“Artifact?” Sandy said.
The witch nodded, a smile growing on her face. “As I told you before, man can enhance things with the power of his belief. If a person believes strong enough on an object, he can give it abilities.”
“You mean like a child that has a lucky rabbit’s foot,” Sandy said.
“Or a grown man with a red star on his belt buckle,” Pecos added.
“Indeed. Though when such things have a significance only to one person, their strength is low. But if many believe on an object, the power can be palpable and-.” She licked her lips excitedly. “If one knows how to use the Witchery Way to infuse it, an artifact’s effect can be impressive.”
“So he’s got some kind of lucky . . . thing that lets him freeze folks up,” Pecos said. “All you gotta do is find a way to take it away or get at him when he doesn’t have it around.”
“Is there a way I can destroy this artifact?” Sandy asked. “Like maybe if I aimed for it instead of him?”
“It depends on what the object is made of. If it . . .” the witch said, her voice trailing off as her gaze moved upward. Sandy became aware that a dim light had begun to spread across the sky above them. The witch smiled despite the fact that the morning sun would soon breach the horizon and burn away at the fog she had created.
“I would say more, but it seems that the time allotted for our palaver has come to an end.” The grin stretched further across her face, her expression taking on something akin to elation. “And somehow the both of us remain unscathed. Ha! I enjoyed your company a bit too much, though. I got carried away and answered far more questions than agreed upon.”
“How unlike you, Martha,” said Pecos with a smirk.
Her grin faded slightly at the sound of her first name and she rubbed her hands together. “I’m afraid that I shall have to claim additional payment.”
She whirled suddenly and pointed at the Coyote’s Pup. The boy had been watching their conversation with one eye open and had let his guard down, his arms no longer fully crossed. Her eyes flashed and the boy stiffened. “The child will do.”
“Wait! I didn’t agree to that,” Sandy protested, moving to stand between her and the child. “Besides, you can’t take him as payment. He doesn’t belong to me.”
“I’ll take him all the same.” She flicked her wrist at him and Sandy stumbled to the side as if pushed by a great weight. She walked to the Pup and stood over him, her arms outstretched. Her wolfskin cloak overshadowed the child. “He has a tasty little talent, this one. I’ll have it for my own.”
Sandy reached for his revolver, only remembering at the last moment that his holster was empty. The Pup had it. He glanced at the Coyote, expecting the man to cry out or stand and be struck by the rattlesnake in his lap. The snake’s rattle buzzed with eager promise as if expecting the same thing. The bounty hunter wore a grimace of worry, sweat standing on his brow, but he remained still and silent.
“Don’t do this,” pleaded Pecos.
She snickered. “Goodbye, son. Goodbye, Sandy Tucker. I hope to see you again and under my conditions.” The witch pulled the fur cloak closed, encasing her and the boy.
Mist flowed up from the ground around her and thickened, surrounding the witch and partially obscuring her. She grunted, hunching over. There were strange movements under the fur cloak accompanied by an awful sound of crunching bone and squeaking tendon. Her form rippled and contorted, changing into that of a wolf, large and fearsome. The Pup was nowhere to be seen.
The wolf let out a brief howl at the brightening sky and ran, disappearing into the line of fog that led to the Rio Grande.
Sandy stared after her in shock for a moment. Then his eyes caught a brief gleam on the ground where she had been standing. It was his Colt. It must have become dislodged from the back of the Pup’s pants. He picked up the revolver and turned it on the Coyote. If he remembered correctly, the boy had left one bullet in the chamber.
He fired. The rattlesnake’s head burst in a fine red mist.
“It’s dead. Get up!”
The bounty hunter sprang to his feet, leaving the snake’s rope-like corpse to fall to the ground and writhe spasmodically. “Nakai!” he cried. “Where did she take my son?”
“To the river. We’d better hurry if we’re going to catch her,” Sandy said.
The bounty hunter ran to the cart and climbed aboard the bench seat. With a sharp cry and a crack of the reigns, the muscular draft horse lurched forward, pulling the cart into the fog.
Sandy headed into the wall of mist to look for his own horse. Thankfully, whatever strange force that had given the fog a sense of solidity had left with the witch. He strolled right through and was relieved to find his mare standing right where he had last seen her. He quickly climbed up and started after the Coyote.
Pecos appeared next to him, astride Widowmaker, the wind of their arrival causing the fog to whip away in whirling tufts. “If she reaches the riverbank, you’ll be too late,” the specter said.
“Don’t plan to let her get that far,” Sandy replied. He patted the stock of the long-barreled rifle that was holstered on his saddle. If he could get a clear shot, he could take her down.
He urged the horse to quicken its pace and charged as fast as he dared down the slightly sloping trail. Though the fog had begun to lift, it was still thick enough that he couldn’t see his quarry.
Sandy heard the cart before he saw it. The draft horse was galloping pell-mell through the slowly disappearing haze and the cart was bucking and bouncing with each bump in the trail. Gear flopped around in the bed, causing quite a racket.
Sandy pulled up alongside the bounty hunter. “Don’t know if you can get that cart going fast enough!”
“I have no choice! I-. Why do you bother to help me?” the bounty hunter yelled, his voice barely audible above the sound of the pounding hooves and rattling cart.
It was a valid question. He hadn’t exactly met the man on friendly terms and, though a child was a child, he wasn’t particularly fond of the Pup. Still, if it wasn’t for his intent to rendezvous with the witch in the first place they wouldn’t have found themselves in their current situation.
“Because I don’t like her!” Sandy replied, which was true enough. “Pecos! Now would be a good time to use up that energy you’ve been saving!”
Nodding, Pecos surged ahead of the cart. The specter opened his mouth wide and inhaled a great gasp of air. Then he puckered his lips together and blew, his cheeks puffing out unnaturally large.
A column of wind rushed down the trail ahead of them, blasting the remaining fog high into the air. The large wolf came into view. It was perhaps a hundred yards ahead of them and had been trotting towards the river at a casual pace before the wind hit. The gust knocked the beast off balance.
Startled at being so suddenly revealed, the skinwalker stopped and looked back. Upon seeing their rapid approach, its lips pulled back from wicked teeth and its eyes flashed with an eerie blue light. It turned back towards the river and darted forward with a speed that no horse could possibly match.
The bounty hunter swore. “The skinwalker is too fast. We will not catch it!”
He was right. It would be at the bank within minutes. “Can’t your backer do anything to help?” Sandy asked.
“He has been hiding the sound of our pursuit!” the Coyote said. “She did not know we were coming until your legend blew the fog away!”
“Then I’ll have to take my shot from here,” Sandy said, drawing his rifle from the sheath. He cranked the lever putting a cartridge in the chamber.
“Wait! What if you hit my boy?” the Coyote yelled.
Sandy paused. He had a point. The child was nowhere to be seen. Sandy could only assume that the witch had hidden him somewhere inside the wolf’s overlarge mass. Unfortunately, he had no other choice.
“I hit what I aim to hit!” he replied and sighted in on the swiftly running wolf. He took a moment to align himself with the movement of
the horse galloping beneath him and when the time seemed right, he pulled the trigger. It was a long shot; a prayer, but he knew the bullet would strike true. Strangely, as if his eyes were following right behind it, he watched as that lump of lead hurtled through the air and pierced the back of the wolf’s skull.
Steam erupted from the spot where the bullet struck as the creature flopped to the ground, it’s momentum causing it to roll through the dirt. The skinwalker was soon obscured by a thick white plume twenty-feet-high.
“Ho-lee hell! What a shot!” hooted Pecos.
“Just blow that fog away!” Sandy snapped. Neither he or the Coyote slowed their approach, each of them unsure if the plume of steam meant that Sandy’s shot had been effective or if it was just a diversion set by the witch to disguise her escape.
Pecos filled up his lungs and blew again. The pillar of steam was ripped apart by another blast of air.
Lying on the road was the small form of the Pup. As the wind whipped past him, the boy stirred and sat up, looking around him with a dazed expression. Sandy let out a sigh of relief. Fluttering on the ground a few feet away, still steaming slowly, was the witch’s wolfskin cloak, seemingly empty.
Sandy reigned in his horse, bringing her to a walk as the Coyote charged ahead. He watched as the Indian leapt down from the cart and looked his son over, then embraced him. The boy looked over his father’s shoulder at Sandy, a quizzical expression on his face.
Sandy considered turning around and galloping away. After all, he had been given no assurance that the Coyote wouldn’t still try to capture him and turn him in. He decided to stay awhile and take his chances. He had to at least make sure that the witch was truly gone.
“I find it hard to believe she was that easy to kill, son,” Pecos said, knowing his thoughts.
Sandy dismounted and approached the Coyote and his Pup, making sure to take his rifle with him. “You think she’s dead?”
They were crouched next to the wolfskin cloak, examining the ground. They had found a spattering of blood mixed with shards of bone and fleshy lumps that could only be brain matter. The Pup was poking one such lump with a stick.
The Coyote looked up at him. “A skinwalker cannot be killed by any normal bullet, but you hurt her very badly. She can likely never wear that face again. And if we burn her cloak, she will never be able to take the form of a wolf either.”
The three of them wasted no time gathering dry wood and brush. They built a fire atop the cloak, taking care not to touch it. When the wolf skin caught fire it burned quickly, belching black smoke. Sandy and the bounty hunters made sure to keep upwind, none of them wanting to breathe it in.
“That was an incredible shot, Eagle Eye. I have never seen one like it,” the Coyote said.
Sandy wasn’t sure how he felt hearing the witch’s nickname for him coming from the Coyote’s mouth. It felt right but, at the same time, weird. “Evidently I have a special talent.”
“Is your backer really the Pecos Bill from the newspaper stories?”
“That’s his claim,” Sandy replied. “Though I’ve gotta say he’s not quite as impressive as the stories make him out to be.” Standing not far away, the specter let out an irritated grunt.
“How about yours?” Sandy asked the Coyote. “Do I know him?”
“I do not know,” the Coyote replied. “His name is Little Tree, a legendary Sioux hunter.”
“A Sioux legend picked a Navajo man?” Sandy asked.
“He had his reasons,” the Coyote said, but did not choose to elaborate.
They stood quietly for a moment as the sun rose, watching the witch’s cloak burn. The Pup, seemingly over his ordeal, clambered onto the cart bed and inspected the contents, putting all the loose items away.
“So . . .” Sandy said. “Still plan to turn me in?”
The Coyote chuckled. “No, Eagle Eye. You saved my son. I owe you a debt.”
Sandy stuck out his hand. “Just call me Sandy.”
The bounty hunter shook his hand. “You can call me Gus.”
“Gus?” He didn’t like it. The name didn’t suit the man at all. “Why do you so dislike being called the Coyote? You’re a bounty hunter. Coyotes are good hunters.”
The Indian frowned. “If I were given a hunter’s name I would rather be known as a wolf or cougar. The Coyote is a trickster spirit. He cannot be trusted.”
Sandy supposed he had a point. That was certainly how the outlaws he hunted saw him. “In Navajo tradition maybe, but I’ve always seen coyotes as survivors. Alone or in packs, they’re more suited to life in the West than wolves.”
Though he had to see the truth in Sandy’s remarks, the Coyote frowned. “Just call me Gus. So what do you plan to do now? Will you go to Puerta de la Muerte and test your talent against this Sheriff Jebediah? It is not my place to fight this sheriff, but as I am indebted I will travel with you and help as much as I can.”
Sandy wasn’t quite sure what he would do. He wasn’t yet confident that he was strong enough to charge at the sheriff head on. Perhaps it was time to link back up with Tom and Luke. The three of them together could come up with a plan. It would require finally telling them about Pecos, but he was tired of hiding it anyway.
A thought occurred to him and a laugh escaped his lips. The witch had been so excited to get away with the Pup that she hadn’t bothered to take his money.
“I got an idea.” He walked to his horse and lifted the flap of the saddlebag to see inside. “Maybe we take my cash down to Mesilla and pay for an article in the paper, tell folks all about my ability to shoot. Maybe I’ll even buy a new hat . . .” His jaw dropped. “Damn.”
He checked the other side, but both saddlebags were empty. Somehow the witch had gotten her payment after all.
15: The Haunting of Luke Bassett
An excerpt from the Tale of Luke Bassett
“Then that stranger rode into town. He weren’t like normal folks. Sheriff, he didn’t even stop at the saloon on his way in.”
“Maybe he was a teetotaler.”
“Never met one of those. Anywho, he just kept riding all the way to the barn at the end of the street and . . . next thing I knew, there was this big ruckus and we found the Burkham Gang dead; strung up, their bodies full of bullets. (Spits on the ground.) May they rot in hell.”
“Yeah. Listen, I hear you got a good look at this stranger.”
“Not a good look. Just a little one is all. I-it was late at night and he wore all black and-and I dunno how to say it, Sheriff. His eyes . . . They glowed like the pits of Hell itself.” - Local witness, Stan Burk, speaking to Sheriff Chuck Blye. Puerta de la Muerte, Texas, 1850.
Luke’s earliest memory of the Stranger was at nine-years-old.
He was asleep that night, dreaming, as children often do, of strange pathways and chasing figures. He awoke with a start and, though the details of the dream left him instantly, the sense of dread he felt remained.
Luke let out a slow breath and commanded his heart to slow. There was no reason for fear. This was the time and place he usually felt most secure. He was lying in his own bed in the main room of his family’s small two-room house and it was late at night. There were no expectations from his mother; no lessons to study; no chores to do. Just peace and quiet as his parents slept in the other room. Nevertheless, the feeling of dread refused to leave.
It was a moonless night. No light came in from the room’s small solitary window and the coals in the fireplace had gone cold, leaving the room dark as pitch. Luke had never feared the dark. He liked it, actually. Slept best in the absence of light. But that night he felt an overwhelming certainty that something was wrong. The air in the room felt strange; somehow thicker than usual. He began to worry that he wasn’t alone.
Luke’s eyes darted about and, though he saw nothing, his imagination, which was still running wild from the restless dream, filled the room with misshapen figures. Suddenly, there was a shift in the darkness. As if his thoughts had summoned his fears t
o life, two coal-like dots opened up in the air above his bed. They were spaced together just close enough that, to his frightened mind, they were the eyes of some hellish beast.
With a yelp, Luke yanked the blankets over his head. His heart jumped in his chest like a frightened rabbit. Logically, he knew that if a supernatural being of some sort was actually standing next to his bed lying still beside it was a bad move. But he tried to comfort himself with the childish certainty that he was protected by his blankets; as if those few layers of woven cotton were a shield that could protect him from physical or spiritual harm.
As if to give credence to this theory, there was no attack. Luke thought he heard a grunt of derision and then nothing. He stayed huddled underneath his blankets until the feeling of dread gradually faded. Several minutes passed before he was brave enough to stick his head back out and then he did so only because it was getting stuffy under there.
Thankfully, there was nothing outside his blankets but cool air. The strange thickness he had sensed before was gone. Luke told himself that it had all been his imagination and tried to go back to sleep. An hour later, he did.
When Luke’s mother woke him the next morning, he felt as if he had barely slept at all. He didn’t dare say anything about his experience to her. After all, most of it was hard to quantify; a thickness in the air; a feeling of dread. But those two glowing eyes had seemed so real.
It weighed on his mind for most of the morning, but the boring repetitiveness of school and chores brought him back to reality. By the time supper came, the intensity of the experience had faded in much the same way as a dream.
It wasn’t until his mother and stepfather had gone into their room and shut the door that Luke felt another twinge of fear. As he readied himself for bed, it occurred to him that the thing from the night before might visit him once again. He brushed off the idea, but made sure that the front door was barred and the window securely latched.
Noose Jumpers: A Mythological Western Page 17
