Presently, one of the now-headless drummers flew out the coach’s right-side door to hit the trail rolling, and Lucky whooped and clapped his hands maniacally. The doctor, also headless, was thrown out the opposite door, where his blood-geysering corpse bounced off a boulder beside the trail. Lucky glanced over his shoulder as the sawbones disappeared in the roiling dust cloud behind the carriage.
He whooped and hollered and pumped his fists in the air. “Wolves at high noon! Can’t beat that!”
The wolfish growls and snarls and angry yips intermittently drowned the screams until the throatless, disemboweled women were both rolling like rag dolls in the trail behind the coach, quickly lost in the distance.
A loud snarl rose, followed by a howl. And then the carriage jerked, and two hairy human hands appeared at the edge of the coach roof. Curly Joe lifted his head up above the roof, his funnel-brimmed hat snugged to his head by the rawhide thong secured taut to the underside of his chin. His red eyes turned blue, and the hair on his hands disappeared.
He grinned and gave another howl, this one belonging to a man, and hoisted himself up onto the roof where he sat with his legs raised, arms wrapped around his knees, grinning and looking around at the sunlit afternoon sliding past the carriage.
“I like this,” he said, slowly shaking his head in awe-filled appreciation of his new abilities. “I really do like this a lot, pards.”
Charlie Hondo glanced over his shoulder at Curly Joe, looked away, then looked back again, widening his pale, lifeless eyes under the brim of his dusty blue cavalry kepi with the gold braid around the crown. “Curly Joe, you keep smilin’ that hard, you’re liable to break your face in two!” He loved being a “Westerner” as much as the others.
One-Eye had his Schofield out of its holster. He broke the piece open to check the loads. “Curly Joe’s just enjoyin’ his new abilities, Charlie. You should, too—since it’s bein’ able to turn whenever we want, day or night, full moon or not, that got you outta Hellsgarde.”
“That and that dragon,” added Curly Joe.
Hondo, the alpha wolf, shook his head and stretched his lips back from his rotten teeth in revulsion as he held the six-hitch team’s reins deftly in his long-fingered hands and stared ahead along the trail. “Glad to be out of that fuckin’ perdition. Wish I coulda killed that warden one more time. Ripped his head off with my teeth just once more!”
The former Ludwig Jurgen Abelard Kiesler grinned at his compatriots. “Much obliged, boys. Oh, I woulda got outta there eventually, but you and that fire-breather sure made it a whole lot easier. I owe you a round of ale…if there’s anything excepting coffin varnish to be found out here.”
Dubiously, he studied the parched desert terrain sliding past the coach, and batted his lashes against the dust.
“Where’d the dragon come from, Charlie?” asked Curly Joe. “Don’t recollect anyone mentionin’ dragons.”
“I reckon,” said Charile, planting his cavalry boots on the dashboard and leaning back in the jehu’s stiff wooden seat, “the dragon was a little something extra provided by our lovely, bewitching benefactor, Senorita Ravenna.” He grinned in delight, remembering the beguiling, crotch-stirring image of Ravenna sprawling nude on a corn-shuck mattress in a Dodge City flophouse, the day after he’d met her in the Long Branch Saloon. “I suspect she’ll be catching up with us soon.”
“Ah,” said One-Eye eagerly, snapping the Schofield closed, spinning the hogleg on his finger, and sliding it back into the holster thronged low on his denim-clad right thigh. “Miss Ravenna.”
“Senorita Ravenna de Onis y Gonzalez-Vara,” said Charlie, letting the long and regal Spanish name roll lovingly off his tongue. “A fitting name for that Mex piece of horny ass.”
“You sure we can trust her?” Curly Joe said, trying feebly to roll a cigarette in his thick, brown fingers, despite the stage’s violent jostling and the hot wind. “I never have known a Mex—male or female—I trusted any more than I could throw uphill against an Oklahoma cyclone.”
“Oh, we can trust her,” Charlie said with a self-satisfied air. “The girl’s powers might be as strong as that cyclone”—he glanced over his shoulder at the others, winking assuredly—“because she needs us as much as we need her. Besides, she fancies my pecker!” He threw his head back and howled, snapping his jaws.
Curly Joe gave up on the cigarette and let the wind take the paper and tobacco, brushing his hands on his patched, checked wool trousers. “And once we get to Mexico?”
“She’ll be sharin’ in our newly acquired fortune, Curly. Once we find it, that is. You don’t think she and her spells helped you spring me from Hellsgarde just for my pecker, do you?”
“I reckon not,” said Lucky Snodgrass, who sat back with his hat tipped over his eyes, trying to catch a few winks. “But you never know about a witch. Ever’one I ever known has made me nervous. They’re a selfish lot, I tell you. And their powers make ’em dangerous. I hope she ain’t just toyin’ with us.”
Charlie slapped Lucky’s knee, fairly teeming with confidence. “You let me worry about Senorita Ravenna,” he said, shaking the ribbons over the team, urging more speed as they started up a long, easy grade. “Ravenna needs us as much as we need her. She followed me to Dodge City for some reason. If I hadn’t gotten drunk and careless in Denver and thrown in Hellsgarde, I might have found out.” He paused, sucked at a gap in his upper teeth. “Oh, she’s got somethin’ wicked on her pretty little mind, all right. But I think it’s to our benefit.” He grinned at the others. “Besides, I got her eatin’ outta my pants!”
Again, Charlie howled.
The others glanced at one another uneasily as the stage shot up and over the hill, then moved even faster down the other side. Ahead, at the bottom of the grade and in a broad horseshoe amid a jumble of high boulders piled on the trail’s right side, the Sandy Wash relay station appeared—a low-slung, L‑shaped cabin with a broad-roofed gallery angling off its front, a barn and two corrals, and a windmill spinning lazily in the warm fall breeze.
One-Eye sniffed the air in the direction of the cabin. “I do believe I smell beer, Charlie!”
Hondo worked his nose, then shook his head. “You’ve been too long in America, One-Eye. That’s not beer. That’s a flooded hog wallow tainted with alkali and stinkweed. But just what the doctor ordered!”
Charlie pulled the stage up between the barn and the cabin, and the horses had barely settled back in their collars before the cabin’s timber door squawked open, and a short, potbellied old man in ragged pants and suspenders came out, blinking his eyes sleepily and tucking his shirttails into his slacks.
Two other, younger men came out behind him, and as the old man stepped off the wide gallery shaded by a brush roof, the younger men angled off away from him toward the team and began unbuckling straps while casting wary eyes at the men atop the stage. The old man ambled, limping slightly on his right leg, toward the coach. As he did, he glanced at the driver’s boot and slowed his pace, frowning.
“ What the hell… You ain’t Mike ’ n’ Rascal….”
He stopped, staring up at the four men riding the coach’s roof, blinking as though to clear his bleary blue eyes. The tip of his red nose was nearly as large as an apricot, and badly pocked and pitted.
“You’re an observant son of a bitch,” said Charlie Hondo, throwing the brake and wrapping the ribbons around it. The other three Angels glanced around at one another, grinning and chuckling. The two young hostlers, working quickly and automatically, well versed in their profession, continued unharnessing the team, casting wary glances from the newcomers to each other and back again.
The fresh horses in the holding corral off the barn ran around with their tails humped.
“Hey, old-timer,” said One-Eye, waving his hat at the dust just now catching up with the coach, “you got any beer in there worth drinkin’?”
“I…I don’t see no passengers,” the old man said, tentatively, as he took a few more steps
toward the coach, lifting his chin to peer in a window.
“And you won’t, neither,” said Lucky, as he stepped down to the left front wheel, then dropped to the ground. “’Cause they’re all wolf bait litterin’ the trail back yonder.”
The old man made a face as he turned away from the blood-coated interior of the stagecoach. “Oh, Jesus!”
“Jesus won’t help you now!” Lucky said, suddenly back in his sleek wolf form.
Lucky the wolf leaped atop the old man and had him flat on his back and dying in seconds, while Charlie and One-Eye, also in wolf form, leaped down from the front of the driver’s boot and onto the backs of the two horses nearest the stage. In seconds, they ran up across the backs of the other horses that had only seconds ago been released from the hitch, and leaped on the two young hostlers who could only stand there, lower jaws hanging, as the two wolves pounced on them under a high, copper sun.
Just as the old man’s had been, their screams were short-lived.
The terrified horses, still strapped to each other but free of the wagon tongue, ran off across the yard, dragging the double tree and kicking their back legs in horror.
Charlie Hondo changed back into his cavalry-suited man form. Then both Lucky and One-Eye changed into their more soiled but well-armed frontier visages. They stared down at Curly Joe, who lay facedown in the dirt beside the recent wheel ruts made by the stage.
Lucky ran to him, placed a hand on his arm. “What the hell happened, Curly? The stage run you over?”
Curly grunted and pushed up onto his knees, snatching his hat off the ground beside him. He looked at Charlie. “I didn’t change!”
Charlie scowled back at him, confused. “Say what?”
“I didn’t change, Charlie. I was just about to—I could feel the hairs pushing out and my hands and feet growin’ big, and just as I was about to jump off the coach, I went back to myself so quick I couldn’t catch myself. I was expectin’ to land on all fours, and…” He winced as he hauled himself heavily, painfully, to his feet.
“Same damn thing almost happened to me, Charlie.” One-Eye adjusted his black eye patch and rubbed the slight paunch pushing out his blue wool shirt, the V‑neck of which was held together with strips of braided rawhide. “I felt a little hesitation, sort of a weakness. And now…” He made a face and continued to rub his belly. “I don’t feel so good. This never happens during a full moon. Of course, I don’t change so quick then….”
Charlie snapped his head at Snodgrass. “What about you?”
Lucky shrugged. “I didn’t have no problem. What about yourself, boss?”
Charlie had just opened his mouth to speak when the cabin door, which had been standing open, closed with a bang! A girl’s voice shouted from inside, “You mangy wolves pack up and fog the dusty trail. I got a shotgun loaded with silver dimes, and I’m just itchin’ to use it!” Her voice grew shrill. “Wolves at high noon—I never seen the like.”
The four killers looked around at one another. Their moods lightened. Charlie smoothed his long, shaggy mustache with the index finger and thumb of his left hand.
Smiling wolfishly, he began striding toward the cabin. “Fellas, I smell purty young female flesh.”
Chapter 13
RAVENNA AND THE DRAGON
“She sounds like she’s got some spunk,” said Lucky as he and the others followed Charlie to the cabin. “I like my wenches spunky.”
They stopped just off the edge of the ten-foot-wide gallery as Charlie mounted it, stepped to one side of the door, and hammered it three times with his fist, causing dust to leap from the cracks.
“You, in there,” the alpha wolf called. “You’d best open this door and toss the gut-shredder out. You got me mad already, callin’ us names who you’ve never met. And you had the nerve to threaten werewolves with silver? Come on, you little bitch, what’s got into you? I’m so mad now, I’m liable to suck your throat out your asshole and spit it back in your face!”
“Might just do that, anyway,” said Curly Joe, bending his knees slightly and adjusting his crotch. “After I drill her, I mean. I ain’t had me a mattress dance in a month of Sundays.” He grabbed his crotch and lurched hungrily up and down, bending his knees. A thoughtful cast entered his gaze. “I wonder if I can do it changed….”
“You mean as a wolf?” Charlie asked.
“Why not?”
Charlie shrugged as though the idea hadn’t occurred to him but was worth considering.
“Best proceed with caution,” advised Lucky, sliding his long-barreled Remington and rolling the cylinders across his forearm. “You heard—silver.”
“Where in the hell’d she get silver out here?” One-Eye wanted to know. “Silver dimes, no less!”
There was no mineral, not even gold, more precious than silver. The only thing more sought-after on the entire frontier was blood-swilling girls with Indian blood—especially blood from the most savage tribes like the Crow up in Montana, the Utes in Colorado, and the Comanche, Apache, and Yaqui in the Southwest and Mexico. They were ferocious as well as rare, and it was said that if a man survived a night with one, no other woman could ever satisfy him again.
“Mr. Jipson done stored ’em up,” the girl obliged One-Eye’s inquiry. “And I got two loads snugged down in both these ten-gauge barrels, so you take your hairy, foul-smelling asses and vamoose!”
Her shrill voice broke on that last.
“ ‘Hairy, foul-smelling asses’?” Charlie said, gritting his rotten teeth and glaring at the door, blood vessels bulging in his forehead. “Listen, you fuckin’ little bitch, you open this door or I’ll break it down. If I have to do that, I’m gonna be even madder than I am now!”
On the other side of the door, the girl sobbed.
Charlie grinned.
He licked his lips, absently massaged the cross tattooed on his right cheek, and gentled his tone. “Honey, look. Werewolves, we are, indeed. You got us pegged. But, while we are werewolves and we did kill your employers merely for the enjoyment of a bloody kill, we’re tired now. We’d just like food, beer, and rest. We got money. We’ll pay you.”
He paused, taking a deep breath as though speaking so gently, suppressing his rage, was sapping his energy. “Best yet, we’ll let you live. Now, won’t you please open the door?”
The girl’s strong, defiant voice was gone. Weakly, befuddledly, she asked, “How in the hell’d you fellas change into wolves right here in broad daylight? The full moon was last night!”
“Let us in, honey, and we’ll tell you all about it,” said Curly Joe, voice pitched with lust.
“You’ll turn again,” the girl said, “and you’ll do me like you did Mr. Jipson and Eb and Leonard.”
“No, no, no,” said Charlie. “But I’ll tell you what we will do if you don’t open this door.” He calmly removed his hat, inspected the gold braid, flicking bits of dust and weeds off it with his fingers before lowering the hat to his side, and, face swelling up and turning as red as an Arizona sunset, shouted, “We’ll burn this bloody place right down to the ground, and you along with it, you defiant little whore!”
Silence.
Curly Joe snickered as he and One-Eye and Lucky stood just off the gallery, thumbs hooked behind their cartridge belts, Lucky holding his Remy pointed at the door, in case the girl should storm out firing.
From inside, the girl’s frightened voice: “You promise you won’t kill me.”
Charlie swallowed. “I promise,” he said as gently as he could, his voice quavering.
Another stretched silence. Then there rose the scraping of a locking bar being removed from over the door. The steel and leather latch clicked, and the door squawked as it drew inward a few inches to reveal a young girl’s pretty, freckled face staring through the crack. Deep furrows cut across her freckled forehead, and her eyes were suspicious, fearful. “Remember, you promised.”
She screamed as Charlie rammed his shoulder against the door. As the girl fell back into the stag
e station’s thick shadows rife with the smell of grease, tobacco, and woodsmoke, Charlie bounded inside and grabbed the shotgun out of her hands. The girl hit the floor on her butt with a yelp, and Charlie stood just inside, his long shadow falling across her body clad in a low-cut flour-sack dress.
She was barefoot, and her pale blues eyes sparked with fear between wings of her long, straight, tawny hair.
The other men sauntered into the station behind Charlie.
“She’s purty, all right,” said Lucky, swallowing hard and glowering down at the girl.
“Right well set up, too.” Curly Joe doffed his hat and started forward, tossing his hat onto the table. He glanced over his shoulder at Charlie. “You want her first, boss?”
Charlie scowled, his fists still balled in fury at his sides. “Nah. You boys deserve first turns with her. I reckon I owe you that. Besides, I think she stinks worse than we do.”
Curly Joe turned back to the girl and began unbuckling his cartridge belt. “You an’ me, girl, we gonna have us some fun.”
“No!” The girl jerked her arm away from him and heaved herself to her feet. “You promised!”
“Promised we wouldn’t kill ya,” said Lucky as he and One-Eye followed Curly Joe after the girl, who scrambled, stumbling and falling and trying to run barefoot on the scarred wooden floor. He gave a whoop. “You ever tumble with a werewolf before?”
As Curly Joe, One-Eye, and Lucky went after the girl, Charlie walked back out onto the veranda, at the edge of which he stood and, tipping his face to the softening sunlight and a slight breeze wafting down from the high country in the northwest, dug a long, black cheroot from the breast pocket of the warden’s rough wool shirt. From behind him came the girl’s curses and sobs as the men apparently cornered her in the cabin’s north corner.
Charlie scratched a match to life on the warden’s black cartridge belt and touched the flame to the end of his cigar.
A whirling sounded in the far distance.
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