Twitch and Die!

Ch.8: Vezzoni, the Bastard

With a single slap on the rump, McCutchen gave Chester permission to roam for whatever winter grass the horse could find on the backside of the hill. Chancho and his friends weren’t going anywhere till morning. Positioned on a knob overlooking the rest of New York Hill, McCutchen watched a weak electric light dance about inside one of the empty homes for several minutes.

Finally it went out. The surface of the hill could have just as easily been covered in scrub oak and mesquite as luxurious homes. The heavens faded until the night turned as dark as death’s closet. He tore jerky between his teeth and sat. His inability to number the nights he’d spent like this made him tired.

His years of tracking bandits and lowlifes across the Texas wilderness hadn’t prepared him for the things he’d seen recently, the worst of it after the sun went down. Ignorance had been bliss for a time. But once the nightmares came to life they couldn’t be kept under the bed. Even now he wondered what demon threats veiled by darkness awaited his discovery.

He tore another strip of jerky and closed his eyes while he chewed. The lack of moon and stars was a mercy. Without the ability to see, no reason remained to keep trying. And he was too old to waste energy on futile endeavors. He’d learned years ago that things can always get worse. The dead were proof. If he ever failed to prepare for it, he’d join them. But fretting and preparation were two different things. Or maybe he was simply adjusting to the idea of death, like his father had in the end.

He stretched out and leaned against his saddle. Funny, he thought. Several nights ago his knowledge of the demons had filled the darkness with fear, until eventually the darkness became a relief. At the moment, he figured Chancho’s lack of knowledge was filling his darkness with the same fear.

Some things are better left in the dark, mi amigo.

As McCutchen floated off to sleep, a distant echo burrowed inside his head. His eyes instinctively shot open, his fingers gripping his Colt. For a moment he lay still, unsure of what had awoken him. Then his waking mind heard the same sound—the combustion engine of an automobile wafting up the hill from the west. Company men.

Either this was an unfortunate coincidence, or someone else had heard the same donkey bray he’d heard echo across the lake. One way or the other, they’d take as kindly to trespassers as a hound to three-pound ticks, especially after working so hard to keep news of the contagion from panicking the populous.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. Why should he care? If Chancho Villarreal and some friends wanted to keep sticking their noses where they didn’t belong, why should he keep bailing them out?

He couldn’t shake the look in Doc Quick’s eyes the day his father had died, the mixture of rage and regret—the same uneasiness he’d learned to recognize in himself. Without words the Doc had blamed someone or something. He’d assumed it had been the illness, the wicked depravity of God’s own creation unleashed on itself.

But then what was Chancho up to? He shook his head, grunting as he stood. Why come here after a sick woman’s dying words? Unless it was to find something. Stooping to pick up his saddle, he whistled for Chester. McCutchen needed to know what that something could be. Headlights flashed over a mile away, then disappeared amidst the rugged terrain. To find out, he’d have to keep the bumbling Chancho Villarreal alive, at least for now.

Vezzoni had been asleep in his recliner when the call came in over the radio, not the telephone. Never a good sign. He growled into the receiver, “What is it now?” He let go of the button. After seconds of crackling static, a response rose above the white noise.

“Visitors, sir… Big Lake…” The signal broke up and Vezzoni ground the stub of an extinct cigar between his teeth. “…sounded like a donkey.”