by Lila Bowen
“Like a chunk of meat,” he said, voice raspy. “Half-cooked.”
The girl brought him a dipper of water, and he sat up on one elbow and drank it with a grateful-type look in his eye.
“Welcome to camp.”
Rhett cleared his throat. “The welcome wagon here needs some work.”
The girl laughed into her hand, her bright eyes dancing. “You should see the leave-taking committee.”
The old man grunted and walked around to Rhett’s line of sight. His face was a saggier, more ravaged, more troubled version of the girl’s, and he had a long gray mustache and goat beard to match his braid around back. He gabbled angrily, made the motion of a finger slicing a throat, and pointed at the door.
“I am Cora, and this is my grandfather, the honorable Dr. Zhang. Everyone calls him Grandpa Z. I am sorry to say you will see us again. But now, you must go.” She gracefully raised her hand and bowed her head as if welcoming him out of the tent and into the pouring rain.
“What do I do now?” he asked, sitting up and feeling the world spin dizzily.
“I would start by putting on your boots. The crews will be in the bunk cars and tents while the rain is hard, repairing canvas or doing other useful work. Have you been assigned?”
“Shelton.”
Her mouth pursed. “Rough crew. Cutting lines and cleanup. Don’t show weakness.”
Rhett nodded his thanks and hunted around for his missing sock, which he found draped over his doctor’s bag. It was closed, as if it had never been rifled through while he was supposedly asleep. That rudeness, he supposed, could be overlooked, considering the kindness Cora had just performed. Before pulling on the sock, he took a long look at the place where his little toe used to be. It was just smooth, pink scar tissue now.
“That’s a right handy trick,” he said. “How’d you do it?”
The girl smiled in a fake but practiced way that didn’t seem like her at all, a way that reminded Rhett of the whores at the Leaping Lizard saloon. At least they were going to play like she didn’t know he’d been awake.
“Ancient family secret.”
“Well, I thank you for it.” He pulled on his boots and stood, wobbling for a moment as he learned how to balance while missing a toe. It didn’t hurt as much to stand as he’d thought it would. “Bunk cars, you said?”
Cora nodded. “If you walk up the train, you will find them. The number eighteen is on the side of the car.”
Rhett’s brow wrinkled. “Oh, eighteen. Well, sure.”
The girl reached into the fire like it was nothing and pulled out a cherry-red piece of coal, crushing it between her fingers as if it were a clot of dirt. Taking Rhett’s arm in one fire-hot hand, she turned his palm over and wrote 18 on it in warm black ash.
“Many thanks,” he said, feeling weirdly choked up. “To you, too, Grandpa Z.”
The old man, whose back had been turned during their discussion, only grunted. Rhett tipped his hat to Cora, picked up his far lighter bag, and did them the favor of not mentioning their thieving. His toe felt remarkably not horrible, considering it had been cut off and the skin sealed over with dragon fire. It was a decent bargain, as far as he was concerned.
He had come to this camp with two objectives, and he’d already got one under his belt. Now he just had to survive long enough to kill Trevisan.
Chapter
20
It was a different world outside their quiet, warm, tidy tent. The camp was filthy, and the pounding rain didn’t help. It sluiced off his hat and shivered down Rhett’s back and into his boots. In seconds, he was drenched, his feet squelching as he walked past Trevisan’s caboose and up the line of train cars. Earl had told him a little, but not much, which meant he had to pay attention and figure it out for himself. There were numbers on each car, and he’d just have to walk until he found the right one.
Off to one side of the train were pens for cattle, pigs, and horses, the creatures mired in knee-high mud and caterwauling. Between cars, he could see that on the other side was the city—but it was not a real one. Even from here, he could tell the buildings had false fronts and weren’t nearly as big as they looked. A feller didn’t need his letters to know that their signs boasted liquor, women, and cards. Rhett was glad he’d chosen to walk along the side with the animals.
He would’ve liked to have seen the train up close in the sunlight. As it was, the dark shape seemed to go on forever under black clouds, and he couldn’t even see the engine up front, obscured as it was by sheets of rain. He smelled a butcher, somewhere, and iron and coal, and blood mixing with mud. The cars he passed began to have open doors, and sullen men watched him as he passed. There were all sorts of fellers, many of whose general types he’d seen before, like the broad, freckled Irish or the dark-skinned fellers from Afrika, many of whom he knew had been recently freed from slavery back east—although he’d heard tell around Gloomy Bluebird that not much had changed for such folk. They glared fiercely at him while he passed, their cat-eyes gleaming green and yellow. Rhett would not have admitted it to anyone for all the world, but he wouldn’t want to tussle with them, much less ask about shared relatives.
He’d kept his hand in a fist to keep the rain from washing out Cora’s scribbling, and he opened his fingers briefly to be sure the number on the train car matched the one on his palm. He reckoned it did, so he stopped in front of the slid-open door. The car was dirty, the dull gray of bare wood, full of holes, and half-full of a motley crew of part-Injun fellers and other in-betweeners.
A dark-skinned man with raised bumps on his face in peculiar shapes bared his stark white teeth in what might’ve been a grin.
“What’re you staring at, podner?” His voice had a honey-slow twang that didn’t go at all with his ferocious looks, not that Rhett planned to comment on the discrepancy.
The man held himself like he knew his own importance, so Rhett nodded to show his respect. “I was told to report to Shelton in bunk car eighteen for work.”
The grin turned up at the corners in welcome, and the man held out a hand—missing the tip of his pinky. “Well, come on in and welcome to hell. You already met the big boss man and know you made the mistake of your life, right?”
Rhett looked down at his foot before taking the man’s hand and stepping up into the car. “That I did.”
“Then I’ll show you around. I’m Digby Freeman. You like that name?”
Having never been asked such a question, it took Rhett a beat to answer, “Well, sure.”
Digby nodded. “Chose it myself. You know what they called me after I got kidnapped off a sugar cane plantation and grew up among the Sioux? Cat Who Falls Twice. So I figured I’d pick something better. What’s your name?”
“Ned Hennessy.”
Digby cocked his head like that tickled his ear. “Hm. That does not roll off the tongue. You don’t look like a Ned.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. You’ll get a nickname, soon enough. Everybody does. So let’s see.”
They were standing with their backs to the open door now, and Rhett got the layout of the bunk car. It held only hard cots, and fellers, although there were no blankets nor any other sign of comfort. Rain showed through holes where boards were missing, and a full piss-pot was swarming with flies. All the men wore shades of gray and black, their faces sweaty and grimed with dirt and their eyes wary.
“Mr. Shelton’s in the shebang with the other walking bosses and foremen—you know what that means?”
“Reckon it means they’re in charge and I’d best watch my mouth.”
Digby nodded. “You catch on quick, which tells me you been in a position to get whipped if you didn’t. When Mr. Shelton ain’t around, I’m in charge, and neither one of us is so bad, comparatively. You like that word? Comparatively?” Rhett nodded because he didn’t appear to have a choice. “I do. Nice, meaty word. Means it could be a lot worse. Now this here’s Jackrabbit, and that’s Pegleg Lemmy, and that’s Notch, and that’s Beans and Pup Dog and Buz
zard and Wild Ed and Little Jim and Preacher. He ain’t a real preacher, mind—he just talks like one.”
“I know a feller like that,” Rhett murmured.
The men were all sewing at canvas and looked up briefly with a nod when their names were mentioned. Cora had called them a rough crew, but they mostly looked like beat dogs who just didn’t get up anymore after they got kicked.
“What kind of monster are you?” Digby asked.
“The dangerous kind.”
Digby snorted. “Lot of that goin’ around, for sure. But we like to know a man’s capabilities before we sleep locked up in this stinkin’ piss-box with him.” He leaned close, his eyes gone flat and hard, waiting. “So what are you?”
“Lammergeier,” Rhett said, his tongue tripping over the unfamiliar word. “Big-ass Afrikan vulture.”
Digby nodded. “That explains that big ol’ red eye. Now, what tribe are you?”
Rhett shrugged. “Don’t know. Didn’t know either of my folks.”
“But you’re a black Injun?”
“Ask me as much as you want, but I still won’t know.”
Still staring at Rhett, Digby said something in a tongue like Dan and Winifred’s, and a couple of the fellers nodded along. One laughed cruelly and responded in kind. Rhett’s hackles went up.
“A feller stands in front of me and talks in another language, I figure he’s trying to keep me in the dark,” he said, his hand going to where his knife should’ve been.
Digby’s grin came back, full force. “Just checking to see if you were lying. I reckon you ain’t. Now, can you sew?”
Rhett nodded.
“Then you can take that extra bunk in the back, Red-Eye. There’s a hole in the floor under it, I’m afraid, which lets in the wind and cold right fierce, when they’re a problem. And Beans farts something awful. I’ll get you some tenting and a needle and thread. Until the rain’s done, that’s all we got to do—patch up the tents while the big men enjoy themselves. Once it clears up, they’ll put us on a handcar, twelve deep, and send us out to smooth the way.”
“Different day, same story,” said the feller Digby had called Notch. Just like Dan, this feller was a long-haired Injun missing a chunk out of his ear. But Notch seemed easygoing, which meant Rhett didn’t want to punch him yet.
“Thanks kindly for the welcome,” Rhett said, tipping his sodden hat and heading for the bunk in back.
“If your britches are soaked through, might want to take ’em off before you sit down,” Beans said. “It’s always damp as hell in here, and your bunk’ll be wet for days.” He pointed down at his wiry brown legs poking out of a leather breechclout like Dan’s.
Rhett considered what he had on under his britches and shook his head. “I don’t know you boys that well, and you might poke fun of my skinny limbs,” he said. The other fellers chuckled, and Rhett hoped that was the start of fitting in.
It rained all afternoon, and Rhett sewed on the rough canvas with the same violent rage he’d felt while fixing Mam’s and Pap’s shirts back in Gloomy Bluebird. It irked him something awful to have escaped slavery and then walked right back into it on his own. He wanted to ask a dozen questions, but he didn’t know if Trevisan might have spies sprinkled among the men or pay the kind souls who brought him word of mutiny. So he just did his work and listened in and tried to get a feel for Digby, who seemed like a top feller and well-liked by all.
At dinnertime, Digby solemnly checked his beat-up timepiece and had the men get dressed and line up at the door right before the bell rang. They followed him out to the feed tent, their hats pulled down and their shoulders hunched up against the driving rain. It was a longer walk than Rhett had anticipated, and by the time they got there, he was again soaked to the bone. No one bothered to complain.
Once inside the tent flaps, everyone relaxed. It was warm and smelled good, and they slid onto long wooden benches along with dozens of other men. In front of Rhett was a bowl, but when he went to pick it up, he found it nailed down. Soon a big ladle appeared over his shoulder, slopping down overcooked beans with bits of bacon and beef mixed in. A hard biscuit was tossed down beside it, plus a tin cup of water.
“Eat fast,” Notch said, his elbow digging into Rhett, so closely were they crammed in. “Or they’ll send you out with food still in your bowl.”
Rhett didn’t have a spoon, but plenty of the fellers didn’t. He had to make do with his fingers and biscuit. The water tasted of tin, and he’d just finished everything when the bell rang and the flap opened and a new batch of hungry workers showed up to take their places. A one-legged Aztecan feller went all down the table, swabbing what was left out of the nailed-down bowls with a mop and leaving dirty water pooled on the benches.
“Like horses at a damn trough,” Rhett muttered.
“Yeah, well, and you might’ve et horse, too. That beef was tough as leather,” Digby said with a laugh, appearing behind Rhett. His big hand landed on Rhett’s shoulder, and he leaned close before they ducked out of the tent. “Just a word of warning. If you try running, they’ll make sure you never run again. You saw that one-legged feller, right?” Rhett nodded. “Don’t be like him. First strike, you get whipped with silver. Second strike, you lose a leg so they can still get some work out of you. Third strike, you’re sand.”
“I thought this was a job.”
“Then you ain’t looking close.” Digby turned Rhett toward the far side of the tent, where the cookwagon poked halfway in. A few wooden shelves were lined with big, greasy-looking glass jars. Each jar was full of sand and had writing on it. “Those boys tried to run.”
“What do the jars say?” Rhett asked, a chill creeping up his spine.
“Runs with Bears. Juan Rodriguez. Shaun O’Bannon. Samuel Sykes.”
Rhett swallowed hard to keep the food in his belly. “You got your letters?”
Digby spat a laugh. “Hell, no. I remember the day each one of those bastards got executed. Trevisan made us all crowd around to watch. Told us their names. Told us to remember. Now we got to stare at what’s left of ’em, every time we eat.”
Rhett wanted to ask him if he knew which jar belonged to Shaun O’Bannon. Maybe, somehow, he could steal that jar and take it back to Earl, or at least tell the bastard what color his brother’s remains were. Earl would take it hard, knowing his brother had died while he escaped. But Digby’s hand on his shoulder, shoving him back out of the tent and into the rain, suggested that further questions about the dead folks weren’t the best idea, now or ever.
They trudged back to the bunk car to sleep, and Rhett did his best to get comfortable on the swaybacked cot. He wished to hell he’d found a moment of privacy during the day to rewrap his chest after transforming for Trevisan’s amusement, but there was no privacy in the train camp, and that meant the damp muslin was pooled around his waist. He tossed and turned and couldn’t relax. Digby hadn’t lied—Beans clearly had belly issues, and their corner of the train smelled like a dead cow left in the sun. Settling himself on his side, facing the hole in the wall, Rhett let his gaze soften and stared out into the night.
A wobble went up in his belly, and his skin went over cold. Through the sluicing rain, he saw a shape approach and hurry by with stern, bold steps. Wrapped in a black cloak, it was dark, so dark, and held a black bumbershoot, on which perched a familiar-looking black bird. A raven. Rhett squinted and could just catch the shape of a pale white face by the light of the shebang.
It was Trevisan.
And he was alone.
Rhett bolted up to sitting as the figure disappeared down the road of filth and muck. Sticking his freezing feet back in his still-sodden boots, he moved toward the train car’s door, his eyes searching around for some sort of weapon that could pierce a warlock through the heart and end him. But as he wrapped shaking fingers around the handle, something warm grabbed his boot around the ankle.
“Where you think you’re going?” Digby asked. His voice, usually so jovial, sounded right threat
ening, as if he knew exactly what Ned Hennessy thought he was doing.
“Going to take a piss,” Rhett muttered.
“Use the pot.”
“Might have to do more. Dinner’s gone sour.”
“Yeah, I bet it has. Now you do whatever you got to do in the piss-pot, and no man’ll blame you for it.”
Rhett’s teeth ground together as he considered how much of a lead Trevisan now had on him in the dark in an unfamiliar place full of hiding spots just as pitch-black as the man’s cloak. “I ain’t afraid of a little rain, Mr. Freeman, and what I need to do is bound to be messy.”
“I reckoned that was so, but I like you, Ned, so I’m gonna tell you a secret. Night like tonight, a man might get some ideas. The kind of ideas the big boss man and his scouts would consider malevolent. Pretty word, ain’t it? Malevolent? Means hateful. Means a man might put his hands to dark deeds. So even if you wanted to go out and do something messy, you can’t. We’re locked in.”
Rhett swallowed hard. “Locked in?”
“You go on and pull that handle a little and see if it ain’t so.”
With a silent growl, Rhett did just that, and the door wouldn’t budge.
“That clank you hear is the pin put through our lock by a man on the outside.”
“What if there was a fire? What if—?”
Digby sighed like he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. “Son, you think they give a shit about us?”
Rhett’s head hung. Digby was right. And the moment was lost.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Freeman,” he said softly and returned to his bunk. He didn’t bother with the piss-pot, and Digby didn’t mention it.
When he put his eye back to the hole, all he saw was a miserable night.
Trevisan was, of course, long gone. No man lingered in the rain, especially not one who thought himself so fine. The railroad boss was a peculiar feller, even before you got to the part where he sliced off fingers and toes. He had dangerous men close to him, not to mention unseen guards planted around the camp. Grandpa Z was not the friendly feller he sounded like, but at least Rhett didn’t have to try to squeeze him to find out how to help Winifred. He already knew the how; he just had to figure out how to get one of the two healers out of the camp and back to Winifred. Of the two, he’d naturally choose Cora, who was right pleasant and had already shown several traits that Rhett could appreciate. She dressed like a boy, she didn’t rat him out for feigning sleep, and she was easy on the eyes. Tomorrow he would learn how to build a railroad, and hopefully how to get close to Trevisan. Tonight, all he could do was go to sleep.
