At least the boys still had their own damn hands and could yank pistols if need be. Even so, Windy didn't much want to honcho a gang of billy goats. A job like that wasn't what you'd call dignified.
Windy sighed. He'd have to play it smart. Think things through.
So first off, he'd take care of the curses the witch had dropped on him and his boys. Then he'd backtrack to the spell the witch had been working on.
Windy had read up on it while snooping around the cabin. The Hand of Glory, it was called. Lop off the hand of a hanged gunfighter, sprinkle it with hot peppers and a bunch of other fixin's and do a little abracadabra over top of it, plus make a candle from the dead shootist's fat, and there you'd be, taking down banks without so much as a pea-shooter for protection. Anywhere, anytime. Just so long as you had a match to light that damn candle, because it would freeze anyone who stood in your way colder than a Yukon miner's ass.
Windy took one last look at the cabin. Everything dark, and still no sound at all. Maybe the bruja had tottered in there and died. Could be. That was what had happened to the witch in that story Windy's mama used to tell him. That fairy tale about Hansel & Gretel. Those two young 'uns had killed a witch by cookin' her up in her own oven, hadn't they? Maybe the gunfighter had taken a lesson from Hansel & Gretel. Maybe so.
But maybe not. Bar cookin', Windy knew by the scorched look of her that the bruja had stumbled across the wrong campfire at the very least. But he didn't much care how she'd come to meet her fate, not now that he had her spellbook and her potions and her peepers.
Hell, if only Buck Barlowe had gone for Windy's scheme. It sure made sense to Windy—why did you need yourself an actual witch when you had her secrets at your fingertips? No call to keep her around.
Damn, but it was too bad about old Buck. Some folks just wouldn't listen, though.
Windy put the spurs to his Appaloosa and the horse trotted forward. The frogs continued their musicale down there in his belly, but the critters didn't bother Windy near as much as they had an hour before.
The outlaw looked to the sky. Dawn was coming on quick, all rosy-fingered above the towering black pines, but he could still see the stars and the moon...
...and a bat flitting above the treetops, circling low.
Windy Jim didn't pay the little black devil no nevermind.
Bat couldn't do him no good, earthly or otherwise.
He didn't need no bat to make a Hand of Glory.
PART FOUR
THREE BILLY GOATS GRUFF
Stack coaxed Bill Fristo's old Paint up a rough switchback trail. The horse was just about done in—six miles this morning through the woods, then two more as they climbed above timberline, and the last two over busted shards of slip-sliding granite that would confound a mountain goat.
Stack was about done in, too. Especially his backside, where the lynch mob had carved that hunk of flesh off his slats. Sure, the wound had just about healed thanks to the Chinaman's magic, but still it was hard to sit a saddle with a slab of flesh missing from the tenderest part of your hindquarters.
But even under the best of circumstances it would be hard to sit a saddle on a day like this, what with the sun shining down through a cloudless sky and no cover anywhere on the side of the mountain, just those hunks of granite catching the heat and tossing it off in blistering waves that threatened to scorch anything that moved.
It was a place so quiet and empty that every crunch of the horse's hooves over pebbly granite was like a thunderbolt. Stack's breaths came raw and ragged. Trickles of sweat poured off of him and damned if he knew where it was coming from, because he didn't even have a canteen, hadn't had a drink since breaking camp in the woods that morning, and he felt drier than a temperance union social.
Hell, it could be worse. Could be he was a horse like the one between his legs, accustomed to shade and apple trees and days where he did nothing more than wander around a corral and drop dumplings for the Mexicans to muck up.
Or worse than that. Could be he was a witch who'd flared up like a hunk of fatty meat tossed on a campfire.
Stack had some sympathy for that feeling. He'd had something like that happen to him once upon a time, though he wasn't the kind to go picking at scabs. He didn't dwell on his past, especially the parts that had gone bad. And that part had been the worst. He still had the scars to show for it.
But he had scars aplenty. He'd earned each and every one of them by getting through one sort of trouble or another. But get through those troubles he always did. Just the way he would get through this.
Stack climbed down off the Paint and fed the animal a couple of apples he'd taken from Fristo's place. Had half an apple himself, standing there beneath the blazing sun, sucking every bit of juice from the fruit before he swallowed it, trying to convince himself that he could feel a cool breeze whispering down from someplace high and icy.
The fruit didn't sit easy in his belly the way it should have. Food never did anymore. Curse or charm, take your pick—it came with the territory. It was all part of the deal he'd made with the Chinaman.
Stack fed the other half of the apple to the Paint. Then he stepped in front of the animal and tugged the reins, leading it up one set of switchbacks, and then another.
Eight or ten more sets and it appeared he'd be at the top of the mountain.
He didn't know which way he'd be going after that.
But his boots knew. They were directing him, following the trail of the bat he'd cut loose the night before. When he got to the top of the mountain, the bats would tell him which way to go. Same way as they were telling him he had to hump that switchback trail right now.
Shards of granite crunched underfoot. Stack's feet ached. His boots didn't seem much happier—the bats began to make little squealing sounds, like rats caught in a trap.
Stack's boots were getting hungry.
And, he well knew, they weren't much on patience.
Goddamn, but it was hotter than Wild Bill Hickok's own pistol on top of that mountain. Not one bit of shade—no trees at all—nothing but rocks and more rocks.
Windy's lips were cracked and dry, and his nose felt like a potato that had baked too long at the edge of a campfire. The new leader of the Buck Barlowe gang couldn't hardly stand it, but he was saddlesore straight through and needed to rest for at least a minute or two.
While he was at it, he could stand a break from the frogs down there in his belly. The little bastards were kicking up a real ruckus.
Every inch as dry and miserable as Windy Jim was, that's how dry and miserable the frogs were, too. The frogs didn't much like being dry and miserable. But there wasn't too much Windy could do about that. The gang only had one full canteen left between them, and they were a long way from water. Still, with the frogs hopping and leaping and kicking at his guts, Jim could hardly think straight.
To hell with being noble. Windy just naturally had to drain half that canteen to earn himself a moment of peace. Fortunately, the other boys had gone wandering and weren't around to complain. Being half goat, they weren't having too much trouble traveling through the mountains, anyway. For one thing, they didn't have any frogs in their bellies. Just roots and branches and scrub. Hell, the boys had eaten half the vegetation on the mountainside on the way up, and Jim figured it would be the same on the way down.
The frogs quieted, sloshing about, settling down a bit. Jim opened his saddlebags and tried to concentrate on the witch's spellbook. He'd flipped through it three or four times the night before, but he hadn't found a single word about putting frogs in a fellow's belly, let alone any way to get rid of the damned amphibians once they'd made themselves t'home.
So he flipped to the part about the Hand of Glory. That one was spelled out real good. Maybe he and the boys would have to get that spell going first, rob themselves a bank or two. Then they could hire themselves a witch, a real professional who could take care of Windy's frogs and the boys' goaty troubles before you could say —
"Wi
ndy! It's the gunfighter!" Jalisco charged across the mountaintop, braying to beat the band. "The one we lynched! And he's coming this way!"
Windy slapped the spellbook closed. Every frog in his belly leaped in unison at the sound, but he didn't let that trouble him any. Right now it looked like his luck was about to change, what with a gunfighter practically falling into his lap and him needing a gunfighter's hand to get the spell going... as long as he killed the gunfighter right thoroughly this time.
Windy stood and looked Jalisco in the eye. "You sure it's the same fella?"
"Yeah." Jalisco nodded, so eager to please that he nearly speared Windy with his billy goat horns.
"He still have his right hand?"
"Yeah."
Windy smiled. "Then let's corral the sumbitch and get us the hell off this mountain."
Three or four more switchback twists and it looked like Stack would be done climbing.
He tugged the reins and Fristo's old Paint trudged after him, the horse's hooves crunching over rocks, Stack's feet doing the same. Step after step after step. Eyes locked on the trail, because he didn't want to lose his footing on this loose rock, didn't want to —
"Hold it, gunfighter."
Stack looked up, slowly. Saw a pair of cloven hooves jutting from broadcloth breeches first off, then a gun fisted in a dark brown hand, and finally a brown face, mostly human, but with a white billy goat beard and sparkling brown animal eyes and a pair of horns as sharp and dangerous as Satan's own.
There was something about that face. Something familiar.
"Stop your staring, boy."
Damn. Lose the whiskers and the horns, encircle that sparkling brown with a pair of human irises, and you'd have the face of one of the men who'd strung Stack up in Fristo's apple orchard.
The billy goat cocked his pistol. "I told you to stop staring. And hand over your pistol."
Stack let go of the reins. Fristo's horse whinnied and nudged his shoulder, but he ignored the animal, keeping his eyes trained on the billy-goat man.
"The gun. Now."
With his left hand missing, Stack had abandoned his holster. The scarred Navy Colt was tucked under his gunbelt so he could get to it with his right hand. He reached across his belly, his callused fingers brushing the cherrywood grip —
"Slow, boy," the billy goat brayed. "Take it real slow and easy — "
Stack yanked his Navy Colt. The billy goat fired his pistol. The first bullet whizzed over Stack's shoulder and slammed Bill Fristo's horse dead between the eyes, and then it was like someone had pulled a spigot in hell because hot blood geysered from the horse's wound and washed the back of Stack's neck as he worked the trigger of his Colt, standing his ground while the billy goat's second shot tore through the brim of his oxblood Stetson and then the billy goat jerked back, tottering on cloven hooves like a drunk, and Stack fired again, and the goatman pitched over the side of the trail just as Fristo's dead horse did the same, and they tumbled together through the granite heat, one slamming wet and broken and bloody over the other, tumbling over and over until they came to rest on a set of rocky switchbacks thirty feet below.
Stack whirled, staring at the mountainside—bleached rock and an ocean of blue sky above. Stack knew that his enemies were hiding among the rocks, but he couldn't see them, couldn't see anything because the afternoon sunlight burned down through that clear blue sky like God's own fire, glinting off the granite and blinding the gunfighter.
Stack squinted, but it was still too bright by half. Sweat trickled over his brow and burned his eyes. He blinked. Everything was blurry now, and —
He heard familiar crunching. Footsteps on granite, above and to the right. He cocked his pistol, trusting his ears, and turned.
Two goatmen ducked behind a man-sized boulder on the second switchback ridge above.
Stack stood in the blazing sunlight, waiting for the billy goats to come after him.
They didn't.
But the man-sized boulder did.
The billy goats grunted as they pushed the boulder over the side of the switchback trail.
Stack had plenty of time to get out of the way. Of the boulder, that is. But other rocks followed in its wake, dislodged by the first, and he couldn't dodge them all.
A rock as big as a man's head slammed Stack dead in the chest and stole his wind. Felt like it had made a hole straight through him and traveled on but he hadn't been that lucky. The rock took him with it, over the side of the switchback trail, and then he was sliding down, long legs tangling with his arms, his spine twisting this way and that like a circus contortionist's, open palm leaving fleshy trails on those hot white rocks and he tumbled down, down... other rocks racing him now, slamming his body like hard fists as they passed him by.
The sound in his head was like a thunderstorm that was never going to end. But it did. He slammed into something soft and blacked out for just a second or two, and when he came around the thunderstorm had reduced to a soft trickle, and soon it was nothing, the sound a final grain of sand makes as it whispers from an hourglass.
Stack winced. Everything hurt. Everything, except for his right cheek. It lay on a soft pillow.
Soft, and wet.
He got his eye open and saw that he'd landed face-first in the split belly of Bill Fristo's dead horse.
Hell of a way to end up. He wouldn't go out like this.
But damned if he could move.
And then he heard the busted granite sounds again. Not another rock slide. Footsteps. Or hoovesteps. The cloven hooves of the billy-goat men.
"We get him?"
"We got him!"
Once again. Stack tried to move, only to realize that his legs were pinned by a granite blanket. Big rocks and little rocks. He might be able to move some of them with his remaining hand, might be able to toss them off one at a time if he had an hour or two to spare. But he knew damn well that he didn't have more than a handful of minutes before the goatmen would be close enough to smell.
Concentrating, he tried moving his legs, hoping that he'd have some wiggle room. But all he could move was his left foot.
The gunfighter twisted, looked over one shoulder. A couple small rocks rolled away.
Stack strained, made it up onto his elbows. Now he had a better view. The toe of his left boot poked through one corner rock pile.
"The nigger's movin'!" one of the goatmen hollered. "He's still alive!"
"That's good, 'cause it would be a shame if he died from an avalanche. Windy Jim says we got to hang him for that spell to work."
"Okay then. Let's get him the hell off this mountain and string him up."
"Yeah. Afore he has a chance to die on us natural-like."
Stack strained against the rock pile, but all that heat and weight was too much—his elbows gave out and he sank against the horse's bloody belly. He didn't have one ounce of gumption left in him. He couldn't move at all.
But his left foot could. Not his foot proper, actually. What moved were the bats that made up his left boot.
He'd cut the stitching and freed one of the creatures the night before, sending it to track the witch. Now the other bats worked against that loose stitching, their leathery wings flapping, their razor-sharp teeth cutting —
Stack giggled. It kind of tickled, the bats squirming like that —
And then the first bat took wing... and the second flapped away... and the third —
The screams of the goatmen echoed through the valley below.
Windy Jim ran across the mountaintop as if Satan himself were hot on his heels.
But there was no way Windy could escape what he'd seen, no matter how fast he ran. His brain held onto that memory the way a desperate gambler holds onto his last poker chip.
Seeing Jalisco fall before the gunfighter's pistol was bad enough. But watching those damn bats descend on O'Reilly and Pueblo Jack had been worse. The creatures had ripped the two men to pieces. And while Windy had been able to look away from the blood, there was n
o way he could escape the sound of his compadres' screams.
He'd tried to outrun the sounds. That hadn't worked. He was running still. But even though his buddies were ten minutes dead, he could still hear them scream. The sound rattlesnaked through his memory and made him want to scream himself.
But that would be a mistake. The gunfighter would hear him. He had to run, had to hide before the black man could come after him.
No. That wouldn't happen. The gunfighter was buried under half a mountain. Bats or no bats, Windy didn't have to worry about him.
The outlaw stopped running. Dropped hands onto his knees, nearly wretched. The sun slapped his backside like a punishing whip. If only he had some water. If only he had a drink. But he'd dropped his canteen at the top of the switchback trail, and he wasn't going back for it now because he didn't want to see that black man ever again, be he buried or no —
He had to straighten up. Just a little bit further and he'd be on horseback again. He could see his mount fifty or sixty feet ahead, in the same spot where he'd left it. If he could just get that far —
His belly heaved. A lump rose in his throat. A lump that seemed to have a life of its own, with scrabbling legs, and Windy choked on that lump, gagged, heaved again, sicked up the lump and spat it out.
A puddle of bile splashed white rocks, followed by one frog, then another. The amphibians jumped over hot granite, and Windy's belly heaved again at the sight of them, and another frog kicked over his tongue and squeezed between his lips, and then another —
And then Windy heard the sound behind him. The crunch of a boot on granite. Then silence. Then the crunch of the boot —
Bad Intentions Page 18