Longtree still didn't care for it. "What makes this government business, Tom? Sounds like a local matter to me. Doesn't seem like our jurisdiction at all."
Rivers found and held him with those crystal green eyes. "Shit, Joe, you know better than that. I can make just about any goddamn place the province of my marshals if I so choose."
"Sure, Tom, I know. But humor me."
"Well, we've got an ugly situation there, Joe. First off, Wolf Creek sits at the foot of the Tobacco Root Mountains and I don't have to tell you what that means--silver. And lots of it. Some people back in Washington, some of whom I work for, don't like this business at all and you can't rightly blame them: they own interest in the mines. Secondly, we've got a camp of Blackfeet in the hills outside Wolf Creek on reservation land. And they've been crying foul to the Indian Agents about how the law has been treating them up there." Rivers mulled it over. "What we're afraid of is these murders getting hung on the Blackfeet and the locals taking matters into their own hands. And you know the Blackfeet. You know 'em well as any--they get pushed, they'll push right back. They won't tolerate whites raiding into their territory."
"They're a proud bunch," Longtree said, nodding. "They don't particularly care for whites and you sure as hell can't blame them."
"And that's where you come in, Joe. You're half-Crow."
"Crow ain't Blackfoot, Tom."
"No, and a pecker's not a pike, but you're all we've got, my friend. Just go on up there, nose around. See if you can get friendly not only with the townsfolk, but the Blackfeet, too. They might accept you. We need somebody in there who can play both sides of the fence before this gets uglier than it already is."
Longtree nodded. "Okay, I'll do it. What they got for law in Wolf Creek?"
Tom Rivers sighed, chewed his lower lip. "Sheriff name of Lauters. He's a hardcase, Joe. I never heard anything good about him. You might have trouble with him."
"Oh, I'm sure I will. You always manage to stick me into some spot like this."
Rivers laughed. "It's why I keep you around."
After Rivers left, Longtree sat and thought about it. Usually, he had a man to go after. Something tangible. Not this time.
It would be a challenge.
Early the next morning Longtree set out for Wolf Creek.
He took to the trail at a leisurely pace. He was a bit skeptical about any of the killings being done by a man once he learned the details. But if it was an animal, then it was like none he'd ever heard of. Few animals were brave enough to venture into a town. And none that he knew of would kill like that once they did and make a habit of it.
It had all the markings of a damn strange investigation.
Nathan Segaris sat in a copse of trees and waited.
He'd been watching the west bluff that separated Carl Hew's grazing lands from those of the Blackfeet Indian reservation. Hew had about four-hundred head and if things went well, before morning, he'd be down about fifty.
Segaris grinned.
And it wasn't a pleasant sight: he had no teeth, just mottled gums.
There were several broken sections of fence along the west bluff that Hew and his men hadn't gotten around to repairing just yet. With a little help, these could be widened up nicely.
Segaris climbed back up on his brown and steered the gelding back down towards Wolf Creek. Tonight would be a good night. The others would meet him on around midnight and, with luck, they'd get those steer off of Hew's land and into the next valley by morning.
It was a plan.
Segaris grinned and lit a cigar.
It was after sundown by the time he made it back to his little place outside of town. He made himself a meal of corn cakes and what remained of the smoked ham from yesterday. It wasn't much, but it would suffice. And by this time next week, he'd have some real money for food.
He sat down and re-lit his cigar.
Life was grand, he thought, life was surely grand.
Outside, his horse whinnied.
He sat up. It was too early for the rest of the boys to show. He listened, cocking an ear. He could hear the wind out there, skirting the barn with the wail of widows.
Nothing else.
But Segaris was a careful man. He took his shotgun off the hook above the hearth, broke it open, and fed in two shells. If someone had come to pay a call, they'd best be wary.
The door rattled in its frame like someone had shaken it.
There was a scratching at it now. That and a hoarse, low breathing. Segaris stood up again and took aim, closing the distance to the door with a few light steps.
The door shook violently again and then exploded in with an icy gust of wind that carried a black, godless stink on it. Segaris was thrown to the floor. He came up shooting, not knowing what it was he was shooting
at.
Then he saw.
"Sweet Jesus," he muttered.
His screams echoed into the night.
Nobody in Wolf Creek particularly cared for Curly Del Vecchio.
He of the striped coats and trousers, gold watch chain, and immaculately brushed derby hats. He was a conniver and con man, gambler and self-styled ladies' man who'd spent ten years in prison for his part in a horse-rustling ring. He fancied himself a champion pistol-fighter, but anyone with a real draw would've killed him before his hand even slapped leather.
The only thing Curly was really good at was drinking. This night he'd swallowed eight bottles of beer and was halfway through a pint of rum by the time he got to Nathan Segaris' spread outside town. It was a cool night, a light snow falling, but Curly felt none of these things. He felt very good, very drunk. He was celebrating--prematurely--the theft of fifty head of Carl Hew's steer.
He knew Nate Segaris and the others wouldn't be too happy with him getting boozed up and all. But a man had a right to celebrate from time to time.
Especially one that was about to come into a good bit of money. Fifty head of old Hew's cattle at fifty bucks a crack. That would be a nice chunk of change for the lot of them, being that five of their member were now gone. Five-hundred U.S. Treasury Greenbacks a man. Nothing to sneeze at.
"Rest in peace, boys," Curly said to himself.
Five of us gone, he thought, five of us left.
Coincidence. That's all.
Curly gave his old mare a little taste of the spurs--a nick in the sides, nothing more--and she picked up speed a bit, galloping over the hard-packed snow. She brought him over a little rise and there was Nate's place. It looked inviting. A trail of smoke drifting from the chimney, a lantern glowing in the window.
I surely hope he has a bottle of something warm, Curly thought.
He tethered his horse in the barn and drunkenly made his way up to the front porch, stopping only once to urinate. He was on the top stair before he realized something was wrong.
The door had been ripped asunder, shattered into so much kindling. Only a few jagged sections clung to the hinges, the rest spread out over the floor in a rain of shards and split fragments.
Curly reached down for his old Army .44.
The metal felt like ice in his trembling hand.
"Nate?"
he called in a weak voice.
Getting no answer, he mounted the final two steps and stopped just inside the door. Tables were overturned and broken. Shelves collapsed, their contents strewn everywhere. A bag of flour had been ripped open and another of sugar. There was a dusting of white everywhere. A sudden chill gust kicked up, making the old house creak and sway, churning up dust devils of flour.
There was blood everywhere.
Curly's stomach turned over.
It was pooled on the floor, sprayed on the walls, beading the old sheet iron cooking stove. The stink of it hung in the air with a ripe, raw insistence. It was in Curly's nose, on his skin. He could taste it on his tongue.
He didn't wait to see a body.
He didn't need to.
He set off at a run, pounding through the snow, falling, slipping, but finally making the barn. He was cold stone sober as he unhitched the mare and climbed on.
The storm was starting again, wind and snow buzzing in the air.
The horse began to whinny, to pace wildly from side to side. It would move off in one direction, snort, and start off in another.
"Come on, damn you!" Curly cried, the smell of violent death everywhere. He pulled on the reigns and gave the mare the spurs. "Get up!"
The barn door slammed open in the wind and then shut again. Nate's horse was whinnying and pulling madly at its tether in there. Something was wrong and both animals knew it.
The lamp in the house flickered and went out.
A cold chill went up Curly's spine and it had nothing to do with the screaming, bitter wind. And then there was another sound in the distance: a low, horrible howling, an insane baying that rose up and was broke apart by the wind. Curly went cold all over, his hackles raising. That sound...the roar of a freight train echoing through a mineshaft.
The howling sounded out again.
Closer.
With a scream, Curly yanked on the reins and the mare took off down the road, nearly throwing him. It galloped crazily in the wrong direction and Curly couldn't get it under control. His face went numb from the cold, his eyes watering. Terror rattled in his heart and in his ears--the howling.
Closer.
And closer still.
"Big" Bill Lauters dismounted his horse and waited for Dr. Perry to do the same. It took the old man a little longer.
"Damn cold," Perry said. "My back's really acting up."
Lauters rubbed his hands together. "Let's go," he said. "Might as well get it over with."
He went in the house first. He saw pretty much what Curly Del Vecchio had seen the night before. The house was trashed, looking much like a small tornado had whipped through. Furniture was shattered. Dishes and crockery broken into bits that crunched underfoot. Bottles were smashed. Everything seemed to be ripped and splintered. And over it all, flour, sugar...and blood.
"Mary, mother of God," Perry gasped. "What in the hell happened here?"
Lauters surveyed the scene. He was disgusted, angry, but his features never changed--he always looked pissed-off. "What do you
think
happened here, Doc?" he said sarcastically.
They both knew what they were facing. They knew it from the moment word reached them that Nate Segaris hadn't shown up at the Congregational Church that morning. Segaris never missed. He was a thief and a cheat, as everyone knew, but he never missed Sunday services. His mother had given him a strict moral and religious upbringing. And although he had managed to shake off the morality, the religion in his soul clung on tenaciously. Or had.
"What sort of animal does this?" Lauters asked for what seemed the hundredth time. "What sort of creature busts into a man's house and does a thing like this?"
Perry said nothing. He had no answers. The killings were more than acts of hunger, but violent acts of mutilation and mayhem. And what sort of creature murders people for food like a savage beast and then destroys their lodgings like a crazy man?
Lauters looked at the blood everywhere. "He's gotta be around here somewhere."
Together they stepped through the carnage and hesitated before the door to the rear parlor. There were claw marks in the door running a good three feet. Perry examined them. The gouges were dug into the wood at least half an inch.
Perry swallowed dryly. "The strength this thing must have to do that."
Lauters pushed through the door.
The parlor was wrecked, too. Segaris had kept all the belongings of his late wife in here. Her frilly pillows were gutted, feathers carpeting the floor. Her fine china serving sets pulverized in the corners. Her collection of porcelain dolls were broken into bits. One severed doll head stared at them with blue painted eyes. Her dresses which had been hanging from a brass rod, were shredded into confetti. Even the walls were scathed with claw marks, torn flaps of wallpaper hanging down like Spanish Moss.
"No animal does this, Doc," Lauters said with authority. "No goddamn beast of the forest comes into a man's home and wrecks it."
Perry looked very closely at all he saw, scrutinizing everything with an investigator's eye. He checked everything. He held a fold of wallpaper in his nimble fingers and examined it as though it were a precious antiquity. He mumbled a few words to himself and extracted a bit of something that was wedged between the wallpaper and baseboard.
"But no man leaves this behind," he said, holding out what he found.
The sheriff took it, rubbed it between thumb and forefinger. It was a mat of gray coarse fur. "Some dog maybe," he muttered to himself.
"Think so?"
Lauters scowled. "I don't know what to think. I've got five dead men on my hands and what looks like possibly a sixth...what the hell am I supposed to say? What the hell do you want from me?"
"Easy, Sheriff."
Lauters dropped the fur and stalked back into the living area. Cursing, with one hand pressed to the small of his back, Perry stooped and picked it up, sticking it in his pocket. Groaning he stood back up.
"Look here, Doc."
Lauters was squatting down, next to a collapsed end table. There was a shotgun beneath it. It had been snapped nearly in half, the barrels bent into a U. Lauters sniffed them and checked the chambers. "Segaris got off two shots with this before it got him. And what," he asked pointedly, "walks away from a shotgun blast?"
"Whatever made this track does," Perry interjected.
Lauters was by his side now. There was a track in the flour, slightly obscured, but definitely the huge spoor of some unknown beast. "What in Christ has a foot like that?" he wondered aloud.
Perry just shook his head. "Not a man. We know that much."
The print was over three feet in length, maybe eight inches in diameter. Long, almost streamlined, whatever left it had three long toes or claws in front and a shorter, thicker spur at the rear.