Numbing winds churned from the north and snowflakes drifted across the black sky as the Lost Causes plodded toward Wisdom, Kansas. Thick layers of snow and ice had covered the logging road, but Quinn read the forest well enough to point them south into the wilderness on a furtive route toward the Kansas River. Keech pulled his blanket and poncho close to his body and prayed for a warmer morning.
Before departing what was left of Mercy Mission, the young riders had stocked their saddlebags with the salted beef and corn from the cellar. Duck suggested they prepare a few torches for the next leg of the journey. “Fire was the only thing that slowed the Chamelia down,” she reminded them.
“I want a torch for myself,” Cutter said. “My magic knife never works, so I want something that does a little damage at least.”
Keech grabbed a jar of kerosene from the cellar and worked with Duck to wrap cotton rags around two splintered wooden shafts. They fashioned a pair of passable torches for Cutter and Nat, then soaked the rags in kerosene.
As the young riders started south, Quinn rode John Wesley’s gelding. He sat tall on the saddle, his face turned down against the wind. The boy had a calming effect on Lightnin’; the pony rode softly and without a single fuss.
“You’re good with John’s nag,” Keech said, impressed. “He took right to you.”
Quinn smiled bashfully. “I never got to touch a saddle back in Tennessee, but after me and Auntie Ruth lit out, I learned on the move. Picked up most of what I know from kind strangers who helped us.”
“I’d sure call you a natural,” Nat said, tipping the boy a nod.
The torchlight turned the territory’s snowy darkness into brilliant portraits of golden trees, gilded leaves, and dancing shadows as the group traveled. In a way, the silence of the deep night was all too perfect for their collective mood, giving the young riders a proper respite to think of the mission ahead and reflect on John’s loss. It also gave Keech time to think about the Chamelia.
He rode up to Cutter. “Okay, Cut, I think it’s high time you tell us what you know. Back when you first saw the tracks, you knew something.”
“Nothing that can help John,” Cutter said. He turned away quickly and coughed, but Keech had seen his bottom lip trembling.
“Tell us anyway. You said you saw something as a boy.”
“Yeah,” said Duck. “Any information can help.”
Cutter took a long, shuddering breath. “Back in Culpa, my old village, mi mamá used to tell me stories of monsters that roamed the Territories. Things not of our world, she said, but demonios that somehow slipped into our lands long ago.”
Quinn’s eyes widened. “That’s what Ranger Doyle said about the Chamelia! ‘From a different place,’ he said. Your mama must’ve seen the same thing.”
Cutter didn’t look comforted. “Maybe. As mi mamá told it, the monsters could mimic animals, sometimes even people, and they would sneak into towns and villages at night and leave strange signs that they were watching.”
“Did you ever see one for yourself?” Nat asked.
“No, but I saw strange tracks one day,” Cutter said, shuddering anew. “They were all around our sunflower garden. After I saw them, I couldn’t sleep for weeks.”
Cutter’s story was deeply unsettling, but another terrible disquiet scratched at Keech’s mind. Not once had he felt the amulet’s chill when the creature attacked, and the silver hadn’t sparked an ounce of light when it struck the thing’s hide. He turned to Duck. “Did you feel any sort of cold from your shard when the creature was near?”
Duck shook her head. “Nothing. What do you think that means?”
“I think it means this monster plays by different rules.” Keech paused to consider something else, something Duck had said back in Missouri. “Do you remember the first few hours after we met? You told me a story about a monster that ransacked your ranch. A monster that came with the man who killed your folks, Big Ben, and tore down one of your barns?”
“How could I forget.” Duck tossed a grim look to her brother, then back to Keech. “But we only heard the thing, we never saw it. Do you think this is connected?”
“Well, I don’t reckon it’s a coincidence that thing attacked us. You saw the black mark of the Reverend Rose on its forehead. Just like the brand on Bad Whiskey’s horse.”
“We shouldn’t speak of these evil things,” Cutter croaked. His hand had crept back to the handle of his knife and gripped the carved bone.
Quinn gestured to the blade. “You shouldn’t be worried if that knife is magic as you claim.”
Nat chortled. “That pigsticker did no more good than those silver charms.”
“This knife is magic,” said Cutter. “My amigo, Bishop, told me a prophet spoke about it.”
“A prophet?” Keech said. “You never mentioned that back in Missouri. You just said it would kill El Ojo.”
“And it didn’t,” finished Nat.
Cutter opened his mouth to keep speaking, but then he closed it, as though he was holding something back, opting to glower instead. The hand gripping the bone handle returned to his reins.
The company fell into another dreary silence as it continued through the frigid night.
As Keech watched the flickers of light on the frosty oaks, his eyelids began to grow heavy. To keep his eyes open, he asked Quinn to tell them more about his aunt Ruth and how they’d come to know Tom Strahan. The rest of the riders steered their ponies closer to listen.
“I was nine years old when she took me out of Tennessee,” Quinn began.
“Nine?” Cutter said. “How long does it take to travel across a couple of states?”
“Long time when you’re on foot. Near four years all told. But Auntie Ruth’s the smartest person on Earth and kept us hid the whole time. Not only did she get me to Kansas, she also taught me all the skills I’d need to make it on my own.”
“Four years is a long time to run,” Keech mused.
“Thing is, I never noticed the time. Took us two years to get across Arkansas—for a while we kept house with a good family, even spent months holed up in some abandoned shack—but to me it felt like the blink of an eye. Auntie Ruth made the whole thing feel like a big adventure. She’d tell me the story of the Odyssey, how the Greek hero in that old yarn took a full ten years just to get back to his island.”
“Our ma used to read us that story,” Duck said happily. “Did you ever read the first one, about Helen of Troy?”
“Naw. But me and Auntie Ruth did sing parts of the Odyssey back and forth to each other.” On this, Quinn began to sing in a lilting voice that Keech considered angelic:
“Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero
Who traveled far and wide
After he sacked the famous town of Troy.”
Quinn stopped singing and chortled. “That probably ain’t how the Greeks used to tell it. We just made up that tune for fun.”
Keech smiled. “I used to sing to my orphan brother, Sam. He liked my cowboy songs. He would tell me stories from the Bible; I’d sing him tunes about cattle drives and outlaws.”
“Mr. Strahan knows a cowboy song or two,” Quinn said.
“How’d you meet him?”
“He found us down the Kansas River, running from a mean pack of border ruffians. Auntie Ruth was sick with a bad fever. He took us on to Wisdom and nursed her back to health. Put us up in his own house for a spell. One day he moved us to our own cottage. Auntie Ruth made curtains for the windows, and Mr. Strahan would come to visit and cook us supper. ’Course, this all happened before Friendly Williams and Rose’s gang.”
Cutter said, “Those bandidos do have a bad habit of ruining a good time.”
Nat huffed. “You sure said it.”
“But the likes of them won’t stop us from reaching Bonfire Crossing,” Duck piped in.
Quinn fell silent for a moment. Finally, he said with a curious tone, “Bonfire Crossing. I’ve heard of it before.”
Keech and Nat pulled rein so quickly, their horses’ hooves skidded a few inches over the ice and snow. Keech looked at Quinn, whose face glowed a vivid amber in the torchlight. “How’d you hear of Bonfire Crossing?”
“From Mr. Strahan. I heard him talk with another man about it once. He mentioned Bonfire Crossing by name. ‘If I could take you right to it, I would,’ he told this fella. ‘But I can’t find it no more.’ Then he said something about a bent-over tree.”
“A bending tree!” Duck exclaimed.
“That’s right,” Quinn said, his face turning more curious by the second.
“We saw a strange bent tree just before we got to the mission,” Keech said. “It was standing by itself in a field with four white stones around the roots. Did you ever see it?”
“No. It was dark the day I got to the mission,” Quinn answered.
Sally’s hooves crunched through snow and ice as Nat hauled the mare a few steps closer. “Quinn, it’s important you tell us everything you can remember.”
“Well, I only overheard the talk. I didn’t even see the man Mr. Strahan was talking to. I was standing outside, and I just heard voices.”
“What else did Strahan say?” Keech asked.
“There was talk about a fang. It didn’t make sense.”
“A fang from the Chamelia?” Duck asked.
“I ain’t sure. The fella in Mr. Strahan’s house must’ve been looking for it, ’cause Mr. Strahan said, ‘If this fang is so important, I do hope you find it.’ And the other fella said, ‘I have to. It can’t fall into the wrong hands.’”
Keech mulled over the story. “It must be some kind of weapon.”
“Maybe so,” Nat said. “What do you think, sis? Did you ever hear Pa mention a fang?”
But Duck didn’t answer. She stepped off Irving and slogged her way toward a nearby thicket, a narrow stretch of dogwood that looked almost terra-cotta in the yellow torchlight.
Keech hopped off Felix. “Nat, borrow the torchlight for a sec?”
Nat handed his torch down, and Keech followed Duck to the brush. The warm glow of the flame cast long shadows over the white forest. Just ahead, Duck knelt to examine a bare dogwood limb. When Keech caught up to her, he noticed that a few of the branches had been snapped.
Cutter’s voice called to them from the horses. “What are y’all doing over there? Hunting rabbits?”
“A big animal came through here,” Duck shouted back.
Keech leaned in closer with the torch and noticed something dark on the broken offshoots. A quick sniff sang coppery in his nostrils and told him the liquid was blood. He swept Nat’s torch around the area.
“Do you think it was the Chamelia?” came Quinn’s voice, just behind them now.
“Ain’t sure,” Duck said.
After nothing obvious turned up in the torchlight, Keech stopped straining for clues and allowed the land to speak. The recent snowfall had covered the ground, but a subtle divot in the way the icy blanket lay revealed that something had been dragged through the area a short time earlier.
A few careful steps to the south brought Keech to the base of a blue ash. All four of the others had fallen in behind him, but he squeezed them out of his vision and focused on the tree. He noticed a narrow smear of blood, darker than ink and still moist but freezing quickly to the bark. Just above this smudge, a series of ragged holes punctured deep into the wood, as though a carpenter had scaled the tree some six or seven feet and driven in clumsy nail pits.
He handed Nat’s torch back to him so he could point with both hands. “I think the Chamelia dragged John Wesley’s body through here.” Keech indicated the path. “What’s mighty peculiar is, I think it pulled him up this tree.” He gestured over his head to the blood streaks. “The holes in the bark tell me the Chamelia had one hand on John, the other on the tree, clinging to it with its claws. The back feet dug in here, and here, see?” He motioned to the rough progression of holes.
“You mean that thing’s up in the limbs?” Quinn backed away.
“I doubt it,” Keech said. “These tracks are half an hour old, at least. I bet it’s long gone.”
“Why would it carry John Wesley up a tree?” Cutter asked.
“Maybe it spotted something it didn’t like and skedaddled into the branches for cover,” Duck said.
“It looks to me like this thing’s on a clear path to the river,” Keech said, then got a sudden, terrible thought. “Do we really want to be tracking it without proper weapons?”
“Least this way, we know its general where’bouts,” Duck said. “Better than losing sight of the beast and having it ambush us.”
“Good point.” Nat glanced back at the ponies. “Let’s get going. It’ll be light soon.”
They rode for another half hour through driving snow, till the purple glow of dawn kindled on the eastern horizon and pushed back some of the white haze. The young riders crested a broad hill, and before them appeared a flat, open valley blanketed with snow and ice. A large brown river cut through the midst of the valley.
“Look, Felix, there’s the Kansas,” Keech said to his pony.
Felix replied by smacking his mouth against his bits, a gesture that Keech knew meant, Let’s just get a move on already.
The Chamelia’s tracks cut sharply down the hill to the river’s edge. Keech noticed a sizable ferryboat anchored to a sturdy wooden post on the northern shoreline a few dozen yards away from the beast’s trail.
Four dark mounds lay scattered across the beach near the boat. Keech knew instantly what he was looking at.
“Dios mío,” Cutter said. “Those are bodies!”
“That’s the old Uniontown trade crossing,” Quinn said. “The ferry connects the logging road that runs past Mercy Mission to the Sherman Trading Post about a mile upriver. The traders use the ferry to barter with the Potawatomi Indians. Maybe those are the ferrymen.”
“I best go find out. Y’all wait here.” Nat clicked at Sally and started down.
When he returned a moment later, his face looked sick. Even Sally’s demeanor wasn’t at peace. “I reckon our old pal Sunrise and his men rode to the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Quinn looked stunned. “That’s the bounty hunter?”
Nat nodded. “The other three are the fellas who ransacked our camp. The Shifter must’ve got them before they could cross the river. When we go down, I advise everyone to look the other way. They’re torn up something awful.”
Quinn exhaled grimly. “I wish they’d been good men. I wish they led decent lives, instead of wasted them on bad deeds. Now it’s too late.”
The gang approached the white beach, giving the macabre lumps that were Sunrise Albert and his fallen hunters a wide berth. Near the river’s edge, Keech drew rein on Felix and slid off, resisting a powerful urge to glance back where the trackers lay.
After studying the area for a moment, he pointed. “The Chamelia entered the river here. Swam for the opposite shore. And notice these drag marks.” With an easy gesture, he traced two thin channels in the snow left by a pair of boots. “It pulled a body along.”
“One of the bounty hunters?” asked Duck.
Keech shook his head gloomily. “No, I’m afraid it’s John Wesley.”
Everyone looked shocked.
“You can’t know that,” said Cutter.
“There’s a clear boot print there, see?” Keech gestured to a single impression on the bank, the place where the boot in question had pressed flatly into the ground. “After traipsing all over Floodwood with y’all, I know your boot prints like the back of my hand, and that one belongs to John.”
Cutter mumbled a bleak-sounding curse. “That’s it then. Any chance John was alive is gone. If he somehow lived to this point, the river either drowned him or froze him.”
Keech felt new waves of despair crash into him. Though his sensible mind had told him that his new friend had died in the explosion, some kind of desperate hope had lingered that John Wesley was still alive. But as he gazed across the Kansas River, he finally knew that John was gone forever.
The torches had at last burned out. Tossing the useless wood to the ground, Nat suggested they all dismount and discuss their next steps.
His eyes swelling, Cutter gestured to the ferry. “We should take the boat across.”
“That is the only way over the Kansas for miles,” Quinn noted.
Where the abandoned ferry was docked nearby, heavy ice frosted the shoreline, freezing the sand so that the day-old tracks left behind there held their shape. Keech inspected the area. “I count at least three sets of boot prints and maybe five horses. It looks like the ferrymen lit off west down that trail.” He pointed out the path.
“I can’t figure why they’d leave the ferry deserted,” Quinn said. “Maybe Sunrise and his men scared them off.”
“Last night’s norther was something fierce,” Duck said. “A storm that wild likely drove them off to shelter.”
“Or maybe they caught a glimpse of the Shifter,” Nat suggested.
“Well, I don’t aim to wait for them to wander back.” Cutter bounded off Chantico and led her to the boat. “Let’s get going.”
The ferry was a curious-looking vessel; it appeared to be a giant raft with two covered horse stalls on the deck, one standing on the starboard side, the other on the port side. Keech had never seen a watercraft like it. Nailed to the ferry’s anchor post on the shore was a small wooden sign bearing a message:
UNIONTOWN CROSSING
1 Man 1 Horse 40 cents
Single person 20 cents
Horses 30 cents each
Loaded Wagon & Team $4
Empty Wagon & Team $2
Keech considered their options. “I don’t think we should just steal this ferry. Seems wrong.”
Quinn cleared his throat. “I realize y’all are used to working inside the Law, but if the ferrymen come back and get a look at me, we don’t know if they’ll help us or turn us over to hunters. If you’re gonna ride alongside me, you’ll have to get used to keeping out of sight.” On that note, he trudged Lightnin’ across the white beach and hopped on board.
“Maybe we can pay the ferrymen back after we’ve stopped Rose,” Duck said.
From the deck of the boat, Quinn added, “Wisdom ain’t far. You Lost Causes can debate your plan for the rest of the year, but not me. I’m gonna sail this river with or without y’all and go free Auntie Ruth.” He paused to glance down at the iced-over boards under his feet. “In fact, I dub this here boat the Liberator. Now, who’s with me and who’s staying?”
“I’m with you,” Cutter said. He led Chantico onto the ferry.
Keech guided Felix to the platform next. Letting out a sigh, Duck followed.
Nat looked at everyone else aboard Quinn’s Liberator, then glanced up and down the shoreline as though entertaining a second thought. For one moment, Keech thought the rancher would refuse to join them. Then Nat announced, “Okay. We’ve got a mission to accomplish. Let’s get this boat sailing.”
There was no cable or rope stretched across the river that a ferryman could pull, so at first it was a mystery how to propel the big boat across the channel. After a quick study of the ferry’s mechanisms, Keech realized that the horse stalls on each wing of the vessel were long treadmills.
He whistled in amazement. “This ferry’s run by horsepower.”
“What’s that mean?” Cutter asked.
Before Keech could explain, Nat and Duck walked their Fox Trotters toward the two stalls. Nat directed Sally into the starboard compartment, while Duck led Irving into the port side box. The horses faced opposite directions, north and south, and each pony was soon harnessed up to a sturdy iron bar inside their stalls. Nat pointed back at the hemp rope attached to the bank post. “Cutter, toss that anchor. Me and Duck will show you fellas how this contraption works.”
With the rope released, Nat and Duck nudged their ponies to walk in place on the treadmills. Two big paddle wheels on each side of the boat commenced to churn the slushy water. The ferry lurched forward on the channel, and the gang was off.
“I never saw a more ridiculous boat,” Cutter said.
Tucking his bowler hat against the cold, Keech gripped the rail as the Liberator drifted gently toward the southern bank, its curved bow driving through the ever-tumbling snow.