Saviours of Oestend Oestend 2 (11 page)

The trip to the BarChi with the two boys was tense, although thanks to Frances, not for the reasons Simon had originally anticipated. He felt a bit odd about what had happened, but mostly, he just felt unbelievably relieved. Still, the other boys were young and nervous as squirrels, and Simon was happy to arrive at the ranch.

Jeremiah and Deacon were stunned to hear about the cattle. Nothing strange at all had happened to their own herds.
“It had to be the froth,” Jeremiah said.
Deacon shook his head. “Dante’s no fool. He would have known if they’d been sick.”
“There’s no other explanation!”
“If it had been the froth, they would have died over several days,” Simon said. “It wouldn’t kill them all at the same time like that.”
“What else is there?” Jeremiah asked. Simon knew he didn’t expect an answer. He was just trying to reason it through. “Some new disease? Some kind of bovine plague?”
“We sure didn’t see any sign of disease, sir, and none of us has come down sick, even after butchering, but I don’t have an explanation any more than you do.”
Jeremiah and Deacon both shook their heads, at a loss for words.
“So nothing strange is happening here?” Simon asked.
Neither of them answered right away, but Simon saw the way they glanced at each other.
“What?” he asked.
Jeremiah sighed. “Nothing odd here at all,” he said. “And that seems to be what’s odd.” The statement didn’t make any sense, and Simon looked to Deacon for explanation.
“We been hearing rumours,” Deacon said. “Between travelling to town and back, and the men visiting the taverns while they’re there, we been hearing all kinds of strange things.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Stories like yours,” Deacon said. “Strange weather. Lots of lightning and hail. Every morning, the folks in Milton find birds and cats and dogs dead in the street. Tama heard the cost of milk and butter in town is sky high ‘cause every cow in the Milton dairy quit producing. Eggs too. Ronin heard the tavernkeeper’s wife say every one her hens have laid is missing the yolk.” He shook his head. “We don’t have pigs here, but Fred McAllen says they’re all damn spooked—and horses, too.”
“That ain’t all,” Jeremiah said. “The Ralstons had so many strange things happen, they up and left their farm. We had a group of their hands show up here, looking for work. They said there’d been a swarm of locusts who took out their crops, and their house and barn were overrun with rats. Horses started catching a plague. They torched their whole place before they left. We hear it’s burned right to the ground.”
“Odd,” Simon said. He ticked the locations off on his fingers. “Milton, the McAllens, the Ralstons, and the Austin ranch. Yet the BarChi sits right between them all, and it’s doing fine?”
Jeremiah and Deacon looked at each other as if debating an answer, but it seemed neither of them had one. Deacon shrugged.
“I’ve got extra men right now, because of those Ralston hands,” he said. “I’ll send a couple north with you. Seems like Dante could use them more than me.”
“I think he’ll appreciate that.”
It wasn’t until after Jeremiah had dismissed him and he was walking with Deacon back to the barn that he remembered the map. “Bring it on up to the house,” Deacon told him. “We’ll make use of Aren’s whisky.”
Deacon seemed spectacularly unimpressed by the map, but Aren more than made up for it.
“It’s beautiful,” he said, as he spread it out on the floor. His movements were gentle and his tone somehow reverent.
“It’s just a map,” Deacon said.
Aren shook his head. “It’s art.”
“No. It don’t have the magic at all. Not like your art does.”
Simon barely knew Aren, but even he could see the way those words pleased him. He glanced sidelong at Deacon and smiled. “It’s a different kind of art.” Aren turned back to the map. He pointed to the strange A marks scattered across the Wild. “What are those?”
“Probably tribes of Ainuai.”
Aren traced the property lines with his fingertip. “The McAllens’, the BarChi, the Austins’.” He pointed to a mark southwest of the McAllen farm. “What’s this?”
“Ralston homestead,” Deacon said. “Daisy’s kin. Or used to be.”
“This shows the border of the BarChi being further west than it actually is.”
Deacon leaned over to look at the map, and Simon followed suit. Sure enough, the loop around the BarChi ran far to the west, encompassing the chunk of land directly south of the Austin ranch.
“Old Man Pane’s daddy thought to expand that way,” Deacon said. “He claimed that land years ago, when people were first moving west. Later on, Zed Austin’s father wanted to buy it, but Old Man Pane refused. Said his sons and their sons would need it eventually. Forced the Austins to go north first, up over the ridge. Made it a two-day trek from their home to here instead of one. Austins never really did forgive the Panes for that.”
“But what’s there?” Aren asked.
Deacon shook his head. “Nothing. Good land, but nobody ever wanted to homestead it. Brighton talked about it once, but Shay wouldn’t hear of it. Said she didn’t want to be all alone in the wild.”
Aren pulled a pencil from his pocket and used the tip to measure distances on the map. “Wouldn’t that have made her closer to her family? Looks like maybe only half a day’s ride to the Austin ranch, if they built on the northern edge.”
Deacon shook his head. “As the crow flies, sure, but that ain’t how it works.” He pointed to the dark row of triangles on the map that separated the western portion of the BarChi property form the Austin Ranch. “Can’t cross the ridge there. Down here by the BarChi, it’s low, but out there, it’s steep and sheer rock. They’d have had to come back through the BarChi, then go up and around.”
“So the land’s just sitting there?” Simon asked. The idea excited him.
Deacon shrugged. “Too far out for us to use it, even for grazing. Wouldn’t have time to ride out, round up cows and bring them home again before dark. Jeremiah might have sold it, but nobody’s wanted to homestead that far west in ages. Too hard to build out there with the wraiths, especially since the wards quit working.”
They moved on to other topics, although Aren’s fascination with the map never seemed to wane. Eventually, Simon wandered back over the barn for the night, but he couldn’t stop thinking about all that available land.
Would Jeremiah sell? That was the first question. Simon had been paid well by Deacon, and even better by Dante, and he’d had very little occasion to spend any of it. He had a goodsized chunk set aside. He hadn’t ever quite known what he was saving up for, but suddenly, he couldn’t get the idea of having his own ranch out of his mind.
The more important question was, was there any way to build on it? Back when the wards had still worked, it had been easy enough to send out a group of men, put up a shack in a few hours, and make it safe enough to last until something more solid could be built. But now, the wards weren’t enough. It would mean putting up not only a shack, but also a generator in the few hours before nightfall. And, of course, if the generator didn’t work right on the first try, there would be no second chances. That was why nobody had tried to go further west in years. But Simon refused to believe it was impossible.

Four nights after Simon returned from the BarChi with the new hands, Brighton Ranch was hit by a lightning storm unlike anything Dante had ever seen. He and Cami stood in the living room, watching out the window as it moved across the prairie towards them. It flared over and over, with barely a heartbeat of darkness between the flashes of light. The thunder was a dull, constant roar, echoing across the plain.

“Holy Saints,” Cami breathed. “Is this normal?”
“Not even close.”
They watched for a while, but it seemed they were both too spooked for casual

conversation. Eventually Cami went to her room, and Dante went to his, although he couldn’t sleep. He sat by his window, watching as the storm overtook his ranch. Lightningstruck trees burned on the edge of the pasture. The storm brought rain, too, and the fires sputtered and smoked in the downpour. The fury of the storm was right on top of them.

Suddenly, lightning flashed. Thunder boomed. The house quaked. The giant oak tree outside Dante’s window flared to life, and with a deafening crack, the trunk sheered in two.
A scream and a crash, this time from down the hall. The sounds chilled him and sent him running down the dark hallway, bright images of lightning bolts still shadowing his sight. The oak was right outside Cami’s window, and Dante anticipated finding the window broken, the room open to the night and the wraiths. He threw open her bedroom door. It took him a minute to take stock.
The window was intact, but next to it, the floor was ablaze. Cami stood there, her hair down and her robe flapping loose around her. Her back was to him, and she was striking feebly at the flames with a blanket, trying to put them out.
“What happened?” he asked.
“It startled me, and I dropped the lamp, and it shattered. I’m such a klutz sometimes!”
It was odd to see her so flustered. She was usually so calm and rational. “It’s oil. If we can keep it from spreading it will burn out.”
She turned to look at him, her eyes big and scared. Her right hand held her robe closed and he saw the dark stains on the fabric. “Are you bleeding?”
“I tried to pick it up, and I cut myself, and…” She stopped, biting her lip as her eyes filled with tears.
“It’s fine,” he said, finally moving around the bed. The fire had mostly gone out. Dante took the singed blanket she’d been using and smothered the last of the flames. “It’s fine,” he said again. He was saying it to reassure himself as much as to her. His heart was still racing, his body tingling with adrenaline.
Now that the flames had died, the room was dark except when the lightning flared. He spotted another lantern on the mantel and squeezed past her in the narrow space to light it. His hands shook as he turned up the wick, and he laughed nervously. “Scared the hell out of me.”
“It’s over now,” she said, although she sounded even more frightened than she had before. “I’m fine. You can go.”
“Let’s check your hand first,” he said, turning back to her. She was only an arm’s length away, and he reached out to take her wrist.
“No—”
But he’d already grabbed her and pulled her hand down so he could look at her palm. Her robe fell open as he did. He was vaguely aware of her trying to turn away, even as he held her hand, of her fumbling to close it again with her left hand. He didn’t want to look. He didn’t want to embarrass either one of them by having him see something neither of them wanted him to see. “Don’t worry about it.” But even as he said it, his eyes betrayed him. It wasn’t much. Only a fraction of a second, as a flash of lightning made the room brighter, and in the moment he caught a glimpse of her, without meaning to. Smooth skin. Her navel. A hint of hair. And below that…
He looked up at her face in surprise. “You’re a man!”
“I am not!” She yanked her hand away from him and pulled her robe shut.
For a second, he had no idea what to say. He’d seen what was between her legs, and it definitely wasn’t what he’d expected. “You are!” he said at last, gesturing futilely towards her groin.
She was trying to tie her robe, but her injured hand stopped her, and she gave up holding it closed. Instead, she threw herself at him, shoving him hard in the chest. “Get out!”
“Cami, what the fuck?”
“Get out, get out,
get out
!”
She shoved him harder with each exclamation, and he was so stunned, he found himself being pushed backward. “Wait!” he said, but he was suddenly in the hallway. Cami slammed the door shut in his face.
He stood there for a moment in the complete darkness of the corridor, staring stupidly at the wood an inch from his nose. Had he imagined it? Could he have been mistaken? There had been so little light, until that moment when the lightning flashed. Could it have been his eyes playing a trick on him? Maybe just a shadow?
He replayed the entire incident in his head, once, and then again, but each time, it ended with that glimpse of skin, and the sudden knowledge that she was not what he’d thought.
“Cami?” he asked.
“Go away!” And then, much to his dismay, she burst into tears.
No matter what he’d just seen, she was female in his mind, and there was nothing worse than trying to deal with a crying woman. He never said the right thing. “Don’t cry, Cami. Shit! I’m sorry! I just… I’m confused, that’s all.”
No answer.
“Cami?”
“Why did you have to see?”
“I didn’t mean to!” One minute he’d been trying to help her, and now he was standing outside her door feeling like his whole world had been turned on its ear. “Why are you pretending to be a woman?”
“I’m not pretending.”
He threw his hands up in confusion and practically yelled in frustration, “I just saw you naked!”
A heartbeat, and then another. On the other side of the door, he heard nothing but sniffles. He forced himself to take a deep breath. He had to calm down. Yelling at her wasn’t going to get him anywhere. “Cami?” he tried again, wondering even as he did if that was really her name.
“Give me a minute,” she said quietly. “I’ll come out, but I really need a minute.”
He was still confused, but the truth was, a minute didn’t seem like a bad idea.
And he suddenly, desperately wanted a drink.

He waited for Cami in the kitchen. Lightning still crackled outside, but the thunder now came several seconds after the flashes of light. The storm had passed over them. It was moving on, across the prairie, leaving Dante stunned and confused in its wake.

He sipped a glass of whisky while he waited and considered her possible reasons for hiding her true gender. The most likely scenario he could come up with was that she was hiding from somebody. Maybe she’d committed some kind of crime. Here on the plains, there was no formal justice. What there was tended to be vigilante-style. But he knew Cami was from the eastern coast. He’d never been there himself, but they probably had officials of some kind or another. Sheriffs or magistrates or both.

Still, would any of them pursue Cami halfway across Oestend? What kind of crime must she have committed to warrant such a thing? He knew her, and he found it unlikely she could have done anything so terrible. And yet, what other reason did she have for pretending to be a woman?

She finally came in. Yes,
she
. Because despite what Dante had seen in her room, he could not bring himself to think of her as male. She was still wearing her robe. She’d managed to tie it tightly around her. Blood stained the ties at her waist.