Hell Come Sundown by Nancy A. Collins Page B

the hold swarm out before anyone can discover the crew is dead of the plague. How can I possibly stop this from spreading across the country? I’m just one man.”
    As he stared out into the vast emptiness of the Texas wilderness, a sense of hopelessness rose within him. During his life he had never known such feelings, even after his father died. He had been faced with ruthless enemies and impossible odds before, but back then he had been part of a larger organization. If he could not handle a situation on his own, he knew there were other Rangers he could call on to back him up. But that was all gone now, sucked into the same void that had claimed his life.
    There was a touch on his shoulder as light as a butterfly’s. He turned to find Pretty Woman standing beside him. As she brushed back the hair from her face, he realized for the first time how true her name was.
    â€œYou are wrong about two things, Sam. You are no longer a man. And you are not alone.”

Chapter Five
    Texas, 1869, once more:
    The sun was down. Yoakum knew this because he was able to move once more. Over the years, he had developed a means of surviving as a creature of the night in a land of relentless sunshine. Every morning, just before the dawn, he would crawl into his custom-made shroud of canvas, secured on the inside by leather laces set in metal gussets. Then Pretty Woman would sling the shroud—with him inside—over the back of his horse, so that they could continue to travel. Upon growing tired, she would find an appropriate spot to make camp. Once dusk had settled, he would awake and once more resume his semblance of life.
    One of the first things Yoakum had learned upon becoming a dead’un was that despite his superhuman strength and relative immunity to physical harm, it was difficult for a dead’un to survive in the world of the living without the help of humans. He knew for a fact that he would never have survived to see his first night as a dead’un, much less his first year, if not for Pretty Woman’s intervention. After all, it was she who guarded his shroud while he slept. She was the one who handled buying feed for their horses, dealing with tradesmen and other such mundane business situations that required someone able to travel about in the daylight.
    Indeed, three of the original twelve Golgotha dead’uns had perished within their first week. The first had made the mistake of attempting to ford a river, unaware that running water renders dead’uns immobile. The current quickly separated the dead’un from the coffin he was carrying, sending both spinning downriver, where the casket was dashed to bits on the rocks while the creature was snared by the branches of a partially submerged tree. The dead’un remained trapped, helpless to free himself, until the sun rose. Sam and Pretty Woman found what was left of him the next evening, still entangled in the deadfall’s embrace.
    The second dead’un had managed to find a small cave in the foothills, where he hid in his coffin during the day. However, while he was asleep, a pack of coyotes that usually made the cave their home dragged his carcass out of the casket and devoured it. When Hell arrived, he found a pup busily gnawing away at the creature’s skull as if it were a ball.
    The third dead’un had more sense when it came to finding a place to hide her casket, choosing the hayloft of an old barn. However, her fatal mistake was that she lost track of time while out hunting. As the sun began to rise, her long, unbound hair caught fire. As she fled back to the safety of her coffin, her hair trailing behind her like a blazing bridal veil, she ignited the surrounding bales of hay, burning the entire structure to the ground, herself along with it.
    The rest of the dead’uns spawned from the Golgotha massacre, however, proved far better at survival than those three. Over the last few years, with Pretty Woman’s