Hell Come Sundown (2 page)

“Tell you the truth, Miriam—I have no earthly idea what's going on,” her husband admitted.

“I sent for him, Pa! I saw his advertisement in the back of this magazine, and I wrote him, telling him what was wrong, and he wrote back and said he could help and tole me what to do what to when he got here!”

“Excuse me, folks—but as I've been trying to explain to your boy here, this dance ain't done yet.”

The man called Hell stepped over the body of the fiend on the floor, pushed back the sackcloth curtains and opened the window, which swung inward on a hinge. A second later a woman, dressed in the fringed riding chaps and beaded pectoral of an Indian warrior, clambered over the sill.

“Comanche!”
McKinney shouted, lifting his weapon.

Hell turned and grabbed the barrel of the shotgun in one milk white hand, forcing its muzzle to the floor. Hiram tried to yank the weapon free from the pale stranger's grasp, but there was no budging it.

“Yes, Pretty Woman is a Comanche.” Hell said matter-of-factly. “And I would kindly appreciate it if you did not point your gun at a lady—especially one who happens to be my business partner.”

The Comanche woman acted as if she did not see or hear what was going on about her as she knelt beside the creature on the floor. Muttering a chant under her breath, she removed a grass-rope lariat tied about her waist and hogtied the unconscious creature like a steer ready for branding. Just as she finished trussing it up, the thing made a wailing sound, like that of a wounded elk, and began to struggle. Mrs. McKinney screamed and snatched her son off the bed, clutching him to her in an attempt to shield him. Hiram McKinney tried to pull his shotgun free of the stranger's grip in order to fire on the thing, but it was still held fast.

“There's no need to panic, folks,” Hell said calmly. “Pretty's got it under control.”

The medicine woman learned in close to the fiend's wildly gnashing mouth. She raised a clenched fist to her lips and blew a quick burst of air into it. A cloud of grayish white powder enveloped the creature's face. It abruptly ceased its howling and became as limp as wet laundry.

“Is it dead?” Mrs. McKinney asked, her curiosity having overcome her dread.

“Like I told your boy—there's no killing such critters,” Hell said flatly, letting go of Hiram's shotgun. “You might as well try and murder a stone or stab the sea. Best you can do is make sure it can't do you harm.”

Pretty Woman removed a leather bag from her belt and emptied its contents, mostly dried herbs and other less identifiable artifacts, onto the floor. She glanced up her partner with eyes as dark and bright as a raven's, and he nodded in return.

“Come along, folks,” Hell said, motioning for the others to leave the room. “We better leave Pretty to finish her ghost-breaking in peace. Something tells me y'all could do with a cup of coffee right about now.”

Chapter Two

Hiram McKinney sat in his favorite chair, his shotgun resting across his knees, while Mrs. McKinney busied herself with making coffee. He stared at the pale-skinned stranger who called himself Hell, who was sitting opposite him in his wife's rocking chair. At first Hiram had thought the stranger was an albino, but now that he was able to get a closer look, he could see that Hell's complexion was more like that of the consumptives who had come out west for the Cure. Uncertain of how to proceed in such an unusual situation, he finally decided there was no wrong way to go about it, so he opted to grab the bull by the horns.

“Jake said something about him writing you—?”

“Yes, sir. That he did.”

“Here, Pa—this is what I was talking about.” Jake handed his father a copy of
Pickman's Illustrated Serials
, which was tightly rolled in order to fit in the boy's back pocket.

Hiram took the periodical and flattened it out as best he could across his knee. He frowned at the lurid illustration that adorned the front cover, which showed a band of outlaws shooting up a town, each of whom had swooning damsels and bags of loot clutched in whichever hand that did not hold a smoking six-shooter. Floating over the desperadoes' heads was the title of the lead story, in ornately engraved script:
The Tortuga Hill Gang Rides Again
.

“You been wasting good money on penny dreadfuls?” Hiram said sternly, glowering at his son in disapproval.

“Far be it from me to step in between a father and his son,” Hell said. “But don't you reckon you're being a tad harsh on the boy, considering the situation?”

Hiram opened his mouth, as if to argue to point, then realized the foolishness of it. “I reckon you're right on that point, mister.”

“Here, Pa—here's where I saw his advertisement.” Jake pointed to a quarter-page ad, located just below the one for Dr. Mirablis's Amazing Electric Truss. Unlike the other advertisements, it did not boast steel-engraved pictures or florid script, even though what it claimed to be selling was far more arcane than the patent medicines and seed catalogs that surrounded it.

Troubled by Specters, Ghosts and Phantoms? Fear No More! There Is Help! Call For The Dark Ranger: Ghost Breaking A Specialty! No Spook Too Small, No Fiend Too Fierce! Write Care of: Box 1, Golgotha, Texas. Our Motto: ‘One Wraith, One Ranger.'

“Dark Ranger?” Hiram rubbed his forehead, baffled by what he was reading. He glanced over at the man seated across from him with something akin to awe. “You a Texas Ranger, mister?”

A look of profound sorrow flickered across Hell's face and was quickly gone, like a cloud scudding across the moon. “I was. Back before the troubles.”

Hiram raised an eyebrow. “Cortina?”

Hell took a deep breath and nodded, as if the very memory caused him pain. “Yep. I was at Rio Grande City. Now that the Rangers have been replaced with those carpetbaggin' State Police, I break ghosts and scare off things that go bump in the night.”

“Any man who rode with Captain Ford is more than welcome in my home,” Hiram said, putting aside his shotgun. He stood and offered Hell his hand. “And I am eternally grateful for you helpin' out my boy here.”

“You've got a very brave and resourceful son, Mr. McKinney,” Hell said, accepting the rancher's handshake. The Ranger's grip was hard as horn, and as cool and dry as a snakeskin. “Not many boys his age would have had the gumption to do as he did.”

“No, I reckon not,” Hiram agreed, a hint of pride in his voice. “I'll be damned if I can figure out how you got into the house in the first place, though.”

“I let him in, Pa!” Jake explained. “Miss Pretty Woman rode up this morning, while you was out tendin' the herd and Maw was out in the coop seein' to the chickens. She gave me this note that said Mr. Hell needed me to leave my bedroom window open so he could sneak in and hide before I went to bed. That way he could catch the haint unawares.”

“Well, I'll be jiggered,” Hiram said. “But, son—why didn't you tell your Maw and me what was goin' on?”

“I didn't think you'd believe me. Besides, I was afraid it might hurt y'all. I didn't want anything bad to happen to you and Maw on account of me.”

Hiram looked into his son's face with a mixture of amazement, respect and love. “So you just kept goin' to bed, even though that thing was waitin' for you every night?”

“It weren't there
every
night. But, yes, sir, I did.”

“Here you go, dear,” Mrs. McKinney said, handing her husband a tin cup full of hot coffee. “How about you, Mr. Hell? Would could care for something to drink?”

“No thank you, ma'am,” he replied, smiling without showing his teeth. “I don't drink—coffee.”

Pretty Woman stepped out of Jake's room and coughed into her closed fist. Hell stood up, visibly relieved that he no longer had to make small talk.

“Ah! Pretty's finished with your unwanted guest. It's safe to go back in now.”

“You sure?” Mrs. McKinney asked uneasily.

“Ma'am, there's not a lot of things in this world I'd bet good money on—but Pretty Woman's medicine is one of 'em.”

As they entered the bedroom, the creature scuttled to the far corner, its head ducked low like that of a dog that's been kicked once too often. The speed of its movements made Mrs. McKinney cry out in alarm and clutch her husband's arm.

“No need to be fearful, ma'am,” Hell said calmly. “The fight's been took out of it.” He strode over to the creature and grabbed the grass-rope noose about its neck. “Come along, you,” he snapped.

“What—what, exactly, is that thing?” Hiram asked, trying to keep the unease from his voice.

“I'm not rightly sure. I'll have to ask Pretty.” Hell turned to the medicine woman and said something in Comanche.

The medicine woman wrinkled her nose as she replied in her native tongue, pointing to the walls as she spoke. Hell nodded his understanding.

“According to Pretty, this here's a nature spirit of some sort. These critters attach themselves to things like rocks, trees, creeks and the like—I reckon you could say they live in them. Some are friendly towards folks, others ain't. Seems this one attached itself to the tree that the planks used to build this room were milled from. By using various incantations and spells, in combination with a specially prepared rope, Pretty has rendered this particular spirit harmless—as long as y'all keep the noose about its neck, and feed it nothing but salt.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Salt weakens unnatural things,” Hell explained. “That is why the signs of power used in calling down the things from between worlds are drawn in salt; it saps their strength and binds them to the will of the conjurer.” Hell stepped forward and handed the loose end of the rope to Jake. “I reckon he's yours, if he belongs to anyone. You'll find having your own private fiend has its advantages. For one thing, they chase off bad luck, as well as snakes. You feed this bogey a tablespoon of salt a day and he'll be yours until the oceans run dry and the mountains crumble. Provided you never take off the noose.”

“What happens if it's removed?” Hiram asked, eyeing the creature cautiously.

“Just see that you don't,” Hell replied gravely. “I don't do refunds.”

After a few minutes of haggling, it was decided that five dollars cash money and a spool of ribbon was fair pay for a night of ghost-breaking. Though the McKinneys offered to let Sam Hell and Pretty Woman spend the rest of the night in the barn, the pair politely declined.

“It is most kindly of y'all to extend such an invitation,” the Ranger said, touching the brim of his hat. “But the nature of our business demands that we be on our way long before sun-up.”

As they rode off into the night, Hell turned to look one last time at the McKinney clan as they stood in the dooryard of their homestead. Hiram leaned on his shotgun as he waved goodbye, his free arm draped over his wife's shoulders. Miriam McKinney stood close to her husband, occasionally casting worried looks in the direction of her son, who was busy poking the captive fiend in the rump with a sharp stick.

After they rounded a bend in the road and were no longer within line of sight of the McKinney ranch, Sam reached inside his duster and retrieved a long, thin cigar shaped like a twig.

“See? I told you advertising in the back of penny dreadfuls would pay off,” he said, biting off the tip of the cigar with a set of very white, inhumanly sharp teeth.

“I'll grant you that,” Pretty Woman replied in perfect English. “But I do not see how it will help you find the one you seek.”

“Texas is a big place. I could wander forever and a day and never find him. But if something spooky is happening, odds are he might be near at hand. Kind of like high winds and hailstones mean a twister's nearby.”

“There is something to your way of thinking,” the medicine woman conceded. “But I still believe it was a waste of perfectly good money.”

“I wouldn't say that. After all—you got yourself a nice spool of ribbon out of the deal, didn't you?”

“That thing could have torn me apart like fresh bread! That's hardly worth a spool of ribbon.”

“But it didn't, did it? And that ribbon should look real nice wrapped around your braids.”

“Point taken,” she replied with a smile. “Still, do you think it was wise telling them so much about yourself?”

“I didn't let on too much. There was plenty of Rangers that fought at Rio Grande City and Brownsville. Besides, they don't know my real name. And there's no Rangers headquarters left to contact anymore, even if they did decide to try and check up on me. As far as the state of Texas is concerned, Ranger Sam Yoakum is long dead.”

Chapter Three

Texas, 1861:

Sam Yoakum first signed on with the Texas Rangers back in '58. Since then, he had fought more than his fair share of Comanche, Apache, Mexicans, cattle rustlers and outlaws, all for the grand sum of one dollar and twenty-five cents a day.

Now that Texas had joined the Confederacy, Yoakum knew it was only a matter of time before the Governor would be forced to muster what was left of the Rangers into an army, despite very real concerns that Cortina and Juarez would use the war between the gringo states to their advantage and attempt to reclaim Brownsville and the surrounding territory in the name of Mexico. But until the day he was expected to turn in his Ranger's star for a set of rebel grays, Yoakum continued to patrol his assigned territory and check on the various ranchers, settlers and townsfolk between Corpus Christi and the Rio Grande.

One such town was Golgotha, Texas—population forty-six, give or take a chicken or mule. Even from a distance, Yoakum could tell there was something not right about the place. Even the tiniest frontier settlement normally showed some sign of life, even if it was just a mangy dog wandering about or a horse tethered to a hitching post. As he rode into Golgotha, the only things roaming the streets were tumbleweeds and dust devils.