Free Year's End: 14 Tales of Holiday Horror by J. Alan Hartman Page B

she had done it before, without knowing the why or wherefore of her passion for such a thing, but believed by simply doing it was in itself reason enough to do it again. She tossed two thigh-long and as doubly thick pine logs into the river rock fireplace where orange embers still sizzled. She grabbed her cutting tools, placed them upon her all-purpose table, sat down on the broad-based two-foot tall log chair and began filing the edges with a hand-crafted rasp, working rhythmically as she sang, “Oh, dem golden slippers! Oh, dem golden slippers!” She stopped her scraping, held the axe up, licked her finger and slid it against the business end of the implement. Shook her head, grinned large and got back to work. “So it’s good-bye, chillun. You will have to go. Oh, dem golden slippers! Oh, dem golden slippers!” She’d long since forgotten all the lyrics and, besides Dixie, it was the only other song she knew, and she’d not really intentionally changed the words but had found they’d somehow changed themselves once she’d satisfied her passions for the first time. “So it’s good-bye, chillun,” she now hollered, spitting out the words to the four walls and Charley, who didn’t stir from his slumber after having long since concluded Myrtle’s quirkiness was a benign thing for him, and perhaps other small critters as well. But those other larger critters Myrtle fancied more dead than alive? Well, that was another thing altogether; something that manifested itself to Charley as exotic but filling tidbits she’d toss his way after… He wasn’t exactly sure what had come before the after, but in his quiet, calculating, nocturnal scrounging way, he understood night feeding as well as any like-minded critter and knew Myrtle surely did know how to bring home the bacon…so to speak.
    *
    In June of 1880, Pastor Henry Gumm had not really seen the worth of settling upon the spot that would become Crawford, but had understood that, after leading his flock of thirty-five from Ash Flat, Arkansas—an apt name for a dreary place even the most robust of Baptists could no longer countenance—across the even more dismal flatlands of the Indian Territory that would become Oklahoma, then up to the northern New Mexico Territory and into what he had identified as the Promised Land of Colorado, his and his congregation’s fervor for travel had hit rock bottom. He knew Colorado offered more ideal places to settle, but the road had been long and the collective enthusiasm for continuing their exodus had turned sour as sun-baked milk. So tents were raised, plentiful water was found, deer were shot, timber was felled and cut for the coming winter. They’d found their Promised Land; surely not an Eden, but it’d have to do.
    Myrtle Roady, certainly not partial to religious folks, especially Baptists, Catholics to a lesser extent, had tagged along on the journey when Pastor Gumm et al had reached the Panhandle of the Indian Territory where, more as a matter of expedience rather than any notion life might be rosier in Colorado, she joined the group. Seems Myrtle had outstayed whatever welcome she’d found there at the Cimarron cutoff for the old Santa Fe Trail, where more than a few travelers from points east rested for a day or two before resuming their westward trek ala the mantra of Manifest Destiny.
    Myrtle, preferring pants to skirts, knee-length boots of soft hide, a silk top hat ragged with wear and a wool coat two sizes too large, had tarried at that offshoot of the Santa Fe Trail for two weeks, where she gained some little respect for her cutting and carving skills upon newly-slain game. Elk and deer mostly, and one domestic hog toward the middle of the second week that had apparently gone mad from ingesting nettles, kept Myrtle busy and valued by the fairly steady flow of folks upon the trail. She was glad to do what she could, and certainly had the equipment with which to do it. Folks took notice, though, that Myrtle