Lloyd observed his father’s annoyance and said, “It’s all right, Farruh. Maybe he needs to leave town, too.”
The lame man sent out more energy through his arms into the reins. His son was right again. They had much more to worry about than stray dogs. And what were they if not stray dogs themselves? “You can’t blame a critter for wanting company,” Hephaestus told himself, his eyes ferreting through the moon shadows, hoping for some sign of the mail track on the outskirts.
They were a long time finding it, and then getting far enough down it to think of veering off-someplace they could get the wagon to so as to bury the remains of the Clutters in as much privacy as they could manage. Along the way they passed a couple of buckboards and simple farm wagons with canvas shells trying to be houses large enough to contain a ragtag of families and animals. It gave them all a little hope that their designs were no more foolish than many folk’s, torn between old lives and new. They also passed a large Spanish camp under some chestnuts. Here the fires were still burning-the scent of food and scheming. “Spaniards never seem to sleep,” Lloyd said to himself. “Perhaps I should become a Spaniard.”
Finally, they found themselves far enough away from Independence to consign the remains of the Clutters to earth and to heaven-if such in-between beings were allowed into heaven. There was a grove of trees off the track, which was becoming less a road and more tall grass with a seam running through. As far into the grove as they dared to venture, and as close in as they could get with the wagon and the now exhausted horses, they set about the strenuous task of digging a grave deep enough to hide the coffin.
All three Sitturds pitched in. The heavy rain that had softened the earth made the back-aching work somewhat easier, but not much. It was a good hour of team excavation before an acceptable depth was achieved. At some point, they each recalled poor old Tip back in Ohio-and the Time Ark. Rapture’s heart wandered further back in time to the stillborn body of Lodema, while Lloyd thought of his cove of wind charms and the slave cemetery across the river from St. Louis, where Schelling had taken him to meet Mother Tongue. Hephaestus remembered vague flashes of his drunken sprees in the shantylands, and how he had once passed out in a graveyard, and very well might have remained if not for the grace of chance and the love of his family. It struck them all that every camp is made amid graves. It is just unknown who lies buried.
It was with this welter of woe and anxiety that they at last completed their morbid mission. The horses were refreshed from the respite-slightly. To be able to push on past sunrise seemed hard. That would leave them still too close to Independence for comfort. Not being able to talk above a whisper and share concerns made the anxiety grow. A damp mist was beginning to rise, which was unsettling to see and unpleasant to feel, and the shambling gait of the horses seemed to herald some imminent breakdown, when around a stand of broken trees and heavy bracken they heard a sound that brought their hearts up into their mouths. It was not an animal sound, like a wild pig or a coyote. It was not a human sound, but it made the duck gun they were carrying seem as useful as a feather duster.
“E’ Gawd love!” Rapture exclaimed, too loud for the male Sitturds’ liking, for out of the patchy mist the beast noise rose as if in response. It was followed by the yelp of a dog-the mutt that had tagged along with them must have slunk out ahead of them, as dogs liked to do, Lloyd reasoned. Now the poor wayfarer had flushed some savage creature out of the underbrush and was about to become a meal. Or was something lying in wait for them?
All their mutual fears forced them to freeze. The moon swam out from behind what was left of the clouds, and the sky above the low road fog sharpened into cold clarity-the intensification of the light revealing the silhouette of something like a man, and something a little too much like a bear for their liking. The thing seemed to recognize its greater visibility and made a gesture that demonstrated a fierce desire both for confrontation and for greater camouflage.
Both inclinations were thwarted in a strangely comic fashion when the creature rushed forward, to be dragged back and to fall with a thump, as if it had run to the end of a length of chain. The next thing, which to Lloyd’s and Rapture’s minds at least, was the most unexpected of all was that a familiar voice rose out of the darkness. “Hey there, Senator,” it said. “Don’t fret now. I knew they were comin’ for the last half hour.”
It was Fast Fanny Ockleman, the gunwoman they had met on the main street earlier in town. The unmistakable ramrod shadow strode up out of the gloom about ten paces away from where the creature had appeared, and which now had returned to an upright but crouched position, making a low, threatening sound that was somewhere between an ursine growl and some kind of protective chant.
In the moonlight, Lloyd could see that she had one of her newfangled guns drawn, but she approached with no hint of alarm and seemed to step through the thigh-high mist to meet them with the grace of an Indian, just as casually as she had greeted the outnumbered situation with Joshua Breed and his hooligans. I wonder if anything scares her, Lloyd thought, before turning his mind to what she was doing out in the wild, awake and alert, at such a time of night.
“You folks’ll have to be right quieter if you expect to get where you’re goin’, and travelin’ at this hour is for those who have to or know how. I take it you have to.”
“Who… is that?” Hephaestus gasped, almost dropping the reins.
The weary horses had snapped awake at the first hint of the creature’s presence. Perhaps if there had been a breeze they would have known about the brute long before. In any case, they were nervous and distraught now.
“Tid be now a long tale tru,” Rapture muttered, not wanting even to think about the incident back in town.
“I am the best shadow you’ll meet in these parts tonight,” Fast Fanny replied. Nearby, Lloyd thought that he could make out a group of shelters tucked away, hidden by both branch and mist.
“We weren’t wanting to meet any shadows a’tall,” the elder Sitturd replied.
“Best not to venture by moonshine then,” the woman answered.
“What’s that… animal?” Lloyd called, unable to help himself.
“Hush there, boy,” Fanny returned. “Other folks are trying to sleep, and you don’t want to be stirring up Senator again. I’ll be to sunup getting him peaceful and he’ll be a sack of possums all day on the trail. Now follow me, with a lid on your questions. I can give you a place to bunk for a bit, and come a brighter hour you can make a better plan than the one you got.”
“You know this woman?” Hephaestus demanded.
“Aye that,” Rapture assented, not wanting to say more.
“And you trust… her?”
“Yes,” Lloyd answered decisively, still curious about the tethered creature, which was quite obviously of the same mind regarding them.
Hephaestus took stock. They had just fled civilization, well before their preparations were complete, to embark on the most difficult leg of their entire journey, having witnessed some kind of nightmare magic that had beset their hosts, then buried the evidence of the atrocity in an unmarked grave on the edge of what was to them real wilderness, with the possible charge of murder hanging over their heads, and maybe even more serious trouble awaiting them if anything like what his son had hinted about was true. In this mix of moonlight and mist, the idea of following a total stranger-a woman who looked like a man and who wielded a kind of gun that he had never seen before, and had some kind of monster animal, no less-seemed if not reasonable to him, then at least possible and maybe even advisable.
Fanny led them around the stand of trees to two wagons, one of them large and of odd design, and several improvised structures, which Lloyd recognized as Indian-style tepees made of animal hides supported by wooden frames. The rest of the camp, whoever they were, seemed to be asleep, except for a short, stocky man who had been leaning against a wagon wheel with a large cudgel on his knees. He got to his feet when Fanny gave a tight whistle.
“Who’s this now?” he whispered.
“At first light,” Fanny replied, as if to say no more would be said until then.
She ushered the Ohioans into a squat tepee pitched in the lee of the larger wagon and ducked her head in when the family had straggled through the slit.
“I’ll unhitch your horses and give them some feed. We don’t have much for our own, let alone yourn. But they’ll get some rest. We rise early and we’ll be on the trudge earlier than usual. I reckon you should do the same. But take a load off now. Whatever called you out on the move at such an hour won’t have an easy time making worry for you for a few hours at least. Now, no questions till birdsong. Get as much shut-eye as you can.”
Suddenly, the hardened woman was gone, and the Sitturds were left in deeper bewonderment than ever, but