Skull Moon

"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."

Longtree said, "Country's full of snakes."

"Not like these, friend, not like these." Benner was grinning like a desert-stripped skull. "If you coulda seen 'em, seen what was in their demon eyes…"

"I'd best be on my way," Longtree told him, wanting nothing more than to get out of that damn town.

"I hope God rides with you, son."

Longtree paid him and unhitched his horses.

"Good luck," Benner said and was gone.

A few of the injuns were eyeing up Longtree and what he had under the tarp in the back of the wagon. He set out his shotgun and Navy sixes on the seat next to him.

If it's killing you want, it's killing you'll get, Longtree thought at them. This old boy's going to a museum, Heathen Halloween or not.

The Indian's chanting took on a raw, expectant tone, the lot of them dancing in crazy circles, shaking bone and feather talismans and waving skulls about.

Longtree urged the horses around facing the way he'd come and started to make his run. He'd barely gotten them up to a trot before the Indians made their move. They came on foot, brandishing knives and ceremonial spears. They were a howling pack of crazy men, their eyes bulging, blood boiling like hot tar. If Longtree had ever seen true religious fervor reach its ugly, insane climax before, he would've known what this was, but he never had. He only knew they stood between him and freedom, him and a lot of cash.