Diablo Lobo

Doug Donnan

Executive Editor GTNW/nMNI-GENRE+

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donnan.doug@yahoo.com

"Diablo Lobo" 

             by

     Doug Donnan


[ 1886 // Sonora Mexico ]

"Si amigo it is 'very' strange indeed," Calvera almost whispered as he looked all around and about the moonlit arroyo just there

under the jutting red sandstone precipice. "If it was as big as you say, it could very well have been the legendary giant prairie wolf

they call Diablo Lobo."

"I only just saw a huge shadow as it slunk past the dull glow of the campfire. I could have sworn it was one of our damn horses that

got unhiched from where we left them over yonder," Matthewson replied from a frightened, bending position as he grasped the stock and

barrel of his Winchester with white-knuckles. "You think that godforsaken thing was some kind of damn wolf... 'that big? Shit Cal, I

ain't never even seen a grizzly bear that could throw a shadow like 'that' damn thing did. Maybe it was just the light of our dying

campfire or the damn full moon's light playin' tricks on my eyes. Ya' think?"

Calvera turned around to face his shaking traveling companion. A duet of midnight coyotes were exchanging a boisterous ballyhoo

somewhere far off in the night. A breath of wind swept and swirled around them, like a dying desert dust devil. 

"Si mi amigo... 'maybe',  pero the legend it tells that the big wolf... Diablo Lobo, only prowls and preys when the moon is full," Calvera

finished with a slanting, lizard-eyed look up at the wide awake alabaster moon."

"Whata ya mean by 'preys'?" Matthewson tried with a hush.

"Diablo Lobo is said to be a hunter... a hunter of men."

"Oh that's jist terrific amigo. Muchas Gracias! Shitfire, next I bet yer gonna tell me he jist happens to be partial to gringos too,"

Matthewson all but gasped as he rolled his wide, owl-like eyes. His shoulders sagged in deflated despair.

"Well, as a matter of... that is... as the legend goes," Calvera stammered uncomfortably.

"Jesus Christ! Come on Calvera, let's get the hell outa' this godforsaken place. I don't giva a prairie rat's ass what time of night it is,

'vamanos muchacho'... comprende-vu?"

At that point, off in the darkness, the two vaqueros tethered horses were fuming and whinnying about something or other.

The cowboys stared in close at each other. 'This' didn't sound good.    

"Bueno, bueno mi amigo Mateo, pero yo creo que we had better be muy careful with every move we make now. Those ponys of

ours are--

"Whata ya mean...we?" Matthewson cut in coldly. "I'm the only gringo out here that I know about. 'I'll' go check on the damn horses.

Shit, I ain't afraid of that big bad wolf," he half-heartedly declared as he held up his lever-ready rifle with a dubious display of bravado.

"Muy bien Mateo, pero 'cuidado' mi gringo amigo--"

"Aw bull crap," the aggravated Matthewson rudely broke in, "I don't want to hear no more of your Mexican malarkey comprende?"

"Pero--"

Matthewson turned-to and walked off into the blackness to see about tending to their two spooked and spirited horses.

[ approximately 5 minutes later ]

A blood curdling cry and shrill bleating from one of the hidden horses cut through the night like a well honed knife.

"Oye, Mateo!" Calvera called out into the pitch tar night between cold cupped hands. "Donde esta?"

There was no response, nothing, save for the indifferent, callous wind brushing by like a lost soul.

"Oye Mateo! Que pasa mi amigo... estas bien?"

Silence.

Calvera fished around in his bedroll for his six gun. He pulled it free and squinted a spin at the tumbler to take a cartridge inventory.

Carefully pulling away a thin glowing log from the cranky campfire, he held the pistol and glow torch out in front of himself like a man

preparing to enter some haunted mine or dark and dangerous cave. He stepped ahead, cautiously, apprehensively, into the night.

*   *   *

At first Calvera was unable to detect anything out of the ordinary, as 'ordinary' might go way out there at the ass end of nowhere.

He swept over the entire area betwixt and between the now rather sedate, but still goggle-eyed ponys. There wasn't a trail or a trace

of his prairie fencing partner Bertrand Matthewson.

Nada, nothing.

But then, after his eyes adjusted to the dim light of the pallid oval moon, he dropped his pistol and froze in place. There were crimson

streaks of blood all across the ground as if splatterd or violently sprayed somehow.

Matthewson's Winchester rifle with hammer and lever action both cocked and ready.

Matthewson's disheveled black Stetson hat lying on the ground upside down.

Calvera inched ahead and then bent low. He studied in horror and disbelief the narrow, double rutted trail as it dragged off into the

blackness of the prairie night. He whipped a hurried sign of the cross just over his jostled wisps of ravenesque hair. "Madre de Dios,"

he gasped into the warm and wistful wind. "Boot tips!"

___ The End ___