“Not at all, such men are a fixture of many towns, living on the outskirts and subsisting on very little.”
The look of doubt that persisted to adorn Hoot’s face riled me.
“Oh very well, I’ll explain.” I pointed at the overturned wagon and more specifically at the small hooks along its wooden rails. “Those are for securing a canvas tarp, which is the only thing obviously missing.” Next, I once again pulled aside the palmetto branch near where Nina had found the bottle. “Something smooth and wide was drug across the ground here.”
“Maybe the assailants used the tarp to take the bodies away?”
“A worthy assumption, however it is not correct. The mark in the earth is much too shallow. I am confident that resting somewhere close by is the rudimentary cabin or lean-to of my before mentioned town drunkard.”
“And because of his reclusiveness there is a chance that he remains free of what’s wrong with everybody else.” Nina spoke up unexpectedly.
“Excellent! That is exactly my thinking.” I turned to Hoot. “Now we can only assume that the road is being watched, if not constantly, at least intermittently. Every moment we waste out here we run the risk of being discovered. Franklin, I am going to make an obvious foray into town. Take Nina and stealthily search these woods for the man I am sure is here. See if you can glean anything from our mysterious scavenger. Michael Roy and I will make haste down the road and into Krotan’s Brook, just two hungry and thirsty travelers looking for a place to stay, thus conducting a more open investigation of the town, perhaps with a bombastic display of ineptitude.”
“A risky gambit on your part.” Hoot suggested.
I shrugged, knelt beside Nina’s small form and spoke to her in earnest. “I know that parting is not the best of courses for us but there may be a good number of people in Krotan’s Brook, innocent ones that need our help so we must soldier on. If things go badly, I want you to run. I know not much on Earth can keep pace when you put your mind to it. If you can’t get back to Dante, go on foot to the big owl tree where we camped. Wait a few hours, if I don’t come, head for Carter Mayne’s place and have him rustle up some Pinkerton boys.”
“What about you?”
“Well, I’ll use my head, but if it looks like a lost cause I’ll use my gun. Roy’s a shooter so we’ll make it out.” Out of my breast pocket I pulled a little four shot derringer. “I know that we’ve only practiced with this a bit, but you’re skilled enough.” She took it and slipped it into a pocket.
We hugged and I stood up. “Let’s go.”
8
Later in the night, conscious of Franklin Hoot behind her, Nina closed her eyes and breathed in deeply through her nose, seeking out any scent that might lead them to the person Ryder had assured them was there. Nothing as yet.
“Perhaps Mr. Ryder was wrong.” Hoot whispered. He was crouched beside her now, searching the dark woods intently. “We should make for the town, it should not be more than two hundred paces ahead.”
“No please, I smelled the hint of whiskey just away from the wagon and though you didn’t know, I was following it for a bit.”
Nina closed her eyes again and inhaled deeply, she had lost the drinking man’s scent. His smell had been replaced with a…burning smell? No, it was burnt, not burning. Something already consumed by fire. There had never been a discernible trail to follow, either visually or otherwise so she made her way to where the scent became strongest.
“Stop.” Hoot’s order had a hint of fear in it so she obeyed immediately. “There’s something up ahead.”
She looked this way and that through the trees and finally saw what Hoot was referring to. It was the ruins of a tiny cabin, burned to the ground. They crept toward it.
The scorched remnants of a few meager belongings were all she and the W.E.r.d. Inspector could find in the ashes. Nina smiled to herself as her foot kicked through the ashes of a canvas tarp, most likely drug from the wagon just as Ryder had envisioned.
“This one had a sad, lonely existence, it seems.” Hoot said in a quiet tone as he flipped through a charred and blackened leather bound Bible.
Nina nodded slowly in agreement but then her shoulders hitched up as she picked up a new scent. She turned and slowly rolled her eyes up the trunk of a big pine.
Thirty feet up, perched on a particularly thick branch, a disheveled and shirtless old man watched them silently. His long grey beard fluttered in the night breeze but the rest of him sat still as death.
Franklin Hoot saw the expression on Nina’s face and he had his gun drawn and pointing into the sky in a flash. “What?
“A sad life was it?” The man’s voice was high pitched and wracked with nervous tension. “Well it surely is now! My home’s gone-burnt by those water drinkers and now I have less than nuthin’! All the pictures of my beautiful Charlotte are gone.” He bowed his head and closed his eyes as if in mourning.
“Was Charlotte your wife?” Nina asked.
“Yes, a fine one. “Course I drove her away with my drinking.”
After some general thrashing and a near tumble, the man reached the ground beside Nina. “What’s a little girl like you doing out in the woods at night?”
Hoot interjected before she could answer. “Never mind that, what do you know of the strange happenings in Krotan’s Brook?”
The old man’s wizened face turned to the Inspector, “The name’s John Carlyle and before I go explaining things, who might you be? You a witchdoctor?” Carlyle looked Hoot up and down, unabashedly frowning at the Inspector’s strange attire.
Hoot puffed an impatient lungful of air out of his mouth before answering, “My name is Franklin Hoot and as far as you are concerned, I’m the law come to town. This is Nina Ryder, her…family lives in Krotan’s Brook.”
John Carlyle squinted one rheumy eye and looked Nina over thoughtfully. “Nope, that’s a lie. This here sweet young lady ain’t exactly from around here, if you follow what I’m saying.”
Nina felt a bit of pleasure at being called sweet, and, oblivious to the comment’s backhandedness, immediately felt a natural endearment towards the old man. “Oh Franklin’s the suspicious type, that’s all.” She leaned toward him conspiratorially. “He’s right about being a lawman of a type I suppose. Now did you see what happened to the people that came in the wagon?”
Carlyle nodded and smiled ruefully. “Same thing that’s happened to anyone come around lately, they get overpowered and drug away. Nobody’s left town either.” He scratched at his impressive beard before continuing. “Damned strangest thing I’ve ever seen. A whole town gone bad, you should be glad Nina, that your family don’t live here for real. What’s going on ain’t making exceptions for the little ones.”
Feeling a chill Nina leaned around the old man and looked toward where the town lay, wishing Ryder was still with them. She nearly howled in fear when Hoot placed his hand on her shoulder. “In all honesty Mr. Carlyle we have some associates up ahead, most likely riding into Krotan’s Brook even as we speak,” he said.
“You’d best forget about them. I was thinking of burning the whole place down but…I ain’t got it in me.” John Carlyle turned from them and began rummaging through his ruined belongings. “I think it’s high time I just moved on though.”
Hoot patted the pockets of his long coat and withdrew a folded piece of canvas that he shook open to reveal was a surprisingly large sack. “Here, use this.” As Carlyle reached for it, Hoot pulled it back just a bit. “I will help you further, however, I ask that you show us the best approach into town or at least the most inconspicuous.”
The old man stood frozen, his arm still extended before him and his eyes far away for a time before flicking to Nina. She withered somewhat under his unreadable gaze. “I will do this for you witchdoctor and maybe a bit more.” He smiled unexpectedly. “My Charlotte and I had a daughter once, Therese, lost her young, rattlesnake bite. Her mom had gone into town and I was watching her, or at least I should have been.
I was hid in the outhouse swigging on some whiskey, and when I stumbled out, there she was laying on the dirt, still in her pretty cotton church dress. She was all twisted up and screaming for her pa.” The tension seemed to go out of Carlyle’s body all at once and he looked as if even the gentle forest breeze might be enough to knock him over. “I suppose it’s high time I did something worth doing. Nina might look a little bit too much like the fox that used to come scavenging around my shack but I can tell she’s got a good heart. Maybe I can make amends before I go home, to my girls.”
9
We rode at a brisk trot, not so fast as to arouse suspicion but fast enough to make an ambush unlikely. Roy kept abreast of me, the long Springfield Calvary rifle held low across his lap.
I kept expecting to hear the sound of running water, perhaps the bubbling brook that gave the town its namesake.
“I see lights.” He said over the sound of the horse’s hooves.
“Yes, slow up.” I pulled out the empty whiskey bottle I had stored in my saddle bags and held it out openly. “We’ll head for the saloon.” I said. Then a horrific thought struck me, one I couldn’t believe had not occurred to me before. “Listen Michael, Lucas Henry, does he know what you look like? That could make this whole plan rather suicidal.”
“I c’nae say with any certainty. But we haven’t met formally, I can attest.”
“We’ll just have to take the chance.” I left the thought, that Inspector Henry might very well be dead by now, unspoken.
We came to a bend in the road, beyond it rested Krotan’s Brook. At a quick glance it looked like a hundred other similarly sized western towns. Several dozen buildings, both one and two stories tall, some wood framed and some were of an older stone construction, almost archaic in their design. We past a lonely graveyard set back off the road, leaning stone markers weakly reflecting the moon light. I still had yet to see a brook of any kind. The first structure we past was the sheriff’s office, its windows were dark. Being well after evening hours I hadn’t expected much activity, but even so, the main street was a veritable graveyard. Lights were burning in a couple windows here and there but even these were seen from behind drawn shades and curtains. A general store, a bank, a doctor’s office, all these we passed on our way to a large building near the center of town. A man on a porch, half hidden by shadows, sat in a rocking chair very still and watched us pass. His features were obscured by shadow but I swayed in my saddle and waved my hand with the empty whisky bottle in it at him good naturedly anyway. We passed a well in the middle of the road, apparently under construction or at least getting refitted.
Roy and I drew up to the hitching post of the saloon. There was a horse tied up there and I slipped off Anna’s back beside it to have a closer look. The big Irishman was already standing on the porch, as I pretended to stumble up the steps and leaned against him, I was happy to see he was still carrying his rifle. “That is no patron’s horse, that nag’s been used for farm work for years. An attempt at an obvious and calculated misdirection” I whispered.
Roy just grunted, so I spun him around and pushed him through the swinging doors of the saloon.
“Bartender!” There was one in attendance, in fact, and I only realized just now how I hadn’t really expected it. He stood behind the counter staring at me, pale and morose. Long silver-grey muttonchops elongated his sad face rather comically. There were exactly three other people in the dimly lit place. Two men sat drinking at one of the dozen or so tables. They were also watching us with dull expressions. Finally, a woman peered down from a balcony I suspected led to the guestrooms. Long red, curling hair flowed down her shoulders and framed a pair of oversized breasts, their pale cleavage threatening to burst out from the corset jealously holding them prisoner.
“My friend and I have rode long and hard on the dusty trail and we’re thirsty!” I strutted up to the bar and slammed the empty bottle down.
The bartender, squinted at me with more scrutiny than became his trade, but after an uncomfortable moment he nodded and said, “What’ll it be stranger?” I was a little put off by the guttural timber in his voice but managed to hide my wary reaction.
“Why, more whiskey of course!” I slapped the bar top to punctuate my request.
“And your big silent friend?” The words fairly gurgled up from his throat.
Roy had come to stand beside me. He leaned the rifle up under the bar and was watching the men at the table from the corner of his eye.
“Water.” His voice betrayed a tinge of nervousness that caught me off guard.
More squinting from the bartender but he set a large pitcher of fairly clear water before Michael Roy.
When I had my drink, I turned around and leaned on the bar in order to survey the room more thoroughly. What had so spooked my usually stoic companion?
The establishment, while a bit more run down than average, was not unlike what I imagined a thousand other like places to be. Card tables, an aging piano, chandeliers overhead crafted from old wagon wheels. Mounted heads of a dozen different species of game were hanging up high on the walls, the haunted remains of white tail deer, elk and even a great furry bison. They watched my poor acting job, silently.
The red haired woman caught my eye, and something about her made the faux drunken smile I was presenting slip. My eyes narrowed for just a moment but she had caught it and in a twirl of lace and silk she was gone down the upstairs hall.
Then I realized what had disturbed me about her. Her eyes were vacant and stared straight through me, seeing me but not seeing me.
“It’s the guns.” Michael Roy muttered as he set the half drank pitcher of water back on the bar.
My eyes flicked to the two men sitting at one of the tables. They appeared to be in deep, quiet discussion. No guns were visible on their hips or otherwise.
Roy continued, “It’s that I don’ spy any at all. Two codgers out at night, at a drinking establishment unarmed. Feels…off.”
It did feel off, a small detail but one I should have picked out. “That’s what had you spooked?”
“Yea an’ the gel, she had dead eyes.”
He was right, she was most likely a lady of the night and her eyes should have been alight with greed at the arrival of two drunken strangers. Especially with one as smartly dressed as I, if I may say so. Well, we knew Krotan’s Brook had gone off the rails somewhere in the last month and we were getting to the thick of it. Or so I thought.
There was a thump from the back of the house. “What was that?” Roy asked.
“The bartender slipping out a back door.” I had heard his boots stealthily make their way across the floor boards earlier when I had been turned, surveying the room.
Without warning, the two men at the table stood up and walked out the door, into the night.
Beside me Michael Roy belched wetly through his beard and said, “I’m going to retrieve the lady.”
“She’s most likely slipped out a window by now but please do, we need some answers. I have to assume we are due for some guests, so I might as well prepare-.”
Roy had fallen to the floor boards half way to the stairs. I dropped into a crouch and drew the Iroquois. My first thought was that he had been shot but he slowly picked himself up and looked back at me sheepishly.
“I must have lost my balance.” He was on the stairs and taking them two at a time in a face-saving show of bravado. “Don’ forget my rifle there.” He pointed toward the bar before disappearing in the hall.
I quickly picked up Roy’s Springfield from beneath the counter and went to look over the swinging doors. The street was as deserted as before. The three horses stood quietly at their hitch. I was about to turn and head after the Irishman when a furtive movement in a darkened alley across the street caught my eye.
Moon light glinted faintly off the silvery streak of Nina’s hair, and I could now make her out motioning to me from the shadows.
Roy hollered down that the upstairs was deserted so I pushed throu
gh the doors and stepped onto the porch. Nina scampered across the road, silent as a stalking mountain lion and we huddled down behind the water trough.
Nina’s voice buzzed with the steady hum of tempered excitement as she relayed to me the circumstances of her last hour. “You were right Ryder! There was a man living in the woods. His name is John Carlyle and he was at the wagon that night. At first the town folk left him alone, but after enough of them went bad they came for him. But he heard them trampin’ through the woods first and scampered up a tree to hide and to watch them burn his poor little house down.” Nina’s mouth turned into a frown at this last part and despite the dire circumstances, I felt my heart swell with a bit of joy. Compassion was something I doubted her wicked mother had ever been capable of. “He said the water drinkers, that’s his affectionate term for people who don’t drink liquor were-.”
“Easy Nina, tell me the rest later. Where’s Franklin Hoot at?”
“He’s scouting the edge of town with Mr. Carlyle. He said to sneak in and find the two of you. Mr. Hoot sure seems pretty confident of my abilities.” She cocked an eyebrow at me.
“Why Nina, you wound me. I certainly know what you’re capable of.” I peeked out from behind the trough to see the street was still deserted but when I looked up at the window of the feed store across the way I noticed a dark silhouette poised motionless behind the glass. In fact, as I looked around, a good number of the windows had similar shapes in them. The bottom fell out of my guts a bit as it dawned on me that most of town’s populace were staring out of their dark homes, silently watching Nina and I converse on the porch of the saloon.
“Let’s go inside.”
Once back in the saloon, I went to the foot of the stairs and called after Michael Roy. No reply came.
“Come with me Nina let’s retrieve our big friend and-.”
“What is it Ryder?”
I had frozen on the bottom step, as something occurred to me. The full night’s series of events had come together in my mind.
The Shadow Town (An Evan Ryder Weird Western) Page 3