“All my life,” he said.
I noticed then that his bare head sloped slightly from a rounded, pronounced crown, but I didn’t say anything.
“I’ll catch you a horse,” he said hastily. “You ride on back to Fredricksburg, tell ‘em there’s men out here need buryin.’”
“I’m going with you,” I said.
He looked down at me dubiously.
“I’ll take care of myself,” I said. “The captives will still need my attention.”
“They might be dead.”
“They only take the women and children,” I observed.
“Only the girl children,” he said quietly. “You can’t keep up with me, Doc. Not even on a horse.”
“Then carry me.”
I hastily replaced the discharged cylinders of his Colts with a dead man’s, and he loaded up his Brand with shot.
Then he took a knee and I boosted myself onto his back. He bolted off into the night, running as if I were only a child riding piggy back.
I do not know how long he ran. It was a heroic distance, a Homeric effort. He was panting when the sun came up red like the cracking eye of a bleary drunkard, and we saw the shadow of the great granite monadnock rising nearly five hundred feet above the trees, breaking from the hills and plains surrounding like a massive egg.
I had heard many stories about Enchanted Rock. Santanna had said within it lay portals to other worlds, and Pedro had told me once of a conquistador who had fallen through a crack at its top and been harried by ghosts in the secret tunnels said to lie beneath. There were whispers that the Comanche and the Tonkawa had held human sacrifices at its summit to appease the spirits who dwelt within, invisible beings of a long extinct tribe.
Perhaps the creatures we pursued were of that tribe. Perhaps the Penateka Comanche had neglected the ritual. If they had, they had paid for it with their lives, for near the bottom of the slope we passed through a silent encampment of cooling fires and broken tepees which bore their markings. The sizable village was carpeted with the twisted dead. Their bones snapped beneath Bigfoot’s tread before we realized what they were. Even the camp dogs lay slaughtered, and of the various human shapes on the darkening ground, some were too diminutive to contemplate. All those we could see in the early light were male, warriors and elders.
One, I recognized.
Santanna himself. The old chief lay broken entirely in half, the heels of his moccasins touching the back of his grey head.
This was the end of the Penateka then. Whether they had neglected some ritual or encroached upon the territory of the creatures, we would never know.
We did not tarry, but plunged into the brushy wood of blackjack oak that surrounded the base of the rock, snapping through sedge and bent grass and bushes of mesquite that seemed to tremble before our approach and shook with terror at our departure.
A third of the way up Bigfoot could carry me no longer. It was bright day when we passed halfway up the gentle, stony slope, and paused to rest among the boulders strewn all about.
“There’ll be a cave,” he said, breathing heavy. “There’s always a cave.”
Bigfoot’s considerable tracking skills were nearly worthless on the mostly bare pink granite of the exfoliated dome. We could see the country all around. The Big Sandy shimmering in the distance, even the smoke of the Fredricksburg Easter fires fifteen miles to the south.
“This is hopeless. This rock is hundreds of acres across,” I said.
“What d’you suggest?”
“They don’t like fire,” I mused. There were some hearty mesquite bushes and shrubs sprouting from the rock clefts, even in the high, blowing wind. They were all quite dry.
Bigfoot reached into his pockets and pulled out his powder flask. He found a post oak struck dead by lightning, little more than a black pointed stake bare of branches jutting out of the rocks. The trunk was lording it over a patch of dry grasses, and cupping his hand against the wind, he sprinkled the gunpowder at its base.
Then he stepped back and motioned for my shotgun. We were quite near the top, and he turned in a circle and let out a feral challenging cry, animal-like, Indian-like, that bounced off the stone and traveled out across the hills, caused flights of screeching bats to light from crevices, birds to flee their branches, and sent rabbits and armadillos scurrying from under their shelters. It made me shudder, the same as before the attack. When he had emptied his considerable lungs, he fired a barrel into the base of the tree and it flared like the burning bush.
He tossed the shotgun back to me. I broke it open and reloaded as he took up the flintlock. We waited.
The smoke rose black in the clear air, whipped over the surface of the rock by a windy comb. The smell was woodsy and sweet as the grass joined the bark in the conflagration.
Then, from our left, figures began to emerge, squeezing out from a thin crack beneath a giant boulder.
They were Comanche women, dragging little girls behind them. Dirt streaked, and terrified by their expression, blinking and shielding their eyes from the daylight. Their wild black hair hung in their faces, dresses of buckskin and trade cloth torn, in some cases hanging shockingly from their bruised bodies. They screeched in their language. Warnings? Insensible panic? Dozens of voices all at once. I couldn’t tell.
“They’re drivin’ ‘em out front,” said Bigfoot, taking aim with the Brand at the growing crowd of women and girls stumbling down the rock.
“It could be a distraction....,” I ventured.
It was both.
At the same time I saw four huge creatures come running from around the great stone, the silver haired hare-lipped leader among them, a gigantic figure with gray flecked black hair launched into the air in an unbelievable arc that began behind the great boulder from under which the captives were streaming and ended a few feet in front of us with a tremendous shock beneath our feet. The black beast came down with its gigantic feet directly on a pair of screaming women, smashing them hideously flat with its tremendous weight. I saw by the pendulous shapes beneath its chest hair that it was female. Perhaps the only female, and likely barren, if the things had resorted to snatching human women. It rose to its full height, maybe nine feet, and roared.
Bigfoot dropped to his knee and fired the Brand.
A .69 caliber bullet struck one of the charging males just above the breastbone in the pit of the neck, nearly blowing the head off. It fell back into its fellows, tripping them up.
Bigfoot dropped the rifle and slid the stiff rope off his shoulder, running backwards towards the slope, swinging the lariat over his head as the female advanced.
I fell back with him, nearly stumbling, the shotgun rattling in my trembling hands.
Bigfoot threw the rope and lassoed the female, catching first on her head and then slipping down around her neck. But the line was slack as she closed the distance. Without a word, Bigfoot turned and ran heedlessly down the slope, leapt over a rocky edge, plummeting into space, and disappeared somewhere below.
The line snapped taut and, combined with her own momentum, flung the huge female forward. She stumbled and fell directly onto the flaming post oak trunk, which pierced her just beneath the ribs. She shrieked in agony as her weight sank the wood halfway through her body, but she stopped her fall with one hand and rolled to avoid the fire, partially uprooting it.
As she struggled to rise, I ran forward and jammed the stubby barrel of my shotgun against her terrible face and pulled both triggers.
The resulting explosion destroyed her skull, coating me with its contents. The great body slumped and succumbed to the fire.
I turned to help Bigfoot, still hanging from the rope. Something jerked me into the air by my neck from behind and flung me bodily away.
I turned head over end and crashed against a boulder, tumbling down, stunned, sure I had broken my arm and perhaps fractured a rib or two.
I blacked out for a moment, but it was a short moment. I was shaken awake by a woman bearing a red-faced
wailing infant in the crook of her arm.
“Médico?” she screamed at me.
It was Mariela Ruiz and her daughter. I sat up, trying to find the breath to tell her not to try and pull me up even as she did.
I leaned heavily against her as another woman, a Comanche, slid her arm around me.
Thus borne across the rocks, I strained to look as Bigfoot pulled himself back up in time to see the creature that had flung me over its shoulder. It brandished a huge stone in both hands, ready to smash in his head, but Bigfoot’s other hand came up with one of the Walker pistols and blasted it once in the meaty arm. The creature dropped the upraised stone on its own head, stumbled backwards, and Bigfoot finished it with two more shots to its chest.
He regained his footing as the two remaining males, one brown haired, the other the great grey, closed on him, ducking under his shots and raising their arms to protect themselves, rushing him even as the bullets blew pieces of muscle and bone away.
They grabbed him at the same time, and the three combatants put up such a furious row that stringy fur and blood orbited them in a constant cloud. All three roared and yowled, and the sound of the blows and the tearing of cloth and hide overwhelmed the crackling of the fire.
The ladies would have carried me away after the rest of the women, who were nimbly flowing down the rock to the tree line, but I insistently stopped, shrugging off their grips. I had to see what became of the Ranger, even if it meant my death. The women abandoned me and went on. I had lost my weapon and could be of no help. I felt supremely useless.
The fight was terrible, like a brawl of grizzly bears. It carried them back and forth, smashed them against boulders, rolled them across the ground. Blood splashed the rocks.
Then a great yelping went up, and the brown haired male staggered away from the fight, both fists jammed against its throat, trying in vain to keep the blood from gushing out from beneath its chin. It staggered and rolled off the edge of the tier, its corpse crashing down somewhere below.
Bigfoot Walsh and the great grey ape man parted momentarily and circled each other, as if mutually granting one last respite before the decision of their contest. Both were torn and bloodied, their hairy hides matted with red.
Bigfoot’s blanket coat was torn away, the shirt beneath in bloody tatters. One of his ears had been partly chewed off, and his face was half-obscured by blood running from a great bite over his left eye. His massive knife was in hand, the bright steel painted scarlet.
The taller, hare-lipped gray was half-blinded, its left eyeball swinging from the gory socket. Its clenching fingers and gnashing teeth were red, and he limped slightly, one leg slashed below the knee and trickling a steady stream of blood.
Then, like two great gorillas, they swelled and embraced each other with a mighty slap of their muscular arms. Struggling back and forth in that terrible hug, I fancied I could hear the creak of their muscles as they strained to the utmost. I saw the gray’s fingers bury themselves in Bigfoot’s upper arms, and send five rivers of blood coursing down his torso. Bigfoot’s knife flashed.
It looked impossible that the smaller fighter could triumph, but just as I thought that, the gray threw its head back sharply, staring wide-eyed into the sky, and then sagged to its knees and slumped against Bigfoot Walsh.
The Texas Ranger backed away, almost gently, easing the gray haired creature down on his belly.
The handle of his big knife protruded from the base of its skull.
Bigfoot fell back heavily against a stone, and sat there with his powerful forearms resting on his drawn up knees.
I slowly made my way over. Bigfoot stared down at the dead grey hair at his feet the whole time.
“Lieutenant?” I asked cautiously as I approached.
He did not look up at me, but only watched the dead creature as though expecting it to rise again, even when I knelt beside him and gingerly inspected his wounds, tearing my shirt to bind up the bleeding holes in his arm.
“They come and took my ma,” he said unbidden. “The skookums. Before I was born. My pa was part Ni Mii Puu. Tracked ‘em to a cave up on Loowit Mountain. Mt. Saint Helens. He got her back, but not before they’d...been at her. Months later she died havin’ me.”
I finished dressing his arm and looked from him to the dead creature, whose head rested on its big chin. In repose, I could not help but see the distinctive mottled discoloration it shared with the Ranger.
Bigfoot must have seen it in my eyes, because when he looked up at me, his striking face hardened and he brushed aside my attention and rose unsteadily to his giant feet.
He spared one more look down at the old beast man curled on the ground, and then limped off across the rock, stopping only to pick up his Brand rifle.
“Let’s get them women home,” he said.
I hurried to keep up with his long stride.
I did not ask why he had not retrieved his knife.
I’m on record as a huge fan of the TV series Kung Fu, which I urge you to check out if you’ve never seen. I think its influence is obvious in this story, which was written as a tie-in into the Dead West universe of Tim Marquitz and J.M. Martin. I dig the especially weird design of the giant monsters in the old Gamera flicks from Daiei and designed Dzoavits’ appearance with that in mind. The illustrator Chuck Lukacs did a pretty killer rendering of the monster for the Kaiju Rising anthology, though he left out the mop of black hair, which I kinda missed.
I thought the colorful blasphemies of the work boss might prove offensive to some readers but I wound up catching a little flak on this one over the racism instead, which caught me off guard. The most virulent racist in the piece is pretty obviously a buffoon.
Devil’s Cap Brawl
Joe Blas was so called because his papist upbringing in Drom, County Tipperary, had given him a knack for devising the most ingenious blasphemies anyone on either side of the Sierras had ever heard.
He blew hot air into the cold red palms of his hands and turned that coarse and inventive tongue against Chow Lan, the agent for the forty coolies under his charge.
“Jesus Christ’s holey hands an’ feet! What d’you mean they’re scared to blast? We’ve blown though every goddamned cliff and mountain since Dutch Flat with no issue! What’s different about this one?”
Chow Lan’s job was to act as liaison between the red-in-the-face Irish riding boss and his aforementioned forty countrymen, who made up the spearhead of the work gang Charles Crocker had hired on to get the Central Pacific Railroad into Utah by 1867. He divvied up their paychecks, keeping a customary cut of it for himself, placed orders with the gwailo agent for suitable foodstuffs for their cook, and voiced employee concerns when the situation arose.
“Hesutu say mountain home to devil. He say brasting powder free devil. Coolies scared. Say no brast.”
Joe slapped his hat down on his knee.
“That goddamned Indian!”
Hesutu was a halfbreed Shoshone and Miwok that had signed on with them six weeks ago along with a gaggle of Paiutes, specially hired to drive a ten yoke team of oxen up to the camp. To avoid the troubles their Union Pacific cousins had been having with the Sioux and the Cheyenne, Strobridge, the superintendent of the CP, had signed treaties with the local Sierra tribes and offered them all jobs, and male and female had answered the call.
Though the Celestials were diligent, they were superstitious beasties, even requiring their own joss house in camp with a heathen priest on duty. Joe had found the Indians liked to sport with them from time to time. One joker of a Paiute had convinced the Celestials that a dragon lived in the high country, and they had lost a day convincing them there wasn’t any such thing. Hesutu was a name that had come up again and again in the past few days.
“Look,” said Joe, rubbing his patchy jaw in exasperation. “You tell them Hesutu talks with a forked tongue, that red serpent. Tell them they better get to work or I’ll send the whole lot of ‘em hoofin’ like sorefooted Israelites back to Sacramento t
hrough the snow.”
“I tell, but they no listen!” Chow Lan said.
Joe sighed. He snatched his brass speaking trumpet off the table and slapped his hat back on his head. He shoved Chow Lan aside and went out of his shanty into the cold air.
They were fifteen miles west of Cisco, high up in the Sierras. Last year they’d been delayed in blasting by an early snow. Word had come down to his lowly ear from Charles Crocker himself; no such setbacks this time around. The line was to be open from Sacramento to Cisco by December and to the far end of Devil’s Cap summit by the same time next year. They had three and half months to get there, and neither mountain nor the buckskin hoodoo tales of any damned Indian was to retard their progress.
Joe saw the young Chinee priest, barefoot in the snow, doing the same weird, slow dance he did every morning outside the crude joss house. He looked like an only child play fighting, but underwater, turning and bending, throwing an occasional sluggish punch or a ridiculously high kick. Only his queue-less, shaven head distinguished him as a priest; he wore the same patchy blue loose clothes all the coolies wore. There was an air of ease and self-assurance about him that annoyed Joe, but he wasn’t some fat, soft handed parson. He did his fair share of work. He brewed tea for the workers all day, kept the big forty gallon whiskey barrel the men drank from brimming, and was even known to fill in for a man struck sick on the gangs now and again, so he wouldn’t lose his place. The heathens respected him, bowing to him when they saw him pass, and at night he directed their prayers up to Buddha or whatever with his droning chants. Mainly, he stayed quiet and out of the way, which Joe liked. He’d been at Wilson’s Ranch when they’d arrived at the beginning of the year, and had volunteered with them, solely to see to their spiritual wellbeing. He figured the priest had some angle on the side, fleecing the coolies out of their fantan money, or dealing opium, though he had never seen him pass the collection plate.
It was a 200 foot walk through a tunnel of snow from the camp to the work gang. Walking that tunnel made Joe nervous. Due to the blasting, snowslides were not infrequent, and had carried off whole gangs of men. In most cases their bodies hadn’t been found. The avalanche that claimed them also made their only graves.
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