Hallowed Ground

Chapter Four

Creed was up before the sun. His head had the empty, hollow ache of lingering whiskey, and his belly crawled with hot, thick coffee. It ate at his gut like acid, but his eyes were focused and bright. He wasn't sure what he expected to find, but he saddled his horse and rode out of Rookwood just as the red-orange fingers of dawn stretched over the horizon. A blood red sun slid sluggishly from behind the ends of the Earth, and he squinted into it, using one hand to shade his eyes from the glare.

The crows were gone. They could call them rooks all they wanted, but the damned things were crows, and in any case, neither crows nor rooks fly at night. Not unless they're spooked. Something, or someone was out there, and Creed was thinking about the trappers Silas had mentioned the night before. He was also thinking about the story the crusty old barman had tacked on at the end. The Messengers had said they saw something flying over the trees -- something too big to be a bird -- something dark. Creed didn't have much patience for ghost stories, but he scanned the treetops all the same.

He wanted to find that camp. Wouldn't hurt to be first on the scene and give it a look before every tramp in town got out and rifled through it. Also wouldn't hurt to be in and gone before the Sheriff caught wind. Creed had no particular feud with "Moonshine" Brady, but he avoided the man when possible. Besides the fact they were often on opposite sides of the law, there was something about Moonshine that gave him the creeps.

The Sheriff stood six and a half feet if he was an inch. He did nothing without careful thought and consideration, but once he made up his mind, he was fast as lightning. There was something in Rookwood that stuck the right word to a thing, and Moonshine, the way it made a man see things others didn't see, and move slower than normal – was a perfect name for the Sheriff. It would be better to be back in Rookwood before Brady found the camp.

Creed topped the first rise outside town and stopped. He knew the trapper's camp should be off to the north, but something else had caught his eye. Something had glinted over by Dead Man's Gulch. Even as he thought about riding on toward the camp, Creed turned his mount and headed toward the gulch. The camp wasn't going anywhere, and he still had time before anyone else was likely to show.

As he turned, the silence was shattered by the loud, mournful peeling of a bell. Creed glanced over his shoulder toward town. It was the bell at the old chapel. There hadn't been a preacher in Rookwood for more than a year. They rang the bell for weddings, and deaths. No one in town was engaged.

Creed frowned, tossed a moment's thought at the question of who had passed, and then turned away. He kicked the horse’s flanks and took off at a trot. Whoever it was would still be dead when he got back. Of that much, he was certain.