Trumpet of the Dead (Raven Trilogy Book 2)

by Kurt B. Dowdle

  “So what?”

  “You believe that’s what happened with that kid. That’s what made you think of Empedocles. You think that’s how the kid knows people’s secrets. You knew Abel Truax, and he knows about you—your habits and your past. And he was telling other people, wasn’t he? That’s why you’re nervous, why you changed the way you dress, even in private.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “That’s why you got rid of him.”

  “As usual, Wendell, you’re seeing through the glass darkly. Very, very darkly.”

  “By putting that kid in that hospital, you signed his death warrant.”

  “When people know your secrets, they kill. Not just mine or yours or your cousin’s or Nadine Bauer’s. All of ours. It works the same for all of us, Wendell. Why can’t you see that? If that child weren’t locked in a hospital, the mob would have ripped him to pieces.”

  “How did you meet Abel Truax? And did you know a freed slave named Onesimus Tucks?”

  “Wendell, stop!” The Judge’s voice rattled the window frames. “These are all figments of the boy’s imagination. You’re losing your footing. I urge you to see all of this for what it is, madness. Please.”

  KAMP TRUDGED the miles back from Bethlehem, trying and failing to concentrate on his feet hitting the road, the air filling and leaving his lungs. For all the distance he’d traveled in the past two days, for all the inquiries he’d made and assistance he’d attempted to render, he’d made no progress. And if his going to Angus’s cabin alerted Nyx’s pursuers to her whereabouts, he may have even sealed her fate in the process. He’d done nothing to help the kid and learned nothing about the man Abel Truax or the fugitive Onesimus Tucks. Nothing to show for any of it but the bruised heels he’d earned when he vaulted himself from the train and down the riverbank.

  At the very least, Kamp thought, when he turned onto the path that would bring his house into view, Shaw and his daughter would be waiting for him. He’d feel their love, eat a hot meal and have a good sleep. He closed his eyes and breathed a deep, relieved sigh, imagining it.

  When his house came into view, however, there was no candle in the window. He saw no one moving inside. The orange afternoon sun had started its slide below the horizon. Kamp’s heart began hammering in his chest. He ran to the front porch and into the house.

  “Shaw. Shaw.” No sound, save for the creaking of floorboards under his own steps. A toy bear lay at his feet, button eyes staring up at him.

  “Autumn!”

  Kamp went upstairs and found no one. He hustled back down to the kitchen and found a note written in Shaw’s hand—“At Hinsdales.”

  He went straight back out the front door, down the path and onto the road. In the failing light, Kamp scrambled on the trail beside the creek. He caught a bramble across the face and pushed past it, reaching the base of the stone stairs and taking them two at a time until he made it to the house. Through the patio window, he saw that the crystal chandelier above the dining room table was lit and that Shaw sat across the table from Margaret Hinsdale.

  Kamp knocked on the back door, and when it opened, Margaret Hinsdale appeared, her face drawn and tear-stained.

  “I’ll get a towel,” she said and gestured for him to come inside.

  “For what?”

  She called back over her shoulder, “You’re bleeding.”

  He went to Shaw and held her to him. She reached up and wiped the blood from his cheek.

  “What happened, love?”

  “Nothing.”

  She looked him up and down. “Whose clothes are those?”

  “Long story. Where is she?”

  Shaw leaned down and looked under the table. “Look who’s here.” Kamp looked under, too, and saw his daughter, playing with wooden blocks.

  The little girl turned her face to him. “Daddy!” She crawled out and held her arms out to him so that he could pick her up.

  Margaret Hinsdale returned, talking while she cleaned Kamp’s face. “Becket used to play with those blocks for hours. He was quite good at making buildings. And even better at knocking them down.” She paused to let the memory play out.

  Shaw stood up and said, “Thank you, Margaret, for your hospitality.”

  “You’re leaving?” Margaret Hinsdale’s eyes showed fear.

  “Yes, the girl needs to sleep.”

  They heard a clatter of hooves coming to a stop in front of the house.

  Margaret Hinsdale collected herself. “Yes, well, thank you ever so much for visiting. And, Kamp, you’ll be coming with us tomorrow, correct?”

  “Where?”

  “The hospital. To see Becket.”

  He looked at Shaw, who nodded slightly. He said, “Why, I don’t know that I can—”

  The front door of the house swung opened and was slammed shut. “Margaret!” Raymond Hinsdale’s voice boomed through the house.

  “We’re in here.”

  Raymond Hinsdale burst in, enraged, and sized up the scene. For an instant Kamp thought the man might attack. He handed his daughter to Shaw and felt the fire starting at the base of his skull.

  Hinsdale focused on him and said, “What are you doing here?” Kamp saw the fibers working in Hinsdale’s clenched jaw.

  Margaret Hinsdale said, “I invited them. They’re helping me.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve asked Kamp to come with us tomorrow to visit with Becket.”

  He ignored his wife and took a step closer to Kamp. “I said, what are you doing here? What do you want? Money?” He pulled a billfold from the vest pocket of his Chesterfield coat and removed two twenties.

  Margaret Hinsdale gasped and reached for the cash. “How dare you, Ray—”

  He caught her with the back of his left hand, knuckles to her chin, twenties fluttering to the hard wood floor. A rope of saliva and blood stretched down from the corner of Margaret Hinsdale’s mouth, as Autumn began to wail.

  Kamp launched himself at Raymond Hinsdale, colliding squarely with the man’s torso and knocking him backward over the dining room table. He pinned him down and put him in a tight chokehold.

  Kamp said, “Don’t ever do that again.”

  Hinsdale hissed, “Who are you to tell me anything? You’re a flea. You’re nothing. Get out of my house. Take your dirty family with you.”

  Kamp squeezed Hinsdale’s throat until the man’s eyes closed and his lips turned purple. Shaw grabbed his arm.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  Kamp kept applying the pressure. A trickle of drool issued from Hinsdale’s mouth and he let out a gurgle.

  Shaw thumped Kamp hard between the shoulder blades with her fist and shouted, “Stop!”

  Kamp relaxed his grip, and Hinsdale slumped forward, taking ragged gulps of air. Kamp put his arm around Shaw, who was holding Autumn. Together, they made their way to the door. As they left, he looked back over his shoulder and saw Margaret Hinsdale, kneeling at her husband’s side, talking softly and consoling him.

  17

  “SHE CAME TO OUR DOOR. She was very upset, crying. She said you had to go with her to the hospital, and she didn’t say why.”

  Kamp listened as he placed logs on top of the kindling he’d started in the fireplace. “Did she say anything about him?”

  “Who?”

  “Her husband.”

  Shaw propped her elbows on the kitchen table and put her hands under her chin. “No, not really.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “She kept saying it’s his fault.”

  “What is?” Kamp struck a match and set fire to the kindling.

  “She didn’t say.”

  “What about the kid? Did she say anything about him?”

  “Just that she’s worried.”

  “She should be.”

  Shaw paused and then said, “I’m worried. About you.”

  Kamp stood up from the fireplace and faced her. “Don’t,” he said.

  “You were getting better. You were feelin
g better. And sleeping.”

  Kamp rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “I have to figure this out. Once I do, things will settle down.”

  “No, they won’t!” Shaw slammed her fist down on the table. “They won’t, Kamp. These people just want to tangle you up in their problems and then shove you down under them.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s how they are! That’s how òpinkòk are. All of you.”

  “Who?”

  “Òpinkòk.”

  What’s that?

  “Possums. White people.”

  Kamp said, “So I shouldn’t help them?”

  “No.”

  “What about Nyx?”

  “No. There’s nothing you can do for her.”

  “Why did you walk Margaret Hinsdale back to her house if you didn’t want to help her?”

  “To get her out of our house. Kamp, you would have killed that man if I hadn’t stopped you.”

  “Yah, well, I couldn’t just let—”

  “You do that, and it’s the end. For the three of us. Do you see that?”

  Kamp hung his head. He took off his hat, unlaced his boots and set them by the fire. “What happened to the bear?”

  “She’s hibernating. Maybe you should, too.”

  ANGUS FELT CERTAIN he could nurse Nyx Bauer back to health. Emma Wyles had given him detailed instructions regarding the care of the girl’s wounds. She’d told him how to clean and dress Nyx’s feet and hand and how to identify and fight any new infection. Angus brought the same level of precision and diligence to nursing that he brought to gunsmithing.

  The only thing Wyles hadn’t adequately explained was the intensity of the pain and grief Nyx would have to endure as part of her convalescence. Nor could Angus have prepared for the toll the girl’s suffering would take on him.

  Nyx regained consciousness the day after the surgery, not long after Kamp left the cabin to catch his train back to Bethlehem. She woke up screaming and didn’t stop for the better part of an hour. She then demanded that Angus show her the extent of her injuries. When Angus removed the bandages and she saw the stumps, Nyx said, “They’re gone.”

  Angus cleaned and dressed the wounds again and then administered laudanum in the way Wyles had taught him. He injected the syringe in Nyx’s arm, and minutes later the girl’s eyes grew heavy.

  Nyx said, “Where did you put them?” And then she’d drifted back to sleep.

  The girl’s anguish touched off a storm of feeling within Angus, sparking emotions he hadn’t allowed himself to feel since long before he’d escaped to the cabin. Angus pushed them down as far as he could and channeled the sadness and fear into his work, namely the construction of shotgun shells. Along with the buckshot he poured into each shell, Angus added fragments of bone. In this way, his own grief was quelled, somewhat.

  Angus kept a number of guns loaded at all times, a rifle by the back door, scatter gun at the front. He packed a pistol in a boot holster. Angus thought it likely that within a day or two, a gang of men would ride up to the cabin and that he’d open fire without delay. After all, he wouldn’t allow them to take her, and would never be taken himself. But it didn’t happen. Days passed and then a week. He watched the tree boughs fill with snow, the creek freeze over and a grey fox pass through. But no visitors, except for Emma Wyles, who returned exactly one month after the surgery, on the exact day and at the time she said she would.

  A blizzard started that morning, and as he sipped his morning coffee, Angus was surprised to see the figure of Wyles, head down and tilting into the great gales and walking her horse to the front door of the cabin.

  Once inside, Wyles took off her coat and went straight to the room where Nyx lay in bed. Tears filled the girl’s eyes when she saw Wyles, who inspected her feet.

  “It all looks better. Much better.”

  “I can still feel them,” Nyx said. “All the time.”

  “Ghost pain. It’s normal. It will go away.” Wyles held Nyx’s left hand and rubbed the stump where her little finger had been with her thumb. “It’s much healthier now.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “Without the surgery, you would have died. In any case, you’re ready to start walking again.”

  A look passed between Nyx and Angus.

  “What is it?”

  Nyx swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up. She wobbled at first and then adjusted her balance, wincing with each step. She walked to the bedroom door and back to the bed.

  “Extraordinary, Nyx. Well done.”

  “So I can leave now?”

  “No.”

  “Why? I’m ready.” The color began to rise in her face.

  Wyles remained unperturbed. “A few reasons. First and most important, your body needs rest.”

  “But I can—”

  “And you’re a fugitive. They’re looking for you.”

  She shook her head. “I doubt it. Everyone’s probably forgotten about me by now, I bet.”

  “They haven’t, and they won’t. They’re scared of you, Nyx.”

  “Scared of me? They’re the ones who—”

  “Believe me, I know. The rumor, though, is that not only did you escape but that you’re coming back for revenge.”

  “On who?”

  “On all of the people you think were involved in hurting your parents.”

  Nyx paused and took in a breath. She looked out the window and said, “I already took care of that.”

  “Yes, well, the problem is that those who fear you—the police, the captains of industry, so-called—they think you’re out to get them. They know you can hurt them.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  Wyles leveled her gaze at the girl. “Is that your intention?”

  Nyx bit her lip and raised her eyebrows. “There must be some kind of deal you can make for me.”

  “Deal?”

  “Yah, just go back and tell them I’ll mind my own business. I won’t hurt anyone as long as they stay away from me.”

  “Nyx, that’s not how it—”

  “This, all of this,” she gestured to her feet and hand, “it all started because the police wouldn’t leave me alone. And if that shit heel Obie hadn’t come after me, I wouldn’t have—”

  “I understand.”

  “No, you don’t! Of course you don’t. It’s not happening to you.”

  E. Wyles pulled in a deep breath. “I’m afraid it is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve lost business. They’ve begun harassing me as well. Someone threw a brick through the front window of the pharmacy.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, at your hearing I spoke on your behalf. And I suppose now people assume that I’m aiding and abetting a fugitive, which of course, I am.”

  Nyx sat up straight and hardened her gaze. “Are you saying I should go back and let them arrest me?”

  “Absolutely not. I’m saying that you should stay here a while longer, remain invisible. Do not leave this cabin. Remember that as long as you’re here, Angus is in grave danger as well. If anyone knows you’re here, they’ll punish him, too.

  “Got it.”

  “And once you’re fully healed, you must never go back to Bethlehem.”

  “Ha. That shouldn’t be too hard.”

  NYX WATCHED WYLES leading her horse back into the storm and then disappearing in the tree line.

  As soon as she was gone, Nyx turned to Angus and said, “I need you to make me some special boots.”

  “Ach, I’m not no cobbler.”

  “So what? I need you to put something in there to fill the space where my toes would’ve have been.”

  “A prosthetic.”

  “Exactly. And I need you to do it right away. I have to get going.” While she spoke, Nyx kept looking out the window.

  “Ach, you heard what the druggist said. She said—”

  “She doesn’t get it.”

  Angus waited u
ntil the girl turned to face him. He said, “What Emma said, about the rumor, about you taking revenge on them that hurt your parents. That’s what you intend to do, say not?”

  Nyx smiled at the corner of her mouth.

  “Ach, Nyx, it don’t solve nothing if—”

  “They’ll get what they deserve. That’s all. I mean, Christ, Angus, look what they’ve done to you.”

  “I made my—”

  “Just help me with the boots, and I’m gone.”

  THE METAL DOOR SWUNG OPEN, and the kid saw a candle flame approaching. When the flame appeared directly over the box where the kid was trapped, he saw the face of the nurse who’d spoken with him before.

  She said, “It’s time for you to come out of there, Becket.”

  The nurse unlatched the spring-loaded lid, and it popped open. Then she helped the kid to a seated position.

  “Are you all right? You must have been frightened.”

  The kid bent one leg and then the other. He blinked a few times, paused, then said, “Hell, I warn’t born in the woods to be afeard of no owls. But what in blazes did y’all stick me in there for?”

  “Jesus said, ‘Spare the rod, spoil the child.’ ”

  The kid scratched his scalp with both hands and said, “First off, Jesus didn’t say that. Second, I reckon the rod woulda been a far sight friendlier than this here torture box. Lastly, Jesus said we oughta take care of rats an’ pigeons, too, but I don’t see y’all worryin’ about them, not at all.”

  “Well, let’s get you out of there.”

  The nurse put her arm around the kid and walked him back up to the ground floor of the hospital. The snowstorm had relented, and the noonday sun glinted off the polished wood floors. She walked him to a white porcelain-tiled bathroom. In the center of the room stood a steaming tub of water.

  The nurse said, “You can take off those filthy rags. Take as long as you’d like in the bath. And here are some clean clothes to wear when you’re finished. I’ll be just outside the door.”

  The kid said, “Shit, what’s the occasion?”