Kaki Warner (3 page)

***

“Where are you?”

Daniel jerked awake, disoriented and confused. “What?”

No one answered.

Lurching up onto one elbow, he looked groggily around the cabin, darker now with the approach of dusk. “Who’s there?”

Silence, except for a faint hiss from the last of the logs glowing in the hearth. No voice called out. No figure lurked in the corner. His mind was playing tricks again. He slumped back, his head aching, his mouth dry as dust. He hadn’t meant to sleep so long. Now he would probably be up most of the night again.

A dark shadow moved past the window beside the bed, startling him. A moment later, heavy thuds sounded on the porch. Merlin.
Damn that horse
. Serve him right if he fell through the planks and stayed there until he rotted.

With a sigh, Daniel pushed himself upright, vaguely surprised to see he was fully dressed and still wearing his boots.

The water in the pot hanging over the coals was cold, but it woke him up well enough when he poured it over his head at the kitchen sink. After toweling his face and hair dry, he refilled the pot and restarted the fire. Then he picked up his jacket where he’d dropped it on the floor, slipped on his snowshoes, and went to see what damage Merlin had done while he’d slept the afternoon away.

By the time he’d fed the animals, replaced the ropes Merlin had chewed through with a length of rusty chain, and retrieved stew makings from the cold box, the light was fading fast. He slid the bolt on the barn doors and looked around, wondering where Roscoe was, then caught sight of him by the woodshed. Just sitting there, looking into the woods.

Daniel whistled.

The dog looked back at him, barked once, then turned again to study the shadows at the edge of the small clearing that circled the cabin.

Odd, that. Usually if the hound caught a scent, he was running it down or barking to chase off whatever had caught his attention. But now he just sat there—showing no hackles, not barking, and not even lifting his nose to sniff the air.

Bemused, Daniel continued to the cabin, dumped his groceries on the table, then went back outside to stock up on wood for the night.

Roscoe hadn’t moved.

To the west, sunset had faded to a faint pale wash, while to the east, the soft glow of an early moon backlit the jagged peaks of the mountains. Not a single cloud shadowed the darkening sky. No snow tonight, but it promised to be a cold one. “What are you doing out here?” he asked the hound as he approached the woodshed.

The dog acknowledged him with a wag, rose, and trotted a few feet toward the woods, then sat again.

Daniel looked into the trees but saw nothing.

“You’ll freeze your balls off sitting in the snow like that.” Trying not to pull his stitches, he stacked firewood in the crook of his arm. “Not that you have much use for them, living out here like you do.”
Me, either
, he thought wryly. Maybe Doc was right. Maybe he should take another wife. One that could cook and sew and do all those household chores he wasn’t so good at. At least then he would have something better to do at night than build a damn dollhouse.

“You said you’d come.”

Startled, Daniel whirled, firewood falling from his arms. Over the pounding of his heart, he heard Roscoe whine. Snatching up a length of wood, he stepped from beneath the shed overhang and scanned the shadows. “Who’s there?”

Silence.

The voice had sounded young. He couldn’t tell if it was male or female. Probably a youngster from town. Maybe hiding in the brush, trying to scare the town recluse on a dare. Or maybe one who had strayed too far and now couldn’t find the way home.

Whoever it was hadn’t alarmed Roscoe. The hound continued to sit staring at the trees, head cocked as if he was listening, his tail thumping up little puffs of snow.

“You lost?” Daniel called.

No answer.

“If you are, come inside and warm up. You’re safe here.”

Nothing.

Had he imagined this, too? Growing uneasy, he called the dog.

The hound turned and looked at him but didn’t move.

“Come, Roscoe. Now!”

Reluctantly the dog came to his side. Daniel loaded up with firewood again, and making sure the dog followed, tromped back to the cabin.

That night, he didn’t work on the dollhouse. Instead, he dreamed of firm-bodied women with silky blonde hair and eyes the greenish-blue color of a high mountain lake. At dawn, he awoke sweating, the quilts twisted around his legs, with an empty ache in his chest.

He stayed busy throughout the day, shoveling paths to the barn and woodshed, cleaning the stalls, hauling water from the creek. By late afternoon, he was so stiff he moved like an old man, but at least the chores were done. After adding two limp carrots, an onion, and a couple of potatoes to his venison stew, he put it on to cook, then filled every other pot he owned and set them by the hearth. While the water heated, he pulled the dented metal tub from the back stoop, then stripped down and checked his stitches.

Two had torn loose. But they weren’t infected, and the rest were itching, so he figured it was time. He snipped through each horsehair knot without cutting himself more than a couple of times. With a whiskey-soaked kerchief and a lot of cussing, he cleaned the wound and sopped up what blood there was, then filled the tub and climbed in, a brick of soap in one hand, the whiskey bottle in the other.

The tub was woefully small. But with his knees bent and his feet outside the tub, he had enough room to slouch down with his butt against one end and his shoulders against the other, so that water covered him from chest to hip. He took a long swallow from the bottle, sucked air against his teeth to ease the burn, then started scrubbing.

“I ought to bathe you, too,” he told the hound dozing by the hearth. “Serve you right for not coming when I called.”

Roscoe lifted his head to stare mournfully at him, then sighed and let it drop back to the plank floor.

“You’re useless, that’s what you are. You and that sorry horse.”

Roscoe didn’t respond. Pleased to have the last word, Daniel tipped his head back against the rim and sighed as warmth spread through his aching body. Steam curled around him. Knotted muscles loosened. Closing his eyes, he let the whiskey dull his headache and send his mind into a peaceful drift.

“You promised.”

“Jesus!” Daniel lurched upright. Cool water sloshed out of the tub and onto the floor. He scanned the shadows but saw nothing move. “Who’s there?”

No response.

“I’m tired of this game. Show yourself.”

Silence.

Roscoe rose from the hearth and went to sniff at the crack beneath the door. Lifting a paw, he whined and scratched at the wood.

Daniel rose, toweled off, and stepped into his trousers. He didn’t waste time hunting up a shirt. The cabin was dark now except for the flickering light from the fire in the hearth. Padding barefoot across the cold floor, he grabbed his jacket off the hook, pulled it on, lifted his repeater from the pegs on the wall, and chambered a round. He yanked open the door.

Roscoe rushed out.

Cold air rushed in, prickling Daniel’s damp skin. Keeping his finger on the trigger and resting the barrel loosely in the crook of his left arm, he scanned the yard. An unbroken dusting of snow covered over old tracks. No new ones showed. Other than Roscoe racing toward the woodshed, no dark shadows moved across the white expanse.

“You there,” he called loudly. “Come out. Now!”

Silence except for the whining of the hound as he took off into the trees.

Shivering so hard his teeth chattered, Daniel stepped back into the house and slammed the door. His mind running in circles, he finished dressing by the hearth. This couldn’t all be just an overactive imagination. Someone was up to mischief. But why? And who?

Confused and starting to doubt his own mind, he pulled on his boots and jacket, picked up the rifle, and went back outside. He checked the barn, found it bolted, as he’d left it. Merlin rested quietly in his stall. The chickens had roosted for the night. Even in the dim light of the early crescent moon, he could see no new tracks circling the paddocks or cabin. Everything seemed as it should be.

Then who kept calling to him? And why?

He made another circuit, still saw nothing to cause alarm, finally gave up and went back into the house. It made no sense. None of it. Either someone was toying with him or he was losing his mind.

He didn’t like either option.

Hunched over his bowl at the table, he ate his stew without really tasting it while he played it all back in his head. Every word the intruder had spoken. Roscoe’s odd behavior. His own unshakable certainty that the voice he’d heard had been real. Maybe even familiar.

He wasn’t crazy. Not yet, anyway.

A thought burst into his mind—one that had hovered just out of reach all day—a thought so unreasoning and far-fetched he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it.

It took the breath out of him. Froze him where he sat, his fork hanging in midair. Because now he knew why he had felt that vague sense of familiarity. He had heard those words before. Heard them spoken in that same voice.

By the girl under the snow.

The one Doc said wasn’t there.

***

Daniel wasn’t afraid of much. During the war, he had stood firm against rifle fire and cannonade, and later had been tested in the dark tunnels blasted out by the railroads. With the loss of his family, he had withstood a depth of loss and pain that had almost driven him to his knees. But the idea of no longer being able to tell what was real from what was not was unimaginable. Intolerable. Horrifying. He had seen insanity in other men—in the eyes of those who had survived the horrors of Andersonville—on the slack-jawed faces that peered back through the barred windows of asylums for the deranged—and once in a shaggy-haired trapper who had lived alone in the wilderness for so long that just seeing Daniel ride up had sent him into babbling, scuttling flight.

The thought of that happening to him awakened a new kind of terror.

He wrestled with that fear through the night as he lay in his rope-strung bed, watching fire shadows dance across the overhead beams. He second-guessed each decision, analyzed mannerisms for evidence of craziness, and dissected his every action for signs that his mind had suddenly betrayed him.

Was Doc right? Was it all just his imagination? But how could that be?

By the time dawn turned the dark windowpanes to frosted gold, he had arrived at the only logical explanation he could find: It was Doc who was wrong, not him. The girl was real.

And he would prove it.

Rising from his tangled bed with new purpose, he set out to do just that, determined that if he heard her again, he would track her down and make her face him. He would find out why she was wandering around these woods, and what she wanted from him, and what was wrong with her parents that they’d let her run loose this way.

And then everything would be all right.

But he didn’t hear a word from her that day, or the next, or the next.

Even so, as he went about his routine throughout the rest of the week, he kept a close watch on the woods that ringed the cabin. He checked the woodshed often, and carefully watched Roscoe, who seemed to know when she was around.

But nothing out of the ordinary happened. No voices called out to him. No unfamiliar tracks broke the snow. No odd, disjointed dreams disturbed his sleep.

So he allowed himself to relax.

Even the urgency to finish the dollhouse diminished, although he continued to work on it for an hour or two each evening. He slept better at night and found himself whistling as he went about his chores. The aches and pains from the avalanche bothered him less every day. Even the headaches stopped.

Everything was fine.

He looked better, too, he decided one morning as he studied his reflection in a shard of mirror that had escaped his earlier destruction. The knot by his temple was less swollen and discolored. The cut in his side had healed well, and all his other bruises and scrapes had faded to a sickly green. Put an angel on his head and a garland around his neck, and he might have passed for a Christmas tree.

He felt good. And strong. And sane. He even trimmed his hair and started shaving every other day, just to prove to himself he wasn’t headed south like that wild-eyed trapper. He was all right.

And that was that.

Winter wrapped his little cabin in a frigid cocoon. Clear, sunny days and below-zero nights left a hard, icy crust on top of the snow, which made footing treacherous, even when he wore snowshoes. Each morning, the layer of ice on the creek behind the house was a little thicker, and he had to hack at it with the ax a little longer to break through it. He wasn’t sure what he would do if it froze solid. After so many hard freezes, there wasn’t much moisture left in the snow, and he needed at least seven gallons of water a day to meet his needs, as well as those of his animals.

The nights were brutal. Even with the fire blazing constantly, the cabin grew so cold the logs popped and sang as sap froze and new splits opened in the contracting wood.

But he heard no more voices and slept without dreams.

In mid-December, he finished the dollhouse. He still didn’t know why he’d taken on such a task, and now that it was completed, although he was pleased with his work, he wasn’t sure what to do with it. It looked forlorn sitting there gathering dust, almost as if it was waiting for a lighter heart and smaller hands to come open the hinged back and give it life. Bothered by the way the two upstairs windows seemed to watch him as he moved about the cabin, he tossed a blanket over the peaked roof and shoved the whole thing into a corner and out of the way.

A few mornings later, he awoke to eye-searing sunshine slanting through his bedside window, Roscoe scratching to get out, and the muffled
whump
s of snow sliding off the roof and hitting the ground around the cabin. Or maybe that was Merlin on the porch again.

He quickly dressed.

A warm chinook wind met him at the door, moaning through the eaves and sweeping snow off drooping limbs to send it swirling across the clearing in powdery flurries. The encircling woods awakened in the sunshine, the bowed heads of the firs bouncing erect as their white mantles slid off in glittering gusts.