Shapeshifter Mountain

By S. M. Krantz

Jonas Bale’s Indian wife and children are murdered. On the trail of the murderers he encounters a fearful dog fleeing from something frightening. Troubled by what he experiences Jonas seeks advice from Dezba a medicine man, who says oral history tells of a legend of man-made terrestrial beasts created by ancient beings who once lived on earth. Shapeshifters, as they are called, are extremely dangerous. Jonas meets twenty year old Rebecca Hagan who has come west after receiving a letter from a military tribunal concerning her father but soon learns her father is dead. Rebecca chooses to stay in Arizona, as it is the first time she has had something to call her very own. Jonas is attracted to Rebecca but the shapeshifting beasts, at war with him, kidnap her in an attempt to lure Jonas to their lair to kill him. He travels deep into their mountain but finds rescuing Rebecca much more dangerous than he expects. Rebecca fights, determined to live, and in the process they find love, security and mutual respect.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781387190874

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Shapeshifter Mountain

SHAPESHIFTER MOUNTAIN 

Copyright August 26, 2017

All rights held by S.M. Krantz reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-387-19087-4

EBook 1st Edition

SHAPESHIFTER MOUNTAIN / S.M. Krantz

10987654321

For information contact:

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Published by:

Phoenix Cosmopolitan LLC Publishers-

United States of America

CHAPTER ONE

Jonas Bale was tall, broad shouldered, muscular framed; a dark brooding man with thick coffee colored hair and a practiced face that was often hard and void of emotion; just as it was now. His wide mouth, framed by a reddish-brown circle beard, accentuated cold slate blue eyes. A thin straight nose, high cheekbones, and tanned complexion completed his naturally good looks that invariably drew women to him like moths to a flame, but they were always burned for their trouble.

In life Jonas had always been a loner, some say a shootist; a gambler and he could lie with the best in his profession. He had learned early how to read the eyes of his opponents with his hard as nails attitude for God knows, he’d been alone for most of his thirty years and had his share of suffering. In happier times it would have been natural for him to be warm-natured in more open moods because truthfully Jonas wasn’t a born killer.

Until now; now he was out for blood. He intended to kill.

As he guided his horse through a mountain range in the southern part of Arizona, he normally would have enjoyed being in its granite fortress and untamed canyons with its unique rock formations, but he wasn’t here for pleasure. Jonas Bale was in pursuit of the killer or killers of Nanabaa, his Indian wife of ten years who he wed in 1854, along with their children, Ashkeii, a boy of eight, and Nezna, a girl just six years old. They were murdered three months ago. When Jonas found them they were naked, their eyes gouged out with things done to them that made him sick. Jonas had always lived with a deep void inside of him conveyed from his own past and he’d been running from that for most all of his life. Now that void was even deeper, and angrier.

When he stopped to water his horse it was close to dusk. Just as he was about to remount, a lone dog with erect ears burst from the shadows of thick shrubs and bushes on his right and ran straight to him, panting, making woofing sounds. He could tell, as it came close, it had expressive gray eyes and markings similar to a wolf but it wasn’t. Its wiry coat was thicker, shaggier, and longer, and was damp, dirty, tangled, snarled full of burrs with broken bits of weeds and leaves.

The animal was young maybe a little more than a year old but had reached its full growth and Jonas estimated it was over a hundred pounds. Bigger than any dog he knew of with the sprightliness of a young pup. It stopped in front of him, sat, cocked its head, and looked up at him with an undeniably friendly expression.

Filthy as it was, the animal was nonetheless appealing. Even though he was on a hard driving mission he felt compelled to stoop and pat its head giving it a scratch behind its ears.

Looks like you’re lost, huh fella? Jonas said.

It made of low grumble sound as if it understood.

You’re a friendly one. You belong to somebody? He said.

It nuzzled his hand and whined.

He noticed that, in addition to its dirty and tangled coat, it had dried blood on its right ear. Fresher blood was visible on its large front paws, as if it had been running so long and so hard over the rugged terrain that the pads of its feet had begun to crack.

Looks like you've had a difficult journey. Running to or from something are you? He said as the animal whined softly, as if agreeing with him. He continued to stroke its back and scratch its ears, but after a minute or two he realized he was seeking something from this animal it could not provide: meaning, purpose, relief from his despair. Besides, he had business to attend to.

You need to be on your way now. He gave the animal a light slap on its side, rose, and stretched but the canine remained in front of him. He stepped past it, intending to mount his horse but the dog bolted around him and blocked him causing his horse to shy backwards.

Come on now, I need to be moving along and so do you. Go find your owner, or whatever.

The dog bared its teeth and growled low in its throat.

Whoa, Jonas said frowning. When he tried to step past it again, it snarled and snapped at his legs. His horse jerked back and he hung onto the reins as he danced back two steps.

What's gotten into you? The canine stopped growling and just panted.

When Jonas advanced again, the animal lunged at him more ferociously than before, not snarling just giving off a deep growl it snapped repeatedly at his legs, driving him backward across the clearing. He dropped the horse’s reins, took eight or ten clumsy steps, stumbled over his own feet, and fell on his knees.

The moment Jonas went down, the dog turned away from him. It padded across the rock clearing to the brink of a sloping trail down into the canyon and peered below. Its ears pricked up and it turned its head from side to side.

Damn animal, Jonas said.

It ignored him.

What the hell's the matter with you? Jonas said curious now.

Something was happening.

Standing on the rock strewn floor, the dog continued to stare down into the bottom of the canyon slope. Its tail was down, almost tucked between its legs. Jonas, by this time, was seized by an irrational determination to go where he wanted to go, by God. This day of all days, he was not going to be deterred or even delayed by this obstructive animal.

He got up, shrugged his shoulders took a deep breath and walked boldly across the area headed towards his mount. The dog growled again, softly but menacingly. Its lips skinned back from its teeth. Step by step, Jonas's courage faded, and when he was within a few feet of his horse, he opted for a different approach. He stopped and shook his head and gently berated the animal: Bad, bad dog, you don't look as if you were born bad you certainly seem like a good dog, an intelligent dog.

He felt completely foolish trying to sweet-talk the large canine, but it had stopped growling. Its bushy tail, held erect now, wagged once, twice, tentatively.

That's a good boy, he said slyly, coaxingly.

That's better. You and I can be friends, huh?

The dog issued a conciliatory whine.

Now, we're getting somewhere, Jonas said, taking another step toward the animal with the intention of stooping and petting it.

Immediately, the animal leaped up at him, snarling, and drove him back across the clearing. It got its teeth in one leg of his leather black chaps then hooked into his black wool trousers and shook its head furiously. He kicked at it, missed. As Jonas staggered out of balance from the misplaced kick, the canine snatched the other leg of his pants and ran a circle around him, pulling him with it. He hopped desperately to keep up with his adversary but toppled and slammed to the ground again, his blue oil cloth canvas duster twisted around his body.

Shit! he said, feeling immeasurably foolish.

Whining again, having reverted to a friendlier mood, the now decidedly more domestic dog licked one of his hands.

You're crazy, you know that? Jonas said, With a split personality!

The dog returned to the other end of the clearing. It stood with its back to him, staring down the trail. Abruptly, it lowered its head, hunched its shoulders. The muscles in its back and haunches visibly tensed as if it were preparing to move fast.

What're you looking at? Jonas said suddenly aware the dog was not fascinated by him or the land and trail itself, but perhaps, by something on the trail.

What? See a mountain lion down there? Plenty of them around. He said as he got to his feet considering if he should pull his pistol or not. He had no intention of shooting this dog because now it certainly had his interest. The dog grumbled, not at Jonas this time but at whatever had drawn its attention. The sound was low, barely audible, and to Jonas it seemed as if it was both angry and afraid. Jonas pick up the reins of his horse, but did not try to mount instead he secured the reins to a manzanita branch nearby, curiosity having overtaken him.

A big canine like this afraid of something?

Not likely, but what could be out there that would make an animal like this fearful?

Wolves? Plenty of them roamed the canyons and hills. A pack of hungry wolves would certainly alarm any sturdy animal. A dog they’d likely kill, so yes that was something to fear. But it still didn’t seem right to him. He’d seen no sign of wolves in the area.

With a startled yelp, the dog executed a leaping – scrambling turn away from the trail. It dashed toward him, past him, to another arm of a flat rock strewn area, and he thought it was going to disappear into an adjacent area. But the canine stopped and looked back expectantly. With an air of frustration and anxiety, it hurried back to Jonas swiftly circled him, grabbed at his chaps again, and twisted backward, intending to drag him with it.

Wait, wait, okay, he said. Okay.

The animal let go. It issued one woof, more a forceful exhalation than a yelp. Astonishingly the canine had purposefully prevented him from moving in the direction he’d wanted to go; something had to be near – very near.

Something dangerous.

Now this dog was making it obvious it wanted him to leave in the other direction because some dangerous thing was drawing near.

No doubt in Jonas’s mind any longer. Something was coming. But what? He thought the actions of this dog were extraordinary. Had it been chased, by this whatever was coming up the trail? It seemed scared enough for that to have happened.

Shrill cries of crickets and cicadas and other insects abruptly cut off simultaneously, in unison, and the area was suddenly, unnaturally silent. Then Jonas heard something rushing up over, between and around rough high rocks, low growing brush and juniper and Manzanita trees.

A scratching, scraping noise.

A clatter of dislodged stones.

A faint rustle of dry brush.

The thing sounded closer than it probably was, for sound was amplified as it echoed up through the narrow rocky trails. Nevertheless, whatever creature it was, was coming fast.

Very fast.

For the first time, Jonas sensed he was in grave peril. His gut told him that this danger was not from any human.

This was something else.

His heart hammered.

Above him, on higher ground, the dog was aware of his hesitation. It chuffed, yodeled and growled agitatedly.

The thought of an enraged bear or cat racing up the trail, driven mad by pain or plain anger was coming seemed plausible at first, but now he knew it was not. This was something else. From the sound of it, the unknown beast was within seconds of reaching the gorge clearing between the lower and higher rock trails. Jonas quickly untied his horse and pulled it in the direction the canine wanted him to go.

He expected something to pounce on him and tear his throat out. He pulled his pistol out of its holster with one hand and held it out in front of him ready to shoot. He detected a rustle in the thick brushy grasses of yucca stalks and low growing sage, then a snapping twig, the soft crunch of dry leaves on small stones – and the unnervingly peculiar, heavy, ragged breathing of something big. It sounded about forty feet away, but he could not pinpoint its location.

Jonas turned warily in a half circle, crouched in a shooter’s position, listening; waiting. At his side, the dog went rigid. Its erect ears were pricked, straining forward. The unknown adversary's raspy breathing was so creepy – whether because of the echo effect of the canyon, or because it was just creepy to begin with.

The canine stared at his gun. Jonas had the weird feeling that the animal knew what the revolver was – and approved of the weapon. Wondering if the thing in the woods was a man, Jonas called out:

Who's there? Come on out where I can see you.

The hoarse breathing in the brush was now underlain with a thick menacing gnarl. The eerie guttural resonance electrified Jonas. His heart beat even harder, and he went as rigid as the dog beside him. The horse snorted out in fear and tried to jerk free. Jonas grabbed for the reins. For interminable ticking seconds, he could not understand why the noise itself had sent such a powerful current of fear through him.

Then he realized that what frightened him was the noise's ambiguity: the beast's growls definitely sounded like an animal . . . a vicious animal but it also held the indescribable quality that bespoke intelligence, the inflection and tone nearly like the sound an enraged man might make. The more he listened the more Jonas decided it was not animal and it was not human, it was something in between.

What the hell was it?

Then he saw a shadow of something stirring in the brush off to his right.

Below.

Something was coming up. Halt, he said sharply.

Alto!

It kept coming.

Now thirty feet away Jonas saw the shadow again, something on two legs – bipedal. Was it a man?

Now moving slower than it had been, a bit wary perhaps.

But closing in nevertheless.

The dog began to growl threateningly, again warning off the creature that stalked them. But tremors were visible in its flanks, and its head shook. Though it was challenging the thing down on the trail, it was profoundly frightened of a confrontation.

The dog’s fear unnerved Jonas. Dogs like this one, maybe carrying wolf blood were renowned for boldness and courage. They were hunters, top predators and could easily take down animals much larger than they were. What peril or foe could provoke such dread in a strong, proud animal like this?

The thing in the rocks continued toward them, staying expertly hidden, seemingly camouflaged and hardly any more than twenty feet away now. Though he had as yet seen nothing extraordinary, he was filled with superstitious terror, a perception of indefinable but uncanny presences. He kept telling himself he had chanced upon a cougar, just a cougar that was probably more frightened than he was. But a cougar walked on four legs, this was definitely bipedal. The icy prickling that began at the base of his spine extending up across his scalp now intensified. His hand was so slick with sweat he was afraid the gun would slip out of his grasp.

Eighteen feet.

It was near dark and all he could make out was a shadowy man–like figure that scurried low, staying hidden, from rock to rock.

Now fifteen.

Jonas pointed his Colt in the air and squeezed off a single warning shot. The blast crashed through the air echoing down the canyon off the granite boulders.

The dog didn’t flinch, but the thing in the brush immediately turned away from them and ran north, upslope, toward the rim of a small valley. Jonas could not see it in the darkness, it kept low in upper rocks but he could see shadowed movement and heard its footfalls on the ground.

For a second or two, he was relieved because he thought he had frightened it off. Then he realized it was not running away, from the sounds it made it was heading north – northwest on a curve that would bring it to the upper trail above them.

Jonas sensed that the creature was trying to cut them off and force them to go out of the canyon by the lower route, where high boulders sat and the trail was narrow. It would have more and better opportunities to attack. He did not understand how this creature knew that.

His primordial survival instinct drove him into action without the need to think about each move he made; he automatically did what was required. Trying to keep his eye on the telltale tremble of sounds to his right, Jonas leaped into the saddle and rode down the steep trail at a neck breaking speed, the dog already running ahead of him. Fast as he was, however, he was not fast enough to put distance between him and the still unknown, unseen enemy.

When he realized it was heading to the path well above him, he fired another warning shot, which did not startle or deflect the adversary this time. He fired twice into sporadic areas in the rocks, toward the indications of movement, not caring if it was a man out there, and that worked. He did not believe he hit the stalker, but he seemed to have scared it away.

Off the steepest part of the trail down to relative flat ground Jonas kicked his horse into a faster gallop.

The dog let out a whine and darted across the top of the rock ridge and started making its way down the trail following him. Clearly, the dog believed they were not out of danger and ought to keep moving, fast. Jonas shared that conviction.

As he rode across the short valley and up the canyon trail his mount seemed to sense his growing urgency and lengthened his strides until his powerful legs were a blur and the dust was a yellow wall behind them.

Jonas’s atavistic fear and the reliance on instinct that it invoked sent him riding finally over the far side of the ridge, and out of the area, with the dog following. He rode across the rocky sandy landscape of the desert, across sage brush, between creosote trees and the tall, short, and round cactus before passing into the next mountain range. His horse was close to collapse before he finally stopped.

He unsaddled his mount and tethered him close to a small creek with running water and patches of green grass so the animal could rest and eat. Then he made camp, hoping that he had put enough distance between him and whatever it was that had stalked, first the dog, and then him. After eating a meal of beans, the dog lay near the fire next to Jonas the rest of the evening, close enough that Jonas could scratch his ears.

The act gave them both some sort of comfort but the dog remained watchful and guarded the camp nervously.

The evening sky – which was dark in the east, was still streaked with deep orange, red and purple light in the west and seemed to be descending like the lid of a box, covering them as coyotes set up a howl.

Something out in the night, neither animal nor human, howled back.

Jonas felt the prick of fear crawl up his spine as the dog pricked up his ears and stared out into the night listening.

CHAPTER TWO

The wind had worked up into a brief squall as another burst of raindrops slapped hard against Bale’s face. His deep set blue gray eyes, now the color of the massive storm clouds, rose to appraise the situation. The storm had moved in for the day, but regardless how severe, Bale knew there was no time to stop and take shelter. Doggedly he raised an arm to pull his roughrider hat down tighter over his dark hair then he lowered his head against the rain, pulled his rubber coated black rain slicker up and hunched his broad shoulders.

He urged his horse on.

For the first time in his life, Bale had felt threatened. If he held any kind of strong religious belief he would have thought hell had surely brought forth a demon to walk the earth. He didn’t see it, didn’t have to know that it was something entirely new and horribly frightening. Its presence had shaken him up enough to seek help from the only person he hoped would give him answers, Dezba, a Navajo medicine man from Nanabaa’s tribe, and her uncle.

Bale’s life had been full of danger and tragedy, but he'd never flinched from anything. In the worst of times, he confronted danger, loss and pain, with fearlessness and had kept his emotions under control. Not this time. For the first time in his life, this peculiar thing brought him, he was ashamed to say, a very deep fear and he’d run from it. He’d actually panicked and run. It had been an innate fear. It had pried into him, touching a deep and primitive level where nothing had ever reached him before. He’d not been alone in his fear, the dog, which even now still followed, exhibited instinctive fear that only served to make his own deeper.

He was faintly nauseous with apprehension.

Chilled. Slick with sweat. Shivering.

Something was terribly wrong.

As he rode, even in cold rain, he felt the gooseflesh and cold sweat overcome his body, he felt suddenly damper, slick with a different kind of sweat, the cool, sour sweat of fear.

He knew his response was irrational. Even illogical. But the prickly sensation along the back of his neck and the iciness in his gut remained with him and, he hoped, were symptoms of purely superstitious terror that had let his imagination run away with his common sense. He had simply turned over the reins to the frightened child–savage that lives in every human being, the genetic ghost of what we once were, and he could not easily regain control of that even though he was aware of the absurdity of his behavior. He needed help to calm him down, speak the language of reason. Brute instinct was ruling, and instinct told him to ride on, just ride hard through the rain and stop thinking, just ride; ride for guidance, ride for help. For beneath the waves of the fear that washed across the surface of his mind, there were undercurrents of his grief, rage, hatred, and the fierce desire for vengeance.

He urged his horse on.

***

Dezba stood six feet one inch tall, an unusual height for a Navajo. He had a bent, roman type nose that emphasized a wide full mouth and silver hair worn in a traditional bun tied with a white wool string. The old medicine man was an intriguing cross between a personification of Dignity and Probity, formidable and well respected in the tribe. He had studied since early childhood to learn the chants and medicinal plants that could heal both mind and body. He was protector and healer of the Navajo that lived along the banks of the San Juan River near Mexican Hat.

His fingers work deftly to cover his face with a light brown paint. He prayed while he worked. Talking God of the Holy People, a Giver-of-Life, you made Thunder Bird, the source of thunder and of all supernatural power. You created this land for the Navajo people and we are tied to this land forever. Never let me forget or question, only direct my actions.

He smiled and remembered back to the days when he could run twenty-five miles or more through blistering heat and still had energy to fight. No more. That was gone. It was a strange thing, this winding down of life, so natural and accepted. Lately he had been feeling anxious and sensed that his help would soon be needed.

He touched his umbilical cord his mother had sewn into a small buckskin pouch shaped like a lizard for comfort that he wore around his neck so he would have a long life. His mother’s placenta was buried next to his Hogan it further tied him to his beloved land. A sweat lodge sat nearby. He wore only a breechclout and moccasins with a wide sash of red cloth around his waist and across his head.

Along the banks of the San Juan, the river had a break in the circle towards the east, where the sun rises. A beautiful place covered with coarse salt