Six Guns Straight From Hell - Tales Of Horror And Dark Fantasy From The Weird Weird West (27 page)

Those who had not mutilated themselves had gotten organized enough to round up the Blackburns and their ranch hands and held them at point of their own guns.

Clark Stanley was nowhere to be seen.

“
Get the folks out of here,” Sheriff McCoy said to his deputies, “or at least move them away from the cattle. We don’t want anyone to get stomped. And take these scum” - he nodded toward the Blackburns - “to the town lockup.”

Following those orders took most of the morning. Wagons were brought in from Severance to cart the wounded to back to town. Ben and Andy helped. By noon, Ben thought he might collapse from exhaustion, and his stomach growled.

“
I could sleep for three days,” he said.

“
Me, too.” Andy said and perked up. “Hey, did you see that?”

“
See what?”

“
In the grass by the dirigible. Someone’s out there.”

“
That’s just crazy. Unless …” The Blackburns were accounted for, and the townsfolk wouldn’t slink off into the grass. That left only one. “You don’t think …”

“
I’m sure he wants his airship back.”

“
He’s just out there. Waiting.”

Andy grinned and went over to Sheriff McCoy. “Everyone’s in town now, right? There’s no one left out here?”

“
That’s right. We did a thorough search. No one’s quite sure what happened, but it seems we owe you a debt of gratitude.”

“
Yeah, yeah.” Andy waved him off. “Can I see your gun?”

Andy marched out toward the herd, aimed the pistol at the sky and fired; a few cattle trotted away before resuming their grazing. Ben joined him. Andy fired again. This time the boys also whooped and waved their arms and ran at the cattle.

That did it.

Sheriff McCoy grabbed back his gun. “What are you doing?”

“
Giving someone a taste of his own medicine,” Andy said.

Ben groaned at the joke. Together, they watched as several hundred head of the Blackburns’ best cattle bore down in a thunderous stampede on Clark Stanley and his marvelous flying machine.

From a young age, Jennifer Campbell-Hicks wanted a career in creative writing but realized at the ripe old age of 13 that such an endeavor would likely leave her living below the poverty line. So she got a degree in that other profession where an understanding of grammar and an ability to tell a story come in handy: journalism. She reconnected with her dream of getting published about two years ago and now spends most of her spare time writing imaginary people into horrible situations and then finding a way to give them a happily every after.

When she is not writing or at the day job, Jennifer is likely out for a run in the thin Colorado air, coaching her son’s soccer team, devouring the latest novel or (most likely of all) spending time with her husband and three children.

The Murders Over In Weirdunkal

by

James Patrick Cobb

Sheriff Joe Conroy was having the breakfast special at the Weird Uncle Café while his sweetie waited tables. A harried young man burst into the diner and gave everyone, within earshot, the news, someone had murdered Sam Barber, the barber.

Joe sighed and hurriedly finished the remaining scrambled eggs on his plate. He kissed Lilly on her dimpled cheek. “Guess I should get over there,” he said, sighing, a bit of fried egg stuck to his bushy mustache.

You do what you need to do, honey,” she said, dabbing away the egg with a napkin.

Joe slid a couple of coins on the table to pay, picked up the toast off his plate and walked two blocks to Sam's shabby cottage. Chick was already there gazing nervously at Sam's mangled body; a thousand holes poked in it, bled out all over the front stoop. There'd been quite a fight.

That Phelps boy, the one who doesn't ever say anything to anyone, was the one who found Sam. They said the kid looked as white as a sheet but couldn't have been whiter than the two lawmen.

After briefly looking around the crime scene, the men plunked down in Sam’s cottage at his wobbly table on uneven rickety, chairs that Sam had built for himself. Sam had been a better barber than carpenter. Nobody would have actually hired Sam to build something out of wood.

A couple of ugly pictures painted by one of Sam's old San Francisco girlfriends hung on the bare adobe walls. An antique Franklin stove sat in the corner of the room. It could have once warmed the founders of the country.

Sheriff Joe’s hand rubbed the whiskers of his weathered face. He put the toast down on a corner of the table having lost his appetite.

“
I’d reckon whoever killed Sam made themselves some kind of tool to do it. The holes are spaced just so. It almost looks like they made it out of some kind of cactus spines. See how they’ve broken off?” the sheriff said, standing and going outside to point at some flecks on the deceased's shirt. “Why would someone go through the trouble?”

“
What do you mean?”

“
Why not a knife?”

Chick shrugged. “That ain’t right. Sam never did nothing to nobody in his entire life.”

Joe sighed wearily and sketched the scene. He petitioned the mayor and council for a camera because it said it was useful in
Scientific Law Enforcement,
a book he'd been reading to find out how he was supposed to work as the law in town. Though the council said they'd get him one, Joe was still waiting.

“
Could he have been stuck full of holes before or after he was dead?” Joe wondered aloud. The book said to consider the possibilities.

“
Don’t know he would have set still to let someone stick him full of holes while he was alive,” Chick said.

“
Hmm.”

An hour later, Sheriff Joe had Chick send a telegram to the U.S. Marshal over in Tucson.

NEED HELP CHARLIE. AN UGLY DEATH. STUMPED. JOE CONROY
.

Charlie Malone, the marshal, still hadn't gotten to Weirdunkal when two more people– sweethearts- died like Sam.

The Weirdunkal Town Council had set aside a stretch of land for a park. The land for the park had yet to be cleared and there wasn't money in the coffers to pay anyone to do it. As of now, there was only a broad path through the middle and a couple of donated benches from the Beautification and Temperance Association. It was on one of those benches where Arlo Stern and Millie Weirdunkal had been sitting when they were murdered by the maniac.

Joe had to force himself to look Jesse Weirdunkal, town founder, mayor and Millie's pain in the eye. Jesse had given him the job when he mustered out of the Army a year ago, said it didn't matter he'd never worked in law before, that it was more important to have a brave man. “You can always get experience. Bravery doesn't come so easily,” Jesse said. “They don't give the Medal of Honor to cowards.”

Jesse didn't look like he felt the same way after his daughter had been murdered: “Get that killer!” Jesse said. “Don't make me wonder why I hired you.”

“
I've called for Charlie Malone from Tucson. He said if I ever needed anything . . .”

“
Good. We'll have a real lawman on the case,” Jesse snapped.

Joe was about to say something else but Jesse didn't look interested in words; he only wanted to hear how the killer was found and hung.

The answer to the unasked question of why there was no chaperone with the two young people came from Lilly later. Millie had gone to see her friend, Arlo's sister. Arlo offered to walk her home and they must have stopped off at the park.

Joe watched the eyes of his citizens. Folks were getting scared. Fear was spreading like melting butter in a frying pan.

“
Oh, my poor baby,” Lilly said, smoothing down Joe's hair and giving him a peck on his leathery cheek when he stopped by the café for dinner. A picture of the owner's favorite aunt and uncle hung right over the cash register, presiding over the dining room. Uriah Smith of St. Joseph, Missouri had never been to town to see how his nephew had made use of the photograph he’d asked for. If anybody asked who the weird uncle was, they were directed to the picture of Uriah.

“
Being a hero isn't all it's cracked up to be,” Joe said to Lilly. “I really hope Charlie gets here soon. He can solve this damn thing. He can have the glory.”

“
Chick,” Sheriff Joe said the next day, after sleeping on the case, “we’ve got to catch this guy. I don't know what's holding Charlie up but we can't wait.”

Chick gulped. Joe looked serious.

“
We’re going to take shifts. I’ll ride for eight hours a day, and stay in the office for two, in case of other concerns. You’ll do the same. Then we’ll have Justin ride for eight. If we see anyone even holding a big piece of cactus, or something that looks like it could have made those kinds of wounds, we'll arrest them; we'll have our man.”

Chick rode though he didn’t like Joe's plan one bit. He was frowning, bug-eyed and trembling. All color drained from his face. He bit the side of his lip until it bled, bucked up and rode anyway. His momma told him to always do what your boss tells you to do. That’s what Chick did.

“
I’ll see if I can’t get Charlie to help spell us some once he gets here,” Joe said later between Chick's circuits. “Then I’ll see if I can’t get some other men to ride patrol with us. It would be fine if we could get these shifts down to four hours apiece. Four hours riding around and around is enough time in the saddle for anyone.”

Still, Chick rode. If he wasn’t riding, nobody was and they needed a rider, Joe said.

Try as he might, Joe couldn't get anybody else to help with the patrols. Everyone gave one lame excuse or another. That bothered Joe to no end though he didn't say anything about it – except to Lilly.

That short, dandified newspaper writer from back east, working for the
Tucson Citizen,
had dubbed the unknown killer the ‘Pincushion Murderer'. Marshal Malone must have got the wire because there probably wasn't any other way the newspaperman would have found out about the murders, Joe surmised.

“
You know if Marshal Malone is coming?” Joe asked pointedly.

“
He didn't tell me. He knows you sent for him.”

Joe groaned trying to understand what this meant. He wasn't coming?

“
You've got quite a reputation in Tucson, sheriff. Word is you done stood against eighteen Apache renegades armed with rifles and another criminal gang trying to kidnap orphans from a train.”

“
It's what anyone would do.”

“
No it isn't. And you captured ten of them? Killed the rest?”

“
One of the older boys got a couple.”

“
Still!”

Joe shrugged.

“
It
looks
like the victim was hit repeatedly with cactus. We've probably got a crazy on our hands.” Joe said.

The thin newspaperman nodded meaningfully and jotted some notes down.

Chick busted in Joe's office, mad that Justin Collins had hadn't shown up for his shift. Collins said he might be getting on with one of the ranches in the area. He didn't need a paid job as bad as he had the week before, he told Chick.

“
It’s a sad day when the only thing folks care about is themselves,” Joe opined.

The newspaperman scribbled the quote.

“
Please don't write that,” Joe sighed. “Last thing I need is everybody in town mad at me. All this murder is getting me a bit tetchy.”

The writer scratched the quote out. “Sure, sheriff. People are scared, can't blame them.”

“
Can I speak off the record?”

“
Sure.”

“
Scared people scare me!”

Chick patrolled alone the rest of the day. Joe had to attend to a thousand other issues.

The deputy didn’t know what he'd do if he saw the Pincushion Murderer. He's thirty-one, but he looked like he's at least twenty-five years younger, and standing in a graveyard at night.

Chick imagines the murderer as a man with sleeves down to his hands. The sleeves have small, thin nails sticking out of them. He doesn't have a clear idea of his face but its crazy, bug eyed and aggressive.

In the sky, the moon is almost a full; for a night, it's bright.

“
Goin’ around again?”

The man who called out is standing with his buddies in front of The Watering Hole, usually the most crowded saloon in Weirdunkal.

“
Yup, that’s right.” Chick answers again as he answered the other hundred times this man or one of his associates had asked.

The men get a hardy laugh out of that--again. They're already drunk but they down some more swallows in Chick's honor.

“
You're like some kind of damn vulture, the way you go round and round,” another man says, slurring. “Too bad to be you. I feel sorry for you, Joe Conroy needs to give you a break.”

“
Let
him
ride around for once,” another man says.

“
You're going to get dizzy!” another man says, busting out laughing.

Chick ignores them and rides on, figuring out another way to go where he doesn't have to pass The Watering Hole.

It's likely the thousandth time that week Chick sees the scene in front of him: the blue, towering mountains; a variety of palo verde and creosote trees in the foreground and an eighteen-foot-tall saguaro with two arms in the middle, towering above the palo verde.
Had the saguaro moved?

“
I’m getting nutty,” Chick mutters. He's shaking and embarrassed. He feels like he's being watched and wishes he could as brave as Joe Conroy.

On the next trip around, bypassing The Watering Hole, the scene is different again.

Rubbing his eyes, Chick looks even closer. Maybe sketching everything all the time the way Joe does isn't a bad idea.

“
Hey, Chick,” Clint Walker says interrupting Chick's concentration, calling out to him from his porch.

“
Evenin’ Clint,” Chick said.

“
You’re going by Le Clair’s place? I borrowed this here hatchet from him the other day. Mind returning it for me?”

Chick sighs. “Might as well. It’ll give me something to do besides ride past his place.”

“You're all right, buddy. Thanks!”

On the next pass, Chick is sure his eyes are lying to him. There's a saguaro standing by the side of the road. None had been there before. The saguaro looks odd. Plants in the area were tall grass, rushes and cottonwoods, not saguaros.