Core-deep inside him, the beast shifted, letting him know it was still hungry. If there was no Strange blood to spill, it seemed just as happy with the blood of a man.
He straightened his shoulders against the chill of dread that slipped down his spine.
The beast was growing stronger. Hungrier.
“So he was just desperate?”
“Could be,” Cedar said. “Saw an opportunity to plunder his way westward. Plenty of folk do it.”
“Land pirates?” Rose sounded excited about the prospect.
She’d seen violence. Killed without a flinch men and Strange creatures that crawled up out of nightmares. But even death and much darker happenstances hadn’t been able to shake Rose Small’s sense of wonder in the world.
Cedar hadn’t yet seen a thing that could dim her spirit.
“Just a rustler, more like.” He paused. Turned to her. “We should search him.”
Rose hesitated. Cedar gave her time to look him straight in the eyes. She held his wild gaze and measured his sanity.
Looking at him like that, when the beast was so near the surface of his reasoning, was something most people couldn’t do.
But then, Rose had a bit of the wild in her too. Wasn’t a metal she couldn’t shape or a device she couldn’t jigger with her fast-thinking mind and clever fingers.
“Not that I don’t trust you, Mr. Hunt,” she said. “It’s just…” Her mouth tugged a crooked frown. “You tore him apart. With your hands.”
“Rose,” he said softly, resisting the urge to put his hands behind his back, where she wouldn’t see the blood. As if that could hide his sins from her. “Whatever happened, it’s done.”
She bit her bottom lip and those springtime eyes searched him like she was peering through the shutter of his soul. “I’ll keep the gun where it is, just the same.”
Cedar walked back to the body. He glanced at the surrounding forest. Didn’t see anything out of place. Well, except for the dead man. Not many bugs had found him yet, so it’d been just a few minutes at most since he’d killed him.
Snapped his neck, to be precise.
Cedar knelt and turned the man so he could study his face. A heavy black beard spread chin to temple. All his unwhiskered skin seemed to be covered in grime. His eyes were rolled back in his head and blood dripped a line out the corner of his mouth. Cedar picked up each of his hands. All the fingers were still attached, calluses and scars where you’d expect them to be on a man who rode the range.
He’d carried two guns, one thrown off in the brush about ten feet east, the other still in the holster. The weapons weren’t nothing fancy, but they were well tended. He’d been good with his guns.
Not good enough to draw more than one before Cedar had killed him.
With his bare hands.
Cedar searched pockets, coat, and shirt. Handkerchief, tobacco pouch, rolling paper, and a knife. Not a lot else. Not a single coin on him, not a scrap of a letter, not a photo of a loved one.
“You done pawing that fellow to death?” The voice was so near him, Cedar started.
Alun Madder, the oldest of the brothers, crouched down on his heels near Cedar. Cedar was not a small man, but Alun took him on width.
Built like bull buffalos, the Madder brothers were all heavily bearded, wide-jawed, and accustomed to a life of mining, drinking, and brawling. When they weren’t fighting, they had an uncanny knack with metal, matics, and odd devices.
Cedar owed them a favor for helping him find his brother, who he had thought was long dead. They’d been true to their part of the bargain, and so he was holding true to his.
Riding east to return Mae to her witch sisterhood before her ties to them and the magic of the coven sent her clean insane. Riding east so maybe those same witches could break the Pawnee curse Cedar and his brother carried. Rose, he supposed, was just looking to see the world wide, though he knew she cared for Mae and wanted to see her set to rights.
And on the way he would uphold his promise to hunt for the Holder, a device made of seven ancient metals cobbled together into a weapon of great power.
The Madders said even uncobbled, the Holder could cause ruin, rot, destruction.
If that was true, then the brothers’ priority of gathering it up—wherever it was the pieces had landed—and getting it out of the hands of the innocent was a worthwhile cause.
“You’re of a quiet mood, all of a sudden,” Alun Madder said. “This man someone you know?”
Cedar pulled a cloth out of his back pocket and wiped his bloody palms and arms until they were mostly clean. He shook his head. “You?”
The miner had a blue kerchief tied tight over his head, but wore no hat. His gaze was on the dead man. “No soul I’ve ever known. Looks to be a drifter. Found his horse back a ways in the forest.”
“Bring it. We can use a fresh mount.”
“Already done, Mr. Hunt. I’m not the sort to leave a useful thing”—he gave Cedar a pointed look—“or creature behind. No matter how it falls into my hands.” He pushed on his knees to stand and peered down over his thick dark beard.
“As Miss Small was saying, we’d like you locked in the wagon now. Night’s coming. We’d rather you weren’t out roaming. And besides”—he walked off toward camp—“the witch says she has an idea for easing that curse of yours.”
A pang of hope snarled Cedar’s gut. “She said she couldn’t break the curse unless she had the sisterhood, and days to do it.”
“Said otherwise just before you wandered off,” Rose said.
“So she’s talking?” Cedar stood.
“Oh, she’s been talking nonstop since we set camp. Just don’t know who she’s been talking to.”
Cedar followed Alun through the trees to the clearing. There was a little more light here beyond the reach of branch and shadow. The grass was tall and silk-yellow around the stones, bent to the wind, and hushing away at every stray breeze. They’d had the luck of clear weather, but any day now the skies would change.
Storms were coming down from the north Cascade Mountains and Bitterroot Range. Strong enough to bury them in snow. Strong enough to swell little creeks into hungry rivers and trails into muddy bogs. They’d a plan to skirt the bottom of the mountain range and reach Fort Boise, Idaho, by the next week. Now he was just hoping they’d make it far enough into the Idaho Territory by nightfall to reach Vicinity. If the rains hit hard, they’d be locked flat in their tracks for the whole of winter.
Alun strolled over to the hulking wagon he and his brothers drove. The drafts that pulled for them were off a ways grazing. So too the other horses, with a new little roan among them. The dead man’s mount. Theirs now.
“Keep going, Mr. Hunt,” Rose said from behind, the gun still at her hip. He’d like to tell her she was being overly cautious, but that wasn’t true.
More than once he’d pulled up out of a dream of hunt and kill and blood, only to find himself sitting in his saddle, his horse spooking and the other folk in the group asking him what he was stopped and listening for.
He’d told them nothing. But that wasn’t true. The beast inside him wanted out. It was making sure it could be heard.
He knew what the Pawnee had planted in his soul and knew how to keep it caged.
Until today.
Mae paced near the fire they’d set between the Madders’ wagon and the women’s tent. She had a handful of plucked grasses and was braiding them together as she walked and muttered.
Less sane every day that went by. The coven of witches she’d once belonged to was calling her home, and taking away bits of her mind the longer it took her to get to them. He didn’t understand witches. Didn’t understand why her vows to the coven meant now that her husband was dead, they could drag her to madness unless she returned to them.
But he knew cruelty when he saw it.
“Look who I found just out in the trees, Mrs. Lindson,” Rose called out.
Mae turned and studied him across the fire. She seemed to be made of sunset there against the sky. The red firelight burnished her pale skin and yellow hair, catching sparks in her inscrutable eyes, and drawing dusty shadows across her soft lips.