Hayden DuPont peeled away the bear’s gut and poked his head into the morning air. Mushy fur sagged as Montana wind sliced through the beast’s opening. Intestines and fluids dripped. DuPont’s breath plumed. Relief flooded his chest.
Alive.
Naked and caked in dried blood, he crawled from the bear’s protective womb and toddled
“Vampires, Marshal. Was a vampire that did it,” said the stout hotel manager.
Roland Chadwick, Deputy US Marshal, removed his fingers from the bite mark against Judge Wilkens’s neck. “Should send for a doctor.”
The manager leaned over the lawman’s shoulder. “Ain’t one in town, just the barber. He’s only good with stitches
Gregory Martin rode into town mumbling, “Killed. Killed us all.”
He stumbled from his horse, staggered toward the frontier clinic, and collapsed. Within the hour, he was dead.
Roland Chadwick, Deputy U.S. Marshal, dispersed an inquisitive crowd and joined Dr. Vernon Mortimer inside his humble hospital.
The physician locked the door and shook
Something was killing the chickens. Outside the window, in the coop, their squawks broke the silent Kentucky night beyond the homestead’s walls—chaotic bursts of fear and agony.
A boy of fifteen, Roland Chadwick sprang out of bed while his younger brother and sister gazed at him wide-eyed from the mattress the three of them shared
The bullet whistled and bit.
Roland Chadwick, Deputy U.S. Marshal, pressed a scarred hand against his blood-soaked shirt and half collapsed against the hotel’s cellar stairwell. Gunshots resounded outside where a gang of hired guns patrolled the frontier town’s streets with revolvers drawn.
The marshal stumbled down to the bottom step, where gaslight illuminated
“We’re clear of the stockade. Twenty yards or so.” Corporal Tiller’s sullied head emerged from the hole, poking into the shade of the primitive lean-to. “I reckon we run like hell, we can reach a river by dawn. Lord willing.”
Lieutenant Roland Chadwick helped the Union soldier from the tunnel’s entrance. Tiller
The door flung open before Marshal Roland Chadwick could finish pouring his morning coffee. The frontier town’s lawman, Sheriff Tiller, was away on his honeymoon, so Chadwick had offered to substitute. He sat at the sheriff’s desk, reading a worn copy of Emerson.
“Well?” the intruder asked, striding toward Chadwick with her dress swaying
The groom’s lips twisted in a final death cry.
Someone in the wedding party called for a doctor, but US Marshal Roland Chadwick suspected the worst. As the wedding’s officiator, he’d heard both bride and groom swear till death do us part, but not even he could have predicted such a swift separation.
The Colt revolver’s song echoed through the barren terrain as gun smoke mixed with heavy snowfall. Marshal Roland Chadwick holstered his firearm, grimaced, and spat, watching bloody saliva crystalize and disappear into the white earth. The image reminded him of a disfigured candy cane. After all, it was Christmas Eve.
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Marshal Roland Chadwick pressed his nose to the desert floor and sniffed. A whiff of sulfur entered his nostrils, receded, and returned stronger. He snorted and coughed. The smell of hades wasn’t easily dismissed. But it came with the territory. Without it, he’d be out of a job.
He mounted his horse and rode,
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