The territorial governor put a bounty on Walking Bear’s head, and a coalition of cattle barons had quadrupled it. Two hundred dollars for Walking Bear and fifty for any dog soldier who rode with him. The most McCall ever made in a single year was one-fifty, and most years it was closer to one hundred dollars. Two hundred for a single bullet was a king’s fortune to a man who lived in the saddle.
So, McCall hunted Walking Bear and his party for months, occasionally catching up long enough for someone or another on either side to take a bullet or get his throat cut. Early on the Cheyenne, along with some rogue Arapaho, held the upper hand with more men, more horses and a better knowledge of the terrain here in Wyoming and down in Colorado. But the Indians had only one rifle for every two of them, and the men in McCall’s party each had a hand gun and a long gun. And all of them hungered for that bounty, which was paid out in gold coins. The tide turned slowly, but it turned.
The funny thing was that McCall rather liked Walking Bear. The big Indian had been the last surviving son of Chief Lean Bear, who had been shot by soldiers under the command of Colonel John M. Chivington, the same maniac who attacked a Cheyenne village at Sand Creek in the Colorado Territory. That had been a bad business. Most of the village’s fighters had been out hunting during the attack, but Chivington ordered his men to kill everyone in the camp. Every elder, every woman, every child. Even little babies. Seven hundred riders of the Colorado Territory Militia had gone thundering in and hacked the Indians to red ruin and pissed on the bodies as they lay spoiling under the stark November sun. Seven hundred armed soldiers against a couple of hundred Cheyenne. Maybe twenty of the Indians had been fighters. A few people escaped. One hundred and sixty-three Indians died.
McCall had been one of the colonel’s men. He’d been right there when Colonel Chivington had made the statement that defined his view of the “Indian problem” as people called it. Chivington had said, “Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians. I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God’s heaven to kill Indians.”
Chivington was one of those men who glowed with holy purpose. Blue light seemed to shine from his eyes. And McCall, so much younger then, had yelled as loud as anyone as Chivington’s speeches whipped them into a frenzy. By the time the colonel aimed his militia at the Cheyenne he didn’t have to use much energy to pull the trigger.
A lot of what happened there at Sand Creek seemed to take place inside a dream. It never felt real to McCall. Maybe not to most of the men. The colors were too bright. The blood was the color of circus flags. The white of bone was like snow. The screams rose like the cries of birds. And the things they all did…
Did men ever do that kind of stuff except in dreams?
McCall could not actually remember what he did that day. He couldn’t remember what his guns did, or his skinning knife, or his hands. None of it. As soon as it happened it all started to fade into pieces of memory, like the way you remembered a play after it was over. You knew the story, but you can’t remember every scene, every line. Why? Because it wasn’t real.
It was just a dream. Chivington’s dream, in fact. McCall and everyone else was an actor, a supporting character, in the colonel’s fantasy.
That was back in 1864. Nearly a dozen years ago.
A lot had happened since then.
Cattlemen from Colorado had gone crazy cutting Wyoming up into private plots that were bigger than some countries in Europe. They moved herds up into the grasslands and let them breed like there was no tomorrow.
Of course… that was true enough for the Cheyenne. There was no tomorrow.
Chivington was court-martialed and left for Nebraska in disgrace—but without remorse. His men were scattered to other jobs. McCall went north into Wyoming to work security for the cattle barons and eventually put together his own team. They were not as bad a lot as Chivington’s militia—they didn’t take scalps or ears or fetuses as trophies, and they didn’t make tobacco pouches out of scrotums. But they were all killers, McCall could not say otherwise. The barons wanted the Indian problem solved, and McCall was one of a dozen such men who formed teams to solve it.
Today wasn’t the only day that ended in slaughter.
Not the second, not even the tenth.
He stared down into his cup, but it was a black well that looked too far down into the truth. So he leaned back and studied the night sky. The stars were all nailed to the ceiling of the world. Nothing else fell.
McCall got up, wincing at the pain in his gut, and collected some fresh wood for his meager fire. He built it up so that its glow drew his focus, tricking his eye and his mind away from the night and all that it held.
And that was good. That worked.
* * *
Until the screaming started.
* * *
McCall jerked upright, yanked out of a doze by the terrible sound that tore through the darkness.
He fell forward onto his knees, pivoted, drew his gun, thumbed the hammer back, brought it up, one hand clutched around the grips and the other closed like a talon around the gun hand, head and barrel turning as one. All of that done in a heartbeat, done without thought. His horse cried in fear and reared, hurling its weight against the line that was made fast to a bristlecone tree.
The echo of the scream rolled past him and was torn to pieces by the desert wind.
McCall could feel his heart pounding. He could hear the thunder of it in his ears.
His breath came in short gasps.
Silence fell like snow. Soft and slow, covering everything.
“A cat,” he said, and his voice was as thin as the lie he told himself. “Mountain cat.”
After a long time he lowered his gun and exhaled heavily. Behind him his horse blew and nickered uneasily, shifting from foot to foot, tail switching in agitation.
“Just a damn mountain cat, Bob,” said McCall. “That’s all it is, don’t you worry.”
Bob blew and stamped.
The echoes faded until they were nothing.
“Y’see, Bob? You dumb son of a mule? Stop being such a—”
The second scream tore the night apart.
It was huge and massive and so loud that it punched into McCall’s head. He screamed, too, and threw himself to one side, spinning on his hip to bring the pistol up again, aiming behind where he’d been facing.
The scream rose and rose.
And even as McCall screamed back at it he knew that this was no cat. No mountain cat and no jungle tiger like the one in the traveling circus. The sound was too loud, too prolonged, too shrill.
It was more like…
Like what?
If there was an answer to that question then McCall’s mind did not want to give it. His brain refused to put a name to it.
The shriek went on and on, louder and louder and louder.
The gun fell from McCall’s hand as he clamped both palms over his ears. He screamed as loud as he could, trying to push the sound back with his own scream.
Still it went on and on and on and…
Nothing.
Gone.
Stopped.
There was absolute silence. Immediate and total.
Only when McCall stopped screaming could he hear the echo of the screech rolling away from him. He lay there, gasping like a trout on a riverbank. His horse stood trembling, coat flecked with nervous sweat, foam dripping from the bit.
“Steady on, Bob,” gasped McCall. “Steady on. It’s just a…”
His words trailed off into nothing. McCall didn’t try to lie to the horse. Or to himself. This was no cat or anything else whose cry he’d ever heard. This was a banshee wail, like in the stories his grandmother used to tell him. Wailing spirits that warned of death trying to sneak into the house.
But there was no house out here. McCall was sprawled on the sand in the dark wind, and the sky was empty of everything but dying echoes.
And then there was movement out there.
McCall lunged f
or his fallen gun, clawed the ground for it, scrabbled it into his fist, raised it toward the shape in the darkness.
“No,” said the shape.
“Step into the damn light or I’ll blow your head off,” snarled McCall.
The figure moved closer. It was a man. Tall and broad-shouldered, McCall could see that much; but he stood just beyond the reach of the small campfire’s glow.
“No,” the man said again. “No reason to fire.”
McCall did not fire, but he did not lower the gun.
“No,” the man said a third time as he stepped forward into the light. The glow illuminated a face that was hard and angular and streaked with blood. Firelight glimmered in the slanting dark eyes and glistened on the edges of five ragged bullet holes in the broad, flat chest. “No need to shoot. You’ve already killed me.”
McCall stared up at Walking Bear.
And he screamed.
Then he fired.
One, two, three…
Six shots that burst in the air with hot yellow flame and sharp cracks. The bullets punched into Walking Bear, striking him in the chest, in the stomach, in the thigh, the arm, the throat, the face.
Every bullet hit a target.
Cloth and flesh puffed up from each impact. Blood and bone flew.
The hammer clicked down against a spent shell.
Click.
Click.
Click.
McCall’s finger jerked the trigger over and over. The cylinder turned with impotent desperation. The clicks chased the gunshot echoes into the darkness.
Walking Bear stood there.
He did not fall.
The new wounds did not bleed.
His face was unsmiling.
“No,” he said again.
McCall cried out. A small, mewling sound. Once more the pistol fell from his fingers and thudded into the dirt.
Walking Bear stepped closer. A single step, but it sent McCall scrabbling backward onto his buttocks, then into a skittering crab-like scuttle on hands and heels until he was almost in the coals of the fire. He recoiled from the flames and fell onto his side, panting, sweating, tears boiling from his eyes.
“Oh god,” he whispered. “Oh god…”
Walking Bear sighed and stepped forward again, but not toward McCall. There was a large stone near the fire and he lowered himself onto it.
McCall goggled at him. He could feel the skin of his face contract, could feel his lips curled back in terror and disgust from the thing that sat on the rock. When he could force the words out, his voice was a strangled whisper.
“What are you?”
The Indian snorted. A soft sound, with only a splinter of amusement gouged into it.
“I’m dead,” said Walking Bear. “What the hell do you think I am?”
“I killed you.”
“Yes, you did. Twice, though I’m not sure the second time counts.”
Walking Bear’s voice was so normal that it made McCall want to scream again. It had the casual tone and cadence of a city man, a gift from the Quakers who’d taught him English. But the accent was Indian. There was no mistaking that odd lift at the end of each sentence. Not like someone asking a question. Indians just had a little hook at the end of everything they said that lifted their tone and then went dead flat.
“How are you… I mean… how…?” McCall couldn’t patch together a sentence that made any sense.
Walking Bear shrugged. He bent down and picked up a handful of small stones, considered them, and dropped them one at a time. No pattern to it, no haste.
McCall sat up with a jerk. With one hand he fumbled for his fallen pistol and with the other he began pushing cartridges out of his belt. He managed to open the cylinder and drop the spent shells, dropped most of the fresh ones, clumsied a few into place, slapped the cylinder shut and held the gun out in two trembling hands.
The Cheyenne looked faintly amused. “Damn, white man, how many times do you want to kill me?”
McCall licked his lips nervously. “Until it takes, damn you.”
Walking Bear dropped the rest of the pebbles and placed his fingers over the holes in his chest, then showed those fingers to McCall. They were smeared with blood.
“It took the first time out.”
The gun barrel shuddered like a reed in a windstorm.
“I…”
“You’re going to try and make sense of it,” said Walking Bear. He shook his head. “But it doesn’t make sense. Not the way you think.”
Before McCall could organize a reply to that, there was more movement out in the darkness. He flinched and swung the barrel around.
But it was a horse.
A big roan with a blanket instead of a saddle. It walked slowly past the camp, cutting a single glance at the two men without pausing. It gave Bob a soft whinny, but didn’t stop there, either. McCall stared at it. There were three bullet holes in its stomach and one in its chest.
“That’s not… that’s not…”
“Possible?” finished Walking Bear. He shrugged and they watched the horse walk away and vanish into the darkness. There was a long time of silence as they both looked at the shadows. Then another horse came walking by. Its stomach was torn open, entrails dragging in the dirt as the animal followed the hoof prints of the roan.
“Jesus Christ the savior!” cried McCall. “That thing’s dead.”
Walking Bear gave him a pitying look. “I thought we covered that.”
“But how?”
“Why are you asking me?”
“Because… because you’re dead, too.”
“Sure.”
“Then how are you here? How can you be sitting there? How can you be talking to me, god damn it?”
But Walking Bear shook his head. “I don’t know, white man. I woke up dead. You shot me full of holes and I fell down. Then I woke up.”
“Are you… a ghost?” demanded McCall. “Tell me if you are.”
“I don’t know. I’m dead.”
“How can you not know?” McCall lowered his pistol, laying it on his lap. “You’re a ghost. You have to be.”
“Then I’m a ghost.” Walking Bear seemed to think about it. He scratched at the bullet hole in his face. “What’s a ghost, though?” he asked. “I mean, to you whites?”
McCall didn’t answer.
“Sure,” said Walking Bear, as if answering his own question, “I read the Bible with the Quakers. There was a lot in there about ghosts and spirits. Jesus was a ghost, I suppose. He came back from the dead.”
“He was a spirit,” said McCall, calling on what little he remembered of proper Sunday school. “The Holy Spirit.”
“Okay, sure,” agreed Walking Bear. “But I remember reading that he was flesh, too. At least when he first came back. He met with his disciples and even ate with them. Fish, I think. And one of them touched his wounds to prove that he was really there.”
“Thomas,” said McCall softly. His mouth was as dry as paste.
“Thomas, right. So, I guess that’s what happens.”
“I’ve seen a lot of dead people, damn it,” growled McCall, “and none of them ever came back.”
Walking Bear turned and looked at him, his dark eyes as cold and hard as chips of coal. “How would you know that?”
There was a sound behind them and they both turned to see four men milling at the edge of the clearing. Not Cheyenne. These were white men in jeans and canvas coats, with gun belts and Stetson hats. McCall knew them, every one. Lucas Polk and his brother, Isaac. Dandy McIsle. And Little Joe Smalls.
All of them were on McCall’s payroll. They’d been at the battle. They’d each killed one or more of the Cheyenne.
All of them were dead.
Bob whinnied in fright and tugged at the rope that held him.
The four men stood together, speaking to one another in low whispers. McCall couldn’t make out the words. They cut quick looks at him, and Dandy McIsle gave a single shake of his head. When they began wal
king, they edged around the camp, staying at the very edge of the spill of orange firelight.
“Hey!” cried McCall. “Lucas… Joe…”
But the men ignored him and hurried away. They headed in the same direction as the two horses.
“Where are you going?” McCall yelled.
There was no answer. McCall wheeled on Walking Bear.
“What’s happening?”
The Indian seemed to think about it. “I guess they’re going home.”
“Home where? Little Joe’s from Arkansas. Dandy got off the boat from Ireland two years ago. He’s been with me ever since. He doesn’t have a home.”
“I guess he sees things another way now,” said Walking Bear. “I guess they all do.”
“What in tarnation are you talking about?” McCall wanted to laugh. He wanted to slap himself across the face and wake up from what was obviously a dream. But he sat there, clutching the gun that lay in his lap, talking nonsense with a dead Indian. “Come on,” he snapped, “tell me what you’re talking about. Tell me how this makes sense.”
More men walked past. Indians and his own men. Some of them walked together, heads bent in conversation so private that McCall couldn’t catch a single word. Others walked alone. The expressions on their faces were mixed. There was fear on some faces, and even terror on a few. Some looked profoundly confused, and these men stumbled along in the wake of those whose countenances showed determination. But whether that determination was bred from actual understanding or if it was in the nature of those men to believe they understood what was happening at all times, McCall couldn’t tell. One man staggered past, arms wrapped tightly around his chest, eyes screwed shut as he wept with deep, broken sobs. And one man went by, singing a slow, sad Presbyterian hymn. Every man was pocked with bullet holes, pierced with arrows, or opened by blades. Every single one. And yet they walked without evident pain, even those who limped on shattered legs. One man waddled past on the stumps of legs that had been hacked off below the knee. Josiah Fenton, one of the youngest of his riders.
McCall watched them go.
All of them.
Every man who had ridden with him, and every Cheyenne they’d died to kill. He even saw two men—an Indian and one of his own men, Doc Hogarth, walking together as if it was something they’d always done. As if it was something normal to do. Even Walking Bear seemed surprised to see that.
Dead Man’s Hand Page 29