Excerpt

I stepped down onto the wooden platform as the parked train huffed and smoked at my back. Adjusting the small pack I carried on my left shoulder, I gave the town of Binger, Oklahoma Territory, a quick inspection, my eyes sweeping the long red-dirt main street. It was...unremarkable: a bank, hotel, and territorial post office; four saloons, a pair of newspapers, the jail, stables, a grocer, and a department store. Small wood-framed houses on the side streets made up the rest of the town. I could see a cotton gin at one end of the street, its back loading doors next to the railroad spur. A small stockyard was built further on up the street, thankfully downwind today. There was no passenger depot, just the raised platform I stood on and a little canvas-covered overhang to keep freight and mail out of the worst of any rain. The most interesting thing was the young man standing on an upside-down shipping crate and crying out like a firebrand preacher that the end was coming and the true gods of the land would walk among them again. I shook my head at the man's crazy speech. Still, except for the lone madman, Binger could have been any of the hundred prairie towns I had seen over the decades.

It could have been Cold Springs, before the monster.

I shook my head to clear the dark thoughts. It was the people that caught my attention. I'd spent most of my adult life being a lawman and could spot the fear running through the townsfolk in their brisk walk from building to building and in the wariness of their eyes as they studied the passengers leaving the train while trying to watch every direction at once. I could see it in the tight nods and frowning faces. Even the local dogs were hushed and quiet, as if terrified to draw attention.

Whatever danger the locals feared would be the reason a telegram from the office of President Benjamin Harrison himself had arrived at my police precinct house in San Francisco, requesting me to travel to Binger, Oklahoma Territory, there to be briefed by the local deputy marshal in a situation that required "special knowledge of creatures and matters most unnatural." If my time in the army and as a marshal had taught me anything, it was that a request from the office of the president wasn't really a request. The San Francisco Police detached me to the U.S. Marshals, and my Millie sternly admonished me to not get my fool self killed or eaten as she packed my bags and handed me a train ticket to the Oklahoma territorial capital of Guthrie, there to switch to a train to Fort Reno and then on to Binger.

I smiled at the two familiar people walking down the platform toward me, my gloomy mood lifting as I held out my hand to William Blenchy, former Deputy United States Marshal. "Bill, it's good to see you again."

"Married life looks like it agrees with you, Jefferson." Blenchy was as tall and thin as I remembered and his mustache as large as ever, if a little grayer. He wore a nice charcoal suit instead of buckskins and boots, no doubt the influence of his own woman. His Colt rested in its worn leather holster, held up by a plain black gun belt, and the gray wide-brimmed hat on his head looked almost new.

"Three meals and a warm bed do wonders for a man."

Blenchy grunted his agreement as I turned to the second member of my greeting party, taking off my hat and giving her a nod. "Lady Priscilla, I see you're still riding herd over this ne'er-do-well," I said, glancing toward Blenchy. "When is Bill going to make you an honest woman?"

Lady Priscilla Talbot was tall for a woman, though Bill Blenchy still towered over her. She wore a brown riding skirt and matching vest over a white blouse. Her chestnut hair was swept up under a small hat. She carried a parasol in her gloved hands.

They had both been there with me that terrible night in Cold Springs, Nebraska. Lady Priscilla's father had died there, his heart failing as we battled the demon that decimated the town. I knew they had been through the fire and out the other side. There were few people I trusted as I did William Blenchy and Lady Priscilla Talbot.

"Please, Jefferson, just Priscilla," she said with a light laugh, her English accent out of place in this dusty little frontier town. "And I've always been an honest woman, if not an innocent one."

"I keep asking her," Blenchy said. He frowned at Priscilla, but his love for her never faded from his eyes. "She thinks we shouldn't because of…her condition."

I didn't know enough about Lady Priscilla's being a werewolf to understand what the risks might be to her husband or any child she would carry and bear. Did she fear Blenchy would have to kill her if she lost control of the wolf within? Could she pass her condition to her child? No, I didn't understand at all, and I refused to put forth any opinion on the matter. This was a decision between husband and wife, which they truly were even if Priscilla refused his proposals until death claimed one of them. I nodded and held my tongue on the matter. "Any of you heard from Bloom?" I asked into the following silence. Mr. Arkady Bloom was the fourth survivor of Cold Springs, though he had been gravely wounded.

"He sends his regards," Lady Priscilla said.

Blenchy nodded. "We saw him last winter for a bit."

"Oh?"

"I had to return to England to complete and close several of father's business dealings," Lady Priscilla said. "There were creditors to pay, patents to file, buildings and equipment to sell. It was all quite boring and tedious."

I reached down for the one Gladstone I'd brought along from San Francisco, but Blenchy beat me to it, lifting the bag my wife had surely over-packed as easily as he would a small child. We stepped off the wooden platform, and I followed Blenchy and Lady Priscilla toward the hotel, where I hoped the answers to all my questions waited. And maybe a meal to go with those answers, as well.

The Binger Hotel was a two-story building, twice as deep and wide as the houses on the side streets. The hotel boasted long porches with wood rails on both floors facing the street and a sign hanging from the corner post that simply said "Rooms." The hotel's name was painted across the side of the building in red. The lobby was polished dark woods with a brass and glass chandelier hanging in the center. The man behind the counter passed me a key after I signed the book and signaled for a boy of about thirteen to carry my bag to the second-floor room. I tossed the boy a couple of pennies and adjusted my gun belt. Feeling a little nostalgic, I'd brought along my old cavalry Schofield and I'd forgotten how the weight of the heavier pistol settled on the belt. I turned to find Blenchy, who had followed.

"Priscilla's waiting in the lobby with Marshal Thomas. We're staying next door to you." Blenchy paused. "We've got this three-room thing, since she brought her maid along." He paused again, chewing his bottom lip. "Violet is, well, she's different for sure."

My eyebrows rose at Blenchy's tone. "Well then, I look forward to meeting her. In the meantime, let's go see your woman and this Marshal Thomas."

U.S. Deputy Marshal Henry "Heck" Thomas was of medium height and had a mustache to rival Blenchy's on a round face. He wore his pistol in the classic cavalryman's cross draw style. His badge—the same badge I had worn for years—was pinned to his coat. He stood and held out a hand. "Captain Jefferson Stottlemyre, it is a pleasure to meet you, sir."

I wanted to chuckle at the title. This was the third time I'd been a captain: in the Federal army during the war, as U.S. Marshal in Dakota Territory, and now with the San Francisco police.

"The same, Marshal Thomas," I said. My respect for him was genuine. He was one of the men charged with keeping the peace and enforcing the law in the ever-dangerous Oklahoma and Indian Territories. From reading the newsprint stories, I knew he was the lead marshal chasing the Dalton gang. I glanced over at the older man, maybe in his early sixties, sitting in a high back chair near Marshal Thomas. He wore a badge as well. The town marshal, I realized. He wore gray trousers, a white shirt and tie, and a black vest. His hat sat in his lap. I nodded in acknowledgement.

"This is Dan Widner," Thomas said. "He's a friend."

Widner held out a hand. "Captain Stottlemyre."

I shook the man's hand, settled into my chair across from them, and took a sip from the glass of water placed on a side table by the same boy who carried up my bag. I glanced at Blenchy and Lady Priscilla, but they seemed to be waiting from me to take the lead. Fair enough. I leaned forward in my chair and looked Marshal Thomas straight in the eyes. "Now, why don't you tell me why President Harrison felt the need to drag my old bones out from California? Because the last time I got a letter from Washington, it was to inform me that my commission was revoked."