Black Medicine Thunder and the Sons of Chaos, Episode 1 – Aaron Polson

Black Medicine Thunder and the Sons of Chaos

by Aaron Polson

-1-

High noon. A dozen vultures picked through the wreckage of the 10:30 coach from Broughton’s Hollow to Abilene. The ungainly birds, black and lithe with blood-red pates, wobbled about the mess of bodies, pulling and gobbling strips of flesh from the remains of the driver and his passengers, unaware of the approaching riders at the opposite end of the valley.

Sam Isherwood, feeling lost in an ill-fitting black suit, eased his mount to a stop. “Jesus, Henry. There it is.”

The stout, dark-faced man next to him leveled a rifle across his left arm, squinted down the barrel, and squeezed gently on the trigger. One of the vultures lurched, a red cloud at its breast, and flapped madly. Panicked as the crack of the rifle reached them, its brethren hopped into the air under an iron-grey knot of clouds, their great wings clapping the wind,  The riders spurred their horses on, speeding down the limestone incline toward the carnage.

Henry Lawton dismounted. Dust puffed when his boots struck the pack earth. He was a large man, wide but muscular, with a sloping forehead and thick boney ridge over his black eyes. His fingers plucked the heads from a few nearby strands of grass. Dirt covered his clothing, an assortment of red-orange soil from Indian country and sandy yellow dust from the limestone formations in central Kansas. He stunk, too, not having seen the inside of a wash tub in at least three months.

“What do you think, Henry?  Indians?”  Isherwood, due to a combination of nerves and his spotless suit, refused to climb from his horse. A ray of sunshine struggled through the clouds, glinting off his U.S. Marshal badge glinted in a ray of sunshine. “Doesn’t look like the work of Indians.”

Lawton held up a hand. “Listen.”

The prairie answered with the sway of thigh-high grass in the soft breeze.

“I don’t hear anything—”

“Shhhh.”  Lawton narrowed his black eyes at Isherwood. Neither man spoke for a full minute, and then Lawton nodded. He meandered around the scene, pausing to study each half-devoured corpse. More than once, he knelt and placed a palm flat against the earth, feeling the indentations from monstrous hooves. “Buffalo.”

Isherwood’s horse whinnied, and he tightened his grip on the reins. “What?  Buffalo?  Those big, God-damned things?  Got trainloads of fellas from back East looking for a herd to take a shot at, but most of ‘em head up North anymore. How the hell’s a buffalo gonna do something like this?  Why would a buffalo do this?”

The stage lay on its side, and the upturned flank had been battered to splinters.  Wheels sat at odd angles with broken spokes and axles. The driver—easily identified by his clothing despite the missing eyes and marred face—still clutched a Winchester in his dead hands.

“I didn’t say they did. But they’ve been here. At least ten, by the count of those tracks.”  Lawton ran his hand along the battered edge of the stage coach, fingered the caved-in door. “Something’s got them spooked. Something’s not right. Bad magic.”

Isherwood frowned. “Jesus, Henry. I can handle bandits or a few rogue Cherokee, but you’re talking crazy. Bad magic, indeed.”

Lawton waded into the grass away from the coach, stopped, and turned his black eyes back to the man on horseback. “There’s a survivor.”  His finger pointed toward a dark shape up the opposite hill, about halfway to a lone tree.

“Looking for shade,” Isherwood said. “Giddyup!” He spurred his horse, surprised to see Lawton already on his mount and galloping toward the figure.

A man… and the man was crawling on hands and knees with a dark stain on his back—too dark for sweat. From the quality of his shirt and trousers, Isherwood reckoned a businessman of some sort. A wealthy man. His movements came in tiny, jerky fits. He surely felt the approaching riders as much as heard them, and he stopped moving as their shadows fell across his shoulder.

Again, Lawton dismounted while Isherwood stayed on his horse. “Hey fella.”

The man peered over his shoulder toward Lawton’s voice. His face was filthy with mud and blood, the whites of his eyes startling against the blackness of it.  “W-water…”

Lawton opened his canteen and held it to the man’s chapped lips. Trickles of water spilled from the corners of his mouth, carving a path through the filth and stubble on his chin. After a moment, the man fell on his back, shielding his eyes from the sun with a hand. He wiped the opposite sleeve across his mouth.

“Were you with the coach?” Lawton knelt only a foot from the stranger’s head.

The man nodded.

“We need to know what happened. My friend on the horse is a U.S. Marshal.”

The man’s body shook with a cough, and a dark smudge of blood appeared on his lips. “Fine… fine lot of good that badge ‘ill do him…”

“We need to know what happened,” Lawton spoke again, cold and mechanical.

“God-damned devils… came outta nowhere… ran us off the trail…” He fell into another spasm of coughing. Once he’d composed himself, he continued, “Eyes red like the fire of hell… kept coming… driver fired twice… kept coming…”

“Devils?  Who, was it Indians?”  Isherwood asked.

The wounded man summoned his strength, leaned forward on one elbow, and spat.“No… the god-damned buffalo. A whole mess of ‘em…”  He shuddered once more and slumped back to the ground, motionless.

Dead.

Lawton gave the corpse a soft poke, just to make sure, and straightened to his full six foot frame. His dark eyes narrowed as he scanned the horizon. Rolling hills covered in sheets of green-gold prairie grass waved in each direction. The dirt-packed coach road at the fold of the valley and a few trees followed a creek bed below, but otherwise grass and a few rocky outcroppings owned the land.

“We’re going to need help, Mr. Isherwood.”

#

Broughton’s Hollow sat on the southern banks of the Republican River, one of the major tributaries which led to the Kansas, then Missouri, and eventually Big Muddy beyond. It was a small settlement with around two hundred residents; G.H. Ekhart Clothiers made up the largest share of local economy. At least half the folks in town either hauled freshwater clams from the surrounding waterways for their pearly inner shells or worked in the factory building itself, converting the unfortunate mollusks into fashionable fasteners.

Two saloons bookended Main Street: Jameson’s Public House on the west side, and Buckwater’s East End at the other. It was in the more trendy of the two, Jameson’s, that Sam Isherwood and Henry Lawton sat down to lubricate their parched throats.

“Whiskey, Mr. Isherwood?”

“On duty?” He glanced at his shiny badge. “I hardly think—”

“No one’s going to care in the Hollow.”  Lawton turned to the bar and whistled, holding up two fingers for the bartender. As he did, he caught the attention of two thin men leaning against one end of the bar. The closest of the two, deeply tanned with a thick, wax-tipped mustache, nodded, and Lawton returned the gesture.

“Friends of yours?”

Lawton shook his head. “No, but I think I’ve seen them traveling with an old salt I knew in the war. Hell of a marksman. Name was… Reaver. Abraham Reaver.”

“Reaver?”  Isherwood folded his hands on the table in front of him. “I know that name. Or feel like I should.”

A waif of a waitress set two glass tumblers on the table, each filled with three fingers of amber liquid. Lawton gave her a wink. “Put it on the Marshal’s tab.” He lifted the glass, took a sip, and set it back on the table. “You should. Local sheriff’s got him in the stockade for something or other.”

“No. Something bigger than a local issue.”  Isherwood narrowed his eyes. “There’s an outstanding warrant I believe. Federal charges. I’ll have to check, but—”

“Don’t bother,” Lawton said.

“With the warrant?”

“Details don’t matter. It’s just the leverage we need. He’s the one we need to talk to.”

“About… what?”

“Solving your buffalo problem, Marshal.”  Lawton downed the remainder in one gulp and slammed the glass. He rose from the table and sauntered to the thin men at the bar, leaving Isherwood to follow in his wake. The Marshal pushed his whiskey aside without a taste.

On closer inspection of the two strangers, Isherwood realized that the gentleman without a mustache wasn’t a gentleman at all. Her face was thin and angular, not quite pointed at the chin, but sharp. Everything about her face was sharp—the nose, the cheekbones, the lips. A face from which life had chiseled away the softer, more feminine lines, leaving it more angular, but rather beautiful in a wild, untamed way. A hint of a bruise encircled her right eye, and both irises were of the bluest prairie summer sky. Isherwood realized he was staring and  felt a blush forming at his neck. He cleared his throat to chase the notion from his body.

“Howdy,” the mustached man said. “Can I do anything for you fellas?”

“Abraham Reaver.” Lawton leaned his back into the edge of the bar.

The woman snickered. “That old son of a bitch?”

Lawton nodded. “We’ve had some… problems with the local wild life.”

“We’ve heard. The 10:30. Everyone dead. Not the first problem with a stage coach in the last week.”  The mustached man clicked his tongue. Up closer, Isherwood noticed three light scars crossing the man’s face. He wore dark woolen trousers and a stiff chambray shirt with rolled up sleeves. The woman wore a similar outfit, stifling any feminine curves.

“How do you know? We just—well we just came from there.”  Isherwood took a tiny, unconscious step back.

“News travels fast.”  The man offered a hand to both of them. “Reaver’s in jail. I’m Silas. Silas Kirchmier. This here is—”

“Amanda.”  The woman’s blue eyes burned into Isherwood’s. She had a fire inside, blue like ice but quick as a barber’s razor—he could see the cutting blade in that glare. “Amanda Reaver.”

Lawton pulled on his chin. “Jesus-god. You’re Reaver’s—”

“Daughter. Yes.”

“And he’s in the stockade for—”

“Decking me in public?”  She pointed to her bruised eye. “That’d be the one.”

#

The Broughton’s Hollow public jail lay at the end of a muddy street, a low point in the town both physically and geographically. The street had worn five different names in the three years the Hollow had existed, the latest simply “Adams” after either president. “Covers more ground this way,” one of the city fathers had argued at the meeting.

Silas and Amanda accompanied Isherwood and Lawton on their way to speak with Abraham Reaver and arrange for his release. Lawton had insisted Reaver was a master marksman and relentless hunter. If, by some bizarre twist of nature, a few big shaggy brutes went wild, well… he was the man they needed.

Isherwood skirted the fringe of the street, keeping his polished boots on the drier ground at the edge.  Lawton rumbled through the thick of the wagon ruts, carrying his bulk like a bear might walk upright. His Colt revolver dangled at his right hip, swinging in disordered, jangling fashion as he walked. Silas and Amanda both moved with long, sweeping steps. Silas wobbled a bit with his head too full of whiskey for such a lean frame. But not Amanda. Even her walk was sharp, but beautiful, and Isherwood couldn’t help but find himself watching her until he stumbled over a rock, fell to the ground, and covered the left knee of his black trousers in muck.

“Got to be more careful, Marshal,” Amanda said over her shoulder.

The jail building had been cobbled together from rough-hewn logs and plaster—a flimsy enough construction as Isherwood estimated it. If a fugitive had enough brawn, he could simply lower a shoulder and take the building to the ground from the inside. Just beyond the jail, a small shack of not much better design sported a hand painted sign:

Shereff

“Morons spelled it wrong,” Silas muttered. He clicked his tongue again and shook his head. “And Abe’s the one they throw in jail. God-damned travesty of justice.”

Amanda grinned and slapped him on the shoulder.

Isherwood frowned and wiped his mouth and forehead on a handkerchief. “The Sheriff—”

“Amos Bently. Should be up in the office. Probably asleep.”  Lawton started up the path. “He’s got a cot in there. I’ll wake his sorry ass and bring him down. You might want to explain to Mr. Reaver why we need his services. Maybe why he’ll want to help us.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Fella like you can probably make a Federal warrant disappear, right Marshal?”

Isherwood’s gaze fell to the jail again. He wasn’t entirely comfortable with the suggestion, but Henry Lawton had served under, and buried, the previous Marshal. Isherwood needed a man to trust, and this was his only man. He lowered his head and made for the small, rough-log building. Silas and Amanda were already at a window.

“Jesus, Kirchmier, I can smell your mangy ass out there… you leave any for the rest of this sorry town?” The voice which came from within sounded like a pair of coarse stones pushed against each other, rough and deep.

“Mr. Reaver?” Isherwood squinted at the dark window. “My name’s Isherwood. Sam Isherwood. U.S. Marshal.”

A snort came from within.

Silas shuffled off toward a stand of trees and started to urinate.

Amanda stifled a laugh.

“Mr. Reaver?”

The face which appeared at the window was dark, tanned into mock leather from too many days in the sun. Pale criss-crossed scars streaked his cheeks and forehead—plenty more than on Silas’s face. “Just Reaver.”  His eyes narrowed. “You’re a Marshal?”

“Yes. Samuel Isherwood. Just assigned.”  He said it, but blushed at the disclosure.

Reaver spit on the floor of his cell. His face reappeared at the window. “Look like a child to me.”

Isherwood stood tall, squared his shoulders, and stepped toward the stockade. Inside his chest, his heart led a clattering protest against his mock display of courage. “We have a… a job.”

Silas sidled up to the wall again, pulling at the zipper fly on his trousers.

“You gonna get me out of here?”

“The job involves a hunt. Some rogue buffalo. We believe they might be rabid. Infected with something… a disease. They’ve attacked two stage coaches in a week. I was told you’re quite the buffalo hunter.”

The cell was silent.  Isherwood glanced down at his star, found a speck of mud on the circle, and scraped at it with a finger. “Mr. Reaver?”

“Buffalo?”

“Yes. Buffalo. We have reason to belie—”

“Buffalo don’t attack people. Buffalo stampede with animal ignorance and brutality. Not purposeful like your ‘attack’ word suggests. Damn powerful brutes, but dumb.”

“We have evidence—”

“If it means I can see the sun again, I’ll do whatever you want.”

Isherwood jumped as a hand dropped on his shoulder and warm breath tickled his ear.

“Sheriff’s rather in an agreeable mood,” Lawton said.

Broughton County’s Sheriff, an older, red-faced man about as thin as a railroad tie, rattled a large ring of keys behind Lawton. “Happy to have him gone. God-damned nuisance. I suspect you’re transferring him, Marshal.”

Isherwood, feeling the full weight of his badge although a little unsure of his legal footing, gave Lawton a quick glance.  “No, we aren’t transferring him anywhere. We have need of his services.”

The Sheriff paused, key half-in. “Services?  Like what, taking his fist to his daughter?”  He spat, and a brown lump of tobacco juice sprayed across the tan earth. “Don’t know what use he could be beyond that.”

After his brief protest, the Sheriff worked the keys in the lock. Tumblers clicked into place, and the heavy door swung open. Abraham Reaver limped out into the fresh air. He stood easily over six feet and was as broad in the shoulders as Lawton. His clothing matched that of Silas and his daughter, simple but rugged. It was the face that Isherwood couldn’t look away from—chiseled and hard, like it had been hewn from the local limestone formations. His skin was dark, burnished to a deep tan, and the scars stood out even more strikingly in the light. Nostrils flared, and his great, barrel chest swelled. As it did, the sun seemed to catch fire to a necklace around Reaver’s throat: a series of white specks.

“Good air you got here, Sheriff. Good God-damned air.”

Sheriff Bently scratched his stubbled cheek and backed away a step . Isherwood wondered how such a monster of a man could have been locked up by anyone, especially the diminutive lawman.

“Afternoon, Mr. Reaver.”  Isherwood offered a hand.

Reaver blinked, his face blank. He didn’t smile and didn’t take the man’s hand. His lips twisted into sour disgust as he looked beyond Isherwood’s shoulder. “What’s that murderer doing here?”

Isherwood tilted his head. “I don’t know—”

“You should. Henry Lawton is a treacherous rattlesnake. How’d you snow this one, Henry?  What lies did you tell him?”

Amanda moved to her father’s side, touching him on the shoulder. “Pa…”

“I’m the murderer, Abe?”  Lawton asked, a hint of mocking derision in his tone.

Reaver’s lips peeled away from his teeth in a fierce grimace. One of his pony-keg fists pulled back and he stepped forward. “You God-damned co—”

“Pa!” Amanda, a distant echo of Reaver save for her eyes and the overt harshness of his face, pulled at his arm. “Not now. Not here.”

Isherwood fumbled with the hem of his jacket, shifting his attention from Lawton to Reaver and finally to Amanda. Her eyes cut through his chest and laid bare his discomfort with being the man in charge at being in such a position of authority.

“We’ve arranged lodging at Jameson’s. It’s starting to get dark, but we’ll make a plan of action in the morning,” Isherwood said.

Reaver’s snarl subsided, his big fist dissolved, and he allowed Amanda and the swaying Silas to lead him back toward the center of town. Isherwood exhaled, blotting his face with the handkerchief. He couldn’t help but watch the odd trio for a moment: the swaying drunkenness of Silas, Amanda’s determined gait, and her father’s limp. After a moment, his attention shifted to Lawton.

“And what was that about?”

Lawton held his pistol in both hands, spinning the cylinder like a child’s toy. “Nothing much. Just… did you see that necklace he was wearing?”

“Yes.”

“Rumor has it those are his wife’s teeth.”

Isherwood braced himself against a quick shiver. In his mind’s eye, he counted the tiny ivory bits dangling at Reaver’s neck. Teeth. “Just a rumor, surely.”

Lawton shook his head. “Possibly. Most rumors have a taint of truth to ‘em.”

The two men began walking. The Sheriff had disappeared during the commotion, and they were alone.

“His wife’s teeth…”

Lawton nodded and slid his revolver back into the holster. “Funny thing, too. He blames me for her death.”

---

Broughton’s Hollow looks like the place to be. Come back next Wednesday for Episode 2 of Black Medicine Thunder and the Sons of Chaos!

© 2010 All rights reserved Aaron Polson

Part 2 ->
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