6
The switchman was a big fellow.
He went in at nearly three-hundred pounds and though some of it was fat, much of it was hardened lanky muscle accrued from a lifetime of hard work. His name was Abe Runyon and in his fifty years, he'd done it all. He'd driven team and rode shotgun on a stage in the Colorado Territory. He'd been foreman for the Irish gangs that laid track from Kansas City to Denver for the Kansas Pacific Railroad. He'd logged some. Trapped some.
Of all things, he liked railroad work best.
And tonight especially. A storm was hitting southwestern Montana with a vengeance. The sky was choked with snow and already some six inches had fallen, propelled with gale-force intensity by winds screaming down from the Tobacco Root Mountains. Runyon was sitting in a signalman's shack, playing solitaire before the glow of a lantern. Outside, the wind was screaming, making the little shack tremble.
Runyon cursed under his breath, knowing he'd have to spend the night out here. Knowing he'd been a damn fool to be inspecting track with the clouds boiling and belching in the first place.
There'd be no whiskey tonight.
It would be just him and his cards and the little wood stove that kept him warm.
'Damn,' he said.
He bit off the end of a cigar and lit it with a stick match, spitting out bits of tobacco. Snow was beginning to drift in the corner, forced by the wind through any available crevice. Runyon stuffed a rag in there. It would serve for a time.
Swallowing bitterly at his luck this night, he wiped his hands on his greasy overalls and sat back down to his card game.
And this is when he heard the sound.
Even with the howl of the wind and the rattle of the shack, he heard it: someone out back rifling through the woodpile.
Runyon knew who it was.
Getting up, he grabbed his light Colt double-action. 38 and opened the door. Snow and wind rushed in at him. And despite his size and strength, he was pushed back a few feet. Gritting his teeth and squinting his eyes, he forced himself out, pounding through the drifts that came up to his hips at times. Out back, he caught the thieves in the act.
'All right, goddammit,' Runyon shouted into the onslaught of wind and snow. 'Drop them logs!'
The thieves, as it were, were three scrawny-looking Indians dressed in raggedy buffalo coats and well-worn deerhide leggings. They dropped the wood, staring at him with wide, dark eyes. A lean, starving bunch, slat-thin and desperate.
'Please,' one of them said in English. 'The cold.'
His English was too good for a redskin and this made the bile rise in Runyon's throat. He had no use for Blackfeet and Crow savages and especially those that considered themselves civilized enough to use a whiteman's tongue. Runyon, a well-thumbed catalog of intolerance, hated Indians. Raised in an atmosphere of anti-Indian sentiments, Runyon was born and bred to hate anything just this side of white. They'd never actually given him any personal grief but he knew that a raiding party of Cheyenne had killed both his grandparents in Indian Territory and that his father had watched the bastards scalp the both of them from his hiding place.
'Cold, are you?' Runyon said.
The one who spoke English nodded. The other two just stared. And Runyon knew what they were thinking, knew the hatred they felt and how the sneaky, lying devils would sooner slit his throat as look at him.
'We were caught in the storm,' the injun said. 'We need wood for a fire. In the morning we will replace it.'
'Oh, I just bet you will. I just bet you will.'
'Please.' The voice was sincere and had it been a white man, even the lowest murdering drifter, it would've touched Runyon.
But these were savages.
And Runyon knew the moment you showed them any mercy, any compassion, was the moment they laughed in your face. And that they'd come back and kill you first chance they got. The heathen red devils didn't respect compassion; they saw it as a weakness.
'If you're cold, injun,' Runyon said, leveling the. 38 in his face, 'I can warm you up with some lead right fast.'
'Please,' the Indian said and seemed to mean it. Hard-won pride cracked in his voice; it was not easy to beg for a few sticks of wood.
'Get out of here!' Runyon cried. 'Get the hell out of here before I kill the lot of you!'
The three of them backed away slowly, not taking their eyes off the white, knowing it was not a good idea to do so. Too many times had members of their tribe been murdered by turning their backs on armed whites.
'We will die,' the one said. 'But so will you.' With that, they were gone.
But they weren't moving fast enough for Runyon's liking.
Spitting into the wind, he took aim on the stragglers and sighted in on the one who thought himself the equal of white men. He drew a bead on the savage's back and pulled the trigger. The chamber explosion was barely audible in the shrieking, biting winds. Visibility was down, but Runyon saw one of the savages fall just as a wall of snow obscured him.
'Damn heathens,' Runyon cursed and made his way back.
Sitting by the wood stove and warming his numbed hands, Runyon grinned, knowing he'd freed the world of a few more thieving redskins.
The bastards would freeze.
Runyon smiled.
7
It was much later when the scratching began.
Runyon had been dozing in his chair, a game of solitaire laid out before him, the. 38 still in his fist. He'd been dreaming he was down in Wolf Creek, warm and toasty, having a drink and eating a good meal. Then he opened his eyes. He wasn't in Wolf Creek. He was out in the goddamn signal shack waiting for morning.
Something that never seemed to come.
Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he set the Colt down and listened. He'd heard something. Some unknown sound. He knew this much. Runyon wasn't one to wake without reason. Cocking his head, he listened intently. The wind was still shrieking, the snow still dusting the shack and making it tremble.
But something more now.
A low, almost mournful moaning noise broken up by the winds.
And scratching. Like claws dragged over the warped planks of the shack.
Runyon swallowed, a trickle of sweat ran down his back. It was the injuns. It had to be the injuns. Somehow, they had survived the subzero temperatures and had come back now. Maybe with a raiding party. At the very least with guns, knives, and evil tempers.
What had that injun said?
We will die…but so will you.
Runyon shivered.
He shouldn't have shot that one… he should've shot them all. He should've tracked the bastards through the snow and killed them. Shot them all down and saved himself a hell of a lot of trouble.
But now they were back.
Runyon lit his cigar back up. He wished he'd brought more bullets for the Colt, but, hell, he hadn't expected any trouble like this. He should have known better. Those savages were always on the look out for a lone white man they could murder and rob.
