The Wolf Tree (23 page)

Ray lunged forward and knocked the knife to the ground. He grabbed Gatch’s hand, twisted his arm behind his back, and pierced the calloused skin of his palm with the coffin nail.

One of the men on the sidewalk drew a revolver and fired it in the air. B’hoy took flight, cawing and cursing his way back to the rooftop. The man brought the revolver around to aim at Ray.

Ray pulled tightly on Gatch’s arm, securing it against the man’s wide back. Gatch was pitched forward, with Ray
locked at his side. The big man did not struggle—he could not struggle. “Tell that man to put away his gun,” Ray said.

Gatch grunted but did not reply. Ray punched the coffin nail a little further into his hand. “Tell him!” Ray said.

“Put that gun away, Curtis,” he called.

The men on the sidewalk blinked in confusion. “He’s bewitched Gatch,” one of the men hissed. Curtis continued to hold the revolver outstretched. Another man growled and stepped from the porch, drawing a derringer from his coat pocket.

Redfeather appeared beside him and reached a hand out to a kerosene torch mounted on the porch. He extinguished the torch in his palm. Redfeather turned to face the man, flames glowing vaporously from his clenched fist. “Drop your gun.”

The man stared a moment at Redfeather’s hand, but then he raised the derringer. Redfeather wheeled around with his tomahawk, clipping the barrel before the gun fired and throwing the little derringer into the air. He flicked out his other hand as if lashing a whip. A tongue of flame sprouted from his hand, catching the man’s pants leg on fire.

The men on the sidewalk erupted with angry cries, some scattering away. But two charged for him, one with a long hunting knife and the other grabbing a pickax from a display of tools.

Redfeather flicked his hand once more. The man with the knife yelled as his coat caught on fire. He fell into the street, rolling back and forth. The other man sprang forward and raised a pickax over his head. Redfeather caught the handle
with his tomahawk, pushing the man back. But the man was quick and before Redfeather could hit him with the flames, the man swung again. Redfeather blocked with his tomahawk, and continued trying to drive the man back.

Curtis leveled his revolver on Redfeather, closing one eye to get a clear shot. Marisol clutched his wrist. The man sneered and drew back his other hand to strike her. But Javidos lunged from her shirt sleeve and bit into his knuckles. Curtis screamed and dropped his revolver.

Redfeather chopped the pickax handle in half and kicked at the man’s knee. He fell, and as Redfeather held up his flaming hand, the man scrambled backward into the street. There were other men waiting on the sidewalk with weapons drawn, but after seeing what had happened to the first four, they hesitated.

Ray pulled Gatch tighter and shouted, “Tell them to back away!” Redfeather and Marisol joined Ray on either side, the tomahawk and Javidos threatening any who would attack.

Gatch roared, “That’s enough. Y’all put down your weapons and get back.” Guns, knives, and tools thudded to the ground.

Then Ray turned Gatch to face the boy, who was still crouching with wide eyes. “Hand him the watch.” Gatch extended his free hand to the boy. “Go on. Take it,” Ray said.

The boy looked nervously at Gatch’s face as he took the old tarnished watch. Marisol dropped a few coins in the dirt by Gatch’s feet and said, “That should settle his father’s debt. Leave the boy alone from now on.”

Gatch glared first at Marisol and then at Redfeather and
finally down at the money. Ray slid the coffin nail out of Gatch’s palm and released him. The huge man turned, rubbing his hand and looking at Ray with anger and fear. Oily black blood smeared across Gatch’s meaty palm.

“Get on out of here,” Ray muttered to the boy. The boy looked once at Ray and ran, cutting between two buildings into the dark. Ray, Marisol, and Redfeather backed toward their horses.

People on the street had stopped. Ray realized everyone had gone quiet, but now the staring crowd began murmuring. “Had a snake for an arm.” “Breathing flames.” “Red devils!” “Witches!”

Ray, Marisol, and Redfeather mounted the horses and hurried through the parting crowd back down the street. “So much for keeping from being noticed!” Redfeather said.

They’d just reached the corral when Ray saw the boy waving to them from around the side of the last building. Ray pointed, and Marisol steered Unole toward the boy.

The boy panted, “They’ll be after you soon. A lynch mob surely. They kill anyone suspected of devilry.” The boy pointed to a hill north of town. “There’s a soddy up there where you can hide. It’s empty. No one goes there but me. Look for the windmill and you’ll find the soddy. I’ll meet you there in a few hours.”

As Ray looked at the boy, he realized he was not so discolored as Gatch and the others. His skin was grayish but still a little ruddy pink. And his movements were not so jarring and haunted.

“Thank you,” Ray said.

The boy nodded and sprinted away.

Redfeather led them down the road heading east out of Omphalosa. When they were out again in the dark, away from the town’s lights, they stopped.

“Are they following?” Marisol asked.

Ray cocked his head. “I don’t hear horses.”

“Then let’s cut up that way,” Redfeather said, pointing to the north.

They led Atsila and Unole up into the low hills and circled back around, searching for the windmill in the dark. The town’s lights were dim in the hills, but eventually they spied the spinning battered blades of an old windmill over a rise. When they reached it, they looked back down at the glow of the town and the brighter glow of the hissing, smoking mill about half a mile away.

“Think we’re safe out here?” Ray asked.

Redfeather slid his tomahawk out. “We won’t be safe until we’re away from this place. Even with Nel’s charms, I feel the Darkness sapping at me. We shouldn’t stay here.”

“I feel it too,” Marisol said. “But we haven’t found anything out yet.”

“And it won’t do us any good when we’re hanging by our necks from a tree,” Redfeather snapped.

Ray climbed down from behind Marisol and helped her off Unole. “Just wait until the boy comes back. Maybe he’ll be able to tell us something.”

They tied Atsila and Unole to the windmill’s frame so the horses could water at a rusting trough next to the well. Ray found a few bundles of hay and rolled them over for the
horses to eat. B’hoy perched at the top of the windmill, and Ray told him to keep a watchful eye.

Redfeather held up his flaming hand. “Over here,” he said.

The soddy was a house burrowed into the side of a hill, with only a wooden door and a short section of vertical wall exposed. Redfeather clutched his tomahawk in one hand as he pushed open the soddy’s door. There was a scuttle of mice, but otherwise the soddy was vacant. Redfeather lit an oil lamp that hung from the ceiling.

Whoever had lived in the sod house must not have left very long ago, for there were still tins of fish, sacks of grain, and crocks of liquid on shelves built into the dirt wall. There were only two beds with dusty, straw-filled mattresses. “No thanks,” Marisol sneered.

Redfeather pulled the infested-looking mattress off one of the beds and tossed it to the floor. “There you go, your highness,” he said, motioning to the rope frame beneath.

“Charming,” Marisol said, letting Javidos slither from her sleeve to hunt in the corners for a meal. “At least I’m above the mice.”

Redfeather looked back at her as he leaned against the door frame. “Nice work back there, by the way.”

She nodded as she lay back uncomfortably on the bed. “You too.”

Ray took off the other mattress, uncovering the corpse of a cat lying dried among the cobwebs. He grimaced and removed it before lying down on the frame. While Redfeather sat in a chair in the doorway watching the dark, Ray and
Marisol tried to sleep. After a few hours, Ray and Redfeather switched places. It might have been midnight or it might have been noon, for all Ray could discern. When B’hoy gave a low caw, Ray stirred from his thoughts and saw the boy, silhouetted against the mill’s glow, coming up toward the soddy.

“Here he is,” Ray said, waking Redfeather and Marisol. Would the boy know anything about the Machine? It was doubtful. But he might help them understand why this strange mill was built out here in the middle of nowhere.

The boy stopped when he was close enough to see the three waiting for him in the door of the soddy. “I’m alone,” he said. “Nobody followed me, so don’t worry.”

“We’re not,” Ray said.

The boy came inside, looking curiously at each of them, and unloaded several dark biscuits from his pockets onto the table. “It was all I could bring to you. But you can open some of those tins if you want.” He motioned to the wall.

“That’s okay,” Ray said, picking up one of the biscuits. He handed one to Redfeather but he shook his head, standing in the doorway and keeping an eye toward the town. Ray bit into the biscuit. It was hard and tasteless, but he continued eating it, smiling courteously at the boy.

“Who are you all?” the boy asked, sitting in one of the chairs and unable to stop staring at them in turn. “How did you do all those things?”

“It’s not what it seemed,” Marisol said. “We’re performers, from a traveling show. They’re just tricks. What’s your name?”

“Gigi Fochesato. Where’s your snake?”

She smiled and let Javidos slip out from her sleeve. “Don’t worry. He won’t hurt you. He only bites bad people.”

Gigi reached out a tentative hand to touch Javidos’s head and then pulled it away when the copperhead flicked his tongue.

“I’m Marisol, and my friends are Redfeather and Ray. Nobody knows about this place?”

“Some might, but nobody ever comes here,” Gigi said. “When I need to get away, I like to sneak out. Sometimes I’ll sleep here. It’s a good place to hide.”

“Who do you need to hide from?” Ray asked. “Those men?”

“They don’t usually bother me. I just like to be by myself. This town. I hate it here. It turns people all wrong.”

“We know,” Ray said, noticing again that the boy wasn’t the same strange color as the others.

“Everyone’s frightened of the Darkness. They think there’s some sort of curse on the town. They’re always looking for someone to blame for the Darkness. Anybody people suspect of witchcraft, they beat up or kill.”

Ray said, “We passed a woman who was hanged. Just outside of town. She was a witch?”

Gigi furrowed his brow. “Granny Sip weren’t a witch! She was nice.”

“What happened? Why did they hang her?” Marisol asked.

“I guess ’cause she made root medicines. They thought she caused the Darkness, but it’s still here. I guess they know now they were wrong, but they don’t care. They’re horrible!
Just yesterday, a bunch of men who work with my papa killed a Chinese man ’cause he made herb potions. But the Darkness is still here. They don’t seem to learn. I’m just glad Hethy got away.”

Marisol asked, “Who’s Hethy?”

“Granny Sip’s granddaughter. She was my friend.” Gigi dug around in his pocket until he pulled out a strange black seedpod that looked something like a bat. “Hethy gave it to me. She said it would protect me from the Darkness. Said Granny Sip told her it would keep the Darkness from making me turn out like everyone else.”

“Can I see it?” Ray asked.

Gigi handed it to him and as Ray inspected the pod in the lamplight, Marisol whispered, “Was she right? Will it protect him?”

He muttered to her, “Hopefully. I think it’s what’s called a buffalo pod. I’ve seen them before and if I’m remembering right, it’s a powerful charm that wards off evil. It seems to work for him. His skin …” Marisol nodded, and Ray handed the pod back to Gigi, thanking him.

“What happened to Hethy?” Marisol asked.

“She ran away before the men came for Granny Sip. I hope she’s okay. I don’t know where she went. I miss her. She was the only friend I had here. I wish I had gotten more of those charms for my papa and brothers before she left.”

Gigi sighed, kicking his feet against the leg of the chair. “My papa. My brothers. They’re different too since they came out here. They traveled out here two years ago. I ran away to find them. I just came out here a few weeks ago from
Pennsylvania. My papa and my brothers, they act strange now. And you’ve seen how everyone looks. It’s like I hardly know them anymore and they hardly know me.”

“What do you mean?” Ray asked.

“The Darkness changes people,” Gigi said. “Many left, mostly the folks who settled this town. But the ones brought to work in the mill, they can’t leave. Some get mean, like Gatch and those men. Some get real scared and do terrible things ’cause they’re so frightened, like the ones who killed Granny Sip. But most just turn … I don’t know. Like they’re not alive anymore. Like they’re just ghouls or something. That’s how my papa’s got.”

Ray looked at Gigi, young and full of sadness. He pitied the boy. To have traveled all this way to find his father and his brothers, who now were little more than strangers to him.

“You work in the mill also?”

“Not on the floor with my papa and brothers. I deliver messages for Mister Muggeridge, around the mill, into town, to the telegraph office, wherever he needs.”

“I heard those men say earlier that Muggeridge is a Pinkerton.”

“There’s a lot of Pinkerton agents here. They keep the peace, at least enough so that work in the factory isn’t bothered.”

Ray exchanged a look with Redfeather and Marisol. “Pinkertons,” he mumbled.

“Think they’re Bowlers?” Redfeather mumbled.

“We’ll find out.”

“What’s a Bowler?” Gigi asked.

“Security agents. Like a Pinkerton, but worse,” Ray said. “Tell me more about the mill. How long’s it been here?”

“I don’t know. But it won’t be here much longer. Mister Muggeridge’s closing it. They’re loading everything up on trains. I guess I’ll be going soon, too. All the workers are being sent. I can’t wait to get out of this town! Things will be a lot better.”

“Why?” Ray asked. “Where’s all this going to?”

“To the Expo.”

“The Expo?” Marisol said.