by J. P. Sloan
I turn to find Katherina in the broken doorway behind me, shawl folded over her arms.
“Oil,” I whisper as I face Katherina. “A good forest fire will drive them out of the hills.”
“Fire,” she answers, “will drive the orphans out, as well.”
“We need them, anyhow.”
She lifts a brow. “When you say ‘we’ you mean yourself and Richterman?”
“Won’t he be troubled that you’re in his town? Don’t you two have an arrangement?”
She unfolds her arms and shuffles the shawl off her shoulders, which falls behind her. She’s wearing something new, something I haven’t seen before. It’s thick, probably leather, and dyed black. It almost looks like some kind of armor you’d see on old-timey knights.
“I have come to fight, Odell. And if you require my orphans to play foot soldiers, then you should know that I am the one they listen to. Not Richterman.”
I nod. “If that’s all right, then?”
“They are already drawn into this conflict. They are suffering far more than the living.”
“Good, because foot soldiers is what we need right now. I got a plan. God help me, I got a plan.”
She cocks her head with a sly grin. “You seem surprised.”
“Figured I’d just piss on them from the rooftops, but that book of yours gave me some notions.”
“That is good to hear.”
“Richterman says he can kill Denton.”
She stands stiff, blinking slowly. “What?”
“Don’t know how, or if he ain’t full of shit in the first place, but he says he can get rid of Denton forever.”
Katherina shakes her head and waves her hand dismissive like. “He is a liar.”
“Seems pretty convinced on the fact, though I don’t necessarily disagree with your first point.”
“They are the same, he and Denton.”
“He offered me a post. A position. Whatever. His second in command.”
She screws her mouth into a crooked grin. “Will that not alarm Scarlow?”
“Probably.” In fact, it definitely will. I should warn him. But not until after he finishes his mechanism.
Katherina takes a step forward and places a finger under my chin, lifting my head just a little. “Denton is stronger than Lars. Lars does not realize this, but it remains true. It is Denton who will be rid of Lars.”
The aroma of jasmine is so overpowering I cough on it and breathe out a whiff of black powder with it.
“How can you be sure? He wants me to stay.”
“Why does that matter?”
“I think we both know why it matters, Katherina.”
She looks away, bracing her shoulders. “It is easy to become… confused.”
“I know he’s stronger,” I interrupt. “He’s a good man. And for all Richterman’s devilry and chessboard horseshit, Denton’s the one who will stay. Good men, they get killed sometimes. But they’re never destroyed. They’re remembered by those they leave behind. And that ain’t nothing.”
“Denton will not die.”
“Dead is a fluid thing with a sumbitch like Richterman. He’s convinced he’s Strigoi. Shit, he might be, and the fact his brain ain’t caught up to the truth is stopping him from burning in daylight.”
“Stop.”
“No, I’m going to say this.” I pause for a quick breath before my common sense drives my jaws shut. “Denton will survive. He has someone to fight for. And he’s broken in the head, and don’t realize how he’s breaking her heart, but he is pure of purpose and full of the most righteous kind of desire. The kind the Bible talks about. The kind that parts oceans and raises the dead, and well, it ain’t sin. So Richterman steps in the way of that, he’s earning the vengeance of Heaven. No good man, or sane man, or even a bastardly piece of work with an appetite for cowardice and the worst luck God could’ve given a boiled turnip can keep Denton away from her. Nor should. Nor would.” Tears stream down my cheeks. I don’t care. “So, this is Richterman playing a card he don’t got. I’m drawing him into this suicide of a war, but I’ll be the one that takes the wrath. I’ll see this through until I’m dead. That’s a promise. And when it’s over, I’ll take Richterman with me. And Denton’s war can end, too.”
Katherina turns to me, her face shining like an angel’s torment, and wipes away a single tear of dark, hot blood from her cheek.
She draws breath to say something.
But a shadow slices from behind her, and a loud crack fills our ears. Shrapnel sprays my face, and I blink away splinters.
Katherina stands erect, unbowed by whatever has just smashed against her head. She raises a hand slowly to inspect the back of her head before her skins adopts a steel-gray cast and her mouth fills with needles. She turns slowly as I raise my lantern.
The light spills across her shoulder onto Toomey’s face, ashen as he drops the wrecked remains of my ax handle. He blubbers and scrambles for the door. His feet swipe against the floorboards in such a way that his decrepit frame folds over his feeble knees.
I step forward as Katherina raises her clawed hand.
“Wait.”
She holds, to her credit.
Toomey shields his face with a wrinkled hand, mumbling gibberish in way of begging for his life.
“Toomey?” I call out. “Stand up.”
He lowers his hands after a few breaths and blinks into my lantern light.
“Stand up!” I shout.
He regains his composure, as much from fear as my assertive Army voice.
Katherina sweeps behind me, placing a hand on my shoulder as she does. I linger on the sensation, then chastise myself for my complete hypocrisy.
Toomey babbles, “Whuh… I… you…”
“Sorry about this,” I extol with a tip of my hat. “I have need of certain materials, and well… this is a touch indelicate, but I need it now and I don’t rightly give a shit whether I can afford to pay you.”
“I thought…” he wheezes.
“I know. Someone broke in. Well, in truth, we did, and I do apologize.” I nod behind me to the racks of lantern oil. “Need your oil, Toomey. Need it good and prompt.”
He nods slowly, but his eyes remain focused behind me. He’s seen the face of a monster. I’m not rightly sure if this is new to him.
“Toomey?”
His blubbering falls silent.
“Stand the fuck up.”
He pulls hisself to his feet with help from a nearby shelf, though he keeps his spine folded.
“Toomey, I need you to wrangle up the townsfolk. We need them all. Men, women, and children. Front of the assay office, right after sunrise. It’s important.”
He nods slow, but I’m not sure he’s absorbed the point.
“Death is about to rain down onto this valley. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Another slow nod.
“Get the people onto the street at daybreak. Absolutely everyone.”
I feel Katherina leaning partially into me. My eyes lose focus for a second as she whispers something. Maybe her Strigoi magic? Not sure. It don’t feel normal.
Toomey eases his breathing and finally straightens up.
“Yes, sir,” he crackles. “All of the people. Front of the office.”
“Thank you,” I reply as he scurries out through the front of his store.
I turn to Katherina, whose face is back to human proportions.
“Thanks for… well, whatever you just did.”
She frowns for a brief moment. “I do not enjoy doing it.”
“Messing with thoughts?”
“It has never been my strength,” she adds, with perhaps the tiniest catch in her voice. I’d almost say a sob, but I’m feeling a touch emotional myself. No need to put that on her.
“I have to check the others,” I add after a long silence.
She nods.
And I leave.
My feet find their way up the lane and down to the aspen copse, wher
e Cheevey has conscripted several hands to assist his tree-butchery. They’ve constructed a ring of bonfires with the shorter twigs and leaves, so as to light their work.
Cheevey gives me a tired but enthusiastic wave as I circle the bonfires. They’ve done better than I could have imagined. A long stack of fist-sized trunks rests in triangular piles, each with a nice point rendered by a butter-faced fellow with a long blade. He hacks away at tree tips and shoves them into the waiting arms of two women, who take care to sort them by size.
I haven’t done this. This is them… the people. It’s as if I’m not even part of the plan at this point. I linger just outside the bonfires, simply watching. They give me looks, now and then. Some hopeful, some dreadful. I don’t even feel present. It’s as if another part of me is elsewhere, connecting joints and making this machine move.
At length, I leave them to their work without further distraction, full of the sense that we might be able to arm each and every citizen of Gold Vein with a Wendigo-killing length of aspen. I stroll back past the pressroom. Scarlow has the press mechanism fully disassembled and mostly laid out in front of the building. He gives me a weary nod as I approach.
“You slept?” he asks.
“Yep. You?”
He snickers and wipes his hands of grease.
“Hell of a mess,” I mutter, nodding at the gears and lengths of iron splayed out on the street.
“I got it sorted. I think.”
“Cheevey’s done good. Got plenty of aspenwood.”
He sniffles, wiping his face with a grimy finger that does more to mar his face than clear it. “That’s good. If anyone survives this―”
“That kind of talk will get people in a panic.”
“I reckon that’s true, but we’re still lookin’ at, what? Fifty? Sixty of these Wendigo?”
“People fight better when they think they got a chance to survive it.”
Scarlow scowls. “Us Southern folk know that better than most.”
I let that statement sit without rejoinder.
Scarlow pulls hisself to his feet and grabs a heaping armful of rope. “Gotta get this into the cart.”
“What cart?”
“Your cart.”
“Why?”
“You think I’m just gonna go out of my way to make a fine piece of monster-killin’ equipment in the middle of a shop for these monsters to take? Gotta keep it mobile. Damn it, you should know this.”
I turn and find my cart ready at the front of the shop. My mind is so thoroughly immersed in my peculiar desires and grievances between Richterman and Katherina and Folger, I simply can’t see the damned cart in front of the store.
“Right. Makes sense. You’ll need a driver.”
“I’m drivin’ the confounded thing.” he snorts.
“Then who’s firing?”
“Figured you’d be keen on the job.”
“Sounds fine, but I have to keep my eyes on Richterman.”
Scarlow’s eyes narrow, and he turns away. “Fine. I’ll get Cheevey on the trigger.”
“Nothing personal.”
“It ain’t like that.”
I rub my face. “Scarlow, I’m moving in what amounts to twelve directions at the same time, so if you have a grievance to air out―”
“Just tired, is all.”
I nod. “Fair enough.”
An immensity of words remains unsaid between the two of us. I have the means to warn him how the prevailing winds of Richterman’s favor have shifted as of late, but that’ll leave me with a cart full of broken press and no means to throw aspen through these monsters’ ribs. So I say nothing.
I have, in my opinion, become as much a bastard as Richterman has ever been.
The light in the east is hedging from black to the darkest blue, and I feel the pressure of the coming day upon my shoulders. I leave Scarlow with his work and move back to the smithy. I climb the ladder to the loft once again, as exhausted as I’ve felt since Richterman roused me from my sleep.
The cot lies in wait of me, and I drop my weight into its weighting arms.
And sleep finds me.
f all the voices I least expect to stir me from my cat’s nap, it’s that of Denton Folger.
“Lin? You up there?”
I sit up in the bed, gripping for my hat like a child snatches his blanket. I slip it over my head and swing my heels onto the floor by the time Folger’s head appears from the ladder to the loft.
He grins at me, spectacles back on his face, his stringy hair curtaining his face much the same way I first saw him from horseback.
“Denton?”
The man beams at me with a child’s innocence. “Didn’t see you at the farewell.”
“What farewell, again?” I mumble as I hoist myself from that too-comfortable bed.
Folger chuckles earnestly. “I figure you’ve earned your rest, my friend.”
He strides toward me with an outstretched hand. I shake it dubiously. The face, I’ve come lately to recognize, is Richterman’s. But the eyes are somehow distinct. Maybe it’s the glasses. Perhaps that’s how the townsfolk keep the two straight.
“Can’t say I feel terrible rested.”
He laughs and sits on the bed. “It was glorious, seeing him carted away in shackles. The man, the marshal? He was like an angel sent from the Almighty, were I to believe in such drivel.”
“Drivel?”
“I apologize. I’ve found such a bond with you I often forget you’re a believer. I don’t mean offense.”
I shrug. “I’ve heard worse.”
“That’s what I adore about you, Odell. You’re above all of this artifice. Somehow, you manage to maintain such a stark realism… Oh, never mind. It’s over now.” He sighs hard. “It is over, isn’t it?”
I hold my position.
He adds, “I suspect your time in this town has drawn to a close?”
Folger is dutifully avoiding eye contact, which is a blessing in and of itself, as I have no clue how to react to this. I know what’s happening. Richterman has sent him up into this loft to sell me on his offer. He’s pulled his trigger with regards to Folger. He’s killed himself in Folger’s eyes. Richterman is carted off in some nameless marshal’s care, and Folger is set to fulfill his unwritten future with his wife.
Which is the perfect place for Richterman to leave him. Should there be any manner of afterlife for a shadow of a mind, or as such as Folger is to Richterman, this would be his Heavenly Reward.
It’s obscene. Utterly obscene.
And yet, so tempting.
“I suppose,” is the best I can manage.
“I hate to see you leave. I’m not prone to casual affectations, Lin. But I’ve come to view you as much a brother as a friend. Perhaps more so, as we’ve found as many disagreements as junctures as of late.”
“One day, you’re going to speak some kind of English I understand, Denton.”
His chuckle is thin. “Would be so, but I doubt I’ll see you again.”
I stand stiff, looking down at his meager frame. How can this frame consume so much space when it’s possessed by Richterman?
“I’m set to ride out to Cheyenne,” I whisper.
“When?”
“Soon.”
He looks up at me with tear-welled eyes. “Well, you do me a favor then?” He grips my left arm. “You stop by the homestead before you go. I owe you one more dinner. Do we have an accord?”
I stare into his sharp-featured, razor-earnest face and nod. “We have.”
He nods before gripping me into a tight hug. I squirm for a moment before I relax and surrender to the man’s need for connection. And that is what I fear the most. This man, this creature embracing my haggard frame, will melt away soon. This is a dead man holding me.
Folger withdraws and gives me a firm nod before descending. I half expect Richterman to nose his way back up the ladder to drive it home… but he abstains.
He don’t need to drive anything home. I got the m
essage. He has Folger at his mercy.
I bustle down the ladder and reach the street… No sign of Folger. Instead, I spot a lone figure standing on the rooftop of the assay office. The figure vanishes as the first rays of sunlight crest over the eastern ridge. Only Richterman’s speed matches his sense of drama.
Scarlow’s contraption is taking shape in the back of the cart in front of the pressroom. At this point, nothing about the pressroom remains as Denton left it. Cheevey and Scarlow are busy in the back of the cart, ratcheting back a loose-spooled loop of rope until it clinks into place against a keeper reel of steel. Cheevey lifts one of three larger aspen trunks sharpened to a point and leaning against the cart. Scarlow loads it into a steel trough slung together with twine, then pauses. Turning slowly he gives me a nod.
“I call her Ingrid.”
“She’s a beaut.”
“She’s uglier’n shit,” Scarlow grumbles with a slap on top of the bow straps. “But will it throw wood, is the question?”
“Tried it yet?”
“Waitin’ on you.”
I climb up the cart and run my hands along the back. “All right, what do I do?”
Scarlow runs a finger along the top of the rough-hewn aspen. “You line her up about how you’d expect her to fly, then give it a kick.” He taps a flat plate, one of Denton’s press plates, with his toe. The plate cocks an angle against the floorboards of the cart, shining in the morning sunlight.
I grip two handles near the rear and line the bolt up to the burned-out church up the street. I give the plate a tap, but it don’t budge any.
“Gotta put some heat on her,” Scarlow offers.
I ram my heel into the plate. The keeper reel snaps clear with a loud clap of metal, and the double-twine of sisal slashes a broad, flat plate against the ass end of the aspen trunk. The stake flies higher than I’d figured, sailing just over the charcoaled beams of the old church, crashing into brush behind.
Steadying myself against the side of the cart, I declare, “I figure that’ll work, if we can get a good aim on it.”
Scarlow sighs and rubs his neck. “Aim’s gonna be the real bitch of it all. Best chances are closer up, but then the point is havin’ some distance.”
I hold up a hand, looking him in his sunken, sleep-starved eyes. “It’ll put down some of the bigger beasts. Those things have enough time in the wild, from what old Redhawk said, they’ll be giants.”
