The Wolf Tree

by John Claude Bemis

  The men on the sidewalk erupted with angry cries, some scattering away. But two charged for him, one with a long hunting knife and the other grabbing a pickax from a display of tools.

  Redfeather flicked his hand once more. The man with the knife yelled as his coat caught on fire. He fell into the street, rolling back and forth. The other man sprang forward and raised a pickax over his head. Redfeather caught the handle with his tomahawk, pushing the man back. But the man was quick and before Redfeather could hit him with the flames, the man swung again. Redfeather blocked with his tomahawk, and continued trying to drive the man back.

  Curtis leveled his revolver on Redfeather, closing one eye to get a clear shot. Marisol clutched his wrist. The man sneered and drew back his other hand to strike her. But Javidos lunged from her shirt sleeve and bit into his knuckles. Curtis screamed and dropped his revolver.

  Redfeather chopped the pickax handle in half and kicked at the man’s knee. He fell, and as Redfeather held up his flaming hand, the man scrambled backward into the street. There were other men waiting on the sidewalk with weapons drawn, but after seeing what had happened to the first four, they hesitated.

  Ray pulled Gatch tighter and shouted, “Tell them to back away!” Redfeather and Marisol joined Ray on either side, the tomahawk and Javidos threatening any who would attack.

  Gatch roared, “That’s enough. Y’all put down your weapons and get back.” Guns, knives, and tools thudded to the ground.

  Then Ray turned Gatch to face the boy, who was still crouching with wide eyes. “Hand him the watch.” Gatch extended his free hand to the boy. “Go on. Take it,” Ray said.

  The boy looked nervously at Gatch’s face as he took the old tarnished watch. Marisol dropped a few coins in the dirt by Gatch’s feet and said, “That should settle his father’s debt. Leave the boy alone from now on.”

  Gatch glared first at Marisol and then at Redfeather and finally down at the money. Ray slid the coffin nail out of Gatch’s palm and released him. The huge man turned, rubbing his hand and looking at Ray with anger and fear. Oily black blood smeared across Gatch’s meaty palm.

  “Get on out of here,” Ray muttered to the boy. The boy looked once at Ray and ran, cutting between two buildings into the dark. Ray, Marisol, and Redfeather backed toward their horses.

  People on the street had stopped. Ray realized everyone had gone quiet, but now the staring crowd began murmuring. “Had a snake for an arm.” “Breathing flames.” “Red devils!” “Witches!”

  Ray, Marisol, and Redfeather mounted the horses and hurried through the parting crowd back down the street. “So much for keeping from being noticed!” Redfeather said.

  They’d just reached the corral when Ray saw the boy waving to them from around the side of the last building. Ray pointed, and Marisol steered Unole toward the boy.

  The boy panted, “They’ll be after you soon. A lynch mob surely. They kill anyone suspected of devilry.” The boy pointed to a hill north of town. “There’s a soddy up there where you can hide. It’s empty. No one goes there but me. Look for the windmill and you’ll find the soddy. I’ll meet you there in a few hours.”

  As Ray looked at the boy, he realized he was not so discolored as Gatch and the others. His skin was grayish but still a little ruddy pink. And his movements were not so jarring and haunted.

  “Thank you,” Ray said.

  The boy nodded and sprinted away.

  Redfeather led them down the road heading east out of Omphalosa. When they were out again in the dark, away from the town’s lights, they stopped.

  “Are they following?” Marisol asked.

  Ray cocked his head. “I don’t hear horses.”

  “Then let’s cut up that way,” Redfeather said, pointing to the north.

  They led Atsila and Unole up into the low hills and circled back around, searching for the windmill in the dark. The town’s lights were dim in the hills, but eventually they spied the spinning battered blades of an old windmill over a rise. When they reached it, they looked back down at the glow of the town and the brighter glow of the hissing, smoking mill about half a mile away.

  “Think we’re safe out here?” Ray asked.

  Redfeather slid his tomahawk out. “We won’t be safe until we’re away from this place. Even with Nel’s charms, I feel the Darkness sapping at me. We shouldn’t stay here.”

  “I feel it too,” Marisol said. “But we haven’t found anything out yet.”

  “And it won’t do us any good when we’re hanging by our necks from a tree,” Redfeather snapped.

  Ray climbed down from behind Marisol and helped her off Unole. “Just wait until the boy comes back. Maybe he’ll be able to tell us something.”

  They tied Atsila and Unole to the windmill’s frame so the horses could water at a rusting trough next to the well. Ray found a few bundles of hay and rolled them over for the horses to eat. B’hoy perched at the top of the windmill, and Ray told him to keep a watchful eye.

  Redfeather held up his flaming hand. “Over here,” he said.

  The soddy was a house burrowed into the side of a hill, with only a wooden door and a short section of vertical wall exposed. Redfeather clutched his tomahawk in one hand as he pushed open the soddy’s door. There was a scuttle of mice, but otherwise the soddy was vacant. Redfeather lit an oil lamp that hung from the ceiling.

  Whoever had lived in the sod house must not have left very long ago, for there were still tins of fish, sacks of grain, and crocks of liquid on shelves built into the dirt wall. There were only two beds with dusty, straw-filled mattresses. “No thanks,” Marisol sneered.

  Redfeather pulled the infested-looking mattress off one of the beds and tossed it to the floor. “There you go, your highness,” he said, motioning to the rope frame beneath.

  “Charming,” Marisol said, letting Javidos slither from her sleeve to hunt in the corners for a meal. “At least I’m above the mice.”

  Redfeather looked back at her as he leaned against the door frame. “Nice work back there, by the way.”

  She nodded as she lay back uncomfortably on the bed. “You too.”

  Ray took off the other mattress, uncovering the corpse of a cat lying dried among the cobwebs. He grimaced and removed it before lying down on the frame. While Redfeather sat in a chair in the doorway watching the dark, Ray and Marisol tried to sleep. After a few hours, Ray and Redfeather switched places. It might have been midnight or it might have been noon, for all Ray could discern. When B’hoy gave a low caw, Ray stirred from his thoughts and saw the boy, silhouetted against the mill’s glow, coming up toward the soddy.

  “Here he is,” Ray said, waking Redfeather and Marisol. Would the boy know anything about the Machine? It was doubtful. But he might help them understand why this strange mill was built out here in the middle of nowhere.

  The boy stopped when he was close enough to see the three waiting for him in the door of the soddy. “I’m alone,” he said. “Nobody followed me, so don’t worry.”

  “We’re not,” Ray said.

  The boy came inside, looking curiously at each of them, and unloaded several dark biscuits from his pockets onto the table. “It was all I could bring to you. But you can open some of those tins if you want.” He motioned to the wall.

  “That’s okay,” Ray said, picking up one of the biscuits. He handed one to Redfeather but he shook his head, standing in the doorway and keeping an eye toward the town. Ray bit into the biscuit. It was hard and tasteless, but he continued eating it, smiling courteously at the boy.

  “Who are you all?” the boy asked, sitting in one of the chairs and unable to stop staring at them in turn. “How did you do all those things?”

  “It’s not what it seemed,” Marisol said. “We’re performers, from a traveling show. They’re just tricks. What’s your name?”

  “Gigi Fochesato. Where’s your snake?”

  She smiled and let Javidos slip out from her sleeve. “Don’t worry. He won’t hurt you. He o
nly bites bad people.”

  Gigi reached out a tentative hand to touch Javidos’s head and then pulled it away when the copperhead flicked his tongue.

  “I’m Marisol, and my friends are Redfeather and Ray. Nobody knows about this place?”

  “Some might, but nobody ever comes here,” Gigi said. “When I need to get away, I like to sneak out. Sometimes I’ll sleep here. It’s a good place to hide.”

  “Who do you need to hide from?” Ray asked. “Those men?”

  “They don’t usually bother me. I just like to be by myself. This town. I hate it here. It turns people all wrong.”

  “We know,” Ray said, noticing again that the boy wasn’t the same strange color as the others.

  “Everyone’s frightened of the Darkness. They think there’s some sort of curse on the town. They’re always looking for someone to blame for the Darkness. Anybody people suspect of witchcraft, they beat up or kill.”

  Ray said, “We passed a woman who was hanged. Just outside of town. She was a witch?”

  Gigi furrowed his brow. “Granny Sip weren’t a witch! She was nice.”

  “What happened? Why did they hang her?” Marisol asked.

  “I guess ’cause she made root medicines. They thought she caused the Darkness, but it’s still here. I guess they know now they were wrong, but they don’t care. They’re horrible! Just yesterday, a bunch of men who work with my papa killed a Chinese man ’cause he made herb potions. But the Darkness is still here. They don’t seem to learn. I’m just glad Hethy got away.”

  Marisol asked, “Who’s Hethy?”

  “Granny Sip’s granddaughter. She was my friend.” Gigi dug around in his pocket until he pulled out a strange black seedpod that looked something like a bat. “Hethy gave it to me. She said it would protect me from the Darkness. Said Granny Sip told her it would keep the Darkness from making me turn out like everyone else.”

  “Can I see it?” Ray asked.

  Gigi handed it to him and as Ray inspected the pod in the lamplight, Marisol whispered, “Was she right? Will it protect him?”

  He muttered to her, “Hopefully. I think it’s what’s called a buffalo pod. I’ve seen them before and if I’m remembering right, it’s a powerful charm that wards off evil. It seems to work for him. His skin …” Marisol nodded, and Ray handed the pod back to Gigi, thanking him.

  “What happened to Hethy?” Marisol asked.

  “She ran away before the men came for Granny Sip. I hope she’s okay. I don’t know where she went. I miss her. She was the only friend I had here. I wish I had gotten more of those charms for my papa and brothers before she left.”

  Gigi sighed, kicking his feet against the leg of the chair. “My papa. My brothers. They’re different too since they came out here. They traveled out here two years ago. I ran away to find them. I just came out here a few weeks ago from Pennsylvania. My papa and my brothers, they act strange now. And you’ve seen how everyone looks. It’s like I hardly know them anymore and they hardly know me.”

  “What do you mean?” Ray asked.

  “The Darkness changes people,” Gigi said. “Many left, mostly the folks who settled this town. But the ones brought to work in the mill, they can’t leave. Some get mean, like Gatch and those men. Some get real scared and do terrible things ’cause they’re so frightened, like the ones who killed Granny Sip. But most just turn … I don’t know. Like they’re not alive anymore. Like they’re just ghouls or something. That’s how my papa’s got.”

  Ray looked at Gigi, young and full of sadness. He pitied the boy. To have traveled all this way to find his father and his brothers, who now were little more than strangers to him.

  “You work in the mill also?”

  “Not on the floor with my papa and brothers. I deliver messages for Mister Muggeridge, around the mill, into town, to the telegraph office, wherever he needs.”

  “I heard those men say earlier that Muggeridge is a Pinkerton.”

  “There’s a lot of Pinkerton agents here. They keep the peace, at least enough so that work in the factory isn’t bothered.”

  Ray exchanged a look with Redfeather and Marisol. “Pinkertons,” he mumbled.

  “Think they’re Bowlers?” Redfeather mumbled.

  “We’ll find out.”

  “What’s a Bowler?” Gigi asked.

  “Security agents. Like a Pinkerton, but worse,” Ray said. “Tell me more about the mill. How long’s it been here?”

  “I don’t know. But it won’t be here much longer. Mister Muggeridge’s closing it. They’re loading everything up on trains. I guess I’ll be going soon, too. All the workers are being sent. I can’t wait to get out of this town! Things will be a lot better.”

  “Why?” Ray asked. “Where’s all this going to?”

  “To the Expo.”

  “The Expo?” Marisol said.

  Gigi sat up in his seat excitedly. “Yeah. Haven’t you heard? Everybody’s going. People from all over the country, maybe all over the world. I hope my ma and sister will come out to work for the Expo. It’s a fair, see? A World’s Fair. They’ve had them in wonderful places like London and Paris, but now they’re putting one here, in America.”

  “Where?” Ray asked.

  “I don’t know.” Gigi shrugged. “Who cares? Anywhere’s better than here.”

  “So, what’ll your father and brothers and the other workers do there?” Ray asked.

  “I guess help set up the display. They say there’s a whole building just for what the mill’s been making. Lots of people will want to see it.”

  Ray looked anxiously at Redfeather and Marisol.

  “But what have they been making at the mill?” Ray asked. “What will the display be?”

  “That’s what’s strange,” Gigi said, puzzling his face up. “I can’t figure out what they build. When we were in Pittsburgh, Papa and my brothers worked in a steel mill, but that’s not exactly what they do here. I see it when I’m delivering messages. It’s a lot of metal parts. They’re building all these huge bits of machinery, but Papa’s never heard what it’s all for. They assemble and store it somewhere else, underground.”

  Ray leaned forward. “Here! Under the mill?”

  Redfeather leaned over to Ray. “You don’t think …”

  Ray spoke in a low voice, “It must be! The Gog built this mill to hide his Machine as it’s being built. It’s here! And we have to find out where they’re sending it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Gigi asked.

  “Gigi,” Ray said, looking urgently at the boy. “We need your help.”

  “For what?”

  Ray let his eyes fall to the dried corpse of the cat. He rose and took out his knife, kneeling before the cat and poking at it.

  Marisol wrinkled her nose in disgust. “What are you doing?”

  Ray held up a small bone. “A good charm. It’ll need this.” Then he looked at Gigi. “We’re going to sneak into the mill.”

  15

  THE MILL

  RAY CROUCHED WITH THE OTHERS ON A HILL overlooking the mill. This close, it was even more ominous with its rumble and cacophony, its massive towers, spewed smoke, flames, and shadows.

  “That fence is too tall to climb,” Ray said.

  “We could do it,” Redfeather said. “But there’d be no way to keep from being noticed. Look at those guards.”

  Hundreds of people moved around the city of tents. Some were going to work in the mill. Others pushed carts from one building to the next, while still others ate meals by cook fires. Moving among them and patrolling the interior edge of the fence were men carrying rifles—men wearing bowler hats and black suits.

  Ray turned to Gigi. “Is there just the one entrance?”

  “The one leading to town,” he replied. “And the train tracks. But there’s a gate they keep locked until the train comes. Why do you want to go in there anyway? I thought you were performers.”

  Ray exchanged a glance with Marisol. “We were. Onc
e. It’s too much to explain, but we’re trying to find out what’s creating this Darkness. We think there’s a machine hidden in the mill that’s causing it.”

  Gigi looked puzzled. “A machine can’t cause darkness.”

  “Makes as much sense as a tree causing it …,” Marisol muttered. Redfeather scowled.

  “Can you take us in with you?” Ray asked Gigi. “Would that put you at any risk?”

  “Nobody would notice you.” He looked at Marisol and Redfeather. “But they might stand out. I haven’t seen any Indians in the mill.”

  “She’s not an Indian,” Redfeather said.

  Marisol opened her mouth to argue, but with a look from Ray changed her mind. “We can wait for you here,” Marisol said. “You can always send B’hoy to us if you have trouble.”

  “Not like you’d be able to help much once I’m inside,” Ray said, studying the dozens and dozens of Bowlers. And those were only the ones on duty outside. Surely there were more inside the buildings. If the Gog was dead, then who were they working for?

  He asked Gigi, “Do you know who owns the mill?”

  “I’ve never seen him. Everybody answers to Mister Muggeridge. But he sends the telegrams to someone else.”

  “You’ve never seen the name?”

  “I’m not crazy. I don’t read them.”

  “But are they sealed?”

  “No.” Gigi looked nervous as he read the expression on Ray’s, Marisol’s, and Redfeather’s faces. “I don’t want to get in any trouble.”

  “It’s okay,” Ray assured him. “You’ve done so much already to help us. Can you just get me inside the gate? Then I’ll be able to explore on my own.”

  “Without getting noticed,” Redfeather said.

  “Of course,” Ray said, pulling out the toby from beneath his shirt. “I wish I had agar-agar.”

  “What’s that?” Redfeather asked.

  Ray opened the toby. “A type of powdered seaweed. Keeps you from being noticed. Almost as good as being invisible.”

  “Are you sure about this, Ray?” Marisol pleaded. “What if someone who saw you earlier recognizes you?”