Angler In Darkness

by Edward M. Erdelac

  “I think so.”

  “Let’s ride then.”

  As the rest of us saddled up, Bigfoot waited patiently by, staring off into the brush.

  “The Captain said saddle up, Big Shaggy,” Tackett called down to him when it looked like he was going to be the last one to move.

  “I don’t ride,” said Bigfoot. “And you best not carry that saucy line of yours too far, sergeant.”

  Tackett looked fumed, but he had been spoiling for a fight with the new man since he’d seen him. He leaned over his saddle horn and gave his hardest look.

  “You care to repeat that?”

  One of Bigfoot’s thick arms whipped out and the huge hand on the end of it unfurled and gripped the back of Tackett’s neck, the thumb and fingers clamping on either side of his head. With one swoop he snatched the man out of his saddle and held him in the air by the nape, irons and all, the toes of his boots a foot or two off the ground.

  “No, I wouldn’t,” he said lowly.

  Captain Shockley rode over.

  “Let him go, Bigfoot.”

  He did, and Tackett fell in a tangle of leather and guns.

  He scrambled for his hat and jumped to his feet, mad as anything.

  “That’s enough, sergeant. Bigfoot’s a lieutenant in Colonel Hays’ company. There’ll be no more horsin’ off.”

  “Yessir,” he panted, and jamming his hat back on his head, he went back to chase his horse.

  We headed northeast. I rode in the back with the privates, and their talk entirely concerned the newcomer. True to his word, the tall hairy stranger rode no horse, but in fact ranged far in front of the company, directing its course. His long stride kept him constantly in front of the horses even at a trot. He seemed indefatigable.

  “Is that Bigfoot Wallace?” the red head asked a fellow private within my earshot.

  Naw,” said the other. “My cousin rides with Cap’n Wallace. That ain’t him.”

  “That’s Bigfoot Walsh,” said Dano. “He was with us at Monterrey. All the lies Wallace tells, Bigfoot Walsh does.”

  “How come he’s so big and....hairy?” The red head asked in a whisper.

  “I hear tell he’s Lithuanian,” said Dano.

  The other Rangers seemed to take this as explanation enough.

  When we camped, the Rangers kept their distance from the stranger. Perhaps they naturally sided with their Sgt. Tackett against him. Although Captain Shockley took his coffee with Bigfoot, soon even he retired to the company of his subordinates and the giant was left off by himself.

  For my part, I was quite overcome by curiosity, and being something of an outsider anyway, went over by him.

  I found him scraping his odd colored chin with a straight razor, absurdly small in his hand. He appeared to have grown a substantial amount of facial hair since I’d first seen him. His legs were stretched out and crossed at the ankles. I saw then that what I had taken to be overlarge hide boots were in fact his own huge, bare, extremely hairy feet. I was astounded by their immensity, and by the calluses that formed pads thick as shoe leather on the bottoms of his feet.

  After a moment he noticed I was staring and raised his furry eyebrows expectantly.

  “Hello, Lt. Walsh,” I said, clearing my throat.

  Bigfoot stopped eating and regarded me with one bent eyebrow.

  “Where’s your cinco peso, buster?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He tapped the faded ribbon around his hat, where a circular, tarnished Ranger’s badge was pinned.

  “I am no Ranger,” I explained. “Dr. Wilhelm Keidel. Captain Shockley asked for my help. In case of survivors.”

  “Well, if we find ‘em you’ll surely have your work cut out for you. You any good? As a doctor I mean?”

  “I’m the only doctor in Gillespie County.”

  “That ain’t exactly a ringing endorsement.”

  Bigfoot watched me closely, folded his razor, then drew out one of his big pistols.

  “Ever clean a pistol?”

  “In the Mexican War, yes. Is it a Paterson?”

  “It’s a Walker,” Bigfoot said. “I took the trigger guards off so my fingers would fit. Here.”

  He handed over the massive pistol and a little leather roll of tools. I lay them out carefully in my lap by his fire and set to work. I motioned to the stubby blunderbuss looking rifle he kept.

  “I’ve never seen that kind of rifle.”

  It had a heavy looking octagonal barrel and a skeletal iron stock. It looked like a swivel gun from a ship.

  “She’s a Brand. They use ‘em up north for killin’ whales. I usually just load her with powder and shot, but she also takes what they call a broomstick lance, or a harpoon bomb. Here, take a look.”

  He reached into his pack and took out a long brass tube with a fuse on one end and what looked like a barbed, two bladed spearhead on the other.

  “I call her CeeCee.”

  “Looks heavy,” I remarked.

  “She’s about twenty six pounds. I like big girls.”

  Bigfoot put the harpoon bomb away and took out his canteen as I slid the cylinder from the arbor and rammed the wire brush down the barrel. It showed spots of corrosion. He didn’t clean the pistols regularly. Perhaps the operation was too delicate for his large fingers.

  “You a Dutchman?” he asked, watching me work.

  “German, yes.”

  I was anxious to ask about his lineage, for I wondered if he perhaps had some Spanish blood, and could be traced back to the famously afflicted Ambras family. However, I felt it might be best not to broach such a sensitive subject so soon.

  “What’d you do in the war?”

  “I was with the First Texas Rifles. Volunteers.”

  Bigfoot rolled his eyes.

  “I remember that regiment. Hope you’re a better doctor than you were a soldier.”

  I pursed my lips. It was well known how most of the eighty volunteers had succumbed to the climate and dysentery without ever firing a shot.

  I hastily changed the subject.

  “You do not think Comanches are responsible for the abductions?”

  “No.”

  “We are in agreement.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “I don’t think Chief Santanna would allow his people to endanger the treaty he signed with us.”

  “You think highly of your treaty.”

  “I do.”

  “Most Texans do not.”

  “Aren’t you a Texan?”

  “Not by birth. I come from up in Oregon Territory.”

  There was a lot of whooping and hollering on the other end of the camp then.

  The red head and one of the other privates were dragging a third man into the firelight, an Indian with black braided, fur wrapped hair, his shirt torn at the sleeve.

  “Look what we found sneakin’ around out by the horses!”

  Bigfoot and I came over in time to see Tackett back hand the young man as he was restrained.

  “So it ain’t Comanches, huh?” he remarked when he saw us.

  “That how you get your licks in, sergeant?” Bigfoot said.

  “All due respect, I get my licks in on a Comanch any way I can, lieutenant.”

  “That’s enough,” Shockley said, coming over. “Let the boy stand.”

  The Indian fell to his knees and hands when released, and when he raised his head, I stepped forward and said that I knew him, for he was Chief Santanna’s own son, Dead Meat.

  “Maruawe,” I said, using the friendly greeting I knew. “How is your wrist, Dead Meat? And how is your father?”

  “Dead Meat?” Tackett chuckled. “Truer words were never spoken.”

  Shockley glared him into silence.

  The boy was no more than sixteen. Santannna had once brought him to Fredricksburg after he had fallen off a horse and fractured his fifth metacarpal, and I had treated him. Santanna had paid me with a fat turkey just in time for Christmas.

&nb
sp; “Ehkweʔne?” the boy mumbled, blinking. His face was half covered in blood, his scalp lacerated and one eye bruised shut.

  “What’d he say?” Tackett demanded.

  “It’s my Comanche name,” I said, with perhaps a hint of pride. “It means ‘Doctor.’”

  “It means ‘Butcher Knife,’” Bigfoot said. “Guess he didn’t think too much of your doctorin.’”

  “Ehkweʔne,” Dead Meat said again, reaching for my shirt and leaving a bloody stain where he gripped it. “You got to get out of here. They wiped us out and they’re comin’ this way.”

  “Who?” Shockley asked.

  Around us, the Rangers shuffled and began to look out into the dark beyond the firelight warily.

  “The Wasapi Kuhma,” he said breathlessly. “They took a couple of girls down by the river. We chased ‘em, but they turned on us at nightfall and ran through us like a prairie fire. We ran. They followed us all the way back to the village. Killed the men and boys. Took the women.”

  “What’s a Wasapi Kuhma?” asked the red head.

  “Who are they?” Shockley demanded. “Tonks? What?”

  “Monsters!” Dead Meat said. “They live up on Spirit Song Rock.”

  “Spirit Song Rock?” Shockley asked me.

  “It’s what they call Enchanted Rock,” I said. “About fifteen miles north of Fredricksburg.”

  “I know it,” Shockley said. “Rangers, saddle up!”

  “You damn fools!” Dead Meat shouted. “You don’t listen! You ain’t got to go to them. They’re comin’ to you!” He looked around wildly, eyes bugging.

  At that moment the horses began to flare their nostrils and shudder, rearing up and whinnying nervously.

  “They’re here already!” he screamed. He shoved me aside and bolted, running pell-mell down the middle of the camp.

  Tackett drew his pistol and took aim at the fleeing Comanche.

  “I got him,” he said, thumbing back the hammer of his Dragoon.

  Then, without any warning, something like a rushing buffalo came bounding on two legs into the camp. It bowled two hobbled horses over and smashed into Tackett. With a grunt and a hint of swift moving brown, the whatever-it-was carried him off into the darkness on the other side of the fire, leaving behind his pistol and one of his boots spinning comically on its heel.

  The Rangers reacted, firing wildly after the monstrous shape. I pushed myself up from the dirt where Dead Meat had left me, only to be slammed back down, Bigfoot’s massive foot in the middle of my back.

  “Best stay down, Doc!” he shouted above the din of gunfire. I saw he had jammed the harpoon bomb down the barrel of his Brand rifle and was now aiming in the opposite direction of the others.

  As if on cue, something moved in the shadows at the end of his barrel. I saw the twinkle of animal eyes and a hint of something large and man-like rolling its shoulders as it came. Then Bigfoot Walsh’s rifle boomed. The harpoon lance hissed out into the night trailing sparks like a rocket and there was an inhuman, agonized howl, which was soon after cut short by a muted explosion. I saw a strange flash which briefly illuminated what looked like a large human torso.

  The next minute blood and matted clumps of wet hair and bone were raining down on us, tapping on the brims of our hats. A large rib, blackened on one end, stuck in the earth near my hand.

  The Rangers had emptied their guns in the initial panic, and now they ripped their spare pistols free.

  Captain Shockley was yelling for them to form a circle when the animal roaring started all around, terrifying in its strangeness. It was like an entire chorus of yowling catamounts, but there was also an underlying, undeniably human tone. It put my hair on end and made my entire skeleton shudder. There was another sound too, a meaty drumming, as if a hundred backs were being pummeled with fists.

  Then they came. I saw them clearly. They walked, or rather ran upright at a terrifying speed thanks to the extreme length of their shaggy legs. They were so large that I felt the ground tremble beneath my belly with the tramping of their great feet. They were muscular as great apes beneath their hairy coats, and their faces were hairless, displaying horrible, ferocious mouths full of beastly teeth. Their heads were bulky and misshapen, topped with the same sort of sagittal crests as gorillas. Their great bellowing, open maws spilled wild streams of saliva, and some of them beat their powerful chests as they came, the source of the drumming I’d heard.

  At their appearance, a heavy musk filled my nostrils.

  There were seven of them, a little more than half the number of the Rangers, but the Texans did not manage to get off more than a shot or two before they were set upon, and I realized that the initial attack on Tackett had been a cunning ploy to disorganize them and waste their ammunition.

  Bigfoot flipped his heavy rifle about and swung it like a short club at the first creature that came at him. The iron stock rang against its howling face, and sent its huge feet up in the air as it fell with a crash on its back.

  Then I felt the weight of his foot come off my back. He pulled me up and ran, dragging me swiftly away by the collar of my coat.

  As I was whisked across the ground, I saw the other six creatures falling upon the shrieking Rangers, beating them down with wild blows. Most fought bravely, discharging their pistols point blank into the furry torsos, or slashing at them with their knives. A few that had been slapped down tried to crawl away. These bloodied and broken Rangers were yanked back into the fray by their attackers, and swung into the air by their ankles, wielded like flails against their own comrades. Skulls dashed together, bones snapped, until the corpses whipped about in their hands with all the resistance of a muleskinner’s brushpopper, undulating weirdly in the air and then being cast aside in silent knots of broken bone and torn flesh. I saw Captain Shockley cursing, gripping the sides of one creature’s face, clumsily plunging his knife into its shoulder as it drew his face into its mouth.

  Bigfoot released me a good deal away from the camp, and I propped myself up on my elbows to look as behind me I heard the clicks of his pistols being readied.

  I saw Dano the Lipan slip away, his arm hanging broken. He managed to get on his horse and cut the hobbles when one of the things spied him and broke from the massacre. It leap in front of his galloping mount and checked its flight, catching the animal around the head with both arms. Displaying its immense strength, I watched it flip the horse into the air, catapulting Dano into the campfire, where he screamed and thrashed. His horse came down hooves up across the shoulders of the creature, and I heard its mighty spine snap.

  Dano staggered out of the campfire ablaze, and the sight of him aflame seemed to excite the creature who had killed his horse. It let the dead animal fall, threw up its hands, and huffed a warning, its black eyes wide, the hair on its shoulders bristling. It did not like the fire, and gesticulated in fear-born outrage at the sight of the burning man.

  A second creature which had broken off its attack ambled over. It was the greatest of them, a head taller than the rest, covered in silvery hair. I saw it had the still booted bare leg of a Ranger in its fist, torn away at the knee joint, and was gnawing it like a drumstick.

  It took one look at the flaming Dano and kicked out with its great foot. Dano left the ground and whipped off end over end into the night, still burning, but no longer screaming.

  A great shape flowed over my eyes and landed at my feet with a tremendous shock.

  It was Bigfoot Walsh, and he was running back into the camp, a Walker Colt in each of his hands, booming as he came, his long hair streaming behind him.

  The creatures turned their heads at his charge, and let the bloody bodies of the Rangers drop. As one looked curiously at this new threat, tilting its head, one of its dark eyes exploded and it fell dead.

  Two roared and rushed to meet his charge, opening their long arms to catch him in a crushing embrace. He ducked at the last minute, and one flipped over his back with a disconcerted groan. The second dealt Bigfoot a glancin
g blow to the side of his head, enough to flatten an elephant, I should have thought. It knocked off his hat, and he responded by dashing the barrel of his pistol against its face, splitting its cheek wide.

  The creature howled and Bigfoot threw an elbow into its chin, rocking its head back long enough to jam the barrel of his pistol into its yawning mouth, cracking a couple of teeth off before lighting up the roof of its mouth and sending it leaping back in a cloud of its own blood.

  The one that had flipped over him rose again and Bigfoot spun and blasted it with both pistols, alternating like a prizefighter, punching it with lead instead of knuckles.

  It gamely attempted to move against the .44 caliber hail, but then wheezed and surrendered to death.

  Two of the remaining creatures bolted for the darkness, all save the great silver haired beast. It dropped its ghastly Ranger leg and fixed Bigfoot with a challenging stare, testing the air between them with a snort. It beat its chest and roared. Its upper lip was split, either an old wound or a harelip.

  I don’t know, but at that moment something struck me about its expression. There was a little more than just animal response there. There seemed to be a recognition of some sort in the black eyes.

  Bigfoot Walsh hollered back. He let his pistols fall and whipped out what would have been a scimitar in the hands of a normal sized man, yet was akin to a Bowie knife to one of his stature.

  “Come on!” he yelled.

  But the silver haired thing plunged into the dark after its fellows.

  Bigfoot watched it go. The camp was a scene of slaughter, men and horses lying broken, blood catching the firelight.

  He picked up his pistols and shoved them in their holsters.

  When I came over, he was inspecting his rifle.

  The animal smell was still in the air, mixing now with the rusty scent of blood and gunsmoke and.....

  The fire.

  The big bonfires surrounding Fredricksburg must have saved us, I thought. And the fire in Ruiz’s cabin had probably driven them off. They didn’t like it.

  “What are they?” I asked.

  “My pa called ‘em skookums.”

  “You knew about these things?”