A Congregation of Jackals Read online

  Quinlan told us that he had counted two hundred and thirty Appanuqi in this settlement, which was made up of mostly warriors—the closer to white men they got, the more braves in a settlement, it seemed. A few of them sat by the fire, but most were asleep in their wigwams.

  We rode down a steep switchback trail they had carved in the side of the gorge. As we descended, they starting calling out to each other. The toddler told us that they were saying “Eight white men,” and some were saying “Breakfast rides in.” The Appanuqi were also cannibals. Quinlan lit the cigar in his mouth, as did the twins.

  By the time we reached the bottom a score of braves had gathered to meet us, hatchets out. Quinlan and the twins lit the fuses of three grenades with their cigars and lobbed them into the group—the metal balls exploded the moment they hit the ground, they timed it so perfectly. Nine Indians lay dead and six more lay dying in the dirt, their faces half blown off, their sides blackened, some limbs gone and shrapnel burning in their guts.

  Quinlan looked at the toddler and said, “Tell them we want to speak to the chief.” The toddler called out the words in Appanuqi.

  More braves came out of wigwams, and I was thankful that I saw no women or children. J looked ill, D was covered with sweat and the other fellow clenched his teeth like he did when he was angry. A dozen braves gathered on our right to charge in, but the twins lobbed two more grenades that exploded the moment they were at shoulder level and blew off most of their heads. Most of them died instantly, but a few fell to the ground shrieking from exposed skulls. It was horrible.

  D saw two Indians raise spears and I saw one with a strange bow. We put bullets in their hearts and dropped them. In the silence after those shots, none of the Appanuqi moved.

  To the toddler, Quinlan said, “Tell them to send the chief out now or we’ll kill every last brave and sodomize the women.” The toddler called out in Appanuqi and the Indians looked amongst themselves, unsure what to do. A voice called out from the round building of flat stones and the Indians dropped to their knees and tilted their heads as if God had spoken. An Indian with a headdress made out of at least twenty bird skulls and clothing made from bear fur walked outside through the fabric door of the building. This was the chief. He held a leash attached to a Mexican with curved legs and a lumpy head who walked beside him on all fours like a pet. The Mexican’s jaw was wrecked and wouldn’t shut and his tongue hung out like a dog’s and all of his fingers were missing. This was one of the grotesques we had heard about and it was very hard to look upon him.

  The chief walked up and I saw that he was about fifty, but still strong and full of fire. He had snake spines woven into his long hair and a tattoo of a bird upon his forehead.

  He looked at the toddler and said some angry words, though he did not yell, but before the toddler translated, Quinlan said, “Tell him to look at me when he talks. I am the leader.” The toddler translated Quinlan’s words and the chief filled up with anger like a kettle with bubbles on the fire, but he looked over at Quinlan and repeated himself.

  Quinlan said, “Tell him to kneel when he addresses me,” which we all knew was going to create some real trouble. J, D, the other fellow and I drew our guns; the twins dropped down from their horses. The toddler translated.

  Seven braves rushed us. I put down two, D put down three and J and the other fellow each dropped one. We were scared and there was no hesitation at all from any of us.

  The twins walked over to the chief. The moment he dropped his leash, the Mexican grotesque scrambled off. The twins broke a couple of the chief’s ribs and his nose and then stepped back. Quinlan told the toddler to tell the chief to kneel again and this time the man did. The cowed Indian looked up at Quinlan and asked a question, something with less pride and fire than whatever he had said before.

  The toddler translated, “ ‘What do you want of the Appanuqi?’ ”

  “Tell him that they all must obey me. I am the new chief.” The toddler translated Quinlan’s demand. The chief gaped in horror. The Appanuqi nearby looked fearfully at their leader.

  The chief spoke his reply. The toddler translated, “ ‘I am the chief.’ ”

  Quinlan reached to the side of his saddle, where he’d hung a burlap bag earlier that day. I didn’t know what was in it. He tossed it to the ground in front of the chief. One of the twins pointed his gun at the chief’s head, the other one untied the bag and emptied it on the ground right in front of him. It was two pounds of horse dung. The chief began to shake as he filled up with rage.

  “Tell him to eat all of that,” Quinlan said to the toddler. The toddler translated. The chief started to get up, but the nearest twin pistol-whipped him three times on the ear until blood was running out.

  “Eat,” Quinlan said, and that didn’t need to be translated. The chief put his hands in the dung and pulled up some and put it in his mouth. He gagged, but he did not vomit. The Appanuqi grew somber as they watched their god-chief desecrate himself this way for ten minutes. He ate the whole thing and I couldn’t watch, nor could any of my men. He didn’t vomit, which only made it worse.

  Quinlan said, “Ask him who the chief is.” The toddler asked in Appanuqi and the chief bowed to Quinlan in response.

  “Tell your tribesmen that they must listen to me.” The chief looked at his people with tears in his eyes and spoke. The toddler nodded his verification that the chief had spoken true.

  That was how we got more than two hundred Appanuqi under our heels. It was the first part of the plan Quinlan had plotted but hadn’t yet explained to us in full. He said if things went well from there on out, there would be no more killings, just earnings with very little in the way of personal risk. It seemed we had already done the hard part and though the Tall Boxer Gang considered leaving Quinlan after that terrible night, it would be foolish to pass up easy money after what we already went through to get it. That was what we thought, anyhow.

  The next day we marched the whole tribe out of their settlement and went back east and a little to the north. If an Indian dawdled or acted up, the twins were there like gnats, throwing fists into them, giving black eyes, busted lips and broken noses to the offenders. Once they shot a brave who fought back and then urinated on his body in front of the rest. The twins seemed to enjoy doing stuff like this.

  We pushed the Indians hard—they were on foot and we were up on horses—so that by the time we made camp late that day they were beat. We let them rest and also eat some of the meat they brought with them. They ate wolves and snakes mainly, though we did see some human parts in there too.

  We were in a gorge about two miles from a town called Vaca Vieja, a place where people were getting into copper mining, something that would pay off big once the railway finally got there. These long-term investors were the richest kind of men, since they don’t need anything and all they do is sit around and gamble and go to brothels and watch themselves get fatter. So there was a lot of money in that town, but it wasn’t centralized in a bank, because it was just a bunch of rich investors staking their claims, hiring workers and setting up operations and also some tradesmen doing their own business. It seemed that nobody could rob a place like this, but Quinlan had figured out a way. Though most Irishmen I’d known drank a lot, Quinlan didn’t ever—he just sat around thinking, which I guess is when these schemes came to him.

  That night we led the Appanuqi to an open plain near the town. Quinlan told the chief to make the Indians do a war dance and beat their drums and holler like devils. The Appanuqi cavorted and yelled and yipped liked wild animals, and the streets of Vaca Vieja got empty real quick. After the dance we led the Indians back to the gorge.

  The next morning, Quinlan and I left the other six to watch the Indians and we rode into Vaca Vieja. More buildings were being made than currently stood completed and men from the East walked around the town in suits with all sorts of flaps and unnecessary stuff dangling down. There were about three hundred people there total. Quinlan and I found the deputy and told
him that we needed to speak to the mayor, quick. The deputy asked what for and we told him it was about those Appanuqi. He didn’t delay after that.

  The mayor was a small nervous fellow with a red face and a runny nose. Quinlan said to him, “We’ve been tracking those Indians since they massacred a caravan. What did they do out on that plain last night?”

  “They made fires and danced crazy, yipping wild, beating drums and calling out blasphemies.”

  Quinlan shook his head solemnly and looked at me and I did the same, playing along. Quinlan then looked at the mayor (the fellow seemed about to cry) and said, “The Appanuqi have marked Vaca Vieja for purging.”

  The mayor went white as milk and asked what could be done—should he evacuate the town, or something like that. He was an Eastern tenderfoot and had never seen any real trouble in his life, it was clear. Quinlan said, “If you take to the plains, that’ll make it even easier for them to slaughter you all.”

  “But we can’t defend against a tribe of Appanuqis,” the mayor said.

  Quinlan told him, “I know how to drive them off, I’ve done it before.” The mayor’s face lit up like a child’s. Quinlan went on, “But it’s a great risk to me and my posse.” The mayor, so excited about salvation, said that the town would pay us whatever we thought fair. Quinlan said, “You’ll pay us one hundred thousand now and another hundred after we send them running.” The mayor had not expected such a large sum to be named and his mouth hung open for a bit before he asked if it could be less. “No,” Quinlan said. “That’s what it costs for us to turn them. Last time I lost seven men.”

  “Good men,” I added for effect. And so the mayor called a meeting, got us the money and paid us the half up front.

  So that night we playacted just what you’d expect—the Indians came out of the plains and at the town making so much noise nobody could hear anything and then we rode out of the town toward them, shooting in the air. We knocked some down and the twins killed a dozen, but they turned and ran back into the plains as soon as the toddler told them to scat.

  We went back and collected the rest of our fee. That first time, everything went smoothly and we were treated like heroes. We divvied the spoils evenly. Quinlan was fair about it even though it was his scheme.

  The thing with a plot like this is that once the word spreads about it, it gets spoiled, so we needed to do it a few times fast to take full advantage of it. We rode the Appanuqis hard the very next day and got to a town where they did their war dance for the setup. Quinlan and I rode in the next morning and spoke to the mayor using the same lines as before and the fellow went for it, though he was a tougher man and the town was poorer so he could only give us half as much.

  We pushed to another town the next day called Rope’s End and the Indians were exhausted beyond telling and starting to act up and behave ornery. One came at me while I was eating and I shot him down. The twins shot holes into a couple of others who’d been making trouble and then kicked around the bodies for a bit. But the big thing was that the chief killed himself in some way we never figured out, his eyes wide open and a grin frozen on his face.

  After the chief died, the tribe was different. They had that look in their eyes, that empty look like when a man has decided he’s better off feeding the worms than doing any more living. D and I pointed this out to Quinlan, but the Irishman had no interest in deviating from his plan.

  That night, when the Appanuqis did the war dance for the setup of our plot, it gave me chills. They beat the drums harder and louder than before and then they began to scrape their own faces with their fingernails until they were bleeding and had shreds of skin hanging down. I swear I heard a deep voice come out of that ceremony that didn’t come from any man or woman, though I couldn’t tell you where it did come from.

  Then the Appanuqi started slapping and punching each other, getting angrier and angrier and more wild, all the while shrieking and moaning and dancing to the drums. They picked up rocks and caved in the heads of the dozen grotesques and then began to howl in unison. And then they turned to the town of Rope’s End and ran directly for it, shrieking, their faces ripped up and their tomahawks out. I knew that they were going to slaughter the whole town for real.

  “We’ve gotta stop them,” I said to my men, who were beside me. We exchanged a look that said everything about how bad it was and what we had to do. We drew our guns on Quinlan and his crew, who had not seen it coming.

  The Irishman did not loose his temper but stared at me calmly. “You’re gonna help stop them,” I said to him, but he shook his head. “Then give me those grenades,” I said, waving my gun at his nose. He did and so did the twins. J and the other fellow tied them up so they wouldn’t shoot us in the backs. We left them there and rode into town to do what we could.

  The first thing I see when I get to the edge of Rope’s End is a brave pulling the scalp from a fourteen-year-old girl. I shoot him in the head and he drops next to her. She is crying and still alive, part of her scalp still attached to her head like a tent flap. I vomit so violently tears filled my eyes, but I keep riding in, shooting Appanuqis and throwing grenades when I see a bunch of them, but since they are so scattered, a grenade isn’t much better than a bullet and I am no expert with them like Quinlan and the twins. J, D and the other fellow do the same, taking down Indians, but those devils are everywhere and it is hell.

  After ten minutes I can no longer tell the screams of the savages from my own. At some point, J gets knocked out and takes an arrow, so he sees less than the rest of us do. I almost shoot the other fellow by accident and I can see the madness in his eyes that’s begging me to do it and end it all for him right then. D is sobbing hysterically the whole time we are defending Rope’s End and I’d never once seen him cry before, no matter what.

  I am sorry about the drops on the paper, I hope you can still read through the smudges.

  Houses are burning and screams are coming from all directions and the smell of burning corpses is the only smell. I run into a saloon where four Appanuqis are biting pieces off of a screaming woman’s leg whose head they have covered with a spittoon. I shoot them down, but not before she bleeds out. I go out and see a teenage boy shoot a brave and then have his face split down the middle by a tomahawk so that his brain shows.

  We tried to put them down, but the Appanuqis won. The townsfolk of Rope’s End were massacred. Sixty or seventy Indians survived and ran back up to where we’d left Quinlan and his crew tied up. D, the other fellow and I found J, put him on a horse, and rode out the other way.

  We disbanded right after that. We just wanted to get far, far way from the evil we’d been involved in. For the next two years I did a lot of drinking and thought of killing myself plenty, but I didn’t for some reason and when I met you I felt you were the reason, which I still think when I ponder you and the kids.

  We had thought Quinlan and the twins and the toddler were killed by the Appanuqi, but the telegram I got from J said otherwise. Quinlan never knew anything but our first names, but as I’ve said before, he’s smart and could’ve figured things out somehow. You can see why I think there’s a fair chance I might be killed in the Montana Territory and also why I had to go out and meet the danger, rather than let it follow me home.

  I have just reread the whole thing. I know Catholics like to go and confess their sins and it makes them feel better to get it all out, but not so with me, I don’t feel any better having written all of this down. I suppose the real reason I went and wrote this is that I want you to move on with your life now that I’m dead and I figured it might be easier for you to take a new husband if you knew about what I’d done. I hope you and the kids have happy lives.

  Oswell

  Chapter Fifteen

  Arrival of the Best Men

  Beatrice looked at herself in the mirror, admiring her sky blue wedding gown and the way its whorls of lace and white silk filigree conformed to her buxom figure. The sixty-six-year-old tailor took a step away from her and no
dded his head in approbation.

  “You look beautiful, dear. Just beautiful.”

  “Thank you. You have matched it to my shape perfectly.”

  “To be truthful, there weren’t that many alterations that had to be made on it. You have the same figure as your mother—almost exactly. I just needed to open up a couple of areas to better receive your . . . ripe bounty.”

  “If you weren’t older than my father, I might interpret that comment as a lustful one.”

  “Don’t underestimate oldsters—we’re bursting with young lust our spouses don’t appreciate. Why do you think I got into tailoring in the first place? It definitely wasn’t to hem men’s pants.”

  Beatrice swatted the old man’s right shoulder, eliciting a look of pure delight upon his face.

  The brass bell hanging beside the door rang, and she and the tailor looked over to see who had entered. Viola, a twenty-two-year-old brunette from Louisiana who worked in the town’s lone brothel, shut the door and looked at Beatrice.

  “That’s a real pretty dress. You gettin’ married in it?”