Skull Moon

"You get the idea. I only saw him in the flesh once. He came into town with Crazytail and a few of the others to buy some provisions. He sat in the back of the wagon and I tried not to look at him, but I felt his eyes crawling over me like spiders. I turned and he was staring holes through me and those eyes, damn, like steel balls, like glass mirroring the sun. Those eyes caught and held you and they told you things, Marshal, showed you things. Told you that Ghost Hand knew all there was to know about you-all those things you didn't confess to nobody but yourself. He knew your nightmares and dreams, exactly what scared you. And all your dirty little secrets? Yeah, he was privy to them, too.

"Anyway, Ghost Hand had been dead maybe four, five months when I came up here. Damn. It was night and filthy black and the wind was howling and I could hear things moving in the darkness around me. And I swear to God I could hear footsteps crunching through the dry grass and voices whispering. I got up by Ghost Hand's grave and, Christ, I swear I saw him standing there all done up in his funeral finery-robes and beads and bones and his hair squirming around like snakes and his eyes were yellow like a rattlesnake's by firelight and…shit, I was just a kid all worked up and all. I screamed and ran all the way home."

Longtree thought about it. He wasn't about to tell Bowes he'd been imagining things. The very quality of his voice was very convincing. It made Longtree's hackles rise. So he said: "Some of them shaman…they're pretty spooky."

"You have no idea," Bowes said and his voice was filled with dread.

36

"If we're caught here," Bowes said, "we're dead men."

Longtree nodded, saying nothing. They were in the foothills of the Tobbacco Roots, in Blackfeet territory. They brought with them shovels, pickaxes, and enough extra ammunition to turn back the Sioux Nation.

They were taking no chances.

"You come here much?" Longtree asked.

"Just the once," the deputy admitted, "when I was a boy. On that dare…scared the life out of me. And I don't care for it much now."

The Blackfeet cemetery was located in between two forested ridges, in a little, moon-washed valley of dead, clawing trees. This was sacred ground. This was where the Blackfeet buried their dead and had for countless centuries before white men walked this land. Longtree and Bowes were astride their horses in a copse of dark pines, waiting.

"You sure you want to do this?" Bowes asked one final time.

"Yes."

"Are you going to tell me what we're looking for?"

"In due time. Let's go."

Bowes nodded. "It won't matter if we're caught digging or not, just being here and being white is enough reason to be killed."

Longtree pulled his hat down over his brow. "Let's get it over with."

The moon brooded high in the hazy sky, illuminating everything, casting crazy, knife-edged shadows everywhere. A cool wind whistled out of the north, skirting the jagged peaks of the mountains.

They picketed their horses at the foot of a rock outcropping. If they had to get out fast, the horses would be hidden from view. Course, if they had to get out fast, it was unlikely they'd get out of this country at all.

Collecting their rifles, ammo belts, and digging tools, they started into the graveyard. Longtree wasn't sure what it was, but he had an awful feeling in the pit of his belly…a crawling apprehension. He had gone white and cold inside and something had pulled up tight in his belly. He could not adequately put a name to what he felt, only knew that, yes, it was a mixture of fear and anxiety and irrational terror. And that it was very old. An ancient, primal network of horror.

They didn't belong here.

No living thing belonged here.

Longtree thought: Imagination, that's all it is.

But he didn't believe it for a second. No more than he'd believed it when he was caught in that sandstorm in Oklahoma Territory.

Bowes was pressed up close to him and when Longtree stopped, he bumped into him. "Quite a place, eh?" Bowes said, his voice thick like tar. "Anytime you've had enough, you let me know."

Longtree assured him that he would.

Despite the fact that the temperature was hovering just above freezing, there was a stink on the wind, like salts and spices and dry things locked in moldering cabinets. Longtree tried to swallow and couldn't…he didn't have any spit.

Certain they were alone, Bowes lit the lantern. It cast wild, leaping shadows over the graves and mounds. The wind began to pick up, sounding at times like cold, cackling laughter. Vines of mist tangled at their legs.

"Think you can find the grave?" Longtree asked softly.

"I can find the site," Bowes told him. "I know where Crazytail's people are buried…once you see it, you won't forget it. He's part of some society, some weird group. Something funny about it all, if you ask me. I came here on that dare just after sunset that time. And I saw, I saw-"

In the bleak, shivering distance, a wolf began to howl. It was a low, drawn-out mournful baying.