The Wolf Tree (13 page)

Ray started to answer ‘maybe.’ But as Javidos hissed from around Marisol’s arm, and she tucked her long hair under a bonnet with a venomous scowl, Ray decided to trust her choice in travel attire. It was mostly train travel, after all. “Ready?” she asked.

“Sure,” Ray said.

They hopped down from the car and found Shacks and Eddie by the locomotive.

“Your pa back yet?” Ray asked.

Eddie shook his head. “Said he’d meet us up here to see you off.”

The massive rail yard was a jungle of noise and activity. Train cars clattered in and out. Whistles shrieked. Workers in grimy clothes moved about busily, crossing the web of tracks and trains, emerging and disappearing in the fog of coal smoke.

Ox Everett rounded the cowcatcher with Ma at his heels. “That’s fine for Ray, but what about Marisol?” Ma was saying.

Ox reared as he nearly ran into the four. “Ah, here you are. Plans have changed and it can’t be helped. I’ve had a time, I’ll tell you. Tried to purchase you tickets, but all passenger trains westbound are halted. They’re rerouting trains north and south around Kansas, Nebraska, and the Indian Territory. They’re saying there’s dust storms out on the prairie.”

“Dust storms?” Ray said.

“We both know they ain’t,” Ox grumbled.

Ma Everett took Marisol’s hands. “It was one thing when you were planning to ride the train, but this is an entirely different matter now.”

“What do you mean?” Marisol asked.

“Dear, how will you get to the Indian Territory?”

“I suppose we’ll have to walk.”

“Walk?” Ma shrilled. “Across the entire state? Dear, walking is fine for Ray. He’s a Rambler. He understands about travel in the open country. But you’re a girl.”

“That means I can’t walk?” Marisol’s eyes flashed dangerously.

“It’s different is all. A young boy traveling overland ain’t going to garner much attention. But the pair of you? And a pretty girl like you at that.”

Ox waved his hands between Marisol and Ma Everett. “Now, don’t get all puckered, Marisol. Ma’s just worried about you is all. And she’s a right to it.”

“Isn’t there another way we could get out to meet Redfeather?” Ray asked quickly before Marisol could respond.

“Hire a stagecoach,” Shacks offered.

“I asked,” Mister Everett said. “None going to the Indian Territory.”

“How about buy a horse?” Eddie asked.

Ray shook his head. “We can’t afford that.”

“I suppose you could always sneak aboard a freight train,” Ox suggested. “Supply runs still going west. But you
wouldn’t want to get caught by them railroad bulls. They watch the cars for tramps, and those they catch … well, let’s just say they’re given a rougher sort of treatment out here.”

Ma winced at Marisol, but kept her mouth shut.

“Well, we’ll find a way,” Ray said. “Thank you for the ride and all your help.”

He and Marisol said their goodbyes to the Everetts and set off across the rail yard. Marisol turned the heads of many of the men hurrying about the tracks. Ray tried to ignore this, but couldn’t help thinking Marisol was anything but inconspicuous. As they reached the edge of the rail yard, where the bridge crossed the Mississippi, Ray stopped and faced Marisol.

“I know Ma Everett pestered you back there, but you know, she might be right. Our plans have changed. You don’t have to go.”

Marisol put down her valise, her eyes narrowed to dagger-like slits. “You’re as awful as she is! You don’t think I can handle this. You don’t think I can do it. Everyone thinks just because I’m pretty, all I’m good for is performing up on stage or taking care of the Shuckstack kids. I expect it from Ma Everett, but I never expected it from you, Ray!”

She spun around, snatching up her valise and swinging it at her side. With a snarl, she marched onto the plank bridge crossing the Mississippi. An old man carrying a basket of vegetables leaped to the side as if she were a wild animal. Ray ran to catch up with her.

“Marisol,” he called. “That’s not what I meant….”

“I can handle myself, Ray,” she said over her shoulder.

They wouldn’t be in the city long, he thought. After that, they’d stick to the forests and less populated routes to Vinita. Hopefully then Marisol would change into her other travel clothes. Nel had urged him not to underestimate Marisol, and Ray struggled to heed his advice.

On the far side of the river, they found themselves in the bustle of downtown St. Louis. Ray followed Marisol as she pushed through the crowds of people past the storefronts and shops, dodging wagons and horse-drawn omnibuses clopping over the cobblestones.

“Do you even know where you’re going?” Ray called up to her.

She pointed over the buildings. “That’s the sun. It’s midafternoon. Then that’s west. We need to get to the southwest side of town. So we head that way. Doesn’t take a Rambler to figure it out.”

Ray exhaled deeply. It was going to be a long journey.

After several minutes, they left the shoppers and strolling families and found themselves in a grittier part of town. Groups of men stood around outside the mills and saloons. Pushing through one of these clusters, Marisol stepped off the curb and into a puddle, splashing her dress.

As they crossed the street, a man wolf-whistled at Marisol from the doorway of a public house. She ignored it, but Ray looked back over his shoulder, cautiously watching the man.

Ray walked in front of her as they passed into a crowd of dirty-faced men congregating on the next corner. He pushed his way politely through the group. As he looked back to
make sure Marisol was behind him, he saw one of the men grab her wrist.

“You lost, doll?” The man was unshaven and churlish, and reeked with the sour stench of gin, even from several steps away.

“Get your hand off me!” Marisol snapped her arm from the man’s grip. But he caught her once more and jerked her back, causing her valise to tumble into the street.

“This ain’t your kind of neighborhood,” the man chuckled. “You might need someone like me to escort you.”

Ray knew a number of hoodoo spells that could overpower or at least persuade the man to leave them alone. But they all required Black Sampson root or coffin nails or any number of items he didn’t have on him. He’d have to trust in his ability to talk their way out of this.

Ray reached Marisol’s side. “That’s not necessary. She’s with me.”

“Not anymore!” The ruffian shoved Ray off his feet, throwing him against the brick wall.

Marisol’s free hand flew up to grasp the man by his greasy shirt collar. He looked down at her fuming face and began to laugh. His laugh caught abruptly in his throat as his eyes fell on the snake writhing out from Marisol’s sleeve just inches from his neck. Javidos flicked his tongue from his thick triangular head, and then opened his fanged mouth to hiss.

“Yes, that’s a copperhead,” Marisol whispered, teeth bared. “If I want him to bite your throat, he’ll do it. Does it look like I need you to escort me?”

“No,” the man gulped, his entire body gone rigid. He relaxed his grip on her wrist.

Marisol retrieved her valise and helped Ray to his feet. As they hurried away, she said, “I told you I can take care of myself.”

By late afternoon, they had passed the last neighborhoods and houses and were back into the countryside. Along the dirt road out of town, a farmer driving a wagon stopped to offer them a ride. His wife and two small children were lined up beside him on the bench. Marisol and Ray rode facing backward from the wagon’s tail for several miles in silence.

“The look on his face …” Ray chuckled. “Quite a day.”

“I might have been a little short-tempered,” Marisol said.

“With that hooligan?”

“No, with you.”

“Might have been?” Ray smirked.

“All right, I was. But you were being a … a gaboot.”

“I didn’t mean to be.”

“Well, you were.”

“Sorry.”

Marisol sighed. “I may not know how to hunt or build a fire, but I can learn. My parents were Ramblers, too, remember?”

With the sun drifting below the tree line, Ray and Marisol hopped off the back of the wagon and thanked the farmer and his family. Soon they reached a copse of trees squeezed between the surrounding fields.

“Well, if we’re to travel as Ramblers,” Ray said, “then I’ll need to show you how to set a Five Spot.”

“What’s that?” she asked, dropping her valise to the ground and pulling her hat from her head.

“Like the bottletrees. It’s a protective charm. It’ll keep anyone passing on the road from seeing us.”

Ray handed Marisol two rocks and picked up two more. “We’re going to put these stones as the corners of a square. If anyone comes along, they won’t be able to get inside the square unless they know how to counter the charm. You put your two over there by the edge of the road. I’ll put mine in the woods a ways.”

After doing so, they met back where Ray dropped a pile of kindling sticks.

“Why’s it called a Five Spot if you only use four stones?” Marisol asked.

“Our fire pit makes the fifth. As long as we keep the fire burning, the charm will work.”

After building a fire ring, Ray said to Marisol, “Redfeather taught me this one.” He took a small tin of saltpeter from his toby and opened it. Cupping a dash of the powder in between his hands, he blew into it. When he opened his fingers, flames leaped up from his hands. Ray shook the flames onto the kindling, and the fire was blazing within a few moments.

“Did it burn you?”

Ray held up his blackened palms with chagrin. “A little. I can’t quite do it like Redfeather.”

She laughed. “Price you pay for showing off.”

They ate some of the biscuits and salted ham Ma Everett had packed. After unrolling their blankets on either side of the fire, they lay down. Ray cocked his hands behind his head and looked up at the dark.

Marisol leaned up on one elbow. “You know, you were right about one thing. I’ve never slept outside like this. Never on the ground.”

“There’s nothing to it, really,” Ray said.

Marisol sighed and lay back down, shifting noisily a few moments. “Well, good night, Ray.”

“Good night.”

They woke with the sky still gray and their blankets speckled with dew.

“How’d you sleep?” Ray asked.

Her eyes puffy, Marisol grumbled, “It wasn’t my bed at Shuckstack.”

They rolled up their blankets and stirred the fire for breakfast. Marisol went down to a little creek with her valise to clean up. When she returned, she had changed into a more subdued cotton dress of hazel brown. The hem was still long, but Ray had to admit it was a better outfit for traveling in the wild.

As they ate, Ray spied a group of crows huddled on a branch just outside the perimeter of the Five Spot. Easing toward them, he spoke in a series of caws.

Startled, the crows scattered abruptly toward the fields.
But one crow remained, leaning his bobbing beak down and squawking. Ray held out a cracker in his fingers, which the crow swooped down to take before soaring off on midnight wings.

Marisol asked, “What did you say to it?”

“I asked where the nearest train tracks are. They’re not too far. I bet it’s the MKT line that runs through the Indian Territory.”

Marisol got a fretful look. “You want to hop a ride on a train?”

“It would be a lot quicker.”

“Are we in a hurry?” Marisol asked.

“The sooner we reach Redfeather, the sooner we find out if the Machine is causing that Darkness.” Ray pulled his haversack to his shoulder.

Marisol gathered her valise and tied her hat beneath her chin. She murmured something to Javidos, who slid up onto her shoulder to flicker his tongue at her ear. Ray kicked out the fire, and they returned to the road.

Within a half hour’s time, the dirt road met the railroad tracks. Ray eyed the clapboard houses nearby and said, “We’d better follow the tracks out a way. If we’re to keep from being noticed, we’ll need a secluded spot to sneak aboard.”

They followed the tracks along the edges of the fields and farmhouses. The day was warm as Ray and Marisol trudged along the gravel of the right of way and took turns balancing on the tracks. The crow returned, swooping back and forth over their path before landing on one of the ties in front of Ray and giving a squawk.

“Get on, you beggar. You’ve got plenty to eat without my crackers.” The crow flapped away, calling back a few complaints.

Before long they came to a forest next to the tracks. After coming down off the right of way to the forest, Ray dropped his haversack and settled down onto it. Standing in the shade of the trees, Marisol narrowed her eyes back down the straight line of track.

“How long before the train comes?” she asked as she knelt to let Javidos slither out into a warm patch of light on the leaves. The copperhead slithered a few feet and then snapped out, catching a grasshopper in his jaws.

“Who knows,” Ray said, taking his bowie knife from his belt and stabbing it into the earth. “We’ll have to be ready.”

“What do we do when it comes?”

“Just follow me. We’ll run alongside and grab a ladder or jump in an open door if a boxcar is left open.”

“Won’t it be going fast?”

“Take off your boots,” Ray said.

Her almond eyes flashed. “Why?”

“Those boots might be good for walking around Shuckstack, but they’re no good for running. Hand them over.”

Marisol sat down and unbuttoned her boots, giving them to Ray with a concerned tilt to her eyebrows. Ray pulled the knife from the ground and wedged the blade between one boot’s heel and the sole. With a snap, the heel popped off. Ray pried off the other one and handed Marisol back her boots.

“Try that out,” he said.

She buttoned them back up and stood, taking a few skips to test them out. “I feel shorter,” she said.

“At least you won’t twist an ankle.” He waved a hand for her to come over to him. “Now the dress.”

Marisol clapped her hands protectively over her legs. “What are you going to do?”

“You’ll get all tangled up running in that.” He held up the knife and waved her forward again.

Reluctantly Marisol came over. Ray put the tip of the knife to the fabric between her knees. With a careful push, he ripped through, and Marisol gave a little whimper. “Come on,” Ray said. “You can sew it back up.”