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Intermission
Colleeta and the Wolf
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An hour after first light, Colleeta Fae Dalrymple tossed the last of the breakfast slop to the farm dogs. She stretched her back, and it crackled like a fresh pine log thrown on the fire. Colleeta meandered across the yard to the cottonwood in front of their three-room farmhouse and settled on the cutting block Mr. Dalrymple used to split fire logs. Resting her bones, Colleeta ruminated long and hard and in great detail about the strips she planned to tear off her lazy husband when he came moseying back from wherever he’d gotten to.
Colleeta shaded her eyes, more from habit than need, and studied the trails leading to Geyser Falls, which lay several miles down the valley. Low-hanging clouds shrouded the mountaintops, and long shadows extended away from every bump in the terrain. The Dalrymple homestead covered forty acres, abutting a steadily running creek in the foothills of the Inyos, and their front yard commanded a good view down into the Owens Valley. Anyone coming up the road from Geyser Falls could be seen a ways off, and she kept expecting to see the lanky form of Mr. Do-it-when-I-please Dalrymple.
But no. The road remained stubbornly empty of traffic, as it had for the past two days. Mr. Dalrymple had hared off after a chicken-stealing coyote, rifle in hand, and she hadn’t seen a lick of him since. Likely the man had snuck off to town for a jolt of Who Hit John and a game of cards down at Murphy’s Saloon. She half expected him to come slinking up the road with his rifle in one hand and a hangover in the other. Colleeta gritted her teeth at the thought. Every hour he stayed away added another chapter to the book of hurt she planned to beat him with.
She quashed the worry pecking her heart. “It aren’t like him to be gone this long,” she muttered aloud.
Marcus and Anthony raced through the yard, which set the hens to squawking and clucking. The boys took after their father when it came to chores, which meant they treated breaking a sweat the way they would opening a barrel of snakes.
“Marcus,” she snapped at her oldest, “water the mules and get ’em hitched up. I’m a-gonna take the wagon to town, see if I can’t find your daddy. If I have to pour that man out of a bottle—”
Already, Marcus, at fourteen summers, stood taller than any doorframe built—the boy was constantly bruised on his forehead—and had feet too big for any Montgomery Ward’s shoes ever made. Though not the brightest lamp in the dark, the boy had a natural, easy way with animals. The youngest, Anthony, looked more like a stick drawing than a human, skinnier than a body ought to be. Both boys towered over their momma, which truthfully didn’t require a great deal of trying. Most folks agreed Colleeta could walk upright under a cat’s nose and not tickle a whisker.
“You think he got that coyote?” Anthony asked.
“It weren’t a coyote, pissant!” Marcus swatted his brother on the head with his hat. “Daddy said it had feet like a damn Injun kid.”
“Watch your mouth, boy,” Colleeta warned. “Or I’ll take a willow switch to your backside, you hear? Anthony, go get some of them peach preserves out of the root cellar. I promised Reverend Weeks I’d deliver him some special, and his camp’s on the way to town.”
“Yes’m.” Her youngest dashed off to the house.
Colleeta dried her hands and went to draw some water to wash up. She’d have to change into her go-to-town dress and pinch her feet into her Sunday shoes. Driving the wagon ten miles to town would get her all dusty and sweaty, and by the time she reached Geyser Falls, it wouldn’t make a pickle’s worth of difference what she wore—everything would wind up looking like it belonged on a scarecrow instead of a person. But appearances were important.
“Damn you, Mr. Dalrymple,” she said then looked around to see if her boys had overheard. “I find you, you’re gonna wish that coyote et you right up.”
Colleeta went into the house, washed her face from her bucket of fresh well water, changed her dress, and knotted the tie on her good bonnet. She stepped out onto the porch and found three jars of peach preserves next to the door. She picked them up and tucked them into a canvas poke. Both boys had vanished, which was not surprising, as she had a list of chores longer than the Book of Genesis, and they had a knack for avoidance of labor akin to miraculous.
More to the point, no mule-hitched wagon awaited her.
“Marrr-cus!” Colleeta could pitch her voice to carry into the hills and start a rockslide. She waited, listening to the quiet. Hens bobbed around the patchy yard, gossiping and pecking. A passing cloud provided a moment of shade while cicadas sang and a mockingbird carried on as if delivering a sermon.
“Where the hell—heck has that boy got to?” Colleeta shaded her eyes with a hand and turned a slow circle. It was as if the Earth had swallowed up all the people, leaving her alone with her clucking hens. “Anthony! Marcus! Where are you?”
No answer.
Colleeta gritted her teeth and set off for the barn. “Them boys think they’ve gotten too big for a whipping. I find them lollygagging around, I’m gonna cut me the biggest willow switch I can find...” She crossed into the dark interior of the barn, stomped down the center aisle, and stopped.
Anthony slumped against Betty’s stall, sitting with his legs straight out. Somehow, he’d managed to splash his chest and belly with a bucket of red paint. Had the bucket hit him on the head and knocked him cold? Anger mixed with worry, and Colleeta ran to her youngest.
“Anthony, I swear if you’ve gone and—”
The smell of raw guts and iron blood stopped her cold. The paint covering Anthony’s shirtfront wasn’t paint at all. A hideous, gaping hole in his throat dripped blood into the soggy mess on his middle. The mule, Betty, was down as well, milky-eyed and with her tongue flopped out.
A sound to her left dragged her eyes to Sally’s stall. Crouched over Marcus’s twitching body, a tiny little Indian with a stone knife glared at her. Two eyes as sulfurous as a demon’s raised from a fiery pit in the deepest level of hell burned from beneath shaggy brows. Just a skinny thing, wearing naught but a scrap of cloth around his privates, but packed with such evil intent—he fairly seethed with it.
The Injun sprang at her.
Colleeta cracked the thing across the head with her poke sack. Glass crunched. The Injun sagged and dropped to his knees, and Colleeta bolted for the barn door then skidded to a halt.
In front of the door, blocking it with countless bodies, an entire tribe of midget Injuns gathered. Some had little-bitty bows and arrows, some had knives, and some others had clubs. All of them had a hateful expression, and their eyes seemed to glitter with demon fire. More appeared at the edge of the loft, and others crept from stalls and out of the bales of hay stacked in the back.
Colleeta was fair surrounded by people no taller than her bosom, which meant they were pretty damn short indeed. But there were dozens of them. And when they came at her, Colleeta fell to her knees and sent up the fastest prayer she could manage.
The Injuns fell upon her, stabbing with their spears.
She smelled peaches and then... nothing.
#
I followed the smell of bacon and the sound of clanking cutlery to the dining room attached to the Bannerworth lobby. The breakfast crowd filled the modest room’s twenty tables nearly to capacity. I hustled between the tables and cut off two well-dressed banker types, beating them to an open table by the window. I smiled sweetly at their glares.
Merilee Soames flashed me a professional smile from across the room but continued on her way to the kitchen with a tray full of dirty dishes. She was flushed, with a lock of curly hair bouncing over her brow, and more curls had sprung loose at the nape of her neck. Her magnificent bosom caught my eye, and I allowed for a moment of pure appreciation. Although many of my fellow men belonged to the Bigger is Better Club when it came to a woman’s breasts, I believed in a total-package approach and preferred women with a good mix of characteristics, body and mind. My gaze dropped to Merilee’s hips as she swayed through the restaurant and lingered there long enough for an indecent thought to take hold.
I looked away with an effort. The work had been heavy lately, and I had had very little time for dating. When I did manage to connect, it had rarely gone well.
“What do you do for a living?”
“I hunt magical people and kill them. But only bad magical people.”
“Uh-huh. Uber, please.”
That left things like Tinder and other apps for quick hookups. Fun, sweaty exercise but all the emotional connection of an oil change.
And this bothers you how?
Not a damn bit. The fewer emotions, the better I like it.
I very firmly put thoughts of a naked Merilee Soames out of my mind and concentrated on feeding my face.
The restaurant stayed busy throughout my breakfast, and Merilee raced from kitchen to tables without a pause. If I didn’t know better, I would say she was avoiding me. Her eyes slid away without meeting mine, and she stayed on the far side of the room unless duty carried her closer. On one of those rare occasions that she came close, I spoke up.
“Morning, Mrs. Soames.”
She whipped on by me, fake smile on tight, and somehow failed to hear me.
Avoiding me. Just as well.
Still, I marveled at the woman’s energy as much as I admired her body. It was no wonder she stayed so slim, the way she charged around from kitchen to table. Only last night, she had been dragged through the streets by a gaggle of Gollums who were in the mood for some British takeaway. A short night’s sleep after that, and here she was, back to work at full speed, smiling at the customers, serving, cleaning, pausing to exchange pleasantries with everyone... except, of course, me.
Merilee Soames carried an aloofness that hinted of thick walls protecting her privacy, and I guessed it would take a long-term siege to breach those ramparts. I much preferred the drawbridge be down and the castle ready for occupation. I had no time for entanglements.
“Focus,” I growled to myself. “Stay on mission.”
Yes, we must stay Oscar Mike at all costs. Remind me, what was the mission again? Kill Birnbaum? How’s that working out?
Shut up.
After springing Kat Krawczyk, I intended to be long gone. She could come or stay, though if she were a decent healer, I would have preferred to bring her back to our time over leaving her here. There was no magic in the vicinity of Geyser Falls, and if I intended to get back home, I’d need a heaping helping of it—not to mention a memory boost to recall the events surrounding how it was done in the first place. I needed to break it down to manageable parts. Objective one, find a huge, dog-slobbering mess of magic. Objective two, figure out how the whole time travel thing worked, which only one wizard in history, at least to my knowledge, had ever done. Objective three, get back to the Mall of Wondrous Creatures and turn Dustin Birnbaum into a charcoal briquette. Call him Cinder-fella.
Use his tech to grow Alizandra a new liver, or convince Krawcyzk to heal her, whichever could be done most efficaciously.
As good a plan as any, I supposed.
“Shivers!” Mayor Bunting called from the restaurant doorway, interrupting my thoughts. The round Englishman tap-danced through the breakfast crowd to my table. He sat down without waiting for an invitation. “Oh, I say, Judge Shivers!” Bunting daubed at his splotched red face with a handkerchief. His bow tie hung askew, and the top button of his vest had popped loose. A sweat ring had formed midway along the crown of his derby hat. “Judge Shivers, a moment, if I may.”
“Bunting.” I forced my face into simulating mild interest or at least not hostile distaste.
“Do you intend to hang the witch today, sir?” The mayor’s mustache twitched as if something lived within it. “That is to say... I mean, ah, try her first, of course. By all means. But will you be setting a date for the hanging?”
“No.”
“I... What?” Bunting cast about as though seeking support. No one in the dining room paid us the slightest interest. “No, you don’t intend to hang her, or no, you don’t intend to hang her today?”
“No hanging at all. Period.”
Bunting goggled like a fat owl. “I say!”
I must have been losing my touch. Normally, when I pitched my voice to executioner level, people paid attention. Not Bunting.
“But you must,” he all but howled. People looked our way, and I glared them down, so maybe it was just Bunting who was oblivious. I cranked up the intensity of my take-no-prisoners attitude to—I hoped—penetrate the granite skull of the town’s mayor. My eyeballs hurt, my pride was chilled by the Soames woman’s cold shoulder, and my I-Hate-the-World-powered engine was overheating, so it wasn’t hard to come off as ready to kill something.
“Listen up,” I said. “There is no statute in the penal code of California that addresses witchcraft, Bunting.” I had checked this, flipping through Moorcock’s law books before breakfast. “If she actually did set someone’s church on fire, through either mundane means or something arcane, then she’s guilty of arson.” I paused and fixed him with a dead-eyed stare. “Can you prove arson?”
“Ah... no.”
“Murder?”
“N-No.”
“Assault? Robbery?”
“No, but—” He gaped and goggled, reminding me of a fish with a mustache.
“Well, there you go.” I stood and donned my hat. I touched the brim in salute to the mayor, and not with my middle finger, so extra points awarded to Calico Shivers for anger management. “Have yourself a lovely day.”
#
I found Sheriff Archibald Bridger at his desk in the jail, frowning over a ledger and scratching at it with a pencil. Today, the Marlboro Man wore a gray hat, a stiff white shirt with a string tie, and a brocade vest in red and gold tones. None of the deputies were present. A blue-steel pot sat atop the stove and filled the room with the aroma of coffee.
“He’p yourself,” Bridger said without looking up.
I declined and snagged a chair across from the lawman. “Tell me about Reverend Weeks.”
“I hear he walloped you a good lick.”
“Guy has a fist like a five-pound sledge.”
Bridger’s mustache crooked up in a grin. He looked up from his paperwork and fixed me with his smoky-blue eyes. “Guess he nailed your dick to the door, huh?”
I swallowed the acid response that bubbled up. Anger management, level two. “Hmm. So what’s his deal?”
“Merilee Soames, I’d say.” Bridger’s chair creaked when he leaned back. His expression turned sour. “Man’s like stink on a skunk where it comes to Mizz Soames. Has been ever since he showed up a couple of months ago and moved into a room over at the hotel. Two doors down from mine, in fact.”
“You don’t sound happy about it.”
“Yeah, you could say that.” Bridger’s mustache twitched, and he appeared as though he wanted to spit. “Before he showed up, I had a feeling Merilee and me... well, I was callin’ on her. Calling on her.”
“And now there’s another dog in the hunt, huh?”
“Not just that, but she seems to be—what’s the word? Ah, receptive to his interest. More than to mine, any which way.”
“So when I show up at the hotel with Mrs. Soames, and her blouse is torn, and she’s all rumpled up...”
Bridger nodded. “Weeks thought you were plowing his pasture and punched your lights out.”
“And what about Mr. Soames? Where is he in all this?”
“I don’t know. Don’t know. She arrived in Geyser Falls before me with enough cash for a down payment on the Bannerworth, they say. Claimed to be a widow, and nobody’s learned any different. Or cares, for that matter. People’s past is their own business around here. Their own business.”
“And what about the little people who attacked Mulligan and Mrs. Soames? Any clues on who they are or where they come from?”
“Nothing. They vanished like smoke. Some tracks led off into the scrub east of town, but the ground’s dry, won’t hold a print for shit. Potts and Barton are out, quartering the ground between here and the mountains, hoping to pick up the trail.”
I tilted my chair back on two legs and tried ordering my thoughts into an action plan. I had objectives, but what I needed was a tasking, or a to-do list at the very least. I had always been good with clear, concise orders, typed out in neat bullet-point objectives. See target, hit target. Move to point A, execute option three. If option three unavailable, go to option four. Muddling around in unfamiliar territory, without a plan, bothered me at a cellular level.
“What’s that you’re humming?” Bridger asked.
“Hm? Oh... ‘Land of Confusion’ by Genesis.”
“Genesis?” Bridger’s face scrunched up. “Like in the Bible?”
“No, not quite.” I could just imagine what Dad would have said if he could have seen me. Whining about what you don’t have is for losers. Work with what you do have and go from there. “Are the church attacks and the little people connected in some way, do you think?”
Bridger inhaled hard and long. He glanced at the open door to the street, and his eyes took on a hooded, guarded look. “I have my suspicions about the church business, but given what I said earlier, you might think I’m a tad... predispositioned to suspect certain things.”
“Try me.”
The sheriff rubbed a finger across his mustache. “See, this trouble started about six weeks ago. First the Catholics, then the Methodists, then the Baptists, right? One church after another.”
I nodded for Bridger to continue. I saw where he was going, and I liked it so far.
“Now, I ask myself—” The sheriff’s voice dropped a notch, and he hunched forward, as if imparting a grave secret. “Who stands to benefit?”
“Follow the money.”
“Exactly! Follow the money. I like that. Follow the money. So whose church do you think has been gaining converts, now that it seems that God has smote all the others?” Bridger touched a finger to his nose. “Think on that a second.”
“Weeks. Has his congregation been growing?”
“Like a teenager’s dick at a barn dance.”
“I can see why you’d be wary of confronting him. Could look like bad blood over a woman.”
“That and I got no evidence,” Bridger confessed with a sigh. “Which is a thing you judges seem to like.”
“I didn’t think you’d bother much with evidence, Sheriff, given what you planned to do to Miss Krawczyk.”
“Well, hanging a strange little strumpet like her is a whole different pot of stew. You seen her, right? Hair like that, and the way she acts. The things she says. Such a foul mouth, it liken to make a body faint, the way she talks. A lot of people want her hung for that alone. I’ve been keeping her locked up for her own protection. Her protection.” Bridger leaned forward and lowered his voice again. His bland expression showed no chagrin at having completely switched positions on Krawczyk being guilty of witchcraft. “She told Merilee, she said she don’t like men. She does it... the other way. We don’t truck with that kind of perversion in this town.”
I let that one go. No time for bringing sexual enlightenment to Geyser Falls. “How could the Methodist minister be choked to death in his own pulpit, with nobody seeing anything?”
“That was the Baptist, Pastor Allen, what got choked. I dunno that either. Poison, maybe?”
I shifted to cover the sudden bad thought that came to mind. Instead of poison, more likely a dose of magic. Was that it? Was Weeks a nineteenth-century Magical, running around and putting his rivals out of business with magic? And did he have any connection to the pygmies, who seemed to be attacking townspeople at random? Or was it random at all? One thing was true: if Weeks had that much magic, I wanted to know where he got it.
There you go. Task A under Objective 1.
Yep. I’d have this planning thing licked in no time. “And the bank?” I asked. “The other missing folks?”
“No idea. Nobody seems to have seen a thing.”
Krawczyk was a Magical, but she had no reason to go rogue and start choking Baptists and burning down Methodist churches or disappearing miners and small boys by the job lot. And robbing banks? Well, there was always that temptation for someone with power, no matter who they were. But it didn’t square with the woman I’d seen in the jail cell. My instinct said she had nothing to do with the crime wave in Geyser Falls. Besides, she had not been in this time period long enough to be responsible for every crime.
“Mulligan and the others,” I said. “Any connection to Weeks?”
“Ahhh...” Bridger scratched his head and stared at the ceiling for a bit. From outside came the sound of a blacksmith’s hammer tanging on an anvil. “You know, now that you mention it, I believe Mulligan was a member of Weeks’s congregation. He was an attorney but all fired up on God most days. I’d have to check on Ollie and Tater.” The sheriff slanted a look of speculation at me. “I never thought of that. Could be there’s a connection after all.”
“You say I can find Weeks at the hotel?” I touched my sore eye socket and forced myself not to wince. One more reason to pay the reverend a visit, only this time if he swung, I would see it coming and give him the opportunity to meet God in person.
“Not always,” said Bridger, “and not regular like. He spends most days and some nights out at his revival tent, due north of town, alongside the river. About two miles or so. Thirty minutes on a slow horse.”
“A slow horse is the only kind I have.” I stood and started for the door but stopped halfway with a snap of my fingers and turned. “And cut Miss Krawczyk loose.”
Bridger grimaced. “Are you sure? A lot of people are going to be mighty nervous.”
“She have anywhere to stay?”
“Actually, Merilee took her in when they first found her up in the mountains. Gave the gal a spare room in her suite.”
“Take her back over there,” I said. “Let her get cleaned up and eat, but tell her to stay put until I get back. Out of sight, out of mind.”
Bridger’s grimace seemed permanently affixed. “If you’re sure...”
“I’m sure. She’s not the cause of the problem here.”
“That’s not what Reverend Weeks says. He says a woman like her has to be straight from Hell.” Bridger’s eyes widened as a thought struck him. “Say. You think maybe he’s trying to shift the blame? Make it look like she’s the one done all the crime?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time somebody tried framing a patsy.” I touched my hat brim—I was getting pretty used to the cowboy thing—and headed for the door, thinking about the ride out to Weeks’s camp.
Oh boy! More time on horseback. Ugh.
Maybe a nice, warm stable had improved Misery’s attitude.
When did you become an optimist?
Shut up.