Skull Moon

Longtree examined him minutely with aid of the lantern. His neck was twisted at an odd angle from the hanging and his skin had shriveled to a blotched brown that clung to the skull beneath. Beyond that, the cold and soil had stopped any real decay.

"Well?" Bowes asked impatiently.

Longtree covered Red Elk back up and wrapped the blanket over him. "Nothing. I'm relieved. Very, very, relieved."

"What did you expect to find?"

Longtree ignored the question and filled in the grave. Bowes helped him pile the rocks back in place. In a few days, after the frost settled back in, no one would know the grave had been tampered with.

"Look at this," Bowes said.

Longtree looked where he indicated. Another grave, an ancient one by the look of it, had been opened. Rocks were scattered aside. All that remained of the grave was a four-foot deep trench. But it was gigantic. Far too large for a man. You could've buried a horse in there. Maybe a couple of them.

"That grave was opened," Longtree said. He pawed in the trench with his shovel. "Empty. Now why do you suppose the body was carted away?"

Bowes shook his head.

Longtree took the lantern to another grave a few yards away. This one was particularly ornamented with skull poles and painted up hides on frames and slabs of rock covered with drawings and writings that were obscured by the years. There were no less than half a dozen human skulls here and twice that many of wolves. Some of the poles had fallen, the skulls shattering like brittle yellow porcelain. It looked to be very ancient.

"Who do you suppose is down there?" Longtree asked. "Ghost Hand?"

"No, he's farther up on the next hill."

"I'd say whoever it was must have been important."

Bowes licked his lips. "They're all important up here. All big, bad medicine men," he told Longtree. "But this one…shit, he's been in the ground a hundred years or more. Maybe twice that."

Longtree was thinking the very same thing. He wasn't sure why, but he was certain there was an answer up here somewhere. And this grave…it was so ornamented, so well-tended…it spoke to him.

Longtree removed a stretched yellowed skin atop the cairn and it came apart in his fingers like candied glass. He began to loosen the stones with powerful swings of the pickax.

"I'm finished," Bowes said, throwing up his hands. "I wanna know what the hell this is all about."

Longtree kept working. "When we find it-if we find it-you'll know."

"Goddammit, Marshal, I'm risking my neck out here! Tell me what's going on or I'm riding out!" Bowes shook all over. Then, calmer, "Digging up Red Elk's one thing, but this one…Christ, he's been dead for centuries. What can he have to do with anything?"

"I hope nothing," Longtree panted.

Bowes spat. "Damn you, Longtree." He came over and started working.

It took them longer to take apart this cairn. Countless generations of rains, freezes, and baking summers had welded the rocks together as if they'd been mortared in place.

When they were done, both men had long since shed their coats, sweat steaming on their faces. A slab of rock was beneath the cairn, this one painted with things that were neither animals nor men. They had to use the shovel handles like levers to slide it free. And then they had to chop through the frost line and the hard packed earth beneath.

The wind had picked up considerably, howling out of the north. Wolf hides and moldering ceremonial blankets rustled and snapped on sagging willow frames. That wolf started up in the distance, baying its ancient dirge. The pale moon looked down, piercing the grotesque, dancing shadows.

Longtree found the first tattered remains of something like a skin-tarp and the two of them cleared away dirt and rubble. The tarp came apart in their fingers, rotted and half-frozen.

"Christ," Bowes said, turning away, "that stink."

Longtree smelled it, too: A heavy, thick smell of decay and grave mold. An odor nothing dead for untold years had the right to possess. It was a black smell, a suffocating evil odor of slaughterhouses and disturbed graves.

"This ain't right," Bowes said in a weak voice.

The grave, once completely unearthed was huge. Gigantic.

The body was stitched up in a hide shroud, too, but blackened with age, covered in spots with mildew and damp gray fungi. And it was not buffalo skin. It had a smoother texture. Was very fine. Longtree suspected human skin, but didn't mention the fact. Whatever it was, given the size, it had taken a lot of pelts.

Longtree slit it open, not being too careful. His fingers trembled. The baying of that wolf took on a high, shrill pitch. Swallowing, Longtree pulled back the shroud. Bowes held the lantern.

"Jesus in Heaven," he muttered.

Longtree backed away, his skin cold and tight with gooseflesh. A nameless dark madness teased at his brain.

Whoever it had been…he wasn't human. He was a giant.