Bad Medicine

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Bad Medicine Page 15

by Paul Bagdon


  The wind seemed to chase itself in all directions at once, first one way and then another in a bit of a second, whipping in translucent, ever-shifting curtains.

  As Will watched, three events took place simultaneously: A terrific slash of lightning speared the ground not thirty feet from the rider, decimating a small boulder. At the same moment Shark threw himself at the rider, sinking his razor-sharp fangs into the back of the man’s neck, just below his head, hurling him from his horse to the ground. The rider screamed but his scream was cut short as Shark, his grip secure, snapped his entire body to one side, severing the man’s spine.

  At the same time, the brilliant, searing white flash illuminated another rider to Will, moving in the opposite direction, hunched in his saddle, as his cohort had been. He wasn’t quite thirty feet away when the lightning struck and Shark wrenched the other from his horse, and the lightning gave the second rider a view of an impossibly rapid attack—and he heard the crunching snap that ended the outlaw’s life. Further, the attacking creature was flying, already in the air when the lightning struck.

  “Wampus!” the rider screamed in a high-pitched, panicked voice and buried his heels into his horse’s sides. Slipping, sliding, almost going down, scrambling in the mud, the horse whirled, and, running almost blindly, raced off into the storm, his rider lashing him with the reins.

  Will’s pistol had been in his hand the slightest part of a second after the opposite-riding man and horse came into view. He shook the rain from his .45 and holstered it. Sending Shark after the second renegade made no sense, given the storm and the darkness. Further, the rider would be constantly looking behind him and a lucky shot could drop the dog.

  “What the hell?” he asked himself. “Wampus?” The word ticked something far back in Will’s mind, but didn’t bring an image or idea to him.

  It didn’t take too long to catch the dead outrider’s cow pony; the animal was underfed, parasite ridden, and scarred with spur and lash welts and cuts. Will approached him slowly, murmuring to him, and was able to take hold of a rein. He saw why his pressure on the rein stopped the diseased horse so easily: the bit in the animal’s mouth was a long-shanked, cruel Mexican bit that cut into the horse’s mouth, stopping and turning him not through training but through pain.

  Will was surprised to see that the saddle and saddlebags weren’t Mex junk. The saddle was Texas made. Will could tell that as he ran a finger along the stitching, which was straight and waxed and tight, and the fenders and stirrups hung as they should. He released the cinches—the saddle was a double rig—and unbuckled the chest strap. When he hefted the weight off the animal’s back the horse shook himself like a dog coming out of water. Will cut the latigo that jammed the bit into the horse’s mouth and eased the bridle down the pony’s snout. Both his hands were bloody as he removed the bit. He twisted the seven-inch shanks into shapes that would never allow the bit to be used again, bent the mouthpiece in the middle, and tossed the whole bloody affair out into the prairie.

  It took a few moments for the horse to realize that he was free—and then he was gone, as far away from any man as he could get, hooves pounding the sloppy, treacherous mud. The only way a man would stop that horse was with a bullet.

  Will went through the saddlebags. He found handfuls of .45 ammunition in each, a bit of beef jerky, a knife that was dull enough to be useless, which he tossed aside, a few double eagles, and a deck of playing cards with pictures of naked women with mules. Those, too, he tossed onto the prairie. He loaded his pistol, inserted rounds in his gun belt, and left the balance of the bullets in the saddlebags.

  The dead outlaw had nothing worth taking. His .45 was a piece of junk: grips taped, rusted, trigger as stiff as an oak tree.

  The rifle, a single-shot, rusted, sightless chunk of scrap metal, was no better. Will figured firing the goddamned thing would be suicide; the round would probably explode within the corroded mechanism and barrel, blowing his head off. He hurled it into the dark. The gun belt was much the same: worn, uncared for, the cartridge loops uneven and sure to scatter ammunition at a gallop. The man carried neither a hide-out gun—a derringer—or a decent knife. Will and Shark left the corpse for the vultures, Will carrying the saddle over his shoulder.

  It would have made sense to fetch the pinto and ride him back to the saddle, but Will wanted some time. The word wampus continued to play in his mind. It was too familiar to recall, and yet it was barely familiar at all. “Damn,” Will cursed as he slogged through the mud.

  The storm had calmed considerably, moving on, the rain little more than sprinkles. The dark clouds that had generated the storm had, of course, scudded on their way, and the half-moon shed some light.

  The pinto was as Will had left him, although stirred-up mud around him showed he’d done a good deal of nervous shifting about due to the lightning and thunder. Will eased the tattered saddle blanket over the pinto’s back and smoothed it, particularly at the withers—the place where galls are most likely to occur under a new saddle. Will flipped the stirrups over the seat and settled the saddle in position on the horse’s back. The fit was closer to good than to fair, and later, minor adjustments could be made to the seat, cantle, and tree. He wasn’t sure that the horse had ever carried a saddle. He was an Indian pony, and most Indians considered saddles to be merely excess weight, a silly device for a poor rider who can’t control his animal. The pinto stood well under the saddle, though, offering no resistance. “I shoulda known it,” Will said aloud. “You was stolen well after you was saddle broke.”

  He pulled the front cinch and set the back cinch, leaving an inch between the leather strap and the pinto’s belly. That strap was intended not to secure the saddle but to brace it and allow it to rise a bit off the horse’s back when the rider was roping or descending a steep grade.

  The hackamore and the single rein were fine—the animal was used to both. Will moved both stirrups down a notch. At the same time he looked carefully over the workmanship of the seat, stirrups, and fenders. The leather needed oil and the buckles were showing some rust, but all in all, the saddle wasn’t a bad piece of work.

  Will stepped into a stirrup and climbed aboard, setting off at a walk.

  Lightning struck not far away, sluicing mud and stone into the air, dropping Shark to his crouching attack position, lips curved back over his eyeteeth, the whites of his eyes showing, his body like a tightly coiled spring. The lightning, the dog, and the blast of thunder brought wampus back to Will’s recollection.

  “I ain’t scared of no horse or nothin’ else,” an old Indian bronc buster told him when Will was still a boy, maybe a dozen years old. “ ’Cept, a course, a wampus. That’s a critter the Great Spirit chased down to earth—meanest goddamn thing a man could come across. They can fly, Will, an’ they can kill in a heartbeat. Once one has his eye on you, why, you’re gone, boy. Ain’t nobody escapes a wampus.”

  “You ever seen one?”

  “If I had I wouldn’t be settin’ here. I seen drawings an’ heard stories, though.”

  Will forced a nervous laugh. “That’s jus’ a superstition. Don’t mean nothing.”

  “No? I seen the remainders of a fella, a white fella, a wampus took after. Purely tore that man apart—worse’n a painter or bear could ever do. You jus’ pray to that god a yours you never cross one. Ain’t a Indian in the whole of the West don’t know ’bout the wampus—an’ plenty of whites do, too.”

  Like many dog owners, Will had begun talking to his dog, sometimes in full sentences, most times in a few words. Of course the animal couldn’t understand any of it, but that fact didn’t stop Will.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Will said to the dog walking along at his right side, “that wampus thing give me a good idea. All the Indians are scared, superstitious, an’ them loonies they’re ridin’ with—deserters, gunhands, murderers, rapists, all like that—they’re as crazy an’ scared an’ superstitious as the Indians. Here’s the thing, pard: your name isn’t Shark no more�
��it’s Wampus. OK?”

  The dog watched Will’s face until he determined that no actual command was involved. Then he simply walked alongside the man, more attuned to his surroundings and the scents that he picked up than the words the man continued to utter.

  “I figure it this way,” Will said. “We make a move on the camp an’ you gnaw on another outlaw. That’ll build the ‘wampus’ thing even stronger in their booze-an’-drug-soaked minds. Then we’ll haul ass away from the camp but follow the crew—hell, how hard can it be to track all those horses?—an’ pick them off as we go. Sound good?”

  Wampus didn’t look up at Will this time. Instead, he stopped, nose high, drawing in the scent of smoke and of men. “Gettin’ close?” Will said in a lowered voice. He reined in, dismounted, and led the pinto behind him. “Find ’em,” he whispered to Wampus. The dog took point position, matching his speed to Will’s stride.

  The sound from the gathering was loud, disjointed. A couple of Indians were chanting. Will tied the pinto to some scrub and moved on.

  Watching flat in the mud from a small rise, Will saw the group had built a good-sized fire from a wrecked freighter, deciding they were better off in the fire’s light than continuing on to their sanctuary at Olympus in the dark with a wampus about. It was clear that the escaping outrider had brought back the news of the other rider’s attack. More Indians took up the chant, while the whites, in their ludicrous army outfits, passed bottles and huddled together, pistols or rifles clutched and ready.

  One Dog pushed his way into the center of the group of whites and held out his arms for silence. It did no good. He punched the man closest to him, knocking him unconscious to the ground, but the violence had no effect on the panicked jabbering and chanting. One Dog drew his pistol and found that none of his men were even watching him, concentrating instead on the grounds around the fire, each completely expecting a mythical beast to fly into the group, slashing and killing.

  Will shivered in the cold mud, Wampus pressed tightly against his side. He grinned and whispered to the dog, “You pressin’ against me ’cause I’m such a fine, upstanding fella, or you lookin’ for a bit of body heat?”

  A fistfight broke out down below, but the combatants were quickly separated by the others. It wasn’t that they gave a damn if the two drunks killed one another; they didn’t want to lose four eyes watching for the wampus.

  Not but one way to do this. I either play on their craziness an’ fear, or I don’t. He sighed. An’ I’m damn well gonna do it. Will drew his .45, which was still dripping wet. He spun the cylinder and held the pistol next to his ear, and the sweet mechanical whirr was as even as the ticking of a ten-dollar watch. He flipped the cylinder open and used his thumb to wipe any moisture off the rear end of the cartridges—the end that held the primer and gunpowder. He closed the cylinder into the frame of the .45 with a satisfying click, pushed back from the edge of the slope, and walked to his horse, dog next to him, gazing up at his face, feeling the tension that suddenly seemed to shroud Will.

  “Might not be the smartest thing I ever did, and there’s a good chance we’ll both end up buzzard bait, but we’re gonna take a run at it, right Wampus?” Will said grimly. The dog growled deep in his chest, knowing from the tone of Will’s voice that action was coming.

  Will took up his rein from the brush, mounted, and pulled his pistol. He sat for a moment, said, “Might just as well get to it,” drove his heels into his horse’s side, and shouted to his dog, “Git ’em, boy! Git the sonsabitches!”

  The pinto leaped forward, fighting for traction, slinging globs of mud with all four hooves. Wampus, low to the ground but running hard, reached the periphery of the fire faster than the man and the horse. An outlaw standing slightly away from the rest, relieving himself, saw the dog in time to begin a scream before glinting white eyeteeth severed his jugular. Will followed a second later, riding at a slipping, sliding gallop directly at the fire, shooting randomly, dropping a pair of men too startled by the attack to even raise their weapons. Wampus was everywhere at once, tearing flesh, ghostly in the light of the fire, looking like an apparition from hell. He sank his teeth into an Indian’s groin and tugged out a couple of grotesque lumps of flesh, looking like a pair of cherry apples in a blood-soaked cloth sack. The outlaw’s howl of pain was louder than the fire, Will’s shooting, and the panic that gripped the gang.

  Will crouched low over the pinto’s neck and urged more speed from him—pointing him directly at the fire. The flames were too high to clear, but the horse plowed through them, slipped and almost went down as he landed, but gathered his hooves under himself and within a couple of strides was in a gallop again. Will, turned in the saddle, wasted a couple of shots that were misses, but took down another pair with his last two rounds. “Come on, dog!” he yelled.

  Wampus appeared through the flames as if he were flying and quickly caught up with the pinto.

  It was only then that a barrage of gunfire erupted from the befuddled outlaws—much too late to accomplish anything.

  Will reloaded his Colt as he rode, reins held in his mouth. Although he looked back several times, he saw no indication of riders coming after him—and he was sure Wampus would give him a warning if he missed anyone on his trail.

  He rode a mile or so and reined to a halt. He stepped down from the saddle and checked the pinto. There were some minor burns and the horse had lost some tail, but he was sound and uninjured. Will crouched to examine Wampus, who was delighted with the attention. The dog, too, had lost a bit of coat to the fire, but was fit otherwise. As Will rubbed his muzzle and neck his hands came away wet and sticky with the unmistakable, thickly metallic scent of blood—and the blood wasn’t that of the dog.

  It was logical enough that all the outlaws rode after Will—what was there to protect their saloon from? Any townspeople who hadn’t fled wouldn’t dare to invade the place. Will kept on riding to Olympus. The moon gave him barely enough light to see.

  Will sent the dog into the renegades’ bar first. The dog came out in a very few minutes, tail awag. There were no men in there. Will rode around to the rear of the gin mill and looped his rein loosely over a short hitching rail. There was some hay under a tarp behind the saloon. It was dry second cutting, but it was better than the pinto was used to. Will gave the horse half a bale. He walked around the building in the opposite direction. There wasn’t a sound from inside, but the saloon’s pervasive stench hung around it like a foul cloud.

  Will pushed through the batwings.

  The inside of the gin mill was a disaster. Bullet holes speckled all the walls, the floor was gummy with spoiled beer, and there was the stink of long-unwashed men and the cloying odor of the urine of those who hadn’t bothered to step outside, much less walk to the privy. But there was treasure, too; the outlaws must have done some scrounging in the mercantile. Will found a .30-30 leaning against the bar, a pair of denim pants in one of the rooms upstairs, and a shirt that didn’t look like it had been worn yet.

  There was a canned ham, several tin cans of something or other—the labels were burned off—and a jar of penny-candy sourballs. In the same room there was a new slicker and a rifle kit, both of which he took. Best of all, there was a bottle of whiskey and three packs of Bull Durham. The majority of the bottles behind the bar had been used for target practice, but several had been set aside. Will took a good suck at his bottle and then drew and blasted hell out of the remainder of the renegades’ liquor supply. He drew himself a bucket of beer and, as an afterthought, shot holes low in the barrel and watched the beer flow onto the floor. He opened the canned ham, gave most of it to Wampus, and ate the rest himself.

  Will took the time to roll a half-dozen smokes, taking a belt from the bottle every so often. He lit a cigarette and coughed out a smog of bluish smoke, his throat feeling as if it had caught fire. He put out that fire with a mouthful of booze and took another drag. This time the smoke went where it was supposed to, and the vague satisfaction that tobacco bring
s—impossible to explain to a nonsmoker—flowed through him.

  Nevertheless, there was an ambience to the place that made Will nervous. It was not unlike sitting in an empty viper’s den, the crushed-cucumber stink still strong, and not knowing when the serpents would return. Wampus, too, was uncomfortable, pacing, panting lightly. The scent of the enemy was too strong for him to relax.

  After crushing the nub of his cigarette on the floor, Will pulled on the denim drawers and board-stiff shirt. He strapped on his gun belt and tied his holster low on his right leg. He stuffed the sacks of Bull Durham into various pockets but left the bottle on the table.

  Both he and Wampus drew in deep breaths of fresh air when they’d put some distance between themselves and the saloon.

  Will had no doubt that the renegades could track when full light came, but with the fear of the wampus in their minds, he doubted that they would—not immediately, anyway. He loped for a few miles and then put the pinto into a fast walk. The prairie ahead of him looked as flat as a billiard table in the dawn light. It offered no cover and certainly no ambush point where he could await the outlaws. He put his horse back into the animal’s easy, ground-eating lope, Wampus jogging at his side.

  The elements of surprise and fear were all he had going for him, Will thought. Another attack too soon could blunt both his advantages: the renegades would soon figure out that their tormentors were merely a man and a dog—easy enough to kill. Will decided to hold off on his forays for two or three days. By then, he believed, the outlaws would be on his trail, and he’d have had time to plan out his next attack on them.

  Will rode through the day, stopping only at the meager water holes he encountered. The water was generally bad—petroleum tasting—but when a man, a horse, and a dog are parched, any water is good water.

  It was coming dark when Will saw a spurt of dust far ahead of him, coming toward him. It was a single rider, from the rooster tail it put in the air. Any more than one horse would raise a more substantial cloud of grit behind them.

 

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