As I watched, a man emerged from the forest dragging two dead beavers. He wore ragged clothes stitched together from various hides, and his beard and hair were both long and unkempt. “John-Thomas!” he bellowed in a rough, bone-scraping voice. “Where the hell are you?” He seemed unconcerned when no one answered.
The man tossed the beavers near the hanging venison. He looked inside the shelter, then went to the fire. He stripped to the waist, revealing a tough mountain-trapper physique honed from a lifetime outdoors.
I knew the type, if not this particular guy. These dirt-crusted anachronisms roamed in all the unsettled places, living as kings among the other hairy beasts on which they fed. They were often romanticized by those disgusted with civilization, but one look at his grisly hanging larder convinced me this was no noble neo-savage. This guy enjoyed killing things whether he needed them or not.
The wind shifted, and the abysmal odor from the rotting meat hit me like a slap from an angry teacher. Combined with the dregs of nausea from my Poy Sippi head smack, it almost sent me over into a full-on fit of vomiting. It took real effort to get control, then mouth-breathe enough to continue observing.
“John-Thomas!” the big man yelled again. “It’s gettin’ dark! Don’t make me come find you!”
I considered my options. I didn’t want to spend all night hiding in the bushes, but at the same time I didn’t trust this guy at all. As I watched, he cut a piece of rancid deer meat, poked a stick through it and stuck it into the fire. After a moment he pulled it out, shook it to extinguish the flames and popped the charred venison into his mouth. Something about the way he did this, strutting with his hard round belly preceding him, did not indicate a man who’d welcome a stranger. And his companion, this John-Thomas, was an entirely unknown quantity.
I could stay or go. I’d learn nothing if I left.
So I stood up, walked into the light and said, “Hi.”
The big bearded man stopped and stared at me. I kept the fire between us. This close, the smell from the rotting deer was like a week-old battlefield.
“How’s it going?” I added.
Again he said nothing.
“Name’s Eddie. Just passing through, saw the fire. Hope you don’t mind.”
He said something I didn’t understand. I sighed in annoyance. “I heard you yelling before, so I know you speak my language.”
His expression didn’t change. Neither did the utter lack of sympathy or kindness in his tight little eyes. I kept my body language casual, although I was ready for anything. “Where you headed?” he rumbled at last.
“Poy Sippi. Thought I’d try finding my own way through the mountains. I don’t care much for the traffic you get on the main roads.”
He scratched something under his beard, and whatever tumbled out spread its tiny wings and flew away. I couldn’t tell if he was sizing me up for his confidence, or his cooking pot. “You best keep going,” he said finally. “Ain’t enough room for you here.”
“Not even a little time just resting by the fire?”
“It ain’t a cold night,” he said. His voice grew darker. “And we ain’t a damn hotel.”
Before this banter got any wittier, I heard a familiar whinny. I looked up to see my horse coming up the trail, led none too happily by a dark figure I couldn’t quite make out. This figure let out the same yell I’d heard earlier, and as the light reached him I felt a cold chill despite the fire.
He was younger than this other guy, and more slender. He had a cleft palate, and as he neared I heard the wet sound of his breath wheezing through the opening. One eye was considerably higher than the other, and his left hand sported fingers that were too small and too numerous. He wore nothing except crude moccasins.
“Hey, Paw-Paw,” he said, although the words were slurred and gummy. “Lookee what I found!”
“That’s good, John-Thomas,” the bearded Paw-Paw said. His voice had the patient quality of an easygoing parent. “We’ll butcher it up in just a bit.”
“Hey, wait, that’s my horse,” I said.
John-Thomas walked up to me, put his face way too close and stared. If possible, he smelled worse than the rotting deer. I knew what inbreeding could do in animals, but this was the first time I’d seen it manifest in a human being.
“Back up a little, would you?” I said as firmly as I dared, and reached to take the reins from him.
Before I could, he let out that same screech again. This close, borne on breath that could melt rock, I nearly threw up right in his malformed face. At the last moment he turned and sort of danced away toward Paw-Paw, still holding the reins.
“He’s good and plump, Paw-Paw,” John-Thomas said. “Just like we always like.”
“That’s true,” Paw-Paw said flatly.
Uh-oh. Did he mean the horse or me?
John-Thomas rushed over to me again. “Goodanplump, goodanplump, ” he repeated. A mixture of his spit and mucus splattered on my face, and I reached up to wipe it off.
“John-Thomas!” Paw-Paw said sternly. The younger man backed away, still staring at me and continuing to hold my horse’s reins.
“That’s my horse,” I repeated.
“Around here, things that get left belong to the people who pick ’em up,” Paw-Paw said.
“Yeah, well, where I’m from, we respect other people’s property.”
“I get his tongue, Paw-Paw!” John-Thomas cackled. “I get his tongue all for mine!”
“Okay, that’s it,” I said and snatched the reins from John-Thomas.
John-Thomas let out a squeal of absolute, primal petulance and ran off into the night. The horse moved next to me, nuzzling me gratefully with her big head. I did not take my eyes off Paw-Paw. “Not tryin’ to start trouble,” I said. “Just didn’t want him hurtin’ my horse.”
I was now thoroughly creeped out, and the last thing I wanted was to spend any more time with these two. The smell of danger was almost stronger than the odor of decay that clung to them. I’d return and search the cottage during the day, when hopefully they’d be out doing whatever they did. “Sorry to bother you fellas,” I said, and raised my foot to the stirrup. The horse whinnied, and only that high, sharp sound gave me the warning I needed.
John-Thomas came shrieking out of the darkness, eyes wide and a crude hatchet high above his head. He swung at me with all his strength and momentum, and I felt the wind from the blow as I barely stepped aside. He tumbled past me, rolled awkwardly and almost landed in the fire. But he caught himself, got to his feet and immediately attacked again.
I had time to get set, and blocked his hatchet arm with my own. I tried to grab his wrist, but his skin was too greasy and he easily twisted free. He viciously swung the hatchet at my chest, and again I barely stepped aside. He tripped over his own feet and fell, and this gave me time to draw my sword. When he turned and attacked again I was ready, and his own forward motion lopped off his hatchet hand at the wrist.
If I thought he’d screeched before, it was nothing compared to the sound he made now. He grabbed the stump of his wrist, dropped to the ground and practically convulsed with rage and pain. His thrashing kicked up a cloud of dust that glowed orange in the firelight. I looked around for Paw-Paw, but he had vanished into the darkness.
I had no desire to prolong this. I sheathed my sword, grabbed my horse’s reins again and swung into the saddle. Just as I was about to dig my heels into her ribs, a hand grabbed my jacket from behind and pulled me to the ground.