At the sight of him, Skullhead stopped dead.
Crazytail took items from his medicine bag-bits of herb, pinches of colored powder, feathered talismans-and threw them at the beast. He chanted and sang, circling the beast now, forming a circle of powder around it.
“What’s that crazy injun doing?” Lauters asked.
No one answered. The beast had paused now, whether held by magic or by curiosity, it was held all the same.
“It killed everyone in the village,” Moonwind said sternly. “Only a few of us escaped…”
“What is your father doing?” Longtree asked.
“Binding him.”
“Will it work?”
She shook her head. “No, but he feels responsible. He and the others brought it back. It should never have seen the light of day again.”
The beast suddenly grew bored with the ceremony. Teeth went in motion, burying in the old man’s head, his skull pulped under the jaws. He fell dead at the monster’s feet.
Laughing Moonwind screamed.
Lauters walked right up to it, emptying his rifle into its hide. “No more! Goddammit, this ends now!”
The beast put hands to either side of Lauters’ head, lifting him into the air and crushing his skull slowly into mush. Longtree dashed away to get another stick from the fire and saw salvation: pushed beneath a pew was a can of kerosene.
The beast charged him and he uncapped the metal jug, letting its contents wash it down. Skullhead ignored this benediction and slammed into him, sending the marshal sailing through open air. In the process, the beast stumbled into the fire. In the time it took him to feel the pain of the embers beneath his feet, flames had licked up and over him. He spun and danced, trying to shake the kiss of fire.
No good.
Skullhead had never known such pain. He and his kind had no use for fire; it was something the little men used. Cooked meat was repulsive. In the old days when a finger of lightning set a dry forest ablaze, the Lords fled, migrating to safer environs. Fire destroyed. Fire hurt. Fire consumed. He slapped at himself and threw his body on the floor, rolling and rolling. It was no good. The fire ate at his flesh, incinerating his being, cremating his will. When all the hair was gone from his skin, the flames died out. He pulled himself weakly to his feet, singed, blackened, blind, his face a distorted running mess.
“Now,” Longtree said, directing his remaining troops, “kill it.”
Keeping well away from the clawing fingers of the beast, they began to shoot and shoot. Reloading when chambers were empty. Finally the fiend fell to its knees. Its crisped flesh was open in dozens of places, mangled and bleeding viscera bulging forth.
Claussen dragged himself forth now. He had an ax. With a single vicious swing, he buried it in the monster’s spine. It went down face first, jerking with convulsions, a sickly mewing deep in its throat. It was beaten now and all knew this.
“Hack into pieces,” Moonwind directed. “It can only die if its pulled apart.”
Bowes, Longtree, Moonwind, and the two survivors from the posse went to work on the primal monster that would be a god. As Claussen looked on at his fallen idol, they each took the ax and chopped at the beast. Its hide was incredibly tough, but its assassins worked with an almost superhuman diligence. Soon its torso split. Its arms were severed free, it legs divorced from their thorny housings. Longtree cleaved the head free himself, kicking it away to the altar. To his amazement, the jaws still chattered, the legs still trembled. With a few more blows the skull collapsed, brains emptying at his feet.
“Not a god,” Claussen mumbled. “Jesus help me.”
Longtree looked down at the wreck of Skullhead with Moonwind by his side. It was a great butchered slab of meat now, bleeding black blood and yellow fluid. Its guts steamed with a foul odor. The altar was stained with bits of it and would have to be destroyed.
But Skullhead was dead.
27
Two days later, it was over.
The fire had been contained the same day the beast died. A heavy snowfall drowned the flames. Half of the town had been destroyed. The survivors quickly began rebuilding. Reverend Claussen died from his injuries that night and was given a Christian burial along with Perry, Lauters, and the other members of the posse. Herbert Crazytail was buried in the Blackfeet cemetery. Only Longtree, Moonwind, and a few others were present. The remains of the beast were assembled in sacks, tied shut, and buried in another part of the burial ground-the same grave they’d been originally interred in centuries before.
The church was burned to ashes.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do about all this,” Bowes said to Longtree as they sat and sipped coffee at the jailhouse. “How I’m going to explain this.”
“There’s nothing to explain. The beast is dead.”
“But all the deaths…”
“People know what happened. Let it go. In a year, it’ll be forgotten.”
Bowes looked at him. “Do you really believe that?”
Longtree didn’t answer. He stood and pulled on his coat and gloves. “I guess I’m done here,” he said.
“Thanks for your…help,” Bowes said.
Longtree nodded and walked out into the cool air, listening to the sounds of sawing and hammering as the town was put to right. People wouldn’t forget what happened, he knew, but they probably wouldn’t talk much about it. In time, the entire experience would take on the connotations of legend. A twice-told tale. A myth. Something to frighten children with on stormy nights. Nothing more. A dark bit of collective memory that would seem all the more unreal as the coming days of normalcy blotted out its darker elements into the stuff of nightmares.
Longtree rode out of town, hoping he’d never have to return. He would ride to Fort Ellis and put in his report. Tom Rivers wasn’t going to like the truth about this matter, but the truth was the truth. On the way, he would meet Laughing Moonwind. They were bonded now, he knew, from these horrors. Parts of them were linked. He couldn’t imagine being without her.
A cigar in his mouth, the wind at his back, Joseph Longtree rode away from Wolf Creek.