The Wolf Road

by Beth Lewis

  I pulled my knife. Slowed down.

  Couldn’t see nothing through the window. Penelope liked to keep a sheet over it at night, keep out the moonlight. Cursed her for it then. I set the rabbit down gentle on the porch.

  Creak a’ one of the loose boards inside.

  The running heated me up. Sweat came out my hands, my knife grip went slick. My heart thundered all through me and all the sounds what weren’t me and what weren’t out that cabin switched off. No more birds. No more river.

  I moved ’round the outside a’ the cabin, straining my ears ’gainst my own breathing.

  The cross on my momma’s grave was crooked. I’d put it in straight. Footprints what weren’t mine or Penelope’s was pressed like stamps into the dirt. ’Bout the size I wore, maybe a half bigger. I let out my breath.

  Not Kreagar.

  Wiped my hands on my trousers, tightened up my grip on my knife.

  No horses nowhere, what meant it probably weren’t Lyon.

  I got right up close to the back a’ the cabin.

  Heavy footsteps. Man’s footsteps. Pacing all ’round the room. Penelope’s voice came through the log wall.

  “No right,” she said, fierce but wary. “You’ve got no damn right.”

  The reply was muffled and lost in the moss ’tween the logs.

  Thundering in my chest turned to hammer blows and drumbeats. Man was in there with Penelope and I had to get him out, just like getting a bear out his cave. You got to wake him up and lure him out with promise a’ food or threat a’ danger. Figured I’d meet this fella with the latter.

  I went back to the tree line, sat myself down low, them wolves all ’round me, adding loud to my voice. Wished right then for a rifle to knock this fella down soon as he stepped outside.

  “Penelope, get that fire going,” I shouted.

  No answer. No door opening.

  “Dammit, woman, you not awake yet?”

  Nothing.

  I sidled up closer, out the protection a’ the trees, and shouted to her again.

  Curtain twitched but the door still didn’t open.

  There weren’t no other way in that cabin. If they didn’t come out, I’d have to go in and one a’ them rules a’ the wild is you sure as hell don’t go walking into a bear cave, ’specially when you know damn well the bear’s at home.

  “Penelope,” I shouted, halfway ’tween trees and cabin. “Wake up, girl.”

  “Elka,” she called from inside. Not panic and screaming. “Elka, that you?”

  “ ’Course it’s me, you damn fool, who else it gonna be?” I kept my voice calm and natural-like.

  Nothing for a few seconds. Then, “Come in here, would you, I have to talk to you.”

  Weren’t nothing natural ’bout her voice. Even if I didn’t know some fella was in there with her, I’d a’ known something weren’t right. I didn’t want to play games no more.

  “He got a gun?” I shouted as I came up close to the porch and where I left that rabbit. I looked at that limp rag a’ fur. Had to cook it soon, else it would spoil and my belly was rumbling for meat.

  “Yes,” Penelope said through the walls.

  I put my knife in the side a’ my belt, ’neath my coats and out a’ sight.

  “I left my knife inside,” I said. “I ain’t armed.”

  “Then come on in, my dear,” said the man, and the door opened a crack.

  My heart flipped and I felt like I’d been gut-punched. I knew that voice. Weedy. Through the nose.

  “Morning, Bilker,” I said, pushed the door open the rest a’ the way and stepped inside.

  Puny little six-shooter in his hand. Weren’t even pointing it. Penelope sat on the bed, tears down her face, but I saw quick it weren’t from Bilker dropping by for breakfast. Purple welt was coming up on her cheek. Tears were pain, not fear.

  Good girl, I thought and nodded to her.

  “Elka,” he said, snitch a’ tremble in him. “So pleased to see you ladies again, though I didn’t expect to find you on my new claim.”

  “What you talking ’bout? This place ain’t yours,” I said.

  He smiled, like a weasel. “Yes, it is. I sold this claim fifteen years ago. The owners I see are sadly no longer with us.”

  “And?” I said.

  “The claim reverts to the seller upon the death of the owners.”

  “They signed over this place to us, check with Tucket, it’s ours,” I said.

  Bilker nodded, licked his ratty mustache, and used his pop gun like a pointing finger. “Yes. Yes that’s what Glen down at the office said. He said that Philip’s signature is on that bequeathment.”

  Then he clicked his tongue and waved that gun around. I caught Penelope’s eye. She looked like she knew just what he was talking ‘bout.

  “Except,” he said quickly, “it looks like Philip has been dead a rather long time and his dear wife is freshly buried. Maybe even freshly killed by you two thieves.”

  My heart near stopped.

  “Once I feed all this back to Glen, we’re old friends you see, he’ll void that bequeathment and this choice piece of land will be mine. Again.”

  He smiled a row a’ brown-streaked teeth. Chewing ’bacco and sin turned him to rot inside and I could see it all. Saw maggots squirming in his gut. Saw roaches crawling ’round his face and out his eyes. Saw hissing snakes sliding through his hair and round his arms and legs. He was a weedy devil stood before us trying to take my home away.

  “You don’t know what you’re talkin’ ’bout, Bilker,” I said. Moved myself ’tween him and Penelope. “This place is ours and you’re trespassin’.”

  He raised his gun right up to my face but I weren’t blinking.

  “Get off my property,” he said, “or I will kill you both. There isn’t a jury in this land that would hang me for it.”

  “Except,” Penelope said, standing up, “everyone in Halveston saw us humiliate you. You have a pretty good reason to want revenge on us and considering this is, legally, my claim, what do you think that jury would say? You followed two young women into the wilderness and shot them, for what?”

  His mustache twitched and his gun hand started shaking.

  “Don’t look good for you, Bilker,” I said.

  He laughed a hissing, nasal laugh. “It won’t matter. I just wanted to come here and give you both fair warning. I’m not an unreasonable man, ladies, so I’ll give you until the end of the day. I’ll be back with red coats.”

  He walked backward toward the door. Penelope stepped forward.

  “Stanley, wait,” she said, voice turned all kind. “Can’t we work something out? A cut of all we find?”

  He puffed out his narrow chest and looked Penelope head to toe, lingering his eyes ’round the middle a’ her.

  “Women aren’t good for mining,” he said, licking his mustache again.

  Penelope put her hand on my shoulder and pushed me gentle aside. “How about something else, then?” she said, soft, and I wanted to be sick.

  He sniffed. Only a few steps from the door. Then he sneered with all his face, look a’ pure disgust on him.

  “Typical whore.” He spat at her feet.

  White heat ran through me and I charged right at him. Felt the shock wave a’ the gun going off but didn’t hear the shot. I slammed his hand ’gainst the wall till he screamed and dropped it. In the scuffle it got kicked into the middle a’ the room. Bilker weren’t as weak as he looked. He pushed me back and cracked his knuckles on my cheek. He threw himself at me, knocked me to the ground. I twisted, couldn’t reach my knife. His hands was round my throat and he was panting and red-faced and squealing like a damn pig.

  “Stop,” Penelope screamed.

  Bilker looked up. I looked up. She pointed that gun right at his face.

  The coward in him came back. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Get off her,” she said, and he scrambled off me, hands up in the air in surrender. I got quick to my feet and spat a
glob a’ blood on the boards.

  “You OK?” she asked me, not taking her eyes off him.

  “Ain’t no foul. Man hits like my nana.”

  “I’m not stupid, you know, I didn’t come here alone,” he said, and I weren’t sure I believed him. I didn’t see no other footprints and I didn’t hear no one in the trees.

  “You look pretty alone,” Penelope said, then raised that gun level with his eyes. “This is my land.”

  “Yes ma’am, it is, it is, and you can keep it,” he said, shaking.

  Penelope weren’t shaking.

  “I must have made a mistake,” he said, blabbering them words. “This isn’t my claim, never was. I got the wrong place.”

  “Yes, you did,” she said, finger firm on that trigger. Had a horrible sinking in my gut that she was going to shoot him. She was going to kill him. He weren’t no threat, not now his balls been cut off.

  “Get the hell out of here,” I said, “and don’t you dare come back.”

  Penelope nodded.

  Bilker shuffled back to the door, flung it wide and backed out. Penelope moved to the doorway. He had his hands up, stumbling backward down the steps, out onto the grass.

  “We’re good? Right? We’re good?” he kept saying as he got farther.

  “We will be,” Penelope muttered, and pulled the trigger.

  Blood sprayed the ground. Bilker dropped like a stone in a river and I couldn’t right believe what just happened. I stood there like an idiot, ears ringing, heart pounding.

  I looked at Penelope. Gun still pointed. Hand steady.

  “I’m not a whore,” she said, quiet so’s I barely heard.

  I pried the gun out her hand and went outside.

  Bilker was still breathing but not for long. Shot through the chest. Blood turning the dirt black. He choked and sputtered red all over his face then fell still. Eyes open and staring up to the sky.

  But he’d been telling the truth. He weren’t alone. A shout a’ surprise came out the woods to the south and the sound a’ snapping bracken and running feet. Too far away to chase. Too far to shoot.

  I dropped down to my knees. Gun in my hand what Bilker’s friend had seen. All my breath left me, ringing in my ears turned to blaring like all the birds were screeching at once, all out of tune and with not a beat a’ rhythm ’tween ’em.

  This was the end. Red coats would be coming, and soon. ’Least they’d take me away, least they’d think I done it. Penelope would be free. Part a’ me wanted it all to be over. That fella would bring the law and we’d be done with it. I was so tired, right down to my marrow, that I figured, hell, let them come. Hurry the hell up.

  Penelope stood in the doorway, blank face like what she just done was nothing. I ain’t never seen her like that. Bilker weren’t no threat, not to our lives, maybe to that cabin, this scrap a’ land, but not our lives. Killing for anything but that ain’t right, no matter what way you spin it.

  “I’ll start the fire,” Penelope said, and picked up the rabbit from the porch.

  I closed Bilker’s bug eyes. I couldn’t right say I was sorry the snake was dead, but that didn’t matter none.

  I didn’t go back inside, even when I smelled the char a’ rabbit and felt my stomach ache for it. ’Stead I dug a shallow grave some ways away from the hut. Dragged Bilker to it and rolled him in. He tumbled into the dirt like chunks a’ brisket into a pot. I covered him up and dumped the broken sluice boxes and branches over the grave to hide it. When I was done, getting on midafternoon, the only thing left a’ him was a trail a’ blood in the grass. Bugs and critters would soon lap that up.

  I stood outside, kicking the ground. Didn’t know what to do with myself. Didn’t know who that girl was in the cabin no more. She’d pulled that trigger without blinking like she was stoking a fire or tying up her hair. I turned the gun over in my hands. Silver handle with a worn rosewood inlay. Scrolling and etching round the barrel. More a decoration than a weapon. More for show, for inspiring fear in people than giving them a real reason for it. Bilker weren’t a good man and he threatened to take our land off us, but he weren’t going to kill us.

  I slumped down onto the ground and rested my arms on my knees, gun in my hands.

  “He would have taken this from us,” came Penelope’s voice from the cabin. She stood on the porch, then when I didn’t tell her to go hang, she came and sat beside me.

  “We lost it anyway,” I said. “He weren’t lying ’bout not coming on his own.”

  “Doesn’t matter. He came onto this land with a gun, intending to kill us. It was self-defense.”

  I laughed but it weren’t funny. “Self-defense to shoot a man reaching for the sky?”

  “What do you mean?” she said. “He was reaching for a second gun when I shot him.”

  I shook my head but didn’t say nothing else.

  She sighed. “Sometimes you have to do bad things to keep what’s yours.”

  I stood up and brushed off my trousers. “I know,” I said, and walked away, toward the trees.

  She called for me but I didn’t turn ’round. I needed some time away, in the quiet a’ the woods. Felt like I was losing myself. We all done bad things. Ain’t no man or woman alive what can say different, but I didn’t want that to be the way a’ my life, not no more. Kreagar done terrible, awful, sinful things with me standing right beside him, but I was trying damn hard to make it right. At least, I was trying damn hard not to repeat my past.

  I walked through them woods till sundown turned the sky to deep yellow and red. My path laid out afore me. Blood and gold and here I was, covered in ’em both. I sat beside the river, staring east across the wide, flat meadow.

  A young deer with just nubs for antlers picked his way across, nibbling here and there on summer shoots. Ain’t nothing more calming. I couldn’t hear nothing but the dusk bugs chirping and the river. This was life. This was my true life. Ain’t no one could take that away from me. Then I figured it. That cabin, that land and paper and rubber stamp, that was Penelope’s true life. She weren’t a wild thing, happy with the wind knotting up her hair, happy sleeping on a bed a’ holly and ferns, picking off ticks like they’s naught but sticky burrs. She needed a bed and a blanket and a lock on her door. Bilker wanted to take that off her and he cut her deep with words while he was doing it. If he’d tried to take the wild off me, I would a’ shot him too.

  I watched that deer till the dark fell and moonlight lit him up. But it weren’t a deer no more.

  A boy stood right out in the middle a’ the meadow. Blond. Pale.

  Screaming.

  A rifle shot rang out in the dark and my eyes sprang open.

  I was leaning up against a tree ’side the river. Dawn was crowning and I was shivering up something awful. Winter was close and I was a fool falling asleep outside, on the ground. I shook away the picture a’ that boy, whoever he was, and made my way back to the cabin. Got there an hour or so past dawn. Smoke curled out the pipe and the rising sun turned the beaten brown wood to rich red-gold.

  I went straight in and set myself down by the fire. Penelope didn’t say nothing, just sat on the bed, flicking through a book. Soon as feeling came back into my hands and face, I said to Penelope, “I get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “I get you,” I said. “I get your thinking ’bout Bilker. If the law comes here then we’ll deal with it. Ain’t no sense in wringing our hands in worry. Law comes, it comes. If Bilker’s friend tripped up running and got eaten by a bear, well then, that’s that. I ain’t wasting time frettin’.”

  She smiled, tension went out a’ her, and she said, “Did you catch breakfast?”

  “Hell, woman! You ate yesterday. Damn, you expect food every day?”

  She threw the book at me, gentle-like, and laughed.

  “I found this when you were sulking,” she said, and reached under the bed.

  A rifle. Old and worn, not been fired in more’n a year.

  “Where’d you get that
?”

  “Under the floor,” she said. “I dropped a hairpin between the boards. I’ve only got two left so I prized it up.”

  “Gold and guns ’neath this floor,” I said. “Wonder what else my folks been hiding.”

  I spent the rest a’ that day outside in the light, working to free the rifle a’ rust. Penelope sat on the porch reading that book. Some story a’ love ’tween a girl and two fellas. The girl sounded like a empty-headed fool and Penelope said I weren’t wrong but the fellas weren’t no better.

  We didn’t have no vegetables growing nowhere and it was too late in the season for planting. I needed to get the rifle clean and firing quick and bag us a moose. Enough to keep us in meat all winter. Though that meant at least two days out in the wild tracking and I weren’t at all pleased with the idea a’ leaving Penelope on her own. We figured we’d use some a’ that gold for a sack a’ tatoes and some onions. A bag a’ rice maybe. Penelope said she’d learn how to fish and pull a few salmon out that river afore they spawned and turned rotten. We planned how to make the cabin safe and warm for winter. My folks had got themselves a tidy stockpile a’ wood and I said I’d add to it best I could. We’d make up some bear-proof shutters and dig a cold store ’neath the cabin. Said we’d start pulling gold at first melt.

  Felt damn good to plan it all. Felt better to start chopping logs and hauling dirt but a deep down part a’ me said I was an idiot. A kid what was dreaming, ’stead of a grown-up what knew better. Weren’t no chance Bilker’s friend got ate by a bear. Weren’t no chance he didn’t run back to Tucket and find Lyon and tell her right where we was. All that worry and fret was gnawing inside me like a beaver on a spruce. Soon them teeth would gnaw right through and I’d fall apart, but till then I wouldn’t let it show. Penelope was happy and I kept the worry buried deep for the both of our sakes. Even though that sky was clear, a black cloud hung low over our claim. I was just waiting for that cloud to turn into a storm and rip our lives clean in half.

  It weren’t safe for me to go to Tucket. It weren’t like Halveston, big enough to get lost in. In Tucket you could spit one side to the other. My face was all over it and Bilker’s friend, whoever he was, had seen me, not Penelope. Tell you the truth, I was glad of it. I’d had enough of people and towns. Tin River suited me just fine. Over the next few weeks we got deep into fall and Penelope made her first trip to Tucket since we posted the note to Lyon. Came back that evening smiling, Delacroix’s men weren’t in town no more, what meant she weren’t being looked for no more. Her trips to Tucket—to Mark—got a whole lot more frequent.