Jeremiah counted his coins as he walked along the moonlit desert trail. He wanted to put as much distance between himself and Harpy’s grisly feast as he could.
Harpy. Jeremiah didn’t know why he had given the beast a name. There weren’t even supposed to be any Harpies in New Mexico, and this thing was bigger than any bird of legend Jeremiah had ever heard about.
Maybe Jeremiah thought that by talking to the bird like a friend, calling it by name, he could maintain the uneasy partnership they had somehow formed.
A fool’s errand, at best. More than likely, that of a dead man. Eventually.
Still, Jeremiah had to admit that his bankroll appreciated their arrangement. Despite being tired and scared, he smiled as he finished tallying his money and slipped it back into the small saddlebag he’d lifted from one of the bird’s victims. He was up nearly five hundred dollars from the night Harpy had swooped into his life just a few weeks back, all without spending one day in a mine, or working doggies.
And his next payday was just down the road a piece, at the new Iron Creek silver mine. Jeremiah focused his eyes on the horizon in that direction and picked up his pace.
Harpy was a master at terrorizing mine camps and other places where men slept. Dropping in from the sky, the beast could surprise even the most vigilant night watchman, and one shriek was enough to send a hundred slumbering men racing into the darkness to save their lives. All Jeremiah had to do was wait behind a nearby rock or tree and then raid the men’s bounties before they returned.
Well, that, and then repay Harpy with a meal, which was easy enough. A pile of coins stacked on a lone boulder or a couple of bills tacked to a dead tree were just about impossible for most men to resist, regardless of any suspicions they might have. Jeremiah knew all too well. He’d been one of them not so long ago.
He shivered at the memory of the shadow that had passed over him that night, the stench that descended from above as he reached for the silver dollar gleaming in the moonlight. It was just dumb luck that the man hiding behind the outcropping got his feet tangled and tripped right at that moment, discharging his gun and causing Harpy to shriek and turn on the stranger. Jeremiah had snatched up the coin and dashed from the scene as fast as he could, trying to outrun the man’s anguished screams.
It had taken Harpy only minutes to catch up, circling in the night sky overhead. They had been inseparable ever since, whether Jeremiah liked it or not.
As Jeremiah rounded a bend and headed out over an unfamiliar landscape, he realized the terrible noises of Harpy’s evening meal had faded behind him. He must have traveled farther than he realized, been away from the bird for longer than it seemed.
Maybe he’s finally finished with me.
That happy idea pushed through his gloomy memories like a single red rose fighting its way to the surface of a snowdrift in winter. But before Jeremiah could take his next breath, the ruffle of feathers overhead poured the death stink of truth over him.
There was only one way to escape Harpy, and Jeremiah’s time was coming.
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