Legends of the Lost Causes

by Brad McLelland

  The outlaw’s black overcoat rippled in the cold zephyr. He coughed onto the back of his gloved hand, and Keech’s fists tightened when he caught a glimpse of the dead left eye.

  A high-pitched whistle sounded from the opposite side of the Home. “That’s the signal, boys,” Bad Whiskey said. “The others are in place round back.”

  Sam grabbed Keech’s arm in desperation. Keech raised his palms, both facing downward, and lowered them slowly: the hand gesture for Stay calm.

  Bad Whiskey shouted at the Home’s front door. “Isaiah Raines, come on out!”

  The house remained quiet.

  “Judgment has come, Raines! Face it like a man!”

  The bitter wind howled across the property, then came to a stark rest, as if the world itself had stopped to catch a breath. The last hint of moonlight hid its face behind the dark clouds.

  The front door of the Home for Lost Causes opened.

  Pa Abner stepped out onto the porch. He was holding his Model 39 Carbine rifle. He planted his boots shoulder-width on the porch boards. Keech recognized Pa’s silence. He was taking a moment to size up each of the invaders crowding the yard.

  At the edge of the half circle, the nose-ring monster—Keech could only think of him now as Bull—placed his hand upon his sidearm. The other desperadoes did the same, fingers inching toward their lead chuckers, but moving slowly to avoid any violent misunderstandings.

  Pa Abner locked eyes on Bad Whiskey. “I made it clear you were to stay away.”

  Bad Whiskey shifted his weight. He fanned back his overcoat, revealing a holstered Navy revolver. “Reverend’s orders. I don’t leave Missouri without the Char Stone.”

  Pa ignored his remark. “I see you found a new hand cannon. Smaller than the Dragoon I took.”

  “The Dragoon ya stole. I’ll be wantin’ that back. I brought me a fistful of thralls. You don’t stand a chance.”

  Pa Abner grimaced. “Did the Reverend raise them?”

  “Nope. I command the Tsi’noo now.”

  “I see. You’ve borrowed the Prime. Your soul’s sunk deeper into rot than ever, Bad Whiskey. I reckon you don’t even have a soul anymore. I have a mind to put you down right here. You know full well I can.”

  Bad Whiskey grinned, his smile all gaps and rotten teeth. “You think you can outdraw me?”

  “A wobbling toddler could outdraw you, Bad.”

  “Maybe yer faster, maybe you ain’t. But we both know burnin’ powder on me won’t make a lick of diff’rence.”

  “Would this?” Pa lifted his left hand. Tied across his palm was the silver pendant. The orange light from the gang’s torches reflected in the metal and made it look as if Pa held a flame.

  The grin withered on Whiskey’s face. He glanced at his banditos, as if seeking reassurance. They all backed away at least five steps.

  Pa Abner seized the opportunity. “These mongrels see your fear, Bad. Get off my land or I’ll send you to your doom.”

  Keech threw a hopeful glance at Sam. But his brother was gazing at something else in the yard and didn’t notice. His mouth had gone slack with disbelief.

  A monstrous crow had landed on Bad Whiskey’s shoulder.

  It was twice as big as any crow Keech had ever seen. Its beak was unnaturally long, like the jagged end of a scythe, and it moved its malformed head back and forth, as if examining the situation. The creature stood on a pair of whopping talons more suited for a bald eagle. But the frightful part was not the size or shape of the thing, but the way it leaned its massive body toward the outlaw’s ear.

  Keech rubbed his eyes, not believing his own sight.

  “Is that crow whispering to Whiskey?” Sam mumbled.

  Bad Whiskey took another five steps back. Then he began to speak. Not to himself or his gang, but to the bird perched upon his shoulder.

  Around him the torches burned, sending tar-scented vapors into the night sky.

  “The Reverend sends a message,” Bad Whiskey told Pa. “He says surrender all the sacred objects and give up the hidin’ places of the Enforcers.”

  As he spoke, the giant crow turned to look at Pa. It screamed a loud Ack! and Whiskey smiled, his courage renewed. His dead eye sparked yellow in the torchlight as the flames sliced in the wind, each flicker causing his foul features to pale and then darken, like a demon’s heartbeat.

  “Reverend says comply, or none escape this night alive.”

  Pa Abner raised his left hand, the silver gleaming like a bright candle on his palm as if the charm itself were glowing. “Ride out this minute or I’ll lay you low.”

  Bad Whiskey sighed impatiently. “Raines, this needn’t get ugly. Give me the sacred objects or I’ll compel ya.”

  The anger that flashed across Pa’s face convinced Keech that those words would be the outlaw’s last. He was sure Pa was about to lunge for the one-eyed villain and beat in his ugly face.

  Instead, Pa jumped back into the house and slammed the door. The move was so unexpected, the desperadoes didn’t know what to do.

  A deafening squawk split the night as the crow released Bad Whiskey’s shoulder. It took mad flight across the yard, its wings lashing the air, and swooped down the center of the front porch. Keech heard the sound of slashing as the crow’s talons scored lines into the planks. He tried to keep the crow in sight, but the creature charged up at the porch’s edge, spiraled high into the October sky, and vanished into the darkness.

  Bad Whiskey tilted his head. “Very well,” he muttered. “Violence, then.”

  He peeled off one glove, brought his fingers to his mouth, and blew a shrill whistle.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE SIEGE

  From their hiding spot behind the bushes, Keech and Sam witnessed three of the pale-fleshed triggermen scramble for the Home’s front door. They spoke no words and Bad Whiskey issued no orders. The time for talk was done.

  The trio of dead men—Bad Whiskey had called his followers thralls—kicked at the door, but found it securely blocked. One of them plucked a stone off the ground and tossed it at the sitting room window. The pane shattered with a terrible crash, but the shards fell outward. Pa Abner had nailed boards inside, across the windows. While Keech and Sam had been away, Pa had been preparing the house for a siege.

  Bad Whiskey pointed at Bull.

  The massive thrall stepped over to the porch, hunkered down, and hurled his entire weight at the front door. The house shook with the impact, but the door held secure.

  Bull shook his head. “It’s barred,” he said to Whiskey.

  “Of course it’s barred. Try again.”

  Bull stampeded the door a second time. The torchlight in the yard revealed jagged cracks up and down the wood, but the door refused to budge. The thrall slumped on the porch, disappointed.

  Bad Whiskey addressed the walking corpse wearing the leather coat. “Rance, get over there. Shoot yer way in.”

  The leather-coated man joined Bull on the porch and pulled his revolver. The harsh crack of gunfire exploded. After a few shots, the door began to splinter. Large pieces of timber burst and cracked, clouding the yard with sawdust and smoke.

  “They’re gonna murder them!” Sam bawled in Keech’s ear.

  The thrall known as Rance stopped to reload.

  Bull slammed his boot against the bullet-riddled door. The entry shuddered. A new cloud of dust erupted into the air.

  “Nearly there,” the thrall grunted. He kicked again. This time the barricade shattered. The door swung wide, revealing darkness within.

  Bad Whiskey pointed to a timid-looking thrall in a tattered brown coat. “You there, Copper.”

  The creature looked surprised to see his trail boss call on him. In the torchlight his flesh looked leprous. “N-n-name’s Cooper,” he stammered.

  “I don’t give a continental what yer fool name is. Get inside and fetch my prisoner.”

  Cooper stepped obediently across the yard. He edged past Bull and Rance and drew a small flintlock pistol. He poin
ted the weapon straight ahead and took a modest step over the threshold.

  Something inside the house flashed bright white. A gunshot rang out.

  Cooper grabbed his chest, took a step back, and collapsed on the porch. Keech couldn’t see clearly what had happened, but he believed Pa Abner had just shot the fella straight through the heart.

  Bad Whiskey guffawed. “A fine shot, Raines! But you know lead can’t stop the Tsi’noo.”

  To answer Whiskey’s remark, Cooper sat straight up. He looked confused, perhaps a little scared, and pushed a finger into the fresh bullet hole, as if hoping to touch his own heart. “That smarted somethin’ awful!” he shouted. Other thralls chuckled in the yard. Cooper climbed back to his feet.

  Keech couldn’t form a single clear thought. Their pa had prepared them for so much. They had spent years in the woods, training for any sort of danger, wild animals, savage blizzards. But not for men who stood up after being shot square in the heart.

  Cooper stepped again toward the door. This time Pa Abner’s hand flashed into view, the pendant tied across his palm. He slapped the glowing charm across the thrall’s cheek.

  A shudder ran down the dead man’s body as if he’d been struck by lightning. Bull and Rance dived off the porch as Cooper collapsed in a heap, almost exactly where he’d landed before. The thrall shrieked an unspeakable noise and his face and neck took on the color of a midnight river. A black dust billowed from the creature’s mouth. There was a final groan, and then Cooper lay still, a lifeless corpse.

  Petrifying horror seized Keech’s bones. Then he understood what he had just witnessed, and his dread turned to hope. The pendant! The second Pa Abner had touched Cooper with the silver, the sinister hold upon the animated body had shattered.

  “Fill that house with lead!” Bad Whiskey screamed.

  The outlaws opened fire. Wood splintered as bullets tore into the Home. The thralls emptied their revolvers, reloaded, then emptied again. Whiskey joined in, firing into the open doorway, screaming obscenities, and stomping his boots with glee.

  “We have to help,” Keech said.

  “But if we break cover, we’re goners!”

  Bad Whiskey’s men charged the house and poured in through the battered entrance, stepping over the still body of Cooper. A second later, more bright gunfire lit the front porch. Men shrieked inside the house. Black powder smoke, made visible only by the torchlight, spilled from the door.

  Then there was silence.

  A skinny, ghost-white outlaw emerged from the house. The man wore a fancy frock coat, blackened by dirt and ripped along the sleeves. In the crook of one arm he carried a long rifled musket, the end of its barrel seeping a thin fog. Clumps of gray hair hung like spiderwebs off his speckled, hatless head. Upon seeing the man, Keech couldn’t help thinking back to his readings on sailors and pirates and the scurvy sickness they suffered from when they didn’t eat fruit for months at sea.

  Scurvy grinned, revealing bloodred gums and broken teeth.

  “We got ’im, Master,” the creature said. “That ol’ punchbug put up quite the fuss. Ended five on the stairs before we managed to get this free.”

  Keech felt his throat tighten when the thrall held up a glimmering object. It was Pa’s charm, glowing like a firefly, partially wrapped in a scrap of cloth. Scurvy was careful to keep the object off his own flesh. He tossed it across the front yard, where it landed at Bad Whiskey’s feet.

  From a distance, Keech could hear the sound of a wounded pup howling. Slowly he worked out that the wailing was coming from the Home. It was not a pup, but his siblings trapped inside, crying.

  “They’re gonna kill everybody!” Sam insisted. “We have to help them!”

  Keech had no idea what to do. One stubborn thought played in his mind: Destruction cometh; and they shall seek peace, and there shall be none. The passage clouded any attempt to form a plan.

  Then he remembered. Pa Abner had tossed Whiskey’s Dragoon onto the workbench in the woodshed. If the revolver was still there, maybe there was some way he could use it to even the odds, or at least slow the dead men down.

  He whispered to Sam, “I have a plan. I’ll circle around the property to the south and get the Dragoon Pa took earlier. You head around to the back door; see if there’s some way to slip inside. I’ll start shooting in the air, cause a ruckus, and draw Bad Whiskey’s men toward me. When I do, find Granny Nell and the others and lead them out to safety.”

  Sam’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Protect us, Saint Jude, from harm,” he muttered. Without another word, he slipped away on silent feet.

  Keech watched him disappear through the dark brush and then shifted his weight, ready to dash back through the trees.

  One of the henchmen stepped out of the house. He waved a hand as though shooing a pesky fly. “Dixon’s bringin’ him out,” the thrall said.

  “Raines better be alive or I’ll have yer life,” Bad Whiskey said.

  “He is, mostly,” the gunman answered. “A bit shot up.”

  A bearded leatherneck emerged from the Home, dragging the wounded Pa Abner. The thrall flung him to the ground at Whiskey’s feet. Pa’s beard was wet with blood. He looked as if he should be dead.

  Keech knew he couldn’t wait a moment more. He made his way quickly along a well-worn path that skirted the southern perimeter of the property. As he scampered behind the waist-high brush, he heard Bad Whiskey growl at Pa.

  “Reverend Rose’ll be happy to see this.”

  Glancing back through the bushes, Keech saw the outlaw snatch the pendant’s leather cord and lift the blazing silver from the dirt.

  He reached the woodshed and slipped inside. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he fumbled around Pa’s workbench. He ran his hand across the raw wood and drew a painful sliver in his palm, but the revolver was nowhere to be found.

  He kept searching. Pa’s lantern could be of use—he could rig a mean explosion with it—but it too was out of sight. A chunk of tree bark lay in the dirt, a leftover from one of Pa’s projects. But that was just plain foolish. There was no way he could make an effective distraction with a piece of dumb bark. He needed something with teeth.

  Keech turned his attention to Pa’s toolbox. His fingers fell upon the handle of Pa’s scratching awl. The tip was sharp enough to stab through pure oak. He stuffed the awl into his coat pocket and kept rummaging.

  Gunfire ruptured the night again—three distinct shots from an elevated position—but this time the volley wasn’t coming from the dead men and their pistols. This gunfire sounded familiar. Keech paused to listen. A fourth shot rang out, the crack of a Model 39 Carbine. The shots were coming from Pa’s Colt rifle.

  Keech guessed that Granny Nell must be firing at the desperadoes. If anyone could defend the Home besides Pa, it was Granny. She was the toughest old woman this side of the Mississippi.

  Keech spotted a blunt object resting on Pa’s sanding stool: the claw hammer that Robby had been using earlier that day. He hefted the iron to test its weight. He took a practice swing and turned the tool over so when the hammer swung, the iron claw would lead. If he banged it against the side of the woodshed, the ruckus would surely make Bad Whiskey and his devils come running.

  There was no more time for uncertainty. The hammer would have to serve. Sam was waiting on a distraction so he could get into the house and save the others. It was time to act, even if it meant Keech would die.

  The Carbine boomed twice more—then fell silent. Granny had used her six shots and was most likely reloading.

  The hammer snug in his grip, Keech pushed open the shed door and stepped outside.

  What he saw nearly made his heart stop.

  Orange fire had erupted inside the Home. Flames devoured the drawn curtains hanging over the back windows. Inside, Keech could see monstrous silhouettes, the shadows of Bad Whiskey’s thralls, stomping around the ground floor with destructive purpose, touching their torches to the furniture, the walls, anything that would take a flame.<
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  “No!” Keech shrieked.

  Clenching the hammer, he screamed with raw animal fury and ran.

  CHAPTER 9

  SMOKE AND ASH

  Keech rounded the corner of the burning house and leaped into the center of the thralls, swinging Pa’s hammer with reckless strength. He aimed the iron claw at the exposed head of a dastardly rotter in brown, tattered clothes. The thrall turned, shock writ across his features. Keech brought down the hammer, but the brute managed to raise his arm. The claw sank into the wretch’s forearm. Keech expected the man to scream, but he barely opened his mouth. At least the man flinched and in the process dropped his rifled musket. The thrall dragged Keech to the ground with him.

  Keech scrambled to pull the claw hammer loose, but the curved iron held firm in the man’s forearm. The other outlaws were sluggish to move, perhaps shocked to discover another person lurking outside the Home.

  From where he lay in the dirt, Pa Abner groaned in anguish. “No, son. No.”

  Keech yanked, but the hammer refused to pry loose. With his free hand, the outlaw beneath him slammed a meaty fist into his left ear. Ringing pain charged through his head like a nest of wasps.

  The monster he thought of as Bull grabbed him by the shoulders and yanked him up. Keech tried to squirm free, but the thrall had pinned his arms behind his back.

  Bad Whiskey stepped over to contemplate Keech. “Why, it’s Jim Bowie, here to defend the Alamo!”

  Wrenching one arm free from Bull’s grasp, Keech scrabbled into his coat pocket and found the scratching awl. He pulled it free and with all his strength thrust the glinting tip deep into Bull’s arm. Like the first thrall, the outlaw flinched slightly, but he seemed unperturbed.

  “Enough, boy!” Bad Whiskey yelled. He swiped the back of his hand across Keech’s cheek. Bull released his grip, and Keech felt as if he was falling from a cliff through shade and firelight.

  A spangled darkness clouded his brain. When his vision at last cleared, Keech labored to lift his head, only to see flames devouring the Home for Lost Causes. His eyes filled with hopeless tears. A few feet away, Pa Abner struggled to rise.