"I mean, I've been to every murder scene this son of a bitch has left around the entire West, from here to Lost Angels and back. I've poked around for all sorts of clues, and I've even found a few, but they only ever lead me to the demon's next stop on his trail o' blood."
"Now yer tellin' me that Bullock-who ain't never left the Sioux Nations in the whole time I been gone-knows who the killer is. This has to be good." With that, Duke knocked back another bit of his preferred poison and slapped the glass back down on the bar between himself and the bartender.
"So tell me," Duke asked evenly. "Who is it?"
Lewis reached over and poured a double shot into Duke's empty glass. "Well," he said as he handed the glass over with just a hair of a tremble in his hand, "he's got it in his head that the killer is you."
***
Another shot rang out, and I heard the bullet actually whiz past my ear. The noise spurred the horse on faster than my spurs ever could have, but the poor beast was tiring quickly. She wouldn't last much longer.
Duke pointed up at a notch in a hill up ahead of us, and we made for it. The horses were starting to wheeze like old men. They weren't going to last much longer.
When I first came to the Sioux Nations to find Duke, I'd been truly impressed by the incredible rock formations the Iron Dragon railroad skirted on its way in and out of Deadwood. They stood strong and tall against the sky, looking like the bones-or possibly the teeth-of some massive creature that had broken through the earth's grassy skin.
When I finally managed to find Duke, he was dead drunk, lying face down in the mud of Deadwood's Main Street. Now that I think of it, I believe he was right in front of the No. 1 Saloon.
He was a real mess.
I suppose I can reveal this in this record, since I've already decided that I'm never going to submit it to my editor Back East. These details would cause Duke to blush seven shades of crimson, but at this point, I'm past worrying about such details.
Although I later knew him to be the brilliant man who'd been the worthy subject of so many of his own autobiographical dime novels, Duke was a sloppy drunk in those days, near to death when I found him. I almost let his miserable existence expire in that filthy gutter, but I didn't.
I picked the pitiful creature up, dusted him off, and then half-carried him to the nearest hotel in town to get him cleaned up and nursed back to health.
I didn't do this entirely out of kindness, mind you. I had come a long way to find Duke Solomon, and I was damned if I was going to let him die on me. After all, without him, I had no hero for my dime novels, and without those, I had no other way I knew of to make a living on the frontier.
For a moment, I considered actually taking up banking or some easier profession with reasonable co-workers and hours, but even then I saw a glimmer of hope in Duke's feeble demeanor.
I knew that something horrible must have happened to have turned such a vibrant man-if the exploits of his writings were to be believed-into this gibbering heap of mush. At the moment, though, that was far beside the point. I needed him, and I was not going to let him die on me.
Duke's recuperation took over a week, and it was toward the end that the first killing took place. Town Marshal Bullock himself actually came to Duke's room to tell him about the murder.
"I ain't never seen nothing like it," he said as he stood there, shaking his head. The color that had blanched from the marshal's face still hadn't come back, and he looked far older and more gray than his years. This was a tall, strong, man, one who made his living by his skill with his gun. 1 was sure he'd seen a lot of death over the years, and little of it could have been pretty.
It didn't matter. He was shaken to his core.
***
"Duke! You got a lot of nerve showing your face around here!" shouted Marshal Bullock as he strode through the saloon's batwing doors. Even in a chaotic boomtown like Deadwood, bad news travels fast.
"Evenin', marshal," Duke grunted.
I glanced around the room, which had suddenly fallen eerily quiet. All eyes were on Duke and the town marshal.
Dressed in dusty dungarees and a dirty work shirt that looked like it might have crawled out of a nearby ghost rock mine by itself, Bullock did not cut an impressive figure. Even so, the tin star on his chest had been lovingly polished to a high shine.
"You're looking a lot better than the last time I saw you," Bullock grunted. Duke was a tall man, but Bullock was able to glare straight into his eyes. Standing next to Duke, the marshal looked out of his league. Duke was sharply dressed in a black pair of pants, a white shirt, and a black vest. Even covered as he was with the dust of the road, he exuded a certain kind of frontier class whereas Bullock was rough around every one of his edges.
Bullock's resentment of Duke's presence was almost tangible.
"Can I help you, marshal?" It was the line Duke had uttered dozens of times before, recorded in just about every one of his dime novels. Rarely had it been spoken with such venom.
"I just want you to know that I've been following your 'exploits' ever since you left my town last year." With this, he leaned forward. "And I don't like what I've seen."
"I don't understand," I interrupted. "We've been thousands of miles from Deadwood. How-?"
Before I could continue, the marshal reached into his back pocket and pulled out a fistful of papers, waving them in my face. I instantly recognized them.
"But those are the dime novels I've written about Duke," I said. Stating such an obvious fact only made me sound as stupid as I felt. I just wasn't following the man's twisted line of logic.
"Exactly!" the marshal grinned triumphantly.
"But Duke's the hero of every one of those. I honestly don't see how there's anything in there that you couldn't like about him. I wrote those myself!"
The marshal stuffed the rolled-up newsprint under my nose. "You're just too close to it all to see what's going on, limey. You've got to read between the lines."
Duke reached out and put a hand on Bullock's arm, forcing the papers away from my face. Bullock moved to shrug off the hand, but Duke only grabbed him harder.
"Now what in Hell are you talking about?" he demanded.
Bullock glared into Duke's eyes, then pulled his arm away hard. "As if you didn't know. I'm talking about the Headhunter!"
At the mere mention of the name, everyone in the room held his breath.
It was Duke's turn to get angry now.
Duke never gets mad by shouting or stomping around or throwing or breaking things. Instead, he simply becomes extremely cold. At that moment, even though it was the middle of a Dakota summer, it seemed like a new ice age was on its way "Speak yer mind," he said flatly Bullock looked flustered enough for a moment that I thought he might actually turn and run, but he managed to screw up his courage enough to stand his ground.
"I've been reading for the past year about how you've been running around the country, solving all sorts of crimes. Your trailmate here calls you some kind of 'cowboy detective'!"
"Actually, I didn't start-" I began.
"And in every one of these dime novels—and I mean every one—the Headhunter always shows up in the same town as you."
There was a long moment of silence as Bullock glared at Duke triumphantly. Duke didn't seem impressed.
"What are you tryin' to say?" he asked with an eerie calm that stood out even more strongly against Bullock's bluster.
"It's as plain as day, man. You're not chasing the Headhunter." He shook his head widely "No, mister 'cowboy detective,' you are the Headhunter."
***
As we reached the top of the notch, my horse collapsed in exhaustion. I grabbed onto its neck and held on for dear life as the poor beast started sliding straight back down the hill. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I screamed like a woman as we began slipping back toward the angry posse hot on our heels.
Despite the rigors of the chase, Duke was as sharp as ever. Without even getting down from his own horse, he holstered
his gun and reached down for his lariat. With a few quick spins and a snap of his wrist, the rope went sailing down toward me and actually managed to lasso the horse right around his neck.
As quick as I could, I leapt off of the horse. Not willing to give up all of my worldly possessions quite yet, I managed to snatch my saddlebags from the horse before Duke was forced to give up his tug of war with my dying horse. As I jumped clear of the mare, Duke let go of the rope, and the horse began sliding back down the hill, tumbling as she went.
Not one to miss out on the opportunity such a distraction would provide, I stood up and fired back down the hill at the posse. To my great astonishment, one of the deputies actually fell off his own steed, holding his chest.
For a moment, I just stood there. I'd never shot a man before, and I didn't know how to react. Fortunately, I had Duke there.
"Don't just stand there!" he shouted down at me. "Get a move on Philip. They're coming right up behind you."
I looked down at where the man had been, but his body was gone now, having fallen behind a massive rock. A hail of shots rang out from below. I turned and fled.
As I scrambled up the hill, I cursed the Headhunter. If it hadn't been for all those killings, I wouldn't be in this situation. Inside, I laughed at the notion that Duke could possibly be the Headhunter himself. I'd been with Duke throughout his entire pursuit of the killer, and the idea was ludicrous.
It seemed like Bullock had forgotten about how Duke had reacted when he saw the remains of the Headhunter's first victim, right there in Deadwood, over a year ago. It was the first time Duke had managed to haul himself out of bed since I'd taken him under my wing, and I was terribly proud to see him standing tall and proud. If there was a slight unsteadiness in his stride, I was sure that no one else noticed it.
When we got to the stable, the body was still there. Well, most of it was at least. As with all of the killer's later victims, the poor stableboy was missing everything from his neck up, which is how the murderer quickly earned himself his nom de mort: the Headhunter.
No one's ever been able to figure out what the killer does with all the heads he's severed in the past year. Not one of them has ever been recovered. The theories run from the merely grisly to the truly obscene, but there's never been any kind of confirmation.
When Duke saw the poor boy's body, he was nearly beside himself. Having witnessed the signs myself over the past week, I was sure he was going to become ill, but he managed to steel himself.
That was a turning point for Duke. The pitiful wreck I'd tended for the past few days was gone, and the man of action he'd once been stood in his place. The watery, vacant look had disappeared from his eyes to be replaced with that of a polished razor.
Duke hunted the Headhunter throughout Deadwood for two weeks, but he was always one step behind. Nearly a dozen people lost their lives in that initial slaughter, and I'm sure Duke wept privately over each of their graves.
It surely frustrated the much-vaunted detective to be unable to bring the killer to justice, but the Headhunter was just too clever. At the end of that first spree, it seemed like he was playing with Duke, taunting him, almost daring the detective to bring him in.
The last body's head was found with a sack of salt where the head should have been. Duke instantly made the connection, but we waited around for a few days to be sure. When no one had been killed for three days, we struck out for Salt Lake City, hopefully hot on the killer's trail.
And that's what we've been doing ever since.
***
Duke slept uneasily that night. Marshal Bullock's accusations racked his troubled mind for hours.
"It's pretty obvious to me," the lawman had said. "Wherever you go, the Headhunter's there."
"We're hunting him!" I protested on Duke's behalf, but the man just put up a hand to shush me.
"Let him speak," Duke growled. "If this kind of talk is going on about me, I want to hear it."
Bullock smirked viciously at me and then continued. "You say you're hunting this killer, but it strikes me kinda funny that you never lose his trail. I mean, all damn year long you've been 'one step behind the killer.' Seems awful suspicious to me that the killings never start until after you come to town, Duke, and they always stop once you leave."
"But he's been leading us around!" I pointed out. "Some of the clues have been so obvious even you could have spotted them."
Even as the words left my lips, I regretted them. This was an extremely angry, well-armed man with the power of the law on his side. I'd made a terrible enemy in that moment.
Duke gave me a look almost as spiteful as the daggers Bullock's eyes were shooting at me. I put my hands up and stepped back. "Just trying to help," I averred.
Duke met Bullock's steely glare like a rock. "You think what you want to think, Bullock. We're gettin' closer to this bastard, and the day will come I'll make you eat those words."
At that Bullock turned and left, steaming as he stomped out the door. The room breathed a collective sigh of relief, then all eyes turned toward Duke, searching for some kind of confirmation of the town marshal's claims. The bartender shouted at them. "Get back to your drinking, vultures! The show's over."
***
As I scrambled up the slope toward Duke and his horse—my own poor beast screaming behind me, protesting a broken leg-more shots rang out at me. The light of the full moon lit the Badlands up like the sun's weak sister-even with the pale twilight coming up in the east-and I was caught out on that bare land like a rat without a hole.
One of the bullets caught me square in my left shoulder, and the impact sent me sprawling forward. For a long moment, I lay there in shock as the blood streamed out of me. A short time later, I heard feet scrambling toward me, and I was sure the end of my adventures in the West had come to an end. After all that had happened that night, I was positive the posse wasn't in the mood to mess around with things like arrests.
Instead, Duke's hands fell on my shoulders and hauled me to my feet. I groaned in protest, but the pain actually seemed to help me regain my focus. A few short moments later, Duke and I were topping the hill, my saddlebags still in my good right hand.
Duke swore when we reached the notch. I quickly took stock of the situation. This seemed like as good a place as any to hold off a small army of men. The Badlands rose sharply on either side, making it impossible to reach us by any other means than coming straight up the barren slope we'd just traversed. Coming around behind us would take hours, so for the moment, it seemed like we were set. We could hold them off long enough for me to get bandaged up and rest the horse, and then-.
Then I realized what Duke was swearing about. His horse was gone.
"There's nothing for it now," he said. "We've just got to hold our ground here and hope for the best."
Duke crept up to the edge of the notch and got down on his belly, pointing his Peacemaker ahead of him. As he crested the hill, he started shooting. The cracks of his gunshots rolled like thunder though the hills, and somewhere below us, a deputy started screaming in pain.
Duke turned to look back at me for a moment as I pulled out my own gun and readied it for the final scene. He wore a wan grin on his face. "It's been a long ride, Philip, but it looks like it's coming to an end."
***
A scream rang through the night. It was an ail-too familiar sound in my line of work. When you're chronicling the adventures of a man on the trail of a serial killer, you hear a lot of screams. You never get jaded to them though. At least I never do.
I met Duke in the hotel's hallway as we left our respective rooms. Long practiced at these midnight interruptions, we each had our saddlebags with us, and when we reached the street, the stableboy had already gotten our mounts ready.
"I think all the commotion's coming from over near the jail," the boy said, looking up at Duke with a mixture of hope and fear.
"Don't worry yerself none," Duke told the boy as he patted him on the head. "We've got it under contr
ol."
We mounted up and trotted off toward the jail, all the way on the other side of town. When we got there, we were greeted by a crowd of men standing around in a big circle, holding torches and guns. As we rode up, the circle parted like the Red Sea, and in the center of the mob, we saw a young woman-or most of her, at least.
Her head was missing.
Town Marshal Bullock was down there on his knees, cradling the corpse in his arms as silent tears ran down his face. He knelt there like that for a moment, lost in his grief. Then he suddenly looked up at us with a face filled with anguish.
"That's him!" Bullock screamed, his face red with fury as he pointed a long finger straight at Duke Solomon. "That's the man who killed my wife!"
***
Duke's gun thundered off a few more shots before the hammer fell on an empty barrel. He quickly patted himself down and realized he'd gone through all of his ammunition.
Duke cursed his horse again, up, down, and sideways. "All my ammo was in my saddlebags!" he whispered hoarsely. "What have you got by way of bullets, Philip?"
I laughed humorlessly. "I'm afraid I favor a smaller caliber of bullet than you do, Duke. I can't be of any help."
He walked over to me and took my sidearm from me. He looked down at the gun in his hands and quickly checked the action. Then he used it to tip his hat at me. "It ain't much, Philip, but it'll have to do."
Duke crept back up to the crest of the notch and poked his head slowly over the ridge. Several shots came flying back at him, at least one of which caught the top of his brown Stetson and sent it cartwheeling back in my direction. I quietly reached for the pocket gun I keep tucked in my vest. It wasn't much, but it would be enough for what I had to do.
When the onslaught ceased, Duke poked my gun back over the ridge and let loose with a few shots of his own. He was rewarded with a cry from a new voice that went tumbling back down the hill.
Of course, Marshal Bullock and his deputies responded in kind, and Duke quickly snatched his hand back to wait out the latest hail of bullets.
Deadlands: For a Few Dead Guys More Page 4