“I’ve taken as much as I’m going to from you, Longtree,” he hissed, “you’ve pushed me around for the last time. My family…oh, Jesus…”
Longtree felt pity for the man. But he also felt the gun on him.
“Put it away, Sheriff. Please.”
Lauters gaped at him through tear-filled eyes. His bandaged nose making him look all the more pathetic, pitiful.
Longtree swallowed. The sheriff had his Colt on him. Even if he drew and drew fast, Lauters would still shoot him and probably in the chest. Such a wound had a high mortality rate.
Longtree held his hands out before him, innocently. “If you’re gonna kill me, Sheriff, least you can do is hear me out first. That ain’t asking too much, is it?”
Lauters stared at him. “I’m listening.”
Longtree eased himself slowly in a chair. “You killed that Carpenter girl, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” Atrocity had brought honesty at last.
Longtree nodded. “You were part of that ring, the Gang of Ten. You boys set up Red Elk with that murder because he knew about you, then the other gang members lynched him and you stepped aside. Am I right?”
“You are.”
“And now you’re the only one left, the last of the gang.”
Lauters nodded. “You’re very good, Marshal. I always knew you were and that’s why I didn’t want you here. The beast is coming for me now…even the law can’t change that. Your badge is useless, boy.”
Longtree licked his lips. “What you did was wrong, Sheriff, and I think you know that more than any man could. But you’ve been punished beyond the limits of the law…I’m not going to arrest you.”
Lauters lowered his gun. “Then why are you here?”
“Because I wanted to have this little talk with you.” Longtree slipped a cigar from his pocket and lit it up. “You lost your family to this monster, Sheriff. You’ve suffered enough. Putting you on trial would be pointless, particularly given the fact that the witnesses and co-conspirators are all dead now.” Longtree let that sink in. “What happened a year ago happened and we’d just better forget about it. The people in this town have a lot of respect for you and I’ve got no interest in dragging your name through the mud. Let ’em think you’re a good lawman…because down deep, you probably are.”
Lauters said nothing to any of this. A single tear slid down his cheek.
“We’ve got us a real problem here, Sheriff. We’ve got a monster that’s killed a lot of people and it’ll keep on killing until it’s stopped. I think it’s up to you and me to stop it.”
“How?” Lauters asked.
“I don’t rightly know,” Longtree admitted. “But I do know that it’ll be coming for you and I’m going to be there when it does.”
“All that’ll do is get yourself killed.”
Longtree stood up. “It’s my job to die fighting this thing same as it’s yours. So get dressed. It’s time we go hunting.”
“You want me to help you?”
“Damn right. We’re lawmen. Let’s kill this thing or die trying.”
It was about this time they heard shooting in the distance.
18
The posse led by Deputy Bowes was made up of eight men. Bowes had gathered the best and bravest shooters from the mining camps and the various ranches outside Wolf Creek. They were tough men, Bowes decided, but more than that they were angry men. They were sick of the killings, sick of being able to do nothing. They lived hard, frustrating lives. They had a lot of aggression to spend and they had been given a target to spend it on.
“There!” someone cried. “The undertaking parlor!”
Bowes turned his head and saw. It seemed impossible in that first second of realization that something this hideous could possibly walk, let alone in full daylight. It moved hunched-over, knees bent, arms crooked, hands dangling limply. Its great tail swung from side to side and when it stooped over (as it did coming through the door of the undertaker’s), the tail rose up as if it were part of some fulcrum that balanced the beast. The beast staggered out into the streets, taking the door to Spence’s place off its hinges in the process. It waltzed out and stood up to its full height.
The men dismounted their horses. The horses had to be immediately tethered: some vague racial memory had stirred in them and they remembered this thing, its kin, and what they were capable of. The horses whinnied and bucked, some throwing riders before they could hop off. Others ran off down the streets.
And Skullhead, Lord of the High Wood, advanced on his flock.
“All right, you men,” Bowes cried out, “hold your fire! Spread out, goddammit! Spread out!”
The men, most of them pale and trembling like babes now, fanned out in a skirmish line as the beast approached. There was a stink of feces and Bowes knew someone had shit their pants. He did not blame them.
Bowes watched the creature. It gave off a sickening, acrid stink. It was tall, bulging with muscularity. Its huge and deformed head bobbed, blood freezing on its lips.
Some brave woman had circled behind it and slipped into the undertaker’s. She stormed out now, falling into the street, vomiting. “Wynona!” she gagged. “It got Wynona…she’s…all over the place…”
Bowes motioned for someone to get her inside. A man, presumably her husband, did just this.
“Let’s shoot the bastard!” someone yelled.
“Take aim,” Bowes told them, knowing if he didn’t let them shoot and soon, they’d do it anyway or just run off. “Steady, steady, hold it…”
Skullhead was ignorant to what was happening here. He could remember in the old days, the forgotten days, how the dark-skins would gather around like this and await the blessing of his claws and teeth.
“Fire!” Bowes screamed.
The beast roared.
The first barrage hit the beast and he stumbled back, blood oozing from a dozen holes in his chest. The pain was intense. Pain was something he was used to, but having these white-skins bestow it upon him with no regard for ceremony or sacrifice angered him. They were to be his chosen children. This was unforgivable. He was an animal at heart, a night-stalker, an eater of flesh, a devourer of bones and babes, but he was an intelligent killer with a love of ceremony, a pagan’s love of pageantry. He did now what instinct told him he must do.
He charged.
The next barrage of bullets brought him to his knees, the agony intense and irresistible. It had been a mistake doing this, he knew, their weapons hurtful. And although his kind didn’t die very easy-it was this stubborn survivability that had kept his race alive eons after it should have went extinct with other such species-he was afraid. Afraid that the white-skins he’d underestimated would surround him and fill him with bullets so that even he would have to concede death. But no, he wouldn’t let this happen. He would lie still, feign death until they got close. It was an ancient way. Many thousands of years before, when his race was thinning and dying out, and the dark-skins first came, they had waged war on the Lords of the High Wood. Only by killing hundreds of them, had the Lords survived, beating the dark-skins at their own game of supremacy, enslaving the newcomers. But before this…there were strategies, ways to draw in the dark-skins, methods to fool their superior numbers.
Skullhead did this now.
And these whites, oh they were easy prey. They waltzed right into the jaws of death. The beast was wise with the ages as a score of victims could attest to. Century upon endless century of hunting and stalking had taught him much.
“You men!” Bowes shouted. “Get away from it!”
Five men were circled around the dying beast, prodding it with their rifles.
“It can’t hurt anyone now,” one of them said.
“Come on, Deputy, it—”
Then the beast was on its feet. It opened the bellies of two men, and tore the throats from a third and fourth. The air steaming with blood and spilled internals and cries of agony, Skullhead snatched up the fifth man and tossed his rifle over the rooftops. It was an old strategy and a good one. He held the fifth white before him like a shield, knowing the others with their rampant sentimentality would not attack and they didn’t.