Walking Wolf (11 page)

He was right. I never saw him again.

Alive, anyway.

Chapter Seven

I met the devil at Pilate's Basin in 1861.

I don't mean the kind of devil you see wearing red long johns and horns with a pointy tail and a pitchfork. No, this devil was more real than that. More personal. He was my very own private demon.

I'd been traveling with Sundown for close to a year by the time we made it to the high plains of what is now Kansas and Colorado. The high plains are an arid stretch of nowhere that would make God Himself cuss Creation. A fine, crystalline snow swirled endlessly in the high wind, making it a lot like being rubbed down with a piece of sandpaper. I was so freeze-dried, I couldn't speak without making my lips bleed.

The sky was perpetually overcast, and sometimes the only way I could tell whether it was day or night was by Sundown climbing in and out of his shroud. It was late fall, heading into winter, and the days were growing shorter and the nights longer, so Sundown was spending more and more time out of his traveling shroud. Not that this did us much good—you could go weeks out there without seeing another soul, human or otherwise. As it was, we'd already sacrificed my horse to feed the both of us. I knew that if we didn't find some real shelter soon, Sundown and I stood a good chance of dying like any other poor bastard who gets himself lost in the trackless wastes.

That's when we came across Pilate's Basin.

It wasn't a town—not the way most folks picture one, leastwise. It was more a cluster of adobe buildings—no more than large huts, really—huddled against the wind. The warm, yellow glow of lantern light seeped out from the main building's shutters, along with a thin spume of smoke. With cold-numbed knuckles, I knocked on the door, not sure what to expect from whoever might live inside. There was the sound of a bolt being thrown back. The door opened.

“Come on in, stranger! And be quick about it! I don't want the wind puttin' out my fire!”

I hurried inside, and the door was quickly slammed behind me. The inside of the adobe was small and warm, but surprisingly neat. As I turned to thank my host, I caught a glimpse of what looked to be a shrine of some sort next to a narrow cot. A woman's shawl covered a crudely built table on which were set a couple of tallow candles placed in saucers, illuminating a faded and dog-eared rotogravure of a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman dressed in the black lace mantilla of a Mexican
señorita.

Standing next to it was a man who was either thirty or eighty—it was hard to tell by his face, which had been severely weathered by the winds and harsh climate of the plains. Had he been without teeth, he would have resembled one of the dried-apple dolls children played with. Although his face looked prematurely aged, my host was powerfully built, with wide shoulder and big, callused hands.

“The name's McCarthy. Who might you be, stranger?” he said.

“Skillet. Billy Skillet.”

This seemed to amuse him. “Is that a fact? Well, Billy Skillet, why don't you go put up your poor horse before it freezes, eh? The stable's around back. When you're done, you can join me by the fire for a chat.”

“Sounds mighty good to me.”

I lead Erebus around the back of the adobe and put him inside the stable, quickly hiding Sundown's shroud under a mound of hay. I then unhitched the pony drag and unsaddled the horse. As I worked, McCarthy's own horses watched me nervously. Like most animals, they knew an unnatural thing when they smelled it.

By the time I made it back to the main hut, McCarthy was already seated in front of the open hearth, sipping coffee from a tin cup. “Brewed you some mud,” he said, pointing to a second dented cup sitting on the table.

“That's good coffee!” I said through my teeth. It was black as goddamn and had a bite like a rattlesnake.

“Set yourself down and warm your stumps, Billy,” he said, gesturing for me to sit on a stool placed next to the hearth.

I did so and, without much in the way of prompting or preliminaries, McCarthy set about telling me the story of how he came to be stuck in the “devil's bunghole,” as he put it.

“My parents came to this country from Scotland. They started out in Baltimore—that's where I was born. My father worked as a clerk in a bank, tending other folks' money every day of his life, bless him. Me, I never had much love for banks, or working jobs that killed a man from the inside out. I was the adventurous type. So I hired on with the U.S. Navy. I was a good enough sailor—until the day my captain accused me of insubordination. I didn't take to having the cat on my back, that's for certain. So I jumped ship—deserted, if you will—and ended up in Mexico. I met a lovely young woman there—” his eyes flickered over to the shrine beside the door. “And I fell in love with her. And she with me. Her family did not approve, however, since I was nothing but a lowly gringo. What could I possibly offer her? They were right and I knew it.

“I guess I could have put the pressure on Carmelita—that was her name—and had her insist on having me as her husband, but I was proud. I wanted to prove to both her and her family that I was sincere, that I was something besides an opportunistic
Yanqui.
So I agreed to work for her family, who had considerable land both in Mexico and America. Her father promptly sent me to the farthest reaches of their holdings, to oversee their herds on the high plains and operate this trading outpost. It was their way of washing their hands of me without resorting to killing me. That's why I call this place Pilate's Basin.

“I've been out here close to ten years. During that time, I've turned my place of exile into an unofficial traveler's rest for those who come my way. All I ask in way of payment is news of the outside world.”

“What about the girl—Carmelita?” I asked, warming my hands as I spoke.

McCarthy smiled sadly and sighed. “She was very young. After a couple of months, perhaps a year, she forgot about me. She ended up marrying some fellow her family approved of. I didn't know about it until I'd been out here, oh, six or seven years. By that time, she'd had a couple of young'uns and was fat as mud—or so I have been told.”

“If she went and married someone else, why are you still stuck out here?”

McCarthy shrugged. “I've gotten used to it, I reckon. Even though it can be mighty lonesome out on the high plains, at least I'm my own boss. There ain't anyone to beat me or order me around. After all this time, I probably wouldn't know how to deal with a town full of people, all running around and getting into each other's business.”

I found myself liking McCarthy, who had willingly exiled himself for the love of a fickle young girl. It was a shame he was going to die.

My host got up to prod the fire with a poker as a particularly strong gust of wind slammed against the hut, rattling the shutters. He glanced in the direction of the door, as if expecting it to open. “It'll be dark soon. I hope that other fellow didn't get lost out there.”

“Fellow? What fellow?” I said, my scalp tightening. For a second I imagined McCarthy knew about Sundown and our plans to ambush him.

“Another traveler, such as yourself, that's all. He showed up a couple of days ago, just as the storm was getting ready to hit. He goes by the name of Jones. But don't they all? He headed out a few hours ago to look for some game. Hope he can find his way back.”

As if on cue, there was the sound of heavy boots on the front porch. The front door swung open, letting in a blast of frigid air. As I turned around to get a look at McCarthy's house guest, I set eyes on my private demon for the first time.

He was huge, covered with hair, and had two heads—one of which was horned. Then I realized I was staring at a man dressed in a full-length buffalo-skin coat with a dead antelope tossed over one shoulder. He stepped inside the house and slammed the door shut behind him, shrugging the antelope onto the floor as if it were a woman's stole.

McCarthy bent over the carcass, shaking his head in awe. “I didn't believe it when you said you'd bring back venison! But, by damn, you done it!”

Jones removed his heavy buffalo-skin coat and tossed it in the corner. Underneath the coat he wore a shirt made from what looked to be timber wolf or coyote skin. This he did not offer to remove.

“Hunting is in my blood.” His voice was deep, like that of a pipe organ, with a slight Slavic accent.

As he turned to face me, I was struck by his bristling black beard, which seemed to start at his cheekbones, and eyebrows so thick and bushy they literally covered his brow ridge from temple to temple. Jones fixed me with piercing eyes the color of a coming storm and scowled.

“I saw a strange horse in the manger. Who are you?”

Before I could answer, McCarthy piped in. “This here's Billy Skillet. He showed up just an hour or two back. Got himself lost in the storm …”

“Did he now?” Jones growled. “Have we met before?” he asked, staring at me even harder.

“I don't think so.”

Jones grunted and brushed past me to stand in front of the fire. As he warmed his hands and stomped his feet to restore circulation, I found myself staring at his wolf-fur jacket. There was something … familiar about it. Something I couldn't place. Maybe I
had
met this hairy-faced giant before. Perhaps he was one of Professor Praetorius' erstwhile customers.

“That's a fine shirt you got there, mister,” I said. “How many wolves did you have to kill for it?”

“Just one.”

“Must have been a damn big wolf!” McCarthy snorted.

“It was. Big as a man.”

I cleared my throat. “Excuse me, sir. I don't believe I caught your name?”

“They call me Jones.” The giant didn't even dignify me by glancing in my direction.

“Jones? Is that all?”

There was a pause, as if he were deciding on whether or not to reply, then he slowly turned his head and fixed me with those gray eyes and said, “Witchfinder Jones.”

“Unusual handle. How you come by it?”

The big man returned his gaze to the fire. “I hunt things.”

“What kind of things?”

“Things like vampires, witches, ghosts and werewolves.”

“That's plum silly! There ain't no such critters! Ain't that right, McCarthy?” I laughed nervously, glancing over at the older man for support.

However, McCarthy was shaking his head. “I wouldn't say that, Billy. I seen a lot of things that couldn't be explained, both here and when I was at sea. Snakes with wings, women with the tails of fish, serpents that chased down and ate whales …”

I was starting to feel dizzy. I found myself needing to sit down. I looked over at McCarthy to see if he'd noticed, but he was busy hacking off one of the antelope's haunches with a cleaver in order to prepare the night's meal. The smell of the animal's blood made my stomach knot with hunger. It had been a couple of days since I'd finished the last of my old horse.

With a deep, guttural sound that was almost a growl, Jones lowered himself onto a chair next to the fire. Without looking at me, he fished a hand-carved briarwood pipe and a drawstring pouch out from his wolf-skin shirt. For some reason, I could not take my eyes from the leather sack that held his tobacco.

“That's—um—a mighty unusual tobacco pouch you got there.”

Jones smiled—it was an ugly sight, believe me. “This is the only one of its kind. It is a trophy. Just like my shirt.” He leaned forward and held the pouch out to me.

As if in a daze, I reached out and took it. As I did so, some faint memory squirmed in the back of my brain like a blind grub. A memory of warmth, the smell of flesh, the taste of milk …

“I took the pelt for my shirt off of a werewolf, nearly twenty years ago, and I took his mate's left tit for a tobacco pouch. I keep the whore's vulva in a box in my saddlebag. Salted, of course.”

I stared at my Ma's breast, trying to summon further memories beyond those of a blind, suckling pup—but none came. I looked up at the man responsible for the slaughter of my natural family, meeting and holding his gaze. Although I realized he knew what—if not who—I was, I refused to let him rattle me.

“What you say is all very well and good,” I remarked, handing back what remained of my mother's breast to her murderer. “But how am I to know you're not just flat-out crazy? For all I know, you took that off some poor Indian gal. And as for the shirt—well, a wolf skin is a wolf skin.”

Jones shrugged his indifference. “It doesn't matter if you believe me or not. I know what I know. I do what I do.” He produced a buck knife, its silver blade shining in the light from the fire. “I use my knife and I use my silver bullets to kill them. Nothing unnatural can survive a wound dealt by silver. There are plenty who believe me—and pay me to rid them of these monsters.”

“Is that what you're doing out in the middle of nowhere?” I asked. “Hunting monsters?”

Jones nodded as he resheathed the knife and turned back to the fire. “I was hired to kill a vampire.”

I felt my stomach hitch itself even tighter. “Vampire?”

“I have been tracking him since New Orleans. The creature committed an outrage against a young girl in the city of Boston. Her family is of some stature, and they hired me to track the fiend down and bring back his head. I found him in a fancy Basin Street whorehouse. I would have claimed my bounty then, except for interference from his servant. The bastard shot me in the shoulder. It wasn't much of a wound, really, but it was enough to make me lose my prey. I dealt with the man-servant, though. I put the silver bullet I had reserved for his master right between his eyes.”

I realized then that Jones was describing was the demise of my immediate predecessor. The knowledge made the sweat rise on my brow and upper lip.

“It took me a couple of days to recover from my wound, but by then the bloodsucker had fled the city. He had a head start, but not enough of one that I could not track him. I have since seen evidence of his passing: Indian raiding parties slaughtered to the man as they slept; isolated farmhouses where the family members were drained while seated at the dinner table; hotels where, after the stranger checked in for the night, half the clientele were found dead in their beds the next morning.