by Tim Curran
The next two shots found their marks.
The first took the top of the ghoul's head off in a spray of dust and filth. The second punched in its chest, dirt and sandy fragments blasting from the wound. The jaws opened with a great whining squeal, a cheated sound, the desiccated flesh of the face splitting open with a series of fanning cracks from the stress. It released Longtree, staggering back, more bullets opening it up in more places.
By then, Longtree was on his feet, a shovel in his fist. When he heard Bowes gun click again and again on an empty chamber, he launched himself at the monster, swinging the shovel like a club. The blade bit into the ghoul's throat and cleaved its head free with the sound of roots being yanked from the ground. The ruined head spun back into the grave. For a few moments, the headless monstrosity stood there, its knotted fingers clawing at the air. Then it went still and fell straight as a plank to the ground, striking with a cloud of dust. It was nothing more than a heap of brittle, broken bones and filthy rags now. There was no life nor semblance of the same.
It was some time before Longtree moved and when he did, it was slowly. He turned from the moldering wreck and went to Bowes. Bowes wasn't moving, just staring with unblinking eyes. Longtree put a hand on his shoulder and Bowes slapped it away.
"Don't touch me, by God," he snapped. "Don't you dare."
"Easy, Depu-"
"Don't touch me, dammit!"
Gently, Longtree said, "Let's bury that thing and get out of here."
Bowes shook his head. "I can't…I can't move."
"Then stay here and I'll do it."
It took Longtree some time to fill in the grave and pile the stones. When it was done, he helped Bowes to his feet.
"What was that?" the deputy inquired.
Longtree looked away towards the mountain. "It's the patron saint of the Skull Society. The same kind of thing that's killing people in your town."
37
It was nearly two in the morning by the time Longtree made it back to his little camp in the sheltered arroyo. Bowes and he had made it out of Blackfeet country without any trouble. Even the shots fired had brought no attention. They both ate and had baths drawn for them at Bowes' house. If nothing else, this unknotted Longtree's muscles-none of which were feeling too good after hours spent digging in the frozen graveyard. And to add insult to injury, all the exertion made the bullet wound on his ribs ache all the more. Afterwards, Longtree rode back to his camp and found Laughing Moonwind waiting for him. He knew someone was there long before he got there-a fire was blazing and he saw the smoke from a long way out. He was glad not to find Gantz or Lauters waiting in ambush for him. But had they been, it was unlikely a fire would be lit.
"Have you been here long?" he asked her.
"Yes. I was waiting for you."
Longtree sat next to the fire and warmed himself. She had made coffee and he helped himself to a cup.
"Word has reached me," Moonwind said, "that you have made dangerous enemies."
"You don't miss much, do you?"
She brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. "It's not my way."
Longtree rolled a cigarette and lit it with an ember from the fire. "I seem to make enemies wherever I go."
"I think that is our way"
Longtree laughed dryly. "You could say that. No one seems to like the law and I doubt they ever will."
"Sheriff Lauters is a dangerous man to cross, Joseph Longtree," Moonwind said, showing little concern. She was simply stating a fact. "I heard you were shot today."
"Just grazed."
"Soon, you will have worse enemies than Lauters."
He scratched his unshaven chin. "How so?"
"The Skull Society knows of you and what you're doing."
"I'm no threat to them."
"But you are. You are here to stop the killings and you might have to stop them in order to do it."
He smiled grimly. "You still hanging on to that Skullhead business?"
She just looked at him with all the knowledge in the world. "I think you know better."
Longtree kissed her on the mouth and told her where he'd been and what he'd done and what he'd seen. She didn't seem surprised by any of it, merely unhappy with him for going to the burial ground in the first place.
"You visited sacred ground," she said in a low voice. "You desecrated my brother's grave. I should kill you. If I was good Blackfoot, I probably would."
"But you won't."
She shrugged. "But how do you know I won't tell others of what you've done? That you won't be killed as an act of revenge for this sacrilege?"
Longtree took a slow drag off his cigarette. "Because you won't say a thing. If you do, I'll be killed. And if I'm killed I'll never sort out what really happened to your brother…and I'm probably the only man who can."
Moonwind allowed herself a thin smile, her dark eyes sparkled in the firelight. "You're right. My brother's honor is more important than any burial ground. Regardless, you committed a blasphemy in doing what you did."
Longtree glared at her. "That thing would have killed me."
"That thing was a god."
Longtree smoked in silence now. God or not, that horror from the grave was nothing remotely human. It was a demon. No more, no less. The dead didn't walk. This was an established fact…or had been until tonight. He doubted there would ever be anything too far-fetched for him to believe again.
"You believe everything I've said," Longtree said sourly. "Why? If anybody told me a tale like that, I'd laugh in their face."
Moonwind frowned. "That's the trouble with you whites-you think you know everything, that nothing exists or can exist that you have not seen or experienced. Well, now you know different. There are many things in this world outside your limited experience."
"Like dead things that walk?"
"It was a god as I have said. And it was not dead…merely waiting."
He sighed. "Bowes told me some stories about Ghost Hand."
"Ghost Hand was my grandfather, a great medicine man, a legend among our people," she explained. "I heard once that he brought a drowned man back to life, that a baby frozen two days lived again when he breathed life into it."
"What did you know about your grandfather?" Longtree asked.
"I knew he was a kind and gentle old man, little else. He died before I was born. He was a medicine man and a Skull Society member."
"And a shapeshifter?"
"Possibly."
"I think we can dispense with that. Skullhead is no man, shapeshifted or not."
"No, he is a god. But you weren't sure, were you?"
Longtree shrugged. "No, I wasn't. I had to be sure. I had to know what I was hunting. The truth, not double-talk. Red Elk was just a dead man when I examined him. He was no beast."
Longtree had been thinking long and hard about what he'd seen in that burial ground. He still didn't buy any of that business about Blood-Medicine, but that mummy had risen from the grave and it had been more beast than man. There was no getting around that; the impossible had happened. But whatever else he might believe, he would never accept that the creature he'd seen was even remotely human. Not even a medicine man could look like that.
"These are interesting tales we're swapping here, girl," he finally said. "Very interesting stuff about the Skull Society, Blood-Medicine, and your grandfather. But they're just tales, aren't they?"
"The Skull Society exists," she said angrily.
"Course they do. But do you really expect me to believe these men are changing themselves into monsters? What I saw was no human being. Wanna tell me what it was?"
"It wasn't Blackfoot."
"I gathered that," Longtree smiled. "No family resemblance…thank God."
She fixed him with a steely glare. "This isn't something to joke about."
"Tell me."
She swallowed. "What you saw, Joseph Longtree, was something my people once worshipped. Something from the beginning of time. They were called the Lords of
the High Wood. They were here before men."
"Before the Indians?"
"Before anyone." She pulled her robe tighter around herself. "You were digging in a sacred plot. The place where the last of the Lords were interred countless centuries ago."
"There was an empty grave-"
"And I think you know why. What was in there, now walks again."
"How?" he asked incredulously.
"The Skull Society once worshipped them, ages ago. They would have ways to resurrect them. I know nothing more."
"Don't you?"
She looked angry, mellowing then by degrees. "I commit a sacrilege against my ancestors. I hope they will forgive me. The white man tells us that the Blackfeet Confederacy has only been in this part of the world for three or four hundred years. But that is wrong. We have been here for untold millennia. Our oral traditions reach back thousands of years. Long ago, in what is called the Dark Days, our people came to these mountains. It was so very long ago that the mountains were hills. There were other mountain ranges then that are no more than foothills now. In the Dark Days, the Blackfeet came here, following the herds of beasts upon which they hunted. What they found was a huge forest, a gigantic forest that covered the world. The trees were so tall they touched the sky. And beneath those trees, in the sacred groves and hollows, there was darkness and shadow in which many strange creatures lived. Tradition tells us our ancestors discovered the ruins of ancient cities of stone, all crumbled and collapsed. But these ruins and the dark woods beyond were the hunting grounds of the Skullheads. There were hundreds of them. They were known not only as the Skullheads, but as the Cannibal Giants, The Mountain Lords, Kings of the Hunt, the Eaters of Men.
"Our people made war with them, but the Skullheads were fierce, they were devil-warriors. The only way we were allowed to live and hunt in their forests and glens was by making sacrifice of our children. A dark practice administered by priests who were to become the Skull Society. It went on like this for many, many centuries.
"Eventually, the forests thinned, the swamps dried-up, sunlight penetrated the lairs of the Skullheads. The ruined cities were dust blown away by the winds. Things had changed. Our people grew numerous and strong, but the Skullheads weakened and died. By the time of the dog days, there were but a handful. And these were laid low by our medicine men, bound by the old ways, held and imprisoned. They were buried alive. But they never died. They could not know death as we do. They only waited as the centuries passed. Whenever our people were wronged, one of them was resurrected to dole out punishment, to seek justice. And this is all I know. There is only two or three of them now up in the burial ground. And one of those, walks."
Longtree found it all compelling, a glimpse of prehistory, of the antediluvian world handed down for thousands of years from father to son, mother to daughter.
"Those ruins you spoke of," he said. "The cities-who built them?"
She shook her head. "They were dust long before the Blackfeet came, but the Skullheads did not build those cities, it was another race."
Longtree figured none of that really mattered. "The Skullhead who walks…it'll have to be destroyed."
"I wish you luck."
Longtree nodded. She had said he soon would have bigger enemies than just Lauters. And what did that imply? Was this Lord of the High Wood going to come after him now? He put this to her.
"Possibly," she admitted. "If the Society learns you have opened the grave of one of their gods…"
He sighed. "Then I'd better get him before he gets me."
There was no more to be said.
Longtree pulled Moonwind to him and kissed her forcefully. She didn't refuse his advance, her strong arms pulled him closer and held him in a tight embrace. She pulled open her buffalo robe and pushed his lips onto her jutting breasts. Before the fire, he made love to her with his mouth, teasing out her secrets and passions with his lips and tongue. Then she did the same for him. When he entered her, he did it slowly with a gentle rocking motion, urging moans and cries from her. As he pushed into her harder, faster, her legs locked around his hips, she panted in his ear, whispering her desires, and biting at him tenderly. They were like two animals at the end, lost in the heat and need, swimming burning seas, their hips slamming together with raw hunger. The beast with two backs, as it was known.
When it was over, she said, "I'm your woman now."
They held each other before the fire, their lips brushing in soft kisses and caresses. Moonwind stayed with him until just before dawn. When she left, she kissed him and rode off quietly, so as not to disturb his sleep.
With what came next, it was better she wasn't there.
38
Just before first light, Longtree heard a horse coming. He was half awake at the time and the slow trod of the horse's hoofs told him danger was near. Whoever was coming, was coming very slowly. Longtree worked himself quietly from his bedroll, donning his coat and strapping on his pistols.
The rider stopped just outside the weave of trees that ringed the little arroyo. The horse was tethered and the rider approached now on foot. He was being very quiet, pushing his booted feet down in the snow very slowly so as to make little sound.
But Longtree heard him, all right. He'd been a scout and he knew all the tricks of stealth-how to use them and how to know when someone else was using them. This fellow wasn't especially good. If he had been, he would've picketed his horse a half a mile away and come on foot, sneaking into camp to do whatever it was he'd come to do.
But he hadn't. Longtree decided this man was no professional, much as he thought he was.
Longtree hid in the same outcropping of rocks he'd hid in the night Lauters and his posse had come. It was an excellent place to hide during the night, but now with day breaking…it was less than desirable. It was defendable, all right, but there was no escape route from it if things turned bad. Behind him was sheer rock rising twenty feet and much the same to either side. Longtree didn't like it. He always sought a place with cover and a backdoor to slip through if it came to that.
In the grainy, pre-dawn light, he saw the man ease through the trees into camp. He suspected it could only be Lauters or Gantz.
It was the latter.
Gantz carried a shotgun and pistols on either hip. There was no question as to why he'd come. He approached Longtree's bedroll cautiously and, when it was in plain sight, aimed the shotgun at it. Cursing, he lowered the barrel, realizing it was empty.
"Drop it, Jacko!" Longtree called out, knowing it was a mistake.
Gantz threw himself to the ground and fired in the direction of the marshal's voice. The blast loosened some debris over Longtree's head, but did no real damage. Longtree shot back, his own bullet kicking up snow and dirt inches from Gantz' head. Gantz rolled away behind a tree.
"Give it up, Jacko," Longtree called out, "before this gets any worse."
Gantz' only reply was another round from the shotgun that exploded more debris from the outcropping. Longtree didn't shoot back. He wasn't going to waste the ammunition until he had a clear shot at the man. This was about to become a lethal cat and mouse game, a waiting game. Longtree wasn't going to say anything else; let Gantz believe he'd been hit if the man was fool enough to think that.
"Throw out your weapons, Marshal," he said. "I just wanna talk…"
Somehow, Longtree didn't believe that.
He kept quiet and said nothing.
This affair could end only one way and both men knew it. If Gantz was taken alive he'd be going back to prison and Longtree knew he wouldn't let that happen. So, one of them had to die. It was an ugly situation. Gantz had the upper hand here. He was in the treeline and he could move around in there at will, under heavy cover, while Longtree could go nowhere. And there was nothing stopping Gantz from slipping around the other side of the arroyo and shooting down on Longtree. Nothing at all. But if Longtree tried to escape, there was no cover until he reached the trees. Easy pickings either way it seemed.
&n
bsp; It all depended on how smart Gantz was.
Longtree could see part of the man's elbow sticking out from behind the tree. At this distance, hitting it was unlikely, but worth a chance. At the very least, it might scare the bounty hunter out into the open for a split second…long enough to put a bullet in him.
Longtree took aim and squeezed the trigger.
The bullet missed its mark by a few inches, gouging free bark and making Gantz dart for fresh cover. The next bullet Longtree fired caught Gantz in the leg and solicited a howl of pain from him. It probably wasn't much more than a flesh wound, but it was something.
Within seconds after the bullet had hit, Longtree came charging from his hiding place, both pistols drawn and firing, slugs ripping apart the brush Gantz was hiding in.
But Gantz was no fool.
He saw what the marshal was doing and he wasn't about to let it happen.
Dragging his injured leg, he hobbled from the trees, bullets zinging past him, shotgun held out and firing. Longtree hit the dirt, felt the first burst of buckshot scream over his head, the second erupt snow and dirt in his face. He rolled and came up firing. The first and second bullets punched holes in Gantz' stomach, blood gushing from the wounds. The third and final bullet ripped into his chest.
Gantz staggered forward, dropping the shotgun, trembling fingers reaching for the pistols at each hip. His bearded face was pale, compressed into a rictus of agony and hatred. He tried to speak, but blood sprayed from his mouth and froze on his beard, his gasping breath frosted in the air. He staggered and went down on one knee, his eyes rolling back white. With a final coughing, gagging wet gasp of air, he fell forward into the snow. His blood steamed in the chill temperature.
He was dead when Longtree reached him, the crunchy snow red with his fluids.
"Shit," Longtree said, flipping the dead man over with his boot.
He'd wanted very much to take Gantz alive. He wanted to ask him why he'd let this happen, why he'd been pushed into such action. These were questions Longtree never tired of asking and the answers were often less than satisfying. But he always asked them, good or bad.