Devil's Call

by J Danielle Dorn

  If de la Cruz had known we were both there, he would have had no reason to take Hawk’s appearance as a threat. If I had not lost my temper and sprung at him, if I had not screamed and alarmed Hawk, if Hawk and I had stayed in St. Louis and let the bastards go on running . . . I might have been able to let George Dalton go, if I thought Hawk were of a mind to do the same. This is what I ruminated on, and all I ended up doing was going so far back in my own history that I lived a whole other life, and that whole other life did me no good in this one.

  Hawk had not jawed on much about the past while we rode together, and when he had, he had had a purpose in dredging up each particular recollection. Most of his stories were amusing, at least to him, and as I sit and think on it now I suppose he derived more pleasure from knowing I did not share his humor than he did from the humor itself. I had not had to ration our dry goods much, as the man subsisted on what to my observations appeared to be a liquid diet, but he and I had shared the burden of trapping game animals when we made our brief stops along the side of the road, and those stops would be more dangerous now. Even riding itself was a risk, as I could urge the horses on only so quickly and an unburdened rider could overtake me without difficulty.

  Thinking about the past and the fanciful ways I could have changed it was a comfort compared to imagining what could befall me as I pursued the demon George Dalton, but in either case I was not focused on the road ahead, or on my environment. Being aware of my surroundings would keep me alive, and as the sun rose the morning after I killed Lorenzo Chavez de la Cruz and Kelly Mackey and burned Roger Hawking’s body, I resolved to keep myself busy with what was ahead of me, and not what was behind.

  In time I came to a fork in the road, one direction matching the stained compass needle and the other leading east, toward a set of roaring waterfalls. I looked down at the needle, and upon comparing it to the position of the sun in the sky saw it still did not point due north. It pointed, make no mistake, but I could not figure what it was pointing at.

  I read in a book once that compasses work because the magnetic pull of the farthest end of Earth, somewhere beyond the Arctic where the ships have not yet sailed, is stronger than any other force in nature. No matter which way a body aims a compass, its needle will always swivel towards the northern pole of the planet. This one did not.

  Magnets may well lose their charge, but they do not malfunction, and this compass, aside from having acquired a patina of dried blood, did not appear to have taken any damage that would account for its refusal to point north. It was then I took it for what it was—tainted by George Dalton and yearning towards him.

  This may seem a hollow confession, as two men were dead on account of my pursuit of George Dalton already, three counting Roger Hawking and four counting your father, but I would let Henry Ness haul me up before Judge Crewe and I would lay my hand on a book a priest believes should burn my palm and I would attest under threat of execution that when I set out from De Soto three months earlier, my intent had been to locate and turn over to the authorities the men who had killed my husband. That was no longer my intention, as I was no longer after a man.

  All the men in the tale save for Sheriff Ness were dead. I wanted George Dalton to join them, my dear, and I wanted to be the one to see certain he did.

  16

  THE TRAIL FROM the Badlands to the Missouri River was a stretch of terrain I would not consider a trail so much as the horses and the cart wheels’ finding the clearest way and keeping to it. From time to time the compass needle would point in a direction that would have taken a single rider over steep slopes or treacherous hillsides, and we would have to go the long way around. Without Hawk there to complain about the obstacles or the biting cold, I felt more alone than I ever had in my entire life. If I were to scream, my voice would evaporate before it ever reached another human ear.

  Only cold, sleepless nights passed during the hundred or so miles between the shack where three men died and the trading post on the southern bank of the Missouri. At dawn on the last day of that leg of the journey, I was heating water over a small fire to wash with when the clopping of hooves some distance away drew my attention. I looked to the west, to the trail I was leaving behind, and I saw three Sioux warriors on horseback.

  They and I eyed each other for several heartbeats, assessing whether the other posed a threat. I saw three young scouts returning to their homes with news of what they had seen on the frontier, and they saw a filthy pregnant woman from an unknown tribe. Neither they nor I had any reason to confront the other. If we had, they would have found me easy to pick off.

  By the time I thought to take my next breath, they had decided to keep moving. They and their horses turned away and disappeared into the copse of naked trees penning in the trail.

  I was as bundled up as I could be, given we had set out from De Soto in summertime and it was now November in the northern Nebraska Territory. Soon snow would fall, and it would cover what little trail there was between myself and George Dalton. When I attempted to use my Sight to find his exact location, I could only manage a weak glimpse of his surroundings. When I attempted to apply an herbal balm to the horses’ hooves, they protested my hands. This, I blamed on the unfamiliar territory and the fatigue the horses and I all felt. A month on the road is a long time for any animal, and these two were not as comfortable with me as your father’s had been. It did not matter to me. What mattered was to keep moving, and so we did.

  Crossing the river was an easier task than it would have been in springtime, the waterline being low as it was and crusted over with ice that the afternoon sun had not yet melted. But the compass needle had not moved, and soon I would meet the man who was responsible for all of this.

  After crossing the river, I knelt by the shore to refill my canteen. My reflection peered out at me, filthy. That was nothing new. My eyes, though. They were darker, the irises no longer the ice blue of their nature. They were black. Rather than take it for warning, I ignored it and returned to the cart.

  We conquered a modest hill and rounded a bend and came upon a cluster of tents. Horses ignored us, their saddles and bridles removed, their heads buried in their feed sacks. Tracks walking back and forth from the river told me the encampment had been here some time.

  My first inclination when I saw the tents was to introduce myself to the men inside, to purchase supplies with money I had taken from the roadhouse. But what I saw next gave me both pause and hope.

  Crosses rose up out of the frozen earth.

  The men were missionaries.

  Missionaries and Christians have not been caring to our kind. Our kind has always been closest to the more fundamental religions, the pagans preceding those institutions. Religions of earth and water and sky. That said, I was not planning on announcing myself as a witch, and figured I would secure nourishment for you by appealing to the charity of which I have heard many Christians speak.

  Something about the crosses niggled at me, but I could not identify what it was. Voices drifted out of the large tent in the center of the encampment, behind the crosses. I reasoned it was the congregation and made my way to it.

  A small stove set up at one end of the tent did little to heat the space, but the men inside, their large bodies packed in close together, must not have felt much need for it. I counted over a dozen men in the audience. Rough men, with large shoulders and unkempt beards. I wish I could tell you the man at the very front of the group, standing tall atop a makeshift stage and preaching with such terrific fervor, was the man who murdered your father. He was not.

  What I am about to write is to the best of my recollection, for I felt a great yawning sensation as the realization came upon me. The compass had led me here, and if I did not step back and begin running, the demon to which it was attuned would escape again. I thought back to my mother’s childhood averments, of the roles of men bearing crosses in burning our kind. Those crosses outside were not mere decoration.

  They were not for praying. They
had been planted upside down, to torture their victims before burning them.

  As the vertigo lessened, I heard the preacher speaking of the devilry born of the heathens of the wood. Younger than I would have thought capable of commanding an audience of weather-hardened frontiersmen, this man had a darkness in his eyes that the men responded to. He had seen the hell of which he spoke.

  “If we descend into hatefulness, brothers, we have already lost the battle before us. We must cooperate with God in turning what was meant for evil into a greater good within us. This is why we bless those who would curse us: it is not only for their sakes but to preserve our own soul from its natural response toward hatred. It is the word of the prophet that fire will purify these wretched devils and release their souls from the shackles of their witchery. Since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves for the same purpose.”

  It was then that the preacher’s dark eyes found me at the back of the congregation, the only woman in the place and filthy besides.

  “My brothers!” said the preacher. “Speak of the devil, and he will snare one of his faithful to answer for him!”

  I backed out of the tent and turned to run, certain I would be able to make it from the center of camp to the cart where I had left the horses. I did not anticipate that the missionaries would have such fleetness of foot, nor that two would appear in front of me. As it was, I all but ran right into them. I used my Will to cause one of the men to trip over his own feet and fall to the ground, but once down he was quick to recover and subdue me.

  In spite of my scratching and shrieking, they secured my arms to my sides and dragged me over to one of the inverted crosses, which others had taken down in preparation to use it.

  As the men wrestled my arms to the posts, I allowed my fury to heat the inside of my mouth, Willing it to scorch whatever it struck, and spat in the eye of one unfortunate who leaned over me. He howled as if I had hit him with a knife rather than saliva, but another took his place just as quick and put his full weight on my wrist to keep me from gaining leverage. He could not keep me from shrieking. If they had performed this act before, it would be nothing new to them. If they had not, my only hope was to unnerve them enough that they would complete the task poorly, and I would be able to escape.

  One of the men was hollering above the others, encouraging them to burn me. Though I saw no signs of fire, his voice stoked the fury in my chest. Then came the voice of the preacher as he approached me, roaring the way only the righteous can.

  “You have committed great sins, and I am the punishment of God, the instrument of your purification!”

  I was not sure whether he was a vessel for the man who killed your father, or some form of disciple, or perhaps just a pawn whom he would soon dispatch as he had dispatched the men de la Cruz had told me of. It made no difference. The others obeyed him.

  They tipped the cross back into position, hoisting my feet into the air and sending the blood rushing to my head. I saw the world upside down, my hair falling away from my scalp and coiling in the snow, the boots of the gathered men tramping about the spectacle they had made of me. To loosen the knots and free my feet and wrists ought to have been a minor bit of Work, and I did exert the effort. But the effort required clarity of mind and purity of spirit, and I could not Will the rope to loosen.

  So I tried to summon the fire beneath my breast, use it to burn through the ropes. At the time, I thought I must have exhausted my resources. I must have attempted to do too much in too short a time. And I fought against the thought my magick was failing me for some other reason as much as I fought against the ropes. No matter what I spat or mumbled, the ropes remained bound fast.

  I looked at my arms, seeking some sign of what was impeding my Work. Rather than iron shackles or some other difficult mechanism, I saw faint black lines running along the veins in my wrists. When I looked forward again, one of the men had returned from the fire. He crouched down before me to wave the screaming red poker in my face.

  All that kept my heart beating was you, my dear. I knew what the black lines meant.

  I could not see the pyre but I felt the heat and smelled the smoke.

  “Not yet, not yet!” The preacher’s voice was thunder rolling over the landscape. “Our father is not yet with us! She cannot burn yet!”

  I looked at the empty crosses to my left and right, waiting for Dalton to appear. Waiting for them to string your gran up next to me.

  This was how I feared our story would end. Dalton would come to witness his handiwork. He would bring what was left of your gran with him, and he would rip you from my belly and pin you to your own cross, and we would all burn together on these rough beams tied into a shape men long ago convinced themselves was holy.

  What happened next I neither expected nor witnessed. It was the retort of the rifle that I heard, a bare moment before the head of the man who had been holding the branding iron sprayed blood and brain onto the snow in front of me.

  More shots rang out. The owner of the rifle was calm, his shots deliberate. I heard horses setting off as I fought to stay conscious, heard the preacher shouting in vain to keep his congregation from dispersing. The sound of a rifle stock firmly connecting with a skull ended his preaching.

  The smoke was thick and I could barely see. A figure paced toward me and I listened to his footfalls, saw his boots before I saw the rest of him. The figure knelt down next to me.

  “Hello, Lilian,” said Sheriff Henry Ness.

  17

  AS THE SHERIFF could no more put me on the back of his horse than he could bear to have me walk along of him in the frigid cold with his friend’s child growing in my belly, he loaded me into the back of my own cart. He lashed his horse to it as well, climbing up into the driver’s seat where the butcher and I had passed so many months together and leaving me in the back, beneath blankets and among my dwindling supplies.

  This was not how I had envisioned my journey ending, and I was not of a mind to allow it to end this way, but Ness shackled my feet as well as my wrists. I could no more entertain ideas of running than I could entertain ideas of rescue. I was too weak to cast a spell to break the mechanisms keeping the shackles closed, or cast a hex to set the sheriff’s brains to boiling. For the moment, I was his prisoner, and though I could no longer see the compass needle pointing the way, I knew in my gut Dalton was not far from us. I do not know how to explain my intuition, and I hope this is nothing you ever learn to recognize. He was near. I know this much.

  Ness drove the cart through what was left of the day and into the dusk, stopping only when continuing would have proven too dangerous. Once stopped, he went about setting up camp, building a fire and tending to the horses and dragging me out of the back of the cart to secure me by the warmth of the flames. Though I asked where his deputy was, Ness was not interested in talking until he had cooked supper and sat down by the fire himself.

  Were I alone, I might have refused food to prove a point. But I was unable to make use of Eva’s protective herbs while under arrest, and you needed nourishment more than anything else. So I ate and waited for Ness to speak.

  “Where’s Hawking?” he asked.

  “Dead,” I said.

  “How?”

  “The Mexican shot him.”

  “Where’s the Mexican?”

  “Dead. I beat him to death after he shot Hawk. Then I smothered the Irishman.”

  “Jesus, Lilian.” I thought that would be the end of the conversation, but he went on, “You’re a goddamned fool. You’re with child. Those men nearly killed you.”

  “What do you care?” I asked. “You were going to hang me.”

  Ness came over and undid the irons on my hands and feet.

  “What are you doing?”

  He removed a mass of paper from his pocket and unfolded it before laying it in front of me. I flinched when recognition hit me. He had found the page George Dalton had planted in Aunt Griselda’s mouth.

  “I believe you,” Ness said.


  “Where did you get that?” I asked.

  “I went to St. Louis to wait for you. Three men matching the description you gave in De Soto arrived just before you did. A Mexican who gave his name as Lorenzo Chavez de la Cruz, an Irishman mad with gangrene, and a blond man dressed in black. I lost track of them, but I figured if I followed you, you would lead me to them. I lost you in the Badlands and picked you up a day back. Now, you’ve got every reason in the world to hate me, and I won’t begrudge you that, but the way I see it, we need each other if we’re going to see the man who killed Matt hang for what he did.”

  As I looked at him, I saw the toll the last few months had taken on Ness. Behind his scraggly beard were sunken cheeks and a haunted gaze. Figuring I had nothing left to lose, I decided to trust him.

  “He ain’t a man, Hank. I don’t know what he is, but whatever he is ain’t of this world. The Mexican says he’s older than this country, and I found a compass in his hide-out that don’t point north.”

  Ness asked, “You expect me to believe George Dalton is some kind of . . . what, devil?”

  “Not the way you mean it. But he ain’t a man, neither. Whatever he is, he’s powerful. It’ll take more than a six-shooter to bring him in.”

  Though Ness was not exactly picking up what I was putting down, neither did he appear to think I had lost what was left of my mind.

  “I seen all manner of Indians called themselves shamans,” Ness said, “and down Mexico way I seen holy men who thought they came from gods. They all bled just the same as me.”

  There is more sense in arguing with a wall than there is in arguing with a man, but I wonder now that I know the ending of the story if I ought not have argued with him harder. If my hands will feel clean after all that they have done, if my eyes will ever shine blue again, or if I will walk the earth with black eyes and veins, the mark of devilry in me not from chance but from my own damned choices.