Tallant wondered how long that beard had been absorbing beer. “And what were the Carkers?” he prompted politely.
“Ever hear of Sawney Bean? Scotland—reign of James First, or maybe the Sixth, though I think Roughead’s wrong on that for once. Or let’s be more modern—ever hear of the Benders? Kansas in the 1870s? No? Ever hear of Procrustes? Or Polyphemus? Or Fee-fi-fo-fum?
“There are ogres, you know. They’re no legend. They’re fact, they are. The inn where nine guests left for every ten that arrived, the mountain cabin that sheltered travelers from the snow, sheltered them all winter till the melting spring uncovered their bones, the lonely stretches of road that so many passengers traveled halfway— you’ll find ’em everywhere. All over Europe and pretty much in this country too before communications became what they are. Profitable business. And it wasn’t just the profit. The Benders made money, sure; but that wasn’t why they killed all their victims as carefully as a kosher butcher. Sawney Bean got so he didn’t give a damm about the profit; he just needed to lay in more meat for the winter.
“And think of the chances you’d have at an oasis.”
“So these Carkers of yours were, as you call them, ogres?”
“Carkers, ogres—maybe they were Benders. The Benders were never seen alive, you know, after the townspeople found those curiously butchered bones. There’s a rumor they got this far west. And the time checks pretty well. There wasn’t any town here in the eighties. Just a couple of Indian families, last of a dying tribe living on at the oasis. They vanished after the Carkers moved in. That’s not so surprising. The white race is a sort of super-ogre, anyway. Nobody worried about them. But they used to worry about why so many travelers never got across this stretch of desert. The travelers used to stop over at the Carkers’, you see, and somehow they often never got any farther. Their wagons’d be found maybe fifteen miles beyond in the desert. Sometimes they found the bones, too, parched and white. Gnawed-looking, they said sometimes.”
“And nobody ever did anything about these Carkers?”
“Oh, sure. We didn’t have King James Sixth—only I still think it was First—to ride up on a great white horse for a gesture, but twice Army detachments came here and wiped them all out.”
“Twice? One wiping-out would do for most families.” Tallant smiled.
“Uh-uh. That was no slip. They wiped out the Carkers twice because, you see, once didn’t do any good. They wiped ’em out and still travelers vanished and still there were gnawed bones. So they wiped ’em out again. After that they gave up, and people detoured the oasis. It made a longer, harder trip, but after all—”
Tallant laughed. “You mean to say these Carkers were immortal?”
“I don’t know about immortal. They somehow just didn’t die very easy. Maybe, if they were the Benders—and I sort of like to think they were—they learned a little more about what they were doing out here on the desert. Maybe they put together what the Indians knew and what they knew, and it worked. Maybe Whatever they made their sacrifices to understood them better out here than in Kansas.”
“And what’s become of them—aside from seeing them out of the corner of the eye?”
“There’s forty years between the last of the Carker history and this new settlement at the oasis. And people won’t talk much about what they learned here in the first year or so. Only that they stay away from that old Carker adobe. They tell some stories— The priest says he was sitting in the confessional one hot Saturday afternoon and thought he heard a penitent come in. He waited a long time and finally lifted the gauze to see was anybody there. Something was there, and it bit. He’s got three fingers on his right hand now, which looks funny as hell when he gives a benediction.”
Tallant pushed their two bottles toward the bartender. “That yarn, my young friend, has earned another beer. How about it, bartender? Is he always cheerful like this, or is this just something he’s improvised for my benefit?”
The bartender set out the fresh bottles with great solemnity. “Me, I wouldn’t’ve told you all that myself, but then, he’s a stranger too and maybe don’t feel the same way we do here. For him it’s just a story.”
“It’s more comfortable that way,” said the young man with the beard, and he took a firm hold on his beer bottle.
“But as long as you’ve heard that much,” said the bartender, “you might as well— It was last winter, when we had that cold spell. You heard funny stories that winter. Wolves coming into prospectors’ cabins just to warm up. Well, business wasn’t so good. We don’t have a license for hard liquor, and the boys don’t drink much beer when it’s that cold. But they used to come in anyway because we’ve got that big oil burner.
“So one night there’s a bunch of ’em in here—old Jake was here, that you was talking to, and his dog Jigger—and I think I hear somebody else come in. The door creaks a little. But I don’t see nobody, and the poker game’s going, and we’re talking just like we’re talking now, and all of a sudden I hear a kind of a noise like crack! over there in that corner behind the juke box near the burner.
“I go over to see what goes and it gets away before I can see it very good. But it was little and thin and it didn’t have no clothes on. It must’ve been damned cold that winter.”
“And what was the cracking noise?” Tallant asked dutifully.
“That? That was a bone. It must’ve strangled Jigger without any noise. He was a little dog. It ate most of the flesh, and if it hadn’t cracked the bone for the marrow it could’ve finished. You can still see the spots over there. The blood never did come
