Inherent chaos, p.12
Inherent Chaos, page 12
He'd thought of at least covering the bodies of Drake and Baxter as well as that of Marshal Bain but decided against it for two distinct reasons. One: Whatever lawmen were the first on the scene would surely not appreciate the alteration and Two: The sad truth was, he simply wasn’t up to the physical assertion. The bleeding of his back wound had abated somewhat, if not he would’ve already passed from blood loss, and he was going to need to keep additional leakage to a minimum if he was going to make it back to the shack alive.
Exiting the caboose, having donned both guard’s uniform jackets and a thick toboggan belonging to one, all of which he’d found stashed in a gunny sack, Dalton could only guess dawn was still three to four hours away. The skies spit only the occasional flake, and the winds had all but died down save a sporadic gust.
Traversing gingerly from the caboose steps onto the tracks with borrowed lantern in hand, a two-to-three-foot snowdrift on either side, he took note of a length of chain running from the car’s undercarriage to perhaps a hundred down the line.
As the frigid cold provided both a natural numbing to the wound and substantial recharging of the senses, Dalton allowed curiosity to rule the moment, following the linked chain to its conclusion a few hundred feet later, just a few yards from the right of the tracks.
From the deep drift protruded a boot, roper style with fancy-stitch design, the chain so tightly wound around the possessor’s ankle it had pulled flesh, muscle and strips of the boot-leather away to reveal the ivory bone beneath.
Having seen, smelled and witnessed enough bloodletting for a lifetime, Dalton turned away without further inspection and, to both his utter surprise and delight, there stood Dixie just to the left of the caboose. Making his way painstakingly back toward the caboose, barely avoiding tripping numerous times, he thought the rag-tail’s presence just a cruel hallucination until he’d reached gingerly out to stroke her all-too-real muzzle. Climbing into the saddle had been a struggle, she’d nearly dragged him by a single stirrup at one terrifying juncture, but once aboard he guided her past the still-foreboding husk of the Big Horn Express, snow up to the filly’s forearms. Dalton knew all too well another tumble like that first, it seemed to have occurred literally days ago, would surely spell his doom.
Attempting to follow the well-covered train tracks leading back to the shack, memory was obviously useless as not only had the marshal steered but he’d ridden the majority of the trek with his head bowed from the blizzard’s rage, Dalton pulled back on the reins only once, that with the discovery of yet another casualty.
The dead man he could only guess to be either the train’s engineer or brakeman, as, even in his frozen state, he didn’t fit the description Bain gave of the fugitive rake, Bradshaw.
Face down in a mound of snow, the corpse’s tracks had been covered on the last stretch before his collapse, meaning he fell just as the blizzard subsided. Tall and lanky and wearing only a light jacket, he’d more than likely escaped the train with only minor wounds, there was a heavy matting to the back of his head notably darker than the sandy shade that dominated, but he hadn’t made it more than a half mile before succumbing to the elements. As for Mister Carlton Bradshaw, Dalton could only assume via process of elimination he had been the unfortunate bastard on the other end of that chain trailing the caboose.
It took just over an hour more to reach the shed, Dixie doing yeoman’s work to avoid untold dangers beneath the snow as Dalton guided her at roughly half the speed of Bain’s earlier trek. High tension aside, Dalton still caught himself nodding off numerous times, such innate drowsiness no doubt due to a heady mix of complete exhaustion and blood loss. Though his back wound numbed considerably, a sporadic and intense throbbing served to wake him from the occasional nods, thus preventing a potentially fatal tumble from the saddle.
The telegraph was short and simple and riddled with uncharacteristic spelling errors. Days later, he would recall nary a detail of sending it.
Big Horn Express stalled.
Prisoners escaped
Many dead inside.
Come as soon as possible
As fate would have it, ‘as soon as possible’ came just in time to save Dalton Harrison’s life, making him the lone survivor of the night soon to be infamously known for all of American western lore as The Big Horn Massacre.
~ * ~
“By the time the nearest authority reached him, Uncle Dalton had been comatose for nearly two full days. The loss of blood, teamed with severe dehydration wasn’t quite enough to kill ‘im, but it was close. They told ‘im he’d been fortunate the Colt slug ricocheted off his scapula bone. In and out almost the same hole. All told, he spent ten days in a Laramie hospital, all expenses paid by the railroad company, which I have to say is the very least they could do.”
Steering the Charger over a steep grade while cruising by a trio of semi’s clogging the slow lane, Brad noted Boone ending the recording before beginning this latest portion of the story’s epilogue, thus openly inviting his driver’s feedback.
“I’ll say. Damn, but what an ordeal,” he offered, shocked via a glance at the dash’s digital clock that well over an hour passed since Boone’s tale commenced. “In today’s world, your uncle would be choosing between book and movie offers. Was there any coverage, I mean at least locally?”
Pale and pastier than he’d appeared at the story’s inception, Boone’s voice was still strong; eyes glistening and hands lively and animated.
“Oh yes indeed. Newspaper reporters from Cheyenne, Laramie and even Casper arrived in Rock Springs before Uncle Dalton even came to, each of ‘em itching for the exclusive. ‘Course by then the lurid details came to light. Lawmen from three states, including a Texas Ranger and even a Pinkerton man all converged on the Big Horn, the latter all too willing to share all he’d seen, for a substantial price, of course. He said the saddest of all was meeting with several of Daniel Bain’s deputies at the Marshal’s funeral service.”
“So, your uncle made a trip all the way to Missouri?”
Boone nodded, the tone of his reply ripe with pride, a renewed gleam in his eyes.
“Yes sir. Said he wouldn’t have missed it, no matter the lack of healing to his own wounds. My uncle was said to have claimed Dan Bain as the bravest man he’d ever met, and from what I’ve heard of Dalton’s subsequent travels, that was no small feat. Anyhow, Uncle Dalton gave the papers the scoop, but only after clearing himself as a suspect. Got a grainy old photo from the Natrona County Times tucked away in my scrapbook. That was Casper’s main rag at that time. Uncle Dalton appears mighty ragged, all right.”
Hitting a lengthy straight, flat stretch of road with little in the way of accompanying traffic, Brad set the Charger on cruise as to better focus.
“So, you’re telling me your uncle was actually a suspect? I get there was no CSI in those days, but how blind could they be?”
“Just a formality,” Boone replied, smiling and waving off the younger man. “You have to understand, trains filled with mutilated bodies wasn’t exactly the norm in those days. Not that such horrors would be considered routine even now, but nobody saw anything like that outside an Apache raid. Once they’d confirmed Harmon and Bueley’s official presence on the Big Horn, all was, how do they say these days? Copasetic.”
Brad nodded eagerly, lips already forming the next query.
“Speaking of bodies, who were the two found outside the train?”
“As my uncle had suspected, what remained of Carlton Bradshaw had been dragged countless miles across that frozen track, though, what was never clear was why he alone suffered such a cruel fate. Speculation was his mouth wrote checks his ass couldn’t cash, so to speak, and he paid dearly for it. Maybe he even made the fatal mistake of flirting with Verta. The other body had been that of Luther Colins, the train engineer. Unknown to my uncle at the time, Collins suffered a substantial gut wound, no doubt administered at Verta’s hands with that damned saber. Honestly, her and Harmon couldn’t scrape up a shred of humanity between ‘em.”
Steering them past yet another lumbering semi, Brad’s voice crackled with adolescent excitement.
“Yeah, about those two. What was their story? I mean, why the transfer from state prison to the nuthouse? Must’ve been some seriously sick acts.”
Squinting out the window, clear blue skies had resulted in a particularly bright day considering all the gray days preceding it, Boone appeared to phase out as if temporarily hypnotized by the passing landscape. Still a good three hours from Sioux Falls, there was little in the way of landmarks since passing Fargo, just mile after mile of rocky hills, concave valleys and distant mountain ranges. Brad gave it a full two minutes before restarting the conversation, his curiosity overpowering any normal good manners or politeness.
“Boone?”
“Yes, yes, I heard you,” Boone replied, breaking contact with the great outdoors and instead peering down into his lap to check the recorder, “I was just…I can’t recall the last time I regaled to anyone that particular chapter of dark family history. Didn’t expect it to…take so much out of me.”
Brad, checking the rearview, cleared his throat noisily.
“Well, hey, if you’d like to continue a bit later or just drop the sub…”
“No, no, it’s fine. I think I owe the proper conclusion to both you and my loved ones. Plus, which, it just might be the therapy I need in order to face the music before crossing that Mississippi line.”
“Tape still holding out?”
“Should be enough to fill in the blanks. Now, you asked about the two mass murderers.”
“Yeah, what was their names? Harvey and Bule? I wanna be able to Google ‘em later.”
The older man laughed, a welcome sight and sound to his transporter.
“Harmon, Richard and Bueley, first name Verta. Those two put the insane in criminally insane before such a term became the norm. At age twelve while living in his third orphanage, Harmon somehow got access to cans of turpentine and set the place ablaze in the middle of the night. If I recall correctly, they pulled the charred bodies of more than a dozen children from the ruins. At seventeen, he raped and strangled an eleven-year-old retarded girl, then murdered a rookie orderly who’d made the mistake of leaving him unattended in the institute’s tool room. Dismembered the poor bastard with a bone saw. All told he’d tallied twenty-two murders, counting the six both he and Verta shared credit for on the Big Horn.”
Brad practically hooted.
“What about Miss Congeniality?”
“If possible, an even higher level of sadistic derangement. She was just eight when she murdered her younger sister by drowning her in a creek beside their house, their very own parent’s the star witnesses. Soon after she was treated with the drugs of the day; opium, morphine, assorted mood breakers, before being placed with stepparents.
“As I recall, the new folks were deeply Christian and took in troubled kids as a habit.”
The comical double-take Brad executed birthed the tiniest grin from his host, who shrugged weakly.
“You’re kidding? They just doped up the little psycho before handing her over to another set of potential victims?”
“Brad, remember this was still the 19th century. Obviously, treatments and methods have progressed substantially.”
Mouth hanging open, Brad just shook his head in stunned disbelief.
“So, I’m guessing this new family unit didn’t exactly bond either?”
“Tragically, no. As a teen, Verta developed a penchant for cutlery, stealing every sharp-edged instrument she could get her hands on. Used a Bowie to slash her stepmother’s throat and a scythe to decapitate a younger stepbrother. Dumped his head in a well out back for his stepfather to discover days after the fact. So, after a series of chemical treatments and years of supervision in a small-town monastery, she came of age and was released.
“Verta was nineteen when she met a carny worker and joined a traveling side show, as it was found she was unusually, almost supernaturally flexible, what folks used to refer to as triple-jointed, but we know now as hypermobile. Sure explained a lot to me about how she was able to slip that restraint on the Big Horn, plus cram herself in such tight quarters while hiding from my uncle and the Marshal. Anyhow, she was considered quite the multitalented lass in the show, both as a knife thrower and trapeze artist.”
“Uh-huh, so how long did she make it before cracking up?”
“A couple of years, believe it or not, though there was speculation that she left a few scattered body’s behind, what with all the different towns the show passed through. If you think on it, it was the perfect profession for those who came to be labeled serial killers. It was just a year, maybe two before the Big Horn killings that she was nabbed after knifing a co-worker, some young lass who’d dared outperform her on the high wire.
“Once jailed, I think the hoosegow was just outside Wichita, she’d allegedly bitten the ear off one guard and beaten another damn near to death with his own Billy-club. That was how she ended up on the Big Horn, and well, the rest is history, though I noticed the Wikerpedia version leaves out the grisly details. Probably for the best. I kinda wish I wasn’t privy to ‘em.”
Several moments of silence passed, Boone having pressed the recorder’s rewind button before Brad turned towards him, face scrunched in utter befuddlement.
“Two things, Boone. Number one, what the hell is a hoosegow and two: I think you meant Wikipedia.”
For the second time since story-time’s conclusion, Boone laughed long and well, his complexion briefly gaining a sudden rush of color.
Approximately a half hour later and still over one-hundred miles away from the first day’s planned stop, Boone politely asked his personal chauffer to pull over at the next service station that might offer an old man a chilled brew and a pack of cigarettes.
Chapter Four
“Mmm, just hits the spot. Appreciate the introduction to this new version of my favorite brew.”
Boone tipped the frosty can in Brad’s direction, the latter pulling back onto an almost deserted stretch of interstate.
“Can’t honesty take the credit. Old Milwaukee Ice was the only version in the cooler.”
“Mother’s milk. Sure, you don’t mind the cancer-stick?” the older man inquired, thin tendrils of smoke pouring from each nostril.
Securing the Charger’s regular place in the slow lane after setting the cruise for a just-under-the-limit sixty-eight MPH, Brad cleared his throat as if delaying a response.
“Oh, yes, excuse the careless phrasing,” Boone resumed, delivering a light tap to the younger man’s shoulder. “Then again considering the diagnosis, I can’t find a logical reason to re-kick what was once a treasured habit.”
“I’m fine,” Brad replied, though red-eyed and teary beneath the dark shades, “I understand where you’re coming from.”
The brew parked at his lap, Boone held the half-smoked Maverick eye-level, staring at it with gleeful admiration.
“Think it was around eighty-seven or eighty-eight a buddy of mine introduced me to Harley-Davidson brand smokes, the precursor to these little beauties. Considering I started out rolling my own before graduating to Marlboro, these bad-boys were like trading in an Edsel for a DeLorean.”
Brad snorted, sipping from a bottled Dr. Pepper.
“Sounds like true love.”
“Well, as far as relationships go, it has outlasted several of my marriages.”
The older man scooped up the beer can and, lowering the smoldering fag, lifted it airborne for a similar gaze of unbridled admiration.
“As for this heavenly can of midwestern prime hops and barley, it replaced Hubor Bock, Miller High Life and eventually even Bud and PBR as the favorite to please this old man’s picky palate.”
Yet again, Brad’s warped expression defined befuddlement.
“A connoisseur of aged obscurity, a mystic for the misled and misinformed, Rip Van Relic, that’s me.”
If anything, the younger man’s mask of utter perplexity stretched to comical proportions.
“Boss, there are times I wonder if we’re speaking the same language or maybe it’s just your wiseman’s dialect that’s tossing me into a continual loop of miscommunication.”
The two shared yet another sincere moment of jocularity, both spit-taking their respective libations in the process.
“So, not to backtrack to the point of exhausting, but whatever happened to Dalt…your great uncle? I mean, was he able to cash in on the celebrity in any way or did he even pursue such a thing?”
“Not at all. I guess in what passes for entertainment these days, he would at least be hosting his own reality show or be drawing quite the crowd on YouTube. Got his picture taken with a grouping of lawmen that got shared to most of the northwestern papers but that was about all they wrote as far as recognition. From what I gathered, he did his best to avoid any and all mention of it. To that point, he and the wife packed up and relocated several states away, to Arkansas of all places. According to my elders, he never worked the telegraph again but instead tried his hand at various labor-type jobs such as lumberman, painter and even farm laborer. Pretty much anything to keep the family fed and by age forty he had sired both a son and daughter. It wasn’t until after WW-one that he finally found his niche. Have to say I thought my pop was selling me a bill of goods when I heard exactly what that niche was.
By that time Dalton was in his late forties and scuffling a bit and had moved the family to the west coast since jobs were supposedly springing up out there like oil strikes in Texas. Still, hard to believe even today, considering what he’d been through in Wyoming. I guess time does have a way of building a protective shell over the past.”
“Don’t tell me…movie actor?” Brad offered, though visibly flinching at the possibility.
