Skull Moon (21 page)

Lauters looked skeptical. "But a monster..."

"Look," Ryan said, leading the sheriff into the corral. There were prints in the mud and snow. "It was warm last night. Our beast left tracks that froze hard this morning."

Lauters examined them carefully. The prints were huge, splayed out. Exactly like the ones in Nate Segaris' house: immense, unnatural, triple-toed like a lizard with a thick spur in the back.

"Physical evidence, Sheriff. We need no more proof." Ryan crossed his arms and glared at the mountains in the distance. "Eight men are dead, Bill, and not just any eight men. I don't have to tell you what you and I and those men have in common, now do I? This creature is killing selectively, very selectively. And, if my memory serves me, exactly one year since that injun was lynched."

Lauters shook his head. "This is all crazy."

"Yes, it is," Ryan admitted, "but it's happening all the same. That injun was lynched and now his people have called up something to take revenge."

Lauters looked beaten. "What can we do?"

"First, we take care of Longtree."

"How? Hire gunmen?"

Ryan shook his head. "No, this is something you and I have to do. We don't want anyone to wag their tongues about this down the road. We take care of that marshal tonight and plant him somewhere he'll never be found." Ryan grinned. "And then we'll take care of Red Elk's clan."

Lauters looked suspicious. "We'll need a lot of men."

"I have thirty men right here that have done jobs for me in the past, all of them handy with guns. I can raise another thirty from the mining camps, men who need money and are just looking for a reason to spill injun blood."

Lauters nodded. "Tonight, then."

"Your man Gantz failed, Sheriff, but I guarantee you, we will not."

Longtree was with Moonwind again at the Blackfeet camp. They were in the lodge of Herbert Crazytail. Longtree had rode into camp and requested a meeting with the old man. And after some wait, it had been granted.

"My father says you are wasting your time," Moonwind translated.

Longtree was a stubborn man and he fully intended to get what he came after: answers. He didn't bother bowing his head in respect to the medicine man, because he no longer had respect for him. Crazytail sat on a bed of dried grasses covered with buffalo hide and tended the fire. He was wrapped in a Hudson's Bay blanket, his right arm and shoulder uncovered. Strips of buffalo meat were cooking on wooden spits. Crazytail was gnawing on bits of pemmican.

"Tell your father to stop the Skullhead," Longtree said. "If the killings continue, soldiers will come. His people may be killed."

It was a lie, but neither the old man or his daughter knew it.

Crazytail turned the spits in the fire, mumbling something.

Moonwind said, "It is too late. What has been set into motion cannot be stopped. Even soldiers cannot stop the Skullhead. He has been called."

"Who called him?" Longtree asked pointedly.

Moonwind translated, but the old man just shook his head.

"I don't think he wishes to talk any longer," Moonwind said.

"He doesn't have a choice," Longtree said angrily. "If these killings aren't stopped, soldiers will come and your people will be killed. Those that aren't will be taken off to prisons and distant reservations. They will never see this land again. Tell him that."

Moonwind, sighing, did so.

For the first time since his arrival, Crazytail looked at the marshal. There was hatred in his eyes, the hatred of an entire race. He began talking loudly now, jabbing his finger at Longtree.

"He says our people have a right to vengeance, we have been wronged. The whites must be taught a lesson." Moonwind cleared her throat. "He also says he is sorry you have involved yourself in this, that you will die also. He says if you are wise, you will leave this place before night falls. The Skullhead will not stop killing."

"Tell Crazytail that I want to know where the Skullhead is. I can stop him."

Moonwind translated. "He says no man can stop what has been set into motion. Once the Skullhead is called, he cannot be put down."

Crazytail, the fire reflected in his narrow eyes, began speaking again.

"After the guilty ones are killed," Moonwind translated, "the Skullhead will begin killing indiscriminately. So we have nothing to fear from the soldiers, for the Skullhead will take us all as sacrifices. Our fate is sealed."

"And after you've all died in vain," Longtree said, "then what?"

Moonwind, looking very unhappy, translated: "Then the Skullhead will go down into the town of the whites and kill everyone."

Longtree had himself a room now at the Serenity Hotel in Wolf Creek. It wasn't much, but the bed was comfortable and there was a livery stable across the street for his black. There was a saloon just off the lobby and the food wasn't bad. The door bolted from the inside and the window was painted shut; it was very unlikely anyone could sneak up on him whilst he slept. And while he was awake, he didn't see that as a problem. All things considered, it beat the hell out of sleeping outside...particularly when there were men trying to kill you and maybe something worse. He enjoyed the outdoors, found it spiritually refreshing, but the white man in him often yearned for material comforts.

He'd gotten a pint of rum from the bar and lay on his bed now, sipping from it. He'd come to Wolf Creek under order from Tom Rivers. As a special deputy U.S. Marshal, he had no actual territory to call his own. He was merely sent wherever Rivers thought he was needed, where his skills as a lawman and former scout and bounty hunter would come in handy.

And Rivers had thought Wolf Creek needed him.

But Longtree wasn't so sure.

There'd been nothing but trouble since he'd arrived--with Lauters, with Gantz. And even without those two, this entire situation was well out of his experience. As a bounty hunter and then lawman, he'd brought in nearly every man he'd been sent after. There were few who'd escaped Joe Longtree. He brought them in alive, dead, and nearly dead. He was a hunter of men and he played this hand well. There was no one better at it. He'd taken in murderers, robbers, renegade Indians, road agents, bootleggers, and even entire gangs in his time. Longtree'd had some of the most vicious men (and women) in the west come at him with guns, knives, hatchets, clubs, even their bare hands. He'd been in a hundred near scrapes with death and escaped every time. Oh, he'd been shot several times, stabbed, beaten, and even hanged (that injury still pained him some, but he'd survived). As a scout, he'd even been tortured for three days after capture by a Cheyenne war party.

But this...this business was too much for even him.

It was a complicated affair. First there was the Gang of Ten, the rustlers, of which he was pretty certain only two still lived and Lauters was one of them. He was sure of this now. He even suspected Lauters had something to do with Gantz trying to kill him...but there was no proof. The rustlers, Longtree was sure, had been found out by Red Elk and before the Blackfoot could speak his piece, he was blamed for the murder of that Carpenter girl. But Longtree didn't think Red Elk was guilty...one of the rustlers had been. Arresting Red Elk and then lynching him killed two birds with a single well-thrown stone: the real murderer could go free and Red Elk's tongue would be forever silenced. The rustlers were probably pretty proud of themselves at the time for how easily they'd covered their tracks...until a year later.

Longtree took another drink, the rum filling him with warmth.

And what had happened a year later? Longtree wasn't entirely sure. The Blackfeet had sought revenge via the Skull Society which had called up some beast to kill the vigilantes. Longtree wasn't sure what this beast was, not really. According to Moonwind, some primeval monster that had once been worshipped by the Skull Society centuries and centuries before. Bowes and he had seen something like it at the burial ground that night. But the one on the loose was no zombie, no hulking mummy, but a creature very much alive...or something like it. Now Crazytail said that once the guilty parties were all killed, this Skullhead would continue killing. So who, Longtree wondered, were the real victims here? Red Elk and his people or all the innocents that would suffer because of the actions of a group of criminals and resultant actions of some blood-hungry Indians?

There seemed to be only one course of action: find out who all the members of this Skull Society were and arrest them. One of them had to know where this beast was...and if not? Well, then more problems. But Longtree couldn't arrest any Indians on suspicion of something like this. The Indian Agent in the district would go crazy. What did you arrest them for? he'd ask. Because, Longtree would tell him, one of them is harboring a monster.

It was ludicrous.

There was, really, nothing he could do. Nothing at all. His only hopes were to find this beast and destroy it. And when that was done, he was putting Lauters under arrest, too. If he could convince Tom Rivers to issue the warrant, that was.

Longtree corked the bottle. Enough drinking. He strapped his guns on, donned his coat and hat, and left his room, 1873 Winchester .44 in hand. The sun was setting and the beast would be active again.

Time to kill it or be killed.

Outside, Longtree got his horse, saddled it, and rode out of Wolf Creek. Crazytail had said the beast would come after him, too, and the marshal was inviting it to. He started riding up to the Blackfeet camp.

He'd been riding about twenty minutes when he heard galloping hooves. The light was fading fast and he was approaching a little ridge that marked the end of the little valley he was in. He swallowed down hard, knowing it was trouble, and one hand snaked down and slipped the Winchester from its boot.

Who would it be this time?

Lauters? Maybe someone he'd hired? Or maybe Blackfeet braves, out to stop him from nosing around.

He rode up out of the valley and followed a thin, hard-packed snow trail into a stand of pines. Here, he paused. He didn't hear a thing now. He hadn't been able to tell from which direction the rider had been coming, just that he was riding fast.

"Well, show yourself already," Longtree said under his breath.

He lit a cigar and got the black to moving again. Its pace was slow, barely a trot, Longtree's ears attuned to every sound. He had a bad feeling suddenly, realizing that these trees and their shadowy depths were the perfect place to spring an ambush. He stopped.

There was a hint of movement off to his left.

Longtree threw himself off his horse just as shots were fired. The aim was poor, the bullets thudding into the branches overhead. The black trotted away up the trail, stopping a good distance away, as if knowing what was coming.

Longtree peeked his head out from behind the pine that covered him and there was a crack and a bullet whistled past his ear. He drew back and then darted out again, firing a few quick shots at where he thought the gunman was.

"You over there!" he called out. "I'm a United States Marshal! Throw down your weapon!"

A few more bullets bit into the pine.

I guess it's gotta be done the hard way then, Longtree thought.

He tensed himself and dove to the cover of another tree. More bullets kicked up snow a few feet from him. He hadn't been able to tell from which direction the rider following him had been coming...but it wasn't from in front of him. Which meant there was another one out there, probably getting a bead on him right now. Longtree almost laughed to himself at how slow he'd gotten through the years. The rider following him had forced him into these trees where the gunman was waiting. It was a simple strategy and one that Longtree should've recognized.

He heard sticks breaking on the rise above him. It could only be the rider.

Longtree didn't shoot; he waited. Waited for the assassin to get within visual range. His partner across the trail probably figured this out for he began to pepper Longtree's location with gunfire, trying to make him shoot, warning his partner.

Longtree smiled and waited.

He saw a gray form moving through the trees, down the rise. He couldn't see the man's face: he wore a black hood. Across the trail, the other gunman crept silently from his hiding place.

Longtree let him get close.

Or tried to. The man coming down the rise began shooting and there was nothing to do but return fire. Longtree clipped off a few shots, one of which knocked the hat from the gunman's head, the other went clear as he dove for cover. More bullets from across the trail pounded into the pines around the marshal. Longtree waited until this volley was over and fired two more bullets at the man on the rise and then leaped out from behind his tree, shooting at the other one. This guy wore a hood, too. He fired at Longtree and missed. Longtree shot back, hitting him in the arm. He let out a cry of pain and fell back, stumbling through the brush.

The gunman on the rise pulled back, firing a few bullets as he ran. They screamed harmlessly through the air. As dark settled in, the man on the rise was gone. Longtree heard the other moaning and plowing through the trees. A few seconds later, he heard horses riding off.

Longtree ran down the trail and caught sight of two riders galloping back in the direction of Wolf Creek. One of which was hunched over in his saddle. The marshal figured he could've picked one of them off, but didn't bother.

There was no point.

One of them was winged and it wouldn't be too hard to find a man with a bullet in his arm.

Particularly when he was the sheriff.

An hour later, Mike Ryan was back at his ranch.

They'd failed; Longtree was still very much alive. That was bad. And what made it worse was that Lauters had taken a bullet in his gun arm. He'd be of no real use for some time...if he ever was again.

It was quiet at the ranch. Most of the men were over at the cookhouse eating or at the bunkhouses playing cards and snoozing. Ryan could hear a harmonica playing somewhere. It was a nice evening, not too cool.