His sentence went unfinished. In that instant, collapsing dirt and gravel echoed somewhere close. Both men halted suddenly.
“Your pet’s behind us.” Rose’s voice was a whisper.
“No. It’s the tunnel crumbling. We must hurry.”
They continued on, thoughts of premature burial hastening their steps. Their course, which did not always keep to the horizontal, began a deep decline. Rocks and clods slid before them as they scudded down the slope, and the weight of the earth above them burdened their minds like chains. In the lamplight sweat ran down their faces, the air as humid and thick as the closing walls. They halted again at the clatter of rolling rock and showering sand.
“I tell you, something’s following us.”
Grosvenor shook his head, wheezing, the air almost too solid to breathe.
Neither voiced their mutual fear, which was the dread vision of rounding a turn only to find the way blocked, forcing them to follow their own steps backwards only to find it collapsed, trapping them. Not soon enough their path struck an upwards tack. The walls sped by, coarse and freshly dug, uninterrupted by cross-passage or byway, and then suddenly they scrabbled up a near vertical length and over the rim like clumsy swimmers pulling themselves over the gunwales of a boat. In the cold night air, the sweat turned to ice on their faces, and both realized they had been running.
Still huffing, they picked up the trail again. It wasn’t hard to find. The creature’s weight and claws had carved deep rents and fissures into the soil, and following its path through the trees and across the roads was like following in the path of a narrow tornado, the earth disrupted and altered by its transit.
Rose seemed content not to speak or ask questions. With the pressure of tons above them removed, conversation was now the last thing Grosvenor desired. With a deep breath he reminded himself that soon he’d be rid of the beast forever. It was a leftover, a remnant of Sed Garrick, and with Garrick gone, the last of his tools would soon follow.
The generation that came next—they would be Grosvenor’s tools.
By the use of side lanes and meanders, the trackers bypassed Saltonstall and kept to the loneliest roads and woodlands, passing darkened farmhouses and fields through November air as sharp as shears. They kept the lantern wicks dialed low.
The miles passed quickly as they followed the path of ruin over the landscape.
In lockstep beside Grosvenor, Rose walked with jaw clenched, the muscles of his back and shoulders tauter than a hangman’s knot. If one’s initial encounter with a bear involves nearly being savaged by it, then he may be excused for feeling some anxiety as he sets out in search of its cubs. Part of Grosvenor wished the thing had finished Rose in the basement; and another part daydreamed of it rising up with a roar to send Rose scampering into the night. If the bounty man had just taken Lyman and gone, that would’ve been the end of it. Now, their arrangement was more—complicated.
And yet as they walked, something crept to the forefront of Grosvenor’s attention, like shadows in the corner of the eye that are dismissed as nothing, yet gradually grow into awareness. It was the conviction they were not alone. More than twice Grosvenor happened to glance into the trees behind him to see a brief dot of light as of a hastily covered lantern or shapes in the night that suggested skulking figures. When he blinked to look again, he saw only darkness broken by trunks and undergrowth. His mind attributed these distractions to tiredness and the gravity of his errand, to the fear of being discovered.
Except Rose saw it too.
“Hold on,” he said. Rose handed Grosvenor his lantern and vanished among the wildness. A moment later there was a shout and Grosvenor thought he heard a woman’s voice. Then silence.
Finally, Rose reappeared, his pistol pointed at the backs of two figures who marched before him. Minerva and Tom Lyman.
Grosvenor’s shock was apparent. “How now,” he said to them, “my sweet child, what are you doing so far from your bed at this hour? And Mr. Lyman, what villainy is this?”
Drawn and white, Minerva ignored his question. “Father, better to ask your conscience what brings you here.”
Grosvenor addressed Lyman. “You are a devil of a man. What thoughts have you placed into her head to bring her to some lonely hilltop so early in the morning? You, sir, are no better than a kidnapper.”
But Lyman, resolute, shook his head. “I believe we’ll return to our blankets the quicker without obfuscations or diversions. We know your errand.”
During this intercourse, Rose had fished a length of rope from his pocket—the same used on Lyman earlier. “Well,” Rose said, “if we all agree what we’re doing here, let’s get on and be done with it,” and he wound and tied an end around Minerva’s wrists and the other around Lyman’s, leaving them bound and connected by a length of several feet.
“Mr. Rose,” said Grosvenor, “unhand my daughter. She is not one of your criminals to be tethered to a chain gang.”
“To be sure I will, as soon as I get what I came for.”
Grosvenor’s face reddened. “You dare take my own blood as hostage? You’re suddenly too brash.”
“Is that a fact?”
The two men stared at each other—but there is little contest when only one among them holds a pistol. Instead Grosvenor turned toward his daughter, the demand for an explanation insistent. Minerva stood straight and silent, facing forward.
“How do you come to be here?” Grosvenor asked her. “It was you following us through the tunnels. How did you know?”
“How indeed,” she said. But the answer to the first question was simply this: she and Lyman were much practiced walkers.
“More moving the feet,” said Rose, “and less moving your gums.” He shoved Lyman forward.
The group resumed in funereal silence. The trail soon led to a road, which they
