Doug Donnan
Executive Editor
GTNW/nMNI-GENRE+
goodtimesnewsweekly
donnan.doug@yahoo.com
"Diablo
Lobo"
by
Doug Donnan
[ 1886 // Sonora Mexico ]
[ 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 ___
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