PREDATOR IF IT BLEEDS

by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  Assured that his hands were finally clean, he picked up his daughter’s latest construction and tucked it in his breast pocket. He could give the dolly back to her when he stopped by the boarding house for lunch. Big Bess Sandford liked to tell the sheriff he spoiled his little girl, but as far as he could tell, there wasn’t anything spoiled about his Mina. She helped Bess around the boarding house and could help her daddy out of his boots in under thirty seconds, which was pretty good for a kid with hands as small as hers. She’d knocked the socks off the school teacher at the start of school last week, too.

  Anderson adjusted his battered hat and knocked his grin into the semblance of a stern expression. He had an hour or two of patrolling before he could sneak back to Bess’s place, and he’d better look the part.

  The door flew open, and Max Corbin, the grocer, launched himself inside. His tongue darted out the corners of his mouth and his eyes had gone two sizes too big. He opened his mouth to talk and settled for licking his lips again, a lizard cornered by a hawk.

  “What is it?”

  “Bunch of men at the tavern asking about you,” Max managed. “Mean-looking.”

  Max’s store had been robbed three times before the town hired Anderson. He knew what mean looked like.

  “I’ll take care of it.” Anderson grabbed the box of shells out of the top drawer of his desk and shoved six of them in his pocket. If things got ugly, he wasn’t likely to get a chance to reload, but he liked to be prepared. He hurried out of the jailhouse.

  Coyote Creek wasn’t the biggest town in southern Oregon, but it sat in the middle of enough successful mining towns to draw the attention of any number of bandits, rustlers, and hustlers. Farmers up in the Willamette Valley liked to brag about how peaceful and prosperous their state was. They didn’t know squat about life down here on the Californian border.

  He strode into the tavern and stopped in his tracks. The black-haired man leaning on the bar was mean-looking alright; Anderson didn’t know anyone meaner. He’d been running away from him since he was twenty-two years old, and he’d prayed every night that Wallace McBurnie wouldn’t find him.

  “Why, boys, it looks like Johnny Anderson done went and grown up.” McBurnie gave the dry bark that passed for his laugh. It usually meant he was about to hit somebody, and for the ten years Anderson had lived under McBurnie’s thumb, Anderson had been the nearest punching bag.

  “McBurnie.” Anderson looked around the room. McBurnie’s men came out of the corners, closing around Anderson in an ugly circle. He recognized a few of the faces: Ugly James, Fat Malone, Piss-Bucket Johnson. The other half-dozen or so were strangers. “You lost both the Lee brothers?”

  “Big Lee got stabbed by a whore down in Virginia City, that cheap sumbitch. Wee Lee’s serving ten years in Wasco for robbery. He never had the same touch with a safe that you did, Johnny.”

  Anderson felt a surge of anger. “You let Wee Lee break a safe on a job? Are you crazy? I told you that boy didn’t have the hands for it.”

  McBurnie lit a cheroot, his eyes fixed on Anderson even as his nimble hands struck the match. He had a way of rooting a man into place with his blue eyes, so pale they were like chips of ice struck from some mountain glacier. He blew a long stream of smoke. “You did tell me. But I had high hopes I could train him up the way I trained you.”

  He lifted the cheroot to his mouth again, the little cigar held between the blackened stumps of the first two fingers on his right hand. He could shoot like the devil himself with his left, but he could never train it up for safecracking. Anderson’s own fingers gave a twitch.

  “So why are you here?”

  One of the gang spat a stream of chew onto the floor. McBurnie shot him a look, and the kid Indian quailed. He had a bruise on his jaw, no doubt from McBurnie’s fist. McBurnie hated chewing tobacco.

  “Do I need a reason to look for my adopted son?”

  Anderson raised an eyebrow.

  “I need a safecracker. I’ve got a big score out in Malheur County, and you’re the only one who can handle the safe.”

  “I ain’t opened a safe in six years, and I ain’t ever going to open one again.” Anderson’s hand went to the butt of the revolver sitting on his hip.

  McBurnie followed the move. His eyes crawled up to the star on Anderson’s breast pocket. He smiled that smile of his, the ugliest Anderson had ever seen. “I’ll just give you some time to think on that.”

  He beckoned to the kid Indian. The boy and the rest of the gang fell in step behind him. Their shoulders bumped into Anderson’s as they passed, a long string of hard thuds. He stood his ground.

  The door thumped softly behind the last of the thugs.

  “Reckon they saw me pull out my shotgun,” the bartender called.

  “Reckon that was it, Lem,” Anderson called back. But he had a bad feeling things weren’t over. He patted his breast pocket. Patrolling be damned. He wanted to go give his little girl her corn dolly and a hug, right this second.

  * * *

  After a hasty lunch, he headed out to the Nielssen ranch. Lars Nielssen was his deputy, but Anderson would have wanted his advice even if he wasn’t. Lars had given Anderson a job and a place to live when no one else would. He and his wife were the closest thing to family Anderson and Mina had, and he had taught Anderson what being a sheriff and a father really meant. Six years ago, Anderson would have just run away from Wallace McBurnie and Coyote Creek. Today, he was looking for backup.

  He found Eva and Lars in their barn, reshoeing their old mare. With the help of their hired hands, the old couple ran three hundred head of cattle through the canyons and gullies of Coyote Creek. They were both tough as nails and smart as the critters they named the creek for.

  It took a minute or two to explain the situation, and then Lars clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m here for you, son. You know that.” He turned to Eva. “Beeves got to go down to the big field tomorrow. You think you and the boys can handle that?”

  Eva had already taken the mare’s foot between her knees, directing a flurry of half-English, half-Norwegian orders at Lars. The big man disappeared into the house and reappeared a moment later with his rifle and his going-to-town hat.

  He gave Eva a brisk kiss, and Anderson helped him load up his gear. The two men worked in silence. Lars’s stolid presence settled Anderson’s jitters. They’d faced down worse trouble than one small gang. It didn’t matter who led this one: Anderson and Lars were a good team. They could manage this.

  He believed that right up to the moment they turned the corner of Main Street and he saw Bess Sandford standing in the middle of the street with blood running down her face.

  * * *

  Anderson crouched behind the fallen cottonwood, studying the gang’s camp on the sandy peninsula. It had taken all evening for Lars to track the devils down to this site. It was the perfect location: impossible to sneak up on, unless you could walk on water.

  Now a dense thicket of brambles and the curve of the creek stood between him and the site. The rush of the creek’s current covered up any but the loudest noises, but his very bones could hear Mina calling to him for help. The flickering campfire lit up the armed men at their posts. Beside the fire, he could see Mina huddled in a nest of saddle blankets. She looked so fragile, clutching her corn dolly to her chest with her tiny bound hands. Every fiber of Anderson’s being ached for her.

  He crept away from the creek to the little ravine where Lars hid, divvying up shells and checking over their weapons. “They’re ready for an attack.” Anderson picked up a handful of pebbles and began arranging them in a semblance of the gang’s camp. “It’s a good site, too—the way the creek bends, they’ve got water on three sides.”

  “There’s no way to sneak up on ’em.”

  “No.” Anderson rubbed his eyes. “Goddamn it! I keep trying to come up with something, but all I can think about is Mina tied up like that.”

  Behind them, a man shrieked.

  Anderson ju
mped to his feet. “What the hell was that?”

  A shot echoed off the hills. Men shouted. A horse screamed. Lars tossed Anderson a rifle and ran past him. The big man could move.

  Anderson ran after him, furtiveness forgotten in the chaos. A man smashed into him, screaming in pain and fear, knocking Anderson into the creek. Anderson splashed back onto the beach, his heart racing. Mina. Jesus God, what was going on in that camp?

  A searing blue light flashed and the sudden stink of burned hair and flesh filled the air. Something pattered down on him, hot and sticky. It took him a second to recognize the hunk of flesh that struck his boot as a man’s hand. He kicked it off and ran faster. He passed Lars grappling a tall man. There was no time to stop and help Lars. He had to get to Mina.

  “Mina!” He couldn’t hear his voice, but he could feel his anger and his fear scorching in his throat.

  A stream of white light flashed past him. The smoke of his own burning hair assaulted his nostrils. But he only had eyes for one thing: his daughter, now clasped in Wallace McBurnie’s arms.

  The gang leader ran through the campfire, charging toward the creek. Anderson jumped over the stack of saddle blankets and stumbled over the motionless form of Fat Malone. He just caught himself as a giant hand closed around McBurnie and Mina.

  “Mina! Mina!”

  For a second the pair hung suspended in the grasp of the hand—no, not a hand, Anderson realized, his mind finally catching up with his senses, a net—and then they were wrenched through the air, skipping off the surface of the creek like a flat rock. In the darkness, a tremendous slashing accompanied them, and then they were gone, vanished into the night and woods beyond the creek.

  Anderson dropped to his knees. “Mina,” he whispered. “Oh, baby, I’ll find you. I’ll find you.”

  * * *

  It took him fifteen minutes to find Lars in the devastation of the camp. He’d only been a boy during the Civil War, but he’d grown up hearing stories of what cannon-fire did to a man, and he could only imagine that whatever that blue flash was, it put a cannon to shame. No noise, no explosion: just pure carnage. Half the gang’s horses had been reduced to scraps by it. Fat Malone had a horse hoof driven through his chest by the force of the blast.

  Lars lay under the body of a tall man with the tooled boots of a dandy. Even in the dull glow of the dying fire, Anderson could see the neatly scorched circle on the back of the dandy’s fringed leather jacket. It was as if a hot awl had punched right through the man’s body, and when Anderson rolled away the dandy’s corpse, he saw without surprise that the hole continued through Lars. The look of surprise on the deputy’s face suggested death had been more surprising than painful. Anderson closed Lars’s eyes.

  Anderson’s own insides felt hollow. He was alone. He had lost Lars. He had lost Mina. He knuckled his eyelids.

  “Help.”

  Anderson went still, listening. The voice had been very small.

  “Help me!”

  He turned back toward the campfire, where a heap of supplies and what must have been a tent or two lay smoking. The heap shook, and a bag of coffee slid to the ground. Anderson began tossing aside saddlebags. A bottle of whiskey smashed as he flung it aside.

  The kid Indian sat up. Blood ran down the side of his face. He clutched his head and hissed.

  “You okay?”

  The kid tried to nod, made a face. Up close, he wasn’t quite as young as Anderson had first made him out to be— but he was maybe eighteen at the oldest. The kid looked around the stinking, blasted camp. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “There was a light. The horses—” The kid stopped. He looked sick. “What the hell can do that kind of thing?”

  “I don’t know.” Anderson turned a bag of beans onto its side and plopped down on it. The rush of energy fear had given him had burned out, and now the long tense day had caught up with him. It wouldn’t be long until morning. He wanted nothing more than to close his eyes and sleep for a couple of hours, but he knew he couldn’t. Mina was out there somewhere. He had to find her.

  “You’re the safecracker.”

  “Yeah.”

  The kid turned in a slow circle, studying the camp. He stooped beside the fire, studying something in the dirt. Whatever it was, he pocketed it. “Where’s your little girl?”

  “Something got her. Her and McBurnie. It took them across the creek.” Anderson thought about standing up, kept sitting. “I’ve got to track them down.”

  “What do you know about tracking, city slicker?”

  McBurnie must have told the gang about finding him on the streets of San Francisco and taking him in. He narrowed his eyes at the kid. “I know enough.”

  The kid snorted. “I heard you crashing through the brush over there, trying to hide behind that cottonwood. If you knew anything about tracking, you would have managed a little better than that.”

  “So you’re a tracker.”

  The kid pulled a bag of tobacco out of his pocket. “No shit.”

  “Why didn’t you turn me in when you saw me?”

  The kid shrugged. He bit off a twist of chaw and began turning it between his front teeth like a knot of spruce gum.

  Anderson studied him a moment or two. The kid was observant, that was for sure. Anderson had to admit to himself that without Lars’s help, he was going to have a hard time finding where that net had taken McBurnie and Mina. He hadn’t caught even a glimpse of the men behind the attack, hadn’t heard any horses, hadn’t seen anything. The only thing he could be sure of was the net—the net and some goddamn terrifying firepower.

  “I want to hire you to help me track down my girl. Whatever your price is, I’ll pay it.”

  The boy shot a string of spit into the campfire. “Hell, no. You see what those bastards did to this camp? You really want to have a run-in with men like that?”

  “With a tracker like you, I won’t have to have a run-in.” Anderson got off his sack of beans and stood in front of the kid. “Those bastards have my little girl. I know you think that’s wrong. Otherwise, you would have turned me in the second you saw me behind that cottonwood.”

  “Shit.” The kid got to his feet. “It won’t be cheap.”

  “How much?”

  “Ten dollars.”

  “How much?”

  “Ten dollars.”

  It would mean digging up his cache beneath Bess’s sycamore, but that didn’t matter. He’d been saving that money for Mina. If something happened to her, that silver may as well rot.

  “It’s a deal.” Anderson put out his hand. “What’s your name, son?”

  The kid shifted his plug of chaw into his cheek. “Billy Novak. And I ain’t your son, Sheriff. Let’s keep this business only.”

  “All right, Mr. Novak. Get your gear and we’ll go back to my camp for horses.”

  “Wait a second.” Novak held out his hand. “You should have this.”

  The corn dolly sat on his palm, ash-streaked and crumpled, but still whole. Anderson felt a surge of gratitude.

  “Thanks.”

  The kid grinned. “You’re damn lucky to have me.”

  * * *

  As the sun nosed up over the hills, Novak helped Anderson wrap Lars in the remnants of the gang’s tents. There’d be time to bury him later, Anderson promised himself. He and the kid piled the gang’s gear around the grisly bundle. He hoped it would be enough to keep the body safe from buzzards and vultures until he could take better care of it.

  After that business, it was a relief to walk away from the camp. In the dark, it had been bad. In the cold light of dawn, it was worse. Every bit of sand and stone had been pelted with blood and meaty bits. The stink was impossible. Anderson’s stomach, luckily empty, turned around itself. He changed course, hurrying toward the place where he’d left his horse.

  “Wait,” Novak whispered, holding Anderson back.

  A body lay in the shallows. A big man, taller than Anderson and twice as wid
e. He clawed at the mud and then fell back, gasping.

  Novak’s eyes narrowed. “Piss-Bucket.” His hand went to his cheek, where a second fresh bruise shone.

  Anderson waded to the big man’s side and grabbed the back of his collar. “Morning, Piss-Bucket.” He hauled him a foot higher up the beach. He’d never liked Piss-Bucket Johnson, not even when they’d worked together. He hadn’t recognized the fat man when he’d knocked Anderson into the creek last night, but he wasn’t surprised he’d run away in the middle of a fight.

  He glanced at Novak. The kid folded his arms against his chest, his face dark. Anderson remembered his own time in the gang. Piss-Bucket Johnson had his own way of making life hell for a teenaged boy.

  Piss-Bucket groaned. Anderson worked his boot into the man’s fleshy ribs and flipped him onto his back. The smell of burned meat overpowered Piss-Bucket’s eponymous aroma. The remnants of his coat and shirt hung in rags off his scorched chest.

  “What happened?”

  Piss-Bucket’s eyes shot open. His mouth opened and closed, fish-like, as he gasped in pain and fear. His burns were too severe for him to last much longer. Any other man, Anderson might have felt bad for.

  “A ghost,” Piss-Bucket gasped. “A ghost!”

  “What’s he saying?”

  Anderson slapped the fat man’s face. “What did you see, Johnson?”

  “A ghost.” Piss-Bucket’s eyes fluttered, then widened again. “I saw a ghost wading through the crick. An invisible ghost, splashing around.” He twitched, jerked.

  “I didn’t see anything,” Novak mused. “Not a thing.”

  “A ghost!” Piss-Bucket went stiff and then his head fell back.

  “Good riddance,” Anderson said.

  Novak drove his boot into the fat man’s side. “Yeah.”

  They didn’t say anything else until they were well away from the campsite and its horrors, the warm September sun drying the clothes they’d rinsed in the creek. Anderson kept slipping in and out of memory, the bad old days with the gang weaving into moments from Mina’s childhood. He’d tried so hard to grow up and be a decent man for her, only to have his past come back and bite him in the ass.