by Devon Monk
Cedar lost all sense of time to that rhythm, and soon the Pawnee curse showed him other things riding that storm. The Strange were thick in that wind. Ghostly fingers and teeth clawed at him, catching at his coat, his feet, his hat.
Angry. But not solid enough to draw blood.
He could kill the Strange, even in this ghostly form they took. It would make the world a much better place without them and eventually, if he killed them all, he might again regain a normal man’s life. The curse he carried forced him to hunt and kill the Strange. All the Strange in the world. He suspected he’d breathe out his last days before that was done, and still not be free of the curse.
But he was too exhausted to fight them today. He ignored these Strange that plucked and wailed and bit. Life was all that mattered now. And life, for all of them, meant moving west.
Wil, beside him, growled. Cedar looked down, surprised to see his brother out of the wagon.
Wil’s ears were flattened against his wide, gray-and-black skull, his copper eyes the only flecks of color in the snow. Wil saw the Strange too, likely smelled the moldy green of them as Cedar smelled them, likely saw the flash of eyes and heard the trebled laughter warbling through the air.
The Strange couldn’t do serious harm unless they took on a shape, a form, a body. As Cedar had learned firsthand, dead people were the clothing preferred by the Strange, though there were times they could inhabit other bits and matics.
He wasn’t going to give them any corpses to waltz about.
“Don’t,” Cedar said to Wil. “There is no time to chase them. They’ll lead you to your death.”
Wil growled but stayed close, snapping at the swarm of Strange and holding them off as daylight drained away and the shadows deepened.
“Mr. Hunt,” Miss Dupuis called out. “Please, Mr. Hunt. You must stop!”
The heat in her tone finally soaked through the cold that gripped his thoughts. Cedar stopped. Wil’s teeth were dug in the cuff of his coat, and he was pulling backward, whining.
For good reason. They had reached the bank of the river. If Cedar had walked even three steps more, he’d have slid down the steep embankment and landed in the water.
The Madders behind him were talking—no, they were arguing, loudly—about ice and rivers and speed and something else Cedar couldn’t hear except for the smattering of curses and the phrase “that devil,” followed by words that must have been their mother language of Welsh.
“We’ve found the river,” Miss Dupuis said.
Cedar lifted his free hand and rubbed his stinging eyes. His vision was blurred by the snow, his hand lifeless in the heavy gloves.
The river was not flowing. It was a frozen ribbon that wound off to the northwest, black and dusty as an old chalkboard.
“Good,” he croaked, his mouth and throat on fire. He needed water, he needed rest; but there was no time for either with night fast approaching. “Town won’t be far.”
“We’re going to step back, Mr. Hunt,” Mae Lindson said, “so the Madders can come through.”
Cedar jerked at her voice. When had she climbed out of the wagon?
“Cedar,” Mae said again, her tone stern, as if trying to pitch her voice over a fever snuffing out his senses. He supposed she wasn’t much wrong to do so.
Along with the cold confusing his head, his ears were filled with the eerie voices of the Strange, calling him. Pleading for him to follow.
“Just take a few steps to the side,” Mae said. “The Madders are bringing the wagon down now.” She pulled on him and he followed her guidance, stopping with her near a leafless tree while Wil paced a tight circle around both of them.
“You’ve been walking for hours,” Mae said. “And you are nearly frozen.” Her hand was firmly in his, holding tight to him, even through her thick mittens and his gloves.
The magic she had placed on his skin seemed to warm again at her nearness. Or it could just be his natural response to her. His want for her.
“You need food, you need water, and you need sleep,” she went on, as if he were not really listening.
“We’re all tired, Mae,” he said, gazing down at her.
She looked up at the sound of his voice, a smile playing across her pale lips.
Her yellow hair was tucked up beneath a wide-brimmed blue wool hat. She wore a thick red scarf buttoned up under her leather coat, and red mittens she had knit to match the scarf. Her face was heart-shaped, her cheeks rosy and softly arced.
Life had left the echo of hardship across her features, a tightening at the corners of her eyes, a furrowed line across her forehead when she frowned, but here, bundled against the cold, with the wind plucking pink from her cheeks, and her wide brown eyes for him alone, she was a beauty who caught at his heart like no other.
“Yes, we are all tired,” she said, “but only one of us just tried to walk off a cliff.”
He gave her back the smile and felt his lip crack and flash hot with blood.
“Here, now.” She reached into her pocket and produced a handkerchief. She dabbed it to his lip, though the blood there had already frozen.
“You need water, Mr. Hunt, rest, and food,” she repeated. “Maybe we could build a fire—”
Her words were smothered by the earsplitting racket of limbs cracking and brush breaking.
Alun and Cadoc Madder stood at either side of the mules that were still hitched to the wagon. They were leading the two reluctant animals down toward a more gentle incline than the one Cedar had been about to step off of.
Seemed the Madder brothers couldn’t go a day without doing something to “improve” the wagon. Cedar secretly, and not so secretly, suspected it was just the deviser madness in them needing something to meddle with.
This time they had pulled two lengths of canvas out of the wagon, tied them to long wooden poles, and lashed them down the wagon sides. Ropes ran slack from various points on the canvas poles, and then were gathered up into the hands of Bryn Madder, the middle brother, who sat in the driver’s seat instead of his eldest brother, Alun.
Cedar noted that Bryn had donned a pair of dark goggles and a woolly hat that flapped down over his ears and tied beneath his beard. He looked ridiculous and was grinning like a fool.
“They’re going into the river?” Cedar asked.
“Onto, if what they say holds true,” Mae said. “They said we’ll make better time on the ice.”
Cedar ground back a frustrated growl. “They can’t be sure the ice is thick enough. They can’t be sure they aren’t all going to fall in.”
“I asked about that,” Mae said. “They have a device that can tell them if the ice is solid. Brother Cadoc was already down on the river testing it. He says the ice is at least a hand deep. It will hold.”
“I do not share their confidence, and don’t like them risking our supplies.” Cedar started off toward the wagon, and caught himself just before his knees gave out.
He was tired. More than that, he was exhausted. Mae was right. He couldn’t go on much longer.
It wasn’t just the walking. It wasn’t just the cold. The moon was coming up soon, and it would be full. But if the beast took him over in this state, and ran through the night chasing and killing Strange, Cedar would wake in the morning, naked, more than exhausted, and lost in the blizzard.
Wil, standing in front of Cedar, glanced back at him. The intelligence and concern in his brother’s eyes were clear.
“Fine,” Cedar said. “I’m fine. I’ll be better if the Madders don’t fall through that damn ice with everything we have.”
Cedar took another step. Satisfied he wouldn’t fall, he kept moving.
Mae walked beside him. He didn’t say anything, didn’t pull away when she slipped her hand into his. They walked, together, hand in hand, through the blizzard toward the wagon.
The wagon and mules, urged forward by Cadoc and Alun Madder, tipped onto the slope and made a rather quick journey down the bank.
Mae gasped, but the
whole lot of them—man, beast, and contraption—came to a full and surprisingly easy stop several feet away from the bank of the river itself.
Miss Dupuis, who stood beside her horse at the top of the bank, just shook her head at Bryn Madder’s whoop of excitement. “They enjoy this,” she said. “I believe they truly enjoy this.”
“Come on down!” Bryn Madder yelled. “The water’s fit as a fiddle!”
Miss Dupuis hesitated. “Do you trust their judgment?” she asked Cedar.
“Doesn’t matter if I trust them,” Cedar said, already making his way down the hill, and helping Mae to make hers. “Right now, we have to rely on them. In my experience, they’ve never been the sort of men overly interested in reaching their graves early.”
After another, probably sensible, moment or two of doubt, Miss Dupuis left the horse, who was too tired to wander off, and started down the slope too. Cedar saw to it Mae had her footing on the ice. She made her way over to the wagon, where Alun Madder was waiting, his hand extended for her.
Cedar turned and met Miss Dupuis halfway up the hill and helped her down.
A Strange reached out of the snow and slapped at her. It tugged a lock of her dark hair out from under her hat, pulling enough to hurt.
“Ouch,” she said.
Cedar took a swat at the thing and it disappeared, as insubstantial as air.
“They are thick here, aren’t they?” She lifted her skirts to step over a twisted root.
“The Strange?” Even though he and Miss Dupuis had been traveling together for some time now, and had even fought the Strange together, he often forgot that she too could see the creatures.
She couldn’t kill them, although some of the weapons the Madders and other devisers had made could hold, slow, and harm the Strange. As far as Cedar knew, only he and his brother Wil, both tied to the Pawnee curse, could kill the Strange.
Two men against an entire country full of ghouls and bogeys. Two men cursed to kill them all.
It was madness. A task they could never fulfill. The Strange were growing in this country, more and more each day.
“I can see them,” she said. “Do you see them now, Mr. Hunt? You and Wil?”
“Yes,” Cedar said. “The storm is lousy with them. I’ve never seen so many in such a small area.”
“Poor weather doesn’t usually bring them out,” she said. “Most Strange prefer rain and lightning storms, if they’re to be in bad weather. Not blizzards.”
“Oh?” Cedar asked, extending his hand to help steady her.
“We’ve studied them, Mr. Hunt. We of the Guard. We know some few things about their ways.”
“Was there a chance you might want to fill me in on your knowledge of the Strange? Knowledge of the Guard for that matter. The Madders talk in riddles whenever I ask questions.”
“I had hoped there would be time to speak of such matters on this trip, but…” She shrugged. “Everything has been difficult.”
“Perhaps when we reach Des Moines,” he said, “you and I could spend more time together.”
Miss Dupuis glanced up at him through her thick snow-heavy lashes. The expression on her face was part surprise and something more. Something like pleasure. “I would like that very much, Mr. Hunt. To spend time with you.”
Then she took the last few steps with him to the edge of the ice.
Mae, who was helping the Madders lead the mules onto a platform they’d lowered from the back of wagon, glanced over at him. Miss Dupuis released his hand like she’d been caught cheating at parlor games. She tipped her chin up just a fraction and waited for Mae’s reaction.
Mae frowned, then went back to work.
“Bring the horse, will you, Mr. Hunt?” Alun called from the rear of the wagon. “We’ve got room for him too. And a long way to go.”
“Shouldn’t be long to reach Des Moines,” Cedar said.
“We’ll go where the winds take us,” Alun said. “Find a smaller town to wait out the storm. Trust me, it will be for the better.”
He’d just told Miss Dupuis trust didn’t matter. But there was something about the three Madders’ avoidance of Des Moines that wasn’t adding up. Still, they’d saved his life more than once, even though they’d made sure he was owing to them for their favor.
“Find us shelter and you’ll have no argument out of me,” Cedar said. Then he turned and, with Wil beside him, climbed back up the bank to fetch the horse.
Rose Small tucked her head against the spit of rain brushing down the roofs of Hays City, and avoided a steam cart full of barley rattling down the street. A little bad weather couldn’t keep the people of this Kansas town from their work, chores, and errands.
Nor would a little bad weather keep her from running down that low-life, cheating son of a grease licker Captain Lee Hink.
It was eight in the morning, and the corner baker had already sold out of the day’s bread. A storm was on the horizon and creeping close with the promise of rain. Folk were hurrying with their necessities, business, and trade, all that hustle giving the town the feel of a kicked beehive.
The sweet faraway clang from off north a ways, where the blacksmith was bending horseshoes and rims for the steam carts, called her heart like a church bell ringing for service. The noises of the city just proved the whole town was open for business.
And so was Sweet Annie’s Saloon.
Three nights this week. Three nights Hink had gone off to “see to a few matters” or “pick up some parts for the Swift” or “check on the crew in town.”
She had stayed behind at the farm owned by a coven of witches who had taken them all in when they’d nearly crashed the Swift trying to bring Mae Lindson back to the sisters. The coven had been happy to see Mae, Cedar Hunt, Wil, the Madder brothers, and Miss Dupuis leave the property in search of the Holder, but she, Captain Hink, and his crew had stayed behind to repair the Swift.
Hink had grown more and more restless and made up lies and excuses to go to town, while she nodded and smiled and believed him, just like the backwoods bumpkin he knew she was.
He’d even had the nerve to bring her back a wallpaper flower, cleverly folded and perfumed like a red velvet rose. He’d said it had come in on the rail all the way from France. He said he’d bought it up when he saw it because it reminded him of her.
She’d loved it. It had been the first time in her life a man had bought a pretty thing just for her. She’d been wearing it on her bonnet and scarves for weeks.
She’d even been so delighted by his gift that she had kissed him for it.
Kissed him. More than once.
And she’d made him something in return: a little compass on a chain that would always point toward a matching little compass she wore on a chain. It had taken some doing to make the two devices point only and ever toward each other, but she’d traded work at the watchmaker in town for access to his instruments after hours.
The compasses were the finest things she’d ever devised. And they’d cost her almost every cent she’d earned in the last two months.
But now she knew the truth.
He could try to wrap his lies up in pretty paper roses all he wanted, but she wasn’t falling for them again. Sweet Annie’s was more than a saloon; it was also a bordello.
Two nights ago, he’d gone into town for some boiler tubing for the Swift’s new guns, and hadn’t come home.
One of the younger sisters in the coven mentioned she’d seen him step into Sweet Annie’s while she was at the post office picking up the coven’s letters. Said he’d been clutching a half-empty whiskey bottle and was half out of his shirt, his arm around some plump raven-haired girl of the line.
It wasn’t like they’d taken vows. It wasn’t like he’d ever said she was his only one, or that he’d told her she was special. Still, she thought they had a beginning that was headed somewhere. She thought that somewhere might be love.
He’d told her she was beautiful.
He’d told her he didn’t want to
live without her.
He’d given her a rose.
Which she’d been sure to stuff in the pocket of her overalls this morning so she could throw it in his cheating face.
Rose paused and stomped the snow and mud off her work boots, tipped back the flat cap she kept her hair tucked up into, then shoved open the painted red door to Sweet Annie’s.
She stepped in and got a face full of stink—alcohol, lavender, kerosene, wood fire, leather, and linseed overpowered by tobacco, sweat, and perfume. She clenched her teeth against the smell, straining it through her teeth as she inhaled.
This was what betrayal smelled like.
A man at the piano against one wall played out the strains of “Long, Long Ago,” sweet and sad.
The decor was done up nicer than she’d expected: wood ceiling polished to a dark shine, walls covered in paper with cream and gold designs. Tables set out to one side were in good repair, crowded with fellows playing cards and dice and women looking on.
The bar itself was honey-colored oak, and so high-shined you could see the reflection of the men who stood around it, boots propped on the brass foot rail with matching spittoons at their heels. Someone had gone and hung up a red, white, and blue star banner in loops across the back of the bar, and the gaslight chandeliers gave off a cheery halo of light, while the Franklin stove at the far end of the room on the wall between two closed doors kept the whole place warm.
There were three sorts of people in the room: workingmen who had already dealt with livestock for the day, there to drink away the weather until they could tend fields or see to their evening work; travelers with shiny shoes cooling their heels, stuck until they could strike out west for more temperate lands; and the employees of the place—a bartender and six saloon girls. Out of sight in the back rooms would be the other ladies who worked there, the sort who took a man’s money in exchange for a certain kind of attention.
The saloon girls were dressed in the prettiest finery Rose had ever seen.
