Of Grave Concern (16 page)

29

Calder met me at the livery. He was riding a big bay. The enormous rifle in a scabbard was tied to the saddle, and the ridiculously large revolver was set on his hip. He was also wearing a hat, a no-nonsense tan felt hat with a wide brim.

“Good horse,” he said when I brought out the Arabian.

“My father knew horses,” I said. “He passed some of that down to me.”

Calder had brought an extra tarp and bedroll, which I tied behind my saddle.

“I brought you something,” Calder said, reaching behind to take something from back of the saddle. Then he held out a woman's hat, a lady's black riding hat, with a high crown and narrow brim. There were black ribbons trailing down the back.

I took it reluctantly.

“I know it's not a gentleman's hat, which you would prefer,” he said. “But you need a hat, and with this one, you can tie the ribbons beneath your chin if there's a wind, and at least it has some brim to protect you from the sun. It belongs . . . Well, it used to belong to somebody I know, but they have no use for it anymore.”

“I'm not her, Jack.”

“I know,” he said quickly, and rubbed his jaw, as if the words ached in his mouth. “It's just a hat. Wear it or not.”

He nudged the bay forward.

I put on the hat and followed.

We rode down dusty Locust Street, past the sleepy saloons and the tired brothels, where the inhabitants were loitering in doorways with cups of coffee or glasses of whiskey in their hands, cigarettes dangling from their lips. They watched us pass without saying a word or giving a wave of greeting. As we approached Bridge Street, the bell at the Union Church on Gospel Ridge began to ring. I knew it was because a preacher had been sent down the tracks from Emporia or Newton or Topeka to hold services. But in my bones, it felt like the bell was tolling for me and for Calder.

Then we turned south on Bridge Street, and just south of town we had to pay a toll of a dollar apiece at the big wooden bridge across the Arkansas River. We passed a cottonwood tree and Calder told me to take a good look at it, because it would be the last tree for a good, long while.

At points not far south of Dodge, we had our pick of trails that veered off, including the Western Trail, the Adobe Walls Trail, and the Jones and Plummer Trail, which led to Fort Elliott. All of these trails had been opened up in 1875 because the last free bands of Comanche and Kiowa had been rounded up and put on reservations near Fort Sill, deep in Indian Territory.

 

 

Thus began three days of hard travel over hard country.

After we left the Arkansas River Valley, the land flattened and dried out, but it wasn't so bad because we met a few herds coming north. We could parlay with the cowboys who traveled with them, and sometimes spared a few minutes for coffee or beans at the chuck wagons that preceded the herds. The weather was pleasant enough, not too hot and not too cold. Once or twice, we were soaked by a sudden shower.

Then we entered No Man's Land, a narrow strip of land between Texas and Kansas that had been set aside for the Indians to hunt buffalo, but which had been opened up after the Indians were imprisoned on the reservation. The deeper we went in No Man's Land, the lonelier we became. Calder said we were gaining ground on the supply caravan. He could tell because of the freshness of the dung left by the oxen.

On the afternoon of the third day, we entered a rolling plain, and Calder said we had crossed over into Texas. Close to sundown, we came upon a little cabin next to a creek. Calder expressed surprise.

“Don't remember this,” he said.

“You've been this way before,” I said.

“Not in years,” he said. “Last time I was here, all of this was controlled by the Kiowa and Comanche. Anybody who put down stakes here would be asking to be burned out, and worse. I guess times have changed. Let's see what the occupants have seen in the past couple of days. Act friendly and keep your hands out where the folks in the cabin can see them, so they know you aren't hiding a gun.”

We rode up to within thirty yards of the cabin and stopped.

“Aren't you going to say something?” I asked.

“Nope,” Calder said. “They're looking us over to decide if they want to invite us in or not.”

So we sat there, and the rest gave me time to study the sky beyond the cabin. There was a wicked-looking line of clouds in the southwest, their flat bottoms dark with rain, and their tops ascending the sky like castle walls. A gentle wind was preceding the storm, but no rain yet.

After another minute or so, the cabin door swung open on leather hinges. A young man stood in the doorway, holding a shotgun in both hands. His suspenders were down and his feet were bare, as if he had just rolled out of bed.

“Looking for trouble?” the man asked.

“Not particularly,” Calder said.

“Are you with them?”

“Mister,” Calder said, “we're with nobody but ourselves. Sorry to bother you. We'll be on our way.”

Calder tugged the brim of his hat and turned his horse, and I followed.

“Wait!” the man called.

“Is there something we can do for you?” Calder asked over his shoulder.

“You can tell me if I've gone crazy or not,” he said. “Yesterday the supply train bound for Fort Elliott came by here. They crossed the creek at the rocky ford yonder.”

“Was a whiskey trader by the name of Vanderslice with them?”

“There was a whiskey trader, but I don't know his name.”

“Tall? Good-looking?” I asked.

“He was vain, if that's what you mean.”

We turned back and walked our horses to within a few yards of the cabin.

“What you got that scattergun loaded with?” Calder asked.

“Dimes. A dollar of silver in each barrel.”

“What has you so rattled?” Calder asked.

“Mister, I saw a man turn into a wolf yesterday.”

“That a fact?” Calder asked.

“Saw a man turn into a wolf and rip the stuffing out of my brother like he was just a rag doll, right here in front of the cabin. So I figure I'm either going crazy or there is something powerful evil on the loose. Either way, it don't sit easy with me.”

“You're not crazy,” I said, dismounting. “My name is Ophelia Wylde, and this is my partner, Jack Calder. I talk to the dead, and Jack's a bounty hunter. We're on the trail of this evil thing you saw yesterday. Do you mind if we come in and talk?”

The man invited us in, but kept the shotgun across his lap as he sat at a table with his back to the wall. He said his name was Pollux Adams and that he was twenty-five years old and that he had been a cowboy driving herds from the panhandle over to the Western Trail. He said he liked this little patch of land along Kiowa Creek enough that he came back with his brother, Castor, and filed a claim, becoming the first white settler in probably fifty miles. That had been a year ago. And apart from the occasional Indian scare, things had gone right well—until yesterday.

The wagon caravan bossed by Malleus had always made him uneasy, he said, but it had never given him any trouble. The train had a dozen or so rangy bullwhackers who seemed more animal than human, but that wasn't unusual for bullwhackers, because they were a rough sort. But these bullwhackers, he said, were rougher than usual, and he never heard them speak—just snarl and snap at one another. Yesterday afternoon the Malleus train rattled over the ford as usual, but one of the whackers seemed particularly aggressive. Castor and Pollux Adams were cooking up some supper on the little stove inside the cabin, just jackrabbit stew and corn bread, and the whacker came right into the cabin and lunged for the pot. He burned himself, of course, spilled the stew all over the floor, and scrambled like a wounded animal on all fours as he slunk away. Castor gave him a swift kick in the ribs for his trouble, and the man yelped and snapped at him before running out the door.

“It was the damndest thing I ever saw,” Pollux Adams said. “The man behaved just like an animal. Castor and me laughed about it, and then we cleaned up the mess on the floor, and salvaged what jackrabbit meat we could, and started another batch. We ate supper, and had a smoke, and sat outside while it grew dark.”

A blast of wind hit the cabin and rattled the shutters as Pollux told us his tale. The cabin door was open, as were the shutters on the windows, and the air and sky had turned an odd green hue.

“I don't like the color of outside,” Calder said.

“What happened next?” I asked, ignoring him.

“It was twilight when the whacker came back,” Pollux said in a voice so low we had to listen hard to catch every word. “He had stayed hidden down by the creek while the train had moved on. He walked up like a man, but by the time he got to the night shadow of the cabin, he was a wolf—a big gray one with yellow eyes.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“We both were so surprised, we didn't do anything for a moment—like that feeling you get in dreams when you're scared but can't move,” Pollux said. “But we came out of it pretty quick when we realized the wolf was coming at us. Both Castor and me are in the habit of keeping our pieces in our belts, because you never know out here when you're going to need them right quick, and we both drew down on the rangy beast and fired. I can't conceive of how we missed, but apparently we did. The wolf didn't even slow down. When he was about six feet out, he jumped and landed square on Castor's chest and tore open his throat like he was bringing down a calf.”

There was a flash of lightning outside, followed a split second later by thunder, which shook dust from the rafters. Then came the patter of rain on the shake roof.

“Ophelia, we need to get the horses under that pole and thatched stable out back,” Calder said.

“Jack, I need to hear the rest of this story.”

“All right,” Calder said, heading for the door. “I reckon I'll take care of the horses.”

“What happened next, Pollux?”

“I placed the barrel of my pistol against the wolf's head and blew his brains out, and he rolled over dead on the spot. But it was too late for Castor. His throat had been ripped out and his chest mauled right bad. It looked like the wolf was trying to break right through his ribs to his heart.”

Pollux hung his head nearly to his knees and wept.

“I buried Castor out back,” he said. “But something came and dug him up and carried his body away.”

I put a hand on his shoulder. “Did the wolf you shot turn back into a man?”

“Nope,” Pollux said. “I dragged the carcass down by the river and burned it up. But the odd thing was, I found this in the ashes when it was all done.”

He reached into his pocket and produced what looked like a marble—brown and swirled-red glass.

“Feel it,” he said. He placed it in my palm.

It was as heavy as lead, and I gasped as pain like fire shot up my arm and into my chest. I dropped it on the floor, where it didn't bounce and stayed put as if glued.

“Strange, ain't it?”

“It is wicked strange,” I said. “Pollux, do you know where the whiskey trader goes when he leaves the train?”

“Yeah. He and Malleus both hole up—”

Then there was an odd sound outside, as if a locomotive trailing a thousand cars was bearing down on us. Calder burst in the door and told us to get to the root cellar.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

“Cyclone.”

“Cellar's around back,” Pollux said. “It ain't deep, but it will do.”

On the way around back, Calder stopped long enough at the thatched stable to untie the horses and slap them on the flank to get them moving toward the creek. They were still saddled, as all he'd had time for was to loosen the cinch straps.

Calder grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the cellar door.

Then I looked to the southwest and gasped.

A cyclone was snaking across the field, not three hundred yards from where we stood. It was dark and sinewy and was chewing up dirt and grass, and it was murmuring a dead language.

Calder shoved me down into the cellar and stood there by the open door, calling for Pollux Adams. But instead of running for cover, Pollux stood his ground.

“Where's the hideout?” I shouted.

He turned and said something, but I couldn't hear him.

“What?”

Now he was walking toward the cyclone, his shotgun at the ready.

Then he planted his feet and shouldered the gun. But before he could fire, the cyclone picked him up and tossed him in the air like a rag doll. There was a bright tongue of flame from both barrels of the gun, and I could see the glittering dimes spread against the darkening sky.

Calder pulled me down into the cellar and pressed me to the ground while the storm raged above us. Then we heard a terrible creaking and snapping of wood. The entire cabin was lifted away and torn apart, so much lumber being sucked into the whirling sky above us.

30

Calder handed me my hat, which he found on the ground near where the cabin had stood just minutes before. The sky had turned a normal color for evening, a pale blue, and Venus shone brightly in the west, the storm having passed.

“Are you all right?” Calder asked.

“Relatively speaking,” I said. “Odd the storm didn't take the hat.”

“Everything about what just happened was odd.”

“Poor Pollux!”

“At least he went out fighting—although you're going to need something more than a scattergun to go up against a cyclone.”

“It wasn't an ordinary kind of storm,” I said. “Malleus was behind it, I could feel him in the wind. If he can summon forces like that . . .”

“Want to turn back?”

“No,” I said. “Do you know this place,
Ciudad Perdida
?”

It meant “Lost City.”

“I've heard of it,” Calder said. “Some call it ‘Buried City.'”

“What is it?”

“Ruins,” he said, brushing the mud from his own hat and trying to restore some shape. He had jammed it beneath him in the cellar. “Maybe twenty miles west along the creek. They're very old.”

“Spanish, then?” I asked. “The conquistadors?”

“Older than that,” Calder said. “The Spanish found it three hundred years ago, and it was already very old then. It stretches for miles along the creek, an entire city carved out beneath the rocky bluffs along the creek. Maybe one of the Lost Tribes of Israel built it.”

“Or some kind of Indian civilization we don't know about yet.”

Calder looked sour.

“All Indians know how to do is kill,” he said. “If there were Indians here before the Comanche, then they were killers, too. It's their way.”

I began to object, but his face told me I should let it drop.

“We'd better round up the horses,” Calder said. “We'll find them in the low ground, down by the creek.”

We found the horses. Calder suggested we make camp, because it was full night and we didn't want to be stumbling around in the dark. I agreed, but was uneasy about sleeping near the open cellar, where the cabin had been. We walked the horses onto the plain, a few hundred yards to the west, then staked the horses and shook out our bedrolls.

“No fire tonight,” Calder said.

We stripped off our wet clothes and placed them out to dry, and we used our blankets as robes. I was disappointed that Calder, who had turned his back like a gentleman, did not once try to sneak a look before the blanket was around my shoulders. I did not really know why I was disappointed, because I had expected nothing to happen between us. Calder was not the type of man I had ever been attracted to. He seemed to care little for things like literature and art, and I found his history of vigilantism barbaric.

Our supper was some stale corn bread and wiry beef jerky Calder took from his saddlebag. As we ate, we made the sort of idle conversation expected in such situations.

“Wish we had a can of peaches,” Calder said. “And a tin of sardines.”

“Wouldn't mind the peaches,” I said. “But not with sardines.”

“I like oysters, too.”

I made a gagging sound.

“Oysters and beer,” he said. “Now, that's a meal.”

I made a louder gagging sound.

“That's a mess on the floor about an hour after,” I said.

“Well, what's your favorite?” he asked. “If you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be?”

“This is what men talk about on the trail?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Calder said. “Food, beer . . . women.”

“In that order?”

“Depends on how long a man has been on the trail,” Calder said. “So come now, what's your favorite meal?”

“Brisket,” I said. “For dessert, pecan pie.”

Then I realized we would soon be facing something quite grave, and I grew weary of the expected.

“Tell me about your wife.”

“Why?”

“Because this might be the last chance you have to talk about her.”

“This is not a chat I am comfortable having.”

“Because I'm a woman?”

“That's part of it.”

“Then pretend I'm your boon companion, Orion Wylde. We have come through hell and high winds today and find ourselves hunkered down for the night on a dark plain beneath the Milky Way. Tomorrow we will face mortal danger, yet again. So tell me, as you would your best pal on the trail. What is your best memory of your wife?”

He gave a wistful smile.

“If somebody had asked me that question when she was still alive, I would have imagined that it would have been the marital relations I remembered best,” Calder said. “I do, of course, but that's not my favorite memory of Sarah. As the years have passed since she was killed, the memory that comes back to me, again and again, is something that I hardly noticed at the time. It was in the spring, and the boy had not yet turned one, when we were still on the ranch in Presidio County. Satisfied at the end of a long day of work, I was sitting in the shade of a cottonwood tree, with Johnnie on a blanket nearby. Sarah brought me a cup of water. She handed it to me and sat down on the blanket with the boy, touched my knee, and then she smiled—and the whole world seemed right.”

He shook his head.

“I've never felt anything was right since,” he said. “We were on the trail to Kansas a month later—and found ourselves in the middle of the Red River War.”

“What happened?”

“At Sharp's Creek, in the Texas Panhandle, we came upon Quanah Parker and his band of about three hundred Indians,” Calder said. “They spotted us, of course. It's hard to hide a wagon loaded with household goods. There was a wagon train in front of us, and they made a run for Adobe Walls, an outpost of buffalo hunters, just north of the Canadian. The train made it. We broke an axle. That was on June seventh.”

He rubbed his eyes.

“While Parker assaulted the Walls, a raiding party of Comanche found us and our broken wagon. There were about five of them, on a low ridge maybe three hundred yards away, watching us. We were going to ride away, to leave them the wagon and everything else, because that's what they wanted—they needed food. I had just boosted Sarah up into the saddle of one horse and handed her the boy, then turned to mount the other horse, when I heard Sarah make a pitiful sound. She pitched backward from the saddle before I heard the thunder of the rifle. It was an old fifty-caliber ball. Do you know how big that is? Half an inch in diameter. Bigger around than your thumb.”

Calder took a breath.

“The bullet had passed through both her and the boy. They were dead before they hit the ground.”

“Oh, God,” I said.

“What God?” Calder asked. “There was no God, at least not on Sharp's Creek that day.”

“What did you do?”

“Before or after I tracked down and killed three of the war party?” Calder smiled. “That's how I became a bounty hunter. I discovered I have a talent for tracking down and killing people. The three Comanche were dead by nightfall. Then it was dark, and I went back and dug graves for Sarah and the boy, and built a big fire, using parts from the wagon. I kept guard over the bodies to keep the wolves away. Then at dawn I buried them, burned what was left of the wagon and the truck inside, and rode away.”

“That's horrific.”

“I went to Adobe Walls, where the hunters had driven away Parker with their buffalo rifles, because of their longer range. They packed up and headed home to Dodge City, and I went with them.”

“How far are we from—”

“Those graves along Sharp's Creek?” Calder asked. “Sixty or seventy miles, I reckon. You know, it's funny. The Comanche believe that the dead travel the road to the west. I reckon they're right.”

He paused.

“I've never told anybody that story,” he said. “At least not all of it.”

“Do you feel better?”

“No,” he said. “There were still two Comanche that got away. Now it's your turn. No holding back. Pretend I'm one of your woman friends and we've just finished low tea or whatever it is that women do before they get down to hen talk. Tell me what you miss most about your lost man.”

“That one's easy,” I said. “His smell.”