Part 3.
Grass blades crunched beneath Heston’s feet as he marched back to his campsite. Competitors be damned, he thought. He clenched his teeth and balled his fists as he tried to focus his rage. Fear tactics to clear a plot of land was one thing, but now they’d stolen away his mule, his livelihood. Any chance he had of moving a large haul out of the valley was now bleeding from a post.
He darted into his tent, ripping away his blankets to snatch up his lever action rifle. He loaded it rapidly and affixed his pistol to his belt, making sure he had enough ammo bagged with him for whatever, or whoever he found. He trudged back through the field, the tall grass slapping against his boots with each stomp, but as he reached the great wall of trees he found himself directionless.
Heston slung the rifle over his shoulder and pulled out his pistol. Cocking the hammer back as he raised it up into the canopy of trees. He pulled the trigger and the silence of the forest muteness snapped away at the crack of his gunshot. He stood still with his pistol outstretched in front of him as the smoke cleared and the blanket quietness settled itself back over the woods. He didn’t detect any movement around him, and if he hadn’t known different, he could have sworn he was alone. After a moment he holstered his pistol. He cast his eyes into the tree tops, searching for blinds, stands, or any evidence of movement, but none could be found.
“I know you’re out there!” He shouted, swinging his gaze side to side as he called out. “Bunch of cowards is what ya are!” He waited again for a moment, still hearing nothing save for his own voice fading into the tree bark. “Trifling with a man under the cover of night! God damned cowards all of you! Step on out! Let me see ya!” Heston grit his teeth hard enough to feel the skin tighten around his face as he was again only greeted with the sound of the wind in his ears. “I’ll burn this fuckin’ forest down with all of you in it!” He thundered. “And when you’re screamin’, and hollerin’, with your hair on fire and smoke in your lungs” he paused, noticing a shudder on his breath that grew with each word. He could feel his hands starting to tremble and could feel it, somewhere in the deep recesses of his instinct. He wasn’t sure if it was fear or wrath that had shaken him, but he could feel them watching him. “I’ll bash your fuckin’ brains with the butt of this rifle!” he finished as he thrust the rifle into the air, clenching it tight as if his squeezing grasp were the reason it was shaking. He drew his hunting knife and stomped to a nearby tree. Refusing to give in to the faceless panic drawing up within him, he dug the knife into the bark, carving away shavings. “Take a look at this here!” He called as he worked away at the bark. “Come down to my camp again tonight, and I know you will,” The shavings fell at his feet as he could feel himself trying to carve faster and faster, as if to be finished before something caught him. “And this what the hell you’re gonna get from me!” He stepped back from the tree revealing a crudely carved skull and crossbones. “I’ll be waiting for you tonight you damn cowardly sons of bitches! So you best come ready!”
He turned and stomped back out of the forest, nostrils flared and knuckles white around his rifle. He was about ten steps beyond the tree wall when he heard a quick secession of light running steps through the leaves. He swung around, his rifle socketing into his shoulder as he spun to see nothing. There he waited for minutes that drew on like hours. “God damned cowards.” He muttered as he slowly lowered the rifle back down. He spit onto the grass as he took backwards steps from the woods. When he finally felt that he was at a safe enough distance he turned back around and made his way to camp.
The previous day Heston had narrowed down a vague lane where he predicted the gold vein might lie. He took up his shovel again, heaving a load of dirt into his pan to trickle through the water. After seven trips to and from the river, he’d felt he was on the right track and resorted to pick a spot and dig. For hours he drilled into the ground. When he’d reached waist deep into the hole, he gathered up two buckets of water to keep in the hole with him, this way he could spot check his digging direction and avoid wasting time by going the wrong way. He continued to dig and filter until the sun began to sink low over the horizon, every now and again, peeking his head over the top to peek at the trees. As the sun sent its last orange and indigo hues across the sky, he finally climbed out of the now shoulder deep hole.
He arranged double the amount of logs as he normally would. Within the tinder he’d placed cotton stuffing, pasted over with tallow to insure a bright, roaring blaze on the riverside. He pulled two small apothecary bottles from his satchel along with his coffee grounds. He’d brought the bottles along expecting a hard slog by the end of his dig, and while he hadn’t always agreed with the use of cocaine tinctures when they were handed out by the company, he knew they’d be imperative tonight. The rifle sat proudly by as he set his coffee pot over the fire, resting back onto his heels as he moved his eyes towards the treeline, his back to the river so as to never have his eyes off of it.
There they were again. Two lights shining from the topmost branches. His teeth gnashed together as he uncorked the first bottle, swigging it down in one determined gulp. ‘Come on you bastards’, he thought. He munched on smoked beef scraps and stale bread as the moon slowly crawled along the sky. The lights never moved, but rather they’d periodically disappear and reappear somewhere else, as if they were trying to position themselves out of Heston’s view.
By the time the moon was at its highest, Heston began to feel his eyes were tricking him. Had he tired his eyes focusing on the faraway lights, or did it seem now that the trees themselves were moving? He continued to feed the flames with tallow cotton balls and straw, keeping the fire as bright and big as he could, casting light in a far reaching circle around his camp. The gentle orange glow reflecting brilliantly from the brass fixtures of his rifle. He’d placed the third pot of coffee onto the fire when the wind picked up, and the familiar whistle could be heard on the breeze.
Heston shot his head to the left, convinced he’d seen a shift in the grass. It wasn’t like that of a squirrel or a raccoon sneaking through the blades, but as though a patch of grass itself had shifted. His hand slowly reached for the gun, eyes trained on the spot of empty land, when he heard a shushing noise in his ear, and a splash of water behind him. He jerked the gun up, working the lever as he whirled around towards the river. He didn’t have to train his eye to the ironsight to see the headless body of his mule splayed across the opposite riverbank. His heart pounded as his mind raced. His eyes searched the riverbank and treeline wildly. “Shit!” He barked out as he spun himself back around, panic beginning to rocket through him as he noticed the mule was a diversion. He aimed the barrel up and ran to the outer ring of the firelight to better see the field. Where the post had stood was now a man, standing tall and basking in the moonlight, wearing the mule's head atop his shoulders as his own. Heston tried to stuff his fear away as he shakily peeped through the sight, trying desperately to calm his breath as he drew a bead on the figure. As Heston began pressing onto the trigger, the figure raised its arms out to its sides, and shook violently as a bitter shriek battered into Heston’s ears. Heston squeezed his eyes shut from the pain of what sounded like a chorus of dread drilled into his temples. He squeezed the trigger back and let loose a thunderous boom from his rifle. The scream faded away a moment later and Heston at last uncramped his face, opening his eyes to see the figure gone. His head pounded now, feeling as though his eyes would burst right from their sockets. His trembling hands worked the lever again while his legs stood frozen in place.
His mind flashed to a lesson his father had once taught him. When Heston was only a boy, his father had conscripted him to join him in the coal mines. Terrified of the pitch dark of the mine, the knowledge that a single spark could incinerate every man in it, or at any moment the entire thing could collapse and crush every breath from his lungs petrified the young Heston. His father, a hard, but wise man, slid a shot of whiskey across the table to the boy and told him that fear is a wild animal, you have to face it head on and sometimes you have to kill it outright.
With his feet planted unmoving into the ground, his back feeling numb and his mind a swirl of fear and confusion, Heston repeated the words back to himself. “You’ve got to kill it outright boy.” He whispered to himself in shuddering breaths. “You’ve got to kill it outright.” He refocused his mind on the figure, he couldn’t guarantee that he’d shot it with his eyes closed, but he knew his barrel was trained directly on it when the shriek came. He looked back at his camp, weighing his options. Does he confirm the kill, leaving his camp, or does he stay put, potentially letting it get away? The safety of the camp was an illusion he knew, and anything he could find on the body might lead him to whatever others were involved. He clenched his teeth and blew a hard breath from his nose before launching into a full bore run out to the spot he’d seen it.
As he ran he dared another look at the top branches of the treeline, completely lit in a string of lights. Nearing the spot he slowed his pace and shouldered the rifle and jutted his barrel down to the ground where the body should have been. Heston’s eyes widened madly, he’d left his camp unguarded. He swiveled his head around to see the distant glow of the fire for only a moment before it blinked out of life, billowing a smoky plume into the sky. He flexed to push his heels into the ground letting off to sprint his way back when he felt a hand around his ankle, holding his foot to the ground. Heston hit the ground with a hard thud, rolled to recover but felt something bash across his face. He heard the crunch of his nose and cheeks cracking beneath the mighty blow, but again fought, trying to sit up and gather his legs beneath him to stand when he felt another hit across the other side of his head, spurting warm blood across his tongue from shattering teeth. He laid his head back into the grass, accepting that his death would taste like iron and he too would be a part of the legend he’d dismissed too easily. He laid in the grass and let his eyes close and his mind fall painfully to sleep.
In a few hours, the sun rose again over the valley. The cool breeze shaking the leaves of the towering trees and waving the grassy plain between the treeline and the river. Heston opened his eyes to an earthworm crawling through the palm of his hand. The smell of his blood-caked mustache accented the excruciating pain in his jaw. He slowly rolled his body over, spitting blood and fragments of teeth into the dirt as he did so. Both his rifle and pistol had been looted from his body. He forced his legs beneath him to stand up and take weak, dragging steps to his campsite.
Everything was gone. His tent, satchel, ration bag, ammunition, his shovels and pans and buckets were all missing. Where the fire had been was now an ashen mud pile. He took a look across the river to where the mule’s body remained, and he noted something he couldn’t see in the darkness of the night before. Carved into the side of the corpse was a skull and crossbones.
