“Come, lad,” and another man, and he sounded like I remembered Jean Luc from The Dolly Belle. “Let me help you.”
“I don’t need no…” But the words stuck in my mouth like a stubborn frog leg, one that wouldn’t be swallowed because the frog still wanted to jump out, even after Mama fried it up in a pan. I lowered my eyebrows so the world wouldn’t look so strange – like I’d ducked under muddy creek water. And then I slid headfirst down a long and icy hill.
“TAKE MORE water,” said a low voice, a woman’s voice that felt so good in my ears I shivered. I was warm, tucked beneath blankets. I could feel all my fingers and toes. A fire crackled, throwing red, leaping light.
“Lorie?” I whispered. “Is that you?”
“Hush,” she soothed, and the outline of a woman leaned close and helped me to sit upright. I smelled her and knew right away she weren’t Lorie, remembering that Lorie was far away. I put my hands around the tin cup the woman offered and brought it to my lips, taking water.
“Where is Cora?”
“She rests,” the woman said.
My eyes could see better now, into the edges of a room with no edges. The room wasn’t inside of a house but instead a round In’jun structure, animal-hide walls pitched like a tall canvas tent, slanting up to a point at the top, where smoke curled and escaped. A fire burned low in the center, near to embers. I saw Cora tucked beneath a blanket, curled into a ball like she always slept, both hands under her cheek. The fire showed me her face and I could take a full breath again.
“Thank you kindly, ma’am,” I whispered, keeping my voice low because there was a-plenty of sleeping bodies around the fire. I needed to explain about Boyd, about going back for him, but it was the dead of night. Fear and worry gnawed inside me like mice in the grain bin.
“Rest,” she murmured, taking the cup.
I lay down, afraid to disobey, curling into the blessed warmth of the blanket. But I could not return to sleep. My thoughts held fast to my brother, back there on the prairie. He needed me and I was doing nothing in this moment but worrying. I was lying here and he was hurting.
What if he passed? What if he’s gone?!
I pressed my knuckles hard against my forehead, driving out such bad thoughts. But they stayed, hanging on like molasses in a cold jar. I did not sleep again before gray light began trickling through the smoke hole. Lying on my side and facing her, I saw Cora wake. She sat upright with a jerk, eyes searching for me; I reached a hand and she crawled to my side, dragging her blanket along the ground. I tucked her close and smoothed a hand over her head, and she burrowed into my blanket, tangling up our arms. Her movements woke others, a bearded man wearing a union suit and three children who looked more In’jun than white, two girls and a boy.
The man was the one I’d thought sounded like Jean Luc. He sat and scratched his chest, swiping at his eyes with both fists. His hair was in disarray but he tugged a knitted cap with a long tassel over his head before scooting closer to the fire and stirring it, shifting the iron grate and the coffee pot into better position. The woman who gave me water in the night hours was not in sight. The three children spoke to the man in a language I couldn’t understand and he answered back in the same, grinning and gesturing at Cora and me. I sat up as all three scrambled our way on hands and knees, giggling and speaking over top of one another. I did not understand their fast-moving words but I understood their curiosity; I wasn’t a-feared of them but I lifted a forearm and blocked my head when one of the girls reached to pet my hair.
The man laughed and spoke in English this time. “Albie! Introduce yourself, girl.”
Cora ducked beneath the blanket as the In’jun children knelt beside us, three in a row, mouths smiling, eyes snapping with excitement. Their hair was long and black, arranged in shiny braids, even the boy’s. They wore leather garments and their hands fluttered around like slender brown birds, wanting to poke and prod. Even so, I could tell they wanted to be friends, to know us. The oldest girl was of an age with me, the boy in the middle, the littlest sister no bigger than Natty, just a sprite. With a strange lilt to the words, the oldest girl said, “My name is Albertine Darvell.” She gestured to the others. “This is Emeline and Pierpont. What name is yours?”
“I am Malcolm Alastair Carter,” I said with my best manners and offered a hand, which Albertine accepted and shook. Her grip was strong as a boy’s and she grinned so big I saw all her teeth. She giggled and pointed at the blankets and so I explained, “This here is Cora Lawson. She’s right shy,” but I drew aside the top edge so Cora could see they meant no harm. She didn’t want them to see her eyes, I knew without her speaking of it. These three might laugh, or poke fun.
Cora blinked as the light fell across her face, slow, like a fawn who didn’t know where it was, or if it was safe; her green eye shone like clear creek water, her dark eye with bits of gold, like treasure beneath the creek water. Her hair was tangled over with curls so messy a comb would have a terrible time dragging through. My heart made a feeling like a hand squeezing into a tight fist.
Cora was so pretty.
The three of them leaned closer and peered, exclaiming to each other in their own language and trying their best to touch her face; Emeline crawled right over my lap to get closer and I shifted my whole body and made a fence with my arms, sheltering Cora so they couldn’t pester her. I wanted to keep her safe so bad my chest hurt. The entrance flap shuddered with a sudden movement as someone tugged it aside, sending white morning light scattering all through the smoky space. A woman came inside, dressed snug in a fur wrap, and spoke sharply to the children. They retreated to the fire in a noisy clamber, still murmuring.
The man said, “Pleased to meet you, young lad Malcolm and Miss Cora. I am Xavier Darvell. This is Fern, my dear wife, and you have met my inquisitive youngsters. We do not often receive unexpected guests, please forgive them. You have ridden far to reach the fort, yes? I too am most curious.” He sat at the fire the same way Sawyer always did, knees bent and arms about them, fingers latched. He did not sound upset but the woman was scolding her children just like I remembered Mama scolding me when I was naughty, talking fast and low, shaking a pointed finger. All three sat with downcast eyes and chins, but Pierpont peeked sideways at us and a smile pulled at his mouth. I knew he and me could be fast friends, if only I weren’t on so desperate an errand. I thought of the Sauk boys my friends, Grant and Miles Rawley, spoke of back in Iowa. Sauk boys got to choose their own names when they was of an age, and could claim three or four horses each. I bet Pierpont had him at least two fine horses.
I waited till the woman was done scolding before I said, “Sir, thank you kindly for helping us. We traveled far to get here an’ left my brother behind. He was hurt bad when our camp was attacked less than a week ago, on the prairie.” Words tumbled like rocks from an upturned wheelbarrow as I tried to explain. “We was on a cattle drive, headed for a spread owned by a man name of Royal Lawson. We was attacked an’ the cattle stole. Two men in our company was kilt. My brother was wounded. Please, I must ride back for him. I must have help. I’ll do anything you ask, in return.” Tears filled up my eyes, stinging and raw as skinned knuckles. I didn’t care if they all saw me cry.
At my words, they stared at me like I’d sprouted a corn crop from my head.
“Please. I can’t leave him there, he’ll die.”
“Son,” Xavier said, kind and serious, the voice of someone who means to deliver bad news and is sorry to deliver it. “An ice storm has roared for the past forty-eight hours. The landscape is slick as a frozen pond, and just as treacherous.”
“I must go.” I was sick with frustration. I stood, dragging Cora with me. “I can’t delay no more. He needs me.”
“You have a most brave soul,” Xavier said. He stayed sitting and they all kept watching me like I was putting on a fine show, dancing and singing and the like. “But there can be no travel this day, young sir. You would not get far, even with such a fine horse as you r
ode into the fort with.”
“I must,” I said again, and my throat felt slit with pain.
But Xavier only shook his head.
I cain’t lift you alone, you see. Can you hear me?
You gotta give me a hand, young feller, I ain’t as strong as I used ta be.
How’d your wagon come to catch fire? Your horseflesh musta run off.
C’mon now, this here storm is gonna let loose any second and that leg of yours looks right poorly.
I came to, flat on my spine. I blinked, taking stock, stretching out with my senses as I’d learned to do as a soldier, gauging threat. A fire burned a few paces from my head; I could see its embers and smell an acrid, unpleasant scent. Not a wood fire, then, but manure-chip. I was no longer outside. I wore no boots – a feeling so strange my legs jerked, toes curling. My right hand twitched for my firearms but I possessed no defenses, not even my smallest blade, and my palm ached at the emptiness, no comforting, solid pistol grip or knife handle. My mind bumped along, trying to grasp any sense, to bring forth the last thing I recalled before this small, dank space. I blinked again, easing to my left side, which ached a little less, peering into the gloom; I could hear wind, a whistling howl that made me grateful I was not within it.
Malcolm, I thought at once, determination welling like groundwater. He might be in that howling wind, searching for me. And though I didn’t know where I was just now, I knew goddamn well I wasn’t where my brother had left me. I pushed free of a single blanket, groaning as I rolled to a sitting position, struggling to draw a full breath. I reached to probe at the wound on my damaged leg, encountering a lumpy bandage tied there, my trousers rolled up to the knee on that side; the wounds hurt, but not as bad as when I’d last been conscious. And then, as my eyes adjusted, I spied a figure sharing the space with me, bundled into a blanket closer to the embers. I edged that direction, not wishing to startle him, understanding it was night and whoever had hauled me here was sleeping.
“Mister,” I whispered, and coughed when the word scratched my dry palette. I tried again, louder this time, “Mister!”
Not a breath of response. Both of us lay on the ground, a cold, hard-packed dirt floor. I scooted closer, hissing in pain, cursing the damage done to my body. I reached the other fellow, his form long and bulky beneath a thick woolen quilt, a man who lay atop a fur hide facing the embers. I reached and shook his shoulder, careful at first and then with more vigor. The realization was slow in coming; he was unnaturally chilled under my grip and his head lolled with my shaking. Bewildered, I rolled him to his back and beheld a bearded and bespectacled face, a man old enough to be my grandsire. His beard was grizzled and white in the faint glow of the banked fire, mouth hanging slack, eyes open a slit behind the round wire of the spectacles.
“Jesus,” I muttered, releasing my hold. “Jesus Christ.”
Panic stormed my blood, hot and fearsome. I looked for a door, any potential exit from this small, cramped space I shared with a dead man. What if I was in hell? What if that’s what this place truly was, the hell for which I’d known I was bound for a long time now? I lumbered to hands and knees and crawled towards the metallic glint waist-high on the wall to my left. A doorknob, as I’d hoped, set in a door constructed of crude wooden planks. The shriek of the wind increased as I opened the door and was met by its stinging bite. Hard pellets of freezing rain struck my face; it was deep night and the storm raged only the length of my arms away. The sky appeared dense and blue-gray, the sleet swirling like a cloud of locusts bent on destruction. I gasped at the cold, shutting the door and sitting with my spine braced against it.
“God help me,” I whispered, shaking with one part cold, all other parts uncontrolled fear. I clutched my bent knees and cried for my mother, my father. I begged to see Rebecca. I begged for Sawyer and my brothers to rescue me. This was hell. I’d been cast out of all favor, barred from any pitiful hope of grace. Even in wartime I’d never been so abandoned. My wild eyes darted to and fro, like a spooked horse, like a boy afraid of the darkness. My heart seemed to explode in endless bursts; I could not breathe. Sweat flowed down my face and along my ribs. And at long last there was simply nothing left within me and I quieted, easing to the floor and wrapping both arms around my head. The air in the small space seemed fragile as eggshells, cracked all apart with my distress.
I closed my eyes and breathed in and out, in and out.
THE WIND had died by morning.
I was ashamed of my actions during the night hours, of losing control in such a way. I must have slept for a time, waking after dawn in a physical state not unlike that which resulted in partaking of too much whiskey, head aching, cheek stuck to the floor and mouth dry as a bundle of tinder rags. Determined to take stock, I examined myself with calmer sensibilities. My skin was welted with burns and scrapes from being dragged and scabs from the rope bindings ringed my wrists and chafed my waist; my ankles had been protected by my boots, both of which were waiting, patient as old dogs, near the door. My ribs ached with a dull pain, mainly on the right side; there was nothing to be done but wait for the cracked bones to heal. I needn’t be a doc to understand I was lucky; had the ribs busted into separate pieces to poke through my skin or innards, I would already be dead. And as for my leg – I could only figure the old man had patched it up at some point between getting me here and dying.
More than a dozen times I found the need to repeat, This isn’t hell. You are not in hell.
Next I examined my surroundings by the light of a circular, canvas-covered window beside the door, carved into the dirt of a structure roughly the shape of a small cave, a roundish hole dug in the side of an earthen hill. A dugout, I realized, managing to stand so that I might trace my fingers over the walls and the low ceiling. The floor beneath my stockinged foot was cold and smooth, dark gray in color; I stood on one leg, favoring my wound. I shared the single room with the dead old man, multiple bundles of fur hides stacked as high as the ceiling along the wall opposite the door, two stumps for sitting, a barrel, and two wooden trunks.
Atop the barrel sat a tin cup, a tin plate, and a glass bottle containing a finger’s worth of corn liquor. A shallow hearth had been dug, its chimney no doubt sticking up from the earthen roof like a gopher’s inquisitive head. There was a pile of dried dung to be used as fuel; the fire was out, thanks to my carelessness. Near the hearth a crude shelf was held up by two wooden pegs lodged into the dirt. Atop this shelf I found a tin match holder, a striker, and boxes of bullets; a Springfield rifle was placed nice and neat on nearby hooks.
I had no explanation for my presence here. I knelt near the man whose dugout this surely was, examining him by morning’s light. He was elderly, but tall and broad; with careful movements I tugged free the quilt covering his body, searching for any signs of harm, wounds or indications of illness, finding none. He wore boots, and dirty garments fashioned of leather over a yellowing union suit; his spectacles were hooked behind his ears and a Henry rifle lay near his side. Nothing to identify his personage, no hint of what his name might have been or why he had died, and so I figured old age had claimed him, as there were no signs otherwise. No blood stained his clothing, no pustules or pox dotted his skin; he was not oddly discolored, instead tinted by the usual yellow-gray pallor of recent death. I sat beside him and thought hard, unable to recall anything more than lying cold and alone at the base of the broken wagon, watching the swarming buzzards. And after that, nothing.
How long ago? How much time since Malcolm rode away from me that morning? How far was this dugout from the oak tree with Quill’s and Grady’s bodies and our broken wagon lying beneath? Had this old man found me at the oak? I had to assume so, and I was goddamn luckier than I probably deserved. He’d treated my leg. I bent my knee and again examined the bandage, a tattered length of nubbled linen, reddish with dried blood. Upon closer inspection, I found that he’d applied a thick paste the color of moss, smelling of herbs that reminded me of Mama’s medicine store in the root cella
r back home. He’d applied something to counteract the swelling infection; I was no longer out of my head with pain. I was not scared of the dead man; I’d seen too many dead to truly fear them. This man was elderly and had not been struck down in battle, bore no gruesome wounds. No, he was an old trapper – if the hides stacked against the wall told me anything, it was that – and he’d found me on the prairie. He’d helped me and now he was dead, and I would never know his name or exactly what had happened.
I put my hand on his shoulder and patted him twice. I whispered, “You saved me and I thank you, sir. I will care properly for your body, I promise you.”
It was no eulogy but it would have to do for now, and I covered his form with the quilt before looking through his supplies, searching first for food and secondarily for a hint as to his name or history. There was a store of salted pork and corn dodgers, bundles of dried onions hanging from the ceiling, and a bucket for water, which I filled with ice chips and hung over the fire; unwilling as I was at first to kindle a blaze with dried dung, it was a source of warmth and I knew I could not afford to be particular just now. I ate onions until I thought I might burst, unable to stop once I started; the tang of them proved irresistible and I ate until my stomach cramped something fierce, bending me double until the stabbing pains passed. I finished this uncouth meal with the last of the corn liquor, which burned its way down my gullet.
One trunk contained tools and additional armaments; I found both a shovel and a hoe propped beside the hearth. Sun shone today, the air flat calm, sparkling atop the ice-covered world in a way I’d never before seen, inches-thick ice the likes of which Uncle Jacob wrote about, as far as the eye could see. In such a deplorable weakened condition, it took all my effort to navigate over the deadly-slick ground to a nearby stone structure, slightly larger than the dugout and built of stacked rock; I guessed correctly that animals were sheltered here, a mule and a goat, the goat with udders so swollen she bleated in pain upon seeing me. Sweating and exhausted from the exertion of staying upright, I had to pause to catch my breath before dragging a low, three-legged stool to her side and milking her.
Grace of a Hawk Page 29
