The day was April 15, 1867, in the Texas swath of the Llano Estacado running from Northern Mexico to Canada. For two years I’d been following a trail of slaughtered Comanche, engaging any demonic fiends that sought to feed on what was left. Every victim I’d found had been scalped and disfigured, unrecognizable as human. And sometimes that was before they’d been defiled by the teeth of unholy scavengers.

…

The last gunshot echoed across the moonlit valley of death that Abraham Strockland stood in the midst of, smoke curling from the large ebony revolver in his hand. Ahead of him, past the disfigured bodies of the Quahadi squaws that peppered the bone dry gulch, was a shambling form holding its bleeding gut, narrow bony back presented to the gunslinger as it struggled to stand. It looked like a sickly old man, naked save for the thick greasy brown fur covering its flesh. Surrounding it were its allies, four beasts of its own kind, lying beside the corpses they’d been scavenging as their heads soaked in the slimy contents of their own ruptured brain pans.

“You’ve killed your last human, bitch of Thuvik.”

It turned its head, shaped like that of a ferocious wild dog, black eyes filled with rage as its snarling snout dripped with blood. The face of a Felgor Coyote, a cousin of the werewolf. This creature was a pure form of evil that sought only to fill its gut with human gore. It curled its lip with a growl and began barking at Strockland before his pistol fired, cratering its left eye and bursting the back of its skull in a black haze.

As the echo died over the grassy hills, Strockland gandered at the disfigured Quahadi women, ravaged children, and hollow horse carcasses sprawled around him, a number of them cleaned of their innards by the demonic scavengers now laying dead in their midst. Daisy voiced her discomfort with a neigh.

“Easy girl,” Strockland said, giving the ivory mare a pat on the nose and a kiss upon her snow white mane. “I told you they wouldn’t get you, didn’t I?”

The wail of an infant reached past the ringing of his ears, drawing his eye to a fallen woman just beyond the dead ranks of the Felgor werecoyotes.

The poor girl’s immense beauty made the horrid violence committed against her an even greater crime. Despite the deep craters stabbed into her body and ruby scalp laid bare of flesh and hair, she was still trying to crawl as she clutched a wrapped infant to her breast. Her love for the weeping babe was giving her one last ounce of life.

 As Strockland approached, she raised her pretty brown eyes into his pale blues, using the last of her strength to push the weeping infant towards him, its body wrapped in cloth so that only its tiny scarlet face was exposed.

“My husband,” she said in Shoshoni, the dialect of the Comanche. “War Chief Puhihwikwasu'u, Iron Jacket, return her to him…please.”

“You have my word,” Strockland said, a hand on her slender shoulder.

She smiled at the tall man before reaching her hand out and caressing the face of her crying child. “You have my love, Topsannah.”

The beautiful young woman took her last breath and laid still, a smile of love etched across her cheeks until her day of decay.

…

It was all wrong. Killing those Felgor Coyotes brought me no pleasure. No matter how much I would try to convince myself, I knew the truth. The coyotes didn’t kill those Comanche. They had only been picking the scraps of a far worse monster.

…

Strockland rode through the next half day with Topsannah in his arms, the babe having slumbered since the first sliver of sunlight rose from behind the eastern horizon and the heat crept in behind it. When he caught the glimpse of a roofline miles over the grassy prairie, he used his free hand to check the ammo load of both his pistols. After seeing the gleaming silver .45 rounds were loaded to his liking, he returned the pitch black instruments to their holster. 

The tiny silver crucifix he wore thrummed like a quivering arrow against his tanned neck and as he brought his hand to it, he understood what it meant. The trail ended there. He glanced down into the face of the slumbering infant in his arm as an intrusive shadow of doubt creeped into his mind, making him wonder if he could adequately defend her from the horrid butcher living there. 

He shook off the gloomy rumination immediately. He couldn’t just take Topsannah to Puhihwikwasu'u. After all, there wasn’t a way of knowing where in all of the Llano Estacado he was. He was sure to be in Texas, but only God knew where. The quivering cross on his neck told him that Puhihwikwasu’u would find or had already found the bodies of his wife and those of the other squaws bleeding out in that valley. The Felgor would’ve turned to dust by now, leaving little evidence as to who had caused such butchery.

However, before leaving, the cross had also told him to leave a note for Puhihwikwasu’u because the chief could both read and speak Spanish thanks to many of the Mexican women he’d taken captive over the years. So, Strockland obeyed its direction as he always had and pointed the war chief to the cabin, the very cabin he was now in the threshold of.

The yard hadn’t been tended to for quite some time and the plains had reclaimed much of what was there, growing over an old plow, a garden, and a splitting block that had the rusty head of an ax buried within. The cabin showed signs of weathering from the Texas heat and perhaps even the occasional Blue Norther beating, but wasn’t very old. The timber still retained its strong whitish brown color.

Strockland slipped from Daisy’s back, Topsannah still cradled in his right arm as he approached the front porch, a sight in the corner of his eye stopping him in his tracks.

Off to the right of the porch was the only grassless square of land around, populated with three wooden markers ordered in descending size, words carved into each one.

The tallest of the three had the following words carved into it: Here lies Margaret Ann Thatcher, beloved wife and mother. August 15, 1836- April 9, 1865.

The middle, standing nearly as tall as the first, bore words of its own: Here lies Thomas Howard Thatcher Jr., beloved son. June 8, 1852- April 9, 1865.

The last gave Strockland the most pause, his stomach pitting more as he read it.

Here lies Amber Margaret Thatcher, most precious and beloved daughter. December 27, 1864- April 9, 1865.

Abraham Strockland read them all over again before he removed his beige hat with his free hand, closed his eyes as he knelt at the foot of the gravesite, placed the hat over his heart, and said a prayer over the poor souls resting in the earth before him. He asked God to bless those beloved and asked that they find comfort in His embrace. When he rose, he returned his hat to his head and climbed up the stairs of the front porch, hand clutching to his right pistol.

Daisy neighed.

“I’ll be fine, girl,” Strockland said.

He walked across the creaky porch before reaching out and wrapping upon the sturdy wooden door. The silver crucifix quivered like a strummed guitar string as the silence lurked over him. The dread in his stomach was so thick it was like a knife in his guts as he reached out and wrapped the door again, feeling the hefty pounding in his boots. This house bled with hatred and sorrow, oozing from every wall.

“Mr. Thatcher?” Strockland called, wrapping again. “Is there anyone there?”

The silent dread returned.

Strockland pushed the door, peeping in as it creaked open. Inside small spears of light stabbed through the roof and cut through the darkness, making lingering dust sparkle as it drifted through the stale air. On the right side of the room was a large bed made of lumber and beside it was another that was much smaller. At the foot of both was a sturdy crib of timber, glossed and shining. All of them were as well made as they were empty.

Strockland stepped in, catching the glimpse of a firepit in the middle of the room, a shadowy man sitting before it with his back to the door as the flames ignited his flickering penumbra. The crucifix was buzzing like an angry bee around the gunslinger’s neck.

“Are you Thomas Thatcher?” Strockland asked, sidestepping a wooden four by four holding the roof up. “Mr. Thatcher, I hate to intrude, but I’ve been traveling the plains for many days and need directions as well as a quick bit of rest if you wouldn’t mind.”

The man was twisting something in his right hand, the room filled with the smell of cooking meat as the fire hissed like a cluster of serpents. Strockland stepped back to the crib before laying the still slumbering Topsannah within, the babe yawning as the tall gunslinger turned away and approached the man he called Mr. Thatcher.

As Strockland grew closer, he saw little wooden figures of soldiers and carved cowboys lined up on a small table to his left, worn with use and covered in dust. On either side of Thatcher were piles of what looked like pelts and in his right hand was a stick he rotated over the blaze, sure to evenly apply the heat to whatever it was dwelling at its end. 

Strockland paused as he made out exactly it was roasting on the end of Thatcher’s stick.

A scalp with long dark hair, glops of grease plummeting into the bowels of the fire with a sharp hiss. Without looking at Strockland, the man plopped the hairy piece of flesh onto the pile at his right side. Not animal pelts, but dozens of scalps of various sizes, many of them fresh and bloody. Strockland was able to pick out many that were too small to belong to any adult.

“Mr. Thatcher, did you collect these yourself?”

The man grabbed a fresh scalp and ran the point of the stick through the middle before letting it hover over the glowing inferno.

“Is that your family buried out front?”

Thatcher turned the scalp over as the flames licked up the leaking ichor. Strockland knelt down beside him and looked into his eyes, seeing that they were completely glazed over and blinking as scarcely as water flowed in the Mojave Desert. His hard face was beat red, the peeling flesh on his cheeks detailing the abuse the sun had delt his once pale cheeks.

“The Comanche, were they responsible?”

Strockland’s eyes lowered to the Henry Repeater laying across Thatcher’s knees, brown specks of blood sprinkled across the barrel, black gunpowder streaks staining the end, a sign of high use and no cleaning. The only way to get that much blood on one's weapon is by execution, up close.

The fire hissed as a fat glob of grease slid from the scalp and struck a pulsing log. The cross on Strockland’s neck thrummed again, making him sigh.

“Mr. Thatcher, I’m not going to lie to you and pretend I understand the pain you're in right now. I’m not going to shower you with empty platitudes and pointless sympathy. I won’t even go on to accuse you of the butchery I know you’ve done, but I will give you honesty.”

Strockland pulled a silvery locket from his pocket and cracked it open, holding out the little images of a boy and a woman inside. 

“This is my greatest fear. I fear everyday that if I lose them, I’ll look something like you. Numb to the hate. I might not know the pain you feel, but I fear it so. I don’t know what the answer to that kind of rage is. But I know that it makes you forget what’s important. This isn’t the man your wife married, nor is it the man your children called ‘father’. You aren’t even you anymore, Mr. Thatcher. You’re more like the kind I’ve been charged to hunt across this God forsaken wasteland.

“And right now, what you’re doing is only making the evil terrorizing this land stronger. You’re putting my beloved in danger and I can’t let you do that. Nor can I let you avenge yourself upon the innocent.”

Strockland stood up, reached beneath the back of his long beige trench coat, and fingered a small lever that released the huge silver knife he wore from its sheath. He placed an affectionate hand on Thatcher’s shoulder and twirled the knife into a reverse grip as the grieved man continued to tan the Comanche scalp. “I’m sorry.”

Strockland lifted the blade into the air and brought it down on Thomas Thatcher’s neck as Baby Topsannah continued to sleep.

…

I believe that Mr. Thatcher was trying to say something in his final moments, for I saw the slightest silent twitch of his lips. A prayer perhaps. Of repentance so he could join his family in the great beyond. Or perhaps it was just my own imagination trying to put my heart at ease.

…

When Puhihwikwasu'u arrived with a band of a dozen horseback braves, Strockland was seated upon the steps of Mr. Thatcher’s porch, waiting.

The chief’s dark face was as hard as the iron described in his name, the deep grooves accentuating the rage dwelling in his eyes. Strockland was reminded of the late Thomas Thatcher as he studied the approaching brave. The white gunslinger raised his hand as a sign of peace and rose to his feet as the Quahadi warriors formed a wall in front of him, the Iron Jacket himself in the center, his black steed trotting to meet Strockland.

“Tu habla Shoshoni?” Puhihwikwasu’u asked. 

“Si, yo habla muy bien,” Strockland answered.

“You are the one that left the note?” 

“I am.” Strockland presented Topsannah to her father. The glaze in the war chief’s eyes vanished within his softening expression as he slid from his saddle and took the quiet babe in his arms. 

“The daiboo’ who killed my wife,” Puhihwikwasu'u said, looking Strockland in the eye. “Does he dwell there?”

“No,” Strockland said, gesturing to the gravesite beside them, a tall fourth marker beside the three. “He sleeps with his family now. I saw to that.”

Puhihwikwasu'u sneered. “You stole my revenge from me, daiboo’.”

“There will be no revenge, Puhihwikwasu'u. Revenge is what got us in this mess in the first place.”

“The daiboo’ have taken everything from us. The buffalo, our families. We will return them what they paid us.”

“And when will you stop, O chief? When you’re even? Well, let me tell you something, I’ve been all over this prairie land and I can tell you there isn’t a lick of even ground anywhere out here. You’ll kill them, they’ll kill you, each one saying they just want to get even. It ain’t happened yet and it never will. What we have to focus on now is the real enemy.”

Strockland pulled the curved knife of the Felgor from his belt and held it out to Puhihwikwasu'u.

“I know you’ve seen them. The enemy is advancing. The real enemy. You may still be the Lords of the Plains, but this is the truth. These wars with the Daiboo’ have weakened you and the old lords have returned to finish you off. But we need you, even if all of us don’t know it yet. The enemy will hunt down all of humanity until his revenge against the Great Spirit is complete. A war with the white men to the east will only end in more death and make the real enemy grow in strength. Unless we take steps to end these wars and begin fighting the evil spirits invading our world, all peoples will be wiped out. Daiboo’ and the Nermernuh.”

Puhihwikwasu'u retrieved the knife with his left hand, inspecting it with a narrow gaze before looking to the sleeping infant cooing just below his head. She opened her little eyes and smiled at the familiar face lingering above hers, provoking the war chief to smile back before lowering the knife.

“Till we meet again, Daiboo’,” He said, returning to his steed and stepping into the saddle. “We go to prepare for the enemy.”

The two gave a salute before Puhihwikwasu'u pulled his horse back and rode in the opposite direction he’d come, his warriors following him over the sprawling Texas plains. Abraham Strockland watched until they became like ants and the sun began its course back west, hovering over the horizon. He took a deep breath and approached the gravesite once more, eyes falling to the newest marker he’d made himself, posted before a mound of dirt bulging higher than the rest.

Here lies Thomas Howard Thatcher, beloved Husband and Father. March 7, 1826- April 16, 1867.

Abraham Strockland knelt down, hat in his hand once more, and prayed for the souls of the fallen man and his poor family. He stood up and looked over the west, his crucifix thrumming again. Another task that must be completed in this never ending war that was his life. His eternal crusade. He whistled Daisy over from the right and after giving her a pat, a kiss, and a carrot, he mounted her and rode into the setting sun, holding onto the locket that beheld the images of his own beloved and the source of his greatest fear.