THE DIRTY BANDANA

            Aspens yawned, birch trees softly swayed, and the oaks shushed as Deborah Pike and her horse Susan, a brown Arabian with white spots, trotted through dusk’s delicate mist. They were nearing the end of a cool trail that opened into Barlow, Wyoming.

            It was more of a single road than a town. Most of the buildings looked the same. Dark gray wood. They had a store, a butcher, a small bank that most thieves wouldn’t look at twice, and an inn for people passing through, which were most people these days. Across the street from the inn was a bar called The Dirty Bandana. It appeared to be the only place to get a drink and a hot bite to eat.

            Deborah looked down at the bandana tied around her neck, a navy blue paisley with her initials embroidered in white cursive. It was a gift from her older sister Helen many years ago, and she decided it was dirty enough to stop in for a drink.

            Life had been hard on the town of Barlow lately. In 1897, a mine nearby closed. It was just starting to grow into a thriving community when suddenly, most of the town was out of a job, and they took their lives with them to more prosperous areas emerging out west. It was becoming a ghost town, and the people who stayed spent their days looking unsure of the future. But, on this sleepy evening, summer was emerging to warm Barlow's skin and kiss awake its fading eyes. There was a feeling of growth that returned with the leaves. A sense of hope. And for now, folks were at ease.

            Deborah pulled Susan up to the hitching post outside of The Dirty Bandana. She looked through the propped-open double doors and put the horse's reigns back over her saddle instead of hitching her. She patted Susan’s neck and scratched behind her left ear, a gray tail swishing behind them.

            “Good girl. Go for a walk and get yourself some grass. I’ll call when I need you.”

            Deborah pushed a short, sharp whistle through her teeth in a pitch for only Susan’s ears. The horse rippled her face with a grunt. She turned and trotted into the growing darkness outside the field of light warming the bar’s entrance. Deborah unbuttoned her goatskin jacket to reveal two revolvers on either side of her hips and tipped her tan cattleman hat back. Bouncy black curls rested above her dry green eyes.

            Life was good enough inside The Dirty Bandana. A piano player softened the atmosphere with lounge music, and the wood floors creaked with the strain of many wild nights. At one table, there was a group of three couples playing poker. To Deborah’s relief, they seemed more interested in simply laughing and playing a game together than winning or losing any money. She had seen towns where it was illegal for women to gamble in public, but these folks didn’t pay any mind. They didn’t appear to have much money to wager.

            At another table was a group of animal trappers and hunters. Four men dressed head-to-toe in animal pelts sat in a tight huddle, closed off from the rest of the bar and talking quietly.

            Near the window, a drunk man was pestering another man for reading a book. Near the entrance, a woman in a worn purple dress stood up, angry, and walked across the street to the inn. The drunk pest finished his beer and walked out after her, apologizing for his behavior.

            Deborah whistled to herself as she walked into the bar. A whistle that started high before stuttering twice and falling low as a grave. The table of trappers stopped talking and looked at her. Half of the poker players glanced in her direction but continued their game. The man near the window kept his eyes on his book, but his ear twitched, and Deborah knew he was listening.

            Behind the bar, the bartender, an older woman with shoulder-length orange hair, waved to Deborah. A boy about six years old was sitting on the bar next to her, drying and putting away shot glasses. He looked at Deborah, frightened, and retreated to the back room.

            The wood over the bar was lipstick red and intricately designed. Flourishes in the craftsmanship were overshadowed by the neglect that had befallen it in recent years. Deborah got lost in her thoughts of how something so beautiful could be ruined by a temporary thin layer of unsightliness. In the center of the wall behind the bar, over a hundred bandanas of various colors and designs were tacked into the wood, presumably donated by different patrons throughout the years. Deborah sat on a stool.

            “Howdy,” the bartender said, smiling so brightly it looked painful, “What can I get ya?”

            “Whiskey.”

            “You got it.” The bartender grabbed the most recent glass the boy had dried and filled it with a double shot of brown liquor from a clear glass bottle. “We only do doubles around here. Hope that’s okay.”

            “Works for me.”

            The bartender slid the shot glass across the bar to Deborah, and she tossed it back.

            "I'm Verna Boyd," the bartender said, keeping her eyes locked on Deborah’s. "I'm the owner of this establishment. Well, my husband Rick was the owner until he passed away. I run it with my boy now. I don't think I've seen you in here before. Are you in Barlow for business or just passing through?”

            “I’m not sure yet.” Deborah smiled, “Seems like a nice place.”

            Verna nodded at Deborah’s empty glass.

            “Another drink? Some food?”

            “I’d trouble you for a beer. What kind you got?”

            “We have beer,” Verna said flatly.

            “Works for me.”

            Verna poured a grainy glass mug of foamy beer from a gold tap and spilled foam down the side until the head was four or five fingers high. Most of the top half of the mug was white bubbles. She wiped the outside of it with a rag that made it wetter and dirtier and set it on the bar.

            “Can I ask your name?” Verna asked.

            “Deb.”

            “Pleased to meet you, Deb.”

            “Pleased to meet you as well, Verna. Keep my tab open. I’ll let you know when I need another drink.”

            Deborah grabbed her beer and stood up. She slid out between the stools and walked over to the table full of trappers. They watched her, eyes angrier with each approaching step.

            “How are you fellas doing?” Deborah asked loud and friendly, standing between two of them and taking a large gulp of foam. Silence. She sat her beer on the table, grabbed a chair from an empty table nearby, and sat with them. "I don't know if you heard the discussion I was having with the lovely Verna over there, but my name is Deborah Pike. I’m a trapper, and well, I can tell that y’all are trappers too. May I ask your names?”

            Starting on her left side and rotating clockwise around the table, they told her their names were Quinten Cisco, Bart Stetson, Jesse Monroe, and Duane Sterling. Duane didn’t say his name because the others informed her that he doesn’t speak. They said his name for him. They were trappers.

            "Feel like maybe I've seen you before," Quinten said. He was a tall, thin man. Clean shaven. The only clean-shaven one in the group. A bowl of beef stew drowned a curious fly beneath his furrowed brow. He spooned the fly out of the soup and dumped it on the table before continuing to eat.

            “Maybe you have,” Deb said, “I get around the towns out near here, but I’ve never been to Barlow before. Beautiful area. Nice people. I noticed there isn’t much livestock. It’s a shame. There could be a booming livestock operation out here. You got the land for it.”

            The men stared at her. Deborah gulped her beer. Less foam this time, but she still wanted to spit it out.

            “You know, lately, a few towns over, somethings been killing livestock. It’s got people all worked up. They don’t know what it is. It’s the god damn craziest thing. It’s probably an animal. A bear or a wolf, they said. But I never saw a bear or a wolf do that. I mean, whatever it is, it’s tearing them cattle apart. I told folks, but they still think it’s a bear or a wolf. I reckon there’s gotta be more to the story. I was wondering if you boys had heard anything about that, and I was hoping you would assure me that it’s just a bear or a wolf.”

            “Hey, I know where we know her from, Quin!” Bart said as he elbowed Quinten, his grating voice and obnoxious body language betraying the group’s mystique, “Her sister was that witch lady they hanged. Helen Pike. She was a witch, remember? We was at that hangin’. You remember? Don’t she look just like her? She was pretty, so you ought to remember that.”

            “Oh yeah,” Quinten said, “Good eye, Bart. That was a good hanging, wasn’t it? Another one of Satan’s whores sent back to her daddy for a spankin’.”

            The air shook with derisive laughter while Quinten picked at his teeth.

            "What was it like having a witch for a sister?" Bart asked Deb, earnestly curious to hear the answer. "I’d be scared. I'd have turned my sister into the sheriff if she was a witch, even if she was that pretty. You're not as pretty as your sister, if you don't mind me saying. I mean, she must have been doing something to look like that. It ain’t natural. That’s why I can tell you ain’t a witch. You ain't ugly or nothing. You just ain't that pretty. Which I tend to think is better, for what it’s worth. You ain’t a witch, right?"

            "A'course she ain't a witch. Would you shut the hell up?" Jesse said, annoyed, "It's possible to be related to a witch and not be one yourself."

            “I know that,” Bart said, defensive. He turned back to Deborah, “I’m not sorry your sister got hanged, because she was a witch, but I am sorry that you were related to a witch. You seem like a nice lady.”

            Deb picked up her beer and chugged the remainder of the mug. With an intimidating thump, she set it firmly on the table.

            “My sister was not a witch,” Deb said.

            “How do you know that?” Quinten asked, looking deep into her eyes and holding a cigarette in his mouth. He lit a match on the table and pulled it up to his face. Deborah reached over, her hand wet with beer, and pinched the match out.

            “The same way I know you won’t survive tonight.” She leaned in, “You’ll just have to trust me.”

            Deborah picked up her mug, stood, and returned to the bar. Verna eyed her cautiously, smiling as she approached.

            “Another beer?” Verna asked as Deborah set her empty glass on the bar.

            “I’ll switch back to whiskey. Thanks," Deb said. "I was wondering, though. Why is your boy afraid of me?"

            Verna laughed harshly as she grabbed Deb's old shot glass and filled it again.

            “Oh, I’m sorry about him. He’s shy around most women.”

            “There are other women in here. He didn’t seem shy around them.” Deborah’s eyes locked onto Verna’s.

            “Well, you’re a very pretty woman. He probably has a little crush on you or something,” Verna set the shot glass in front of Deb. Deb looked down at it and then back up at Verna. She took off her bandana and wrapped it in her hand.

            “Ask him to come out here. I want to give him my bandana as a gift,” Deborah said.

            Verna paused, smiling even more nervously.

            "He would love that. That's so sweet of you.” Verna turned to the door behind her. "Gunner, get out here! Gunner! Come here, Gunner! The pretty lady has a gift for you."

            Slowly, the door creaked open, and the boy peeked his head out. His flat brown bowl cut scraped between the door and the doorframe. The rest of his body emerged, and he walked over to the bar. He had difficulty looking at Deborah. He showed his teeth in an expression that was trying to smile without knowing how.

            Deborah held out her hand to him, the navy blue bandana resting over her palm.

            "Hey, Gunner," Deborah said soothingly, "I want you to have this bandana. My older sister gave it to me a long time ago, and it's very special. I was hoping you could find a nice place for it on the wall back there. It would be an honor to add it to the collection."

            The boy nodded. He slowly reached out and grabbed the bandana. When he pulled it off her hand, he saw a small dark gray pebble, no bigger than a thimble, resting in her palm, and he began to scream.

            The boy lurched forward, dropping the bandana, collapsing on all fours and digging his fingers into the floorboards. Blood spilled through cracks in his skin as his clothes tore, muscles ripped out of his body, and his forehead and hands started growing hair.

            He shrieked and snarled as he kicked his legs out, toppling a stool behind the bar and causing a group of pint glasses to shatter on the ground. His legs bowed unnaturally, and his nose and mouth formed into a single shape, pushing out from the rest of his face. His ears pointed and flexed. He stuck his left leg out behind him, like a tail, and his nails curved and sharpened.

            “Werewolf!” Jesse screamed.

            Verna pulled a double-barrel shotgun from behind the bar and pointed it at Deborah.

            “What did you do?” Verna demanded.

            A gunshot rang out. Deborah kept her eyes on Verna, unflinching. She focused, trying to feel any pain coming from her body without looking down, and concluded that she had not been hit. Jesse was behind her, aiming his rifle at the boy and getting ready to fire again.

            The boy, now almost entirely covered in thick brown fur, lunged at the table of trappers. His arms and right leg worked in tandem as his left leg stayed stretched out behind him for balance. Jesse shot two more bullets that hit the boy's flesh and disappeared. His movement only grew more violent. He jumped on Jesse and knocked him to the ground, tearing into his throat.

            Wailing turned to gargling, and soon Jesse stopped moving on his own. The trapper’s foot rocked, and his black hair slowly waved in the pool of blood growing around him as the boy feasted.

            Bart reached for the rifle leaning against his chair, but another blast rang out, this time from in front of Deborah. Bart fell dead next to Jesse, his eyes frozen in shock as Verna turned her smoking shotgun toward Quinten.

            Quinten dove behind a table for cover just as Verna shot her second round. The blast slapped into the wall behind him, freckling a group of holes to the outside. Verna reloaded while the other bar patrons ran out the front door, tripping over each other and squeezing their bodies through the doorway. The silent trapper, Duane, ran out with them.

            Gunner, now a mess of growling anthropomorphic canine features, lifted his head to look at the door, blood rolling down his chin. He ran out after them. A scream from the silent trapper, slowed by the frenzied crowd, echoed through the streets and shuddered the walls. Then, the bar was quiet.

            Verna finished reloading her shotgun and aimed it at Deborah again. Deb stayed motionless until she noticed a flicker from the corner of her eye. She took a revolver from her right-side holster and pointed it at Quinten as he raised his rifle at Verna.

            “Why are you pointing that thing at me, lady?” Quinten shouted at Deborah. “I’m trying to help you!”

            “Don’t shoot Verna. Otherwise, the boy will never be cured,” Deborah said, cocking the hammer back, no longer concerned with the shotgun Verna was pointing at her head.

            “He can’t be cured,” Verna said, “He’s cursed.”

            “You cursed him. You can uncurse him. I know he ain’t your son. And I know who you are. Don't waste any more of my time tonight.” Deborah turned back to face Verna again but kept her revolver aimed at Quinten, the triangular standoff holding tight.

            “What the hell are you broads talking about?” Quinten shouted.

            “She’s the witch y’all should have hanged instead of my sister,” Deborah said, her stare hardening on Verna, “She poisoned Rick to take over his bar. Then, she put a werewolf curse on his son.”

            Verna smiled.

            “There isn’t a full moon tonight. How’d you trigger him to change?” Verna asked.

            “I knew what he was when he ran from my whistle. I got a little rock here that does the rest. It's a neat trick. Tools of the trade.” Deborah glanced at Quinten, “Surprised you boys don’t have one of these.”

            With her free hand, Deborah slowly held the dark gray pebble up to the light.

            “That’s a rock, sweetheart,” Quinten said.

            "It's a lunar meteorite,” Deborah spat. “A moon rock.”

            Quinten laughed.

            “You ain’t got no moon rock. That’s a load of horse feathers. Nice try, though. How could a rock travel all the way to Wyoming from the moon?”

            "Sometimes they fall down. You would too if you were up there. All I know is that werewolves can't stand to be near it.” Deborah slowly returned the moon rock to her pocket and faced Verna. “Now, remove the curse from the boy.”

            “The only way to remove the curse is for him to abstain from feasting on human flesh for nine years,” Verna said matter-of-factly, “You just saw him break that rule, so the curse can no longer be lifted. Sorry, sweetheart.”

            Verna cackled.

            Deborah turned the revolver to Verna and got off two rounds, one in both of her arms. Verna dropped the shotgun and fell back on the puddle of broken glass behind her. Deborah jumped behind the bar and kicked away her shotgun.

            Quinten lowered his rifle, no longer able to see Verna. As he stood up to help, the front door burst open. Gunner galloped across the hardwood floor, a shower of bone fragments and guts drooling freely from his jaws, and he jumped on Quinten’s back. Quinten turned his rifle sideways and shoved it into Gunner’s mouth, holding the barrel and stock to restrain the beast’s glistening fangs.

            Deborah removed the revolver from her left-side holster and pointed it at Gunner.

            “This one is silver, Verna. Remove the curse,” Deborah shouted.

            Verna laughed louder. Tears squeezed out of her eyes.

            Quinten screamed as the boy crushed the rifle with his teeth and ripped into the trapper's face. The squelching gave Deborah a stomachache as she pulled back the hammer and fired five silver bullets into the beast. Gunner slowed and collapsed next to Quinten, dead.

            Deborah grabbed her bandana off the ground and walked over to Quinten. She pulled him away from Gunner with a labored wheeze. Life still showed in his eyes as he shakily held his hands to his face. All the skin had been torn off. His cheekbones were exposed. The muscles were twitching and shifting what was left of his face into bizarre expressions. Deb knelt down and used the bandana to hold back the bleeding.

            “He’s still alive,” she said, looking back at Verna, “Remove the curse the boy has spread to Quinten, and I will spare you.”

            Verna’s laughter turned to panting. Deborah sighed.

            Deborah pulled a handful of dried purple flowers out of her coat pocket, crushed them and spread them over Quinten's face. She then took out a silver blade and pressed the flowers flat. The rest of Quinten's skin burned flush as his body rattled.

            “This is wolfsbane sealed with a silver blade,” Deborah said quietly to Quentin. "It ain't the best way to fight off a curse, but it can work in a pinch. It usually only works on smaller wounds in less critical areas, but hopefully, the curse ain’t in you too bad already." She took the moon rock from her pocket and placed it on the floor next to Quinten. Then, she showed his unfocused eyes her last silver bullet. “If you change, I’ll kill you.”

            She stood up and walked back over to Verna, stepping on the bartender's back as she crawled through the glass to her shotgun.

            “Who taught you all that?” Verna squinted.

            Deborah bent down and picked up Verna’s shotgun, holding it to the back of her head.

            “My sister.”

            A shotgun blast sent Verna’s head through the floor and into the dirt foundation beneath the building.

            Deborah dropped the shotgun and turned around. Quinten was gone. The bloody bandana sat crumpled on the floor. She picked it up, rinsed it off, squeezed the pink water out of it, and tied it back around her neck. She put the gray pebble back in her pocket and walked outside.

            Duane was a puddle of arms, legs and organs on the dirt road. One of the couples had been mangled as well, although Deborah didn’t look too closely. She’d seen enough. The rest of the folks had run to the inn across the street for safety, which they found. No other bodies needed to be cleaned up. Just Quinten.

            A short, sharp whistle called Susan over from a field of fresh grass a little ways off the road. Susan grunted at Deborah. Deb patted her neck. Then, Deborah let out another whistle. It started high, stuttered twice and fell low as a grave.

            She saw him. A dark figure scurried out from behind the bar, low to the ground, a limb sticking out behind it, and ran into the shadowy woods at the edge of town.

            Deborah undid the pack on her saddle and reloaded her revolvers. This time, she filled both with silver bullets. She patted Susan on the rear and sent her with a whistle back to the grassy field. She walked into the bar, found her glass of whiskey, shot it down, and sighed.

            Outside, night fog choked the air. The dim crescent moon hid behind the clouds. The wet grass cleaned her boots as she walked back into the woods on the edge of Barlow. As howling shook sleeping birds from the trees, it appeared for a moment that the world was consumed in one enormous shadow, and Deborah disappeared into the darkness, whistling.