At the drainage ditch, the kid dropped the keg and fumbled with the matches. The wind blew out the first three—only two left. He looked over his shoulder. The weeds tumbled closer and closer. A light and the fuse went quick. He shielded the delicate blaze with his hands. The weeds rolled. There would be no time to escape and keep the fire alive. This would be his redemption.
“Sorry Mama,” he whispered.
The keg exploded in raucous thunder. Black smoke, brown earth, and gray water spit in all directions.
The pursuing weeds stopped and backed away from the spilling reservoir.
An arm reached out from the mass of weeds, and Port was free for a moment before he was sucked back down by the malevolent force.
A torrent of water become a river, as chunks of the dam broke free in a mighty domino effect.
Porter knew he was turning blue from the vine’s deadly grip on his neck. With eyes barely open, he fell to the dust. Torn in all directions, his tongue lolled in hot earth, then felt cool relief.
Water ran, slick and cold, as the weeds let go.
Porter struggled to his knees and saw the wave coming. He moved like a crippled locomotive and just managed to grasp a sturdy post as the river hit. Weeds were drowned and taken away past the corrals and abandoned bordello.
The tumbleweeds tried to hold to one another and again and again were washed downstream from the town.
Sadie and the others atop the saloon cheered and whooped. Port held to his post like a rod of iron, fearful of being carried away. When the water at last subsided to a few feet deep, he looked behind and saw a clumped mass of the drenched weeds.
They moved as one.
Forming together, they rose out of the ebbing waters, rounded like a head with hollow spots for colossal eyes and mouth. Shoulders appeared then arms, fingers, and a hideous weed-bodied torso. Thousands of wet tumbleweeds fused together to fashion a giant weed golem. The vines interlaced, wrapped and knotted about tenaciously. An inhuman cry echoed from the cavity of a mouth and the thing stood up, over three stories tall. It shook the wetness from itself and stepped forward with a ponderous gait.
Sadie screamed. The others ran for their lives to escape the colossus’s awful gaze. Port shuddered, but still his mind sprang like a steel trap to find a way to defeat this demonic foe.
Coming closer, the awful giant stepped on the bordello, crushing it asunder. With the waters gone, the town was now just a mud track. Some of the structures had been knocked off their foundations and were laying haphazardly. The street in front of the saloon was the biggest clearing the town had left.
“Wheat! I’m a fool,” Porter said to himself. “Now I got him.”
“We have to get out of here,” the barkeep shouted, tugging on Port’s shoulder.
“You think you can outrun that?” Sadie asked.
“We just gotta outrun the others,” the barkeep answered.
Port grasped his shoulder and swung the man around. “You wanna live? Get me a lamp! All of ‘em! And be ready when I am! I gotta buy some time.”
The barkeep stared at him like he was insane but dashed back inside.
The colossus was almost upon them and Port stepped into the muddy streets to face it.
“PORTER,” it echoed.
“You know me, but I don’t remember meeting you before.”
“WE ARE LEGION. OURS WILL BE A PLACE OF HONOR IN GEHENNA, WHEN WE DESTROY YOUR BODY,” the voice came, deep as the pit.
“That’s where we have our feud. I doubt I’ll get anything for destroying yours.”
The hollow eyes looked down on Porter, and an ominous sound that he believed was laughter echoed.
“YOU HAVE NO POWER OVER US.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I do have power over your chosen body.”
“WE WERE TRICKED. BUT IT SERVES US WELL ENOUGH. WE CANNOT BE SHOT. WE CANNOT BE DROWNED. WE CANNOT BE BLOWN APART.”It leaned in closer to Port.“WE CANNOT BE KICKED, NOW.”
“You forgot one,” Port caught the oil lamp the barkeep tossed him. He threw it into Legion’s mouth and shot.
Fire erupted and an inhuman cry rocked the town. The whipping wind gave the behemoth a tongue of flame, and it laughed again before shooting witch-fire back at Porter like a blast furnace.“YOU HAVE ONLY GIVEN US MORE POWER TO DESTROY YOU! EMBRACE YOUR DOOM!”Still sopping wet, the Legion thing was not burning.
The front of Lulu-belle’s burst into flames, but the wily gunman dodged and ran about the slick street, taking cover behind the ruins of the blacksmith’s.
The tongue of fire blasted again, igniting the forge and structure. Port crossed to a ramshackle house. Again the fire tore into the dry wood. Port faked left and went right, taking cover in the collapsed bordello. “You have to do better than that,” he taunted.
The weed golem swung a colossal fist at Porter and shot its witch-fire tongue as he dodged yet again. Smoke obscured him, but as he chanced a look, the edges of the Legion’s mouth blackened.
Sensing that its protection of wetness was wearing off, the golem brought up a hand and suffocated the fiery tongue. It cast its wicked gaze for Porter and realized too late it was surrounded by the flaming ruins of the town--a second sacrifice it never could have understood.
Sadie and the remaining others threw more oil, and the flames grew. Porter backed away through burning wreckage, choking on the smoke. The Legion thing was trapped, and its weed body sizzled and smoked as the wetness boiled off. Every path was blocked. It twisted and turned looking for escape, finding none.
“WE WON’T FORGET THIS,” it roared, before dropping to the mud and writhing as dry weeds were burnt to skeletal ash. Dark things flickered amongst the smoke, and it seemed evil spirits, free of any mortal coil, fled up into the ether.
“The thing burned awful fast for being so wet,” Sadie said.
“Yeah, it did,” Port answered. “I’m glad at least one element was on our side.”
A barefoot, middle-aged man of medium build stood beside them as if he had been there the whole time. “With every blessing comes a curse,” he said. “And vice versa.”
Port cocked an eyebrow and shrugged, “Horse chips.”
Red Wolf Moon
A rust tinged moon hung over the high desert like a lantern in God’s own hand. In the swirling distance a wolf howled its respects. Cactus and sage cut ominous shapes amongst the stark landscape as stars above bled a weary cold light. Porter pulled back on the reins and listened through the whispering wind.
Knowing he was close behind the bandits made him more cautious with each mile. He took a long pull of Valley-Tan whiskey from his flask and listened again. Sound carried a long way on the eastbound wind. Porter scratched his beard and dismounted. The moon granted just enough pale light to be sure he was still on the trail.
The tracks abruptly disappeared a hundred yards back on a chink of bare rock, but Porter simply gave a soft laugh to himself. He knew full well that the Kofford gang had merely removed the mule’s shoes to better hide their trail. It was a good trick, but wouldn’t work on a tracker as experienced as Porter. There wasn’t a predator alive as tenacious as the long haired gunfighter. He had but to scan a few yards on until he found an odoriferous sign.
Judging by the still wet and lukewarm horse pies, they couldn’t be more than an hour or two ahead. If Porter pushed himself, like he always did, he should be able to get the drop on the Kofford gang while they slept. Experience played out that even the lookouts usually fell asleep by four in the morning. With any luck, he would have the lot of them captured and be riding back to Green River by sunrise.
He rode up out of a steep wash, wary not to silhouette himself against the horizon. A range of mountains attempted to conceal themselves as clouds rolled in across the moon. These were the haunted Henry’s, so named by Colonel Powell when he last passed through the area. Porter had heard some tales of eeriness associated here but nothing absolute. Jim Bridger himself said they were full of bad medicine. He pa
ssed through back before the Henry’s had a name, always looking over his shoulder, just sure that something was eyeballing him. But he hadn’t actually seen anything either. Porter mused that Old Jim sure did like telling his stories.
It grew darker the later it became. The mountains towered black nearly matching the sky, Porter only saw them because the stars abruptly stopped, outlined against the irregular peaks. Somewhere between the pitch-hued mountains, tiny firelight escaped one of the canyons. Porter mused that the Kofford gang must believe themselves free and clear. This was good, it would only make his job stalking them that much easier.
The wind shifted and Porter led his horse in a long circuit to stay downwind of the bandits. They might very well not smell a thing but Porter was cautious that their horses wouldn’t either. His own mount was unfortunately in heat, but she had been the best available given the circumstances. She had endurance and was fast, fast as any horse alive, but right now?
“Blessings and curses.” He reminded himself, thinking about the ridiculousness of it all.
He made his way to the north of the camp, to keep the wind in his face, figuring he would come up both beside and behind the bandits before dawn. Confident in his plan and the aid of night, he dismounted again, leading his horse amongst the shambling terrain.
Then from some unknown quarter of night, queer music whistled down the mountain.
Porter paused, wondering at what the fools were doing. But it only took a few more haunting notes for him to realize this was no white man’s song. This was no melody from civilized lips. This hearkened to a primal need, it called from the depths of somethings soul.
A rising and descending piece, the ominous tone sounded like a warning to Porter’s ears and he almost forgot that he was stalking the Kofford’s.
Unable to tell what was happening, Porter led his mare on, cautious as a panther toward the camp. Twice the mare halted and dug its hooves uneasily at the ground.
“Easy darlin’, we’ll see what we’ll see,” Port whispered into her ears, calming the skittish animal. He wrapped the reins about a large sage. “I’ll be right back.”
The fluting stopped as abruptly as it had begun and a great wolf howl from across the canyon reared up against the black night.
Climbing to the top of a small ridge, Porter faintly made out the distant dancing fire and the rippling commotion beside it.
Men and horse screamed, each attacked by some savage dark force. A few wild gunshots reverberated across the gulf of darkness, but these did nothing to quell the raucous sound of slaughter.
Something was feeding.
A few more heartbeats passed and all was deathly still. Not a man, horse or gun left any retort against what had just happened.
The dancing flames died away and Porter wondered at the brutal massacre. True, the Kofford gang had been lying, murdering, horse thieves, but still he would have taken them before the hanging judge to be tried. Maybe they had done something to offend local Utes? That had to be the answer. Tomahawks made that awful crunching sound—not teeth.
A lone wolf howling, deep and guttural, broke the placid silence again.
That made no sense. Porter knew a wolf wouldn’t linger around men, especially after that ruckus. Waves of eerie loathing washed across Porter and his wildest imagination threatened to roll over him like a flash flood in a slot canyon.
Rather than walk into what may be a trap, he decided to hunker down in the hollow with the mare and wait for daybreak. He fell asleep beside his horse, Navy Colt in one hand and Sharps rifle straddled across his chest. Dark dreams nestled upon his shoulders taunting. He shrugged them off. He knew why he was here. Justice for the Wagner clan. It tore him up that a small family homesteading out beyond Green River was murdered by that scum. Even if no one else ever knew about it, Porter would see justice served. It was a cold night and the wind pried at his hat and coat until daybreak.
Warm sunlight crept over the mountain peaks and slid in under his eyes. The mare nickered and seemed anxious to be away.
“Not yet. I gotta see what happened.”
Porter watched the canyon and surrounding mountainsides for some time and never espied any movement beyond the wind whipping the tall grasses. He rode into the ruinous camp and was shocked at the brutal savagery. This was worse than anything he had seen back east.
The Kofford’s had been torn apart, all six of them. One of the horses had been shredded down its side by what appeared to be four knife blades, the others were either gutted or had their throats torn out. Blood jelled in small pools all about the camp. Then the real curiosity dawned on Porter.
Nothing of value was missing.
That seemed unbelievable. Unless the attackers thought that it was cursed. Did the piping Utes, have a blood oath against these bandits and that was the reason they were so viciously killed?
Glancing about the gory details, a shine caught Porter’s eye. He knelt and took a gleaming golden ingot from beside a dead man’s hand.
Turning it over, Porter saw a Spanish crest stamped into the thin bar. Even superstitious Utes would not have left such a prize, they knew the value of the money rock. Strangely, the ingot had no blood upon it, despite it being held by a rendered dead hand. Almost like someone had placed the gold bar there on purpose after the fact. But who and why?
Searching for tracks as to who had done this, Porter saw only the wolf tracks. Big ones. He knelt closer to the ground looking for a light footed moccasin imprints, anything. But there were none.
Thinking he saw movement out of the corner of his eye, Porter spun with his Navy Colt revolver drawn. No one was there, but he could have sworn a pale woman had just been there. But there was only the lonely wind pushing the tall dry grasses.
He spent some time looking over the bodies but found no more gold or even any hint as to where the single ingot could have come from. With the exception of the meager sundries and horses they had stolen, the dead Kofford’s had no valuables.
With a bad storm blowing in, Porter decided to cut short any more investigating and chalk it all up to vengeful Utes. The somber feeling of dread lingered about the gory camp and Porter wanted to be away almost as much as the horse. The mysteries could sit and the dead murdering bandit’s bones could bleach in the sun too. If the Wagner’s had any next of kin he would deliver them the ingot.
Or at least a share of it.
Beyond the Green River, Porter asked after any relatives of the Wagner’s and was directed to a hermit on the fringe of the red desert named McKay. He was a dusky toned old timer who had lived there as long as anyone could remember.
“Yeah, I knew the Wagner’s. Damn shame. I appreciate your going after their killer’s and all but I’m not any blood to them,” he said, gesturing with his crutch for Porter to take a seat on his front porch. “But I’d appreciate hearing the details. Bartering stories and such.”
Sitting on the offered stump, Port asked, “You been here a long time? Any relation to the McKay’s I know?”
“Probably, black Irish. Moved here in ‘49. Was gonna head to the gold fields in California but I fell in love with this valley and never went any farther west.”
Glancing at the dry barrenness, Porter refrained from rolling his eyes. “How about south? Anything strange? In the Henry’s?” he prodded.
McKay grinned, “I did a little prospecting in the Henry’s if that’s what you’re driving at. That’s where you found the Wagner’s killers?”
“It is.”
“You’re direct. I like that. But I never found nothing. Sides, I wasn’t panning. I was searching for the lost Ortiz treasure.”
“Never heard of it.”
“You wouldn’t have. I only knew of it because the Paiute medicine man, name of Wash, told me about it when I got him real drunk. That old Indian told me that about two Wash ago, that’s two of his lifetimes, Spanish were here forcing the Utes into slave labor. Digging for gold and silver. They struck a right purty vein and worked those sla
ves near to death gleaning all they could out of those cursed mountains.”
Port rubbed his jaw line, “They do have a spooky feel about them.”
“You bet they do, and this is why. The Spaniards would smelt the gold right there, molding ingots for easier transport. All spring and summer long they worked those poor souls. Finally, the Utes had enough, they rebelled. After what Wash said was a three-day battle, they killed all the Spanish but one. They took the men, gold and put it all back into the sacred mountain. They walled up the entrance, putting the decapitated Spanish bodies in there with it. The heads on the other hand, were taken across the valley to the dunes and left to rot.”
Port nodded, adding, “I’ve heard of that being done before. So they would be twisted and crippled in the next world.”
“Oh yeah, then the Utes took all the hooves off of the mules too. All of this was done so that the Spanish couldn’t use the animals in the afterlife, not that they would be complete spirits without their heads either,” laughed McKay. He offered a whiskey bottle which Porter gratefully accepted and took a pull from.
“You think any of that is true?” asked Porter, before taking another long swig.
“Sure is,” McKay nodded. He got up and went into his cabin, emerging a moment later with a dull rusted conquistador helmet. “It happened. I found where they dumped the heads. Halfway to Goblin Valley. Found the mule hooves too, course that was in another spot right near the Henry’s. The gold is there somewhere, but I don’t think even the Utes even know or care where anymore. It’s cursed and they won’t touch it. But a man can dream.”
Porter produced the gold ingot from his vest.
McKay eyes lit up like a struck match. “In all my days I never. Where?”
“Someone put it in a dead man’s hand. Didn’t make any sense. Like they wanted me to find it and poke around. I probably would have, but for that big storm.”
Cold Slither: and other horrors of the weird west (Dark Trails Saga) Page 18