Wesley responded, “Gabriel, your history may be right, but that code is nonsense. It was the same code that defended the right to chain a child to its mother in the field. It was the same code that allowed four men to go free after they hanged an innocent man on the word of an old spinster.”
Gabriel tilted his head and said, “I see where you’re going; so answer my first question. What can a man fight over in your world?”
“Self-defense I suppose. Violence is only an answer if there is a threat of violence that you cannot avoid. I would say that, Gabriel. All other things are meaningless; the violent man’s justifications for lashing out because of misplaced pride, honor, or base instincts like jealousy, hate are all the fool’s passions. The twentieth century is dawning—it’s a new world. I’ve seen it in the east—it’s going to be a better world guided by law, medicine, science; people can either choose to board the train or be crushed by its steel wheels.”
Gabriel pulled on his pipe and said, “A world with no myths, no creed, no insult or blasphemy that allows for a reprisal? Is that the world you see in the future?”
“That’s right, Gabriel, there’s no golden idols in the new world. It’s not the future, it’s in the East now, and it’s coming here, it can’t be stopped. It will reach the wastelands and even those tribes will be ripped into the new world.”
“You say it’s going to come to these savages, take their myths and convince ’em the druids is noth’n but rocks?” the colonel asked.
“If you could see what I have seen, the cities back East, you would believe in the future too.”
“For a man that talks about such a time, you certainly ain’t got no problems pull’n the trigger in the here and now,” Gabriel said.
“I never said the future would come without a price. A few chosen will have the burden to be its deliverer.”
Toby and Seth relieved Abner at the watch. They lay flat in the darkness on the rise above the birch trees staring south. There was a faint glow from the river where the hacienda rose on the plain; when the wind was right you could hear the moans of the girls.
Seth looked at Toby for a long while before he asked, “What happened to you out there?”
Toby said, “The White Lion chanted to me, it were odd, it took me to dream’n of that spot of grass by the bend in the Criss where it pools deep. It was like I was there, really there, felt more real than it do right now. Me and your sister were all wet from dipp’n, and we were drying in the hot sun, lay’n in the grass together. May’s scream brung me out of it. The Lion knew it too, the fear showed in his eyes when he seen me come out of it. He had fooled me with that song, but she broke it with her scream ’fore he got me. Raif said don’t let him chant, but I wanted to hear it, I guess. Raif jest told me it’s an ancient song born thousands of years ago. Raif’s searched for answers to it these past ten years and paid medicine men gold for the secret of it, but the only thing he come to know is the song is called a passage song. Those that know it, sing ’fore they kill—it’s like an offering—it’s like you give the soul of those you kill to a winged angel on t’other side. Raif said he gave the song but once and even though the man needed kill’n, he still wished he’d never sung it. Said he’d done it for reasons his own, which he didn’t want to tell, he fears the price be heavy though when the tax collector comes and he need to pay it back.”
“Will you teach it to me, Toby?”
In the hut, Tamara ran the Lion’s ear along May’s belly, and she knew the babe cradled in the womb was the Lion’s cub. She had brewed a sleeping mix from roots that grow wild in the abandoned turtle nesting ground along the river’s reedy bank and the potions let the girls sleep. She paced the room—her bare feet gliding along the floorboards.
“What would the priest extract as a price if I sacrificed the Lion’s kin?” she murmured to herself. She could fool most shamans, but the priest would find her out. “What would Gabriel do if I let the kin live?”
She placed the ear in an earthenware jar and buried it beneath a stove leg. She riffled through an old case for her mixings and blended a bitter soup that would fortify the child being forged in the womb. She sacrificed a burnt offering. She needed it to foretell that McCallum would send the girls back east to kinfolk to heal up while he rebuilt his ranch. The girl would be too far along before warning could reach McCallum from his east kin. The son would live and find his way back.
In the morning, the company loaded the two girls into the buckboard of a wagon they bought from Tamara. Tamara had fed them more root and they both lay sleeping in the folds of many blankets.
As they finished laying the girls out, Jed trotted up on Ulysses. The company crowded around him patting him on the leg and asking him how it had gone.
He said, “Them got the same ass-kicking anybody stupid enough to chase me gits.”
The company broke in a loud guffaw.
The colonel asked, “Is any of ’em coming?”
“No, sir, I left ’em broken bitches back of the Ash.”
Tamara looked Jed once over. He was covered in filth and dirt. She said, “I figured your skin to be making a new drum by now.”
Jed looked down at her and said with a smile, “Hey, Crazy, good to see you too.”
Tamara moved up to Raif and whispered to him. She told him if he brought Toby back to her she would craft him a dreamcatcher out of the sinews and talons of a snow owl. It would catch the dreams, and he would sleep like in the days of old before the passage song.
The company rode off and started moving north.
Jed asked Raif, “What was your sweetheart whispering back there to you?”
“She’s hankering for Toby. I reckon she either wants to hump him or cut out his heart and eat it,” Raif responded.
“I shoulda shot that crazy bitch long ago; never can understand why you were always sweet on her. You gonna bring Toby back here?” Jed snorted.
“Nah, my soul, what’s left of it anyhow, is held together with pine tar and spit. I reckon it can’t take that,” Raif said.
The girls watched from the bed of the wagon as the company voyaged home on their run to the North County. Their route took them back across the flats, up past the Old Mission and retraced the steps they took in the descent into the wastelands. North of the mission the McCallum clan split from the company, dragging their wounded souls in the wagon. The Hansons split off at the Post Road and headed east from there to the Cuchalainn.
Molly and Mother Martin were on the porch when they saw riders approaching; when Molly saw it was three she held her hands tightly over her chest, trying to ease the ache of anticipation. The three came to the gate where she now stood, and she looked at them covered in dust, their faces filthy, blackened with soot. The eyes of all three were pierced and shadowed, still full of hate and an animal’s wariness. She looked at Toby, and he had the dried blood of the Lion spread on his riding jacket; it looked like dried clay. He had forgotten to remove the ear of the White Lion, which lay pierced upon a coarse leather rope he wore as a necklace, the ear pendant dangling from the strip of leather.
Molly went to Toby and looked up at him atop Ulysses. He looked down at her in silence, and she saw his eyes reflected no light but sparkled darkly. She lowered her head and cried, “Oh, John, you promised.”
EPILOGUE
* * *
Walker slept the night and most of the next day, emerging as the sun dipped on the horizon, the fire blazing across the sky. He struggled onto the porch, his legs wobbly beneath him, and the ache going to the marrow of his bones. Toby and Wesley still slept and would for hours longer. He held the jug of whiskey and sat in the rocker looking out at the fire being swallowed by the earth.
Molly came out on the porch and sat on the rocker next to him. “Is there any way to heal him?”
Walker sipped the whiskey and looked off in the distance. He winced, and said “I don’t know, some boys come back from it. I seen a few come back after the war.”
M
olly shuddered.
Walker looked off. “We journeyed to that cave in Miller’s bog, the four of us. We found a pool of dark warm water. An old slave, Clarabelle, had told Pierce how to cross the waters to a stone temple on the far side by swimming underneath a rock ledge. Pierce, Addie, Courtney, they were all smiles, the thrill of it, to explore beyond that cave wall, to swim underneath and discover the secrets it held.
“I stood there and the water was black, a deep black so dark it swallowed the torch light. I watched them enter the water, Courtney first, Addie, and Pierce the last. He turned to me, and said, ‘This is such good stuff, isn’t it, Johnny?’
“When Pierce disappeared into the water, I ran. I ran out the cave and on to the trail into the moonlight, and I kept running. I didn’t stop until I reached Sommersville’s fence line, and even as I walked in the early light breaking the darkness I could feel something was upon me, searching for me, running my scent. I never really spoke to the three again. I’d see them from time to time and there would be awkward moments. The three were always together after that night, and it was as if they couldn’t speak to me, as if their secrets could not be shared with those not anointed that night.
“I had stood on the edge of the world as they had, but I ran away.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
* * *
Thomas Owen O’Connor lives in upstate New York with his family and is a former infantry officer in the Marine Corps (1990–1996; 2002–2004.)
The employees of Five Star Publishing hope you have enjoyed this book.
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