Slocum 428 (4 page)

Jigger McGee arrived in Timber Hills at dusk that night, as the sky purpled and the breaths of the few people hustling along the boardwalks plumed thick and hung, cloud-like, in the dense, stormy air.

“That you, Jig?”

“Who said that?” The small, wiry, fur-clad man spun on his hard rail of a seat behind the pair of mighty Belgians thundering slowly along the darkening street. Two streets north a dog barked, received no answer, tried again.

“You know damn well who it is, Jig.” Out of the shadows stepped a squat man whose shadowed bulk spoke of great girth.

“Torrance Whitaker, I shoulda known it was you, wormin' around in the shadows.” McGee dragged a cuff across his mouth and loosed a stream of tobacco juice. It spattered in a rough spot at the fat man's feet. The man didn't even finch, just kept his eyes on Jigger.

“And my nostrils should have told me it was you coming, McGee. Those foul horses of yours can be smelled from clear across the county. And believe me when I tell you, that isn't a compliment.” He waved a gloved hand before his face as if a terrible stench had infiltrated his nostrils.

“Nobody talks about my boys that way and lives it down. So shut your homely, fat face, Whitaker. Or I'll be glad to do the job for you.”

“Now aren't you a defensive little fellow.” Whitaker cast the remark out, but Jigger didn't rise to the bait.

“What do you want?” It galled Jigger to think that by asking, he was showing interest in what Whitaker had to say, but he couldn't help himself. The fact was, Jigger wanted to know just what Whitaker's plans were, precisely because the fat man was the biggest landowner in those parts, and a major thorn in Jigger's side. “I'm getting a little tired of you popping up anytime I make a trip to town.”

“Well now,” said Whitaker, puffing on a finger-thick cigar and doing his best not to shiver from the cold. “Seems to me you ought to be nicer to me. Especially considering I am the one and only person in the world who can make your life better than the living hell it currently is.”

“How do you know what my life is like?” Jigger's voice rose in pitch, and a couple of men on the far side of the street looked up from their conversation.

“Let's just say that everyone knows what your life is like, Jig. And it isn't a pretty thought.”

McGee sputtered and delivered a string of blue oaths, but Whitaker kept right on talking. “First there's the debt load you carry. Then there's the poor quality of the work your loggers deliver.”

“What?
What?
” Jigger shook with rage and trembled as he looped the lines around the brake and prepared to jump down from the sledge.

Oddly enough, Torrance Whitaker held his ground and kept right on talking and puffing on his cigar. Despite the creeping cold temperatures, people began to leak out of the fog-windowed storefronts and saloons to hear what the shouting ruckus was all about. And they began to recognize the two combatants as right-full-of-himself, rich-as-sin Torrance Whitaker and Jigger McGee, a solid, if cantankerous, fellow liked by most who took the time to know him.

Whitaker puffed long on his stogie and glanced in appreciation at the growing crowd. “And then there's the fact that you have been late on your payments to the bank a few too many times, Mr. McGee.”

That brought Jigger up short. “What are you saying? What business is my business to you? Hmm?”

“Considering I just guaranteed the bank's solvency in exchange for the presidency of said institution . . . ” Whitaker thumbed his lapels and rocked back on his boot heels. “I'd say I have every right in the world to call into question your haphazard dealings. In fact, I'd go so far as to say you're a public menace to the fine society of Timber Hills.”

It was Jigger's turn to smile, despite what he'd just heard. “What makes you say I'm a menace . . . President Whitaker?”

“Why, the very fact that you are, as we speak, in danger of defaulting on your loan puts the very life savings of everyone in our fair town at risk.” He sucked in a full chest of air and said in a louder, booming voice, “At great, great risk.”

Jigger reached into the foot space of his mighty sledge and pulled out a worn leather satchel, packed and strapped tight.

“What's that?” said the fat man, his cigar drooping between his chapped pink lips.

“This?” said Jigger, holding the bag aloft. “Oh, this ain't nothing much. Just a whole lot of cash.” He leaned forward until the two men's faces were barely a foot apart, but he spoke loudly. “To make my bank payment in full and on time. Might even be some extra there, too, for next month.”

“But how is that possible? I told—”

“You told Deke Tiffins not to buy my logs, is that it?”

The fat man spluttered, and even in the dim light of the street, folks could see him turning a rich hue of crimson. “I . . . I never . . . ”

“You never what, Mr. President? You never told the truth in your life? Now that I'll believe. But you by gum sure did tell ol' Deke you were going to shut him down if'n he bought my logs. But you seemed to forget—or maybe you never knew, being an outsider and all—that me and Deke, we go
waaay
back. Come out here to this rugged old country together, in fact.” He smiled as the fat banker's face puffed and wobbled.

Torrance Whitaker chewed his cigar as though it were a wad of jerky, but he could think of nothing to say.

“Next time you go to threatening a man, you best consider his friends, you hear?” Jigger McGee turned a beaming face on the assembled townsfolk, enjoying a smile at Whitaker's expense.

“Now, now, Jigger. I am, after all, only looking to provide my future daughter-in-law with a safe and secure future. A nest egg, if you will.”

“What do I care how safe and secure your family is, Whitaker?” Jigger rasped a hand across his old curly wolf of a beard and turned toward the bank. “Way I see it, they can all go hang fire, for all I care.”

Whitaker smiled slow and wide, puffed once, twice, pluming blue smoke skyward, then said, “Pity you feel that way about your own daughter, Jig. But then again, that doesn't surprise me. You're a selfish fellow, you know that?”

With that, Whitaker turned his back on Jigger, who still stood by the hanging heads of his boys, the Belgian team, and tried to raise something more than an agitated grunt. The sad part of hearing the news about his own beloved daughter was that he didn't really doubt what Whitaker had said about her becoming Torrance's daughter-in-law. So strained had their relationship become in recent months that he wouldn't put it past the girl to do that to him, in fact.

Finally Jigger, slump-shouldered, sighed long and low and hefted the leather satchel, the one thing he had been so proud of but a few moments before, but that now seemed so damned useless. He slowly walked down the street toward the still-glowing front window of the bank. “Let me down, just like her mother,” he mumbled. As he headed for the bank, the wind picked up and felt like a slap to the face.

“Slocum, what are you doing with that light?” Ned, the wiry older man who ventured outside with him, gestured with his pipe at the snowy mounds before him. “There's something over here. Can't quite see what, though.”

Slocum brought the lantern in low just as an errant gust filled in a track that at its bottom looked as though it had been made by a massive human foot, padded like a bear's, and tipped with great curving claws where the toes ended.

“You see that?” he said, shouting close by Ned's ear.

The other man merely nodded, then gestured onward ahead with his pipe stem. “More there. Best look at 'em before the wind fills them in, too.”

In this fashion they made their way around the far end of the long, low, log structure. Occasionally from inside they could hear muffled words from the men, the occasional bark of laughter shushed by other more strident voices. There was something to this howling noise business, and Slocum was eager to find out just what it was that got all these burly loggers in such a worked-up state.

“We best get back inside,” said Ned.

In the dark, the man's voice, close by to be heard over the whistling wind, startled Slocum. He jerked out of reflex. “Damn, Ned, you rattled me.”

“Good,” said the man, smiling and gesturing back toward their rapidly filling tracks. “Now you know how the rest of us feel. Even if those big goobers in there wouldn't admit it.”

“Ned,” said Slocum as they made their way back toward the cabin door. “What exactly do you think this skoocoom is anyway? As for me, I've heard it, last night and tonight. Hell, I even saw it.”

The effect Slocum's words had on Ned was as if he'd yanked the man hard with a fishhook and line. “You saw it? Why didn't you say so? Tell me, what did it look like?”

“Hold on a second. I may have misspoke. I saw its eyes. Greenish-yellow glowing things about eight feet off the ground. I tell you what, in all my days on the trail, I've never seen a creature's eyes like that.”

Ned nodded, but said nothing.

Just before they reached the door, from the opposite direction they'd just come, they heard the grating, cracking sound of wood being wrenched apart, coupled with the creature shrieks they'd heard earlier. But this time they were outside with it, whatever it was, and this time the sounds were louder, more violent and earnest in their howlings, and this time, they were doubled, as if made by two of the beasts.

“Lordy Lord . . . ” said Ned. Even in the dim lantern light and the wind-driven swirl of pelting snow, Slocum could see that his companion had turned ashen-faced. The man looked to have aged tremendously in mere minutes.

Slocum wanted to investigate. No, he told himself. That's not quite true. What I want to do is go back in there in the warm cabin with the other loggers, sidle up to the fire, and wait it out. Herding instinct must have kicked in, though he tried to laugh it off. In truth, he was as scared—or perhaps more scared—than he had been the night before when he and the Appaloosa were alone in the hills.

The horse! Horrible thoughts of the beast attacking the Appy drove down on him. “Ned,” he shout-whispered. “Where's that sound coming from? What building is it attacking? I don't have the lay of the camp yet.”

“Oh hell, Slocum. We got to get the boys. That thing is tearing up the storehouse. One thing we can't take is losing our supply of vittles, our dynamite, all our necessaries!”

He was already pushing his way inside.

“Come on, Slocum, strength in numbers!”

But Slocum was already stepping into the darkness, his Colt still poised in his cold-stiffened left hand, the guttering lantern in his right. “No, I'll go on ahead. You gather the men, and let's get to the bottom of this.” Snow stung his face, his hands throbbed from the cold, and he couldn't feel his feet, so stiff were his boots. He turned his head back. “And bring shotguns!” he shouted.

All the while, the shrieking and ripping and smashing sounds continued, and if anything, increased in intensity.

Slocum swallowed back the hard knot of terror in his throat and plunged forward into the dark night, pushing his way through what snow had accumulated between the dining cabin and the storage shack. At a distance of what he guessed was halfway to the shed, he paused, his breath feathering into the black sky. He heard a raspy, stuttering sound close by, as if in his own ear, and realized it was his own breathing, coming hard, out of fear.

The sounds continued. The black bulk of the storage shed sat a good fifteen yards away, and the wrecking sounds emanated from within. He couldn't see it clearly enough, but already he had formed an image in his mind of the plank door hanging askew, or ripped from its leather-strap hinges completely, perhaps holes poked in the thick cedar shake roof, the interior a ravaged mess. The beasts, whatever the hell they were—some freakish cross between a grizzly and only the devil knew what else—were probably after food. Maybe the smoked meats hanging from the rafters in the dark shed. Perhaps boxed goods, stored root vegetables, sacks of meal and flour, all ripped and strewn and smashed and scattered.

There was a part of Slocum, though—despite what he had seen, what he had heard, the cold, horrific tingling daggers running up and down his backbone and into his scalp, then straight down into his guts—that doubted this was anything more than a rogue bear.

Or, he thought, pooching his lips at the vaguest of possibilities that this new idea introduced, perhaps this thing was more man than beast? Maybe those two jackasses who attacked him? Might go a long way in explaining why Frenchy acted so odd about them. And why everyone at the Tamarack Logging Camp was so all-fired squirelly and cagey about nearly everything.

Another outburst of growls and howls from the dark and stormy gloom ahead snapped Slocum from his reverie. He raised the lantern high and caught a glimpse of movement, something dark, covered in—what? Fur? Clothes? He could not tell. It looked to have been made from inside a space along the logs, likely the door that had, as he had guessed, been ripped off its hinges.

“Hey!” he shouted, still holding the lantern aloft, still not daring to walk toward sounds that could have been made by a slow cannon blast warring with a bull grizz. And where in the hell were the other men anyway?

He didn't dare turn around, not when there was something—or some
things
—unknown to him somewhere in the dark, not far from him, in fact. He took a step forward, waving the light in an arc before him. He risked one quick peek back over his shoulder and saw the door of the cabin open, a dozen or so loggers huddled together in the doorway, staring out at him.

“Could use some help here!” shouted Slocum in a barking tone. He doubted, though, that they could detect his anger through the howling wind.

Still they didn't do much more than shuffle their feet in place and look at each other. One form broke through them and trudged up the path toward Slocum. It was Ned again, this time carrying a lantern and a shotgun. His pipe was clamped in his mouth.

His grim look mirrored Slocum's. Once he made it to Slocum's side, they walked forward together, slowly advancing on the storage shed. The closer they drew, the farther away the growls and guttural shrieks became. Finally they made it to the door of the shed, or what had but minutes before been a door. Even though the wind had picked up, rousting dervish swirls into their faces, they could see that the wreckage was severe.

The door had been pulled free and lay barely attached to one leather-strap hinge, and Slocum could see some of the roofing—shake shingles—flapping free in the breeze. And when they mustered the strength to look inside, they found bare ropes hanging from the ceiling rafters, ropes that had not long before held shanks of meat cinched tight. Wooden bins of vegetables had been upended, ripped from the walls, and their contents strewn about and stomped on.

“What in the name of all that is holy did this?” shouted Slocum.

Ned didn't reply, merely stared at the wreckage.

“You think it was the skoocoom, or whatever they called it?” Slocum continued, slowly surveying the depressing mess inside the shed, keeping an ear cocked for any sound that might indicate the ransacking beasts might be returning.

“I . . . I don't know what to think. They've come around plenty at times like earlier, though they only made noise, maybe hurled a piece of firewood against a log wall to get our attention, it seemed, but tonight . . .” Ned turned slowly around the room, holding his lantern aloft. “Tonight they really outdid themselves. If I didn't know it was the blasted skoocoom, I'd swear it was . . .”

Slocum turned on Ned, held his lantern close to the older man's face. “Swear it was what, Ned? You think it was some of the men, don't you? From town? From the Tamarack? Or from somewhere else?”

“I . . . I didn't say anything of the sort. Don't go trying to put words into my mouth, Slocum. You just do the job you were hired to do here and leave such worryings to them who has the right and the authority to worry about such matters.” Before Slocum could reply, the man stomped off back to the dining cabin, leaving Slocum alone in the midst of the rubble, wondering what in the hell he'd gotten himself into.

There's one thing none of these men are going to stop me from doing, he thought as he made his way back along the trail. And that's from sleeping in the stable. There are enough horses to keep me warm, and I can protect the Appaloosa should those varmints—whoever or whatever they may be—return. And besides, he thought as he approached the stable, I am damned sure the horses will be easier to get along with, and smell a whole lot better, than a bunkhouse full of men who've been living on beans for weeks.