Range of Deceit

A C.R. Moultrie Story

This story first appeared in the Summer 2024 edition of Cirsova Magazine. There are some other great stories in there, so if you like this you might want to grab that issue.

I’m also thinking of putting together a collection of all my C.R. Moultrie stories (so far) and putting that up on Amazon in paperback format. Some of it would be stories I’ve already published here or elsewhere, but I have at least one story written that would be new along with a work in progress that might tip the scales as a novelette/novella. If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, leave me a reply in the comments.

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Clancy’s Stables looked just about like I remembered them, though both the wooden siding and Clancy himself had undergone more than a little weathering in the ensuing years.

“I asked Matt to give me some space in the back,” the Sheriff told me as we approached the building. “No sense disturbing the stable’s business or givin’ the good folks of Bracton a scare.”

“That’s a good call, Deke,” I said.

He grinned at me, overlooking my failure to address him as “Sheriff Piebald,” rather than the nickname I had used to call him when I was Sheriff and he was the Deputy. It may have been nigh unto ten years since I had moved to the Marshals, but old habits linger around old friends.

“Well, there it is,” he said as we rounded the corner and peaked into the stall against the back wall. “You ever seen anything like that?”

There on the ground in a heap was the carcass of a large steer. I’d seen my share of dead ones, but not like that. The tongue lolling out of its mouth was to be expected; it was the gruesome burn marks that disturbed me. I could see why Deke wanted the beast kept out of the way: cattlemen talk, especially when they come into town to visit the saloon, and rumors about an unusual death would spread quickly.

“Whose is it?” I asked, stooping down to inspect one of the burns more closely. The flesh appeared white and leathery around the too-perfect edges and totally charred in the middle. I scraped at the surface with my pocketknife and revealed bone almost instantly. A burn that deep wasn’t unheard of, but I was unsettled by how it covered only such a small area.

“Whose did you say it was?” I repeated. Deke had positioned himself behind me, just inside the door. I turned to see that he had doffed his hat and was rubbing his eyes.

“Well, it’s Daniels. He hasn’t seen this one yet. A couple of his hands found it and brought it to me. I should have told you before.”

Cyrus Daniels was one of the wealthiest ranchers in the area and nobody but nobody was allowed to forget it. When he didn’t get his way a man had better watch himself. This wouldn’t be the first time I’d dealt with him, but I didn’t give up hope that it might prove to be the last.

I stood and headed for the door. “Might as well get over there now, I suppose. Like my Pa always used to say ‘Never leave for tomorrow what you can get done today.’”

“The soul of the sluggard desireth, and hath nothing,” Deke said. He always did have a line or two of Holy Writ close at hand.

As it turned out, however, we had no occasion to test the sluggishness of our own souls, for who should meet us in the street on the way back to Deke’s office, but Cyrus Daniels himself. Even from a distance I could see that he was fit to be tied.

“Well if it don’t be the distinguished Deputy Marshal Clive Ransom Moultrie! We need another harebrained lawman in this town about as much as I need a hole in the head.”

“Pleasure to see you too, Mr. Daniels. It’s been a while.”

“Deke,” Daniels continued, as if I weren’t there, “Billy Hanson told me you had a couple of my boys haul off one of my steer. Mind explaining yourself on that account?”

After a couple minutes and one fruitless attempt to explain that we had just been on our way to ride out to Daniels’ ranch, we were back in the stable. The rancher’s mood was not thereby improved.

“It’s rustlers, I don’t doubt. Lousy ones without a lick o’ sense, by the look of this … well, this thing. I’ll send some men back to get it in the morning.”

“I ‘spose that’ll be fine,” Deke said. “Just let me tell Clancy.”

“Never mind Clancy,” Daniels spat back in yet another abrupt change of attitude. “You and the Marshal—I know he’s here ‘cause you sent for him—had best get out to my east pasture today and figure this out.”

Deke sputtered “Hold on just a minute, Daniels. I’m the Sheriff here and I say—”

“You’re the Sheriff all right, but I have rights. And I know about a certain poker game at a house of ill repute in Santa Fé where C.R. Moultrie’s superior, the Marshal himself, was in attendance. It would be an awful shame if that information were to get out, wouldn’t it Deputy Moultrie?”

“We’ll head that way directly, Mr. Daniels,”

Daniels gave me a sneer and a jerk of the head before hurrying out of the room.

Later, as Deke and I were saddling up our horses I could tell that something was troubling my old friend.

“What is it, Deke?”

He hesitated for only a moment, never being one who found it easy to keep his thoughts to himself. “Well, Clive, it’s just that I’d never figured on your bein’ one to roll over for Daniels so easy like that. I know time can change a man but—now what are you laughin’ at me like that for?”

I slapped him on the shoulder. “Deke, not much has changed around here, I reckon, including the fact that Cyrus Daniels only has about five gallons worth of brains to fill that ten gallon hat of his. Sure, the Marshal was at that poker game—along with the Governor and half his cabinet. I’d be more worried about getting bit by your horse than by that threat Daniels tried to make.”

We shared another laugh and rode off toward the Daniels place, where I had resolved to go long before the rancher had made his half-baked threat. As we went, I asked Deke to run through the list of “incidents” they’d had in and around Bracton. All told there had been a dozen or so cattle on a handful of ranches that seemed to have succumbed to similar injuries.

“The first couple were over at Abe Nettleton’s,” Deke said, “but by the time I got there, it looked like they’d been dead for at least a day, maybe longer. Abe wasn’t even sure whether they were his or strays. The burns were there, but I didn’t think about it much at the time; coyotes or carrion birds had picked them over pretty good.”

“Who else?”

Deke told me the other names—some familiar and others new—and said that he’d gotten each of them to keep it to themselves while he looked into it.

“They’re all good men, Clive. They won’t stoke a panic.”

“But Daniels …”

“Yeah, I know.”

The east pasture on the Daniels ranch was some of the prettiest land in the county, of that there could be little doubt. Streams knifed their way through gentle hills, watering meadows that were lush with fodder. I avoided thinking about just how honestly Daniels might have come to own such a spread.

“Any idea what we’re lookin’ for, Deke?”

“Ain’t that why you’re here?” he said with a grin. He slid off his mount, leading the way to a curious little oxbow that cut away from one of the larger streams. I surveyed the horizon while Deke stooped to refill his canteen.

“Looks like the herd is no more than a mile that way,” I said. “Figure we can get a little closer and set up someplace where we can observe without being seen. Pains me as much as anyone to admit Daniels may be right, but it’s as like to be rustlers as anything else.”

“I know it. But …”

When Deke trailed off in the middle of a sentence like that it usually meant he was thinking something he was too embarrassed to admit. Yet more often than not his hunches turned out to be reliable.

“Now don’t do that to me, Deke. Spit it out.”

“I only wish I could. The burns … well, you saw ‘em. And rustlers are thieves: they’d never sneak in just to kill an animal or two and then run off. I don’t know. It’s just my gut feeling. I ain’t got no evidence.”

We saddled back up and crossed the stream, moving slowly north, along the edge of the shallow basin where the cattle were grazing. Spying a little stand of trees, we made our way toward it and the chance it offered us to get out of the sun for a while.

I broke the silence after a spell. “Sparse evidence is one thing. But no evidence? Naw, Deke, I judge we’d better follow your gut for now.”

We tied up our horses in the copse and sprawled out on the ground. As we caught up and reminisced about the old days, Deke produced some jerky from one of his saddlebags; I could tell it was of his own making by the extensive chewing required—I chuckled to myself, thinking again that some things in Bracton would never change. Our vantage point allowed us a panoramic view of Daniels’ land. The herd was unbothered and tranquil, but very much alive, leaving us nothing to really investigate.

#

The sun was nearly set when Deke said, “No sense in staying out here all night. Daniels has plenty of hands at his call if he wants no more than to have eyes out here. I say we oughta head back before it gets dark.”

I dusted off my backside as I stood, preparing to lodge my agreement, when we heard a commotion down in the basin. I had never driven cattle myself, but the moaning was the sort I imagined might precede a stampede. Deke and I trotted over to the lip of the basin where we saw cattle scattering. It was hard to see quite what they were trying to get away from with the sun perched as it was just over the horizon on the far edge of the little valley.

I shielded my eyes as best as I could and was just able to make out the silhouette of a man. He was leading a horse by the reins with one hand and in the other was carrying an odd-looking carbine or shotgun. Before I had more than a moment or two to puzzle over the strange weapon, the man raised it slightly, firing from the hip. There was a faint flash of light, not the streak of fire and smoke I expected. At that distance I knew the report would take a second or two to reach our ears, yet I heard no more than a muffled rushing sound. I looked aghast in the direction the man had pointed his weapon and saw a gargantuan steer jerk and stumble for a few paces before collapsing to the ground and letting out the most ungodly cry of agony I believe I have ever heard any beast make.

“Clive, what just …”

“No time,” I said.

Deke knew what to do. We ran back into the trees, untied and mounted our horses, and took off toward the herd, hoping to catch the criminal before he could get away. The horses were fresh from our rest in the shade and they careened down the gentle slope at a frightening speed. The assailant’s mount was not nearly so fast, but he had more than a fair head start. Before we even reached the animal that had been the target of his attack, he had crested the edge of the basin and disappeared into the thin forest that lay beyond.

“Let him go for now, Deke. Galloping that way he won’t be hard to track.”

We pulled up beside the poor beast, gasping pitifully for his last breaths. The stumbling that we had seen from a distance suddenly made perfect sense: where the steer’s right foreleg should have been was a blackened stump.

“Well,” Deke said, pushing his hat back from his forehead, “I reckon at least we’re in the right place.” He pulled his revolver from the holster and put the steer out of its misery. “But I’ll be confounded if I ever saw a gun like that, Clive. You ever seen such a one?”

“Was it a gun at all? There was no flash, no report. How …” I rubbed my face with both hands. “Doesn’t matter just now. You think you can track that fella with the light we have left?”

Deke squinted at the sliver of sun that was edging its way below the horizon. “It’s not much to work with, but we got a full moon. You know me, Sheriff.”

Photo by Kym MacKinnon on Unsplash

I did know him and with that “Sheriff” it seemed that his old habits died as hard as mine. That particular phrase was one he had only ever pulled out when I had set a task in front of my deputy that he wasn’t quite sure he was up to. Yet after those words and a heavy sigh, Deke had never failed to impress me. He might not have been the best tracker in those parts, but no one was as unrelenting. He slipped off his hat, dropped to his knees, and muttered a prayer I couldn’t really make out.

“Amen,” he said a minute later. “Let’s get after him!”

Though we were in no tremendous hurry, in the dim light more than a few branches thwacked at my chest and arms, low shrubs scuffed my legs and my horse’s sides. The fugitive was too far ahead to hear, but for the first few minutes after we plunged into the scrubby timberland even I had very little trouble picking out which way he had fled. It wasn’t long, however, before I found myself waiting as Deke stopped to inspect for subtler signs.

As I slid down from my saddle, thinking that I might be some kind of help, a searing pain blazed across the bottom of my foot almost as soon as I had set it on the ground.

“Tarnation!”

“Clive?!”

I hopped a couple times to one side, hoping to get clear of the hidden danger, and dropped to the ground. Kicking off my boot and poking gingerly at my foot, I found to my relief that I did not seem to have been burned.

“I’m all right, Deke.”

My boot, however, was a different story. Deke held it up to the moonlight, revealing unmistakable scorch marks.

“What could have done that?” he asked.

“Must be I stepped right in the last of that rascal’s fire pit. Serves me right for not seeing it.”

Deke handed me my boot and went over to the spot. “Well it ain’t a fire pit,” he said. “But what it is …”

I walked over to where my companion had knelt down. He had one hand extended, as if he were warming it by a campfire, but all I could see was what appeared to be a lump of metal. It had a faint glow to it—violet or almost blue, though I couldn’t be sure—and was shaped vaguely like the stock of a rifle.

“No wonder your boot got scorched,” Deke said. “Providential that you didn’t burn your foot.”

“I know you don’t believe in coincidences,” I started to say.

“No, sir, I do not.”

“So finding this—well, whatever it is—finding it here must have something to do with that fella that took down that steer, right?”

Deke grunted and nodded his agreement. We marked the spot as best we could, hoping to be able to find it later and put it alongside the other pieces of this puzzle. Onward through the trees we continued our pursuit.

Before very long, we could see that the trees were starting to thin out ahead of us. Yet no mere moonlight revealed the approaching clearing. Deke shot me a glance that showed that he noticed it too: there was man-made illumination in the direction we were going.

“I don’t remember this in any of the plat books,” I said as we emerged from the woods. “Whose land would this be?”

Deke surveyed the lot. In the little dell into which we had emerged, a few house-like structures had been thrown up all slipshod by some would-be craftsman. Lanterns were strung on poles around a small perimeter that must have served as some kind of yard, though I could see no obvious purpose for the yard nor any source of fuel for the lamps. They looked almost like some of the street lamps I had seen the year before when I had taken the train way down to New Orleans. But these were something else, I told myself; they had to be.

It was Deke who broke the silence. “Clive, as far as I can tell, we should either still be on Daniels’ land or else we crossed over to the Jones claim, but I can’t begin to tell you what all this is. Just the lights, well—”

My old friend’s speculation was cut short when a noise split the night air, like a freight train roaring to full steam in an instant. I had never heard anything like it. As it settled into a steadier rhythm, Deke pointed to the largest of the buildings.

“Coming from there,” he almost had to shout.

Without a word, I dropped to the ground, threw a sloppy knot around the low branch of a nearby conifer to secure my horse, and sped off in the direction of the noise. Deke followed close at my heels. We covered the distance quickly, making for what appeared to be two large doors. My hope to be able to peer in at a gap in the entrance proved unnecessary, however, as the doors swung open.

I skidded to a halt, holding out my left hand to one side, striking Deke in the chest harder than I had meant to. His face was awash with the unnatural light coming from inside the building, but his expression darkened. I turned to see the silhouette of a man standing in the doorway.

“Gentlemen!” a reedy voice squawked. “I’ve been expecting you, Sheriff Piebald and Marshal Moultrie. Do come in, please.”

The man retreated inside the building, beckoning us over his shoulder. I hesitated for a moment, casting a skeptical glance at Deke, but then followed the strange man into the barn-like structure. My gut told me that the man was no threat and my anxious trigger finger amply supplemented any remaining lack of resolve.

Once we were inside, it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the light. What I saw there remains hard to describe very exactly. At first I thought it must have been some kind of steam engine—though I knew little of such things—but it was like none I had ever seen or heard of. It was all smooth lines and gleaming surfaces; a panel of dials and knobs was situated on one side, though from that distance the lettering seemed to be little more than indecipherable scribbles. Our host was poring over some papers and motioned for us to come further in.

“Allow me just another moment,” he said.

The strangeness of the machinery was matched, if not exceeded by the man’s. As he bent over his papers I could plainly tell that the arch in his back was not merely a display of poor posture. I had seen one or two people with hunched backs before, but his seemed different somehow. His hair was the color of faded parchment and stuck out from his head in random places.

“This latest experiment did not go quite as planned, you see,” he exclaimed without looking up.

As we drew slightly closer to the plank of wood he was using as a desk I had the fleeting thought that the motions of his hands could never have produced anything like legible handwriting. Before I could take a close look at any of his papers he shot up off his stool and turned to face us.

“They gave me all the tools—and this of course,” he added, gesturing toward the hulking contraption. “But they left before I fully understood how it all works.”

“They?” Deke inquired.

The man squinted at the question. “The visitors. Haven’t you seen them?”

“Hold on,” I interjected. “Why don’t we start with your name? You seem to know us, but I’m sure I’ve never laid eyes on you.”

At that, he turned his squint on me, looking even more puzzled than before.

“Why Marshal Moultrie, don’t you remember me? It’s Simon Maguire.”

I narrowed my own eyes slightly. Indeed, one Simon Maguire had been an acquaintance some years before, but that man and this seemed to share almost nothing in common. That man had lingered on the edge between stout and portly, while this man appeared to be wasting away before my eyes. The Simon I had known had always held himself erect and proud, making the most of his five feet and a few spare inches as he stood in the door of his little dry goods store, yet this man had slumped and slouched his way around from the moment we laid eyes on him. Perhaps most striking was the hair: gone was the thick, tangled tapestry of flaming red, replaced by the sparse covering I had noted moments before. And yet for all that, I could not deny that the face and the eyes—though sunken and aged beyond what I would have thought possible—were the same. I was forced to admit that it was the same man and the admission sent a chill down the back of my neck.

“What happened to you, Mr. Maguire?” I asked. He stood there for a moment without saying anything; his empty gaze seemed to pass right through me.

“As I was saying,” he announced, “the instructions the visitors gave me must be incomplete somehow. The weapon overheats so quickly that it’s no use for more than a single discharge.”

That would explain the debris that had nearly burned my foot earlier, I thought. But it was still clear that there was more he was not telling us—or perhaps more that we simply did not understand.

“Now hold on just a minute there, Mr. Maguire,” Deke said, taking a step toward the shriveling man. “What’s this ‘weapon’ and who are these ‘visitors’ and why would you have any reason to be expecting me and the Marshal? I’m sure you’d rather do your talkin’ here than down at my office.”

“Oh, don’t be silly, Sheriff. The weapon is the whole reason you’re here, isn’t it? Of course it could never be very long before what’s happened to those cattle would end with my being found out.”

“You killed those animals? You admit it?” Deke asked. He was usually a hard man to anger, but I could see that he was getting a lather up pretty quickly. “This is a heap of trouble for you and I hope you know it. When we—”

“Now about the visitors,” Maguire interrupted. He paused to reach for a rolled up stack of papers and swat a fly.

In truth, Deke or I ought to have interrupted him right back and dragged him to town kicking and screaming if necessary. But I suppose curiosity got the better of the both of us in that moment.

Maguire continued, his eyes darting back and forth between me and Deke in irregular rhythm. “Surely you must have seen them too; it was about this time last year when they came. Of course I can understand why you wouldn’t broadcast it to the rest of town, simple people prone to hysterics. They gave me all of this, you know,” he traced a wide arc with his hand, seeming to gesture toward the contents of the entire building.

“And what exactly is all of this?” I asked.

“You see,” he continued, once more seeming to ignore our presence as the mood struck him. “The ore was already here on the land, or under it, rather. All I needed to do, they told me, was dig it up. Then their machines would do the rest. Imagine a weapon that never needs to be reloaded and will never get fouled and dirty. Why, you’d want something like that, wouldn’t you, gentlemen?”

The lilt passed down to him from the Emerald Isle had always sounded quaint to me before. But at that moment it was vaguely unsettling.

Deke was the first to respond. “Want it for what?”

“Doesn’t matter, Mr. Maguire.” My patience was starting to wear thin. “You admitted to killing those animals and the Sheriff and I are going to bring you in. Judge Hatcher will decide if your excuse is good enough.”

Maguire’s eyes widened at the name of the judge; his courtroom had something of a reputation when it came to his treatment of criminal defendants.

“Ye’ll be takin’ me nowhere, boyo.”

The cheerful lilt had hardened to his thickest brogue in an instant. I could see that he had balled his fists and raised them slightly. Though his eyes remained locked on mine, he had bowed his head, giving his face a sinister look I would never have thought possible for the Simon Maguire I had known before.

“See, when the visitors return, I aim to be ready. Sure they won’t be likin’ that you got in me way. Now—”

Before he could finish his thought, Deke lunged toward Maguire with both hands. He lurched backwards and beyond both of our grasps with inhuman speed. Now a third version of Maguire had arrived: long gone were both the man I had known years before and the shriveling husk who had greeted us mere minutes before. He bounded to the side, traveling farther and faster than should have been possible, and sprinted toward the mysterious apparatus. Reaching its near side almost before I realized what was happening, he surged up a ladder that I had not noticed until then.

“Ye can’t have it!” he shrieked upon reaching the top. “The visitors gave it to me. I’ll be the one to show it to the world, not the likes of you!”

“Now just come on down from there,” Deke said, adopting his most conciliatory tone. “We can talk this over.”

“No one wants your infernal machine,” I added.

At my remark, Maguire’s agitation soared to a hysterical rage; his bulging eyes flamed with a kind of hatred I have seen only a handful of times in my life. In an instant, he produced a revolver from underneath his tattered shirt, training its sight in my direction.

“You lawmen need to leave. Now!” As he spoke, Maguire shuffled toward another bank of dials and levers, placing his left hand on a large switch while keeping the gun aimed at me. “If ye don’t, I can’t be held responsible for what happens after I throw this switch.”

To tell the truth, I didn’t really care at that moment what he did with that switch. His talk of “visitors” and the way his entire countenance had changed at the drop of a hat convinced me that I was dealing with a madman. Whatever the heaping pile of metal was, it could wait—until Maguire was either in a jail cell or an asylum.

“Maguire,” I called out. “Let’s all go back to town and talk about this. Don’t do anything drastic.”

“Not another step, Moultrie! Keep yer hands where I can see them.”

He locked eyes with me. I read in his gaze anger and revulsion mixed with fear. It was a look I had seen in the criminally insane more than once before, yet it was—in a way I still cannot quite explain—more than that somehow.

I raised my hands in a gesture of cooperation and started to edge forward.

“I said don’t move!” he bellowed. There was something else in his voice then, something deeper, as if Maguire’s voice were no longer merely his own. He fumbled slightly to pull back the hammer on his weapon, yet maintained his grip on the switch mechanism with his free hand.

I inched closer, defying his demand. Maguire’s gun began to rise toward me, but it would do no more than begin to rise. Before I realized what was happening, Deke had whipped out his trusty Peacemaker and winged a shot in less than a heartbeat. Maguire’s weapon tumbled toward the floor and he slumped over to his left, falling on and tripping the switch that he had held with a deathgrip only an instant before.

The innards of the machine made a horrible grinding noise, followed by a deep, yawping thud. A moment later it seemed as if the machine had started itself running. The sound was all at once too smooth and too regular to be any kind of motor I had encountered, yet for all that I sensed that something was wrong. The sound seemed to increase in pitch and intensity.

“He’s down, Clive! But let’s not count on him stayin’ that way.”

I nodded and clambered up the ladder after Deke. Maguire had managed to prop himself up against a panel under the collection of dials and levers, but he barely seemed conscious. There had been no time for me to see where Deke had aimed his shot, but the crimson stain that spread across Maguire’s gut left no doubt where it had ended up.

“Let’s get ‘im up, Deke, but be careful. It’s a long ride back to Bracton. You can get the doc and meet us on the way.”

I held out little hope that the deranged little fellow would live that long, but I knew we had to try. Deke slipped an arm under one shoulder and I took the other, but just as we were about to hoist him up, Maguire woke with a start.

“No!” he shouted before erupting into a bloody coughing fit.

“Maguire, you’re gut-shot. We have to get you to the doctor as soon as we can for you to even have a chance. Deke will go and fetch him and I’ll—”

“Too late.” Maguire was gasping for air. “Leave me … while you …”

Even at death’s door he maintained his Irish flair for the dramatic, I thought. “Now don’t be silly. Deke and I—”

“You don’t understand.” His voice grew firmer. I looked into his eyes and could see once more the Simon Maguire I had known years ago. Whatever had possessed him before was gone. “You have to get as far as you can from here as fast as you can.”

“What?”

His voice began to fade as I felt the strength start to leave his body. Deke leaned in closer as Maguire continued in whispered tones.

“The engine … the whole place … meltdown …”

“Simon, what do you mean?”

“It’s all going … flames … one minute after … the switch … run.”

Beneath our feet the apparatus, or whatever it was, shuddered violently, knocking me off balance. A crash erupted from behind us and I turned to see that the ladder had broken loose from whatever had been fastening it to the side. We would have to drop the eight feet between the platform and the dusty floor.

“I’ll never survive … the fall,” Maguire expelled through clenched teeth. His eyes rolled back in his head and he went unconscious once more.

“We better hightail it Clive, there’s no telling what’s gonna happen if we stay here.”

I let go of Maguire’s shoulder and made for the edge of the platform. When I hit the ground, I rolled forward to try to soften the landing, but even with that effort I felt an electric jolt of pain shoot from my heel to my spine. I’d taken more than a few such falls during my time as Sheriff in Bracton, but I guess the years and the paperwork duty of a Marshal had softened me more than I wanted to admit.

Deke was close on my heels as we sprinted for the door. The cacophony of Maguire’s infernal machine grew louder with every step and I wished that we hadn’t decided to tie our horses off quite so far away.

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want …”

How Deke had any breath in his lungs to be reciting psalms while running with total abandon away from that unknown danger I could not understand. I had a hard enough time convincing myself that my lungs were not actually on fire, let alone breath left for so much as a whispered prayer.

“No time for that,” Deke said as we reached the horses. I had doubled over and thrown my hands on my knees to try to catch my breath. It took all the willpower I had to stand upright again and untie my horse.

“Clive, take a look at that!”

I cast a glance over my shoulder, but then wheeled the rest of the way around to face the sight. It was as if Maguire’s entire compound were glowing like coals scattered in a fireplace. The light was white and startling in its intensity. Then in the corner of my eyes I spied the first of the inevitable flames. There was no sense in waiting around to see the alien luminescence transform into the familiar red-orange glow of what was soon to be a general conflagration. I swung myself up into the saddle and we rode off as fast as we dared.

#

After a few hours of restless sleep on the cots Deke kept at the jail for just such a purpose, we started our return—unsure of just what happened the night before and anxious about what we might find.

“Deke, what do you suppose we ought to tell Daniels? I’m not sure I can explain it to myself, let alone anyone else.”

Deke sat back in his saddle and looked off into the brightening sky. “What should we tell him?” he said, though more to the air than to me. “Well, we can’t lie. I was never a good liar anyway—and I ain’t got the slimmest notion how we’d cook up a lie to cover this—but it wouldn’t be right.”

“No, we can’t lie,” I agreed.

“All he really wants to know, I expect, is what’s his bottom line. If his property is safe that’ll be enough for him.”

I grunted my assent. Daniels had always been a simple man when it came to matters of his billfold and passbook. The rest of the town was likely to let the matter go if Daniels did. But that wasn’t good enough for me. I wanted answers—about the weapon and the machines, about these “visitors,” and most of all about Maguire himself.

The thought that I might never get any of those answers forced itself into my mind just as we came over the last small rise that rimmed the diminutive valley. Then another thought occurred to me: where was the smoke? We should have seen it from a mile away, yet even as we looked down on the scene from the night before there was none. More astonishing than that, however, was what remained of Maguire’s compound.

“This ain’t possible,” Deke said.

The last shred of hope that I would get any of those answers I wanted floated away in that moment. There was nothing left of the compound. If there had been heaps of ashes, at least we could have sifted through them for some kind of clue. Yet some unseen force had denied us even that. Aside from a couple stray scorch marks in the prairie grass no one would have known there had ever been anything there. Riding down into the hollow for a closer inspection was no more revelatory than viewing the scene from a distance. We sat in the midst of what ought to have been blackened, smoking ruins before either of us spoke.

It was quite a long while before I finally asked, “What now?”

“Uhh, well,” Deke said. “I suppose we should just ride straight over to Daniels and …”

The Sheriff’s thoughts were far off, I could tell. Like him, the next step seemed anything but clear. Hoping that the familiarity of simply being in the saddle, picking our way through the trees, would jog something loose in my head, I flicked my reins and pointed my horse toward the stand of conifers that stood between us and Daniels’ east pasture.

A few minutes later Deke had caught up to me and passed ahead, when he turned back over his shoulder to say: “Heh. I plum forgot about that in all the excitement.”

It was the spot we had marked the night before, where my foot had had its unfortunate encounter with the unknown source of intense heat. Deke hopped down and crouched near the spot, holding his hand out as he had previously, testing for warmth. He inched forward on his haunches and lowered his hand slowly to the ground.

“By Jiminy!”

His hand shot backward.

“What is it?” I cried, nearly flying out of my saddle and to my friend’s side.

“It’s cold as a dead man’s nose.”

Surely it would not be as hot as it had been before, but I knew Deke must be exaggerating. I peered at the object and reached out, finding that it was, in fact, cold to the touch.

“That’s the darndest … but it’s not as cold as all that, Deke.”

He retrieved it from the small depression where it lay and held it up to the light. “Ever seen something like this? Is it metal? Looks more like stone, don’t it?”

He passed it to me and I turned it over in my hands. It surely was like nothing I had ever seen, nor could I begin to imagine the source of such a material. By its sturdy appearance one would have judged it likely to be quite heavy, yet it seemed lighter than a pine sapling in my hands. I passed it back to Deke who stowed it in a saddle bag before we resumed our course to the Daniels homestead.

A short time later we stopped on the edge of a wide stream. The current bubbled noisily southward, away from Daniels’ land, the edge of which was marked by a new barbed-wire fence a stone’s throw away.

“Deke, let me have that thing again.”

He handed the strange article to me as I got down from my horse. I don’t know where the idea came from, but it had hit me like a bolt of lightning just then. I stepped into the stream up to my boots and crouched down. Placing the remnants of the bizarre weapon in the water, I let go of it for an instant. My premonition was confirmed: the thing floated. I snatched it out of the water before it got away.

“Did I just see …” Deke said. I didn’t have to turn to look at him to know that his mouth was hanging open.

“Yeah, you did.”

“Clive that—that’s just impossible.”

“I know it. But I also ‘spose the both of us have seen more than one or two things over the past couple days that oughta been impossible. Just add this to the list.”

“Well, what are we gonna do with that thing now?”

I looked at it again. As I did so, the deranged, hysterical look I had seen in the face of Simon Maguire came back to my mind. The exact connection between the thing in my hand and the hellish ruination of the former shopkeeper remained a mystery to me. I had no intention of following the proverbial cat down the curious path to my own undoing.

“The way I see it …” I said. Then, turning away from Deke and back toward the stream, I tossed the thing into the middle of the rippling current.

“Bah—” Deke took a jerky half-step toward the water. If he had been trying to form a word, it caught in his throat.

We mounted up and crossed the stream, riding in silence for a few minutes.

“It’ll be better this way,” Deke said. “Daniels is—well, it ain’t polite to say what he is in precise terms. But if we showed him that thing he’d be askin’ questions and flappin’ his gums all over the county. And for what, when his cattle are safe now?”

“You’re right. When we get there, let me do the talking. If Daniels means to cause any more trouble about this, I’ll draw his fire off you for a while.”

“Looks like you won’t have to wait long for that.”

I turned my gaze away from Deke and toward the crest of the low hill that lay in front of us. There, at the top, was none other than Daniels himself, astride his favorite cream-colored mare and flanked by two of his ranch hands. I chuckled and shook my head; Deke returned the gesture as we spurred our horses to a quick trot. The man with the big ranch was in a hurry to be done with this whole thing and for once I was happy to indulge him.

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