He Hath Lifted Up His Heel

A Short Story

I. On the Road to Gardiner, 1876

He took the train from Iowa to Rock Springs and rode a coach through the badlands of the Wyoming Territory. When he reached Jackson, Abraham Woolsey purchased a mule and swapped his lever action Winchester for a trapdoor Springfield. He continued northward, through a wide grassland enclosed by snow-capped peaks of bare rock, then wound his way upward through the evergreen forests of the Yellowstone Plateau. For three days, they rested on the shore of a wide lake, the largest body of freshwater that Woolsey had ever seen, then continued northwest as the terrain alternated between forest and lush grassland. On the fifth day of his journey, a large brown bear emerged from the treeline, and he reined the mule to an uneasy halt, one hand resting on the grip of the Springfield.  The mule pawed uneasily at the ground, and the predator eyed them for a tense moment before ambling off in the opposite direction, a malevolent spirit that spared them for reasons known only to itself.

II. Des Moines, Iowa - One Month Earlier

The train lumbered northward from Georgia at the end of a hot summer, moving through Nashville and Paducah before crossing the Ohio River into Illinois, a flat expanse of prairie which had, to many of the passengers, been enemy territory a decade earlier. The man contemplated the endless fields of corn and wheat from his seat in the dining car and considered that his contemporaries would have been heartbroken by the sight, for the same Midwestern farmers that tilled the soil beyond his window had inflicted a punishing defeat upon the South. This passenger felt no such grief, for though he had played a crucial role in the war, defeat had, paradoxically, liberated him from servitude to the past. Many who had served under him now hated him as a traitor to the Confederacy, a fact that bothered him not at all.

You’ll find him at the Federal courthouse. The passenger still had access to the records of the Confederate Army, and the name had warranted nothing more than a brief notation, one of many young troublemakers who flourished during the war. He couldn’t have been more than a boy, he thought, but the guerillas of the eastern mountains had pressured his own troops during the siege of Knoxville, and Abraham Woolsey, had they caught him, would have been hanged as a bushwhacker. Instead, the South was defeated, and I barely escaped my own hanging, he thought. Let’s hope the marshal bears no grudge for the war years.

They met at the railway station, and the lawman took his hand readily enough, though his expression registered confusion – after all, it was not every day that one was visited by a former general of the Confederate army.

“Marshal Woolsey? My name is James Longstreet, and I have a matter of some importance to discuss.”

“I believe we can skip the preliminaries,” Longstreet said over dinner, “since the Attorney General has vouched for both your qualifications and your integrity. Are you familiar with the name of Elihu Colfax?”

Woolsey shook his head. “Should I be?”

“He was the firstborn son in a prominent Louisville family and a minor functionary in the War Department. By all outward appearances, Colfax was a loyal Unionist, and an ambitious man – he submitted his name as a candidate for Senate, and with a few more years of experience, he might well have attained that position. However, it would seem that young Elihu grew impatient with his lot. Perhaps you know of the St. Albans raid.”

“The bank robbery in Vermont,” Woolsey nodded. That raid had spawned a hundred imitators, including a vicious gang of bandits that Woolsey had been pursuing across the Midwest. “Some of your fellow Confederates decided to invade from Canada.”

If Longstreet was offended by the remark, he let it pass without comment. “The raiders were briefly detained in Montreal – most of them, at any rate – and sat out the war north of the border. Speculation abounds that a few slipped away undetected.”

“And you think Elihu Colfax was one of them. War’s been over for years,” Woolsey said. “Why go after him now?”

“Because he was involved in far worse,” Longstreet said. “Six months ago, I received a letter from Bennett Young…”

III. Gardiner, Montana Territory

Harry Yount wore a threadbare coat of Army issue, a broad hat, and a mustache that put Woolsey’s own facial hair, grown thick and ragged after a month of travel, to shame. The gamekeeper nodded approvingly at the long rifle propped against the bar of the saloon.

“I see you brought enough gun.” The gamekeeper ordered whiskies, and Woolsey paid with a copper coin. “Them grizzlies can take eight, ten shots from a Winchester and never bat an eye. How soon do you mean to be going?”

“Soon as I can,” Woolsey said as he swallowed his drink. His wife and son were waiting in Iowa, and another child was due at any time. “You met him when he was in town?”

“Oh yeah,” Yount replied. “He posted a few letters but kept mostly to himself. Never figured him for much of a frontiersman, but he saddled up last week and took off into the mountains.”

“Which way?”

Yount pointed through the saloon window, where a scrub-covered hill rose to the east. “Travel’s pretty easy for the first ten miles, but past that is the Beartooth range, and not even the Indians go there. My guess is that he got himself frozen or eaten by now.”

IV. Beartooth Mountains, Montana Territory

They followed the meander of the river for a few miles before ascending through a gap in the mountains, and the pair of Crow scouts provided by Harry Yount rode at the head of the small column. “These young gentlemen are Blackfoot and Shadow,” the gamekeeper had explained. “Their fathers were killed at the Little Bighorn.” They appeared little more than children to Woolsey, but he had nodded gravely and extended a hand to each – he had scarcely been old enough to shave when he avenged the murder of his father and cousin. To the south, a plume of steam rose into the autumn sky. The ground around the hot springs was fragile, he remembered, and one misstep by man or mule could open up the earth beneath their feet. Watch for hot spots or patches of bare earth. They stopped at midday and rested as Woolsey chewed over the details of his assignment.

Bennett Young had been a Kentuckian and a contemporary of Elihu Colfax, but where Colfax had served in the Lincoln administration, Young joined the Confederate army for a brief period before leading the St. Albans raid in 1864. If one took Longstreet’s tale at face value, Young later had a change of heart, for he opposed the violence that accompanied Reconstruction in the aftermath of the war. And Colfax? Longstreet provided only hearsay for evidence, but though the war was as good as over by April of 1865, a prominent stage actor and his circle of conspirators plotted a grisly act of revenge. “As you know, John Wilkes Booth was killed twelve days after carrying out the murder, and the other conspirators, including Mary Surratt, were hanged for their part in the crime. Speculation abounds regarding a wider plot, and Mr. Young’s letter implicates Colfax in the assassination.” Perhaps Elihu Colfax was involved, Woolsey thought, but he doubted that the Kentuckian would ever stand trial

His account is the tale of a madman.

V. Des Moines - One Month Earlier

Dinner was over, and they retired to the smoking lounge. “So Colfax changed sides,” Woolsey said. “Why?”

“He appears to have been a deeply conflicted man.” Longstreet pulled two cigars from his coat and offered one to Woolsey. “His family owned slaves, but as a young man, he gravitated toward the abolitionist cause. I imagine that took a fair amount of courage on his part, but even the best intentions can, perhaps, be twisted to bad ends. My understanding is that young Colfax had very specific ideas about how to win the war - ideas that were ignored in Washington. You see, in addition to being an ambitious man, Elihu Colfax was also deeply religious, and the worship that he practiced was of an apocalyptic style. He wanted a crusade, with himself as its prophet, and when his entreaties were rejected in Washington, he made discrete inquiries to Richmond and became acquainted with Bennett Young. At the same time, his religious beliefs appear to have undergone a metamorphosis of their own.”

James Longstreet withdrew a bundle of letters from a valise, and Woolsey thumbed through the pages. The letters were written over the course of a year, and each marked a westward journey to the frontier of the Montana Territory. Woolsey read until his eyes fixed upon a specific passage.

“I don’t think you need a lawman, mister Longstreet - I believe a physician would be more appropriate.”

“Perhaps you are right, but I find myself tasked with the burden of conveying the message to you.

President Grant is my friend, notwithstanding our former conflict.” A shadow of pain passed over Longstreet’s face. “His time in office is nearly ended, but if one of Mister Lincoln’s killers walks free, he wants the guilty brought to justice. At the same time, he wants no appearance of unduly influencing the upcoming election. Thus, your inquiry is to proceed outside of the normal channels. Do I make myself clear?”

“Absolutely,” Woolsey nodded. “I do have one question.”

“What is it?”

He leafed through the pages until he found a particular word. “What is a Wendigo?”

“It is a malevolent spirit of some sort, which is reputed to inhabit the forest of northern New England.” Longstreet paused, weighing his words. “Its significance, you can read for yourself within the correspondence.”

VI. Beartooth Mountains, Montana Territory

The valleys narrowed, and the surrounding mountains became steep and rocky. Blackfoot and Shadow ranged ahead, and Woolsey kept a close eye on their backtrail, rifle in hand. The earliest letters detailed Colfax’s flight along the shore of Lake Champlain following the St. Albans raid. He was accompanied by a Micmac guide during the first leg of the journey, but the guide was not mentioned once he crossed the border into New York. Perhaps he returned to Canada, Woolsey thought. By January of 1865, Elihu Colfax was back in Washington, and his letters indicated regular visits to the boarding house of Mary Surratt. Colfax had fled Washington within hours of Lincoln’s murder, but Longstreet’s annotations suggested more than a flight from justice. “There were two murders in the city that same month, and had they not occurred so closely to the assassination, they would have made headlines due to their grisly nature.” Another murder had occurred in Louisville that summer, and two more bodies were discovered in Kansas City in the spring of 1866. The Kansas City deaths were noteworthy because the corpses had signs of predation. Killed and eaten, Woolsey thought. At the far end of the trail, the Crow scouts were returning.

There was a glimmer of sunlight from the rocks, and he shouted a warning as Blackfoot’s head exploded in a spray of blood. Woolsey raised his own rifle, but a bullet tore into his upper arm, and he fainted, his consciousness fading even as he glimpsed a shape, tall and impossibly thin, emerging from the forest at the far end of the trail.

VII.

It was dark when he regained consciousness. Woolsey was surprised to be alive, for he had lost a fair amount of blood from his wounded arm, and his head swam as he forced himself into a sitting position. Blackfoot lay where he had fallen, and there was no sign of their horses or his mule. He used his knife to cut a strip of cloth from his sleeve and tended to the wound as he tried to make sense of things. They had been ambushed, but the thing that emerged from the woods – whatever it was – had not fired the gunshots. A passage written by Elihu Colfax rang in his ears, and Woolsey tried to force it from his mind. “On the third day of our journey, on the shore of the long lake that divides Vermont, we met the spirit of Micmac legend, and in exchange for a great victory, I agreed to offer my own flesh…”

Bootprints and drag marks led into the narrow canyon, and another spoor, something not unlike the track of a great bird, followed. Woolsey checked that his revolvers were still in his belt and took up the rifle, unsure if he would be able to shoot with his damaged left arm. If the Wendigo existed, it had followed Elihu Colfax across the breadth of the continent, but though the blood loss made itself felt with each unsteady step, Woolsey resolved that he would not abandon Shadow to his fate.

The trail led upward, and his head reeled as he climbed, but the landscape gradually broadened and flattened, and the surrounding air grew warm from the steam that vented from the ground. Woolsey could feel the heat through the soles of his boots, and as cracks opened around his footsteps like rotten ice late winter pond – he stood upon the unstable ground of a vast hot spring.

Elihu Colfax stood at the far end, waiting for him.

VIII.

His face had the ragged appearance of a man on the verge of starvation, but it was the gaunt outline to his side, barely visible in the starlight, that drew Woolsey’s attention. The Crow scout lay at its feet, semiconscious, and Woolsey wondered whether Shadow had been injured, or if his mind had been spellbound by the half-observed fiend. The discarded rifle of Elihu Colfax lay on the bare ground, ten feet away and between the two men.

“It cheated me,” Colfax mumbled. “I wanted victory, yet when the deed was done, the South lay prostrate and defeated. Now, it follows me, and only my propitiation of its terrible appetite forestalls my own death.”

“I gave you victory.” The words dissolved into an odd sound that rang in Woolsey’s ears and made his wounded arm ache, and he realized that the Wendigo was laughing. “Now you seek to delay payment.”

“It gave you nothing,” Woolsey said. “It follows you now because you let it in… because you feed it.”

“Very perceptive,” it said. “Poor Elihu was mine the moment that he slit the throat of that Micmac – one might even say that he delivered his flesh to me at that very instant. And now? Only his work on my behalf keeps him alive. Of course, my appetite grows with each passing night, and if I had realized that you still lived, I would have feasted on two men. Instead, I snatched only one in my haste.”

“I’m afraid you’re finished with him.” Woolsey covered his fear by retreating to the only thing that he knew, the thing that had given structure to his life. “Colfax is coming with me to answer for his crimes.”

“The law is a cloak that conceals your true nature,” it replied. “You are a common killer, little different from myself. The men that murdered your family – did you arrest them, and did they stand trial?”

“It was a different time,” Woolsey said. “I was little more than a boy during the war, and there was no law and no court.”

“You’re little more than a boy now.” The Wendigo extended an arm, and dark tendrils crept across the ground toward Woolsey’s feet. Heat from the hot spring seeped through the soles of his boots and burned his feet. “Do you want to save an innocent life? Then shoot Colfax and take his place as my servant. The boy can go free, and you and I will venture forth in search of others.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Perhaps he will do what you cannot.” Shadow reeled and staggered to his knees as the black tendril caressed his body.

The young Crow stood and wandered listlessly toward the rifle, moving as one half asleep as Woolsey’s heart began to race. To shoot an innocent was murder (but you’ve done murder before, a voice in his head whispered) but to kill Colfax now was to accept the monster’s challenge, to offer himself as a substitute for the traitor. The spiderweb of cracks about Woolsey’s feet began to expand as his eyes alternated between Shadow, Colfax, and the malign shape of the Wendigo. There was a way out, but… Is it murder? Shadow’s fingers hesitated as he reached for the rifle, his eyes upon Woolsey.

Colfax has the same chance to escape as any of us.

The rifle bucked in his grip as Woolsey fired, and Shadow flinched as the bullet sailed over his head. Woolsey dropped his weapon and gripped the scout with his good hand as the bullet struck the bare earth at the feet of Elihu Colfax. Woolsey staggered backward, nearly falling, as the fragile ground moaned, split, and opened at his feet, and though the talons of the Wendigo raked at his bare skin, he dragged Shadow for the crucial few steps to firm ground, and they were safe. At the point of the bullet’s impact, Colfax wailed as he was scalded by a jet of steam, then the ground opened, and the Wendigo leapt with astonishing speed as he fell into the void. Woolsey had a final glimpse as the dark shape enfolded his enemy, then the shattered ground collapsed in a cascade of dust, swallowing them both. He staggered another ten steps and collapsed as the wound in his arm reopened.

IX.

The horses were gone, but they found the mule, and Shadow bandaged his arm as Woolsey gulped whiskey from his saddlebag. He spent the first night in a haze of delirium, his dreams haunted by a dark shape that whispered into his mind. “It’s not too late – kill him, and I can heal your wounds. You can see your wife and son again.” He was feverish and delirious when the sun rose on the second day, and though the fingers of the Reaper brushed at his neck – men frequently died from infected wounds – Shadow helped him upright, and somehow, he made it onto the saddle. Woolsey hugged the mule’s neck and shivered as the wind whipped around them, but he rode for a full day through the mountains and managed somehow to stay in the saddle. By sunset, he felt a little better, and when Shadow killed a rabbit and gathered roots for a rough stew, he was able to take a little food.

On the third day, he walked, and when they made it to Gardiner, Woolsey told the gamekeeper what had transpired in the mountains.

“Ain’t no hot springs in that direction.” Harry Yount stared at him with a gimlet eye. “You were wounded and losing blood, so maybe you dreamed the whole thing… or maybe you dispensed a little rough justice and don’t want to tell me?”

Woolsey shook his head. “I’d have shot him in a heartbeat and owned up to the deed before any judge in the country – but that ain’t what happened.”

He was fully recovered by the end of the following week, and when Abraham Woolsey rode south, Harry Yount gathered shadow and they rode toward the Beartooth Mountains. They gathered the remains of Blackfoot into an old Army blanket, and the gamekeeper mumbled a short prayer – he was not much for churches or preachers, but four years in the Union Army had acquainted him intimately with death, and he wished the young Crow well on his journey. His grisly task finished, the gamekeeper wandered up the trail, searching for the hot spring, and found nothing, save for the remains of an old rifle. Its stock was missing entirely, and the barrel was twisted and oddly blistered.

A sign, the gamekeeper thought, of an object deformed by a great heat.