Day of the Wolf by Charles G. West

Author:Charles G. West [West, Charles G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101602652
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2012-09-04T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Left to stare at the open door in shocked silence, Clem Russell could not be certain if the man he had just seen was real or the remnants of a drunken dream. Looking at Jewel, he received no enlightenment until she finally spoke. “Wolf gone,” she expressed unemotionally. “You want food?”

“Food?” Clem echoed. “Hell no. I need a drink.” He felt himself trembling, still unable to think clearly. “Yeah,” he said then, changing his mind. “I need food. Go ahead, make some coffee and cook some breakfast.” He turned, startled, when Boyd separated himself from the cot in the corner of the room and headed for the door with the intention of answering nature’s call. Clem had forgotten he was there and, seeing his hungover guest, was also reminded that there was another sleeping in the stable.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Boyd asked, noticing the startled expression on Clem’s face. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Maybe I have,” Clem answered honestly.

“No ghost—Wolf,” the Cheyenne woman offered unemotionally, causing further confusion for Boyd.

“What the hell’s wrong with you two?” Boyd demanded, thinking them both loco.

“We’d best go check on your cousin in the barn,” Clem replied. “We had a visitor here in the store while you was still sleepin’.” He started at once toward the door.

“What?” Boyd exclaimed. “I didn’t hear nobody.” Still confused, he followed Clem out the door.

“It’s a good thing for you that you didn’t,” Clem told him as he walked briskly toward the stable. “And if we find what I think we’re gonna find in the barn, you’re damn lucky your name ain’t Taggart.”

As Clem had suspected, they found Mace Taggart’s body sprawled on the hay, a gaping slash across his throat, and a death mask of wide-eyed horror eternally fixed on his face. In a fog of confusion to that point, Boyd was staggered to see the blood-soaked body of his cousin. “What the hell…? What the hell…?” was all he could manage at first. Then he grabbed Clem by the collar and demanded to know what had happened, for his initial reaction was that Clem or his sullen woman had for some reason murdered Mace.

“Take it easy!” Clem sputtered. “I ain’t had no part in this.” When Boyd calmed down enough to listen, Clem recounted the events of the past half hour or so.

Still dazed by what Clem told him, Boyd found it hard to believe all this had gone on while he was sleeping right there in the corner of the store. “And you didn’t make no move to stop him?” he asked. “Let him walk right in here and kill Mace?” Recovering from his initial shock somewhat, he was now getting angry.

“Ain’t no call to get riled at me,” Clem said. “He’d already done for Mace when he walked in here. I went for my shotgun, but he had the drop on me. And the only reason you’re still alive is that my woman told him your name wasn’t Taggart.

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