Hunger on the Chisholm Trail

by M Ennenbach

  The four of them laughed. On their second run last year, there ended up being five different runs meeting in Duncan at once. Everything was going great until the drinking commenced for real. Mitch was playing faro with some of the other crews. Mitch was a good guy. A great worker that never gave up. But his mouth had been known to get his and the rest of the crew’s rears into the fire. His mouth was the only thing quicker than his draw. Which could be unfortunate, as his pistol was usually just as fast to be used once he started losing at cards.

  It was a pretty stout ruckus that evening. Little damage to the establishment, less to each other. Just a few black eyes, along with some new friends. It was fortunate that the madam, Kenzie, had kept Mitch still. It could have escalated quickly from a regular brawl to calling the undertaker.

  A third howl rang out. This one sending shivers down the entire camp’s back. A hollow note of fear tinged it as it filled the night. A few of the steer jerked awake at it. The air became filled with fine grit as the winds picked up.

  “Let’s keep the cattle still. Ride out,” Chris said as jagged lines of purple lightning flashed across the sky like branding irons.

  The men rode with small circles of light from the hammered lanterns flickering across the dark flat land. The wind fought to extinguish the glow. Chris rode in the back of the pack and watched as Danny’s went out. Then Paulie’s. Soon, only his and Mitch’s fought against the night. A triple prong of electricity raced across the sky as a rumble of thunder, near subsonic rattled the ground.

  “Boss, they look ready to run!” Mitch called out.

  Then a bolt of fire sizzled to the ground not a mile away. The after image burned itself into Chris’s eyes as his horse reared back in surprise. He found himself falling toward the ground and willed himself to go limp. As the hard-packed earth hit his back, his breath was launched out in a fierce exhalation. But all he could think as it happened was, he thought he saw the shape of a person loping across the ground toward them.

  He scrambled to his feet in time to see the bouncing light of Mitch’s lantern dance forward as the ground rumbled beneath him. “Stampede! All Hands!!” he screamed into the night as the world became chaos.

  He saw the men roll off the ground around the fire that sputtered weakly against the winds, the embers flaring. Soon they all had their lanterns going, the beams dancing in the air. Chris got back onto his horse, not bothering to relight his torch. The need to get the cattle calmed down overrode any sense of safety. For a moment, one of the stray beams flashed on to Paulie’s back as he raised a lasso to pull in a steer. It flashed back and, again, Chris thought he saw that person. Too quickly the light moved. A muffled cry in the cacophony caught the breeze. The light came back to show Paulie no longer in the saddle. Chris knew how perilous this could be. The herd couldn’t see any better than he could. And sheer terror from the lightning flashing closer and closer meant they were heedless to a possible body in their path.

  “Paulie!!!!” he shouted. The wind and stampede drowned out his voice. He urged his mare, still wide eyed but well trained, toward where he had seen Paulie last. He combed the ground looking for any trace of his friend.

  The sky flashed above him, illuminating the night briefly. He saw a pool of what could have been blood. The ground rumbled with thunder and hooves. He counted to five and kept his eyes trained for Paulie. Another flash. He was positive what he had seen was blood. But no body.

  Time seemed to slow around him as the stench of lingering death hit him in the face. He felt as if he existed a step out of time as he watched the chaos around him in brief moments of clarity.

  He heard Mitch calling out to try and calm the rumbling herd. Flash. He could make out Mitch riding. Flash. There was something else. That person he believed he saw. A rail thin body. It was perched on the sweeping horns of a terrified steer. Impossible.

  Flash.

  The gaunt form leapt off of the rack into the air toward Mitch. A cry choked itself out in his throat, a warning he couldn’t get out.

  Flash. Mitch’s horse galloping rider-less. Just like Paulie’s.

  He drove his heels into the flanks of his mare, toward where Mitch had fallen. No. Been tackled. Taken out of the saddle. There was nothing. No sign of him. He scanned the land around in desperate flashes of the storm now roiling overhead.

  He reached up and grabbed the cross on his chest and began mumbling a prayer. If there was ever a time for divine protection, it was now. As he tried to find Mitch, the lights of the rest of the crew raced past him. He had no concept of time. It had been minutes since the strike. Since the herd took off in a panic. Since Paulie and Mitch vanished from sight. He watched the day riders fly past him. James yelled something but it was lost in the noise. He saw them race ahead of the bulk of mindless animals. They had already begun to calm. The earlier escape attempt had left them low on energy and hungry. It was coming under control as rapidly as it began. He kept looking for Paulie or Mitch.

  Another flash and he heard what sounded like a pained scream. He jerked the reins toward the direction it appeared to come from. He slowed the horse; the stampede was far ahead of him.

  Flash.

  He felt his horse rear again but kept a viselike grip on the reins and saddle horn. For a brief moment, he saw what he thought was Danny. But he was on his back on the ground with a look of sheer horror burnt onto his face in the split second of light. Faster and faster the lightning danced across the sky. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Danny lay staring up into the storm. A gray skinned human was kneeling in front of him. Spools of ropey intestines lay strewn across the ground. Chris was sure he was hallucinating. There was no way he had seen what he thought. A trick of the storm, he thought. Then another series of rapid-fire bolts. Danny was still lying there. Alone. But his guts were torn out of his now hollow torso. There was no sign of the creature. Or Paulie. Or Mitch. He quickly pulled his shotgun from the holster on the side of his saddle.

  He slid down from the saddle and called out softly, “Danny. Can you hear me, man?”

  Of course he couldn’t. He knelt down and relit his lantern, the winds finally dying down again. He examined the ground and found markings consistent with the thing that had been tearing Danny apart. His blood went cold. He had not imagined it at all. There was something out here with them. He stayed still and listened intently for any sign of the creature. He shined his light toward the tall prairie grass that wasn’t trampled down. He felt eyes on him from the large thatch. A low groan carried faintly on the wind.

  “Hello? Who’s there? Paulie? Mitch?”

  There was no answer. The wind picked up and that smell of rot swirled from the swaying grass. He felt himself begin to gag. He took a shaking step forward and used the barrel of his shotgun to part the grass. He was not prepared for what he saw lying in the grass. Paulie lay with his hand over his throat, blood pouring around his fingers. He saw Chris and reached out for him. His entire throat had been torn out. Choking gurgles escaped the ragged hole where his windpipe had been. Chris watched helplessly as his body shook one last time and his arm fell limp. Beneath him was the mangled body of Mitch. His body was crushed by the stampede but there were other marks across his chest. Long slashes that seemed to be caused by . . . fingers from the look of them. But unnaturally sharp. No human could have done that.

  The smell didn’t fade and he heard the grass move to his side. He could still feel eyes on him as he turned quickly. A sound from in front of him floated to his ears.

  “Pleeease . . . ”

  “Who’s there?” he asked. The sound of fear evident to his own ears.

  The grass shook and he tried to follow it. Whatever it was moved faster than it should be able to. He whipped his light between the tufts but couldn’t catch a view of what it was. It made a full circle around him. It was taunting him.

  “Come out here. Face me like a man!” he shouted in rage and frustration.

  “ . . . don’t”

  “Don’t w
hat? Who are you? What are you?”

  “Pleeease . . . ”

  He heard steps directly behind him and turned and squeezed the trigger. An explosion and flame left the barrels of the shotgun. Too late he saw the shocked expression on Jarod’s face as the two handfuls of shot took him in the chest. Chris dropped his weapon and fell to his knees cradling Jarod as he took wet, rasping breaths. Blood welled up and out of his tattered, red and white checkered shirt. He tried to speak but all that came out was a bubble of blood in the lantern light.

  James and the remaining four riders found him holding onto Jarod’s lifeless body. The scene of carnage in the grass. Danny’s half mauled body lying in a pool of blood and dirt. In the distance, the lightning played across the sky as three wolves howled at the nearly invisible moon.

  7

  Chisholm Trail

  “Ain’t no sign of whatever it was that Chris saw. I searched for a mile in all directions.” Chad looked at the ground, the images from last night still burnt into his mind.

  Chris sat with dark bags around his vacant eyes. He just stared at the fresh patches of dirt with four pairs of empty boots beside them. His hand was rubbing the cross at his throat. Haunted was an apt description for him. James sat not too far away with a mug of coffee sending heat waves into the air in front of him. The heat already felt oppressive as it pulsed down onto the five exhausted survivors.

  “I am trying to figure out the math on this one. Five of us. Four, since Jesse has to take the wagon. The remuda is a one-man job alone. That leaves three. How are three of us supposed to successfully guide this many head of cattle all the way to Abilene?” Thomas asked.

  James shifted a bit and sipped at the thick black coffee. “All we need is to make it to Duncan. We can get a couple locals to ride with us. We give them Daniel’s cut of the pay and a portion of the ones we lost. The rest of the dead men’s money goes to their families. It’s the only way I can figure. Three days to Duncan. Four if we take it nice and slow. We rest for a week. Then the final push to Abilene.”

  Thomas looked at him doubtfully but nodded. Chad never looked up from his boots but nodded as well. Jesse didn’t care. He had loaded up his stuff and sat next to James with a mug of coffee as well.

  Chris stopped twitching. “It was the devil himself.”

  “It was the storm and a heap of bad luck. The night does things to a man. Plays tricks on him. I reckon the lightning caused the stampede. Danny was crushed nearly immediately. Paulie and Mitch got caught up on it too. It was a freak storm from outta nowhere.”

  “And the bite marks? Danny was half eaten! Mitch had those claw marks across his face and chest. Paulie too! No stampede of grass eaters did that!” Chris looked feverish as he spoke louder and louder.

  Jesse made a face at James, who nodded. He stood and went to the wagon.

  “Wolves,” Chad said quietly.

  James nodded. “We heard enough of the bastards. They must have slinked in under the cover of the storm. Ate their fill of the boys after they got trampled.”

  “Seems as likely as a monster crept in,” Thomas added, not looking toward Chris as he did.

  “I know what I saw. There was a creature out there.”

  “Or you jumped at shadows. Maybe it was Jarod checking on the fallen. James said it. Your mind played tricks on you. You got so worked up from fear and then . . . ”

  Chris finally got more fire into his eyes. “Then what? What? You think Jarod won’t be a ghost floating around my heart until the end of days? It was an accident. Or it wasn’t. I don’t know. Christ on his cross, I wish I did. I think the creature in the grass baited me into doing it. I think it knew what it was doing and saw a chance to thin our numbers by one more. It is the devil out there, the stench of death hovering over its evil form.”

  Silence hung over the camp. For a long moment, there was an uneasy feeling as the world itself felt at peace. Nothing stirred.

  A hawk circled high above, floating lazily on a thermal as it watched the ground. Its long brown feathers perfectly caught the invisible currents. Sharp black eyes scoured the ground below for any telltale signs of prey on the hardscrabble earth so far underneath. The hawk’s head snapped to the side. In an instant, the wings pulled in tightly to its body, like a bullet speeding toward the flash of shadowy movement, its sharp talons and beak at the ready to snatch the morsel in midstep, to tear it to shreds to be eaten.

  The hawk’s cry pierced the silence at the same time a different cry came bellowing from the back of the wagon. James burst to his feet, with Chad and Thomas right behind him. Chris stared as the wagon began shaking as if in an earthquake. The cross held so tightly in his hands four drops of blood ran down his forearms.

  “Jesse! Are you alright in there?” James yelled.

  Chris watched in horror as the men circled behind the wagon with guns raised. He heard the exclamations of fear, wordless shouts and gasps. Unintelligible. Gunfire filled the former silence as all three men let loose with the steel in their trembling hands. “Cannot kill the devil,” he murmured silently, a tinge of insanity in his hoarse voice. He felt the longhorns panic and begin to scatter to the four winds. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

  Gray arms reached out and yanked Chad into the wagon as James and Thomas tried to snap speedloaders into place. Chad cried out in terror and pain. Chris watched red liquid ooze down from the slats that made up the floor of the wagon. He watched it hit the ground in fat drops. Then James and Thomas unloaded again. Black seemed to drip with the crimson, thicker, more viscous than the red. Burnt powder filled the air. Then, as the plumes of gun smoke wafted like clouds into the clear azure nothing above, silence fell again.

  James turned his head and began vomiting. Thomas just stared without comprehending what was in front of him. Chris watched the red begin to flow faster, like a waterfall. Globs of the black tar fell into the growing puddle. James wretched until his stomach was empty. Then he continued to dry heave.

  Thomas turned to Chris. His face was pale from the horror he had just seen. The ghost of a smile turned up the corners of his drooping mustachioed mouth. “We got the bastard. The devil is dead. Damn thing must have snuck into the wagon after breakfast. It’s over.”

  He clapped James on the back and dropped to his knees. Chris watched with tears streaming down his face. The devil was dead. Nine men lost. The entire herd gone. But the devil was dead. Hallelujah. The devil was dead.

  A creaking sound came as the wagon shifted a little. James raised his head at the noise. He didn’t have time to scream, though. The twisted gray creature launched itself from the wagon and had its jaws, stretched impossibly wide, around James’s throat. A wet tearing sound erupted as it wrenched its head back, sending a shower of viscera onto the air. Its head went back again and again, each time spraying more hot blood across the ground. An unearthly howl rumbled out of its mouth that echoed across the flat ground.

  Thomas turned to watch, frozen for a moment. Then he turned to Chris and screamed, “Run!!” Chris just sat there, willing his arms and legs to move. But they were still, as if carved from stone.

  With an almost casual flick of the too-long claws coming from the gore covered hands, it turned and lopped Thomas’s head off. It was so smooth and effortless. It stood with a satisfied grin as the blood fountained up, bathing it until the pressure dropped and the body slumped forward. It cocked its head like a crow and studied Chris as he sat in his urine. It raised one hand and flicked its claws towards him. He watched flecks of blood and skin arc through the air only to fall short of where he sat. The grin turned into a smile devoid of any happiness, a frozen monstrosity that parodied the real thing.

  Then it opened its mouth and called out. “Runnnnnnnnn!”

  That snapped Chris out of the sheer terror that had held him like chains. He leapt to unsteady feet and raced off into the flat lands, not even considering trying to get on one of the horses tied far off to the side. The only thought racing through his mind wa
s to run as fast and as far as possible away from the Devil. He ignored his soaked pants, didn’t even feel the cross still jammed into his palm or the leather straps slapping his wrist. He just ran.

  And the creature watched. Its nostrils flared as it took in the scent of prey, turning into a blurry spot in the distance. A long tongue jutted out to taste the air as well. The gray skin hung in strips where the bullets had torn through it. The onyx fluid slowly ran across the blood-soaked torso. The all black eyes still followed Chris who was no longer visible.

  “Pleeease . . . runnnnnnnnn . . . ”

  It let out a cruel cackle and then fell onto Thomas’s still warm body. The bullets fell to the ground with wet plops as it feasted. A model of efficiency, tearing and ripping through flesh and bone. Perched high above to the South, the hawk tore pieces of the rabbit off and shook them down its throat in a similar act. Chunks of fur lined the bottom of its nest where three eggs lay warmed from the sun.

  All the while, Chris just ran.

  8

  Duncan, morning

  Kenzie stood outside of the largest building in town and stared up at the lettering painted in bold red across the light gray wood. She watched her bartender and silent partner, Bradley, apply a fresh coat of paint.

  “How’s this look?” he called down.

  She scrunched her face up. “It does look like blood, doesn’t it?”

  Brad glowered back. “I told you it did before you sent me up here to repaint. I said it looks like blood and asked if that is what you wanted the first image of the business to be. The last color was fine, but no. Mackenzie wants something done.”

  “You finished?”

  He shrugged and went back to painting. The letters were huge, visible nearly before the tall steeple of the church, spelling her name in bright red letters. Would have been even bigger if Josiah hadn’t complained that a brothel shouldn’t have better line of sight than a church. She didn’t care for his logic one bit. But she acquiesced as her daddy had taught her to do, painted on a big smile of agreement, and only allowed Bradley to serve the preacher from the watered-down stock at a slight increase in price.