Walking Wolf

by Nancy A. Collins

  The Sioux believe that physical indignity done to a dead body is carried by that person into the Spirit World. The only way to right such a disgrace as was performed on them was via cremation. So I placed them in the hayloft of the barn and set it on fire.

  As I tended to the final needs of my family, my face made rigid by a sheet of frozen tears, I promised their spirits I would not rest until I’d avenged their deaths. Judging from the tracks left in the frozen mud of the dooryard, there was only one man. It wasn’t hard to figure out where the killer was headed, as he made no effort to hide his tracks. He was moving high into the Bighorns, where the weather would be even heavier and the cold even more extreme.

  No one in their right mind would have dared set out under those conditions into such hostile terrain, with almost no food, no horse and no gun. But I wasn’t in my right mind—I was crazy. Crazy with grief. Crazy with hate. Crazy with guilt. All I could think of was how my wife and child had suffered under that bastard’s knife, and how I would only find peace after I’d torn the life from his body the same way he’d tortured them: slow, mean and evil.

  I cut strips of meat from the horses he’d butchered, knowing in advance I was not going to find much in the way of game so late in the season. I did not know if it was possible for one such as me to starve to death, but I was unwilling to weaken myself. I wanted my strength when the time came for me to send the son of a bitch back to whatever Hell he had crawled out of. I figured he had at least a two-day head start on me, and he was on horseback, but I was far from discouraged. I had stalked Apache as a barefoot boy, and tracked renegade Pawnee as a Sioux brave. I was not about to let a blizzard keep me from finding the man responsible for murdering my family.

  I struggled along the snow-choked mountain passes for more than three days, trying my best to ignore the frigid winds that bit into my flesh like a whipsaw. During that time, my mind closed inward and began feeding on itself. Without my family to give me purpose and make me whole, I found myself reduced to the level of a beast. Stripped of mercy, hope and love, I stalked my prey through the mountain wilderness with no thought in mind save to taste my enemy’s blood. I knew I was getting close when I found a horse stolen from my own corral frozen stiffer than a missionary’s dick on the third day.

  I spotted the cabin on the fourth day out. I recognized it as belonging to a mountain man that went by the name Clubfoot Charley. I’d traded with him a few times over the years and found him a decent sort, if just a touch mad. There was a thin plume of smoke rising from the chimney, and I wondered if Charley had chosen to stay put to mind his traps instead of ride out the winter in one of his cabins on the lower slope.

  I opened the door without knocking. The heat from the potbelly stove struck me like an invisible hand, making my frostbitten ears feel as if I was wearing red-hot coals for earmuffs. The smell of cooking stew wafted from a bubbling pot atop the stove, which made my stomach growl and mouth water. Seated at a crude table next to the stove were two men. Clubfoot Charley sat stripped naked to the waist, his head thrown back, mouth and eyes wide open. If that didn’t tell me he was dead, the gaping hole in his chest sure did. Most of his right breast had been carved away, revealing the ribs beneath. Across the table from him sat Witchfinder Jones.

  Although I knew the bounty hunter had to be well into his sixties, I saw only the slightest hint of silver in his heavy beard and long, matted hair. A large, puckered scar ran along his left brow, as if someone had roughly shoved the split halves of his skull together and saddle-stitched them shut. His left eye was white as an egg, the pupil gone cloudy, but he was otherwise unchanged from the first time I ever saw him, nearly thirty years before. He was even dressed the same, down to the wolf-skin shirt that had once been my Pa.

  “Howdy, Billy,” Jones said. “Long time, no see. You’ll have to pardon by dinner companion,” he gestured with his eating utensil. “He wasn’t one for the social graces, even when he was breathing. Besides, you’ve got me at a disadvantage, brother,” Jones smiled, spooning a mouthful of stew into his hairy maw. “I’m in the middle of dinner.”

  Despite the days I’d spent fantasizing about what I’d do to my enemy once I caught up with him, I had not been prepared to walk in on such a scene as this.

  “You look confused, Billy,” Jones chuckled. “Close the door and pull up a seat, brother. It’s colder than a politician’s heart out there.”

  “I no longer call myself Billy. And I’m not your brother, murderer.”

  “Oh, but you are. We’re as much kin as Cain and Abel. Or haven’t you figured that out yet?” He seemed intent on distracting me, toying with me. But I was determined to have none of it.

  “I’ve come to kill you, you murdererin’ filth, for what you done to my family!”

  Jones smiled a slow, nasty smile that made me want to rip it off his face. “Which family would that be, Billy? The squaw and her half-breed cub, or the werewolf settler and his human bitch?”

  “You know who I am, then?”

  “Aye, I knew you from the moment I laid eyes on you in McCarthy’s cabin, thirty years ago. Just like you recognized your sire’s pelt and your dame’s teat. Blood knows blood, brother. There’s no denying it.”

  “Stop callin’ me that!” I snarled, bringing my fist down hard on the table. Coarse gray hair sprouted across the backs of my hands and up my arms as my teeth grew longer. “You killed my only brother over forty-five years ago!”

  “That boy wasn’t your brother,” Jones growled. “He was a servant Howler brought over from the Old Country. In another year or two, he would have undergone the induction ceremony and been ritually castrated, like all human males must be if they are to serve the pack. Don’t you remember Grondeur’s brace of eunuchs?”

  “So who paid you to come after me, bounty hunter?” I growled. “Was it McLaughlin?”

  “There’s no bounty on you, Billy. I did what I did not for money, but on account of what was done to my mother—and to me.” Jones leaned back in his chair and stroked his shirt like he would a pet, fixing me with his good eye. “How old do you reckon I am?”

  “I don’t know—sixty-five, perhaps. Although you don’t look it.”

  Jones gave a short bark of laughter. “I’ll be eighty-seven come July!”

  “That’s impossible!” I snorted.

  Jones smiled again, and this time when he spoke, he allowed his accent to come to the fore. “It started in Romania. My mother was a beautiful young woman of gypsy blood. Her people had long served the Masters of Hounds and Bitch Queens of the vargr. When a handsome and influential Wolf Lord chose her as his wife, she viewed it as an honor, not a disgrace. My sire kept us in high style, in an isolated chateau, with servants that waited on us hand and foot. I did not have much to do with my sire, as he spent most of his time at the Bitch Queen’s floating courts in Paris and Vienna. Then, on my twelfth birthday, he took me to Paris, where I was presented to the Bitch Queen.

  “She was indeed a grand dame, dressed in lace and expensive silks, her hair fixed with ribbons and smelling of perfume. She looked very young, even though she was older than the kingdoms of Europe. I was so intimidated by her high manner I could do nothing but tremble. As my sire pushed me forward, she sniffed the air about me like a hound scenting a blooded animal. The smile on her face faded and grew cold. The Bitch Queen then turned to my sire and said: ‘You have not bred true, Howler. The whelp is esau.’

  “I’ll never forget the look my sire gave me. Although sired by a vargr, the human blood in me was too strong. While I might possess the instincts, the needs and the hunger of a true-born vargr, I could never shapeshift. Because of that, I could never run with the pack. And, as such, I was useless to my sire. I was imperfect—a mongrel of the worst sort. The pride and hope that had been in his eyes a moment before was suddenly gone, replaced by a loathing that stung like a bundle of nettles. It was as if I had done something so terrible, so disgusting, it curdled whatever love he ever felt for me. Howle
r no longer had any use for me or my mother, who had not produced any further live issue over the years. Without any further ado, he turned us out of the chateau with nothing more than the clothes on our backs.

  “My mother, no longer young and made unattractive by her failed pregnancies, tried to go back to her people. They would have nothing to do with her, as she had willingly consorted with an unnatural thing. They were especially hostile to me, since I bore the Mark of Beast.” Jones explained, gesturing to his thick eyebrows and hairy palms. “My mother was never a strong woman, and the years spent pampered by my sire did not prepare her for such cruelty. Cast aside by the vargr and shunned by her own people, it was not long before she lost her mind completely.

  “She began to believe that she was, indeed, the devil’s mistress and began threatening the local villagers, demanding tribute in the form of food or money, or she would put the Evil Eye on them. It worked at first. But, in her madness, she eventually went too far. The townspeople stopped being frightened and began to get angry. She was accused of being a witch and hanged at the crossroads of a village in Transylvania. I would have died with her as well, but I somehow managed to escape the mob. It was then I decided to vent my rage on the unnatural world by becoming a witchfinder. After all, vampires, werewolves and ghouls hold no horror for one such as me.

  “I might be incapable of shapeshifting, but I am a vargr born.” He rapped his chest with a clenched fist. “The blood of the Wolf Lords runs strong in my veins. I do not age like mortal men, and I have suffered wounds that would have killed a normal human three times over.” Jones leaned forward, his single eye gleaming in the dim light of the cabin like a polished stone. “I was raised on the taste of human flesh, taught to view them as cattle to be herded and culled, only to have my sire cast me aside, without help or guidance. I swore one day I would make him pay for the cruelty he had shown both me and my mother. And I made good on that oath in 1844, when I tracked Howler and his latest wife to the wilds of Texas. It wasn’t hard. He’d been preying on a few of the Spanish ranchers in the area. They were more than ready to believe me when I told them it was the work of lobo hombre, especially if the guilty party was a gringo.

  “Howler thought he could come to this country and escape his past. But I made the bastard pay, with his hide and his woman. He would have paid with his son, but I somehow overlooked you that day.”

  “I understand why you might harbor hatred for my father. But what harm have I ever done to you that would justify what you did to my wife and child?”

  “You’re seeing this all wrong, brother. Things like us, we aren’t meant to be husbands and fathers. Me, I never had a friend in my life. I’m too much of an outsider—even before my head got split, normal humans could tell I was trouble just by looking at me. And as for women—I can’t get it up unless I hurt ’em, or worse. Besides, I did you a favor. That whelp of yours was esau. He must have been, sporting all that hair on his shins. He wouldn’t have amounted to much when he grew up.”

  Jones picked up the empty tin plate set in front of Clubfoot Charley and went to the stove, where he ladled up some brown, savory stew. He set the plate down on the table and pushed it in my direction. I was salivating despite myself.

  “I just wanted to put you on my level. The way I see it, it ain’t fair that you should have those things I can’t. But to show you I ain’t all bad, I’m willing to share my grub with you. You must be hungry after all this time.”

  Jones was right on that account. I was starving, and I don’t mean figuratively. The initial adrenalin rush from confronting him had blunted my hunger, but now the smell of the stew was making my gut rumble and my mouth fill with water. I automatically reached out and drew the plate toward me. But as I looked down at the proffered food, I saw something peculiar amongst the lumps of meat, carrots, potatoes and onions. It was an eye.

  My wife’s eye.

  “What’s the matter, Billy?” Jones jeered. “She was good enough for you live—ain’t she good enough for you dead?”

  With a single bellow of anger, I overturned the table. The knot of hatred and rage inside me unraveled, wrapping my body in the painful joy of the change. Witchfinder Jones was on his feet, his revolver free of its holster. Even though I knew it was loaded with silver bullets, I did not care. It did not matter to me if I died in that lonely, snowbound mountain cabin. What did I have to live for, anyway? My wife and son were murdered. My friends were all dead. Everything I had known as a boy had been swept away in a cloud of gun smoke, dust and lies. I had nothing left to lose, and all I wanted in the world was to tear my half-brother to shreds with my bare hands.

  Jones’ first shot went wild. The second went through my right side, just above the hip. The pain was immense, but such things no longer mattered to me. When I collided with my brother, it was like running into an unmovable wall of muscle and bone. I had never experienced anything like it before, and I’d brought down grown buffalo in my time. He seemed surprised that I was still on my feet, so I used his confusion to my advantage, digging my talons into his wrist, forcing him to let go of the gun. Swearing in a language I did not know, he grabbed for the knife sheath on his belt. I leapt back just in time to see the silver blade cut an arc through the air where my throat had been a second before.

  “I don’t know why those silver bullets didn’t drop you, and I don’t care! I’m going to take real pleasure in gutting you, brother,” he snarled through bloodied lips. “I think I’ll turn you into a pair of boots. Maybe a nice fur hat, too, if there’s some left over.”

  “Go ahead and kill me,” I snarled. “I don’t care if I die! But I’m going to drag you to Hell by the scruff of the neck like the sorry half-breed cur you are!”

  Jones’s face crumpled, as if I’d somehow dealt him a painful blow. He bellowed like an angered bull and charged, knocking me backward into the potbelly stove. The stove tipped over, disconnecting from the flue, and scattered red-hot embers in the small, cluttered confines of the cabin. Within moments, everything was ablaze.

  He came at me with the knife again, roaring wordlessly. His face was distorted by a bloodlust that was beyond anything I had ever seen in a human. He was in the grip of a fearsome animal rage that knew no mercy, gave no quarter. And that suited me just fine. We circled one another in the middle of the burning cabin, growling like wild beasts, looking for the first sign of weakness in the other before we attacked.

  Jones lunged at me with his knife, and I surged forward to meet him, grabbing his wrist and twisting it one hundred and eighty degrees while I drove the talons of my free hand into his face. He screamed as his forearm shattered like a green branch. Jones dropped to his knees, his dead eye laying against his cheek like a limp dick. I twisted his arm, turning it completely around in its socket.

  “You’re real good at killin’ when you’ve got yourself up a posse of Mexicans or Mormons or whoever the hell you can talk into hirin’ you, ain’t you? And you’re real good at killin’ from a distance—or butcherin’ helpless women and children. But when it comes to fightin’ one on one with a full-blooded vargr, you ain’t nothin’ but a sorry sack of shit! Our father was right to shun you—you’re nothing but a mad dog!”

  Witchfinder Jones looked up at me with his remaining eye and spat a bloody wad of saliva that struck me square on the chest. “Think what you want. But the truth is I’m just like you, Billy—except I wear the same skin all the time!”

  I snatched up his fallen knife and plunged it up to the hilt in his empty eye socket, giving it a twist for good measure. Although this would have killed a normal human right on the spot, Jones’s vargr heritage gave him the strength to lurch to his feet. He clawed at the hilt jutting out of his skull as he blundered blindly around the burning cabin, screaming at the top of his lungs. As I moved to tackle him and tear out his throat, there was a loud sound and the roof collapsed, burying us both under burning rafters and a ton of snow.

  While I was buried under the remains of Clubfoot C
harley’s cabin, I was visited by a number of friends and family, all of them dead. First there was Sitting Bull, who looked in far better shape than when I last saw him. He was traveling in the company of Medicine Dog. I really wasn’t surprised they’d hit it off in the Spirit World.

  “Medicine Dog told me of how you tried to help save my life,” my friend said. “Perhaps you could have changed things. Perhaps not.”

  “Am I dead, uncle?”

  “No,” Sitting Bull assured me. “Not for good, anyway.”

  Someone touched Sitting Bull on the shoulder and he moved aside. It was Digging Woman. Beside her stood our children, Small Wolf and Wolf Legs, holding one another’s hands. Although Small Wolf was the elder of the two, he looked to be half his younger brother’s age.

  “I bring you a gift, my husband,” she smiled, lifting her right hand. Six glittering silver bullets fell onto the snow. “While you battled my killer, I used my spirit to exchange his bullets with those of common lead.”

  I struggled to speak, but every breath I took made my ribcage feel as if it were trapped in a vise. “Digging Woman—I’m sorry—I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect you—to save you—I failed you—”

  “That is true,” she agreed. “But I still love you, Walking Wolf.” She reached out to smooth my pelt, as she often did as we lay curled together under our buffalo robes. Her hand had no weight and passed through me, making my skin tingle the way a leg does when it falls asleep. “I must go, my husband.”

  “Don’t go—stay—stay with me—don’t leave me alone—”

  Digging Woman smiled and suddenly she was as young as when we first met. “I will love you forever, Walking Wolf. In this life—and all that follow.”