Slocum and the Hellfire Harem (9781101613382) (12 page)

19

Tunk Mueller still rode northward a day after he'd creased the hide of whoever had tried to ambush him, he hoped for good, but somehow he knew that particular wish wasn't to be. And the more he thought about it, the more it ate at him. Who would be dogging him and why? He'd no doubt left plenty of folks plenty of reasons over the years to pester him. But he hoped he would be able to come across this latest one and finish the job he'd started.

He was about to stop the horse once again, give himself time to think this thing through, when he saw a string of smoke in the distance, down along the barren flatland of the valley below. In the breezeless sky, the smoke rose straight up. That fire could mean food, and food could mean drink. And drink, Mueller decided, could mean people with money saved up. A cash box or at least a coin purse. “Hmm,” he grunted and reached into his saddlebags for the last of his whiskey, confident that he would soon be experiencing the splendors of someone else's drink.

As he rode, he swallowed back the dank brown gargle. It tasted of tree roots and urine, but it sure, by God, gave a man a reason to open his yawp and growl. He belched long and low and looked down at his hole-filled undershirt. It was once red, but had in the past week on the trail made the journey to mostly brown, with some sooty streaks to break up the monotony. But it was the bear-cub growling of his empty gut that drew his attention.

“I know, I know. I'd hoped to feed you by now.” He patted his belly. “It is an almighty embarrassment to me that I am unable to feed myself and my horse properly.” He said this to the air around him, flashed a glance at the still-far-off smoke at the edge of the forest. “I wish I'd turned out differently than how Pap said I'd turn out. If I hadn't been clouted and clopped on the ears for everything I did wrong, I might have become a man of means and high taste.”

He upended the bottle and glugged the last of it down, regarded the empty green-tinged glass bottle, and leaned far back in his saddle and let 'er fly. The thing arced high. He tried to follow it, but he lost it briefly in the sunlight, then it reappeared, whipping end over end, and landed with a
tunk
. The sound was satisfying and brought a smile to his face.

“You gonna to miss that bottle, if'n I was to retrieve it?”

Mueller's eyes flew wide open and he whipped his head back and forth. “What in the hell was that?” Even the horse ceased its relentless plodding and cast a glance sideways.

“Mister?”

Tunk looked down and not twenty-five feet to his left stood a thin, dirt-covered boy of perhaps fourteen. He wore filthy sacking fashioned into some sort of long garment cinched in the middle with what looked to Mueller like a root.

Tunk snatched up his pistol, cocked it, and aimed at the boy. “Who are you and where did you come from?”

“Aw, don't shoot me, mister. I ain't done nothing wrong.”

The kid seemed not half as perturbed at having a gun drawn on him as having someone think him a thief.

“I ask you again, and I am not a man known for his patience. Where in the blue blazes did you come from?”

“I was just out here looking for something to eat. That's our camp down yonder.” He nodded at the smoke, toward which Mueller had been riding.

“You said ‘our'—that mean you got family?” Mueller regarded the boy.

“Yes sir, that I do. Got me a pappy and a mammy and a baby sister. All of us is camped, waiting for someone with a horse or wagon to haul us on out of here.”

The kid looked at Mueller, but didn't say much more. He didn't need to. Mueller understood. “Let me get this straight. You all are waiting out here in this god-awful hot summer sun, waiting on someone to yarn you on out of here?”

The kid nodded as if what Mueller was asking made all the sense in the world. “That's 'bout the size of it, yes sir. You come on down, I'll be able to show you real hospitality, you mark my words.”

“Does that involve food?”

The kid paused long enough to scratch his head. “If we had enough food to fill our bellies, do you think I would have been out here roaming the hillside for a bite of anything at all?”

“What do you eat, boy?”

He seemed not to hear Mueller. His smiling eyes had gone glassy. “We're nearly dead around here.”

Tunk stopped his horse. “You all haven't been afflicted with some sort of disease, have you?” He leaned from his horse, squinting at the boy.

The boy moved closer.

“No, no you don't. You keep your distance. I aim to keep mine.”

The boy chuckled, a tired, hollow sound. “I ain't sick, not yet anyway. But I keep gnawing green bark, I will be.”

“How old are you?”

“I'm nearly sixteen.”

“God, you'll pardon me for saying it, but you look younger than that.”

The boy said nothing and they kept moving toward the smoke. Though it was still some distance away, they had drawn near enough that Mueller could make out a couple of shapes stretched out near the fire. Could be his folks, thought Mueller.

“What happened to you and your kin that put you in such hard straits?”

“We was rolling along in our wagon, doing our best to get to California. Pappy heard there was a new gold strike and he aimed to get hisself a piece of it.”

“That so?” Mueller tucked away that thought. Information like that might prove useful down the road.

“Yes sir. Pappy's right fond of gold. He ain't got much but . . .”

“Go on.”

“Look here, it's that bottle.” The boy retrieved it, unbroken, from beside a hummock of grass. “That's lucky.”

“I never said I was fixing to give up that bottle, boy.” Mueller scratched his chin.

“But you threw it away.”

“I threw it, yes. But away? Not hardly.”

The boy turned the bottle over in his grubby hands, then held it up to Mueller. The man ignored the gesture and kept the horse walking forward. The swish of grass and the light clomp of the horse's hooves were the only sounds for another few minutes.

“You see,” said Tunk. “We often play a game, me and the horse. I will chuck that there bottle far along the trail, in the direction we are headed, and when we come on up to it, why, that horse will pick it up in his teeth as gingerly as you please, and hand it on up to me.”

The boy smiled, his teeth brown nubs in his tight-skinned face. “You're funnin' me. Show me. Show me how that horse can do such a trick.” He handed the bottle up to Tunk.

But Tunk shook his head. “Naw, we're almost to your camp. Don't want to go clunking anybody in the bean. Another time.”

The boy looked disappointed and rubbed the bottle, but perked up again right away. “You wanna stay for supper?”

“Supper? Why, boy, you said you didn't have no food.”

“I never did.”

“About close to that, though. Hell, you look like you could eat . . .” He was going to say a horse, but he didn't want to give the kid any ideas.

“Oh, we got food to eat, don't you worry none. Mammy won't mind.”

Mueller's brow wrinkled, but he said nothing. The boy was so thin, there was less than no chance that they had food enough for themselves, let alone to feed a stranger. Then his nose wrinkled, too. What in God's name was that hard smell? It seemed to hang right there in a ring around the little camp, like a kill gone off and green with age.

As he dismounted, well outside the camp, the boy went on ahead to the smoldering campfire and laid on another couple of thin sticks. “Mammy? Pappy? This fella here is come for supper.” He smiled at Tunk.

Tunk caught sight of a small rock pile about as long as his leg. Stuck at one end were two sticks lashed into a rough cross with a strip of leather thong.

“That's my sister,” the boy said, following Tunk's gaze. “She's still resting up. She's powerful tired most all the time.”

“I should say,” said Tunk to himself, eyes wide. Then he raised his voice. “Where's your wagon, boy? Stock?”

“Gone, they done took 'em all.”

“Who?”

“Oh,” he sighed as if he were tired of telling the story. “It was them who raided us a long time back. Bad things happened then, took all we had.” He looked out over the waving grasses, flat as far as Tunk could see. “I was off on my own.” He waved an arm in no real direction. “Trying to find us some tubers. Mammy's partial to such things.”

He looked around himself, at his parents, the grave, the smoking fire, and little else. Finally his gaze rested on Tunk and his voice was quieter. “But when I come back, there wasn't much left but my family. But that's what matters, right? That's what Mammy always says.”

Tunk didn't say anything.

The boy was smiling down at the figures laid along the fire, unmoving as if they were in a deep snooze. His parents were wrapped in holey wool blankets and hides with patchy hair, buffalo or bear, Tunk wasn't sure. They lay unmoving, not even waking up or looking his way. He had a god-awful bad feeling creeping up the back of his head. Something wasn't right, but he couldn't figure out what it was.

As the boy stepped over one of them, his bare foot caught an edge of a blanket and peeled it off what appeared to be skinned legs of a person.

“What you got under there, boy?” Tunk narrowed his eyes, but didn't step any closer.

“Oh, that?” The boy bent and lifted free the rest of the blanket. “That's just Pappy. He don't say much nowadays. Been a hard trip on him.”

Tunk Mueller had seen a whole lot of rank things in his life—a good many of them he'd done while others were the leavings of scavengers, both human and animal. But this beat them all to hell.

The boy's pappy, or what was left of him, had flopped backward, arms by his sides and a sort-of-smile on his skin-bone face. The rest of him, though, looked about like how a bear carcass would resemble after a week or two of a campful of hungry miners eating off it. Mostly bone and sinew and bits of muscle, all dried a puckery brown. Only this body had been a man and the one doing the eating was his boy. In fact, Tunk could see some resemblance, particularly in the thinness of them both.

“He's nearly finished,” said the boy, still smiling, as he pointed to his father. “But Mammy's still in good shape.” Before Tunk could stop him, the boy whipped back the other blankets and skins. A swarm of agitated blueflies rose up and clouded the air before working their way back down again to their task, feasting on what was left of the dead woman.

Mueller turned away, his lips puckered while he worked to breathe through his mouth. That would explain the smell, he thought. Raw carcass.

“I'll be right back,” said the boy cheerfully from behind him. “Fetch us some tubers.”

“Yeah,” said Tunk as he caught sight again of the small rocky grave not far away. Must have started with his sister. He had heard of people doing such things, but never thought he'd run into them. The desolate landscape, he had to admit, did not appear to offer much promise in the way of finding food. Tunk heard himself whispering something his mother had said so long ago: “You do with what you got at hand.”

He looked back, but the boy was walking away, a large skinning knife in his hand, the blade crusted with dried blood and hunks of gristle. Then Tunk saw something curious. A thin bit of sunlight worked through the gloom and he caught sight of a faint gleam in the sagged mouth of the boy's father.

Tunk stepped closer, saw the boy was a ways off in the grass, digging at something. Tunk slid out his own sheath knife, used the blade tip to push open the dead man's mouth even wider. What few teeth the man had left were blackened and full of holes—except for two gold ones in the back, one on either side on the bottom.

Well, thought Tunk. This old boy is past needing such fine and valuable choppers. I expect he won't miss them. He slid the knife in there and pried at one of them. It soon popped out and Tunk caught it with the blade tip just before it dribbled down the man's dried gullet.

Far behind him, Tunk heard the boy grunt as if from exertion, and turned to see the boy lunging at him. The thin youth had that crusted-blade knife that looked to be half the length of his arm, and it looked to the man as if he was fixing to stick it into Tunk, sure as sugar is sweet. But the boy was weak and slow.

It seemed to Tunk, just before his boot connected with the boy's ribs and he heard that cracking sound, like fresh dry twigs make when you toss them on flame, that the boy knew he was in a poor state. Tunk could see it in his eyes. Almost like he was grateful for the kick.

The blow sent the kid sprawling backward. His strange little rag of a dress had flapped upward and Tunk saw that the boy's parts were as shriveled as the rest of him. The kid lay there, not moving, except for his slowly rising chest.

“Get up, boy. We got to have us a talk. What's been going on here ain't right, and you know it. Just my bad luck I come upon you when I did. I'd say you need to figure out a better way to live.” He approached the boy with care, one hand on the butt of his pistol, his own long knife still gripped in his hand. “Maybe you could follow me. I'm aiming for California. Could be I'll shoot a deer now and again, give you a haunch and a place at the campfire. But you got to leave these heathen ways behind, you understand?”

The boy said nothing. Tunk stood over him. “Boy?” He toed the lad's leg. Nothing. He noticed the boy's chest wasn't rising anymore. Then he saw the thin stream of blood leaking out from under the boy's chest. He flipped over the thin body with his boot tip and there was the knife, half sunk in the boy's back.

“Aw, now how in the hell did you manage that, boy?”

The kid's eyes were half open, still glassy, and his mouth was sagged. Tunk regarded him for a moment, then pulled the knife out of the boy's back, tossed the knife onto the grass, and rolled him once again onto his back. He walked to the nearly dead fire, retrieved the empty bottle from where the boy had stood it upright, and laid it on the boy's chest. It rolled off and caught in his arm, like you'd hold a puppy or a baby.