Deadlands--Thunder Moon Rising

by Jeffrey Mariotte

  The man tried to respond, but his voice was so feeble Tuck couldn’t understand him. “Just hold on, pard’,” he said. He checked the man’s hands and the floor where he had fallen, but didn’t see any guns. The man wasn’t wearing a gun belt, either.

  “Anybody pick up his gun?” Tuck asked.

  “No, Marshal,” Senora Soto said. “Nobody’s gone near him.”

  He rose, turned back to the man with the gun, and held out his right hand. “Better give me that,” he said. The man complied quickly, as if he couldn’t wait to get rid of the thing.

  Tuck stuck the revolver in his belt. “I’ll have to take you in,” he said.

  The man’s face turned three shades whiter. “Don’t put me in that j-jail!” he said. “I ain’t ready to die!”

  Tuck was about to ask the man what he meant by that, when the answer came to him. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “But nobody else is going to be killed in my cells.”

  A burly man at a nearby table slammed his hands down on the tabletop and hoisted himself to his feet. He had a thick, dark beard and a bull neck and wide shoulders. His clothing looked as if he’d slept in it for a year before having it dragged through town behind a team of horses. “That a fact, Marshal?” he asked.

  It wasn’t a promise Tuck could keep, because if he could, Calhoun would still be alive. Now that he knew it might happen, though, he would take greater pains to make sure it didn’t. He didn’t want to explain all that; he just wanted to get this man behind bars until a circuit judge could decide his fate. “Count on it,” he said.

  “You say so,” the big man said. He yanked a gun from its holster and squeezed off three quick shots before Tuck could even react. Two hit the first gunman in the chest and the third tore through his face, beside his nose, and blew out the back of his skull. The gunman dropped, not far from the man he’d gutshot. His feet tapped an uneven rhythm on the floor. No matter how soon the doctor arrived, it would be too late.

  Tuck drew his Colt and leveled it at the burly man. “Drop that!” he ordered. The man obeyed, his piece hitting the table and bouncing to the floor. “What’d you do that for?”

  The man grinned, showing a half-dozen teeth and more blank spaces. “Way I figger, your cell’s probably the only place in town a feller can’t get killed. Thought I’d make sure you had to park me there for a spell.”

  Tuck couldn’t believe it. This man had shot another human being dead in cold blood, just to ensure that he would spend time behind bars. Now the fifteen or so people in the saloon were staring at him, waiting for him to do something about it. “What are you worried about?” he asked the man. “Who else got killed?”

  “I guess you haven’t heard, Marshal Bringloe,” Senora Soto said. “Come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “Just out back.”

  Tuck didn’t want to leave the big man in the saloon, unguarded, though it seemed a man who wanted to go to jail was unlikely to run. He navigated between the tables, picked the man’s revolver up, jammed it into his belt with the other one, and looked the man in the eye. “We’re not done,” he said. To the room at large, he added, “Make sure he stays put.”

  Nobody answered him. Then it struck him: What he had taken as shock was really fear. Every person in the saloon was terrified. Of what, Tuck didn’t know.

  But he had a feeling Senora Soto was about to show him.

  * * *

  He stood in the rain and studied the corpses. Water ran off the brim of his new hat in rivulets. “How long they been here?” he asked.

  “An hour, maybe,” Senora Soto said. She stood in the doorway holding a lantern, out of the worst of the weather. “Little more.”

  “Why hasn’t anyone carted them away?”

  “We’ve told Chalmers. I think he doesn’t want to come for them in this downpour.”

  “Can hardly blame him.” The bodies were soaked, of course, but the weather had kept the worst of the flies away and diluted the blood. They didn’t smell as bad as he had feared, though there was a rank, familiar scent to the air around them. They looked ghastly, and he shivered. “Know what happened?”

  “Jack came out to dump some water. When he didn’t come back, this other man wanted a drink, so he went looking for Jack. Then somebody else found them and told everybody. Since then, everybody who didn’t take off right away has been just sitting around, quiet and scared.”

  “So nobody knows who did it?”

  “Who or what,” she corrected.

  “I don’t follow.”

  She reached into a pocket and pulled out two dark objects. He examined them in the lantern’s glow. “They look like claws.”

  “I’m sure that’s what they are.”

  “Big ones.”

  “Very.”

  Tuck shivered again, though this time it had nothing to do with his wet clothing. The way those bodies were torn apart reminded him of what he had seen before, with Daisie and Hank Turville and most recently Calhoun. That stink in the air, partly washed away by the rain, was a remnant of the same odor he’d encountered on those occasions. And these black claws could have been cut off of the creature that had gradually melted on the way to Carmichael. “I’ll take those, if you don’t mind,” he said.

  “You’re welcome to them, Marshal. I don’t want them anywhere near me.”

  He took them from her hand, wrapped them in a bandanna, and stuffed them in a pocket. They would probably vanish soon enough, but he wanted to hang on to them if he could.

  With luck, he would be able to find whatever monster they had come from.

  * * *

  Back inside, Tuck went from table to table, asking everyone if they had seen anything in the alley. The responses weren’t helpful—everyone had been inside, blissfully unaware until a man named Sherman Bostik had come in with the news. Bostik had left shortly thereafter, so when he was finished talking to the people still in the saloon, Tuck went to Bostik’s home and woke the man from a liquor-induced sleep. Bostik couldn’t add anything Tuck hadn’t already heard, and he wasn’t making much sense. Tuck thanked him and sent him back to bed.

  The first gunman had died while Tuck and Senora Soto were out back, but Doc Crabtree had shown up and thought he might be able to save the wounded man. Tuck hadn’t bothered arresting the burly fellow. Chances were he’d be too scared to leave town anyway. And if Tuck couldn’t figure out what was behind the fear that had gripped the town—and what those mysterious, murderous creatures were—everybody would soon be shooting at everybody else. Having one man in a cell wouldn’t make a lick of difference.

  When he finally got to his office, the rain had moved on and the moon, inching ever closer to full, rode high in the sky. Mo Kanouse was in the office, making himself useful for a change, cleaning the shotguns on the gun rack.

  “Thought you’d be asleep at this hour,” Tuck said.

  “I figgered you would be. I don’t sleep so good, most nights. Unless I got a bottle or a woman, or both.”

  “I don’t think many people in this town are sleeping tonight, Mo. Or are likely to soon.”

  “Why not?”

  “Folks are scared. And fear spreads like wildfire in dry brush. It’s not something that just happened, either. I don’t know who or what is back of it, but I aim to find out.”

  “How you figure to do that?”

  “I’ll need your help,” Tuck said. He leaned against a corner of his desk, folded his arms. “Ride up to Tombstone. You know where the office of the Epitaph is?”

  “’Course I do,” Kanouse said. He eyed his boss suspiciously. Tuck guessed it was because he could tell he was going to be made to do his job.

  “Go up there and bring me back copies of the paper for … I reckon the last three years will do.”

  “You mean, one from this year, one from last, and one from the year before?”

  “All of them,” Tuck clarified. “Every paper they’ve put out in the last three years.”

/>   Kanouse shook his head. “I’d need a wagon for that.”

  “Then find one,” Tuck said. “I need those as quick as they can get here.”

  “Bringloe,” Kanouse said, “you’re a real piece of work.”

  Chapter Thirty-four

  The night seemed like the longest one ever. Mr. Tibbetts didn’t sleep a wink of it, but sat in the kitchen, drinking coffee and looking at the door. Cale didn’t, either, because he stayed up keeping an eye on Tibbetts. When morning finally lightened the sky, Tibbetts found his feet. “I’m goin’ out there, Cale. I love you like my own son, but if you stand in my way, you’ll regret it.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Cale said.

  “No.”

  “How do you mean to stop me, once you’re out there?”

  “Reckon I can’t,” Tibbetts admitted.

  “Then you might as well give your blessing.”

  Tibbetts sighed. Cale took no pleasure in the look of defeat he wore. “You’ll do whatever you want, I suppose. Always have done.”

  When the rancher’s hand was on the doorknob, Cale asked, “Should I fetch Mrs. Tibbetts?”

  “Let her sleep.” Tibbetts swung open the door and stepped outside. Cale waited only seconds before following. The air didn’t have the fresh after-rain smell, tinged with the sweet scent of wet creosote bush, which typically blanketed the high desert the morning after an early-season monsoon storm. Instead, it had a coppery, metallic bite.

  Tibbetts reached the bunkhouse first. “Wake up, boys!” he shouted. In the man’s voice, Cale detected a quaver that worried him. “You’re burnin’ daylight!”

  He threw the door open, started to step in, then stopped halfway. A choking sound escaped from his throat, followed by a plaintive “Oh, God.”

  Cale picked up his pace. When the rancher realized Cale was behind him, he spun around, his face a mask of grief. “No, boy! Don’t look!”

  But it was too late. Cale hadn’t had a clear view, with Tibbetts standing in the doorway. He had seen enough, though.

  The bunkhouse floor was awash in blood.

  Almost at the door, as if someone had been trying to escape, Cale had seen a hand, fingers down and curled. He couldn’t tell whose hand it was, because no arm joined it to a body; it ended at the wrist. On the floor a little farther back had been what looked almost like a sheet of torn, discolored paper attached to a thatch of fur. Just before Tibbetts turned on him, Cale was able to make the elements make sense in his head, and he saw that it was the upper half of somebody’s face, with the scalp still attached. The empty eye holes looked like careful cutaways.

  Cale hadn’t eaten anything since dinner, but he’d had plenty of coffee. He whirled away from Mr. Tibbetts and the gaping doorway and dropped to hands and knees just before it all spewed up from his gut and out his mouth and nose. Retching, down in the mud like an animal, he burned with shame.

  When he was done, or hoped he was, he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and looked up. Tibbetts had left the bunkhouse door open and was walking, almost staggering, really, toward the nearby corral. When he got close, he cried out in anguish. “No! God, no, no!”

  Cale forced himself to his feet and dashed after him. Tibbetts was clutching the corral fence, staring into the open space, tears rolling down his cheeks.

  In the corral were the horses, slaughtered and savaged. Cale couldn’t count how many; like the cowboys in the bunkhouse, there were more parts than whole animals. The ground was a churned-up mess of red-tinted muck. Cale’s stomach was empty, but he spat bitter-tasting bile onto the earth. What kind of creature would do something like that? He had seen wolf predation, and had once run across a bear feasting on a dead deer. None of those scenes had resembled this one.

  But if it hadn’t been an animal, that only left people. Could human beings actually do such a thing?

  Tibbetts climbed up on the corral fence. At first, Cale didn’t understand why—a cowboy sometimes did that to rope one of the horses, or to watch someone else work in the corral. But there was no reason to rope butchered stock, and no one working. Then he realized that the rancher was trying to see into the nearest pasture, and he got a better view of it from that elevated position.

  “Mr. Tibbetts,” Cale said. “The beeves. Are they…”

  Tibbetts turned toward him, his face a mask of agony. “Them, too,” he said. “God bless it, them, too.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cale said. “I don’t know what coulda…” He let the sentence trail off. Tibbetts was already walking back toward the ranch house, shoulders slumped, his posture one of utter defeat. Cale started to follow, then changed course.

  Things were the same in the chicken yard and the hog pen. Not a creature was intact. He should tell Mr. Tibbetts, he thought, but Tibbetts had probably already deduced how it would be.

  There was nothing Cale could do here, nothing that would help. Mr. Tibbetts would tell his wife, and they would probably appreciate some privacy. Meanwhile, if whoever or whatever had committed these horrible deeds was not just targeting the J Cross T, people needed to be warned. Carmichael was a good distance away, and he’d have liked a horse, but that was obviously not to be. Instead, anxious to keep the images he’d seen from haunting his thoughts, he took off running.

  He might be too late, but he had to try.

  * * *

  Kuruk wouldn’t have summoned him without a reason, Jimmy McKenna knew. So when a trooper found him eating breakfast and delivered the Apache’s message, he had downed his coffee quickly and abandoned the rest. He hurried to the cottage Little Wing was using, which was where he’d been told Kuruk would be waiting. When McKenna arrived, the scout was waiting at a window. He saw the lieutenant approach, and met him outside.

  “Thank you for coming,” Kuruk said.

  “Of course. What is it?”

  Kuruk tilted his head toward the door. “It’s her. She had a bad night. She’s awake now, but she’s afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “I don’t know. She can’t say, or else she won’t. I think she doesn’t know. But it’s bad, anyhow. Whatever it is.”

  “How sure are you about this, Kuruk? What if she just had a nightmare? She’s a little touched, right?”

  “She might be,” Kuruk replied. “Don’t mean she’s wrong.”

  “What do you want me to do about it?” McKenna asked. He liked Kuruk well enough, but he barely knew the girl, and from what Sadie had told him, she couldn’t be trusted.

  “Anything you can, Jimmy. Something bad is coming. Or could be it’s already here. Little Wing can see it better than we can, and it’s bad enough to scare her. Scares me, too. I don’t know—what you’re working on with Delahunt, could be that’ll help. Or not. I just don’t know enough.”

  “I’ll talk to the colonel again, Kuruk,” McKenna said. “It might not do any good, but I’ll try.”

  “Can’t hurt.”

  “I hope not.”

  “Depending on what it is, a whole army might not be enough to do any good.”

  “Depending on what it is,” Kuruk said, “a whole world might not be enough. I don’t know how bad it is, though. I only know that I’ve never seen her so scared.”

  “You haven’t known her that long.”

  “Nope. Long enough, though.”

  “You sure about this, Kuruk?”

  “Sure enough. She has some kind of sight, I know that. And if she’s afraid, so am I. You should be, too.” The scout took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then said, “Everybody should be.”

  * * *

  He stood on the crest of a hill, facing east, his naked form bathed by the red light of dawn. Other red painted his flesh, too: the blood of an innocent. The girl’s parents would have worried about her, sought her out, had they lived. They would not be a problem, though, and her blood was pure and clean and rich.

  He raised his arms over his head and chanted the ancient words, in a tongue that had died out before hum
an beings had ever walked this land. At the right moment, he took a breath and turned to the north, then chanted a verse. Then to the west, and the south, and finally to the east again, where the sun had fully broken above the horizon and the light was more yellow than red.

  His name was Jasper Montclair. He knew that, but he knew also that he was only a link in a chain, and that chain reached back to when the Earth had been young, and forward into the age when the sun would wink out and the planet would be a cold and lifeless orb, spinning through space.

  He was only a link, for now.

  Soon, though, he would be so much more.

  Some links, it turned out, were more important than others. Some could break the chain, others strengthen it. Very few could determine its direction, shift one of its end points.

  He would be one of those few. When Thunder Moon came, he would be ready. He would be present. Thunder Moon came soon, and it came for him, and he had to have all the pieces in place by then.

  And he would. This ritual greeting of the sun was a small part of that. The sun, the earth, the seasons, all were part of what Thunder Moon would bring about.

  Montclair stood, nude, sunlight catching the patterns he had painted in blood and limning them as if with fire.

  When the ritual was done, he closed his eyes and felt the warmth of the sun on his skin. The new day had come.

  Another new day was on the way, and when it dawned, nothing would ever be the way it had been. Not for him. Not for anyone.

  Montclair smiled, and the dried blood on his cheeks cracked and flaked off and drifted, unnoticed, to the earth. And the earth, swimming in blood since before humans had walked upright, accepted it as an offering, and continued to turn.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Tuck unwrapped the claws Senora Soto had given and showed them to Alf Maier. They were in the back of Maier’s shop, in a storeroom full of high shelves. Most were empty, but others held merchandise, dry goods and the like.

  “Recognize these?” Tuck asked.

  “Should I?”

  Tuck was surprised. “That thing we fought? The killer? It had claws like these.”