Dig 'em Deep

Doug Donnan

Executive Editor/OM-GEN+

donnan.doug@yahoo.com

"Dig 'em Deep"

by

Doug Donnan

          [ 5 miles outside of Poco Diablo, New Mexico // circa 1892 ]

*One hour after two trapper/hunters shot and killed a would be poacher.

"And I say that's it's plenty deep enough for this sidewinder varmint here,"

Valdemere snarled as he kicked at the contorted corpse there just at their feet

with a blatant disgust. He spat out an inky wad of chew at a sand lizard that was

skittering by as though it might be late for some important midnight meeting or

prairie appointment. "This Goddam poacher is lucky we dug him a hole at all amigo!

Hell, in my daddy's day, they'd a just left his kind out here belly to the sun. Fire ants

n'  buzzards could have their fill... comprende?"

A silver sickle of moon was hooked up into a coal black sky full of flickering stars.

Only Pintor's rusty pig-iron kerosene glass lantern offered any illumination over

just exactly what the two trappers were about out there at such an ungodly hour.

Somewhere, off in the dark and distance, two coyotes conducted a howling moonlight

serenade.

"Si senor Val, pero in my country they believe that if you do not bury a dead body

deep enough you may be cursed to see its spirit otra vez somewhere and it won't be

very happy with you." Pintor whispered with wide and rolling barn owl-like eyes.

"What the hell are you talkin' about Pinto bean," Valdemere popped back. "Ghosts?

Sheeeyit, I ain't afraid of no damn fool's ghost who tried to rob some hard workin'

bastards like us outa their hard earned pelts and prizes. The Lord takes care of

them that takes care of business... their own business."

"Si... pero we catch animals in snapping, painful iron traps senor Val. Then we

skin them, sometimes they are not fully dead yet. I'm just saying that I am not

certain that the Lord looks down on the two of us with any great measure of

love or understan--"

"Aw don't gimme none of yer tortilla talk mumbo-jumbo Pinto bean," Valdemere

rudely cut in as he bent over to drag the body off to the shallow elliptical grave there

in the rocky clay. "C'mon amigo help me get this 'soon-to-be-spirit' of yours over to

the damn hole we dug."

"Muy bien senor Val," from Pintor as he shook his de-sombreroed head and then

bent low and grabbed the sprawling body by the boot straps.

"Pero, I give you fair cuidado... warning mi amigo Val. We had better watch out for--"

"Oh Goddamit, aqui... here," he sailed the man's Stetson off into the darkness in

the direction of the makeshift grave, "we'll let him wear his damn hat to the promised

land. Maybe then he won't be in such an all fired hurry to come back and haunt us."

Valdemere then snatched at the shirt and shoulders of the lanky length of the dead

poacher. "Ready? C'mon now... Heave-Ho!"

*   *   *

    [ Later that night (one mile further away) from the murder and burial site ] 

That very same pallid scythe of moon had silently repositioned itself all the way

across the vaulted onyx sky. It was now hanging, rather precariously it would seem,

just barely above the points and precipices of the far off Cimarron Range of the

majestic silhouette of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The duet of caterwauling,

crooning coyotes had long since ended their midnight audition. The tardy lizard, if it

ever did return to its point of origin, very probably had decided to take a more

circuitous and less damp route.

There wasn't a sound to be heard save for the weary, inhaling and exhaling of the the

two dead tired back-of-the-buckboard sleeping hunter-trappers and the light passing of

the chilling, intermittent prairie night's melancholy breeze. It was as though everything

in the world were, quietly and patiently, waiting for sunrise.

Just then...

"Who's out there?" Valdemere called out just over the rear pelt and paraphernalia

bin of their open wagon. He looked over at the blanket and multi-animal-pelt-pillow

bundle just there alongside him. The slapdash hide pallet was unfurled and vacant.

He tried another sleepy-eyed look, with bristly chin hanging just atop the splintered

top plank of the open wagon. "Pinto bean... you out there somewheres?"

Silence.

"Hola Pintor... donde esta? Que pasa mi amigo?" now rather apprehensively and

with more than a just a dash of respect.

Nothing. Stillness. A cold breath of wind.

"Come on now amigo, don't play games out here with your ol' pal Val. You onto

somethin' out there... somethin' big we can bag?"

Suddenly...

Valdemere caught sight of something (was it floating?) just out of the corner of his

squinting,  bloodshot brown eye. It was a figure of sorts off out by the piss ant dying

glow of their coffee and rabbit-catch campfire. Was it Pintor funnin' with him for some

reason?

The almost translucent, will-o'-the-wisp like figure was wearing a Stetson, not a

sombrero! It was also decidely taller than Pintor. Rather 'rangy' you might say. It was

kind of hard to interpret. Was he dreaming he wondered? No, after a silly, two-finger

forearm pinch.

"Pin?" he tried with a psst whisper.

The diaphanous specter turned to face him there in the wavy vertical curtain of

heatwaves provided by the fizzled campfire. Its eyes appeared hollow, but there was

something else, something that froze the bewildered Valdemere right there in his

kneeling position betwixt his pelts and prizes.

The figure was moving, slowly, towards him now as he cowered just there in the back

of the open, naked wagon. It didn't hesitate or halt by any means. A drifting, leering

still-life undaunted, unchallenged. It was coming and coming, advancing for the

 previously palpitating now wildly fibrilating Valdemere.

He was trapped and he knew it. There was nothing to be done.

  

*   *   *

            [ El Ciudad del Poco Diablo // mid-morning the very next day ]

"So let me see if I got this whole cockamamie story of yours straight Mr. Pintor,"

the sheriff said as he leaned an elbow up against the buckboard's slat and board

back bin. "You two fellas, you and the deceased back here," he thumbed over his

shoulder at the propped up body of Valdemere, "were out checkin' your traps and

such till late at night, last night in fact. You gathered up your pelts, threw 'em in the

ass end of this wagon, then made some coffee and what not, then curled up for some

shut-eye back here and called it a night.  Am I onto it so far amigo?"

"Si senor sheriff," Pintor replied as he nervously spun the curling brim of his straw

sombrero just out in front of him as if he were turning some big oil well valve.

"That is it." 

"Okay then," Sheriff Branch continued. "Now here is where you got me to scratchin'

my head. You say you woke up in the dead of night from your pallet in the back of this

ol' wagon of yours. Then you slipped off the back tailgate so's you could go tend to the

pony you got pullin' this rig. She was pissin' and moanin' about somethin' or other, so

you unhitched her, quietly as you could so as not to disturb or wake your dead partner

here, one NevilleValdemere... okay so far?"

"Si that's right senor sheriff... es verdad," from the pensive Pintor.

"So you grab your rickety ol' lantern here," Branch held up the kerosene light by its

curling rod handle, "and lead the restless horse down off for some little nearby prairie

ravine to try and conduct its business and have a cool drink of water. Havin'

accomplished these good and presumably necessary deeds you traipse on back to the

wagon draggin' miss prissy up there right along with you. As you arrive on the scene

you find this hapless individual here lyin' in his own stink and stuff, all owl-eyed, deader

than a damn doornail."

"Si, sheriff," Pintor exhaled. "I checked him over, and he was dead. So I jumped

up in the wagon's driver seat and made straight for Poco Diablo to find the sheriff...

which is you," he finished just as a tidy ghost-like team of long, pigtailed oriental

undertakers appeared just at the wagon's gaping gate. They waited, hands in fluted,

black silken sleeves for the sheriff's next procedural decision.

Sheriff Branch craned a look over at the patient burial party, then back at Pintor.

He stared in close at the little Mexican trapper.

"Just for the record amigo," the sheriff looked far off into the distance of the blue

morning sky at three or four pinwheeling vultures, I know exactly who I am around

this town amigo... comprende?"

"Si sheriff... pardona me senor."

There was an awkward pause as Sheriff Branch now eyeballed all around and about

the jittery Mexican trapper.    

"Okay buddy," he began slowly, with obvious concern and doubt, "but just before I

let you go, let me ask you one last question."

"Si senor sheriff... que?"

"Our town's doctor, who has been known to be sober from time to time, says this

here trappin' partner of yours died from some kinda' damn mass cornaree... heart

attack I'd call it. Now I cain't really say for certain 'cause I ain't no kinda' medical

examiner or coroner, but I want you to take one last look at this man's wide-open

silver dollar eyes and grimacing mouth."

Pintor stood up on tiptoes and peered inside the wagon at the frozen in fear corpse

of Valdemere. He returned to face the not so patiently waiting Sheriff Branch.

"Just what in the hell do you think caused that kinda' look to be on his face... hmm?"

"I don't know sheriff," Pintor replied as he whipped a hurried sign of the cross just

atop his sweating forehead, "but it looks as if he saw... a ghost."

                                                    ___ The End ___