That evening, the Lost Causes huddled in a deserted, tumbledown shack, a lonely hovel they had stumbled across in a patch of cottonwoods north of the trail. Quinn built a fire in the hut’s old fireplace while Duck brooded in the corner.
“What’s got your dander up?” Keech asked.
Duck raised a stern finger in his direction. “Nat never would’ve put us in danger like you did back there. He’d have listened to the team about the scarecrow and not run off all topsy-turvy.”
Shrugging, Keech said, “I just altered the plan a bit.”
Quinn shook his head but continued placing wood onto the flames.
Duck said, “You exposed us. Now Rose can find us.”
“No he can’t.” Except Keech knew better. Rose had said himself, I’ve caught your scent. “Quinn hid us again. We’re back in the blind.”
Duck’s face scrunched in clear frustration. “We need you to be steady. We gotta work as a team to find this McCarty fella and learn what he knows.”
Keech felt his teeth clench. “I am steady, Duck. And you’re strong. We’re a team. Don’t forget what Milos Horner said before Friendly Williams shot him. He said we’re Enforcers.”
“He did not! He said, ‘The Enforcers live on.’ That’s different. Don’t start thinking you’re as powerful as an Enforcer, ’cause that’s gonna get us all killed.”
“I don’t think that,” Keech insisted. “But you have to admit the Enforcers passed some kind of power on to us.”
Duck’s face turned even darker with anger. “Those words you spoke to kill the crow sounded unnatural, Keech. You shouldn’t have said them. You don’t know what you’re dabbling in.”
“They’re Doyle’s words. I found them in his journal. It’s fine.”
“Doyle told us he tapped a dark magic. Then he stole from us so he can resurrect his dead daughter.” Duck’s voice sounded weary as she spoke. “I don’t aim to follow down his path.”
Keech’s temples pounded with a sudden headache. “You’re going gutless.”
Duck’s fierce blue eyes turned as cold as ice.
Quinn held up his hands, a brace between the two. “Now, Keech, that ain’t too cordial.”
Though Keech was spitting mad, he did regret the accusation. The last time he’d spoken that way to an Embry, during a scuffle with Duck in the town of Whistler, Nat had put him on his rump. Keech knew Duck wouldn’t hesitate to do the same.
“Oh, never mind,” Duck snapped. “Getting you to listen is a fool’s task.”
Keech stomped over to the door. “I’m gonna go check on the ponies.”
Duck shouted back, “Go on and do it then!”
As he slammed the door behind him, he heard Quinn’s voice call after him. “Y’all need to work this out!”
“Let her work it out,” Keech spat, hoping Duck had heard.
He plodded around the shack to the windbreak they had built to shelter the horses. Keech stood in the empty silence, and a disconcerting anger stirred inside him. The horses watched him with tired gazes, their bodies huddled together in the lean-to, their saddles and bridles still cinched in case the gang needed to ride out in a hurry. John Wesley’s old gelding nickered.
“What?” Keech barked at the horse. “I did what I was supposed to. I killed the dang crows. What else does she expect?” When Lightnin’ grumbled to his partners, Keech tossed up his hands. “Felix would understand.” He knew he sounded foolish, speaking to a gelding about the beloved pony he’d lost, but he didn’t care.
Plopping down on a snowy log pile, Keech took a few minutes to collect himself. He didn’t enjoy being riled at Duck, but there was nothing for it. As Granny Nell once told the orphans, sometimes you had to let yourself feel the anger, so long as you didn’t harm others with your vexations. Little Eugena had been a master at getting her dander up, but she dispelled all her rage when she played her brass bugle in the woods. At times, Robby’s crooked hand left him feeling plenty resentful, so he purged all his scorn by building Patrick the finest toys.
But Bad Whiskey had taken his siblings away, so now Keech had to find the best way to channel his anger without punishing Duck.
Peeling off his gloves, Keech stared at his fingers, inspecting the knuckles, scrutinizing the fingertips that had smoldered like the barrel of a gun after firing a bullet. The same power Doyle had wielded lay inside, waiting under Keech’s skin. Whatever that force was, it was different from his focus. It didn’t grow slowly from within. The invocation from Doyle’s journal, words taken from something called the Book of the Black Verse, had summoned power that was instant and effective.
The places where the crows had scratched Keech stung something awful. Wincing, he dabbed at the talon slashes on his cheek and ear, then the pecking wound on the back of his neck. If the Lost Causes still had the Fang of Barachiel, he could heal those wounds lickety-split. However, because Doyle had stolen the Fang, Keech would have to find regular old remedies for his injuries. In this case, cottonwood buds would do the trick. Despite the terrible chill, the trees still offered plenty of shoots to serve his needs.
Keech stripped a handful of buds off a few branches, bundled them in a cloth, and turned to walk back to the cabin.
Suddenly he glimpsed a shadow moving through the cottonwoods. Keech pivoted toward the movement. As he did, the cloth tumbled out of his hands, spilling the buds. The dark shape had vanished. The shadows lingering beyond the shack belonged only to the somber trees.
Keech waited like a stone, probing the cottonwoods for danger.
Truth be told, the gang’s encounters with the Chamelia still haunted him. Gooseflesh rippled over Keech’s arms as he envisioned the nightmarish Man Slayer closing in on the shack, baring its fangs, setting its claws to attack.
“Hello?” he said. The cottonwood boughs rattled in the wind. He pursed his lips to whistle for Duck and Quinn, but a rustling noise pulled his attention.
Powdery snow shook from the canopy and sugared the ground. Keech crept deeper into the woods, closer to the spot where he’d seen the shadow, and scoured the tangle of growth. The snow was undisturbed. No sign of prints from either animal or man.
A frigid breeze blustered through the spiderweb of branches. The wind must have rattled a tree limb. Nevertheless, one of Pa Abner’s rules of survival spoke up in Keech’s mind. Don’t let your guard down when you get a hunch. Listen to your gut, and learn what it wants to teach. He stood in silence and waited. Nothing moved till another gust shook the cottonwoods, sending a fresh rain of frost fluttering to the ground. “Nothing out there,” he muttered.
Satisfied, Keech scooped up all the cottonwood buds he could find in the snow. Then he hustled back to the shack.
Duck and Quinn were playing a card game on the dusty floor when he stepped inside. Their hats, coats, and pelts were drying by Quinn’s fire, and Quinn was humming, his special tune hiding the shack in their magic bubble and concealing any hint of the fire’s smoke outside. The game between the two was Old Maid, a game Keech had never found particularly enjoyable.
Quinn apparently noticed Keech’s jitters and frowned. “Lordy, Keech, a ghost must’ve stumbled over your grave! Everything all right?”
“I thought I saw something in the woods. But it was just the wind blowing branches.” Keech placed his bundle of buds on a flat stone next to the fire. When the resin softened, he mashed out the buds with Doyle’s paring knife and applied the oily gum to his cuts—a sticky concoction Pa used to call “balm of Gilead.”
Quinn reached to pull a card from Duck’s hand.
“Careful, that’s the Old Maid,” Duck said with a smirk.
“Your bluff stinks to high heaven, Embry.” Quinn grabbed the card and snickered when he examined it. He placed a pair of red fours on the floor, then resumed his hum.
Keech watched the game for a spell, feeling more and more wounded by Duck’s accusations as the evening drew on. The forgotten shack boasted little in the way of comfort other than a forlorn rocking chair in the corner, shrouded with cobwebs and dust. He pulled the chair close to the battered front door and watched the frozen night unfold through crevices in the rotting walls.
“Keech, you wanna play Hearts?” asked Quinn.
Not a word stirred from Duck, but Keech noticed her giving him a sideways stare. “No, I’m keeping watch. Y’all go ahead.”
Quinn said, “Riddle me this, then. I have two sides, but only one you care to see. Sometimes I bring you ruin, sometimes victory. What am I?”
Keech pondered for a second. “I give up, what?”
Quinn held up the queen of diamonds. “A playing card.”
The boys shared a small laugh, then Quinn and Duck reshuffled.
Feeling the cold night creep closer, Keech huddled up in his deerskin pelt. A short while later, his trailmates put away the cards and curled up under their blankets. Duck soon fell to snoring, leaving Quinn to pass the time drawing stick figures in the dirt floor, something he did frequently on the Santa Fe whenever they went to ground. He started with a few crudely formed shapes on horseback, then added dozens of stick soldiers, drawing up a complex battle formation like the great Odysseus from the magical poem. But halfway through his mental battle, he, too, began to snore, leaving his stick figures to fight the night away in the dirt.
Keech reached into his coat pocket and pulled out Doyle’s leatherbound journal. Before cracking open the book, he made sure Duck was sleeping. Bad dreams had been disturbing the girl for months. One time in eastern Kansas, Keech had even shared one with her—a dream about a massive cavern filled with terrible light. Tonight, though, her sleep seemed free of monsters and misery.
Convinced he was the only one still awake, Keech peeled open the journal and flipped through the pages.
Duck and Quinn had shown little interest in Doyle’s writings. They knew the Enforcer once rode with the Reverend, but Keech didn’t think they knew the true extent of that villainous partnership. Doyle had not only traveled with Rose; he had studied under him, penning several passages of the so-called Black Verse into his travel logs. Many pages of the book were devoted to Doyle’s musings on the origins of the dark words, while other entries showed nothing but frustrated scribbles. On one page, Doyle had written the words The Black Verse came not from Man before concluding the entry with nonsense lines of turbulent scrawl. The gibberish seemed to indicate Doyle had lost all track of reality, so disjointed from the rest of the man’s jottings that it didn’t even contain a date. Keech suspected if Duck had read this madness, she would have insisted they burn the journal.
Keech could never let that happen. He was certain that somewhere in the Enforcer’s record hid a clue that could help them destroy the Reverend. To understand your enemies, Pa Abner had once taught, search for the method behind their actions. Maybe Doyle had written about the Key they were supposed to find. They had been told this artifact was hidden in a place called the House of the Rabbit. Other than that, the Lost Causes had no idea what they were seeking; they knew only that locating it was vital. You must hurry to find it first, the Osage elder Buffalo Woman had said. The Scorpion must not find it.
So far, Keech’s investigation of the journal had turned up nothing regarding the location of the House of the Rabbit. But there was one interesting note at the corner of a torn page. Beneath the date 3 September 1833, Doyle had scratched the words The skeleton holds the key. The rest of the page had been ripped out of the book, along with several other complete pages before it. Perhaps the answers Keech sought had been removed at one point, but he would continue to scour the pages of the journal in search of more clues about this skeleton.
Keech rocked in the shack’s old, forgotten chair, pondering the Ranger’s writings. His head grew heavy, and he was starting to nod off when the snapping of frozen twigs near the shack jolted him awake. He sat upright, his heart hammering, his fists tightening.
Another twig snapped, this time closer.
At the fireside, Quinn and Duck continued their slumber, oblivious to the night noise. Keech tiptoed to the door, peeked through a gap between the rotten boards, saw nothing but darkness. He waited.
A boy’s whisper infiltrated the cracks. “Big Bad Wolf? Are you in there?”
Staggering back, Keech almost tripped over the rocking chair. He caught his balance just before spilling backward.
Again, the faint voice blew through the wall’s crevices. “Come on out and talk.”
Keech slapped a hand over his mouth to keep from crying out.
A rapping of knuckles jittered the cabin door as softly as a windblown branch tapping a window. “Please, Keech. It’s me, the Rabbit! I need to talk to ya.”
The gentle knocking didn’t stir Quinn or Duck. There could be only one explanation for what was happening. Though the world felt vivid and real, he must be dreaming.
Curious to discover where the fantasy led, Keech stepped toward the door and unlatched the hook. A heavy bluster of wind tried to drive the door wide open, but he caught the edge before it could crash against the shack’s inside wall.
Standing in the snow was none other than Sam.
Keech jiggled his head, trying to jar himself awake, but the vision was too stubborn. “Sam?”
“Hey, big brother.”
The boy looked exactly as he had the night Keech left him behind, the night Bad Whiskey descended on the orphanage. The knees of his trousers were ripped, and his boots were muddy like they used to get when he and Keech played together. He was even holding the lacebark limb they’d been using for their game of Grab the Musket before Bad Whiskey invaded their lives. Except now Sam was covered head to toe in a thin layer of blue frost, as if the night’s chill had turned his skin to solid ice.
“Don’t worry, dummy. I ain’t a ghost or nothin’.” Sam tittered.
Keech allowed himself a cautious laugh. “Am I dreaming?”
“You guessed it.” The boy smirked. “But listen, I got something real important to tell ya. Let’s take a walk.”
“All right.” Keech stepped out into the deep night; the chill instantly rattled his teeth. “I’m gonna turn into an icicle.”
“Don’t be a big baby. C’mon.”
Keech followed Sam away from the shack and into the cottonwoods. Through recesses in the winter clouds, a vibrant moon shone down on the Great Plains, illuminating the snow-covered highway stretching off to the west.
They stopped shy of a snow-packed ditch, and Sam peeled off his hat—the same one Granny Nell had given him a few years back, the same one he’d been wearing when he ran into the burning Home for Lost Causes. He scratched the dandelion fluff of his hair, then slapped the hat back on. Flecks of ice chipped away from the brim.
“Do you recollect how Pa used to tell us to be true to our gut?” Sam asked. “How we should always do what’s right, even if everybody around us tells us not to. Remember?”
Keech pulled his pelt and coat tighter. “Pa called it ‘being true to your own whisper.’ I miss him every day, Sam. Just like I miss you.” Warm tears bubbled up as he thought back to all the spry summer days spent with his orphan brother on the banks of the Third Fork River. Sam would bring along his trusty Bible, the one Pa Abner had given him, and read aloud his favorite adventures from the Old Testament. Ain’t too many rip-roarin’ sagas in the New Testament, Sam would say. You gotta turn to those older books, like Daniel and Joshua and Deuteronomy. Those boys knew how to spin a yarn.
Keech wiped away his stray tears, which were already freezing on his cheek. “You wouldn’t believe what I’ve gone through since I lost you, little brother. I found myself a pack of new trailmates. I faced down Bad Whiskey. We rode on to Wisdom, and—”
Sam held up his small hand. “None of that matters. What matters is what’s about to happen. There’s a wagon team rollin’ north of the Santa Fe, past Hook’s Fort, that’s in trouble. The Reverend Rose is sendin’ a hard rabble after it. You can’t let him take that wagon team, Keech. No matter what.”
“We’re headed to Hook’s Fort to find a trapper named McCarty,” Keech said.
“Dandy. Get on to Hook’s Fort, see what you can find. But save that wagon team. Everything depends on it.”
“What do you mean ‘everything’?”
“The whole thing, brother.” Sam’s unblemished face grew somber. “If you don’t save the wagons, you don’t save the world.”
“Why in blazes would the world depend on a bunch of wagons?” Keech asked.
Blue moonlight glinted in Sam’s eyes. “Because they have what you’re huntin’. The key to your mission.”
Keech’s throat nearly closed in shock when he heard the word key. “That’s what we’re searching for! A key! But the Osage at Bonfire Crossing told us we’re supposed to find it in the House of the Rabbit. You know, like your nickname.”
Sam shrugged. “I don’t know nothin’ about a house. But there’s a special key tucked away in a lockbox in one of those wagons.”
Keech chewed over the new information. “Save a wagon team north of the Santa Fe. Fetch the Key from a lockbox. I’ll do what I can.”
Sam’s cheeks lit up. “That’s the Big Bad Wolf I know.” The boy turned as if to walk away but stopped. “One more thing.” He gestured back toward the abandoned cabin. “Your trailmates might try to talk you out of helpin’. They won’t listen to reason. But you gotta convince them.”
“Don’t you worry about them,” Keech said. “They’ll do the right thing.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” Sam held out his hand to Keech. “I best go. I know you won’t let me down.”
Keech shook the younger boy’s bare hand, and Sam’s fingers pulsed a terrible chill straight into his glove. He figured his dream must be trying to wake him with cold sensations. Before he could wake up, Keech said, “See ya, Rabbit.”
“See ya later, Wolf.” Sam turned and crossed the ditch, sinking into the night shadows.
Keech needed to say one more thing. “I’m sorry I left you alone!” he called out, but it was too late. The shadows of the Santa Fe Trail had swallowed Sam whole.