The Good, the Bad, and the Dead Read online

  Apparently Timmy wasn't too impressed with me either. As a gunslinger, I was far past my prime, and Timmy-along with just about everyone else in town-knew it. But treachery beats youth every time, as I used to like to say. Even so, the years might have taken their toll, but I was still faster than just about anyone I knew, and I was smart enough not to get into a fight with the rest.

  Anyhow, I'd been tossing back a few at the No. I Saloon one night when Timmy decided to call me out. I did just about everything I could to talk my way out of it, but even a silver-tongued devil like myself can fall short when faced with a determined, fame-blinded kid.

  Better yet, Timmy had taken pains to stack the odds in his favor. Shoot, I had at least 20 years of slowing down on the kid, not to mention the fact I had a few of the No. l's cheap excuses for beers swilling around inside my skull.

  Still, I did my best to weasel my way out of it. I even told the kid he could tell all his friends I was too scared to fight him, just as long as he left me alone.

  But Timmy just wasn't going to take no for an answer. He actually drew on me right there in the middle of the saloon.

  What else could I do? A young man was waving a loaded gun at me with ill intent. He could have hurt someone. Hell, he could have hurt me.

  I shot the kid down.

  I didn't feel too bad about that at the time. It was self-defense, and I had lots of witnesses. A kid like that had a killing coming, and I just happened to be the one who pulled the trigger.

  No, what really brought me down was Chrissy Carson, Timmy's little sister. She just happened to have snuck out of the house to see what her big brother was up to that night, and she was going to pay for her curiosity with her life.

  Chrissy couldn't have been a day over five, far too young to actually enter the saloon. That didn't stop her from standing out on the boardwalk outside the place's batwing doors and peering in at her brother from behind.

  When I lay down my fire at Timmy, I fanned my gun and shot three times. The first shot hit Timmy in the chest and knocked him down. The second caught him in the shoulder.

  The third sailed over Timmy's head and smacked right into that innocent little girl.

  It was ruled an accident, which is what it was, but that didn't do Chrissy a whole lot of good. I felt bad enough about that to hang up my guns permanently-or so I thought at the time—and have the decency to crawl into a bottle to die.

  I was doing a good job of it too when Philip Westerly found me.

  My old editor Back East had noticed that the stories had suddenly stopped flowing from my pen like someone had reached out and shut off the tap. He sent Philip out to find me and take over chronicling my adventures.

  When Philip found me, I wasn't much good for anything except soaking up enough booze to make my breath flammable. For some reason, he took to me, though, and he did his level best to sober me up.

  Philip didn't have much luck getting me going until the killings started. People all around Deadwood were turning up dead, missing everything from their collars up. The mystery was enough to intrigue me, and I guess I might have seen a chance for some kind of redemption in it. If I could stop the killings, then maybe mine wasn't such a useless life after all, right? I took to the investigation like a drunk to the last shot of whisky in the bar.

  I trundled around after this "Headhunter" for the better part of a week before the killings finally ended. When they did, the bastard left me a clue that pointed me on to the next city in his tour of terror. Being the good-hearted man I am, of course I followed.

  This went on for the better part of a year. Philip and I would track the killer to the next town on his agenda and wait for the killings to start. Then we'd poke around the crime scenes for a while before the killer dropped a clue leading us on to the next stop on the schedule.

  No matter what we did, it seemed like we never got any closer to the Headhunter. He was always at least one step ahead of us. Still, that didn't stop us from trying. I'd sworn I was going to bring the killer in if it was the last thing I did, and I'd meant every word of that vow. I heard the Italians have a word for a hunt like that: vendetta.

  In the meantime, we often had some free moments while we were waiting to hear of the Headhunter's next victims, and from time to time we were able to help a number of people who approached us with problems of their own. My reputation as a cowboy detective just grew and grew and grew. The tales of those adventures sold pretty well Back East, I hear, and the money kept us well-stocked enough for us to continue our pursuit of the Headhunter.

  It wasn't until we made our way back to Deadwood that I found out that Philip was actually the killer I'd been hunting for so long.

  You read that right. The man I'd been searching for that entire year, the man who'd killed so many innocent people in such a grisly and horrible way, was my trailmate.

  Looking back on it, it made a lot of sense, as most things do. Everywhere I'd go, no matter if I really understood the Headhunter's last clue or not—and some of them were really a stretch—people ended up dead. I could never seem to miss the man's trail, and I was always there when the killings started. Always. It got so bad that by the time I made it back to Deadwood, Town Marshal Bullock had actually got it into his head that / was the killer myself, and I was just pretending to be after the Headhunter to cover my own ass.

  It's funny to think about it now how the marshal wasn't all that far off. Of course, I didn't know that at the time, and I protested my innocence to the man at every opportunity. Without any evidence, Bullock didn't have much elsewhere to go.

  Eventually Bullock decided to press the point, so Philip and I did the discreet thing and rode out of town with Bullock and a posse of deputies hot on our tails. Before we got too far into the Badlands, things started looking hopeless. Our horses were beat, we were outnumbered five to one, and we were running out of ammo. It was then-just as the lawmen were finally closing in on us—that Philip turned on me, handing me over to the posse, complete with dozens of shrunken heads-the ones that had once belonged to the Headhunter's victims-stashed in my saddlebags.

  Unknown to me, Philip had been collecting the missing melons from his victims, then somehow shrinking them down to the size of an apple. Apparently he'd been carrying them with him the whole time. I don't know if he'd been planning to plant them on me from the start, but that's what he did. If he was trying to get me strung up, it sure seemed to be working like a charm.

  I was just happy to make it back to town alive. In a lot of other places, I'd have died out on that hill in the Badlands while "resisting arrest." The judge would have been spared the bother of a trial that was sure to convict me in any event.

  I hadn't put up much of a fight, but they'd beaten me mercilessly anyhow Given the circumstances, I could hardly blame them. If I'd been in Bullock's position, I don't think I'd have been able to show such restraint.

  I just sat there and took it. Hell, I was still in shock from seeing those heads all roll right out of that bag and wind up in a heap at my feet. It's a sight I won't soon forget.

  So when that shrunken head started yelling at me, I wasn't half as surprised as I should have been. It had already been one Hell of a week, and if the Four Horsemen had gone riding down Main Street that afternoon, I'm not sure if I would have blinked.

  I looked up at the wrinkled head sitting on the window sill across from my cell. It rocked back and forth on its severed, shrunken neck muscles. "Over here, you idiot!"

  I stared at it for a moment in total disbelief. And here I'd thought my life couldn't possibly have gotten any more twisted.

  I had no idea how wrong I'd been, how sheltered a life I'd led, but I was adjusting to it all as quickly as I could. Sure, I'd run into some strange things in my time, but Philip really took the cake, the pie, and every other dessert on the table.

  While I was awaiting trial and the sure hanging to follow, one of the deputies had gotten the bright idea to haul out all the evidence against me—over 40
shrunken heads that had once belonged to people of every age, gender, and color-and set them up on a nearby table and window sill to stare lifelessly at me. It was his twisted idea of social justice, I suppose. Maybe he thought the guilt of having 40-plus of my so-called victims staring at me day and night, never blinking, would cause me to crack.

  At that moment, I thought maybe he'd been right.

  Then I took a closer look at the head. It had long, blond hair tied back in a kind of warrior's braid that reminded me of stories of the Norse soldiers that had first set foot on this continent centuries ago. Its nose was long and straight, upturned just a little at the nose. Its lips were broad and thick, or they would have been had the head been of normal size. Its eyes burned at me with a particular shade of green I'd only ever seen in one other face.

  "Carly?" I whispered. "Dear God, is that you?" Carly "the Cat" Perkins had been an old friend of mine, but I hadn't seen her in over a year. She'd gotten her nickname because it seemed like the woman had nine lives. A scout, a journalist, a spy, a bartender, a soiled dove, she'd done as much as any other woman I'd even met and more.

  Carly had wandered around the West for years. I'd spent a fair amount of time the next saddle over from her, and I'd come to depend on her as both a fellow gunslinger and a friend. She'd escaped death more times than I cared to count-often saving my own bacon along with her own-until the Headhunter caught up with her.

  Carly had been the Headhunter's first victim in Deadwood— the first anywhere as far as anyone knew, for that matter-and the news had shaken the town to its core. It was almost worse than when that fool kid shot Wild Bill Hickok. Bill might have been tough, but he was just a man. Everybody had thought the Cat was unkillable, the toughest lady alive, but there aren't a whole lot of people who can survive being separated from their head.

  Carly had proved me wrong once again.

  The old scout's head bounced up and down on the window sill like a kid on a pogo stick, a wide grin cracking her shriveled, grayish face. "Good to see you again, Duke," she cackled in a shrill voice. Carly had been a big woman, but apparently her voice had shrunk along with her noggin.

  "Wish I could say the same, Carly You've looked better."

  "Aw, don't be like that, Duke," the head whined. "It's been a long damn time since I've had a chance to open my mouth to someone. Most people got a hard enough time with folks walking around when they should be pushing daisies. When it comes to talking heads, they're downright unreasonable."

  "You talk to lots of people then?"

  Carly barked a high, sharp laugh at that one. "Naw, Duke, just desperate ones. I figure most other folks are just as likely to want to crush my skull as talk to me."

  "So how many desperate people you talked to so far?"

  "Well, lessee. You'd have to be pretty damn desperate for me to open my yap at you." Carly rolled her eyes toward the sky as if she were counting. "Counting you, that makes one!"

  "You're not making me feel any better, Carly."

  "Sorry, Duke, but I ain't really all that worried about how you feel. I kept my trap shut for over a year because I was afraid that Westerly friend of yours would crush me flat if he found out I was still...active. I think I could stand a bit of sympathy for that."

  I thought about that for a moment. This poor woman had not only been decapitated, which would have put a stop to most folks' misery right there, but she'd also had her head shrunk in the process. To top it all off, she'd had to sit there and watch as more and more heads filled the Headhunter's grisly saddlebags, powerless to do anything about it.

  "You could have said something to me at any time, Carly," I offered.

  She just laughed. "Right! And what would you have done if you'd seen me like this while you were eating your dinner out on the open range? Hell, Duke if you hadn't just stomped me flat, you'd have ended up using me for target practice for the next week."

  I considered that for a minute. "Yeah," I nodded. "You're right, just like always."

  Then I looked into her eyes for a moment. Was this Carly or just some horrible prank Philip had played on me-or both? I ignored the shriveled, discolored skin and the size to which she'd been reduced. I just concentrated on the eyes. What I saw there nearly moved me to tears.

  "Damn, Carly," I rasped out through a suddenly thick throat. "It's good to see you again."

  For a moment there, I thought she was going to start weeping herself. I could hardly imagine the tremendous relief she must have felt, body or no. For just an instant, I saw a hint of tenderness creep into her eyes, but just as quickly, it was gone.

  "Knock it off, Duke," she growled at me. "You're liable to make me tear up, and with a head this dry, that could spell disaster."

  "But Carly," I began.

  "No buts, Duke," she spat. "There's no time for that now. For one, if we don't get you out of here soon, you can count on being the guest of honor at a necktie party tomorrow. Second, we've got to stop that headhunting bastard before he kills us all!"

  "You're already looking pretty dead to me, Carly."

  At that, the head gave me a hard look. "There's dead and then there's dead, Duke, and I don't have time to argue the finer points of mortality with you. If you don't bust your ass outta this podunk jail soon, there's going to be Hell to pay, and I'm not talking about just for you. The fate of the whole town is at stake."

  "Way I figure it, Carly, that's no problem of mine. I tried putting an end to this killing-Hell, I dedicated a year of my life to it-and now I'm facing a noose for my troubles. About the only thing that's going to clear me is if Philip kills someone else while I'm locked up in here. It'll cost this damned town another life, but chances are it won't harm any innocents. After all, there ain't none here."

  "That's true," the head grunted. "You killed the last one yerself, didn't you? One o' those deputies who chased you out of Deadwood?"

  Carly always did know just how to push my buttons. I saw nothing but red. I leapt from my cot and reached out between the bars. Fortunately for Carly, my fingertips fell a good three feet short of her head. If she'd been within my reach, I'd have crushed her skull in my bare hands.

  "Calm down, Duke," Carly shushed me. "Get a grip on yourself. You know I didn't mean that. I just needed to get your attention."

  I stepped back from the bars, still seething with rage. "You've got it, Carly, for all the good it's going to do you. Tomorrow evening, I'm going to swing."

  "It's always about you, isn't it, Duke? 'Me, me, me.' 'I got set up.' 'I'm going to get hanged.' Pull yourself together, man! I need your help, or Philip's got a plan to make sure neither of us will be around to complain much longer."

  I laughed humorlessly at that. "You're already dead, lady, and I'm on my way. I don't see what the hurry's about."

  Carly looked at me with disgust. "Don't you get it, you idiot? Philip's not going to kill just anyone. He's going to kill everyone!'

  I goggled at that for a second. "What the Hell are you talking about?"

  "You remember what you were poking around Deadwood about the first time you got here? Sitting Bull hired you to figure out who was lighting off small mines? Well, that was Philip."

  "But that was before I shot-He was sent out here from Back East to find me long after all that started happening."

  "Christ on a candlestick, Duke! You believe everything people tell you? How many lies does a man have to tell you before you realize he's a liar?"

  That shut me up for a moment. I hated it when she had a point.

  "Philip-or whatever his real name is-always had something bigger than simple murder in mind. Anyone can pick up a knife and do what the Headhunter did to the people of the towns you visited like some kind of Johnny Appleseed of Death. He wasn't satisfied with just that. He wanted destruction on a larger scale altogether.

  "The fact is, Philip led you back to Deadwood soon after he heard tell of the Mother Lode Strike. Everything else has just been a merry chase of destruction across the West. The Mot
her Lode Strike, though, that was bound to grab his attention. The damn thing's full of ghost rock, and it runs right under the town.

  "Ever since the miners found that thing, they've been treating it real careful like. After all, that stuff burns like a dry fuse, and trapped in a mine like that, it goes off like dynamite. And you know what happens then, right?"

  "Dear God," I muttered. "Philip's going to blow it up."

  The head rocked back and forth on its neck, nodding at me. "You're not so slow as you look, Duke. Once the entire town's dead, Philip can collect all the heads he wants. Or he can just move on, if that's what he's really all about."

  "If the man's currency is terror, blowing up the mine would be the mother lode all right," I muttered. I looked back up at Carly's head. "So why should I trust you?" I asked.

  "You're picking one Hell of a time to get picky about who you listen to, Duke. The fact is I know all this stuff because Philip used to talk to me. While he worked on shrinking down his latest trophy, he'd sit and blab on for hours to all us heads about what he was planning to do."

  "I thought you said I was the first person you've talked to since, well—"

  "That's true. I never said I talked back to the man. In fact, he wasn't really talking to me in particular. He talked to all of us heads. Read my lips carefully, Duke: The man is a freaking loon!"

  Carly paused for a moment before continuing on. "I ain't your enemy, Duke. I'm the last friend you have, and if we don't stop the Headhunter soon, we're all going to die. And it'll be the kind of death there's no walking back from."

  I looked over at the woman, unable to push aside the comment that leapt to mind: "Carly, you're really not one to talk about walking."

  ***

  I was lying in my cot again when Town Marshal Bullock came back from dinner.

  "The judge'll be here in the morning, you cold-blooded bastard," he growled at me. "Judge Hopler doesn't mess around with your kind."

  "And what kind is that?" I asked angrily. "Wrongfully prosecuted innocents?"