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Short Stories & Tall Tales
Death Chases the Shadows
Tom Sheehan
Wedge Drummond, in flight, out of ammunition, a hole in his canteen by the last shot from unknown men on his trail for almost a full day with no clear reason, dipped into a rock-loaded canyon where boulders and sheared mountain faces of a long-past cataclysmic interruption had come to rest. The mess of rock and stone extended for one side of the canyon, piled high as possible, pinnacled by huge stones bridging one another, their brute balance in the desperate offing, a sudden tremor promising a new deluge of stone. Mother Earth, he equivocated in a rush, rarely let go of her treasures, meager or not.
Into this unquarried mess, one at least offering a chance to hide instead of running, he leaped from the saddle, slapped his horse on the rump and let him go off on his own, down the rocky trail. Star shone as a superb animal; he prayed he’d find him again. It’d be fair not to make him a target any longer. “Giddy up, Star, skit out there and find a filly. You’ve been good to me.” He and Star had been a pair for a few years. Tested, bruised, survivors to this point, he wanted that partnership to continue to one simple glory beyond glory.
Drummond dipped his lanky frame into the cluster of rocks and watched the shadows begin to crawl in behind him as sneaky as footpads and settle behind a mess of rocky sections big as the horse he’d let go on its own. The shadows suddenly came covetous, hungry … thick and heavy, swallowing the whole of him, the canyon, the debris of centuries at his feet, towering above him. The sun’s rays disappeared, fell away, left him alone in darkness. Quickly, he felt mysterious, knew he’d been lost not only in himself but in the shadows. They stretched, went into a deeper blackness, swallowed everything in their path.
Yet, in the absence of light, the clatter of Star’s hoofs still sang in the air in a faltering rhythm, like a drummer teasing with his sticks, and Drummond realized his horse ran on a rocky surface, one that might leave fewer tracks for pursuers to follow. “Good for you, old boy!” he muttered.
When Star’s hoof beats, in a merciful decrease, finally faded, Drummond, not relaxing by one degree his sense of security, felt he’d made the correct move, to use this site of Mother Nature’s upheaval where he fit his long frame into concealment between two monstrous slabs that provided a slim tunnel-effect --- a declivity where a stouter man could not negotiate the slim confine nor the turns therein. With that decision, he felt the cloak of shadows wrap him as if into the midst of their bowels. Some reasoning told him that the shadows were more than just the mountain’s escape from the sun.
As he inched, tussled, fought his way deeper into the declivity, rough stone leaving its mark on his joints, smoother parts, perhaps treated in some volcanic past, momentarily easing his passage.
The mountain, while he rode the trail, had tossed its recognition, and apocalyptic condition, afar to him, where he’d ridden once before. Such features showed where upheavals and landslides had occurred perhaps a thousand years ago, perhaps more in the last dozen years. The belief, like a surge of hope, leaped alive that the area not only offered concealment, but might cloak him totally from his pursuers.
The spurs had separated from his boots, and in one wider space he managed to get his empty gun belt off his waist and leave it behind. Into his beltline he thrust a single pistol, feeling the cool metal send its message. Without ammunition it seemed useless, but it might make a difference, somehow, in whatever came at him in the silent heart of a landslide, an earthquake, a broken mountain. Yet these trade-offs suddenly settled options around him: he felt not only the immediate coolness of the shadows, but there followed an icy touch along the length of his body. It brought an eerie feeling.
Shadows might be death itself.
And it had been presented to him before, by the wisest man he had ever spoken with.
Almost five years since it had happened, separated from a posse as he followed a strange track that led him not to the prey but to a wounded Indian sitting beside the trail, his last sign, a recognized cluster of stones, mere yards from where Drummond came on him. That time the area sat in shadows, the elderly Indian nodding at him, saying, “You read sign of Bear Claw like Cheyenne. When I hear you coming, I think Cheyenne find me in dark place.”
Now, confined in darkness, the aperture tighter than he originally thought, hoping his own icy odor would not give him away, he heard a voice, a heavy and disgruntled voice, a voice he recognized practically on the first harsh syllable. “Dammit, Choker, he’s run right out of here on that damned horse unless he’s hidin’ in them rocks. Kind of stupid if he is. Take a look up in there. See him, shoot him!” The hoof beats of the speaker’s horse were dancing in place, perhaps even the animal uncomfortable in the shadows, the mountain taller than ever.
The voice, Hurry Falkin’s voice, carried a solitary image as its baggage.
Falkin, one of the usual gun bullies and quick draw artists that live on some towns by reputation, had been embarrassed by Drummond over a year earlier when Falkin refused to draw his holstered pistol, instead took it from the holster and placed it on a table. When Falkin’s hand slipped subtly to his backside, Drummond said, “Put that little pistol tucked into your backside on the table too, before you figure making a play with it.”
They were, from that moment, enemies for life.
Bear Claw had heard from others of that encounter and advised Drummond, “Death plays in shadows. One does not see Death coming in the shadows. He is coward, is Death, waiting to strike at the heart, back of the neck. Keep eye open for Death who plays like puma at target.”
Another voice, slighter, subordinate, unsure, from the one called Choker said, “Nothin’ I can see, Hurry. Nothin’ at all. Too many rocks all over, like Boot Hill got slammed in here on top of everythin’.”
“Hell, Choker,” Falkin said, “just fire some shots in them dark places and maybe shake him loose if he’s in there. Just a few shots. Might make him scramble, make some noise. He’s got to be damned tired of us.”
“Why we chasin’ him, Hurry? You never said a real good why.”
“’Cause I’m the boss, and I said, like before, it’s real personal. Understand?”
“Yup, you’re the boss.”
More shots sprayed among the fallen rocks, but nothing penetrated into Drummond’s stony cavity, though the echoes of rocky chatter and ricochets sang around his head. Drummond counted another dozen shots and wondered if their ammunition supply would also get depleted in this canyon, at the foot of this disturbed mountain.
Choker yelled out, apparently from a spot not very far from where Drummond kept to his silence, his inertness, “Why’n’t we get some dynamite and blow him the Hell out of there if he’s in there? A big boom and we can go get a drink, somethin’ to eat.”
“Nice thinkin, Choker, and bring the rest of the mountain down on top of us. Nice thinkin’.” Drummond could see Falkin still sliding his hand toward his backside in that other time, and the eyes of a few men in the saloon shifting their knowledge to Drummond without words, but with looks, grimaces. Again he wondered how many men Falkin had dropped with the hidden pistol.
“Aw, I’m just getting’ tired, Hurry. It’s been a long day runnin’ like we have, like it ain’t no way personal with me.”
“It better get that way, Choker, ‘cause we ain’t through with him by a longshot. We’ll find the horse trail when we get out of here. For now, shoot ‘im up some more, up there in them dark spots. We ain’t goin’ and climbin’ into any of them places.”
With thirst and hunger, and an enmity toward the pair of pursuers, building up in him, Drummond tried not to count time, but he could measure the growing chill as it settled around him. These rocks might not have felt the direct sun’s rays for a thousand years, might stay for years at the same temperature. He’d heard so many times, from miners and others, that there existed a constant temperature at a certain point down in the earth, a temperature that a man could withstand. But did that also include upheaval stones, hearts of mountains taken from their given places?
The shadows carried their own coolness … and what else in the mix? He had his fears, but also realized he had adopted some of Bear Claw’s patience, the way he could suppress his bodily movements, become inert as a rock in place, thousands of years on the hunt for food had come down to him from the ages, from men who lived only in cages, who only bore the crudest of arms … all generally at arms’ length. He wished he knew more, had listened closer to men of real experience at surviving alone, who learned from their enemies, from their own past failures.
He stopped thinking of time’s passage, but the chill had become deeper. Not a single ray of light had followed him even part way into his current solitude in the hole.
Drummond felt thanks, however, that sound came to him so audibly, and in that thanks he heard the depressed guttural voice of Falkin’s attempt at whispers, then heard him say loudly, “All right, Choker, let’s go chase that horse of his. He might leave marks we can follow all the way to California if we have to. Let’s go!”
The clatter of hoofs on stone came to Drummond in his sanctuary, but they were the beat of a single horse. At patience’s command, he kept motionless, and he did count the passage of five minutes, when he heard a horse nicker.
“Damn you, Hobo, why’n’t you keep still? Hell, let’s go.” And Drummond heard the hoof beats of Falkin’s mount flow down and fade in the canyon’s far end where it came down to the green grass more than a mile wide. Carson’s Flow existed out there, almost due northwest by five miles. Soon, Falkin and Choker would drink, eat and look for his horse … if they hadn’t found it before they got to Carson’s Flow.
If there ever occurred a time to get out of this deep place, this dark and eerie place, recover some of his belongs, get a new point of vantage, it jumped up at this moment.
He began his retreat from the heart of the landslide. More than a solid hour later, he had recovered his gun belt, his spurs, his hat, and stood near the end of the canyon, but still maintaining coverage from the stone fall, slipping from rock to rock, sheared face to sheared face, into one passage and out the other end.
And in one move to a slightly higher elevation, he saw a horseman coming down the trail. A man on a mule, a prospector, both looking as old as they come. The newcomer saw him waving, heard his call for water, and reached for his canteen. He waved it back at Drummond, while he kept a rifle in his left hand, pointed at Drummond.
“Thank you, mister,” Drummond said. “First, give me a drink of water and then you can shoot me if you want. I haven’t had a drink in two days, I’d sure appreciate it.”
The prospector nodded and flipped the canteen to the stranger, saw him take a mouthful, savor it, cleanse his throat, let the pleasure and satisfaction settle on his face, as he said, “Thank you, sir, I needed that.”
“Shore looks like it did the trick, stranger. My name’s Eddie Lampack, still lookin’ for gold and mostly finding strangers, which ain’t the worst thing in the world every couple of months, I’ll tell you. Met a few other things in my time. It looks like you’ve had a time of it yourself.”
“I have, Mr. Lampack. My name’s Wedge Drummond, and I’ve been running for days from a pair of killers and have no ammunition, no food, nothing but an empty pistol. Do you have any ammunition you can spare? A few rounds? They might come back this way. I figure, when I was hiding in the rocks up in there,” and he pointed back over his shoulder. “They headed for Carson’s Flow, to get a drink, to get some food.”
Lampack glowed. “Are you the same Wedge Drummond my friend Bear Claw talks about? I figure there can’t be another with that name in these parts.” He smiled before Drummond could answer and said, “That old Indian’s got a fondness for you, but never said why. But it’s enough for me to feed on. Let’s git over there by them trees and I’ll rustle up a tasty breakfast for us. I ain’t et in two days myself, ‘cept a chunk of jerky gummed to death.” He paused and nodded at the canteen, and advised, “Best save some of that water for coffee.”
The meal came quick, simple and rudimentary, the meal of a man used to caring for himself in the wild, quick to set up, be done, and put away. The hard beef held salt and taste, a prairie egg appeared from a deeply-folded black cloth taken from his pack and wass fried in beef fat with two hard biscuits the coffee softened, made tastier.
Both men felt different in a matter of half an hour, accepting what buzzed around them. The sun had climbed to a midmorning level. A breeze, warm as the edge of the fire just fading away, came without odor across their fire site. A hawk hovered at the edge of the canyon and swooped away in a sudden, not to come back. A coyote called from limitless space in the mountain range. Two vultures, nearly out of this world, made specks of themselves in a circling routine high overhead.
With a meal under his belt, his pistol loaded, eight rounds in his gun belt, Wedge Drummond felt reborn.
The pair of them had talked throughout the meal. When Lampack put all his gear back in his packs and on the backside of his mule, he announced, “Now we et, let’s go look for your horse. Least I can do is help a friend of Bear Claw’s and a new friend of mine.”
His head shook in some consideration of a thought, and he offered, “That horse maybe in Carson’s Flow right now. If he ain’t ‘n’ found a place to graze, we might catch up to him. You ain’t about to ride on my Jersey, who might not tolerate it a lonesome bit.”
They were an hour along the edge of the foothills, sometimes going into growths of trees and deep brush with visible paths cut through them, when Lampack said, in a guarded whisper, “Jersey smells a body ahead of us, and I know it’s danged four-legged. Let’s hope he’s smelt your horse home.”
Drummond’s patience, now altered with a decent meal and a sudden hope, called out Star’s name, and the nicker and sudden sounds of hoof beats, brought the horse out of a cluster of young trees. His saddle rested in place and he rushed at Drummond who rubbed his neck, spilled some water from a canteen into his hat and let him drink.
Lampack showed joy and kept patting Jersey during the whole reunion.
In a matter of minutes, Drummond sat mounted, checked his weapons, and said, “Thanks for your help, Mr. Lampack. If you run into Bear Claw, tell him how you helped me.”
The shadows, just about all of them, were gone!
They had disappeared, gone with daylight chasing them into hiding, taking them into that other world he had only recently crawled into. Drummond found the weight on his body had lightened, and the pull on his mind brought thoughts quicker, found images leaping to find a proper framework. The images took Falkin into a special place for good.
“Easy, son,” Lampack said, “go with good luck. You gotta know Bear Claw had a view of this well ahead of us’n’s.” He waved on his new friend, resettled his loneliness in its original place, and said to his mule, “We done a good trick today, Jersey. Let’s hope we find that boy when we git to Carson’s Flow. No place else to go today but to town. Get us a due bath, a steak thicker ‘n hell, find that boy, and put a stall around your hind end, away from any strange critters.”
In Carson’s Flow, right on the main street hitched to the saloon rail, Drummond spotted the horses of his two pursuers. The big black and the mare were lathered and spent and showed no immediate care on arrival in town. The drink had called Falkin and his sidekick before any thoughts of their horses.
Knowing the old scene with Falkin might well repeat itself, Drummond went to the sheriff and told him the whole story.
“Hell, son,” Sheriff Bill Oxley said, “I don’t know as I’d’ve done it like you did. I guess I’d lay it on my horse, a good one, and let him ride me out of it. Tossing yourself in among them stones was taking a real big change. Don’t know if I could’ve done that, but here you are. Speaks a whole lot about you. I’ll go down there at the saloon and keep my eyes open, listen to ‘em talk it up, if they do, and wait until you get something to eat and wander in later on. If he does the hidden gun trick again, I’ll be right behind him. When I walk into the Hawk’s Nest Saloon without my badge on, folks’ll know I’m on business and will take care. Done it before the same way.
He patted Drummond on the back and advised him, “The best meal is right next door to us, at Millie Mae’s Place. Tell her I sent you and she don’t take kindly to a whole lot of thanks, and minds to her own business to my everlasting sorrow.” The whole story was in his eyes.
When Drummond walked into Millie Mae’s Place, three customers sat alone at three tables in the room crowded against one wall. When one asked for more coffee, Drummond recognized the one called Choker. And he knew Choker didn’t recognize him when he walked in, or sat down at his table.
“Mind if I share the table, stranger?”
“Naw, go right ahead. I’m just fillin’ my gut anyway. Get the steak. Best in century, you bet. Best in a century. I’m gettin’ another soon as she can get it.” He looked at a young pretty girl, maybe 24 or 25 with dazzling blond hair.
“Keep up that kind of talk, mister,” the blonde said, “and I’ll throw you out like I promised, and you won’t have to leave a tip.”
Choker smiled, dipped his head, and whispered, “Ain’t she somethin’? Ain’t she?”
Drummond asked, halfheartedly, “You been on a long ride to get so hungry? Where did you come from?”
Choker, still looking at Millie Mae, said, “Oh, we come on a long law chase, lookin’ for an escaped prisoner, but we lost him and I got hungry horrors for two whole days until I come in here.” He looked up at Millie Mae and said no more.
Drummond said, “Your boss still carry that little gun on his backside, Choker?”
Choker almost choked, the last remnant of steak caught in his throat. He dropped his fork. “You’re him, ain’t’cha, that Drummond guy he wants so bad. You’re him ain’t’cha. I didn’t want to shoot at you, but he’s the boss. I know he kilt another guy rode with him over nothin’. I didn’t wannna get shot too. I just did what Hurry told me. That’s all.”
Looking at Millie Mae staring at the pair of them, one of them near cowering, Drummond said, “Did you hear all that, Ma’am, and all you other folks? Just in case things don’t work out for me, the sheriff ought to know all this. This gent’s boss is down at the saloon. I’ve faced him before. I know what he does. The sheriff’s down there too. I’d appreciate it a great deal if you sort of made sure this gent doesn’t get down there ahead of me.”
Millie Mae said, “We’ll take care of him, mister. You take care and tell Roy the next meal’s on me.” She pointed to another customer and added, “Warnie, you hog tie him until things get proper.”
Choker said, “Can I have another steak in the meantime I ain’t goin’ anyplace?”
Millie Mae’s intensity eased quickly at Choker’s request, the hearty chuckles running around the room.
At the Hawk’s Nest Saloon, Sheriff Oxley had a seat near the middle of the bar, with the bartender the first one to realize the sheriff had come on business, his badge out of sight.
Oxley looked around the room and guessed correctly that the stranger he heard introduce himself as Hurry Falkin to another customer, appeared troubled. He showed as a stick-out in the crowded room, boisterous, ill-kempt as imaginable, demonstrative while ordering his drinks, and had shoved his way to make more room at the bar.
The sheriff heard from a friend who whispered, “He’s sure a mean one, Bill. Be careful.”
“Okay, so I’m a bounty hunter,” Falkin said to a man at the bar, so what? We ain’t the only ones. I’m on the look for an escaped killer. We chased him almost to your front door here. Better not be hidin’ him from us.”
“Who’s us?” a patron asked.
“Me and my pal Choker, that’s who. He’s stuffin’ his face now someplace in town, got the bony hungers, but he’ll be along before we start up again, lookin’ around town, knockin’ on suspicious doors.”
Oxley, girding up for things, aware of the character of the braggart at the bar, said, in an official voice, “Not in this town, you don’t, mister. Not in this town. You don’t knock on any doors. No now. Not ever.”
“Who the hell are you tellin’ me what I can’t do. I’m a bounty hunter. I got papers. You bigger than me?” He had his chest thrust out, his hands hanging close to his guns as he stepped away from the bar, dipped one shoulder in a practiced taunt.
Before Oxley had a chance to say a word, the saloon door opened and Drummond, in a gray hat, a week’s worth of dark beard, and a look in his eyes that Falkin read only too well, stood no more than 30 feet away from Falkin, his right hand already hanging beside his pistol.
“Before you do anything foolish, Falkin,” Drummond said, “you better show all of us, and the sheriff as well, what papers you have on what man you’re looking for in Carson’s Flow. Good papers. Legal papers. And you can do it now.”
Falkin leaned back against the bar, felt the small gun at his backside pushing back at him, and its hardness against his backside added a spur of confidence and told him that the chance was at hand to take care of all past emotions.
He raised one hand and said, “Hold it, Drummond. I’m putting my gun down on the table. Every man in the room will see me put down my gun. Every last one of them.” His eyes swept the room.
With a subtle move, he eased away from the bar. The pressure at his backside softened, lessened, disappeared. He’d been practicing for this time. He stood ready.
He placed the pistol from his holster on the table. He shifted his weight. He felt loose.
And the click on Oxley’s Colt came thunderous in the room, and he said, “You go for that piggyback gun, mister, and you’re dead right at the bar.”
Falkin couldn’t let it happen again. Not this time. Not in front of another crowd in another town.
He went for his secret gun. He fell dead on the floor, smoke rising from the barrel of Oxley’s pistol and from Drummond’s, the sound a unified sound of power and right.
Drummond knew shadows were in the room.
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