The Lost Causes journeyed deeper into the canyon as the din of gunshots faded. The rugged terrain grew stonier as they traveled. Quinn hummed his Odyssey tune to obscure their passage into the gorge. The clouds broke, and dull moonlight suffused the frosty ground with ghostly silver. The troop slowed the horses to a careful walk, watching for deadfalls.
“I sure hope those thralls ain’t tracking us,” Duck said.
Except for the incessant wind, their back trail was quiet and still. “They will, eventually,” Keech guessed. “The crow spotted us, but I destroyed it.” When Duck said nothing in reply, he dropped his smile. “We’ll be all right. We just have to find somewhere to hole up.”
They rode awhile longer in silence, listening to Quinn’s enchanted tune, till he strolled Lightnin’ up to Strong Heart’s pony and paused his singing. “I don’t remember the Osage words for ‘much obliged,’ but I sure would say it if I could. You saved our bacon back there.”
“Weh-wee-nah,” Strong Heart instructed. “‘I thank you.’”
“Weh-wee-nah,” Quinn echoed.
“We’d be goners if it weren’t for you,” Duck said. “But how did you ever find us? We’ve been on the Santa Fe Trail for weeks.”
Strong Heart said, “I’ve been following your group for a long time now.”
“Why?” asked Quinn.
“After the attack on Bonfire Crossing, the Protectors parted ways for a time. Some journeyed home to bury our brother, Mah-shohn Shkah. Others rode east to join the winter buffalo hunt. Wah-hu Sah-kee and I remained with the elders, and I began the mourning ritual for my brother, Mee-kah-k’-eh Moin.”
“Wandering Star,” Duck said.
“Yes. While I mourned, Wah-hu Sah-kee and the elders spoke of many ways the Osage could help rid the world of Rose. But they were concerned that placing more trust in Red Jeffreys wouldn’t be wise. Our people had given so much to Jeffreys and the Enforcers; the elders wanted no more part in their strife. But I needed to continue, for my brother and my parents. I asked the elders for their guidance. They listened to my pleas and spoke to my uncle. They held many discussions.”
“Then what happened?” asked Quinn.
“The elders instructed me to find you, so that I could help ensure the safety of the Fang.”
Keech shuddered at the girl’s mention of the Fang of Barachiel. Strong Heart wouldn’t be pleased to hear they had lost the dagger because of Doyle’s betrayal. Hoping to shift the topic away from their failure, he said, “You should know that Rose is gathering an army. In Wisdom, we saw a stockpile of uniforms and military supplies.”
Concerned, Strong Heart said, “If he succeeds in his plans, the world will die.”
“‘The land will lose the sun,’” Duck said, quoting the dire words of the elder Buffalo Woman.
“Since you’ve been following us on the trail all this time, why didn’t you show yourself?” Quinn asked. “We could’ve ridden together.”
Strong Heart pointed at the sky. “I didn’t show myself because Rose was watching for you. I thought I could do more to help if I remained hidden. But when you were captured, I knew I must act.”
“We’re sure happy you did,” Duck said. Then her breath hitched as she seemed to catch hold of a memory. “Strong Heart, how is Nat’s horse?” After the battle of Bonfire Crossing, Duck had given Sally to the girl, sending the Fox Trotter to live with the Osage in southern Kansas.
“She’s well,” Strong Heart said, smiling. “My uncle took her to his favorite field, and she’s fed well. She’ll never have to know another battle.”
“Good,” Duck said softly.
Strong Heart turned to Keech. “Now, I need to see the Fang. I need to see it’s safe.”
Keech stiffened on his saddle. He wanted to tell her the truth, but he didn’t know how the Protector would react. They could use her help to reach O’Brien and the Key of Enoch, but if she learned the Fang was gone, she might light out to hunt Edgar Doyle. “Later,” he said, struggling to ignore the guilt weaving a tight web around his heart. “There’s another blizzard on the way. We shouldn’t linger, especially so close to Black Charlie. I don’t suspect he’s dead.”
Quinn grimaced. “Me and Auntie Ruth knew men like Black Charlie in Tennessee. They’re a sickness. Cruel and relentless. I’ve seen a lot of evil the past few months, but ain’t nothing worse than a slaver.”
Duck shook her head, as though she didn’t know how to respond, then simply said, “I’m all for pushing on, but where to? We don’t have a clear direction. The trail is gone, and I don’t know how we’ll ever find the Suffering Bluffs. They could be anywhere.”
Quinn raised a finger toward the canyon. “Maybe he knows the way.”
He was pointing at Achilles, sitting in a snowy basin a few yards up the gorge. A wedge of moonlight framed the dog’s body, perched on a rock. The hound barked once as if to offer a greeting, then he trotted up the hill, weaving between frost-laden thickets of aspen and birch.
“I don’t believe it!” Duck laughed. “That mutt stuck around.”
Keech kicked at Hector’s sides. “We best not lose him again.”
Achilles led the Lost Causes on a gradual ascent through the canyon, corkscrewing around gulches and snow-packed pitfalls. Along the way, Quinn told Strong Heart the story of Cutter’s kidnapping and their chancing upon the trapper McCarty. She listened intently, keeping her face and ears tucked into the folds of her buffalo robe, and to Keech’s relief, she did not ask again about the Fang of Barachiel.
McCarty’s dog kept several steps ahead of the group, holding to the sparse moonlight, pausing occasionally to ensure they were still following. Keech’s mind drifted with thoughts of Doyle, the elders, the great bonfire on the Oregon Coast. He realized he was feeling dizzy.
“Look! He stopped,” said Quinn.
Several yards ahead, their canine chaperon had paused near a large stone overhang. The rock wall curved inward, creating a shallow barrier from the wind, but the most noticeable feature was the deep oval of black that yawned from the wall.
“It’s a cave,” Keech said, feeling blurry. He blinked to clear his vision, but his thoughts rippled like ocean waves. “I think he wants us to camp inside.”
Strong Heart and Quinn seemed eager to escape the dreadful cold, but Duck hesitated. “I don’t know if I fancy going in another cave. The last one we visited wasn’t all that agreeable.” She covered her mouth as if she’d said something horrifying. “I’m so sorry, Strong Heart. I shouldn’t have said that.”
When Strong Heart nodded quietly, Keech understood. In Missouri, they had discovered the body of her brother, Wandering Star, in the Floodwood cave. He had fallen to an enormous bear while accompanying Doyle through the cave’s cursed loops.
Thankfully, this particular cave wasn’t anywhere near as menacing as the one in Floodwood.
The young riders studied the cave’s egg-shaped mouth. They watched as Achilles entered the dark funnel, turned around, and barked. “Looks like the coast is clear,” Quinn said.
Achilles waited deep in the cave as they approached. Thankfully, the cavity’s entrance was tall enough to accommodate the horses, so the gang directed the animals into the shadowy oval, then the kids dismounted, careful not to bang their heads on the stone ceiling. The gale outside shrieked all the harder at their deliverance, throwing shards of sinister whistles against the jagged walls.
“This cave,” Keech said, feeling uneasy. “It feels familiar.”
“How do you reckon?” asked Duck.
Keech searched for the answer, but the shadows grew darker and the world swooned. He dropped to the cave floor. His chest smacked against a rock, but he felt no pain.
Deep in the fog in his ears, he heard his name called. When Keech turned his head, he saw Duck crouched by his side, holding his face out of the dirt. “What happened?”
“You fainted!”
Keech tried to laugh off his wound, but a wave of ragged coughs overcame him. He closed his eyes.
When he reopened them, Keech found himself wrapped in blankets next to a dwindling campfire. He was lying on his back in the cave, and needle-like pangs poked at his arm. He rolled back the blankets to inspect the damage from the gunshot and blinked in surprise to find several ribbons of cloth tied around his forearm. One of the young riders had dressed his wound while he was unconscious.
Outside, heavy clouds had engulfed the moon. Duck and Quinn were fast asleep, huddled under their pelts and blankets. Grateful to be out of the cold, the four horses stood lined up against the stone walls, two on each side of the fire.
Farther into the cave, Achilles lay flat on his side on the soft earth. The light of the dying fire painted the hound’s fur a warm cinnamon color. Strong Heart rested beside the dog, wrapped up in her buffalo robe, her palm resting on the critter’s side. The cave was comfortable and secure. Keech imagined that over the centuries, many travelers had stopped here for sanctuary.
“I know this place,” he muttered. Just as he’d known the village of Snow in Missouri, the ghost town that Pa Abner had used as their hideout before heading to Bone Ridge with Keech’s parents and the Char Stone.
“Hey, brother,” a thin voice whispered.
A surge of fear bolted through Keech, and he shook himself alert. The voice had come from the mouth of the cave, beyond the soft light of the campfire. He searched the dark landscape of the world outside. “Who’s there?”
“Who else? It’s me.” The voice was shallow, weak.
“Sam? Am I dreaming again?”
“I’m watching you,” Sam said. “I’m close.”
“Come into the cave,” Keech said. “I can’t see you.”
“Don’t worry.” Sam’s voice was almost lost in the whistling winds. “I can see you.”
A flicker of movement at the cave’s entrance caught Keech’s attention. A few muttered words tumbled away in the night, then the whisper from the darkness said, “You were too slow, Keech. You lost the Key. They took it up into the mountains before you could get to the wagons.”
Keech shook his head. “They never had the Key, Sam. It was all a bushwhack. Why would you send me into a trap?”
“How could you think I would do such a thing, Wolf? That sounds like Duck Embry’s talk. Don’t let her deceive ya. The Key’s within reach; you just have to keep going a little farther.”
“We’re gonna find O’Brien. She’s the next step.”
“But Black Charlie’s after ya. He’s as mad as a hornet and aims to kill you all. Or turn you over to Ignatio. How do you hope to stop him?”
“I’ll figure something out.”
Sam’s whisper fell silent for a moment, then returned stronger, closer. “There is a way to defeat that monster. You know what I speak of.”
He was talking about the curious phrases sprinkled throughout Edgar Doyle’s journal. “The Black Verse,” Keech said.
When Sam spoke again, he sounded as if he were grinning. “That’s right. When you use the words, they wake me up. I can help when I’m awake.”
The idea that he could wake his brother stunned the breath out of him. At the Home for Lost Causes, Keech had chosen to escape and let Sam perish in the flames. But here he was, the Rabbit himself, conjured by the Black Verse. Keech felt a hope he hadn’t felt in a long time.
“Keep using the words, Keech. They’re the secret way to defeat the Reverend.”
Keech shivered under his blankets. As much as he wanted to use the words, a strange sort of shame tugged at his heart, despite his newfound hope. “I don’t think I should. There’s something wrong with them.”
“They’re only wrong if you don’t know how to control them. But you have the strength to bridle the Verse, right?”
Keech thought back to all the moments on the trail when he’d used the writings. Each time, he had achieved his goal—destroying Rose’s crows, transforming the buffalo. “Maybe. I don’t know,” he said. Then he glanced at his fingers and smiled at the memory of smoke rising from their tips. “Yes, I do. I am strong enough. But that doesn’t take the bad off the words. I don’t like how I feel when I use them.” He paused, shook his head again. “Or maybe I like the way I feel too much. It’s all powerful confusing.”
“You just need to practice.”
“Maybe you’re right. But what should I practice on?”
“Somethin’ small. You could build your campfire back up. Your trailmates will thank ya.”
The campfire flames had smoldered down to a smattering of paltry coals. Keech remembered seeing a fire incantation in Doyle’s journal—an entry dated 22 August 1832, the Enforcers’ first encounter with the Reverend Rose.
Checking the others to make sure they weren’t awake, Keech pulled the journal out of his coat. Reading by the dim coals, he turned to the passage in question. His finger moved down to the Reverend’s words, and he mouthed the Black Verse to practice the phrase.
“Speak them out loud. Watch what happens,” Sam murmured.
Feeling his stomach tighten, Keech lowered Doyle’s book to his lap, raised his index finger to the dead campfire, and spoke the incantation from the entry. “Fm’latghor U’aahn.”
As before, Keech’s mouth filled up with the taste of charcoal dust.
The orange embers of the fire popped and sputtered anew. Bright sparks crackled in the circle of stones, steeping the cave walls in light, then a magnificent crown of tall flames leaped up from the cinders as if Keech had tossed on a handful of dry kindling.
Laughing, Keech held up his hand and watched as gray smoke poured from his fingertips. His mind released all the old vexations and fear he’d been carrying on the Santa Fe, and he felt the beautiful stirring of renewed hope. “I can control it.”
“That’s right, Wolf. You can. You’re strong enough.”
“It won’t control me.”
“Never. Now go rest up, big brother. And when you wake, find O’Brien. Persuade her to help you find the Key.” Perhaps Sam said more, but his whispers were carried away by the angry howling that poured down through the canyon.
Keech felt dizzy. His strength was fading again, and the light at the edge of his vision was dimming. He covered back up with his blanket, feeling cold despite the newly stoked flames and homesick beyond measure.
He curled up by the fire and allowed sleep to swallow him.