by Ned Oaks
‘I went hunting this morning. Got me a big old buck. Been gutting and dressing it for the last hour.’
Burton and Blayloch exchanged skeptical glances.
Turning back to Dodge, Burton said, ‘Then you won’t mind if we go around back and take a look.’
Dodge frowned and wiped his palms on the sides of his pants. ‘This is my property. I got the papers for it. It’s all legal. You ain’t got no right to be coming around and harassing me.’
‘We’re investigating some killings,’ Burton said steadily. ‘You’d be wise to cooperate.’
Dodge chewed on a plug of tobacco in his cheek, his eyes locked on Burton’s.
‘Are you even a lawman?’ he asked disdainfully.
‘Mr Burton is acting in an . . . unofficial capacity on this case,’ said Maynard Blayloch.
Dodge laughed. ‘Whatever the hell that means. . . .’ he muttered.
Burton took a step toward Emerson Dodge, who stepped in front of him and put a hand out to block his path toward the back of the cabin. Dodge put his other hand on Burton’s sternum and shoved him back roughly.
‘Hey!’ Blayloch exclaimed.
Burton looked over his shoulder at the deputy. ‘Don’t worry, Maynard,’ he said. ‘I can handle this.’
He turned back toward Dodge and stepped forward. When Dodge attempted to block him again, Burton grabbed Dodge’s wrist and pulled the homesteader close to him in one very fast movement. Before Dodge could respond, Burton brought up his right arm and drove his elbow hard into the man’s throat, then shoved him back. He hooked his right boot behind Dodge’s feet as he pushed. Dodge’s legs came out from under him and he tumbled backward into the mud, clawing at his throat and gasping for breath. His face was a deep crimson.
‘Let’s just call that a warrant,’ Burton said, looking down at Dodge. ‘Now we’re going to take a look around back. Let us know if you have any questions.’
With Blayloch following, Burton stepped around the wheezing man and circled to the back of the cabin. A large deer carcass was dangling there from a hook near the back door, and there was a lot of blood in the area. Dodge’s explanation for his bloody state was plausible enough, Burton thought reluctantly.
Blayloch’s face showed disappointment. ‘Don’t mean he didn’t kill the Ballards, too,’ he asserted.
Burton nodded. ‘True.’
They turned and walked back around the cabin. Dodge was on his feet now, crouching over with his hands on his knees. He still struggled to catch his breath. He looked up at Burton and Blayloch with eyes filled with hatred.
‘You sons of bitches – you’ll pay for this,’ he said. ‘We got laws in this country.’
‘You made this harder than it had to be, Dodge,’ Blayloch said with an edge to his tone. ‘A little cooperation goes a long way.’
Dodge stood up straight now, his right hand rubbing his throat where Burton had struck him. ‘Who the hell you think you are?’ he asked Burton, who stared back at him impassively.
‘I don’t like you, Dodge,’ said Burton. ‘I think you got something to hide.’ He noticed that Emerson Dodge had blue eyes.
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know yet. But me and Maynard are going to find out. You can bet on that.’
‘If you’re trying to pin this on me—’ Dodge began.
Blayloch cut him off. ‘Nobody’s trying to pin anything on you. If you’re innocent, then you got nothing to worry about.’
‘Yeah, sure.’ Dodge looked back and forth between Burton and Blayloch. ‘Get out of here. You saw the buck.’
‘Fair enough,’ Blayloch said. ‘I got a couple more questions, though.’
Dodge was irritated. ‘Ask ’em, then.’
‘Where were you last night?’
‘I was at the town meeting.’
‘No, after the meeting.’
‘I was here,’ Dodge said, jutting his chin toward the cabin.
‘You sure about that?’
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘Don’t know,’ Blayloch said casually. ‘Sometimes people forget things. Especially when it’s convenient for them.’
‘Well, I ain’t forgot nothing. I was here.’
‘All night?’
‘All night.’
Blayloch sighed. ‘You got any more questions, Marshal?’ he asked Burton.
‘Marshal?’ cried Dodge. ‘You said yourself he ain’t a lawman.’
‘Not anymore,’ Burton said softly.
‘He’s solved a lot of murders,’ Blayloch said.
Emerson Dodge scoffed.
‘I do have one question,’ Burton stated.
‘Ask it then!’ Dodge said, crossing his arms.
‘You planning on taking part in the night time patrols?’
Dodge smiled. ‘Sure I am.’
‘That’s good to hear,’ said Blayloch.
‘You two think I’m the Phantom, don’t you?’
‘Don’t know,’ Blayloch replied. ‘But if you are, we’ll find out.’ He remembered something and turned back to Dodge. ‘By the way, you used to live around here before, didn’t you, Emerson?’
Dodge smirked. ‘Before when?’
‘When you were younger. Didn’t you and your pa live for a while with Buck?’
‘Yeah, we did. What about it?’
‘When was that?’
After thinking for a moment, Dodge said, ‘About five years back.’
Blayloch glanced at Burton, then back to Dodge. ‘So it was 1874, then, right? Just to be precise.’
‘Yeah – 1874. Like I asked, what of it?’
Blayloch tapped his finger against his temple. ‘Just want to get everything straight up here, you know what I mean?’
Dodge said nothing as the two men walked back to their horses. He watched them mount and ride off into the trees toward the road. Then he turned and went back to butchering his deer.
The mood was notably somber when the designated patrolmen gathered in Maynard Blayloch’s office at eleven o’clock that night. A heavy rain lashed against the windows and the roof.
Blayloch sat on the edge of his desk, a lantern beside him with the wick turned down. Four men sat in wooden chairs in front of the deputy. Ed Burton was one of them.
‘I reckon I don’t need to tell anyone about what we found this morning,’ Blayloch said carefully. ‘I think it shows that this Phantom is more of a danger to the good people of this community than some of you may have thought. We got two dead people now, to go along with those who have been attacked by the Phantom and got out alive. Killing’s probably what he’s been wanting to do all along.’ He rubbed his weary eyes for a moment. ‘Anyway, these patrols ought to make a big difference. With the five of us spread out, he’ll have a hard time travelling in the immediate Oakridge area without one of us spotting him. Hell, this ain’t a big town.’
Oakridge could barely be even be called a town, thought Burton. It was an isolated little hamlet, deep in the massive Oregon forests about forty miles east of Eugene. Last Burton had heard, the town had an official population of eighty-four residents, not including the twenty or so homesteads and ranches in the area as far as Deception Creek. To date, the Phantom had struck very close to the town. In his attacks from five years before he had even struck in town once, at the home of the local printer. The printer and his family moved away from Oakridge within a week of the home invasion. There hadn’t been a printing establishment in the town since.
‘Remember that these patrols is meant to deter him at least as much as catch him. He may not try his tricks if he knows we’re out and about, keeping an eye out for him. Then again, he may try it even though we’re patrolling, just to teach us a lesson. If you see him running around in that mask of his, then shoot to kill.’
The man sitting next to Burton shifted in his seat. ‘Uh, Maynard – what if we see someone who matches the description but ain’t wearing a mask?’
Blayloch thought for a moment. ‘Wel
l, I guess you can stop them and ask to see inside their saddle-bags and pockets. Hell, we might just open up a saddle-bag and find the mask in there.’ He raised an eyebrow in Burton’s direction. ‘What do you think, Mr Burton?’
Burton sat up a little straighter. ‘I think that’d be all right,’ he said. ‘People might complain, but . . . just say it’s voluntary. They don’t have to open their bags or coats if they don’t want to.’
‘Right!’ Blayloch said. ‘And let’s only ask to check if it’s a young man, average build, blue eyes – you got the idea.’
The men nodded.
Blayloch was just about to add something else when a series of loud and insistent knocks on his office door interrupted him. Burton was the closest to the door, so he rose and opened it. A momentary shock went through him as Emerson Dodge stepped into the office out of the pounding rain. Maynard Blayloch’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.
‘I’m here to help out with the patrols,’ Dodge said. There was an unmistakable hostility to his presence, and none of the other volunteers greeted him.
‘That’s fine,’ Blayloch said simply. ‘We need all the help we can get.’
The deputy explained how the men were to be distributed. Three would be in town, patrolling different areas. Two would roam the hills west of town where the ranches and homesteads were, and one would patrol the sparsely populated few miles to the east of Oakridge. No one’s designated geographical area overlapped with that of another. Blayloch assigned the area to the west to himself and Emerson Dodge, who looked chagrined at the choice. Burton took the job as the sole patrolman east of town. He was the only one of the six men in the office who lived there.
By midnight, the riders were in position. The signal for any trouble was three rapid gunshots in the air. Given the relatively small distances between each horseman, it wouldn’t take long for reinforcements to arrive if someone encountered the Phantom.
Burton took the road leading out of town and stayed on it for roughly two miles. Then he turned around and slowly made his way back, stopping in and taking a look at various neighbors’ lands to see if he found anything suspicious. He and Blayloch had warned the others not to patrol too close to houses and cabins. The tense atmosphere in town after dark had led to some trigger-happy talk. No one wanted to see someone get shot in the dark by an old homesteader because the latter thought the Phantom was creeping in the shadows outside. The men were on six-hour shifts. Blayloch would have liked to have shorter watch shifts but was unable to do so given the lack of residents in the Oakridge area.
The first evening passed slowly and uneventfully. The only people out on the muddy streets at that time of night were a couple of the town’s regular drunks, trying to find their way home. They lived together in a shack on the eastern edge of town and Burton watched them stumble out of the saloon and slowly make their way toward him. They greeted him jubilantly in the moonlight, and he nodded and smiled in acknowledgement.
The six patrolmen met up a little before six o’clock outside Blayloch’s office. It was still at least an hour until dawn. It had drizzled lightly but relentlessly throughout the night. The men were all cold and tired.
‘Well, maybe the patrol made a difference tonight, men,’ said Blayloch, dismounting. He tied his horse’s reins to the hitching post. ‘Thanks for your help. There’ll be another patrol tonight, but as I said earlier we won’t plan on using any of y’all until a week from now.’ He grinned sardonically. ‘That is, unless you want to volunteer for duty between now and then.’
A couple of the men forced tired smiles.
‘All right, then – head on home. Make sure to lock your doors and windows at night!’ He made a vague waving gesture with his hand and turned to open the front door of his office. He went in as the men turned their horses toward their respective homes and rode away.
Emerson Dodge flicked a glance toward Burton before they separated. Burton met his eyes. He could see the loathing and suspicion in the man’s face. A smile creased the corners of Burton’s lips.
‘You make sure to lock up real careful at night, Mr Dodge, y’hear?’ he said.
Dodge looked like he was going to say something in reply, but thought better of it. He turned his horse toward Deception Creek and rode out of town.
The patrols worked.
Weeks and then months passed without any sign of the Phantom. Seven nights per week, men rode the streets and hills in and around Oakridge. Maynard Blayloch was especially indefatigable, patrolling at least six nights every week – sometimes seven. He existed on roughly two hours of sleep per night for more than half a year. Sometimes he made up for it with cat naps in his office. Burton had to implore the deputy to take a night off every now and then.
Despite his chronic fatigue, Blayloch was also fairly exuberant much of the time. Annie Burton found this concerning, but her husband knew what Blayloch was going through. The sheer relief Blayloch felt as one day led into another without another home invasion, rape, or murder seemed to be feeding his sometimes manic moods. Well, that combined with the prolonged sleeplessness.
After almost seven months of nightly patrols, pressure from the residents of Oakridge finally led Blayloch to call them off. The men were complaining about the demands on their time, which they said would be unsustainable when spring came and their commitments to working their land increased. Blayloch and Burton warned of what might come were the patrols to be cancelled, but the pressure eventually became too great and one Monday morning in late April the last patrol concluded.
Ed Burton and Maynard Blayloch braced themselves for a new wave of attacks from the Phantom. But nothing happened. Spring gave way to summer, and then autumn came, but still there was so sign of the Phantom. Had he moved away in the face of the nightly patrols? Burton thought it was possible, although somehow he doubted it.
By the time November arrived it had been a year since the last attack. Most folks, it seemed, had either forgotten about the Phantom or no longer feared him.
CHAPTER SIX
It was a cold, foggy November morning when Ed and Annie Burton encountered Maynard Blayloch outside the general store in Oakridge. Since the end of the patrols, Burton hadn’t seen the deputy very often. He was glad to observe that Blayloch appeared much more rested than he had in previous months.
‘Maynard, good to see you,’ said Burton.
The men shook hands.
Blayloch tipped his hat at Annie. ‘Good morning, ma’am. You two keeping warm out there at the cabin?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Annie responded. ‘Ed keeps busy chopping firewood.’
‘Well, you two have that big old fireplace. You can probably keep the whole house warm with it.’
‘Pretty much,’ Burton said. There were many things he liked about inheriting Annie’s father’s house, but the massive stone fireplace ranked near the top in Burton’s estimation.
‘You two keep talking,’ Annie said. ‘I’m going in.’
She smiled at Blayloch and entered the store, leaving Burton and the deputy alone on the steps outside.
‘It’ll be one year since the last attack here in a few days,’ Burton noted. ‘I guess the patrols really did scare him off. They’ve been over damn near six months and he still hasn’t made a move.’
Blayloch blew out his cheeks and shook his head with a thin smile.
‘Whatever it is that’s keeping him from doing it, I hope it keeps working.’ He pushed his hat back on his head and looked into the distance abstractedly. ‘Maybe he moved on.’
‘That could be,’ Burton said. ‘There’s a very good chance he was doing the patrols with us.’
‘You think?’
Burton nodded. ‘Only four or five men in this area weren’t able to take part in the patrols. I don’t think any of those fellers matched the Phantom’s description.’ He watched Annie through the window of the store where she was perusing a rack of books. She invariably bought three or four whenever the store had some in stock. He turned back
to Blayloch. ‘I haven’t seen Emerson Dodge around in a few weeks.’
‘Me, neither,’ Blayloch said. ‘I heard he was spending some time up in Salem at his brother’s place. I’m still keeping an eye on him whenever he’s around, though.’
‘I would, too, if I were in your boots.’
A homesteader and his family passed by in a wagon and both Burton and Blayloch smiled and waved in greeting. Afterwards they were silent for a minute or two. Life seemed to have returned to a state of normality around Oakridge.
Annie came out of the store with her books. Blayloch saw her and patted Burton on the shoulder.
‘I’ll let you two get along,’ he said. ‘Let me thank you again for all the help you gave me.’ He turned his eyes to Annie. ‘Ma’am, you have yourself a nice day.’ He gestured toward the books in her hands. ‘Those should keep you busy for a while!’
The Burtons laughed and climbed into their buggy. With a final wave to Maynard Blayloch, they headed back toward their home.
The Phantom stood behind the tree, watching. He had been doing that his entire life, he thought. Watching, planning, waiting.
The cabin was about thirty yards away. He could see it clearly in the moonlight. No lanterns were lit inside. Most of the curtains were closed, although he could see right into the living room.
It had been almost a year. The desire to attack again had gnawed at him terribly throughout those passing months. The patrols made that impossible, however. He had at times found it amusing to be patrolling the dark streets, looking for . . . himself.
He had chosen to be disciplined. The only times he had ever come close to being captured or killed in his attacks were when he had chosen to be undisciplined. He had waited for five years; he could wait out the patrols. And he did.
But now he could contain it no longer. He desired to feel again that rush, that incomparable, almost godlike sensation that came when he gained total control over another human being. The impulse was too powerful for him to resist, even had he wanted to, which he didn’t anymore.
His pulse was rapid, his senses alert with anticipation. It was like scratching an itch, he thought. He was finally going to satisfy the insistent urge within himself. He was going to make them pay for the year he had spent dormant, biding his time.