The glowing wolf that stood before them twisted toward the bending tree, as if Keech’s call had spooked it. The ghostly ears pinned back, then the creature vaulted straight up from the ground. The beast flew between the two trunks, where it stopped in midair and hovered, as though snared by an invisible mesh.
A current of warm wind blasted over Keech, a gust that carried a brackish scent like salted fish. The wind bellowed past him with enough strength to knock the hat off his head. The basswood shuddered, though the ground beneath them didn’t move an inch.
“What’s happening?” Duck cried.
Brilliant light flashed in the center of the bending tree, where the wolf hovered. It sparked so violently that Keech had to shield his eyes. Peeking through his fingers, he saw the creature shimmer and expand into a flat sheet of light, as if a golden sailcloth had been stretched between the two trunks. A rhythmic hum and a faint breath of briny warmth rolled off the radiant curtain.
Keech looked to the heavens. “You knew, didn’t you, Pa? All those years, you knew how to get us here. Thank you.”
The vibrations surging from the barrier shook the air and reached deep into Keech’s guts. He took a step back from the moss opal stone, worrying as he moved that the energy before them might diminish, but the veil of light continued to shine between the boughs.
The others had also abandoned their stones and were walking around the tree, their faces dazed. The ponies grunted and whinnied at the impossible sight.
“It looks the same on the other side,” Duck said. “A shimmery gold sheet.”
Keech stepped toward the gleaming barrier. “Somebody ought to touch it.”
“Sounds like you’re volunteering,” Cutter said.
Reluctantly, Keech lifted a hand. “Okay. Here goes.” He took another step toward the light.
“Wait!” Quinn kicked at the snowy ground, loosened a small stone, and tossed it to Keech. “Test the water before diving in.”
“Happy one of us is thinking straight,” Keech said. He cranked his arm back and tossed the stone. The rock disappeared into the pulsating glow.
“Did it come out the other side?” Cutter asked.
“Nothing came out!” Duck reported.
Keech dug his hand into the snow to find another stone. As he burrowed, something itched at the back of his attention. He hesitated, listened. Except for the curious hum emanating from the veil of light, everything around him was silent. He glanced at the others. “Something ain’t right.”
The savage howl of a large animal pealed across the forest. Everyone swiveled to look in the direction of the horrible noise.
John Wesley emerged from behind the gooseberry thicket.
He had changed in several ways since dropping off Doyle at the ravine. The motley hide of black scales that dotted his flesh had spread, and his once-round cheeks were sunken and gaunt. His jawline jutted, hinting at the gradual formation of a snout. The strawberry-blond curls that had once framed John’s face had fallen out, leaving his head strangely bald and covered in prickled mounds. But despite the beastly changes, he was still very much John Wesley, his eyes brimming with sorrow and innocence.
“John!” Cutter exclaimed.
The boy crept closer, his shoulders hunched. He gave the magical light a cursory, almost nonchalant look, then turned his gaze to Cutter. “Hey.”
“You’ve been following us.”
“I didn’t want y’all to go off alone. I’ve been keeping to the shadows. But curiosity got the better of me when I saw the ghost wolf.”
“You could’ve just joined us,” Cutter said.
“No. I feel different inside, Cut, like I can’t trust myself no more. Sometimes I get angry and can’t see, like there’s a monster inside trying to take over.” He glanced over at Doyle and pointed a clawed finger. “Is Papa still alive?”
Duck stepped over and squatted beside the Ranger. She placed a hand on his chest. The man didn’t stir to the touch. “He’s still breathing, but I ain’t sure how.”
John Wesley’s distorted face dropped. “I thought I wanted him to die, but now I’m scared I’ll never get to talk to him again.”
“You told us he killed your ma,” Keech said.
As if he couldn’t help it, a barbaric growl rolled from John Wesley’s throat, but it sounded more woeful than angry. He spoke, and the words sputtered through clenched fangs.
“After Papa left with Eliza, Mama lost all hope. She stopped talking. She took to standing outside the house and staring up and down the trail, like she was waiting for Papa to come back with Eliza. I did my best to care for the ’stead, but I lost hope. Then one day Mama disappeared, and I hunted all over the valley for her. I found her body on the banks of the Erinyes. She had just decided to quit, I reckon. I buried her beside Eliza’s dug-up grave and set out in search of Papa. He may not have killed her by his own hand, but leaving us like he did snuffed out Mama’s will to live.”
Cutter reached a trembling hand toward his friend, but John Wesley skittered back. “I told you, don’t come near, Cut! I can’t promise I won’t hurt you.”
“You’d never hurt me,” Cutter said, his voice gentle. “We’re partners. You helped me chase down El Ojo, remember?”
“I wish I could trust myself, but I feel so strange now.”
Cutter didn’t waver. “C’mon, hermano.”
As the boys spoke, the strange vibration from the blazing tree surged against Keech’s body, like a wall of warm rain cascading over him. He felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.
“Take my hand,” Cutter said to John.
“I don’t want to hurt nobody,” John Wesley said, but he took a step forward anyway and reached for Cutter’s hand.
The vibration emanating from the tree intensified. Keech turned to face the basswood, noticing that Duck and Quinn were doing the same. Suddenly, a high-pitched cry erupted from the tree, and a young girl on a brown pony charged out of the golden light, as though leaping down from the very sky.
CHAPTER 28
THE PROTECTORS
She looked like the same Osage girl that Keech had seen riding with the six horsemen farther north. A long black braid of hair whipped around her face as the pony landed on the ground before the tree. The girl’s thick buffalo robe billowed around her.
Keech wheeled backward, barely keeping his feet. Quinn and Duck yelled in surprise as they flopped into the snow.
The girl gave them all a baffled look, then shifted her gaze to John Wesley. She galloped straight for the cringing boy, raising a wadding of black ropes as she rode.
Cutter shouted, waving his arms, but the girl offered no indication that she heard him. Instead, she loosed a piercing cry, drove her pony right past him, and flung the dark bundle from both hands. A broad, thick net landed on top of John Wesley.
John careened against a maple tree and struggled in the mesh. He screamed, perhaps trying to form words, but any meaning was lost in a series of haggard barks.
Despite the pure surprise of seeing a person materialize from thin air, Keech possessed enough awareness to realize the rider was attacking John Wesley because of his monstrous form. “Wait!” he shouted. “He’s just a kid!”
Quinn and Duck joined in his pleas, but the girl ignored them. Her pony hurdled past the maple tree, yanking the net, and John Wesley tumbled off his feet, striking his head on a thick limb as he went down. The rider stopped a few feet away and spun her pony back toward him.
A volley of arrows whizzed into the forest, flying out of the light between the bending tree boughs. One of the arrows caught the netting and pinned it against the maple tree just over John Wesley’s head.
A squad of horses leaped out of the glowing rift, and six Osage riders charged into the forest. Keech knew immediately they were the team that Doyle had spoken of, the troop known as the Protectors. They joined the girl, tossing more of the dark mesh. The netting landed on John Wesley, burying the boy in thick tangles. John shrieked again. The horsemen loosed
more arrows that pinned the nets to nearby trees. Ropes connected to each rider’s saddle horns secured the snares.
The Protectors pulled the lines taut between their ponies, spreading John Wesley’s limbs apart. The boy thrashed against the maple tree. Long claws erupted from his fingers but poked through the netting to no avail. His jaw gnashed against a few strands, but the trap held firm.
Cutter dashed toward his friend. “No! Turn him loose!”
Four of the Protectors nocked fresh arrows and lifted their longbows toward John Wesley. The bear-claw necklaces on their bare chests looked fierce in the bending trees’ golden light. Their buffalo pelts and sawtooth robes draped over the backs of their horses.
Keech tackled Cutter to the ground. “You’re gonna get yourself killed.”
“Let me go!” Cutter shoved against him.
When Keech glanced back up, he saw that the girl had driven her pony into the center of the Protectors, her hand now grasping a hefty war club. The mounted men waited for her to proceed. The largest of the six men—a heavyset fellow wearing eagle feathers and war ornaments in his dark hair—glanced at the girl with a stern face. As though taking a teacher’s cue, she stepped ahead of the group and raised her weapon over John Wesley, who snarled as he thrashed at the ropes.
Cutter broke free from Keech’s clutch. Pulling his knife, he stood in the girl’s way. Bowstrings urgently stretched behind her, steering toward Cutter this time.
The girl waved a warning hand at him.
“He ain’t a monster; he’s my friend!”
Cutter’s declaration appeared to confuse the girl. The eagle-feathered man spoke a few brisk words to her, but she didn’t budge. “Meenah!” the man barked.
Again, the girl advanced on John Wesley with the war club.
Keech and Duck and Quinn scrambled over to Cutter, raising their arms to form a blockade between the Protectors and their snarling trailmate.
“He’s one of the good guys!” Quinn said.
“His name is John Wesley,” Duck added.
The girl gave each of them a long, inquisitive look—then slowly lowered the war club.
“Meenah, mah-theen thee-eh!” the heavyset rider called out.
“EEn-dah-tsee-dahn, we should listen to them,” she said. Keech recognized the Osage word as “uncle.”
“You speak English!” Duck exclaimed.
The girl threw a sideways glance at her. “Of course.”
Keech moved cautiously toward the girl’s uncle, who appeared to be their leader. “Call off your attack. Please. I swear he’s our…” He shuffled back through his memories and recalled the Osage word for friend, which he spoke loudly: “EE-koh-wah.”
The eagle-feathered man gripped his longbow, its missile ready to fly at the slightest provocation. “We’ve never seen such a beast. He’s a demon.”
“No,” Keech said. “He’s innocent.”
Waving away Keech’s plea, the man spoke something in Osage to his team, and the other five Protectors tightened the snare on John Wesley. A second Protector wearing a brown otter hat asked a question to his group. The others responded with apprehensive grumbles.
The girl—whom the heavyset rider had referred to as Meenah—pointed her war club at Cutter. “They say your friend looks beyond control. They say you can’t save him.” Her voice was steady and deep, her English precise. Keech figured her to be roughly his own age, yet the way she spoke for the company made her equal to the horsemen. He couldn’t help wondering if the girl held some kind of special duty in her clan, a duty that would allow a young girl to ride and fight with seasoned warriors.
Cutter squatted at John Wesley’s side and wrapped a protective arm around him. As soon as the two touched, John’s thrashing relaxed, and the red anger drained from his eyes.
“See? We’re hombres,” Cutter said.
The girl raised a thick eyebrow. “If he still has some control, maybe the elders could help him,” she said to the large man, the one she had called EEn-dah-tsee-dahn.
Frowning, the man appeared to ponder the girl’s suggestion.
Raising her hands to show she carried no weapon, Duck took a step closer to the girl. “Your name is Meenah?”
The girl shook her head. “You don’t call me that.”
When Duck appeared confused, the girl’s heavyset uncle spoke up. “‘Meenah’ is First Daughter of her family. You would not address her that way.”
“Oh,” Duck said. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean disrespect.”
Nodding at Duck’s apology, the girl pointed back to the pulsing, luminous curtain at the bending tree. “How do you know about Bonfire Crossing?” she asked.
“We’ve been searching for it. My pa, Abner Carson—” Keech stopped himself. “Isaiah Raines sent us to find it.”
Mention of Pa Abner’s real name silenced all the Protectors.
“Isaiah?” said the girl’s uncle, looking fascinated. “He was your father?”
“Well, not my real one,” Keech replied. “My real father was called Bill to some. I learned he was half Osage, but I didn’t know this till recently. In Osage he was called—”
“Zhan Sah-peh,” the man said, his mouth slightly dropping. The Protectors looked at one another knowingly. “I heard many stories about him.”
Keech’s heart skipped. “You’ve heard of my father?”
“He was a close friend to the elders in Bonfire,” the eagle-feathered man said. “As stories tell it, he left many years ago on a trading campaign to the north, but when he didn’t return, the elders felt it was a betrayal. The stories say he left his people to ride with terrible men.”
“But he revolted against the man who led him astray,” Keech said. “And now I’m here—we’re here—to finish his fight.”
“You didn’t answer Meenah,” the man said, throwing his niece a cursory glance. “How did you come to this place?”
“We had some help on the trail. Another Enforcer. But now he’s wounded.” Keech gestured beyond the bending tree to Edgar Doyle, who lay on the ground under Quinn’s blanket. During the struggle with John, the Ranger had awakened, but only to grind his teeth in pain.
The sight of Doyle stunned the Protectors, especially the girl, all over again. “I know that man,” she said. “He came to my encampment once.”
“He’s hurt real bad,” Duck said. “We’re hoping you can help.”
The Protectors spoke to one another in brisk voices. Some sounded angry. They eventually deferred back to the girl’s uncle, Wah-hu Sah-kee, or Strong Bones. He shouted for a moment till the others yielded to his argument. The fellow looked at Keech and said many things in Osage, then finally pointed at Doyle.
“Red Jeffreys betrayed his Oath,” Strong Bones said, his words full of concern. “He betrayed everything he stood for.”
Apprehension seized Keech’s stomach. He worried they had ridden so far just to be turned away at the open door. “We know, sir. But he’s dying. You’re our last hope. Please don’t turn us away.”
The Protectors conferred one last time, then Strong Bones held up his hand to silence the negotiation. He sighed.
“We’ll bring the Enforcer. Just know the elders may not wish to help him.”
“Weh-wee-nah,” said Keech. “Thank you.”
Strong Bones gestured to two of his allies, then at John Wesley. The horsemen hooked the nets over their saddle horns and pulled John toward the mysterious gateway. “We’ll bring the beast as well.”
Cutter stepped after John Wesley, reaching for the mesh. “You ain’t taking my friend anywhere without me.”
“We won’t hurt him,” the girl said.
“You have nothing to fear,” Strong Bones added. “We’ll allow you to follow us, as long as you do what we say.” He flashed a quick smile at Keech, then turned his mount.
Through the nets, John Wesley looked at Cutter with lost, fearful eyes. “It’s okay, Cut. Let me go. Everything’ll be fine.”
Cutter released his
grip on the nets and watched as the horsemen pulled the boy toward the bending tree.
The other Protectors glanced back, apparently waiting for consent, and their leader waved them onward. One by one, they stepped through the gateway, pulling John Wesley along into the golden light, and one by one, they vanished into thin air. Finally, Strong Bones looked to his niece and spoke curtly in Osage. She replied with a quick nod. Without another word, the man walked his horse between the bending tree boughs and disappeared.
The girl turned to the Lost Causes. “My uncle says to load the Enforcer. Once you’re done, you’re to follow me.”
Keech raced over to lift the groaning Doyle back onto Saint Peter. The other young riders joined him, and the gang tied the Ranger down. Doyle murmured in his darkness, occasionally raising a hand and slapping at the air. His breathing sounded so raspy, it astounded Keech that any breath was getting into his lungs at all.
“He’s slipping,” Keech said. “Everyone mount up.”
The group gathered the ponies around the bending tree.
The young riders had seen a great deal of death. Allies had been laid to rest, and Nat Embry had been buried in fire and rubble. Keech prayed that once they reached Bonfire Crossing, they would all find a trifle of peace. Yet his stomach knotted with worry.
Standing before the light, the Osage girl called out in a strong voice to the Lost Causes. “Stay close!” Then she and her pony walked into the glimmer, and they vanished like stones sinking into a sparkling pool.
The other young riders followed, Quinn leading Saint Peter and Doyle. Keech watched them disappear one by one into the shining curtain, then stepped up closer to the tree. Sliding his thumb over Hector’s saddle horn—over the initials that said MH—he took a deep breath. “Here we go, my friend. On to Bonfire Crossing.”
The stallion stepped forward, and Keech moved into the light.
CHAPTER 29
THE TWO ELDERS
For a terrible moment, the white radiance around him grew so bright, Keech thought it would blind him. He feared he would ramble off into an unknown space, sightless, but then a progression of blurred shapes took hold in his vision, and Keech recognized that he was seeing the full group led by the Osage girl.
The Fang of Bonfire Crossing Page 23
