did the beast take him on full? Did he change back into a man but have no conscious thought and sleepwalk his way through half a night? When, exactly, did he find the time to fold his clothing?
He didn’t know, and there was no one to tell him. Staring in the mirror had brought him few clues.
The first change, four years ago, still held strongest in his mind’s eye. He remembered the fear, remembered the painfully satisfying stretch of his body and bones reshaping into lupine form. Remembered looking over at his brother, who, even in wolf form, still carried his own scent and copper brown eyes.
He remembered most watching as Bloodpaw, the wolf he had been tracking, stood up and revealed himself as not a wolf, not even a man, but a god native to this land. The god had shaken his head and spoken in the tongue that the people of this land still spoke—a language Cedar did not know, yet for that one night, he had understood.
“Your people come like rabbits running from wolves. They spread far and wide,” the god said. “Dark magic follows in their path. Poisons the rivers and the earth. Then come engines breaking the mountains down, punching holes from this world into the other.
“Strange things cross through these holes. Strange things hunt and eat and thrive in this world.
“But you are not a rabbit. You are a wolf. You will turn and hunt. You will drive the darkness back through the holes and send the Strange from this land.”
The next thing Cedar remembered was waking far from that place, gripped by fever and nausea, the taste of blood and meat in his mouth. Wil was gone.
A bloody trail led Cedar to the carcass of a wolf, whose throat had been torn out.
He had killed his own brother.
The fever lasted a full week. When he finally came to, he was miles away to the west, just outside a small town. He begged clothing and supplies from a Mormon family, who took him in and nursed him to health. Since he was more recently out of the universities and handy with matics, he repaired their boiler to repay the debt. Then he kept walking west, putting his past behind him.
The jingle of a bridle and the sound of hooves brought Cedar back to himself, and his current state of nakedness. He dressed quickly, trousers and shirt dark enough that the dried blood on his hands would not visibly stain them. He dipped a second handkerchief in the bucket, wiped his face, jaw, and neck, and washed his hands. Then he rolled the handkerchief and tied it around his head against the cut.
He didn’t know who was riding past, but the only people who came this far into the forest were looking to either end trouble or start it.
He pushed his feet into socks and boots, lifted his hat from the hook. He left his goggles on the hook, and settled his hat over the kerchief on his head. Near the mantel he hesitated, and finally decided to tuck the watch into his pocket. He didn’t want it out of his sight.
Then he took up his holster and gun, not a tinkered pistol, but a crystal-sighted Walker, gauged to the goggles he usually wore, and modified by his own hand for a faster reload. He strapped on the gun and holster and unbolted the door.
The door had gotten the worst of the night, claw marks gouged knuckle deep all the way up to eye level. Something else he’d need to repair.
Cedar stepped outside into the cool morning air that hung heavy with the honey spice of pines and pollen.
A gray saddle mule made its way through the buzz and brush of late summer. On top of the mule rode a yellow-haired, light-skinned woman. Pretty. No, more than that, stunning.
His heart skipped a beat at the sight of her and he felt as if a string had been plucked deep inside his chest, shaking off the ice that had numbed him for so long. Though it had been years since his marriage, and this woman did not resemble his wife, Catherine, an unexpected longing filled him.
She was beautiful. And he found he could not bring himself to look away from her.
Her eyes were deep brown, her face fine-boned and sweet. She wore a simple straw hat, with a sage-colored ribbon wrapped round it to match her paisley dress, as if for all the world she was out to enjoy a morning ride.
But as she drew nearer, there was no mistaking the anger that set her lips in a hard line. No mistaking the flush to her cheeks that looked more from crying than the meager heat of morning.
He didn’t recognize her, which surprised him. He thought he knew all the people in town.
“Mr. Cedar Hunt?” she called out from a short distance.
He blinked hard to end the staring he’d been doing, then walked a bit away from the door into sunlight.
“Yes, ma’am.” He tipped his hat and wished he hadn’t. The band scraped the kerchief and got the cut bleeding again. “And who do I have the pleasure to be addressing?”
She pulled back on the reins and stopped the mule. Not too close, which said a lot. She was a cautious woman. She did not dismount to his level. He would bet she had a gun hidden in her sleeve.
Beautiful and smart.
“My name is Mrs. Jeb Lindson.” She tipped her chin up, as if admitting such a thing usually brought on a fight.
Jeb Lindson. The Negro who kept to himself out a ways on the southeast side of town. Mr. Lindson was a farmer and sometimes hired himself out to work other plots of land. Cedar recalled he was a strong man, and didn’t complain about hard labor, nor people’s manners toward him, so long as it brought him a coin or a quart of fresh milk.
Cedar had done his share of roaming the area, and he’d seen the Lindsons’ stead, a neat place with sheep and chicken and a team of mules. Ordinary, except for the plot of ground near the house carefully marked off with a white picket fence and a row of river stones around it. Green always seemed to be growing inside that fence, no matter the season. Green and blooms. He’d suspected it was tended by a woman’s hand. He’d just never seen the woman before.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Jeb Lindson,” he said.
His reaction seemed to catch her off guard, and her stubborn mask cracked to reveal the grieving woman beneath.
It didn’t take a scholar to see her pain.
“And yours,” she whispered.
“What brings you out my way?”
“I am looking to hire your services.”
“Trouble with your stock?” Wolves weren’t the only thing he’d hunt, and hunting wasn’t the only answer he had for vermin. Certain plants took care of grazers, certain fences repelled smaller varmints, and certain matics took care of both.
“Trouble with my husband’s death,” she said.
Cedar frowned. “Don’t think I understand you rightly.”
“My husband, Mr. Hunt, has been killed. Last night. Somewhere here in this valley. I want you to find his body and his killer.”
“If you don’t know where his body is, how is it you know he’s dead?”
“I am his wife. A wife knows these things. A wife has . . . ways.” She twisted the reins in her hands. Even though she had repaired her mask, her hands betrayed her grief.
“You don’t think an animal killed him, do you, Mrs. Lindson?”
“No.” She opened her mouth to say something more, then looked away from his gaze. “No,” she said again.
Cedar took in a deep breath, and let it out quietly. This was something he could not do. The town didn’t trust him, and if he killed a man among them, they’d just as soon hang him as listen to his reasons for it.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Lindson,” he said softly. “But if it’s justice you’re looking for, you’ll need to talk to Sheriff Wilke. I have little sway with the law in these parts.”
“I am not looking for justice,” she said, her hands gone cold as her face now. “I am looking for revenge.”
He’d thought as much. Folk got it in their heads that once a man made his living by the gun, any target was as good as another.
“I don’t hunt men, Mrs. Lindson.”
“I don’t consider my husband’s killer a man, Mr. Hunt. I consider him a monster.”
