The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All - By Laird Barron Page 0,13

shack his father built. He thought of the fairy tale books at his aunt’s house. Musty books with wooden covers and woodblock illustrations that raised the hair on his head. The evil stepmother made to dance in red hot iron shoes at Snow White’s garden wedding while the dwarves hunched like fiends. Hansel and Gretel lost in a vast, endless wood, the eyes of a thousand demons glittering in the shadows. The forest in the book was not so different from the one he found himself riding through.

At noon, they stopped to take a cold lunch from their own saddlebags as this was beyond the range of the lodge staff. Arlen trotted from the forest, dodgy and feral as a fox, to report Scobie picked up the trail and was hoping to soon drive the stag itself from hiding. Dr. Landscomb and the British were in hot pursuit.

“Damn,” Mr. Williams said.

“Aw, now that limey’s going to do the honors,” Mr. Briggs said. “I wanted that rifle.”

“Everybody wants that rifle,” Mr. McEvoy said.

Mr. Williams clapped his hands together. “Let’s mount up, muchachos. Maybe we’ll get lucky and our friends will miss their opening.”

“The quarry is elusive,” Mr. Liam Welloc said. “Anything is possible.”

The men kicked their ponies to a brisk trot and gave chase.

* * *

An hour later, all hell broke loose.

The path crossed a plank bridge and continued upstream along the cut bank of a fast moving stream. Dogs barked and howled and the shouts of men echoed from the trees. A heavy rifle boomed twice. No sooner had Luke Honey and his companions entered a large clearing with a lagoon fed by a waterfall, did he spy Lord Bullard and Mr. Wesley afoot, rifles aimed at the trees. Dr. Landscomb stood to one side, hands tight on the bridle of his pony. Dead and dying dogs were strewn everywhere. A pair of surviving mastiffs yapped and snarled, muzzles slathered in foam, as Scobie wrenched mightily at their leashes.

The Brits’ rifles thundered in unison. Luke Honey caught a glimpse of what at first he took to be a stag. Yet something was amiss about the shape as it bolted through the trees and disappeared. It was far too massive and it moved in a strange, top-heavy manner. Lord Bullard’s horse whinnied and galloped blindly through the midst of the gawking Americans. It missed Luke Honey and Mr. Williams, collided with Mr. McEvoy and knocked his horse to the ground. The banker cursed and vaulted from the saddle, landing awkwardly. His horse staggered upright while Mr. Wesley’s mount charged away into the mist in the opposite direction. Mr. Briggs yelled and pulled at the reins of his mount as it crow-hopped all over the clearing.

“What the hell was that?” Williams said, expertly controlling his horse as it half-reared, eyes rolling to the whites. “Welloc?”

Mr. Liam Welloc had wisely halted at the entrance and was supremely unaffected by the debacle. “I warned you, gentlemen. Blackwood’s Baby is no tender doe.”

Mr. McEvoy had twisted an ankle. He sat on a rock while Dr. Landscomb tended him. Scobie calmed his mastiffs and handed their leashes to Mr. Liam Welloc. He took a pistol from his coat and walked among the dogs who lay scattered and broken along the bank of the lagoon and in the bushes. He fired the pistol three times.

No one spoke. They rubbed their horses’ necks and stared at the blood smeared across the rocks and at the savaged corpses of the dogs. Scobie began dragging them into a pile. A couple of flasks of whiskey were passed around and everyone drank in morbid silence.

Finally, Mr. Williams said, “Bullard, what happened here?” He repeated the question until the Englishman shuddered and looked up, blank-faced, from the carnage.

“It speared them on its horns. In all my years… it scooped two dogs and pranced about while they screamed and writhed on its antlers.”

“Anybody get a clear shot?”

“I did,” Mr. Wesley said. He leaned on his rifle like an old man. “Thought I nicked the bugger. Surely I did.” He coughed and his shoulders convulsed. Dr. Landscomb left Mr. McEvoy and came over to examine him.

Mr. Liam Welloc took stock. “Two horses gone. Five dogs killed. Mr. McEvoy’s ankle is swelling nicely, I see. Doctor, what of Mr. Wesley?”

Dr. Landscomb listened to Mr. Wesley’s chest with a stethoscope. “This man requires further medical attention. We must get him to a hospital at once.”

Scobie shouted. He ran back to the group, his eyes red, his