Hell Come Sundown by Nancy A. Collins Read Free Book Online Page B

something familiar about him. Then the man turned his head and smiled at him, and, with a start, Yoakum realized he was looking into the face of his father.
    â€œDaddy?”
    â€œBest be careful, son,” Silas Yoakum said. He extended his right hand, in the palm of which was the severed head of a rattlesnake. “They can still bite after they’re dead.”
    The elder Yoakum smiled and quickly closed his fist about the viper. As he did so, his features began to rapidly swell and turn purple, the eyes bulging from their sockets, until he looked like he did the last time his son had seen him, twenty years ago.
    Sam had been working the fields, chopping cotton, when he heard his father cry out in pain and anger. As he hurried to his father’s side, he saw Silas Yoakum’s arms rise and fall numerous times, swinging the hoe he carried down onto something near his feet. By the time Sam reached him, Silas had chopped the rattlesnake into ribbons. The older man waved his ten-year-old son away.
    â€˜Go fetch your Maw,’ he rasped. Those were the last words Silas Yoakum ever spoke.
    Suddenly Sam was back at the house, sitting in the kitchen at his place at the table. The stove must have been on, because the room was hot. Yoakum heard the door open, and he turned to see his mother enter the house, holding out her apron, which was full of blue bonnets from the pasture.
    â€œAren’t they lovely, Sam?” she asked. “They’re dead but they still look like they’re alive. Mercy, it’s so hot in this kitchen! They’ll need to drink if they are going to keep looking lively. They’re dead, but they can still be thirsty. Be a good boy and draw me some water.”
    â€œYes, ma’am,” he replied, dutifully walking across the kitchen to the sink. He had to give the kitchen pump handle a couple of good pushes before the water spurted forth. As he watched the cold, clear spring water splash into the waiting catch basin, he was suddenly aware of just how hot and thirsty he was.
    He leaned forward and placed his lips against the spout, eager to drink his fill. To his surprise, the water was not cool and refreshing, but warm and slightly salty. He drew back and saw that it was not well-water spurting forth, but blood. Even as he retched, something in the back of his mind urged him to continue drinking from the gushing gore. Though he knew he should resist the urge, he was helpless to fight it. It was as if his body was being devoured from the inside out by a ferocious heat, which could only be slaked by the blood of others.
    As Yoakum fought against the dark fire burning inside him, he became dimly aware of what felt like a soothing, feminine hand on his fevered brow, accompanied by a slowly expanding numbness. The numbness overwhelmed the hellfire within his veins, dampening it to a tolerable level, if not exactly extinguishing it altogether. As the lack of sensation spread throughout his body, he wondered if he was dying. The idea did not bother him overmuch. Better to die a man than to live as a monster.
    The next thing he was aware of was the smell of wood smoke and the sound of a woman’s voice, chanting in a language he recognized as belonging to the Comanche. It took him a moment to realize he did not need to open his eyes because they were already open, staring at what looked to be the backside of a horse blanket. He reached up and pulled it away, and found himself gazing up at the night sky.
    As he sat up, he saw the source of both the smoke and chanting. An Indian woman dressed in buckskin riding trousers hunkered before a small campfire, her back to him. Her hair was long and hung down her back like the mane of a wild pony. Upon hearing him move, she turned her head to look at him, and he could see she was naked from the waist up, save for a beaded pectoral and the paint on her face.
    â€œWho are you?” he rasped, his voice drier than ginned cotton. When the