“What can I do ya for?” asked a portly sheriff, startled from his late afternoon nap.
“I have a prisoner. I want to lock him up secure for the night. We’ll be moving on in the morning to get before the territorial judge by tomorrow night. I have a badge; my name is—”
“I know who you are, Porter,” the sheriff interrupted. “I suppose we can hold your prisoner.”
Port removed the kid’s bindings and pushed him to the sheriff, who put the kid in the tiny jail.
“What’d he do?”
Port stepped to the door, remarking over his shoulder, “Horse thief and murderer, he’ll hang soon. Where can I get a square drink?”
“Lulu-belle’s, it’s the only place still open.”
“Much obliged.” Port shut the door in the face of the gale and strode across the cactus dry street.
Inside Lulu-belle’s a hairy-knuckled barkeep wiped down unused glasses as an off-tune woman sang an off-color song. The carnival of patrons looked Port’s way as he entered and then went back to their previous distractions. He went straight to the bar, thumping down two bits.
“What’ll ya have?”
“Whiskey,” Port said. “The wind ever stop blowing around here?”
“Not usually. The miners like it. Helps keep ‘em cool. It’s hot as hell most days.”
Port’s gaze tightened. “Wait, is this the cursed town I heard about?”
The barkeep smiled, “It is indeed. That’s our claim to fame. The territorial governor cursed Eden as the wickedest city in the west and said we’d fade out, but were hanging on. We ain’t hardly licked yet.”
Port chuckled to himself. He doubted the town would last another year unless the miners struck something. Everywhere death and decay lurked, whitewash peeled leaving flakes like dandruff on the ground and a certain stink never left the air. It was a dead and bloated town, with inhabitants like fleas still clinging to the lifeless dog’s warmth.
Something banged near the back of the saloon and distracted the barkeep. “Sadie, will you serve this gentleman?” he called, “I have to see what that was.”
Port looked out the window as a single tumbleweed rolled by, helped by the ever present wind.
A homely saloon girl with a whiskey bottle and glass sidled up to Port, “Well howdy stranger, doesn’t it get lonely on the trail all day?” She batted her eyes like a butterfly gathering nectar.
He gave her a dirty look. “I ain’t looking for company, just a drink.”
“Everybody likes company,” she said through overly red lips.
Port grinned. “Maybe so, but not me.” She offered Port the glass but he declined and took the bottle.
“You’re funny,” she said. “I’m Sadie.”
“Howdy Ma’am, I’m Porter.”
“You from nearby?”
“A bit up north.” He noticed a pair of tumbleweeds ramble by on the street. He took another swig watching the sky turn azure as Venus appeared.
Sadie coaxed, “I hear it’s nice.”
“I expect you’d like California better,” Port said offhand.
The barkeep hollered for Sadie again and she shrugged. “Anything else you need, just you holler.”
Port gave a half charity smile and focused on his drink instead of the next tone-deaf song. Dusk was falling and the wind grew louder with a moan like a dying man’s last gasp.
Port rubbed a broad hand over his face and pondered the ride in the morning. The kid would hang in another night. It bothered him. The kid was young. Still, that he deserved it couldn’t be denied. What would the parents say when Port brought their son home? Wouldn’t likely be thanks. Nope, not a lot of appreciation for his service out here. He took another long pull on the whiskey bottle.
The wind moaned again and the rapid sound of a boot heel kicking the boardwalk shook Port from drowning his troubles. He stood and stalked to the saloon doors, hand on his Navy Colt.
Not six feet from the swinging doors lay an old man with the blue face of one who’d been strangled.
Glancing around the corner, Port looked left and right. Not a soul was on the street, just those blasted tumbleweeds rolling in the wind.
“Someone give me a hand,” he ordered.
The bartender and Port brought the dead man inside. His clothes were dirty and disheveled, food stained his shirt and jacket precisely where a napkin bib wouldn’t cover. Tight red gouges across the neck revealed the cause of his murder.
“Who was he?”
The hairy-knuckled bartender answered, “Quinn Cleary, town lawyer.”
Port gave the bartender the stink-eye.
The bartender gulped adding, “And town drunk. There hasn’t been a lotta need for a town lawyer last few years.”
“You don’t say? Who’d want him dead?”
Shaking his head, the bartender said, “No one. He was harmless.”
Wheeling, Port looked upon the rest of the motley group of patrons. “Anyone?”
No one volunteered anything. Most seemed in shock, but Sadie stepped forward, “He was liked by everyone, there weren’t no bad debts or dissatisfied miners if that’s what you mean?”
Port nodded, “I’ll get the sheriff.” He went out into the night, the dark wind whipping about him like a scorned lover. With the wary sense of a predator, Port kept an eye up and down the street and while a sense of dread filled him, he couldn’t see another soul. He convinced himself the dread was merely the aura of the town in general. He struck a match to light his cigar but the wind blew it out.
A rather large tumbleweed rolled in front of him and stopped abruptly despite the wind.
Port looked at the noxious weed, rubbed his beard and gave it a kick, sending it flying into the darkness.
He continued across the street, looking over his shoulder several times. Lamplight flickered through the shuttered windows of the sheriff’s office, and a hint of laughter filtered out against the moaning dirge of the wind. Port frowned, what could there possibly be worth laughing about in this stinking town?
The sheriff sat at the little wooden table playing cards with the kid. Each looked up in shock at Port.
Port barked, “This the kind of town you run sheriff? Granting the opportunity for a horse thieving murderer to escape?”
“It ain’t like that. We was just playing cards.”
“Yes, sir,” the kid agreed, “jus’ playing cards. I wasn’t gonna try and escape…honest.”
Port picked the kid up by the scruff and threw him into the jail cell. “He has killed three men already, for six dollars and a slow horse.”
The sheriff looked indignant at Porter, as if he didn’t believe him, while the kid gave his most innocent look.
“I suppose I can keep him locked up,” muttered the lawman.
“You suppose? You got more problems. Someone strangled your town drunk, and that murderer is still on the loose.” Port struck another match and lit his cigar.
“Cleary’s dead?”
Port nodded, smoke flared from his nostrils. “Strangled with wire. We got him over in Lulu-belle’s.”
Putting on his gun belt, the sheriff wheezed and said, “I’ll be over in a minute.”
Not waiting any longer, Porter went out the door back into the blasting wind. More tumbleweeds rolled by. Several weeds were massed up against the open saloon doors. The wind extinguished his cigar, and he prepared to light another match. Port kicked the tumbleweeds aside and went in. The lamps were blown out.
Everyone was gone.
Port spun around wondering if it was some kind of joke, but the saloon was deserted. No one was behind the bar or on the low stage. Then it dawned on him that the dead man’s body was gone too. Going up the stairs with his Navy Colt drawn, Port was ready for anything. A tumbleweed had been blown up to the landing. Port knocked it aside.
There were four small rooms. Two had doors cracked open. No lamps burned, but a hint of moonlight crept through the narrow windows.
No
one in either room. Port opened the first closed door, standing as far back as he could reach and still turn the knob. He half expected a gunshot to explode through the door, but none came. Each room was empty as well, though the last had an open window with the wind whipping the sun bleached pink curtains like a banshee.
Port came back downstairs and puzzled. It had been at least five minutes. Where was that idiot sheriff?
He went back outside. Somewhere in the cold distance a horse screamed. Porter gave pause. The street was nearly covered with tumbleweeds, and his horse was gone too! “Wheat in the mill! That damn kid!” He waded through the sea of weeds that almost acted like they wanted to grab and hold him. He puffed on his cigar extra hard to keep it lit against the wind. The orange cherry flared and the weeds seemed to part a little. The door stood open. Expecting to see the incompetent fool dead, Port leveled his six-gun at the ready.
But the sheriff wasn’t there.
The kid was. Hunched in his cell in the darkness, in a fetal position, he sobbed and jerked as Port entered.
“Where is he? What did you do to him?” Port demanded.
“I didn’t…do anything. It was them . . .”
“Them who?”
“The weeds, they came to life. He opened the door and they rolled in. They took the sheriff. He screamed ‘til he couldn’t breathe no more.”
“Horse chips!”
“They drug his body out the back. They tried to reach me but couldn’t through the bars.”
“You damn liar. Do you got friends trying to bust you out? Tell me or I am gonna shoot you here and now!”
“Better that than those things getting me.”
Port wheeled and looked out the slit windows. The wind was forcing more tumbleweeds up against the door. Their scratching was unnerving. It almost looked like their myriad tiny branches were moving in a uniform, crawling chaos.
Port wrinkled his brow. The whiskey must be too strong here.
“They are trying to get in,” moaned the kid.
Port puffed his cigar and said, “You’re one defective bullet kid.”
“It’s true. Open the door and find out, you cold-hearted bastard.”
“All right.” Port opened the door, wary of gunmen on the street. He puffed on the cigar, looking with disdain at the weeds which fell back away from the door. “Yeah, kid, they’re alive, either that or the wind moved them.”
But the kid was as far back in his cell as he could be.
“Porter!” came a woman’s voice.
Port looked and there on the roof of the saloon was Sadie and a handful of others.
“Run! Run! You’ve got to get away!”
Port looked each way down the street. “From what?”
“The weeds!”
He furrowed his brow again and the wind blew out his cigar.
The weeds closed in.
“Horse chips.”
He leapt back into the sheriff’s office, slamming the door as he did so, but the weeds clogged the threshold, keeping it open. So many rolled atop each other, that the pile was as tall as Port.
He did the first thing that came to mind. He shot the mass with his Navy revolver. Smoke belched from the six-gun but the weeds were unaffected beyond a moment’s respite.
The kid screamed in his cell.
“Shut up!” Port kicked over the card table, which did nothing to the weeds. He then flung at chair at them. It crushed a few, but against the mass it was useless. Taking the other chair, Port smashed out the window behind him and dove through.
He landed hard on his elbows and knees, rolling to get up.
Weeds tumbled around each side of the office and then out the lip of the window.
Port was on his feet racing to the next building, a dilapidated Smithy’s. Scrambling up a post, covered with tools, he managed to get several feet off the ground and above the weed’s reach. Then he climbed up to the narrow slanted roof.
The weeds thrummed in unison and surrounded the tiny structure.
From his new vantage, Port could see thousands of weeds covering the town. Across the street, Sadie and a dozen others sat on the saloon’s roof. The wind moaned and Port sat precariously for what he deemed one of the worst nights of his life. He chanced throwing matches at the weeds, but they rolled away until the matches died in the blustery night. Port knew there was no way he could burn the brush while they were so spread out.
Several times individual weeds attempted to climb the post after Port. One on one he could knock them away, but what about when sleep would eventually take him? He couldn’t stay awake forever.
Dawn’s light only revealed a greater nightmare. There were more weeds than Port had guessed. Not a single horse remained. There’d be no way to outrun the horde, and still the hurtling wind blew fierce as the devil.
He kicked another tumbler that clambered up. Sadie and the others above the saloon did the same with their climbing invaders. Port knew that eventually they would lose. He had to take the fight to the weeds. Looking across the lay of the land, the narrow sloping valley, the reservoir sat above the town. Port chewed his lip and hatched a plan. As much as he didn’t like it, he would need help.
“Sadie,” he called, “Are the miners still using their powder magazines? Do the mines go deep?”
“Yes. It’s there past the east barn,” she shouted, pointing to a lone shack at the far upper end of town. “But so what about the mines depth? The weeds can go anywhere a man can go.”
“Much obliged.”
She puzzled over his intentions and frowned, shielding her face.
Tearing off another, ascending tumbleweed, Porter then snagged a blacksmith’s hammer from the post. He tossed it to the roof of the sheriff’s office. Then he gauged the distance between the two buildings. It would be a long jump, especially since he didn’t have much room to start with.
He didn’t like heights, and while this wasn’t that high, the weeds waited below, hungry as rabid dogs. They seemed to sense his intent and gathered thickly underneath him. It was now or never. More weeds were crawling up the post.
Port reached with all he was worth, whispering a prayer as he jumped.
His fingers grasped the lip of the sheriff’s office as the wind was slammed from his lungs. Still, he didn’t let go. He struggled over the lip of the flat adobe roof. Port lay on his back a few moments, breathing hard.
“Are you alright?” called Sadie.
“Yeah, never better,” he panted.
Porter slammed the hammer at the roof of the jail cell. It was hard work and took longer than he would have liked. By the time Port burst through the ceiling, the kid below was screaming in terror.
“Shut up, it’s only me.”
Dumbfounded, the kid nodded and let Port pull him up to the roof.
Port whispered, “We got two things we can do. Nothing and die, or act and perhaps live.”
The kid nodded.
“Now, I know you can run, so I got a job for you. I need a distraction. I need you to get the weeds’ attention while I charge up to the powder box and blow the reservoir wide open. It’ll wash this town clean.”
The kid shook his head, “I’d rather wait here. Get someone else to do it.”
“Look kid, I can’t be yelling these plans across the street for the weeds to hear. I don’t know how smart they are. Wheat! I don’t even know how they are doing this. It’s gotta be you.”
“It could be you. I can run faster than you. Let me light the powder and blow the dam.”
Port grimaced. He knew the kid was fast, he’d been awful hard to catch. “Here’s my matches. There will be some powder kegs. Take one or two, whatever you can still move with. Get up to the reservoir put the keg next to the drainage channel, light it and get the hell away. Once a hole is knocked in that dam, it’ll be like a river in flood. Get clear. You hearing me? These things will come tearing after you, so you gotta do it quick.”
The kid nodded, “But what about after? I do this,
you still gonna take me to get hung?”
Port narrowed his gaze. “No. But you’re gonna head to Mexico.”
“I don’t wanna go to Mexico.”
Port cocked his head and gave a wicked grin.
“I’ll go to Mexico.”
“Good lad. I’ll lead the weeds south as best I can. You run north fast as the devil on your tail. Make sure this wind don’t blow out your match.”
Port dropped down to the slopping roof on the front of the office. He tore the sign from the rusted brackets and tossed it, smashing weeds beneath. He jumped down and ran serpentine through the streets of Eden. Weeds rolled after him like a pack of dogs.
The kid watched a moment then eased down the backside and made for the powder magazine. On the ground he peered around the corner to determine if the weeds would even see him. They appeared taken with Porter and paid no attention to him or the others on the saloon.
Porter dodged the few weeds that rolled to intercept him and booted a few, but more came on until they were so thick on his heels that kicking would only waste his time. They lashed at his ankles and no amount of shooting or struggling would avail him.
The kid moved behind the ghost town shops to avoid being seen, but Sadie saw him. “Where are you going?” she shouted. “Help us!” He signaled her to be silent.
While they watched, weeds with a thousand tiny arms grabbed Port’s heel and tripped him. He flailed and sent dozens spinning away, but for every one he threw a dozen more took its place. The weeds piled, reaching to strangle the human life they envied and hated.
Through some eldritch means, or from understanding Sadie’s shouting, the weeds sensed the kid. A number of them, too far from reaching Porter, stopped and rolled north after the young blood.
The kid glanced from the edge of the hotel and saw them coming. He turned and ran for the powder magazine. He pulled matches from his pocket.
Port reared up, tearing weeds from his throat. He roared like a mad bull and swatted the balled weeds away. Like an infinite hydra they attacked from all sides.
The kid saw a hundred or more weeds rolling. He reached the powder magazine and threw back the door. Inside were a half dozen powder kegs. He picked up the nearest and ran for the reservoir. “This had better work,” he muttered through clenched teeth. The weeds were gaining on him.
Cold Slither: and other horrors of the weird west (Dark Trails Saga) Page 17
