Home by Morning

by Kaki Warner

  He kept going, hope fading with the daylight. As the trail climbed, mud gave way to snow. When he found no more tracks, he decided she must have wandered off the trail. So he did, too, climbing north over rocky ground and through tangles of brush. Could she have made it this far over such rough ground? He doubted it. He was about to turn back when he saw something caught in a bush.

  Her stick.

  Relief gave him new strength. Cupping his mouth, he called out again and again until his voice grew hoarse.

  Nothing.

  It was almost dark now, but he kept going, trying to focus on the faint tracks in the dirt and not on the fear that built with every step, or the tiny snowflakes falling from the leaden sky.

  * * *

  Lillie couldn’t stop shivering. She felt hot and cold at the same time, and now tiny snowflakes were hitting her face. How long was she supposed to sit here before somebody came looking for her? She would call out again, but her throat was so sore from all her yelling she could hardly swallow and her head hurt something awful. Muttering a word she wasn’t supposed to know, she slumped back against the tree.

  Daddy, where are you?

  Was it night? The air seemed much colder than before. And quieter. No birds. No squirrels. And a faraway sound that might have been rushing water in the creek. Or wind through the trees.

  And sometimes, a crunching noise, like footsteps on snow or icy ground. Sneaky footsteps. Starting and stopping, like whoever or whatever it was, was creeping along slow and careful, maybe listening to see where she was.

  She heard a wheezy sound, realized it came from her own self, and clapped a hand over her mouth. She felt prickly and sweaty-cold. Maybe she should go back toward the sound of the creek—if what she’d heard was really the creek. If she followed it, wouldn’t it lead her home, or to town?

  Unless the water she heard was from a different creek. Daddy had told her that when the snow melted, water ran in lots of places down the canyon.

  Maybe she should go anyway. She was thirsty. It might make her throat feel better. And she didn’t like whatever was sneaking around out there.

  But didn’t animals get thirsty, too? Big, hungry animals? Like coyotes? And mountain lions, and bears?

  The crunching stopped.

  Lillie waited, hardly daring to breathe.

  Then it started again. Closer, louder, heading her way.

  She began to rock, arms wrapped tightly around her raised knees. Tears spilled down her cheeks. “Daddy . . . where are you?” she whimpered, too cold and frightened to yell anymore.

  The crunching got so loud she couldn’t hear anything else. Then it suddenly stopped right beside her. She heard breathing—up high—from something big. And smelled something stinky—worse than a dog or a pig or a cow.

  “Well, well,” a man’s voice said. “Looky what I found.”

  Fifteen

  Thomas was about to go back and get a torch, then he realized it was snowing harder now—not the tiny flakes that had fallen earlier, but big, wet flakes that would quickly cover the ground. And Lillian’s tracks. So he kept going, his head and shoulders growing damp with melting snow, his vision fading with the light. Then he saw more tracks headed in the same direction as Katse’e’s. Deep and big, with that familiar dragging, toed-in stride.

  The recluse.

  His tracks were easier to spot in snow and mud than a child’s shallow print, so he followed them, a terrible fear building in his mind.

  In the faint twilight, he almost missed where the bigger tracks crossed Katse’e’s. Thomas knelt to study the ground. It looked like the man had stopped and milled around for a moment, then followed the small footprints that led deeper into the brush. Where was she going?

  Or was she being chased?

  If the man was tracking her, he made no secret of it . . . and he also had to know it was a child he followed.

  “Katse’e!”

  Silence.

  He stumbled on, fear pounding through him so hard it made him light-headed and dizzy. He kept imagining what Katse’e was going through. Her fear. The blackness. Wondering where she was and if he was looking for her.

  If he lost another child . . .

  Bile surged into his throat. Bending over, he braced his shaking hands on his knees and struggled to settle his nerves. Then he straightened and called again.

  This time, he heard something. A single, short sound that was not a birdcall, or an animal. It did not sound like a voice, either. But he turned toward it because it was all he had.

  And the snow kept falling.

  * * *

  Lillie flattened against the trunk of the tree as the man stomped around her, mumbling to himself. Finally, he stopped. She heard rustling, then he spoke, so close she could feel his stinky breath on her face.

  “What you doing out here all by yourself, little girl?”

  She cringed away, not just from fear, but from the stink. “Huntin’ my dog. But now I lost. Who you?”

  “Tombo.” More rustling and muttering. “Most call me Moose on account I’m so big.” He must have straightened, because she couldn’t feel his breath anymore, but the stink was still bad. “The mean ones call me Dummy. I don’t like that. It makes me mad. So mad I just wanna . . . wanna . . . break things.”

  He sounded mad. Crazy-mad. And he talked funny. Like he wasn’t sure of the words. Lillie didn’t remember hearing anyone in town talk that way. She wanted to tell him she wouldn’t call him Dummy, and ask him if he would take her home, but she started coughing so hard it was a minute before she could catch her breath. “You take me home?” she finally managed.

  “Home? Where’s that?”

  “Town.”

  “Nope. Can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t go to town.” He moved around, mumbling to himself. “Town folks don’t much like me.”

  “Why? You bad?”

  “No! I’m not bad!”

  Lillie ducked her head, but the blow never came.

  Then in a strange, high, woman-sounding voice, he said, “Accidents happen, Tombo. It’s not always your fault, even though mean people might think so.” His voice changed back to a man’s voice. “That’s what Ma always said. She said ’cause I’m big and clumsy and funny-looking, accidents happen. But if I stay away from people, accidents won’t happen. See? That’s why I live in the woods.”

  Lillie didn’t know what to say to that. But she was feeling too bad to be afraid anymore. He didn’t sound mean, although he sure did stink. “You hunting me?”

  “Yep. Heard you yelling and wondered what you was doing. It’s starting to snow. What you doing out in the snow?”

  “Huntin’ my dog, like I said.”

  “I ain’t got a dog. Used to. Not anymore.”

  Lillie licked at the snowflakes on her chin and lips, trying to cool her mouth. How could she be so cold and hot at the same time? She was so tired of shivering, but it got worse the longer she sat here in her wet drawers. “I wanna go home. You gonna take me?”

  “Nope. Can’t.” Mumbling.

  She caught a few words this time. “Trouble . . . hurt . . . mean.” None of it made sense. “Please. Mrs. Winnie give you muffins.”

  “Too dark. Can’t hardly see nothing, and the snow’s coming down hard. I better go.”

  Lillie threw out an arm. “No, wait!” she cried, then started coughing again. “Don’t leave me. Take me home. Please . . .”

  “Why don’t you go your own self?”

  “I cain’t see.”

  “It’s not that dark yet. Just head down that a ways.”

  “No!” She started coughing so hard she nearly threw up. “I not know which way to go,” she said in a raspy voice once she caught her breath. “I blind.”

  A long pause. “You mean you can’t see nothing?
Nothing at all?”

  Suddenly the stink got worse. She felt a light breeze over her lashes and wondered if he was waving a hand in her face to test her.

  “Then what you doing out here, if you can’t see where you going?”

  Lillie struggled for patience. “My dog run off. I afraid coyotes get him so I go after him. Now I lost. Why you stink so much?”

  “I stink?” He sounded surprised.

  Tears welled up again, and she dropped her head on her folded arms. “I not feel so good.” In fact, she thought she might puke for true. “You help me or not?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Daddy pay you.” Unless he was too mad at her for going into the woods.

  More mumbling and pacing. “I better not.”

  Anger surged through her. “You in big trouble you don’t. He the new sheriff and he put you in jail you don’t help me.”

  “Jail? No, no. No jail.”

  “Please . . .” She could hardly hear her own voice over the drumming in her head. “I think I sick.”

  “Don’t want no trouble. No, no.”

  “You let me die out here, they come for you, Tombo. You knows they will.”

  “No, no, no.” He started stomping around beside her, muttering and sniffling. Was he crying? “I didn’t mean to. Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

  In the distance, a voice called.

  Daddy! With one hand braced on the tree, Lillie struggled to stand. She was so dizzy she almost fell, but managed to stay on her feet. She took a wheezing breath. “Da—”

  A hand clamped over her nose and mouth. “No, no, little girl, you can’t do that! You gots to be quiet.”

  In panic, she shoved at the hand, but it didn’t budge. She fought to drag in air. Couldn’t. Then an arm grabbed her around the waist and jerked her from the ground against something hairy. In a frenzy of terror she kicked, bucked, clawed at the hand.

  She couldn’t breathe!

  Daddy!

  * * *

  Thomas followed the tracks to a tall fir. It was snowing harder now, and was so dark he could hardly see, but the heavy branches overhead kept most of the new snow from covering the ground around the trunk. Bending down, he ran his fingertips lightly over the dirt and found a small, smooth depression where Lillie had sat.

  Heart drumming, he circled the tree, tracking as much by feel as by sight in the fading light. Then he found them—the big tracks he had been following. Like Katse’e’s small prints, they came toward the tree. But then they led away again, kicking up clods of mud and fresh snow, like he was running.

  Katse’e’s tracks had disappeared.

  He had her.

  Rage exploded. Throwing back his head, Thomas gave a bellow of fear and frustration—a war cry that echoed along the rocky walls. Then he began to run, following the deeper tracks into the canyon, praying the snow wouldn’t cover the prints until he found his daughter.

  When he made it back to the wagon trail that went up to the mine, he saw three horsemen coming toward him. Two carried torches. The third led Thomas’s pinto. Breathing hard, he stopped, grateful to see Jessup, Hardesty, and Rylander.

  “Any luck?” Jessup asked, tossing him the reins of his painted pony.

  Thomas untied the poncho behind his saddle and pulled it on. “The man who hides in the woods has her.”

  “The hermit?”

  “I do not know what he is called, but he tracked Lillian into the brush, then carried her off that way.” He pointed up toward the abandoned mine, then swung up into the saddle. “Many trails lead from there higher into the canyon.”

  “How do you know he has Lillie?” Rylander asked.

  “I tracked them both.” Tired of wasting time with words, Thomas kicked his horse into a gallop. The others followed.

  * * *

  Lillie huddled against a plank wall. If it was in a house, it hadn’t been lived in for a long time. Smelled like mouse pee. And something else—something she’d never smelled before. The floor was wood, too, and gritty, but dry. Wherever the man had taken her, it at least had a roof.

  But she still couldn’t stop shaking. Her wet clothes itched her skin, and her bones hurt almost as bad as her head.

  He was muttering and pacing again. She thought he might be crying, but what grown man cried?

  She was still mad at him for grabbing her that way. She thought he was trying to kill her. Then he started running and she almost puked up her innards until he banged in here and dumped her on the floor like a sack of potatoes. When Daddy came, Tombo would be in big trouble.

  “You okay?” he asked. “You sound funny.”

  “No, I not okay!” Lillie tried to sound mad, but it came out more like a frog croak. “What you thinkin’, draggin’ around a po’ blind black girl like that? If I could see you, I puke all over you shoes.” A fit of coughing grabbed her and she curled tight over her aching stomach. Even breathing hurt her throat.

  “You cold?”

  Lillie was shivering too hard to think of an answer. He really was a dummy.

  “I ain’t got no blankets. I could let you use this, I guess.”

  A minute later, Lillie was engulfed in stink. Furry stink. “What this?” she choked out, trying to shove it off.

  “My bearskin coat. Nice, ain’t it?”

  More like heavy and stinky. And prickly, rather than soft. But so warm, Lillie felt like she’d slipped into a hot bath. She pulled it closer and breathed through her mouth so she wouldn’t have to smell it. Maybe if she slept, Daddy would be there when she woke up. He would take her home, and Bitsy would be there, and she wouldn’t mind hardly at all if they both got whippings for running off.

  * * *

  Thomas burst through the door of the overseer’s shack at the old mine, his knife up and ready.

  But the shack was empty.

  He looked around, his mind still gripped in a red haze and unable to accept that Katse’e was not there.

  Tait Rylander charged through behind him, followed by Jessup and Hardesty. “She’s not here?”

  Whirling, Thomas shoved past them and studied the ground outside. He cursed in Cheyenne. With their arrival, they had disturbed any tracks that might have shown in the fresh snow. He saw several that might have been the big tracks he had been following, but none as small as a little girl would have made.

  He stood, his body shaking with frustration and fear, unable to decide what to do next. He had been so sure the hermit had brought her here. The tracks led this way. So where was he?

  A big hand gripped his shoulder. “Isn’t there a mine shaft somewhere nearby?” Rayford Jessup said. “Might he have taken her there?”

  Thomas shook off the fog in his head. “There are several.” He started toward the rocky wall beneath the abandoned scaffolding that clung to the side of the bluff. There were many shallow, jagged depressions where the water cannon had dug away earth and stone to get to the veins of silver that had once striped the rocky hillside. All were empty.

  Disheartened, they gathered around the faint light of a lantern they had found inside the entrance of the biggest cut and discussed where to go next.

  “Anyone see any tracks leading away from the shack?” Rylander asked, his voice bouncing back at them from the rocky walls.

  “Could he have gone on past the mine and deeper into the canyon?” Ethan Hardesty suggested.

  “On the way here, I checked the water tower above town,” Jessup said. “No fresh tracks anywhere around it.”

  Thomas did not respond. He barely heard them. Motioning them to silence, he closed his eyes and concentrated all his being on any sound moving along the damp, rocky walls.

  Nothing but the men breathing around him and the slow drip of water off the icicles clinging to tiny seams in the stones overhead.

  And yet . . .

 
He drew in a slow, deep breath, letting the air flow gently through his nose, down his throat and into his lungs. There. Beneath the smell of burning kerosene from the lamp, and the damp wool of their jackets . . . so faint it was barely noticeable . . . a rank animal smell.

  “Do you smell that?” he whispered to the others.

  Deep breaths. Sniffs. “Bear?” Jessup guessed. “Maybe this is a winter den.”

  Drawing his knife, Thomas went deeper into the darkness at the back of the cut. The others followed, Jessup holding the lantern high so that Thomas’s shadow crept ahead of them along the walls. They reached the back of the depression, which was so far into the hillside it felt more like a shallow tunnel.

  Thomas stopped and tested the air. Urine. Pungent. Fresh. Someone or something had been in here recently. Yet there was nothing left now but rocks piled along the back wall, a pickax with a broken handle, a dented bucket . . . and that strange, rank animal smell.

  Jessup stepped closer, holding the lantern high. “See anything?”

  Thomas scanned the floor, the walls. Nothing but shadows. One seemed especially deep. Stepping forward, he stuck his hand into the shadow, but instead of touching more wall, he felt only air. He grabbed the lantern from Jessup, thrust it into the shadow, and was shocked to see that behind the rocks piled up at his feet, the tunnel turned and continued.

  Hope building, he handed the lantern back to Rayford Jessup, gripped his knife tightly, and stepped over the rocks and into the darkness beyond.

  Jessup followed, the light of the lantern stretching ahead of Thomas.

  This back tunnel was not very long, or high, or wide. The animal stink was so strong Thomas expected to see a bear charging toward him.

  Instead, crouched against the back wall was a small, rough, wooden shack. On the sagging door, a crude skull and crossbones was painted above the words Danger Black Powder.

  With a snarl of rage, Thomas raised his knife and flung open the door.

  Someone cried out—a man, not a child.