He had killed many evil things in his long career. He’d been all over the west and seen things most people would never see in ten lifetimes, or could ever even imagine. It had been a good hunt, but now it was over. He pulled the trigger. The cylinder turned, the hammer came down, but nothing happened. With a scream of frustration he threw the gun against the wall of the cave. Liz Duval must have emptied it when she took it from him. In his present condition, with those hands, he knew he would not be able to reload it. His grotesquely distorted fingers lacked the dexterity. He sank to his knees again and began to moan. Then lay down on the cave floor and curled up into a ball.
He lay there for hours, his mind black with despair, until in the swirling chaos of his mind, something occurred to him. He had taken the Valcobre right after he’d been bitten. Could that have caused this aberration of the transformation process? Had he taken too little too, too late? Or maybe too much? He did not know why Cha-Qal-Tan’s potion had not worked as it should. And he did not know how to undo the effects the medicine had on him. But Cha-Qal-Tan would know. The Coyotera medicine man would know what had gone wrong and how to fix it, and if there was no way to fix it, he would help him to leave this world, and enter Tonk-Shani, the Coyotera Land of Good Hunting.
A sudden ray of hope now beamed in the darkness. Slate put aside for the time being any thought of doing away with himself. His Colt 1855 revolving carbine lay on the cave floor a few feet away. He got on his feet, grabbed the rifle and moved closer to the cave entrance where the light was better. He knew the gun was loaded. He’d loaded it himself just before he’d entered the cave. He had to find Cha-Qal-Tan, but first he had to free himself of the shackles he’s put on himself. He held the weapon clumsily in his left hand and put his crooked and bent finger of his right hand over the trigger. The gun barked and the chain flew apart.
There was nothing he could do about the wrist shackles. They would have to be taken care of later. Slate strapped his canteen over his shoulder and let everything else behind, including his pistol and carbine. They were of no use to him now. He walked the trail down the side of the mountain. There was no sign of Dutch. In an hour, he stood alone out on the vast, dry sands of the Sonora Desert.
He knew where the Coyoteras were. They’d been rounded up on the Fort Apache Reservation in the White Mountains north of the Gila River. He’d have to walk across the desert to where it began to turn green and rose up into the higher elevation. It was at least four or five days walk. In the condition he was in he doubted he would make it. But he had to try. It was already past noon.
He walked the rest of the day, hour after hour, mile after mile of burning heat. He stopped at night and lay on the sand exhausted and watched the moon rise. He waited for it to happen. It was the third night of the full moon. It hung above him, not as big as the last two nights, but red and angry looking. He waited for the change to come, but nothing happened. The Valcobre may have frozen him halfway between man and beast, but at least it seemed to have ensured that he would no longer be subject to the nocturnal transformation into a werewolf. He might get no better but he could get no worse either. After a while he fell asleep.
It was bright daylight, when he awoke and saw three men on horseback looking down on him.
“Well, would you look at that,” one of them said. “What is it? Some kind of animal?”
“Sure is ugly as hell,” one of the others said. Slate couldn’t see their faces. They were silhouettes standing in front of the rising sun.
“Throw a rope on him,” said another man from behind him.
A horse whinnied. Slate turned and saw Dutch with a rope on him. Slate sprang to his feet. But the man behind him spun him around by the shoulder and hit him in the stomach with the butt of a rifle.
“What you gonna do?” the man said, kicking Slate in the ribs. One of the horsemen threw a lasso and the loop fell around Slate’s shoulders and tightened, pinning his arms to his sides. Slate jumped to his feet snarling. The man standing next to him swung his revolver. The barrel cracked against the side of his skull and he fell.
“Steady down,” the man said. They tied him more securely with several more loops of the rope.
“Get up,” the man who had hit him said. “Can you understand English?”
Slate got up and spat in his face. The man backhanded him and sent him sprawling on his back. “You don’t spit on Jack Cauley,” he said, and gave him a few more kicks. He mounted his horse and turned to the others. “Let’s ride,” he barked.
They traveled west, pulling Slate behind them, dragging him when he fell. They were going in the direction opposite of the way he wanted to go, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that. The second night when they stopped he heard them talking around the campfire.
“How much you reckon you’ll get for him?” one of them asked.
“Much as we can,” Cauley said. “Seems like that carnival we saw in Phoenix would be willing to pay a good price for a freak like that there.” He nodded in Slate’s direction. “He’ll fit right in with them other weirdos.”
“This been a good trip,” the other said. “First we find that fine horse, and then him. Should get something for that buckskin, sure.”
“In two, three days, we’ll find out.”
Three days later, when Captain Carlson threw Slate into the cage, he was more dead than alive. Twenty-five dollars was the amount he paid the men for this new addition to his show.
“You should have taken better care of him,” the Captain told Cauley. “He might not live. I’d have paid more if he was in better shape.”
Slate lay in the cage and didn’t care if he lived or died. He heard them dicker for the horse. In the end, the Captain paid another forty for Dutch.
The carnival traveled south from Phoenix at a leisurely pace, hitting several small towns along the way. By the time they arrived in Tucson four weeks later, Slate had recovered well enough to be put on display. He had gotten stronger and his hatred of Captain Carlson had grown stronger as well. He lay there, now, in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, thinking, remembering, dreaming of escape and revenge.
It was still night when he was awakened. He heard someone rattling the door in the side of his cage. He sat up. The door opened and he saw the girl who said she was from the sea standing there.
“I know you can understand me,” she said. “I don’t know who you are, or what has happened that turned you into the creature that you are. But I know you understand me. You must leave here.”
He didn’t move.
“I know you are a half-wild thing, and if you stay here, you will die,” she said. “We here in this carnival, we have to stay. We have nowhere else to go, no one to turn to or who will care if we live or die. At least here, we have some kind of a life, food, shelter, a roof over our heads. But you cannot survive here. I see that. So you must go and try to save yourself. If you get out of here, maybe you will find some kind of salvation. There is no salvation for us. You must go.”
Slate reached out a hand to her. He tried to speak, but it was useless. He pointed at the Captain’s wagon.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “He’s drunk. He won’t wake up until morning. He will be angry when he finds out you’re gone. He will know it was I who released you. He will be angry but he needs me. I’m one of his star attractions. So go now.”
A soft garbled animal sound came out of Slate’s throat. He jumped through the open door and dropped onto the ground. He stood for a moment, his savage eyes gazing into hers. He knew what would happen to her. Carlson might not kill her, but he’d make her wish that he would. He didn’t want to leave her this way, but he had no choice. If he wanted to get out of there without being shot down, he had to run. But he promised himself, if he lived, if he could find a way out of his nightmare, he would come back.
“Go!” she whispered.
He ran down the midway, in the direction opposite Captain Carlson’s wagon. He ran around the last tent and came
to the rope corral where the horses were kept. The animals woke up as he approached and made nickering and blowing sounds. He found Dutch and walked up to him quickly and put his arms around his neck. At first the animal tried to back away, but Slate hung onto him and put his hand over Dutch’s nose and let him smell it. The animal’s head reared up, but Slate held on, kept his hand tight over his nose. Dutch nodded his head up and down. There were no saddles in sight. A shadow moved out from behind one of the tents.
“Hey!” a man’s voice shouted. “Who’s there?” It was Haney. Without a sound, Slate grabbed hold of the horse’s mane and swung up on his back. He pressed his heels gently into the horse’s sides and the horse ran a few steps and sprang over the rope corral. A shot rang out but missed. They were free.
Four days ride through the Sonora Desert. No weapons, and no food. But he knew the territory and knew where to find what little water there was. The waterholes he knew were nearly dry. He had to dig with his fingers and squeeze the water out of wet sand, using the cloth of his shirt for a strainer. He found insects to eat, and he managed to kill a lizard with a rock and eat it raw. After three days, he did not know if he or Dutch would survive.
On the third day he lay in the shade of a rock that jutted out of the desert floor. There had been no water for twenty hours. He thought of staying there and not getting up. But then an image came into his brain. He saw the sea-green eyes of Elois, the Mermaid Girl. He saw ocean waves crashing in those eyes and somehow it made him feel cool and wet. He reached inside his shirt and grasped the silver medallion with the flying eagle on it. He held on to it and it gave him strength. He got back on his feet and walked. Dutch followed him.
By the time he reached the reservation, man and horse were nearly dead. Dutch walked slowly down the dirt road that ran through the settlement, his head down, tongue flopping out of his mouth. The Beast Man on his back could barely stay on. The Coyotera people came out of their huts and lean-tos and stared at them in awe and fear, not knowing what to make of them. They had heard of the Man-Wolf-Who-Walks-on-Two-Legs, but they had never seen one before. And they had never seen one riding a half-dead horse.
The dry squalor of the settlement swam before Slate’s eyes in a hazy, dizzying fog. It had been a long time since he had seen Cha-Qal-Tan. That was in the time when they lived free. They had lived there for centuries and hunted and roamed free until the White Man had come. Now they were forced to live here on this land that would grow nothing. Cha-Qal-Tan. Was he still alive? Would he know him, now that he had become this grotesque monster? Dutch stopped in the middle of the street. He could no longer move.
Slate tried to speak, but it was impossible. He raised a hand as the men and women gathered around him and he fell from Dutch’s back. He was unconscious before he hit the ground.
When he awoke he was inside, out of the blistering sun. He looked up at the wrinkled grey eyes and knew at once it was Cha-Qal-Tan. The man had aged twenty years in the ten years since he had seen him. There was a sadness in those eyes, and yet as before, Slate saw infinite depths in them. Depths that went deeper than the sorrows he had seen and lived.
“You are Ch’iin Nalzheehe’,” he said, peering down at him. “Are you not?”
Slate tried to talk but the words would not come, only a hoarse barking sound. Ch’iin Nalzheehe’, the name Cha-Qal-Tan had given him, the man who hunts demons.
“I recognize you from this,” the Medicine Man said. He held the silver medallion he had worn around his neck. “The Ghost Eagle.” He laid it down on Slate’s chest. “You told me long ago how a Kiowa Chieftain gave it to you for saving his life. The Ghost Eagle has power. It is a symbol of friendship. He who wears it can never be harmed by any people of the Indian tribes.”
Slate stared up at the old man, remembering how he had been years ago, when he rode his black stallion through the mountains and they hunted deer together, so long ago.
“But a great misfortune has befallen you, Ch’iin Nalzheehe’,” the shaman said. “Your leg has the bite of the Man-Wolf on it. And you yourself are a halfling. It has sometimes happened with the Valcobre.”
Slate lay still, holding his breath.
“There may be no cure, Ch’iin Nalzheehe’,” Cha-Qal-Tan said. Slate’s heart hammered in his chest. “But we will try, my friend,” the medicine man said.
Four braves came into the hut and carried Slate out into the hot daylight. He noticed now that he was naked except for an Apache breach cloth covering his privates. They carried him down to an open area beyond the settlement, overlooking a cliff. The green of a forest lay in the valley down below. They laid him down on the ground and tied his wrists and feet to wooden stakes driven into the ground. The shackles that had been on his wrists were gone, removed somehow while he was unconscious.
A fire burned a few feet away and a small black kettle hung over it on a tripod. Whatever was boiling in it sent up waves of steam. The six inch-blade of a knife lay in the fire. Four apache women wearing ceremonial masks appeared and began to chant. They had long shafts of dried buffalo grass bunched in their hands. A brave sat beating a steady rhythm on a small drum. The man chanted and the women dipped the long grass in the fire and danced around Slate, brushing the burning ends of the grass on his skin. Clouds of smoke that smelled like honeysuckle rose up around him.
Cha-Qal-Tan came through the smoke and kneeled next to him. He had a cup in his hand made from a gourd that had been cut in half. A thick black liquid lay in it. The medicine man lifted Slate’s head and put the cup to his lips. He drank the foul tasting substance and tried not to gag on it. “Drink, Ch’iin Nalzheehe’,” the shaman said. “More.” Slate took another swallow and Cha-Qal-Tan let his head back down.
The effect was immediate. An inner fire seemed to consume him, as if flames burned inside his body. The world around him changed. As quickly as someone striking a match, he was in a strange blue place with white snow. There were deer running across his field of vision. He had his Colt rifle in his hand and tried to get off a shot. But they ran too fast. He went over a hill and down in a deep blue valley he saw a herd of buffalo. A young brave ran alongside him. It was Cha-Qal-Tan in his youth. They ran down in the snow to where the buffalo were.
Then there was sharp pain. Something had hold of his leg. He saw a giant wolf gnawing on his leg and he turned the carbine on it and fired at it. He opened his eyes and for a moment he was back in reality and saw Cha-Qal-Tan squatting over his leg, the knife in his hand, the red hot blade flat on top of the bite, searing the skin. He looked down and saw the skin blistering and turning black under the knife. It no longer hurt. The four women chanted and danced, brushing him with the Sacred Smoke as the brave beat the tom-tom.
The medicine the shaman had given him took over his mind again. He was back in the snow valley and the wolf would not let go of his leg. The animal was bleeding from the Slate’s bullet, but it would not open its jaws. More wolves appeared, a pack of a dozen. They circled warily, their tails switching back and forth, their eyes narrow, their ears down. Clouds of steam rose out of their mouths with each breath. Slate fired another shot at the wolf that had hold of his leg and it fell in a pile of blood and fur at his feet.
The other wolves charged—too many of them at once. He got one but the others brought him down and he jabbed at them with the rifle butt and kicked them, and clawed at them with his hands. Then Chal-Qal-Tan came with his bow. Arrows flew like lightning bolts and some of the wolves fell and died twisting on the ground. Slate lay bleeding.
Then Elois, the Mermaid Girl, came walking toward them across the snow. The remaining wolves saw her, and something about her frightened them. They cowered as she got closer and then ran away whimpering, as she stood over him. Cha-Qal-Tan was gone and now the snow fell harder. Slate looked up into sea-green eyes that filled the sky.
A week later, Slate stood on the very spot where he had been cured. Dutch stood next to him, now healthy and restored. Slate wore clothes that the Ft. Apache
Indian agent, a man he knew named Clayton, had given him. He had a rifle and a pistol. Not his old weapons, and not silver bullets—those he would have to go back home to Ft. Collins for—but the weapons he had would do for now.
Slate looked down the dusty road and the collection of shacks, huts, and wikkiups. He saw the parched land and the clouds of dust blowing, the children in tattered clothes, the women carrying wood on their backs, or working outside their homes milling corn or sweeping the dust out of their living quarters. Cha-Qal-Tan came to stand beside him.
“This is home now?” Slate said.
“The white man came and stole our land, Ch’iin Nalzheehe’,” the old man said. “We fought but there were too many. Those of us left alive are either too old or have no spirit for war. So we must live here until we die. I do not think it will be for long.”
“It saddens me, Cha-Qal-Tan,” Slate said. “I remember the good days.”
The old man looked up at him. “I remember no good days, Ch’inn Nalzheehe’,” he said. “The cage they have put us in has taken my memory away.”
“I’m sorry,” Slate said. “To live in a cage is to die. I wish I could do something.”
“There is nothing anyone can do,” the medicine man said. “Where will you go?”
“Back to the place where I was,” Slate said. He put a foot in one of Dutch’s stirrups and swung up into the saddle. “There is a girl there who used to live in the sea. She told me that cages come in many shapes. She let me out of mine. I intend to return the favor.”
Use Enough Gun (Legends of the Monster Hunter Book 3) Page 37
