The Good, the Bad, and the Dead Read online

  "Keep telling that story, Duke. Maybe you'll even start believing it yourself. Either way, by this time tomorrow, you'll be hanging from my favorite tree."

  I sat up and looked at the lawman. He was a hard man, but he looked like he'd been distraught all day long.

  "Would it help if I told you again that I didn't do it?" I asked wearily We'd been doing this dance ever since he brought me in. We were both tired of it.

  "You shut your mouth, you lying sack of shit!" he roared at me, stepping closer to the cell door. "You killed a lot of good people, you son of a bitch. You killed my wife!"

  I decided it was time to change tactics. Playing innocent hadn't worked. "And what if I did?" I asked him, and at that he hauled up short, surprised at my new tone. "What if I did kill her, marshal? What if I told you she had it coming?"

  Bullock's eyes bore into me like angry drills hungry for blood. The lawman's hand started inching up toward his Peacemaker, and he started shuffling almost mindlessly toward the door of my cell.

  "What if I told you she begged for mercy?" It hurt me to do this. Bullock was a good man. He didn't deserve the pain I was causing him, but I had no choice. He walked over between me and the stack of heads sitting on the window sill, but he still wasn't close enough for me to make my move. "What if I said her last words were your name, and she cursed you for not being around to save her?"

  With that, the lawman stopped dead in his tracks, standing square on with the door of my cell. "I know what you're up to, killer," he growled. "You're hoping I'll get mad enough to get within reach of those arms of yours, that I'll be stupid enough to let you kill me, and then you can get away.

  "Well, that ain't gonna happen." Bullock pulled out his gun calmly, checked the cylinder, and then pointed the pistol directly at me. "Now that I've got you in my jail, you're not going anywhere but from here to the judge's chambers and from there to the gallows."

  A sly grin suddenly spread across the marshal's face. "Of course, if you were to turn up dead while trying to escape, I don't think anyone in this world would shed a single tear."

  The sheriff thumbed back the hammer on his pistol and raised the gun's sights to the center of my head, his face a grim mask of pain. "I know I sure wouldn't."

  "I might, marshal," came Carly's voice from over Bullock's shoulder. The lawman whirled around, ready to plug whoever it was that had snuck up behind him. Instead, all he saw was the stack of heads standing as mute testimony to what Bullock was sure were my crimes. He looked over each of them one by one, his glance passing slowly over each of their sets of glazed eyes.

  As the sheriff's eyes finally reached Carly's head, the squeaky-voiced beast looked up at the sheriff and shouted, "BOO!"

  Bullock almost jumped out of his skin.

  Fortunately, he backpedaled before he could think about what he was doing and he fell right into the bars of my cell. I was on him in a flash. A few moments later, I was using his keys to let myself out of the cell, then stepping over his unconscious form.

  I slipped Carly into my shirt pocket before I left. Before I did, I could see her smile up at me. It was a sight that both warmed and chilled my heart.

  ***

  I caught up with Philip outside of town, right where Carly said I could find him. He had ridden my horse-the one Bullock had given him after turning me in-out to the front of the Mother Lode's entrance, and when I found him, he was standing in the middle of the camp, admiring his most recent handiwork.

  It was dark, and the stars shone down on the land like silent witnesses. A fire burned lowly in the camp, and its light showed me all I needed to see.

  There had been three guards at the camp, but Philip had made quick work of them. They hadn't even had the time to fire their guns before he'd killed them all.

  When I trotted up on Bullock's horse, Philip was removing the last guard's head, about to stuff it into a bag. He looked up at me as I rode into the camp, a sly grin still on his face. He hardly seemed surprised.

  "I hardly suppose it needs doing anymore," he said, hefting the bloody head in his right hand, "but when you've got a trademark like this, you really can't afford to disappoint your public."

  I fought back the bile in my throat as the dead man's eyes stared vacantly back at me. "I guess if I'd bothered to wait for morning, my name would have been cleared."

  Philip laughed. "I suppose that would have been true had you not been the next name on my list. I had a special kind of Hell in mind for you, 'friend.' "

  I got down off my horse and drew my gun. "It ends now, Philip."

  "I think I'll be the judge of that," he said, grinning widely at me.

  I pointed my pistol right at his heart. "I just want to know one thing," I told him. He looked up at me like a parent waiting on a slow child. "I just don't understand why?"

  "Ah-ha!" he gloated. "The great Duke Solomon, cowboy detective, is reduced to actually asking his greatest nemesis to elucidate for him. Ironic, is it not? I almost hope you find this experience suitably humbling, although I'm not sure it's not entirely wasted on the likes of you."

  If it was a joke, I didn't laugh.

  "Well," he said, "I suppose it's easier to show you than tell you. The heads you found, those were just souvenirs."

  With that he waved at the corpses still bleeding in the dirt. "I was after the bodies."

  I just stared at him goggle-eyed.

  "I've been at this for a while, Duke, and the killings haven't been just an incredibly entertaining way to help me pass the time. Oh, they were fun, all right. I'll grant you that, but there was a method to my madness."

  While he spoke, Philip reached up and grabbed his head with both hands and began to lift it directly upward. As he continued, his neck separated neatly from his shoulders.

  "As I said, I wasn't looking for those heads. They were filled with all sorts of nonsense. Most of them were hardly worth harvesting."

  As Philip lifted his head out to arm's length, a slimy tentacle like some kind of spinal tail slurped out behind it for a long moment before finally pulling itself entirely free, The grayish appendage curled up underneath the still-talking head, coiling like some fleshy spring.

  The sheer horror of the scene froze me dead in my tracks. I wanted to pull the trigger on my gun and blast this thing to Kingdom Come, but I just couldn't get my finger to move. My mind was simply overwhelmed.

  "C'mon, big guy," whispered Carly from inside my shirt pocket, evidently able to hear my heart skipping beats like a one-handed drummer. "Don't leave me now." She sounded like she was shouting at me from across the Grand Canyon.

  "As I was saying," the monstrosity continued, "I've been looking for a new body for myself. After having spent enough time in your company, Duke, I've settled on yours."

  The menace in the thing's voice was almost tangible.

  "C'mon, Duke!" Carly was shouting at me now, but it wasn't doing any good. "I need you, sweetie! I can't do this by myself."

  "Just hold still, Duke," said Philip's head as its tail coiled up tightly against his chest. "This won't hurt a bit."

  The thing laughed wetly at its sick joke, the kind of gurgling sound a dying man made as he chokes on the blood filling his lungs. "Actually, I was talking about me," Philip burbled. "It's going to hurt you a great deal."

  With that, the head launched itself at me, springing across the gulf separating us like sonje awful mountain lion starving for its next meal. At that very moment, Carly bit down right through my shirt, almost severing my nipple.

  The pain shot through me, shattering my motionlessness. Instinctively, I brought up my gun and filled Philip's roaring head with red-hot lead.

  The thing dropped to the ground at my feet with a sickening, red-and-gray splat. I swung my gun up to shoot the legs out from under Philip's body, but the headless form had already crumpled to the ground.

  I stared out at the scene for a moment. In his better moments, Philip would have called it "macabre."

  "Wah-hoo!"
came a little cry from my bloodied shirt pocket.

  I reached down into the pocket and pulled out Carly's head. "Damnation, Duke, you know how to make a girl's day!"

  "Thanks, Carly," I muttered.

  The old scout's head twisted in my hand to survey the destruction. "Damn, Duke, what do you think folks are going to think about this?"

  "What do you mean?" I asked, exhaustion showing in my voice.

  "Well, here you are, a man arrested on charges of beheading dozens of people, including the marshal's wife. You've broken out of jail, and you're standing-"

  "Right in the middle of four decapitated bodies." I bent over to look at Philip's head. The thing's tail was missing.

  "Nobody's ever going to believe this story, are they?" I asked.

  "Not a chance."

  I stuffed Carly into my shirt, walked over to the horse Philip had stolen from me, and mounted up.

  "Where we off to, partner?" Carly asked from my pocket.

  I kicked the horse into a trot and slowly coaxed her to a gallop. "Anywhere but here, lady. It's a wide, wide west out there, a lot of territory for a man to get lost in. That's just what I'm going to do."

  "Duke," Carly shouted sarcastically over the thundering of hooves as we rode off into the darkness. "This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

  "Ha!" I barked. "That's what Philip said when we first met."

  OUT OF THE FRYING PAN

  By John R. Hopler

  Dexter "Dex" Crawford rounded the corner of the building and ducked behind a stack of crates. He bent over with his hands on his knees, his chest heaving as he sucked in air in great lungfuls. Sweat ran down his face and neck in small rivers, staining his expensive silk shirt, stinging his green eyes, and dropping off the end of his nose in big, salty drops. His normally well-coifed, reddish-brown hair hung down in damp clumps.

  New rule to live by he thought, don't play poker with Agency goons. Dex took a quick peek back around the corner. No one was in sight. Lost them.

  Dex allowed himself to relax and leaned back against the side of the building. The pounding in his chest subsided and his breathing slowed. The harried hexslinger thought back to his narrow escape and tried to make some sense of it.

  It had seemed like a normal poker game with a few high rollers who had more money than sense. Dex had been playing along, losing a few hands on purpose to build their confidence and gradually raise the stakes. It wasn't until they had ordered a few bottles of whiskey brought to the table that things went downhill. He hadn't been able to resist using a minor little trick he knew that would encourage his opponents to nip at the bottle a little harder than usual, shortening the time it would take to sucker them into some high stakes hands.

  The huckster thought he had covered the slight motions he had made while waging his mental duel with the denizens of the Hunting Grounds, but evidently in this case, the hand was not quicker than the eye. Shortly after he attempted to put the whammy on his fellow card players, they exchanged a few glances and Dex found himself staring down the barrels of an Agency-issue Gatling pistol. Only some quick thinking and a few well-timed hexes had gotten him out of the saloon with an unpunctured physique.

  The gambler had run nearly six blocks with the Agency operatives on his heels. It had taken some hard running and a few more hands of poker with some leering manitous to escape them.

  Dex had heard a lot of stories about what the Agency did to hucksters like himself, everything from imprisonment, to torture, to burning at the stake. He had no desire to verify any of these tales if he could help it. The gambler needed to think carefully about his next move. Did the operatives know who he was? Was the poker game an unlucky coincidence, or was the Agency actively looking for him?

  The hexslinger's thoughts were interrupted by a loud barking and a shout from behind him: "He went down here!"

  Damn. Those guys were tenacious.

  Dex left his haven behind the crates and ran down a connecting alley behind a warehouse. The alley turned left after about fifty yards. Dex turned the corner. Dead end. Thirty feet in front of him was a twelve-foot high stockade fence topped with barbed wire. It guarded the edges of the Wasatch rail yard.

  Let's see, Dex thought, I can get shot by the Agency goons behind me or by Wasatch guards. Maybe if I get lucky, they'll shoot each other.

  Dex knew he had no chance of climbing the fence, so he began to desperately tug at the boards, hoping to find a loose one. No luck. The only gap in the fence was a small knothole barely large enough fit a finger through.

  The huckster heard another bark and the sound of feet pounding up the connecting alley. He pulled at the boards with new energy.

  A new sound split the air: the high-pitched scream of a steam whistle. Dex could hear the steady chugging of a locomotive as it began to slowly get under way. He crouched down and peered through the knothole. A westbound freight train was just leaving the yard with a heavy load. Its wheels spinning and then catching as it gradually picked up momentum. More importantly for Dex, the door to one of the train's boxcars was slightly ajar. The interior was filled with deep shadows.

  The huckster looked around the alley. The closest warehouse cast a long shadow over him. It would work! He turned back to the knothole and locked his eyes on the receding boxcar. His mind reached out into the spirit world and locked horns with a manitou. He dragged the unhappy spirit to his mental poker table and dealt the cards in a blur.

  "Halt or I'll shoot!" bellowed someone behind him.

  Dex looked down at the fan of cards which appeared in his hand: Full House. Damn, I'm good, he thought. He vanished from the alley just as a volley of Gatling pistol bullets passed through the space he had occupied.

  "Oooff!"

  Dex picked himself up off the floor of the boxcar and massaged his bruised ribs. Magically teleporting from shadow to shadow was never easy. He had reappeared right where he had wanted, but he hadn't accounted for the difference in speed between himself and the train. A stack of crates had slammed into him at about fifteen miles per hour and knocked the wind out of him.

  Not graceful, but it worked. The huckster looked around. Both ends of the car were filled with large, wooden crates. He found a spot near the front of the car where he could wedge himself comfortably behind some of the boxes, then gathered up some of the loose packing straw which littered the floor to use as a pillow and made himself as comfortable as possible.

  Dex mulled over his situation. The Agency operatives could telegraph ahead to the train's next stop, so he would have to get off before then. What he would do after that he was unsure of.

  As the hexslinger considered his alternatives, the adrenaline from the chase began to wear off. A wave of fatigue washed over him. He struggled to keep his eyes open, but the heat of the afternoon sun and the gentle rocking of the car overcame him, and he soon nodded off to sleep.

  Dex was awakened by a sudden jolt that shook the entire boxcar. This was quickly followed by a second jolt and then the car came to a sudden halt. The partially open door through which he had entered the car slid completely open with a loud bang.

  The huckster peered cautiously around the crates which hid him from view. Through the door he could see that his car was now in the middle of a large rail yard. He could smell smoke and hear the soft huffing of waiting steam engines.

  He guessed from all the banging that his boxcar was now attached to a different train. That was good, but where was he, and where was this train going? Before he could do anything about answering those questions, Dex heard the sound of crunching gravel and slipped back behind the crates.

  "Who the Hell left that door open?" asked a voice.

  "I don't know, but you better get it closed up fast. If the doctor sees it open he'll have a conniption and skin us both alive," responded a second.

  "Right," said the first voice.

  The crunching sounds grew louder. Dex heard a grunt as someone lifted himself up into the car. "I better make su
re we don't have anyone bummin' a ride," said the first voice. Footsteps approached Dex's hiding place.

  The huckster pushed himself back into the corner as far as he could and curled up into a ball. A fan of cards flashed in his hand, and the shadows surrounding him deepened.

  A man wearing the uniform of a Hellstromme Industries guard peered around the crates. He looked straight at Dex, paused for a moment, and then turned and walked away.

  "Looks clear. Let's get out of here."

  There was a crunch of gravel as the man jumped down from the train, then a loud bang as the car door slid shut. The guards' voices and the crunching of their footsteps receded into the distance.

  Time to go, thought Dex. He emerged from behind the crates and moved to the door. He grabbed the interior handle and pulled. The door remained shut. He pulled harder, but still no movement. He tried again but only succeeded in rattling the door on its rails. He was locked in.

  A tendril of panic wormed its way into the huckster's brain for a second, but he quickly fought it down. He didn't know any hexes that could open the door, but there had to be another way for him to get out. All he had to do was find a place where he could see out, and he could use the same hex he had entered the car with to leave. He had ridden the rails like this before, and he knew from experience that most boxcars had places where the weather or general wear and tear had warped a plank or two. He began searching for just such a thing.

  Twenty minutes later he gave up in defeat. Not only did this car not have such a place, it appeared to have been built recently-all the boards were tightly caulked. The car was nearly airtight. Well, thought Dex, I guess I'll just have to ride this wherever it's going, and deal with whatever I find there. Having resigned himself to taking a train ride, Dex went back to his hiding place and settled in for the trip.

  With the door closed, the air in the car quickly became hot and stuffy. Despite this, Dex managed to fall into a fitful slumber.

  When he awoke again, the train was stopped. He could hear sounds of activity in the distance: shouted commands, the pounding of hammers, and the measured steps of marching troops. The air in the car had cooled some, and Dex decided that it must now be early evening.