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  And there was something else. Her soft eyes, so like a young fawn’s, the heavy red lips of her broad mouth, pursed together in that oddly disappointed expression, her voluptuous form; she reminds me so much of her. Of Dracula’s wife. His favorite. The feeling was so strong that I was short of breath. My mind wandered everywhere as my mouth spoke I knew not what. And in my mind’s wanderings, I fear it traveled back to the dark place from which I have strived these many months to depart.

  The notion that this woman was that undead creature somehow returned from the final death to which I had delivered her grew and festered in my brain. I began to imagine that all her idle talk was to distract me from the moment when she would lunge at my throat. I think that I endeavored to remain unconcerned, but the idea and the thoughts that naturally accompanied this wildness would not be denied within me. I began to think that I should take some preemptive action against her. In the back of my mind the old bloody images began to take shape again, and in desperation, I realized I was without mallet, stake, or consecrated vial. My only defense against the darkness had become to me as the trappings of madness. Yet I found myself wishing I had not put them away.

  As our conversation went on, I grew more and more distracted. First I thought of what weapons I could improvise. The hatpin of a sleeping woman. The walking stick of a gentleman across the aisle. Then I began to believe that if she truly was trying to lull my suspicions, I might be able to do the same. I would be charming, I thought, perhaps even seductive. I would use the very wiles she was turning against me. And then, while she was under my power...I thought of things I am ashamed now to recall.

  In the end I fell to silence.

  It was all foolishness. The poor woman had her husband’s manservant (a hulk of a man who could speak only Norwegian) drive me most of the way to my destination, and all the while I could provide no conversation whatsoever. I struggled with my own inner troubles, and only mumbled my thanks and a promise to see her again, even after she was kind enough to invite me to her impending wedding celebration.

  Foolishness. In the walk into town I regained my composure. I found my way first to an eatery, thinking to curb my distracted mind with victuals. My steak arrived very bloody. I had not realized my hunger until I was sopping the red juices from the plate with a hard biscuit.

  Now I must set about finding Mr. Coleman Morris, Quincey’s younger brother. Lord Godalming told me all that he knew of the man; his name, and that he was administering the family cattle ranch, somewhere outside the town of Sorefoot, Texas.

  I fear I have much to bring beside Mr. Quincey’s ashes, Bowie knife, revolver and Winchester rifle (which I have noticed a few gentlemen of dubious intent eyeing since my arrival). For what if Mr. Coleman Morris should ask how his brother died? I have noted in the past that there seems to be a certain willingness to believe in the supernatural prevalent among Americans. Some have said it is the inherent primitiveness of the people, but I believe it has something to do with all the mysterious, unsettled space. Our imaginations are not challenged by an empty room until the lights are dimmed and the corners fill with shadows.

  On my walk into town, I noticed two bravos had taken an interest in me and my luggage. I can see them now through the picture window facing the street. They seem to be waiting for me. I have kept Quincey’s revolver loaded in the bottom of my bag, having heard much talk of the propensity for western American passenger trains to be waylaid by bandits. I expect I am about to be initiated into the cult of the ‘Wild West’ as it were. It should prove an exhilarating distraction, and a good prospect for cultural observation.

  CHAPTER 3

  Excerpt From The Personal Papers Of A.N. Crooker, Esq.

  Aug 21

  The sun sets at last on August the 21st, and Alvin Nathaniel Crooker bids it good riddance.

  I am now laid up at the Morris place with my arm swaddled in bandages like the baby Jesus. Yes, it has been rendered quite hole-y thanks to the infamous Harley Crenshaw’s pistola. Harley consecrated this reporter’s flesh quite nicely when he attempted to intervene in the manhandling of what turned out to be another damned foreign immigrant.

  My tribulations began whilst I was chewing the saddle leather that passes for steak over at Gridley’s. I was staring out the window mulling over the whole affair between Early Searls and that Norgie lawyer Vulmere, and getting in a bit of lunch before I rode out to Cole Morris’ place to talk to him about it. It was the biggest bit of news we’d had in Sorefoot since that mountain lion started in on the cows. The biggest news that is, until yours truly spied Harley and Two-Step Crenshaw sizing up some poor old man just into town by the looks of his bags.

  Indeed I do mean the very same Crenshaw brothers who made life so interesting for the employees of the Denison Stage some years back. Harley Crenshaw had a knack for getting mean drunk and blowing holes in things. Though the circuit court never got wind of it, it was generally accepted that one of the last things he’d vandalized with his .44 prior to lighting out with his little brother for Arizona land was a Jewish sheepherder named Levitz. Last I’d heard, the brothers had been snagged holding up the Fort Apache payroll and hauled off to Yuma.

  I didn’t need my spectacles to recognize that crazy shuffle of Two-Step Crenshaw as he and Harley came out from under the shade of the tonsorial parlor’s awning. I had seen him get that shuffle, back when Old Alkali Firebaugh blasted his knee with a Whitney rifle in front of the Sunup Saloon a number of years back.

  As I said, it was the old fellow with the bags that got them twitching. I should have spotted him as a foreigner straight off, with that old greatcoat and that John Bull suit. But he had a Texas hat on, and the stock of a handsome Winchester ‘76 poking out of a fine, tooled scabbard. I took him for a game hunter; probably some easy come swell from back East that got sold on a buffalo hunting holiday and failed to meet his contact at the train station. Joe Furrows had done a good business through the mail for a couple years pulling that very same scheme, never bothering in his glowing letters to tell any of his customers that the buffalo had gone the way of the dodo in this part of Texas years ago.

  This old fool didn’t seem to take any notice of those two as they came down off the porch of the barbershop. They followed him right down the boulevard, nudging each other the whole way like a couple of scheming truants, each one with a hand shading their pistols. Of course no one was allowed to sport sidearms in Sorefoot anymore; not even this reporter, who has necessarily fended off many a rival of free speech in his years as founding editor and top journalist for the Picayune. Sheriff Turlough and his lackwit deputy were not to be found, and thus it fell upon me to see to it this pitiable rube came to no harm.

  The would-be victim came into Gridley’s and sat down and ordered a steak, extra rare. Harley and Two-Step leaned against the post outside and shared a stub of a Contestogie between them, apparently deciding in some flash of gutter gallantry to allow the old man a last supper before they robbed him blind (and possibly made worms’-meat of him). As for the old man, he propped his rifle against the empty chair and opened up his bag. He took out a pen and a ledger and set to scribbling. Marking expenses, no doubt.

  I watched the Crenshaws through the window for a bit, hoping Turlough might show his stupid face by the time the oblivious mark at the next table finished his raw meat. But good fortune was not with me. The old man ate like it was him that had been in Yuma for the past four years, and was soon gathering up his things and heading for the door, a solid dollar on the table for Gridley’s Mexican waitress.

  Well, in all my deliberating I had not got to warning him, and I saw that it was too late for talk.

  I rose from my own half-eaten repast and caught the door as the old gent was letting it fall shut.

  “What say, old timer?” I heard Harley say.

  “Hallo,” the old man said thickly, around a mouthful of lukewarm steer he was still chewing. He licked his fingertips, apparently ignorant to the danger.

 
“You new here?” Two-Step leered, one hand resting on the horse pistol in his pocket. The cigar end was tucked into the corner of his mouth and his yellow and black teeth showed like kernels of Indian corn.

  “Quite,” was the old man’s reply. “As a matter of fact, I wonder if you might help me, my friends...”

  Had I heard his guttural German intonations correctly, I might not have done what I then did, but being behind him, and with the blood thundering in me, I did not. Fool that I am, I actually stepped between the old fellow and the Crenshaw brothers, and struck a heroic pose.

  “Leave the old fellow be, you devils,” I said.

  “I know you,” said Harley, straight off.

  I began to sweat and for all my talk, I was way down in my boots. I had written several unfavorable editorials about the Crenshaw clan back when they had made their home in Sorefoot, but I had assumed that, being illiterate, they had never had the opportunity to read them. Either they were not so uneducated as I had thought, or some friend of theirs’ had read the paper to them, for Harley next said:

  “Yes. I know you. You’re that son of a bitch with a pen.”

  And he took out his pistol as easily as most men will take out a hankie or a pocket knife.

  Then I was shot. I deduced this, having seen the smoke burp out of his ugly little gun, and heard the crack in my ears, and moreso, because I felt my arm break just below the elbow, as though I were some fool Philistine that had crept up on Goliath and caught a stray one from the jawbone of the ass.

  I fell back swearing against the old man, and he caught me. And I’ll be damned if when he dropped his bag to the boards there wasn’t a revolver in his hand. In a half a second he was firing under my arm, so close I could feel the heat of the muzzle flash singeing my underarm hairs.

  The old man was not Wild Bill Hickok, but with all the shooting he did, one of the bullets did manage to find a home in Harley’s nose. He yelped and fell back, spitting blood and septum.

  Two-Step had stood quite still during all this, bewildered as a wolf that had seen a rabbit turn and kick. As soon as he saw his brother fall, he forgot to be stupefied and pulled his six gun, the cigar dropping from his lips, an indication that real business was about to be done.

  I was sure that our game was played out, as the click of his revolver told me the old man’s wheel had run dry of beans. But by then I didn’t care much anyways, as my legs gave way and I struck my head on the edge of the porch and lay flat like a good newspaperman at last. As a final indignity, I lay my hand right on Two-Step’s discarded cigar, burning myself.

  I lay there staring up at the old wasp’s nest clinging to the roof over Gridley’s porch and thinking what a shame it was the old man was going to get rubbed out, when I heard a yell from across the street followed directly by a couple more shots. When I was through feeling sorry for my arm (and my burnt palm), I sat up and saw Two-Step Crenshaw lying dead in the street with Old Alkali Firebaugh hobbling up, his trusty Whitney rifle (possibly the same one that had given Two-Step his limp) swinging in his hand.

  As for that old Dutchman, he was kneeling over me as unconcerned by the bullet show and dead man as Daniel was with the lions.

  “My friend, you are alright?” he said to me.

  Bad enough to have a damn foreigner pluck my fat from the flames, but then to my intense embarrassment, my only answer was to faint dead away.

  When I came to, I was spread out like a plate of steak and eggs on one of Gridley’s tables, and the Dutchman was leaning over me in his shirtsleeves, smiling like a fox with a mouthful of hen.

  Behind him stood the ever-punctual Sheriff Turlough, his patented confused expression worn low on his fat face. Old Alkali was standing beside him with his big lumpy fist on his hip, grinning from behind his huge, drooping silver mustache.

  “Yessir, I’d say that was hands down the fastest patchin’ up job I ever did see. Faster’n any American doctor I been subjected to yet, that is.”

  Old Alkali knew what he was talking about of course. He had been in as many scrapes and taken as many wounds as there were states in the Union. Some said he was only held together by scar, scab, and baling wire. He had one eye, one ear, one leg, and one hand, but he liked to say that he had purposefully gotten rid of one of every pair (except his balls) on his body because he’d found each loss had given his enemies less to shoot at. Despite his questionable past, he is one of the most prominent horse traders in the county, so maybe all these sacrifices on the altar of luck had paid off.

  “You better think twice about playin’ lawman again, Mr. Crooker,” Turlough said to me, as though he was offended we had gotten so much done without his help.

  Alkali cackled and said, in his gravelly snarl;

  “Yeah! This Dutchman might not be there to save you next time!”

  “On the contrary,” said the Dutchman. “This man sought only to keep an old tenderfoot from harm. He is much to be commended for his bravery.” He touched a hand to his chest. “I am Professor Abraham Van Helsing.”

  “Alvin Crooker,” I muttered, thankful that he didn’t insist on shaking hands, as my own was freshly sensitive from grabbing the lit end of Two-Step’s cigar.

  “A professor, no less!” Alkali laughed.

  Alkali stuck out his paw to the Dutchman, while I sat up easy on the table and poked at my swollen arm.

  “Aurelius Firebaugh. Friends call me Alkali. Horses are my game. Whereabouts you from, Professor?”

  “Amsterdam,” he answered, squeezing Alkali’s good hand.

  “Sounds like a long way...”

  “It’s in Europe,” I said.

  “Say, that is a long way,” Alkali whistled. “Well, Professor, I can respect a surgeon that’s as good at makin’ holes as he is pluggin’ ‘em up. Even if he is from Amsterdam. Meanin’ no offence, but what in hell’s name are you doin’ in Sorefoot?”

  “It is not in hell’s name that I come, but in the name of sorrow. I bring ill tidings to Mr. Coleman Morris.”

  Alkali looked perplexed.

  “Ill tidings, you say? Well, I don’t know that he’ll be wantin’ anything like that...Cole’s a self-sufficient sort. You some kinda medicine peddler?”

  “He means he’s got bad news for Cole,” I clarified.

  “He’s had enough bad news, I’d say,” said Sheriff Turlough. “Lost a brand new hound and his foreman in as many days.”

  “You still here, Sheriff?” I asked bitterly.

  “I got to take the Professor’s statement. He did shoot Harley Crenshaw in the nose with a pistol he ain’t supposed to have inside city limits.”

  “If you’d been out on the street, it never would’ve gone down the way it did.”

  “Ja,” said the Professor. “I forget. Is the poor man I shot alive?”

  “He’ll live, I guess,” Turlough said.

  “Lucky he won’t be able to smell your cooking down in the jailhouse, Sheriff,” I muttered. “He’d be likely to try and break out.”

  “Please, you take me to him, Sheriff,” said Van Helsing. “I want to make sure. I should hate to think he might bleed to death for want of proper medical care.”

  It took some doing to convince the Professor that Doc Ravell would be better off treating Crenshaw’s wound. For a man so game under fire, he is a real dutiful sort when it comes to sticking to the letter of the Hippocratic Oath. As for Turlough’s need for an official statement, I told him to read about it in the next day’s edition. He made a half-hearted attempt to detain Alkali for the killing of Two-Step, but Alkali just laughed it off. Turlough went off looking steamed and ineffectual as always.

  So it was that I found myself indebted to a Dutchman (and a proper Dutchman, not a German) - not something I cared to leave alone. I offered, with the help of Alkali, to whom the both of us were indebted, thanks to his timely intervention in the whole affair, to take the Professor to Cole Morris’ place. I had been planning a visit anyway, to get a statement for the Picayune on Early’
s arrest and the troubles with the Skoll outfit. Alkali agreed to cart us over in his buggy. It was on his way.

  I didn’t inquire further as to the Professor’s ‘ill tidings,’ as I figured it would all play out before my eyes anyway when we got to the ranch. Instead, I conducted an impromptu interview with my intrepid companions, taking notes and wondering how I would find time to set the type for an article on the shooting.

  Van Helsing told us he was a Professor at the University of Amsterdam, where he taught biological science. A pretty weighty claim, if there is any truth to it. I still don’t comprehend how a doddering old schoolmaster comes to carry a revolver in his book bag; nor do I understand how he handles it, if not expertly, at least with the alacrity of one not unaccustomed to handling firearms (and having them handled back at him). I suspect in my guts that he is on the run from something. It will make for good copy if he is.

  When we got to the Morris place, it was nearly dusk. The Mexican cook, Pepperbelly, was sitting on the porch cutting up potatoes. He stood when Alkali drove his buggy up the road, and called into the house.

  Cole stepped out to meet us. He had a hound limping at his heels, and the beast looked out of sorts. I wondered if it was one of the ones that had been reported killed by the lion. If it had tangled with that cat, it was lucky. Three other farm dogs had gotten torn wide open for their trouble. This one looked to have traded its left eye for a brand new limp. It hobbled toward us, growling uncertainly till Cole hushed it.

  I have never thought of Cole Morris as a pleasant fellow. Surely the charm in his family dwelled in his late mother and his elder brother Quincey, who left for parts unknown in pursuit of a South American girl years ago. Cole is no dandy the way Quincey was. He takes after his daddy, Captain Morris. Quincey always favored silk shirts and fancy clothes, whereas his little brother was content to sport hide chapaderos and trail dust.