“I don’t think so either,” Cuttrell said. “But I would sure as hell like to know who did it.”
* * *
They made camp a half mile away, on the other side of the narrow, rocky canyon. Colonel Cuttrell had considered posting guards to ward off any more animal predation and protect the ghost rock until it could be collected, but in the end had decided he didn’t want to ask his men to do anything he wouldn’t do, and he would never assign himself such a morbid duty. Kuruk was glad to be away from there. It was no good to spend a lot of time with the dead. He desperately hoped no troopers had taken any of the dead’s possessions; if they had, those dead would be with them for a long time.
While the troopers set up camp, he watched over the girl. They had transported her here in the bed of the wagon, but then he had taken her out, wrapped her in blankets, and sat her up against a rock. When troopers came around to look at her, he warned them off with a fierce glare or a few well-chosen words. He knew he was pushing his luck—he was a scout, not a soldier, and any one of them had more authority than he did. A word to the colonel and he could be dismissed. But he felt protective of the girl, for reasons he couldn’t explain, and the men seemed willing to let him deal with her. Perhaps, he thought, they were a little afraid of her—a young lady, by herself with the train, and alive when no one else had made it. There was something strange about her, and Kuruk could sense it. Probably the troopers could, too.
She hadn’t spoken a word. She had blinked a few times, but if she was seeing anything at all, it wasn’t in this world. She gave no indication that she understood anything that was said to her. Every soldier had come around at least once for a glimpse of her, but Cuttrell had them busy now, pitching tents, starting fires, cooking. Kuruk had a small fire going, Apache-style. Big fires were too hot to sit near, and too easy for enemies to see. This one would keep her warm, and he had done his best to make her comfortable. He spoke to her in his language, telling her tales of the old times, when White Painted Woman and Child-of-the-Water walked the earth.
The sun had nearly fled from the sky, but streaks of gold still sliced through the indigo onset of night. Kuruk watched the girl, wondering if she would fear the darkness, or embrace it, or even notice it. As he observed her, her eyes rolled up in her head, and then her head tilted and turned a little. Kuruk followed her gaze, which seemed to be focused on something for the first time. He caught a glimpse of a golden eagle, soaring overhead and disappearing behind the hills. After a moment, it swooped back out from another position, cut some arcs across the sky. Kuruk watched it, and watched the girl. Her head moved with the hawk—not, he thought, in response to it, but in time with it, in perfect harmony. She moved when it did. Then it vanished once again, and didn’t return.
“You know him? Brother eagle?” he asked.
Her chin lowered and her head shifted back to its usual position, eyes looking straight ahead. Maybe she did see. Maybe there was more going on inside her than he could tell.
“What do they call you, girl?”
She gave the same answer she had all the other times he’d asked. Silence. A blank stare.
“Very well,” Kuruk said. “Then I will call you Little Wing. She who speaks with the birds. Do you like that?”
Silence. The same blank stare.
“No argument. Good. Little Wing it is, then. Welcome to D Troop, Little Wing. Twelfth Cavalry, Army of the Confederate States of America, out of Fort Huachuca in the Arizona Territory. My name is Kuruk, Little Wing. And believe me, I know what it’s like to be alone.”
She didn’t respond. They sat, Kuruk speaking softly in English and Apache. The last light fled as the eagle had, and darkness settled, broken only by Kuruk’s fire and those, farther away, around which the soldiers sat.
With the dark, Little Wing became agitated. Kuruk noticed that if the firelight flagged, she tensed. At first it was barely noticeable, but it became more pronounced the more it happened. He fed more wood into the fire, and built it up again, and she visibly relaxed. After a while longer, her eyes closed. Kuruk kept talking for a while, until her deep, steady breathing told him that she had fallen asleep.
Almost at once, she started to twitch. Her fingers bunched toward her palms, then relaxed. Her shoulders bobbed up and down. Her lips parted, moved, as if she were trying to speak, but no sound came out. Her eyes moved behind her eyelids. He expected whimpers, perhaps even cries. She was dreaming, and the dream didn’t strike him as a pleasant one. A nightmare. He stroked her cheek, her neck, her shoulder, whispered to her of fine things, of clear rushing streams and long fast rides on horseback and the glory of a spring morning in the desert, and he kept it up until she appeared to be at peace once more.
He didn’t sleep all night, but sat up watching her to make sure it didn’t happen again.
“Be at peace, Little Wing,” he told her, over and over. “Nothing will hurt you now. Nothing will ever hurt you again.”
Chapter Ten
Nate McHale wasn’t anxious to spend another night out on that haunted range, watching over cattle but knowing all the while that something was stalking them—and possibly him. He had spent hours with the bodies of Pinky and Hopkin. He’d tried not to look, but every now and then curiosity got the better of him. It wasn’t so bad in the darkness, but as the sun rose and the flies began to swarm them and the stench thickened, he allowed himself short glances, then longer ones. At one point he quit fighting the urge and walked in a slow circle around them, observing the vicious cuts that flayed away flesh and exposed white muscle and bone and pink organs. Blood had soaked into the ground, and the flies liked that too, they liked it just fine, as if it were a holiday spread and they the invited guests.
He didn’t know what could have done that to two human beings, men who were armed and knew the country and, he had to assume, wouldn’t have taken foolish chances. Whatever it had been, he had no interest in meeting it.
But his options were limited. He could quit Mr. Tibbetts’s employ, and find himself on the trail, penniless and jobless, trying to find someplace else that would hire on a cowboy who had one leg shorter than the other, could barely write his own name, and had a newfound fear of the dark. Or he could stay and do what he was told. Anyway, the old-timers said Mr. Tibbetts tried to be generous to his hands, once he’d closed a deal and sold whatever stock he meant to for the year. Nate wanted to hang on until then, if he could.
At least he wasn’t alone. He was with Gamewell Reisen, one of the men who’d been with the J Cross T the longest. Reisen had a full beard that was sprouting wiry white hairs along with the brown, small eyes hidden behind folds of flesh but that missed nothing, and the look of a man who had faced every kind of adversity at one time or another. Most of those challenges had left scars of some kind—the first time Nate had seen Reisen with his shirt off, he was astonished the man was still alive, given the patchwork of cuts and burns and bullets that had left their marks.
Joining them was a man from the Broken M, Montclair’s outfit, a man who introduced himself only as Colby. He was a dark man with black hair and pale eyes and skin so deeply tanned he might have been an Indian. Even his clothes were black. It was, Nate thought, almost like he was his own shadow, or carried it close all the time. He wore a pair of revolvers (their grips black, not white—well, once white, anyway—like Nate’s own), and there was a Winchester rifle in the scabbard on his big black mare that looked like it had seen plenty of use. Though Colby didn’t say much, he carried himself with the air of a capable man, and Nate figured that capability extended to violence when it was called for.
Tomorrow, they would combine the divvied-up herd into one summer pasture. It would be crowded, but already the monsoon storms were greening the grass, so the hope was that the stock would have enough to eat through the summer months. Those who had night guard duty tonight could choose to be excluded from tomorrow’s drive, but the work would go faster with every hand taking part. Nate figured he could survive tonight
and tomorrow, then get some rest after that. The important thing was to make sure whatever had been preying on the herd was stopped, before they lost any more head.
Nate, Reisen, and Colby would stand watch on the west side of the herd, nearest the mountains. Three other cowboys had taken up positions on the east side, facing the valley. They had a couple of dogs with them. The men had arranged a signal: two shots fired in quick succession, then a pause, then a third shot, meant “come quick.”
So far, the night had been a quiet one. The herd was settled, peaceable. Most of the time, clouds blotted out the moon, but once in a while it managed to peek through. When it did, Nate took advantage of the illumination to study the herd and the surrounding landscape, watching for anything that seemed out of place.
“Nate,” Reisen said softly. The moon had shone briefly, and he was still standing up and surveying the distance as it slipped back under the blanket of clouds. His focus on the animals, he hadn’t even heard Reisen walk up behind him.
“What?” he asked. The man’s sudden appearance had startled him, and he snapped his response. “Sorry.”
“Walk down here with me a minute.”
“Down where?”
“Just over here.” Reisen led him down a little footpath from the shelf they had settled on to watch over the herd. He was keeping his voice quiet, and Nate asked him why.
“It’s Colby,” Reisen said.
“What about him?”
“What about him? Haven’t you smelt him?”
Nate tried to think if he had. “I guess, some.”
“He smells like a javelina climbed inside his skin and died there.”
“I ain’t been able to draw a full breath through my nose since spring,” Nate said. “So I can’t hardly smell nothing.” He glanced out toward the herd. “Cow shit, but that’s about it.”
“Have you noticed that if you stand near him, it’s colder’n anywheres else?”
“It is?”
“Do you know when you step outside if it’s rainin’ or sunny? Do you know if it’s day or night, right now?”
“Sure, it’s night.”
“Well, go over and talk to Colby a minute, and tell me if there isn’t something off about him.”
“What do you think it is?”
“I don’t have any idea. Maybe a javelina really did die inside him. Maybe he rolls in their scat. He’s just a mite odd, all I’m sayin’.”
Nate couldn’t think of anything to say to that. He looked at Reisen in the dim light for a few seconds, then walked back up onto the rocky shelf. Colby was sitting away from the fire, carving something out of the sole of his boot with the point of a knife. Nate went closer to him than he ordinarily would have. “Quiet night,” he said.
“Seems like.”
“Figger it’ll stay that way?”
“Can’t say.”
“You from these parts, or what?”
Colby took the knife point out of his boot and sat holding it, point more or less directed toward Nate. “You always talk so much?”
“Reckon I’m just a little nervous.” Nate took as deep a breath as he could through the plugged-up morass that was his nose. He caught a faint scent of something sour, and then he tasted it, and was glad he couldn’t smell much of anything. “Is it true your boss has never been on the back of a horse? He rides everywheres in a wagon?”
“I look like I’ve known him his whole life?”
“I’m just sayin’ what I heard.” Nate took a step closer to Colby.
Colby didn’t lower the knife. “You need something?”
“No, sorry,” Nate said. He had gone close enough to sense what Reisen had mentioned, the circle of frigid air that seemed to surround the man. The night was warm and so was the fire, but being near Colby was like standing too far from the stove on a winter’s day. He could feel the heat from the fire on his back, but the side that faced Colby was chilled. He stepped away, quickly. “Didn’t mean nothing.”
“Keep your distance, then.”
“Sorry,” Nate said again.
“I got to work with you for a spell,” Colby said. “Don’t mean we’re friends.”
“It surely don’t,” Nate said. “Don’t mean nothing like it.”
He hurried back down to where Reisen waited. “You’re right,” he said. “Something about that man ain’t right.”
“I told you.”
“What do you reckon it is?”
“You asked me that before. You think I figured it out standin’ here?”
“It’s just strange, is all.”
“Hell yes, it’s strange,” Reisen said. “That’s why I told you to smell him.”
Nate was about to say something else when one of the beeves let out a terrified scream. Anyone who doesn’t think cattle can scream, he thought, has never heard what he did in that moment. It lasted for almost a minute, and instantly the herd was on edge, lowing and shifting about. “What was that?” he asked.
“Let’s find out!” Reisen said. “Colby! Grab a torch!”
The men ran to the horses. Colby came behind, with the torch, and the three of them mounted up and rode out into the restive herd. They couldn’t find the cow that had cried out, though, or any that had been butchered. The hands from the other side had heard the commotion as well, and rode in. After a while, they gave up and went back to their separate sides. The cattle were still spooked, but gradually settling again.
“You reckon we scared it off?” Nate said when they were gathered around the diminished fire again.
“Doubt it,” Colby said.
“Why?”
“Think about it. Something can kill a creature as big as a cow or a bull—not just kill them, but really tear ’em apart, like folks say. And then do the same to a man. You think you’re gonna scare that?”
“What do you think it is?” Reisen asked.
Colby hadn’t sat down. He reached for the buckle of his gun belt, and undid it, stooping to lower the belt gently to the ground. “Well, I doubt that it’s a man, precisely,” he said.
“Some kind of animal, maybe?” Nate said. “A bear or a big lion or something?”
“I don’t think so,” Colby said. He took the knife from his sheath, balanced it by its point on the tip of his finger for a second, then put it down by the gun belt.
“Not a man or an animal?” Reisen asked. “What, then?”
Nate was getting anxious. Colby was a strange one, that was for certain. Nate didn’t understand what he was doing, why he was putting down all his weapons, when whatever it was might still be out there. The odd behavior frightened him even more than the cow’s screaming had. Sweat trickled down his ribs, and his knees started to quiver.
“Well,” Colby said, gazing into the fire. “I reckon it’d be something you’ve never seen. And if you ever did…” He looked up, his gaze meeting Nate’s, only his eyes weren’t the same as they had been; no longer pale, they were as yellow as the flames. His face was changing, too, elongating, the features kind of melting in and becoming indistinct. When his mouth opened it showed rows of teeth that looked huge and razor-sharp. “… Well,” he continued. “I don’t guess you’d see it for very long, and you’d never get to tell anybody about it.”
“What the hell—” Reisen started to say. At the same time, he pawed his gun free of its holster. Before he could pull the trigger, Colby had cleared the distance between them. His hands—but they weren’t hands anymore, Nate realized, they were something else, something with ferocious claws—were outthrust, and he slashed at Reisen. He cut from the older man’s collarbone down to his gut, spewing blood and snapping through bone and releasing organs from their inner cages, and Reisen didn’t even have a chance to cry out.
Nate wanted to scream and he wanted to shoot the thing that had been Colby, but his guts turned to water and his knees wouldn’t hold still, and when he managed to free his gun from his pants, his hands wouldn’t grasp it and it fell into the fire. He reached for i
t, knowing the flames would burn but that wouldn’t be as bad as what had happened to Reisen. But he barely managed to touch it before the thing was on him, and its claws were just as sharp and wicked as they’d looked, and so were its teeth.
Chapter Eleven
The posse had been riding away from the Huachuca Mountains, but as they followed the killer’s path, Tuck noticed that it was starting to turn back toward them. The sun had dropped below peaks that had become familiar, though seen from farther south than he had ever been. They were in Mexico for sure, and the Mexicans didn’t always appreciate lawmen from north of the border. “He’s circling around,” he told the marshal. “Heading back toward the territory.”
“Back toward the mountains, anyhow,” Turville agreed. “Could be he thinks he lost us.”
“Or he doesn’t care,” Tuck said. They were riding through a grassy meadow, dotted here and there by a yucca standing up as if to wave at passersby. “Maybe that’s where home is, after all, and he’s going there to make his stand.”
“He’s got some pardners there, mebbe.”
“Hard to say.”
“We’re losin’ the daylight,” Turville said.
“You told the men they could rest at full dark.”
“I know. Sorry now I did. We’re gainin’ on him, and I’d hate to lose him.”
“We don’t, you might lose the rest of your posse.”
Turville spat into the grass. “I know it, Bringloe. Good thing about a posse is they’re men who volunteered to ride for justice, with no promise of reward or anything but a long, hard haul and the chance of gettin’ shot. Bad thing is they’re amateurs who give up too easy. I could use a few more like you.”
“I haven’t done anything yet to help you.”
“You were the only one who could follow those tracks the first night, in the rain. You helped me hold the men together earlier. I don’t know if it’s your officer trainin’, or just your natural disposition, but when you ain’t drinkin’, you’re a good man to have around.”
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