I went to open the root cellar door, thinking soon as I do this that spook is gonna rush me, but this time soon as I touched the key to the lock the spook he started thumping and slamming up against the door. That was enough for me, my young heart can’t take this no more. I went and told Mrs. Jennings that I cannot handle this ghostly business and she had to fire me or give me a different job.
She slapped me upside the head and told me what a lazy cuss I was and that she would show me there weren’t any such things as spooks.
I followed her out to root cellar thinking either this ghost is gonna take her or me. I wasn’t exactly pleased about either outcome. I tried to show her the fish heads and cord covered in bile but she was too busy berating me to listen. She took the key from my hand with a jerk and unlocked the door. There was no sound or movement just yet. She gave me the severest of stink eye and then picked up the case of beets and went inside.
I waited an awful long minute expecting screams as Mrs. Jennings finished putting her stores away and then called me to come in and put away what I was holding. I did so and wondered mightily on why the spook wasn’t showing himself now.
Nothing, now I was sure that spook was tormenting but me alone. Later I found myself busy with plenty of other chores around the house and it weren’t til late that I was tasked with again gong out toward the root cellar. Evening made me uneasy in passing by and I was alarmed when what should I see but the Jennings dog, General Beauregard lying amongst the shrubs on the far side of the root cellar. I called to him but he did not come when I called. Though he seemed to be lying there and shaking a bit.
I stepped closer thinking him ill when he stopped moving and something went bumbling through the shrubs.
General Beauregard was no more. Something had given him a terrible bite. There was a wide half-moon of neatly impressed teeth marks across him. It was such a strange bite, all net like the teeth were small and the bite was so big, I didn’t know what could have done it except that spook trying to give me the willies and I must say he did. I ran back to the house as fast as my legs could carry me and fetched Charlie Three Toes and Mr. Jennings. I told them what I saw and they rushed out.
We reached the edge of the shrubs it having only been a minute or two and General Beauregard was gone. We didn’t see no trace of blood either. I swore I was telling the whole truth but Mr. Jennings he cursed me again and said he wasn’t about done with my crying wolf all the time. I said it wasn’t no wolf but he just said I was a simpleton.
He said when General Beauregard showed himself again in the morning it would prove me a liar. But I saw the bite on that dogs fore quarters and I don’t think I’m gonna see him again.
Next day I took more canning to the root cellar but this time I was ever watchful outside by the shrubs too but I didn’t see anything. I knocked upon the door and there was no sound. I noisily unlocked the door and slowed creaked it open. Nothing happened, so I quickly put away the case and shut the door. I was glad I didn’t have to go back all day neither.
Later that evening when I was walking back to my place I saw Hailey Summers again. She asked me if I had seen little Tommy Turner. I said I hadn’t but she told me he had been missing since early that morning and she was helping look for him. I joined in the hunt but we didn’t find any sign of him by midnight. Some people suspected he drowned and went down the river but I had to wonder if the spook was behind it and what it might do next.
The next day Mrs. Jennings had me run another case out to the root cellar and before I even got to the door, the thing was banging against it. I ran and got Mrs. Jennings, I wanted her to see what the spook was doing.
She rolled her eyes at me but proceeded to storm out to the root cellar with a new case of beets. We got there and the spook had gone quiet again. She unlocked the door and went inside after calling me all sorts of choice names.
I stood outside thinking I should probably ought to just quit and see if I could get work in Overton or St. Joseph when Mrs. Jennings, she screamed like banshee.
She dropped the case of beets, I heard them crash in a thunder, and she came a running out screaming she had seen the face of the devil.
She slammed the door behind her but didn’t drop the bar, the spook he started thumping against the door and it was cracking open a couple inches with every push of his might.
I rushed to help hold the door and as I came down the steps, I saw the spook through the cracks. He must have been a dead man for his skin was black and red and scaly dead looking. He was a rasping and panting at the door but I couldn’t make out no words.
We finally dropped the bolt and it held good and he couldn’t come out. Only then did she pay attention to my fish heads a few steps away. She agreed that even the devil might devour human food at times and that this surely was his work and he must be tormenting them [The Jennings] on account of their sinful ways[32]. I didn’t doubt the possibility of that answer I just wondered why it had to involve me and my fish in any way. And what about General Beauregard and now I’m inclined to think Timmy Turner too!
Well Mrs. Jennings she went and had me fetch Mr. Jennings and Charlie Three Toes and they came in a huff and demanding just what had happened. When she told him about the thing in the root cellar he laughed at her and called her nonsensical and said it was all just old wives tales and stupid children that believed such rot.
She glowered at him insisting that it was the truth and the devil was a punishing them for their thieving ways. She declared she had seen the face of the devil that he has a jagged toothy smile and that he had beady black eyes and a red and black face that was tattooed like.
Even I didn’t know what to make of that, but I had seen the spooks skin and wondered if the dead were rising from their graves. What if the root cellar was built upon someone’s grave? It was dug pretty new only a month or two old, and I supposed such a thing was possible.
Well Mr. Jennings he looked at me, Mrs. Jennings and Charlie Three Toes and he knew he would never hear the end of it if he didn’t open that door and face the devil.
So he took a deep breath, had a shovel in one hand and Charlie Three Toes behind him with a pick ax and he throwed open the door.
Nothing. There was nothing, no sound, nothing standing there or anything. Mrs. Jennings started to cry and Charlie Three Toes was trying to keep from laughing.
Mr. Jennings he yelled that this was all my fault that I had told enough lies to upset the whole community and that he didn’t never want to see my face again and that he was gonna see to it that I never came around again after he gave me such a licking.
Something grunted at that.
Mr. Jennings he looked from me to Charlie Three Toes to Mrs. Jennings and back to me and it was plain that none of us had made that strange eerie noise.
He went back to saying he was gonna tan my hide but stopped real abrupt.
Right about then we all heard that same horrible rasping and I looked knowing full well that that spook was gonna be rushing toward us. I looked at eye level not seeing nothing but then the shambling sound kicked a case low and I saw just a foot or so off the ground the biggest Gila monster in all of creation!
The thing was long as a man and rasping and charging.
I backed away quick but the beast bit full down on Mr. Jennings and shook itself trying to turn upside down it seemed to me.
It was hard to hear on account of Mr. Jennings crying out and Mrs. Jennings terrified screams. Charlie Three Toes he had jumped something fierce and run off. It was left up to me.
I took the shovel Charlie Three Toes had left and started battering down on that giant lizard. Nothing seemed to make much effect on him so instead of hitting him with the flat of the shovel I took to trying at piercing him with the shovel blade. The beast had flipped himself upside down as the lizards are wont to do[33] and I hit him square with the shovel a cutting somewhat into its throat like.
It wouldn’t let go of Mr. Jennings, not even as I took its head clean of
f with multiple strikes of the shovel.
Well Charlie Three Toes he come back with a scattergun and he shot the monster in the belly and that took it all apart. We each then had to get a crow bar and pry its dead head off’n the leg of Mr. Jennings who was caterwauling something fierce.
It took some doing but we finally managed to get that monsters jaw loose and get Mr. Jennings free of its awful bite.
We rushed him into the house and got a poultice on his leg while Charlie Three Toes then went and fetched the Doctor from over in Rioville.
I went back and looked in the root cellar now and poking around found a smallish tunnel that the monster must’ve been using to come in and out of. I also found a clutch of eggs.
I felt bad about killing that big wonder of the world. I also felt mighty silly at thinking that it was a spook. I filled in the tunnel which emerged out by the shrubs where General Beauregard had been lying. I suspect the good old dog had seen the monster and they got into a tussle and the dog he lost. I wondered if’n Mr. Jennings might lose his battle with the Gila’s tooth venom but weren’t much bothered at the thought of it.
I took the clutch of eggs out of the root cellar and gave them to Chief John for safe keeping. He said he would take them across the river and up into the hills. That the big lizard spirit of the desert would live on where they wouldn’t harm our people.
It weren’t long after this that Mr. Jennings, he lived but was what you would call real frail and sickly like. Also seems a lot of the money double dealing had back fired on him lately and he said he had to be moving on. He would send for Mrs. Jennings in the by and by and he left near a broken man. Least that’s what I told them reporters that asked from up in Salt Lake[34].
I did stay on and help out on the farm and let me tell you, Mrs. Jennings was awful polite to me from then on.
“The murdered do haunt their murderers,”
— Emily Bronte
Black Jack’s Last Ride
The sworn solemn testament of Dan Brill: June 27th 1876
“I am a gunslinger and a wicked man and know that tonight I am truly at the end of my earthly rope. I ask not for forgiveness nor pity just perhaps someone to believe what I do hereby record as my last will and testament. It is the Gods own truth and my life blood will seal its veracity.
I met up with Black Jack Reed and rode with him and his men[35] for nearly nine months. In all that time we shot and killed ten men, held up seven coaches, rustled cattle, stole horses and hit the bank in St. George once.
Lastly we did also waylay and kill one more man for whom we were well paid though I never did know who he was nor who was paying Black Jack for the job. He was awful quiet about it and I did suspect at first that it was a prominent man whom we did not want the Mormons to pursue us for. Black Jack did say one night before we did the deed, when he had a lot to drink that it wasn’t the first time he had been a part of such a thing and his soul was already damned for murder anyhow, so he might as well be paid for it.
Having long been on the wrong side of law and order myself I ain’t much of one to judge, I’ve robbed and murdered but Black Jack, gunslinger that he was, did seem particularly plagued with bad dreams and chronic pain these last few months on account of the evil things he had done. He kept a stiff upper lip as most Englishman are won’t to do but his was driven by a bitterness and resentment only the truly desperate and wicked attain.
Black Jack often had horrid scabby sores upon his legs and could not ride as long as he had when we first met. He would wash his legs in the ditch that ran through the lower St. Thomas fields, and I was always careful to drink upstream of his condition.
I repeat myself sometimes because I am a relatively unlearned man and find it necessary to go over again what happened in my mind to make sense of it. Our last job was the murder and again I stress between myself and my Maker that I did not know who it was to be.
Black Jack had the four of us ride out halfway to St. George along the Virgin River and wait a good long time. I think he knew what kind of dire condition he was in so he had given plenty of time for us to rest and for him to soothe his infected legs in the cool waters. I suspect that he had been given word of a time and place of our intendeds crossing and we had but to wait in the shadows of a narrow gulch within the canyon. It was cool and gave us much relief from the usual heat of the season.
We did let several wagons pass by without their being aware of our presence for the course of three days. Black Jack would watch them closely and once he was sure it was not our man lay back down and rub salve on his legs that he had received from a Mrs. Jennings.
We ate hard tack and jerky as Reed said we were to have no fire and not alert no one of our presence.
Finally come evening on that third day and we heard horses a coming down the Virgin River Gorge from St. George way.
A man was walking leading four pale horses. He looked to be a tall finely built fellow who stood proud and handsome guiding his mounts. He wore no hat and I was surprised on account of the heat and sun outside the canyon walls.
“It’s him,” cried Black Jack, “It can’t be, but it’s him!”
Jack looked pale and quite shaken but we took it as our order and we opened fire with great abandon as we had felt so cooped up and with itchy trigger fingers for the last of these three days.
Amidst the thunder of guns and storm clouds of powder smoke we all saw the man go down into the river, crying out, ‘Oh Lord, My God!’ as he vanished. His mounts bucked and galloped back down the gorge surely leaving the dead man lying in the river with multiple grievous wounds.
The three of us approached the spot in the river where the man must have gone down. Black Jack strangely hung back, gobs of sweat bleeding over his brow.
The distance had not been much, perhaps but fifty yards but already there was no trace of the man, the body was gone and there was no blood in the water. Even the horse’s prints had been washed clean away by the river.
He must have washed down already suggested Shan and I was inclined to agree but Siebrecht shook his head saying the current was not near strong enough to float a body especially out of sight that fast.
I was inclined to agree with him also but there was no other explanation. The gathering darkness may have helped hide the body but the three of us were at least in agreement that no man could have survived the volley that we did give.
Black Jack was in panic and could not be consoled. We had planned to ride out of the canyon and put some distance between us and the murder but he was seated and rubbing his legs which now oozed worse than ever.
Of who the man had been he would give no answer. We waited only a short while and forcibly put Reed upon his horse and started down the gorge.
He cried out in pain at his legs many a time and we did our best to shut out the agony of despair that echoed from his lips.
We had just reached the open valley out of the Gorge when behind us in the dim star-flecked twilight we saw a rider leading three spectral mounts approaching with great speed. He was not dark as he should have appeared but instead was a ghostly white as his garments were glowing and hanging from him like a death shroud and his ghostly horses matched same.
I don’t need to tell you this put the fear of god into us and we rode at all possible speed away.
We passed by the Joshua tree forest and did wait a moment to gain a breather for own horses and shoot this awful foe, but as we saw him come over the crest of the hill his specter of presence made me lose all courage and I remounted my horse and did away with Black Jack at my side clinging to his saddle like a man possessed.
A gunslinger to the end, Siebrecht stood fast and I heard him shoot his sharps rifle twice, but then it went silent and of him I never saw again.
Shan Balden caught up to us fast screaming that the ghost rider had taken Siebrecht’s very soul! And he did note that now there were but three ghostly mounts instead of four.
We raced through Mesquite without stopping sure
that the rider was yet coming up fast behind us upon his relentless chargers. Galloping like that all night we did and as dawns light was about to crest the mountains I looked back and saw that our spectral pursuer was gone.
I was filled both with relief and anguish. I asked Black Jack again and again who the rider was and who had put the bounty upon his head, but of answers he gave none.
Upon reaching St. Thomas we brought together our resources and were oh so wary. I set a boy to keep watch for strangers and none did come into town all that day.
Black Jack went to Mother Jennings and had her change the dressings upon his sore legs. We then went back to our camp and took up some much needed rest.
When the thick hot night came, we sat by our slow burning cook fire and wondered at our collective experience. We spoke but little and I knew that we had not seen the last of our haunted foe.
Sometime after midnight when the coiling’s of the fire winded down leaving only lackluster coals, the moon came out and put ghostly light upon all it touched, bathing the town in a sea of ashen grey. We waited a breathless moment and my ears stung at the sound of hoof prints hitting the hard packed earth.
Watching in every direction, I was in a daze at where the sounds came from. Black Jack moaned in a fitful state and I was not sure if it was from pain or from fear.
Shan Balden who was afraid of no man, stood up from the fire and looked at the road.
I saw nothing but it seemed Shan did.
The sound of hoof beats rapidly approached and Shan turned to look at me, then back to the empty road saying I’m next, then he fell over dead.
I heard hoof beats race away, but of that gruesome specter I saw nothing.
Whispers Out Of The Dust: A Haunted Journey Through The Lost American West (Dark Trails Saga) Page 9