The Tears of God

The ground rose in a series of broad shelves to the canyon rim. Forest covered about half. The rest consisted of grassy belts broken here and there by boulder fields.

Nate avoided open ground as much as possible. The climb was steep and arduous, and often they stopped to scan the next stretch to be sure they didn’t ride into an ambush.

“I’m surprised they came all this way,” the Texan commented at one point when they were high up.

Nate wasn’t. In the name of hate men drove themselves to deeds they wouldn’t otherwise do.

“That one you called Kuruk must want you dead awful bad.” Maklin echoed Nate’s thought.

“The feeling is mutual.” Nate wasn’t a killer by nature. He only did it when he had to, when circumstances left him no choice. He had no choice now. He must slay Kuruk not only for his own sake but so that no one else lost their lives. The farmer and his family and the wrangler had died because of him; he would be damned if any more would.

The sun relinquished its reign to the mantle of darkness. Soon a crescent moon added its radiance to the shimmering of the stars.

Out of their dens and thicket hideaways came the fanged creatures of the night. Legions of predators were on the prowl in search of prey to fill their bellies. Their cries and howls and wails were constant, a bestial chorus that once heard was never forgotten.

The farther they climbed, the slower they went. Nate constantly tested the wind with his senses. It blew down off the heights in spurts. A gust would fan him and rustle the trees, and then everything would be still.

The rim was a black silhouette against the stars. They were several hundred feet below it when Nate drew rein and announced, “We’ll go the rest of the way on foot.”

Maklin didn’t argue. Swinging lithely down, he tied his mount to a fir and loosened the pistols wedged under his belt. “We can cover more ground if we separate.”

“We’d be easier to pick off, too.” Nate preferred that they stick together so they could watch each other’s back.

Maklin didn’t argue.

Taking the lead, Nate rapidly climbed until he came to a stone wall fifteen to twenty feet high. He groped about him but couldn’t find handholds. “This way,” he whispered, and bore to the left, on the lookout for a gap or some other means of reaching the crest.

“Maybe they’re not up here now,” Maklin whispered. “It could be we came all this way for nothing.”

Nate hoped not. He crept along until a puff of wind drew him to a split wide enough for a man to slide through. He had to turn sideways and wriggle. Intent as he was on not getting stuck, he forgot about his Hawken and bumped the stock against the rock. The sound was much too loud.

Nate came out on a flat rocky parapet. Crouching, he glided to the edge. Below lay the Valley of Skulls. Light showed in the windows and a fire had been kindled near the wagons.

“Any sign of them?” Maklin whispered.

Nate was about to say no when from off to their left, as clear as could be, came a cough. Dropping into a crouch, he moved more warily than ever.

The cough was repeated.

Something about it troubled Nate. A boulder hove out of the pitch and he was making his way around it when he happened to glance up and saw a shape crouched on all fours. A long tail flicked and lashed.

The tail of a mountain lion.

Chapter Twelve

Nate King reacted in a twinkling. He whipped up his Hawken and started to thumb back the hammer. Even as he did, the cougar whirled with astounding speed and in a starlit tawny blur leaped off the other side of the boulder. It happened so fast that it took a few seconds for Nate to realize the cat had fled and not attacked him. “That was close,” he breathed.

“What was?” Maklin whispered.

Nate twisted in the saddle. “You didn’t see the mountain lion?”

“Where?”

“On that boulder.”

“I was looking down there.” Maklin’s arm was a black bar, extended toward the Valley of Skulls. His voice dropped until Nate barely heard him. “Tell me I’m seeing things. Look over yonder and tell me what in God’s name those are.”

Puzzled, Nate turned. The valley floor was a mire of ink save for the lit windows and the fire by the corral. Across the valley reared the opposite heights. He looked, and his skin crawled with goose flesh. “I see them, too.”

“What are they?”

Nate wished he knew. Pale things appeared to be moving down the mountain. Long and slender, they writhed like snakes. As he watched in stunned amazement, one of them changed shape, expanding until it was bloated at the middle and thin at both ends.

“Hell spawn,” the Texan said.

A gust of wind fanned Nate’s face. The next moment, the shapes did something even more wondrous; they broke apart. Each became two or three smaller shapes that continued to crawl and writhe.

“What are they?” Maklin said again.

Nate racked his brain for an explanation. That both he and the Texan saw them proved they weren’t an illusion. That they moved as they did suggested they were alive. But if they were, they were creatures the likes of which mortal man had seldom set eyes on. Maybe—and his mind balked at the idea but it was the only one that made sense—maybe they were creatures from the Indian legends. Maybe they were the animals whose skulls and bones littered the valley floor.

Then, with disturbing abruptness, the pale shapes faded and were gone. One moment they were there, the next they weren’t.

“What the hell?” Maklin blurted.

Nate searched in vain for further sign of them. When it became apparent they were gone, he shook his head and said, “ ‘There are more things in heaven and earth…’ ”

“What was that?”

“A quote that a friend of mine likes to say a lot.”

Maklin shifted toward him. “Damn. We forgot about the Pawnees.”

Alarmed, Nate whipped around. The crest was still and quiet. As near as he could tell, they were the only two human beings atop the mountain. “They’re gone.”

“They were here, though. We both saw them.”

Nate had seen something earlier. What he took to be the heads and shoulders of men spying on the valley’s new inhabitants from on high. At that distance it had been impossible to say for certain that it was the Pawnees, but he was willing to bet his poke it was.

Nate dismounted and walked to where he could see the sweep of mountains to the south. At night the rolling tiers of forested slopes were a sea of ink, which was why the one bright orange finger stood out like a lighthouse beacon. “There.”

“I reckon a mile, maybe less,” Maklin guessed. “They must have been going down while we were coming up.”

“Let’s have a look-see.”

They became tortoises. They had to be, for the sake of their animals as well as their own hides. The snap of a branch would carry on the wind. The peal of hooves, too, so they rode at a walk until the mile had become half a mile and then a quarter of a mile and finally they were a few hundred yards above the fire.

Nate drew rein. “I’ll go. Wait here with the horses.”

“Why just you?”