Power in the Blood (12 page)

“A rock?”

“A rock, a rock, an everyday rock! Don’t waste time!”

Drew searched a short distance along the ravine and returned with what he thought would be acceptable.

“Perfect! Into the wagon with you. Hurry now.”

Drew climbed onto the seat, worrying a little by then; why get in the wagon when the mules were no longer there to pull it?

“Among the brush, if you please.”

“What for?”

“That is where the sacrificial fire will be lit. Place yourself in the middle. Did not Abraham prepare such a fire for his son Isaac? Did he not prepare to sacrifice his child for the glory of God when called upon to do so? Did not God stay Abraham’s knife a breath away from spilling blood on the sacrificial pyre? All this will be done as it was in ancient times.

“I see alarm in your face. Did not Isaac trust his father, as you trust me? This rock found by your own hand will be my knife. I know in my heart as I raise it high, our father will command me to halt. You need fear nothing. Share my faith. What has happened before will happen again. We, you and I, have been chosen … and Sylvie will be returned to us as our reward: I have the promise of God himself, if we only show to him our faith.… Stay there!”

Drew had vaulted from the wagon seat and was running for the water bag. He snatched it up without pause and ran on. Morgan’s outraged screeching followed him along the ravine. Drew scrambled up the nearest bank and dashed among the rocks, seeking cover. He fell, panting with fright, and listened for Morgan.

There was no sound other than himself. He should have grabbed the jackrabbit too. Morgan was crazy after all, but not so crazy he didn’t get Drew to help build his own funeral pyre, and even go pick out a rock to crush his skull! The deceit behind Morgan’s behavior upset Drew even more than the pathetic madness directing Morgan to do it.

When he was certain he had not been followed, Drew stood and began walking. He chose a direction he believed led directly away from the wagon, and as he walked, he wept for what had happened. Now he was without a mother and father for the second time, and he wondered if this was maybe the natural order of things, the way it was intended by God that his life should be. But what did God have to do with it? Wasn’t it God who had brought them to this place? And now Sylvie was dead, Morgan insane, and Drew an orphan again, even if Morgan still lived; Drew wasn’t having any crazy man for a father.

He was alone, would probably die himself when his water ran out; dead like poor Sylvie. At least he wouldn’t go mad like Morgan, who had listened to and believed what God told him. God had never talked with Drew, and he suspected Sylvie had also been ignored by the heavenly presence. That was all right with Drew; any being that caused the catastrophe he had witnessed was someone he had no use for. He’d never really liked church anyway; the only good thing about Sundays in the white clapboard box in Dinnsville had been the chance it afforded to look at Betty Pulvermiller in her best dress and bonnet, just the prettiest girl in town. Of course, she always stuck her tongue out at him whenever she noticed him looking, which was discouraging, but Drew figured that with time and patience he could have married her someday. Between them, Morgan and God had ruined that plan too.

Doubts about God had surfaced in Drew’s mind a long time ago, when he tried many times through prayer to alert Clay and Zoe of his desire to see them both again. Neither of them ever came, so it looked as though God had ignored his prayers. It was another good reason not to believe in or need such a thing as God. It was all hooey. There probably wasn’t even a heaven. If he was wrong about that, he hoped Sylvie was there already, sipping cool sweet water from a little pool all her own. Morgan could go to hell.

Walking on, Drew wondered if Clay and Zoe were still alive. They were too young to be dead, surely, unless they got very sick and gave up the ghost, but it would be very unfair if that happened before he got the opportunity to see them again. Prayer hadn’t worked, hadn’t summoned them to Dinnsville, so now he’d go find them, his brother and sister, so they could be their own family, without grownups. It made him slightly sick to think they might be perfectly happy with the families they’d found after stepping down from the orphan train. That would fix his plan all right, having Clay and Zoe wanting to stay right where they were, wherever that might be, so happy there they never once thought about coming to find him all these years later. Clay said he would, but it was pretty clear Clay had forgotten his promise.

Well, if Clay wouldn’t come to Drew, Drew would go to Clay, and Zoe too. He’d find them both, without using a single prayer. He’d just search and search until he found them, and after he told them both off (especially Clay) for not coming to fetch him, they’d all laugh and cry and be happy together, the Dugans again.

He stopped to drink, and while water trickled like life itself down into him, he saw the Indian, and dropped the bag in surprise. Drew snatched it up again before more than a mouthful had belched from the spout, then looked hard at the Indian to make sure he was not imagining him. The Indian was even older than Drew had guessed by moonlight, old and cracked in the face like sun-dried mud. He wore a loose store-bought shirt made for a larger man, and deerhide moccasins; his skinny legs were bare. And he wore a bag over his right hand, just as Drew had told Morgan.

He gestured for Drew to come closer, and when Drew did so, the Indian turned and began walking. Drew followed, his trust in the old man immediate. He stumbled in the wake of the Indian—a man of considerable sprightliness despite his years and stooped spine—having no knowledge of their direction or purpose; it was enough to be with another human being. Drew was allowed to catch up with his guide at the top of a low rise. The Indian held a finger to his lips, then beckoned Drew forward until they lay side by side. The Indian slid forward on his belly, and Drew followed.

They were overlooking the ravine where Sylvie lay buried. Drew realized then how utterly lost he must have been when the Indian found him. He saw Morgan stride from behind the wagon, buttoning his pants. It was fascinating to observe, unseen, the man who had intended killing him for God. Morgan picked up his Bible from the wagon seat and began declaiming to the sky.

Drew recognized passages from Deuteronomy, but couldn’t understand their significance in these surroundings. Maybe to Morgan’s crazy mind the words he spoke made sense. Morgan began to walk as he read, following a wide circle around the wagon, his voice rising and falling, sometimes failing altogether; without the water bag Morgan’s throat must be awfully dry, Drew thought, but he had no intention of returning it.

He looked sideways at the Indian, who happened to be looking at him. “He’s crazy,” whispered Drew. The Indian said nothing. Drew’s eyes went to the leather bag covering the Indian’s right hand, and stayed there. The bag was more interesting than Morgan’s madness; Drew really wanted to know why it was there, and the Indian understood his curiosity. He began unpicking the rawhide knot at his wrist that held the bag in place, then slid the bag free.

Drew stared. The Indian’s hand was held in a closed fist, and had been held that way for many years, because the fingernails had grown clear through the palm and out the back of his hand, long gray nails that curled like streamers of pointed ribbon frozen in the air. The thumbnail had grown in a wide, looping curve around knuckles that stood up like a row of burial mounds. The Indian was smiling, proud of his hand. Drew couldn’t see why; it was the ugliest, most awful thing he’d ever seen in his life.

The proximity of that pierced hand to the ranting madman just over the rise produced in Drew a sense of disbelief. The things that his eyes and ears told him were real could not be. The world was a colossal joke of some kind, an unreal place. Everything the Kindreds had ever taught him about God’s place in the affairs of men was nonsense, a trick. The smiling Indian, himself unreal, was revealing to him another way of seeing. Drew felt he had stepped off a cliff and was tumbling in the air, unsure even if he was falling. Even Clay and Zoe were robbed of meaning, of reality; they belonged to another time, another place, another life. The world was being made over in seconds as Drew stared at the cruel hand. The boy called Drew was becoming someone else, someone without identifiable features, an entity Drew might not even recognize when next he looked into a mirror. Drew knew it, and Smart Crow Making Mischief knew it too.

Dazed, Drew allowed himself to be led away from the ravine to a place nearby where two familiar mules grazed, one with a rawhide halter and reins, the other without. Drew was ordered with a gesture to mount the first, while Smart Crow sprang onto the broad back of the other and grabbed a handful of mane. Drew hadn’t known it was possible to ride like that, and found himself even more impressed once he learned how difficult it was to stay aboard his mule without benefit of a saddle. He mastered the technique soon enough, and was well pleased; it was one more new thing in this new world he found himself living in. Nothing was the way Drew had always held it to be, and realization of his error made him light as air.

They rode toward the mission at San Bartolomeo. Smart Crow had been headed there to see his grandsons when he was diverted by the antics of the madman and his family. The delay had been worth it; he would use the white boy to persuade Bleeding Heart of Jesus and Nail in His Feet to abandon the appalling religion of the Dead Man Flying on Wood and return with him to the true life for which they had been born.

8

Aspinall’s stonecutting equipment was wrapped in burlap, but no matter how carefully he arranged it, a part of some tool always managed to find a reciprocal part of another tool, and together they produced a
chink, chink, chink,
to rival the steady tinklings of bridle and bit. Aspinall preferred to handle the two-horse team himself, since the wagon was his, and that meant Tully had much time to spare for Zoe, who had none for him.

“The baby, she’s a real little traveler. Not a peep hardly.”

Zoe knew he complimented Omie as often as he did because he was aware that Zoe loved her. Omie was a convenient handle by which Tully attempted to grasp her mother. Zoe ignored most of what flowed from him. It was annoying, though, to have to climb into the back of the wagon whenever Omie required feeding. Zoe had tried baring her breast while seated up front with the men, but although Aspinall was sensitive enough to keep his eyes elsewhere, Tully always ogled her nipple before it disappeared into Omie’s reaching mouth.

Tully’s crassness was the only blemish on an otherwise pleasant journey. The road from Springfield to Saint Louis was well traveled. When they reached the Mississippi and were ferried across, Zoe thought of Mrs. Ringle from the train, but decided against visiting; Mrs. Ringle would certainly not approve of her accompanying two unmarried men. The wagon passed through that great town without pause, Aspinall eager as always to be moving west. The road to Kansas City was arrow-straight in precisely that direction.

They avoided hostelries and wayside inns; Aspinall was a tight man with a dollar, a keen appreciator of campfires and starry skies. He would not share the wagon’s limited floor space, however, which placed Zoe in closer proximity to Tully than she would have chosen. For the first few nights Tully had not violated the several yards separating their blankets, but well before they reached Saint Louis he had come creeping to her side to whisper words of love into her ear. A small blade entered his vision; Zoe had purchased it in Springfield for just such a use as this. She told him, “Don’t you touch me ever, or I’ll poke your eye out.” Tully was intelligent enough to believe her.

On a lonely stretch of trail halfway between Saint Louis and Kansas City, they made camp by a shallow creek. During the night, Zoe incorporated Tully’s voice into a dream, then woke up. He was calling her name, softly and insistently. When she saw him moving closer, she found the handle of her knife and gripped it hard.

“Zoe … Zoe …”

He was close, but not within stabbing distance. Zoe watched with a barely opened eye as he wriggled closer in the moonlight.

“Zoe, can’t you see how I’m paining? You’ve got me loving you. Soon as I saw you that day, I said, That’s the girl I want to marry, swear I did. You know me by now, Zoe, you know the way I am, all in love with you. I know how it is, with the little one and all; you’ll be wanting a man steady as a rock to be providing for you both. That’s me, it is. I’ll be good to you and Omie both. Are you listening? You’re a funny one, Zoe, I swear. Are you awake, are you?”

He came closer. “You’re the girl I’ve been wanting all my life, so help me. I don’t care if another man had you. No one’s perfect in this world. I’d be a true husband, my oath on it … only let me in with you, in there under the blanket. Just a little kiss and I’ll tell you the things I bet you’ve been wanting to hear from an honest fellow, which there’s very few of us about, Zoe, very few indeed. Let’s have a little kiss, just a little kiss to show I care, Zoe …”

Mistaking her silence for acquiescence, Tully slid closer. Zoe opened her blanket, just the way he wanted. Tully couldn’t believe his luck; she thought he truly wanted to hitch up with her and her bastard, and was willing to receive him into herself to speed the marriage along, the little trollop. He’d keep up the pretense until he found Lovey Doll Pines, then let Zoe down with a bump that might make her think twice next time she offered herself. He’d be teaching her a necessary lesson in life, Tully told himself as he moved toward Zoe with a grin on his face. She was a sweetie, and the next few minutes should be worth the considerable effort he had expended to get this far with her; perseverance was a lover’s asset, along with charm and an impressive mustache.

As he reached for her, Zoe’s blade jabbed Tully just below the jawline. For a brief moment he was unsure what had happened, then saw the knife in her hand rushing at him again. He rolled over to escape it, blood spraying from his neck. Tully was angry. He lunged at her, avoiding the blade as it whizzed by his head in a tight arc.