“Follow me and don’t slip,” Tommy instructed as he led the way up the dark hillside. The road was bare and the hillsides lay empty, devoid of human life.
Poor Tommy felt just as scared as Benjamin but he had to ignore his fear and become the leader, since their group had been torn in half.
The night’s cold air settled over them unexpectedly, biting Benjamin’s ears and numbing his hands and toes. From a distance, the dark hill hadn’t looked steep, but now it seemed to tower above them menacingly. Benjamin kept slipping in the icy mud until he reached the top.
Tommy fuddled around the map and struggled to read the further they were from the station’s lamps. “This Jacob fellow shouldn’t be that hard to find. There’s only a stretch of countryside to get across before we reach our destination. How hard can it be?” Tommy chattered on to keep himself warm.
The woods around them were spooky. Howling winds brushed through the massive branches and blew against their frigid faces as the pair made their way toward the opposite side of the hill. A huge frost-covered field lay ahead of them.
“I-I think we should go back,” Benjamin suggested, raising his voice over the wind.
“Don’t chicken out now, Brannon,” snapped Tommy. “We stick with Peter’s plan until we find this farm.”
A second howl came from the woods ahead, only this time it didn’t sound like a gust of wind. It was more animal sounding.
Maybe it was a fox? thought Benjamin. He could only hope.
“I’m going back to the station,” Benjamin said, turning around and running face-first into something sturdy and large. Benjamin bounced back to the ground before he gazed up at a large figure standing over him. The strange character firmly clutched a few dead rabbits in one hand and raised a lamp to his face with the other. The light of his lamp revealed a deep scar on the left side of his face, accompanied by a few smaller scars on his right ear and forehead.
Benjamin screamed in fear while Tommy ran to the nearest tree to break off a branch. Hurrying back to Benjamin’s aid, Tommy held the broken bough like a weapon and pointed it at the stranger’s chest.
“Keep away from us, or I’ll stick you and your rabbits, old man,” Tommy threatened.
The rabbit hunter hooted loudly. “You won’t do much damage with that thing, lad,” the man said smugly. The rabbit hunter fell silent shortly afterwards when he heard the same howling noise echo through the dark woods ahead.
“We’d best be on our way, gentlemen,” he whispered in his thick country accent. “Hold this for me,” he ordered, throwing Tommy a large bag of dead pheasants and rabbits. The rabbit hunter then helped Benjamin to his feet with a mighty tug.
The man was large but quite short for an adult.
“I don’t travel with adults,” snapped Tommy after he threw the bag back at the man’s feet.
“Neither do I,” the man replied, smiling back. “My name is O’Malley. I am a hunter of these fields and I have a permit, so you know…and you are?” he asked, eyeing both boys.
“Oh…my name is Benjamin, Benjamin B-Brannon, Mr. O’Malley.”
“O’Malley! What kind of a name is that for a hunter?” whispered Tommy to Benjamin, who was trying desperately to ignore his friend’s rudeness.
The countryman leaned in toward Tommy. “And what do they call you then, boy?” O’Malley asked with a mischievous grin.
Tommy looked up at the sturdy man and jerked when he heard another howl from the woods behind him. “T-Tommy’s the name, Tommy Joel.”
The large man took another step forward bending down slightly to look young Tommy in his fear-filled green eye.
“Indeed…do you have your permit, Thomas?” he whispered.
The boy could only muster a silent ‘no’ in reply, whilst shaking his head. O’Malley took another glance into the woods behind them and picked his bag of dead animals from the frosty grass.
“The look on yer face. I’m just joking with ya, lad,” he chuckled, as he began to walk away from the pair.
The two boys stood in the frost watching the stranger walk down the other side of the dark hill toward the massive open fields. O’Malley stopped a few feet ahead of them. “Well come on then,” he called back.
“We don’t walk with strangers neither,” Tommy shouted back stubbornly.
“Suit yourselves, I’ll walk home by myself then. I can’t wait to put my feet up by a nice warm fire and eat some of my homemade rabbit stew. Hmm, or maybe I’ll have some tomato and basil soup. It goes well with pheasant. Anyway, good luck with the storm, boys. Tomorrow’s the first day of winter.” He chuckled again and continued walking, whistling, without a care in the world. The beautiful glow of the full moon gleamed down on him, lighting up the rows of the fields in the distance.
O’Malley seemed a very odd character, which made Tommy extra cautious of him. The toughened orphan had never had any good experiences with adults or guardians before, much less a wild hunter from the country.
Benjamin also had little, if any, trust for adults, especially strangers. But O’Malley appeared a bit too jolly to fit into either category. It was a risk between joining this stranger or trekking through the bitter cold and possibly freezing to death.
“I think we should go with him,” suggested Benjamin.
Tommy rolled his eyes and pushed his smaller friend forward. “You go with him if you want to get yourself caught or worse…kidnapped. I’m following the map.”
Benjamin kicked at the frosted grass in frustration at Tommy’s stubbornness.
“Well, I’m not going to freeze to death trying to find my way in the dark,” Benjamin sighed as he followed the rabbit hunter’s footsteps.
Tommy slumped next to a tree to memorize the map. Hypnotic sounds of branches rustling inside the woods sent him into a restless sleep until a loud howl woke him. He peered over the hill’s edge to see a large stretch of land close below, but Benjamin and O’Malley were no longer in sight.
Winds blew fierce across the fields as Tommy made a late start toward his destination.
Adrenaline kept his body going while he ran down the opposite side of the hill. A stone embedded in the ground instantly caught his shoe and flung him forward. Rolling the rest of the way down the steep hillside, Tommy roughly landed flat on his face in the frost.
The winds had grown stronger and he could feel the frost bite at his bare knees where his trousers had been ripped. His legs were cut and bruised from the tumble, which made him feel wretched. Picking himself up from the frosty ground, he limped his way across the first patch of field.
Meanwhile, in another open field a few miles ahead, Benjamin wasn’t having too well a time himself. Having abandoned his only companion to follow the prodigious stranger caused him to panic. After all, anything could happen to him now, and Benjamin’s imagination usually thought the worst. His sudden anxiety exhausted his body, and the blistering cold had made his feet twice as heavy. He couldn’t go on. Feeling sick, chilly and downright miserable, Benjamin’s body finally gave up.
The rabbit hunter immediately took off his large animal coat made out of wolf’s skin and wrapped it around the fainting boy. Lifting Benjamin in one arm over his free shoulder, O’Malley started to slog through the rest of the field while he listened to the sounds from the forest.
The cold was like nothing Tommy had ever felt. His mind couldn’t concentrate on anything. He lost all sense of hope and briefly forgot about Benjamin and Peter. He even forgot about Gatesville and how he came to be in this serious situation.
The only thing he had the strength to think about now was a warm bed. Thoughts of comfort became more vivid the icier the weather became. He longed for rest.
After he reached a patch of forest, his hazel green right eye detected a small light in the distance. A torch? A flashlight?
The moonlight danced off a pearly set of teeth that shone back at him through the shadows. Bright snow under its body reflected a fierce glow in its piercing eyes as the boy moved inches away from the beautiful face of a lethal wolf.
Unwittingly, the boy’s eyes locked onto the beast’s dazzling electric ice blues and caused him to faint with fear.
Tommy could sense another light behind his closed eyelids but was too weak to show any sign that he was still semi-conscious. The light exposed an unusual sight of wolves still lingering near the seemingly dead boy. The ravenous wolf pack stood still, curiously watching the man rescue what was supposed to be their long-deserved meal.
O’Malley shouted at the wolves that stood several yards away from the boy while he covered Tommy in more wolf skin. The wolves stood as still as stone statues, beautifully silhouetted by the light. None howled nor made a sound. Tommy slipped into a comfortable deep sleep when the heavy fur shawl coated his upper body.
Heavy snow swept across the open field. With the aid of one large stick and a newly lit beacon in the other hand, O’Malley continued his heroic journey toward the sanctuary of his house, carrying the unconscious boy the rest of the way he had carried Benjamin.