Six Guns Straight From Hell - Tales Of Horror And Dark Fantasy From The Weird Weird West (28 page)

He sits straighter in the saddle, widens his eyes and grips the hatchet for Le Clair tighter.

“
Iy-yi-yi-yi!” Chick whoops.

The eighteen-foot-tall cactus shambles toward him. One of the arms of the saguaro swings, the end of its limb bunched up like a fist in a cestas.

Chick doesn't have to spur his horse to gallop away; the horse gets the idea for himself. The saguaro springs after him on two running legs like a man's, but green like a plants. When held together the legs come together like the base of a normal cactus except for a think vertical line where the base splits apart to form the two legs on which it ran. They're definitely not together right now.

A hundred feet later, Chick reins in his horse. Nobody's going to believe a saguaro attacked him. He isn't sure he believes his eyes as it is.

Joe's going to laugh at me.
Only thing to do is bring it down myself. It's what Granddaddy would have done!

It's also what Joe would do. Brandishing the hatchet, he and the horse charge. He has to use the hatchet because he's sure shooting at it wouldn't do much except make it ugly.

Charging, it doesn't spook it at all. Its arms draw back as Chick closes in.

Chick's hands shake and he almost drops the hatchet.

Of course all this, and the four-second fight that follows, is moot when Chick is discovered bloodied and murdered a little after sunup.

Joe notices evidence. Chick hacked off a bit of the cactus's green flesh before he died. It doesn't look like it comes from your regular plant. It doesn't take a botanist to tell it's from something else entirely.
But exactly what is beyond me,
Joe thinks.

Joe told Lilly he thought the killer might be a plant. “Kind of like one of them Venus fly traps.” Word spread from the Weird Uncle Café until it reached all the way back to Joe.

“
My son has something he’d like to tell you about,” Jim Chestnut said later to sheriff Joe, stopping by the office. He was a robust blacksmith from Missouri who moved to Weirdunkal about a year ago to work for the mine but ended up opening his own blacksmith shop a couple of months later.

The fifteen-year-old behind him was Chestnut's son Michael. Michael was brawny like his white father yet short and brown skinned like his Apache mother.

“
Tell the sheriff everything you’ve told me. Go on,” Jim said.

Shyly, the boy began. “I don't know if all this means anything, Sheriff.”

“
That's all right. Say your piece and I'll decide.”

One day an Apache fighter is walking in the desert thinking of ways to become a better hunter and warrior.

The best thing he can do, he decides, is to become less visible.

How can I do that,
he asks the heavens.

A storm gathers. From the south comes a mighty wind, then gusts of rain and flashes of lightning. Nothing uncommon about this. During certain times of the year, it can be sunny and cloudless one minute and stormy the next. The warrior decides to hide to wait out the storm.

The lighting follows him. No caves where he is, but there are tall trees. The trees blow apart, hit by lighting bolt after lightning bolt.

The warrior doesn't know what to do–there isn't any place to hide. The storm seems to be directed at him. Has he made the spirits angry?

The young warrior backs up a hill. At the top of the hill is a giant saguaro; no other place to go. At the base of the giant cactus is a depression. The roots of the plant are exposed. He hides among them, sitting within the depression, partially shielded from the slapping rain.

The storm blows on. Flooding fills the depression. The warrior edges up closer under the saguaro to stay out of the water. It isn't comfortable, but it's cozier than remaining in the open.

Lighting bolts slash through the air hammering the earth and plants all around. The warrior makes himself smaller underneath the saguaro.

A bolt from the sky hammers the ancient saguaro seemingly angry it's sheltering the crouching warrior.

“
He wanted to look different in order to become a better warrior. That's what happened. He became part cactus and part man. My grandfather said I was something like that man. I am not quite Apache, not quite white man. I am something in between,” the boy says.

“
Well, you're quite a young man anyway,” Joe says. “I appreciate you coming out and telling me this.”

The more Sheriff Joe thought about it, the less crazy the story sounded. Last week, it might have. Now, after four strange deaths, he wasn’t so sure. It actually explained a lot. Whatever the thing Chick had seen was, it fought like an Apache–hit and run. It wasn't going to attack a large group of people aggressively; it was going to go for the one or two people out by themselves favoring those whose attention was diverted. It would hit, “run” and blend into the desert. Either that or it might set up an ambush.

This killer isn't going to stop until Weirdunkal is a ghost town.
Joe was sure of it.

“
What are you going to do?” Lilly stopped by his office where she found him reading
Scientific Law Enforcement
. “Are you really waiting for the marshal to do anything? That's what everyone is saying.”

“
No. For whatever reason, Charlie isn't coming. Anyway, I'd be surprised if I saw him now. Chick's dead and Justin suddenly decided being a ranch hand is better than being a deputy. Can't do a thing about Justin. Not sure he'd have been much use anyway if he wouldn't of stuck at a time like this.”

“
So what are you going to do?”

“
Become bait like a worm on a hook.”

Lilly knew exactly what he meant. She'd been with him long enough to know how he thought.

“
Joe, let me come with you. Let me help.”

“
Forget it, Lilly. It's too dangerous. I'd never let you put yourself in danger like that. You've got to think of Chip. He needs you.”

“
He needs you, too.”

“
There's other men around.”

“
Nobody pays attention to him like you.”

“
Forget it.”

“
I can't.”

“
You're not coming with me.”

“
I am. Look, Joe. I can help.”

“
How?”

“
For one thing, I can net a snare better than any man. I'll be a second set of eyes. If I see some giant cactus moving toward us, you can be sure that I'll scream and let you know.”

“
Lilly, I'll be fine.

“
And one more thing – you might need yourself a girl to get this monster.”

“
How's that?”

“
Maybe we can get it to think we're paying attention to each other instead of looking for it. You're not going to be able to do that sitting out there waiting for it. You're an entirely different man than Chick. Chick would ride around shaking and looking pie-eyed, bless his soul. It was all he could do to stay in the saddle. You probably scared him more than some giant killer cactus. You'd be about the last person the cactus man would attack and you know it too.

“
Now, if that damned cactus killer thinks you're paying more attention to me than everything around you . . .”

Joe's mouth set into a line and he growled. “All right.”

“
Goody! This is going to be lots more interesting than waiting tables.” She pecked him on the cheek, thrilled.

“
That boy is going to need his momma. If something should happen to you, I don't know that you'll be doing right by him.”

“
He's going to be fine ‘cause nothing will. And anyway it's better for parents to provide a good example to their kids. I don't want him to grow up thinking it's all right to be a coward.”

“
There's no arguing with you, is there?”

Lilly grinned and batted her eyelashes.

Joe and Lilly passed the wooden bench where Arlo and Millie were murdered behind a wooden barricade marked “Work Area.” The sun was setting. The desert around them was getting harder to see.

“
He's a good kid. You done right for him.”

“
Thank you.”

Lilly looked absently around, trying to keep from looking like she was concentrating on the darkness. They planned to promenade back and forth through the park. Neither Arlo, Millie, nor the killer paid heed to the Work Area sign before. Hopefully folks in the town would. If they didn't, they'd be in for an unpleasant surprise. The whole park was booby trapped. She and he spent the day fixing the place up.

When Joe and Lilly stopped, they'd stop in front of or near one of their snares. They wouldn't be safe from all directions. With Chick dead, and no U.S. Marshal, there wasn't anybody else to help them if they ran into trouble with the killer cactus. If they were going to prevail they'd need a little luck.

More small talk: “It's a beautiful night. The stars are twinkling like your eyes,” Joe cooed.

Lilly grinned at the compliment and modestly glanced downward. Never having dramatic training and only seeing a few plays in their time, they put their heads together and found they knew enough about such things to know they had to avoid talking about the murders. There wasn't any way to know how much English the creature spoke.

When she looked upward, she saw how, at first glance, what looked like a barrel cactus had moved behind Joe. Instantly she knew that was part of the way the killer cactus had avoided detection by the townspeople, by appearing to be an entirely different species. Few went around looking at plants closely.

There'd been a lot of ways for the killer to hide among them. It could lie down and pretend to be a felled cactus. It could hide in a copse. It could leave the area and come back at night.

“
To your back,” Lilly whispered. “Not yet. Get ready.”

Slowly, the cactus unfurled itself, lengthening along the ground.

Joe reached down her leg and worked out a knife from her petticoats. To the observer it might look like he was getting fresh and she was letting him.

“
Ooh!” Lilly cooed and swayed her hips from side to side.

Joe kissed her neck again and again. Waiting.

When the cactus killer sprung, a trip line strung near the trail triggered a tree branch. The branch hit the cactus square in the side, surprising the cactus creature but falling far short of stopping it.

Over eighteen feet tall fully extended, the cactus towered over Joe. Still, Joe didn't appear impressed. He sprung on the cactus stabbing and slashing savagely. He carved out a big hole in its side.

Thwack! It hit Joe squarely in the jaw with inhuman strength, and its barbs bit into him. Staggering backward, Joe fell to the ground and the cactus prepared to finish him off.

Lilly called out for the men who were hiding to finish it off, to draw its attention off Joe. A bluff, of course. Everyone Joe asked was busy. Joe and Lilly were out there by themselves.

Gathering her petticoats up to her waist Lilly sprinted as fast as she could while wearing heels - right alongside a ten-foot pit dug into the trail covered with brush and then covered again with more dirt from the pit. If it fell in, it might not get out.

The cactus fell. Lilly cheered.

Seconds later, she groaned when the giant cactus scaled the sides of the pit using its roots and thick, green legs. Its six arms flexed in frustration. Seconds later it stood at its full height on the other side. No gunshots had been forthcoming from the brush.

She, he and it were all alone, and the thing knew it. The cactus had no face. She couldn't help but sense the evil nature emanating from it as she backed up on the trail. Maybe it saw them as a bat sees its prey.

“
Over here,” Joe called.

The cactus didn't have to turn in order to turn its attention to Joe. Joe lit a rag stuffed into a whiskey bottle filled with corn alcohol. He'd hid them along the trail.