Bad Medicine (24 page)

“Damndest thing I ever seen,” Will said. “An' lookit Wampus. He's scared shitless.”

The wolf dog certainly did look frightened. He stayed a few inches behind Will's heels, cringing so
his gut touched the ground, his tail tucked tightly between his legs. His eyes, like those of the horses, seemed as large as wagon wheels.

“Somethin's real wrong out there,” Will said. “I don't—”

Ray hushed his friend with a raised hand. “Listen careful. You hear what I do?”

Will listened intently, eyes tightly shut. The tension he'd felt earlier had translated itself into a quietly sawing buzz that was all the more ominous because of its lack of real volume. Hell, a half hundred head of beef on a run would make three times the noise. “What's . . . ?”

“Jesus Howard Christ,” Ray said. “That ain't no rain storm or dust storm. Them is grasshoppers, Will!”

“Grasshoppers?” Will asked incredulously.

“Abs'lutely! I never seen nothing like this, but a fella from Missouri—another wolf-bounty boy—he tol' after he give up wolfin' an' started farmin', he lost a whole fifty acres of wheat.” Ray was talking rapidly now, almost too fast to follow. “The sonsabitches et the stalks right down level with the ground. They et all the clothes his woman had hanged out to dry, much of his tack an' leather riggin's for his two-bottom plow, his saddle, a buncha kittens his kid was raisin' up, his manure pile, his—”

“How can a grasshopper eat leather an' cloth an' such?”

“One hopper can't but ninety thousand billion of them can eat any goddamn thing they come across. I hear tell they ate up a baby in Kansas. I dunno how true that is, but it's what I heard. Kinda tough on the poor baby if it
is
true.”

Ray stopped talking and took several deep breaths.

“OK. Here's what we gotta do.

“First, we cover our mouths an' noses with our bandannas. Then we stuff li'l plugs of cloth in our ears. If hoppers git in there . . . well . . . and then we gotta plug up the horses' ears an' their nose holes, if we can do it. Wampus need plugs in his ears, too. Here's another thing, too: every snake an' rabbit and scorpion and prairie dog in all them acres is gonna be haulin' ass away from the hoppers. We gotta keep the horses close together as we can, an' use stout sticks to whack the piss outta the rattlers an' sidewinders. See, they go nuts an' bite ever'thin' they see.”

Will already had his bandanna in place and was tearing up his second shirt to make plugs for his ears and for his horse and dog. “You need some'a this?” he asked Ray. “No sense in us both ruining a shirt if we don't have to. I got plenty for me an' my critters.”

“Good idear. While I'm pluggin' up my horse, how 'bout you tearin' off a couple branches to pound snakes an' scorpions with? Won't be long 'fore they're here, an' they ain't lookin' to be friends with us. Oh—and tuck your drawers into your boots an' tie one a them sleeves around your neck good an' tight. If what my friend tol' me is true—an' I got no reason to think it ain't—the hoppers'll be all over us real soon.”

Neither Will's horse nor his dog put up a fight as he jammed balls of cloth into their ears. Both animals were trembling and the pinto had broken a heavy sweat. Wampus stayed in place a couple of inches behind Will, belly to the ground, following his every move.

The buzz had turned into a flapping, pounding sound—like that of the wings of a frantic bird except many, many times louder. Will hacked off a couple of desert-pine branches and trimmed them clean of shoots and suckers. He tossed one to Ray. Will stood between the horses. Ray was in front of him a few strides.

The rabbits came first, covering the ground like a dirty brown blanket, running their hearts out. It was hard to believe that there could be so many jacks in one place, but there they were, wild-eyed, many with their tiny pink tongues protruding from their gaping mouths as they sucked air.

The prairie dogs were next, scrambling, banging into one another, falling, running over each other. Then came the snakes.

Will had never seen so many goddamn rattlers in his life, and neither had Ray. They didn't glide smoothly as they generally did, but seemed to move in almost jerky, spasmodic leaps ahead, stopping every so often to raise their heads eight or ten inches above the ground as if they were periscopes on those rebel underwater ships. Ray began slamming reptiles with his stick, yelling and cursing at them. Only a few got past him and Will handled those easily enough. The horses stood stock-still, paralyzed with fear, the scent of the snakes reaching their brains even through the cloth jammed into their nostrils. And then, suddenly, there was nothing in the world but grasshoppers, impossibly massive numbers of them, with virtually no space between them. They came on with a roar composed of millions—billions—of the miniscule abrasive sounds each made, amplified by a figure too large to imagine.

In a matter of seconds both horses, both men, and the wolf dog were blanketed with foraging hoppers. The horses, now beyond panic and into a state of raw instinct, wanted nothing but to run, to get this horror behind them. They reared and bucked in spite of the hobbles, their piercing squeals barely audible over the infernal racket of the insects. Will was pulled from his feet, blinded by the hoppers sheeting his face, afraid to open his eyes, and had to release the ropes he had on each horse. Without the use of their forelegs, the horses stumbled and fell and were unable to get up, their hooves sliding on the crushed grasshoppers that now covered the prairie floor like a grotesque green snowfall from hell.

Wampus was rolling wildly, digging his shoulders into what should have been ground but was, instead, two inches of grasshoppers, the thick brown exudate—tobacco juice, as the cowboys called it—staining his coat. He snapped futilely at the hordes, accomplishing nothing but filling his mouth with hopper parts and guts. Will and Ray slapped at themselves ineffectually. Even with pants tucked into boots and bandannas tight to their necks, the cursed hoppers got into their clothing and the sensation of the beating wings, the sharp-edged legs, and the seeping flow of tobacco juice was enough to drive a sane man 'round the bend. Will tried rolling on the ground—forgetting there was no ground, beyond millions of grasshoppers. He stumbled to his feet with more hoppers touching his flesh than he'd had before he attempted rolling.

It was impossible to see; the cloud of insects was so thick that there was no space between them. They
were a writhing sheet of foul, tremendously destructive creatures that brought forth a driving, atavistic fear in man and animal alike.

The onslaught ended abruptly. One moment the very air was crawling with hoppers and the next only a few stragglers leapfrogged past. Even the mass of hoppers on the ground moved after those in the air—except for those that'd been crushed, rolled on, or stomped into paste. Dead and dying snakes littered the ground; dead prairie dogs and jackrabbits were scattered about. There hadn't been many scorpions—at least that the men could see. They'd stamped on those.

The men stripped down and shook their shirts and pants vigorously, emptying their clothing of hopper corpses. They picked the crushed ones off their skin as if they were scabs, often gagging as they did so.

Will tossed his bandanna on the ground in disgust, first holding it out in front of him. “Lookit this goddamn thing,” he said, “dripping with 'bacco juice. Damn! It'd make a shit fly puke.”

They looked around them, awestruck. There was nothing green—or even brown and dessicated by the sun—left on the prairie. It was as if a giant scythe wielded by a demon spirit had attacked the area as far as the eye could see.

The horses, still hobbled, hadn't gotten far and now stood together, heads hanging, breathing heavily, insects glued to their panicked sweat. Will and Ray cleaned their mounts using the edges of hands as scrapers. Wampus, finally standing erect, cleaned himself, except for those his paws and teeth couldn't reach. Will took care of those for him.

“Ya know,” Ray said, “as bad as this was, some good's goin' to come out of it.”

“How so?”

“Think about it, Will. The whole wampus thing. See, the redskins believe a wampus can control nature, control the weather. They gotta see the hopper attack as a plague ordered by the wampus.”

Will considered that. “Then we oughta plan an attack real soon—hit 'em while they're still seeing visions of hoppers an' wampus comin' after them.”

“Right. The grasshoppers headed right for Olympus. The outlaws could stay in their saloon, but most of the windows—maybe all of 'em—were shot out, so that cesspool was just a-crawlin' with hoppers. We know how they react to your wolf dog, an' if you up an' add that to a plague of bugs they figure the wampus set on 'em, well, we got us a buncha scared enemies—real scared.”

“I dunno, Ray. One Dog jus' hired on a herd of new guns. We don't know where they come from or who they are—or what they can do with a pistol or rifle.”

Ray grinned derisively. “Sure. I 'magine they hired on the Earp brothers, Billy Bonney, John Ringo, Bill Hickok, ol' Doc Holliday, all them Clanton boys, an' the goddamn Pope, right?”

Will laughed heartily. “Thing is, the Pope could never fan a .38 or .44 worth a damn. But yeah, you're right. Still, they got a army and we got us. We're better an' faster an' a whole bundle smarter than they are, but they can put a awful lot of lead in the air.

“Seems to me you got a plan, Ray.”

“Oh, yeah. An' a damn fine one.”

“Tell me.”

“First I gotta show you somethin'.” He led Will
over to their saddles, their boots crunching on dead hoppers. The grasshoppers hadn't had time to do any real damage to the saddles, although both were splotched with amber saliva from them. “I got some neat's-foot erl,” Ray said. “We'll clean our tack later.” He crouched down and opened his saddlebag, from which he removed a wooden box about sixteen inches long and six inches wide.

“What's that?”

“Now, jus' hold on an' I'll show you.”

Ray worked the three latches on the box and swung its top open. There, on a layer of straw, were six flat, blunt-ended darkish brown strips, each about a half inch wide. “This here is black powder,” Ray said, “mixed with some chemical or another, so it ain't loose—ain't really a powder. A feller named Du Mont or Du Pont or some such come up with it for the Union Army. Then the war went an' ended an' he kinda give up on the idear.”

“But what's it for?”

“I'll show you in a minute. But first, when I went to send them wires, I seen posters nailed to the wall of the depot on three of the boys I was lookin' for. Then, the ol' buzzard runnin' the 'graph key tol' me two of the boys was dead an' he knew it for a fact. Anyhow, we got to jawin' an' I mentioned One Dog. I tol' him me an' my group was Pinkertons disguised as reg'lar saddle tramps an' cowhands, an' our job was to kill One Dog. Well, that lit up the ol' fella. Dog had killed some relative a his, a farmer. He—”

“Jesus, Ray, will you cut the horseshit an' tell me what you're thinkin' an' what them sticks are for?”

“Porky sumbitch,” Ray mumbled. He took one of
the sticks and hurled it overhand out into the prairie. “Now you pop that fella with a rock,” he said.

Will drew his pistol.

“No, dammit! Toss stones 'til you hit it.”

“Look here . . .”

“Jus' do it an' keep your yap from flappin, OK?”

Will waited for a long moment and then gathered up a good handful of pitching stones and began throwing. Will didn't have much of an arm for throwing stones—he had the strength, but his accuracy was abysmal.

“Gonna be dark in a few hours,” Ray remarked.

Will grumbled some obscenities but kept on pitching. Finally, one of his stones ticked the very end of the stick. The explosion blew him off his feet and onto his ass on dead grasshoppers.

“Holy God,” he said reverently.

“See, a decent-sized man's weight—a single step—will set one of these sonsabitches off. All we gotta do is slide in there and plant some sticks an' we got them outlaws by the eggs, no?”

“Sure! We plant some 'round the saloon, some where their horses are—lots of places. Damn, Ray, you're a genius!”

“Ahh, hell,” Ray said modestly, “ain't nothin' the great Bobby Lee couldn't have did, had he these sticks.”

It was a long wait until full dark. Will leaned against his saddle, smoking a cigarette after clearing the insects out of his space, thinking.

Ray has become an awful good friend. He's a good fighter, he's got the balls of a bull buffalo, and a sense of humor that's really somethin'. Sure, he yaps a tad too
much—but lookit his plan with those sticks of black powder. Hell, if we launched an attack, both of us an' Wampus's blood would be drawin' flies on Main Street.

I've seen Ray handle a rope, too. He don't look at it as he builds his loop, and he throws better'n average—not a top-notch roper, but not half-bad, neither. Better'n the usual cowhand, anyways. Ain't afraid of some work. Lookit that ride he made.

Ray's a good man. I wonder if he's ever thought 'bout ranchin'?

The saloon was cryptlike in its silence. One Dog stood atop the far end of the bar, arms folded, war paint on his face and his naked, sweating chest.

“One Dog has more power than the wampus,” he said. “I will meet him and kill him and take his hair and his head and hold his bleeding head in front of you, whether he calls upon his powers to appear as a man or a wolf or a lowly grasshopper. Remember my medicine.”

There were at least two heavily armed men at each window frame, the glass having been long ago shot out. A dozen or more men spread around the batwings and the front windows. The floor of the saloon was a carpet of dead and dying hoppers, puke, urine, and shell casings.