Over baked shoulders, the boiling globe hovered about two fingers above the parched horizon. On their wiggly way to heaven, heat thermals squiggled upward from the desiccated terrain in the manner of earthworms being fried alive in an iron skillet.
A bead of salty-tasting sweat trickled into my eye like a tiny river, coursed down a dusty cheek, then dove into the corner of my mouth. I wiped the droplet away with one finger and flicked it into the dense air, as I peered through my five-segment, calvary-surplus telescope. Tried, with little in the way of satisfying success, to make sense of the uninviting scene laid out before us.
A good two hundred yards distant, at the lowest point of a saw-shaped, gently descending cup of sloped sand and scattered bolders, sat ole Felthus Duvall's abandoned house. Fortresslike, the mortar-and-stone dwelling jutted from beneath a thick shelf of jagged rock like an ugly wart on the earth's reddish-brown rump. The entirety of the viewable earth between us and that man-made cave appeared totally barren of life. Not a single blade of grass, clump of weeds, flower, or bush grew within a hundred feet of the bleak, sinister-looking dwelling.
With surprising abruptness, the stunted breeze that had followed us to that spot like an old dog looking for a handout seemed to die. It sucked away, as though frightened by something unseen. Something larger, more dangerous, more deadly. It left us surrounded by an unearthly stillnessâa troubling, nerve-jangling quiet. To this very instant, I can close my eyes and easily reacall a feeling of eerie uncertainty and apprehension about the entire, peculiar setting.
I rocked back in my saddle, as if involuntarily trying to move away from what I could not see, or know. And in spite of the day's brutal, body-sapping heat, an unwelcome, sweat-drenched chill crept up my horse-weary spine. A baffling, creeping kind of eerie gloom wrapped clammy fingers around a backbone that ached. Got the uneasy feeling some invisible, iron-fingered fist had delivered an unexpected crusher of a blow to the spot directly between my shoulder blades. Remember as how I grimaced. Then, I twisted sidewise, as though some stealthy back shooter was about to dry-gulch me from the open maw of a dark alley on a moonless night.
“Don't know 'bout you fellers, but this spot gives me a case of the creepin' willies. Just can't imagine, for a single second, why anybody'd want to build a place to live way the hell and gone out here.”
Boz nodded and added, “Think you're right, Lucius. Cain't see a damned thing to recommend this particular spot. Looks exactly the way I've come to imagine what the surface of the moon must resemble. Or some place in hell, or maybe the ass end of the whole world. Only a damn sight harsher.”
“'S why I lives down by the water,” Honus Lavender mumbled and toyed with the hammers on his shotgun. “Done been a complete mystery to me why ole Duvall built this place way out here. Spot sure's the dickens got nothin' to recommend it, far as I've ever been able to tell anyhow.”
Boz, Glo, and I grunted our mutual concurrence with Lavender's assessment.
“As many times as I've been up to this spot,” Honus continued, “still don't like bein' here. 'Course when you're tryin' to keep the Comanche from killin' you and your family, in the most horrid fashion imaginable, like ole Duvall was, guess you'd do whatever necessary to make certain that didn't happen.”
“Impossible to know another man's heart or mind,” Glo offered.
“Don't matter none 'bout the heart or mind, Mistuh Johnson,” Honus said. “They's ghosts livin' in that place. Worst kinda ghosts. Evil spirits and sech.”
Boz forced a crooked grin and shook his leonine head as though more than a bit amused by talk of ghosts, spirits, and such. He used his long glass as a pointer. “There's a corral at the east end of the house, Lucius. Pair of horses pinned up back there right now. Both of 'em look to be unsaddled. Horrifyin' thought, but I'd bet the girl's still down there.”
Tapped my own scope against one chap-covered leg and said, “Wonder how ole man Duvall managed to get water to this place?”
“No need to worry none on that problem,” Honus Lavender quickly offered. “They's a well inside the house. Appears Duvall even imported a custom-made hand pump from back East once he got 'er dug. Not sure how far down the man had to go 'fore he struck plenty of liquid. Musta been pert deep though, and a hellacious job for a single feller with nothin' but a shovel to accomplish such a task. Anyway, them folks as are still inside, if they's the ones you're lookin' to find, have access to water, and plenty of it.”
Those words had barely fallen from Honus Lavender's lips, when a high, thin, piercing wail rolled up that sandy slope and boxed all of us across our ears like an open palm. While muted by stone walls and distance, the sound of the girl's pitiable scream sent prickly chill bumps charging up and down my spine.
“Well, that for damn sure rips the rag off the bush,” Boz said, then snatched his coach gun from its bindings and hopped off his animal.
The rest of us quickly followed Boz's lead, hit our feet, and grabbed for the heaviest weapons we carried.
Before things got out of hand I said, “Wait, now. Gotta go at this with some thought beâ” Another round of stomach-churning screams stopped me cold. I paused 'til the screams died away and I could get my breath back. Figure I was talking about a mile a minute when I finally said, “Honus, you're familiar with the interior of the house. Want you to draw us up a quick sketch of the floor plan. You can do it right here in the dirt.”
“No need to draw nothin', Mistuh Dodge,” Lavender said. “ 'S all just one big room. Long as the front façade and maybe ten, twelve feet deep.”
“No interior walls?” Boz said.
Lavender gave his head a vigorous shake. “None as I recall, Mistuh Tatum. One long, easy-to-defend room. That's it.”
“How 'bout furniture? Any furniture left?” I said.
A puzzled look played across Lavender's deeply creased face. After some seconds of head-scratching thought, he said, “Just some old busted, broke-down stuff. Not much really. Only complete piece as I ever seen was the remnants of an iron bedstead.”
“Where?” Boz demanded.
“What you mean, Mistuh Boz?”
A hurried urgency spiked in Boz's voice when he snapped, “Where in the room? Front corner? Back corner? Which end of the room when we go through the door?”
Lavender gazed into Boz's eyes as if staring at a man who'd lost his mind. “What you mean, when we go through the door? If'n we go and step one foot too close to that place, and Mad Dog Cutner just happens to take a gander outside, he'll cut us down pocket high faster'n God can get here and stop the killin'.”
A loud metallic click snatched everyone's attention my direction when I broke open my shotgun and eyed the primed and ready loads. Another barely discernable, trilling screech clawed at my ears as I snapped the weapon shut, then thumbed the hammers back.
“Ain't got no choice in this particular matter, Mr. Lavender,” I said. “Once we've left this spot, we'll head for the front door quick as we can hoof it.”
“Then what?” Lavender said as though stunned and amazed.
Big popper propped on one shoulder, Boz said, “Then, me and Lucius'll each blast hell outta one side of the door with both barrels of these shoulder cannons of ours. That'll blow us a pathway inside. Once we get inside, we'll kill the hell out of Cutner and save the girl. That about it, Lucius?”
I flashed him a tight grin then said, “Sounds right to me.”
Lavender shook his head and took several steps backward. “Done all the killin' as I ever intend to do, gents. Already in too deep with God over my past killin's as it is. Jus' cain't go bein' a party to this 'un.”
A look of surprised confusion on his face, Glo said, “What you mean, Honus? That man inside there is the worst we've ever encountered. Ain't no arguin' the point. And he has a defensless young girl in there with 'im. We gotta go on down there and get 'er out. Whatever it takes.”
Lavender took another step backward, then moved to his animal's side. He jumped into a stirrup and quickly threw a leg over the beast's broad back. The horse shook its head, rattled the metallic pieces of the California headstall and curb bit against one another.
“Got you mens up here like I said I would. But ain't gonna be party to no more killings, 'less it's done to save my own life. Y'all go on and do what you has to do. I completely understand. Trust me, I do. Just count me out of it.”
Then, God as my witness, he wheeled that big ole gray of his around and kicked for home. Seconds later, Honus Lavender didn't amount to any more than fleeting memories and a cloud of swirling dust headed for safer climes.
Glo stared at his feet as though dumbfounded. “Hadn't seen it myself, wouldn't of believed it, Mistuh Dodge. Never knew the man to have a craven bone in his body. 'Fore now anyway.”
Boz turned and gazed down at Duvall's stone dwelling. And, in that strange, philosophical way he often assumed, said, “Well, ain't nothin' cowardly 'bout the man, Glo. Of late, must admit I've come to understand his position completely. Like a lot of others I've known, 'pears as how, at some point, Honus Lavender has simply reached that point where killin' another man is as foreign to his way of thinking as payin' to watch a troup of armadillos play banjos and square dance.”
“Doesn't matter whether he's with us or not,” I said, “the job's still the same. Ain't nothin' more 'n a day's worth of gun work fellers.”
And with that, and a quick nod of agreement to one another, we struck out. Heeled it for Duvall's derelict strong-hold like a trio of men on a deadly mission. Clementine Webb's piteous screeching rang in our ears every step of the way.
23
“SCREW YOU LAW-BRINGIN' BASTARDS . . .”
I CANNOT IMAGINE what kept us from being discovered as we hoofed our way down that treeless, barren hillside. We sure as hell didn't attempt anything in the way of concealing our approach. No point. Nothing to hide behind. Perhaps the worst part of the deadly stroll was that Clementine Webb's noisy, tortuous treatment became louder, more real, and more difficult to stomach the closer we got to our objective.
Suppose we couldn't have been more than ten feet from the rock-bound chamber of horror's sturdy-looking front entrance when we came to a huffing, puffing stop. I turned to Glo. Locked him in a narrow-eyed glare and said, “Boz and I'll take the door down, then go inside. Want you to wait out here. If ole Mad Dog makes it past us alive, don't you dare hesitate, Glo. Drop both hammers on his sorry, woman-stealin', murderin' ass. You assume he's already shot hell out of the two of us and most probably sent the girl to Jesus as well. Kill 'im graveyard dead.”
Boz let out a derisive snort, then added, “Damn right, Glo. That son of a bitch manages to eleminate the both of us, once you've put 'im down, drag his corpse out into the middle of nowhere and let the coyotes have him.”
Glo pawed at the sandy ground with one booted foot. “My, oh, my, Mistuh Dodge. Sho' do hope ain't nothin' like that's in the cards today. Sho' don't want this dance to end in such a terrible tragedy. Cain't begin to imagine what I'd do if'n y'all men went and got kilt.”
“You'll do what's necessary,” Boz said. “Same as we would do. Same as always.”
Raised my weapon and aimed for the hinged side of the door. “You ready to start this ride, Boz?”
“Screwed down and sittin' deep in the saddle, Lucius.” He brought his weapon up on the opposite side of the rugged entryway, then said, “Turn 'er loose and let 'er buck. Let's see which way she jumps.”
Thunderous report from four barrels of heavy-gauge buckshot rendered the weather-shriveled door, the frame, and goodly parts of the stone and mortar wall on either side of it to nothing more than a cyclone of flying splinters and roiling dust. An ear-thumping roar from our blasting still hung in the air, when we cast those big poppers aside. Filled our hands with cocked pistols and stormed through the run-down building's newly fashioned front opening like a pair of mad men running toward the worst of a moonless midnight's bad dreams.
I darted for the right corner. Boz hoofed it to the left. I'm fairly certain no more than two or three seconds passed once we crossed over that shattered threshold before I could truly see anything of life-saving importance.
Appeared as how Cutner might have moved what remained of the bed Honus Lavender described for us. The rickety piece of junk sat in the middle of the unkept, nigh-on-empty room. The sagging metal frame and springs were but a few feet from the door we'd just reduced to a fog-like mist of black-powder gun smoke and toothpick sized kindling. Covered by our pistols, Cutner had dragged Clementine to the back wall near one side of an enormous fireplace. The massive hearth appeared fully capable of accommodating entire trees.
The pair of them were as naked as glory-be-to-God jay-birds. Near as I could tell, in the half-light of inner darkness and still swirling clouds of grit, Clementine Webb had either totally lost consciousness or already walked amongst the dead.
The girl's appearance bordered on the hideous. Finger-shaped smears of crusted blood painted her beautiful, child's face in a hellish, demonic mask. They decorated her boyish body in weird, fiendish, wavelike curlicues, and peculiar patterns in the manner of painted-on lightning bolts.
The totality of the bloodcurdling scene sent me to the edge of retching like a man coming off a month-long drunk. Realization of what that animal might have done to her made me mad enough to bite a chunk out of the head of a double-bit ax.