Less Than Human (10 page)

The refrigerator kicked on, kicked off. Then the only sound in the room was a hungry sucking.

After a while, Steven raised from the unconscious body of Leon Francis Wilson. The vampire wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing red. "You want a taste or not?"

"I guess so." Earl looked hesitant. His eyes were fixed on the floor.

"What's wrong now?" Steven asked.

"Nothing."

"Come on, what's wrong?"

"I left something in my other jacket."

"Something."

"What?" Steven coaxed.

"Something… all right, my teeth! I didn't bring my fangs with me, okay? Damn it, it's not my fault you turned me after I lost all my teeth!" He looked away, his voice sad. "Cut him for me, will you?"

"Why don't you do it?"

"You know how I feel about knives and cutting people." Earl traced the scar on Leon's jaw. "You didn't have to torture him so much. He would have told you what you wanted to know."

"Kind of like the way old Cates told you what you wanted to know? You remember Cates, don't you?"

"Yeah, I remember," Earl answered. "I remember.

Jacobs had stolen horses for a living in his younger days, but that was a long time ago. Now he was getting old. He had never thought he would live to be old, since the fate of most horse thieves was to finish up on the end of a rope.

The year was 1919—he wasn't too sure about the month—and the meager living he made these days came from peddling snake oil town to town. A man wasn't as likely to be hung for selling snake oil as for stealing horses, though it was still a risky occupation. You might catch a rock thrown by a disgruntled customer if you weren't quick on your feet. A man had to take things as they came.

On the good side, he had a wagon with his name on it; on the bad side, he had a temperamental rattlesnake, the two slowest mules in Texas, and a surly, one-eared dog that wouldn't do any tricks at all.

All in all, he figured he wasn't doing too bad.

He was standing in the middle of what passed for a main street in Jessup, Arizona, trying his best to interest the crowd in a bottle of his elixir. Progress hadn't managed to locate Jessup yet. There was a dry-goods store where you could post a letter if you had a mind to, a Baptist church where you could be saved if you had a mind to, and a saloon if you didn't. Most of the citizenry looked saved, which meant they had no intention of spending any of their money, unless it was over at the saloon. Some of the farmers kept gazing wistfully in that direction and rubbing their sunburned necks.

Earl's claims for his patented medicine were being met with a great deal of good-natured jeering. Most of the folks were more interested in seeing him handle the four-foot rattlesnake he claimed to own than they were in drinking his medicine, which was mostly watered-down whiskey anyway. He was going to have to pull out the snake soon if he was going to hold on to the crowd, and he hated that. The heat tended to put the snake in a bad mood and he'd already been bitten four times this month. He was feeling more than a little put out and kept glaring at his surly dog, who wouldn't even shake hands.

So far, no one was showing even the slightest interest in buying a bottle of his cure-all.

Already the crowd was beginning to get restless and some were drifting away. His chances for making a sale were getting slimmer by the minute.

Only one thing to do—bring on the snake.

He went to the back of the wagon and lifted out the wooden crate that held the big diamondback. There was an ominous rattle from inside. The onlookers brightened up considerably at this development. Earl was not particularly cheered by the sound. That old snake got bigger and meaner by the day. Maybe someday he would grow large enough to swallow the surly dog. It was the first cheerful thought he'd had all day.

One of the ranchers, a big florid man in a straw hat, was telling anyone who would listen about a preacher he'd seen down in Louisiana who handled snakes. "It was the damnedest thing I ever seen. He had snakes crawling all over him. Said he Wasn't scared at all. Said the Lord would protect him."

"What happened?" his companion asked.

"I guess the Lord must have been busy that day, 'cause one of them snakes bit that preacher right in the face. It wasn't no time before he got all swole up. He died before the sun even went down."

"The snake or the preacher?" a wag in the crowd asked.

Earl started to tip the box over, but he lost his grip and the snake tumbled out onto the dusty street. The old diamondback was thick as a man's arm. Before Earl could get hold of him, the snake struck him on the hand and held on.

Everyone saw that it was a serious bite.

"We ain't got no doctor," straw hat said. He didn't seem too sad about it. "We got an undertaker, though. You might be able to trade him them two mules for a fancy send-off."

"That's right neighborly of you," Earl said, grabbing the snake behind the head and dropping him back into the box, "but I think I might need those mules to pull my wagon when I set out for Crowder Flats tomorrow." With that he opened up a bottle of his elixir and drank it straight down.

"You throw in a couple of bottles of that colored water and the undertaker just might put you up a stone." Straw hat was playing to the crowd as he waited for the fancy-talking old man to double over and start swelling up. "But you'd better not wait too long. That preacher I saw get bit couldn't even talk before long. Tell you what, you give me them mules and I'll see you get a Christian burial myself."

"Friend, your concern touches me deeply, but I'm going to be fine. That colored water, as you call it, contains a secret ingredient taught to me by an Arapaho medicine man. No snake can hurt me."

"I'm giving five-to-one odds this old fraud is dead before sundown," the florid rancher called out. There were quite a few takers. The mood of the crowd was becoming positively festive. This was the most excitement they'd had in years.

They settled in to wait.

Every so often, someone would remark that Earl didn't look too good and more money would exchange hands. The saloon keeper, an enterprising fellow, set up a canvas awning to keep the sun off and managed to sell quite a bit of beer while everyone waited for the old man to start puffing up.

Once in a while, to show everyone he was feeling fine, Earl would get up and do a little dance for the children, even let out a whoop or two. The small boys loved it and some of the braver ones would shoot at him with their wooden guns from behind their fathers. The girls mostly hid behind their mother's skirts and cried.

The big rancher was suspicious when Earl didn't swell up and die as the sun began to dip. He demanded to see the snake-bit hand, which Earl showed him. Sure enough there were two puncture wounds and one even had a little blood oozing out of it. He looked closely at Earl, and hatred filled his eyes. "Your little trick cost me money today, old man." His voice was soft. "I know you from somewhere, don't I? Maybe from a long time ago?" He tightened his grip on the injured hand, causing more blood to flow from the wound.

"I doubt it. I don't get through here very often." The grip tightened some more and the pain was bad, but Earl didn't let it show on his face. He smiled. "Mostly I stick kind of close to Missouri. Ever been there? It's pretty country, good place to raise a family."

Something flashed between them and the big rancher looked hard at him, as though weighing the chances of shooting him where he stood. "My name is Cates and I don't ever forget a face. Yours'll come back to me." He released the hand. "We'll talk again when it's not so crowded." Before Cates could say more, he was overrun by people eager to collect on their wagers.

Within a few minutes, Earl had sold every bottle of elixir he owned. He was in such a good mood he promised the snake a toad.

By the time night fell, Earl was miles away from Jessup and nursing his sore hand. All the venom might have been milked from that old rattler, but it still hurt like hell where the fangs had gone in. By morning he wouldn't be able to close the hand. Getting snake-bit was just part of doing business and he was philosophical about it. What worried him more was that he could barely hold on to the big old hogleg Colt he kept under the wagon seat. He was going to need to hold on to it, as soon as Cates figured out where they'd met before.

And Cates would figure that out. Twenty-five years had passed since Earl had seen the massacre, yet it might have been yesterday as far as he was concerned. He had been running a herd of stolen Kiowa horses up Missouri way when he came across what was left of a dead family—a hunter turned farmer and his squaw wife.

They had been butchered by renegades. White renegades from the look of the signs. The man had been tied to a tree and gutted; the woman had been raped and strangled. They had been dead for several days because the animals were fighting over what was left of them.

Earl had seen death. He knew what was in that cabin was going to be bad. He couldn't have said what made him look in there. What he saw was worse than anything he could have imagined. There were two boys no older than eight or nine and a girl of about six, their heads bashed in with a rifle butt.

Only the little girl wasn't quite dead. She should have been. She had been skinned alive and was crawling across the cabin floor on her stomach.

Trying to get away from him. Thinking he was the one who had come back to hurt her some more. Trying to hide. Her own blood greasing her path.

Crawling….

Like a snake without a head.

He wouldn't have thought such a little girl could hold so much blood.

Knowing he was a fool for risking his life over something that was none of his damn business, he tracked the killers back to their camp. There were five of them and he fully intended to cut all their throats as they slept.

After night fell, he sent two straight to hell with gaping toothless grins carved in their throats. The second one had taken a long time to die, bucking and thrashing so hard that Earl had feared the rest would be awakened. It was just plain bad luck that prevented him from finishing off the rest of them. One had drunk too much whiskey and had gotten up to relieve himself. Earl sliced the man's throat while he was making water, but somehow he slipped loose and got off a shot. That slug tore off part of Earl's lower lip. In the flash, he got a look at the renegade leader. It was only for an instant, just long enough to see a big man wearing a straw hat.

And for the man to see him.

The man in the straw hat called the other renegade by name, trying to direct his shots in the right direction. Several of their slugs came so close; Earl felt the air brush his ribs from their passing. Luckily for him they had camped near a stand of cottonwoods or he would have been killed right there.

As it was, they tracked him for a week, causing him to ride his favorite horse to death. He managed to steal another from a ranch and was finally able to lose them on the other side of the Arkansas River.

That had been a long time ago. Now he was driving his wagon across the Arizona flatlands in the dark, and it had been three days since he'd left Jessup, and it might be another three before he made Crowder Flats. He hadn't slept much in that time because he knew Cates would be coming after him. But then he never slept much anyhow.

This country was deserted, not much grass and even less water. Only lizards and snakes lived here. There would be no one to interfere when the big rancher came after him. He took another pull from a bottle of his best pop-skull whiskey and waited for Cates to come.

The only sound was the creaking of the wagon and the pop of the reins as he urged the mules on. The sound lulled him into a light doze. Still, he heard the man riding after him. That was all right. Earl was expecting him. He had been expecting him for twenty-five years.

Earl's eyes sought and found the old hogleg lying on the wagon seat. He stared at the pistol and remembered the little girl crawling on her stomach. Night after night he had imagined what he would do to the man who had killed her when he found him.

Now that the time had come, Earl just wanted it to be over.

Cates wasn't a man to put off a fight or maybe he was just plain crazy. He came in at full gallop, leaning low over the roan he rode, letting the animal shield him. His shots weren't even directed at Earl. He meant to spook the mules, which he did, because they went to kicking and bucking until they kicked over their traces. They bolted and Earl had to jump from the wagon before it went over on its side. He fell heavily, twisting his leg, and the hogleg landed in the dirt.

Before Earl could get to his feet, Cates saw him. The big man spurred the roan forward, meaning to run him over. Earl leveled the pistol—but Cates didn't seem to care. Beneath the straw hat, his face was dead calm as he guided the horse toward the man on foot.

Earl thumbed back the hammer and squeezed the trigger and nothing happened. He tried again with the same results. The pistol wouldn't fire. Something must have happened to it when it landed in the dirt. All those years of traveling from town to town, looking for Cates, only to let him escape. A feeling of sadness crept over Earl. He had let the little girl down. For a moment he saw her crawling across the floor, leaving a trail of blood.

The roan would be on top of him in seconds. He looked straight ahead and at first he didn't see the small white shape dart from under the wagon and run in front of the horse. Cates was taken by surprise as his mount reared and pitched over sideways. The horse landed heavily, pinning the rider beneath him for a moment before rolling free. The roan climbed to his feet and stood there, trembling.

Cates didn't move.

The white shape came closer and Earl was surprised to see it was his surly, one-eared dog who wouldn't do any tricks. The dog had been scared by all the noise and had decided to make a run for cover. Earl was too numb to be surprised.

Quickly, Earl limped over and picked up the big man's pistol, stuck it in his belt. Almost as an afterthought he put a hand on Cates' chest, feeling around for a heartbeat. He found one. Earl pulled out the pistol and pointed it at the rancher's head, but after twenty-five years, he had to have some answers. He went to the wagon and returned with some rope.