“What is it, Jed?” Belle was blinking at the sudden inrush of light.
Jed indicated the road ahead - or rather, where the road should have been. Instead, there was nothing but a grey-brown coating, covering what little there was in the barren landscape like dirty snow.
Willoughby’s head poked out between Jed’s and Belle’s.
“What’s up?”
“Dark dust,” said Jed, flatly. “We cain’t continue on this road.”
“Can we go around it?” Belle was anxious. Any delay in reaching her sister in the capital could only be a bad thing.
The dark dust stretched as far as the eye could see.
“And we cain’t go through it?” Willoughby climbed down and stepped towards the edge.
“Don’t get too close!” Belle warned. Willoughby froze.
“You’d be a goner afore you’d gone a mile,” said Jed. He turned the wagon around. “We’ll go alongside it for a while - until we find a clear spot or the wind changes. Get back on.”
Willoughby sighed. He looked down at his feet. In the minute he’d been standing there, the dark dust had crept forwards and was just about to reach his boot. Willoughby started away and climbed up onto the seat between the woman and the gunslinger, fearful that the dust would form a claw and grasp him by the leg, pulling him back into that simmering mass.
The other two said nothing but were quietly amused by the young man’s panic.
“Where does it come from?” he asked when they were a little further along.
“Where does anything come from?” was Jed’s enigmatic answer.
“Cain’t somebody do something to stop it?”
“Maybe. All I know is the town of Tarnation’s all but cut off already. Deliberately, I reckon.”
Willoughby gasped.
“You mean this stuff...thinks?”
Belle laughed but Jed took the boy’s question seriously.
“I think someone’s manipulating the dark dust. Someone wants a whole town isolated.”
“Who? Who?”
“You sound just like a hoot owl!” Belle laughed. Enchanting though her laughter was, Willoughby was annoyed to be teased. He sent her a scowl and repeated his question.
“Only one name I can think of,” said Jed. He looked at the boy to gauge his reaction. “Farkin Plisp.”
Willoughby was nonplussed. Clearly he had not heard the name before.
“Who’s that?”
“Yeah, Jed; who is it?”
Jed looked them both in the eye and then turned away.
“You’re better off not knowing,” he said.
***
They kept the dark dust to their right; like the water of a great lake it rippled, lapping at the shore. It was gradually edging nearer. Willoughby, marvelling at it, suggested they go back to the staging post and warn people it might be headed their way.
“No time,” said Jed. “We’ll swing by on the way back.”
“But - but...” the young man sputtered. “There mightn’t be nothin’ left by then!”
Belle put a hand on his arm to calm him.
“There ain’t no time,” she said softly.
Willoughby shook her hand away.
“This is still my wagon. I say we turn around. You’re just thinkin’ of your sister.” His angry accusation hit home. Jed sprang to Belle’s defence.
“Kid, we’re more than halfway to the city. If we turns back now, we might not get out again. We’re going to stop the man who’s behind all of this and only when that’s accomplished can we think about...cleaning up.”
“But those people!”
“They’re on Plisp’s conscience, if’n he has one,” Belle chipped in.
Jed grunted.
Eventually, Willoughby settled down into something of a sulk. Belle tried to tease him into a better mood, singing sweet songs about lost love and hope for a brighter future. Her voice rang through the cloudless, azure sky like a church bell. Only the distant caw of a buzzard provided dissonance. Meanwhile, the dark dust continued to swell in silence.
“Real purty,” was Jed’s assessment.
“Where’d you learn those songs, Miss Belle?” Willoughby asked.
“On my granny’s knee,” Belle smiled, blushing from their attention. “Old Pioneer songs most of them.”
They fell into a contemplative silence.
“What were they like, the Pioneers, do you reckon?” Willoughby broke the silence.
“Just like us,” Belle shrugged.
“It was the wrong question,” Willoughby frowned. “What I meant was, What was it like for them, the first people to come to Vultures’ Moon?”
For a few moments, neither of his companions answered. They thought about those distant days and tried to picture an untamed Vultures’ Moon, before the Pioneers had shaped it to their ends. Roads, towns, farms, were all in place by the time Jed, Belle and Willoughby had been pushed into life and made to cry for the first time.
“Must have been tough,” Jed spoke up. “Got a friend back in Tarnation reckons they didn’t intend to come here but got waylaid and had to make the best of it.”
He and Doc Brandy had spent many a pleasant evening, drinking and jawing in the Last Gasp, giving voice to their opinions about all manner of things. Naturally, the subject of the Pioneers, those brave first settlers, had cropped up from time to time.
“Where were they going?”
Jed glanced away from the road and saw that both Belle and Willoughby had rapt expressions.
“Beats me,” he shrugged. “There’s other worlds, maybe not in this sector, but beyond...” He looked up at the vast canopy of blue; it was difficult to imagine on this bright, clear day that there was anything else. At night, it was easier. You could see the space between the stars.
“I don’t get it - I’ve never got it,” Willoughby shook his head. “I mean, if they were travelling across the skies and they ended up here, why didn’t they leave again? And, if they were capable of such - such - mechanical marvels, why ain’t we? Why cain’t we move from star to star, looking for these other worlds?”
Belle bit her lip.
“Kind of makes you sad, don’t it?”
“It’s frustrating; that’s what it is, Miss Belle!” Willoughby was flushed, animated by his passion. “I mean, here we are, plodding along with a horse and wagon, getting nowhere fast. I cain’t help feeling we’re missing out. Vultures’ Moon ain’t nothing but a backwater speck in the ocean of space.”
“It ain’t all bad,” Belle countered. “I mean, there’s new developments all the time. Take yonder horse, for example.” She waved at the beast that was dutifully pulling them along. “Jed’ll tell you. There’s this new kind available now. They’re intelligent. They got great stamina. Some of them can do all kinds of tricks, cain’t they, Jed?”
Jed remained silent. He resented the word ‘tricks’ and he was missing Horse.
Willoughby was dismissive.
“It ain’t natural, tinkering with a critter’s natural abilities.”
“Says the boy who wants to fly to the stars!” Belle scoffed. “If that ain’t tinkering with what’s natural, I don’t know what is!”
Willoughby turned purple, embarrassed by her laughter.
“It’s man’s nature to create things,” he muttered, “to strive to make things better.”
“Like the Horses,” Belle pointed out.
“That’s what spurred the Pioneers on. Where do you think they came from? What was so bad about where they were that they had to find a means to escape? Or were they just curious to see what’s out there?”
“You ask a lot of questions,” said Belle, “and you don’t like it when I try to answer them. In my own humble way.”<
br />
“What do you think, Jed?” The young man looked to their driver for support.
Jed turned his head sideways and spat on the ground. A tendril of dark dust stretched towards where it landed.
“I think you’re both right. Kind of. I think things are improving on Vultures’ Moon. I mean, there’s all kinds of innovations going on. Look at medicine, for instance. You and your boss might make a living peddling bottles of coloured water but in the towns and cities, there’s men like Doc Brandy, patching folks up good as new - better in some cases. Why these hands of mine weren’t hands of mine to begin with.”
The others looked at the strong hands holding the reins.
“What happened to your own hands?” said Belle.
“I don’t know,” Jed admitted. “But these do just fine. I owe them to Doc Brandy. No offence, Willoughby, but there ain’t no bottle of coloured water could have done this for me. And no offence to you, Miss Belle, but what your granddaddy’s up to at Fort Knightly ain’t right.”
“What’s he doing?”
But they ignored Willoughby’s question.
“So, advances and developments are all well and good, provided they ain’t in the wrong hands,” Jed concluded.
The others couldn’t determine whether he was making some kind of joke.
“Well, I’m glad you got some new hands,” Willoughby didn’t sound very pleased, “but I think there’s too much time being spent on the wrong things. Folk should be looking into getting away from Vultures’ Moon. Carrying on what the Pioneers started.”
“Cain’t we do both?” Belle nudged him. “Cain’t we make people’s lives better with the medicines and the surgery and whatnot as well as shooting for the stars?”
Willoughby sighed. He gestured towards the expanse of dark dust that was rippling to their right. Jed and Belle understood the gesture without commentary.
If folk didn’t get away from Vultures’ Moon pretty darn quick, there’d be no folk left.
***
The sky took on deeper and deeper shades of blue and gradually the stars they had talked about began to appear. Jed said it wouldn’t be wise to set up camp for the night until they were well out of range of the dust. Before the light failed them completely, they came to a rocky outcrop beyond which was a plateau. The horse, although bent with fatigue, duly hauled the wagon up a smooth slope. The travellers would spend the night aloft, above the plain. Jed pointed out that although the dark dust would cover anything it tended only to spread to places where there was organic life: plants and whatnot. The three of them, and the horse, should be safe enough up on this rock.
“We’re organic, ain’t we?” Willoughby pointed out. Belle gave him a shove.
“If Jed says we’ll be safe then safe we will be.”
Jed didn’t respond. He was smashing up crates from the back of the wagon to fix a fire. He ignored Willoughby’s protestations about damage to stock. The boy didn’t refuse the vittles Jed cooked on the resulting fire, the gunslinger observed.
When they were fed and the horse tended, they sat staring into the fire, watching it dwindle into red embers and grey ash. There’s something about the movement of flames that provokes contemplation.
“You mentioned your granddaddy...” Willoughby prompted, poking an errant ember with the toe of his boot.
“I didn’t; Jed did,” was Belle’s tight-lipped correction.
“What’s he doing up at that fort?”
“Making advances and developments,” Belle shrugged. “Nothing for you to worry about.”
“And your folks? Your parents?”
The question stung Belle like a slap on the cheek. She kept her eyes on the flames.
“Dead. Gramps brought us up - my sister and me.”
Jed was watching through the fire. Of course the girls would go along with whatever their grandfather told them. They were loyal. Hell, they didn’t know any different. Away from the fort, away from that old man and his experiments, Belle was a softer, sweeter girl, with a mind of her own and a devotion to her sister.
Maybe I’m rescuing them both, Jed reflected.
“Mine too,” Willoughby added. “Only I didn’t have no grandparents on standby. It was ole Doc Swallow took me in. Educated me in the ways of the world while we rode together all over the world. I seen just about all there is to see. There ain’t much on Vultures’ Moon worth writing home about.”
“So you’re keen to get off it.”
Willoughby laughed. “So I’m keen to get off it. Yes, ma’m.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Jed grumbled. “Best to make the best of the life you have.”
With that, he got to his feet and unrolled his bedding. He drowned the remaining flames with water and settled down for the night.
“Goodnight, then,” cooed Belle. She and Willoughby shared an amused glance before they too got under their blankets.
Willoughby couldn’t sleep. He gazed up at the stars wondering which one had been the Pioneers’ home, and to which other one they had been headed.
How disappointed they must have been, he mused, to end up on a desolate rock like Vultures’ Moon!
***
Jed was up first. He tidied away his bedding and made a start on breakfast. He had to start over - a sudden bout of tingling in his hands that quickly escalated into painful twinges caused him to drop the frying pan into the fire. He waited for the pain to subside, staring at his hands in disbelief. They had ached but never given him trouble before.
It’s probably nothing, he told himself. All those hours yesterday holding the reins. His hands weren’t used to that. That’s probably all it was.
If he was back in Tarnation he could nip in to see Doc Brandy - and have his old friend scold him for wasting his time on such an insignificant affliction? Not likely!
Jed laced his fingers and pushed his hands out in front of himself. The joints cracked and his hands instantly felt like their old selves again. He gave the beans another stir.
“Morning.” It was Belle. She disappeared behind the wagon before he could catch a proper look at her early morning face.
“Morning,” he called after her. He kept his attention firmly on the bubbling beans, allowing the young woman her privacy.
When she joined him, she offered to make the coffee. He didn’t dissuade her - but not, he told himself, because he was worried his hands would rebel and upset the coffee pot all over either or both of them.
In a hushed voice and with a jerk of her head towards the blanketed bundle that was Willoughby sleeping, she asked Jed’s opinion of their young companion. Jed was typically noncommittal.
“Wonder what his story is...” Belle mused.
Jed would not be drawn into speculation.
“Reckon he’ll tell us if he wants to.”
Belle let out a brief hum and poured the boiling liquid into three tin cups.
Jed stood at the edge of their rock, looking back the way they had come. The dark dust was still present but seemed neither to have advanced nor receded during the night.
Waiting for us to make our move...
Jed dismissed this foolish notion as quickly as it occurred. The damned dust cain’t think, he reminded himself. Belle appeared at his elbow, proffering a cup. He accepted it and they looked at the view together.
“Beautiful spot,” Belle remarked, “if you disregard that...stuff.”
“I reckon the Pioneers weren’t too disappointed with what they got,” said Jed. “I want to get moving afore the sun gets too high. I don’t think that stuff, as you call it, will come beyond these rocks. Sort of a natural barrier. Even so, I don’t want to linger to test that theory.”
“Morning!” Willoughby was up and stumbling into his trousers. He hitched the straps of his braces onto h
is shoulders and tucked in his shirt. Belle handed him some coffee.
“Will we reach Wheelhub today, do you think?”
“Near as damn it,” Jed barely glanced at the young man. “Long as we get moving right away.”
“Right. Sure. I just need to, ah...” Blushing and avoiding Belle’s eyes, Willoughby skittered away behind a standing stone.
Belle rolled up Willoughby’s bedding and stashed it on the wagon. She became aware of Jed’s disapproving look: let the boy clear up after himself.
“I’m just trying to save us some time,” she explained.
By the time Willoughby returned, the others were sitting on the driving seat, ready to go. He climbed up to join them but Jed got the horse moving before his backside touched the plank.
They made a slow descent from the rocky plateau. This side of the valley was refreshingly verdant after the sinister dullness of the dark dust. The sky was clear and the air was fresh. Were it not for the purpose of their journey, it would be a perfect day for a ride.
Conversation was sparse. It was too early in the morning for personal revelation or historical speculation. A few comments were made about the scenery: how tall the chaparral! How inviting the creek! How lush the long grass! For the most part they were content to feel the sunshine on their faces and the gentle breeze playing with their clothes.
Willoughby kept looking back to see if there was any sign of the dark dust pursuing, but there was none, and eventually these glances became less frequent and then, when the place where they had spent the night had disappeared from view, stopped altogether.
They came to a town, slumped on either side of the road. Parallel rows of buildings loomed ahead. There was a sign at the side of the track, leaning like a man walking against the wind; the board was cracked and the paint was faded.
Willoughby tried to read it.
“Gillyflower...Gulch...” he deciphered the ravaged lettering. “Ever hear of this place, Jed?”
Jed shook his head, barely noticeably.
“Never been through here yourself? With Doc Swallow?” There was no archness in Belle’s question but the young man blushed.
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