The Sheriff’s Tale

The stranger arrived ’round sunrise. Nobody woulda remarked—people were always passing through town since the railroad started getting built, ’specially natives all running west—but he was wearing faded blue denims and only faded blue denims under a sunburn made you blister just looking. He was huge. Hands the size of wagon wheels. And all over in funny tattoos that hurt your eyes. Nobody remarked any of that neither. But he was trouble, and everybody remarked that.

“Asked me I’d seen someone with a green marking,” Jeb Oppley told the sheriff, who’d swept into the Dusty Cup alongside Jeb’s regulars. It was the sheriff’s last stop of the night. “Said I’da thunk it native script, ’cept he said it ain’t. And I asked him specifics, mind, ’cause you gotta beat them with words iffen you wanna get nothing outta ’em. Asked it was a man or a woman. And he says—you know that funny way they talk, mouth can’t quite make proper words—says,  ‘either, both, or neither.’ Shoot me for a bullseye! Told him I’d seen exactly who he was looking for … at the circus last month!” Laughter drowned out Peachoo Herman’s piano mashing. Jeb scratched two red bitemarks on his neck, smile sagging. “Strangest thing, Sheriff. Had them tattoos all over, right?’Cept sunlight caught his cheek on his way out a scootch and I swear, I swear, seen me an eye peeking out it. Right there on the giant’s cheek!”

The sheriff made no comment on this. It sounded too much like what Doc Pritchard had told when the sheriff visited him at a proper, God-fearing hour.

The medicine showman was washing up when the sheriff arrived. Wylla Bonder drooled on the operating table, dirty cloth on her neck. The cramped tent stank of ether thick as engine smoke.

“Wondering when you’d stop by,” Doc Pritchard exclaimed, tossing a blanket over the unconscious girl before plopping down on a loudly complaining three-leg stool. He produced, stuffed, and lit a pipe. Doc Pritchard was a doctor like the sheriff was a showgirl. But real or not, Union Pacific kept waffling on sending the town a doctor, so the sheriff didn’t complain when Doc Pritchard rolled through with his medicine show a few months back, and stayed.

“Why? ’Cause that native boy came by earlier. I thought the biggun wanted some cure—the natives do now and again, modern medicine’s magic to them. Instead, he wanted knowing about any strange bites I’d seen. Listed off a few other nasty symptoms too. Mentioned anemia and near knocked me off my stool, couldn’t believe he knew the word! I said sure, sure, got a young lady coming in later today for a couple bites like that, need cleaning. Got real concerned about if I drained blood. Said ’course I do! Like I don’t know my own business! Well, the biggun reached into that big old purse on his back and pulled out the strangest leech I’d ever seen. It was dead, sure as dirt, but fat and white, with shiny black veins ran all over. Asked if any my leeches looked like this after draining blood. Told him no one uses leeches nowadays. He asked how many bites I’d seen like Wylla’s. A handful over the past few months, I said, but nothing killing. Probably just varmints. Then, and Sheriff I really think you oughtta take this into consideration, he asked for a list of anyone who’d got bit. I asked why, and he said they needed to get cleaned. I didn’t like that. Told him to scram. But Sheriff, something about him gave me the willies. The boy was big—bigger’n most of them natives, but all muscle and tattoos, and some of it, when you weren’t looking right on, I swear it was moving under his skin. Like snakes.”

The sheriff agreed this stranger’s request for a list was disturbing. The natives were open ’bout disliking the foreigners and their railroad companies crawling across this new old land with promises of a better, interconnected tomorrow.

People always thought if they sat somewhere long enough, they owned it.

These thoughts had swirled in the sheriff’s head all day since word came of the stranger from Gor Marky. Gor Marky was foreman for this scintilla of the railroad’s construction, and by extension, ran the town.

The sheriff got called in at dawn and arrived with two tin canisters of coffee. Gor liked his with some hooch, and the sheriff obliged. Anything to make Gor a bit less Gor. Except when the sheriff came in, the foreman was already sweaty, covered in dirt and pine needles and more’n a bit of sawdust.

“If we fall behind schedule ’cause you ain’t doing your job, Sheriff, it’s your ass, not mine!” Gor snarled when the office door opened, scratching a couple red bitemarks on his neck.

What did Gor mean?

“I mean the native who stomped into my worksite and riled up the trained ones I got lifting all the heavy shit. Damn near started a riot!”

Well, that didn’t sound good.

“No, it ain’t! Me, Lester, Haunch, and Little Jimmy all had to pull some big caliber before they’d calm. Talking about leaving. Said they didn’t wanna be ’round here no more, screaming about bitemarks or some shit—like half the town ain’t been getting bit up for months. Think they’d be used to getting bit, out in the forest like they are. I had to shut the whole operation down for the day. Best I gather, this stranger’s some native priest and he told them some native hooey that got them all riled up. Damnit! And I barely got ’em back in their camp before Lester catches the crazy and starts swearing he saw a face pushing up outta this giant’s shoulder. Haunch and Little Jimmy are both saying they saw an extra eye on the fella in different places. Fuck! You gotta get that big boy outta town. Him and his weird tattoos. I know you ain’t been with Union Pacific long, but they’re strict on deadlines, which means I am the one who gets a boot up the ass if things go off track, har har har. So this is me, a concerned citizen of this town and an employee of the only reason this damn town exists, telling you this native boy is a danger that needs taking care of!”

So that night, after Jeb Oppley finished his story, the sheriff asked who was willing to defend their home? And who was a yellowbelly? Cries went up all ’round the bar. Jeb pulled out the double-barreled ten-gauge shoulder-dislocating big boomer he kept under the counter for any would-be desperados, or if he just wanted to clear the place out fast. Tom Rathford, Haunch McDuffy, Lester John Jones, and the Dukes brothers all drew six-shooters, while Gilbert Gilbert produced a sawed-off twelve-gauge. Everyone else joined in with their bottles, a few broken stool legs Jeb had ’round back, or just their fists and a good attitude.

The town wasn’t big, and the posse found the stranger quick. He was out front the Historic Lodge, waiting.

He was big, with tattoos flowing up, down, and crisscross sideways on his body, including his face, down from his chin, and heavy across the eyes like a war mask. His long black hair was tied in braids over either shoulder. Strangest of all were his faded blue denims, the only clothing he wore. He carried no weapons the sheriff saw.

When his heavy eyes got to the back of the posse, the sheriff winked and tugged on the collar of their uniform shirt, exposing the green mark on their neck just so the stranger could recognize his quarry. Even in the darkness it glowed. It had been the sheriff’s own bravado upon arriving in this land—how easy life was in the wretched old country! —that saw them caught, marked, and near killed by this strange hunter of those like the sheriff. Had the sheriff not been old and cunning, they would have died without ever tasting the desperate blood of this new frontier.

At the sight of the mark, the stranger snarled, his canines growing big and sharp like the wolves who ran in fear of the sheriff. Muscles beneath his skin writhed like maggots.

The sheriff bared their own biting fangs and asked if the man would go.

“No.”

The sheriff told the posse, the flock, to fire.

Lester John Jones unloaded first. Torches and lanterns blazed all over town, perhaps in premonition of this battle, so all had light to see as the bullet flew its deadly trajectory, and the man, the hunter, unraveled. He became a writhing knot of flesh, and ate the bullet.

Everyone opened fire.

Hell, from one perspective or another.

Missus Willa Fernough, who owned the heap of ruins that had been the Historic Lodge, watched the whole thing through her first-floor window right up ’til she had to flee for her life, and afterwards told anyone who’d listen that the stranger had erupted into one hundred grasping limbs. A still-drunk Arnold Arnick swore up and down that a bear’s head opened in the man’s shoulder and swallowed burning lead all down its abominable gullet. And poor Jeb Oppley didn’t even get a round off from his double-barreled ten-gauge shoulder-dislocating big boomer before he dropped screaming and clutching his face, went blind, and forever after swore a bad third eye all yellow had opened in the stranger’s forehead which Jeb looked into and saw … but then he’d break down sobbing.

The fight was over fast at it began, and the good old boys were running or screaming on the ground or unconscious. But none were dead. The stranger’s sort didn’t kill the workaday evil that was humanity. Still, the stranger was alone, ’cause the sheriff had ran.

The stranger gave chase. He moved unnaturally, leaping across buildings, sliding down alleyways too thin for his bulk, moving smoothly between all fours and upright as his body melted and broke and reknit.

The sheriff loped away quick as nightfall, but the stranger followed as he’d followed the sheriff’s scent and that glowing green tracker’s mark. The sheriff became a bat and took to the sky, but the stranger’s bad third eye all yellow opened and let him pierce the night, and he threw a rock that knocked the sheriff back to the dirt. The sheriff scrambled to hide, but the Union Pacific Railroad Company had cleared the trees, and the stranger’s arm stretched long, long, long out of the darkness.

The sun rose on a town in shambles, and letters were sent all ‘cross the frontier. Most included sketches of the stranger. Stories were told about how the native had murdered the sheriff. Probably eaten the body. The natives did things like that. Gor Marky sent a telegram to Union Pacific, making known the town would need a new sheriff again. Second time in a year too.

Nobody but Doc Pritchard, whose business rose sharply after the kerfuffle, remarked that the biting varmints musta been scared off by the tumult. But by then Gor Marky was near finishing that scintilla of the railroad’s construction, and the town along with. So Doc Pritchard rolled up his medicine show, alongside the tale of the stranger and the sheriff, and went on his way.