Sing Me A Death Song

by Robert Essig, Anna Kubik, Zoe Lemmon

Genres: Westerns; Horror

Synopsis

Word travels slowly across a desert plane. By the time Blue arrived back to La Plateau after word that his family ranch had been taken over by marauders, he found another mystery plaguing the townsfolk. Three musicians have been singing death songs, terrorizing the locals.

Those who can leave are fleeing, but pride keeps others around, hoping a death song isn't sung for them. Those unfortunates don't make it through the night, and the aftermath is a testament to brutality.

After such a strange homecoming, Blue seeks guidance from an old flame. Louise uses her psychic abilities, but the cloud of darkness hanging over La Plateau is thick. The people are scared. Blue has to face the fears of an entire town and partner up with unlikely allies to have a chance at getting the family ranch back from a gang of psychopaths with one motive: vengeance against Blue. Who's name will be on the lips that sing the next death song?

 

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Release date: December 10, 2024

Publisher: Death's Head Press

Print pages: 176

Sample

Chapter One

News Gets ‘Round

News travels slow across countless miles of dusty plateaus and desolate hills. Travels about as fast as a stagecoach can ride or a horse can gallop, that is if the rider doesn’t run into trouble on the way. News dies then.

It was in some dusty nowhere town that Blue heard news that his momma’s ranch had been seized by a group of marauders.

“Son of a bitch,” Blue said as he sat at a table in the back of the saloon, puffing on a cigarillo. He preferred them when he could smoke them, but more often rolled his own using whatever cheap tobacco he could procure. If ever he befriended a bandido, he was sure to bargain for a batch of good cigarillos.

Watson Billings was the man sitting at a rickety old table with Blue, as nervous as a fat chicken in a meat market. He’d come from La Plateau, fresh off a weeklong ride north for reasons he was reluctant to discuss. Stopped in to wet his whistle, saw Blue in the shadows and plopped himself down to share the bad news. In a place such as this one wary eyes followed each new face, but people kept to their own table. This was not a saloon of upbeat music and laughter so much as a place of serious gambling and drinking.

“Who are they?” Blue asked.

Watson shook his head. “I don’t know, Blue. But they have it in for you. Word is they’re waiting for you to come back.”

Blue nodded, glanced across the room at the barkeep tending to customers seated at the bar. “Figures. How about Blake and Pappy Cort? Them’s my ranch hands. Any word on them?”

Watson shook his head. “I really don’t know nothin’. I was just passing through, heard word, knew it was your momma’s ranch.”

Blue took a deep drag and blew the smoke into the already smoky air of the saloon. “My ranch now, but it’ll forever be known as my momma’s ranch.”

Watson nodded. “Yessir it will. Your momma was a fine woman. She really was.”

“A firecracker, some would say. Rollin’ in her grave at thought of some goddamned marauders taking over her place.”

On the table stood a bottle of whiskey and a pair of shot glasses. The bottle was old and cloudy looking. The whiskey was cheap, but Blue liked it that way. No use paying for the good stuff that didn’t make his guts burn. He never drank much anyway. Just enough to keep his senses sharp. Just in case he had to reach for his gun. He scanned the

 room again, glancing at the patrons talking and dealing cards, as he’d been doing since he took a seat at a table against the back wall where the light from the kerosine lanterns was faint. He’d seen the looks on so many grisly faces as he walked in. Shifty eyes sizing up another such wanderer. Some folks had a gleam of recognition, perhaps a hope that Blue didn’t have their wanted poster in his possession.

Blue leaned back, tilted his head and looked Watson in the eyes as if trying to read the man’s intentions. Had he been sent here to lead Blue back to his momma’s ranch? Was he working for the folks who had commandeered the ranch?

Blue had killed men for far less.

Watson began trembling as if the hot air in the saloon dropped thirty degrees. Sweat beaded on his baldhead like dew on a watermelon. He eyes the whiskey and licked his lips.

Blue held that stare for a bit longer than necessary.

Keep ’em scared for their life. Keep ’em on their toes. The words swam in Blue’s mind. Something Pappy Cort used to say, though the man had never killed anyone in his entire life. It was just a way of intimidating people in hopes that he would never have to pull a six-shooter. Cort had enjoyed the drinking establishments in La Plateau, but he was no gunslinger. He was like a father to Blue after his real father was fatally injured by an ornery bull. Blue was too young to remember. The story was that his pa had been gored in the stomach so bad his insides were showing. Momma shot the bull, figuring it had gone mad. All he knew of his real father were in the form of stories from his mother and a detailed drawing of the man. Pappy Cort had helped Blue’s mother by taking on greater responsibilities at the ranch. Over the years he’d taught Blue a lot about life, the things he figured a mother couldn’t rightly reach a young boy. How to shoot a gun, how to gut an animal. Eventually he taught Blue how to drink and most importantly, how to treat women with respect, a trait Cort felt too many cowboys lacked.

After pouring two shots, Blue slid one across the table. “Have a drink with me.”

Watson nodded and let out a breath he must have been holding through the entire duration Blue had stared him down. He smiled and nodded. “Pleased to have a drink with you, Blue.”

“I’m not pleased to get the bad medicine, but I’m glad you filled me in. I was going to head east tonight, but that’s done changed.”

“What’s waiting for you

out east?”

Blue’s eyes shot up at Watson with a clear message not to ask questions that don’t pertain to him. There were stories about Blue Covington in just about every town in the west, and even into the east. Watson knew enough to assume some things were fabricated, but he didn’t know where the truth ended and the fable began. Blue was a bounty hunter, but some folks claimed he worked dirty. Problem was, most folks who were on the wrong side of the law made false accusations in defense of their own poor judgment.

Watson nodded. “Sorry,” he stammered out the words, “none of my business.”

“It ain’t.” Blue poured himself another shot of rotgut. Sipped it. “So tell me, Watson Billings, why this bodega? You’re not the type I thought would frequent a bucket of blood like this one.”

Watson got to shaking again. Around him patrons talked and glasses clinked. The overpowering reek of body odor and stale beer cut through the acrid smoke. “Well, I, uh,” he licked his lips. “I was just looking for a place to get a drink.” A nervous chuckle.

“You’re a piss poor liar, you know that? Good thing you never took up poker.”

“Really, Blue,” trembling, Watson shook his head fervently. “Blue, you got to—”

“What’d they pay you to track me down?”

“I swear—”

Blue’s right hand swung down and grabbed his revolver from its holster at unnatural speed, the gun pulled and pointed at Watson’s head before he could stammer out another broken word. Blue pulled back the hammer and cocked the gun. Hardly anyone looked their way, as if used to such outbursts, though talk hushed some.

“You didn’t come in here for a drink, you lying bag of mule shit.” Blue pulled back the hammer and cocked the gun. “I’m no dummy. I have myself positioned back here where no one can get a good look at me. 

Finding me here ain’t no accident.”

Watson licked his lips and swallowed hard. His jaw trembled.

Blue smiled and let out a gargle of laughter. “You came looking for me. How much they pay you? They certainly didn’t send you here to kill me. You don’t have the balls.” As he spoke he shot a quick glance to the entrance of the saloon as someone walked in, before barreling his eyes back into Watson’s. “You really are a spineless piece of shit, aren’t you?”

As Watson froze in his shivering state, Blue continued his surveillance of the bodega. He had already been waiting for someone before Watson joined his table.

“Look here. You let me know how much they paid you, and you might leave alive.” Blue spit in his face. “Might.”

Blue looked up again. His eyes narrowed as he gazed longingly at the bar. Watson didn’t dare turn to see who had caught Blue’s attention.

“Well,” Blue said, “you got about thirty seconds to tell me what I need to know, because the man I’ve been waiting for has just entered the saloon and is at the bar getting himself a drink.” Watson shifted as if to turn and see who this man was. “No. Don’t you dare turn around on me. How much did they pay you? I already know I’m heading back to La Plateau. It’s just a matter of whether I’m killing one man or two right now.”

Watson, trembling, said, “Two hundred.”

Blue tilted his head, his brow contorting. His eyes darted to the man behind Watson, his unshielded form standing at the bar. He held his cocked gun to the side of Watson’s head. “You better duck or your ears’ll be ringin’ like hell.”

Gritting his teeth and squinting one eye, Blue took aim. Watson dropped to the floor just as the six-shooter made a deafening pop. Just one shot. The crowd gasped, glasses clinking, followed by a brief moment of silence after several women screamed. A few folks ushered themselves outside and away from the violence. The regulars resumed drinking and dealing cards, chuckling and thankful they weren’t a part of the outburst.

The man who’d been shot in the back of the head hesitated before falling to the floor. Behind the fallen corpse, the bartender was awash in the blood that sprayed from the exploding exit wound. Blue hadn’t been concerned with the aftermath. He never was while taking down wanted men. He learned a while back that using his knife to score an X on the tip of his bullets met with horrendous results

that insured a kill. Some folks got shot in the head and had enough instincts about them to reach for their own gun and fire back. With a notched bullet their brains always blew out the exit wound. That poor bastard bartender just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Gesturing to Watson, who was crouched on the floor, Blue said, “Come on.”

The bartender was flicking bloody chunks out of his eyes when Blue and Watson approached the lifeless body on the floor. The din resumed moments after the killing. With some excitement, the scarred and dust blown faces had something to talk about while getting drunk, before the next fight inevitably broke out. Behind the bar there were notches in the wood that once represented each person who had been killed over a bad game of Faro, a lover’s triangle, a wanted man, or any other reason for someone to shoot first and keeps questions to themselves. The bartender who started notching the wood was shot one night when a rowdy individual took offense to him always notching when the man killed someone. It was petty, but then again so many murders in a place like this could have been resolved more peacefully by men with straighter heads.

The bartender used a dirty rag to wipe brains and blood from his face. Blue regarded him, feeling genuinely sorry for the man. It was never Blue’s intention to put anyone else in danger while getting a bounty. Or to splatter a head full of gore on another man like this.

“I do apologize,” Blue said to the bartender. “I should have given you a sign or something.” Blue slapped down several coins. “For the drink and your troubles. The guy here, we’re taking him out. Ain’t no one gonna know him from his face, but he’s got other markings on him. Scars and such.”

The bartender slid the money off the counter into his waiting hand, then deposited it in some kind of locked box beneath the bar. He didn’t even count

 it. Didn’t have to. Blue had given him a handsome tip.

“Grab him,” Blue said to Watson.

“Me?”

“Well yeah, who else?”

“But—”

“Just grab his feet and drag the son of a bitch out of here.”

Watson, confused and wary of the look in Blue’s eyes, dragged the man out of the saloon. Patrons cleared a path, eyeing the dead man with piteous smirks. Once outside Blue asked, “Which one’s your horse?”

“The black Morgan, second from the left.”

Blue nodded. “That’s a nice ride there. Hope she can afford the extra weight.”

“Extra weight?”

“I like you, Watson.” Blue smirked. “That you came lookin’ for me either shows that you’re dumb, brave, or stupid. You take this bounty north to Tennessee. He’s worth five hundred dead or alive. You don’t say a word to anyone you found me, hear?”

Watson nodded and slumped his shoulders. He glanced at the body, grimaced, and quickly looked away, his eyes darting to anything but the corpse.

Blue shook his head. “Hate to say it, but I don’t think bravery brought you out here.”

Blue approached his Saddlebred mare, clicked a few times to let her know they were about to depart, then undid the rope from the hitching rail.

“How am I supposed to get him up on the horse?” Watson asked.

“You’ll figure it out. He’s worth a good bounty, so watch yourself. Some other bounty hunter will shoot you between the eyes for that there man. No one will know who he is so long as they don’t see his scars. Travel by night, due east. Follow the moon. I hear you spoke even one word about running into me, I’ll find you and next time I won’t be quite so generous.”

Blue leapt upon his  horse and rode off west, toward La Plateau.

 

Chapter Two

Meanwhile, Back In La Plateau

Louise Campbell watched the show from the back of the Mid Town Saloon, alone at a small table amongst the townsfolk. The place was lit by large kerosine lamps, which gave an almost ethereal quality, especially in the back where Louise preferred to sit. Most of the lamps were positioned around the stage to provide the audience a better view of the performers. There were a few card tables with their own lamps and a bar that bustled with local gossip and tall tales from lonely rovers in between the evening acts on stage.

Some folks didn’t think it was ladylike to attend a variety show alone, but Louise didn’t give a good goddamn what anyone said or thought about her demeanor. On the contrary, many people in town cared a great deal about what she said and thought, and therefore people generally left her alone even though she often went against the grain. Her coming to La Plateau in the first place had been a move that most women of the west would have been terrified to make alone, especially at the age of fifteen. That was damn near twenty years ago. She’d fled her home town in Kentucky after her grandmother was hanged for practicing black magic, but it wasn’t that at all. It was a gift. One that Louise inherited. When those holy rollers came after the rest of Louise’s family, they fled. She was the only one with the gift, and fearing for their safety in her presence, she tucked her hair into a hat, donned cowboy duds, and headed west alone.

When she came upon La Plateau, she felt a kinship with the people. They were kind and generous and greeted her with open arms. She dropped the rugged facade she’d been hiding behind while traveling and settled down. Eventually she gained enough trust to share her gift with the locals, being sure to do it in a way that wouldn’t result in her dangling from a tree like her grandmother, God rest her soul.

On stage the Bridgeford Trio belted out a song with pithy lyrics that had an almost comical sense. Their music was a blend of cowboy ranch tunes, traditional standards, and something that was uniquely Bridgeford Trio, something Louise couldn’t put her gloved finger on. They’d been in town all week, playing in the variety show that Mid Town Saloon put on almost nightly. The cowboys watched for the dance hall girls. The dancers wore big fluffy dresses, but when they danced in a line and kicked their legs up high the audience was given an eyeful. The younger cowboys had never seen so much leg. Some of them got all horned up and visited the brothel upstairs afterward, and even more of them were foolish enough to

think the dancing line girls were up there waiting for them.

The musical acts that played the variety show usually stayed for a few weeks and then moved onto the next town. They were paid by the saloon, and often pumped the strings of a guitar or blew a harmonica throughout the day out on Main Street with a top hat or guitar case upturned at their feet, hoping for small coins from folks who enjoyed a little serenade. The Bridgeford Trio were no different. They had a guitar player, a harmonica player, and a fiddle player. All of them sang, and their voices blended like rich cream, soothing to the ears, though their choice of lyrics were often absurd and odd, which would in turn cause certain members of the audience to heckle in between songs, yearning to hear a tried and true standard, something the whole place could sing with. Something about camptown ladies doo dah, doo dah.

Louise sipped a brandy as she watched them play, curious what their hands would tell her. Considering the trouble they’d been causing, she figured their palms would be a fascinating read were she given the opportunity. Her profession was one of near secrecy, considering how judgemental people could be, what with palmistry not being very Christian and all. Little did the townsfolk know that their very own preacher had been to visit Louise in a weak moment, struggling with his beliefs.

Will, the fiddle player, did most of the solo singing, with the other two joining in for chorus lines or backing vocals. When Will sang he made exaggerated facial gestures after certain lyrics. Louise didn’t find them all that amusing, and neither did the rest of the audience, which had grown since the Bridgeford Trio started playing the saloon a week prior. People didn’t come for the music, per say.

They came to see who would get a death song.

It started five days ago with a heckler in the audience. There was always one. The Bridgeford Trio had gone through their various renditions, smiling and playing their songs. Peaceful, jolly men who appeared as harmless as a tailor in church. That first night they soured at the words of the heckler. The final song came with horrendous lyrics so violent that the audience was left in awe. When the very man who had stood and jeered was found dead the following morning, no one suspected the Bridgeford Trio. But each night

someone did something to disrupt the show. An outburst of laughter caused a second person to die brutally in their sleep. Then it was a fellow who stumbled drunk into a table and caused several mugs to shatter on the floor. The singing group smiled as they sang those awful songs, and soon enough people began to put the pieces together, blaming the Bridgeford Trio for the deaths. No one could make sense of how each person was being murdered so violently in their sleep, but the morning revelations were undeniable.

On the tail end notes of an original tune they called “Cattle Driving Ladies” a man in the audience lobbed a remark. “You couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket!” So original. They were fine singers, the man was just trying to get under their skin. The crowd collectively gasped, for they knew this was a fatal mistake.

Will, leader of the group, tilted his head and squinted his eyes, searching the smoky room for the man who dared heckle. Five days into their stay and the people of La Plateau should be well aware that heckling the Bridgeford Trio was a very bad idea indeed. A few days ago the local grocer had merely made a critical comment about their performance, suggesting that the night would have been better served by another dance routine from the line girls. The Brigeford Trio took the comment to heart, dedicating their next song to the heckler. Not only was he found dead the next morning, he’d died exactly the way their lyrics predicted.

“It was me!” The man stood proud. “Ain’t no cattle driving ladies I ever heard of! You don’t know what the hell you’re singing about. Maybe go on back north where you come from. You can’t fool real cowboys with those cheap lyrics. Good for nothin’ no nothin’ idiots!”

Will raised his eyebrows exaggeratedly. “Well well. Has your mother ever told you if you have nothing good to say, don’t say anything at all? Maybe not in a town like this, but where I come from we were taught manners.”

Rojo, the guitar player, strummed a couple of chords, punctuating his leader’s sentiment, to which a few members of the crowd began to clap. Their joy was soon stifled at the leering eyes of fellow townsfolk who better shared the opinion of the outspoken man who now stood so everyone could see him clearer. He was a bold son of a bitch.

“You half breed!” The man pointed at Rojo. “You ain’t welcome here. Go on back where you come from.”

Will smiled, pivoted his head toward Rojo. “You believe this guy? Calling you a half breed, and I’m pretty sure you’s as Mexican as they come.”

Rojo said, “It’s probably because I speak English better than some of these . . .” he trailed off.

“Some of these what?” the man in the audience said.

Louise knew what was coming just as well as everyone else, and there was nothing she could do about it. The man standing up was Harold Strummer. A well-seasoned cowboy who tended to drink too much and run his mouth. Louise knew Harold’s deepest secrets, as she did so many others in town. He’d come to visit her once. She grabbed his grungy hands and saw everything. The abuse. The blackout drinking. His own father and uncle beating and raping him. She saw it all and saw clearly how the man became such a bitter specimen of human offal. Somehow his wife stuck by his side through the beatings and verbal abuse. Had his wife been here she probably would have remained silent, even though she, like everyone else in the audience, knew perfectly well that Harold was signing his own death certificate.

“Well, folks,” Will said. “Looks like we’re going to sing our last song for the night. I really hoped we could make it through a set without one of these renditions, but as you can see, some folks just can’t keep their mouths shut.”

Harold started up again, his voice slurred and impassioned, but Will spoke over him.

“Here’s another death song to cap off what was otherwise a delightful night,” Will nodded at his fellow players, and they started up the familiar tune. It was in a minor key, which gave it an awfully spooky sound that unnerved the audience, an audience who wanted terribly to do something, but were afraid that a death song would be coming their way if they did. Men clutched guns that rested in holsters, dreaming of firing a bullet through any one of their three faces, but what if they missed? What if they only got one of them? Would the other two sing a death song for their wife or children in revenge?

Whispers in hushed tones too low to battle the singing expressed familiar concerns throughout the crowd, followed by gasps and nervous coughs as Will sung the final line, “. . . ignorant brains seeping from Harold’s ears, a hundred stab wounds take away all his fears . . .”

Low murmurings began around the saloon.

“Someone’s has got to do something about this.”

“We can’t live in fear.”

“They need to be hung by their necks ’til they’re dead.”

“A bullet in the head’ll do mighty fine.”

When the Bridgeford Trio finished the death song, they promptly bowed to a silent audience. The murmurs would not dare be spoken any louder for fear they would unleash another killing tune, not that anyone had ever seen them perform that song twice in a night. They walked off stage and exited through a door just beyond an open area backstage where performers could ready themselves before a show.

Louise watched as the town’s sheriff, Grover Davis, stood from a table in the middle of the saloon and hurried upstairs for a better view from a window in one of the working ladies’ rooms above. He returned a couple minutes later.

“They’re down the road toward the hotel where they’re staying,” Sheriff Davis announced.

At this, the room opened up to a boisterous conversation. Talk of murdering the musicians, to which Sheriff Davis discouraged.

“Then why don’t you do something, Sheriff?” someone asked. “Poor Harold is gonna wake up dead, I just know it. And then what?”

“Maybe we should stop coming here watching them,” Sheriff Davis suggested. “How about that? Maybe they’ll just go away.”

“They’ve killed five so far. Harold will be number six. And still there ain’t no justice. That’s on you, Sheriff.”

Harold said, “I’m not dying in my sleep. That’s bullshit.” Not looking very convinced, he tipped back a bottle of whiskey that had mysteriously been

placed on his table—an offering for a dead man walking.

“We don’t know they killed anybody,” someone said.

“The hell we don’t!” The town coroner had been the one who started putting the pieces together, he and Sheriff Davis being the only two who had closely examined each victim. “It’s in the words. They say things in them songs, terrible things. I seen the aftermath just the other day. It ain’t natural to die that way in one’s sleep is all I’m saying.”

“Why haven’t they gone?” someone asked.

All eyes shifted to Frenchy Hill, the bartender and owner of Mid Town Saloon. Frenchy was a staple of La Plateau. Everyone knew him. People trusted him. He’d become a sort of confidante, being the man who served the beer and poured the shorts. He may not have known the deeper secrets that Louise knew, but he knew everything else that went on in town.

Frenchy’s face tightened. “I haven’t paid them.” Gasps and rising murmurs. Frenchy’s voice rose, “I haven’t paid them because of what they’ve been doing. They don’t deserve it.”

“Well why the hell do you allow them to get up there and sing every night?” the coroner asked.

Frenchy raised his eyebrows. “You’re telling me if you were in my boots you’d kick them out? I don’t need no one in my family dying in their sleep, God damn it. And I ain’t paying a bunch of low down murderers either.” Frenchy shifted his gaze to Sheriff Davis, leveling a telling sneer.

The rumblings increased. Finally Sheriff Davis yielded to their insistence. “Okay,” he resigned, “Okay. I’ll round them up in the morning.” His eyes traced the patrons looking to him for answers. “It seems our morbid curiosity does nothing more than bring us here every night to see who’s next. I believe in justice and law, but I also believe a community can come together to fix their own problems. We’re all scared of them. We’re all scared we’ll be next.” He nodded and took a deep breath. “I suppose it’s in my job title to be the one who takes care of this.”

The dull thud of a glass smacking one of the old tables silenced the room. It was Cort “Pappy” Rudgers, an old timer in town who’d been working the Covington Ranch for the past twenty years.

“Them’s killers right there. Three of ’em. This isn’t a problem for townsfolk to care after. This is a problem for the law, but it seems the law hasn’t been doing its job lately. I haven’t seen a goddamn thing done about Covington Ranch. Me an’ Blake Martin are out of work, and . . . aw hell, I don’t even know what happened to Ed Long. There hasn’t been so much as an investigation up there. It’s like you just let them marauders have the land.” Pappy shook his head.

“People are starting to leave town,” someone said, and then the din of concerned argument erupted once again. Pappy hung his head and wept. Seemed no one gave a damn about Covington Ranch, not while the Bridgeford Trio were in town killing people.

Louise slipped off her gloves and crossed the room to where Pappy sat. She pulled up a chair beside him, steadied herself, and put her hands on his. His head shot up, and when he saw who was comforting him, there was a look of terror that came over him. Louise had her eyes closed, reading deeply of what her gift showed her. Though Pappy was fearful of the woman in town who could read fortunes, he was also smitten with the touch of her soft hands, the delicate nature of her features that made her look almost like one of those porcelain dolls he’d seen once when a caravan of Chinese immigrants came through town selling goods.

She twitched, jaw clenching, a pained expression tattooed across her face. Deep breathed through her nose, and then she steadied. Louise opened her eyes. She looked troubled, her gift telling her he didn’t have much time. “I’m not so sure about the future of Covington Ranch.”

Pappy shook his head. “That ranch was all I got. I’m lost without it.”

Pulling her gloves back on, Louise said, “I apologize. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. Sometimes I,” she hesitated, wary. “I don’t like what I see.”

Pappy looked up, eyes grave, and nodded as if accepting a dire fate. He looked very old

at that moment, older than he was. His hair was thin and gray and his beard only had hints of color. He was skinny, but toned and more willing to put in a hard day’s work than a lot of the younger folks in town.

“Excuse me.”

Louise turned to see Sheriff Davis standing there. “Yes, Sheriff?”

“Could I have a word with you? In private.”

She thought on it for a moment too long, wishing she didn’t have to touch the sheriff’s hand to see his true intentions. “Why sure.” She offered a courteous smile, bid Pappy goodnight, and walked outside, Sheriff Davis in tow. ...