Coleman has asked me what it is we face. I see the trust in his eyes now, even as my own gaze passes over the heavy knife at his belt, the keen American blade that has sent two great evils to the inferno, and seems hungry for a third.
Callisto is as dangerous as any foe I have ever faced. I can only surmise her potential. Whereas in my pursuit of the vampire I had a vast store of folklore from which to glean the tactics I employed against him, there is comparably little in the lore of the werewolf to suggest how one may be defeated. They are spoken of as dying easily enough from the musket ball or the blade. It may be that in this form, though larger and faster and possessing of heightened awareness, she may be as susceptible to our bullets as any other animal (or woman). Perhaps moreso than even her berserk worshipers, who had their fanaticism to hold them up. Then again, what power may the waxing moon this night have over her and what power may she wield against us?
I have only guessed at her manipulative powers. At the party at Skoll’s every man was at her beck. Was it simply because she is beautiful, or is there something preternatural in her allure?
And too, we must take into account that we are after a mother very near her delivery. An animal such as a wolf will fight viciously to protect its young. What we will face will be ten times the danger inherent in such a natural encounter. I think of the giant grey wolf in the canyon...and how a strong man like Vulmere could be rendered less than a rag doll in the span of seconds. I wonder to whom belongs the advantage? Two able armed men on horseback, or a lone, pregnant wolf woman? I wish Plenty Skins were with us.
When I saw her leap into the smoke and emerge in that terrible form, I did not want to believe. In my desperation to deny the fact, I even plunged headlong into the flaming house, searching for her. I moved through the burning furniture with no time even to lament the loss of Skoll’s many priceless antiques. I called for her by name, struggling to be heard over the crackle of the fire and through my own strangled coughs. I fought my way through the heat as if it were a tangible enemy, and climbed even the dangerous stair, my coat drawn over my face to shield my watering eyes, which felt as though they were melting in their sockets.
I burst from one room to another until I recognized at the foot of a large bed the luggage I had seen her bear on the train. In her room I tore about like a madman, jerking open the closet and ripping the sheets from the bed, as though to find her cowering from the fire, ready to be saved. I found nothing but an open book on the night stand, the pencil laid aside by its author in the crease of the binding, the penmanship executed in a baroque, womanly hand, and in Greek. I took this treasure alone from that dying place, wrapping it in my coat to insure its safety as I made my way back down the fire-eaten stairs and finally exploded into the cool night air, coughing and feeling the blood rush from my face.
Here now is the only key to our prey. Our only guide to the werewolf. It will be more welcome than even my lost copy of Baring-Gould in the days to come.
* * *
From the Diary of Mary Weir
September 1st
Ben is due back from Austin in two days. This morning I found the chickens dead in the pen. A wolf or a coyote must have gotten them, but I don’t see how, as the fence and wire were alright. I suppose it must have been an industrious predator, to have scrambled up and over the rail. When I found the pullets lying about, their white feathers soaked in blood and scattered all over the broken dirt, an overwhelming sadness poured over me like thick molasses. I dropped the can of feed and sat there crying on the step of the coop like a fool.
I wasn’t crying for the chickens, for I had been planning to fry one of them for dinner tonight. I suppose I was crying for myself. With Ben gone the prairie is so lonesome. The wind through the tall grass at night climbs the walls of the cabin and seems to frighten the wood, making it groan dreadfully and leaving me wakeful in the big bed. Without the hens I feel I am the last living thing out here in all this big country. Aside from whatever animal is roaming about with a belly full of chicken meat, anyway.
If I felt like a fool crying in the pen, then I was twice as embarrassed when I saw that two men were looking down at me from their horses. I was embarrassed yes, and frightened out of my wits. I had been so unused to the sight of other people since Ben left a month ago that at first I had the crazy notion to vault over the fence rail and go running through the brown grass like a scared rabbit. I was so shocked by their sudden and noiseless appearance, I bolted for the only cover thereabouts, the back of the chicken coop. I don’t know what I thought at the time, maybe that I would crawl underneath it, but the older of the two men raised both his hands to show they were empty and said something to me that sounded like:
“Pleace, dewt bee all armed.”
Well, that stopped me right in my tracks, and I guess the look on my face must have tickled the younger one, for he grinned in a thin sort of way and said;
“It’s alright ma’am. Didn’t mean to scare you. Everything alright here?”
“Yah,” said the older man, who had a kind of rusty beard and a great big cape-like coat, “Vote hast hep end to deez hens?”
I realized then that the old man was some kind of Dutchman, and now that I had more to go on, heard him right. He had asked me what had happened to my chickens.
I saw that they must have come up upon me while I was blubbering, and ran my sleeve across my watery eyes.
“Oh, coyote or a wolf,” I answered.
The two men looked at each other.
“I don’t know how it got in...the fence is fine and there’s no hole underneath. Must’ve crawled over somehow.”
The two of them stopped looking at each other only to look out over the whole prairie, as if they expected to see something other than nothing.
“You lost?” I ventured.
“No ma’am,” said the younger man. He was about Ben’s age, with straw colored hair and sun-dark skin, and eyes as blue as anything.
I think I took a couple steps back from the fence then, for if they weren’t lost, then I assumed they must be looking for this place. They didn’t look like anyone Ben would know.
“Are you here to see my husband? He ought to be around anytime now. He went down to the creek.”
The older man cocked his head at me and had a strange look on his face.
“Is there something the matter with your well, lady?” he asked (I understood him better once I got used to his way of talking) gesturing to the pump beside the house. “Has it gone dry?”
The younger one looked at me for a minute, then took off his hat. The skin on the upper half of his head was a stark white from the red blemish of his hatband on up.
“Ma’am, I’m Cole Morris and this is Professor Abe Van Helsing. You needn’t fear us. We’ve come upon you by accident, and aren’t here on any mischief.”
I felt myself go red at having been caught in a lie, and at the thoughtfulness of his courtesy.
“I’m Mary Louise Weir. I’m sorry. We don’t get company out here. Please let me bring you some coffee.”
“We’d be obliged to you, Mrs. Weir, if it’s not too much trouble,” said Mr. Morris, and he and his Dutch companion (surely I thought, he can’t really be a professor. I guess it is a nickname, like how they call a bartender ‘professor.’) got down from their horses and tied them to the rail.
As I went into the house and began heating the water, I noticed through the window that they took a great interest in the chicken pen and the ground immediately surrounding it. They talked in low tones to each other.
When I brought the coffee, I asked them just how they had come out all this way and where they’d come from.
“Sorefoot, ma’am. We’re hunting,” Mr. Morris explained.
They did not look like hunters, which made me nervous again. They did not have the provisions or gear of men on a hunting trip.
“Madame,” said the Dutchman, “did you hear or see anything unusual this night last?”
“No,�
�� I said. “Nothing. You can see a far distance from here all around, so anything coming is usually not a surprise. Until you, of course,” I said lightly.
They did not smile. They seemed quite preoccupied with something, and drained their coffees quickly and would not have more.
“You’re not hunting antelope,” I observed. “What is it? Was it the same thing that killed my chickens? Is that what brought you here?”
“Mrs. Weir, when will your husband be back?” Mr. Morris said, ignoring all my questions. “Truly.”
Again something in me cringed. Yet, I did not feel entirely threatened. There was an easy way about Cole Morris and a benign air to his companion that precluded my mistrusting them.
“Within a day or so,” I said, almost with relief. I am terrible at lies, and I have been so lonely for company of any kind lately that I hate to think of driving off the only human beings I had seen in a month with fabrications. “He went to Austin at the beginning of the month for a cattle show. We want to raise cattle. Oh, just a few at first, maybe never more than that. But it’s what we came here to do. Ben’s father raised cattle back east in Vermont. Do you know anything about cattle, Mr. Morris?”
“Something about it,” he said absently.
“Madame Morris,” said the Dutchman, “it is imperative that you remain behind doors until your husband’s return.”
“What? Why?”
“There is a very wild animal loose,” Van Helsing said. “Should it return and find no more hens to prey upon, it may be a danger to you.”
The stern insistence in his eyes made me tremble slightly, like I had just felt a wind that had been through grave grass. I hugged my elbows.
“What kind of an animal?”
Van Helsing’s mouth was open to answer, but Mr. Morris interrupted him.
“Lion,” he said. “Gone rabid. It butchered one of my calves and mauled a horse. I believe it did get at your chickens sometime last night. Probably it won’t come by here again, but better to be safe till your husband gets back.”
I have never been much afraid of wild animals. The ones I have seen were mostly skittish, fleeting little creatures or the occasional cowardly wild dog, as afraid of an untoward look as they are a hurled stone. I had never known there to be any big wild cats out here, but Mr. Morris and Van Helsing did not seem to be lying. I told them I would indeed do as they advised, and gave them a handkerchief of biscuits I had left over from breakfast. My morning sickness made it impossible for me to enjoy them anyway.
They watered their horses from the well and then mounted up. Mr. Morris promised he and his man Van Helsing would pass back this way to look in on me on the return trip, after they had bagged the wildcat.
As they rode away over the rise, I felt lonelier than ever. The brief excitement of their news and their visit are gone and tedium has settled on me like dust. The house is so quiet now it is almost tangible, like the steady sound of rain though there is none. The noise of the chickens gossiping in the yard is even gone now. I will have to bury them away from the house so nothing else comes scrounging for their carcasses. How I wish and pray Ben would come home early...as I have every day, for the past two weeks.
CHAPTER 21
From the Journal of Shadrach Mueller
September 2nd
I met old Captain Quentin Morris’ younger son today. It was not a particularly fortunate meeting.
It was just before noon and we were branding wild cows on the north forty when Ben Weir’s wagon came up the road with two men I could plainly see were not Ben driving it.
I called Buster and Tripas over and told them to keep their eyes open, as I saw the two in the wagon had spotted us and were coming over. I wasn’t sure if I was just mistaken about it being Ben’s wagon (although you can’t mistake his spotted old swaybacked gray Janey — it’s the most pitiful animal in the county), but if these two were up to no good I wanted to be certain sure they didn’t pull anything over on us. Besides, a couple of the ‘strays’ we had picked up had turned out to have Bob Billings’ triple B brand (we weren’t letting it stop us though, as I had warned Billings a thousand times to watch his cows better) and we were all a little jumpy at the sight of a wagon.
As it pulled up, I could see that it was indeed Ben Weir’s rig with old Janey in the tracers, and with Buster and Tripas on either side of me, I asked plainly of the two strangers where they had got it.
The younger one, a light haired fellow of about Buster’s age, touched his hat and said they’d found it about three miles to the south, and they had what was left of the owner bundled up in the box.
The older fellow, a rusty-bearded foreigner, added that they had urgent business to the northwest and were hoping we might be able to identify the poor corpse and take it and the wagon (and its goods) off their hands.
I still wasn’t sure if they were shooting straight or not, but I bit and took a look in the box anyway. Sure enough, wrapped in the back was a sack of butchered meat with half of Ben Weir’s face hanging ragged off a mashed-in skull. It looked like he’d been half eaten, or else trampled by a buffalo.
“Ben Weir,” Buster said beside me, and the Dutchman gave a little sound of regret.
When we looked at him for explanation, the younger one explained they’d stopped at the Weir house on their way up north from Sorefoot, and Mary Weir had kindly given them coffee.
It was bad to find Ben Weir in such a state. Bad for Mary Weir too, who was all by herself and word had it, expecting.
“Ay, que malo! What happened to him?” Tripas asked, taking off his sombrero out of respect.
I shook my head.
“Did you find him in the wagon?”
“Nearby,” said the younger one.
“Tracks?” asked Buster.
“It looks like a wildcat, or maybe a bear.”
“Maybe the same thing that got to that Billings cow we found, huh Shad?” Buster said.
I shot him a look. I didn’t want to touch on the subject of Billings’ cows to a stranger when there were eight or ten Triple B steers waiting for the iron right here. But Ben did look an awful lot like what had happened to the cow we’d found on the far south range, torn and butchered, some of the bones cracked open and the marrow sucked out. It’s odd business. There aren’t any bears around that I know of, and no wildcat short of a striped Indian tiger ought to be able to do that to a cow, or a man. What troubled me more was that whatever had done this to Ben Weir hadn’t touched Janey.
“Something been at the animals around here?” the young one asked.
I didn’t like him asking me questions, so I answered with one of my own. I asked him who he was.
“Name’s Morris,” he said. “And this is Abe Van Helsing.”
Well, I knew the Morris name directly, at least Quentin Morris, whom I’d served under against the Comanches out of Fort Elliot, and who I knew had a spread down around Sorefoot. I also knew of his son Quincey, who had won a prize Winchester in a shooting contest in Ft. Worth, and asked him if he was that same boy. He told me he was the younger offshoot of the Captain, Cole, brother to Quincey. I hadn’t heard Quentin had two sons.
I explained how I’d known his paw in the wars and his elder brother by reputation. I asked him what he was doing so far north with an old Dutchman for company.
“Headed for Austin,” he said. “Van Helsing here was a friend of my brother’s from back east, and I’m taking him up to meet a relative of his.”
I looked the two of them over. They looked like they’d been out of doors for more than a while. The old Dutchman’s beard was dirty while Cole’s was sprouting in patches. Their clothes had more dust than a Denver pimp’s prayer book.
“Looks like you shoulda took a coach,” I said.
“Looks like.”
I invited him and the Dutchman to come back to the place for a bite to eat, but though I could see in their eyes they wanted it, they said no. They had a lot of miles to cover, and had been delayed by bringi
ng the body of Weir and his wagon over. They asked me what would happen to his widow, and I promised I’d bring her the news and the wagon and horse myself, though the body probably wouldn’t keep much longer and our icehouse won’t be finished for another week.
I saddled myself with a heavy burden agreeing to deliver this evil news to a lonely young mother to be. It’s not something I would usually do, but for the Captain’s son I make an exception. I don’t know just what his game is, but if he and that Dutchman are going to Austin to visit a relative, then I am Daniel Boone’s sister.
* * *
Journal of Abraham Van Helsing
September 2nd
Our spirits had descended to dark depths when we left the branding camp of Mr. Mueller and his men. Though I am confident that he is a man of his word, I would like to return personally to dear Mrs. Weir’s home to express my condolences, if it is our fate to return at all.
That Callisto is responsible for the death of Mr. Weir is without question, just as it was certain that it was she who stole into the Weir chicken pen. Probably it was she who also fell upon the Billings cow. Why Callisto did not kill Mary Weir herself is uncertain.
We did not return to the place where we had found Mr. Weir lying near his wagon until dusk. We have lost a day of our pursuit. She ranges the same far flung distance of a full-blooded wolf, and it is difficult to keep up. I fear our sense of duty to Mrs. Weir (for it was with a grave and ironic surety that we knew it was her husband we found slaughtered, having found the bill of sale for a brand new baby cradle that was packaged in the wagon box) may have cost us our due vengeance.
Coleman asked me once more to tell him what had become of his brother Quincey. Unsure as I am of our future, I agreed to tell him. I do not know if there will be another opportunity.
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