Airship Hunters by Jim Beard, Duane Spurlock

violent end. The particular details about locating limbs weren’t really important. That Howard’s mule also had been slain and gutted was a point Cabot noted, but didn’t dwell upon.
    He stepped down from his mount. It was a piebald, the same horse he’d ridden yesterday. He watered the horse and hitched her to a fence rail so she could crop grass while he looked around. Clouds had been filling the sky during his trip from the Howard home, and the light would be failing soon. Best look for clues, then return to town.
    Cabot began by walking his methodical spiral, the house at its center. The ground had been scored by the shod feet of horses and men, but no sign remained—if any had been made—of such remarkable prints as those he’d found at the Smith home.
    He glanced at the sky. The clouds were thicker, taking on a cobbled look. The breeze was picking up. Cabot had heard about Kansas storms, and this had the appearance of one kicking into action. He stepped toward the sod house.
    The door was intact, not like at the Smith and Kelly houses. Intact and latched. Cabot entered. The front door opened into the kitchen. A stench of something rotten filled the room. He covered his mouth and nose with his handkerchief, breathed through that. Tears still came to his eyes.
    The sunlight had subsided enough that Cabot needed to locate a lamp. Once lit, he saw the disarray that had marked the Smith and Kelly homes. But some unformed thought fluttered at the back of Cabot’s mind. He grabbed at it, impatient, but whatever was just beyond sight of his mind’s eye flitted from his grasp.
    He focused again on the soddy’s interior.
    Something was different here. Different from the Smith and Kelly houses.
    Tables and chairs overturned, yes. Broken crockery in a pile in a corner.
    Cabot felt a tingle behind his eyes.
    The center of the room was clear.
    The floors of both the Smith and Kelly homes were scattered with the debris of a violent attack: shattered household goods thrown about, underfoot where they had fallen.
    Here, anything that might have been flung onto the floor had been pushed to the sides of the room, against the walls. The floors were cleared. Perhaps the sheriff’s men had done that?
    Why?
    Cabot walked the edge of the room, peering at what had been pushed there. He found the source of the heavy, oppressive smell: an enamel pail filled with something pale, its surface a pocked skin. Where the skin met the wall of the bucket, a black ring of mold grew. A crusted dipper lay beside the pail. Milk from the remarkable cow? Cabot wondered. He squinted against the burning tears in his eyes to be sure of what he saw: the surface of the milk was moving, apparently stirred from below. Maggots? Or maybe the stinking milk was aging into some sort of volatile cheese.
    He ducked through a doorless opening to a second room. Again, whatever had been tossed to the floor had been pushed up against the walls.
    Cabot entered the third and last room of the house. The rotten smell wasn’t so strong here, but there was another odor. Like in the other rooms, the center of this one was cleared. But something was different here. What? He looked about. He returned to the first two rooms. He heard Yankee Bligh’s voice resonating in the bones behind his ears: When you don’t know what you’re looking for, don’t think. Just look.
    So he stood in the first room, then the second, the lamp raised, and just peered about.
    In the third room, Cabot let his gaze wander over the walls, along the lines where the walls met the floor.
    Then he had it.
    No furniture. Nothing broken.
    All tables, chairs, utensils—broken and whole—were in the other rooms. In the third room, only linens—clothing, bed clothes, rags—were pushed up against the walls.
    And in one corner was a larger pile. Cabot kneeled and examined the tangled quilts and sheets, blankets and emptied flour sacks. The center of the pile had been hollowed out, depressed as by a great