How the West Was Weird, Vol. 2

by Barry Reese

  And it all makes so much sense, it's a shame it isn't true.

  I raise the gun.

  Dumb Tom is ashamed, yes; he's ashamed of the dirty drawings and the love letters he scrawled with Miss Shayes in mind, and raised as a God-fearing boy, one of slow brain, that's enough for him to think he's good for hanging. He loved Isobel, had been infatuated with her. She'd been a beautiful woman after all. But he hadn't been the only one who was guided by that obsession, and in truth Dumb Tom would sooner have cut his own hands off at the wrists than harmed Isobel, even unintentionally. He hadn't murdered her.

  It was Pa who put the locket in the box. This morning he went to Tom's house and then up to his room, and looked under his bed. He found the box, slipped the locket inside, then showed it all to Tom's folks and to the other deputies. Proof of Dumb Tom's guilt. But Tom's innocent. And now I'm here to free him, at Isobel's insistence.

  The scream rattles the jailhouse windows, and it comes at me like a flurry of knives. I go down to my knees again and this time stay down, shrieking as each and every ten-don in the backs of my legs is severed in turn like the strings in a grand piano. The gun shakes in my hand. I can feel the fingers of Isobel's scream begin to dig into the back and separate my vertebrae. Dumb Tom stares down at me, nonplussed.

  He still doesn't understand, curse him to hell.

  Pa died tonight because of the locket. This deputy beside me, he died because he helped Pa dispose of the body, cutting slits into Isobel's gut and trussing a wheat sack about her slender ankles and weighing her down with rocks.

  But they didn't kill her either. Guess that just leaves one suspect in the frame.

  Pa knew where Dumb Tom kept his box of drawings because Dumb Tom had once shown me the box, and be-cause I'd told Pa where to find it. I told him that night I gave him Isobel's locket, when I also broke down and confessed I'd done a terrible thing, out in the woods by the creek. That afternoon, when I'd come across Miss Shayes reading poetry by the water's edge, and crying. I'd wanted to help her, to comfort her. I didn't appreciate that poetry could make a woman feel like weeping even if she wasn't truly sad. She was sitting with her legs tucked beneath her, the skirt of her white dress slightly hitched in the dappled sunlight. I could see her bare legs, halfway up her thigh. Seeing a woman like that, it's different from watching girls skip rope or bathing in the lake. I'd wanted to touch her. To kiss her, her lips and then her eyes, to kiss away her tears. This was what I'd prayed to God for, after all; an oppor-tunity. I was sure, given that opportunity, I could make Miss Shayes see me as a man, not a boy. I could make her fall in love with me, as I'd fallen so deeply for her. And with me it would be different. She could never have loved Dumb Tom, but I was smart and handsome, and she could have loved me.

  She'd smiled at me when she'd seen me approach, and gestured for me to sit beside her. She was a beautiful woman. I didn't know, in that moment, that the destiny of most beautiful women was a violent death; my Pa hadn't told me that yet, watching me sadly across the kitchen table and thinking on how he'd undermined the law and arrested an innocent boy like Dumb Tom to save his own stupid kid from the gallows.

  I sat at Miss Shayes' side, slipping off my own shoes so I could splash in the cold water on a warm day, and when she passed me her book so I could read her a poem I knew then, in my heart, that this was just the prelude to something more. I was overcome with lust as much as love, and it was all I could do not to push my hand up her dress and lean her back on the creek bank then and there, as I suspected she wanted me to. I tried to concentrate on the poem instead. It was a melancholy piece. For the first time I understood every word, I felt every hidden meaning. There was a connection between us. Her tears were proof of her romantic soul, my arousal was evidence of mine. I reached out and stroked the side of her foot beneath her thigh. Her toes weren't painted today, but that was okay. That was better. The winterberry red had excited me in school, but I hadn't wanted it to. That kind of thing was for city girls, and I wanted Isobel here with me, in my little town by the creek, forever.

  Miss Shayes was concerned by my touching her. She moved her feet, blushing and uncomfortable, and smoothing at her dress as if to pretend she hadn't known it was hitched. I reached for her waist instead, her hip, the lap of her skirt. I leaned in for a kiss. She pushed me away. I tried again, and she made an angry sound.

  That was when I hit her the first time, out of frustration. It was the fact she wasn't saying anything. Those wordless sounds she made, the gestures, the inflections, they'd been sweet and evocative before, but now they were just irritating. Dumb, in both senses of the word. I didn't hit her for pushing me away; I hit her because I wanted her to be normal, just for that moment, this moment we were sharing. I knew I was doing something wrong, that I was spoiling things somehow, and I wanted her to tell me what it was, to reassure me, but instead there was just that typical, ridiculous silence.

  She tried to run. I chased her down and caught her quickly, although the rocks at the edge of the creek cut up the soles of my bare feet. The pain made me angry. I pinned her down, balling my fists as she swatted and scratched at me, skinning my flesh in numerous places. Just like her scream has done again tonight.

  I hit her again, and again. I heard the chirp of crickets and the slow rush of water. I heard her spit blood. I heard the frantic skip of her heart. Skitter-whack. I took a rock in my hand and stared down at her, at her dark hair that caught the sunlight so wonderfully but which was now speckled with blood, and at her wide, passionate eyes. And I said something for which I'm utterly ashamed, in the same way as Dumb Tom was ashamed of his drawings and letters, and Pa was ashamed of covering up my crime and transferring guilt to my best friend, a simple-minded bull of a boy with Cherokee blood everyone would believe capable of murder given the right evidence.

  “Tell me,” I said, cruelly. “Tell me you love me, and that'll be an end to it.”

  Isobel looked up at me, eyes glistening, lips blackening with blood and split flesh, and a small sound bubbled in the back of her throat. But, of course, she'd said nothing of the sort in reply. Mute her whole life, there's no reason Isobel Shayes would be different in death.

  She made me so angry. And so I took that rock, and I went to work, and when I was done she wasn't so beautiful anymore. She didn't scream, she didn't beg, and that use-less mouth of hers stretched wide enough so I could count her teeth, but she didn't make a sound.

  Dumb Tom watches me as I die now, Isobel's scream lashing the last of the flesh from my back, and from my arms and legs. I can barely hold the gun to my mouth and swallow the barrel. He still doesn't understand. He doesn't understand much, Dumb Tom. Chances are he never will. He'll never know that, if not for the scream – a scream he can't even hear, I can see that now – I would have allowed him to hang for a murder he didn't commit, as would Pa. I'm not a good friend, see, or a good person.

  But Isobel Shayes, she was a decent woman. I should have known she wouldn't rest until things were set right. I just didn't know she'd come back from the grave to make sure of it.

  My final thought on God's earth is that when I pull the trigger I'll at least be spared that terrible, terrible screaming.

  But I'm wrong.

  Because death isn't the end, and even after that instant when the bullet's done its work, I continue to suffer. In fact, it's worse now than it was before. Now the scream's taking me apart piece by bloody piece, and when it’s done it puts me back together just so it can begin all over again. Isobel has a lot of anger inside her, I guess.

  She gives me one chance, however. Just for a second, the scream dies and instead I fancy I hear her whisper at my ear, “Tell me. Tell me you love me, and that'll be an end to it.”

  But, of course, I can't save myself, because I can't say a word in reply.

  As Pa always said, when you're dead, you're done talking.

  UNHALLOWED GROUND

  by Stacy Dooks

  Alberta-Montana border, 1887.

  I
f I never see this blighted country again it'll be too soon.

  Morgan 'Mad-Dog' Deckard led his horse through the snowy mountain pass. He adjusted the brim of his hat as the horse snorted, working its way through the deep snow. This route hadn't been travelled since they opened up another, safer route that didn't pass through the moun-tains, but Deckard didn't have the time to seek the quick and easy path.

  He frowned, bringing the horse up short with a tug to the reins. The path before him split in two directions, one leading upward, the other further along the same route. Was this where he turned left? Or was that the next one over? What had old Jim McDaniel said? Deckard swore, taking a moment to rest the horse and get himself some chewing tobacco as he struggled to recall the directions he'd been given days before.

  Anger rolled over him, and his expression grew more sour with every movement of his jaw. It just wasn't fair. He'd been so damn sure that bastard chinaman had been cheating at cards. So damned sure. He'd taken all the money Morgan had made selling whiskey and beads to the damned savages off the reservation, a pretty sum that would see Morgan through months of good booze and willing women. So he'd wanted to gamble a little, play a little poker. So what? It wasn't his fault. The chinaman had the look of a cheat. Morgan had called him on it, and done what came natural to a man who frequented saloons from Carson City to Deadwood; he'd drawn his iron and shot the bastard clean between the eyes.

  Morgan winced, running a hand over his face. Of course, things like pulling a gun and shooting people in the face did have the unexpected downside of drawing the attention of the law, which had landed him in his current predicament. Months of jumping from one side of the border to the other, robbing banks, stagecoaches, living hand to mouth and one step ahead of the U.S. Marshals, and the one time he had managed to build a decent racket selling cheap liquor, sto-len rifles, and glass beads to the savages, he had to go and louse it up. It wasn't fair, dammit.

  Morgan sighed, then flicked the reins, clucking his tongue to get the horse moving, taking the lower path and rounding the bend slowly. With luck, he'd be back across the border soon. He'd lay low, maybe at his cousin Steven's ranch for a few months, then try again. Nobody could find him this far from Golden. He found his face breaking out in a smile as the thought comforted him. Yessir, he'd be back across the border in the good ol' U S of A in no time at—

  A horse and rider stood before him.

  “Jesus!” Morgan's cry startled his horse, which reared slightly.

  The other horse was a real beauty, an Arabian mare with a glossy black coat that stood out all the more vibrantly amidst the white drifts lining the mountain pass. The man astride the mount was no less impressive, his gray eyes piercing into Morgan's own with a mixture of intensity and what the thief and killer would swear was amusement. The man looked young, a look compounded by his clean-shaven face (a rarity in these parts) and the smoothness of his features, but the easy way he sat in the saddle and the way he kept the revolver in his hand comfortably trained on Morgan's midsection spoke of his experience. A wide-brimmed Stetson hat kept the afternoon sun out of his eyes and a long duster covered his red jacket. A cavalry sabre sat sheathed on his left hip.

  His red... jacket. Morgan's stomach fell twenty feet. Oh no.

  “Not quite, I'm afraid.” The man's voice was pleasant, as though he was discussing the weather. “Mr. Morgan Deckard, I presume.”

  Keep calm. You can still get outta this. He don't know for sure it's you.

  “Don't know who that might be, sir. I'm jus' on my way back home...”

  “Indeed.” The stranger's foot moved in the stirrup and his horse trotted closer. “A man with the general build, beard, and light scar along the left cheek of his face matching that of a Morgan Deckard, horse thief, whiskey trader, and murderer, riding the horse that he stole from one Yuan Sang, which is gray with a white mark along the left side of its nose, is on his way to his beloved home via the route to the United States least likely to be patrolled by agents of the law... or at least those agents who'd largely discard it as the last refuge of a complete idiot.”

  Morgan blinked. This wasn't looking good. He canted his head, doing his best to look as innocent and confused as he could, even as his hand slowly moved toward the gun at his hip. “Mister, I got no earthly idea what yer jawin' about...”

  The rider drew back the hammer on his revolver. In the quiet of the pass it sounded like a thunderclap. “Please, spare me the protestations of innocence in your God-awful approximation of the Queen's English. If you'd like for me to drape your dead body along the back of the Sang family's stolen property, then by all means draw your weapon. Let's see how fast you American 'gunslingers' truly are.” The man's expression went from playful to solemn as the grave within the span of seconds.

  Morgan had been a killer for some years now and he knew the look of a man who has no compunction about putting a bullet into a man. That look was staring back at him from those cold gray eyes. For a brief minute he thought about taking his chances, then sighed. He raised his hands slowly, spitting tobacco juice and sighing long and deep.

  “Life ain't fair, I tell ya.”

  “Kane, a word if you have a moment.”

  Damion Kane, Sergeant in the North-West Mounted Police, gave the incarcerated Morgan Deckard one last admonishing look before remanding him to the custody of the two constables at the guard house. He removed his Stetson, running a hand through his slightly unruly (though still within regs) black hair before following Lieutenant Raymond Dean into his office. The small detachment in Fort Macleod made up for its lack of manpower with some of the finest and most dedicated officers in the force, and Kane was proud to be one of them.

  He sat across the pine-carved desk from his superior, wincing at the feel of the wooden chair after long days in the saddle. A hot bath in his rooms at O'Leary's Tavern had been foremost in his mind upon delivering the prisoner to custody and ensuring the safe return of the Sangs' horse and Yuan's personal effects, but it seemed that there was scant rest for the virtuous or the wicked alike.

  Dean wasted no time. “I'm sorry to have to place you back in harness so soon after tracking down a lout like Deckard, but it seems we have a bit of a situation that needs tending and I'm low on seasoned men.” The older man turned from the window, his polished brass buttons catching the light as he sat in the chair behind the impressive-looking desk. He pushed a sheaf of papers toward Kane, who took them, flipping through them idly.

  “Professor Emil Zabros? Can't say I've heard of him.” Kane looked upon a Toronto Newspaper clipping. The headline GEOLOGICAL SURVEY SALLIES FORTH leapt off the page in bold if slightly smudged letters. The article's sole photograph depicted a number of men before a railroad car, horses being led into it by workers as they posed in the finest clothing Upper Canada tailors could provide.

  “An engineer, apparently. Something of a hero in the East's scientific community. Did some consultation work with the railroad, provided some method for transporting nitroglycerin across country safely. Made him one of the prime minister's personal darlings.” Dean opened a drawer, withdrawing a long pipe, a box of matches and a tobacco pouch, slowly filling his pipe as he spoke.

  “With the completion of the railroad, more and more citizens are making the move west. Which is good, helps to secure our position so Johnny Yank doesn't get ideas above his station and decides to come calling where he shouldn't. But apparently the march of progress sits less than comfortably with men like Zabros, who's decided to mount an expedition across country, into the north of all places.” Dean clenched the stem of the pipe between his teeth, drawing a match from the box and lighting it. He took a few experimental puffs, the scent of tobacco filling the air quickly as Kane looked back to the article.

  “'...an endeavour to catalogue the species and terrain of the diminishing frontier in the wake of Canadian westward expansion.'“ He leaned back, placing the article on the table. “I take it things went slightly awry?”

  De
an nodded, bringing his hands together on the desk like a schoolboy. “The expedition was meant to travel through Fort Saskatchewan and into the wilderness for a period of no greater than fourteen days. Even with the early thaw, it wasn't deemed feasible to be too far out of reach of rescue in case of mishap. Supplies were checked and double-checked, the best of our Metis guides placed at their disposal, and the dog teams were some of our finest.” Dean took a long draw from his pipe, his expression turning grim beneath his close-cropped silver hair. “It has now been twenty-one days.”

  Kane ran a gloved hand along his chin, feeling the resistance of three-days' stubble. “It could be nothing. The weather slowing them down perhaps?”

  “If only it were so simple.” Dean spoke through teeth clenched tight around the pipe stem. “Once the expedition was deemed to be overdue, a party of mounted police and volunteers were dispatched to search for the wayward scientists.” He trailed off, his expression becoming even more drawn and tense. “Five further days passed, and just as a second party was about to be formed to find the first, a wagon from a nearby farm returned a member of the search party to Fort Saskatchewan.” Dean removed the pipe from his lips. “What was left of the poor soul, at any rate. From the report filed by Sergeant Kaplan, the man looked to have been savaged by some animal.” The old soldier shook his head. “Dead at twenty. Damned waste. I don't envy the Sergeant his letter to the boy's parents in Ontario.”