Legends of the Lost Causes

by Brad McLelland

  “I thought I told you all to stay on the trail.”

  “Yessir, it’s just that—” The thrall grimaced in the torchlight, as though scared to continue. “Them dead’uns we rounded up are startin’ to stiff up. Your stallion and the packhorses don’t like it none. Want us to go ahead and bury ’em?”

  Whiskey said nothing at first. The Prime was seeping from his bones, but the power to raise was still inside, pulsing just under his flesh. The Reverend Rose had left him just enough to get the job done.

  “Bury ’em,” Whiskey said. “Be sure to leave no sign.”

  Dixon lowered his head, obedient. “And Raines? Want us to bury him, too?”

  “No, leave him,” Whiskey said. “I’ll see to him later.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  The thralls began to ramble back through the woods.

  “One more thing,” Whiskey called.

  “Master?”

  Whiskey raised his voice. “You all failed me. You let the pup escape and lost the shard.”

  “Not me, Master!” Dixon whimpered. “It was the others! I wanted to find ’im!” The other thralls shuffled back, hoping to avoid Whiskey’s wrath.

  “I’ve told you worms the amulet cannot come together. Thanks to yer blunderin’, Raines’s shard is still in the wild. An example must be made.”

  Without raising a finger, Whiskey pulled at the invisible ropes around Dixon’s mind. The thrall gave a choking sound. He raised his hands to pry at his throat, but Whiskey forced the arms back down to his sides. There was no other struggle. Dixon dropped to his knees.

  “I give, an’ I take away,” Whiskey growled.

  The thrall crumpled to the ground, and was still. Bad Whiskey looked at the other thralls and sneered, “Go.”

  The thralls hurried away.

  CHAPTER 10

  AMBUSH AT COPPERHEAD ROCK

  Pa Abner stands before Keech and Sam in the deep forest, two miles north of Low Hill, the quiet place he brings them to train. He holds an object up to the faint sunlight, a freshly sharpened iron tomahawk, the same one that had grazed Sam’s cheek in the fighting circle one season before. The sun flashes on the blade like a silver wound cut into the air.

  “Ready yourselves, boys,” Pa says firmly. “Prepare your minds.”

  “Yessir,” Keech and Sam respond in unison.

  “Keech, mind your feet,” Pa warns. “I won’t tell you again.”

  “Sorry, Pa,” Keech says, and checks his stance. Over the sounds of distant loons and Missouri warblers, he can hear the apprehension in his own voice, a small pang of worry that hasn’t gone away since Pa began their weapons training. He has done well in their lessons on land and water navigation, and the teachings on tool and weapon building, but he has never accepted the warrior’s way, has never fully embraced the side that makes you fearless in combat. Sam is the confident one, more willing to accept the pain of a battle. Keech knows he still has so much to learn, even from his brother.

  “Study the blade; visualize the swing,” Pa tells them, then takes a menacing step forward.

  Keech and Sam draw deep breaths, again in unison. They hold no weapons of their own. The only protection they’re allowed in the fighting circle is that of mental preparation.

  “We don’t leave this ground till you’ve seized the weapon,” Pa says.

  Off to the west, a whip-poor-will calls out a lonely ballad.

  Pa grips the iron tomahawk, and speaks the phrase that opens the game.

  “Now, my young warriors, let’s begin.”

  * * *

  A cold dampness caressed Keech’s cheek, pulling him out of the ghostly memory from three summers ago. He opened his eyes to find himself staring at one of the runt shoats from the pigpen. The shoat grunted and nudged Keech with his snout, probably hoping for a bucket of slop.

  Keech pushed the curious shoat away and sat up. The charred skeleton of the farmhouse, billowing heaps of buckled timber, lay before him. He had apparently collapsed again in the front yard, either from exhaustion or from the shock of seeing his family, his home, destroyed. The heat from Whiskey’s fire had dried his clothes and coat. To the east, a cautious light spread across the sky. Clouds covered the void, but they couldn’t hold back the approaching morning.

  He stood and rubbed his eyes.

  He knew what this morning would bring. Might as well get it done.

  Keech went to the woodshed, retrieved one of Pa’s shovels, and set about combing through the rubble of the Home for his family’s remains. In the nearby coop, Pa’s blue hens fussed at the empty dirt. Somewhere north, a friendless bird cackled.

  Minutes after he began, the billowing smoke and lingering heat from the buried cinders forced him away. There was no way he would be able to dig through the Home for their remains. He would have to wait for the wreckage to stop smoking and cool down, and by that time Bad Whiskey Nelson would be long gone. Keech spat in frustration, and hunkered down on his haunches to think.

  The wind shifted and pushed the black smoke south, and in that moment Keech’s eye caught something small and thin poking out of the Home’s ashes. He walked over carefully and used Pa’s shovel to reach over the cinders and lift out the object.

  It was Patrick’s stick-and-ball, the toy that Robby had whittled for him. It was still intact, barely even grazed by the fire.

  Keech clutched the toy with both hands and decided this should be the moment to say something and then shed his tears.

  But Keech could find no words, no tears. The sign that hung over the shakepole fence was still there—PROTECT US, ST. JUDE, FROM HARM—and he remembered all the times he and Sam had slapped that sign for good luck—but everything had changed. All he felt now was a confusing sort of rage.

  After a long silence, the words came. But they weren’t for Sam or Granny Nell or the others. Not yet. He addressed Pa Abner.

  “You kept too many secrets, Pa. Now Sam and the family are gone. You must have had your reasons, but now it’s too late to save anyone.”

  Keech’s hands began to quiver around Patrick’s toy.

  “I have to go hunting now. You put this on my shoulders. I have to finish it.”

  He looked at the mountain of black timber where his family lay buried under cinder.

  “Vengeance will come,” he said to them. “I swear it on my life.”

  * * *

  Buttoning his coat, Keech crossed the property and headed for Big Timber Road to retrieve poor Felix and Minerva. With everything that had taken place, he had almost forgotten they were still tied to the pignut hickory behind Copperhead Rock.

  As he hiked up the road, he slipped his hand into his coat pocket and Pa’s silver pendant grazed his fingers. He’d forgotten all about it. He pulled it out and gave it a look. Bad Whiskey had wanted this something fierce. When Keech had escaped with it, Whiskey had yelled at his thralls, Get the shard, you fools! The Reverend’ll have our heads!

  Maybe he shouldn’t be touching it. Maybe Pa Abner should have gotten rid of the thing a long time ago. A good luck charm didn’t bring misery and destruction.

  A curious shiver ran through Keech, as if he were being watched. The shadows were long inside the elms, and he didn’t like the way the trees moaned and snarled when the wind kicked up. Clutching the pendant, he walked faster.

  Behind Copperhead Rock, Keech felt relieved to see the ponies standing exactly where he and Sam had left them. They had tangled their ropes around the hickory, and Minerva had suffered a small gash above her left hock; otherwise, the ponies were in passable shape.

  Stowing Pa’s charm inside Felix’s saddlebag, he set about untangling their ropes. Midway up the tree bark, the sight of his own carving—the head and face of the Wolf—gave him a lonely feeling. He had never thought of himself as the Wolf without Sam as the Rabbit. They had always been inseparable, ever since Sam had been dropped off at the Home as a toddler.

  From deep in the woods Keech heard a blunt crack. Felix and Minerva blu
stered.

  “Easy now,” Keech said. He stood still, ears cocked toward the sound.

  Nothing.

  As soon as he turned back to the ponies, the forest exploded behind him. Limbs cracked and leaves shattered. Keech spun around to see three figures leap out from behind Copperhead Rock.

  The trio hollered and yelped, and Keech’s only thought was that Bad Whiskey and his thralls had returned to finish their treacherous work. His eye caught a gleam of sharp metal—a giant, nasty blade in one of the figures’ hands.

  Keech scrambled backward, midway to turning about and forming the proper fight stance, but his heel snagged Minerva’s rope and he tumbled. His bowler hat flew off his head and landed in a blanket of leaves. As soon as he was on his back, the trio descended upon him. The one with the knife sprang like a bobcat. The figure straddled his stomach and pressed the razor-sharp blade against the side of his neck. Keech tried to lift his body, but the goon bounced a little, using his weight to drive the wind out of Keech’s gut.

  “Move a muscle and you’re dead,” the attacker snarled.

  The other two figures gathered around their partner. Recovering a quick breath, Keech took a closer look at them. He blinked in surprise when he realized he wasn’t staring at Whiskey’s gang of thralls.

  He was staring at three boys.

  One of Pa’s first rules of fighting sounded in his head: If possible, reduce the danger.

  Keech unclenched his fists.

  “Hey there, fellas,” he said. The attacker’s bulk on top of him pinched his words. “If you aim to rob me, I’m only holding a few pennies.”

  The trio glanced at one another, then rumbled with laughter. The boy with the giant knife leaned downward, pushing breath that smelled like salted beef up Keech’s nostrils. “We ain’t after your pennies,” he said, his voice revealing a light, nimble accent. The blade in his hand had to be a full thirteen inches long.

  “You think we’re pickpockets?” said the largest of the boys. This one stood six feet tall in his muddy boots, and his stomach was as round as an oak barrel. Keech put this boy at fifteen, despite his size—too young for a beard but old enough for puppy fuzz.

  The third boy—the mousiest of the trio—looked no older than ten. “Even if we were thieves,” the kid said, “we wouldn’t want a bunch of no-account pennies.”

  The boy with the knife said to his large trailmate, “What should we do with him, John Wesley? Feed him to the wild boars?”

  “Dangit, you ain’t supposed to use names! He might be one of them killers!”

  “Yeah, no names, Cutter,” mocked the youngest.

  The boy who apparently went by John Wesley tossed a hand in the direction of the Home. “Was that blaze down yonder your handiwork?” he asked Keech.

  “Hang on a dang second—you think I’m responsible for that?” Anger knotted Keech’s stomach. He struggled against the boy with the knife. “You’ll want to get off me now,” he said.

  “Oh yeah? What happens if I don’t?”

  “I’ll make you eat that knife is what.”

  Cutter chortled. “I’d like to see you try, chavo.”

  Without taking his eyes off the boy’s face, Keech used both hands to grab the blade-wielder’s right wrist and forearm. He shoved the arm and wrist violently upward, twisting the business side of the blade away from his neck. Then he kicked up his left leg and hip to toss the kid off his stomach.

  The boy yelped in pain and went tumbling. Before he could reposition himself, Keech pivoted perfectly, landed on top of him, and pinned the hand still clumsily holding the knife to the ground. One final turn of the wrist, and Keech wrenched the blade out of the hand. He tossed it safely to the side.

  Nearby, the mousy boy released a surprised gasp.

  “My knife!” the boy beneath him shouted. He lifted his other arm to strike, but Keech moved quickly, securing the boy’s fist with his free hand.

  “Knock it off, all of you,” another voice called out from behind Copperhead Rock.

  Keech glanced back. A fourth boy appeared around the boulder, a long muzzle-loading rifle propped in the crook of one arm.

  “Kid, we don’t mean you no trouble. Now kindly release my friend, and we’ll leave you in peace.”

  This new boy was even taller than John Wesley, but a good deal slimmer. The weapon on his arm was a long-barrel musket, a Hawken rifle with a polished wood stock. Keech recognized the rifle because stories had it that Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett both had carried one.

  “You have my word no harm will come to you,” the tall boy said to Keech. “Please. Let him stand.”

  Positioning one knee on the attacker’s chest, Keech shoved himself up. His rising motion drove a loud wheeze out of Cutter’s throat. Keech backed away, and held up his hands in a gesture of appeasement.

  Cursing under his breath and shaking his hurt wrist, Cutter got to his feet. He gave Keech a furious look, then went to retrieve his giant knife. He slid the blade over the arm of his coat to clean the dirt off and returned it to a long leather scabbard upon his hip. Keech noticed that the knife’s handle was a twisted brown-and-white grip of solid bone. There were hints of an old design, some kind of engraving, at the base.

  “Much obliged,” the rifleman said to Keech. “Sorry for the tempers. My trailmates get jumpy when they run across a stranger.” He offered a large hand for Keech to shake.

  “No harm, I reckon.” Though deep down, Keech wanted to give a bona fide lickin’ to the boy with the knife for pinning him down.

  Letting the rifleman stand with his hand in the air, he took a moment to collect his bowler hat and brush the dirt off his rump. He had no wish to trust any of these scamps, but there was something about the tall boy—a solid confidence—that reminded him of Pa Abner. Warily, he offered his own hand for proper shaking.

  “Name’s Keech Blackwood.”

  “Keech, glad to know you. My name’s Nathaniel, but everybody calls me Nat.”

  As they shook hands, Keech took a second to size up Nat. The boy looked sixteen, perhaps older, with dark mahogany hair that fell the length of his neck. His rawhide clothes were shabby and faded by the sun—a rancher’s garb, full of dust and hard work—and the brim of his gray hat cast a wide shade over a pair of fierce blue eyes, so deep and severe they were almost unsettling.

  Keech noticed a peculiar marking on Nat’s coat. A small egg-shaped patch, brown on the top, yellow on the bottom, sewn tightly onto the coat’s breast pocket. Inside the oval was a symbol:

  Keech had never seen it before. He figured it for a rancher’s mark.

  A loud bluster from the ponies drew his attention away from the patch. He gestured at the animals, still tied to the pignut hickory. “That’s my horse Felix. And that’s Minerva. Her owner was Sam, but he—” He paused to swallow a lump. “He died down yonder.”

  Nat frowned. “So that was your house.”

  From their vantage point, Keech couldn’t see any traces of the Home itself, only the rising black smoke through the white elm trees. But the outline of the orphanage was strong in his mind, standing tall and happy and defiant in the clearing below the peak.

  “It wasn’t just a house,” he said. “It was an orphanage. We called it the Home for Lost Causes.”

  “‘Lost Causes,’” the smallest boy mused. His voice had not yet dropped. “Named after Saint Jude?”

  Keech smiled, impressed by the kid’s knowledge. “That’s right.”

  The mousy boy returned the smile, then cast his eyes to the ground. Like Nat’s, his eyes were a fierce blue, honed to sharpness by hard days. “We lost our families, too. They all got killed.”

  “Sorry to hear it,” Keech said.

  The boy shrugged. “No more time for sorry,” he said. “There’s only time for vengeance.”

  Keech took a few moments to finish untangling his ponies. As he worked, the mousy boy walked over and pulled a small leather pouch out of his black woolen coat. He opened up the pouch, reve
aling a thick, greasy medicine inside.

  “I bought some salve back in Saline County. My horse cut his muzzle on a jack pine branch.” He gestured to the gash above Minerva’s hock.

  “Much obliged,” Keech said.

  The small boy applied some of the cream to Minerva’s wound. When he was done, he wiped his fingers on his trousers. He noticed Keech’s carving of the Wolf head on the pignut hickory.

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing,” Keech replied.

  Nat summoned everyone back together. “I think it’s high time we have proper introductions,” he said to Keech. “The small one there”—he pointed to the mousy boy—“that there is Duck.”

  Keech nodded to Duck, who smiled bashfully and doffed his blue hat, a head covering so large it concealed nearly every strand of the boy’s short brown hair. Around his neck the scrawny lad wore a knotted green scarf, cinched up tighter than a croc’s mouth. His trousers were mud-blotted, and both of his boots were cracked along the toes, soon to be in shambles. Keech immediately pegged Duck as Nat’s brother, on account of the eyes and hair color. “You two siblings?” he asked.

  Nat flashed a small grin. “How could you tell?”

  “There’s a family look about you.”

  Nat turned and gestured behind him. “The big one yonder, that’s John Wesley.” The heavy boy dropped his eyes to his boots at being called out by name. He wore a yellow straw hat pulled low over a pair of bushy eyebrows, and the hair beneath the hat was a curly reddish blond, full of knots and tangles. He looked just as disheveled and trail-muddy as Duck. “He’s hunting the outlaw who killed his ma.”

  Keech offered John Wesley a small nod. “I’m sorry to hear it. Who’s the one responsible?”

  An aggrieved look crossed John Wesley’s face. “I don’t speak his name.”

  “Ain’t nobody’s business anyway,” Cutter said, and patted John Wesley on the back. He then added, “Ain’t you gonna introduce me, Nat?”

  Nat sighed, not so much an exasperated sound, but a light mocking one. “That there is Cutter,” he said. “He thinks his knife is magic, but he’s an ace with it.”