bull Evans.

  Then, one day a timber crew returned from Humble’s Wood with a frightening tale. They had been set upon by the biggest bear ever seen in them parts. It attacked them and ate poor Sam Butt, owner of the general store, and clawed a few others in the crew afore they could make it back to town. The creature had even left a tooth in the leg of a young Chinee by the name of Kwai Chang. When Gilly examined the tooth, he realized he had worn its identical twin round his neck, nestled alongside his talisman, for the past 10 years. So, it would be up to Gilly now to go into the woods and hunt that bear, whose name he suspected he already knew.

  Horse took Gilly back to the clearing in Humble’s Wood where once Gilly stood and ate rabbits with Inky Dugan. There they waited. It did not take long. Inky had growed even bigger since last they met, standing nearly 20 hands high now, as thick around the chest as a Longhorn steer measures from tip to tip, and appeared well able to crush a grizzly in a bear hug, if’n he were of a mind to. In fact, with his habit of wearing pelts and maintaining his overlong black tresses in an unkempt manner, Inky suggested a big ole grizz hisself, to those few what crossed his path and lived to tell the tale.

  “Hello, Inky.”

  “Welcome back, Gilly.”

  “I think you done ate one o` my timber crew.”

  “Possibly. All white men taste alike to me.”

  “Well, I need you to stop.”

  “With Hums being so scarce these days, and the townsfolk being so suddenly plentiful in my woods, I take what I can get,” sighed Inky.

  “So how come yer not eatin’ me right now, then?” asked Gilly, his eyes narrowing.

  Inky smiled and pointed at the stone talisman around Gilly’s neck. Gilly drew his Colt and clicked back the hammer. “Brother, I don’t want to shoot you none, but the townsfolk are under my protection.”

  Inky laughed, throwing his head back in a wild howl that sent chills up Gilly’s spine. “You think you can harm me with lead? Then take your best shot, little man.” He roared with defiance and charged. Gilly pulled the trigger, speeding a bullet toward Inky. It struck its mark, but without effect. Inky stopped and howled with laughter again.

  “No bullets forged by man can pierce my hide,” said the were-bear, “and I have never been bested in battle.”

  “Well, we’ll jes’ have to settle this the old fashioned way, then, and see where the chips fall,” said Gilly, as he unstrapped his leather and came toward Inky with fisticuffs raised.

  And so the two men fought a fight that no one witnessed, `cept the sky and the mountains, and yet here I am to tell you that it was a battle for the ages, raging through the night and into the following dawn. Gilly, though smaller than Inky, was quick, strong and tough as jerky, and gave a good account of hisself. When the sun broke through the morning mist, the rays danced upon Gilly’s bronze skin and golden curls, dappling him like an Appaloosa and giving off an otherworldly glow that momentarily blinded the exhausted Inky Dugan. Gilly summoned his remaining strength to land a last mighty blow that lifted the massive bear-man off his feet and into darkness.

  When Inky awoke, he found his wounds being tended to by Gilly, who raised a drink to Inky’s lips.

  “I am yours, brother… forever,” Inky said, before taking a light sip.

  “Hush now. Rest up. I’m takin’ you back into town with me. I need you by mah side.”

  “Wherever you lead, I will follow... until darkness takes us both.”

  “Yeah, well, good luck to the darkness that comes a lookin’ for us, eh?” laughed Gilly.

  ><><

  The Plot Unfolds

  Mad Gilly had stolen Newt Starr’s crown. It would be weeks before Ole Newt would have the strength of numbers to reclaim it, and months `til the summer solstice, when he could conjure the return of Bull Evans to lead his men in such an endeavor. In the meantime, Izzie Starr had a plan. She would seduce this new king, and Gilly would then be hers, and would be made to serve her father’s will. But Ole Newt didn’t want to take the chance of leaving Gilly alive, where he could still turn on Starr one day, despite his daughter’s undeniable charms.

  “Acch, Izzie,” Newt sputtered in his unmistakable brogue, “we need a more permanent solution to our problem. There is one fellow who might be able to terminate Mr. Gammesson for us… a giant, half-breed mountain man known as Inky Dugan. He used to live down in Humble’s Wood, but now he lives in town, as Gammesson’s deputy. Go to him; work your magick upon him, capture his heart. Then, cast your spell on Mr. Gammesson, too. When jealousy brings the two of them into conflict, it will not be the first time such a thing had happened in the history of men. If Dugan kills Gammesson, our problem will be solved. And if Gammesson kills Dugan, it will leave him alone and broken, and still our problem will be solved.”

  “Why would Gilly be unmanned over the killing of some half-breed?” asked Izzie. “I’ve heard that he has killed dozens of men… and at least twice as many Mexicans.”

  “Dugan is not just anybody. He and Gammesson are brothers of a sort.”

  “Of what sort would that be, da?”

  “It’s a long story. Just do it, me dear. I’m sure the doings will provide you with sufficient entertainment to justify your efforts.”

  Izzie Starr considered her father’s request, as she bathed in the chilly waters of Lake Thannat, glistening like a highland snowbird on its still surface. She was most at home here in the water, as in the lochs of her youth. It was where she was most herself. “Yes”, she thought. “Yes, let us do entertain the gentlemen.” She laughed, and h
er laughter made birds take wing, and insects chitter, and forest creatures seek higher purchase.

  ><><

  Brothers of Rook

  At first, the townsfolk were terrified of their new resident. But when they saw the effect that Inky had on Gilly, they privately rejoiced. Gilly and Inky drank together, laughed together, and worked together overseeing the security of the town. Despite his bestial appearance, Inky had a surprisingly civilizing effect on Gilly, who tended now to rational discourse rather than impetuous outburst.

  When the moon waxed full, the two brothers retreated to Humble’s Wood, and Inky ran free to hunt and feed, clothed only in the coat of black fur that would thicken and cover him at such times, while Gilly kept hold of his talisman and sat round the fire, waiting for the days and nights to pass until the moon waned again and Inky would return to hisself… although Inky reckoned he was more hisself at the apex of the moon than at any other moments of his life.

  And so it went in the town of Rook. As work continued on the fortifications, and the menfolk commenced training under the leadership of their golden sheriff and his hirsute deputy, the community came together in a time of grace that it had not known since Rook was Uruk, a home only to horses and Hums. And Gilly and Inky found in each other kinship they had never knowed.

  Until one midday, when into their midst rode Isabelle Starr on a white mare, upon which she sat side saddle in the English manner, carrying a parasol for shade. When she walked into Uhry’s Saloon, Inky was knocked back like a cocked hat. For, as powerful a creature as he was, he was the only one of his kind as far as he knew, and he had not known any woman’s touch since his mother had slipped loose of his hand that fateful day in the woods. He had certainly never seen a woman of Isabelle’s comely nature. So, he was unprepared for the flood of emotion that overwhelmed him in that moment.