“We’ll be needing your help,” Cedar said. “Bryn’s too.”
“Are we hunting the Holder now, Mr. Hunt?” Alun asked.
“No. We are hauling and digging,” Cedar said. “There’s dead in this town. Rose and I have agreed we’ll see to their burial before we move on.”
Cadoc Madder had stopped pacing. He turned to look at them as if they’d suddenly dropped out of a blue sky and brought the moon down with them.
Alun pulled the pipe from between his teeth and pointed it at Cedar. “What do you think killed all these people? The Holder. It fell into this town, and snuffed their lives out like a wet wick. If a piece of it remains behind, the death will spread, creep to the next town, and kill off the living there. Finding the Holder is a damn sight more important than burying the dead.”
“The Strange have been here,” Cedar said. “Surely you know what sport the Strange can have with the dead.”
“Of course I know! Hang the dead and hang the Strange. If we find the Holder we won’t need to stay here to see any of it.”
Cedar drew his gun and cocked back the hammer. “Rose Small, myself, and these bullets disagree with you.”
Both Madder brothers went stone cold. Even the smoke from Alun’s pipe seemed to stop moving.
“No need for guns,” Mae said as she came round from back of the wagon leading her mule. “Let us tend those who have been lost.” She wore a duster—Cedar thought it might belong to one of the Madder brothers, and though she’d rolled up the sleeves, it was huge on her thin frame. She’d changed her bonnet for a man’s hat—again, Cedar guessed it to be one of the Madders’.
He had no idea what she was doing out of bed, nor if she was in her right mind.
“Enough standing and pointing weapons,” Mae insisted. “Let’s put these people to rest so we can move on and find the Holder.” Her voice was clear. Strong.
Alun stared at her warily, as one might a bowl of nitroglycerin left to boil on the stove. “The sooner we’re to it, the sooner we’ll be quit of this place,” he finally said. “Cadoc, fetch up brother Bryn, and bring the wagon and the steam shovel along.”
Cadoc swung up into the wagon and started off, the wheels sending a spattering of mud to slap their boots.
Alun turned an eye on Cedar. “I hope you know what it is you’re doing, Mr. Hunt. Whole town of the dead is going to take time to bury, and we haven’t that to spare.”
“You bring out the digging device, I’ll gather wood to fire it.”
“Rose and I can gather the wood,” Mae said. “Unless you’d rather we gather the bodies, Mr. Hunt?”
No. He very much did not want them to be carrying dead bodies around like kindling. He didn’t know how long this break of clarity she was experiencing was going to last.
“Keep your guns ready,” he said. “Both of you. This night is filled with harm.”
“We’ll do just that.” Rose gave him a look that meant she’d also keep an eye on Mae. “If we need for anything, we’ll come calling.”
Cedar nodded. Rose could more than look after herself and Mae to boot. Gathering wood, even in the night where wild things crept, was a fair shake better than dragging dead folk into a pile.
Wil skulked out of the shadows, his eyes catching copper from the low light of Rose’s lantern. He padded silently over to Rose and Mae and looked up at Cedar. It wouldn’t be the new moon for a few days yet, which meant he would remain in wolf form until then.
He’d go with the women to gather wood and watch for danger.
Rose nudged her horse off a bit while Mae swung up atop her mule. “Since we’re gathering in the center of town,” Rose said, “let’s see if there’s a woodpile near to it. If not, then we’ll check other houses close by.”
“Good,” Mae agreed.
“Didn’t figure you to be the kind of man who endangered the people under your care,” Alun said as the women headed off. “Some other reason you’re fired up to bury the dead?”
“The Strange are near. The ground stinks of them.”
“All the more reason for us to be moving on. Hastily.”
“The bodies have been picked apart by Mr. Shunt.”
Alun fell into a full-halt silence. “That can’t be so,” he breathed. “You killed him.”
“Jeb Lindson killed him,” Cedar said. “Those bodies we found have been gleaned and cleaned. Bits missing. Specific bits, as if just the best of each person was taken.”
“You’re sure it’s not an animal?”
“Yes.”
“Savages?” Alun asked.
“No.”
“And you’re certain it’s Shunt?”
“I know that devil,” Cedar said. “The smell of him on the bodies. The song of him left in the things he’s touched.”
Alun just stood there in the rain as if that news rolled like an earthquake under his boots and changed the landscape around him.
“We should look for him,” Alun said.
“He’s not in the town,” Cedar said. “Come and gone, maybe far on as a week ago.”
Alun got moving again and Cedar paced him atop Flint.
Finally Alun said, “Dark things slip in this night, Mr. Hunt. You can feel the Strange?”
“Yes.”
“They can feel you too,” Alun noted. “They know the one man who can track them, hunt them, tear them apart. They know you’re here, you and your Pawnee curse. And they don’t fear the dark.”
“That suits me fine,” Cedar said. “Because neither do I.”
It didn’t take long to reach the center of town. Cedar and Alun got to work moving the dead, starting with the family in the general store, and lifting, or as the circumstance required, dragging the bodies to the clearing.
Cadoc finally returned with the wagon, having found Bryn. After a brief talk with Alun, they unloaded several crates and a boiler out of the wagon. Bryn got busy assembling pieces of a device that looked more suited to pumping a well than digging a grave, while Cadoc and Alun took the wagon farther off to gather up any more people they could find.
It was grim work. Silent work.
Cedar had done his share of digging graves in his life. He’d stood above far too many saying his last farewells. His wife’s. His child’s.
Many more.
These people were strangers to him, yet the shame of so many lost, stripped and picked over like a feast of convenience, burned a deep anger in him.
He carried a small body toward the pile, each step slower than the last.
The beast within twisted and stretched. It wanted out. It wanted to hunt. It wanted to destroy the Strange. It wanted to destroy Mr. Shunt.
Cedar found it more and more difficult to find a reason to fight that need. A man’s hands could do as much damage as the beast. A man’s hands could tear a person limb from limb. Why not let the beast take his mind and use his hands for its needs?
“Mr. Hunt?” Rose said. Again, he realized.
He blinked until he could see the world. He’d been standing for some time now.
There was no rain, just the cold exhalation of the night against his skin.
“You can put her right there,” Rose said gently.
Cedar looked down. He held a girl in his arms. Maybe two or three years old. Not much bigger than his own daughter had been when he held her, dead, in his arms.
This little girl was cold and gone, a splash of blood on her dress around the hole where her stomach should be. There were no tomorrows left for his daughter. And now there were no tomorrows left for this child.
Cedar swallowed hard and placed her gently next to a woman missing the top half of her skull. He didn’t
