Her anger was fueled by sorrow, by a broken heart. He understood it. Understood what it was like to lose a loved one, a spouse. He knew what it was like to lose a child, and a brother too. He’d been at death’s elbow all his life and felt death’s chill sickle slice through his heart more than once.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I don’t hunt men.”
She folded her hands calmly across the horn of the saddle. Stared at him with a widow’s eyes. “I have money to pay you, Mr. Hunt.”
“Money you shall keep, Mrs. Lindson. I have another job, a more urgent task, to fulfill this day.”
“Well, then. If money won’t change your mind, consider this: I see the curse upon you and I know how best to break it.”
Cedar’s heart kicked at his ribs. Was she telling the truth? Could she be a messenger, an angel from the god who had torn his life apart and cursed him with a beast’s skin? Could she know some way to end his nights chained to the moon? Or was she just a woman gone crazy with grief?
“Find my husband’s killer,” she said again, “and I will free you from what ails you. I will wait until sunset.”
“You’ll wait for what?”
“For you to change your mind, Mr. Hunt.” She clicked her tongue and turned the mule, urging it into a trot, then a ground-eating lope.
Cedar stared after her, his heart pounding so hard, he couldn’t hear the mule’s hoof beats over the noise of it.
The ear-cracking pop of a rail matic expelling steam ricocheted through the hills. Then the low hum of the matic chugging, and another pop, finally shook Cedar clear of his racing thoughts.
Sunset. Just one day to decide if ending his curse was worth finding a man’s killer, and abandoning his hunt for the Gregors’ boy.
It seemed far too many decisions for such an early hour. Though he was sorely tempted to ride after the widow, he couldn’t abandon the boy lost in the wilds, who might still have a chance at living if Cedar was quick enough to the hunt. Cedar decided his own curse, and what the widow Lindson knew of it, would wait a while longer.
He took a deep breath and nodded to himself. First, he’d go looking for the Gregors’ boy. If he could find him fast enough, there might still be a chance he could talk to the widow, see what she knew about his curse. The boy, if he was still alive, didn’t have much time left.
Cedar strode into the cabin and shut and locked the door. He lifted the lid on the trunk against the wall. His hunting gear was there, wrapped in a wool blanket. Everything a man could cobble together to aid in tracking, catching, and killing lay within those folds. Waiting.
Cedar removed the first wrapped parcel and placed it on his bunk, deciding his course of action.
Time was running out to save the boy. But the dead man would stay dead no matter how long the widow Lindson grieved.
Jeb Lindson did not like the dirt or rocks or worms. It was cold. It was too cold.
But there was a need pulling him. Like a sweet song calling. Something he should rise for, something he should fight for, on the other side of this dirt and cold that weighed his bones down. Something he loved more than life and wanted more than death.
His brain, not being all it used to be, took time to worry an answer free. By and by it came to him.
Mae. His beautiful Mae. She was the answer. She was waiting for him. Calling.
He had vowed to be hers until death did them part. And he was not dead.
It took time, maybe minutes, maybe hours, until his right hand found the silver box over his heart.
The iron key was there. Colder than the grave, silenced by the dirt.
It took time, maybe minutes, maybe hours, before he knew what to do. Finally, thick fingers dug away the dirt around his heart. And his thoughts singled to one slow chant:
He grasped the key between his fingers and thumb.
Cold. So cold.
But cold could not stop him. Death could not stop him. Nothing could stop him. Not even Mr. Shard LeFel.
He turned the key. Once. Twice. Thrice.
His heart rushed with something warmer than blood, liquid fire pulsing fast and hot as the clockwork dragonfly’s wings rattled to life.
It fueled him. It strengthened him. Jeb Lindson pushed at the dirt and rocks above him, digging his way free from the stones, digging his way into the world of daylight, into Mae’s world.
Because he had a new thought now. A thought that filled him with a different kind of fire. He was going to kill Mr. Shard LeFel.
Beneath the shadow of a tree, a small matic clicked and whirred. Sensing the tremble of stones and dirt falling from the dead man’s grave, it rose up upon spider legs, balancing its portly copper teapot body. The gyroscope and compass set within its belly pointed the ticker east. It skittered off on quick, spindly feet. East. To the rail. To the man who had left it spying here. To Mr. Shard LeFel.
CHAPTER FOUR
Cedar gave the cinch on his horse, Flint, one last tug, then swung up into the saddle. It hadn’t taken long to gear up. Guns and goggles in the saddlebags, canteen of water, and fry bread wrapped and warm. He’d hunt for the boy in the day, then find his way home before the beast took him.
He had two more nights of the change. Fight as he might, he’d never been able to push off the change for the three nights when the moon came full. For three nights a month, a beast he’d be. Empty of a man’s thoughts, with nothing but a killer’s hunger. And he was not going to spend this night or the next as a blood-hungry beast out in the forest. It would be too easy to kill the very child he was looking for.
Day was his charm right now. He’d need to talk to Elbert’s father and ride by their house to catch a scent or sign of what stole the boy.
Cedar turned his horse’s nose to the wind, and started off to town. It was still early enough that dew clung to the underbrush of the forest and birds sang and rattled in the high branches of the ponderosa pines. He could taste the green and sage of needles crushing beneath Flint’s hooves, could hear the distant cluck of the creek over stones. Days after the change always made the world seem clearer somehow, like he’d been stretched out so far, he needed to take in the whole world to fill up his senses and the space inside him.
Days after the change, he still carried some of the beast close beneath his skin, keen sight, keen smell, keen hearing. Enough that hunting the boy would be easier for him than any other man. He didn’t like it, but admitted it was the other gift the curse gave him. And he’d used it to his advantage more than once.
Slants of sunlight through the pine and Douglas fir promised an afternoon warm enough to melt the morning’s dew. Far off, the clatter and chug of matics working the rail sent out a stuttering pulse. They were crawling closer every day, trees falling, rocks crushing, iron and spikes driving, as the rail pounded down.
He’d heard folk in town say the dandy was going to run the rail from Council Bluffs straight through town, and then clean over the seam between the mountains, breaking them in two. The track would snake onward, catching the mighty Columbia River, and opening the town to traffic from both the east and the Pacific Ocean.
If it was true, the rail would be a life vein to such a little town. But Cedar reckoned there were easier ways across this territory. A man didn’t build and blast his way over a mountain unless he had a powerful need to.
And it made him wonder why, of all the little towns in Oregon, Mr. Shard LeFel was aiming to bust his way right down the middle of Hallelujah.
Cedar rode out from under the cover of the forest and made his way down into town. In contrast to the general commotion of yesterday, things seemed settled, folk going about their business of readying for the coming
