22.
A posse was organized by mid-afternoon and rode out to old Lehi’s camp. It was later than Port meant, but several of the men insisted on getting silver bullets cast. Fancy trays, silverware and jewelry that had crossed the plain as priceless family heirlooms was smelted and molded into balls for precious family insurance.
Port didn’t worry about any of that for himself. There were twenty guns riding with him to fire those sacramental rounds. He had his Bowie knife that Brigham had blessed and already knew that it could harm the creature. If he needed to, he would cut the beast asunder.
When they were close, Port had them come in from two directions to triangulate their fire and trap the old man and his creature. He kicked himself for not trusting his, or his horse’s instincts. The creature must have been nearby the whole time he visited with the old man. That would explain the wretched smell.
The tattered tepee was there in the glade but Lehi was nowhere to be found.
“There’s nothing inside but this copy of the Book of Mormon that father gave him,” said Joseph. “I don’t understand. He has been here, living amongst us for weeks, he seemed like a good man. He quoted scripture. He said he knew it was true.”
Port gave a lopsided grin, “Don’tcha think the devil knows it’s true?”
23.
Thundering into town as dusk closed in around them, Port knew something wasn’t right. Something whispered on the wind, and the scent of wet dog hung heavy in the air.
Amanda Cook raced her horse up to Port. She had been crying. “I thought you’d never return,” she sobbed.
“Calm down, Amanda. What is it?”
“We were in the garden, gathering the last of the harvest, just Mary and I. That witch-fire wolf-man came back. Phineas heard our screams, he tried to shoot it and fight. It hurt him real bad. Apostle Rich is looking after him, but it took Mary. It tore her from my grasp. It spoke, like a demon from hell but it spoke, 'It said you and you alone had to come and get Mary at the lake shore past the camps.' What do we do?”
Port held Amanda close and looked her in the eye. “I will get her back.”
“How? It will kill her.”
“No, I'll take care of it. Rich, you very good with that Sharps rifle?”
Joseph nodded. “Got a few silver slugs too.”
“Keep to the tree line. If the right moment comes, take it. Everyone else stay put.”
“I’m coming with you,” broke in Amanda.
“No, you’re not. Look after Phineas and trust me.”
With that Port turned his stallion about and made for the lake shore past the Shoshoni camps, and the full moon glowed down like a dragons face.
24.
The Shoshonis had moved camp, but the markings of where tepees had sat along with cook-fire remnants still dotted the ground. The loss of Big Bear and the others would be a hard tax on the small tribe. He remembered his own people’s exodus in the dead of winter. They’ll be all right he told himself.
Fingers of ghostly clouds tried to shroud the moon, but still the cold light poked through, casting a long line across the lake. Where it ended upon the shore stood the white-haired old Indian, along with the little girl beside him. She was bound up like a trundle bed with a rag stuffed in her mouth.
Lehi, or Ligaii-Maiitsoh raised his hand in the common greeting, though the smirk on his face was mocking and cold. “I knew you would come Long-hair.”
“My motivations aren’t hard to understand, what are yours though?”
“I have blood of the Trickster in my veins. I am naked terror. I sow deceit and discord. I am your fatal error.”
Port dismounted, “Well I am here. You gonna give me the girl?”
The tall old man smirked, and pointed a long spindly finger “She dies, but only after you.”
Port drew his gun, “Where’s your creature? Nowhere to hide down here next to the lake.”
Lehi cocked his head and laughed inaudibly. “I have no creature.”
“You’re blood of the trickster, a natural-born liar. I know you have some kind of beast.”
“My name is Ligaii-Maiitsoh, it means White Wolf in my people’s tongue. If you knew anything about us, you would have known what kind of man wears skins of a predator.”
“And I wear a dozen cow skins. Let the girl go.”
Lehi didn’t move.
Port sent a round nipping past the old man’s ears, but he didn’t flinch. “You got nerve, I’ll give you that. Let the girl go or I’ll shoot. I got no truck with kidnappers or rustlers.”
“I know you. You don’t know me,” said Lehi. “A lifetime ago, I swore to serve the Trickster and his slave, the Master Mahan. They granted me powers beyond the white man’s gun.”
“Enough! Let the girl go, or I scalp you from the inside out.”
Lehi grinned, revealing terribly big teeth, a jaw that jutted bristling with fangs. It grew wider and wider, impossibly huge and fearsome.
Port wasn’t sure he was seeing correctly.
The old man’s nose twitched and stretched. “You see what only the dead have seen.”
Port sent a round through Lehi’s chest. The old man flinched upon impact but no blood came, and his face stretched further. Port shot a second round and a third into the monster.
But the transformation wasn’t complete. Fine white fur sprung from the old man’s body, and beneath it muscles rippled. A howl came with the completion.
Port sent a fourth, fifth and sixth round into the beast, none of which produced so much as a drop of blood.
Grinning devilishly, Lehi tossed the bound girl into the lake behind him.
Amanda Cook screamed from farther up into the tree line, as she dashed downhill for her daughter.
“More to slay,” growled Lehi, his transformation to skin-walker complete.
Port dove for the girl in the lake but the swift hand of the monster batted him aside.
His pistol knocked from his hand, Port strained for his Bowie. But already the beast took him by the coat and threw him.
The thunderclap of a Sharps rifle, boomed over the lake shore. A tuft of white fur flew, but still no blood came from the skin-walker’s wound.
Amanda reached the water’s edge and pulled Mary from the weak surf. The little girl took a deep breath, gasping from the cold water.
Then she was thrown back in the lake.
The skin-walker knocked Mary back into the waters while holding her mother like a rag doll. “Danite,” it called, emphasizing the ‘ite’. “Choose which to save, girl or woman.”
Port had the Bowie out, despite how badly his body ached from the blow.
“Throw it away in the lake or I rip her apart, but choose,” snarled the skin-walker.
Port knew Lehi was a liar, but he knew it could fulfill the threat. Even a silver slug from the Sharps did nothing against it. Only the Bowie knife Brigham had blessed in Nauvoo could harm it.
The girl was drowning; the choice must be made.
Amanda fumbled one-handed with something in her pocket.
The skin-walker stared cold-fire at Port relishing the Danites painful choice.
Somewhere above, Joseph Rich looked down the barrel of the Sharps, waiting to try another shot.
Mary sputtered in the cold lake water.
Port took the Bowie in hand and threw it true as he had ever thrown anything in his life, straight for the skin-walkers heart. “Lord, guide my hand,” he prayed. “Help me end this creature.”
The big knife flew end over end impossibly fast. And it seemed for a moment that Port’s aim was true and he would skewer the fiend.
It caught the blade with the reflexes of diamondback’s strike and sounded out in a cross between a dogs’s bark and a man laughing. It arched to throw the knife back.
Port thought it would throw the heavy blade at him. He ran for the girl and drew her from the water like baby Moses. She gasped again her face turning blue.
Looking back, Port expected to
be stabbed with his own knife, but the skin-walker reveling waited for Port to watch.
The blade went high and wide of Port, falling into the lake and disappearing in dark waters.
Port watched the trusty blade vanish in the inky darkness, glancing at the shivering girl, he had an idea. Facing the lake, he called, “Blue! Blue! Blue!”
The skin-walker taunted, “Calling for your knife’s return?”
Amanda found what she had fished for, a small glass vial. She smashed it against the only part of the monster she could reach, its shoulder.
Consecrated oil dripped down the white fur, surprising the beast. Amanda tore free, running to her daughter.
The monster puzzled at her choice of attack. “What is this?”
Granting a thin reflective line down the monster, Joseph Rich took his shot, nailing dead center the shoulder where the holy oil covered.
Deep crimson flowed and the beast howled.
Bare-handed, Port tackled the fiendish beast, punching, kicking and clawing like the monster was the devil himself. The skin-walker resisted until Port jammed a finger in the wound, it let roll a string of wicked curses.
Groaning, it prevailed and sent the avenging angel flying into the cold surf.
Joseph ran down the hill hoping for another shot to present itself, but Porter was too thick in the fray and he dared no take another shot. “Do you have any more oil? It works!”
“I don’t,” cried Amanda, desperately trying to untie her daughter and run away.
The skin-walker raked at Porter with its claws, but try as it might it couldn’t pierce his skin, the sharp edges could not gain access. Yowling, it looked at the lake and dragged Port into the water.
Joseph took another shot, hitting the monster in the back, but missing the oil and nothing happened.
“If I cannot cut you, I will drown you,” laughed the skin-walker, holding Port beneath the water.
Kicking, Port strained and fought but the monster was too strong, pushing him into the sandy bottom.
Underwater Port heard a strange set of clicks.
The shaggy white arms let go and Port sat up.
The skin-walker had stepped back away from the water. It beckoned angrily with its right arm, speaking a wolfish tongue.
Behind Port loomed the Bear Lake Monster.
“Blue, I need some help. Get him!” Port shouted, directing the lake dragon’s gaze.
The skin-walker’s chest began to turn a shade of pale green that was growing in intensity when Joseph shot it again, right where a stream of oil had touched along the ribs.
Wailing of pain and true terror, the skin-walkers glow faded.
“He won’t bob off this time. Get ’em, Blue.”
The Bear Lake monster lurched forward and swallowed the skin-walker, devouring the white horror entire.
“Chew him up, Blue! Chew him up!” shouted Port. “Wheat!”
An infernal, hollow cry sounded from within the beast, dimming and fading to silence.
Blue opened its cavernous maw and let its tongue loll out between titanic fangs.
Port patted the tremendous beast’s snout and examined its handiwork. “No coming back from that,” he said, picking random clumps of white fur that stuck in the monster’s teeth. “You did good, Blue. Now back to the lake with ya, old friend.”
The monster rumbled a colossal purr and turned to slide back into deep waters.
25.
Amanda watched in amazement, holding Mary close. “He is good?”
“Yes, ma’am. He just needed some help and understanding,” said Port.
Joseph ran down the hillside shouting, “What a story to tell. I’ll get this posted in all the papers across the country. People will come from all over the world to be a part of our valley and see the lake monster.”
“No!” Port stuck a thick finger in the tall man’s chest. “You’re gonna tell everyone you made it up. No good will come of this tale being told for true.”
Confused, Joseph looked at Port and the monster disappearing into the lake.
“You don’t want what they’ll bring to your valley. You don’t want more trouble coming down on Brother Brigham. And you don’t want ’em messing with the monster.”
“I’ll say I made it all up,” said Joseph Rich, rubbing the sore spot where Porter had pushed. “I can’t take back what has already been printed. But I can say now that it was all a wonderful first-class lie.”
“Good. Some stories are better off that way.”
Garden of Legion
The McHenry wagon train, bound for California, persevered through prairie fires, buffalo stampedes, Indian attacks, and even a bout of embarrassing dysentery, but their greatest struggle was when that flower of the prairie, nineteen-year-old Fannie Burton, became possessed.
Some recollected the pretty little blonde dabbled with an ensorcelled Ouija board stolen from a New Orleans juju man. Her mother claimed the girl was bewitched by a Navajo skin walker, and still others said she had taunted Satan himself late one night around the buffalo-chip campfire after refusing to say grace. Regardless of the sinister origin, something hideous held the girl in demonic thrall.
The once shy and reserved Fannie swiftly took a rough frontier situation from dreadful to dire and finally to disastrous. She ripped apart the Conestoga’s, devoured the pitiful food supplies, guzzled or smashed their water caskets and, astonishingly, ate a pair of oxen…alive! The company attempted to subdue the normally weak girl many times, but even a dozen of their most able-bodied men were overpowered by the maiden with a newly developed voice that was deep as the pit of Gehenna.
She, or It, or Them, seemed determined to force the desperate McHenry party to die in the wastes, reveling in their cries of desperation and misery. Each day they grew weaker and she, It, or Them grew stronger. All hope seemed lost in the blossoming desert of the American southwest. Tormented by a devil in a black dress, it seemed the party’s bones would soon bleach under a merciless sun.
Being good Christian folk, they prayed for deliverance and a man they later called the desert prophet materialized. He appeared to be of late middle-age, medium height and build, walking barefoot upon the scorching earth and, most important, he could exorcise little Fannie Burton of her demons.
Spying the holy man’s approach, the girl cried aloud and wallowed in the powdered dirt, frothing, vainly trying to hide in a baptism of cinnamon-like soil.
The entire wagon train listened in hushed amazement as the desert prophet communed with the throng of evil spirits inside Fannie. “You don’t belong here. You must leave. I command you in His name.”
“Suffer us to enter into another set of the living,” came the bottomless well of a voice from the convulsing waif. “Even, He,” it gnashed, “was so accommodating.”
“You may enter into whatever lives on the other side of that nearest mountain,” allowed the mysterious holy man.
A vile grin split the girl’s face as her body shook one last time. An almost imperceptible mist spouted from her frame and flew like a swarm of ravenous locusts to the far side of the mountain.
Her own true voice restored, Fannie spoke hoarsely, “Thank you stranger, but who’re you?”
“One of three who tarry,” he answered, drawing her up from the baptism of fine powdered earth. “The demons shall not trouble you again. Go your way in righteousness.”
Fannie ran to her waiting mother and father. As the rest of the McHenry caravan came out cheering from behind their wagons, a dust devil sprang up out of the dunes and the desert prophet vanished.
The McHenry party never caught his name, his tracks vanished into the shifting sands. Their problems were over, but two mountains away, the hell on earth was about to begin.
Port trotted to the top of the pass, the dust swirling about his horse’s hooves like the phantoms of nipping dogs. The horse stamped at unseen ghosts and Port clicked his tongue softly to calm the beast. Grey clouds loomed on the horizon. Rain would strike t
he desert soon enough, drowning as much as quenching, and Port had no wish to get wet.
Port was a broad-shouldered man with long dark hair and a short beard. He wore a stained duster which canvassed the flanks of his dun horse. A brace of pistols jutted from his vest as he glanced back at his unwilling companion.
Lashed to the trailing mule’s saddle was a scrawny, red-haired kid with a face so sun-burnt it almost matched his curly locks. A thousand bitter curses were written in his gaze.
Neither spoke. Port, a gunfighter turned lawman, had nothing to say to the horse thief. Likewise, the kid had nothing to say to his captor. At the top of the pass, each looked down into the canyon before them. A small reservoir collected precious runoff from the mountain peaks, while a town lay jumbled a little farther below like a half-shuffled deck of greasy cards that had been played too many times. A wretched sign designating the town leaned at Port’s right. The name made Port crack a smile, it had to be someone’s sick joke.
The ruinous sign read, Eden, pop - 37. The number had been crossed out many times. With each scratch, the population had decreased until there was no space left for the last few numbers. Someone had tacked an extra board on the side to accommodate the count.
The mountain looming on the south side was covered with as many pockmarks across its face as the ne’er do well horse thief. Tailing's from mine shafts spewed out discoloration and Port noticed few, if any, were working claims.
The town itself had two dozen buildings in various states of decay. There wasn’t a single tree and no plants except a desiccated tumbleweed passing by in the ever-present wind. The only other sign of life was in the murky reservoir. Insects skeetered by, but not a single fish jumped.
Porter had seen less promising towns but not by much. This was a town of broken promises, failed dreams and dead hope. Still, maybe he could get a drink.
Riding in, the breeze seemed to pick up and whine at this desert oasis. Port thought he heard a fell voice on the wind but he paid it little mind. He rode straight for the faded yellow star, bleaching upon the front of a peace officer’s shanty.
Port tied his horse and the mule to the rail, then dragged his prisoner inside, bringing a cloud of dust with him as he opened the door and shoved the kid through it.
Cold Slither: and other horrors of the weird west (Dark Trails Saga) Page 16