Bad Medicine

“What the hell?” he asked himself. “Wampus?” The word ticked something far back in Will’s mind, but didn’t bring an image or idea to him.

It didn’t take too long to catch the dead outrider’s cow pony; the animal was underfed, parasite ridden, and scarred with spur and lash welts and cuts. Will approached him slowly, murmuring to him, and was able to take hold of a rein. He saw why his pressure on the rein stopped the diseased horse so easily: the bit in the animal’s mouth was a long-shanked, cruel Mexican bit that cut into the horse’s mouth, stopping and turning him not through training but through pain.

Will was surprised to see that the saddle and saddlebags weren’t Mex junk. The saddle was Texas made. Will could tell that as he ran a finger along the stitching, which was straight and waxed and tight, and the fenders and stirrups hung as they should. He released the cinches—the saddle was a double rig—and unbuckled the chest strap. When he hefted the weight off the animal’s back the horse shook himself like a dog coming out of water. Will cut the latigo that jammed the bit into the horse’s mouth and eased the bridle down the pony’s snout. Both his hands were bloody as he removed the bit. He twisted the seven-inch shanks into shapes that would never allow the bit to be used again, bent the mouthpiece in the middle, and tossed the whole bloody affair out into the prairie.

It took a few moments for the horse to realize that he was free—and then he was gone, as far away from any man as he could get, hooves pounding the sloppy, treacherous mud. The only way a man would stop that horse was with a bullet.

Will went through the saddlebags. He found handfuls of .45 ammunition in each, a bit of beef jerky, a knife that was dull enough to be useless, which he tossed aside, a few double eagles, and a deck of playing cards with pictures of naked women with mules. Those, too, he tossed onto the prairie. He loaded his pistol, inserted rounds in his gun belt, and left the balance of the bullets in the saddlebags.

The dead outlaw had nothing worth taking. His .45 was a piece of junk: grips taped, rusted, trigger as stiff as an oak tree.

The rifle, a single-shot, rusted, sightless chunk of scrap metal, was no better. Will figured firing the goddamned thing would be suicide; the round would probably explode within the corroded mechanism and barrel, blowing his head off. He hurled it into the dark. The gun belt was much the same: worn, uncared for, the cartridge loops uneven and sure to scatter ammunition at a gallop. The man carried neither a hide-out gun—a derringer—or a decent knife. Will and Shark left the corpse for the vultures, Will carrying the saddle over his shoulder.

It would have made sense to fetch the pinto and ride him back to the saddle, but Will wanted some time. The word wampus continued to play in his mind. It was too familiar to recall, and yet it was barely familiar at all. “Damn,” Will cursed as he slogged through the mud.

The storm had calmed considerably, moving on, the rain little more than sprinkles. The dark clouds that had generated the storm had, of course, scudded on their way, and the half-moon shed some light.

The pinto was as Will had left him, although stirred-up mud around him showed he’d done a good deal of nervous shifting about due to the lightning and thunder. Will eased the tattered saddle blanket over the pinto’s back and smoothed it, particularly at the withers—the place where galls are most likely to occur under a new saddle. Will flipped the stirrups over the seat and settled the saddle in position on the horse’s back. The fit was closer to good than to fair, and later, minor adjustments could be made to the seat, cantle, and tree. He wasn’t sure that the horse had ever carried a saddle. He was an Indian pony, and most Indians considered saddles to be merely excess weight, a silly device for a poor rider who can’t control his animal. The pinto stood well under the saddle, though, offering no resistance. “I shoulda known it,” Will said aloud. “You was stolen well after you was saddle broke.”

He pulled the front cinch and set the back cinch, leaving an inch between the leather strap and the pinto’s belly. That strap was intended not to secure the saddle but to brace it and allow it to rise a bit off the horse’s back when the rider was roping or descending a steep grade.

The hackamore and the single rein were fine—the animal was used to both. Will moved both stirrups down a notch. At the same time he looked carefully over the workmanship of the seat, stirrups, and fenders. The leather needed oil and the buckles were showing some rust, but all in all, the saddle wasn’t a bad piece of work.

Will stepped into a stirrup and climbed aboard, setting off at a walk.

Lightning struck not far away, sluicing mud and stone into the air, dropping Shark to his crouching attack position, lips curved back over his eyeteeth, the whites of his eyes showing, his body like a tightly coiled spring. The lightning, the dog, and the blast of thunder brought wampus back to Will’s recollection.

“I ain’t scared of no horse or nothin’ else,” an old Indian bronc buster told him when Will was still a boy, maybe a dozen years old. “ ’Cept, a course, a wampus. That’s a critter the Great Spirit chased down to earth—meanest goddamn thing a man could come across. They can fly, Will, an’ they can kill in a heartbeat. Once one has his eye on you, why, you’re gone, boy. Ain’t nobody escapes a wampus.”

“You ever seen one?”

“If I had I wouldn’t be settin’ here. I seen drawings an’ heard stories, though.”

Will forced a nervous laugh. “That’s jus’ a superstition. Don’t mean nothing.”

“No? I seen the remainders of a fella, a white fella, a wampus took after. Purely tore that man apart—worse’n a painter or bear could ever do. You jus’ pray to that god a yours you never cross one. Ain’t a Indian in the whole of the West don’t know ’bout the wampus—an’ plenty of whites do, too.”

Like many dog owners, Will had begun talking to his dog, sometimes in full sentences, most times in a few words. Of course the animal couldn’t understand any of it, but that fact didn’t stop Will.

“I’ll tell you what,” Will said to the dog walking along at his right side, “that wampus thing give me a good idea. All the Indians are scared, superstitious, an’ them loonies they’re ridin’ with—deserters, gunhands, murderers, rapists, all like that—they’re as crazy an’ scared an’ superstitious as the Indians. Here’s the thing, pard: your name isn’t Shark no more—it’s Wampus. OK?”

The dog watched Will’s face until he determined that no actual command was involved. Then he simply walked alongside the man, more attuned to his surroundings and the scents that he picked up than the words the man continued to utter.

“I figure it this way,” Will said. “We make a move on the camp an’ you gnaw on another outlaw. That’ll build the ‘wampus’ thing even stronger in their booze-an’-drug-soaked minds. Then we’ll haul ass away from the camp but follow the crew—hell, how hard can it be to track all those horses?—an’ pick them off as we go. Sound good?”

Wampus didn’t look up at Will this time. Instead, he stopped, nose high, drawing in the scent of smoke and of men. “Gettin’ close?” Will said in a lowered voice. He reined in, dismounted, and led the pinto behind him. “Find ’em,” he whispered to Wampus. The dog took point position, matching his speed to Will’s stride.

The sound from the gathering was loud, disjointed. A couple of Indians were chanting. Will tied the pinto to some scrub and moved on.

Watching flat in the mud from a small rise, Will saw the group had built a good-sized fire from a wrecked freighter, deciding they were better off in the fire’s light than continuing on to their sanctuary at Olympus in the dark with a wampus about. It was clear that the escaping outrider had brought back the news of the other rider’s attack. More Indians took up the chant, while the whites, in their ludicrous army outfits, passed bottles and huddled together, pistols or rifles clutched and ready.

One Dog pushed his way into the center of the group of whites and held out his arms for silence. It did no good. He punched the man closest to him, knocking him unconscious to the ground, but the violence had no effect on the panicked jabbering and chanting. One Dog drew his pistol and found that none of his men were even watching him, concentrating instead on the grounds around the fire, each completely expecting a mythical beast to fly into the group, slashing and killing.

Will shivered in the cold mud, Wampus pressed tightly against his side. He grinned and whispered to the dog, “You pressin’ against me ’cause I’m such a fine, upstanding fella, or you lookin’ for a bit of body heat?”

A fistfight broke out down below, but the combatants were quickly separated by the others. It wasn’t that they gave a damn if the two drunks killed one another; they didn’t want to lose four eyes watching for the wampus.

Not but one way to do this. I either play on their craziness an’ fear, or I don’t. He sighed. An’ I’m damn well gonna do it. Will drew his .45, which was still dripping wet. He spun the cylinder and held the pistol next to his ear, and the sweet mechanical whirr was