The men looked at each other, nodded, then came into that crowded room just as smooth and oily as serpents sliding up out of a crevice. Their spurs rang out on the plank flooring, their dusters swished. They took their time, admiring the racks of picks and shovels, the barrels of salt pork and beans, the soiled doves working the miners. They seemed to like what they saw, grinning with smiles of narrow yellow teeth. One was bearded, the other clean-shaven with pitted scars along his jawline.
Together, they leaned against the bar, set identical sawed-off Remington pumps on its surface.
They did not speak and all eyes were on them.
Maybe everyone was smelling something bad coming off these two, some inexplicable, savage odor that turned their insides to sauce. Because it was definitely there. A strange and heady odor of slaughterhouses and bone pits. The smell, say, wild dogs might carry with them from hunting and scavenging, chewing on dead things.
Hiley managed to clear his throat of whatever was lodged in it. “You gents thirsty?” he asked.
The bearded one laughed and it was a hollow, barking sound. “You hear that, Hood? Man wants to know if we’re thirsty.” He laughed again. “You thirsty, son?”
Hood stroked that scarred jaw. “Reckon I am. But I don’t see my favorite drink distilled anywheres. Figure I’ll have to tap my own keg in my own way. You understand my meaning, Cook?”
“Suspect I do.”
A miner at the bar with a Remington model 1858 .44 hanging at his hip, said, “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“Here that, Hood? This one wants to know what that means.”
That made Hood laugh. A staccato, metallic laugh like a hammer banging at a forge. It was not a human sound. “I heard him. Figure this feller just don’t understand what we’re about is all.”
“Maybe you should show him,” Cook said.
“Maybe I’ll have to.”
Hiley, behind the bar, his hand resting on the stock of an Army carbine just out of view, licked his lips carefully. “We don’t want no trouble here, gents. All of us are just drinking and playing cards and minding our own. I suggest you do the same.”
Hood was grinning again and it was the sort of grin a corpse might have… two months in the ground. “That some sort of threat?”
The miner with the .44 nodded. “Damn straight it is, boy. You can either be sociable and peaceful… or things can happen the hard way. There’s only two of you and there’s about two dozen of us, give or take. You might want to weigh that out.”
“I suspect I will,” Hood said, “being outgunned and all.”
Cook wiped the back of his hand over his beard, said, “You’ll have to excuse us. Hungry is what we are. Bellies are just plain empty, growling something fierce.”
It was Hiley’s turn to laugh now, only it was more of a nervous tittering. “Shit, boys, all you had to do was say so.”
“Believe we just did,” Cook reminded him.
Hiley didn’t seem to catch that or want to. He could feel every set of eyes in the place watching him now, seeing how he was going to handle these hardcases. He knew the situation had not been pacified yet, that just about everyone in the room was armed and lead could begin flying at any moment. He did not want this. This was his place and bullets caused damage. That cost money. Bodies he could sweep out with the trash… but stock, now that wasn’t easily replaceable up here on the far left side of the Devil’s asshole.
“What you boys need,” he said, “is a some meat in your bellies. That’ll fix you up.”
Hood and Cook looked at each other and laughed. Then they looked around the room, taking in all they saw. Their faces were drawn and sallow, their eyes wide, unblinking, just as dark as open graves.
“Meat,” Cook said. “You hear that? Feller here’s offering us meat.”
“I heard it and I figure that’s right neighborly of ’em,” Hood said, wiping drool from his lips. “Because meat’s what we came for. Fresh meat. I like my meat raw. That’s what. Nice and raw. Like that taste of blood, hear? Puts iron in my pants.”
Some eyes widened at that. Others narrowed. Bodies shifted in chairs. Fingers slid down towards holstered pistols. One whore made a face, another smiled… finding these men interesting.
The miner with the .44, said, “What is it you boys do?”
Cook drummed his fingers on the bar. Hiley saw that a pelt of reddish hair covered the man’s wrist, that it flowed over the back of his hand like wild grass and furred his fingers… which were oddly long, thin enough to pick locks.
“We’re what you call Hide-Hunters,” Cook told him. “Thing is we don’t hunt animal hides. We hunt the other sort.”
The miner was about to say something about that and maybe Hiley was, too? or any number of others? but there was a pounding at the door. A thudding sound and not like a fist would make, but maybe the butt of a rifle. Whatever it was, it kept banging away.
“You gonna answer that, Hiley?” one of the poker players said, but in such a voice like maybe he thought it wouldn’t be a good idea.
Hiley looked at the strangers, then at the others. He swallowed hard. “I suppose I’ll have to.”
“It would be neighborly,” Hood said. “Wouldn’t want them out there bursting in uninvited and all.”
All eyes on him again, Hiley went to the doors, taking the carbine with him. He stopped a few feet away, seemed to smell something or hear something that just laid on him wrong. He looked back into the bar, maybe for help, maybe for divine guidance, but got none.
“See who it is,” someone said, a strange edge to their voice.
Swallowing again, Hiley threw open the doors.
In the barroom, people saw that darkness out there just as black as bubbling pitch. Saw it shifting and swirling and oozing. Then there was motion. A blur. A wild, rending activity. Hiley shouted, maybe he screamed. But it all happened so fast no one could do anything but jump to their feet, reach for their guns.
And by then, it was over.
Hiley was gone.
The doors swung shut and there was a spattering of blood on one of them.
In a wild, shrieking voice, a miner said, “Something grabbed him! Something took him! Something dragged him out into the night…”
Those words echoed and died in the silence.
No one moved.
No one spoke.
No one did a damn thing. Maybe they were all waiting for someone else to do something. Herd instinct. They would all move… but not until they were led. That’s how things worked in tense situations and this one was so tense, apprehension hung in the air thick as fog.
Silence.
Blood glistening on the grubby plank door.
Outside, there rose a shrill howling sound that went through everyone like a sharp knife.
The miner with the .44 started moving, then stopped. The hairs were standing up on the back of his neck and his balls had gone small and hard and cold. He turned to the strangers, unleathered his pistol. “You two! Goddammit, you two brought this!” The pistol shook in his hand. “What’s out there? What the hell sort of game you playing?”
Cook just smiled… and it was funny, but his teeth had gone just as long and shiny as leather punches, his lips shriveling away from them. His eyes were huge, glassy, just as green as emeralds. The pupils were horribly dilated.
“Ain’t no game, friend,” Hood said and it seemed that shaggy beard of his had crawled up his jaw, was encroaching on his cheekbones. The bones of his face were thrusting out, stretching the skin taut as a drumhead, the nose flattening and going canine. His jaws pushed out, teeth flashing now like knifeblades.
Somebody started screaming.
The miner backed away. “Dear Jesus,” he uttered.
“Ain’t got nothing to do with him,” Cook said, his face a skullish, wolflike expanse of jutting bone and deep hollows. His teeth were long and sharp and his voice dropped two, three octaves to the growl of a rabid dog. “Nothing to do with him whatsoever…”