Legends of the Lost Causes

by Brad McLelland

  “I lost the charm!” He grabbed rocks and hurled them aside.

  “The ceiling’s falling.”

  “We can’t leave without the charm!”

  Cutter grabbed Keech’s wrist. “You didn’t want to leave me back in the tunnel,” he said. “I’m telling you the same thing you told me. Be smart, amigo.”

  Reluctantly, Keech gave up his search. All five of the young riders assembled at the riverbank, teetering on the edge of the roiling river.

  A giant stone formation plunged from the ceiling, crushing the other two ghouls.

  The Wasape lunged again. Bad Whiskey barked a curse and scrabbled away. He found the Osage warrior’s arrow, grabbed it, and raised it high. The outlaw jabbed the arrow deep into the Wasape’s chest. The great bear flung its head back and bellowed.

  Keech yelled at Nat, “We have to jump!”

  In the dying torchlight, Nat’s face looked sick. “If you’re wrong, Keech, this river will be our grave.”

  “If we don’t jump, we’ll be killed anyway.”

  “Right,” Nat said. He grabbed his sister’s hand. “Ready?” he asked Duck, and the girl nodded excitedly. They leaped into the raging river.

  Cutter stepped up next and crossed himself. “Now we’re jumping in a river,” he said, as if trying to make sense of the plan. The boy chuckled and sheathed his knife. “I reckon I’ve done crazier things. Adios!” he shouted, and jumped in.

  John Wesley didn’t budge. “I can’t do it,” he cried.

  Keech looked at him desperately. “John, this river’s our only hope.”

  “But I ain’t sure I can swim!”

  Keech felt a sickening panic twist his gut. “Just hold your breath and kick. It’s easy.”

  The Wasape roared behind them as the cavern continued to rain massive chunks of stone. There was no more time for debate. “We’ll go together,” Keech promised. “I won’t let you drown. I swear it.”

  John shivered. “Okay, let’s do this.”

  Keech grabbed the bottom of John Wesley’s coat, clutching the cloth as tightly as he could. John Wesley released a loud cry, then vaulted into the water.

  Keech had one last moment to hear Bad Whiskey scream, then he sprang into the river, holding for dear life onto John Wesley. The icy water engulfed him. He began to kick, but the rapids were much too strong for swimming. The river sucked him under. The currents snatched his fingers away from John Wesley’s coat. He fumbled for the boy, but there was no use.

  Keech tumbled into the unknown.

  PART 3

  THE SULLIED PLACE

  INTERLUDE

  WHISKEY IN THE DARK

  The drum is his glory, his joy and delight,

  It leads him to pleasure as well as to fight;

  No girl, when she hears it, though ever so glum,

  But packs up her tatters, and follows the drum.

  The song came to Whiskey like a leaf tumbling in the wind. He tried to hold on to it—the song reminded him of warmer days, before the Gita-Skog, before the Reverend Rose—but the tune faded.

  He knew the song was an old Revolutionary War tune, but Whiskey couldn’t remember who had sung it to him. His father? His mother? To be honest, he couldn’t remember either of them anymore. Not their faces, their names, not even their voices. His memories were dying.

  He opened his eye, saw nothing but darkness, and heard a muffled growl rumble at his feet.

  He was lying deep under Floodwood forest. The growling thing was a bear. The crumbled ceiling had pinned the monster. The bear had swiped off his right arm. Those things were certain.

  Whiskey reached out to look through the eyes of a thrall, but no woken vessel remained. The orphan boy—the son of Screamin’ Bill—had crushed the last of his Tsi’noo under rubble.

  However, there was another he could raise. A corpse back in the forest with his stallion and the packhorses. But did he have enough strength? The Prime was near gone. The Reverend had withdrawn so much of the dark energy. Only the smallest spark lingered.

  Whiskey coughed up dust and tried to sit, but his body was as weak as a rag doll. He collapsed back to the ground and stared into the darkness.

  And he pays all his debts with a roll of his drums …

  He tried to whistle the song. Nothing came out but a wheeze.

  Suddenly, Whiskey realized he couldn’t remember his own last name. The darkness of this place was stealing everything from him.

  He felt around the stony ground with his left arm. His gloved hand turned up his faithful Dragoon, but nothing else of use.

  A tiny fire, no larger than a penny, flickered near his feet.

  He was seeing the eye of the great bear, still open. The Wasape, the boy had called it. A glint of light reflected in the bear’s eye.

  Whiskey looked around for the source of illumination.

  Lying in the cave dust was the glowing amulet shard. After all the chasing and battling with Screamin’ Bill’s orphan, a vital part of Whiskey’s mission was lying only a few yards away.

  Once he had it, there would be only one last thing to retrieve—the Char Stone, the source of new life. If he found it in time, Whiskey would no longer need the Prime to sustain him. The Stone could put back all that had gone wrong. The Stone could make him a whole man again.

  A fluttering noise, the flapping of wings, interrupted his thoughts. The Reverend’s dark mouthpiece, one of the emissaries known as the P’mola, had found him.

  There was a scratching sound at his left ear, followed by a vicious caw. The Reverend’s voice bored into the hull of Whiskey’s mind.

  You’ve been beaten, Nelson.

  Nelson! That was his last name. “No, boss,” Whiskey said. “I’ve got Isaiah’s shard! It’s here, in the cave!”

  You are useless on your own. Ignatio and Big Ben will finish the hunt.

  “I won’t mess up again! If I just had more time, I could have the Stone by midnight.”

  After a long, empty silence, the Reverend spoke again.

  You have been a loyal hand, Nelson. When the Enforcers betrayed me, you stood beside me. You fought Screamin’ Bill, you fought Isaiah, and you died for me. I will give you one more chance. One.

  “Yes, boss!”

  You have till midnight. Retrieve the Stone.

  “I can do it! Please don’t let me slip away.”

  There was another long pause. Then a trickle of power flowed through Whiskey’s limbs. The Reverend was feeding him one final taste of the Prime. Enough to raise more men and finish the hunt.

  Refreshed, Whiskey stood, stretched his legs, and dusted off his trousers. He searched for the crow but saw nothing but darkness. He knew it was still there, watching. Darkness always felt different when the P’mola were about.

  “The bear took my arm, boss. I can’t swim out by the river’s way. Lift the curse or I’ll be stuck in Floodwood.”

  The bear is the Keeper. Finish the bear, and end the magic that binds you here.

  Whiskey grinned. Smart of Raines to create such a Curse Keeper. Most men would never be able to defeat it.

  He picked up his Dragoon, blew the cave dust off the barrel, and stepped over to the mountain of shadow that was the Wasape. He cocked the gun—but paused. “No,” he muttered to the bear. “Not a bullet for you. Prob’ly wouldn’t work nohow.”

  Whiskey stepped to the amulet shard and lifted its cord from the cave dirt. His gloved hand held the fragment away from his body, as a man would hold the tail of a viper.

  “This wretched metal works on most magics. Let’s see if it does the trick on you, Curse Keeper.”

  The creature grunted, straining to move, but a stone chunk the size of a thick tree pinned the massive body. Whiskey squatted in front of the creature’s head and lowered the shard.

  The second the glowing metal touched the monster’s snout, the Wasape gave a tremendous roar. It thrashed for a moment as if hoping to flee the inevitable; then it slumped, and moved no more.

 
Whiskey waited for something—a sound, a feeling, a flash of mystical light—to signal the end of the Floodwood curse, but nothing happened. Nothing visible, leastways. Yet he detected a silence upon the energy imparted here, a stillness under the surface. The obnoxious buzzing that stained the air was gone.

  He felt the rustle of wings again as the P’mola landed on his shoulder. The creature dug its talons into his flesh.

  Go now, the Reverend murmured through the crow. Retrieve my Stone.

  “Yes, boss.”

  Midnight, Nelson. Your clock is ticking.

  Whiskey found no trouble backtracking through the cave and emerged from the hole he had blasted through Raines’s door with his Dragoon. The October sky had darkened. What little sun was left would be setting soon. No time to waste. He had to find the Sullied Place.

  His stallion waited for him at the base of the embankment. The other packhorses had fled while he was in the cave. On the ground at the stallion’s hooves lay Whiskey’s special bundle—the corpse he had hauled from the orphanage.

  Whiskey stooped to murmur in the corpse’s ear. “I’ve a special task for ya, old friend.”

  He then uttered the ancient words from another place, the Black Verse the Reverend Rose had taught him. The drop of Prime stirred in his veins.

  A finger slowly curled. Then a hand. Soon there were mutterings. A cough. A blink of an eye.

  Isaiah Raines, known by others as Abner Carson, stood. The bullet wounds that had taken his life were still fresh upon his body.

  Whiskey said, “Lead me to the Sullied Place, Raines.”

  The thrall gave Whiskey a curious look, as if it wanted to question the command. But that was impossible. No thrall could oppose its Master.

  Like a farmer prodding a stubborn mule, Whiskey nudged the thrall with his mind.

  WALK, he commanded.

  The dead man grimaced, then shambled forward.

  CHAPTER 23

  EXĪTE

  Keech Blackwood splashed up from the Little Wild Boy River and blinked at the autumn sky. He had lost count of the number of times he’d emerged from a freezing river the last few days. Sputtering, he dug his hands into dark sand at the water’s edge. He noticed his hat floating and grabbed it, amazed he hadn’t lost it in the river.

  Glancing back to the east, Keech spotted their exit and whistled in disbelief. The Little Wild Boy spilled out of a black hole sliced into the foot of the Floodwood mountain, a fissure the shape of an upside-down horseshoe. The back side of the mountain was a jumble of black dirt, half-buried boulders, and gnarled trees—all of which looked on the verge of tumbling into the crazed water.

  There was a loud splash nearby as Cutter broke the river’s surface and sucked in a giant breath. “What a swim!” he exclaimed, his own hat sagging on his head. “I can’t believe we’re still kickin’.” Shivering, he staggered through the shallow water and stood next to Keech on the bank, his face a mixture of relief and shock. As if by instinct, Cutter’s hand dropped to his red sash to make sure his knife was still intact.

  Hectic movement near a bend upstream caught Keech’s eye. “Oh no,” he moaned.

  Nat and Duck were working to pull John Wesley out of the river’s current. The boy looked unconscious, his arms loose by his sides. Nat stood behind him, arms linked around his chest, heaving the boy onto the bank while Duck cleared the sand of debris.

  “John!” Cutter cried. He sprinted up the bank. Keech hurried after him.

  Nat and Duck dropped to their knees around the boy. The rancher began to push at the soft base of John Wesley’s chest—hard, quick movements. Whenever Nat paused, Duck would bend, pinch John Wesley’s nose, and blow into his mouth.

  “What in blazes are y’all doing?” Cutter shouted, running up to John Wesley’s side. “Leave ’im alone!”

  “We’re saving him,” Duck said. She bent again to John Wesley’s mouth and blustered more air down his gullet. “Pa used to say when a fella drowns, you have to push air back into him.”

  Keech stood at the unconscious boy’s feet, gripping his sodden hat. He would never forgive himself if the boy perished.

  John Wesley coughed up a lungful of water. His face turned deep purple from the vicious hacking. He muttered two words that sounded like, “Papa, no,” but Duck shushed him.

  “Easy. Don’t talk.”

  John Wesley struggled to regain his feet, but Cutter pushed him gently back. “Stop your fussing,” he said. “You almost drowned.”

  John Wesley spluttered, then collapsed on the riverbank.

  * * *

  Keech sat on a fat driftwood log and pried off his boots. As he emptied them of water, Nat, Duck, and Cutter stepped over, trembling in their wet clothes.

  Nat joined him on the log. “Your crazy hunch saved our hides back there.”

  Keech nodded. “We need to find Bone Ridge now. We have to be close.”

  “We’ll find it.”

  “Thanks for saving John Wesley.”

  Nat smiled, but it quickly fell to a frown. “He ain’t out of the woods yet. We need to dry him up, warm his skin.”

  “We could build a fire here,” Cutter said, gesturing to a flat spot on the bank.

  “I don’t relish camping where the river spills out,” Duck said. “Bad Whiskey could come riding out of that hole any second.”

  “He won’t be coming through there,” Cutter said. “Last I saw, he was being torn to bits by the bear.”

  “Who’s to say the bear did him in?”

  “If it didn’t, the cave-in must have finished him,” Cutter said.

  But Keech didn’t believe for one second that Bad Whiskey was done. That ornery cuss had pulled an arrow out of his own heart.

  To make matters worse, Keech had given him a vital tool. The pendant. There had been no choice but to abandon the charm, but if Whiskey had survived, he would have felt the presence of the silver and retrieved it.

  Nat must have plucked this thought straight from his mind, for he turned to his sister and asked, “You still have Pa’s charm, right?”

  Duck lifted the shard out of her shirt. The hand around it was shivering from the cold. “If Whiskey survived, I’ll take him down.”

  “Good.” Nat stood and cracked his back. “Let’s scout for a safe camp and go to ground for a spell. I don’t want to look for Bone Ridge when we still have company.” He gestured to the dimming sky north of the Little Wild Boy. Three dark specks floated under the lowest cloud. They were bathed in dying sunlight, and they moved in steady circles, as if sweeping the land for woodland prey.

  Keech frowned at the sight of them. “They don’t seem confused anymore. Over the forest they were acting all mixed up, like they’d found a bushel of wild berries.”

  “Come to think of it, I don’t hear that awful buzz,” said Cutter.

  “The weird pressure’s gone, too,” Duck said, wiggling a finger inside her ear. “Does that mean we’re out of the curse?”

  “I think we made it out of Floodwood, at least,” Keech replied. He slipped his wet boots back on. “Nat’s right. We better get a move on.”

  “Y’all go without me,” said a croaky voice.

  Everyone wheeled around. John Wesley stood behind them, his legs wobbling.

  “John!” Cutter said. “You should be resting.”

  The boy shambled closer, his big arms clutched around his river-soaked body. He had left his bullet-riddled hat sitting on the ground, and his long curls of strawberry-blond hair clung to his face and neck in wet clumps. “I ain’t gonna put no one else in danger. Not anymore. It’s best if you go without me.”

  “Nobody’s leaving you behind,” Nat said. “We’re a team, remember?”

  “We ain’t no team,” John Wesley said. “We’re just a rabble of fool orphans. We don’t know where we’re going, we lost our ponies and our food, and our friend from Big Timber got shot up.”

  Cutter walked over and stood defiantly before him. “If it weren’t for you, I’d s
till be riding the countryside alone, or dead on the side of some road.”

  John Wesley dropped his head.

  Pa Abner’s comforting words came back to Keech as he stood and put a hand on John Wesley’s thick shoulder. “Work as two, succeed as one, John.”

  “Huh?”

  “You are Cutter’s left hand, and Cutter is your right. Our mission is to stop Bad Whiskey and find the Char Stone. We can’t do this without you. Cutter can’t do this without you. Our posse won’t succeed if you stay behind. I honestly believe that.”

  John Wesley turned his back on the others, as if struggling with a hard thought. A stark silence descended over the group.

  Finally, the boy nodded. He turned and pointed at Cutter.

  “I’ll keep on for you, amigo. We made a pact to ride down your desperado, and that’s what we’re gonna do.”

  Keech glanced at Cutter, whose calloused lips had cracked into a smile.

  “As for the rest, I’ll do my best to watch your backs,” John Wesley said. “I can’t promise I won’t mess up, but I’ll stand by you as best I can.”

  Grinning, Keech said, “Then let’s get moving and finish this.”

  * * *

  The gang made haste up a northern track, taking a fox trail Keech had discovered behind a heavy wall of jimsonweed. Cutter used his knife to chop away the growth as Nat and Duck moved alongside John Wesley, who was slumping on Nat’s shoulder and humming a lonely-sounding tune. Keech walked behind Cutter, his eyes locked on the distant crows.

  A frigid wind whistled over the trail, shuddering the jimsonweed. Keech raised his coat collar and wished he was riding his horse, Felix. Having his trusty pony would make all this infernal traveling so much easier. It saddened him to think Felix might be forever gone.

  A loud curse gave him a jolt. Cutter had paused on the trail and was looking back at him.

  “Admit it, Blackwood, you can’t see no trail. We’re lost.” He spat another curse, and continued chopping weeds. “I can find my way through a cave better than you can walk through woods.”

  “Speaking of the cave, whatever happened to you back there?” Nat asked.

  “After you left me in the tunnel, I took off running to face El Ojo. I could see his torchlight getting brighter, but then the light faded and I was standing in darkness as black as tar.”