Tim Curran - Skull Moon

Longtree ran down the trail and caught sight of two riders galloping back in the direction of Wolf Creek. One of which was hunched over in his saddle. The marshal figured he could've picked one of them off, but didn't bother.

There was no point.

One of them was winged and it wouldn't be too hard to find a man with a bullet in his arm.

Particularly when he was the sheriff.

An hour later, Mike Ryan was back at his ranch.

They'd failed; Longtree was still very much alive. That was bad. And what made it worse was that Lauters had taken a bullet in his gun arm. He'd be of no real use for some time…if he ever was again.

It was quiet at the ranch. Most of the men were over at the cookhouse eating or at the bunkhouses playing cards and snoozing. Ryan could hear a harmonica playing somewhere. It was a nice evening, not too cool.

There were men out riding the perimeters of Ryan's lands, twice the usual number, a good idea Ryan thought under the circumstances. And there were men down in the valley with the herds and half a dozen more walking the grounds. Nothing would come in tonight that wasn't supposed to be there.

Ryan had put together an army of over sixty men that would ride at first light against the Blackfeet camp. That problem would be solved, but as for Longtree…that was another matter entirely. He had to be killed and soon. There wasn't enough time to bring in a professional killer and most of those wouldn't care too much to go after a federal marshal, particularly one with Longtree's reputation for cunning.

No, there was only one man for the job.

Ryan himself.

He considered himself a businessman, not a killer. He wasn't fast with a gun, but he was a good shot. Something he'd picked up in the sixties as a buffalo hunter. And he wouldn't need to be fast…he planned on shooting the marshal in the back. It was the way most professionals did it, he knew. Safe, sure. The accepted method.

But it had to be done tonight.

And doing it would mean leaving the security of the ranch.

That was dangerous. But it was equally as dangerous letting Longtree live. He knew the truth of who the rustlers were and who lynched that injun. It was only a matter of time before he obtained the proper warrants. Ryan was a powerful man and he could probably block said warrants for a time, but not forever, not without looking damn guilty.

He devised a plan.

He found one of the men on watch. Cal Shannon. Shannon was a good man, but he liked the wild life and this is what Ryan needed.

"Cal," he told him, "I need you to ride into Wolf Creek for me."

Shannon's eyes lit up. He knew he could stop for a drink and maybe a round of quick fun at Madame Tillie's. "But the watch…"

"I'll get another man."

"What do you need, sir?"

Ryan told him. He was to go see Wynona Spence, the undertaker, and check on the progress of the monument. Have Spence put in writing the progress she was making. Then he was to go to the Serenity Hotel and procure a case of their best champagne. After that, there were some dry goods needed. But before he did any of that, he was to track down Marshal Longtree and tell him to ride up to the ranch immediately. And after these things were done, he could spend the night as he chose. Ryan even slipped him some money.

"No hurry to come back in the morning," Ryan said. "Have a good time. You need a day off, I think."

Shannon hooked up a wagon immediately and rode off.

Ryan took his guns and rode off a few minutes after Shannon was gone. He found a good spot on the trail to spring his ambush. Then he waited. The spot he'd selected was a shelf of rock rising a good twenty feet above the ground. Ryan could lay up here and shoot Longtree in the back as he rode by. There was no margin for error-if he didn't kill Longtree, Longtree would kill him. He had no doubt of that.

But there would be no error here.

Ryan had a Sharps 1875,. 50 caliber. The "Big Fifty" as it was called, a buffalo gun. It could drop a bull with ease. No man would live if hit. And Longtree wouldn't live. It was dark, but the moon was full. Plenty of light to shoot and die by.

Ryan waited.

He figured, at best, it would take a good thirty or forty minutes before Longtree would arrive. He only hoped Shannon could find him. If he couldn't, this entire plan was doomed to failure. It would mean that Ryan would have to go into town himself and shoot the marshal and such an idea was ripe with dangers. But the cold fact remained: Joseph Longtree had to die.

There were no two ways about that.

Ryan wetted his lips and waited for his victim, knowing when the time came, he'd better be damn sure it was Longtree he was shooting and not someone else. The idea of murder didn't sit well with Ryan and if some innocent was killed by accident…no, that was unthinkable.

The wind began to pick up slightly. It had a warmth to it. A mere hint of heat to dispel the cold. It wasn't possible, he knew, but there it was blowing on him, driving the chill from his bones and starting a fire of madness in his brain.

It can't be, he told himself repeatedly, just can't be.

But it was. A warmth that seemed to burn hotter by the moment, an almost feverish heat. A trickle of sweat rolled down Ryan's temple, his shirt clung to his back, an obnoxious gassy smell filled his nose.

By God, what is this?

Then a shadow fell over him: huge, nameless.

Skullhead stood over Ryan, his skin crusted with sores, scant irregular patches of coarse gray fur blowing in the wind. A sickening warmth oozed from his skin in sheets. He'd slipped up the back of the rock outcropping Ryan laid on with a preternatural silence and now he stood at his full height, staring down at the former vigilante with bleeding eyes, his huge skeletal tail whipping like a serpent.

A suffocating stench issued from the beast's hide and it was this, more than anything, that often froze its victims in fear. Skullhead drew in sharp gasps of breath, his head reeling with savage appetite. His stomach growled. His tongue trembled fatly in his mouth.

His lips parted, a guttural bark ripping forth.

He shook his head, momentarily attempting to dislodge the hunger that burned in him like a fever dream. He clawed out for the intelligence to communicate, but it was denied him. Eat, his brain said, kill.

His huge misshapen skull was an architecture of bone knitted with poorly-fitting gray and pink skin, rubbed raw and infested with beetles and worms. He flinched each time one of these parasites worked at a strand of nerve.

Ryan moved then, as Skullhead knew he would. He brought up his weapon and pointed the long barrel at Skullhead's huge plated chest. Blinking his eyes, he pulled the trigger. The chamber explosion was deafening, noise beyond noise, but Skullhead had little time to be angered at this as a. 50 caliber slug ripped through his chest and exploded out his back. Skullhead was thrown from the rocks, an agony that was at once sweet and numbing threading through his chest.

But more than pain, there was rage.

Skullhead scrambled back up the rocks with impossible speed. Ryan brought up his weapon and the beast knocked it from his hands with a single lethal blow. Ryan cowered: crying, whimpering.

Skullhead stood over him. Black blood and bile ran from the hole in his breast. His face was twisted up in a ragged sneer, yellow teeth protruding from the gums like knife blades. He was larger than any man, a giant, his arms longer, his skeletal fingers sharpened stakes. He pressed his face in that of Ryan, enjoying the terror that it produced in the man-making his bladder and bowels void, his eyes roll madly in their sockets. Skullhead licked his cowering face with a spiny tongue, the taste of fear making his loins ache. He drew back his great, bobbing head, lips peeling back inches from slavering jaws that jutted like a steel bear trap.