arched his bushy eyebrows at Lassiter. “This is right down my cowpath. As a kid I was called Snatch-cat Toler.” He sat down opposite Moxley, with Holly Dew on his right.
They got set. Holly snapped his finger, and they snatched. Toler’s thick hand hit a vacant spot, and Moxley’s bounced up with two twenty-dollar bills crumpled in its clutch.
Lassiter shouted angrily, “It wasn’t done fair. That dirty bum blowed as he snapped. I seen them bills slide as Toler went for ’em. It was a blasted, lousy trick.”
Hollywell Dew had slid his chair back. He rose, sixgun again oscillating. “That of course, is a lie. It was done fair, and if anybody wants to dispute it, let him draw.” Moxley pulled a sixgun from his under-arm holster. “That is correct. But to avoid trouble, I’ll relieve you gentlemen of your hardware.” He did as he’d indicated. “But I shall leave them with Bogannon. You’ll no doubt be able to retrieve them after Dew and I are safely on our respective ways.”
* * * *
When Dew and Moxley were gone, Lassiter and Toler rushed for their guns.
“Now, now, gentlemen,” Bogannon chided gently. “A famous wit named Sir John Falstaff once said, Discretion beats bravery all holler. You go chasing after those bozoes, and you’re sure to get shot. Take my advice, and wait for daylight.”
“Let me have a drink of whiskey,” growled Toler, “and keep your advice to yourself. Give me half a chance at them skunks and I’ll let moonbeams through ’em.”
“So will I,” declared Lassiter. “Them punks are in cahoots, and they’re going to pay for it, I’m tellin’ you!”
Bogie handed over their guns. “Tell them, not me, fellers. But if you’re smart, you’ll wait for daylight.”
They rushed out and looked hither and yon, but their quarry had vanished.
Toler and Lassiter mounted their horses, both declaring what they were going to do to a couple of two-legged polecats if ever they saw them again.
Lassiter rode west and Toler rode east. Toler was still telling himself what he’d do to Hollywell Dew and Cris Moxley, if ever they crossed his path again, when he came even with Bill Avis’ tumbledown shack. Without any warning whatever, his horse leaped from under him and took off for open country. Toler himself had caught one glimpse of a window-framed wolf’s head, fire gleaming from its mouth and eyes, and simultaneously he’d heard a frightful growl roaring from its depths.
He was stunned momentarily, and when he regained his senses and sat up he was staring at a sixgun, its business end two feet from his forehead. A man he soon recognized as Cris Moxley stood behind it, and beside Moxley crouched a ragged bum named Hollywell Dew.
“Take his gun, Holly.”
“You skunks’ll take nothing.”
Toler grabbed for his sixgun, but Hollywell Dew leaped upon him like a panther on a yearling, and steel claws bit into Toler’s throat.
* * * *
Deputy Winters had dozed, but a terrible dream roused him. Moonlight fell upon his bed. He sat up quietly and stared down at his wife, Myra Winters. Her beautiful face was motionless in sleep. She wasn’t a werewolf at all, though he’d dreamed she was.
Winters lay back down and considered himself a lucky man. He’d married a charming widow whose late husband had endowed her with a mining claim and a comfortable, neat cottage. Winters and Myra slept in a half-story room upstairs, where they could have their windows open and not be afraid of possible intruders. Open windows allowed night winds to enter with their freshness and their music.
But they brought strange sounds, too, eerie cries from Alkali Flat, running hoofbeats, roar of distant guns, sometimes human death scream. That same southeast wind which had dogged him and Cannon Ball on their long ride from Brazerville was still blowing. And now it brought a chilling sound—a scream of human terror, dying away to agony, then stillness.
Myra slept on peacefully, but Winters could not then sleep. He wondered how many of Forlorn Gap’s fifty-odd citizens were asleep, which one of them had suddenly died. Forlorn Gap, he reflected darkly, was a mysterious, ill-fated spot, a cross-roads town where evil elements sifted out of passing throngs. He never could anticipate what queer sort of varmint would show up next, but of one thing he could be sure—there was an inexhaustible supply.
Next morning after breakfast Winters caught up his horse from his corral feed-rack and pasture. He was thinking, while hay fragrance was strong in his nostrils, that it was about time for him and Myra to settle in one of those secluded, spring-watered valleys west of Forlorn Gap and begin to raise stock and a family. Being a deputy marshal brought him good money, what with salary and rewards for wanted monkeys, but it brought danger, too. What troubled him most, however, was hidden danger, that kind which prowled at night and assumed strange shapes.
But he was still mad from that fright he’d got at Bill Avis’ shack, and his first self-assigned job was to ride down there and investigate. When he’d investigated, he rode back and hitched at Bogannon’s.
“Mornin’, Winters,” said Bogie. He’d been alone, forenoon being his idle time.
Winters slouched into a chair. “Doc, we got a dead man on our hands.”
Bogie sat opposite him. “No! A stranger?”
“One of our hot-headed fellow-citizens. Kehoe Toler. He’s down in Bill Avis’ old shack. You won’t believe what I’m about to tell you, Doc, but as I rode past last night I saw a wolf’s head there, framed in a window, its mouth and eyes gleaming fire. Cannon Ball and I had but a single thought; that was to get away from there, and pronto.” Bogie had his eyebrows up. “But what’s that got to do with Toler?”
“Toler’s throat is marked by prints of wolf teeth.”
Bogie swallowed. Sweat popped on his face and stood in beads. “Now I know why you mentioned werewolves last night. You did see one.”
“But of course it wasn’t a werewolf, Doc. There ain’t no such thing.” Winters got up, whipped out his sixgun and twirled it on his trigger finger. He shoved it back into its holster. “Well, Doc, I don’t mind telling you, I’m scared. I don’t want no truck with werewolves, nor anything else that ain’t human.”
* * * *
Word got around that Forlorn Gap was haunted. But here was a new kind of ghost infestation. Traditionally, ghosts merely scared people; Forlorn Gap’s variety killed people. Deputy Winters had regarded gold-diggers as a pretty tough lot, but they laid off from their diggings. He ran into a cluster of them in front of Pepper Neal’s store.
They stopped Winters, who was riding Cannon Ball and headed for his office.
Their spokesman, big Moss Tyner, shook his shaggy head. “Look here, Winters, this town’s comin’ to a bad end. It’s haunted. Last night with my own eyes I seed a man ridin’ by moonlight, and he didn’t have no head.”
Another miner butted in. “You’re wrong there, Tyner. He had two heads.”
“That’s right, Tyner,” declared another. “I seed him myself. He had two heads, sure as I’m breathin’.”
