“Cup of coffee, a warm fire,” the stranger said. “That’ll do for a start.”
“Yeah?” Ned said. “Where you from? What business you got here in Beaver Junction?”
“Heard you had some trouble here.”
Ned pumped the lever on the Winchester. “Trouble? What kind of trouble?”
“That’s just it. The kind of trouble you got, you don’t have a name for it. Don’t know what to do about it. That’s where I come in.”
Cassie had forgotten about the bucket. She came close up behind Ned as the two men talked.
“Howdy, miss,” the stranger said.
“Hello,” she said, pulling her shawl tighter around her. She looked up at the stranger’s bright blue eyes and the straight nose that hung over a strong-looking mouth. His face was covered in dark beard.
“Who might you be?” the man asked.
“Cassie Foster,” she said.
“Is there a man in charge in this little town?”
“My father,” Cassie said. “Daniel Foster. He owns the mine.”
“Think I could have a word with him?”
Ned interrupted. “What do you want with him?”
“Business. It’s about the trouble that you don’t have a name for.”
“Let him in, Mr. Gates,” Cassie said.
Gates hesitated, kept his gun on the stranger, then nodded his head. “All right,” he said. “Come on a-down.”
The stranger dismounted. He was even taller than Cassie had thought. Broad shouldered too under that green poncho. Gates pulled aside a crate that formed part of the barricade and let the man and his horses enter. They walked slowly toward the row of ramshackle buildings that made up the west side of Main St. The deep orange sun was beginning to slip down behind the mountain. It would be dark soon.
“Where would I find this father of yours?” he asked Cassie.
“He’s home,” she said. She pointed to the windows of the building up ahead. The words “General Store” were painted on the glass. “We live there.”
The door to the store opened suddenly. A big bulky man in his mid-fifties stood in the doorway in his shirtsleeves.
“Cassie!” he barked. “Where’s that water you went to fetch? And who’s this?” He looked the stranger up and down.
“Sorry, pa,” Cassie said. “I forgot about the water, I’ll get it. This here’s a stranger asking to see you.”
“See me? I know you, mister?” He shot a glance at Ned who had followed the stranger closely. “What’s this all about?”
“Not sure, Daniel,” Gates said. “Seems to think he knows something about our problem.”
“That right?” he looked at the stranger suspiciously.
“It’ll only gonna get worse, if you don’t do something about it. For the right fee, I can help you get rid of it.”
Daniel Foster looked at him with his steel grey eyes. “Come on in,” he said. He nodded at his daughter. “Cassie, don’t forget the water.”
Cassie went over to the well, her eyes nervously scanning the darkening forest behind town.
“Good coffee, Miss Cassie,” the stranger said. He sat in the rocking chair next to the fire holding a tin mug of the coffee she’d made. “And a mighty fine meal you cooked.”
“Thank you,” she said. She felt her face burning, as she smiled.
“Mind if I smoke,” he took his pipe out of his shirt pocket.
“No, I don’t mind,” she said. “I like the smell.”
Daniel Foster interrupted. “Where you coming from, Mr….ah, didn’t get your name,” he said. They were in the kitchen behind the store. Her father sat at the table, drinking his own cup of coffee. Frank and Charlie, her two brothers, big lads in their early twenties, sat on the other side of the table.
“Name’s Slate,” the stranger said, tamping tobacco into the Meerschaum. “Mordecai Slate. I came up the Chilkoot from Skagway.”
“That where you heard about what’s going on here?” Foster asked.
“Let’s say there are rumors floating around. Nothing most people would take seriously.”
“So we can’t expect any help from there?”
Slate struck a match on the fireplace stone and lit the pipe. “Just me.”
“We don’t need no help, Pa,” Frank the eldest said. “We took care of them last night. They might not even come back.”
“They’ll be back, son,” Slate said, taking a long draw on the pipe. He looked out the kitchen window at the dark and blew smoke at it… “It won’t be long.”
“So if they do, we’ll do like last night,” Charlie said. “We’ll shoot the shit out of ’em.”
“There’ll be more of ’em tonight,” he said. “And more the next night. You can’t stop them by just shooting them.”
“That’s horse pucky,” Frank said. “You’re just trying to scare us.”
“If you can’t stop them by shooting them,” Daniel Foster said, “then how do you get rid of them?”
Slate looked down at the empty coffee empty cup resting on his knee. “Think I could have more of that delicious coffee, Miss Cassie?” he said. Cassie ran to get the percolator. After she filled the mug and he took another sip, he said: “For a thousand dollars, I’ll get rid of them.”
“A thousand dollars!” Frank yelled. “Are you serious?” He looked at his father. “Pa, we don’t need this man. Send him back down to Skagway.”
They heard a shot outside and everyone in the room froze for a moment.
“They’re comin’,” a man shouted out in the street.
“Get your guns, boys,” Daniel Foster ordered. The three men jumped to their feet, grabbed their rifles from the rack next to the fireplace and put on their coats. “You stay here, Cassie.”
She watched as her father and brothers ran out through the kitchen door into the store front. The stranger got up from the rocking chair slowly. “Much obliged for the meal, ma’am,” he said. He put on a denim coat with a sheepskin lining, and followed the others. Cassie ran up the back stairs to the second floor and looked out a window onto the street below and saw her men folk running up to the barricade.
Slate stood on the wooden sidewalk in front of the general store puffing on his pipe and watched Daniel Foster and his sons run up to the barricade. Half a dozen men were already there with their rifles. There was enough moonlight and snow shine so that he could see dozens of dark figures moving down from the forest at the base of the mountain toward the barricade.
“Hold your fire, men,” Foster yelled.
The men waited and there was a tense silence. Then Slate heard the music. First came the beat of the tom-tom, and then the flute, and then the weird chanting. The voice of the old medicine man rose up in the night Slate understood Tlingit. He’d lived among Indians as a boy. He knew their languages and their ways. He understood the medicine man’s death song. The men at the barricade opened fire. The shots struck the dark figures outside the barricade, but none of them fell. They just rocked back with the impact but then kept on coming.
“Jesus,” Frank Foster yelled. “They don’t die!” He fired two more rounds from his Winchester. “Die, you heathen dogs…”
More men ran to the barricade and now a dozen rifles poured a steady rain of lead at the Tlingits. Some of them fell, but for everyone that went down half a dozen more took his place. Soon they were at the barricade and climbing over—an unstoppable, inexorable tide of rotting flesh, bones and gnawing teeth.
There was a scream. Frank Foster was down with one of the Tlingits on top of him. The thing’s broken teeth bit into his forehead and tore a piece of it away. Daniel Foster screamed and beat at the Indian’s head with the stock of his rifle. He knocked the thing off his son, and fired six rounds into its head and it didn’t move. But it was too late. His boy lay still on the ground.
More of the things clambered over the barricade. There was no stopping them. Charlie Foster ran up next to his father. “Pa!” he yelled.
�
��They’ll kill us all,” Daniel Foster said. He looked up to see two more Tlingits, climbing over the barricade. He fired his rifle, pumping the lever and pulling the trigger as fast as he could until there were no shells left in the magazine.
“Run for it,” one of the men yelled, and the men folk of Beaver Junction ran from the barricade, seeking another place to shoot from. Daniel Foster and Charlie hid in the alley between their store and the barbershop. They jumped when they heard the sound of loud, repeating shots firing mechanically over and over. They looked out to the middle of the street where the stranger, his pipe clenched between his teeth, knelt on one knee behind a Gatling Gun that stood on a tripod. An open trunk lay on the ground behind him, and behind that stood the pack horse he’d brought with him. Mordecai Slate cranked the handle and the gun’s revolving barrels turned, and with each turn a new round of .30 caliber ammunition dropped down from the carousel magazine on top. His arm moved mechanically, and he turned the gun on a swivel. The Tlingits reeled under the impact of the shots. The gun blew their arms off, split their heads open. Flesh flew and splattered from pancake size wounds in their chests. More of the Undead Tlingits came over the barricade and Slate mowed them down like wheat caught in a combine.
Then suddenly they stopped coming, the ones that were still on their feet retreated to the forest. Daniel Foster came out of the alley with his son. The others came out into the street. They saw the medicine man standing at the edge of the black forest, beating his drum and they heard the young Indian girl, her long pigtails down her shoulders, playing that weird, haunting music on her flute. A cloud passed over the moon and there was less light, and then they all disappeared back into the woods.
“Cassie!” Daniel Foster yelled. “Cassie, where are you?” He ran up the stairs to the bedrooms on the second floor. “She’s not here!” he shouted at Charlie. He ran down the stairs and found Slate in the small living room next to the kitchen. “My daughter’s gone,” he said.
“They took her,” Slate said. “I thought they gave up too easily. They got what they came here for.”
“They came here for Cassie?”
“Looks that way.”
“But why?”
Slate gave him a hard look. “I wouldn’t know,” he said.
“My God!” Foster said. “They killed Frank and now Cassie.”
“They didn’t kill her,” Slate said. “There’s signs of struggle but no blood.”
Foster grabbed up his rifle again. “Charlie, you stay and see after Frank,” he said and put his parka back on.
“I’m going with you, Pa,” Charlie said defiantly. “We can take care of Frank when we get back. I’m not stayin’ here knowing Cassie’s out there with those things.”
“All right.” He looked at Slate. “What about you?”
“I told you what my fee is,” Slate said. “Aren’t you the owner of the Killibrew Mine? You can afford it.”
“Damn you,” Foster yelled. “All right. A thousand.”
“In advance.”
Foster ran back upstairs and got the money from a tin he kept under a floorboard in the bedroom. He came down and gave Slate the money. “Bring that big gun with you,” he said.
“How long this mine been open?” Slate asked as they rode up the side of the mountain. The trail left behind by the Undead Tlingits in the snow would have been easy for a blind man to follow. Slate and Daniel Foster rode side by side. Charlie Foster rode behind them next to Slate’s packhorse.
“Tweny-five years,” Foster said. “I found gold there with my brother Wes.”
“He was the first one killed,” Slate said.
“Yeah,” Foster answered.
“And then they killed your son Frank,” Slate said. “And took your daughter. Seems like maybe there’s something personal in all this.”
“It’s personal now,” Foster said. He looked over at Slate, sizing the man up. “This how you make your living?” he asked. “Chasing down things in the night?”
“There are a lot of things out there,” Slate said. “Things people are afraid of. That’s why they bring me into it. They need an outsider. Somebody who’s not involved.”
“Professional monster hunter,” Foster said. “What makes you qualified for the job?” Slate looked up at him from under the wide brim of his hat. “Experience.”
The tone of Slate’s voice sent a chill down Foster’s back and he knew better than to ask any more questions.
“The dead coming up out of their graves,” Slate said. “There’s usually a reason they won’t stay in the ground. Mostly it’s because they’re pissed off about something. You people here in Beaver Junction ever do anything to piss the Tlingits off?”
Foster turned. There was an angry frown on his face.
“The Tlingits pulled out of here a long time ago.”
That was all he said. Slate decided to drop the subject for now.
They rode on in silence another hour and then they came to the Red Bird Tavern, which was halfway up the mountain to the mine. The ramshackle building was dark. There was no smoke coming out of the chimney.
“God damn!” Foster said. “They been here.”
They dismounted and Foster trudged through the hard packed snow to the front door of the Red Bird. He opened it and stepped inside. Slate waited. Foster bolted back out the door a moment later, his face pale white as a sheet. He ran over to a tree and leaned on it while he heaved.
Slate went up to the door and opened it. Enough moonlight came in through the windows so he could see what Foster had seen. The bodies, or rather, the body parts strewn all over the floor and stuck to the walls. The dark stain of blood was everywhere and it smelled like a charnel house. There was no sign of the girl.
He came out of the tavern and walked over to his horse. He noticed Charlie Foster was missing from his mount. Daniel Foster still stood leaning against the tree, wiping his face with a handkerchief.
“Where’s your boy?” Slate asked.
There was a ghastly scream from behind a clump of bushes several yards away, where Charlie Foster had gone to relieve himself. The bushes jumped and shook and Charlie Foster came out from behind them and rolled on the ground, a Tlingit on top of him. The Foster boy kept screaming but his screams were nearly drowned out by the ghoulish roar of the Indian he was wrestling with. Slate yanked the Colt carbine out of its saddle holster. Half a dozen more Tlingits came out of the bushes and there were more, coming out from behind the trees. Slate ran up and swung the stock of his rifle at the head of the Tlingit on top of Charlie. The Undead Indian screamed in pain and rolled back on the ground.
“Get him,” Slate shouted at Foster.
Daniel Foster grabbed hold of his son’s jacket and pulled him down the hill on his back. The Undead Tlingit sprang up at Slate again, its teeth dripping with blood, its one good eye glaring at him from under a rotting lid. Slate swung the rifle again and the stock caught the Undead under its fleshless chin. The blow knocked the thing to the ground. Slate clubbed him several more times with the gun butt, until its face and head had turned into a caved-in pile of mush.
The others were moving in. Slate raised the rifle and began firing. Six shots rang out in quick succession from the rifle’s revolving cylinder. Six of the Tlingits dropped from the impact of the .45 slug. For a moment the others hesitated. Slate backed down the hill, pulled another loaded cylinder from his pocket and exchanged it for the empty one. The Tlingits jumped out from behind cover. Slate fired six more times. Six more fell and didn’t move. Foster began firing, but the Tlingits he hit didn’t fall. The shots only seemed to slow their staggering movement toward them. Slate reloaded with loose shells from his pocket, the moonlight glinting on the silver, and six more Undeads flopped down on the snowy ground.
The others had had enough. They retreated into the darkness, and Slate could hear them moving back up the mountain.
“Pa!” It was Charlie Foster. He lay on the ground, gurgling blood. His father knelt next to
him. “It’s all my fault,” he cried. There was blood pouring from his throat and his shoulder. “It’s because of this!” He pulled something out of his pocket. It was a gold necklace with a big gold sunburst on a chain of golden links. “I took it. They want it back.”
“God, Charlie!” Daniel Foster said. “Why?”
“I went down in that shaft you told us never to go down,” Charlie gasped. “I knew there had to be gold down there. And there is. But I found this down there too. And some other stuff; stuff that must’ve belonged to the Tlingit. I took it. I didn’t think it would do any harm. But right after, all this trouble started. I’m sorry, Pa. I…”
“Charlie,” Daniel Foster said. “Charlie, it’s not your fault, boy. It’s got nothing to do with you. Charlie—” Foster broke off with a sob when he saw that his son was dead.
“What kind of rifle was that you were using?” Foster asked. They rode alone together up the side of the mountain. Foster didn’t want to talk about his dead son or about anything else right then. Talking about Slate’s weapon was a safe topic. It wouldn’t be long before they got to the mine.
“A modified Colt M1855,” Slate said. “They were made during the War. They fired percussive caps but the caps leaked powder and the gun came into disfavor. I modified it so it so it fires .45’s. I use silver shells dipped in garlic. It seems to stop most of the things I run into. It if doesn’t kill them, it at least slows them down enough to give me time to find some other way to destroy them.”
“A hell of a business you’re in.”
Slate smiled ruefully. “You want to tell me now what this is all about?”
“Might as well,” Foster said. “I know I won’t be coming down from this mountain. Twenty-five years ago the Killibrew mine was just a cave up there in the middle of Tlingit territory. Wes and I found it together. There was only a handful of Tlingits still in the area. Most the them either died off from lack of game or moved or moved on to where there was better hunting. There was an old medicine man, his daughter, and about nine or ten braves. That’s all that were left. But there must be hundreds of them that were buried around here. The cave had high-grade ore in it. The ignorant savages didn’t know what they had. They all wore necklaces and ornaments made of pure gold like it was tin. The daughter was proud to wear to wear this.” Foster took the necklace out of his pocket and held it up. “Thing’s worth a fortune.” He put it away. “They were stubborn ones. We offered to buy the land from them but they wouldn’t go. And they wouldn’t give us permission to set up a mining operation in the cave. So we did what we had to do. We killed ’em. Dropped their bodies down a shaft in the back of the cave where there didn’t seem to be any ore streaks. I sure wanted to keep that necklace, but I was afraid somebody might figure out what we done, so I threw it down there with them. We filled the shaft with rocks.
Both Barrels of Monster Hunter Legends (Legends of the Monster Hunter Book 1) Page 73