Bannon shook his head, then tapped a finger against his temple.
“You got it,” Valenti said. He looked up ahead, not seeing Ali. “Hey, we better get a move on or we’ll be meeting Ali on her way back.”
Bannon let him set the pace.
* * *
Ali had been like a young pup straining at its leash until Valenti had waved her on.
“Go on,” he said. “Scout things out. We’ll catch up.”
So she ran on ahead, enjoying the sense of freedom and exploration that being in the woods gave her. She slowed down when something shiny caught her eye on the trail, but it proved to be only a bit of foil from a cigarette pack, rolled up into a tight little ball. Far more interesting was the row of ants that moved steadfastly across the trail. She pushed aside some underbrush to see where they were coming from, then wrinkled her nose when she saw it was the body of a small dead chipmunk. She let the boughs slap back in place and headed on down the path.
It took a circuitous route through the trees. Approximately a mile from where the road ended by Tony’s place and the track started, the path ran into a stream. Ali paused to dubiously study the random scatter of rocks that might serve as stepping-stones.
The trail continued on the other side of the stream, which was at its narrowest point here, at least so far as Ali could see. It was seven feet wide, tops. Farther up and down the stream, the water broadened out to eight or nine feet, and there were no stones. She wondered if Tony would be able to cross, then decided to see how hard it would be.
It was surprisingly easy. She stepped on the first stone and as she swung her foot in front, another was just waiting for it. In moments she was across.
That’s strange, she thought as she sat down to wait for Tony and Tom. It was like an optical illusion if you studied the pattern of the stones because they didn’t appear to be so perfectly placed. As she leaned forward to have a closer look, she heard the bushes rustle behind her. Fear knifed through her as she turned. It didn’t entirely go away when she saw Mally’s thin features peering out at her from between the branches of the willows that grew on this side of the stream.
“’Lo, Ali,” she said. “What are you doing?” She stayed where she was, the low brim of her hat hiding her eyes, the willows all around her.
“Mally!” Ali said, finding a smile. “I was hoping to find you. I wanted to see where you lived.”
“I live here.”
Ali looked around, then past Mally to where the forest started again with a rank of cedars, then a hodgepodge of birch, maple, pine and oak. “Here?” she asked.
Mally smiled. “In the forest—in all of it.” She shook her head as though it didn’t make sense why such a simple explanation should prove so hard for Ali to grasp.
“Yes, but…” Ali began.
“Where are you going?” Mally interrupted. “To the stone or to the village?”
“Well, I didn’t even know there was anything out here—I mean, besides the forest and you. And your friend Tommy.”
“I don’t really know Tommy,” Mally said. “I belong to the moon, you see, while a mystery has him.”
“A mystery?”
“The stag. The music.”
“Oh,” Ali said, although it didn’t really explain anything. She was about to say more when Mally’s head lifted like a startled deer’s and she peered down the trail.
“Men are coming,” she said, moving a little deeper into the willows.
“It’s okay,” Ali said. “It’s just Tony—you’ve already met him, sort of—and a friend of his named Tom Bannon.”
“Can’t stay.”
“No one’s going to hurt you,” Ali promised.
Mally smiled, showing her teeth. “I know. It’s just that until I see how the music touches the stranger, I’d rather not meet him.”
“But—”
“When the trail forks, go left if you want to get to the stone, right for the village.”
“But what are they, this stone and village?”
“Bye, Ali.”
“Mally, wait!” But the wild girl was already gone.
Ali was all set to chase after her, then thought better of it. Sighing, she turned around to watch Tony and Tom approach.
* * *
“I don’t know,” Valenti said as he looked at the stepping-stones. “Walking’s one thing—if I take it easy, I’m okay. But jumping’s something else again.
“Just try it, Tony,” Ali said. “It’s weird how easy it is.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Baby.”
Valenti looked at Bannon but found no sympathy there. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll give it a try already.”
Ali watched his face as he stepped on the first stone and went for the next. The look of concentration was quickly replaced with shocked delight and in moments he was across. Bannon followed, his features also reflecting surprise.
“What did I tell you?” Ali asked.
Valenti smiled. “Okay. So for once, you’re right.”
Ali punched him on the shoulder. “You just missed Mally,” she said.
“Your wild girl?” Bannon asked. He looked around. “She was here?”
Ali nodded. “But she’s gone now. She said that this trail can take us either to a stone or a village. Does that make any sense to you, Tony?”
Valenti shook his head. “I had a good look at the maps before we set out. This is Black Creek. What we’ve got is hills to the southeast, Snake Lake Mountain up that way, and marsh to the north. But I didn’t see any houses marked.”
“How long have we been walking?” Ali asked.
“About thirty-five, forty minutes,” Bannon said. He glanced at Valenti. “You want to go a little farther?”
Valenti nodded. “Sure. I’m doing fine. A stone or a village. Fercrissakes, what’d she mean by that?”
“Well,” Ali said. “There’s only one way to find out.”
“So let’s go,” Valenti said, “and cut out all this gabbing.”
Ali and Bannon exchanged grins. This time Ali stayed with the men.
* * *
It was almost another forty minutes before they reached the fork in the trail. The path had continued to wind, doubling back on itself, it seemed at times. The trees were almost all cedar here, with big junipers in the few clearings they came across.
“Left is the stone,” Ali said. “Right takes us to the village.”
“I’m for the village,” Valenti said. “I want to meet this Tommy.”
Bannon nodded in agreement. That was how Ali felt, too, though she did want to know just what this stone was. They took the right-hand path. After about five minutes, it gave way to an open field. When they reached the top of the field’s gradual rise, they were suddenly looking down into a small valley.
“Jesus Christ,” Valenti said.
The other two were silent, but equally amazed. Below them lay a cluster of cottages that seemed to come right out of a picture book of the British countryside. They were made of fieldstone and wood, with thatched roofs, all except for the barns and one cabin that was closest to the higher slopes on their left, which had to be Snake Lake Mountain.
“This doesn’t make sense,” Ali said. “How can this place be here and nobody know about it?”
“How do we know that nobody knows about it?” Valenti asked. “How many people have we talked to about it?”
“There’s that,” she said.
They stood awhile longer looking down at the tiny village. There was motion around the buildings—people working in their gardens, Ali thought. She saw sheep dotting the slope on the other side of the valley.
“Well,” Bannon asked. “Are we going down?”
Valenti and Ali exchanged glances, then the three of them started down the gentle slope toward the village.
6
When Brenda Maxwell woke on Monday morning, Lance was no longer lying beside her. She thought of last night, digging Dooker’s grave in
the darkness, Lance standing over it. Lance would probably never have gone to bed if she hadn’t taken his arm and steered him toward the house and upstairs.
Sitting up, she had a pretty good idea as to where he was now. She got out of bed, wrapped a bathrobe around herself and went downstairs. Through the kitchen window she could see him at the edge of their property, standing over the freshly-turned mound of earth that lay on top of Dooker.
Eight years Lance had had that dog, she thought. And the two of them had been inseparable. The kind of work Lance did, when he could get it, hadn’t interfered. Hauling, clearing land, working on houses—unskilled labor, but at least it brought some money in to help stretch the welfare check. The farmhouse they were living in used to belong to Lance’s father. Now they rented it from the bank. The rest of the land had been sold off, but no one wanted the old farmhouse. Just like no one wanted the Maxwells.
It hadn’t always been that way, but things changed and what could you do? They had their problems. Money troubles. Looking for work. Making ends meet. But this new change in Lance didn’t fit any of that. She’d read in her magazines how stress could make people go a little strange, but Lord, she’d never read about anything like this. Killing Dooker just didn’t make any kind of sense.
And what would? a voice inside her asked. Would it make more sense if he turned the shotgun on her? Or on himself?
Brenda shivered. Get out or get help, she told herself. And do it now. But as she moved toward the phone, she saw Lance walk away from the grave. For a moment she thought he was coming back inside, but he walked around to the side of the house and was lost from view. She hesitated, heard the pickup start up, heard it back out of the lane. As it drove off, all her resolve drained from her. She sank into a chair at the kitchen table and stared wearily around the dingy room.
Lord, they had so little as it was—just their health and making do. Why did that have to be taken away from them, too?
* * *
It didn’t seem right to Lance that Dooker should be lying under that pile of dirt in the backyard. It just didn’t make sense. Dooker wasn’t the kind of dog to lay around. He was a doer. Damn dog was never still, always checking out this, checking out that. Chasing rabbits and groundhogs. Catching ’em by the neck and giving them a quick shake that broke their necks, killing ’em fast and easy.
No way a dog like that was dead. Dooker’d just run off somewhere—playing a game. Looked like it was up to Lance to find him.
He nodded to himself as he drove to a special spot where the two of them had spent a lot of time. It was off a back road with a stream running by. Trees hung low over the water and there were lots of fields nearby, full of slow groundhogs just looking to get their necks snapped.
A cloud of dust spun up from Lance’s wheels that took a while to settle after he’d passed. That was the trouble, Lance thought, watching the dust in his rearview mirror. Times like this, a man left no more trace of himself than a dust cloud like that. Five minutes later the dust settled down and who the hell knew you’d been there?
When he reached the turnoff, he turned into a rutted road that was more pasture than road, the pickup shaking and rattling all the way. At the end of the road, he shut off the engine. Stepping out of the cab, he walked down to the stream and called for Dooker, waited awhile, called some more. After a time, he just sat down on his bumper.
Christ on a cross, that dog had really taken off this time. Where would he go? Lance thought about that, then found himself thinking about Buddy Treasure and the music he’d heard back when he’d gotten the flat in front of the old man’s place. That’s where Dooker would go. Chasing that music. Chasing the stag that made the music.
Lance nodded. Turning the truck around, he headed back toward French Line and the Treasure place. That’s where he’d find Dooker. Chasing the music. Just like the music chased him. Lance gritted his teeth. He didn’t want to think about that, about what the music did to him, about how it made him feel, about what chased him through his own dreams. He didn’t want to think about that at all.
* * *
Lance stopped in front of the Treasure house and looked it over. Really looked at it, instead of giving it the quick nervous glances that he usually did when he drove by. It looked good. Fixed up real nice. He noted the debris in the front lawn. At another time he might have thought of offering to haul it away for a few bucks. At another time. If it were another place.
He got out of the pickup and stood listening to the silence. There was no sign of Dooker, no sign that there was anyone or anything around at all. Returning to the truck, he sat there studying the building, the wreck of a barn behind it, the woods behind that. In the early afternoon, even with the overcast sky above, the property didn’t seem much different from any other place. Hell, why should it? It wasn’t the house, but something in the woods behind it that was playing on his nerves.
He thought about what was back there. He’d lived his whole life in this area and never heard a whisper of talk about there being anything strange back there. It was just bush and marsh. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was waiting for him in those woods.
He sat there for a long while, listening to nothing, just staring. Nobody passed him on the road. Nobody moved inside the house.
There’s nothing here, he told himself. Reaching over, he turned over the ignition. The pickup started up with a cough, loud in the quiet air. He’d come back, he thought. But first he’d find Dooker. A man shouldn’t go messing around in the bush without his dog. Christ on crutches, but there was nothing Dooker liked better than a good run through the woods.
Lance drove away, heading back for that special place that he’d already checked out once this morning. Dooker had to be there by now. But when he arrived, there was no sign of the dog. He beat the bush and called until his voice began to go hoarse.
That dog’s just not here, he told himself. And that was because the damn dog was dead. He’d shot the poor bugger himself last night.
He lay down on the grass by the stream as a blur of tears clouded his eyes and his chest tightened with pain. The criss-crossing branches above him moved with the wind in a hypnotic pattern and then sleep crept up on him like a sly thief. He slept dreamlessly, one hand clenched in a tight fist on his stomach, the other stroking the grass at his side where Dooker would have been lying if he were still alive.
7
Lewis was expecting them, having been forewarned by Mally. She’d stopped by his cabin with a cryptic “They’re coming,” before vanishing into the forest again.
Who was coming? he wondered as he left his cabin. Jango Gry and his people? It was a little early for them. He looked up to the hill where the trail from the outside world left the forest to come down to the village. When he saw the three figures up there, he knew that Mally hadn’t meant the Gypsies. Taking off his glasses, he shaded his eyes and peered up at the strangers. He had never seen any of them before, but he knew who two of them were all the same.
He waved to get their attention. When he saw that he had succeeded, he sat down on his chopping stump to wait for them to come down to talk. He wondered what they thought of what they had found.
* * *
“Somebody’s trying to get our attention,” Bannon said as they started down the hill.
Ali squinted, but all she could see of the figure by the cabin was that he was white-haired. “I wish I’d brought my binocs.”
“What do you think he wants?” Valenti said.
“Maybe he’s Tommy,” Ali said.
Bannon nodded. “Could be. Could be anyone. But whoever he is, it looks like he was expecting us.”
They followed the trail down to the village. Just before it reached the first buildings it forked again, one path leading in among the cottages, the other swinging to the left where the figure had signalled to them. There was only one cottage between them and the old man’s cabin. A middle-aged woman sat on its stoop and regarded them expressionlessly. A t
eenaged boy who was hoeing the garden paused in his labor, also to watch.
“Friendly, aren’t they?” Ali whispered when they’d gone by.
Valenti nodded. Neither woman nor boy had responded to their friendly greetings.
“Did you take a good look at what they were wearing?” Bannon asked. When Ali and Valenti shook their heads, he went on. “The old-fashioned style of their clothes. I can remember my grandmother wearing one of those old black cotton dresses, and the kid was wearing woolen trousers and a collarless shirt, both of which looked too big for him.”
They reached the front of the last cabin. The trail went on, inclining more steeply as it entered the woods once more. That’d be Snake Lake Mountain, Valenti thought. Remembering his map, he was about to turn to see if he could catch a glimpse of the lake, which should be over to his right, when the old man who’d signalled them came around the side of the cabin.
After what Bannon had pointed out, Valenti took note of the man’s clothing. Like the boy’s, his trousers were woolen and he wore a collarless white shirt as well. Overtop was a tweed vest. His shoes were scuffed and old. Looking at him, taking in the creased face and snow-white hair, Valenti realized that everything about him was old.
He glanced at his companions, but they seemed to be waiting for him to make the first move. Valenti nodded and smiled at the old man. He took a couple of steps closer and held out his hand.
“My name’s Tony Garonne,” he said. “Are you Tommy, uh…” Christ, he thought. They didn’t even have a last name for him. That bothered Valenti. He liked to treat older people with the respect he felt was their due and that included no familiarities that weren’t okayed first.
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