The Curse of Jacob Tracy: A Novel (35 page)

“No, sir,” the Kid said stoutly. “I mounted up the same time he did, four o’clock. He saw me do it.”

“What horse did you take?”

“Buttercup, sir.”

Trace made a mental note to ask Old Walt, who minded the remuda horses, whether Buttercup had been back in the corral that morning at dawn. “Did you or did you not hear gunfire last night?”

“I did not, sir.” The Kid’s eyes were guarded.

“Why not? Where were you?”

“Well I don’t know, do I? Somewhere along the east boundary. I guess I maybe heard a crack during the round, but I didn’t know what it was. Could’ve been a branch breaking.”

Trace wasn’t sure he believed that. The east boundary
was
full of pines and scrub, but a breaking branch made a much sharper sound than the pop of gunfire, and a gun report would have echoed like the dickens, back by the waterfall where Hanky had seen his monster.

“I want you,” Trace took a clean sheet of paper and turned it toward the Kid, “to write for me,” he passed over the ledger pen, “‘I, Karl Oscarson Smith, do solemnly avow that I rode my watch last night.’”

The Kid glanced at him mistrustfully, dipped the pen and wrote, with only a slight hesitation over the last part. He signed it with a flourish.

As Trace had suspected, the boy had a fine hand, regular and highly legible. “You like book-work, son?”

“I took the Prophet’s dictation at the Temple for two years,” the Kid said, with a hint of pride. “I wrote all his letters and declarations.”

“I thought the Prophet passed on some years ago.”

“Prophet Joseph Smith was martyred thirty-six years ago. Prophet Taylor is the President of the Quorum of Apostles.”

“My mistake,” Trace said. “Your pa must’ve been pretty close to the Prophet, then, if he saw your writing and offered you the job.”

That seemed to touch a nerve. The Kid’s poker face was smooth, but not that smooth. “Yes, sir,” he said, without elaborating.

“Fine. You like hand work, you can help me out here, mornings.” Trace pulled out a bill of sale and slapped it down on the blotter. “I need twenty-five of these copied out. Leave blank lines where it says the date, the name of the buyer, and the animal’s description. You do those right and maybe I’ll find somethin else for you to do.”

The Kid looked stunned, but recovered quickly. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Trace got up, taking the boy’s affidavit with him. “I’ll be at the smithy, if anybody asks.”

“Yes, sir.” The Kid rearranged the inkwell and the blotter to suit him, and fell to.

Once out on the porch, Trace glanced at the paper in his hand.
I, Karl Oscarson Smith, do solemnly avow I was in the east pasture last night.

A subtle distinction. Signifying what, Trace didn’t know. But the Kid was lying about something more important to him than missing his turn on watch. Trace had done enough prevaricating of his own to recognize the signs.

*   *   *

T
HE REST OF
the day was uneventful. There were only two branding accidents, and one broken finger, when Sam’s grip slipped on a buggy-axle while Davy was putting a new wheel on. A horse stepped on Old Walt’s foot, but it was only bruised, not broken. While Trace bound up the foot, Walt confirmed that Buttercup had been taken out last night; he’d saddled her after supper, and she’d been stripped and her tack stowed before six, when he’d arrived at the corral. The Kid’s bunk mates also confirmed that he had been up and gone when they awoke at dawn.

Boz spent the day in the training paddock, putting the four-year-olds through their paces. He gave particular attention to his favorite pinto mare—too gaudy for a driving horse, but the animal had sense and fire, a deep chest and massive hindquarters that promised a hell of a jumper. There was a crowd of Englishmen up in Denver who organized fox-hunting clubs, just as if they were back on their country estates in Surrey. They were some of Miller’s best customers.

Trace never tired of watching Boz work with a horse. The paint darted from one end of the barrel-lane to the other, stopping and backing on a dime, putting down every foot as pretty as a dance. Boz had acquired a certain prestige during their brief time here; the other trainers accepted him and even consulted him occasionally. Miller trusted him with the best of the stock.

“Put that one down for the market,” Miller said, when Trace met up with him outside the paddock. Trace made a note of it, and then told the rancher he’d put the Kid to work in the office.

“Just as well,” the old rancher said. “He’s useless with the cattle.”

“You hire him?” Trace asked.

“Sullivan did,” Miller said, naming Trace’s predecessor. “Found him in Evanston back in May. I think he just wanted somebody to record sales cause he was too drunk to do it.”

That explained the strangely neat handwriting in the books. Trace knew Sullivan had stepped into the foreman’s role when
his
predecessor had gotten married and pulled up stakes for San Francisco. Sullivan had been a good cowboy and popular with the men, but the higher foreman’s pay had let him overindulge his fondness for whiskey.

“Kid causing trouble again?” Miller asked. “Martha overheard some of the boys saying they were going to ‘fix’ him.”

“They’re rough,” Trace said. “He’s not. He lets ’em know it. Have to wonder why he came up here, if he hates it so much.”

“Prob’ly got nowhere else to go. The Elders tend to run off the young men—not enough women to go around, you know.”

Trace nodded. He’d heard the stories about Mormons taking multiple wives. He’d always wondered how they meant to make that work in future generations.

“If a boy takes a shine to a girl his own age, but her pa wants to wed her to one of the church Elders, well, the boy’s got to go. They tell him he’s a wicked sinner and run him out of town. I get one or two of ’em every year. They all work hard, but some of ’em don’t rest easy among the low-down sinner crowd.” Miller gave a brief, mocking smile. “Seems I remember another young missionating-type who got his flint fixed for passing judgment.”

“So do I,” Trace said, “and he was a mush-headed young gull.”

“Aw, you were young, that’s all. Younger than your years, I used to think.” Miller gave him the critical once-over he used to gauge horseflesh. “You grew into your legs all right.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

It got dark early in the valley, shadows drawing long across the ranch even while the western sky was still amber with sunset. The evening milking was done by lantern light, and the hands built a fire in the center of their outdoor dining hall, to linger and socialize after dinner. Faint laughter and conversation carried across the yard to the porch of the foreman’s house, where Trace and Boz were having a nip of whiskey before bed.

“You’re quiet tonight,” Boz said, tucking tobacco into a fresh rolling paper.

Trace contemplated the ash on the end of his own smoke. “You know what today is?”

“Twentieth, ain’t it?”

“That’s right. I marked it down in the ledger this morning, but it wasn’t til after noon … Miller said somethin about the old days, and that made me remember, today’s the day my wife and folks died.” The breeze fanned a spark in his cigarette and he turned his hand to protect it. His mind had done the same thing when the memory came, curled around to shield his heart, but the expected flare of guilt and grief had not come. “Almost got past without me noticin.”

Boz’s profile was illuminated briefly by matchlight. He shook the match out and settled his head back against the chair. “S’cause you ain’t beatin yourself up about it no more.”

That was true. In fact, before Boz had spoken, he’d been sitting there in a kind of peace—melancholy, but accepting. Of course he had to wonder, in light of new knowledge, whether there’d been any sign of demon activity in the house before they all took sick, but if there had been, he hadn’t marked it. Mostly he remembered feeling relief, that he could let go his constant vigilance. And that had been his mistake—if, in fact, his family had been felled by malicious spirits, and not simple hateful cholera.

There was no way of knowing. Trace thought he would rather
not
know for sure. But he couldn’t help thinking, if Aloysius hadn’t been so insistent that everything strange was the work of the Devil, the younger Jacob might might’ve grasped Hardinger’s lesson sooner. He might’ve broken the power to harness so it hadn’t run away from him that time—if, in fact, it had.

He couldn’t despise his father for doing what he’d believed to be right. For all his faults, the old man had never been a hypocrite. But there was a certain satisfaction in redistributing the blame.

Laughter carried over from the fire-pit, and Trace remembered the other matter that had dogged his thoughts all day. “Miller told me the Kid’s been here since May. Also said the first of the horses slaughtered was around that time. And you remember that tin-peddler came through here last month, up from Salt Lake?”

“Yeah?”

“He said there was sheep getting tore up, south of here, earlier this spring.”

“An’ you suspect the Kid?” Boz sounded dubious.

“There’s somethin bout him ain’t natural. Somethin my power picks up on, but I don’t know what, I never seen it before. And between what you said, about somethin man-sized cuttin down that horse, and him hedgin about ridin his shift last night, I got to wonder.”

Boz thought for a while. “Still, that’s a awful lot of damage for some boy to do with a knife. He’d need … a curved blade. Like a farrier’s knife, but pointed. And there ain’t no way to do it without gettin blood all over him.”

“He could wash up in the creek.”

“Blood don’t wash out of clothes.”

“Maybe he did it naked,” Trace said, half-serious.

Boz chuckled. “As neat as that boy is? You see him runnin round buck-naked in the dark with a knife?”

The image was more chilling than humorous, in Trace’s opinion. “I knew a man in the hospital, after the war … sweetest fella you ever did see, until the moon came full. Then they had to put him in restraints and throw him in a cell, or he’d chew your leg off. He
did
bite the ear off an orderly who got too close.” He cocked a wry smile. “Thought he was a wolf, see?”

“A
shape
-changer?”

“Nah. He never changed his skin—not that I saw, anyway. But we’ve both seen demons get into people and make ’em murderin-mad. Maybe he’s doin it and can’t help it. Doesn’t even know he’s doin it, maybe.”

Boz sipped from his glass. “So what d’you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” Trace admitted. “Watch him, I guess.”

They fell quiet for a while. The sky overhead was blue velvet now, twinkling with diamond stars, and as the twilight deepened he began to feel the seductive slide toward trance, the urge to wander in the gray space for a while. He didn’t need to do it every night, once or twice a week was enough to keep the spirits at bay, but there were other enticements, other tricks he was learning …

The scar in his right palm itched and he rubbed it irritably on his pants leg. He’d almost succeeded in not-thinking about her all day and he didn’t want to start now.

“Did, ah … did Her Worship say aught to you about that sort of thing? Shape-changers and whatnot?”

It was uncanny, Trace thought, how Boz could track his moods like that. If he didn’t know better he’d think
Boz
was a psychic.

“Not that I recall. We didn’t talk much outside of the job at hand.” And bicker over who was withholding the most from whom. “Why?”

“Just—it’s funny how all manner of folks have stories of men changin into beasts. When I was a boy my mam used to tell me stories bout werewolves. Said they were bad witches who made a deal with the devil and would eat up little boys who stayed out after dark.”

Trace chuckled. “I think all mothers know that story.”

“Then in the army, I heard stories from our Crow scouts. Most of the Plains tribes see wolves as brothers, cuz they’re smart and good hunters, and they look after the pack. Crow scouts put on wolf skins when they go out trackin the enemy ahead of a war party. But the Navajo have stories about a skinwalker, a bruja who can change his shape for real. That’s powerful bad magic. He has to kill a brother or a father to get it.”

“The Christian witch-hunters said much the same. That werewolves were the worst of blasphemers, eatin babies and matin with animals. Claimed that demons gave ’em power to change into beasts. But Thomas Aquinas said it was all illusion, that the devil didn’t have the power to manipulate the laws of nature.”

“What do you think?”

“I … think after what I’ve seen this year, I’d be a fool to say anything was impossible.”

Boz grunted assent. “Hearin you talk, it’s like my mam was right—there’s this whole other world I can’t see, but it’s waitin to pounce on me an’ eat me up.”

Trace huffed. “That’s how I felt most of my life.”

He tried to make light of it, but Boz’s silence was serious. There was a long, pent-up breath, and then Boz said, so carefully he might have been handling a stick of dynamite, “You miss … you know, talkin to her bout this stuff?”

The question made him feel morose. And guilty. Because, of course, he did. He missed her cool, rational voice, laying out all the reasons there was nothing wrong with him. Her occasional scathing flashes of humor. Her frank admiration of his abilities, even as she scorned the faith that shaped and governed them.

And as much as he felt disloyal for thinking it, he missed her mind, and her refinement of manner. Those weeks of working with her had roused a hunger for learning he’d not known was still in him. Not only learning about his power, but just plain
study.
It had been a long time since he’d had the time or excuse to learn anything new. He did not think he was a snob, but he
had
been educated better than the average ranch hand, and sometimes he craved a little … well, erudition.

And there was the rub. If she had been merely hateful he could have banished her by now. But he had glimpsed the method behind her madness, and the desperation. Yes, she had manipulated him and hidden things from him and let Kieler serve him up to Mereck on a platter, but she had also gone to great lengths to ensure the Russian wouldn’t have him.