Tim Curran - Skull Moon

And in those dark days after his tenure as an Indian scout for the army and time spent beating men in the ring, he had little use for anything but money. Men, white or red, were all savages to him. He thought of himself as truly belonging in neither world so he hated equally.

He watched the Indians and they watched him.

A beaten, lean lot they were, all bundled up in rags and moth-eaten blankets and cloaks of dusty despair. Zuni, he figured. They studied him with hateful, mocking eyes sunk in burnished skins. And who were they to look on him like that? These pathetic, hopeless sonsofbitches who begged for crumbs in a white town and warmed themselves around a buffalo shit fire?

Longtree despised them.

He tethered up his horses so the thieving redskins wouldn't make off with them and, gathering up his shotgun and saddlebags, went inside.

There was a fire burning in the hearth and a few depressed and drunken men slouched over shots of whiskey or forgotten card games. The place smelled of piss, sickness, and misery.

There was a Mex behind the bar, a greasy little thing missing an eye.

Longtree set his shotgun on the bar. "Gimme a shot of something," he told the Mex.

The Mex poured him whiskey.

Longtree looked around surreptitiously. "You know a guy named Benner?"

Someone walked up behind him and Longtree turned around real fast, hand on the butt of his Navy Colt.

"I'm Benner," a man said. He was so ravaged by the climate he could've passed for an Arapaho. "You here for the body?"

"Yeah," Longtree said absently. He was listening to the commotion out on the street. The injuns were chanting and pounding gourds and rattling beads. Commingled with the moan of the wind, it all took on a very eerie, haunted sound.

"Heathen Halloween," Benner croaked.

Longtree eyed him up to see if it was a joke. Benner's face was forbidding. "Since when do redskins celebrate that?" Longtree asked. "Halloween's a whiteman's-"

"It don't belong to any Christians," Benner said in a low, guarded voice. "Halloween's a pagan ceremony, my friend."

"Halloween…out here? That's crazy. Out east, maybe, but not here."

Benner shrugged. "That's what we call it. Heathen Halloween. They celebrate it this night every year." He seemed disturbed at the idea. "Now, we'd best get you what you came for."

Longtree downed his shot and followed Benner into a claustrophobic back room. A match was struck and a lantern ignited. There was a wooden box sitting atop a heavy table. It was about six feet in length and looked much like what it was: a coffin. Benner pried open the lid and held the lantern close so Longtree could see.

"Christ," Longtree muttered.

It was some sort of Indian chieftain done up in skins and beads and necklaces of animal teeth. The face had the texture and color of tanned animal hide, the skin just barely covering the ridges of the leering skull beneath. The eyes were empty, grizzled pits, the teeth broken and pitted like deadwood. A beetle crawled out of one eye socket and Benner brushed it aside.

"Almost two-thousand years old," he told Longtree. "Been baking in the sun and drying in the wind since before white men ever set foot here…"

Longtree shrugged and thought of the money they promised him in San Fran for it. A smile brushed his lips. "Some people'll pay good money for anything, I reckon."

But an Indian chief, is what he was thinking. I'm taking money to deliver an Indian chief. That's what it has come down to.

"Those Indians out there," Benner said in a whisper, "usually they have their October heathen service out in the hills where we can't see. But they brought it to town now that he's here. They're mighty ornery about me having stolen him. They want him back. Some sort of god to them, I guess."

"Don't look like a god to me," Longtree said.

Benner was staring at him. "You're kinda dark yourself friend…you ain't got no injun blood in you, do you?"

"No," Longtree lied.

"That's good. I can trust you then, I guess."

Longtree grunted and looked down at the chief and couldn't help shuddering: the old boy looked angry. His leathery, crumbled face was hitched in a sneer, it seemed. There was something else that bothered Longtree, too. Now that he studied the old ghoul's face, there seemed to be something slightly off-kilter about it, almost as if his bones weren't laying quite right. His face had a narrow, inhuman cast to it, the eyes too large, the jaws exaggerated. It was reptilian somehow, suggestive of the skull of a rattlesnake.

"We'll have to take him out the back way," Benner told him, "those injuns'll be angrier than a fistful of snakes if they know he's gone and you're taking him."

Longtree nodded.

Benner suddenly took a step backward, one trembling hand grasping his temples, his lips pale as fresh cream. He was whiter than flour in a sack. His eyes were lunatic, rolling balls shifting in their swollen sockets.

"What the hell is it?" Longtree asked.

Benner shook his head, mouthed a few unintelligible words and then seemed to calm down. For one awful moment he looked as if he'd seen something Longtree hadn't. "I'm okay," he said.

"You accustom to spells?"

"No, I'm fine," Benner assured him. "Just this place, I guess. Gets to a man after a time. Nothing here but injuns and sand and the wind. Goddamn snakes everywhere." He mopped his forehead with a discolored bandanna. "I wish them redskins would take that damn heathen ceremony somewheres else."

Benner put the lid back on the crate and opened the rear door. The wind slammed it violently against the outer wall and both men started. Longtree brought the wagon around. The box didn't weigh much and it was a simple matter to load it.

"Where did you find this, anyway?" Longtree asked him in the whispering darkness.

"Out in the hills," Benner said hesitantly. "Out in some burying ground the injuns call Old God Hollow. Lot of curious things out there. I'm probably the only white man who has ever been to that awful place. It's an ancient place and an evil one, friend, only in your nightmares will you ever see such a thing. Must be ten or fifteen other scaffolds there with injun corpses drying out on them, injuns with devil-faces like his. There's faces carved into the rocks and bones everywhere, piles of 'em. And scalps…Christ. Must be thousands, strung up on poles and not recent ones either, but old things tanned by the wind into leather." He paused, lowering his voice. "This old chief and the others I saw, there's something not right about 'em. I've heard stories about an older race…shit, I don't know. But somebody had to teach them injuns how to scalp folks."

"A fellah down in Tucson told me white folk started that," Longtree said.

Benner grinned. "You believe that, do you?"

"Nope. Just mentioning the fact."

"If you coulda seen them scalps in the Hollow, you'd think different."

"Where is this place?" Longtree asked.

"About ten mile, due east." That crazy look was in Benner's eyes again. "I heard about it from an old Kiowa name of Hunting Lizard or Hopping Lizard, can't remember which. He wasn't much then, just some old rummy who'd sell his soul for a bottle, but I guess in the old days he was some big shot medicine man. He called it the Snake Grounds. Told me there was gold up there, more than a man could carry away in a week. I fell for it. He got a bottle out of the deal and sent some white fool to his death, that being me. No gold there, of course, just them mummies and scalps and other things meant to drive a sane man crazy."

Longtree nodded with disinterest. "Gold, you say? Maybe you didn't look too good."

"Maybe not. I just wanted out. Goddamn place."

"So, you took one of these dead ones instead?"

Benner was brushing the palms of his hands against his pants as if he were trying to rub off some old stink. "Yeah. I was hoping I could sell it to a carnival or something. Damn. The wind was howling like nothing I'd ever heard before and there were snakes everywhere, biguns, coiled around them scalp poles and hiding in the rocks. Rattlers bigger than anything you'd want to see. Must've killed a dozen, barely got out of that devil-yard alive."