The Wolf Tree

by John Claude Bemis

  The Clockwork Dark

  The Nine Pound Hammer

  The Wolf Tree

  To

  Claud T. Smith

  Thelma M. Smith

  William Y. Bemis

  Elsie F. Bemis

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1. Shuckstack

  2. An Unexpected Guest

  3. Wintergreen

  4. The Sleeping Giant

  5. Élodie

  6. The Elemental Rose

  7. The Return

  8. Stones in the Passway

  9. The Council of Three

  10. Pistols of Silver

  11. Jayhawkers

  12. Gunmen

  13. Water Spider

  14. Omphalosa

  15. The Mill

  16. Coyotes

  17. Lone Wolf

  18. The Rougarou

  19. The Steamcoach

  20. Familiar Strangers

  21. Ascending the Wolf Tree

  22. Gunshots

  23. Hostages

  24. The Battle on the Plains

  25. East and West

  About the Author

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  CONKER BROUGHT THE NINE POUND HAMMER DOWN ON The Pitch Dark Train’s boiler. The train erupted into flame and rocketing debris.

  Jolie fell.

  Just before she hit the water, she lost hold of Ray. She plunged into the river, and with the splash came a powerful surge of relief. She had returned to the water where she belonged.

  For so long she had been hidden aboard the Ballyhoo, the medicine show’s train. For so long she had been prisoner to the fear that the Gog would capture her, to have her siren voice, and use the enchantment as a means of controlling people, of drawing servants to his monstrous Machine.

  She had at last reached the blessed, true waters of the Mississippi River. Now she was free to return to her swamp far to the south.

  Then she remembered Ray.

  The swift current whipped past Jolie, scattering her tangled hair and gown. She arched in the water, kicking fiercely as she swam back for him. Heavy chunks of metal ripped from The Pitch Dark Train plummeted around her in the murky water. She looked all around through the gloom until she spied a shadow below her. It wasn’t sinking like the train’s debris, but drifting with the current.

  Ray!

  Kicking her way closer, she saw a hand, the skin a deep brown. Her chest constricted painfully.

  It was not Ray; it was Conker.

  She could not believe what she saw. The train had erupted volcanically. He should have been blown apart by the blast. As she turned his enormous body over in the swift currents, she saw he had not even been burned.

  How was this possible?

  She listened to his chest, but no heartbeat could be found. “Conker, dear Conker,” she whispered as she clung to her friend’s broken body.

  Something tickled her neck. Jolie pulled back and saw a charm hanging on the end of a necklace: a rectangle of beaten copper.

  She had seen the necklace before, but where? She had never known Conker to wear any jewelry, not like Redfeather.

  Redfeather! This had been his necklace. When she had been rescued from the Gog’s train, Ray and Si had been able to walk through a burning field to reach her by holding Redfeather’s necklace.

  The copper had protected Conker from the immense heat of the exploding train. The fire had not burned him to death, but the impact of the explosion was more than any man could survive. Any normal man …

  But Conker was not any normal man. He was John Henry’s son.

  Holding on to Conker as the swirling current carried them through the river, Jolie put her hands to his face.

  She had never encountered a shipwrecked sailor, as many of her siren sisters had, but Jolie had been told how to preserve the life of a human. She called out to the river, to the ancient grandmother of the waters, asking for this life not to be taken.

  Covering his nose, she placed her mouth to his and blew, filling his lungs with her air.

  A tremor came over Conker’s body. Jolie put her ear to his chest and listened. It was hard to discern but she heard it: a heartbeat.

  He was alive, although just barely. He had sustained injuries to his body from which no man should be able to recover. Her sisters had told her of a place, a spring that might save him if she could ever find it.

  But where was Ray?

  Jolie looked back into the murk of the river. The swift and scattering currents of the water had pulled her and Conker far from where they had landed.

  “Ray.” She spoke to the waters. “I know that you will not understand where I have gone, but trust that one day, I will find you.”

  Jolie wrapped one arm around Conker’s waist. She let the rush of the river speed their journey. Following the waters that came together from across the vast continent, Jolie ushered Conker’s broken body away.

  1

  SHUCKSTACK

  FLICKERS OF EMERALD BUDS WERE EMERGING ON THE mountainside. Marbled swirls of receding snow and wet black earth still lingered in the shadows of the forest. The sun shone with a clear, white brilliance as Ray Cobb crested the range.

  Cool air blew up from the coves, and Ray pulled the doeskin robe tighter around his neck as he climbed. He had grown taller and leaner over the past year. His face was sun-speckled, and his curly mass of brown hair was jagged and uneven from the haphazard trimmings of a knife. Although his linen shirt and wool britches showed considerable wear, Ray had kept them patched and travel-worthy.

  He saw no others as he traversed the Great Smoky Mountains; in fact, the wilderness was so remote that he had seen no living person in more than a month. Aside from winter birds, foraging deer, and reclusive creatures venturing from their dens, Ray’s shelter—deep in the maze of evergreen-crowned ridges and cascading waterfalls—had been a place of quiet isolation.

  Ray crossed an icy black creek. He was nearly there.

  The sunlight dimmed as ghostly fingers of clouds moved across the mountain. The chestnuts and hemlocks moaned around him. Ray followed no path or track, nor did he need one. Stopping in the shelter of dark trees, he dug the waterskin from beneath his shirt where the heat of his stomach kept the water from freezing.

  As he took a long drink, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned and whatever it was disappeared into a thicket of rhododendron. Ray’s hand slipped to the knife on his belt. “Hello?”

  He inhaled, trying to catch a defining scent. But the air was too cold and the wind in the stand of trees too turbulent.

  Ray continued walking, scanning for movement. Leaves rustled and then a snort came from the deepest nest of rhododendron. His hand at his knife, Ray crept forward. As he reached the dark green shrubs, a squeal rang out and low black forms rushed out at him. A heavy beast swiped his knee, knocking Ray to the ground. He rolled over and watched several stout feral hogs flee into the forest.

  Ray laughed and chased after them. “Hey,” he called. “Not so fast.”

  The hogs swirled about the trees, their white eyes rolling around in their sockets.

  “Hey! Come on now. You know me. Come on back,” he called, but the hogs disappeared through the bracken and wilting ferns.

  When Ray reached the muddy trail coming up the mountain, he spied one of the hogs sitting in the bottom of one of the deep wagon-wheel ruts.

  Ray cocked an eyebrow at the hog. “Hungry?” He reached in his pocket and took out a piece of dried venison pounded with checkerberries and wild ginger. He held the pemmican out, waving the stiff strip before its nose. The hog rose
from the rut and took the jerky, grunting as it ate with noisy relish.

  “There you go,” he said. “That a boy.” Ray squatted at the beast’s enormous face. Motioning with his hands and touching the hog at its ear and at the edges of its mouth, he instructed the hog in what simple vocabulary Ray had learned. Foxes and raccoons and their kin were easier than hogs, but he was best at speaking to birds, especially crows. Fortunately this hog seemed smart, and Ray felt it was following his crude instructions.

  Ray untied his sun-faded bandanna from around his neck and knotted it around the hog’s fat throat. The hog blinked several times at him and turned.

  “That’s right,” he added as the hog trotted away. “Get on to Shuckstack. Let them know I’m back.”

  A year ago, they had followed Nel up into the Smoky Mountains and built a home at Shuckstack Mountain. Ray and Sally, Redfeather and Marisol, Buck and Si, Nel and the twelve orphans. The wilderness was everything Nel had promised: a place where the children rescued from Mister Grevol’s Pitch Dark Train could grow up in peace.

  Nel had taught them how to live in the wild. Not just survive, but live fully and happily. But Ray wanted something more. He wanted to be a Rambler. There were skills the old pitchman could offer, but Nel had forgotten his deeper Rambler powers. Ray needed to learn from others.

  Mother Salagi’s cabin on the Clingman’s Dome was nearly two days’ journey from Shuckstack Mountain. During Ray’s first winter wandering alone in the mountains, he found the ancient seer. Mother Salagi taught Ray some animal speech and a smattering of hoodoo charms.

  But neither she nor Nel could teach Ray how to become a Rambler. In order for Ray to really learn, he needed to be alone. He needed the solitude of the wilderness. Ray would wander from his friends and family at Shuckstack into the craggy cliffs and deep coves off and on throughout the year—each season offering its own lessons. He traveled far, seeking out medicine men and root workers who could pass on some nearly lost knowledge or skill.

  He wore a toby around his neck. When he first met Mother Salagi, the old seer sewed spells into the red flannel pouch to protect its contents. And as Ray journeyed, learning more and more, the toby grew heavy with charms: nine shoestring-shaped roots, a twig of elder, a twist of rue, Hobnob’s dandelion flower, goofer dust, a ball of bluestone, a pair of Indian-head pennies, a tin of saltpeter, and assorted other herbs and objects. Among them, he also carried the golden rabbit’s foot—his father’s hand.

  And in time, without ceremony or decoration, Ray knew he had become a Rambler.

  As he passed the first of the bottletrees, the lodge came into sight. The sun had dropped below the ridgeline. Ray thought nothing was more beautiful than returning to Shuckstack in the half-dark, its golden windows illuminated from within by the firelight, and the sound of all those chirping voices bouncing off the mighty trees nestled up against the millpond.

  He was home.

  Ray saw that preparations had begun for Nel’s eighty-first birthday party. Several canvas tents had been erected, reminding him of smaller versions of the one that had been used by the medicine show. A small corral had been built since he last left, most likely to house the horses of the coming guests. Sniffing toward one of the outbuildings, Ray could smell several deer, salted and hanging from the rafters and awaiting the feasts.

  The hog trotted from around the barn, the bandanna no longer around its neck, and dashed for the trees. The front door of the lodge swung open. Dmitry, who was ten, and one of the oldest of the children rescued from Mister Grevol’s train, ran out onto the long porch stretching across the front of the lodge. His eyes widened as he saw Ray. He held up the bandanna as he shouted, “He’s home!”

  Mattias was out the door next. The two boys raced down the stairs into the yard, running to meet Ray. Voices, cheerful and curious, emerged from within Shuckstack’s lodge. Figures pushed their way out from the doorway, some coming down the steps to beat Dmitry and Mattias to be the first to greet Ray, others waiting along the rails of the porch.

  Ray heard his name over and over, picking out each speaker: Si, Nel, Marisol, Buck, Felice, Naomi, Rosemary, Oliver, George, Dale, Preston, Noah, Adam, Carolyn, and Sally.

  They were all there.

  Each and every one.

  All but Jolie.

  The lodge on Shuckstack Mountain had once been a sawmill, abandoned decades earlier. When Nel led them up the mountain the summer before, all that remained was the stone foundation beside a crumbling dam on the creek, a broken waterwheel, and a heart-pine floor buried under the collapsed frame of the mill. Although more than half of the nineteen hands had been children, they had cleared the rubble, cut the logs, and built a home.

  As Ray came up the stairs to the porch, the children battled fiercely to greet him, to take his things, to ask if he’d seen any panthers this time, to pull him this way and that as each wanted to show him some new toy or to tell stories of what he’d missed over the winter.

  Quieting the row took an irritated roar by the ragged-faced cowboy Buck, followed by the old pitchman Nel’s gentler, “Give him a moment’s repose to settle in. Recede! Regress! Rosemary, Carolyn, stop pulling at his arms. Poor Ray looks half-frozen. Yes, yes, there will be time to beguile Ray with your salamander soon, Adam. Come over to the fire, Ray. Naomi, fetch Ray some supper. Back away, Dale….”

  Soon Ray was sitting before the blazing hearth in the den that stretched across the main floor of Shuckstack’s lodge. He had a plate on his knees and sopped at the last of his beans and orpine drippings with fried acorn cakes. Mattias and Dmitry took turns telling a story about a black bear that had chased them from Two Eagle Mountain.

  Listening to the boys’ story, Nel leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs at the ankle so the mahogany peg rested on the wrinkle of leather at his boot. He grinned widely behind his briarwood pipe. Peg Leg Nel was lean and strong for being on the eve of eighty-one. Ray felt if it hadn’t been for the pompadour of silver-white hair, he would never have guessed him to be that old.

  The children were scattered on the floor or in the hand-fashioned chairs and benches of split logs. Marisol, raven-haired and lovely in her spangled dress, listened with the smallest, five-year-old Noah, nestled in her lap. Her copperhead, Javidos, coiled down in Noah’s lap, but the boy showed no more fear of the fat, blond-and-brown striped snake than if it were a kitten.

  Beside Buck sat Si with a blanket to her chin. She was so bundled up, Ray half imagined she was bound for some escape routine as she’d done in the medicine show. But when he noticed the dark circles under her eyes, he realized she must be ill.

  Sally had settled beside Ray on his bench, her arms locked in his and her eyes growing animated as Mattias and Dmitry recounted each exciting moment. Ray thought how much she looked like Ray’s and her mother. Over the past year, Sally had sprung up skinny like a poplar sapling. Her small upturned nose was sprinkled with freckles, and her eyelashes fell across her cheeks when she blinked.

  Nel’s barking laugh pulled his attention back to the story. “How did you learn to do hoodoo, Mattias?”

  “From Ray,” Mattias answered. “He tried to show us the spell a while back. But it didn’t work.”

  Dmitry, whose hair, even his eyebrows and lashes, was so blond as to be white, chimed in, “Well, we couldn’t remember if you were supposed to put the goofer dust in the jar first or scoop the footprint dirt first.”

  “Besides,” Mattias said, “the bear was charging too fast and then we—”

  “Footprint charm,” Nel interrupted once more, looking at Ray. “Where did you get ahold of goofer dust?”

  Mattias and Dmitry stopped with mouths left expectantly open to continue as soon as Ray finished his reply. “From that root worker I met down on the Pamlico.”

  Deep folds of wrinkles tightened around Nel’s eyes, and he seemed to struggle to hold his smile. “Of course…. He showed you the charm also?”

  Ray replied, “No. Mother Salagi taught it to m
e.”

  Nel’s fingers went reflexively to his neck, to the amulet he wore. The silver fox paw had once been his leg, before the Hoarhound severed it and his Rambler powers were lost.

  “Oh. Well. Of course.” Nel waved with his hand to turn the attention back to Mattias and Dmitry. “Resume your yarn, boys.”

  As Mattias and Dmitry both exploded to recount how the bear had chased them across Hanson Knob, Ray glanced down at Sally. Her mouth was pursed as she leafed through the book in her lap. The Incunabula of Wandering.

  “What are you looking up?” Ray whispered.

  Sally closed the book, with her hand still marking the page. “Nothing.” She smiled and turned her attention back to Mattias and Dmitry.

  Eventually the story concluded. A few of the children acted out the dramatic episode, some playing the bear, others vying for the roles of Mattias or Dmitry. Marisol whispered to Javidos, and he slid up her arm to her neck. She rose with the already sleeping Noah in her arms. “It’s getting late. Everybody off to bed.”

  There was a general grumbling until Marisol added, “We’ve got a busy day tomorrow. Lots to do and our first guests may arrive.”

  At the anticipation of strangers coming for Nel’s party, the children broke into excited chatter. Carolyn helped Marisol shepherd the children up the stairs to the loft. “What story do you want tonight?” Marisol asked.

  “The one about the giant vacaroo!” Preston shouted.

  “Ismael is a vaquero, not a vacaroo,” Carolyn, the oldest of the rescued children, said.

  Marisol brushed them forward. “You’re not tired of Ismael yet?”

  “No!” the children cried together, even the older ones. “Ismael the vacaroo!” they began to chant.

  “Vaquero,” Carolyn tried to correct.

  “Say ‘good night,’” Marisol said.

  Marching in a line to the toasty loft above, the children chirped out good-nights to Ray and Mister Nel and Si and even Buck.

  “Finally some peace,” Buck grumbled as the last footsteps disappeared overhead. Ray smiled, thinking how often he had seen Buck showing one of the children how to whittle a duck call or string up a reed fishing pole.