The Rifters

by M. Pax

  Charming had revealed a lot to this man for him to claim they weren’t involved. It wasn’t like Charming to trust a stranger with so many delicate details. All through college, she had pretended to have grown up outside Chicago and had made Daelin play along whenever she visited. The rest of the story claimed their parents had become missionaries in New Guinea. Now Charming told stories to Daelin, which hurt worse than being fired and robbed.

  “Yeah,” Daelin said, “you met Rosalie. She didn’t like to stay with a band more than two years. If she wasn’t on tour, we moved about looking for the next band. American nomads is what we were. Where did you grow up?”

  “Nowhereville, New York. Left as soon as I was old enough.”

  “Really? A New Yorker? I never would have guessed.”

  “Why not?”

  “You don’t talk like one, and you seem so at home with the cowboy thing.” The clothes fit him as well as if he had come from another century, and he had the build of a cowboy, of a man who spent a lot of time working on the land.

  He chuckled softly. “I was never a cowboy. I’m a businessman who pretends to be one.”

  His pretending came off as genuine. He acted as if he and Charming were something innocent. With all her sister had disclosed about her early life, that wasn’t possible. Daelin watched his lips move while he spoke about the ranch, not really listening. Something tickled in the back of her mind about rescuing her sister. By Earl? From Earl? She chewed on her fingernails unable to remember and wanted a sandwich. How could she be hungry? “You pretend a lot, Mr. Blacke.”

  The smile left his cheeks. “No. Not anymore.”

  His answer hit her ear as odd. “What did you used to pretend about?”

  His guffaw came out like a dry hack. “It wasn’t so much pretending as changing. You know, once in awhile you wake up and realize you aren’t the same person. When that happens, I can’t go on living the same life as the same man.”

  She hadn’t taken him for the philosophical type. Earl was a definite enigma. “Did you learn your cooking skills in one of those former lives?”

  His brows rose. “What?”

  “The sandwich you made me was unbelievable. Did you used to be a chef?”

  “No, but I’ve been on my own a long time. So Charming mentioned you did something in relation to books in New York?”

  Her former life, the one she regretted giving up. “I was an editorial assistant for a publishing house. It was everything I wanted. I didn’t change. The world did. I still want to be that Daelin, not this one.” She sighed and picked at her fingernails. She could use a fresh coat of polish.

  “So you aren’t a writer?”

  She had started many times, but never stuck with it. She couldn’t claim the title. No, she only made other writers better. Well, used to. “Never had the time. Maybe someday.”

  “You’ll have lots of time on your hands as Settler’s librarian.”

  “Yeah?” She hadn’t thought of that. What would she write? Maybe life here wouldn’t be the horror story she feared. “Bend is really a city?”

  He exited onto the Basin Highway, and they headed east. The brush gave way to pine trees. The air burdened itself with their scent, filling Daelin’s lungs.

  “The definition is a little skewed in these parts.” He laughed, this time carefree, brightening his eyes. They almost twinkled.

  “I thought Charming would end up at a museum in Chicago. She was obsessed with Chicago.”

  A group of deer sauntered onto the highway. Earl slowed to a stop and waited for them to bound off before hitting the gas again.

  “She told me she had been in plenty of towns like Settler growing up,” he said, “and liked the idea of staying put. If she’s been in Podunks, so have you.”

  Daelin watched the deer disappear into the woods. “None as tiny or as remote. Dinky towns like to push new people out, which is why I went to the biggest city there is, counting on its size to keep me anchored. Who knew the publishing houses would merge and a job like mine would become as obsolete as Charming’s dinosaurs.”

  “It’s just a down cycle. You’ll find your place again, one you love as much as the old.” His head bobbed in rhythm with his words. “That’s what I hope anyway.”

  “You too, huh?” He was an all right guy. She could see why Charming would fall for him. “So tell me about Settler. How can I fit in and not stick out like a New Yorker in the wilderness?”

  “Be yourself and take a genuine interest in the lives of others.” His lips twitched into the hint of a smile. “Everyone will know you sneezed within ten minutes. Your sins don’t disappear in a small town, they linger forever. But they’re pleasant enough people and good souls.”

  As the new person in town, Daelin would bet everything she did would be of unshakeable interest. Great. “I met Culver’s cousin. She seems a little kooky. Are they all like her?”

  “Tiny?”

  “Yup.”

  “There’s a few. Most like to gab, and conversations can get deeply personal right quick. It’s Settler’s favorite entertainment.” He raked his gaze over her. “You should trade in your business coat for something more casual. Warmer, too. Layering is best in these parts. Fleece is a good idea too.”

  “This is all I have until I get paid.”

  “There’s a thrift shop in town. I just brought the owner some items left behind by my winter guests at the resort. There are a few nice coats. For a mere twenty dollars, you’ll be all set.”

  It wasn’t only twenty dollars when her whole fortune was forty. “This coat will do. It’s summer.”

  “Summer usually doesn’t start until mid July and it’s a short season. Central Oregon only has winter, which is most of the year, and August.”

  If Charming had mentioned the dreadful weather, Daelin would have figured out somewhere else to go. “Why is it so cold?”

  “We’re at a higher elevation. Elevation dictates everything in Oregon, especially weather. Be careful when working out for awhile. You’ll feel the lower oxygen. It’ll make you feel as if you’re old and out of shape.” He paused to take a swig of water from his canteen. He used an old-fashioned one Daelin had only seen in old camping photos. “The festival season is about to start. You missed Memorial Day weekend’s Race Days, but you’re in time for Swit Days and the rodeo.”

  Daelin watched his face. It didn’t flicker with the faintest hint of a joke. “Was that English?”

  He took a pack of mints out of his pocket and popped one in his mouth. “Patrick Swit was the founder of Settler. So this is Settler’s version of Founders Day. A carnival, music, and a rodeo.” He offered her the mints.

  She took one and chewed it. “The postman mentioned he and his cousin were descendants.”

  “Yeah, the last of them. Patrick Swit was a little odd.”

  With Culver and Trinidad as examples of the Swit family, oddness obviously ran in the genes. “How’s that?”

  “You should get Wald in the county offices to give you a tour of the house. It’s crazy. Doors everywhere. Hallways to nowhere. Old Pat believed Settler possessed by spirits.”

  “How bizarre. I hadn’t heard it mentioned until now, which is the weirdest part.”

  “It’s one of Settler’s hidden secrets. The town doesn’t talk about the house much or Patrick’s craziness.”

  Yeah, who would want to admit their home was founded by a loon. “Yet they celebrate him.”

  “History loves rewriting itself.”

  hapter

  Earl had rewritten his past. He didn’t say it aloud, though, dropping Daelin at Charming’s with four bags of groceries. Certainly he atoned for Dante with the gesture. Yet, his still insides squeezed like he had gas.

  At the ranch, he sent his employees home and put stuff away, setting the new prepaid phone in his safe. Leftovers abounded in the fridge. Some he added to fresh veggies and whisked a dressing to pour over the top. He ate his tasty salad facing west, enjoying the colors
the slipping sun sent spilling across the sky. It’d be dark soon, and he hoped to be welcoming Charming home.

  Meal finished, he cleaned up then went to his bedroom, the only room on the third floor. He changed into outdoor work pants and a flannel shirt, hanging his cowboy hat on a peg beside the closet. Hats in different colors made an artful arrangement on the wall. The only other wall decor came from the scenery outside the floor-to-ceiling windows.

  Since his first trip out west in 1852 as a young man, he’d been awed by the panoramas. The lack of striking gold had hid some of the glory then. Luck had a lot to do with how the world and he got along. It had been bad so long, he thought luck and color had gone for good from his life.

  “Only took a trip through a portal and a friend from another world to turn things around.” He laughed, striding down the granite staircase past striking paintings and grand sculptures. Finery he claimed as his.

  His fingers brushed over the bronze mustang in the lobby. It ran with others in front of the waterfall cascading down the back window. The richest man he had known in the 1880s didn’t possess such extravagance. A smile dislodged the guilt he had harbored over Daelin. His home had that effect.

  Returning to his office filled with more fine things, he grabbed worn ones: a backpack, a wool cap, and a heavy long coat that matched his tan pants. Life in the wilderness had a very different set of rules than civilized life. A pattern from his former century he couldn’t change. Savagery didn’t belong in town.

  He took the trail leading to the obsidian pillars and veered off the path to climb up onto the overhang. Orange streaks in the west flamed to reds, blues, and violets, the sparse clouds giving the dusk its soul-inspiring pigments. When all hint of the sun disappeared, the wind kicked. Earl zipped his coat and put on his hat.

  Out of his pack, he took a pair of binoculars. For now, Earl could only assist Charming by observing the otherworldly door from his perch. If she came through with trouble, he’d do more.

  He glanced toward town. No beams of light moved in his direction. The early opening of the portal last night hadn’t attracted the Rifters, the people in town who guarded the gate. Culver’s earlier investigation must have satisfied their questions. Earl went back to staring at the obsidian columns.

  A hint of silver broke in the east. The moon rose higher, washing out most of the stars. The pillars awoke. The posts hissed in a flash of blue, fingers of lightning caressing their reaches into the sky. The energy built in intensity until it burst. Glowing in yellow and blue, the portal pulsed then settled. Shadows flickered in its brilliance, dancing and looming.

  Earl’s vigil ended. His girl came home. It had to be her. He stood, ready to run down into the clearing and embrace her, but the angle of the head gave him pause. Silhouetted by the blue energy, the arrival had a long beak. Yes, a beak. Definitely not Charming.

  “No.” Earl slumped to the ground and scrambled behind a boulder. Once concealed from the visitor below, he raised his binoculars.

  The figure came into focus illuminated by the moon and the rift. It wore a mask with goggles over its beak. Green mist poured out of it in a breathing rhythm, and it had the tail of an eel. The thing stood like a human with two arms and two legs in the usual places. It set down a gyroscope, a metal orb of rings, some full rings, some partial, before the gateway. The gyroscope spun, siphoning energy from the pillars, energy reaching for a crystal in its center. It spun faster, faster, faster until the crystal began to glow. A disturbing shade of green.

  The beaked thing from the rift shrieked, which came out as a bubbly burp, an odd sound to go with an odd sight. It kept burping, stopping periodically to sniff at the wind. It continued with its strange behavior until the moon started to set, which deepened the shadows of night, stretching them to distorted patches.

  Green mists slinked out from the trees, bowing before the birdman thing. It laid a hand on every mist, dunking its head into the globs of vapor one at a time. The beaked thing bobbed, burped, and snorted, prancing in and out of the fog gathered around it. Finally, the birdman chose one, adding its green breath to the patch of green mist. At the others, the birdman flapped its arms, sending them away.

  Earl inched closer, engrossed, his elbows slipping off the edge before he realized he verged on going over. What was the birdman doing, and what exactly were the green cloud things? His scalp prickled, and he glanced toward town, checking for Culver or one of the other guardians. The forest lay unnaturally quiet. No rustles of branches. No whispers of crickets. It was up to Earl to protect the town.

  Alone with the chosen mist, the birdman stepped into it, pulling the mist on as a second skin. This had a horrid effect. The vapor took form, the form of a headless man. In his hands, he held his head. The lips parted, and he howled. A strange sort of phantom with the beaked thing’s head where a human one should be.

  Together, birdman and the phantom plucked the crystal from the center of the gyroscope. Birdman put the ghostly head on over its beaked one and together they swallowed the glowing stone. The jewel sat in the phantom’s throat pulsing. The birdman sank fully into its ghostly skin, disappearing into the gossamer form.

  The phantom lumbered away from the pillars, and the rift shut down. The ghost’s head jounced, threatening to tumble to the ground. The mouth twisted into an awful laugh, and the hollow eyes peered directly at Earl.

  hapter

  Resurrected. George “Haw Shot” Hawley hadn’t expected such a thing. Testing his body, he rolled his shoulders and shook each limb. They all worked, except his head. If he moved it too much, it fell off. Yet his senses worked, and he could speak. So he didn’t have much to grumble about, except for the strange thoughts sometimes invading his mind. No problem. He’d get rid of the birdman’s influence soon enough. It had no strength, annoying him like a case of the hiccups.

  “Haw, haw!” Anyone in George’s way would be sorry. He hadn’t changed at all, except for the empty holsters. Hell on hot sand, he wanted a gun.

  The birdman tasted strange, like fresh peas and sour beer. It tried to tell George what to do. Grab the man watching us.

  Haw Shot hated being told what to do, but he hated being spied on more. “Haw, haw.” His first couple of steps stumbled. The nippy air pressed into his muffled senses, which worked slow. Everything about him worked slow, except for his hate and the pretty words the birdman whispered in his mind. Kill. Revenge. Blood. Bart lives, but not for long. Not if you swear to listen to me.

  Revenge had a ring to it. Maybe the thing in his head was his guardian angel. What else could have resurrected him from the grave?

  The man on the rocks is Bart.

  A temptation Haw Shot couldn’t say no to. “My guardian angel promises me a kill.” He howled his words, enjoying his new job as a spook. “You’re going to die, Bart. Outlaws shooting it out. It’s our destiny.”

  Haw Shot had only met Black Bart once, well not so much met as spied on him. From thick brush, he had watched Bart perform the perfect heist, getting away clean with the Wells Fargo box and the mail pouches, earning more script with less effort than soldiering ever paid.

  The following day, Haw Shot had polished his guns and loaded them with his best bullets. From town he procured a flour sack and cut two eye holes in it. Returning to the same spot Bart had profited from, Haw Shot had hid, waiting on the next stagecoach. Wheels crunched up the road, and the horses’ harnesses jangled. When he heard the driver’s whistles, Haw Shot jumped out, firing. “Haw, haw.”

  A pretty young lady with golden curls wept, bleeding from her stomach, hit by one of his bullets. Men and women in the coach wailed like sunrise would never happen again.

  Worse, the stagecoach had a shotgun rider and a second as a passenger. Crack shots, they had aimed at George and pulled their triggers. A fiery kick roared through his shoulder and another in his gut.

  That had been the last thing Haw Shot saw until he found himself sitting on a horse under a tree with a rope around his neck. Th
e pretty young lady, dead because of him, had a lot of friends. The mother kicked the horse out from under him, wishing him an eternity in hell. As if the angels granted her wish, the rope had snapped off George’s head.

  Entrenched in chaos and death, the heist had caused more raucous than any of Bart’s, yet no one knew Haw Shot’s name. His life, or lack of, was all Bart’s fault, and it was all Bart’s fault no one had ever heard of the notorious Haw Shot. “It’s not fair. Everyone knows who you are, Bart, and you never killed anybody. You never stole a huge amount of gold. You still got your head. That isn’t right.”

  Stumbling down the trail, Haw Shot smelled cedar, sage, and juniper mixed in with the pines. Hot on a desert rock, it was nice to smell again. Crispness from snowy mountain peaks tingled his deadened skin. “This ain’t Nevada County.”

  “No, it isn’t.” Bart came down from his perch to stand before Haw Shot, fresh and full of vigor. Life danced in those cold blue eyes. Not for much longer.

  Vengeance would go down better than three thick steaks. Haw Shot licked his lips. “Last time I saw you, you was gray and wrinkled. How’d you get younger?” It irked him to distraction his holsters were empty. Bart’s were too. It’d be a fair fight then.

  “I don’t recall ever meeting you, but I’ll be straight as the wind is true. The truth is awful. You sure you want to know it? We’re being used for nefarious purposes by things from another world.”

  “Nefurious. You made that up. Haw, haw.” Bart was full of it, like his method of robbing stagecoaches. “You done this to me, you piece of shit. You’re a goblin or something, bewitching stagecoach drivers. Nothing else explains why you wasn’t shot and hanged.”

  “I see. You had known of me.”

  Haw Shot growled. “Where’s your diamond pins and fancy rings?”

  Take them from him. Attack. George’s angel had some good advice.

  Haw Shot lunged. His angel rewarded him, sending surges of great power into his veins. He felt alive, so deliciously alive. Green spindles of energy arced from his fingers, wrapping around Bart, squeezing, jolting, until Bart fell limp to the ground.