Hell Come Sundown (3 page)

The town was still. Not in the sense of it being a sleepy little village where nothing much happened, but in the way a dead body is utterly motionless. As the wind shifted in his direction, Yoakum caught the odor of spilled blood. During the Cortina War, when the Mexican bandit lord had laid waste to the lower Rio Grande Valley, Yoakum had come to know the smell of death all too well to ever mistake it for anything else.

He reined his mount to a halt before Haygood Swanson's General Mercantile. In his five years ranging the frontier, he had come to know the various townsfolk under his general protection fairly well. Goody Swanson, as he was known, was an affable fellow, who could be counted on for a free chaw and a decent price on salt, biscuits and coffee.

“Goody? Goody, are you there? It's Sam Yoakum!” His boot heels struck hollow notes on the raised boardwalk that fronted the store. As he pushed open the front door, the bell that alerted the shopkeeper that someone had entered his store gave a deceptively merry jingle.

The interior of Swanson's General Mercantile looked as if a tornado had hit it. Bolts of cloth lay strewn about the countertops, and the barrels that held the flour, sugar and nails lay on their sides, their respective contents spilled across the plank floorboards. Glass cases had been smashed, cabinets overturned and the potbellied stove that dominated the central room had been pulled free of its ventilation pipe and knocked onto its side. As he moved toward the back of the store, something crunched under his boot, and Yoakum smelled a cross between paint thinner and fermented grain. He glanced down and saw that he was walking through broken bottles of redeye.

Yoakum pushed his hat back and scratched his forehead, puzzled by what was before him. He didn't care how crazy they might be—Indians, outlaws and bandits never let whiskey—no matter how cheap—go to waste. If Cortina had raided the town, he would have taken every last barrel of flour he could have laid his hands on. After all, armies—even those comprised of bandits and outlaws—traveled on their stomachs.

As Yoakum turned to leave, something caught the corner of his eye. He bent over and picked up a shotgun from the tangle of unraveled cloth, broken glass and spilled sugar. The stock was marked with the initials h. s. and the barrel was bent back on itself. Yoakum dropped the useless weapon back where he found it and hastened out the door. He strode out into the middle of the empty street and cupped his hands to his mouth.

“Hullo! Texas Rangers! Anybody here? Can anyone hear me?”
he shouted.

His only answer was the echo of his own voice. Whatever had happened to the citizens of Golgotha, it was more than a one-man job. He'd have to ride on down to Brownsville, pick up a couple of men and come back to sort things out.

Just as he was about to saddle up his horse, the tolling of a bell broke the eerie silence. Yoakum turned and looked in the direction of the sound. It was coming from the church, which stood in the very middle of town, catty-corner from the general store. The frantic nature of the bell ringing was more like a call for help than a somber call to prayers. He cast his gaze about, but saw no signs of life from any of the surrounding buildings.

He approached the whitewashed wooden church with his gun drawn, not knowing what to expect. As he drew closer, he could see several panes of stained glass had been busted out, as if by someone throwing rocks. The front door of the church swung inward as he touched it with the muzzle of his gun. As he stepped inside, a beam of sunlight illuminated the dim interior, falling across the figure of a solitary man, who stood at the back of the church, pulling on the bell rope that lead to the steeple.

“Where is everyone, Reverend?” Yoakum called out.

The bell-ringer stopped and turned to look at Yoakum. His face was gaunt and pale, covered with several days worth of gray stubble. His hair was greasy and uncombed, and his eyes were red-rimmed and more than a little wild, like those of a man who has stood guard on the ramparts with far too little sleep for far too long.

“I ain't no preacher,” the bell-ringer replied. “And as for where everyone is—they're dead. Every last one of them. Ain't nothin' and no one left alive in Golgotha but me.”

“And who might you be?”

“The name's Farley. I got me a place a couple miles east of town. I've been livin' in these parts since '52. You don't need to point a gun at me, Ranger,” he said, nodding at Yoakum's pistol. “I ain't gonna give you no trouble.”

“You say everyone's dead. If so, where are the bodies?”

“That's a long story,” Farley said with a weary sigh.

“Humor me,” he said, motioning for the other man to be seated in one of the nearby pews. As the other man sat down, Yoakum holstered his pistol but did not take his hand off its butt.

“It begun when Merle went and dug himself a new well. You see, he'd bought a parcel of land off this Meskin feller, name of Garcia. Merle already had him a place, but he wanted to build a little house on its own plot so he could bring his mama and the rest of his family down from Back East. He needed the new well, on account of the old one being too far away. Anyways, Garcia's old grandpa gets all riled up when he hears what Merle's doin'. He rides out and tells Merle he can't dig where he's diggin'.

“Merle tells him that he's bought the land off his kinfolk fair 'n' square, and if he wants to dig straight to hell, there ain't nothin' the old man can do about it. Then Old Man Garcia tells Merle that his grandson had no right to sell him the land without talkin' to him about it first. Merle says that's tough, but they've already signed papers on it and money has changed hands, so the sale is legal. Then Old Man Garcia offers to buy the land back from Merle—and at a good price, too. But Merle ain't havin' none of it. So Old Man Garcia, he goes home, packs up his family, and next thing you know they're gone—and they was in these parts since the conquistadors.

“After a few days diggin', Merle's about eight feet deep, I reckon. He's far enough down that he's got to use a ladder to get in and out of the hole. And he's got a couple of good ol' boys from town, Billy McAfee and Hank Pierson, out there helpin' him haul the dirt and rocks up topside. Then his spade strikes something made of metal, but it's too dark for him to see what it is.

“Merle yells up to Billy to lower him down some light. So Billy sends down a lantern. Merle lights it and bends over to get a look-see. He finds what looks like the lid of a big iron box. There ain't much showin', but from what he can see it looks like it's the size of a steamer trunk. Merle and them get to talkin', and they decide that it must be buried treasure—maybe gold the

Aztecs tried to hide from the Spanish, way back when. At first they mean to keep it to themselves, but as they get to uncoverin' the metal box, they realize it's too big and too heavy for just the three of them to pull it free of the hole.

“That's where I come in. I lived down the road a piece, and Merle knew I had me a string of mules. At first I didn't believe a word he said, but then he takes me over to where he's got the well started and tells me to climb down and take a look for myself. I have to admit that once they put the notion in my head, all I could think of was gold. I kept thinkin' that if that box was full of treasure, it would go a long ways to settlin' debts and makin' life easier for me an' mine. So I ran and fetched the mules and brought them back to the well.

“By this point, the boys had uncovered the whole damn thing. It was about four foot long, three foot high and three foot deep, with an old-fashioned hinged iron padlock. I hitched up the mules and wrapped the box in a set of chains I use to pull stumps. But when I laid my hand on the top of the box, I jumped back and hollered on account of it being so cold. My hand tingled and burned like I'd just stuck it in a bucket of ice water. Merle figgered it was cold like that because it had been buried so deep all them years. That didn't make much sense, but I was in too big a hurry to lay claim to my share of the treasure to give it much thought.

“I fastened the chains around the box and then climbed up top to fix them to the team. Usually my mules are pretty easy to work with, but that day they was givin' me fits, stompin' the ground and rollin' their eyes like they do when they smell somethin' fierce nearby, like a cougar or a bear. I really had to lay into them with the whip. Their rumps were runnin' red before they finally gave in and started to pull. But once they did, that ol' box was out of the bottom of Merle's well just as easy as yankin' a rotten tooth. Still, it took all four of us to lift it up and put it in the back of Merle's buckboard.

“By the time we finally managed to get the chest over to Merle's place, it was gettin' on dark. Since the danged thing was so heavy, we decided to just pull the buckboard into the barn and open it out there, as opposed to tryin' to drag it into the house. Billy and Hank rassled the bastard off the back of the wagon and set it on the barn floor.

“While Merle was busy fetchin' his chisel and pry-bar, I took a few seconds to study the padlock on the chest. It was a big rascal—as large as a baby's head—and when I looked at it close, I could make out some kind of symbols through the rust and the dirt caked on it. The funniest thing about the lock, I noticed, was it didn't have no keyhole. Once that critter was locked, it was meant to stay shut.

“Merle came back with the tools he needed to open the box, along with a lantern so he could see what he was doin' now that the sun was set. Merle weren't a small man, and he sure as hell weren't a weak one, but it took him several good swings with the hammer before he knocked that lock open. When it finally broke and dropped to the ground, we all stared at it for a couple of heartbeats, then looked up at one another. I don't know if it was the light from the lantern or somethin' else, but the other fellas seemed to be lit from inside with a terrible hunger that made their eyes burn like those of animals gathered around a campfire. I reckon I didn't look no different, though. Greed is a horrible thing.

“The lid of the chest was so heavy that Merle had to take the pry-bar and wedge it under the lip of the box. He levered it open enough so that Billy and Hank could grab hold and throw it all the way open. We crowded around, lantern held high, eager to sink our arms up to our elbows in gold coins and precious gems. But there weren't no treasure buried in that chest. Not by a long shot.

“The only thing the iron box contained was the body of a man lying on his side, knees drawn up and arms folded across his chest. 'Cept for a thin covering of yellowish, dry skin and wisps of hair that were still stuck to the scalp, it was basically a mummified skeleton. Going by the rusty breastplate and helmet it still wore, the dead man had once been a conquistador. The only thing of any possible value was a silver medallion set with a highly polished stone hung about its neck.

“Merle reached in and yanked the necklace free, holding it up to the light. Merle was always one for lookin' on the sunny side of things, so he tried to put a good face on it, so we wouldn't be so disappointed. ‘At least it ain't a complete loss. This has to be worth at least fifty dollars …'

“That was the last thing I ever heard him say, at least that weren't screamin'.

“We all had our backs turned to the box, as we was lookin' over Merle's shoulder at the necklace he took off the Spaniard's carcass. Suddenly there was this cracklin' sound comin' from behind us, like someone walkin' through a pile of dead leaves. So I turn around, and I see—sweet Lord Jesus—I see the dead thing in the box stand up.

“I know what you're gonna say, now. That I must be crazy. But if I'm crazy, it's on account of what I seen in that barn. The thing that got out of the box weren't nothin' but bones with dry skin the color and texture of old leather stretched over 'em. But it still had eyes—or something like eyes—burnin' deep inside its sockets. And when the thing saw us, God help me, it grinned—peeling back black, withered lips to reveal a mouthful of sharp, yellow teeth.

“We was so flabbergasted we was froze to the spot, just like a covey of chicks hypnotized by a snake. I was too scared to swaller, much less scream. The dead thing, it made this noise like a screech owl and jumped on poor Merle. It sank its fangs into Merle's throat like a wolf takin' down a lamb. It sure as hell was spry for somethin' that had to have been dead three hundred years.

“Billy grabbed the thing and tried to rassle if off Merle, but it was like tryin' to pull off a tick. Even though it weren't but a bag of bones, it swatted Billy aside like he was nothin'. Hank snatched up an axe handle and laid into the thing, but just ended up splinterin' the handle on the iron breastplate it was wearin'. Still, he must have got its attention, cause it dropped Merle and turned on him instead.

“Things was happenin' and movin' too fast by this point for me to get a clear picture of what exactly was goin' on, but I remember that once the thing was finished with Merle, it didn't quite look the same. There seemed to be more meat on its bones, an' more juice in the meat. It was like the blood it had drained from Merle was fillin' its own veins.

“Billy starts screamin' ‘It's got Hank! It's got Hank! We gotta save him!' He grabs up a pitchfork and charges th' thing, but it's too fast for him. It drops Hank and sidesteps Billy, snatchin' the pitchfork away like it was takin' a toy from a kid. Now

Billy's screamin' for help, and—Lord, help me—instead of tryin' to save him, I ran away. I jumped on my horse and hightailed it to town, not lookin' back once for fear of what might be gainin' on me. Billy McAfee's death screams were echoin' in my ears the whole way.

“I reached Golgotha and I went straight to Sheriff Winthrop's office. He was in th' middle of dinner, so you can imagine he weren't too happy to have me bustin' in goin' on about dead things with glowin' red eyes murderin' Merle and them. Instead of ridin' out to check on my story, he just locked me up and told me to sleep it off.