Skull Moon

"Oh God," Weiss stammered. "God in Heaven…you're dead…" He fell backwards out of his chair as Brickley and Hannion went for their guns. Longtree shot Brickley in the face, his head pulping in a spray of blood and bone. Hannion pulled his gun and took his in the chest, hitting the floor and flopping about, pissing rivers of red.

Longtree broke open the shotgun, emptied the chambers, and fed in two more shells. He stepped over the corpses and towered above Weiss. Weiss was trembling on the floor, his crotch wet where he'd pissed himself, bits of the other two men sticking to him.

"Where's my horse?" Longtree asked him. "My guns?"

Weiss shuttered, unable to talk.

Longtree kicked him in the face, the boot-spur slicing off the end of his nose and dumping the man in the wreck of Hannion. Weiss screamed, left arm sunk up to the elbow in the bloody crater of Hannion's chest. Longtree grabbed him by the hair and pulled him to his feet.

"My things," he said in a deadpan voice. "Now."

Barely able to walk, Weiss led him out of the saloon and through the screaming wind to the livery stable. A lamp burned in there; a grizzled old man oiled a bridle. He saw the blood on Weiss. Saw Longtree's badge and fled.

Weiss pointed to Longtree's horse and saddlebags, his bedroll and weapons lying in the corner. Then he fell to his knees, crying, whimpering, drool running down his chin.

"Don't kill me, Marshal! Oh, God in Heaven, don't kill me!" he rambled in a broken, lisping voice. "Please! They made me do it! They made me!"

Longtree kicked him in the face again and the man howled in agony.

Sighing, Longtree turned to his things and went through them. Everything was in order, save the warrants and wanted fliers of the men-they were missing. His gun belts and nickel-plated Colts were untouched. His Winchester rifle had been emptied of cartridges. Nothing else had changed.

Behind him, he heard Weiss make a run for it.

Longtree turned quickly and let him have both barrels. The impact threw Weiss through the doors, his midsection pulverized. He hit the ground a corpse. Only a few ripped strands of meat held him together.

The killing done, Longtree sat down and smoked.

5

Later, after he'd hauled the corpses to the undertaker's and arranged for their burials using the outlaws' horses and guns as payment, Longtree hit the trail. He rode up to the camp of the Flathead and gave Swift Fox the horse and gun back, thanked the man.

And then he was gone.

Longtree didn't like Bad River. It had a stink of death and corruption about it. And if the truth be told, there were few frontier towns that did not. And the reality of this brought a bleak depression on him.

So he rode.

He headed east to Fort Phil Kearny where orders from the U.S. Marshals Office would be awaiting him.

And that night, the air stank of running blood.

6

The switchman was a big fellow.

He went in at nearly three-hundred pounds and though some of it was fat, much of it was hardened lanky muscle accrued from a lifetime of hard work. His name was Abe Runyon and in his fifty years, he'd done it all. He'd driven team and rode shotgun on a stage in the Colorado Territory. He'd been foreman for the Irish gangs that laid track from Kansas City to Denver for the Kansas Pacific Railroad. He'd logged some. Trapped some.

Of all things, he liked railroad work best.

And tonight especially. A storm was hitting southwestern Montana with a vengeance. The sky was choked with snow and already some six inches had fallen, propelled with gale-force intensity by winds screaming down from the Tobacco Root Mountains. Runyon was sitting in a signalman's shack, playing solitaire before the glow of a lantern. Outside, the wind was screaming, making the little shack tremble.

Runyon cursed under his breath, knowing he'd have to spend the night out here. Knowing he'd been a damn fool to be inspecting track with the clouds boiling and belching in the first place.

There'd be no whiskey tonight.

It would be just him and his cards and the little wood stove that kept him warm.

"Damn," he said.

He bit off the end of a cigar and lit it with a stick match, spitting out bits of tobacco. Snow was beginning to drift in the corner, forced by the wind through any available crevice. Runyon stuffed a rag in there. It would serve for a time.

Swallowing bitterly at his luck this night, he wiped his hands on his greasy overalls and sat back down to his card game.

And this is when he heard the sound.

Even with the howl of the wind and the rattle of the shack, he heard it: someone out back rifling through the woodpile.

Runyon knew who it was.

Getting up, he grabbed his light Colt double-action. 38 and opened the door. Snow and wind rushed in at him. And despite his size and strength, he was pushed back a few feet. Gritting his teeth and squinting his eyes, he forced himself out, pounding through the drifts that came up to his hips at times. Out back, he caught the thieves in the act.