Deadman's Crossing

by Joe R. Lansdale

  The Reverend jammed his pistol back into its holster, bent and grabbed the axe from the floor and leaped out of the circle. The thing caught sight of the Reverend as he came, rolled off the horse and leaped up on the wall and ran along it. As the Reverend turned to follow its progress, it leaped at him.

  Reverend Mercer took a swing. The axe hit the fiend and split halfway through its neck, knocking it back against the wall, then to the floor. Its narrow eyes widened and showed red, and then it came to its feet in its unique way, though more slowly than before, and darted for the bedroom door.

  As it reached and fumbled with the latch, the Reverend hit the thing in the back of the head with the axe, and it went to its knees, clawed at the lumber of the door, causing it to squeak and squeal and come apart, making a narrow slit. It was enough. The thing eased through it like a snake. The Reverend jerked the door open to see it going through the gap in the window. He dropped the axe and jerked the pistol and fired and struck the thing twice before it went out through the breach and was gone from sight.

  Reverend Mercer rushed to the window and looked out. The thing was staggering, falling, rising to its feet, staggering toward the well. The Reverend stuck the pistol out the window, resting it on the frame, and fired again. It was a good shot in the back of the neck, and the brute went down.

  Holstering the revolver, rushing to grab the axe, the Reverend climbed through the window. The monster had made it to the well by then, crawling along on its belly, and just as it touched the curbing, the Reverend caught up with it, brought the spell-marked axe down on its already shredded head as many times as he had the strength to swing it.

  As he swung, the sun began to color the sky. He was breathing so hard he sounded like a blue norther blowing in. The sun rose higher and still he swung, then he fell to the ground, his chest heaving.

  When he looked about, he saw the thing was no longer moving. Norville was standing nearby, holding one of the marked rocks.

  “You was doin’ so good, I didn’t want to interrupt you,” Norville said.

  The Reverend nodded, breathed for a long hard time, said, “Saddlebags. If this is not medicinal, I do not know what is.”

  A few moments later, Norville returned with the flask. The Reverend drank first, long and deep, and then he gave it to Norville.

  When his wind was back, and the sun was up, the Reverend chopped the rest of the monster up. It had already gone flat and gushed clutter from its insides that were part horse bones, gouts of blood, and unidentifiable items that made the stomach turn; its teeth were spread around the well curbing, like someone had dropped a box of daggers.

  They burned what would burn of the beast with dried limbs and dead leaves, buried the teeth and the remainder of the beast in a deep grave, the bottom and top and sides of it lined with the marked rocks.

  When they were done chopping and cremating and burying the creature, it was late afternoon. They finished off the flask, and that night they slept in the house, undisturbed, and in the morning, they set fire to the cabin, using The Book of Doches as a starter. As it burned, the Reverend looked up. The sky had begun to change, finally. The clouds no longer crawled.

  They walked out, the Reverend with the saddlebags over his shoulder, Norville with a pillowcase filled with food tins from the cabin. Behind them, the smoke from the fire rose up black and sooty and by nighttime it had burned down to glowing cinders, and by the next day there was nothing more than clumps of ash.

  Salamander shall kindle,

  Writhe nymph of the wave,

  In air sylph shall dwindle

  And Kobold shall slave.

  —Goethe, FAUST

  Reverend Jebidiah Mercer smelled them before he saw them. They came out of the brush along both sides of the trail. There were four of them. One had a pistol, one a shotgun, the other two were carrying digging tools, a shovel and a pick.

  His hand went swiftly inside his coat, pulled his .36 Navy Colt. Before the fellow with the shotgun could lift it, the Reverend shot him right between the eyes, spraying blood and brains out the back of his head in a mess that looked like vomited strawberries.

  A pistol shot whizzed by Reverend Mercer’s head. He shifted in the saddle and fired twice, aiming low and letting the revolver buck. The first shot caught the shootist in the balls. The second shot found a spot in the center of his chest and nestled there like a horrible chest cold.

  By that time the other two attackers were on him. As the one with the shovel swung it, Mercer flipped backwards off his horse and rolled on the ground. When he stopped rolling he could see the man with the pick rushing toward him. From a kneeling position he shot the fellow’s knee out, watched the screaming man’s hat fly off, and then the man flipped into the bushes and twisted around there like a snake with its head cut off.

  The remaining man threw down the shovel, leaped on Jebidiah’s horse, stuck his feet in the stirrups and started riding away. Jebidiah stood up, laid his revolver over his left wrist and fired, hit the rider in the small of the back. The rider didn’t stiffen, didn’t jerk. He didn’t do anything but let go of the reins and fall. He hit the ground hard, lay on his back moaning.

  He walked over and checked the knee-capped man who was rolling on the ground, screaming to high heaven.

  “You done blowed my knee out,” the fella said.

  “You are correct,” Jebidiah said, and leveled his pistol at the man’s head.

  “I done give up,” the man said.

  “Yes, but I’m still in a riled frame of mind.”

  Jebidiah shot the man through the mouth.

  That’s five shells, he thought to himself. He walked over and looked at the man who had the revolver. He was good and dead. So was the shotgunner who lay sprawled over some rocks, his dead eyes filling with sunlight.

  Jebidiah found his last victim lying on the ground on his back, squinting. Jebidiah’s shadow fell over the shovel man and the man turned his eyes toward the preacher.

  “I can’t feel my goddamn legs,” the man said.

  “That is because I shot you in the spine, down low. You are about to take the slide into hell. You boys should have taken up another line of work. Robbing people doesn’t seem to suit you as much as you might think.”

  “We’re miners.”

  “I hardly call what you were trying to do to me mining.”

  “There’s goblins in the mines.”

  “Goblins?”

  “For God’s sake, please help me.”

  “I will help you depart,” the Reverend said. “Tell me about the goblins.”

  “I’ll tell you nothing.”

  “Then do not. But I’m not feeling too good about having to chase down my horse. I can leave you here and let you bleed slow and let the sun do its work. Way I shot you, you will leak out at a dribble. The pain may not be much, but you won’t be able to move, and by nightfall the coyotes and the wolves will come out, and if you should make it through a cold night, tomorrow you got the buzzards and the crows, and all manner of scavengers. Including ants. You cannot even move your arms to push them off your eyes. I was you, that would not be the way I would want to go on my trip into the dark.”

  The man studied the Reverend carefully. The only thing he could move was his head, his eyes and his mouth.

  “Things don’t smell right,” the man said. “And there’s shadows moving all about.”

  “Those are the shades of hell, my friend. They are waiting for you on the other side, trying to grab you before you are completely ready. What you smell is what you done in your pants.”

  “Hell? Those are the shadows of hell?”

  “That would be my guess. I do not take you for a Sunday school attendee. Being a preacher, I can usually tell about a man. It is a gift.”

  “You’re a preacher. You can’t be no preacher.”

  “I am.”

  “God wouldn’t like you to do what you done.”

  “You do not know God as well as I do. Under certa
in circumstances he can be surprisingly flexible.”

  “Pray for me, Reverend.”

  “What is this about goblins?”

  “Will you help me go, I tell you?”

  “It is a possibility.”

  “In the mines, up a ways. Down deep inside. They done near ran everybody out. There’s a few men still digging, but most of them have gone off. We wouldn’t have done what we was trying to do to you had we not needed the money to eat.”

  The Reverend’s face crunched up. “Then I guess that makes it all right.”

  “It makes it what it was. The shadows are starting to get really dark. I can hardly see you.”

  “I still say you will last a long time. The shadows will come and the shadows will go. A lot can happen before they take you into Hell.”

  “Please pray for me.”

  “Well, I have to be going, friend. I have a horse to catch.”

  “Don’t leave me like this. For God’s sake, please say a prayer.”

  The Reverend nodded, recited the Lord’s Prayer. “You feel any better?” he said when he finished.

  “I do.”

  “Good, ’cause it will not do you one ounce of good. You are going to die my friend. God plays dirty dice. And he does not really forgive. Jesus was a liar.”

  “Then send me over, Reverend. Least wise I’ll have company.”

  “That you will.”

  The Reverend lifted his revolver and shot the miner in the right eye, giving him the final jump into the shadows and worse.

  It took the Reverend about an hour to locate his horse, which had found some berries on a bush and was busily chomping on them when the Reverend came up and took the reins and stroked the horse’s nose. He noted there was a cut on the horse’s withers where the shovel strike had caught the animal. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t a wound he wanted to worsen by riding. He led the horse for a while, finally stopped just before nightfall where the rocks dipped out and formed a cave large enough for him and his mount. The Reverend found some dry brush and piled it in front of the cave, lit up a fire and made it high. It crackled and popped like someone snapping a whip. He reloaded his .36 Navy. He took the saddle and bridle off the horse, got a currycomb from his saddlebags and gave the animal a good brushing. He hobbled the horse in the cave with rope and sat down by the fire and ate some jerky, chewing slowly, drinking a bit of water from his canteen.

  Out in the dark he heard something, listened to see if he could identify the source. He didn’t like building such a big fire because of the possibility that more desperate miners were in the brush, but it really wasn’t the miners that concerned him most. It was what the dying miner had said about goblins. Goblins of all kinds seemed to dislike fire. He piled more brush on the blaze and sat back down. He saw eyes out beyond the fire. He counted twenty sets of eyes. They appeared to be stuck to the dark, like flaming yellow darts against black wool.

  He pulled his old Henry rifle from its sheath on his saddle, cocked it, sat back in his spot and watched the eyes. They moved a little closer. He lifted the rifle, aimed between a set of peepers, and fired. The eyes dropped from sight and the other eyes tumbled about like thrown coals, and then they were gone.

  The Reverend sat and watched, and about an hour later, the eyes reappeared. He sighted with the rifle, but before he could shoot, the eyes tumbled away again. The horse made a noise behind him, and the Reverend, without looking, called soothingly to the hobbled animal. The horse seemed happy enough where it was; it could sense what was out there and it didn’t want to be near it.

  The Reverend sat up all night, and when morning came, it came in a swathe of purple that fluttered down through the canyon like an unfurling robe and gradually reddened, then turned the color of Inca gold. Gradually, the air grew warm.

  The Reverend fed the horse from the grain he kept in a bag, then fed himself a bit of jerky. The fire had gone out just before morning, right before the wood he had gathered played out and left him cold and vulnerable. It had worked perfectly.

  The Reverend went to where he had seen the eyes fall, and there was some stirred dirt and something dark and dried, some footprints that went off into the rocks and were visible no more. The footprints were wide and not too long and there were drag lines between them, like a heavy tail had followed suit.

  “Goblins indeed,” the Reverend said aloud. He went back to the cave and stretched out on his horse blanket and slept with his hat over his eyes for about two hours, then he was up. He dug one of his volumes of lore from his saddlebag, and read from it. He nodded as he read, familiarizing himself with things he already knew.

  He decided his horse could bear him now, so he saddled it and rode along the canyon road that wound up higher into the mountains.

  The mining camp smelled like miners, only stronger. It was an odor of dried and re-dried sweat, bean farts and un-wiped assholes. It made the Reverend wrinkle his nose. The main mine could be seen up the mountain, a big black mouth open in the rock. No one was up there. The goblins, the Reverend presumed, had run everyone out.

  As he rode into the camp he could see the stained tents of miners and there were a few shacks with open fronts where jugs of liquor were sold. There were also sheets hung up around some trees and they were designed to cover the bodies of the whores behind them. But from his position on horseback, the Reverend could see the tops of their heads and the tops of the heads of the miners behind them; the women, dresses hiked, leaned against trees with their hands, and the miners took them from the rear.

  Not too much farther into the camp, the Reverend saw a naked woman lying in the mud with some pigs nosing around her. As he rode by and looked down, he noted that she was long dead. Someone had cut her throat from ear to ear, perhaps preferring that to paying the price for a ride. A hog sniffed the woman’s bloated face. The Reverend took his rifle from its scabbard and poked the hog with it, running it off. He let the dead woman lie.

  There was a big clapboard building on up the muddy path, and beside it were other clapboard buildings, only smaller. The big building wasn’t really all that big, just big compared to what else was around. The Reverend stopped in front of it, got off his horse, tied the reins to a post outside with some nails driven into it for tie spots.

  He looked around. There were miners coming out of the rocks, out from behind trees, moving in his direction, or rather the direction of his horse. He had a feeling that if he left the animal outside, by the time he got through the door of the building, his horse would be gone. Ridden away or chopped up and eaten.

  He undid the tying, and led the horse up on the little porch in front of the building, opened the door, and led the animal inside, throwing a backward glance at the grouping miners. They turned away sadly and made their way back to where they had come from, their shoulders hunched with disappointment.

  Inside the building the stench outside seemed like perfume. It was awful in there. There were cots from wall to wall, and there were miners on them, and in some cases, women, and in some cases men mounting women. There was a plank set over two barrels, and behind it, sitting on another barrel, was a man with a hat that had so many holes in it, one more and it wouldn’t have been a hat. The face that poked out from under it looked as if it had been carved with a hatchet.

  The Reverend led his horse over to the plank. The man behind it, he said, “You can’t bring that horse in here.”

  “Of course I can, there he is,” the Reverend said.

  “Well, you can’t bring him in here.”

  “If I say I can, I can. If you do not want my horse in here, all you have to do is throw me out and my horse with me.”

  “That can be arranged.”

  “Not by you.”

  “Naw, by them.”

  The Reverend looked where the man was pointing. Two guys with enough fat between them, that, if rendered, would provide lard for the city of New York, moved toward him. One of them didn’t have enough shirt to cover his belly, and the other one
didn’t have enough pants to cover his ankles.

  “They make sure nobody gets smart in here,” the man behind the plank said.

  “With the exception of myself, I doubt a rise in intelligence is a great worry around these parts,” the Reverend said.

  “What the hell does that mean?” the man behind the plank said.

  “Sleep on it,” the Reverend said.

  The Reverend turned, looked at the big fellows, let go of his horse’s reins, said, “I would hold myself right there. I do not warn twice.”

  The man with the too small shirt grinned and showed the Reverend where some teeth used to be. “You ain’t worrying us.”

  “I ought to be,” the Reverend said.

  The man popped a snap-blade knife out of his pocket and opened it with a flip of the wrist.

  The Reverend pulled the .36 Navy and shot the man in the stomach where it poked out from under his shirt. It was a good shot, caught him dead center of his navel. He dropped and rolled in the sawdust and human waste on the floor. As he did, he bumped one of the cots, turning it over, dumping its occupant on his butt. The former cot’s occupant jumped up and kicked the screaming gut-shot fellow twice in the head.

  “Can’t a man sleep around here?” Then the man saw the Reverend, standing there, holding a smoking revolver. He stopped cussing and stopped moving. The other big man had halted in his tracks, one high water pants leg propped in front of the other, his knee bent where he had stopped in mid-step.

  “I hope my gunfire did not disturb your slumber,” the Reverend said to the man from the cot, and glanced about the room. Others were moving, having been awakened by the snap of the shot and the screams of the dying miner.

  “He is gut-shot by the way,” the Reverend said, waving the revolver at the man writhing on the floor, “and he has a long way to go before the trap door opens and he drops through. Somebody ought to help him out.”