Shauna Friesen

Phantom Gulch

I.

I woke with a scorpion in my mouth. A rattlesnake noosing my neck. A full moon strung up incandescent in the western heaven. A small figure swayed over me, heel of a miniature boot twisting into my ribs. I’d reckoned in such rough country as I’d come to wander I faced considerable danger of bandits, but it was a mighty puzzlement to find myself apprehended by a lone youngster such as this. My little scrap of an attacker couldn’t have been but coming on eight or nine, by my figuring. The child had unevenly shorn braids. Knobby limbs. Hollow cheeks. Round, unblinking eyes, aimed steady as a pair of powder revolvers. The blood that ran in two lines from her nose was dark as blackstrap molasses, and when she sawed a sleeve across her face she came away looking a sight worse.

Were it not for the cactus prickle of scorpion legs on my tongue and teeth and
chin, I’d have already volleyed all manner of astonished curses. Neither did I weight that drawing my holstered pistol would be in my great interest, as a rattler had found comfortable respite on its pearl grip, jaw slacked and fangs aglitter in the starlight. More yet of the devilish creatures belly-slithered from the shadows of the darkling creosote thicket where I’d rigged up camp.

Without a word, the girl made her business with me plain.

An unsteady finger, stabbed in the direction of the saddlebag I’d fashioned a pillow of.

I understood I’d be obliged to hand my personal effects over if I meant to avoid mortal injury.

II.

Dawn came in her appalling beauty, sun’s first beams like something shot zenith-ward through chapel glass, the Sawtooth Range burnished roseate to the west. Diamond cholla looked frost-dipped, haloed as holy mother. Specimens of milk quartz flared celestial in the sand. Hummingbirds needled the verbena. It might have been easy to allow that my midnight ambush had been no more than desert phantasm were it not for my lightened load of particulars.

However, strange as the facts were, it was with perfect clarity that I could recall the tiny girl-thief dropping to her knees to gulp in palmfuls from my water keg. Her charmed snakes had menaced at my jugular and the band of my trousers as she guzzled to her satisfaction.

After my belongings had been upended across gravel, it had been a tremendous relief to see a drawstring containing material of great importance to me booted aside with disinterest. The child had plundered nothing besides a tin of biscuits and a parcel of salt pork before running.

Never in my years nor in all the manner of country I’d crossed had I been struck with a bewilderment so keen as I was when I discovered the venomous creatures atop me had vanished the same moment the girl-thief had. Should my cask not have been drained to drops and the prints from her soles not been plainly stamped into the dirt, I’d surely have considered myself courting lunacy.

Needless to say, I slept not so much as another wink, and the moment dawn broke to torch the ramparts topaz, I fetched up my weakly pair of burros and struck a course westward.

III.

Gold.

Mere mention of metal such as she, in all her luxuriant yellowness, was capable of bringing men to their knees in exalt. Reducing those of the most hardened constitutions to feverish grovelry in the gravel. I knew her to turn even the meekest and gentlest of fellows to acts of devilry beyond comprehension.

Naturally, finding myself upon a bit of hard luck, I’d thought it high time to try my hand at hunting that supreme mineral. I’d panned considerable, backbreaking days in some alluvial rift, the meager ounces I’d wrested from the washes and the undersides of boulders of no notable amount, but enough to peg me honest wages on returning to Banner.

My sole aim was to reach that settlement and procure my coin without
encountering troubles along my way, but as I negotiated the chalk whites and ethereal pinks of the slot canyons, sought passage through the grotesquerie of the badlands, pushed toward the distant architecture of the black-spined peaks, I was sure I felt eyes on my shoulders, heard footsteps yielding sand in time with mine.

IV.

The rattlers returned at last light, giving much credence to my suspicions.

“Say,” I spoke to the sagebrush the reptiles reared from, wagering I’d do the
youngster a good turn. “If it’s only a bit of supper you’re after. I’d occasion I’ve got something of mine to spare.”

I heard a rustling, but could make out nothing of form in the gloom.

And then, to my powerful surprise, and with the fearsome swiftness of a forty-four’s report, the desert chaparral before me fairly burst into flames. I was on my feet without delay, sputtering oaths, setting up quite a fuss flapping my bedroll to damp the inferno. It only roared with more intensity, catching on the sleeves of my riding buckskin so I was roused to dance, striking and spinning in a fool’s frantic earnest.

When the blaze came to be extinguished it was not by my efforts, dedicated as they were. The fire had been dispelled with all the instantaneousness of a snuffed candle, and the blow to my faith in my own faculties was considerable upon discovering not a trace of char on the brush, nor a whiff of smoke in the air.

You might well guess that I came to discover my evening’s rations had been deftly raided—and I’d have taken solemn oath on all things holy that I heard a laugh from several stone throws up the range.

V.

I urged my burros forward with renewed inspiration, eager to reach the hitching rails and the assay offices and the refined cowtown comforts my profits might afford me in Banner. Whirling columns of blown sand stung what little skin I had bared. Teeth could not be closed without grating grit. Ocotillo stretched worshipful, wind-creaking arms by the dozens to a white gold sun. Lonesome dirges were whistled overhead by aeolian caves, zephyr-scooped from the red cliffsides.

That I was being followed was no longer a thing to be denied—and it was the baffling irregularity of my young pursuer that had me powerful agitated. I admit to more than once calling out to the lass in one-sided exchange of courtesies, in assurances that I meant no harm, but a response could not be stirred from the desert topography.

Presently, I found myself making stony ascent of the ribs of a familiar foothill. I
knew a deep gulch there to contain a source of sensationally cold, clear water, and by dint of a good deal of encouragement to my tiring pair of pack animals, we were soon availing our thirst at her fine banks.

However, before I could put to the work of replenishing my casks beneath the
verdant fan palms, a girlish scream pierced the oasis.

VI.

It was trouble of the most unlucky sort that the girl-thief had fallen into when I left my burros to make silent investigation from the underbrush. Upon securing a suitably covert position from which to peer, I found that she’d been laid hold of by a lone bandit, one of exceedingly course visage and formidable physique, cartridge belts crossing his breast and a gun glistening black as volcano glass at his hip. Numerous teeth had been knocked clean from his foul grin, and I’ll confide I took some tolerable time weighing the worth of risking my own hide getting the youngster out of the predicament she’d fallen into. Certainly there could be nothing to be gained from assisting my thief but to increase my own perils tenfold.

However, honor demanded my interference when I saw the rough way the child was being handled, her shoulders being shaken, her braids being yanked, a blow being struck with stunning force to her face when she spat and snarled feral at her captor, knocking her to her knees.

I was not of the stripe to allow for such brutal treatment of a helpless youngster, whatever the nuisance she’d proved herself.

My iron had scarcely cleared leather before I’d sent a warning blast ripping
skyward. “Let her loose,” I demanded.

The foolhardy of my intervention was clear before I could make any further assault. Two more men emerged from the brake, faces more blister than pale, vesseled eyes fixing me in their sights, their rifles up and aimed while a third weapon was put to the girl-thief’s temple.

“Easy, now.” Their chuckles ground like metal put to stone. “This one here belong to you, old timer?”

I lifted my palms in grim surrender, bracing for the tear of lead through flesh,
divining that the fix I’d found myself in would only be escaped by aid of a grandly persuasive bluff. “Gold out in them there washes,” I spoke in answer, with a tilt of my chin toward the expanse of frontier, willing to gamble it was what they’d dug out to these parts for. “Nuggets big as peach pits. Show you right where I seen ‘em if you hand her here.”

“Which of them washes?”

“Yonder.”

“Where?”

“Awful hard to recollect exactly, all them carbines put to me,” I said. “Can make a fellow powerful forgetful.”

The largest member of the trio nudged at the girl-thief with his weapon, face a cast of ruthlessness, hair sunbaked to near-silver. “How we know you ain’t just tellin tales?”

It was then that the child lifted her hanging head, a shock of crimson sliding in a single line from her nose to pink her unnerving smile.

What came off in the minutes that followed cannot rightly be expressed with words. The trio of bandits let loose shrieks of hideous terror, the largest man crouching with hands over his head begging the Lord for pardon, another fellow cursing and clawing his neck and arms to bleeding, as if crawling with unseen vermin. The third gaped down at his palms, wailing in a profound and indescribable grief.

It was not long that the men suffered before the crouching bandit had issued a pair of startling shots that met their marks in the skulls of his two companions. I could only stand by in sublime, uncomprehending horror as he spun his rifle heavenward and closed his teeth around the muzzle.

The girl released a shuddering sigh of relief when he fell.

I’ve seen my share of hard sights, but I cannot convey the singular gruesomeness of the scene. Quivering yet, and with a sense of astounded awe, I watched the girl cross the bloodsoaked earth to compare each of the three bandits’ hats, pulling one moony brim after another down low over her eyes before settling on a dark Stetson.

I could not be shaken from my stupor until she had the pearlescent grip of my pistol in her whitened fist, nor could I conceive of when I had occasioned to drop it while she aimed its business end at my chest. All I could manage was something in the stammered, hitching way of “what in hell’s thunder.”

The girl-thief scowled down the barrel with a considerable bearing of mistrust. “Let’s go,” she said.

VII.

“You’ll have to forgive my ill manners. Ain’t properly introduced myself.” I spoke cordial as I could muster across a fire of crackling sage balls and greasewood and mesquite branchlets. Night had clasped the desert in pitch, meteors streaking the dome of the firmament with shimmers of quicksilver. Coyotes were in full cry across the valley. Prickly pear cast long, malformed shadows down the slope. “I’m Coleraine. Calce Coleraine.” I tipped my hat obligingly, unable to still the tremoring in my hand.

The girl-thief gave no indication of having heard me, assaulting her share of cured bacon and hardtack biscuits without a breath, chewing and swallowing in a most unladylike fashion.

“Most folks call me Gristle,” I offered, forcing an uneasy chuckle. “Earned that back in the Sangres. Ha. That story’s a might longer than a preacher’s Sunday sermon.”

I took her for rather incurious when her gaze flickered to me, darkly laden with irritation.

“Got yourself a name, then?” I asked instead. Though I’d put question after question to the child after her attackers had been left to the work of circling buzzards, I had yet to succeed in coaxing any answers from her.

The youngster’s glare was searing as a cattle brand. “Name?” she repeated.

I shifted with some nervousness. I’ll confide that she had come to evince an even mightier sense of dread in me than previously. It was safe to reason I’d been saddled with the girl’s company at least until the moment came that I’d run through my provisions, at which juncture I feared myself liable to endure the same violent end as the bandits. Earning her favor was proving no simple undertaking. “You know. A name,” I said. “Somethin your folks called you by.”

The girl considered for a moment. Nodded once. Looked me straight on with gold dollar eyes. “Devil.”

My sputtered cough of confoundment could scarcely be helped. “That so.” I scratched my head. “Weren’t ever nothin else your kin got to callin you?”

She nodded, expression blank. “Demon.”

I sputtered again. “Hell. That won’t do,” I said. “Ain’t there anything you’d rather be called?”

Her glower was humorless. “Reckon just about anything would do better than Gristle.”

When I turned my exasperated attentions back to the share of meat in my hands, it was a peculiar surprise to see it writhing with maggots that had not been present moments before. I let it fall from my hands, the girl-thief striking out quick as a diamondback to take it for herself, knuckling blood from her wicked grin.

VIII.

We were long in advancing up the mountain pass on our southwesterly pursuit, the youngster slowing my progress markedly.

Three times I was sure I could see contours in the indigo distance that told tale of civilization, only to turn to the girl and see her bloody nose and smirk of mischief.

Twice I bent to scoop handfuls of crystalline water from a stream, only to discover my mouth full of sand while the child giggled.

Once I was certain I’d spotted the brilliant glint of gold amongst an arroyo’s smoothed pebbles, biting the nugget in keen, prayerful exhilaration before it was revealed at the girl’s amusement to be a common hunk of schist.

I’d never been one to put stock in the supernatural, but any doubt I had was settled. “You can make folks see things that ain’t there,” I said. “Anything you fancy.”

The girl kept silent as grave, palming blood from her upper lip.

“What’d you show them bad fellows back there? To make them want to—”

And then, manifestly, I was peering out through the iron bars of a jailhouse. Toeing a granite cliff’s plunging edge. Shackled to the iron ties of a railway, smoke-belching locomotive barreling my direction. Moon slid over sun like the lid of a jar and mad steers of unspeakable disfigurement surrounded me. When I lifted my hands in self-preservation I hadn’t a pair of them, arms sawn to sickening gore, all that remained of the limbs bone-splintered stumps that set me to howling in agony.

The girl-thief’s breathing was labored, smile cruel across her begrimed face when the illusions abated. “Can’t show you everything,” she said, licking blood from her knuckles. “Wish yourself dead if I did.”

IX.

She could grant blissful visions just as well as she could torments. Swarmings of wondrous luna moths. Radiant-hued sundogs crowning the glazed sun triple. Summit blocks of translucent amethyst and geysers erupting whiskey and Aurora Borealis dipped down near enough from heaven that it felt like cool silk between fingertips.

“Ain’t no devil’s curse. What you can do,” I told her, after she’d earned herself a good laugh filling my pockets with rubies—brilliant marquise cuts that hatched to thousands of spiderlings at the slightest handling. “Expect you could be properly rich, with your talents. Never want for any luxury.”

Her amber eyes went narrow with suspicion, her feet dragging with increasing weariness. The landscape was much changed in our final day’s push toward Banner, rolling hills bedecked in abundances of yucca and whitethorn giving way to valleys of gnarled coastal oaks. Our destination was at last visible at some distance ahead.

“Could afford yourself all manner of fine suppers, too,” I added.

The girl-thief’s slumped shoulders straightened almost imperceptibly.

Though we’d been not long acquainted, she’d come near trying my last nerve with her trickery. However, I was beginning to recognize favorable opportunity in her queer capabilities, and a scheme had been slowly taking shape in my mind. “It’s a pretty good piece of luck our paths came to cross,” I said, making effort to sound some extra soft and considerate. “It ain’t regular, you know. Ain’t safe. A lass your age, up against it. Turned out to these parts by her lonesome. Reckon we can help one another out.”

The girl gave no reaction, her stare forlorn and affixed to the horizon.

“What do you say? Why don’t we make a deal? Get ourselves enough green for comfortable lives? Won’t need all but a bag of rocks and a bit of your magic to pull it off. Assayer’ll be none the wiser it ain’t real gold until the batch is sent up to be soaped and smelted and you and I are halfway off the map.”

I’ll confess I was already envisioning with mighty eagerness the wealth she could fetch me, the leisurely easefulness of the years that ranged ahead of me if my pockets could be lined well enough.

“What do you reckon?”

The girl-thief was a long time in pondering my proposition, but when I began gathering gravel and small stones by the fistful for my canvas drawstrings, she knelt to help me scoop them overflowing.

X.

Sun struck the center of Banner with all the force of a bell’s clapper against brass.

I hadn’t intended at first on giving the girl the double cross. Hadn’t figured the grift for going off with such uncommon effortlessness. Hadn’t foreseen the way such remarkable quantities of bank notes being counted off on an appraiser’s desk might sway a fellow’s integrity.

Braids tucked into her hat and bandana pulled up well over her nose to conceal the blood, the girl-thief had held up her end of the swindle in unsettlingly solemn cooperation. The assayer had parted with his tender without the expected protestations while she’d performed her spell from just outside the office, face a grim knot of focus beneath the brim of her Stetson, hands trembling with invisible exertion. Were it not for the town being peculiarly overquiet, I’d have had concerns of a pitiful-looking youngster such as herself rousing attention. Surely the regularly bustling avenues must have been empty on account of the oppressive heat, and I’d given the oddity of it little credence, leaving the girl to her illusion-work while I set off to secure a pair of horses for our prompt getaway.

I’ll admit to it taking me tolerable time to locate the stables, my memory of previous visits to Banner serving faulty, my mind much occupied by the bills that burned in the seams of my buckskin.

It was with little negotiation and with pulse jumping in my throat that I made selection of a single sleek chestnut colt at the livery stalls—one that came saddled and looked fit to the task of a hasty flight from the region. A receipt was made out by an untalkative liveryman to the false name I gave. I hesitated only a moment before swinging astraddle the leather and digging the heels of my boots deep into the creature’s flanks, riding out with all the briskness I could rouse from my fresh mount.

I assuaged my gnawing guilt with remembrances of the fearsome fate the girl-thief had been capable of delivering to the bandits. I’d be hard pressed to find more favorable occasion to give the youngster the slip before she’d caught the whim to wield the deadliest of her phantom horrors against me, and she’d proved herself more than capable of fending for herself besides.

I settled into a steady gallop northward.

At short length, before I’d yet put a mile between myself and the settlement, and as I was just beginning celebrate my stroke of luck, the Morgan colt halted and reared back, abruptly enough to buck me from seat and stirrups.

The jolt to my backside was considerable when I slammed the dirt. A string of oaths were readily loosed and a galaxy of stars had to be cleared from my vision before I could account for the familiar form swaying above me.

Surely my eyes were deceiving me.

“Ought to have known any fellow go by Gristle’d be a low down backstabbin gutless swill.” The girlish voice froze me stiff, drenched as it was in rageful venom. The heel of a small boot ground into my side with surprisingly painful effort.

“Hell. It ain’t like you think,” I stammered. “Please. I ain’t a bad fellow. Been an honest man all my life. I was only—”

“Ain’t no better than anyone I ever met.” The girl-thief was sucking air through her teeth, eyes blazing embers of tearful fury, such quantities of blood flowing from her nostrils her shirtfront wore the stains of it.

It took no further admissions from the child to grasp the hopelessness of my predicament.

She heaved for air while I took stock of my much changed surroundings.

There was no Morgan colt.

No cowtown at my back.

I carried with me none of the bank notes that had been trusted to my possession.

Banner was still a half day’s journey west from where I recognized myself laid out in the desert sand.

All had been illusion, conjured from thin air as her snakes and scorpions had been.

That she wielded the ability to create so elaborate and detailed an unreality with which to test my trustworthiness wasn’t something I’d reckoned on.

A devilish grin stretched over the girl-thief’s face, the high noon sun cracking open like a snake’s egg, the wide vault of sky above spoiling red as the blood on her teeth.

*

Shauna Friesen (she/her) is a mountain climber and author living in Los Angeles, CA. Her words have been selected for Best of Net 2025 and have been featured in Gone Lawn, Variant Lit, Chestnut Review, Foglifter Journal, and The Forge, among others. She has been previously nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Shirley Jackson Award.