by Mark Lukens
Jed looked to his left, towards the end of the wooden deck. The lights from the saloon windows along with the full moon provided enough light for Jed to see that the rope he had tied to the end of the hitching rail wasn’t stretched towards the alleyway between the two buildings anymore. Now the piece of rope hung down from the end of the hitching rail.
“Our horses are gone,” Jed said.
“You left them out in the storm?” Karl asked as he turned around to look at Jed. His words were slurred slightly.
Jed glared at Karl. “No, I had them tied to the end of that hitching rail down there, but I left enough slack so they could stand in the alley and be protected from the storm.”
Moody walked past Jed and Karl. He opened the saloon door and poked his head inside. “Get me a lantern out here!”
Jed didn’t wait for the lantern. He marched to the end of the walkway and hopped down onto the dirt, searching the darkness of the alley. But he already knew the horses were gone. He didn’t see them. He couldn’t hear them. He couldn’t smell them.
He walked the few steps to the end of the hitching rail and inspected the rope he had tied there hours ago. He picked up the end of it and studied it for a moment. The rope looked just like the one in the woods had looked, not cut but snapped. Torn apart.
A thundering of footsteps approached.
Jed looked at Moody and Karl as they hurried towards him, Moody holding an oil lantern by a wire handle.
“Horses are gone,” Jed said, still holding the remaining length of rope in his hand as evidence.
“The storm,” Moody said.
Jed shook his head. “Someone took them.” He offered the end of the rope to Moody as evidence.
Moody took the rope and looked at it for a moment, but Jed could tell the man didn’t understand what he was seeing.
“You think someone stole your horses during the storm?” Karl asked.
Moody let the rope drop out of his fingers.
“They could’ve run off,” Karl suggested. “The storm might have spooked them, and they snapped the rope.”
Jed didn’t bother answering Karl. He looked across the street at the line of dark buildings silhouetted against the night sky. There were still no lanterns or candles lit in any of the windows or outside the doors on the porches. No one was coming out of the buildings. “How many people live in this town?”
“Why do you ask, marshal?” Moody wondered.
Jed stared at Moody.
“About forty,” Moody answered and looked at Karl like he was double-checking with him. “Maybe forty-two or forty-three. I don’t know. I haven’t taken a headcount recently.”
Jed looked beyond the two men at the rest of the town that disappeared into the darkness, the line of buildings on both sides of the dirt street stretching towards the white church, its steeple a black spire pointing up at the sky. The moon’s light splashed down on the shingled roofs of the buildings and the part of the street that the buildings’ deeper shadows didn’t touch.
“The mines all shut down about nine months ago,” Moody said as if he needed to provide an explanation of why so few people lived in the town. “Silver and copper ran out. The miners and prospectors moved on, taking a fair share of the merchants with them.”
Karl nodded in agreement, his vivid blue eyes rimmed in red and moist in the lantern light.
“I couldn’t leave,” Moody continued. “I have everything I own tied up in this saloon and hotel.” He looked at Karl.
“Me too,” Karl said. He glanced down the street where Jed was still staring, itching to get down to his store and his wife and boys.
“It’s a rough situation,” Moody said. “But we get by. Help each other out. I believe prospectors will come back. Probably a bigger mining company, one that can spend the money to drill deeper into the mountain. I believe there’s still plenty of silver and copper in those hills. I’m certain of it.”
“Forty people,” Jed muttered.
“At least forty,” Moody corrected.
“Awful quiet for forty people,” Jed said.
“You mind if I borrow your lantern, Moody,” Karl asked. “I need to get down to my store.”
“I’ll go with you,” Jed told Karl.
Esmerelda and Billy Nez came out of the saloon with David. “He was worried about you,” Esmerelda explained.
David dashed over to Jed’s side.
“We’re going to check on Karl’s store,” Moody told Esmerelda. “We’re going to make sure Ingrid and Karl’s boys are okay.”
“We’re coming, too,” Esmerelda said.
“Wait a minute—” Moody began.
“Free country,” Esmerelda said, cutting his words off. “We can go where we please.”
“But the boy?” Moody asked.
“He’s staying with me,” Jed told him.
“There could be danger out here,” Moody argued with Jed. “Why, you just said yourself that Red Moon’s gang could be around.”
“Could be,” Jed agreed. “Could also be another gang of outlaws. Could also be nothing.”
“We need another lantern and another gun,” Moody said, rushing back inside the saloon.
The barkeep watched Moody as he approached.
“We’re going down to Karl’s store,” Moody told the barkeep. “Get me that lantern back there and the shotgun from behind the bar.”
The barkeep set the lit lantern on the bar top in front of Moody, then bent down and got the shotgun from underneath the bar.
“You keep an eye on the marshal’s prisoner while we’re gone,” Moody told the barkeep.
The barkeep’s eyes grew big, and they darted to Sanchez tied to his chair.
“He can’t go anywhere,” Moody grumbled as he took the lantern and shotgun with him back to the double doors.
As soon as Moody was back outside, all of them stepped down off of the wooden platform, down to the dirt street.
Six people and a child, Jed thought. One pistol and a shotgun. He didn’t like those odds . . . not after what he’d seen in the woods.
Coyotes yipped in the distance.
“Storm got the coyotes stirred up,” Moody said.
Jed didn’t like the sound of the coyotes. It sounded almost like they were communicating with each other, like they were talking in some strange language. And laughing.
The seven of them walked down the street, their boots and shoes scuffing across the sand, the glow of the lanterns lighting their way.
A few minutes later, Karl stopped in the street. He stared at the dark two-story general store. “That doesn’t make any sense at all,” he said.
CHAPTER 13
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Karl said again as he stared at the two-story building in front of them. “Ingrid would have lit a lantern by now.”
Like the saloon and hotel, the general store had a front walkway with a porch roof built over it that hid the front doors and windows in shadows so deep they reminded Jed of the bottom of a well. A hitching rail ran along in front of the porch and a wooden sign supported by a few lengths of chain hung from the edge of the roof; Jed couldn’t make out what was engraved and painted on the wood sign.
“Look at the windows upstairs,” Karl said in a shaky voice, the slur gone from his words now as he sobered up immediately. “There aren’t any lanterns lit.”
“Maybe they just fell asleep,” Moody suggested.
Jed watched the upstairs windows—they were black rectangles against the wood planked exterior wall. There was no light in those windows, no sign of movement, no sign of life.
Karl didn’t wait any longer—he took off for his store, marching across the dirt street. “Ingrid! Boys!”
No answer from inside the general store and the apartments above it.
Jed had that prickling feeling on his skin again, like a creepy-crawly sensation after a terrible nightmare. Nobody had come out into the street yet. There were still no lanterns lit inside any of the buildings. With
all of the noise they were making and with Karl shouting, surely someone would have come outside by now. Or someone would have at least come outside to survey the damage done from the storm.
Jed touched David’s shoulder, nudging him forward just a little. “Let’s keep up with them.”
Karl was already at the double doors of his general store as the others were walking up the wide wooden steps. Jed noticed that all of the rocking chairs along the walkway were tipped over.
Could be from the wind, Jed thought. But then he noticed that the last chair at the far end of the porch had been smashed to pieces.
Karl froze as he reached for the door handle. Both doors to the general store were ajar, a black line of darkness between them.
“Maybe we’d better let the marshal go in first,” Moody said as Jed and David walked up the steps to the porch.
Karl didn’t wait for Jed; he exploded into motion, pushing both doors open and rushing inside the store. The top of one door struck a little bell above it when Karl opened the doors, the bell making a jarring, ringing sound. The glass panels in the doors shuddered in their frames from the force of Karl pushing them open. Karl was immersed in a bubble of light inside the darkness from the lantern he held. He was already several feet inside the store.
“Oh God,” Esmerelda whispered with her hands up to her mouth. She was still on the walkway and staring into the open doorway.
Jed saw what she was looking at. Even from the front walkway, Jed could see that the general store was a wreck inside; contents of the store had been destroyed and strewn across the floor.
Moody went in after Karl.
“No,” Karl moaned from inside the store. “No. No. No.”
Jed and David followed Moody inside the store, their boots crunching on the broken bits of glass and ceramic and smashed pieces of wood.
Tables in the store had been tipped over, wooden bins broken apart, glass panels shattered, jars and plates shattered. The floor was a mishmash of goods: ripped-up pieces of clothing, candies, soaps, candles, bits of wood. And splashed here and there among the debris were dark smears of blood. There was more blood on the walls where pictures and artwork had been knocked down.
“Ingrid!” Karl screamed. “Boys!”
No answer from Ingrid and the boys.
They were all inside the general store now, Billy stayed close to the double doors. Moody handed his lantern to Esmerelda so he could use both hands to hold his shotgun, his body tense, his eyes wide and alert.
Karl darted around a wood counter that had been splintered apart. He tripped over the destroyed contents of his store behind the counter, stumbling over the debris like he was walking across deadfalls in the woods. He headed towards a doorway where a curtain had been torn down.
Moody hurried to catch up to Karl as he disappeared into the doorway. “Wait for us, Karl. We shouldn’t split up.”
Jed felt that Moody’s warning was meant for all of them, and he and David fell in behind Moody, walking as carefully as they could over the broken and smashed bits and pieces of what used to be the goods in Karl’s general store. Billy and Esmerelda brought up the rear with the other lantern.
Moody followed Karl up the set of narrow steps, the walls close, like a claustrophobic tunnel up to the second floor.
Upstairs, they checked all three bedrooms. All of them were destroyed. There was no sign of Ingrid and her children . . . no sign except for the smears of blood everywhere.
Just like David’s house. Just like David’s family.
Ingrid!” Karl screamed even though she was obviously gone. “Ingrid!”
Billy Nez plucked the eagle feather from his hat as they all stood in what used to be Karl and Ingrid’s bedroom. He waved it back and forth, chanting softly.
Karl glared at Billy, his blue eyes rimmed in red, the little bit of bleached-blond hair he had left sticking out in wild tufts. “Stop doing that!” He rushed at Billy.
Moody stepped in between Billy and Karl, holding Karl back. Billy made no move to defend himself, and he kept his eagle feather in his fingers.
“They’re gone,” Moody whispered to Karl, still holding on to him.
Karl stopped struggling with Moody. He looked around at the wrecked bedroom as tears fell from his eyes. “How? How can this be?”
Moody looked at Jed. “Someone took them.” He stared at Jed like he was waiting to be backed up by an expert.
Jed didn’t answer.
“You think it was Red Moon’s gang?” Moody asked Jed, his words more forceful now. “You think they took Ingrid and Karl’s boys?”
Jed still didn’t answer.
Moody looked at Billy like he might have an answer for him.
Karl walked away from Moody, stopping at an overturned bureau, the drawers pulled out. He sank down to his knees and set the lantern down on the floor beside him. He searched through the clothing all over the floor. He pulled a pistol out from the clothing and checked to make sure the cylinder was loaded with bullets.
“They didn’t take anything,” Jed said.
Everyone except Karl looked at him.
“They tore everything apart,” Jed continued. “But they didn’t take Karl’s gun. And it looked like they left behind plenty of supplies downstairs.”
“They took my wife,” Karl said from the floor. “And my boys.”
“Yes,” Jed agreed. “But they weren’t robbers. They came here only to take your family.”
“And your horses,” Moody reminded him.
It sounded like an accusation to Jed, like Moody was trying to blame him for the plague that had descended upon their town. And maybe it was true.
“They came with the storm,” Esmerelda said in a whisper, her face lit up from the lantern in her hands.
Moody glanced at her but didn’t bother to ask what she meant by it. He looked back at Jed again. “We should check the other buildings.”
Jed just sighed—he already knew what they were going to find: more wreckage, more splatters of blood, but no bodies.
Moody hurried over to Karl who was still on his knees, cradling his pistol in his hands, his face a scowl, an equal mixture of rage and sorrow. “Come on, Karl. We need to search each building and look for Ingrid. Maybe she took the boys and ran. Maybe they’re hiding somewhere.”
Jed didn’t think so. He looked at the smears of blood on the walls and knew there was little hope of finding Ingrid and her sons alive. About as much hope as finding David’s family alive.
“I’ll kill them,” Karl said through clenched teeth as he wiped at his eyes. His face was red from crying, the skin underneath his eyes baggy and purple. He found a small box of bullets under some clothes and slipped it into his pants pocket.
“Let’s go back down there and look,” Moody said as he helped Karl to his feet. Moody picked up the lantern and ushered Karl towards the doorway.
“Something’s wrong here,” Esmerelda whispered to Jed as they followed Moody and Karl out to the hallway.
Jed didn’t reply.
Downstairs, Moody walked Karl out onto the front porch. The buildings across the street were still shrouded in darkness, the town still deathly quiet. Karl held the lantern in one hand and his pistol in the other. Billy and Esmerelda were the last two out of the general store, Esmerelda’s lantern adding to their little bubble of light as they gathered together on the walkway.
“No blood out here,” Billy said. At some point he’d stuck the eagle feather back into the band of his hat.
“He’s right,” Esmerelda said, shining the lantern down towards the floorboards. “No blood out here at all. How did they get the . . . how were they taken out of there without a drop of blood anywhere?”
Jed remembered thinking the same thing when he had stood on David’s front porch yesterday.
“No tracks in the dirt,” Billy announced.
“We’re not accomplishing anything by standing here,” Moody snapped, already moving towards the other end of the walkway whe
re another set of steps led down to the dirt street. “Let’s check the dining hall next door.”
Moody and Karl were already on their way, Karl’s lantern lighting up their path to the doorway of the building next to the general store. That building was just as dark as the others.
Jed nodded at Billy and Esmerelda and then guided David towards the end of the walkway.
Moments later they all stood inside the dining hall. Like Karl’s general store, the dining hall was wrecked. Tables and chairs were smashed to pieces, even the counter at the other end was destroyed, like someone had taken an ax to it. More splashes of blood were smeared along the walls and floors, even a splatter along the ceiling ten feet above them.
“It doesn’t look like anything was taken in here either,” Esmerelda said. “Just destroyed. What kind of outlaws don’t steal anything?”
“The kind that just want to kill,” Jed said.
“Ingrid!” Karl called out, walking deeper into the darkness.
“Mary!” Moody yelled for the owners of the dining hall, following Karl. “Charlotte! Anyone here?”
No one answered from the doorways that led to the back. Moody and Karl ducked through the doorway, the light from the lantern fading as they worked their way deeper into the building, looking for any survivors.
“Look,” Esmerelda whispered to Jed. She pointed at the wall closest to them where four finger marks of blood trailed along the wall, the blood growing fainter as the streaks went along the wall boards. The streaks of blood went up and then down in another area, curving, almost like someone had tried to form letters, or words. They walked over to the wall, Esmerelda shining her lantern onto the wall so they could see better. “You think they were trying to spell something?” she asked him.
Jed stared at the bloody streaks, trying to make sense out of what the person might have been trying to spell. “That looks like it could be the letter C, and then an O.”
“Yes,” Esmerelda nodded. “I see it now. And then an L and an E. I think that word is Cole—like someone’s name. And this other one. That looks like an S and then a T.” She frowned, studying the squiggles of blood on the wall. “Maybe the name Stella.”