It was much later when the scratching began.
Runyon had been dozing in his chair, a game of solitaire laid out before him, the. 38 still in his fist. He'd been dreaming he was down in Wolf Creek, warm and toasty, having a drink and eating a good meal. Then he opened his eyes. He wasn't in Wolf Creek. He was out in the goddamn signal shack waiting for morning.
Something that never seemed to come.
Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he set the Colt down and listened. He'd heard something. Some unknown sound. He knew this much. Runyon wasn't one to wake without reason. Cocking his head, he listened intently. The wind was still shrieking, the snow still dusting the shack and making it tremble.
But something more now.
A low, almost mournful moaning noise broken up by the winds.
And scratching. Like claws dragged over the warped planks of the shack.
Runyon swallowed, a trickle of sweat ran down his back. It was the injuns. It had to be the injuns. Somehow, they had survived the subzero temperatures and had come back now. Maybe with a raiding party. At the very least with guns, knives, and evil tempers.
What had that injun said?
We will die…but so will you.
Runyon shivered.
He shouldn't have shot that one… he should've shot them all. He should've tracked the bastards through the snow and killed them. Shot them all down and saved himself a hell of a lot of trouble.
But now they were back.
Runyon lit his cigar back up. He wished he'd brought more bullets for the Colt, but, hell, he hadn't expected any trouble like this. He should have known better. Those savages were always on the look out for a lone white man they could murder and rob.
They were circling the shack now. Moving with quiet footfalls. He could hear them scratching at the shack. But what he heard then made no sense: growling. A low, throaty, bestial growling. No man made sounds like that. Maybe they had brought a dog. He could hear it sniffing, pressing its nose up against the boards, growling low and snorting like a bull.
Runyon aimed the. 38 at the door.
The first one in was a dead man.
The door began to rattle, to shake as someone pulled at it. The boards were shuddering, groaning beneath great force. Nails began popping free. The entire shack was in motion now, swaying back and forth as something out there clawed and tore at it. It wasn't built for such stress. The roof was collapsing, snow raining down as planks fell all around Runyon.
The lantern went out as it was engulfed in snow.
With something like a scream in his throat, Runyon began kicking at the rear of the shack, knocking boards free. Just as he pulled a few planks clear and squeezed his bulk through, the door was shattered to kindling.
Runyon plowed through the drifts, his ears reverberating with the deafening howls of the thing that could not be a man. Runyon ran through the swirling, blowing snow, tripping, falling, dragging himself forward. Behind him, there was an awful low evil growling and something that might have been teeth gnashing together.
He turned and fired twice at a blurry, dark shape.
A huge shape.
He could smell the beast now. It came on with a stink of decay, a reek of rotting meat and fresh blood.
Runyon screamed now, a high insane screech that broke apart in the wind.
And something answered with a barking wail.
Down in the snow, breath rasping in his lungs, fingers frozen stiffly on the butt of the Colt, Runyon saw a great black form leaping at him. Much too large to be a man. A giant. Runyon fired four more bullets and the gun was knocked from his hand.
But the wetness.
It steamed from his wrist.
In the numbing cold he hadn't even felt it, but now he saw. The thing had sheared off his hand at the wrist. And as these thoughts reeled in his head with a quiet madness, the black nebulous shape attacked again.
Runyon saw leering red eyes the size of baseballs.
Smelled hot and foul breath like a carcass left to boil in the sun.
And then his belly was slashed open from crotch to throat and he knew only pain and dying.
Runyon was the first. But not the last.