Lone Star Stories
                Speculative Fiction and Poetry
            The Hangman Isn't Hanging
                            by Jay Lake



The Dunes south of the San Luís Valley is a death trap for white
man and red alike. Only the hardyest and wiliest Adventurers can
trade across them sands. Not Mormon nor Texian nor even them
Russian bastards can track a man there neither. Only a right
smart Injun or a Chinee witch doctor can take you down there.
And them monsters in the sky, what goes without saying. But
cross La Veta pass and there's the Wet Mountain valley, prettiest
country God ever laid His finger on.

-- Journal of Jed "Spade" Wolters, mountain man, ca. 1850

Courtesy of the Founders' Collection of the Denver Temple Library,
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints



Red Eyes Parker was leading a string of pack ponies two days
north of the Burrista trading post at the far south end of the Wet
Mountain Valley when they began to spook. Loaded down with
ironwork and kitchenware, the ponies were louder than mission
bells.
Parker cursed inventively in a mixture of French, Spanish and Ute.
He halted to calm them one by one, stroking the muzzle of each
pony and whispering the names of their mothers. Then he scanned
the scrubby pines that surrounded the trail. There wasn't much
underbrush but the lay of the land was sufficiently rough to hide an
army of Americanos, Mormonistas or worse.

Eyes closed and mouth open he breathed deep. His ears brought
him nothing. There should have been mountain bluebirds, scrub
jays, woodpeckers -- this was not a quiet forest. His nose brought
him...
A mix of rot and blood and cold bone. Something dead or dying.
Perhaps.

It was the "perhaps" that worried him.

Reluctantly, Parker hopped off of his horse Poquito, telling the
mount to watch over the ponies. He took his axe and his crutch and
followed the odor. Faint stirrings of breeze led him stumping up an
embankment away from the pony line to a point where the smell
was much stronger. He looked down, studying a ravine which
opened on the far side of the ridge.
There was an angel amid the stones at the bottom. The black of its
skin and wings blended with the shadows around it. Parker's hand
flexed for his absent musket before he realized the creature was
folded into an impossible position down there.

Angels could be slain. It had been done. But he'd never heard tell
of someone fighting one of the white God's creatures to a standstill
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