The Ardath Mayhar MEGAPACK®

by John Maclay

  “You head right up the track, Jody. You can see where it is by the stars, and Coaly isn’t going out into the brush, and he certainly isn’t coming back here where the cat is. I’ll be right behind you with the lantern. But you make him RUN, you hear me? Kick him with your heels. Slap him with the reins. Go now!” and she struck the horse sharply with the stock of the whip she had taken from the wreck of the wagon.

  As the hoofbeats rattled away up the red dirt track, she turned where she stood and held the lantern high. No eyes parked at her...yet. She backed slowly up the way, watching sharply. Then she turned and ran as hard as she could for a couple of hundred yards. When she turned again there were red points of light there in the road.

  Julie’s heart thumped high in her throat. Beads of sweat sprang out along her hairline as she watched the tawny shape that she saw clearly now for the first time.

  The cat was cautious. An adult human being wasn’t its usual prey, and the fire in the lantern filled its eyes disturbingly. But its gut growled with hunger. Julie could see the creature weighing its hunger against the unknown threat she might pose.

  Before it could make up its mind, she was upon it, the whip swinging down in a wicked arc, the metal tip cracking viciously as it drew blood that showed bright against its tan coat. The cougar crouched, snarling, its ears flat against its head, its eyes glaring. But Julie was past caution. To buy time for her children, she was prepared to risk everything. She danced to one side and cracked the whip again. Another trickle of blood gleamed against the creature’s neck.

  The lantern that she had hung on a stub of branch beside the track gave her enough light for maneuvering, and she struck again as the best backed away, keeping its head toward her, its eyes focused on her as the pressing danger it knew it faced.

  Then a rain of whip strokes drove the creature backward into the edge of the wood...deeper. And then it was gone, a frustrated cough of anger coming back to Julie’s ears as the last twitch of brush marked its passage.

  Julie listened hard. The only sounds were tree frogs, a whip-poor-will in the distance, a hoot owl somewhere nearby, and the many small noises of a wood at night. There was no scream to be heard, nor any other sound that might mark the hunt of a big cat.

  She turned in her track, the lash of the whip marking the red dust of the road. She took the lantern from the stub.

  Now she could hear sounds from the road ahead. Men’s voices, calling—but she was suddenly too exhausted to make a sound. The children were safe—that was all that mattered. If they hadn’t reached Dooleys’, nobody would be calling in the forest in the early morning hours.

  Letting the lantern dangle wearily from her hand, dragging the whip, she started up the trail toward the east. The early morning constellations hung above the cut. A mockingbird was tuning up his song in the woods.

  LIKE MOTHER USED TO MAKE

  Another macabre tale of the Old West….

  He rode into town lank as a winter wolf and mean-tempered to boot. When he stalked into the saloon (the inevitable Silver Dollar), he dropped three neat whiskeys into his empty belly and turned to the bartender.

  “I been eating my own cooking until I’m ready to quit eating entirely,” he growled. “I don’t want no restaurant nonsense. I don’t want no fly-specked bar goodies. I want real FOOD, like Mama used to make. Is there one single person in this flea-bit town that takes in boarders and feeds ’em as if they was people instead of hogs?”

  The man behind the sticky bar gave a half-hearted swipe with a dirty rag and pursed his mouth. “There’s Miz Peabody—but her cookin’ ain’t just the thing. Miz Grueber takes in a roomer, now her man’s dead and gone, but she’s already got the schoolteacher there. Hmmm.” His brow wrinkled painfully, as if it hurt him to think.

  Then his eyes cocked up at Mark Shaftoe as if sizing him up. “Course, there’s Emmy Whittle. But she’s...she’s real special. Don’t like nobody rowdy or that cusses a lot. Don’t take many drifters”—he stared hard at the dust on Shaftoe’s shoulders and pants legs.

  “She treats her folks like they was kin. She sort of mothers ’em, y’see? Course, she really likes her boarders to like their vittles too. She hates a skinny man. Can’t wait to fat him up, when one comes along. If you intend to stay around for a while, you’d be just her cup of tea. She’d have that big old iron stove of hers goin’ like a steam engine, gettin’ stuff fixed to fill out them bones of yours.”

  Shaftoe was leaning forward over the bar. “Aim me at her,” he said. “I need just that sort of place for a month or two.”

  As he followed the man’s directions, leading Yellowbone, he watched the street closely. Nobody there gave him a second look— men at loose ends were nothing extra here in Packsaddle Stop, it seemed.

  There was no sign on Emmy Whittle’s boardinghouse. Evidently she took only those boarders sent to her by word of mouth. That told Shaftoe a lot—she probably had all the business she could manage. And if she was the sort of cook the bartender hinted at—he sighed with anticipation. It would purely hurt him to have to rob and kill her, once he got ready to go on. Still, that was the way he did things, and he didn’t break his own rules.

  The house was tall and narrow, with a porch that ran all the way around it front to back. A line of rocking chairs sat there, and it was late enough for most of them to be filled.

  Shaftoe nodded as he clinked up the steps onto the porch. Banker, the steadier sorts of cowhands, drummers, four old ladies in black dresses and little shoulder shawls, a really obese Chinese in yellow silk, waving a little fan before his perspiring face—a motley bunch. Ripe for the picking, it looked as if.

  He smiled politely at the skinny young woman who elbowed the door open as she came out with a tray loaded with cups. He slid past her into the cool dimness of a wide central hall. He could smell something heavenly—roast beef, perhaps. And apple pie with cinnamon. And fresh-baked bread—his mouth began to water.

  Someone called from the back—the kitchen, he thought, “Who’s there? Come here so’s I can see you!”

  He stalked down the polished boards of the hall and stood in the door of a big room that was dominated by a cook stove of Herculean proportions. From it came an array of odors that almost made him faint with hunger.

  The woman who stood there was large and fair, her body sturdy without being fat. She had wiped her hair back with a floury wrist, for there was a streak of white across her forehead. Her round cheeks were flushed, and her cornflower eyes surveyed him shrewdly.

  “New boarder?” she asked, her tone neutral.

  “The man from The Silver Dollar advised me to come here. Just in case you might have room for me,” he said. He made his eyes shine, as he had trained them to do, and his expression showed nothing but trustworthiness. “He said that you’re the best cook this side of the Mississippi.” Which was a lie, but couldn’t do any harm.

  She looked him up and she looked him down. She frowned for a moment as if trying to find a spot in which to put his skinny frame. Then she smiled and held out her floury hand.

  “Emmy Whittle,” she said. “Welcome to my house. You look as if you could stand a little home cooking. Staying long? I don’t like to take in short-timers. Less’n a week, and I can’t be bothered.”

  Mark Shaftoe sighed and grinned. “I intend to stay until you run me off, if I can find me some kind of a job to keep me goin’. At least a month, if I can’t. That all right with you?”

  Emmy turned back to the oven, which was filling the kitchen with heartbreaking smells of bread and cake and pie. She opened the door, revealing a space in which she could have baked half an ox, and pulled out a rack of pie-pans with an iron hook. Sliding them onto a marble-topped cook table, she closed the door and turned back to Mark.

  “Get washed up for dinner. The folks on the porch is havin’ coffee right now, but it’ll be time to eat pretty soon. First door on
the left at the very top of the stairs. Top, mind you—that’s the onliest place I’ve got left, and it’s pretty small.”

  Mark went back to Yellowbone and took down his packs. A small boy was pretending to play marbles in the dust of the road, but he was really watching the newcomer. Mark flipped him a dime.

  “Take my horse over to the livery?” he asked. “Tell the man I’m staying here at Miz Whittle’s and I’ll be over after supper.”

  The child grabbed the coin and the reins almost at once. He tugged the tired beast across the dusty street and into the dark maw of the stable. Shaftoe watched them go, feeling oddly restful. It had been years since he had found a place where he could put up his feet and really relax, and this one seemed just that sort. A shame—but he shrugged away the thought and went to find his room.

  * * * *

  Fall came in with gusting winds and a flurry of early snow. Shaftoe rode in from his piddling little handyman job huddled in his heavy jacket. He was feeling smug—this was the first winter in years that he would be warm and well fed. His plan to finish his business in Packsaddle kept getting put off and put off, for he never had been so comfortable in his life.

  Not to mention the fact that his belly had moved away from his backbone. While he didn’t have a paunch, exactly, he was getting a bit of flesh ’round the middle. Have to watch that—but Emmy’s cooking made it mighty hard. He even, once in a while, toyed with the thought of marrying her instead of murdering her. But he shook that away as unworthy of him. He had, after all, his professional standards, and they were strict.

  He washed up on the back porch, and Prue, Emmy’s handy-girl, had hot water waiting in a can for him. He slicked back his hair and went into the hall, smelling the food that was already being put onto the long table in the dining room.

  “Oh, Mr. Shaftoe,” fluttered Miss Filligan, the youngest of the old ladies, “You’re late tonight. We were worried about you.” Her faded eyes brightened as he took her arm gallantly and ushered her into the dining room to join her two sisters and cousin at their usual end of the table.

  Wang, the Chinaman, bent his head slightly in greeting. His little fan lay on the table beside his plate, and his pudgy fingers kept playing with the silk cord on its handle as they waited for their hostess to join them. He had grown fatter in the months Shaftoe had lived in the Whittle house. It was a wonder that even the stout mahogany chairs could hold his weight.

  The banker and the single drummer entered and sat, and at last Emmy Whittle made her entrance. She always dressed fresh for dinner, and she looked cheery and bright in a dress patterned with scarlet poppies. But she looked sad, and her gaze kept turning toward Wang as she served the plates.

  Before they rose from the table, at last, she tapped on her glass with a teaspoon. “My friends,” she said in her light soprano, “I have some saddening news. Our friend Mr. Wang will be leaving us this week. We will miss him, but he says that his business here is finished and he must return to San Francisco. I can only hope that he and our Mr. Wingate have prospered, and that he will come again, one day, to stay in our home.”

  Wang was beaming. His small black eyes shone as he struggled to his feet and bowed as well as a perfectly round figure can manage to do.

  “Is great pleasure to say, will return when can,” he said. Instead of sitting again, he went out with Wingate to the parlor, leaving Shaftoe to finish his dessert and follow more slowly.

  Emmy caught him as he left the dining room. “You are looking so well, Mr. Shaftoe,” she said, her tone arch. “I feel that I have been able to improve your health during your stay. Do you think you will continue until Christmas with us? We do have such a jolly time, then, with a feast that will astonish you.”

  He bent over her hand in a courtly manner he hadn’t used in a decade. “My dear lady, I wouldn’t miss it for the world!”

  He went up to his room and lay on his narrow bed, boots carefully propped on the foot rail. He was becoming puzzled as to his best move. Rules were all very well, but when it meant hurting yourself to go by your principles—he was more and more tempted to marry Emmy and let the whole business go.

  * * * *

  The week passed slowly, with nasty weather delaying Wang’s departure. At last one morning Emmy greeted those at breakfast with the news that he had left very early.

  “He said that he was already late, and there was a wagon going to Denver that could take him and all his things. He said to tell you all goodbye and that he hopes to see you again.” She looked chipper, her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed.

  There was a murmur around the table, and Mark found that he was going to miss the colorful shape of Wang about the house. He was a note of Oriental splendor you didn’t often see in a town like Packsaddle.

  If he’d had any idea of leaving before Christmas, it dissipated in the next several weeks. The food, which had been good, became superlative. Emmy seemed excited and pleased, and the house was filled with cheerful voices and bright faces. A sort of Paradise, Mark thought as he went in and out about his small job.

  Then he found the fan. It was purely accidental—the thing had been kicked beneath the heavy settee in the parlor, where Wang’s imprint still marked the plush upholstery. Mark’s lucky dollar rolled under, as he flipped it, and he got onto his hands and knees to retrieve the thing. It had been given him by his aunt, who was the first of his victims, and he had a sentimental attachment to it.

  The room was empty, for everyone had gone to the church for a carol-singing. Mark took the fan upstairs to his room and sat for a long time on the bed. Wang might well have dropped it and been unable to find it. He couldn’t, obviously, crawl under after it as he had done.

  The Chinaman might well have had more than one, in fact. But somehow Mark felt that he would never have gone away and left that bauble behind. He pushed away the thought that kept trying to creep into his mind. Emmy...was Emmy. The thought was absurd.

  But he went downstairs before day the next morning, and went cautiously into the back yard. He wanted a look at the smokehouse, where Emmy hung the meat she butchered herself. He wanted to know, surely and certainly, if he had been eating Chinaman for the past several weeks, though he had to admit that if so, it was the best meat he had ever put a tooth into.

  The door was padlocked, but that didn’t slow him more than a minute.

  There was a side of meat hanging in the chill darkness. The scent of smoke was thick in the little room, but the smolder under the meat didn’t give any light at all. Mark found a sulfur match and struck it. He found himself looking into Wang’s eyes—upside down and open.

  His stomach heaved. Something that felt ridiculously like righteous indignation filled him. What a horrible thing he had discovered! He must go to the sheriff, get a warrant, have Emmy Whittle arrested for murder. For cannibalism. For—but what about him and the others? Did they share in her guilt? What would the law say about that?

  As he stood in the darkness, pondering the situation, the solution came to him in a flash. He need only go through with his original plan. To kill Emmy now would be a just and necessary thing. To rob her was only what she deserved.

  He turned toward the door, but there was a shape there. Something glittered in its hand.

  “Oh, dear,” said Emmy Whittle. “I wanted to save you for New Year’s, and now I’ll have to go ahead. But the weather’s plenty cold—you shouldn’t spoil.”

  She moved toward him, and Shaftoe stepped back and back, until he felt Wang’s cold nose against his neck. Then she swung the cleaver, and he never worried about anything again.

  WHISTLE IN THE WIND

  This is one of my favorite stories, and I cannot imagine why it has never been published. Somehow editors just didn’t seem to get it!

  It was a long old way from Barron’s Landing to Twining, and I cursed every mile of it as I traveled. Hell, I cursed every inch o
f it, with extra thrown in for each gust of wind that filled my eyes with dust. Old Henry, my mule, didn’t like the trip much either, and when Henry ain’t happy he never intends for his rider to be happy either.

  Which accounts for the fact that he sat down with me just short of halfway, which was two weeks out from Barron’s in the middle of no place in particular, and looked around with that mule expression that tells you it’ll be a cold day in hell before he gets up. I’d lit on my back, as usual, when he buckled his hind legs, and I wasn’t in the best of moods myself.

  That don’t excuse what I did next, and I’ve got to admit I’m a mite ashamed of myself for losing control that way. A mule’s not easy to get along with, and I knew that when I bought him off Petroff, the Jew peddler back in Missouri. I traded off speed and obedience for a lot of bottom, which Henry had, but it didn’t do either of us much good once I’d blowed his innards all over the trail.

  He kicked once or twice and let out a long toot and that was that. By then I’d cooled down a little and realized I’d done a real fool thing, but it was too late to mend. Toting all that stuff I’d been taking with me on my way west was going to be impossible, and I’d just cut my visible assets in half, being as Henry represented fifty percent.

  It was getting on for dark when I shot old Henry, and as you couldn’t say that track saw more than one traveler in any given month, I figured to camp right there, cook a strip of Henry for supper, and leave the rest for the buzzards when I went on. Bad decision. He was the toughest bastard I ever set tooth to, and I ended up eating beans.

  Next morning I made me a kind of travois out of some of the skinny little cottonwoods that grew along a creek I’d passed a mile or two back and packed on all I could drag of my plunder. My clothes wasn’t no problem. I had what I wore, which wasn’t fancy, and a good outfit I kept for funerals.

  There was my survival stuff, which I had to take along. But the main weight and bulk was my tools. A carpenter has to have those, and I wasn’t going to leave mine behind if I drug my guts out.