As his father had told him many times, the woman had corrupted the paradise that they had all come together to build. 'I was one of the first to see old Jeb Freeman after she'd drained the life out of him, and that's a sight I'll never forget,' Grover had been saying as long as Leland could re member. 'Jeb was a powerful man, and someone that could do that to him, leave him nothing more than an empty shell, was someone to be feared indeed. We didn't like Isabella, none of us did, but after that we were afraid of her. She still had William hornswoggled, too, and some of the others eventually went in with her.
But I never did. I knew what she was.'
There was a litany of sins that his father never failed to recite, and Leland had grown up with a fear of Isabella and her seemingly unstoppable powers. Now he had a son, Robert, and his father wanted to indoctrinate the boy as soon as he was old enough to speak, to instill in him the same fear of Isabella's revenge with which he himself had been filled.
'Why didn't we ever leave?' he'd asked when he'd grown old enough to think on his own. 'How come we're still here? Other people left. Why don't we?'
'Because this is our home,' his father always said fiercely. 'We carved this home from the wilderness, and I'm not about to let any monster drive us away.'
There were rumors that some had seen her: visions in the canyon late at night that terrified horses into running and sent the roughest ranchers into paroxysms of fear. They all knew where the cave was, and a special effort was made by all to avoid that area. It was one of the wider sections of the canyon, several miles across, and though the route was
longer, people these days traveled on the other side of the marsh, near the west bluffs, rather than take the old path past the blocked cave entrance.
Leland moved away from the fence, looked down at Hattie's sunflowers, just beginning to poke their heads up toward their namesake after staring at the ground all through the early weeks of their existence.
He was supposed to travel to Randall tomorrow for material, a hard hundred miles that covered a lot of diverse territory, not all of it nice. But the truth was that the only part of the journey which concerned him was the trip out of the canyon.
The trip past Isabella's cave.
It was foolish and childish, but he still had the sense that she waited in there, watching, that she could somehow see through the rocks that covered the cave entrance to where he passed by--even though the new trail was miles away. It was as if there were a line across the width of the canyon, and anytime anyone crossed it, she knew.
He'd had a dream the other night that he'd been on the road to Randall and his horse had kicked something in the trail that turned out to be Isabella's head. The hair was filthy and filled with spiderwebs, the skin rotting, the eyes gone, but the bloody mouth worked perfectly and the head flew up into the air before him and began to shriek.
Though he knew it was probably just his father's doing, he still couldn't help feeling some trepidation at the thought of passing by the dreaded place after a dream such as that.
Leland walked into the house, yelled to Hattie in the kitchen that he was going over to see Samuel and visit for a while, have a smoke.
'Supper's gonna be on soon!' she called.
'I'll be back in twenty minutes!' He looked at his pocket watch and headed out the door. She said something behind him, but he didn't hear what it was and it didn't really matter. Even if he was late, she'd hold supper for him.
Magic was still good for a few things around here. Samuel Hawks was sitting on his porch, smoking his pipe, looking after the slowly setting sun, which would be below both the clouds and the rim of the canyon in a few more minutes. He nodded to Leland, motioned for him to come up and sit a spell.
A spell
Samuel's wife Maureen was watching the Engstrom's baby John while their next-door neighbors went to the market and a loud constant crying could be heard from inside the house. Samuel reached back behind him and shut the window as Leland took a seat on the swing next to his friend's rocker. 'Thought you was leavin'' 'romorrow.'
'Be back when? A week?'
'About that.' Leland took out his pipe, packed down some tobacco, lit it. 'Watch Hattie and Robert for me?'
Samuel chuckled. 'Hattie don't need no one watching out for her. That li'l woman can take care of herself.' He glanced over. 'Which way you headin' out?'
'To Randall? There's only one way.'
Samuel said nothing, looked north toward the buttes.
Leland cleared his throat, turned toward his friend. 'You saw something out there once, didn't you? Over by Isabella's cave?'
Samuel nodded slowly, was silent for a moment. He took a puff on his pipe. 'Wudn't nuthin' specific, you know.
Wudn't no specter or Spock. I don't know what I told you before, but it was more something' I felt than saw.r=
'I thought you said you saw something'
'I did, I did. But that wudn't the scariest part is I guess what I'm lryin' to say. It's what I felt not what I saw that scared the bejeebers out a me.'
'So what'd you see? Tell me again.'
Samuel smoked in silence for a bit, and Leland thought
his friend wasn't going to respond at all, but finally he sighed. 'I was gonna go fishing upriver, past that sycamore grove. It was spring, I think, and it wudn't even night, although I think it was a little cloudy.' He paused, puffed. 'I got spooked around that swampy area.
Mighta all been in my head, but I thought I heard noises, and I stopped for a moment and...'
He shook his head.
'What?'
'I felt her lookin' at me. It don't make no sense, but it was like for a minute she was lookin' through me, too. Everything looked brighter.
Or darker. Something. Anyway, it felt like I was seem' through someone else's eyes, but I knew it was her lookin' through my eyes.
Then I felt like she was lookin' at me again, and everywhere I turned I felt eyes peerin' at me, hidden in that swampy water, behind the grasses, up on the cliffs. It scared the hell out a me, I tell you.
Then I saw it, over by the bottom of the canyon wall, next to a pile of old rabble that had to be coverin' her cave.'
'What?'
'A shadow. But it weren't like any shadow I ever seen. It was kinda human-shaped, female if you want to know the truth, but it din't move right. It sorta twisted in on itself instead a walked. Creepiest damn thing I ever saw. It twisted toward me, and I just hightailed it out a there. Never did go fishing. And I never been back up that part of the canyon since.' He looked meaningfully at Leland. 'If I were you, I wouldn't go there, neither.'
'I have no choice. My materials are in Randall, and until they build a train track to Wolf Canyon, I have to pick them up myself.'
There was another long silence as they both smoked, looking up at the darkening late afternoon sky.
'There is another way to Randall,' Samuel said. 'Go south out a the canyon, take the new road from Rio Verde.
It'll add an extra day to your trip, but believe me, it's worth it.'
Leland did not respond.
'It's worth it.'
Leland walked home feeling even more uneasy than he had on his way over, although perhaps that was what
