by Jake Logan
Torrance Whitaker chewed his cigar as though it were a wad of jerky, but he could think of nothing to say.
“Next time you go to threatening a man, you best consider his friends, you hear?” Jigger McGee turned a beaming face on the assembled townsfolk, enjoying a smile at Whitaker’s expense.
“Now, now, Jigger. I am, after all, only looking to provide my future daughter-in-law with a safe and secure future. A nest egg, if you will.”
“What do I care how safe and secure your family is, Whitaker?” Jigger rasped a hand across his old curly wolf of a beard and turned toward the bank. “Way I see it, they can all go hang fire, for all I care.”
Whitaker smiled slow and wide, puffed once, twice, pluming blue smoke skyward, then said, “Pity you feel that way about your own daughter, Jig. But then again, that doesn’t surprise me. You’re a selfish fellow, you know that?”
With that, Whitaker turned his back on Jigger, who still stood by the hanging heads of his boys, the Belgian team, and tried to raise something more than an agitated grunt. The sad part of hearing the news about his own beloved daughter was that he didn’t really doubt what Whitaker had said about her becoming Torrance’s daughter-in-law. So strained had their relationship become in recent months that he wouldn’t put it past the girl to do that to him, in fact.
Finally Jigger, slump-shouldered, sighed long and low and hefted the leather satchel, the one thing he had been so proud of but a few moments before, but that now seemed so damned useless. He slowly walked down the street toward the still-glowing front window of the bank. “Let me down, just like her mother,” he mumbled. As he headed for the bank, the wind picked up and felt like a slap to the face.
6
“Slocum, what are you doing with that light?” Ned, the wiry older man who ventured outside with him, gestured with his pipe at the snowy mounds before him. “There’s something over here. Can’t quite see what, though.”
Slocum brought the lantern in low just as an errant gust filled in a track that at its bottom looked as though it had been made by a massive human foot, padded like a bear’s, and tipped with great curving claws where the toes ended.
“You see that?” he said, shouting close by Ned’s ear.
The other man merely nodded, then gestured onward ahead with his pipe stem. “More there. Best look at ’em before the wind fills them in, too.”
In this fashion they made their way around the far end of the long, low, log structure. Occasionally from inside they could hear muffled words from the men, the occasional bark of laughter shushed by other more strident voices. There was something to this howling noise business, and Slocum was eager to find out just what it was that got all these burly loggers in such a worked-up state.
“We best get back inside,” said Ned.
In the dark, the man’s voice, close by to be heard over the whistling wind, startled Slocum. He jerked out of reflex. “Damn, Ned, you rattled me.”
“Good,” said the man, smiling and gesturing back toward their rapidly filling tracks. “Now you know how the rest of us feel. Even if those big goobers in there wouldn’t admit it.”
“Ned,” said Slocum as they made their way back toward the cabin door. “What exactly do you think this skoocoom is anyway? As for me, I’ve heard it, last night and tonight. Hell, I even saw it.”
The effect Slocum’s words had on Ned was as if he’d yanked the man hard with a fishhook and line. “You saw it? Why didn’t you say so? Tell me, what did it look like?”
“Hold on a second. I may have misspoke. I saw its eyes. Greenish-yellow glowing things about eight feet off the ground. I tell you what, in all my days on the trail, I’ve never seen a creature’s eyes like that.”
Ned nodded, but said nothing.
Just before they reached the door, from the opposite direction they’d just come, they heard the grating, cracking sound of wood being wrenched apart, coupled with the creature shrieks they’d heard earlier. But this time they were outside with it, whatever it was, and this time the sounds were louder, more violent and earnest in their howlings, and this time, they were doubled, as if made by two of the beasts.
“Lordy Lord . . . ” said Ned. Even in the dim lantern light and the wind-driven swirl of pelting snow, Slocum could see that his companion had turned ashen-faced. The man looked to have aged tremendously in mere minutes.
Slocum wanted to investigate. No, he told himself. That’s not quite true. What I want to do is go back in there in the warm cabin with the other loggers, sidle up to the fire, and wait it out. Herding instinct must have kicked in, though he tried to laugh it off. In truth, he was as scared—or perhaps more scared—than he had been the night before when he and the Appaloosa were alone in the hills.
The horse! Horrible thoughts of the beast attacking the Appy drove down on him. “Ned,” he shout-whispered. “Where’s that sound coming from? What building is it attacking? I don’t have the lay of the camp yet.”
“Oh hell, Slocum. We got to get the boys. That thing is tearing up the storehouse. One thing we can’t take is losing our supply of vittles, our dynamite, all our necessaries!”
He was already pushing his way inside.
“Come on, Slocum, strength in numbers!”
But Slocum was already stepping into the darkness, his Colt still poised in his cold-stiffened left hand, the guttering lantern in his right. “No, I’ll go on ahead. You gather the men, and let’s get to the bottom of this.” Snow stung his face, his hands throbbed from the cold, and he couldn’t feel his feet, so stiff were his boots. He turned his head back. “And bring shotguns!” he shouted.
All the while, the shrieking and ripping and smashing sounds continued, and if anything, increased in intensity.
Slocum swallowed back the hard knot of terror in his throat and plunged forward into the dark night, pushing his way through what snow had accumulated between the dining cabin and the storage shack. At a distance of what he guessed was halfway to the shed, he paused, his breath feathering into the black sky. He heard a raspy, stuttering sound close by, as if in his own ear, and realized it was his own breathing, coming hard, out of fear.
The sounds continued. The black bulk of the storage shed sat a good fifteen yards away, and the wrecking sounds emanated from within. He couldn’t see it clearly enough, but already he had formed an image in his mind of the plank door hanging askew, or ripped from its leather-strap hinges completely, perhaps holes poked in the thick cedar shake roof, the interior a ravaged mess. The beasts, whatever the hell they were—some freakish cross between a grizzly and only the devil knew what else—were probably after food. Maybe the smoked meats hanging from the rafters in the dark shed. Perhaps boxed goods, stored root vegetables, sacks of meal and flour, all ripped and strewn and smashed and scattered.
There was a part of Slocum, though—despite what he had seen, what he had heard, the cold, horrific tingling daggers running up and down his backbone and into his scalp, then straight down into his guts—that doubted this was anything more than a rogue bear.
Or, he thought, pooching his lips at the vaguest of possibilities that this new idea introduced, perhaps this thing was more man than beast? Maybe those two jackasses who attacked him? Might go a long way in explaining why Frenchy acted so odd about them. And why everyone at the Tamarack Logging Camp was so all-fired squirelly and cagey about nearly everything.
Another outburst of growls and howls from the dark and stormy gloom ahead snapped Slocum from his reverie. He raised the lantern high and caught a glimpse of movement, something dark, covered in—what? Fur? Clothes? He could not tell. It looked to have been made from inside a space along the logs, likely the door that had, as he had guessed, been ripped off its hinges.
“Hey!” he shouted, still holding the lantern aloft, still not daring to walk toward sounds that could have been made by a slow cannon blast warring with a bull grizz. And wher
e in the hell were the other men anyway?
He didn’t dare turn around, not when there was something—or some things—unknown to him somewhere in the dark, not far from him, in fact. He took a step forward, waving the light in an arc before him. He risked one quick peek back over his shoulder and saw the door of the cabin open, a dozen or so loggers huddled together in the doorway, staring out at him.
“Could use some help here!” shouted Slocum in a barking tone. He doubted, though, that they could detect his anger through the howling wind.
Still they didn’t do much more than shuffle their feet in place and look at each other. One form broke through them and trudged up the path toward Slocum. It was Ned again, this time carrying a lantern and a shotgun. His pipe was clamped in his mouth.
His grim look mirrored Slocum’s. Once he made it to Slocum’s side, they walked forward together, slowly advancing on the storage shed. The closer they drew, the farther away the growls and guttural shrieks became. Finally they made it to the door of the shed, or what had but minutes before been a door. Even though the wind had picked up, rousting dervish swirls into their faces, they could see that the wreckage was severe.
The door had been pulled free and lay barely attached to one leather-strap hinge, and Slocum could see some of the roofing—shake shingles—flapping free in the breeze. And when they mustered the strength to look inside, they found bare ropes hanging from the ceiling rafters, ropes that had not long before held shanks of meat cinched tight. Wooden bins of vegetables had been upended, ripped from the walls, and their contents strewn about and stomped on.
“What in the name of all that is holy did this?” shouted Slocum.
Ned didn’t reply, merely stared at the wreckage.
“You think it was the skoocoom, or whatever they called it?” Slocum continued, slowly surveying the depressing mess inside the shed, keeping an ear cocked for any sound that might indicate the ransacking beasts might be returning.
“I . . . I don’t know what to think. They’ve come around plenty at times like earlier, though they only made noise, maybe hurled a piece of firewood against a log wall to get our attention, it seemed, but tonight . . .” Ned turned slowly around the room, holding his lantern aloft. “Tonight they really outdid themselves. If I didn’t know it was the blasted skoocoom, I’d swear it was . . .”
Slocum turned on Ned, held his lantern close to the older man’s face. “Swear it was what, Ned? You think it was some of the men, don’t you? From town? From the Tamarack? Or from somewhere else?”
“I . . . I didn’t say anything of the sort. Don’t go trying to put words into my mouth, Slocum. You just do the job you were hired to do here and leave such worryings to them who has the right and the authority to worry about such matters.” Before Slocum could reply, the man stomped off back to the dining cabin, leaving Slocum alone in the midst of the rubble, wondering what in the hell he’d gotten himself into.
There’s one thing none of these men are going to stop me from doing, he thought as he made his way back along the trail. And that’s from sleeping in the stable. There are enough horses to keep me warm, and I can protect the Appaloosa should those varmints—whoever or whatever they may be—return. And besides, he thought as he approached the stable, I am damned sure the horses will be easier to get along with, and smell a whole lot better, than a bunkhouse full of men who’ve been living on beans for weeks.
7
“It wasn’t our fault, boss,” said the man with the smeared nose. “He just up and attacked us. We went up there like you said, looking for work, and he come at us with an axe. Ain’t that right?” He looked at his companion.
The man beside him, thin and equally battered looking, swallowed and nodded, not taking his eyes off the steaming plate of food their boss had before him on his desktop. “Yeah, that’s about right.”
Torrance Whitaker sighed, continued tucking his napkin under his chin, and lifted his knife and fork. “I did not ask you two men to engage anyone in fisticuffs. In fact, I did not ask you to do a damn thing. My boneheaded son did. But he was acting on what he thought was my behalf, so I will let this episode slide. You were not successful, however, in doing much of anything. Except ticking me off.”
“But boss—”
Whitaker thrust his knife at the thicker of the two men. “Don’t you call me that. At least not until I get what I want.” He thrust a quivering wad of chicken into his mouth.
“What is it you want?”
Whitaker regarded the bold-talking man. “I want Jigger McGee. Everything he owns, in fact. I’d pay a whole lot for that.” He smiled, thrust more meat into his maw, chewed. His smile slipped when he saw the two battered men still standing before his desk.
“You two, get the hell out of here. I’m sick of looking at you.”
They fidgeted. Whitaker sighed and fingered a coin from his vest pocket, flipped it to the bolder of the two, obviously the brains of the pair. “Go away, clean up, drink, do something. As long as it’s away from me.”
8
The events of the night before had left Slocum confused, tired, and not a little steamed at the gall of his fellow loggers. Not only had he been acting on their behalf, trying to find out what was ravaging their stock of supplies, but they had the nerve to seem to be accusing him of being in league somehow with whatever or whoever had done the foul deed. True, they hadn’t said much to that effect, but the chilly tone was there.
Even Ned, who he’d thought he’d developed a bit of camaraderie with, had been cold toward him this morning. The only one who showed him any amount of gratitude—not that he was looking for it—was Frenchy.
The burly camp cook had chuckled and slopped down a ladleful of gruel, thick as Southern mud, and tossed a handful of raisins and dried apple rings on top. “Good morning, Slocum. You deserve deux helpings of raisins today for the help you gave us last night.”
“Wasn’t enough to prevent the shed from being torn apart.”
“True, but keep in mind that it could have been so much worse, non?”
Slocum nodded in reluctant agreement, then took his place at one of the tables, the only one that seemed to have a space available for him to sit. He ate in silence, glad, frankly, to be on his own. He brooded for a few minutes while he spooned up the surprisingly tasty hot grains mixed with dried fruit.
He followed the gruel with a couple of cups of hot, black coffee, all the while doing his best not to brood on the thought most looming in his mind—that he should never have ventured this far north for a job. Hell, he shouldn’t have come this far north in the winter for anything, not even a woman—though that particular promising approach had worked out for him in the past.
He longed for a normal life, one in which he was no longer a wanted man, on the run from the law. He wanted a life in which he could settle down, perhaps on his own spread somewhere that wasn’t too hot in the summer, not too cold in the winter, with grazing and . . . bah! Enough with the self-pity. He knew he had to see this thing through. He was no quitter.
Never had been, and wasn’t about to start now. Just because a bunch of burly loggers were too busy grousing about what was happening to them to solve the problem for themselves didn’t mean he had to toss in the towel and let them get to him.
No sir, thought Slocum as he stood and carried his bowl, spoon, and cup to the huge copper cauldron beside the stove into which Frenchy was tossing the dirty dishes.
“Frenchy,” said Slocum in a voice loud enough for everyone in the place to hear. “I guess it’s just about as perfect a day as any to get some work done, don’t you think?”
“Sure, sure Slocum,” said the cook, looking a bit confused at Slocum’s sudden loud utterance.
That was more for me than anyone else, thought Slocum. Got to make sure they don’t get to me.
But all these hours later, after they’d gotten to the woodlot they were
working, a couple of miles northwest of the main camp, the boss, Jigger’s right-hand man, guessed Slocum, who it turned out was Ned, his erstwhile chum from the night before, had brought him quite a distance from the main group.
“I need these six trees limbed out by lunch.” He looked at Slocum. “Or no lunch. You got me?”
“Yep,” said Slocum. He was happy to play the silly games for as long as he needed to. As long as there was a chit for pay at the end of this deal, he’d do whatever tasks they set him to.
Slocum didn’t wait for him to try to explain away whatever it was he wasn’t telling Slocum, but instead set right to work. Limbing was a good, if mindless, task for him. He’d done plenty of it in the past and knew enough to get the job done in a decent time frame. Certainly by midday.
“Anything else?”
“That’s enough,” said Ned, already heading back down the trail that led to the rest of the crew. He offered a halfhearted one-handed wave over his shoulder, a stream of pipe smoke following him back down the trail.
Slocum set to his task. The day was coming off mild, and the sun was a high, bright spot in a clear sky. It was the first fully blue day he’d seen in a week, and the day’s warmth filtered down, reaching him in the newly made clearing. Soon he had worked up a full head of steam, chips flying from the gleaming blade of the double-bit axe assigned to him. He’d also been loaned a pair of stout spiked boots to help keep him atop the massive felled trees’ rough hides while he swung his axe first left, then right, lopping off endless branches to make the tree into an enormous log.
He wasn’t sure how many hours had passed by the time he stopped for a long, much-needed drink from his canteen. The woods in full sun were still somewhat dark among the massive trunks, but the ghostly mounds and rolling scape of snow reflected the increasing sunlight and gave the quiet forest an odd, yet comforting glow.