Slammed to the deck, furious arms groped and prodded him whilst also punching, gouging and tearing him. Brought to his feet, the zombie like crew stretched Porters arms, binding him with taut ropes between the mizzen and main masts.
Captain Quinn in crazed devilish bravado shouted, “Rise! Rise up and claim from the clutches of Yahweh this misbegotten soul! Steal back this son of thunder!”
Porter gazed through bleary blackened eyes. Waves off the starboard side seemed to broil and part as tentacles darker than Gehenna’s abyss rose, flailing against the surface.
“Behold, he comes!” shouted Quinn.
Porter now understood the meaning of Quinn calling himself a vessel. The demon god of the deeps, Dagon, held the minds of the crew in his tentacled grasp.
A dozen or more, sinewy long sucker laden fingers reached and took hold of the gunwales of the Dagon. The sailors in a trance stood by as the demon monster tilted the ship with its flabby bulk.
Stretched like Samson between dark temple pillars, Porter prayed as firmly as he ever had. He called for deliverance and strained against the lines holding him between the masts.
Captain Quinn, high priest to this dark god of the depths, intoned necrotic verse in wicked glee.
Dark abysmal eyes scanned the deck, locking on the bound man.
His titanic strength returning, Porter called, “Lord, allow me to take this demon to the deep! Never to return!”
The colossal squid faced demon reached. Slimy grips yanked Porter from the mizzenmast ropes and lurched him toward its beaklike maw.
Porter pulled away, futile as it was.
Snakelike appendages coiled over his body, caressing, squeezing, killing.
With a prayer still echoing through clenched teeth, Porter pulled, willing the temple to fall, even at his own peril. He did as much as he could do . . . on his own.
Ropes snapped and the Ruler of the deep took Porter from the ship. Saltwater, bitter as bad blood rushed into his retching mouth.
Death embraced him.
But prayers were heard and answered, even in the depths of the devil’s realm.
The last moment before Porter hit the grim waters, he heard the grinding snap of breaking wood.
Following Porter and the deep demon like a drawn arrow, the mainmast cracked and tipped, plunging itself into the gelatinous mass of tentacles.
Underwater, Dagon screamed in forced breathless silence. Shooting out its tentacles in horrific constricted force, smashing through the hull of its namesake.
Porter rolled in the deep, casting off his bonds. He met the stricken eye of Dagon and kicked away as its beak snapped in tenuous despair. He broke the swelling surface.
The Dagon listed and took fire. Men awoken from their sorcerous trance, tried to fight the blaze, but either powder, opium or oil exploded.
In a fiery instant, Porter was the last man alive at sea.
Porter held to a broken piece of mast, rolling with the waves as the currents carried him into a sea lane. Weak as a babe, he laughed with joy as the good ship, Brooklyn, came into view.
Bound for San Francisco, Porter would soon enough be on land, where he belonged. Soon enough this son of thunder would pay his respects to a certain Mr. Kelly. And Porter swore he would never cut his hair again.
Tangle Crowned Devil
A black scorpion crawled ponderously up Porter’s arm. His bowie knife sheared the stinger without knocking the creature off balance. He slid the blade back in its sheath, silent as sleeping death.
He flicked the crippled creature away and continued watching the rustlers camp from just below the spine of a shadowy crag. He wouldn’t take the chance that even the dim web of stars might outline him.
Port was being extra-cautious as of late, quite a number of folks had been taking shots at him lately and he hadn’t yet been able to identify them all. The likelihood that it was the rustlers themselves watching their back trail was the most likely explanation, but if that were the case we were they being so careless now?
When the moon dipped behind clouds, he felt his way down the jagged granite boulders and stalked toward the fading orange glow of the campfire. The floor of pine needles concealed his approach and the rustlers slept soundly. Even the watchman, a half-breed Lakota, called Red Cap was dozing against a tree.
The horses nickered at Porter’s approach. He grunted softly to them and they quieted, still shying away. The scent of the predator was strong even with the cool wind whipping through the pines.
A horse neighed, waking Red Cap who peered blindly into the palpable darkness. The smoky dying fire gave stark shape to the night, each tree seemed a slender column of rough tiger striped orange and black.
Port knew that old Red Cap saw nothing but might feel his presence and wake the others, he had to move fast.
Red Cap glanced toward his companions, likely taking false comfort in their nearness. The tree he sat under ran sap across his homespun blanket. The stickiness threatened to trap his hands. He rubbed them furiously against his pants so they wouldn’t mar his Sharps rifle.
A soft sound in the needles was all the warning Red Cap had before looking up in time to see Port’s snub-nosed Navy Colt revolver trained on his chest.
“Put it down. Quietly,” whispered Porter, harsh as steel trap. His long wild hair and beard made him look every bit the maniacal gunslinger-come-lawman. For good or evil, people knew him when they saw him. Legend had it that he had shot well over a hundred men, some called him the Destroying Angel.
“Porter, I didn’t want any part of this. Honest,” Red Cap said, putting down the rifle and rolling away from the tree. “Two-Toes, he said . . .”
“On your belly.”
Port bound the Red Cap’s hands with stout rope and then put the man’s own dirty sock in his mouth to gag him. Porter then walked to the sleeping men and nudged the closest one with his boot. As the man rolled over angry, Port stuck the snub nosed barrel in his face.
“Shhh. Don’t need to wake your friends up just yet.”
Port repeated the process until three of the five rustlers were bound up like corn husk dolls. He kicked the last two awake. They yawned and exchanged horrified looks as they beheld the infamous gunman.
“Porter, you son of a—,”
“Save the sweet talk for the judge, Two-Toes,” said Porter, tossing a length of rope at Two-Toes Turley, the leader of the gang. “One of you tie up the other. And if it ain’t top notch, I’ll be making you walk.”
That prospect alone was enough to make the two men fight each other over who got to bind who. Once they finished Porter bound the last one and double checked the other.
“My hands, I can’t feel ‘em,” whined Saw-Tooth Roberts.
“That’s alright, you don’t need ‘em to ride anyway,” said Porter, picking Saw-Tooth up by his belt and flinging him sideways upon a waiting horse.
With dawn’s early light, Porter led the five rustlers and their herd of horses back out the box canyon and northwest toward Fort Kanab. Way out across the vale Port thought he saw a small light brown creature standing on its hind end watching them. It had antlers. He shook his head guessing a shrub must have been beside the creature granting it a tangled crown. He kept riding on, but it was a strange sight.
It wasn’t yet noon when a boy of perhaps twelve or thirteen came riding from the east at a furious pace.
He was calling for Porter before he even hit earshot. “Mr. Rockwell! Mr. Rockwell! I found you! Right where Mr. Lee said you’d be.”
“Easy son, give that horse a breather before she keel’s over on you. What’s got you so riled?”
The boy nodded and got off his horse, stroking the panting creatures neck. The affection he had for the animal was plain. “Mr. Rockwell, sir, I’m John Worrell, Hezekiah Deacon’s nephew. My uncle has rich claim of a mining camp on the other side of Lee’s ferry. We’re down a box canyon that he discovered.”
Porter listened and took a swig of Valley Tan whiskey f
rom his dusters side pocket. “So?”
“We need help, something is a murdering at night.”
“Claim jumpers? Ute’s?” Porter took another swig.
The boy shook his head vigorously. “No sir. My Uncle could handle other men.”
Porter squinted at the boy against the sunlight. “What are you saying?”
“It’s a monster sir. Kills with its mouth and antlers.”
The rustlers bound and uncomfortable as they were, chuckled at the boy.
The boy glared at the rustlers. “You tell them to keep their traps shut. I’m sorry, but this thing is real. It may sound like a story but tain’t.”
“Monster huh? How big? Big as a man?” asked Port. Holding his hand up to gauge height. “This high?” The boy shook his head. “This high?”
“No, it’s a lot bigger.”
“This high?”
“No, bigger.”
Porter grinned, “Lot bigger huh?” He took another swig of his whiskey. “What are you all mining in this canyon your Uncle discovered? Pyrite? Mercury? Guano?”
“You don’t believe me do you? Uncle says you’re the only one that can help us. He said you’ve dealt with monsters before.”
“Maybe I have, but I got a bounty I aim to collect on these rustlers. Its gonna pay twenty dollars a head. I don’t have time for something that your Pa ought a shoot himself. Probably just a bear or panther.”
“No it isn’t. Its killed good men,” protested the boy, wiping away a tear. “My Uncle said.”
“My uncle said, my uncle said, look kid. I haven’t got time. I’m riding to Fort Kanab.”
“Uncle Hezekiah said you might say that. Said you might not remember him from the old days back in California, back in Murderer’s Bar, but he remembers you. Said you were the most deadly gunslinger he ever knew. He knew what would motivate you.” The kid reached into his saddlebag.
Porter, ever wary, kept a free hand near his gun.
The kid pulled something small enough to be concealed in his hand out of the saddlebag and tossed it to Porter. It glittered, capturing sunlight across its face. The rustlers saw it too, nudging each other in excitement.
Porter caught it and his eyes grew wide. A gold nugget bigger than any he had ever seen, even in the days of the gold rush no one had found one this big.
“There’s more where that came from, if you will come.”
“You could buy an army with this. Why’s it need to be me?”
“Bullets can’t kill this monster.”
“Course not,” said Porter. “What am I supposed to do? Grin it to death?”
“Everybody in these parts knows that Porter Rockwell can’t be harmed by bullet nor blade. That a holy man blessed you like Samson of old. Your long hair and you lead a charmed life. You coming with me is our only hope of killing what can’t be killed.”
Port admired the nugget again asking, “Am I supposed to keep this for the job?”
The boy nodded. “It’s to pay you to believe and have a little respect.”
Port glanced at the rustlers behind. “Two-Toes, Red Cap, Saw-Tooth and you others, if I let you boys go—you leave the territory and I never want to see you again. Do we understand each other?”
The rustlers who knew they were facing a hanging, all nodded. Porter cut the bindings on the lead rustler and then the rest.
“You’re gonna listen to this kid’s tall tale and leave us out here? What about our horses?” grumbled Two-Toes.
Port wheeled. “You ain’t got horses anymore. Get going ‘fore I change my mind.”
“You’re a gonna abandon us without guns or horses? Why that’s practically a death sentence.”
“I could use you up right now, Turley,” Port snarled, emphasizing the slang for killing.
“We ain’t forgetting this.” The rustlers shook their heads and begrudgingly started walking.
Whether they meant that in a positive or negative light Port no longer cared. The nugget was big enough to be worth twenty bounties and if Two-Toes and the others tried any more rustling, he would just snag them again for possibly a higher bounty. Things have a way of working themselves out.
Porter ushered the pack of horses after the kid down toward the southeast. They rode the better part of the day, all the while Porter asked the kid for more information.
“So why don’t bullets work?”
“We’ve tried shooting it, cutting at it, nothing penetrates the skin. Uncle Hezekiah lit some bonfires a couple nights back. It stays away out from the fire but the box canyon don’t have much wood left. And when the fires die down it comes back and feeds.”
“Feeds?”
“It’s a murderer, a cannibal, its eaten seven men and one woman,” said the kid, looking away to wipe a tear. “A monster killed my pa!”
“Your pa?”
The kid nodded. “I wanna kill that bastard so bad, but there’s nothing I can do . . . yet.”
“Alright, answer me this. Why not just leave?”
“You saw the nugget. My uncle and the others won’t leave. They keep pulling the gold out of a fissure the river must have cut open this last spring. Uncle says by next year the river may change and we’ll never get back. He’s rich and crazy as Midas. Me? I just want revenge on that murderer.”
Port nodded, “Can’t say I blame ya.”
As Port watched his back trail he saw the little antlered creature away out in the distance and this time he was sure there was no brush or shrubs to give illusion to the diminutive abomination.
The kid looked back and grinned.
“You seen those before?” asked Port.
“Jackalopes? Yeah, some reckon they are lucky, others say an omen of death.”
“What do you think?”
“I know they are.”
They reached Lee’s Ferry on the Colorado river by late afternoon. Porter arranged for his newly acquired herd of horses to stay there while he and the kid would be ferried to Deacon’s camp across the river. Once across what was known as Pariah’s Crossing, they followed a narrow trail upriver, half of the time in the river it seemed. Porter marveled at the stark canyon walls, they were carved deep red, streaked black and burning orange like fire in stone.
“I’ve been here before kid and there ain’t no canyon like you’re telling me.”
“There is. You just have to know where to look. It’s not far now.”
Sure enough, just around a long bend in the river a wide wet sandbar opened up along the cliff face and tucked into the slanting golden shadows of this Grand Canyon was a slot canyon no wider than six feet. It reached up hundreds of feet to the mesa above. The closer Port looked, it didn’t seem to be a force of erosion, instead it was a great crack in the high desert tableau; the birthing pains of an earthquake not long ago.
Beneath the musky scent of the river, Porter smelt the stink of death. This unhallowed natural hall reeked of grim loss and decay. The horses threatened to bolt and each rider was forced to dismount and lead.
At one-point Port looked back and saw the jackalope again. He guessed it had to be a different one because there was no way such an animal could have crossed the wild Colorado. He wasn’t superstitious but he started to wonder about omens.
They walked through the serpentine canyon for only a few hundred yards when it opened up to the oblong size of a few square acres. Sunlight only touched down from the high canyon walls in a few spots. The ground was rock and sand. A variety of tents, makeshift huts and lean-tos were scattered throughout and a few mangy horses stood in a dilapidated corral made of rope and driftwood. The men looked worse. Haggard and hollow-eyed, like beaten dogs they watched Port fearfully.
Port’s gut told him they were up to no good but considering few if any wore gun belts, he didn’t figure they could be much danger.
A man with yellow hair fading to grey came forward to take his nephew in his burly arms. He then faced Porter. “I’m Hezekiah Deacon, I want to thank you for coming.”
<
br /> “’Lo, but I haven’t done anything yet.”
Deacon smiled saying, “But you came. I was telling the men about that incident in Murderer’s Bar and I told ‘em you were the only man who could take care of this.”
Port looked shrewdly at Deacon. “How do you know about any of that?”
“Bloody Creek Mary told me, after you left following the incident with Boyd Stewart.” He grinned at that, knowing full well it was more than just an incident. Porter narrowly escaped being hung following a thousand dollar shooting match—which he won.
“Don’t tell me you’re friends with that polecat Stewart.”
“No, but Bloody Creek Mary said you killed some monsters. Scariest things she ever saw.”
Port grimaced, recalling the event brought no pride or joy, just nightmares. “I was in the wrong place, wrong time. We were blessed to escape alive.”
“I take it my nephew told you what we need here?”
Porter’s eyes caressed the hollow, taking in every feature where something could hide. He had suspected a trap, but the broken look of the men and stink of death spoke that this was no trap for him.
“He told me enough. When can I see this thing for myself? Has it got a lair?”
“It must, but we’ve never seen it. Lives somewhere up the canyon, possibly up top, we don’t really know. No one has dared follow the beast.”
“So it’s a dumb animal?”
Deacon’s face went serious as the grave, “It ain’t dumb, Lord no, this thing thinks and it hates and it relish’s what it does. It’s an evil spawn of Cain himself.”
Porter rubbed a broad hand over his forehead and adjusted his hat. His hand instinctively felt for his pistol and the deadly comfort it gave. He had never heard of a beast that couldn’t be harmed by flying lead, though the creatures in California were damn close. What could this be? “If I take care of this beast . . .?”
Deacon wrinkled his face. “Didn’t the boy give you the nugget?”
“He did, but I wanna hear it from you.”
“You’re right, if the monster can be killed. You deserve more. We just ain’t been able to mine more because of that thing.”
Cold Slither: and other horrors of the weird west (Dark Trails Saga) Page 10
