inhuman footprints nearly covered by snow wound out into the distance.
Alden Bowes was, for all purposes, the sheriff of Wolf Creek now. He knew Lauters' family well and none of it was easy for him. But he had a job to do and do it he would.
'I can't believe this,' Bowes kept saying. 'What kind of animal does something like this?'
'No animal,' Longtree said.
Bowes narrowed his eyes. 'These people had nothing to do with that lynching, Marshal. I think… this puts your little theory to bed.'
Longtree frowned. 'Not at all, Deputy. It couldn't find him, so it went for his family.'
Bowes paled and walked off, joining Spence and Perry as they examined the atrocities in the barn. Longtree didn't blame the man for how he felt; the other victims were bad enough, but this…this was obscene. No other word could be applied here. Women and children. Longtree had seen plenty of killing in his time. Enough to turn most men sick with the awful potential of their fellow man. But never had he experienced the aftermath of such gruesome savagery before.
Longtree joined the others in the barn.
Perry was examining a human femur stripped of flesh. There were huge indentations in it. 'Teeth marks,' he said in disgust. 'This thing must be incredibly powerful. I've seen the leftovers from a grizzly's meal…but never anything like this…' He coughed then, fighting against tears.
'It must be insane,' Wynona Spence said, 'this beast. Even a pack of hungry wolves stop…they fill themselves and let the scavengers have the rest. But this thing…by God, it eats and eats. It kills for pleasure, for the fun of it.'
Longtree lit a hand-rolled. 'You better get a posse together, Deputy. You get some men and tracking dogs on that thing's trail, you might find it. Trail's still fresh.'
Bowes nodded. 'You coming?'
'I'll join you later. Something I have to follow up first.'
Bowes got on his horse and rode off.
Longtree pulled Perry aside. 'I hate to add insult to injury, Doc, but when this is wound up, I may have to arrest the sheriff.'
Perry didn't look surprised. 'Why?'
Longtree told him about the masked gunman. 'I figure you dug a bullet out of Lauters' arm last night, did you not?'
Perry nodded grimly. 'Just wait until this is over, son. Do that for me. I suspect the sheriff is guilty of a great many crimes around here.' He looked back at the litter of bodies. 'God help him,' he sobbed. 'Oh, Jesus, Marshal, the children…'
Longtree watched him walk away stiffly, wondering just what the doctor knew and what he didn't know. And feeling for him, this entire town, a great compassion.
15
Skullhead, the last of the Lords of the High Wood, was far away from Wolf Creek by the time the posse was organized and dispatched. He was watching the Blackfeet camp in the hills, his stomach growling. He'd slept off last night's feast in a shelf of rock a half mile from town. He woke just after dawn, realizing he'd fallen asleep, bloated and gassy, while in the process of eating the child. The boy's innards were strung around him like a threadbare blanket. They were quite frozen and unpalatable.
He left the remains for scavengers.
After his long walk up into the hills, he was famished. He still had one more of the white men to kill, but no law stated that he couldn't take his sacrifice before they were all dead.
He approached the camp carefully, being silent as possible. Once the dogs started barking, he'd have to kill them. Too bad there wasn't some way he could simply slip in there and twist their necks without being noticed. But that was impossible. No longer able to contain his lusts, he moved into the camp.
The dogs began to bark.
Two of them ran at Skullhead and he slashed them into ribbons with a single swipe of his nails. A third and forth were torn asunder by a sweep of his bony, jagged tail. No more came. There was screaming now, crying. People were running about, gathering up children and retreating into the forest. Skullhead let them go. He went from one lodge to the other, tearing them down and stomping them into the snow with childish glee. A few of the tribal elders weren't quick enough to escape their lodges and Skullhead grinned as their fragile bones crunched beneath him.
There was shooting suddenly and Skullhead grimaced in pain as bullets swept over his back. He turned and chased down the defiant ones. He killed the first by merely tearing out his throat, the second by detaching his limbs, and the third by crushing him in a hug that forced his viscera to exit from any available opening. There was another and Skullhead beat him into submission with ragged, bleeding parts of the others, then opened his skull with a blow from his own rifle.
But this was merely for amusement.
His real interest was the sweat lodge. It was set away from the others at the fringe of the forest. It was in here that would be the men who summoned him, the Skull Society members. They knew their debts and would not run. Skullhead forced his way in, the tanned flap of buffalo skin that served as a door coming apart in his fingers. The men in here squatted on the earthen floor, their naked bodies painted up with streaks of white, black, and red. They chanted and mumbled meaningless prayers.
They did not attempt to hide or flee.
These were the ones that had called him. It seemed so silly to think that these weak, cowering creatures had summoned him from his grave. Of all the absurdities. Skullhead emasculated them one by one, laughing with a dry roaring sound as he did so. He watched them bleed and cry and moan and writhe on the ground. Bored with this display, he crushed their heads to jelly and brought the lodge down on top of them. It was how sacrifice was offered and received.
Outside, he smelled meat cooking on the fire. Strips of it smoking and sizzling on wooden racks. The stench was sickening…yet Skullhead was curious. He snatched a strip and chewed the vile substance, forcing it down the cavern of his throat. When it hit his stomach, the reaction was instantaneous: he went to his knees and vomited. This done, he pulled himself up dizzily, remembering now the ancient taboos concerning cooked flesh.
He would do well not to forget again.
Skullhead decided now that these dark-skinned people were not worthy of worshipping him. As he devoured a woman and her child he decided they could only be of use as meat. The white men and their kin…they would be his new flock. They were the ones with power, with imagination. They reared cities like the ancients. A brutal and savage people. Skullhead liked them. They would do.
Moving into the forest, he found small packs of the dark-skins hiding under the cover of trees and rock. He took his time in claiming them. When he'd filled his belly to the point of bursting, he staggered back into camp and doused the fire with a stream of piss. Remembering that this was an old way of marking territory, he emptied his bladder throughout the camp. All who came here would know now that this place belonged to a king.
A Lord of the High Wood.
16
As the posse ran in circles outside town, Wynona Spence returned to the body of Mike Ryan. It had been very fortuitous of Ryan to order his elaborate headstone some days earlier. There were various stories circulating about how he had known of his approaching demise-everything from death threats to second sight-but Wynona was of the school that some men just knew when their time was coming. It hadn't been the first time a man had ordered a stone only to be placed beneath it a few short days afterward.
