Wilderness Double Edition 15, page 2
He saw no mouse. Angered by the knock on his noggin, he drew his Green River knife and moved toward the wood he had brought in earlier. It was possible he’d accidentally brought a mouse inside, too, maybe concealed in a hole or some such. If so, he’d skewer it and add it to the pot. Mice didn’t have much meat on them, but they had a nice flavor.
A search of the pile yielded no rodents. Mystified, Old Charlie sheathed his knife and filled the tin bowl. The pot was close to bubbling over, so he took it off the fire and deposited it on the counter.
“So what if my mind’s startin’ to go?” he said to the buffalo head mounted on one wall. “I can last another ten years or better if’n I take real good care of myself. No whiskey, no women. Well, maybe just a nip now and then, and a poke every six months or so.”
The buffalo’s shriveled sockets gazed lifelessly back. Old Charlie had once seen a mounted head in a high-priced eatery in St. Louis, complete with horns and glass eyes. His trophy had the horns intact, although they drooped, but glass eyes were as scarce as hen’s teeth west of the Mississippi, so he’d had to go without.
“What’s that? You’d like to poke a cow? You stupid critter. Your oysters were part of the feast those Flatheads threw together for the whites who helped them on that surround. Your pokin’ days are long over, friend.”
Cackling, Old Charlie raised the spoon once more—and that awful sensation hit him like a mallet, so startling he heaved upright, spilling stew onto his buckskin shirt. He looked wildly around, then swore lustily.
“Will you cut it out? There’s no one else here, simpleton! Keep this up and you’re liable to burst your heart vessels and wind up like your uncle Hiram, as addlepated as a loon and always droolin’ spittle out the corners of your mouth!”
Old Charlie finished his meal in relative peace. Twice the sensation plagued him, but each time he ignored it. There was only so much silliness a man could abide, and he’d reached his limit.
Propping his feet on the table, Old Charlie slipped a hand into his possibles bag, which hung over the back of the chair. He fished out his pipe and makings and tamped the pipe full. To light it he went to the fireplace and hunkered. As he sucked on the stem, inhaling smoke, the skittering noise was repeated. He ignored it too. The mouse, or whatever it was, could wait.
“If’n there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years,” Old Charlie said as he straightened, “it’s that a man has to have his priorities in order.”
Rather than return to the chair, Old Charlie sat down right where he was. At peace with himself and the world for the first time that day, he cheerfully puffed, blowing small circles of smoke into the air, a trick taught him by a Cheyenne.
It’s too bad I don’t have a son to teach the trick to, Old Charlie reflected, or any grandchildren. The lack always weighed heavily on his heart. He’d wanted children. Lord Almighty, how he’d wanted them! And he’d tried his best with Dove at Dawn and later Clay Pot. The latter gave him a daughter, the genuine apple of his eye, and he’d doted over that infant like she was the Queen of Sheba until that fateful day when a white man brought smallpox to the Mandan village and wiped out every last man, woman, and child.
The deaths of his wife and little girl had been almost more than Old Charlie could bear, and he’d gone off into the hills to kill himself. He’d found a nice hill with pretty flowers and a few aspens and had stuck the end of a pistol into his mouth and cocked the hammer. But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t take his own life. It was his one cowardice, as he called it, and he never forgave himself for not having the courage to go join them, wherever they were.
From out of nowhere the eerie sensation hit him once more. Old Charlie snapped his head up. He happened to glance at the far corner where he kept his stock of ale, and he was positively stupefied to see a face just like the one he’d beheld that morning staring at him as brazenly as could be.
“I’ve had too much ale,” Old Charlie said, and closed his eyes for a bit. When he opened them, the horrible apparition was still there, still staring with a sort of detached hostility, like a painter sizing up its prey.
Old Charlie tried to recollect if he had placed the plank back over the hole after he retrieved the ale, but couldn’t. Either way, how had the creature gotten into the hole? There was no other way in or out except through the opening in the floor.
“What do you want?” Old Charlie demanded. Naturally, the creature didn’t answer. Its slanted eyes were almost as red as the ones he’d seen in the cleft. It must be one of the same creatures, he concluded. The thing had followed him home and been spying on him all day, which accounted for his spooked spells.
“Go away, runt. You’re nothin’ but a miserable nuisance.” Old Charlie wagged a hand at it, but the face might as well have been etched from stone. “I mean it,” he warned. “I’m tired of being trifled with. Go pester someone else.”
Thin lips curled, exposing tapered teeth in a hideous grin.
“Are you mockin’ me, damn your hide?” Old Charlie swept to his feet so fast, he surprised himself. He hurled his pipe at the mocking visage but missed. Lightning quick, the creature dropped from view.
Old Charlie drew his pistol and dashed over, warily peeking over the edge. The hole was empty. No critter, no new hole on either side to show how it had got there, not a blessed thing. “I’m plumb crazy,” he declared. It was the only explanation. The creature couldn’t have been there. Not unless it could swim through solid earth.
Small prints at the bottom jarred him. Old Charlie’s senses weren’t deceiving him. He wasn’t insane, either. The creature was under his cabin! Where had it gone? Kneeling, Old Charlie lowered his head partially into the hole. When he built the place, he’d deliberately left a two-inch gap between the planks and the ground. Barely enough room for a mouse, let alone one of those— things. Yet when he scanned the inky gap, he detected rustling to his right. Abruptly, crimson eyes blazed like burning coals.
“I’ll be damned!”
The eyes rushed toward him. Old Charlie jerked upward, shoving the section of plank over the hole and slamming it down. A thump against the bottom lifted one end. “I’ll show you!” Old Charlie fumed, drawing his flintlock. He fired into the center of the board, drilling a hole as big around as a man’s thumb, slivers flying every which way.
Acrid smoke tingled Old Charlie’s nose as he scrambled backward and hastily reloaded. His ears were ringing, and his heart pounded wildly. Fingers shaking, he opened his powder horn, taking several deep breaths to calm himself. “How dare they!” he roared. After he had been so friendly, too.
Loud scratching broke out under the floor. Not from the hole, but from almost directly under him! He jumped up and backpedaled, continuing to reload. The creature was trying to claw up through the boards! “No, you don’t!” Snaking a ball from his ammo pouch, he hastily shoved it into the barrel with his thumb, then darted to the counter where he had left his ramrod. “I’ll fix your mangy hide!”
The scratching grew louder when more sounds erupted from a different spot, close to the door.
“Two of you, eh?” Old Charlie said, shoving the ball in all the way. “Well, it won’t make a difference! I’ve got plenty of ammo!” A tiny hole appeared where he had been sitting a second before, the tip of a sharp claw jutting out. That plank is an inch thick! he realized, stunned that anything could rip through it with such incredible swiftness. Striding over, he pointed the pistol at the hole.
The claw was yanked down, almost as if the creature knew what Old Charlie was about to do. He fired, the ball coring the hole and cracking the plank. He expected a screech, a yip of agony, something, but either he’d killed it outright or missed, because heavy silence greeted the blast.
Scratching resumed near the door. Old Charlie ran to his rifle, propped in a front corner. He would blow the varmints to kingdom come! He had to gauge where the second one was by the racket it was making, which stopped the moment he sighted down the barrel. He squeezed off the shot anyway.
A gust of cool wind fanned Old Charlie as he pivoted, seeking more evidence that the things were trying to get at him. “Where are you?” he raged. “Hiding?” He lifted the powder horn to pour black powder into the rifle, then had a thought that chilled the blood in his veins. Where did that breeze come from? The door and the window are both closed.
Or so Old Charlie assumed until he rotated and saw the shutter flung wide. On the counter stood one of the things, firelight highlighting its feral features. “Abomination!” he shouted. “Vile spawn of Satan!” His fingers flew as he sought to get off another shot.
The creature held an object of its own. Old Charlie blinked when he recognized what it was, then laughed. “You can’t hurt me with that puny toy!”
He was wrong.
Outside, a raccoon that often visited the cabin for table scraps was crouched among the trees, afraid to approach any closer. It heard a twang and a thump, and afterward strident sobbing that ended eventually in a series of hair-raising screams. Terrified, the raccoon raced off into the night.
And so the nightmare began.
Two
It was cleaning day at the King cabin.
Eight-year-old Evelyn King loathed it, loathed it with a passion seldom seen in one so young. It was all work and no fun. Her mother insisted on washing everything that wasn’t tied down: clothes, curtains, towels, even the bearskin rug. They dusted, they mopped, they polished, they oiled. In three days, when they were done, they’d have the cleanest cabin in the Rocky Mountains. And all for what? Evelyn repeatedly asked. Just so they could go and dirty the place up again. How silly. But that was how grown-ups did things. Backward.
“I wish a tree would fall on me,” Evelyn remarked while trudging down a well-used trail, carrying a bucket.
“Why’s that?” responded sixteen-year-old Louisa May Clark, her companion. Eyes as deep blue as the lake ahead regarded her with amusement.
“If I break my leg, maybe Ma will let me loaf and Zach and you can do all the work.”
“You’re fooling yourself. Loafing isn’t in your mother’s vocabulary.”
“I reckon you’re right. She’d probably have me polish the pots and pans, since I could do that sitting down.” Evelyn sighed masterfully. “Cleaning house is the one thing I hate more than my brother.”
“That’s not true,” Louisa said. “You care for Zach. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
“When? That night I brought in firewood for him? It wasn’t because I cared. He agreed to do my chores for the next two days.”
They were quite a contrast, these two girls. Evelyn King was dark of complexion and hair, befitting her mixed lineage of white and Shoshone. A bundle of energy, she was always on the go, always getting into mischief. Louisa was taller and leaner, and much more deliberate in her speech and manner. The death of her father in the past year had added a layer of reserve to her usually quiet demeanor. They were opposites, these two, as opposite as two people could be, yet in the past several months they had grown to care for each other as deeply as two sisters.
Ironically, it was Lou who wore beaded buckskins, a gift from Winona King, Evelyn’s mother. Shirt and pants were finely crafted, smooth and soft, the finest Lou ever owned. Evelyn King wore a green dress, also made by Winona, complete with ribbons and bows such as Winona had seen white women wear at Bent’s Fort.
“Look at the bright side,” Louisa commented. “By this time tomorrow we’ll be done. No more housecleaning until next spring.”
“Which will be here before we know it,” Evelyn lamented. “If it were up to me, we’d clean only once a year. And only if the cabin needed it.”
Lou thought of her own mother, who had died on the arduous trek west. She thought of how her ma had cleaned their house twice a week, rain or shine, summer and winter, year in and year out. She never had understood why her mother did it so often. The few times she’d inquired, her ma always said, “Because it has to be done.” What kind of answer was that?
Going around a bend, Lou spotted a familiar figure down by the lake and her heart leaped in her breast. “Look! Zach’s watering the horses!”
“So? Maybe he’ll fall in and give us something to laugh about.” Evelyn didn’t share the older girl’s enthusiasm for her brother. She’d just as soon he married Lou next week instead of next year like he was supposed to, and move out. Although she’d miss Louisa. It was nice having another girl to talk to, real nice.
“Oh, hush,” Lou said, absently fluffing her hair and tugging on the hem of her buckskin shirt so it would cling to her admittedly underendowed chest. “He’s not as bad as you make him out to be.”
“Easy for you to say,” Evelyn replied. “You’re the one who goes around making cow eyes at him all the time.”
“I do not.”
“Then what? You open your eyes wider just to see him better?”
Lou wasn’t going to argue with Zach so close. “You sure are a caution, you know that?” was her riposte as she strolled into the open and hooked her arms behind her slender back. “Howdy, handsome,” she called out.
Zachary King had heard them coming from a long way off. He prided himself on having the ears of a bobcat, the eyes of an eagle. As should every Shoshone warrior. In keeping with Zach’s preference for his mother’s people over his father’s, he had on buckskins much like Lou’s and was armed with a long knife in a beaded sheath on his right hip. “Flower of my heart,” he greeted Louisa in the Shoshone tongue, switching to English when his sister giggled. “It takes two of you to fetch a bucket of water?”
“Your pa didn’t think it was safe for Evelyn to go alone,” Lou said, “not with all the strange things that have been going on.”
Zach knew what she meant. The strangeness had started about a moon earlier when the horses took to acting up most nights, nickering and stamping as if there were a mountain lion in the corral. Every night he and his pa ran out with their Hawkens; every night they found nothing to explain it. Along about the same time, they started to hear occasional noises in the nearby forest, the patter of feet or paws and the occasional cracking of twigs. Again, he and his pa always investigated and never found a thing.
Then stuff around the cabin began to move of its own accord, or disappear. First was an ax, which his father had left embedded in the stump of a pine overnight. The next day it was found lying on the lake shore. Later, a saddle was dragged from the tack shed behind the corral and into the forest, where they found it in a clump of high weeds. An empty water skin and a coil of rope disappeared.
Zach’s pa originally fretted that marauding hostiles were in the area, but as time passed and none of them was harmed and the hostiles never showed themselves, Nate King confessed to being as much in the dark as everyone else. Which shocked Zach more than the mystery. His father always had an answer. Nate was widely considered one of the savviest mountain men alive, ranked right up there with Shakespeare McNair, Jim Bridger, and Old Charlie Walker.
Now Zach rested a hand on the hilt of his knife and smirked. “Evelyn doesn’t need to worry. Whatever’s been nosing around our place wouldn’t want a scruffy bundle of bones like her.”
“Be nice,” Lou said.
Evelyn bristled like a riled porcupine. “You have your gall, Stalking Coyote!” she snapped, using his Shoshone name. “If you were half the hunter you claim to be, you’d have tracked down whatever it is by now.”
“Please be nice,” Louisa stressed. It upset her, their constant spatting. Winona King claimed it was normal, but having never had a brother or sister of her own, Lou couldn’t comprehend why they were forever at each other’s throat.
A sharp retort was on the tip of Zach’s tongue, but he held it in. Evelyn was blood kin, after all, even if he did have a daily urge to drop her off the handiest cliff. And, too, she had a point. His prowess as a hunter was another ability he took pride in. Yet he hadn’t been able to find so much as a clue as to the identity of the nightly prowler. Nor had his father, which was even more remarkable, for it was said among the Shoshones that Grizzly Killer, as his father was known, could track a flea across solid rock. An exaggeration, but not by much.
Louisa didn’t like for anyone to upset her betrothed, even his own sister. “That’s not fair,” she said defending him. “Your pa said himself that in all his years, he’s never seen the like. Trying to find whoever is to blame is like trying to find a ghost.”
Zach saw a chance to change the subject. “There are no such things as ghosts,” he flatly stated.
“Shows how much you know,” Evelyn said. “Otter Tail saw one once, during the Blood Moon. As big as life it was, and all shimmery and scary.”
“Otter Tail has been seeing and hearing things since a Blackfoot war club rattled his brainpan,” Zach noted. “Remember those pink buffalo he saw? And the thunderbird?”
“My grandma claimed to have seen a ghost,” Lou mentioned. “When she was no older than Evelyn. It floated into her bedroom and stared at her for a while, then smiled and floated off.”
Had it been anyone else, Zach would have made a comment to the effect that her grandmother was as crazy as Otter Tail. But this was Louisa, the girl he loved, the one he was going to take for his wife. So he smiled sweetly and said instead, “As that may be, why would a ghost steal a rope? Or drag a saddle into the woods?”
Evelyn had a burst of inspiration. “Maybe it’s a kid, like us! A real kid, not a ghost.”
“Be serious.”
“She could be right,” Lou said. “Think about it. Dragging that saddle off and leaving the ax by the lake are things a kid would do, for a prank. Scaring the stock, the rope, it all fits.”
Zach considered another aspect. “It would also explain why Pa and I can’t find tracks. If it’s a young kid, they wouldn’t weigh much and wouldn’t leave much sign.” He looked at his sister. “You could be onto something, sprout.”
