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I had been thinking about Lord of the Rings, so the first thing my mind latched on to when the thing jumped out of the wagon was that Sméagol himself had come back from Mordor. About the size of a preteen boy, ropy with muscle and oily slick, the creature was bare except for a loincloth around its hips. A mouthful of pointy teeth glistened. I gathered this vision as if from a snapshot, right before my eyes snapped shut against the brilliant aftereffects of the supernova lantern and the light died.
I backpedaled, tripped, and landed on my ass. The Gollum bounced off my chest like it was a trampoline, bounded high, and ran over my head and shoulders with bare, stone-calloused feet. The thing smelled worse than a dead fish in a dirty sock. It used my back as a springboard and shot toward the open barn door.
Confused shouting rose from the gathered crowd. A dozen or more shots banged out, followed by more yelling.
Peace returned at the same pace at which my eyesight recovered. My situation clarified with my vision, which was not to say it improved. Dampness from the floor soaked the seat of my pants. Best not to think of all the fluids that may have seeped into the soil of the Bethlehem Stables and saturated my britches.
The thud of bootheels announced Bridger’s approach. The sheriff stood over me. “Are you all right?”
“Fine.” I accepted his extended hand and hauled myself upright.
“What was that thing?” the sheriff asked.
“Something out of either Lord of the Rings or Lord of the Flies.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t say much, but what you do say is odd as a sun-struck chicken.”
“Did they get it?”
Bridger sighed. “No, ’fraid not. The kid moved too fast. Right now, I got a crowd of excited folks with guns, running around in the dark. I better go round ’em up before someone dies of lead poisoning. See you later, Judge.”
My eyes adjusted, and I noticed the glint of brass where the box of shells had fallen from my coat pocket and spilled over the floor. I gathered and pocketed the loose cartridges, along with some grungy bits of debris collected in the process.
I ventured outside. Dogs from one corner of the town to the other barked in chorus. Men shouted, their voices attenuated by distance and impossible to locate. The night breeze brought a cooling draft and nothing more. The chase for the killer kid had left me far behind, and I could get no sense of direction or distance through mundane means. I checked for nearby animals and reached out to a tabby cat slipping along the sidewalk.
Hey, kitty. Did you see where the scary thing went?
Fuck you.
Cats. Go figure.
Nothing and no one else appeared to be within range. The chase for the thing—I had no ready classification, other than Gollum, which didn’t feel quite right—had moved on without me, meaning the outcome was out of my control or influence. Running around in the dark in a strange town, looking for a crowd of gun-toting locals with edgy tempers, seemed unwise.
The light from the Broken Wheel’s windows beckoned.
“I believe I’ll have a drink.”
Good idea. Getting drunk will surely improve your situation.
Shut up, brain.
#
The Broken Wheel proved to be everything I imagined a Western saloon should be. Here was something, at least, that matched my expectation of the Old West. A rough-hewn bar chopped from knotty pine ran along the left side. Stairs at the rear led to a second floor. A dozen tables filled the main space, many of them cluttered with abandoned glasses and suspended card games. A faro dealer spun his wheel in lazy circles—clickety-clickety-click-click... click... click—over and over again. The bartender paused in the middle of clearing a table when I stepped through the open door.
“H’ep you?”
I frowned at the empty room. “Everybody out chasing the... the killer?”
“Or in yon stockroom.” The barman hoisted his chin in the direction of a closed door under the staircase. “Gawkin’ at the dead’uns.”
“You’re keeping the bodies here?”
“Aye. Coroner’s comin’.” Shaved bald, with a walrus mustache to rival the mayor’s, the bartender stood a shade over six-two, and heaping stacks of muscle strained his plain, collarless shirt. A tang of Scots peat bog flavored his speech. “Didna seem right to leave ’em in t’alley.”
“Right. I’ll have a Maker’s Mark, straight up.”
“Beggin’ your pardon?”
“Ah, sorry.” I surveyed the shelf of unlabeled bottles behind the bar. Many were filled with what I presumed was alcohol, either clear or tan in color, but without any external clue as to their contents. I fingered the coins in my pocket and tossed out a silver dollar. “Bring me whatever that will buy. If you have anything that may have at least heard of Tennessee or Kentucky, that’d be awesome.”
“Aye. I’ll see what I can do.”
I took a seat at a clean table. The faro dealer left off spinning his wheel and started fiddling with a deck of cards, shuffling, cutting, and reshuffling. Riiippp-flutter. Riiippp-flutter.
“You’d be the judge, then?” The barkeep plonked an unlabeled bottle of rich amber liquid and a clean glass in front of me. He cocked a bushy eyebrow and extended a meaty hand. “Amos McKenzie.”
“Mmm. Judge Calico Shivers.”
“Aye, I know. I et me supper over t’Gerda’s. She spoke of ye.”
The door to the stockroom squeaked open, and a handful of subdued men—cowboys and farmers, by their clothes—trooped into the bar. They all looked a little green around the gills.
“Seen enough, boys?” McKenzie called.
“That was ghastly,” a cowboy in leather chaps said. He shuddered. “Ghastly.”
“Tater’s neck was plumb chewed out,” a frog-eyed man added. “And poor Ollie had a big chunk missing here.” He demonstrated by cupping his clawed fingers against the side of his head, above his ear. “Head bashed in. I never.”
“Ghastly,” Chaps said again.
The returning men took their tables, and McKenzie got busy, refreshing drinks. Talk picked up, quiet and low-key. I tuned it out and addressed myself to pouring my own stiff drink. The bourbon tasted of oak and spice, not at all the backwoods corn mash I expected. I closed my eyes and recalled the still image of the thing that had jumped me inside the Bethlehem Stables. Brown as an earthworm. Dirty hair. Naked except for a loincloth. Sinewy muscles stretched over a small frame.
And shark teeth lined a bear trap mouth.
Admittedly, I had only a brief glimpse of the... creature... person... thing, but I had the distinct impression it was not something created in a lab. The thing’s body looked too lived in. I didn’t know. I just couldn’t see it as something I brought back from the future, which created a whole other level of creepy, as I had never heard of pygmy tribes inhabiting the Southwestern US. Maybe I had been asleep when they covered that in history, but it seemed unlikely that I would miss something that odd. And where were the pygmies in the old Western movies? Roy Rogers and the Attack of the Little Indians. Fort Lilliputian Apache.
I dropped my borrowed flat-brimmed hat on the table and scratched my sweaty head as if I could ease the itch on the inside. I slurped a mouthful of whiskey then coughed as the liquid fire burned my esophagus. My eyes watered, and I suctioned life-giving oxygen through my open mouth. Then, proving I had no ability to learn from past mistakes, I chased the first slug with another. It appeared cauterization improved the taste. I poured another shot.
A hand touched my back, and I jerked. Only a quick reaction prevented me spilling my drink, thereby saving a nasty hole burning through the floor to the center of the Earth. The heat of a warm body and the smell of perfume, along with a gentle touch that trailed across my shoulders, stopped me from reacting with sudden and explosive violence. A girl eased into my lap with the sinuous suppleness of a boa constrictor sliding around its next meal. Dark, almond-shaped eyes regarded me from close range. Her lips were as plump as ripe berries. A mass of tumbling black hair graced the girl’s bare, honey-toned shoulders. The top of her gown revealed a breathtaking amount of her apple-shaped breasts when she leaned into me.
I grunted as her weight settled onto my lap.
Her cinnamon-toast voice tickled my ear. “Hola, señor, can you help me, please?”
“Help you?” I arched an eyebrow. “I think I’m the one in trouble here.”
“I have been stranded, señor,” she said with a sad pout, “with no one to help me. I just have been trying to get home for so long...”
“You too?”
A tiny flicker of a frown came and went. “But the travel, it is so-o-o-o expensive.”
“You can borrow my horse.”
“I would—excuse me, señor, what did you say?”
“Never mind. Please continue.” I shifted her to a more comfortable position. My predictable reaction to her wiggling rump made its presence felt.
“I would be so, so grateful for any act of kindness, señor.” She clung to me as if I alone stood between her and a desolate end. Lustrous black hair tickled my nose. Her bottom managed to squirm against me even more insistently. “So very grateful.”
“Esmeralda.” McKenzie appeared at the table, hands on hips. “The judge”—he made a point of emphasizing the word—“is no rube to be conned by the likes o’ you. Leave the man be, fer the love o’ Christ.”
“We’re good,” I said when the young lady stiffened. “How old are you, Esmeralda?”
Esmeralda lowered her eyes and looked at me through her lashes. Her lower lip trembled. “I... I am so very young, Señor Judge. I no have the... experiences with the men. I am so sorry to have offensed you.”
I let out my first real laugh in a while. My aches and pains faded, and I felt better than I had in days. “Oh my. You’re good.” I patted her back. “Hop off and pull up a chair. I have a half-dollar that’s all yours if you’ll just sit there and look pretty for a while.”
“Are you sure, now?” McKenzie said. “I’ll run her off if she’s a bother.”
“No bother.” I leaned back. “Bring another glass and one for yourself, if you’d like. I’d like to hear about the town of Geyser Falls.” And catch up on the year of 1887.
“Of course, Your Honor. T’would be a pleasure.”
The bartender left, and I spun a half-dollar across the table to Esmeralda, who made it disappear faster than any magician, real or stage, I’d ever seen. She regarded me with cat’s eyes, outlined in kohl. A wicked smile touched her satiny lips. When she moved to take a seat, she half hopped, half stepped. I frowned and glanced under the table, letting out a grunt of surprise. One shoe, one wooden stump.
“A wolf, señor,” Esmeralda said with such perfect sincerity that I knew she was lying. “I was lost in the woods, and a wolf ate my foot.”
I sat back for a moment to allow my brain to run after the departing reality train and latch on to it. It was surreal. I was sitting in a real saloon, a six-gun tucked in my waistband, a beautiful Mexican one-legged maiden—well, not a maiden, per se—and a bottle of whiskey on the table in front of me. My own personal cowboy movie. Eat your heart out, Gary Cooper.
If not for the whole issue of temporal displacement, I could see Geyser Falls as a cool place to hang out and chill. Ride horses, shoot guns, mosey into saloons... Didn’t every boy want to be a cowboy at some point?
Here, I had no worries. No responsibilities. No mission to accomplish. No terminally ill sister. No one I had to execute—except maybe for a few wild pygmies.
I downed a shot and let the whiskey burn my throat.
You have no magic. Don’t forget that.
But maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. For six years, I had manipulated energy like I was some kind of demigod, beholden to no one and nothing but my own conscience. No law bound me, other than a loose set of rules established by old farts who claimed superiority by virtue of longer exposure to magical power. I had signed on as their enforcer almost gratefully. They had given me a mission when I needed one, a purpose.
That purpose was to kill people who needed killing. Somebody had to do the hard thing, right? It was just an extension of being a soldier, protecting the homeland from those who would harm it.
“Tell me,” I said to Esmeralda, whose dark eyes had studied me while I brooded. “How did you happen to get to Geyser Falls?”
Before she could answer, the door to the saloon pounded open, and a short man with a drinker’s red nose and ruddy cheeks paraded in, carrying a black bag. Given his wavy blond hair, mustache, and goatee, he was the separated-at-birth twin of General George Custer, except in a black suit instead of an arrow shirt. He stomped up to the bar and slapped it with an open palm.
“Where’s the stiffs, Amos? I need to get ’em planted before the stink kills what few customers your rotgut swill hasn’t already separated from this mortal coil. Although come to think of it, more dead people means more business for me. So I guess I’m in no hurry, after all. Give me a shooter of your rotgut swill to fortify me for the task ahead.”
“My rotgut is better than ye deserve, Mallory,” McKenzie boomed in response.
I leaned toward Esmeralda while I poured another shot. “The coroner, I presume?”
“Sí, Señor Judge. He is the undertaker too.”
“Call me Calico.”
The Spanish beauty smiled, and her lost-waif act evaporated. “You can call on me anytime, Señor Calico.”
I laughed again and realized I felt almost... happy. And talkative. Where was all this conversational ability coming from? “Why hasn’t some handsome cowboy carried you away?”
“For me to live in a bunkhouse? Or a hole in the dirt?” Esmeralda’s exaggerated shudder suggested that the idea lacked appeal. She bit her lip, and her eyes took on a wicked gleam. “No, señor, I think I will wait for a man of means to rescue me from this horrible place.” She made a point of looking me up and down. “A man with big, broad shoulders and curly dark hair.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Here’s to the dead!” Mallory shouted. He knocked back his drink and clunked the empty shot glass on the bar. “Long may they rest. Now, where the fuck are they, McKenzie? The night’s a-wastin’ away, and the cards are calling my name.”
“In the stockroom,” the barman said. “You should know the way. You’ve slept there often enough.”
“Indeed I do.” The coroner-slash-undertaker picked up his bag and marched toward the stockroom door. “Let me pronounce ’em dead as the Devil’s dick, and we’ll get the shindig rolling.”