Skull Moon

Lauters licked his lips. "You killed him?"

"He didn't give me much choice."

Lauters pushed past him and went outside.

"If I didn't know better," Longtree said, "I'd think the sheriff was disappointed Gantz didn't succeed."

40

There was a light, cool mist in the air by the time Lauters made it out to Mike Ryan's ranch. Ryan had one of the largest ranches outside Wolf Creek and he was, without a doubt, the richest man in that part of the Montana Territory. He had some seven hundred head of cattle at present and twice that amount in another ranch near Bannack. He owned several hotels in Nevada and Virginia Cities as well as a variety of dance halls, saloons, and gambling halls. He was a major stockholder in several copper and silver mining companies and sat on the board of directors at the Union Pacific Railroad.

Ryan was waiting for Lauters as he rode up.

"What happened, Mike?" Lauters asked.

"Hell broke loose, Bill."

Ryan had dispatched a rider to fetch the sheriff. At the time, Lauters was at Spence's undertaking parlor with Longtree and his deputy, having a look at the man Longtree had killed. He was glad to be called away. He had an ugly feeling Longtree knew damn well that he'd had something to do with Gantz' attack.

A ranch hand brought the two men mugs of steaming coffee as they walked through the grounds. The ranch was like a little city. Ryan's huge white house sat serene and omnipotent on a hill overlooking everything, its great carved pillars and fancy latticework gleaming in the weak sunlight. Below, was a sprawl of buildings-bunkhouses for the men, livery barns, log barns, outbuildings, a fine insulated ice house set in a low hill, a smithy's shop, a cookhouse twice the size of Lauters' home, and an intricate network of working corrals stretching off towards the horizon.

It was all very impressive.

"Tell me what's been happening in this town, Bill," Ryan said. Ryan had only arrived back in Wolf Creek the day before after some six weeks spent touring his various holdings.

Lauters laid it all out for him. About the killings and the inhuman nature of them, putting special emphasis on who the murdered men were. He spoke of Longtree and Bowes and the death of Gantz.

"That injun's gonna be trouble, I take it?" Ryan said.

"More than you can imagine, Mike."

Ryan nodded. "A federal officer, too. That could make things difficult for us. He's not some sodbuster no one will miss."

Lauters nodded, knowing this all too well.

"But every problem has its solutions." Ryan said this with total conviction.

They came to a corral near the house and Lauters saw the reason he'd been called…or one of them. This was where Ryan kept his racing horses. These animals had been, once upon a time, his pride and joy, but now…now they were so much meat. Lauters was looking at the slaughtered remains of some five thoroughbred horses. They had all been disemboweled and decapitated, the flesh stripped down to muscle, the hides ripped free and draped on the fence. They were partially eaten, but food didn't seem to be the primary reason for this carnage. The heads lay in the frozen mud, staring up with bulging eyes.

"I loved these animals," Ryan said calmly. "I truly did. Much as a man like myself can love. Whatever did this…is as good as dead."

"Looks like the work of an animal, but…"

"But with a man's twisted intelligence behind it," Ryan interrupted. "An animal will kill for food, to protect itself, but only a man kills for the sport of it. Only a man does something like this."

"Longtree's got it in his head that we're dealing with something that might be a little of both, so I hear."

"Tell me," Ryan said. He wasn't asking, he was demanding.

Lauters told him everything Bowes had said, even the bit about what they'd seen up at the burial ground. "A load of crap, if you ask me."

"Deputy Bowes doesn't strike me as the sort of man who makes up tales."

"Yeah, but-"

"But nothing, Bill. Longtree might be a pain in the ass, but he's right about one thing-we've got ourselves a monster here."

Lauters just stared.

"Don't look at me like that, Sheriff," Ryan snapped. "The evidence speaks for itself. I was in Virginia City last night and…that thing must have come for me. When it couldn't get me, it got what I loved best-my horses. Tonight it'll probably come again, maybe for me, maybe for you."

Lauters swallowed. These were things he had thought about quite a bit, but had dismissed as fantasy. Hearing another man say them made it all that much harder to brush them aside.

Ryan turned away from the bitten, clawed horses. "It came last night…and no one heard a thing." He threw his mug of coffee into the snow. "I have nearly a hundred men here, Bill, and no one heard a goddamn thing. I've heard horses die, I've heard the sounds they make when a hungry wolf pack sets on them…it carries for quite a distance. Anything that can slaughter five horses and do it silently, is no mere animal, no man."

Lauters looked skeptical. "But a monster…"