Straight Outta Tombstone

by David Boop

  Their meat was just as bad. It spoiled instantly. Crackerbox had even tried to pop it into a pot while Big Axe Chow carved it off a still quivering carcass, but even then it was like eatin’ bad fish soaked with lamp oil. He’d had to throw out one of his best kettles, as even after scouring it down to the shine with sand, anything cooked in it tasted rancid.

  Everybody agreed that these were the most useless critters they’d ever seen.

  Their bones lasted, once you boiled ’em with borax, which was a durn good thing, since that was the whole point of this circus. Crackerbox sighed. The job was starting to get to him. Gettin’ to all of them, really. They were so ready for it to be over and done with.

  He was chopping out a slice of johnny cake for Doc when they all heard the steady clop of hooves and realized that Fancy Man was making one of his rare appearances at camp. The man was one of the best scouts anyone had ever worked with, but there was no denying that the man was like a ghost, and was hardly ever seen. This was doubly strange because when he was in town, Fancy Man was one of the most sociable and talkative men on the frontier. His way with the ladies was the stuff of legend, and it was even said that he once won an impromptu argument with a Copperhead senator from Washington, D.C., that had made a whistle stop in Laramie, scrounging for votes.

  And now, sure enough, his white horse could be seen against the gloom and in less than a minute, the man himself, his famous blue feather flashing in the firelight from its place in his leather plug hat, entered the circle of men.

  He rolled from his saddle, landed silently on his feet, and gave a small jerk of his head. His horse nodded once, turned, and headed off toward the paddock. Everybody tried not to show how impressed they were, but there was no denying that that there was a mighty fine horse.

  Crackerbox dished out a bowl and Fancy Man took it with a low “much obliged, suh.” He then walked, with those delicate, mincing steps that had caused men to fatally underestimate him from Dawson to Dodge, over to the fire and hunkered down to eat.

  Everybody waited. Fancy Man never showed up unless he had something important to say. He polished off his stew, delicately wiped his mouth with a lace handkerchief he’d been given by the Jersey Lily herself (Big Zack swore he’d seen it happen), and looked up. “We’re done,” he announced. “Been up, down and sideways, and there ain’t no more of them critters left.” Having delivered his news, he settled down cross-legged, pulled his hat over his eyes, and dropped off to sleep on the spot.

  This was welcome news indeed. They had been working every day for close to six weeks, and even with Doc’s nightly recitation, tempers had begun to fray.

  But now the end was in sight. Crackerbox considered the great corrals with their gigantic residents. Two, maybe three days of hard work, and they’d be packing up and hitting the trail.

  Everyone else was doing the same calculation and a guffaw from Sledgehammer was confirmation of the wave of good feeling that was sweeping over the whole camp.

  “Read it agin, Doc!”

  Crackerbox nodded. This nightly ritual had kept them going, even when things had been at their grimmest. It would feel even better to hear it now.

  Doc pulled the folded handkerchief from his waistcoat. From within that, he extracted the tattered scrap of newsprint. As always, he made a show of polishing and adjusting his spectacles, and, in a clear, firm voice, read:

  JUNE 17, 1902. CHICAGO: Today representatives from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, presented to bone hunter Barnum Brown, a check for fifty dollars to be drawn on the First National Bank, for delivering the perfectly preserved skeleton of an immense, unknown creature that scientists have declared to be thousands of years old.

  Although there are those who contest this seemingly farfetched assessment of the “dinosaur’s” age, there is no denying that the remains are ancient enough that they have turned to stone!

  “We are always looking for more fossils,” (which is what scientists call these ancient animal remains) said Professor Felix Cahill, “and can assure your readers that our museum is willing to pay top dollar for exemplary specimens.”

  Doc finished, and as always, passed the scrap around so that they could compare the newspaper’s fanciful line drawing with the animals they’d been rounding up. As always, there were smiles and nods all around, even though it was pretty obvious that the artist had never actually seen one of the great lizards in the flesh. But as Sledgehammer had sensibly pointed out, “Them city boys can’t even draw up a good lookin’ mountain lion!” There was no arguing with that. No, things looked good.

  Fifty dollars for bones thousands of years old!

  They couldn’t wait to see what them city slickers would pay for fresh ones.

  THE WICKED WILD

  NICOLE GIVENS KURTZ

  “A wind can move the branches of trees,

  but it will never move the head of a man.”

  —African Proverb

  1901

  New Mexico Territory

  “Who there?” Zara Gibson whirled toward the sound. “Come on out here now!”

  The gods grew up in the foothills of this place. In the gods’ shadows, hills, mesas, and arroyos remained, or so the Navajo believed. The gusts of wind swept through the valley between the natural monuments.

  The wind didn’t silence the crunch of footsteps.

  She waited.

  One breath.

  Two breaths.

  Three breaths.

  The wind died as if listening too. Nothing. She resumed her walk along the untamed path toward home. A body couldn’t be too careful.

  Out here, the West wasn’t just wild.

  It was wicked.

  Zara suspected the wickedness had found Chad Wilkins. A prick of anger fed by the heavy loss of the Civil War. She’d spied him fooling around in some arroyo consumed by thick billowing smoke, but no fire. She’d smelled the odor of spoiled eggs, thick like the smoke, and took off. With her heart pounding, she prayed he hadn’t caught her spying.

  Not that she meant to be spying. She had been out walking to get some fresh air—until it turned foul.

  “How come you ain’t got your black ass to town to do the laundry?” Chad asked as he emerged from the brush. She spied his horse appearing behind him as if a dark apparition.

  He spat around the wad of tobacco from his mouth. A cowboy hat, dirt brown from years of wear and weather, sat atop hair just as dirty. His horse looked away, embarrassed by his owner’s lack of tact.

  Zara picked up the scattering of dried tumbleweed around her appropriated hogan, giving her hands something to keep busy. Idle hands became the devil’s workshop, and Zara had one devil too many standing in front of her.

  “Ya hear me?” Chad shouted. Soon the deep rattling of his cough shook his body and choked off whatever other vile he intended to spew.

  Zara stopped and turned to face him. “I hear ya talkin’.”

  “You ain’t been in a week.”

  Zara took in a breath and released it. “Been down in my spirit.”

  Chad scowled. “I ain’t brought you all the way out here for you to get lazy.”

  “I brought myself. Earned my own way. Walked on my own two feet. An’ I ain’t felt too good.”

  The whole point of coming out to this land and settling was to be free of folks like Chad, men who thought they still owned her and her people.

  Chad peered across to her the way folks looked at scorpions scurrying across the road. His dark green eyes narrowed. “I protected ya.”

  Zara adjusted her headscarf. “Say you.”

  “So, getcha black ass back to town before I drag you back.”

  Zara put her chapped hands on her hips. She didn’t miss the washing and scrubbing. The harsh lye soap ate into her skin and even now, days later, her hands still bore welts and angry flesh. She looked him up and down before shaking her head. Some people just don’t know how they sound.

  “I go to town when I’m goo
d an’ ready. I ain’t yo slave no more.”

  Chad spat out another wad of tobacco. It sounded like coughing out a hairball—wet and dark. It landed near her skirt. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and shrugged like her words didn’t matter.

  They did.

  And she knew it.

  “You see, girl, just ’cause we living in the new frontier don’t mean we like being dirty. We’re civilized, not savages.”

  Zara peered harder against the glint of the sinking New Mexico sun. The wide-brimmed cowboy hat cast his face all in shadow, except the slash of anger on his lips. This close to dusk, the leaving light revealed the slivers of smoke escaping from Chad’s back, smoke that the ordinary folk wouldn’t see. Could be trick of the light. Could be trick of the devil.

  “No point in being clean when your soul’s stained black,” Zara said.

  “You know all about being black, don’t you? How many good people died ’cause of your kind? And for what?” Chad scratched at the beard crawling along his jawline.

  Zara didn’t give a direct answer. She’d traveled far, across hard, unyielding earth, to get to what some called the Promised Land. She wouldn’t waste time on the likes of him. With a sigh, she turned to go inside her home.

  The cocking of a gun caught her attention, and she turned back to him.

  “You don’t turn your back to me.” Chad pointed his pistol in anger. “That’s enough damn disrespect, you filthy n—”

  On instinct, Zara lifted her hands and, with palms out, swept them upward, toward the heavens. A huge gust of wind rushed over Chad. The language of her forefathers and foremommas rushed in a stream of verbal magic. She commanded the winds, and they readily obeyed.

  The blood in her connected to all that came before. They took their payment from her, payment for her calling them out and waking them. They always left her tired. So tired.

  Sometimes, it was worth it.

  Like now.

  “Come, great winds!” She commanded the wind to whirl around him. The roaring of the blood in her body spoke to her fury, and it called to theirs. Pent up anger from years of enslavement, cruelty, and torment had unfurled.

  Chad’s lips puckered. Eyes bulging, he clawed at his neck trying to ease the pressure on his windpipe. The winds stole his breath. His face became a dark purple, and he’d drawn blood in thin rivulets along his neck before Zara lowered her fists.

  “You a nasty person, Chad Wilkins.” Zara coughed out blood, thick and wet like the tobacco wad now drying on the parched earth. Zara wiped her mouth. She didn’t like using it, the magic. Not because of the damage to her own spiritual core, but because it frightened folks.

  And frightened folks did foolish things.

  She peered at him, the roar of power burning in her palms’ centers. The skin along Chad’s temple bulged outward and crawled down to his mouth. He opened it and a spew of black smoke shot out. Zara raised her hand and wind rose up to whisk it away.

  Chad cackled, but behind his eyes, Zara saw something other.

  With her chest burning in agony, she waved her hand, and a whispered, “Thank you,” to her ancestors. To Chad, as he mounted his horse, she said, “Go on now, Chad. Y’all leave me be.”

  Chad gasped, his inhales rattling in a wet, sickening manner. He coughed out some words in her direction, before yanking on the reins and leaving, just as she had wanted. The red-purple hue had started to fade, but the damage to his windpipe would take days, maybe weeks, to heal.

  As he left, he wheezed out three words. “You. Gonna. Pay.”

  Zara sighed. Now she’d done it. The wickedness would come for her. The movement behind Chad’s eyes and rippling beneath his skin didn’t belong there. The very thing she had hoped to avoid by relocating to this desolate place, she had angered.

  The devil would have his due.

  And clean laundry.

  * * *

  Trouble arrived first thing in the morning.

  Throughout the previous evening, the wind’s howling had warned of approaching evil. Despite the pain and soreness in her muscles, she’d risen early, heeding her ancestors’ wisdom, and found Sheriff Hicks waiting outside her door, his fist raised to knock. He didn’t have his usual smile.

  Sheriff Hicks tipped his hat, but didn’t enter. He hesitated, then said, “Understand me fully, Zara. Chad Wilkins come to see me last night. Now, I dunno what happened. You can’t just go around attacking folks. This ain’t some juju village in Africa. We might be living ’round in a wilderness, but we observe the social graces of life. I won’t stand for base savagery out here…”

  Zara listened, allowing Hicks to say his piece. He was the law, after all.

  Men like Chad looked strong, but that strength didn’t go all the way through. Just on the surface. She suspected Chad had taken it bad, but it went deeper than hurting his feelings. The other inside him, housed up in his body, recognized her power, and that of her ancestors. It wanted it, craved it.

  But Sheriff Hicks didn’t wanna hear ’bout all that.

  So, she crossed her arms. “He drew on me.”

  Sheriff Hicks climbed back onto his horse and leaned over his saddle. “What did you do to make him do that, Zara?”

  She sighed. “Sheriff, I done lived a bunch of places, and the land always changes. Sumthin’ that don’t always change—hate. Whether it be here or in the deepest hell of Mississippi, the wickedness don’t care. It feeds on the hate.”

  Sheriff Hicks’s breath shuddered. “Look here, Zara. I’m a Christian, so I don’t believe in that mojo stuff. All I got was a battered cowpoke crying foul. Dunno how you did it, or even if you did it. Just stay away from him. Okay?”

  “I’m a freed person. No more master. No more followin’ orders.”

  “You still gotta follow the law.”

  “What about him? What about the pistol he drew on me? Threatened my life! He didn’t even tell you that.”

  “You sayin’ it’s self-defense?”

  “I’m sayin’ he’s the lowest value of a coward, drawin’ on me when my back’s turned. If he come out here again and tries to take my life, he won’t be comin’ to talk to you about it.”

  As she stood just outside the threshold of her residence, she studied the broad-shouldered lawman. He rode a dark horse. The tan cowboy hat kept the sun from his face. His gun belt slung low over his hips contained his guns, and his badge shone from his chest. Wiry and red-haired with spectacles, he didn’t look like danger. A mistake that many numbered dead had made.

  “I see. You like getting your own way, don’t you, Zara?” Hicks rubbed his chin. Then, his usual smile emerged on his lips.

  She shrugged. “Don’t ever’body?”

  “Indeed.” He laughed.

  “Changes are shiftin’ things, Sheriff. The wickedness ain’t gonna lie still. It be comin’. Sum folks better be gettin’ used to that.”

  He studied her for a moment, before shaking his head. “What you goin’ on about? More of that juju?”

  She fixed her gaze on him. “Sumthin’s here and that little pistol ain’t gonna help.”

  “Ain’t no problem these guns can’t solve, Zara.” He patted the butt of a gun, but his smile sagged a little. “Now, will you just come into town and wash? The unmarried men folk like going to church with clean clothes. Might find ’em a good God-fearin’ woman.”

  * * *

  The sound of wagons and galloping horses couldn’t drown out the saloon’s music next door from filtering into the laundry. She could smell the alcohol and unwashed bodies sweating off their drunk over the scent of the lye. Despite being early in the day, laughter and howls emitted in concert with the music of frontier life. Inside the store, she sat perched on the stool as the water-filled caldrons warmed over the fire. Beyond the buildings, the blistering and scorched landscape stretched out across the New Mexico territory.

  That morning Zara ate her breakfast and walked back into town with the morning sun accompanying her as i
t rose higher in the heavens. Some townspeople called the land enchanted. Spirits rose from the ground and inhabited the trees, the animals, and the stars. The sky birthed humans and all living things. Here, the line between reality and mystery blurred. How else did you describe the towering mesas, the deep canyons, and magical terrain? One thing was certain. Living in this wilderness wore down lives. She saw it in the eyes of customers who came to get their clothes washed. All men. Single. Widowers.

  It’d been three days since Chad Wilkins’s visit. Recovered, Zara stood on the storefront’s porch, attempting to catch the breeze. Already, the New Mexico sun wrought high heat and little relief. The mile trek into town had been slow, but she got there.

  “Ah, you finally drag your sorry ass into town!” Chad leered as he stumbled out of the saloon. The inky smoke drifted from him and his shadow shimmered as if unable to hold the shape.

  Zara tried to ignore him, well it. She shifted her eyes instead to the beautiful mesa beyond him, but the smoke skewed her view. No one else on the street—those strolling past, those standing around talking—seemed to be able to see the wickedness that had claimed Chad Wilkins.

  “You hear me?” Chad roared.

  “Yeah. Ever’body can hear you.” Zara turned to go back inside her shop. Maybe he’d knock off and go back to the abandoned hogan, back to his demonic master, or he’d follow her in, which would at least take him away from those on the street.

  His bellowing drew a crowd from the saloon. Several people paused as they strolled along to observe the antics of the town idiot.

  Darn it! That’s what she didn’t want—a group of folks in danger of getting hurt if Chad’s other decided to engage her.

  “That’s ’cause I got somethin’ to say to you! Witch!”

  Zara paused inside her store. The wind whistled as it slipped in. Yes, she heard the warning. Chad and the others moved down the short porch toward her.