#call it...

John Franklin had been dead for days. When the Marshalls found him, the flies had been so dense that he’d looked nothing more than a shadow of a man standing over the creek near duskfall. Had there been a man to accompany him, perhaps Deputy Jopson wouldn’t have noticed him at all, save for the way the thing moved and jittered like lakewater, and the man stank of all manner of filth- whether human or non-human, remained to be seen. 

Deputy Little had his theories, and certainly spared none of them to the open air as they rode to where the man had been found. Hodgeson, the Marshall’s man, of course, did nothing to assuage them. The man seemed to be full of apocryphal tales of natives (he’d never specified which, of course), missing children, women with their necks cleaved open by tomahawks, all manner of brutality that might befall a man should he face the indian hordes outside the safeties of their little town. Sheriff Crozier, of course, gave credence to none of them. He was never a speculating man, save for the occasional game of cards he played with Thomas at the Blue Belle, but he’d not put a penny on anything until he had a chance to see for himself exactly the manner of carnage that befell their man. If his years with his badge had taught him anything, fear never led to the truth, and speculation was always the birthmother of that poor mistress. But, he supposed, these greenhorns fresh from those pretty cities back east had nothing but those tales to go on. Not a lick of sense but for that of the men by whom they were raised to go on, none of which would serve them in the open country as they were now. None of it would prepare them for what they would find when they arrived. None of it would have prepared their poor stomachs fresh from breakfast for what Deputy Jopson had to show them.

George was the first to go, and from the smell alone, as they had not even cleared the treeline before he’d emptied his stomach upon the grass. Ned was not too far behind him, judging by the thick swallow that Crozier heard beside him as he scaled down the ridge to where the Marshall and his men waited for them. He at least had had the good sense to cover his face with his neckerchief before approaching further, as Crozier had. Still, all men present couldn’t help but wince under their masks.

Even Crozier himself felt queasy as he came face to face with their inquest. His belly had been empty for hours now, save for the shot of whiskey he spared himself when Jopson came storming into the office in a frenzy he’d never much seen in his young protege. He understood a bit better now to look at what he had seen.

The whole thing looked as though it might up and move by itself at any given moment, were it not for the construction of branch and twig and twine that held the poor man upright. The flies began to shift and scatter in places as he approached to inspect a little better the patches left untouched underneath the swarm. He could hear a man begin to wretch a little behind him, to see the pallid gray palor the man now posessed- Little, most likely, since Hodgeson could dare not venture further and opted to watch the tree-line, and wait for his own betters to arrive back from town with a cart to transport the man- or better he would say, what was left.

Crozier waved his hand then, to clear the flies and better look at what lay beneath the carrion that had gathered, and was met immediately with a scene that made the younger men behind him gasp.

The eyes were pale, but strung open wide, and the mouth affixed- agape, skin pulling back at the lips- rigor having long settled in. The horrified expression, combined with the odd shaping of the man’s pose, provided no clarity. There were wounds around his belly, but little blood soaked into the clothes to indicate their incision. But more ghastly of all was the gaping flesh at the top of the man’s hip where his leg should be, but where currently there was none, and where the flies continued their work at the rotting flesh there, blood and meat congealing against raw bone. 

“Have you found the leg?” Crozier finally asked, his tone even to himself unexpectedly low.

“No, Sir,” Jopson replied in a whisper, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, “I had Deputy Irving sweep the shoreline before riding out to alert Fitzjames’ party. Haven’t seen any sign of it.”

Crozier grunted as he stood again, not so much at the ache in his bones but more for the mention of one Mr. Fitzjames. A foolish man who seemed to be under the impression that his appearance, subdued though he tried to keep it, as it was, might disguise better in this place the truth of his employment, but Crozier knew a Pinkerton man when he saw one. The man couldn’t hide that no matter how many fine waistcoats he owned and wore. Not to mention his distaste for the local culture. He expected the man would show himself any minute now, with those city airs of his, and no doubt, some theory to who might have done this that might satisfy the speculations of the Deputies.