heard horses die, I've heard the sounds they make when a hungry wolf pack sets on them…it carries for quite a distance. Anything that can slaughter five horses and do it silently, is no mere animal, no man.'
Lauters looked skeptical. 'But a monster…'
'Look,' Ryan said, leading the sheriff into the corral. There were prints in the mud and snow. 'It was warm last night. Our beast left tracks that froze hard this morning.'
Lauters examined them carefully. The prints were huge, splayed out. Exactly like the ones in Nate Segaris' house: immense, unnatural, triple-toed like a lizard with a thick spur in the back.
'Physical evidence, Sheriff. We need no more proof.' Ryan crossed his arms and glared at the mountains in the distance. 'Eight men are dead, Bill, and not just any eight men. I don't have to tell you what you and I and those men have in common, now do I? This creature is killing selectively, very selectively. And, if my memory serves me, exactly one year since that injun was lynched.'
Lauters shook his head. 'This is all crazy.'
'Yes, it is,' Ryan admitted, 'but it's happening all the same. That injun was lynched and now his people have called up something to take revenge.'
Lauters looked beaten. 'What can we do?'
'First, we take care of Longtree.'
'How? Hire gunmen?'
Ryan shook his head. 'No, this is something you and I have to do. We don't want anyone to wag their tongues about this down the road. We take care of that marshal tonight and plant him somewhere he'll never be found.' Ryan grinned. 'And then we'll take care of Red Elk's clan.'
Lauters looked suspicious. 'We'll need a lot of men.'
'I have thirty men right here that have done jobs for me in the past, all of them handy with guns. I can raise another thirty from the mining camps, men who need money and are just looking for a reason to spill injun blood.'
Lauters nodded. 'Tonight, then.'
'Your man Gantz failed, Sheriff, but I guarantee you, we will not.'
41
Longtree was with Moonwind again at the Blackfeet camp. They were in the lodge of Herbert Crazytail. Longtree had rode into camp and requested a meeting with the old man. And after some wait, it had been granted.
'My father says you are wasting your time,' Moonwind translated.
Longtree was a stubborn man and he fully intended to get what he came after: answers. He didn't bother bowing his head in respect to the medicine man, because he no longer had respect for him. Crazytail sat on a bed of dried grasses covered with buffalo hide and tended the fire. He was wrapped in a Hudson's Bay blanket, his right arm and shoulder uncovered. Strips of buffalo meat were cooking on wooden spits. Crazytail was gnawing on bits of pemmican.
'Tell your father to stop the Skullhead,' Longtree said. 'If the killings continue, soldiers will come. His people may be killed.'
It was a lie, but neither the old man or his daughter knew it.
Crazytail turned the spits in the fire, mumbling something.
Moonwind said, 'It is too late. What has been set into motion cannot be stopped. Even soldiers cannot stop the Skullhead. He has been called.'
'Who called him?' Longtree asked pointedly.
Moonwind translated, but the old man just shook his head.
'I don't think he wishes to talk any longer,' Moonwind said.
'He doesn't have a choice,' Longtree said angrily. 'If these killings aren't stopped, soldiers will come and your people will be killed. Those that aren't will be taken off to prisons and distant reservations. They will never see this land again. Tell him that.'
Moonwind, sighing, did so.
For the first time since his arrival, Crazytail looked at the marshal. There was hatred in his eyes, the hatred of an entire race. He began talking loudly now, jabbing his finger at Longtree.
'He says our people have a right to vengeance, we have been wronged. The whites must be taught a lesson.' Moonwind cleared her throat. 'He also says he is sorry you have involved yourself in this, that you will die also. He says if you are wise, you will leave this place before night falls. The Skullhead will not stop killing.'
'Tell Crazytail that I want to know where the Skullhead is. I can stop him.'
Moonwind translated. 'He says no man can stop what has been set into motion. Once the Skullhead is called, he cannot be put down.'
Crazytail, the fire reflected in his narrow eyes, began speaking again.
'After the guilty ones are killed,' Moonwind translated, 'the Skullhead will begin killing indiscriminately. So we have nothing to fear from the soldiers, for the Skullhead will take us all as sacrifices. Our fate is sealed.'
'And after you've all died in vain,' Longtree said, 'then what?'
Moonwind, looking very unhappy, translated: 'Then the Skullhead will go down into the town of the whites and kill everyone.'
PART III
1
Longtree had himself a room now at the Serenity Hotel in Wolf Creek. It wasn't much, but the bed was comfortable and there was a livery stable across the street for his black. There was a saloon just off the lobby and the food wasn't bad. The door bolted from the inside and the window was painted shut; it was very unlikely anyone could sneak up on him whilst he slept. And while he was awake, he didn't see that as a problem. All things considered, it beat the hell out of sleeping outside…particularly when there were men trying to kill you and maybe something worse. He enjoyed the outdoors, found it spiritually refreshing, but the white man in him often yearned for material comforts.
He'd gotten a pint of rum from the bar and lay on his bed now, sipping from it. He'd come to Wolf Creek under order from Tom Rivers. As a special deputy U.S. Marshal, he had no actual territory to call his own. He was merely sent wherever Rivers thought he was needed, where his skills as a lawman and former scout and bounty hunter would come in handy.
And Rivers had thought Wolf Creek needed him.
But Longtree wasn't so sure.
There'd been nothing but trouble since he'd arrived-with Lauters, with Gantz. And even without those two, this entire situation was well out of his experience. As a bounty hunter and then lawman, he'd brought in nearly every man he'd been sent after. There were few who'd escaped Joe Longtree. He brought them in alive, dead, and nearly dead. He was a hunter of men and he played this hand well. There was no one better at it. He'd taken in murderers, robbers, renegade Indians, road agents, bootleggers, and even entire gangs in his time. Longtree'd had some of the most vicious men (and women) in the west come at him with guns, knives, hatchets, clubs, even their bare hands. He'd been in a hundred near scrapes with death and escaped every time. Oh, he'd been shot several times, stabbed, beaten, and even hanged (that injury still pained him some, but he'd survived). As a scout, he'd
