Chapter 7

Sleep after that was obviously not an option. Caleb felt decidedly unclean, like all the events of his life had been rifled through. And the last dream . . . that had not been his, and that disturbed him, too. He had no right to walk through other people’s thoughts, either.

A small voice inside chided him for superstitious nonsense. Dreams were dreams, and nothing more. No doubt the plight of the Indian family had plagued his mind as he drifted off, resulting in the strangeness of his dreams. “That’ll teach me to eat haggis an hour before bed.”

“Haggis isn’t actually food, you know.” Ernst hopped from the windowsill to the bed in one graceful bound. “It’s what you eat when there isn’t any food.”

“How would you know? You don’t eat.” Caleb buttoned his shirt and carefully pinned his badge over his heart. “Besides, it was kind of Teddy to make us one of his traditional dishes. He was being hospitable.”

The jackalope snorted and scratched furiously at one ear with his hind foot. “He fed it to you because no one else in this town will eat it.”

Caleb went about the mundane business of gathering his belongings for the day, letting the silence drag out as he sorted through his own thoughts. “Ernst? Can I ask you a question?”

“You can ask anything you want. But you know I don’t always know the answer.”

“Can you walk into people’s dreams?”

The little creature seemed a bit taken aback by the question, and it took a long time for him to formulate an answer. “No. I could see yours, if I wanted, but that’s because you’re mine. But I couldn’t see anyone else’s, and I couldn’t walk into them.”

“Do you know of anyone who can?”

Again, it took a long time for him to answer. A familiar’s origin was often shrouded in mystery, even to the creature itself, and sometimes it took a while for Ernst to sort through the myriad of knowledge he held in his furry little head. Finally, he sighed. “I have met no one, personally, who has that ability. But that does not mean it doesn’t exist.” He shrugged his furry shoulders. “I am part of you. My powers are limited to the breadth and scope of yours. Other cultures, other peoples . . . who knows?”

Caleb nodded. It was no less than he’d expected. He holstered his gun and gathered up his staff, leaving his heavy coat behind in deference to the already sweltering heat.

“Caleb?” He stopped at the door and looked back. Ernst hadn’t budged from the bed. “They’re your dreams. If you don’t like them, you have the power to change them.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He put his hat on, pulling it low over his eyes. “You coming?”

Ernst hopped off the bed and followed him out into the hallway.

Teddy had made good on his word, and packed several meals’ worth of food up for Caleb’s excursion, along with a small flask that was clearly meant for Ernst. “Watch yerself in the sun, Agent Marcus. Ye’ll get heat sick before ye realize.”

“Thank you, Teddy.”

His next stop before actually leaving town was the smithy, where he was informed in no uncertain terms that he was early.

“I tell you come back in one week! Not four days! You count, ja? All fingers and toes?” Sven glowered at him, not even bothering to come out from behind the forge to berate the Peacemaker.

Caleb eyed his transport. The rear end was in some chaotic state of disassembly, with gears and wires and bearings all hanging out for the world to see. The thing had been reduced to simple hunks of metal held together with hopeful thoughts. The transparent windows were dark and still. He couldn’t help but wonder how the scoured man had managed to safely bleed off all the energy so he could open the casing to make repairs.

“Hi, Agent Marcus!” On the far side of the transport, Jimmy’s head popped up, a smudge of grease near his hairline (and probably in his hair, too, judging by how it stuck up at erratic angles). “I found the problem!”

He flipped something silver to Caleb, who caught it by reflex. The Peacemaker examined the tiny gear, finding two teeth chewed to mangled nubs, and smirked. “This one tiny thing caused all that trouble. Figures.”

Jimmy came out of the shop wiping his grubby hands on a rag. “It was way down in there. Mr. Isby needed me ta get it, ’cause my hands are smaller.” He took the broken gear back, rolling it over the backs of his knuckles with a grin.

“Do you help Mr. Isby often?”

The boy nodded. “Yup. I got the spark, he’s got the know-how.”

Caleb raised his head at the smith, who just shrugged and said, “Boy has gift. Should learn honest trade with it.”

Eyeing the disabled transport, Caleb suddenly had a chilling thought. “You don’t let him . . . I mean, that’s a lot of power to be grounded. You didn’t let this boy . . .”

Sven snorted, his white-blond brows furrowing over his eyes. “I look stupid? Boy risk being scoured like that. No, that I leave to others who help now and then. Adults.” He muttered to himself in Swedish, no doubt saying some very uncomplimentary things about Caleb, and returned to his work.

Jimmy snickered. “Mr. Isby’s a grump, but he treats me good, and he pays me.” Fishing in his pocket, he displayed two shiny quarters. “He says I could be a good arcanosmith someday.”

Caleb nodded his agreement. “He’s right, if you get the right education. You should tell Miss Sinclair; she could guide your studies in that direction.”

The boy shrugged, blushing faintly. “I might keep goin’ ta see her. Might not. Depends on how busy I am.”

Caleb managed to hide his amusement. “Of course.”

Jimmy eyed the hauler, laden with Caleb’s staff and the packs of food. “You going somewhere, Agent Marcus?”

“Just out for a ride.” He winked at the boy. “But if anyone asks, you didn’t see me today, all right?”

“All right!” That seemed to perk the kid up, and Caleb could see visions of a vast and secret conspiracy whirling in his eyes.

With Ernst perched on the hauler’s rump, Caleb lit out at a choppy canter to the south, intent on investigating the first two places on his haphazard map.

The first was a few miles outside of town, just off what passed for a main road between Hope and the A-bar-W. Perhaps it had once been part of an army of towering oaks marching across the plains, but now it was merely a solitary dead tree adrift in a sea of tall grass. The old roots had long since given way on one side, causing it to list until the branches themselves touched the ground. The floor of the resulting cave had been trampled free of grass years ago by many tiny feet as they clambered in and around the half-fallen giant. How many wars and battles had been fought there, with all the combatants cheerfully going home for dinner at the end of the day?

Caleb crawled in, through, and over every surface he could find, seeking any trace of nullstone with tiny pulses of his own power. After two of those resulted in small fires in the deadwood, he stopped. “Ernst?”

The familiar was higher in the tangled branches, where an adult’s weight would be a liability. “Nothing. There’s no nullstone here. None within at least five hundred yards.”

“Then we move on.”

The next stop was little more than a mud hole, where little Emily had insisted there was water during all but the hottest of summers. Caleb crouched at the edge of the cracked, dry pond while Ernst made slow progress out to the vaguely damp center. “Anything?”

Ernst sniffed at the remnants of the once-vibrant spring, his furry nose twitching for a long moment before he shook his head. “No. And this spring’s been broken. It’ll never hold water again after this summer.” He thumped the crust of hard-baked mud with one hind foot. “Been cracked all the way down to the bedrock.”

“Was that from the heat or the earthquakes?”

“Both.” Ernst hopped back up on the hauler, getting comfortable again. “North then?”

For a moment, Caleb hesitated. They were close to Warner’s, and he truly wanted to search the ranch proper, but he was certain the rancher wasn’t going to sit idly by and let that happen. Best to eliminate all other possibilities, he finally decided, before he kicked that particular hornet’s nest. “Yes. North.”

They rode wide around Hope on their way back north, so it was just past noon before they located the trail from the morning before. It was easy then to follow the bent and broken grasses to the site of the abandoned teepee.

The two horses still lay where they’d been felled, the carcasses swollen with gases, a noisy cloud of black flies going about their gruesome but necessary work. Caleb walked around the small camp, but nothing appeared to be disturbed. Everything was just where it had been left when the family disappeared. He crouched to pick up the little girl’s doll, forgotten in the dirt. “Someone is missing you, I’ll wager.” He dusted it off and absently tucked it into his pocket, eyeing the rest of the waste grimly. “Why didn’t they come back for their things once we were gone? Or to butcher the horses, at least? They were nearly starving; that could have been a lot of meat for them.”

“Perhaps they were too frightened.”

“Maybe.”

It was impossible to tell from the scribbles on the map just where the town’s children liked to take their picnics, but the camp seemed as good a place as any to start. Caleb placed his bare hand flat on the ground and whispered, “Zoek.” His power went seeking through the parched soil, finding dry roots that shriveled away from his touch, scuttling bugs taking shelter deep within the earth and a small warren of hardy prairie rabbits that had denned up against the heat of the day.

He followed the pulse outward as far as he could, until it dissipated into nothing. Nowhere did he detect the nullifying effects of the white chalky stone. “Ernst, I’m going to try another one. Be on the lookout for fires, all right?”

“Will do.”

Caleb took a deep breath, gathering up as much power as he dared use in such a tinder-dry clime. It pulsed out through his palm and into the soil, an ever-widening circle of sensation, the obstacles in its path reflecting back to Caleb in blue afterimages behind his eyelids. Rocks, plants, animals, insects at varying distances. A small stream, deep within the earth to the north, burbling its way from somewhere even farther without ever breaking the surface. And almost directly to the west of his position, a large circle of nothingness, a void that his power found and spread around but could not touch or read.

His eyes sprang open. That hadn’t been nullstone, which would have absorbed and swallowed the seeking pulse. Something—or someone—was trying to hide their presence from him. “Ernst, three hundred yards to the west. It might be the family that belongs here, so go gentle.”

The jackalope blinked out without being asked, and Caleb ran to catch up. The tall grasses sliced at the backs of his bare hands, and he was disturbingly reminded of his dream, riding a horse through this very same prairie.

They obviously heard him coming. By the time he was even close, he could hear the mother calling out in their language, frantically herding her children away. “Wait! Wait! I won’t hurt you!” Where the hell was Ernst when he needed him?

The woman was trying to run with her daughter on her hip, pulling her son along by one hand as fast as they could go in the tall grass. With his long strides, Caleb caught up easily, but when he reached to stop her, the boy whirled with a knife in his small hand, swiping at the Peacemaker.

“Whoa!” He jumped back, just in time to avoid the rough blade, and held his hands up to show they were empty. “Easy, son. I’m not going to hurt you. Please, you don’t have to run from me.”

The child obviously did not believe him, and still facing down the man twice his size, he said something to his mother. He told her to take the girl and run. He’s going to slow me down so they can get away. Caleb knew it from the look in the boy’s eyes, a grim determination that should never be on the face of one so young. “Ernst . . . I could use some help here. . . .”

The little jackalope popped into view, grumbling to himself. “I’m coming, I’m coming. Tell me to go somewhere, then take off running. . . It’s hard to keep up!” The Indian boy’s dark eyes grew very wide, and he called something to his mother. The woman returned warily, torn between watching the jackalope and keeping her eyes on the large man her son was menacing. She finally settled on looking at Ernst, asking him something in her own language.

“Can you understand them, Ernst?”

The familiar took a few cautious steps forward and seemed relieved that the Indian family didn’t bolt. “Not so much. I may know a way, but it’s going to be very taxing.”

The Indian woman looked at Caleb this time, asking the same question as before. He held up one hand, imploring her to wait. “This better work, Ernst.”

“Hold on to your hat,” the familiar mumbled, and hunkered down into a little brown ball of fur on the ground.

For a long moment, nothing visible happened. The humans present exchanged puzzled glances, all of them uncomfortable, but none yet willing to flee the scene entirely. Caleb tried to offer the woman a small smile, but she only watched him, her body tensed to bolt at the first untoward move on his part.

The boy exclaimed suddenly, pointing at Ernst.

The furry little form was growing transparent as Caleb watched, the dry grass behind him visible right through his body. “Ernst? Is this supposed to happen?”

Suddenly, the Indian woman pointed with a gasp to their right. There, huddled in the grass, was Ernst. Or, at least it was another jackalope, as transparent as Caleb’s familiar. Both the creatures shivered in unison, and raised their heads to speak.

“I can’t keep this up for long. Being in two places at once is difficult,” the leftmost jackalope informed them in English, while the one on the right parroted the words in the other language.

Caleb swept his hat from his head, crouching down to look at Ernst. “If this is too hard, forget it. I don’t want you to harm yourself.”

Again, the two jackalopes spoke in unison. “I’m fine. Just hurry.” The Indian woman babbled something at him, pointing emphatically at Caleb. “They wish to know what you want.”

That made Caleb sit back on his heels and think for a moment. What did he want?

“Ticktock, Caleb. Grains through the hourglass and all.” The two Ernsts’ noses twitched in perfect unison.

“Why are they alone? Where are their people?” That seemed as good a place as any to start.

The question was relayed, though Caleb found it disturbing to hear Ernst repeating his own words back at him. The woman drew herself up stiffly, holding her daughter tightly and pulling her son close.

“Five days ago, I took my children to gather greens away from the camp early in the morning. Sometime before noon, we heard gunshots and screaming, and we hid away. When things were quiet, we returned to find that everyone had been killed and our teepees burned. We took what we could salvage, and our horses, and we are going south to find my sister’s people.”

The memory of Caleb’s dream haunted him, the bodies tossed about negligently as if they’d been no more than debris in the way. “Who did this?”

“The white man. We saw the tracks of the skyfire horses.” He could hear the accusation in her voice, even if he could not understand her words directly.

“Which white men? From the town?” He pointed in the direction of Hope.

“I do not know.”

“And you have no idea why?”

She shook her head. “We were peaceful. We did not venture into the plains to taunt and raid like the Dog Soldiers. But they came anyway. A woman of the People led them.”

Caleb frowned. “A Cheyenne woman was with them?”

It was the boy who answered this time. “I saw them days before the attack. They moved among the rocks, and she spoke to the spirits of the earth, asking them questions they did not want to answer. She forced them, and the ground shook.”

The earthquakes. “Do you know what she was asking them?”

The boy shook his head. “Foolish questions that made no sense. Seeking rocks within the earth.”

Ernst’s form wavered, growing thinner by the moment. “Hurry, Caleb.”

“Why did you not butcher the horses if you are hungry?”

This time, the mother spoke. “The man with the dead eyes has been known to poison carcasses and leave them. We did not dare touch them.”

That could only be Schmidt, and Caleb hated him a bit more knowing that. “Tell them to wait here, Ernst. I’ll be right back.” He didn’t wait to hear the message relayed.

His transport was right where he’d left it, with the packs of food attached. He lead the construct back to the little family, and unpacked what would have been his lunch and dinner. “Here. It may not be what they’re used to, but it’s food. Hopefully, it’ll last until they can find their people.”

The woman looked grateful, if suspicious. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because it’s right.” He gave the little girl a small smile, and she hid her face shyly against her mother’s shoulder. “And I have something that belongs to you, I think.” He produced the tattered doll, and the child’s dark eyes lit up with delight.

“She says thank you, Caleb.” The jackalope’s voice was fading, as if he could hardly catch his breath.

Caleb knew he had only moments left before Ernst had to end whatever it was that he was doing. “Travel at night if you can. And don’t fight them if they find you. Just disappear like before.” He looked at the boy. “You take care of your mother and sister, you hear?”

The child nodded, and Ernst gave a sad little moan, his doppelgänger disappearing like mist. Once more solid, the original Ernst flopped onto his side, his chest heaving. Caleb knelt to gather him into his arms, feeling how slight and frail he now felt.

The boy grew brave enough to move close, peering at the animal in Caleb’s arms and asking a question.

“I think he’ll be all right. He’s just very tired.” Caleb held very still, holding his arms out toward the boy. “You can touch him, if you like.”

After glancing at his mother once, the child extended a hand, stroking Ernst’s soft fur lightly. The exhausted familiar managed a tiny purr, only for a few seconds, but the young warrior was obviously entranced.

Caleb let both children pet the jackalope for a moment, knowing how much Ernst enjoyed it, then carefully deposited the animal on the back of the hauler. As Caleb swung into the saddle, the woman came to look up at him, questioning him again. Though he didn’t understand her, he could guess what she was asking.

“I’m going to see what they were looking for.” He pointed toward the mountains.

She nodded, and said something that had to be “Be careful.”

“I’ll try.” He gave a small smile and kicked the hauler into motion.

The small family disappeared in the tall grass behind them, and the mountains loomed large before him. Caleb glanced back once to check on Ernst and found the creature snoring softly. “You get some rest, buddy. Hopefully, I won’t need you anytime soon.”