The man held up a hand, saying, “Greetings man from the outside. I am Ke-ho-te-ho, he of the silent footsteps.”
The lawman did not bother to hide his surprise. He’d been told by local Wichita that this tribe didn’t speak English. He raised his own hand. “Greetings, Ke-ho-te-ho. I am called Rowan, enforcer of the law of my people,” he said tapping the tin star on his vest.
“It is good. We have been expecting you to come. I welcome you to our village. Enter in peace.”
Rowan had to admit he was relieved at the friendly welcome. He hadn’t been at all sure of his reception by the tribe as they were a solitary people, feared and avoided by the other tribes in the area. Still, he wasn’t about to let his guard down on account of a smiling face and soothing words; he dismounted, but kept his hands near his Colts.
Leading his horse, Rowan followed the Indian toward the village proper, pushing his hat back on his head with a thumb.
“I have come in search of a white man. Stories have come from your valley that one such may be found here.”
“Yes, such a one has lived among us for many moons. You shall see him shortly.”
Rowan was surprised again by the open admission of the presence of a white man in the village. Indians by now knew of the rage engendered in white men at the thought of others of their kind in the hands of red men; the senseless bloodshed of villages wiped out if even a suspicion was harbored by local officials. Yet this had openly admitted to a white man being in his village. But less of a surprise was the presence of Johnson Kent in the area. After all, he had been on Kent’s trail for a good six months, ever since being handed the assignment by the Territorial Marshall’s office. It seemed that Kent had disappeared along with a companion, Israel Paulson, while on a cattle drive along the Goodnight-Loving trail almost a year before. The drive foreman tried to find them or their remains, but couldn’t stay too long and delay the drive. When he finally completed it, he reported the incident to the Territorial Marshall’s office and from there it was passed from officer to officer as leads were dried up in their respective jurisdictions. Usually such disappearances were accepted as a matter of course by local lawmen who had enough to do keeping the peace and apprehending those who disrupted it. In the Kent case however, the Territorial Governor, anxious to make the territory attractive to prospective settlers, had applied the political pressures to keep the search alive. Finally it was his turn, and after weeks of crisscrossing the territory, he at last hit on his first solid lead — that a white man was rumored to be living in an Indian village in the Devil’s Gullet, a valley deemed very bad medicine by the surrounding tribes. But here he was, and certain of having found his man. “How do you mean, Ke-ho-te-ho, that you have been expecting me?”
“Our friend, Ken-te-ni-pa, he of the silver hair, knew you would come to look for him and our spirit-talker made powerful medicine to confirm it. In his visions, he saw your image and our scouts were told to allow you to pass.”
Rowan did not reply to that beyond a noncommittal grunt, and looked out over his guide’s shoulder to the village ahead of him. It was not as poor as he might have thought a village located in the barren wilderness of the Gullet would be, but neither was it a prosperous one. The tribesmen stood about, curiosity marking their faces, as he passed among them. They were not the faces of men frustrated with their position in comparison with other tribes; instead, Rowan thought he saw the sort of pride there of those who have offered a great deal in sacrifice to a higher calling. That they would continue stubbornly in their thankless task, misunderstood though they might be by other tribes, did not matter. They took pride in their appointed task. But just what that task was, Rowan had no idea and did not really care. Why would an otherwise healthy people sequester themselves in such desolate surroundings for as long as they had for no appare
He had little time to ponder the question as his short walk among the simple domiciles of the village came to an end before a wooden frame hut whose walls were formed of the skins of animals stretched taut over the poles. He turned to Ke-ho-te-ho, who had hung back within the protective semi-circle of the gathered tribe clustered inquisitively around him and the entrance to the hut. “Is the white man inside?”
The Indian waved a hand toward the doorway. “Yes. He is waiting for you.”
Rowan looked around at the circle of people, not sure what to think of the situation. The last thing he wanted to do was to show any doubt or fear before them. Without taking his gaze from Ke-ho-te-ho, he held out the reins he had in his hand, indicating his expectation that someone should take him. He felt them snatched from his grasp, and without a backward glance, stepped into the dark opening in the hut.
Inside, he stood in the crimson glare of the dying sun that creeped across the dirt floor of the hut. A grit of fine dust hung in the air and tickled his nose. Squinting his eyes against the gloom of the deeper interior of the tiny room, he glimpsed something moving in the darkness away from the doorway and, turning toward the sound, he held his hands ready by his guns.
So, you’ve come at last have you?” said a husky voice from the darkness.
Rowan squinted again, trying to pierce the veils of gloom surrounding the speaker but not relaxing his guard. “I’m Marshall John Rowan, district of the Oklahoma Territories,” he said. “I’m looking for two white men by the names of Israel Paulson and Johnson Kent who disappeared a couple years ago.”
There was a dry cough. “Paulson is dead. I’m Kent.”
Rowan relaxed at last, happy to be the one to finally put the Kent-Paulson case to rest. He backed a little ways from the open doorway. “Have these Indians been holding you prisoner?”
Kent laughed and Rowan had the impression that there was no mirth in it at all. “Just the opposite. Marshall, they’ve been protecting me.”
“From what? This valley’s dead to life and all the other tribes in the area would never even bother with it.”
“Other tribes are the last thing these Indians or me, for that matter, are worried about.”
“Then why haven’t you left?” Rowan had thought this whole thing would be a simple problem of bluffing a captive out of the hands of the tribe. Now it seemed Kent had gone native, preferring the life of the tribe to civilization. He had seen it before in white scouts and French voyageurs who had spent too long in the wilderness for their own good. He was about to press the question when he was stopped by new sounds from outside the hut. One by one, the voices of the Indians began to rise in ululating cadences, like dogs howling at the moon; then beats of drums and tom toms were added to the cacophony creating a strange music at once sophisticated and primitive and definitely unnerving. Rowan found himself trying to shake off chills that crept unwanted along his spine. The red light of the setting sun had dissolved into a dull pink that cast the entire desert into a twilit peacefulness that now seemed to shiver with hidden menace.
“What’s going on out there?” he asked at last, still facing the outside.
“They’re appeasing Yig, father of the children who lie asleep in this damned valley,” said Kent, just visible to Rowan as his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. “It’s the autumn you see,” he continued, “the season when he’s most angry.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Have you fallen for all that crazy injun medicine talk? Spirits in the sky and were-things on the prowl? So help me Kent, if you’ve gone over the edge, I’ll see you with a bullet in your brain before I leave a white man to rot out here with them.”
“You’re the fool, Marshall. Here you are in the middle of hell, and you act like nothing’s the matter.”
“Nothing is, except that damned howling,” he tossed his head in the direction of the villagers, now jumping and prancing wildly about a growing bonfire. Catching himself, Rowan forced himself to calm down and said, “Listen Kent, if you’re not being held here against your will, just why are you still here?”
Kent leaned back against the skin wall. “Because I’m scared tha
t’s why.”
“Of what?”
“Of the world. The world I left behind. The real world.”
Rowan didn’t answer.
“You see, I’ve seen things…or maybe I haven’t, maybe I just imagined them…” He shook his head violently. “No, no, I did see them. But the things I saw were just plain impossible. I didn’t want to believe it, but I had the proof right in front of me.” Rowan thought he detected the beginning of an emotional outburst just then, but in the silence of the pause, he could see that Kent had cut it off as if he’d done it a thousand times before. Still, he needed a few minutes to get himself back under control.
Rowan took the time to sit down, but out of line with the entrance to the hut.
“You see, that’s why I couldn’t go back,” continued Kent. “What I saw was impossible, it just couldn’t be. But it was right there, proof positive, and I had to accept it. And once I did, I had to face the fact that everything I, and every white man who ever lived, ever knew or thought was wrong. From that time on, I couldn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. I couldn’t go back to civilization then, I couldn’t face it.”
“Why not?”
Kent leaned into what was left of the fading light and Rowan saw for the first time the shock of snow white hair that covered the man’s head and bristled his chin, despite the fact that he knew him to be no more than in his late twenties. “Because, if what I saw… down there… was true, and it was, how could I know if the world I thought I left behind isn’t just a dream? It could be, you know. I just couldn’t face that. If it was, then I’d have to be a crazy man, living in a dream world my whole life. I had to stay here, never leave the valley. That way, I’d never know if I was right or wrong. I’d still have the hope that maybe the world was the same as I’d left it, but God help me…I don’t have the courage to find out for myself. Besides, I have a real purpose here. I’m needed.”
Rowan wasn’t sure what to make of the man’s ramblings, but one thing he was sure of was that Kent believed them. He was about to offer some words to reassure him that the outside world was just as he’d left it, when Kent continued.
“I’ll tell you the story from the beginning so you’ll see what I mean, so you’ll see why you can’t take me from this valley.
“It was a couple of years ago I guess, as you’ve said. I was hired on by old Ben Ironwood of the squared R brand to scout out the trail ahead of the herd when he drove it up the Goodnight-Loving later in the month. I wasn’t, strictly speaking, a trail hand, but that didn’t stop the bastard from using me to help out. I hated the damned work, especially working the rear of the herd. The heat and dust were terrible. Anyway, one day as we were nearing the Oklahoma Territory, Ironwood called me over and asked me to scout out the land to the northeast of the trail to see if there was a chance of a shortcut on the way to Colorado Springs. I was happy for any chance to leave that herd and took along another man, Israel Paulson, to keep me company and cover my backside in case there were Indian problems.
“We didn’t follow any clear trail, I just let the lay of the land direct me where to go. In a couple of days, it led me to the head of this valley, the Devil’s Gullet. I was surprised to find out that Paulson recognized it from the formations and that he also heard stories of it being full of bad medicine. Of course, I didn’t pay him no mind and continued on up the narrow mouth into the valley itself. Well, it did have those weird formations, shaped like giant beehives, stacked all over the valley floor, real regular like, and the farther we went, the more Paulson got nervous. I didn’t need to have it said to me that the man believed the Injun talk about there being bad medicine in the valley, but I could see where ignorant savages would be intimidated by the weird country we were riding through. How a white man could let himself fall for it though, was something else. Well, eventually, we got to the end of the valley with nowhere else to go but up. It was completely hemmed-in by steep walls. No way for a herd of longhorn to move up through there. It was late in the day, so I decided to have us bed down in the shadow of a lone mesa near the outside edge of the valley. Paulson was for getting out as fast as possible, but I overruled him and said to quiet down and spread out his bedroll, we’d be out in the morning. We figured not to have to take turns standing watch, since the place had a reputation that kept people pretty much out of it.
“I don’t know what it was that woke me later that night, but the full moon hadn’t set yet and when I looked around, I couldn’t find Paulson. I got up and looked some more and found his things still laying around the dead fire and both horses asleep where they’d been hobbled. At first, I thought he just went off for a squirt, but when about half an hour went by, I knew it was more than that. I got up again and found his tracks and followed them out onto the valley floor; it was easy to follow them by the moonlight and when I looked up ahead, I saw that they led straight for one of them funny beehive formations. I headed toward it, and followed Paulson’s tracks right up to the base of the thing. That’s when I began to get nervous.”
“What do you mean?” Rowan asked. “Did you find his body?”
“No, I didn’t find his body,” Kent replied. “What I found was nothing at all. The tracks of Paulson’s boots just ended right there as if he’d just vanished into the air. I scouted around for other tracks, but there were only his and mine. Oh, and theirs, of course.”
“Whose…these Indians’?” Rowan demanded, his suspicions rising.
“Hell, no. Not a one of them would go near those mounds for a hundred horses. Those other marks were snake tracks…maybe thousands of them, either leading into or out of all the little holes around the base of that mound. I walked all the way around it, trying to pick up some other lead, but there was nothing. I got back around to the place where Paulson’s trail ended and looked up to see if maybe he could’ve climbed the thing somehow. No way he could’ve done it. About half-way up the side, though, I saw another hole, maybe a yard across. I hollered up to it, just in case, but got no answer. Just a kind of rustling noise that I figured was the sand being blown around by the wind that was kicking up. Strange things happen in the desert, Marshall. You’ve traveled some, so you know what I mean. But this was the first time I’d come up against something like this, and I’ll tell you, I was getting more nervous by the minute. Not scared, though. I wasn’t scared…not then.” Kent became still and quiet, huddling himself against the lodge-pole as if ill.
“You okay?” Rowan inquired. “I’ve got dram of whiskey in my bags if that’d help.”
“No, Marshall,” the man replied. “I’m afraid there just isn’t that much whiskey anywhere. What was I saying? Oh…well, the wind was coming up, and I figured I’d have as good a chance waiting back at the camp as I would out there, so I followed the tracks back. The moon was low by this time, but still gave plenty of light. I poked up the fire some, and then decided to saddle our horses, since this was kind of an odd situation, and I wanted to be ready to ride quick if we had to. Then I sat down at the fire and rolled myself some smokes, and waited. It must’ve been near dawn when I heard footsteps coming, and not Paulson’s either. These were quick steps, and short like a child’s. They’d come a bit, and then stop a bit…come, and stop. I took my rifle and hid behind some tall brush, off to one side of the fire so the glare of it wouldn’t blind me. About this time, the horses started acting up. They’d heard the steps even before I did, so they weren’t just startled by the noise. Something else was spooking them…a scent of some animal, I figured. One of them shied to one side, and I got a glimpse of Paulson’s yellow-checked shirt. I stood up to holler at him, and just then the horse broke his hobbles and went tearing off into the dark.” Kent took a deep breath and looked Rowan square in the eye. “I swear by holy God, Marshall…that thing wasn’t Paulson. Not any more it wasn’t, anyway.”
The lawman felt an inexplicable shock of fear rush through him, but subdued it with a silent oath.
“I’m not liking the sound of this, Kent,”
he blustered. “You’d better start making sense fast.”
But rather than comply with his order, Kent began a low, wild-eyed laugh which increased in pitch and volume until it had drowned out the still-pulsing drums of the ceremony outside. Rowan’s first impulse was to run; his second, to smash his fist into the man’s gaping mouth. He did neither. He grabbed Kent by the front of his tunic and hauled him to his feet in one powerful motion. Some suggestion of sanity crept back into the smaller man’s eyes, and his mad laughter subsided to a half-whimpering giggle.
“Listen to me, you crazy bastard,” Rowan hissed between clenched teeth. “If I have to beat some sense into your skull, then that’s what I’ll do. But I want some answers, understand?” He released Kent, who returned to his crumpled position against the pole.
“Oh, I’ll give you some answers, Marshall, but I don’t think they’ll make the kind of sense you want to hear. The kind in which I can no longer believe…
“When the horse bolted, I got a clear look at what I’d thought was Paulson. It wasn’t Paulson…it wasn’t even human. It stood up on two little legs, no longer than a child’s. Its body was long and thin, and kept swaying back and forth even when it walked. And its head…God, that was the worst…its head was like a snake’s. It was broad and flat, like a rattler’s, and its eyes glowed yellow in the firelight. Paulson’s clothes hung on the thing, shredded to rags, but I didn’t realize what that meant until later. The horse that was still hobbled was going crazy, but the thing paid it no attention, and came for me on its short, little legs. It opened its mouth to hiss at me, and its fangs looked just like a huge rattler’s. I clean forgot about the rifle in my hand…all I wanted to do was to keep the fire between me and that thing. It seemed scared of the fire, even though it was burning pretty low, and those short legs couldn’t close any distance between us. Then I remembered the rifle, and brought it up for a shot right through the thing…I figured a .44-40 ought to take care of it. Hell, I killed a good-sized bear with that ol’ gun once. Anyhow, I levered a shell into the chamber and fired at near point-blank range. I must have been more scared than I thought, ‘cause I only nicked the thing on the side of its neck. That’s when it gave this choked-off sort of scream, and threw itself down onto its belly. Then it came after me in dead earnest. It moved as fast on its belly as any snake I’ve ever seen. I guess it kind of went crazy, ‘cause it came right through the fire at me…didn’t even seem to feel the flames. I was so scared, I ran backwards a few steps, tripped over a rock or something, and lost the rifle.
Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois Page 19
