quarter-mile or so. A man afoot would have to grab hold on a grade, or drop down from a cut. Yeah, he could relax for a few minutes along this stretch.
He stood and stamped his booted feet to ease his cramped thighs, then hunkered down again, bracing the Winchester across his knees as he chewed an unlit cheroot and mused, “Killing that Paiute just don’t fit, even leaving aside the distance and the missing sign on that dusty grass. Unless the others were killed for no good reason at all, that Ghost Dance missionary was playing right into the hands of—whoever. If I was the Wendigo I’d have killed almost anybody else first. Between the killings and that fool Paiute shaking his rattles, the tribe was just about ready to jump. Well, let’s study on it that way and see who’d most want that Dream Singer dead.”
Longarm suddenly brightened and said, “Hell, that’s got to be it!” as the train chuffed through another deep cut. Then the flat cars were rolling along in the moonlight once more and Longarm saw he was no longer alone.
An ink-black blob crouched on the planks, two cars back. Longarm rose slowly, the box car behind his back concealing his own dark outline, as he studied the form that had dropped from the rim of that last bank. It looked like a human being, sort of. It was on its feet now, and moving his way, as if seeking the same shadows he’d been hiding in. It walked peculiarly, on great big floppy feet, but a sudden shift of the moonlight flashed on the holstered gun it wore. It moved to the break between cars and leaped across, landing as quietly as a cat in that funny footgear. Longarm waited until it sort of danced the length of another car, jumped the gap, and was coming his way, before he called out, “That’s close enough! Freeze in place and grab for some sky, friend!”
The Wendigo threw himself prone on the weathered planks and a blaze of gunfire answered Longarm’s voice as a bullet slammed into the bulkhead of the reefer at his back. The shot was too wild to get excited over, so Longarm said, “You’ve had one free shot, you silly bastard! Now drop that fool gun and behave yourself!”
The Wendigo fired again at the sound of Longarm’s voice. The round ticked the tail of Longarm’s coat. So he swore softly and fired back. The Wendigo’s head jerked up like he’d been punched in the jaw. Then, moaning like a wounded bear, he rolled away from the pistol he’d let fall to the planks and Longarm grunted, “Oh, shit!” and ran to grab him before he could fall between the cars.
Longarm didn’t make it. Up in the cab, the engineer had heard the shots and was slowing down. But the Wendigo had fallen under the wheels!
Longarm jumped off, landing on one hip and rolling over twice in the grass beside the track as, up on the train, a brakeman yelled out, “You want us to hit the brakes?”
“Hell, yes!” shouted Longarm, as he got to his feet, rifle at the ready. Then the train had rolled on, its squealing brakes hardly slowing it until the caboose was winking its red lights at him from half a mile away. Gingerly, Longarm walked over to the tracks, shining silver in the moonlight. He found one leg on the ties, with its foot wrapped in rope and straw-filled burlap. It had been sliced off by a wheel above the knee.
Longarm fished a match from his coat pocket and thumbnailed it alight. The gentle night breeze from the mountains blew it out, but not before he’d spotted the trunk, a few feet to the west. He sighed and said, “Jesus, we had so much to talk about, too!”
The brake boss was trotting back from the halted caboose with a wildly swinging lantern, calling out, “What happened? Did you get him?”
Longarm said, “Your train helped. Wheels tore off his head, one arm, and both legs as he bounced along the ballast under it. Bring that light over here, will you? I suspicion that’s his head against that rail, there.”
The brake boss stopped and raised the lantern. Then, as the puddle of light swept over the battered human head lying on its bloody left cheek against a rail, he gagged and gasped, “My God! It’s that Mex, Mendez! The yard bull from Switchback!”
Longarm said, “He wasn’t a Mexican. He was from South America, where they rope cows different.” He bent to remove something from the belt of the mangled yard bull’s torso and held it up, explaining, “You call this thing a bolo. The gauchos use them, down there in Argentina. You hold this leather thong, whirl her around your head a few times, and let her go. These heavy balls spread out as she goes whoom-whoom-whoom through the air at you. He threw it at me one night, and it sounded like a big-ass bird.”
“I know what a bolo is. But what in thunder was he out here throwing it at folks for? He’s supposed to be tending to business in the Switchback yards!”
“Yeah, he let folks know he kept unsteady hours. Likely pretended to drink more than he really did, so his two kid helpers would cover for the times he wasn’t where everyone thought he was. Nobody notices a railroad man getting on or off a slow freight. So he’d ride out here, drop off, and lie in wait like some beast of prey for anyone who came by. Then he’d hit them from behind with that bolo, rip them up and behead them, and just wait for another train going back. He didn’t walk much, and he did it carefully in those big padded sacks tied over his boots.”
“I can see how he got about. But why was he doing it, and what in thunder did he take those heads for?”
“Well,” Longarm said, retrieving his hat from the ditch beside the roadbed, where it had landed when he jumped from the train, “I was aiming to ask him the why of it, but as you see, he doesn’t have much to say now. The reason he took the heads with him was to keep us from seeing them. When the bolo thongs hit someone about the neck, the heavy balls spin in and hammer hell out of their heads and faces. Then, too, carrying off the heads was sort of spooky. You might say he was in the trade of being spooky, and I don’t mind saying, he scared hell out of me a few times!”
The brake boss shook his head and said, “Mendez, the yard bull. Who’d have ever thought it! You reckon he was crazy, Deputy? A man would have to be crazy to do what he done, right?”
The deputy slapped his hat against his knee, raising a little puff of dust, then reshaped it with his hands and replaced it on his head, dead-center. “Maybe. I’ll know more after I figure out why he was doing it.”
The coroner couldn’t tell Longarm anything he might not have guessed about the cause of the Wendigo’s death, but the papers had to be filled out, so, leaving the coroner to deal with the mangled remains, Longarm got on the federal wire at the land office. This time, the results were more interesting.
As he finished and rejoined Agent Chadwick in the front office, Longarm said, “Mendez had a record a mile long. He told me about killing a colored hobo in Omaha, but he left out some union-breaking activities and some questions the St. Joe police wanted to ask him about a lady he left in his room when he checked out sudden, owing rent.”
Chadwick asked, “Really? What did she say he’d done to her?”
“She didn’t. Her throat was slit from ear to ear. St. Joe thought maybe Mendez could explain this to them, but as you know, it ain’t likely he’ll be able to.”
