June 21, 1871

It had taken Hunter a week to get to Fremont just outside of Omaha. That was a week Stout had to prepare for them.

After Ariko reversed time, he informed Taak of the situation and how they needed to get to Nebraska if they wanted to save his village. But getting there wasn’t straightforward since the railroads weren’t friendly to most natives so Taak had to pass himself off as a Pawnee—a tribe that had defended the rails from the Sioux—just so they could get passage on a utility train carrying Chinese rail workers eastward.

On the way, Hunter thought back to the marshal at the Box X ranch. A man like Stout made enemies everywhere he went, and he had drawn the ire of Marshal Durant. Someone who could hit Stout like that knew a lot about his operation and would have been surveilling him for months, maybe even years.

Yet despite the atrocities and the animosity perpetuated by Stout, he always moved on to burn the world in his wake so that true justice and retribution never found him. At Box X he killed everyone except Ariko but maybe if Durant joined them, this evil cycle could end.

But did it have to go on for as long as it had? Could he have struck this monster down in cold blood when he heard the first buddings of Stout’s atrocities on this planet before they reached full bloom? In the lifeboat, he had only the faintest idea of what kind of demon he was traveling with. But at this point, regret was just self-indulgence.

They got off the train into a bustling company camp. What had been tents and shacks two years ago when the railroad was first completed were now buildings and houses. Hunter and Taak took to the streets of the newly incorporated town to find Ariko. They thought she was with the Issei who had worked the railroad and were surprised when they were directed to the Zeff Brothers Saloon at the edge of town.

They walked into a tall narrow flat-faced wooden building among a row of others where they found two handlebar-mustached twins behind the bar who greeted them cheerfully completing each other’s’ sentences in turn with their German accents.

“Ah you must be Hoontah.

“Und Taak.”

“Ve are zhe Zeff brozhers Max…”

“Und Dax.”

“Ariko ees expecting you…”

“In zhe back.”

And they simultaneously held out hands directing Hunter and Taak to a curtained doorway at the rear of the bar. Ariko was sitting in a booth that took up one end of the small room and they took their seats with her. She had a bottle of Old Fire Copper whiskey on the table with three glasses.

“How’d you end up here?” Hunter asked.

“One of the people I sent out asking questions about Stout found the Zeff brothers. They were German abolitionists during the war, and they dislike men like Stout,” Ariko replied. “I also think they may be telepathic between themselves,” she mumbled as an aside trying to explain their odd synchronicity. “But they were more than happy to let me establish myself in their bar when they found we had a common enemy.”

Hunter took a seat beside Taak and across from Ariko. “Stout seems to make friends everywhere he goes.”

“I also asked around about the Black marshal we saw at the Box X—”

“Yeah Akay Durant.”

“So, he told you his name before Stout killed you?”

“Yes.”

“The brothers say the marshal frequents their bar.”

“How fast did you find this out? You couldn’t have been here long.”

“Two days and I’ve been here three.”

“You just mobilized an army of volunteers?”

“Among the Japanese, the great Paulownia Seal carries weight.”

“I find Japanese officials asking after me kinda odd,” came a voice from the doorway. It was the marshal tall broad and barrel-chested holding a cigar. “I was gonna let it sit for a while. See what you were up to. But today a train comes into town, and this stepped off it,” he said pointing at Hunter. “So, I follow him. And he comes here to meet you—then I knew I had to step in.” He walked over and leaned in close to Hunter’s face. “See I got a sense about people and something about you don’t seem right. There’s only one other man I can say that about—”

“Joe Stout,” Hunter interjected.

And the marshal stood up and looked hard at him. “What are you?”

Hunter took a glass and poured the marshal a shot. “Have a seat. We have a lot to discuss.”

The marshal looked apprehensive, but he put out his cigar on a leather-gloved hand and accepted the offer. “Whatever you are, you best not be in league with him.”

“The exact opposite,” Hunter said.

“I didn’t get your names,” the marshal said.

“Ariko.”

“Taak.”

“Hunter.”

“I take it you know my name with you asking after me and all,” Marshal Durant said.

“So, you know I’m not human?” Hunter asked, leaning back in his chair with a fascinated smile on his face.

“You’re the same as Stout but different from those wolves and that vampire wife of his,” Akay said before turning to Ariko. “I take it you’re here because of her.”

“I’m here to bring back a member of the Imperial family.”

Akay put his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “What is it you two want with Stout?”

“To stop him from slaughtering my village,” Taak said.

“To back up my friend and stop stout from hurting anyone else,” was Hunter’s reply.

Akay nodded his head. “It’d make sense that he’s going to war with somebody. This past week he’s been selling off everything, buying weapons, and packing up for a move. I’m gonna arrest him in transit.”

Hunter was skeptical. “You know he won’t come alive.”

“I don’t expect him to.”

“You’re strong I’d wager,” Hunter said having seen the marshal break a werewolf’s arm barehanded almost three years from now. “But you won’t be able to kill him.”

And if that was the case, then Akay needed answers. “Which brings me back to my question: what are you?”

“Stout and I are from another world.”

Akay looked him over. “Sounds plausible.”

Hunter took out a knife and drove it through his own hand and the table and let Akay watch it heal as soon as the blade was withdrawn. “There’s only one substance that will kill us and Stout and I each have a vial of it. I just have to get close enough to deliver it then you can take him in. It can all be over. How long have you been at this?”

“Stout’s been my entire career. The judge that recruited me was a Confederate, but he despised Stout so much that he figured it would be more humiliating to Stout if one of his former slaves took him down. And the government wants to preserve the union so they’re not putting a lot of effort into hunting down war criminals. I’ve been the only one on him since the war ended.”

Akay’s tale made Taak sit up. “You were his slave?”

“Yep. Ran away at sixteen and joined the Army. Massachusetts 54th. Ran into him at the battle of Grimbal’s Landing in Charleston. Didn’t kill him. Now I understand why.”

“How is it that you can tell he’s not human?” Ariko asked Akay waving a pointing finger between he and Hunter.

“Stout’s funded a lot of experimentation on his slaves. He shared knowledge with some crazy German scientist but when they turned out people like me that could kill his overseers like I did when I escaped, it was safer and more profitable for him to use some messed up voodoo witch doctor to just turn his dead slaves into zombies. When the Confederates lost and the Union was closing in, he ate the witch doctor’s brain to get the knowledge for himself and killed most of his slaves to keep them in his service as zombies. He’s still got my mother.”

“That’s awful. Is she alive?” Hunter asked.

“I don’t know.”

This steeled Hunter’s determination to recruit the marshal. “Let us help you. Surely you have a plan. We can add to that.”

Akay tightened his lips and hesitated. He’d been taking on Stout for so long by himself it was hard to accept help.

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But Hunter would not be dissuaded. “You can’t take him alone.”

Ariko finished her drink and said, “He is right. I’ve seen it. You died.”

Akay was taken aback. “What?”

“This is one way we can add to your plan,” Hunter said. “She can reverse time.”

The marshal gave a skeptical laugh as he took a drink. “Really? Can you go forward too?”

“I can,” Ariko said flatly. “But I only disappear from the present.”

This was something Hunter didn’t know. “Why?”

“I can only jump into parts of my own life. I’ve lived the past and so there is a place to go. Once I change my past, I haven’t lived that future yet so there is no part of my life to land on. I just disappear from the present and reappear in the future as if I’m not part of the world anymore. Anyway, I’ll give you all a few seconds to talk.” And she disappeared to prove her point.

Akay was still staring at her empty seat as Hunter spoke to him. “We’re telling the truth. We came in on your hunt at the spur of the moment in California three years from now when you take on Stout and everyone dies except Ariko. But this time with a plan we can beat him. This man has taken up too much of your life for too long. He’s been your whole career and I can only imagine the horrors he subjected you to on his plantation. You know a lot about him. We can use that to beat him this time.”

“Alright,” Akay said nodding and looking at the table. “Let’s put our heads together.”

At that moment Ariko silently appeared back in her seat giving the marshal a start. “Are we in agreement?” she asked.

They rode to the train station leaving their horses in the street. According to Akay, Stout would be leaving today on a train he had bought out to move his entire operation to California. This was the last chance in this timeline to catch up with him before he set out for Taak’s village.

They drew eyes as the four of them—a cowboy, a native, a black marshal, and a Japanese woman—rounded the corner of the station to the platform. Among those eyes was Princess Junko in all black with sunglasses and parasol who took her Derringer from her purse and held it to the conductor’s head and said “Go!”

The train began to move quickly, and Akay ran ahead of the rest of the group and leapt on the caboose as it receded away from their grasp. He was alone now, and he was okay with that. It’s how he’d been going after Stout all his life.

“On the horses!” Hunter said and they took off after the train.

They galloped away from the station out into the plains giving chase and Taak was the first to leap aboard.

“As we planned,” Hunter yelled and Taak took to the top of the train camouflaged in a duster made of kushtaka skin that took the color of the roof as he did so.

Hunter leapt aboard the train but was worried to see Ariko lagging desperately behind. He held out a hand to her and she made a valiant reach but fell to the dirt with her horse tumbling over and trampling her.

One more reverse of time later, she made another failed attempt but had to turn back the situation before she cracked her head on the tracks.

The third time, Hunter threw her his lasso and yanked her aboard before she could drag the ground.

At the head of the train in his opulently appointed lounge car, Stout sat in a leather chair swirling a glass of wine and smoking a cigar. “You feel dat?” he asked Junko.

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Theyuh on tha trayn,” he said.

“They can’t be,” she countered. “I had the conductor pull out of there as soon as I saw them.”

“Well, ah felt yo brothah’s lil’ nannay toyn back tahm,” he said rising from his seat and making a motion to Ty. “Getcher wolves ‘n follah me.”

On board the train, Hunter and Ariko walked with mild awe following the trail of destruction left by Akay in his fight forward. Unconscious bodies lay half inside shattered cargo crates. Doors between cars were kicked in with a force that knocked them from their hinges.

They finally found Akay at the entrance to a car full of uniform upright coffin-sized crates just staring. Akay addressed them as he sensed them walk up from behind. “This is his corral of zombies. My mother is somewhere in here.”

Hunter put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “We still need to go ahead, brother.”

Akay nodded. “We need to go slow and quiet. No need exciting them inside their boxes. Could cause us trouble if one topples over and gets out.”

They had made it no more than a few steps when Akay halted. “A wolf’s coming,” he said.

And in through the door came Ty Boyd in black vest and chaps with a hatchet in one hand and caressing his VanDyke with the other. “I’mma gonna have to stop y’all here,” he said pushing over several crates which broke letting loose zombies. And he gleefully took a hatchet to others causing a slowly advancing pile up that pushed them back.

Hunter ran forward and jammed a forearm between a set of mindlessly chomping jaws aimed for Akay. “They can’t affect me. Akay, you go up through the skylight to the roof and get around this. Ariko, you disappear for a while. We can’t lose you.”

Fighting his way through the horde, Hunter pushed a mass of zombies into the next car where Ty and the wolves were awaiting his demise. They weren’t expecting him to bring the horde to them.

“Holy hell!” shouted one of the wolves as more zombies flooded through the door behind Hunter.

Sensing the action below him, Akay had the good instincts to come down behind them and lock the door preventing the wolves’ escape greeting Ty with a smile through the viewport as he did so.

“Dammit!” exclaimed Ty pounding a fist on the door and turning to see two of his men bitten. Wishing to save himself he jumped up to the skylight to get on top of the train and two wolves followed.

But when they reached the roof, Taak was waiting in hiding under his chameleon camouflage duster to snipe them exploding the heads of two wolves in a row with one silver bullet from his Joslyn rifle.

“Dammit!” Ty exclaimed again running further forward atop the train away from Taak and dodging two bullets before disappearing down another skylight. Running through several more cars, it wasn’t long before he reached Stout. “They’re comin’ forward and the Injun’s got silver bullets!”

“Git bahahnd me then,” Stout said pushing a powder-packing rod down a small cannon braced on a sturdy wooden stand in front of him pointing at the door. Junko gave Ty a sly smile at Stout’s brilliance.

Ty was stunned. “Ya sure this ain’t overkill.”

“Thay’s jest gonna keep commin’ fer us,” Stout said intent on the door. “Gotta kill ‘em now!”

A few cars back, Taak leapt down from the skylight and landed next to Hunter. “Where’s the marshal?” Hunter asked.

Taak shrugged.

“I hope Ariko’s still gone,” Hunter said looking back at where he had come from and then back ahead to the door. “They’re just ahead and they’re close. You ready friend?”

Taak nodded.

Stout could hear footsteps coming closer outside the door. He lit the cannon, and its hissing infused the expectant silence.

Hunter came through the door first. Seeing the cannon he turned to run when Akay busted through the roof with his bare hands and landed atop the trio swiveling the canon down at the train car floor.

BOOM!

The shot blew through the floor and an axle lifting the car up and off the tracks and the rest of the train with it in a scarring sideways skid across the plain. It was several long moments in the smoking fiery wreckage before Hunter found Taak and Akay rising to their feet near him in the overturned car. “You two okay?”

They both nodded.

“Is Ariko here?”

“She’s just rear of the zombie car,” Akay said pointing down train and Hunter took off. They all knew if she were dead, this could be it for them.

He broke out a window and leapt down into a smoky car to find Ariko unconscious. “Wake up. Wake up,” he said patting her on the face. She stirred and a bullet hit him in the back. It was Stout. “Go find Junko,” he said moving to block Stout’s gun and taking the bullets as he shot at Ariko.

“We gonna do thess ag’in?” Stout said with a smile.

Hunter said nothing as he walked toward him.

Back up train, Ty slashed at Taak with fully extended claws only blocked at the last second by a raised arm covered in impenetrable uncegila serpent leather. The wolf had achieved his goal of separating the native from his Joslyn rifle and silver bullets. Then he landed a blow that knocked Taak back a good twelve feet and cracked a rib as the wolf prepared to pounce.

But then the marshal put a choke hold on Ty from behind with the intent of breaking his neck. The wolf struggled and flailed to buck the marshal before he passed out. And as Akay was losing his grip, Taak decapitated Ty with his wendigo tomahawk sending all parties flying in different directions.

Hunter wasn’t faring well against Stout. The two had taken to knives stabbing and dismembering each other over and over, neither giving the other time to draw his suicide injector but Hunter was proving worse for the wear.

“Yer windin’ down, Ah c’n feel eht,” Stout said reaching on his belt for his injector only to have Hunter cut off that hand. He stabbed Hunter in the neck as his other hand grew back.

Hunter stabbed Stout under the chin and Stout returned the favor in Hunter’s ribs twisting the knife and dragging it across Hunter’s torso as he did. This took enough out of Hunter where he missed a step and Stout drew his suicide injector.

Stout leapt at Hunter who blocked the hand holding the fatal needle with his forearm. Pushing with his legs and with his full weight on his adversary, the injector came closer and closer to Hunter’s eye when a hand from out of nowhere knocked Stout’s lower jaw off.

The marshal took another step and threw an uppercut that knocked Stout through the air and off Hunter. Then Taak let loose a thunderbird arrow into the air above Stout calling down a bolt of lightning that rebounded him off the ground like a ball with his spine arching in pain while the electricity shattered and burned the desert floor under him.

Hunter rose and walked over to the bleeding, jawless, and smoking Stout picking up Stout’s suicide injector as he did so. He crouched down near Stout’s ear and said, “Allies take the victory when enemies don’t,” before plunging the injector in Stout’s neck. Steam rose from what was left of Stout’s reassembling mouth and his eyes went black as he died.

“It’s over,” he said turning to Akay. “Get the bounty on Stout. Find your mother.”

Up train, Ariko had Junko bound at sword point among the shadows of the setting sun inside an overturned car waiting for dark before moving her.

“Stout’s dead,” Hunter said from behind her. A pained shriek strained from Junko’s gagged mouth.

“He was going to sacrifice you for gold,” Ariko told her.

“We can’t abide this,” Taak said following up behind Hunter.

Ariko narrowed her eyes at them. “Abide what?”

“What’s going to happen to Junko,” Taak replied. “They do the same thing to us—imprison us on the reservations and then if we roam free, we are imprisoned again. It’s not right.”

Hunter took a step forward and she turned her sword to him. “I have my mission,” she said.

“Do you really want to fight us?” he asked.

“She drinks human blood,” Ariko said. “What do you propose be done with her? Let her roam free to drink from whoever crosses her path? In Japan she has a steady supply of condemned criminals to feed on.”

Hunter looked at the ground. She had a point. “What does Junko have to say?”

Ariko undid Junk’s gag while looking warily at Hunter.

“I want to die,” Junko said.

Ariko shook her head. “No.”

“What is my life worth? No one is safe around me. Joseph let me indulge my darkest impulses and I see that now. But he’s gone and what am I to do? Live a life in captivity? No. Let me die.”

The thought made Ariko visibly uneasy as she kept her sword on Junko and shifted her weight from foot to foot. “But your brother—”

“Will know I died honorably. He won’t need to worry about me anymore.”

Ariko’s fidgeting intensified and she shook her head and bit her lip but ultimately, she relented lowering her sword and turning her back.

Taak went to Junko and cut her bonds freeing her to rise and walk into the light of the setting sun beaming down from a window above.

Junko’s skin smoked and she winced, but she braced herself and climbed up onto the side of the overturned car and faced the sun with her arms outstretched. There was a flash and a brilliant blaze for a few seconds, and she was gone. Her ashes fluttered down into the car, lacing the air in a gray pall.

Without a word. Ariko left out of the same window as Junko.

In the weeks after, Hunter reflected on this experience. He marveled at the news of the rapid progress Japan was making toward modernity and wondered what part Ariko played in it. He smiled when he read in the paper that a U.S. marshal had brought in the notorious war criminal Joe Stout; dead of course. And it gave him comfort to know Taak and his village were safe—for now.

The world was a better place without Stout in it, and he was at peace about not killing Stout sooner. It would have made him just as much of a murderer to preemptively snuff out a life with the potential for good before that life had proven itself otherwise.

He often found himself thinking of the verse The wheat when first thrashed lies in one heap with chaff and straw and is after winnowed to separate it. In some way, Stout had to grow among the good and decent before he could be rightfully cut down. But cut down he was. And if Hunter could say he had done anything worthy in his life on this tiny island of a planet, it was that.