The Wolf Tree

by John Claude Bemis

  The black rougarou came a step forward: ears flat, back arched, fur bristling.

  “Stay back, Renamex!” Quorl growled. “You may have me, but you must let these humans go.”

  The black rougarou snarled.

  “Renamex,” Quorl said. “You are my nata, you are mother to our pack, and I submit to you. But listen! We are rougarou. We are not wolves. Can you still understand any of what I’m saying? Don’t you remember who we are?”

  Renamex pulled a paw back, her ears flickering.

  Sally clutched Hethy, both girls shaking. She looked up at the eyes of the rougarou. They were not like Quorl’s. They did not have the same bright intelligence that burned in his blue eyes. Their eyes were those of wolves—dark and merciless.

  “The Great Tree is here, my pack!” Quorl roared. “Don’t you see it?”

  The moon was behind the canyon’s rim, and its light shone in Renamex’s eyes. The light grew brighter. Long shadows deepened along the canyon. Renamex’s eyes began to transform. Her ears rose and she lifted her snout, sniffing.

  Hethy was crouched on her knees, pulling at Sally’s skirt, but Sally stood. The pack whined and rolled their faces against the earth.

  Quorl howled again, a singular, heart-wrenching note.

  Renamex’s eyes widened. The light above grew brighter, brighter, until it was as if a thousand suns burned. The nata’s eyes lightened into a pair of lapis gems, blue and deep against the blinding white sheen.

  Sally stepped out from the cove. She turned to look behind her. There was a flash and she covered her face with her hands. When it passed, she pulled away her hands to see.

  Over the rim of the canyon, somewhere beyond, Sally saw it. Glowing softly as if with moonlight, the Great Tree was towering, too tall even for the enormity of the sky. Rising, its roots alone were larger than a mountain range. Rising, narrowing to a ghostly white trunk. Rising, it filled the night. And miles above, its branches spread, distant and faint, mingling into the constellations and cosmos.

  The rougarou were all now looking upward. Sally watched as, one by one, their eyes became blue.

  “Thank you, Little Coyote,” Quorl panted behind her. “You led me to the Great Tree. It is found, at last.”

  Sally could not speak. Hethy emerged from the shadows to take Sally’s hand. She gasped as she stared up.

  The black rougarou, Renamex, moved forward to join Quorl. Sally and Hethy hid behind Quorl, but Renamex did not look at them. She was beautiful, her fur dark and silky as a sable. She lowered her nose, nuzzling it against Quorl’s throat.

  “You … have done it, Quorl,” Renamex said, hesitating as she found her voice. “You have returned the Great Tree, and you have returned us.”

  One by one, the rougarou howled. Lifting their faces to the Great Tree glowing in the night, they howled in a long chorus.

  19

  THE STEAMCOACH

  THE STEAMCOACH MOVED ACROSS THE DARK PRAIRIE like a slow comet, its cacophonous engine belching smoke and its headlamp piercing the dark with a lance of light. It was easy to follow. Ray, Marisol, and Redfeather kept the horses a safe distance, but the Darkness gave them little reason to worry that the Bowlers would know they were being followed.

  After what they could only guess was several days’ travel, the sun rose again. The light was brief, but it grew longer each day. The undulating hills of the prairie kept the horses hidden from view during the daylight.

  B’hoy glided above. Ray finally understood how to see through the crow’s eyes and hear through his ears. At first he could only get flashes of the world from the crow’s vantage. It made Ray dizzy, and he would lose his concentration easily. But he kept trying until he was able to focus. He could see what B’hoy saw and so could observe the Bowlers’ progress at a distance.

  The Bowlers camped each night, the fourteen men falling into duties of building a fire, distributing supper, hobbling the horses, setting up the canvas tents, and posting watch. Overseeing it all was the stout Bowler named Muggeridge.

  When the steamcoach stopped each night, Ray would set up a Five Spot at their camp, close enough to see when the Bowlers prepared to leave, but not so close as to risk discovery. They were never near enough to overhear the Bowlers, but B’hoy came in handy for that.

  Ray sent the crow out to spy at the edge of the Bowlers’ firelight.

  “What are they saying?” Marisol asked, as she laid out the dwindling store of food Little Grass had sent with them.

  Ray opened his eyes. “Not much. That Pike guy is just talking about some showgirl back in Cincinnati he’s in love with.” Then he added with a grin, “But I can’t keep my concentration when you talk to me.”

  “Sorry, sorry,” Marisol said with mock kowtowing. “Don’t disturb the great Rambler at work. Wouldn’t want you to miss a word of that riveting yarn.”

  Although he never mentioned it, Ray had worried whether they would become sick after leaving the Darkness. And when they finally left the Darkness behind and none of them showed any signs of illness, he realized Redfeather and Marisol had been silently worrying as well. A buoyancy came over their spirits, as if they were three prisoners newly released from their dungeons. The warm weather returned. They shed their coats. Javidos crawled out from Marisol’s collar to sun himself across her shoulders. Even Redfeather grew more lighthearted.

  But the joy of having left the Darkness did not diminish the urgency to reach their goal. Quite the opposite: they were energized more than ever to discover what the steamcoach carried in the windowless car at the back and what the Bowlers were pursuing across the plains.

  The green grass of the prairie rippled in the wind. Beyond a series of hills, a banner of black smoke rose, signaling the steamcoach’s location. Riding behind Marisol on Unole, Ray watched the Bowlers through B’hoy’s eyes as the steamcoach stopped.

  Muggeridge got down from the driving bench and walked back to the car, unlocking the door. Desperate to see what was hidden in that heavily guarded car, Ray told B’hoy to swoop low. But the crow could not descend before Muggeridge entered and closed the door. The other Bowlers, rifles in their hands, waited placidly at their positions: two atop the car, others peering out the six windows of the steamcoach, and the last waiting on the driving bench at the front. The four on horseback sat with rifles across their knees. After a few minutes, Muggeridge came back out and spoke to Pike, the other man on the driving bench.

  Ray wanted to listen, but B’hoy refused, not willing to get close again to the Bowlers and their guns. Muggeridge pointed to the north, seeming to discuss with Pike the direction the steamcoach would travel.

  “Get down there!” Ray argued with B’hoy. “What are they saying?”

  Irritated, the crow took a steep dive, and Ray almost lost his balance. Clutching Marisol’s arm, he squared himself again in the saddle behind her.

  “You all right?” Redfeather asked, wheeling Atsila around.

  “Stupid cowardly crow,” Ray grumbled as they rode on.

  The steamcoach stopped late in the day. Ray found a lake nearby to make camp. The Bowlers were not visible, but the prairie wind carried their muffled voices. As Ray set up the Five Spot, Marisol said, “We’re running low on food.”

  Redfeather took the bow and arrow from Atsila’s saddle. “It’s nearly dark. Game will be active now.”

  “Keep out of sight of the Bowlers,” Marisol said.

  “Oh, thanks for that useful tip.” Redfeather smirked. “I almost forgot there were fourteen men with guns around.”

  Marisol laughed. “Be careful. That’s all I meant.”

  He nodded and set off.

  Ray went down to the lake to fill the waterskins. He found white-flowered arrowhead growing along the banks and dug some up to cook with the corms. Redfeather returned much quicker than either Ray or Marisol expected, a small pronghorn buck over his shoulder. Redfeather lit a fire while Ray dressed the deer, and after dark, they ate a delicious meal.

 
“You’re pretty good with that bow,” Marisol said as she cut another piece from the deer.

  “Just takes practice,” Redfeather said. “You want to learn?”

  Marisol cocked an eyebrow. “Are you offering to show me?”

  Redfeather shrugged. “Might come in handy.”

  As Redfeather got up to set up the pronghorn’s hide for a target in the firelight, Marisol picked up Redfeather’s bow and took an arrow from his quiver.

  “I’m sending B’hoy to spy,” Ray said. “I’ll be down by the lake so I can concentrate.”

  Looking back as Redfeather helped Marisol notch an arrow, Ray walked over to the edge of the Five Spot. He sat down in the grass and closed his eyes.

  B’hoy was catching a grasshopper. He gulped it down and then took flight. Soaring up into the night, he did not have to go far before he saw the Bowlers’ campfire by the silent steamcoach. B’hoy moved lower, circling the camp before alighting on the steamcoach’s smokestack.

  Only ten of the men sat around the fire, talking and smoking and eating packaged dinners from tin cans. Three others were armed and on watch duty. One was missing: Muggeridge. Through B’hoy’s spying, Ray had noticed that Muggeridge often went into the car after the Bowlers set up their camp.

  As B’hoy turned around on the smokestack, Ray could see Muggeridge returning from the car and picking up his canned dinner. Several conversations were going at once, and he let his attention wander from group to group:

  “… we’ll need to find a pond tomorrow or by the latest the following day, so we can refill the water tank …”

  “… how much longer until we need to take on more coal? There positively has to be a depot or some town if we just keep …”

  “… they say the board governing the Columbian Expo denied Buffalo Bill’s application for his Wild West show. How do you like that? So he’s setting up just outside the Expo grounds by the Midway …”

  “… that’s why he’s using Stacker Lee …”

  Ray paused on this group of men. Muggeridge was talking to Pike and two other men, named De Courcy and Murphy.

  De Courcy licked his spoon. “So who is this Stacker already? I heard his name before. Is he a Chicago Pinkerton?”

  “He’s no Pinkerton at all,” Pike answered. “He’s not even a living man.”

  “What’s that mean?” Murphy asked.

  Pike and Muggeridge exchanged a look, and Muggeridge nodded for Pike to go ahead and answer. Some of the other men turned their heads to listen.

  “Sure, Stacker Lee was once a regular man, as regular as any St. Louis two-bit thug. He was absolutely a known killer. Sometimes for money, sometimes just for sport. Killed this Lyons kid over some hat. So after that, Stacker up and disappears. Some said he was dead. You know something? I know plenty of marshals that wished he was. And then Muggeridge hears he’s working for the boss.”

  “The boss? Our boss? Mister Horne?” another Bowler asked.

  “Not Horne,” Muggeridge said, cocking his eyebrows. “The Boss.”

  The men nodded, eyeing one another and leaning forward as Pike continued. “What I heard, someone stabbed Stacker Lee in the chest with a bowie knife. Split his sternum. Burst his heart. Right! So the Boss, he somehow he gets ahold of Stacker as he’s dying. He takes out Stacker’s heart and replaces it with a mechanical heart. Some clockwork device.”

  “Yeah, like that … that …” De Courcy cocked a thumb toward the steamcoach.

  “Right,” Pike said. “One of them. So Stacker, he’s walking, talking, breathing, killing, but he’s not alive. Believe me, any shred of human emotion that once tugged at his malevolent heart, well, it’s gone now. If he was remorseless before, he’s ruthless now. If he was a stone-cold killer before, he’s a glacier now. Yeah, he’s a catastrophic blizzard.”

  “So he’s working for the Boss?” Murphy asked.

  “That’s what I heard,” Pike said with a shrug. “He’s off looking for the Nine Pound Hammer. You know, John Henry’s hammer.”

  Ray nearly lost his link of concentration with B’hoy. He struggled to refocus his thoughts to what the crow was seeing and hearing.

  “… that Negro boy who destroyed The Pitch Dark Train, yeah?”

  “That’s the one,” Muggeridge said.

  “What’s the Boss want the hammer for anyway?”

  “I think just to display at the Expo. Probably thinks it’ll be a hit with the crowds, people are interested in John Henry and all. Guess the authentic Nine Pound Hammer will bring people to his exhibit …”

  “… keep seeing that crow.”

  Ray’s attention—and B’hoy’s—was suddenly drawn to two of the men on guard duty at the back of the car.

  The men were looking at B’hoy. “Crows are beggars,” the other man said. “He’s only waiting for our scraps.”

  The other man scraped out the last of his meal from his tin can. “I hate beggars and bums of any kind.” He heaved the can at the crow. B’hoy took flight as the can scattered out in the grass.

  Ray raced into the campsite, startling Marisol, who swung around with her bow. Redfeather grabbed the arrow and pushed the bow down.

  “What’s the matter, Ray?” he asked. “You nearly got shot.”

  “The … the Bowlers,” Ray panted. “They said there’s this man with a clockwork heart and he’s looking for the Nine Pound Hammer….”

  “Slow down,” Redfeather said. “Start from the beginning.”

  Ray tried to sit, but as soon as he did, he was on his feet again, pacing around the fire and telling them what he had heard.

  “Don’t worry. He’ll never find it,” Redfeather said, when Ray was finished. “The Nine Pound Hammer’s head is at the bottom of the Mississippi River. There’s no way he could get it.”

  “But who is this mysterious ‘Boss’ they were talking about?” Marisol asked.

  “It’s Grevol. It has to be,” Ray said.

  “Grevol!” Redfeather scoffed. “The Gog? He’s scattered in a million pieces at the bottom of the Mississippi too. Didn’t you see what that explosion did to The Pitch Dark Train?”

  “But the Gog was no normal man,” Ray argued. “The bottletrees couldn’t stop him. He could walk through fire—”

  “So can I. So could you when you had my copper. But if we’d been on The Pitch Dark Train, we’d never have survived the explosion. Conker didn’t.”

  “Whoever he is,” Marisol said, “someone’s carrying on the Gog’s work. And about this Stacker, I think Redfeather’s right.” Redfeather raised his eyebrows with surprise, but Marisol continued, “There’s no way that anyone—even someone with a clockwork heart—could find the Nine Pound Hammer.”

  Redfeather nodded. “We can’t stop this Stacker Lee. Besides, we’re out here now. We’ve got to find out what that steamcoach is after.”

  Redfeather salted the rest of the venison, which, along with the arrowhead tubers, would last for several more days. They continued following the steamcoach, keeping the horses out of sight.

  B’hoy was more wary now. Ray had to coax and flatter him into spying. At night, the crow was willing to listen in less conspicuous spots near their camp, but by day, he would do little more than circle high overhead for Ray to watch from above.

  At one point, they came upon a spot by a creek where the earth was violently upturned. Ray got off Unole to examine the ground.

  Redfeather watched curiously from Atsila. “What happened here?”

  “There was a fight,” Ray said, kneeling to look closer. “Some sort of animals. Wolves? Coyotes, maybe, but the grass is really torn apart. No, here’s a good print. These tracks are some sort of canine, but they’re huge. Bigger than any dog I’ve ever seen. I don’t think wolves even get this big. Look, there’s other tracks, too. Shoes. They’re small. Probably just kids. Two sets. It looks like the kids camped here and left in that direction. Huh?”

  “What?” Marisol asked.

  “Strange. It looks like the
kids’ tracks follow one of the wolves.”

  “Or the wolf followed the kids,” Marisol said.

  Ray nodded and took Marisol’s hand to get back on Unole. They started to ride off, when Redfeather pointed to the ribbon of black coming from the steamcoach beyond the hills.

  “Look,” he said. “They’re turning north.”

  The initial relief they had felt after leaving the Darkness had been replaced by determination to discover what the steamcoach was after. But their days of travel had yielded no answers.

  As the three sat around the campfire, Redfeather worked on fixing some of the feathers that had come loose from the arrows Marisol had been using for practice. “We can’t keep hoping we’ll sneak a glance sometime,” he said. “We need to find a way.”

  “How do you propose we do that?” Ray said, clenching his fists. “Over a dozen armed Bowlers guarding it day and night. B’hoy’s too scared to go close enough to see anything.”

  Marisol said, “But every night, when the Bowlers set up their camp, Muggeridge goes into the car, right? If we could only catch him when he does—the door is left cracked.”

  “That’s suicidal,” Redfeather said. “Even in the dark, we could never get close enough to look inside the doorway. We’d be spotted in a second.”

  Marisol leaned forward, planting her hands firmly on the ground. “But a snake wouldn’t.”

  Redfeather opened his mouth, but said nothing.

  Ray asked quietly, “You’d be willing to risk Javidos?”

  With the firelight dancing off her lovely face, Marisol’s eyes betrayed her terror for a moment, but then she tightened her mouth and nodded. “He’ll be all right.”

  Redfeather said, “It’s not like B’hoy who can fly over there. We’ll have to leave the Five Spot to bring Javidos close; otherwise it will take him forever to reach their camp.”

  “We shouldn’t all go,” Marisol said. “I’ll do it.”

  “No, we’re coming with you,” Redfeather insisted. “Just in case.”