The Wolf Road

by Beth Lewis

  My head kept going back to the black circle. Was it just nightmares on account a’ him seeing them posters? Or was Kreagar right here, outside this house, marking that boy for his own? I thought ’bout telling them to leave, right now, pack up, go south like everyone else. But sitting there at that kitchen table while Jethro gave Josie a look what said she was being mean Aunt JoJo, I couldn’t say a word. If I told them what I knew, who I was, who goddamn Kreagar Hallet was, then all this would be lost to me, maybe to Penelope too. I knew that Penelope would stick by my side but I couldn’t take her away from Mark, not when they was just getting acquainted. If my plan, my damn fine plan, didn’t work, then she’d need him more’n ever, even if it weren’t true love.

  I told myself it was just nightmares. That boy was young and Tucket was half a step into the wild. Him and his daddy been attacked on the road up here, caught in a snare; that was enough to crack up a young’un. Them charcoal posters just gave all that fear a face.

  “Friend of mine has a skiff you can use for the wood,” Josie said, raising her chin toward the door like I’d caused the kid’s fit and they wanted me gone.

  “Much obliged,” I said.

  The river running just outside Tucket joined up with another branch what would take me and the wood right back to the claim. I met up with Penelope at the boat, all red-faced and giggling with Mark, and I said she’d be best staying here. Winter was close and I didn’t have much time left to bag a moose.

  She didn’t argue long, nor did Mark, and Josie, who was helping me load the wood, shrugged, and said all right then.

  “Three days,” I said, “four tops. I’ll come back here and fetch you when I’m done.”

  Penelope gave me a hug and said good luck, shoot us a moose. Josie rolled her eyes right back in her head and Mark thanked me for giving him time with Penelope. Felt a mite sorry for Mark then, but I didn’t let it show.

  The man whose boat it was, was a jolly round fella with a white beard tight to his cheeks. We said our goodbyes and good lucks and such and sped up the river dragging a dozen planks and a saw, and a bag a’ nails what I borrowed off Josie. The fella helped me unload at Tin River, hauled them planks out onto the grass to dry off, and then turned the boat around and went on his way with a hat tip and a wave.

  It was all so rosy. Sun was on me and warming up the edges, all the folks in Tucket had been smiling and helpful and it made me sick in my gut. I kept seeing that little boy and the fear what struck his face when I asked what that black circle was, kept thinking what was going to happen to him. But hell, he had his family around him and even Kreagar would have to work hard to get the best a’ Josie.

  I quick laid out all the wood to catch the last few hours a’ sun and packed a bag. Knife in my belt. Rifle slung over my shoulder and rounds in my pocket. It was getting close to sundown when I set out but that didn’t matter none. Cold ain’t no enemy when you can make a fire easy as I can. I’d seen moose out on the other side a’ the river, crossing the meadow northwest to southeast. Figured on going up the world ’stead a’ down.

  Felt myself a little burst a’ excitement in my chest, growing up my neck and putting a smile right on my face. I was out here, on my own, no other person near, and I had me a hunting rifle. I checked on the smokehouse and figured four planks on the top would make a fine roof and ’bout the same for the door. That’d take me two hours when I got back and I prayed hard I’d have meat for smoking. Had me a powerful urge for some jerky, mouth went watery at the thought, and as I shut up the cabin and walked out into the woods, I set my head remembering all that jerky I made and ate with Trapper. We tried a hundred different dry rubs, different wood for the smoke, different age a’ meat. Took us ’bout a year but we figured the best recipe for each animal and damn, the one we had for pig was, hand to God, the best I ever tasted.

  My head went through all the weights and measures a’ salt and sugar and spices what would go on the moose I’d be shooting. My belly gurgled and rumbled all the way into the wild and I was happy as a dog chewing on a T-bone.

  Shame I’m a goddamn idiot.

  The safety on that old rifle didn’t work, and safety weren’t my friend. One time when I was fourteen I’d tripped up, fallen hard, and my gun had gone off right beside me. That bullet cut a chunk out a tree right next to my head. Since then I ain’t never walked with a loaded gun, ’specially one with a busted safety, so on that hunting trip I didn’t have a round in the chamber ready.

  I’d spent a day walking only to spot a cow moose, perfect damn size, perfect damn place, munching on grass like nothing else in this world existed.

  That’s when I found out my coat had a damn hole in the pocket and I’d dropped every single one a’ my damn bullets all over the damn Yukon.

  I watched that moose wander off all calm-like and I tried my damnedest to hold in all my raging. But hell, I just ended up laughing. All that song and dance I made a’ putting Penelope with Mark and keeping her safe. Well, she’d just have to stay there a day or two longer while I went back to get more bullets, or least find some a’ the ones I dropped.

  I walked back ’tween the trees, breathing in all the fresh, cold air a’ the North afore I got back to the cabin. Bullets, hunting, and my plan, my damn fine plan what was going to free me a’ Kreagar and Lyon, went straight to hell, when, in the new dawn light, I saw three horses tied up outside my front door.

  I weren’t in no mood for stalking then. I knew right away who was inside my house and what they wanted. In truth, I almost turned right ’round and ran right back into the forest.

  But then I remembered Kreagar. All his evil was still free in this world. He’d keep on killing till he was behind iron or ’neath the dirt and Lyon weren’t smart enough to catch him on her own or she would a’ done it already.

  I strode right up to the cabin, useless rifle resting in my arms. Felt my knife in my belt.

  “Magistrate Lyon,” I shouted, and quick the door flung open.

  Saw her silver six-shooter first, pointed right at me. Then my eyes found hers. I hadn’t seen her since Genesis and not up close since Dalston, more’n a year ago. She looked so much older. Her neat blond hair weren’t so neat, her hand weren’t so steady.

  She came out and her two lieutenants came out behind her, guns up.

  I didn’t move, didn’t raise my hands, didn’t drop my rifle though she told me to.

  “Good to see you again, Elka, is it?” she said, and that ice-cold voice put a chill through me. Suddenly thought, What in the hell am I doing? This woman shot a squirrel ’tween the eyes, burnt my home to the ground, and has been chasing me for more’n a year, and I just invited her in for a goddamn nightcap.

  Shit. All that cocksure feeling went right out a’ me and I told myself I should a’ run for it when I had the chance.

  Lyon must a’ sensed that shift in me. Her hand went steady as bedrock.

  “All this time you been chasing me,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. “What you want?”

  Lyon held out her free hand to that stocky man what near arrested me in Halveston and he gave her a piece a’ paper. She held it up.

  “You know Kreagar Hallet,” she said, and I recognized the note me and Penelope left in Tucket. “I knew you did, when I first saw you in Dalston.”

  “That Frenchwoman in jail?”

  Lyon shook her head. “No, Ms. Delacroix is not in jail.”

  Shit.

  “Then you ain’t getting nothing from me,” I said.

  Lyon came farther out the cabin, stepped down onto the dirt, and signaled to the stocky fella. The other one, skinny and young, stayed quiet. The stocky one came at me with another piece a’ paper in his fist. It was out of a newspaper and was most all words. I recognized a few but couldn’t make no sense of it. There was a picture though, and that said it all.

  “Amandine Delacroix was hanged in Genesis last week,” Lyon said, and my throat went dry as sand. The picture showed a smart-dressed woman hanging
three feet off the ground, unmistakably Delacroix, and two men swinging beside her. Them dandy fellas.

  First thought that went through me was Penelope. She was free of all that business and I couldn’t help but smile.

  “Appreciate it,” I said, and shoved that paper in my pocket. The young fella didn’t have his gun drawn and the stocky one had it hanging by his side. I could run. Trees weren’t far. But Lyon’d shoot me afore I got ten yards. Not in the back. In the knees, in the arms. She didn’t want me dead. Not just yet.

  “Where is my son?” she said, and I saw her finger itching to squeeze that trigger.

  I figured a deal’s a deal and gave her the place as best I could remember it.

  “Ride back to town, send three men south to check,” she said to the stocky fella.

  Cold water filled up my gut. “You ain’t going yourself?”

  She shook her head slow but her eyes didn’t move off me. That unsettled me right to my core.

  “Hallet is here, so I will be here.”

  Didn’t think a’ that, did I? Pure, deep-down fear ran through me.

  The two men mounted their horses, exchanged a few words with their boss what I couldn’t hear over my pumping heart, then rode off. Me and Lyon was alone and there weren’t no one close enough to hear a gunshot.

  Soon as the horses were out of sight and hearing, she holstered her piece. Wished I had a bullet then so’s I could a’ taken the shot, ridding myself a’ her right then, but I figured she could probably draw and shoot me clean through the eye afore I even raised my rifle.

  “What now then?” I said, scuffing my boot in the dirt.

  Lyon sat on my porch, rested her elbows on her knees, and stared up at me. In truth, I didn’t know what in the hell was happening. Felt like I did with that doctor afore he gave me them pills, but I figured there weren’t no way I’d get that lucky twice.

  “What now, Elka, indeed,” she said, and she sounded tired.

  “How’d you find me?” I said.

  “Stanley Bilker, name sound familiar?” she said, and my eyes went to the pile a junk on top a’ his grave. “Your girlfriend caused quite the stir in Halveston, which wasn’t too clever. Stanley recognized you from the poster and he, as you probably noticed, is not a man who takes humiliation well.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  Lyon kept talking. “He came to me, saying he’d seen you. He and one of my men followed you here and, strangely, Mr. Bilker never made it back. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Elka?”

  I winced. Heard that shot all over again. Realized I was standing on the patch where he bled out.

  “Maybe a bear got him,” I said.

  “Maybe.”

  The openness in her was unnerving, like she was calming a pig afore slitting its throat.

  “My man said you killed him, tried to get me to come out here and arrest you on the spot,” she said, and I wanted to shout, hell I did, Penelope pulled that trigger.

  “But I was too busy with Delacroix and her whorehouse,” Lyon said. “The world is better off without a man like Bilker, but still, it’s against the law and I uphold the law.”

  I swallowed down a gulp a’ grit. “You arresting me, Magistrate?”

  She bowed her head. Strand a’ blond hair fell down over her eyes. They was weary eyes, tired a’ living, tired a’ crying.

  “Give me a reason not to,” she said.

  This was it. It weren’t quite how my damn fine plan was meant to happen, but I didn’t have no choice.

  “I’ll give you Kreagar,” I said, and she looked up at me, them tired eyes blazing.

  Then she laughed. Horrible sound, it was. All the humor gone right out a’ her and a sound like sand rubbing on glass taken its place. Right then, like the gods was hearing me, the sky went dark with clouds. To the north, the thunderhead rumbled to life.

  “How are you going to do that?” Lyon said.

  I shook my head. “Ain’t that easy. If I give him to you, you leave me alone. You take down all them posters a’ me, you stop lookin’ for me. I give you Kreagar, I’m dead to you. Get it?”

  She stood up, quicker’n I expected. I jumped back, gripped my rifle. She looked at me strange, like she’d got some kind a’ meaning out my words what I didn’t intend.

  “You helped him, didn’t you?” she said, and tremors went through me.

  “I don’t know what…” I started, but she put her hand on her gun.

  “Do you know what he did?” she said, stepped closer but didn’t draw. “Did you help him cut them up?”

  Flashes went through my head.

  Deer lying on the gutting table turned to women, to Missy, turned back to deer. Pelts stretched on A-frames blinked out, fur turned to pink skin. Skulls and bones changed shape in my head. I thought a’ that blond boy I seen in my dream, standing, screaming in the meadow.

  I shook it all away. Near shook my head clean off. “I didn’t know.”

  But I’d known it all along, down in the dark heart a’ me. The place a’ locked rooms and lost keys. But all them doors was flying open now. All but one.

  Lyon ran at me, grabbed my arms, made me look her right in the eye. I let her. I didn’t have no energy in me to fight her. Them doors were sucking me into their darkness, sucking me back through time to all them days in the woods with that man what I called Daddy.

  She shook me and shouted, “Did you eat them too?”

  Then I turned cold on the inside. I saw myself cutting strips a’ meat, hanging up rows and rows a’ them in the smokehouse.

  Best jerky I ever had.

  Lyon gave me a flask a’ water to sip and sat beside me on the porch. I stared at the pool a’ my sick in the grass.

  “How long were you with him?” she asked.

  “I was seven when he found me in the woods.”

  She weren’t exactly motherly but she had changed in them few minutes. Some a’ that ice in her melted and I think she believed me that I didn’t know.

  We sat quiet for a while and I watched the clouds roll in slow from the north. Tint to them spoke a’ snow.

  Finally Lyon said with a sigh, “Give me Hallet and you and me are done. I won’t pursue you.”

  I looked at her, felt a mite a’ warmth coming off that porcelain. “What ’bout Bilker?”

  She squinted up at the sun. “He was trespassing.”

  I took that to mean she wouldn’t think no more ’bout it and for the first time in more’n a year, I could taste real true freedom.

  We didn’t discuss details, there weren’t all that many. I just told her to stay in Tucket, keep that six-shooter loaded and the horses saddled.

  “Be ready,” I said, “ ’cause Kreagar ain’t gonna come easy.”

  In truth, I hadn’t a damn clue where to start. He was a ghost in these woods, same as me, and wouldn’t be found till he wanted to be. I told Lyon as much and she said she’d wait, as long as it took.

  There was a desperation in her, I saw it plain. Same kind a’ thing that fella in the rail station must a’ seen afore she tied him to the back a’ her horse. Seen that desperation afore, in my dream by the river, that blond boy. Same eyes. Same hair. Kreagar right there with his rifle aimed.

  Felt sick again but kept it down.

  “You remind me of him,” she said, and I looked at her frowning. “My son, I mean. He was always in the woods. Covered in dirt and bringing home insects in jars.” She paused, smiled, then said, “He brought home a rabbit once, tiny thing he’d shot with an air rifle. So proud of himself. He stood there in the kitchen saying, Mom, Mom, I got us dinner.”

  Then she laughed, not that bitter sound, but one full a’ sorrow. “I cooked it, like he asked, then he took one bite, turned up his nose, and spat it all over my clean table! He said he was sorry for killing it because he didn’t like the taste. Then he sat at the table, stern face on him, and thought about what he’d done. He gave that rabbit full funeral honors and vowed never to kil
l an animal again, unless it was a cow, of course, because he said he liked beef.”

  I smiled. “Good kid you had.”

  That word, “had,” might as well a’ been a knife in her. Everything changed ’bout her then. She stood up like she’d been caught out being friendly and said, all the authority back in her, “Get me Hallet. Alive.”

  Then she got on her horse in one quick move and said, “Soon.”

  She went to turn the horse then stopped and said, “Oh, and Elka, if you try to run before Hallet is mine”—she pointed right at me with the leather strap—“I’ll take that pretty blond friend of yours to Genesis instead.”

  She didn’t wait for me to answer. She shouted Yah! at the horse and dug her heels into the poor beast. He set off at a gallop and was off the claim and in the trees in a blink. Then I was on my own and my chest went tight and panicked and I couldn’t right figure what in the hell had just happened.

  She could a’, should a’, killed me, but something, maybe some piece a’ pity in her gut, stayed her hand. My life been given to me and there was only one reason for it. Kreagar was the only thing standing ’tween me and the rest a’ my life. Lyon been turned in my head from cold, hard law keeper to a mother wanting revenge.

  ’Course I couldn’t blame her.

  I sat there for longer’n I knew. Dark was coming and I didn’t notice Penelope till she was ten feet from the porch. She waved, called my name. A swell a’ pure shame near drowned me and I broke down, fat blubbering tears coming out a’ my eyes. I couldn’t stop ’em, couldn’t wipe ’em away fast enough.

  Penelope ran to me, concern all over her face, and knelt down in front a’ me, her hands on my shoulders.

  “What happened?” she asked. “Elka? What is it?”

  But I couldn’t speak. All I could do was hang my head and let it all come flowing out. Dam was burst. Doors was open. Weren’t no stopping it.