Supper was roasted venison, Indian bread, and coffee, a couple of fingers of moonshine in the dregs for dessert. Conversation and fiddle-accompaniment ebbed and for a while everyone fell into reverie, heads cocked toward the whispering wind as it brushed the treetops. Night birds warbled and small creatures rustled in the leaves.
“They’s stories ’bout these parts,” Bane said with an abruptness that caught Miller off guard. Bane and Ruark had laid out an array of knives, tomahawks, and sundry accessories for oiling and sharpening. Ruark hefted an Arkansas Toothpick, turning it this way and that so it gleamed in the firelight. Bane painstakingly stroked a whetstone across the edge of his felling axe. A lump of chaw bulged his cheek. “Legends, guess ya might say.” It was no secret how much ‘Grandpa Moses’ loved to spin a yarn. His companions immediately paid heed, leaning closer toward where he sat, white hair and beard wild and snarled, little orange sparks shooting as he rasped his axe.
Horn became agitated. “Aww, dontcha go on, old man. No call for that kinda talk while we’re hunkered here in the woods at night. No sir, no sir.”
Stevens guffawed. “What’s a matter, kid? Your mama put the fright in you back in Kentucky?”
“Hush yer mouth ’bout my mama.”
“Easy, kid. Don’t get your bristles up.”
Miller didn’t speak, yet misgiving nagged him. He’d dwelt among the Christian devout as well as the adherents of mystical traditions. There were those who believed to speak of a thing was to summon it into the world, to lend it form and substance, to imbue it with power. He wasn’t sure how to feel about such theories. However, something within him, perhaps the resident animal, empathized with the kid’s fear. Mountain darkness was a physical weight pressing down and it seemed to listen.
Bane paused to gaze into the darkness that encroached upon the circle of the cheery blaze. Then he looked Stevens dead in the eye. “I knew this Injun name o’ Ravenfoot back to Seattle who come from over Storm King Mountain way. Klallam Injun. His people have hunted this neck o’ the woods afore round eyes ever hollowed canoes. He told me an’ I believe the red man knows his stuff.”
“Who’d believe an Injun about anything?” Stevens said. “Superstitious bastards.”
“Yeah. An’ what tickled yer fancy to speak up now?” Horn said, his tone still sour and fearful. Ma squatted near him, head lowered, digging into the dirt with a knife. Miller could tell the brute was all ears, though.
“That map of your’n,” Bane said to Stevens.
“What the hell are you chinnin’’ about? The map? Now that don’t make any kind of sense.” Stevens took the map from his pocket, unrolled it and squinted.
“Where’d you get that?” Miller said, noting the paper’s ragged border. “Tear it from a book?”
“I dunno. McGrath gave it to me. Prolly he got it from the Supe.”
Now Bane’s eyes widened. “My grand pappy was a right reverend and a perfessor. Had lots o’ books lyin’ ’round the house when I was a sprat.”
“You can read, Moses?” Calhoun spoke from where he reclined with the wide brim of his hat pulled low. The men chuckled, albeit nervously.
“Oh, surely,” Bane said. “I kin read, an’ also write real pretty when I take a notion.”
“Recites some nice poetry, too,” Ruark said without glancing up from whetting his knife. “I’m partial to the Shakespeare.” These were the first and only words he’d uttered all day.
“But Grand pappy was a dyed in the wool educated feller. He took the Gospel Word to them heathens in Eastern Europe an’ the jungles of Africa, an’ some them islands way, way down in the Pacific. Brought back tales turn yer hair white.”
“Aha, that’s what happened to your hair!” Stevens said. “Here I thought you was just old.”
Bane laughed, then spat. “Yeh, so I am, laddio. This is a haunted place. Explorers wandered ’round Mystery Mountain in the 1840s. Richies in the city, newspapermen mostly, financed ’em. Found mighty peculiar things, they say. Burial mounds ’an cliffside caves with bodies in ’em like the Chinee do. A few o’ them explorers fell on hard luck an’ got kilt, or lost. Some tried to pioneer and disappeared, but onea ’em, a Russian, came back an’ wrote hisself a book. An pieces o’ that book wound up in another one, a kind o’ field guide. Looks like a Farmer’s Almanac, ’cept black with a broken circle on the cover. I seen that page afore. Ain’t too many copies o’ that guide not what got burned. My mama was a child o’ God and hated it on account o’ its pagan blasphemy, documentin’ heathen rites an’ sich. Grand pappy showed me in secret. He weren’t a particularly devout feller after he finished spreadin’ the Lord’s Word. Had a crisis o’ faith, he said.”
“Well, what did the Russkie find?” Calhoun said.
“Don’t recall, ’xactly.” Bane leaned the axe against his knee and sighed. “Ruins, mebbe. Mebbe he lied, ’cause ain’t nobody backed his claims. He was a snake oil salesman, I reckon. They run him outta the country.”
“I think,” Miller said, “that’s an amazing coincidence, your ending up on this hunt. Could be you’re pulling our legs.”
“Mebbe. But I ain’t. God’s truth.”
“ Arri, arri.” Ma scowled and stabbed at the ground. His voice was thick as cold mush.
“Sounds like Ma thinks that redskin mumbo-jumbo rubbed off on you,” Stevens said. “Why’n blue blazes did you volunteer to come along if this place is lousy with bad medicine?”
“Hell, son. McGrath done volunteered me.”
“Have at it, then.” Calhoun raised his hat with one finger. “What’s so spooky about Mystery Mountain?”
“Besides the burial mounds and the cave crypts, and them disappeared explorers,” Stevens said with a smirk.
“Oh, they’s a passel o’ ghosts an’ evil spirits, an’ sich,” Bane said, again glancing into the night. “Demons live in holes in the ground. Live in the rocks and sleep inside big trees in the deep forest where the sun don’t never shine. Ravenfoot says the spirits sneak up in the dark an’ drag poor sleepin’ sods to Hell.”
“Hear that, Thad?” Stevens nodded at Horn. “Best sleep with one eye open.”
“I hearda one,” Ruark said, and his companions became so quiet the loudest noise was the pop and sizzle of burning sap. He spat on his whetstone and continued sharpening the knife. “Y’all remember the child’s tale Rumpelstiltskin? The king ordered the miller’s daughter to spin straw to gold or die, an’ a little man, a dwarf, came to her an’ said he’d do the job if’n she promised him her firstborn child? Done deal an’ she didn’t get her head chopped off.”
“They got themselves hitched and made a bunch of papooses,” Stevens said. “Everybody heard that story.”
“How’n hell that dwarf spin straw to gold?” Horn said. He took a swig of hooch and belched.
“Magic, you jackass,” Calhoun said.
“Lil’ fucker was the spawn o’ Satan, that’s how,” Bane said.
“The king made her his queen an’ everthin’ was hunkum-bunkum for a while,” Ruark said. “Then, o’ course, along comes baby an’ who shows up to collect his due? She convinces him to give her until the dark o’ the moon to guess his name an’ call off the deal. So bein’ a cantankerous cuss, the feller agrees. He knows his name is so odd she hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell o’ sussing it out.” He paused and finally looked up from his work and slowly met the wondering gaze of each man riveted to his words. “But that ol’ girl did cotton to the jig. She sent messengers to the four corners o’ the land, their only mission to gather a list o’ names. One o’ them men reported a queer sight he’d spied in a deep, dark mountain valley. The scout saw a mighty fire below and who danced ’round that blaze but a pack o’ demons led by the little gold-spinner hisself. The dwarf cackled an’ capered, boasting that his name was Rumpelstiltskin. He was mad as a wet hen when the queen turned the tables later on. He stomped a hole in the palace floor an’ fell into the earth. That was the end o’ him.”