It was 6:49am when Jack Denham died, precisely. This according to Doc Miller, who’d found the burnished silver pocketwatch smashed beside him. I have to credit the doc for not taking it as his own; smashed or not it was a nice timepiece, and by the boasts Denham’d made alive, it was an expensive one. But Doc Miller tucked it into a pocket of Denham’s denim, and he had Mac Burly and Jack O’Hara lift the poor sod into the wagonback. Hadn’t been cleared out recent, so Denham’s corpse lay atop some chickenfeed meant for Mears at the general store. It wernt the Doc Miller’s wagon, and wouldn’t have been polite to toss the sacks in the dust, not even for a corpse. Perhaps especially not.
I got called in by Jack O’Hara, who told me he’d just unloaded Jack Denham’s body outside the doc’s office with a gaping hole in his chest. Mac Burly was still there when I arrived, trying to keep back the rubberneckers at the doc’s request. I pushed my way through the little scrum, and Mary Lightly almost gave me a dressing-down til she realized it was me and not some other offender. Mary’s not too bad, on the average, but her husband Benjamin spent a lot of time in my office, sitting just on the other side of the bars. Drunkenness, most times, though Billy’d brought him in once or twice on more serious business. Anyway, I pushed past Mary and then Mac, and stood beside the body.
As reported, there was a goodly chunk of Jack Denham’s chest missing in action, about the size of the doc’s closed hand. He was kneeling beside Denham, pulling idly on his sideburns as his other hand explored the edges of the wound.
I asked the doc if Denham’d taken a fencepost through the chest. I tried to make my voice deep, on account of even if the onlookers wernt supposed to be there, they were, and I figured it was important to sound assured. Doc Miller’d looked up at me, and I was glad to be blocking his face from the gogglers behind. It wouldn’t do to have em see the doc all concerned and confused like that, not at all. And the doc sure did look concerned and confused, his face all wrinkled up and his mouth in an awkward slanting line. It was a moment before he spoke, and when he did I wondered, not for the first time, where the hell Billy was at when he could be here beating back the crowd. “I ain’t got a clue what’s done this,” is what the doc told me, eventually. He let me know he’d measured the thing, and it was perfectly a circle, and the edges were smooth.
I asked the doc if perhaps the Arapaho had come up with a new spear. Doc just shook his head. He didn’t seem to have much more to say on the matter, and opened and closed his mouth a couple times like a caught fish. I’d take a lap of the body in a minute, trying to see if I could maybe identify who’d killed Jack Denham. Meanwhile, I told Mac Burly to shoo off the onlookers, and sent Jack O’Hara to find Billy.
“Need to clear off, all of ya,” I announced to the crowd, my face still pointed toward Jack’s pale deathmask. “I need space, and anyone hangs around other than Mac and Jack and the doc, I’ll lock em up and call em a drunkard til I’m done here.”
Denham’d always been a pale fella, you remember, the nice browning most of us took out here hadn’t ever quite taken on his skin. This was a new degree, though, and a similar one to what I’d seen of consumption deaths, but Denham’d been hearty and hale just four days ago when I saw him at Debby’s. I supposed it a boon to me that Denham didn’t have a wife, or a girl I knew of, so I’d be spared the telling. Other than the pallidness of it all, Jack didn’t look much harmed. No scratches, not on his hands, not on his face. No other wounds, and not much dirt. And not a drop of blood – not a damn drop.
There was a rock in my gut by the time I spoke, having waited til Mac Burly cleared all the others away. “Doc,” I said, “where in the hell’s all the blood?” There wernt even any on the shirt, and the edges of the hole in that one were smooth too, almost like they’d been hemmed that way. “You didn’t clean it.”
“I’m telling you I haven’t got a clue. Not one.” The doc had stood up, and stuck his hands in the pockets of that shotgun coat he always wore, you know the one. “It don’t even look like he tried to defend himself.”
It didn’t, and it was when the doc said this I noticed what was missing, too, other than the red stuff. Denham’s holster was empty, flat and void, with the hammer tie-down ripped in two. “D’you leave his gun out there? I think it was ranch property, Liberty’ll want it back.” This reminded me I’d still have to tell Liberty about Denham’s death, but I figured Liberty’d hear it in the saloon anyhow, unless He worked a miracle and kept Daniel Hare’s mouth shut who I’d seen in the crowd. Getting a bit ahead of myself, He did not.
“It weren’t there.”
I took my leave from the doc with more questions than answers, on account of I didn’t think Denham’s body would tell me much else. Before I left, I ran the idea of some sort of goring past Doc Miller, but he dismissed it and I was all out of theories. Maybe I’d start with who could’ve done it, not how, but as a jumping-off point that didn’t offer much. It was midday, by then, so I went back to the office and looked for whether Billy’d shown up yet so he could throw ideas my way. Could be Billy knew who’d killed Denham.
Well, Billy wernt there when I arrived, just my hat I’d left behind and some puke from whoever Billy’d released early that morning. That’d bee Billy’s cleanup to do. Not that I’m lazy; I don’t know of a single sheriff who wouldn’t have a deputy handle that sort of business. Anyway, that was my plan when I saw it, and smelled it, but it should be obvious to those of you who’ve heard snippets it’s not the way it panned out. I sat in my chair smelling that whisky-infused vomit for a while, just thinking on Jack Denham’s death and that perfect sealed-off hole in his chest.
It was Jack O’Hara, the ranchhand I’d sent after him, that came back telling me of Billy’s death. He’d seen Denham’s body too, but something wild was in him when he burst through the jailhouse doors screaming about smiting and hellfire and the Apocalypse of John. Seemed he’d witnessed Billy die. ‘Course, it took me a while to get it out of him, panicked as he was, and once I’d gotten just that much he was fully off the rails and steaming toward a station he wernt supposed to visit, so I send him to the doc’s to cool off. Doc Miller couldn’t do much for him, I found out later, and you might’ve heard he hasn’t spoken since, but that’s plumb false, he’s just been quiet.
What I did get from Jack O’Hara’s tale was this. He’d been looking for Billy over by Del Rourke’s stables, and Del had sent Jack out to Johnson Ranch, where he’d seen Billy headed earlier. Jack got over there right quick, like I’d told him, and found Billy alive. Some time later, as they were coming back, Billy died, and Jack wouldn’t say much about why. He talked of dragons and lightning and the endtimes, and kept repeating that young Bill was dead, smoked, and that was all I could glean from our talk. Some of it I’ll admit I put together after sending Jack to Doc Miller; I did speak to Del Rourke later that day.
Now I had two deaths on my hands, one of em my own deputy, and I can’t say I was champing to go over and see Billy’s corpse by my lonesome, so I went to Debby’s and took them as was there – Earl Pickett, Buck Reeves, and Bucks Addison – with me to the ranch. Daniel Hare volunteered to come likewise, but I could see in his eyes he’d rabbit if the time came for a fight, and I told him to sit and have another drink. Besides, if his speech indicated anything, his bullets was more like to hit us than whoever was doing the killing. Debby herself insisted on coming along also, and while I was at first in opposition, I am in reflection quite grateful for her presence, to understate somewhat the facts of the case.
Earl, Bucks Addison, Debby and me went out on horses, thinking the mystery shooter might need to be chased a bit. Buck Reeves went to get his from home, though he never ended up joining us. Took us twenty or so to get there, and by then our horses didn’t serve much purpose, as who’d done it was long gone. Billy’s body was hard for us to find, at first, but eventually we stumbled across it in the west field, struck down just alike to Jack Denham, down to the smoothed-out edges of the hole. The difference, here, was that Billy’s gun was present and accounted for, a Cattleman like mine.
I should mention at this point that me, Earl, Bucks Addison, and even Debby were armed. I had that Cattleman I bought new out of Dodge City a few years back, and on top of that had brought the Winchester the man previous in my post left behind. Bucks Addison had a pistol only, an old Volcanic if I recall correct, and Earl had two shiny Peacemakers, whose long snouts poked out the open bottom of his holsters. They were inset mother-of-pearl on the handle, more expensive than he probably could afford. Earl always fancied himself a gunslinger, and I think that day he figured to fire those guns. Debby, the stalwart, had appeared a shotgun from beneath the bar when I gave out my call for volunteers, and she’d clung tight to it ever since, even riding. I had it in my head at the time she’d been sweet on young Bill, and still do.
So, as I said, Billy’s gun was where it ought have been, nestled in its leather slot, which I’d given him as sort of an inaugural gift when he agreed to let me deputize him. I looked down at his ugly face – some sort of pox or similar he’d had as a kid, or so my wife recalled – and thought that this one would be a lot harder to reconcile than the last. Jack Denham had hardly an attachment beyond his work, where Billy here was a son and a brother and my very own deputy. When I’d accepted the job upon the departure of one Mr. H—, I’d anticipated my fair share of deaths, by the gun or the Indian or the rope, but it hadn’t quite struck me Billy could be one.
I picked up Billy myself. Bucks Addison wanted to help, but I waved him off, and I slung Billy over the back of Guinevere, where I fixed his body in place with a bit of spare lariat off of Earl’s mare, whatever her name was. We rode, the four of us, back toward town right after, and it speaks to my shortcomings as an investigator that I didn’t notice Billy’s missing boots until we were outside Doc Miller’s. I asked, but no one had seen em at the ranch, and Debby said he’d been barefoot when we found him. I trusted her on that.
Doc Miller came out all upset – he couldn’t take a hysterical man along with two bodies, he told us – but we convinced him to keep a hold on Jack Denham and Billy at least until we could work out with George Berle how to pay for coffins. He was undertaker, at the time, though he’s since moved on. This didn’t make the doc happy, not by a shot, but he calmed enough to take Billy in out the eyes of onlookers and examine the corpse. He agreed with my internal assessment of the situation, in that the facts of the killing aligned quite symmetrical to those of Jack Denham’s death. The doc told me also he hadn’t been able to get much more from Jack O’Hara, who’d been raving until a dose of laudanum brought him some peace.
I left Billy at Doc Miller’s and went toward his mother’s house with Bucks Addison and Debby in tow, Earl having quailed at the idea of helping break the news to the old southern lady. Personally, I thought Bucks Addison had a better excuse to stay behind, but he didn’t take it and accompanied us to the door. Could be Earl’d only come in the first place hoping for a shootout, and if so then he left the party too soon.
We arrived at what was now just Billy’s mother’s place – his father having passed a year previous, from something natural the doc hadn’t been able to nail down – with about two hours having gone since we set out for Johnson Ranch. She opened the door, and to her credit didn’t make mention of Bucks Addison’s presence. We broke the news as gentle as we could do, but she took it hard anyhow and I’d hoped to leave Debby with her to do the consoling as me and Bucks Addison did the investigating. To my surprise, however, it turned out to be Bucks Addison who took care of it, and he stayed with her for some time. Debby and I rode off, though I didn’t know what progress we could hope to make. I’d mulled it over some, and couldn’t put a name to a single person in the town who’d want both Billy and Jack Denham dead. We’d spoken to the headman over at Johnson Ranch, or rather Debby had as I packed up the corpse, and he hadn’t given us any real place to start either, hadn’t seen anything.
Ultimately, I elected to put off the investigation for a moment, given that Buck Reeves hadn’t shown up and might be searching, even now, for the kid we all knew already to be dead. I’ve always hated to waste a good man’s time, and so I asked everyone I saw between Billy’s and the office whether Buck Reeves’d come by, and if so where he’d been headed. Most hadn’t seen him, but one that had told us he was placed convenient for our access – his horse was posted right outside the sheriff’s place. We were going there anyway, and I supposed it was a normal enough place to go for Buck Reeves if he’d realized he wouldn’t catch us at Johnson Ranch. Perhaps he did head up there and came back, it’s possible as well, though I never found out if he did.
We posted our horses outside the office. Debby’s gave a bit of trouble, so we didn’t hear anything from inside as we tied em down through the sound of the whinnies. The door was stuck, but not locked, and it did that sometimes back then before Gem Martin put in the new door for me, so I put my shoulder to it and it banged open, startling them what was inside.
I should say first that Buck Reeves was now accounted for – we’d anticipated this by the sight of his Morgan at the post where Guinevere was now tied. They were still whickering at each other, I could hear behind me. The horse was mottled, and a good runner, and I think it ended up belonging to Cy Nowak, who got it at auction after the funeral. As to the state of Buck, that was more uncertain, though I could say even then he wernt by his lonesome. I’d been told once, don’t recall by who, that old Buck Reeves was born out Cook County, Arkansas. Now I don’t know rightly whether that’s the true place, or even if it’s a place at all much less the one where Buck Reeves’s mama brought him into the world. What I do know is it ain’t where Buck Reeves died, because he died on a summer Wednesday right in my sheriff’s office, slumped across my desk. He lay like a performer’s doll, strings sliced in two. From where I stood, I could only see Buck’s lower half, and a part of his torso, that along with the things around him trying to pull off his vest and mostly failing.
As you already know, and as this document stands as proof to, I am lettered. I say this not as a pride but a simple fact, and to explain the glass through which I viewed the things in my office. In my life to this point, I’d had the pleasure of reading five books, two I’d found, two I’d been given, and one I payed for. While I could list em all, the only one worth putting your eyes to was a Twain one I think more apt folks than I have already recommended. One of the others, though, was a collection of short pieces from a bunch of stuffy Russians, put into English, though I’m not fully assured the putting was done by a man what spoke Russian. The fact I got through it all was a point in favor of my dedication rather than any merit on the book’s part. One of the stories, the author of which I’ve been told is well known but whose name I can’t say much less put to page, was about something called the Crocodile. It’s a beast akin, I believe, to the alligators some southerners have displayed in zoos and tangled with in the swamps, though I’m sure there is some distinction.
The creatures in my office, standing between ourselves and the late Buck Reeves, resembled strongly my understanding of the Crocodile. At least from the dorsal perspective, and below the neck. They stood taller than me, about a head, on hind legs that were thick and muscled, covered – as was the rest of the body – in dense scales, like a reinforced fish. They leant back on long tough tails, impishly tapered to a point. The torso was bulky, almost like a bison, as I recall, and it was there that the scales were thickest. I suspected a Sharps wouldn’t do too much damage there, nor my Winchester. The head was bereft of these scales, instead feathered in downy white all across the rounded dome. I hissed at Debby to aim for the head. She had, for which I was immensely grateful, maintained possession of the shotgun.
From here out, I’ll endeavor to record what the creatures said with all due accuracy, for as a fact they spoke. I shall try to put down only what I comprehended, which was not the event in its entirety, and include what I did not only as paraphrase. As I mention above, I had told Debby to aim for the head, quiet in hopes of avoiding the attention of the beasts. In this case, I was unsuccessful.
The words it spoke first were: “Do what?” It took me a second to figure who’d spoken, as Buck’s dead body hadn’t moved, his head lolled back over the desk and arms dangling down to the rifle on the floor – a Sharps, which is why I mentioned it earlier. Besides, he’d never sounded like that. The creatures, as I’ve said, were trying to remove Buck’s vest, which was a hideous frilly thing he’d always insisted on wearing. It was one of em who spoke. On an aside; years after this’d occurred, I passed through a town in the Dakotas on travel, where I encountered a barkeep whose voice was the spitting image of this creature’s. I learned he was English, although I remain confident these beasts were not.
The beast that’d spoken, at least I believe so, they’d had similar voices, turned to face me, and its maw was protruding but strangely human, a long yellow duck-bill that ended with the lips of a man. This, I found more terrifying than the foreign nature of all the rest of its appearance in combination, so revolting a sight it was. It had no nose of which I could be sure, though on occasion feathers on its neck pulsated in such a manner I believed it could have gills. Its eyes were wholly unfamiliar in construction, neither like a duck’s nor an alligator’s; there were three, all a bright and saccharine yellow, all with narrow pupils dashing and darting in every direction.
Debby, behind me, handled all of this better than I did, I maintain, by keeping her silence. My words, on the other hand, were frankly preposterous in retrospect, given I just asked what the hell they were doing in my office. It was all I could think of to say, although essentially each passing moment since I have thought of infinite phrases I would prefer to have said to the monstrosities upon first meeting.
I’m always comforted somewhat by the fact that what the thing replied, in its absurd accent, was similar in its odd-ness. It asked if I happened to have a hat, followed quickly by the dismissive, “not that bowler, I mean,” and a gesture toward the felt cap I’d hung on my peg. I’m ashamed to say I took some offense at this disparagement, which in the midst of everything does seem a bit a minor point.
This was when I lifted my Winchester toward the two, hoping Debby’d the sense to put her shotgun to the same purpose. Knowing Debby better now, I imagine her load of buckshot was aimed long before I brought the rifle up, on account of she’s got much more sense than me. Nowadays, I don’t know if I’d be bold enough to draw on them outright, given my hands shake and I never really was a crack shot, but then I figured the paths ahead both led to death – they had for Billy and Buck and Jack Denham – and I’d rather be dead with a rifle fired and the smell of gunsmoke in the air than otherwise.
It was also around now I noticed they’d pulled off Buck’s vest entire, and he didn’t have the same odd hole in him that had Jack Denham and Billy West. A few more seconds observation would’ve told me then, though in actuality I didn’t learn til later, the hole wernt in his chest, it was in his head – had blown it clean off, actually. Yes, when I went around the room later on, I saw Buck’s head hadn’t tilted backlike, it was gone complete, and bloodlessly so.
“Oh, say it, say it – tell us to reach for the sky,” the one on the right put out, affecting his voice strange and deep for the last few words. “Won’t you say it?”
Instead, I elected to get right to the point, and asked em what the hell they were. The one on the left replied.
“Why, actors, of course! Well, an actor and a prop-master. You’re not Bill H—-, are you? Wouldn’t that be great!” This inscrutable response initiated a moments-long conversation between the two of them only, which shed light on really nothing from my perspective. Again, I can’t speak much to accuracy or meaning. I’ve called the beasts Left-thing and Right-thing here, as I did around that time and afterward. The never switched spots, and I couldn’t have told em apart if they had.
Right-thing clarified, correctly I suppose, that my own question had referred to their nature as creatures, rather than their mode of employ. He said this, his head shaking. At this, Left-thing had looked at me, nodding, and replied that they were foreigners, “like the war of the worlds,” and asked if I was perhaps Bat Masterson, telling me “You’ve got the mustaches.”
“No, no,” Right-thing had responded, and the image of his terrifying visage bobbing back and forth had fixed in my mind, “Twenty years too early. Maybe fifteen, for Bat. I’d have to check.”
“Okay, well, like men from the moon. You understand? Men from the moon?” Left-thing had stared in my direction, and I gathered the query was intended for my response.
Dumbly, I’d mimicked back his words, asking if they were truly from the moon.
“Not the moon, no, but it’s a conceptual thing, you understand?” Left-thing looked at Right-thing, in what I now believe was a look of pity for myself and the silent Debby. “We’re extraterrestrials.”
I told them they wernt like any horse-riders I’d ever seen, and got to the point quick afterwards. “You killed Buck,” I told em, and asked, “D’you kill Jack Denham and Billy also?”
“No idea,” said Right-thing, “were those the tall guy and the fellow with the messed-up face?” He gestured with a scaly arm toward Left-thing, and I recall flinching and nearly squeezing the trigger. “He’s got a gun from one, and boots from the other, if you want to confirm. Do you need it for a form or something? A receipt? Bill of sale?” He paused. “We’re just borrowing them, don’t worry – it’s for our newest production, should be over in a few weeks.”
Left-thing had nodded, and asked again if I had a hat. “I’d really like to look authentic.” I believe I shook my head here, though perhaps I just stood in silence. In any event, Left-thing spoke again, saying something about a day’s travel in time not being wasted. As I’ve mentioned repeatedly now, I understood little of this conversation, though I make my best attempt to record it as spoken in hopes someone more intelligent may be able to put things together on my behalf.
The one asked the other if he – or it, I suppose – was ready to “head out,” and both picked up short black sticks from the desk, whose handles protruded – and which were held in such a way – so that I still believe them to have been pistols of a sort.
I believe I fired first, but as I missed, it was hard to tell in the aftermath. Certainly, Debby fired soon after, and took my advice in aiming for the head. Right thing was blown clear off its feet, tumbling back over the desktop to lay cross-wise over the corpse of Buck Reeves. The second thing made a motion toward us, blaring sound from its duck-bill, and I feared I’d have a fist-sized hole in me like Jack Denham, but a second blast – the thing that took my hearing, in the right ear, at least – knocked it back into the iron bars of my cells. This hadn’t been from Debby’s shotgun, which I’d known ahead was one-barreled, it was from Billy West’s pistol. He hadn’t revived, don’t get my meaning crooked, it’s that Debby nicked the gun from his body and tucked it away somewhere til needed. In others I’d’ve been concerned at the theft, but I’ll not pass judgment on an action that, sure as shooting, saved my life.
The Things had gone the way of Jack Denham, Billy West, Buck Reeves, the prophets and my sainted da, but I still treated their bodies with hesitation as I approached. It was about then that I noticed – or rather didn’t – Buck’s absent head. The shots had been heard, and Debby and me were joined by Mac Burly, who’d been on his way over anyway, and a few others from the street. We all took the bodies – Buck and the Crocodile things alike – over to George Berle’s, and stuffed em in caskets quick as we could. I swore them and Berle and Debby to secrecy, and swore myself in for good measure, but like all secrets this one got out and mutated and changed til an enemy armada had attacked our little town, at least as one paper told it far off on the coast. I don’t think no one but Debby and me knows what happened exactly, ‘cause she kept quiet and I did til now. Well, us and Bucks Addison, who we figured ought to be looped in.
The last thing we did, last of all that day, was we smashed those stick-guns to bits. Took a hammer from Dave Bulber’s shop and went after em like they were the ones that killed Jack Denham and Billy West and Buck Reeves, like they were the ones took my deputy away and my friend. Buck Reeves left behind family, too, I forgot to mention, and I suppose I should note also that Billy’s mother ended up with Bucks Addison, so some little good came from it all. I don’t rightly know whether Earl ever fired those Peacekeepers, but I figure not.
I’d like to say beyond this I never had occasion to shoot the Winchester, never had cause to pull out my Cattleman, and that beyond this nobody got killed on my watch, and nobody died for a very long time, but that ain’t true and you’d know it. People still cut round holes in men, they were just smaller and jagged and came from Colts, and Remingtons, not stick-guns. Boots and pistols were stolen, too, and vests. But in my time as sheriff – and it racked up to a couple years, all told – nothing else alike that one long day ever came to pass.
We buried Billy West in his own back yard, where his mama wanted him left. His headstone said he was too young, and pretty much everyone agreed. Jack Denham we put in the community churchyard, between two other ranchhands who’d passed in recent years, and we put a boulder there with some paint, to defray expenses. Buck Reeves we burned, like savages. His wife said it wernt Christian to put a man in the ground without a head. The things we put in caskets, and the caskets we put on Al Mears’s wagon one time he headed down to Corpus Christi, God knows why, and he told us he threw em in the sea. I trust he did.
Greg Burton is a writer and law student hailing from the Garden State. His work often focuses on the same themes that fascinate him academically, those of psychology, politics, and language. He is preceded by a series of lofty and meaningless titles including “Threat Analyst” and “Bouncy-House Operator.”