Nightfall descended on the foothills, casting deep purple hues over the pearly white landscape. A few of the drivers struck up lanterns, creating a ring of muted light around the gathering.
The wagon master with the bushy sideburns continued to train his Colt revolver on the Lost Causes as he directed the painted thralls to search their gear. The horses kicked up a fearful commotion as the thralls approached with lanterns and lariats.
“Just ’old them still,” scolded the captain.
After the dead men pushed the horses into submission, they hunted through the Lost Causes’ possessions, ransacking the dry goods purchased at the fort. The giant crow bounded off the captain’s shoulder and flapped over to the poke bonnet covering of a wagon. Though the creature watched in silence, Keech could practically hear the Reverend’s voice whisper, Your days are numbered like a shadow that passeth away …
“You’re one of Rose’s dead men,” Duck said to the captain in disgust.
The mutton-chopped fellow rocked back on his bootheels and laughed. “A thrall! Non, I’m far too pretty to be a dead man.”
“So you’re a Thrall Master, like Bad Whiskey Nelson,” Keech said.
“Wrong again.” The captain gestured to the bronze-faced creatures pillaging the young riders’ gear. “These wretches belong to a bonhomme named Ignatio.”
Hearing that name—the one Doyle had whispered in Wisdom—Keech felt a disorienting tangle of shame and stubborn hope that all this might still be some terrible mix-up. But it wasn’t. The Lost Causes had been bushwhacked.
Keech looked at Quinn and Duck and felt his face burn with remorse.
The captain sidled closer with his revolver. “All it took was a bit of prodding, and you tumbled right into our ’ands.”
“Nobody prodded us,” said Duck. “We ride of our own accord.”
“But of course!” The captain pointed toward the dark ridge where Keech’s mammoth buffalo had descended to attack Ian. “Why do you think those four bandits showed up in ’ook’s Fort to begin with? They were thralls supplied by Ignatio. They pushed you to be’ave exactly as the Reverend wished, which was to ride out ’ere and put up a grand fuss.”
“Mister, who are you?” asked Quinn.
The Frenchman’s grin boasted a mouthful of white teeth, except for two needlepoint fangs where his two front teeth would sit. They weren’t as prominent as John Wesley’s Chamelia fangs, but they seemed vicious enough.
“Sorry. Je me présente. My name is Charles Gascon, but folks in these parts call me ‘Black Charlie,’ on account of my ’andsome black whiskers.” The fanged man smoothed a hand over his thick sideburns. “You must be Oscar Revels, the runaway from Wisdom, non? I have ’eard tales about you. That you can sing yourself invisible and fight like a puma.”
Quinn’s cheeks shuddered with a fury Keech hadn’t seen in months. “That ain’t my name. Speak it again, and you’ll lose those ugly fangs.”
Black Charlie sneered, his pointed chompers jutting over his bottom lip. He leaned closer. “That so … Oscar?”
Darting forward, Quinn smacked his fist against Black Charlie’s mouth. The fellow tumbled onto his rump, his throat barking surprise. One of his fangs flew into the snow.
“My tooth!” Black Charlie yelled, clasping his mouth.
Quinn hovered over the man. “I spit on the name ‘Oscar,’ shackled on me by terrible, slaving men. My name is Quinn, and I’m the son of George and Hettie Revels, who died in the cornfields of Tennessee. I got a free body. I got a free soul. And I won’t ever wear chains again. Anybody tries to lock me up, I’ll kill them dead or die fighting.”
“We shall see about that,” Black Charlie spat, scrambling back to his boots. As he wiped a trickle of blood from his lips, the Frenchman’s eyes turned as black as oil—unnatural eyes, the peepers of a monster. Black Charlie yelped at his men. “Tie them up!”
The main clutch of thralls held their pistols on the Lost Causes as two dead men shoved them to their knees and bound their hands behind their backs with strands of prickly rope. Keech strained at the bindings, testing them, and found the knots secure.
Black Charlie probed his bloody mouth with a finger, then lifted his Colt. “That was my favorite tooth! You will pay for that.”
“Try me, you dog. You’ll lose the other one,” Quinn answered.
Black Charlie thumbed back the Colt’s hammer. “L’orgueil précède la chute. Do you know what that means? ‘Pride precedes the fall.’”
The wicked fowl roosting on the nearby wagon screeched, “Not yet, you fool.”
At the sound of the unearthly voice, all the thralls surrounding dropped to their knees in terrified reverence.
The crow tilted its head. “Find out what they know.”
Black Charlie barked a command for the thralls to resume their saddlebag search. As the dead men scattered Duck’s belongings across the snow, the Frenchman asked, “Anything, Rufus?” The fresh gap in his teeth made the words come out in a dry whistle.
“Nothin’,” grumbled a thin man with a pointy chin.
The rabble was searching for the relics. The Reverend apparently thought the Lost Causes still had the Fang of Barachiel, perhaps even the amulet shards. Rose didn’t know yet that Doyle had stolen everything.
The crow’s heartless eyes gleamed blacker than a pair of beetles. A swirling redness blossomed within them, and Keech felt a stabbing sensation nip the edges of his mind. Images of Gail Travis’s barn at Hook’s Fort appeared in his memories. He saw Achilles barking at their feet, McCarty gazing at the kids with concern.
Fear overtook Keech’s soul, and he cried out. Thus far, Rose’s power had manifested as external attacks, occasionally darting from the skies in the form of a crow or invading the body of an outlaw, such as Bad Whiskey. But now he felt the Reverend clawing his way into his mind. He clamped down on his memories, fighting to hide his most recent thoughts of McCarty and Cutter and the mysterious Key they were supposed to track down.
The mental wall served no effect; the Reverend’s crow cackled in triumph. “You found O’Brien. I never suspected she was so close. She’s managed to stay hidden near the Key of Enoch, guarding it like a stubborn watchdog.”
The complete name of the relic—the Key of Enoch—sent a jolt through Keech, and he remembered his brother Sam reading from Pa’s old Bible. “This verse says, ‘Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.’ You know what that means? It means the prophet Enoch went right up to heaven without ever dying.” Keech had waved away Sam’s tale at the time, but now he wondered if he should have paid closer attention.
One thing seemed certain: He should have never listened to his dream at the cabin. The Key was nowhere near this caravan, and never had been. Whatever his vision of Sam had been trying to tell him, Keech had mistaken the message.
Based on the information Rose himself had offered, they were on the right trail, a couple of steps behind Coward and Cutter and the Char Stone, and within reach of the Key. They only had to secure the relics for themselves, and the Lost Causes could seal Rose’s doom. Exactly how, Keech wasn’t sure, but he had a hunch this Key of Enoch was the solution.
They would never achieve victory, though, if they were held captive. Keech had to do something to get them out of this mess.
Duck growled at the crow, “We never met any O’Brien.”
The beetle-like eyes flicked toward Duck, giving Keech a momentary reprieve from Rose’s sickening mental intrusion. “You lie, child. But O’Brien will be dead before the next sunset. I’ll find Jeffreys, too, since I now see that he has the Fang and two of the amulet shards.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Duck spat.
“Should I kill them now?” asked Black Charlie.
The messenger crow hesitated. “They could serve as bait for the Enforcer. O’Brien will never let children perish, no matter how forsaken she’s become.”
“When we find O’Brien, can I kill ’er at least?” asked Black Charlie. “She must be the reason I had to go ’unting for all this extra munition.” He pointed at the four remaining wagons in the train. “Her meddling cost me two months of work. Ignatio is not pleased. I’m needed back among the Weavers, too. I cannot run wagons forever.”
The crow’s head bobbed. “Patience, Gascon. You will have your chance to spill blood.”
“That’s why your wagon went up in smoke!” Keech said to the Frenchman. “You’re hauling explosives to Ignatio. He’s digging around for this Key of Enoch, using the people of Wisdom to do his dirty work, and you’re running gunpowder to help him. Guess you didn’t count on a giant buffalo taking down your stash.”
“Foolish boy, gunpowder had nothing to do with the explosion,” Black Charlie scoffed.
Standing at the rear of the fourth wagon, the thrall Rufus guffawed. “Apparently, you brats ain’t never heard of nitro-gliss-reen.” Reaching one hand inside the wagon’s covering, he pulled a large glass jar of clear fluid out of a crate.
Black Charlie waved his hands. “Put that down! You will blow us all to kingdom come!”
Embarrassed, Rufus set the jar of explosive at the edge of the wagon bed.
“There is one problem with nitro,” Black Charlie continued, keeping a nervous eye on Rufus. “Even in those infernal crates packed with straw, it takes a mighty brave ’eart to carry them through the mountains, because even the smallest rattle could make it go boom.”
“When I knock out your other fang, you’ll feel a rattle,” Quinn said.
Black Charlie sneered at the comment, then fired his pistol into the sky. The detonation echoed like Zeus’s thunder in the canyon. Somewhere to the east, the rumbling rolled on, and Keech realized he wasn’t hearing the Colt’s reverberation, but the renewed running of the buffalo herd, panicked by the gun’s report. The ground under Black Charlie’s wagons trembled.
The jar Rufus had rested on the wagon shuddered, drawing Keech’s attention. It would take only a little nudge to shake the jar loose and cause an explosion. A phrase from Doyle’s journal would probably do the trick. At the very least, he could buy them a few seconds to run, though not enough time to get under cover.
There had to be another way.
Lowering his pistol, Black Charlie chuckled at Quinn. “Scorn all you want, mon ami. O’Brien will not stop us. Ignatio is ’ard at work in the mountains.”
Still perched atop the wagon, the Reverend’s crow flapped its black wings in irritation. “Stop talking, Weaver,” the creature hissed. “You have no more to say here.”
Black Charlie dropped his head at once. “Désolé, Reverend. I meant no ’arm.”
A careful expression crossed Duck’s face, a look Keech recognized as deep scheming. She said to the crow, “Reverend, I know you want us as bait for this O’Brien, but I’d wager it won’t work. We tried to get her help, but she turned her back. She ain’t interested in saving us.” Mischief flickered in her eyes. “But I got a better deal for you.”
The crow tilted its devilish head. “Go on.”
“We promised our pard Quinn here we’d reunite him with his aunt. Take us into the mountains where Ignatio took his aunt, and let the two of them go. If you do that, we’ll tell you where Jeffreys is holed up.”
The crow’s cackle was so shrill it echoed like Black Charlie’s pistol shot. “Take you to the mountains,” the creature repeated. “You wish to meet Ignatio?”
“Yes. Then you get the Enforcer.”
Keech hadn’t thought the February night could grow any colder, but suddenly the air was filled with a petrifying chill, as if the wind itself had turned to solid ice. The breeze swirled around their boots, dusting up the powder on the basin floor, and Keech caught sight of a shadow shaped like a man, creeping along the edge of the lantern light cast by the penitent thralls.
When the gathered thralls saw the shadow, they gasped in unison. “La Sombra!” they muttered, and dropped to their knees again.
“What’s that mean?” Duck asked.
Black Charlie answered. “‘The Shadow.’ Your doom approaches.”
The terrible shade stepped into the lamp glow, but instead of dissipating in light as a shadow ought to, the specter took on weight, as though the darkness that composed it was as physical as flesh and blood.
The apparition slithered past Black Charlie, then stopped to stand in front of Duck. The girl whimpered at the sight of it, but stood tall.
“Buenas noches, niña,” La Sombra said with a voice both smooth and temperate. “You wish to meet Ignatio in the mountains, ¿no? No need to travel, child. I am here.”