Cryptid Frontier (Cryptid Zoo Book 7)

by Gerry Griffiths

  Blood began to drench over her but the wounds she was inflicting only seemed to make the gamecock angrier and did nothing to lessen the voracity of the assault and she knew she would not be the victor.

  But that all changed when the 120-pound cougar bit off the rooster’s head and stomped its body to the dirt, thrashing it apart with its claws, feathers flying about the barnyard as if a prankster had blown up a down pillow with a stick of dynamite.

  The big cat’s face and body were smeared with blood as it turned, standing only five feet away.

  “Momma?” Lizzie said as she peered into the deep-set emerald eyes.

  Heavy boots approached.

  Lizzie glanced up and saw Grainger trudging over, plucking two spent shells out of the coach gun’s breeches, and inserting fresh cartridges.

  “Please! No!” Lizzie yelled.

  The cougar reared back, bared its fangs, and hissed at the bounty hunter.

  Grainger raised the shotgun and swung the barrel, clipping the animal on the side of the head, and knocking it unconscious.

  He looked down at Lizzie and half grinned. “Your momma’s going to be mighty sore at me when she wakes up.”

  * * *

  With torch in hand, Grainger went about setting fire to the strewed chunks. He figured the rooster Nagual had been a dwarf. Small flaming mounds littered the barnyard.

  The bounty hunter had dragged the Nagual out of the farmhouse and piled it with the headless bull. The skin-walker that had been the mule had died a slow and agonizing death, allowing it to mutate back to human form before its spirit left to travel to some hellish place.

  Grainger torched the heap and threw the burning branch into the inferno. The Daltrys’ horses were not cursed and did not need cremation so he left them to the scavengers.

  Selma and Lizzie sat on the saddled Appaloosas and watched as the dark smoke rose from the crackling fires. Grainger had set both the palomino and the pinto free.

  He strode over, lifted his boot into the stirrup, and climbed into the saddle. He pulled on the split reins, tugging the snaffle bit in the buckskin’s mouth, and turned the horse around.

  Selma faced him, a light bruise on her cheek. She held out her hands, the insides of her wrists pressed together, a prisoner waiting to be bound.

  “Let’s see how it goes,” Grainger said, and smiled when he saw the woman and the child’s eyes brighten.

  And with that, the bounty hunter spurred his horse and the three galloped up the steep incline toward the bluff and the vast badlands beyond.

  15

  THE SNAKEMEN

  After a blistering trek crossing a salt flat, Grainger suggested they make camp for the night at the base of a talus near a rocky draw. A large pocket between the boulders provided adequate shelter on the chance a windstorm kicked up while they slept.

  He’d removed the Daltry brothers’ saddles from the Appaloosas, the rugged horses having taken to the heavier rigging just fine even though they were accustomed to the Naguals’ way, who used lighter hides and blankets when riding their Indian ponies.

  The ground was too dense to drive a stake for a tether, so Grainger bound both horses’ front hooves with leather twist hobbles so they couldn’t wander off and bolt; the buckskin he left unshackled, knowing his steed was not prone to ambling.

  While Grainger laid out the saddles and bedrolls, Selma and Lizzie went off to comb the barren terrain for anything ignitable. Their search drew them farther away from the campsite, as the pickings were sparse.

  Selma came upon a knee-high sage down by the gully bank. She grabbed the stalk to pull it out of the hard-cracked clay, and even though the skeletal bush was withered, the roots were anchored firmly as though clutching to the earth’s core. She yanked, first one-handed, then with both but to no avail. With no other recourse, Selma snatched the tomahawk tucked in her belt, raised the sharp blade and with a single swing, chopped the shrubby plant down. She snapped the branches for kindling and put the remnants in a canvas tote.

  “Momma, come see.”

  Selma traipsed over and saw her daughter pointing at an arch of metal butting out of the compact clay.

  “It’s a wagon wheel,” Selma said. She knelt and used the tomahawk as a spade to dig but the ground was hard as granite. “Shame, we could have burned the spokes.”

  “Think these folks died here?” Lizzie asked.

  “No telling.” Selma rose and gazed farther up the dried creek bed. “Let’s see where this goes.”

  On their way they saw signs that the route had been journeyed before by other travelers as they came across things such as a metal ribbing of a Conestoga, a sun-bleached boot, the upper skeletal half of a mule, a shredded parasol, an empty steamer trunk, and a few unexplainable particulars sticking out of the ground.

  They trudged on, reaching a rocky path. Soon the shale became a gravelly trail for a spell, ending at a flatland of sand.

  Lizzie stopped abruptly and grabbed her mother’s hand. “Are those...”

  There were sandy mounds that looked to be a crude burial site, only the graves were half the length considered for a normal sized person. The plots were haphazardly placed, each one with a burrow hole at one end, cavernous enough to shove a powder keg down inside.

  “Look Momma.” Lizzie pointed at a narrow rut stretching across the sand.

  “Oh my Lord,” Selma gasped when she saw the strange impressions on either side of the furrow.

  “Those aren’t footprints.”

  “No, they’re not. They’re handprints.”

  “You don’t think that someone was crawling in the sand?” Lizzie said.

  Selma studied the peculiar mounds, wondering what might have made them. She had an uneasy feeling. “Let’s go back. I think I can break up that steamer trunk with the axe, get us enough wood for a good fire.”

  “Sure thing, Momma.”

  * * *

  After arriving at the campsite, Selma stowed the filled canvas tote by the fire pit ringed with rocks that Grainger had arranged while they were gone.

  Grainger was knelt over his open bedroll, delving through his saddlebag. “I know I got some pemmican in here somewhere.”

  Selma and Lizzie sat down opposite the bounty hunter and watched him pull out a silver-plated Forehand & Wadsworth pocket revolver and two boxes of .31-caliber cartridges for the double-action five-shooter. He took out a fistful of gun parts, an over-under double-barreled .41-caliber Remington derringer, and then a tied leather bundle of throwing knives.

  Exasperated, he lifted the saddlebag and turned it upside-down, impatiently dumping the remaining contents including a cloth sack that fell out amongst the deluge of shotgun shells and other artifacts privy to a bounty hunter’s trade.

  “It’s not a porterhouse but it’s the best I got,” Grainger said, unknotting the string and opening the bag. He handed Selma and Lizzie each a cured bison strip that could have easily been mistaken for a tongue cut out of an old boot.

  “Thanks,” Lizzie said and bit down on the stiff jerky. She gnawed the tough meat, grinding her molars, switching over and using the row of teeth on the other side of her mouth but was still unable to chew. She looked up at Grainger, who was smiling back at her like he had just heard a knee-slapping joke.

  “You best suck on that awhile,” he chuckled. “Soften it up if you don’t want to be a toothless granny.”

  “But I’m hungry,” Lizzie replied.

  “Your spit will trick your belly.”

  It was close to nightfall as the sun fell into the horizon—molten steel returning to the cauldron—and the sky bruised a purplish black.

  “I’ll build a fire.” Grainger reached in his jean pocket and removed a small tin box. He popped off the lid, and inside were a tuff of dried lichen and two flints. He shifted over to the canvas tote and grabbed a handful of sage branches. He broke them in two, and formed a teepee in the center of the fire pit. He crumbled up some dried twigs and shoved them inside the cone’s bas
e then added a pinch of lichen from the tin. Taking the two flints, he leaned forward and struck them together repeatedly, each time creating a spark. Soon the lichen caught and there was promising smoke, then a tiny flame.

  The fire crept up the teepee like a rumba of red rattlers.

  Grainger reached over and grabbed a few strips of flat wood embedded with brass tacks from the canvas tote. “Where’d you find these?”

  “Over by the gully,” Selma said. “Near some sand mounds.”

  Grainger gave her a curious look.

  “We also found a strange trail. Handprints in the sand.”

  The bounty hunter stood and drew his Dragoon.

  Selma and Lizzie looked up with concern.

  “What are they?” Selma asked.

  “Snakemen.”

  “But that’s only an Indian legend.”

  “I’ve heard it said that they used to be real men,” Grainger said as he began his tale. “It’s been told that a group of settlers passing through were set upon by a band of Naguals. The Naguals stole the women and children and left the men to die in the desert. That’s when a Nagual medicine man cast a curse and turned them into snakemen, banishing them to live underground. The only time they come to the surface is to appease their vengeful souls on unsuspecting travelers, much like ourselves.”

  Grainger stared out between the boulders at the barren landscape stretching for miles. He saw no sign of life, not even a cactus, just a darkening, desolate wasteland.

  “And you believe that?” Selma asked.

  “If you heard it different, I’d be obliged to listen.”

  Selma shook her head.

  Grainger glanced over at the weary horses; their heads drooped, flanks pressed as they leaned against one another. They were in no condition to saddle up which meant that they had no choice but to stay put.

  He turned and stared grimly at Selma and Lizzie then knelt on his bedroll.

  Grainger picked up the pocket revolver and handed it to Selma. She looked at the puny gun. “I’m a farmer’s wife. You can do better than that.”

  “Yep, I reckon I can.” The bounty hunter went over to a blanket roll and untied the leather strap. He turned back the blanket revealing the Daltry brothers’ firearms that he had confiscated. The dead men’s guns were no longer of use to them so it wasn’t like he had thieved them. He bent down and picked up the .44-caliber Winchester lever-action that had been in Ned’s rifle scabbard on his saddle. “This more to your liking?” he asked.

  Selma reached out with her left hand and grabbed the rifle by its long barrel, and with her right hand, ratcheted the lever-action then sighted down the barrel like a gunsmith contemplating a purchase. “This will do.”

  Grainger couldn’t help but smile. “How about you?” he said to Lizzie.

  “I can shoot,” the girl replied as if asking her the question was an insult.

  “Here, try this on for size.” He handed Lizzie the over-under double-barreled Remington derringer.

  Lizzie took the tiny gun that looked big in her hands. She hefted the weapon as if gauging its weight measured its worth. She looked up at Grainger and nodded in agreement.

  “Good. Keep a mind, each barrel fires separately. Gives you two shots. A forty-one caliber is a fair load but I’d aim for the head.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “I doubt we’ll be getting any sleep,” Grainger said, looking weary-eyed at both Selma and Lizzie. “Snakemen only come out at night.”

  * * *

  The encroaching night was a black beast, nibbling at the tips of the campfire flames as the snakemen slithered in the sand under the veil of darkness.

  “So those belongings we saw back at the gulch, those were from wagon train folks that got ambushed by these snakemen?” Selma asked.

  “That would be my guess.” Grainger said, and slipped on the bandolier stuffed with 10-gauge shells. He snapped open the chamber on the coach gun and fed two loads.

  Grainger stood with the Ithaca ready, his Dragoon in the holster, the Navy Colt tucked in his gun belt next to his sheathed bowie knife; Selma on his right, the barrel of the Winchester resting on the crook of her arm; Lizzie to his left, holding the derringer with both hands.

  “Selma, you keep the rear watch if they should come down those rocks behind us.”

  A snakeman came out of the darkness, visible in the faint light. Its chalk-white head was oval with no facial features; it had shoulders and arms with hands like that of a man but then its body tapered into a thick ten-foot long serpent tail.

  “My God, it has no face,” Selma said.

  “It doesn’t look that tough,” Lizzie said, raising the derringer.

  “Careful what you say, little girl,” Grainger said.

  While they had been conversing, the snakeman had been tilting its head in their direction as if it were eavesdropping even though it had no ears, perhaps drawn by vibrations instead of actual language.

  The snakeman suddenly shot across the sand, clawing the ground with its hands and propelling itself with its powerful swishing tail.

  Lizzie fired. The bullet struck the snakeman in the chest but still it kept coming.

  Grainger blasted the thing with buckshot and stopped it dead in its tracks.

  Another snakeman had slithered between the rocks and was attacking the horses. Clutching an Appaloosa’s leg, it pulled itself up, grappling until it snatched the mane and wrapped its strong tail around the horse’s neck. Taut muscles constricted in a hangman’s noose as the horse struggled to stay on its feet.

  The buckskin charged in and champed down on the snakeman’s arm. The tombstone teeth bit hard enough that the creature released its death grip on the Appaloosa. Grainger’s steed shook its head and upended the snakeman so that it landed on the ground. The horse reared up and came down with its mighty front hooves like iron pistons, crushing the snakeman’s skull.

  Selma shot a snakeman as it came down the rocks. She levered another cartridge in the chamber, aimed the Winchester, and, like a champion marksman at a turkey shoot, picked off another creature glissading over a boulder.

  Grainger blasted another snakeman. He dropped his coach gun rather than reload, and pulled out his Dragoon and Navy Colt. He popped off a few well-aimed shots, each slug hitting its intended mark.

  Selma felt a tight grip on her ankle and was yanked off her feet. The rifle flew from her hands. She landed facedown and immediately got on her hands and knees and spun around to confront her assailant. The snakeman grabbed her by the throat with both hands and wrapped its crushing tail around her midsection. She could feel the air squeezing from her lungs, her ribs compressing like a thin-walled pail under the weight of an anvil.

  She stared into the blank face. Up close, it was hideous and looked like a skin-tight hood that had been soaked and starched in white flour and left to dry. Before her last breath was forced out of her, Lizzie turned into her animal-self.

  Her cougar body bulged against the coiling snakeman’s tail, breaking its hold enough that she could squirm free. She sunk her fangs into the snakeman’s neck and savagely tore out the flesh. The creature thrashed and writhed in a dramatic death throe, and after a few paroxysm jerks, drew still in the crimson sand.

  Selma stood over her kill to make sure it was dead. She heard the horses whinny briefly and then all went still and quiet around the campsite. She closed her eyes, ruminated for a moment, and reverted back to her human-self. She got to her feet and staggered over to where Grainger and Lizzie stood by the campfire.

  “Have they gone?” she asked.

  “They’ve had their fill,” Grainger said. “I suggest you two get some rest.”

  “What about you?” Selma asked.

  “I’ll stay up, tend to the fire.”

  “Any inclination where we might be going?” Selma looked pensively at Grainger as she steered Lizzie toward the bedrolls.

  “There’s a town half a day’s ride from here.”

  “Is it a go
od place?”

  “No. I don’t think the devil himself would live there.”

  “Then why are we going?”

  “There’re some very bad men there with a big bounty on their heads.”

  “And you aim to collect,” Selma said, slipping under her blanket and resting her head back on the stiff saddle serving as a poor excuse for a pillow.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  16

  THE RAPACIOUS GANG

  They arrived the next afternoon and tied up their horses behind a boardinghouse at the edge of town. Grainger led the way through the backdoor. The place was as quiet as an abandoned mine as they entered the small parlor.

  “Where is everyone?” Selma said, glancing about the room meant as a gathering place for socializing: a pair of matching armchairs, a rocker, and a chesterfield positioned in front of the stone hearth.

  Lizzie stood at the double-door entry that led into the dining room. “Are we going to eat in here?” She turned and smiled, her face unable to contain her excitement.

  “I’d say it’s time you two had some home cooking.” Grainger spotted a secretary desk with the front panel open. Dangling from hooks was a row of keys with assigned room numbers. He took one and handed it to Selma.

  “Go make yourselves at home. I’ll settle up with the proprietor later.”

  “Hope they have a bath,” Selma said, then narrowed her eyes on the bounty hunter. “Where will you be?”

  “Paying a visit to the sheriff.”

  “You be careful.”

  Grainger grinned. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Good. See that you do.”

  * * *

  After Grainger had brought the bedrolls and saddlebags into the room, he left Selma and Lizzie at the boardinghouse and led the horses by the reins past the rear of the buildings, as he didn’t want his presence to be known. He found a corral behind a livery stable. He ushered the horses into the pen. He unbuckled their saddle straps and took off the rigging. The Appaloosas trod over to the water trough while the buckskin grazed on an alfalfa bale.