The Wolf Road (21 page)

Felt my back prickle. Wind started picking up and Betty got impatient.

The woman looked around. “Where’s your equipment?”

Penelope sighed all fake and loud and said, “On the boat, of course. Here, here’s her ticket, now let her go.”

Other red coat took the paper and Big Betty’s grip went slack. My eyes kept flitting between Betty and that poster a’ me. Last thing I needed was her realizing my papers was already tacked up on her jailhouse. Penelope looked at me like I was something stuck on her boot and I weren’t at all sure if it was part a’ her act.

Red coat opened up the papers, read out the name, “Porter McLeish,” then he gave the paper to Betty.

“I need her. I know she’s got a mouth on her but come on,” Penelope said, more friendly to Betty, “give a girl a break.”

My heart beat heavy in my ears and throat, drumming along with the rain. All them seconds they spent looking over that paper, words what meant nothing but a headache to me. These three people around me all had a magic I didn’t and I sure as shit didn’t enjoy feeling like that. Them words on that piece a’ nothing could send me back south on that boat or could set me right on my path north. All from paper. That rubbish that rips easier’n cotton, breaks down to mush in water, bleaches out its meaning after too long in the sun. That paper right there in Big Betty’s meaty fingers, and the people who could make sense of it, had total power over me.

That weren’t no fun.

“Seems to be in order,” big’un said slow, and looked down at Penelope. Her eyelids didn’t have no lashes, just creases a’ skin and puffy bags ’neath her eyes. Made her look like a frog taken unawares by a heron.

But Betty weren’t convinced. She squinted them bug eyes at Penelope and said, “And where are your papers, miss?”

Pink flushed Penelope’s cheeks and she opened her mouth to give some new excuse but didn’t get a chance. Shout went up from the dock. Dandies stood up straight and a crane winched up a crate too heavy for the deckhands to lift.

I knew that crate. Penelope knew it better. Bloodstains covered the yellow wood. Penelope stared at me, eyes glistening with fear.

“What in the hell…” Red Coat said, and tapped Big Betty on the arm.

Betty growled somewhere deep in her throat and let me go like she was flinging mud off her fingers. She pushed the papers back to Penelope and said, “Get going.”

Neither a’ us needed to be told twice. Betty and the red coat strode toward the boat just as the crate was set down in a splash a’ mud. I looked at Penelope, saw her panic, and the devil and angel on my shoulders just shrugged and said, Elka, you don’t got no choice.

“Come on then,” I said, and started walking fast out a’ Ellery. “We got to get shelter.”

Penelope followed and we only looked back when we heard the splintering of wood and the screaming from the women.

“Just keep walkin’,” I said, and pulled Penelope along with me. I couldn’t afford to have her lagging behind, ogling the crowd.

Word spread quick around Ellery but even a dead body weren’t enough to tempt people out their homes when a thunderhead was coming. We kept our heads low and our stride fast and I found myself wishing to heaven we’d get to shelter afore the storm hit. Hell, I could a’ wished for anything but just like almost all else in this life, you wish in one hand and shit in the other, see which fills up quickest.

We got out the town and I quick dragged Penelope off the road and into the forest. Smell a’ trees and sap and rain and leaf litter mixed up with the sting a’ the coming storm, filled me up and set me smiling for the first time in too long. Thunderhead was coming quick. Rain was heavy and cold, like the world was dropping rocks on us. Sky was dark and full a’ fat black clouds.

Penelope couldn’t take the pace. She heaved in breaths and leant up ’gainst a tree. I rested a minute on a rock, let my ribs stop screaming.

“We need to find cover. Storm’s comin’,” I said.

Penelope looked up at the sky like she knew what she was seeing. “There should be a town along the road, we should—”

She shut up when she heard me laughing. Hurt to laugh but it didn’t matter. I cursed that devil and angel on my shoulder.

“Next town you’ll see is Halveston,” I said, and took a little pleasure in seeing her face turn gray.

“You mean…?”

I set my eyes level with hers and pushed up from the rock. “Thunderhead’s comin’.”

I weren’t in no mood to talk to her. I weren’t in no mood to look at her. I weren’t in no mood to do nothing but walk. I’d spent too long in a crate and too long on a boat. All I wanted was to find an outcrop or cave to shelter in afore the thunderhead found me.

I didn’t know these woods and a chill was getting deep in my skin. It helped my aching ribs but put me in a foul mind. Penelope had naught but a lacy cotton dress and useless shoes. She walked a few steps behind me, arms across her chest, trying to hold in all the warm she could. Heard her chattering teeth following me. Heard her stumbling. She tried to speak to me once but I didn’t say nothing back and she didn’t try again.

Didn’t complain though. Not once. She didn’t say “I’m so cold” or “I’m so hungry” or “How much farther?” She just trudged on behind, look a black storm on her face.

I quick found an overhang what was perfect for shelter. It was on the other side of a stream fattened up to raging by the rain. Penelope looked at that water, mouth open, like it was wide as the Mussa. City folk don’t got a brain or eyes for the wild. They see a thing so much worse and bigger and angrier than it is. They see a skeeter taking its meal out their arm, they slap that bug with all they got and they moan for days ’bout the itch. Itches worse when you slap them. Wild folk just brush them skeeters off, gentle and kind and don’t pay no mind to a red bump here or there. We know there’s worse things in the wild than an itching elbow. After all, when a grizzly’s chasing you, you don’t remember to scratch.

“Step where I step,” I said to Penelope, and she swallowed hard. “That water is just a sniff up from icy; you fall in you might as well not bother gettin’ back out.”

“You can’t be serious,” she said, as hoity-toity as I’d ever heard. “I can’t cross that.”

I kept my temper, didn’t grab her hair and force her on like I wanted to, just said, “Then die here in the thunderhead.”

She huffed out her nose, a sound what set my teeth on edge, but didn’t say nothing else. I took that to mean she would step where I stepped.

The stream was all white water and jagged rocks not used to the beating.

“Stay here,” I said.

Sundown was less than an hour and I felt the thunderhead in my bones. It was coming in quick, bearing down on me like a mad god what I forgot to pray to. I had to find a way across this stream what both me and Penelope could handle. Time was, I’d a’ waded across no questions, just let the water hit me wherever it wanted till I got to the other side. I didn’t have the strength in me to do that. The thought a’ the water buffeting ’gainst my ribs and belly set me shaking. A ways upstream I found a tree what had fallen clean across the river, giving us a bridge and a death trap. I looked at it with a wily eye. Wild gave me this, but it never gave nothing for free.

Rain had made the tree bark, covered here and there with moss, slick and slimy. The log had been there a while and made a kind of dam behind it. A calmer pool what we might be able to wade through. I grabbed a stick and tested the depth from the bank. Waist-high, maybe a step deeper in the middle. Ran my hand over the log to see if we could walk it, but it was like stroking ice. I weren’t too happy at the thought a’ being up to my nethers in that water but same I didn’t want to be falling off that log onto the rocks.

Down the bank, Penelope stood where I left her, shivering like a foal just been spat out its momma. Water kept her attention, she weren’t looking for me. Even this far away I could see the fear in every bit a’ her. Her shoulders tensed and her eyes kept head-on, flitting every few minutes left and right. She lifted her heel. Shook her hair. I saw a deer flicking its ears, legs like coiled springs, ready to run at a twig snap. Neck long and slender, ripe for slicing.

“Found anything?” she shouted.

Took out my knife.

“I found something,” I called back, “but you ain’t going to like it.”

I used my knife to anchor into the log. Stabbed it in there hard. Shudder of the hit sent my ribs splintering. Penelope joined me up by the calm pool just as the first thunder crack split the sky. My toes went cold as deep-winter ice.

“Listen to me,” I said, “you hold on to the log. Soon as we get to the other side you take off your dress quicklike and start jumpin’ stars.”

“I can’t…” she said, but I weren’t having none of it.

I grabbed her ’round the shoulders and made her look in my eyes. “Thunderhead is coming and I know you know what that means. We got to get to cover and if you don’t cross this river right this damn minute, you gonna get swept up in that storm and pulled apart like you’s no more’n wet cotton. You get me?”

She kept my gaze for a few seconds, then nodded. “What about you?”

“I’ll be doin’ the same, don’t you worry.”

I took off my coat and boots and socks and stuffed ’em into my pack. With my good arm, one what didn’t have cracked ribs ’neath it, I held it up out the water.

“Stay close and move quick,” I said, and dipped my toes into the river. Cold shot right through me, made my side ache. This was really going to hurt.

Behind me, Penelope hiked up her dress to her waist and took off her slipper shoes. She held them awkward in one hand while her other felt along the log. Heard her gasp when the water got to the top a’ her legs.

She swore up something unholy when that water got just a few inches higher and I wondered where she heard all them words. Made me smile though. Made me think a’ Trapper when he stuck a fishhook in his thumb, cursing the heavens and all us people on the earth. I laughed all the while I cut that hook out.

I pulled the knife out the log and used it like a bear uses its claws to climb a tree. Current pulled at me and slippery rocks ’neath my feet did all they could to trip me. I dug my toes in, dug my knife in, and tried to forget about the cold.

Water was deeper’n I thought, right up to my bandages. I could a’ cried when that chill hit my bruises.

Penelope kept up that swearing when she got to the middle a’ the stream. She hiked the dress up higher so’s her flat belly was showing. I glanced over my shoulder at her, leaning heavy on the log, more than she would a’ needed if she weren’t holding on to her dress like that.

Thunder struck and I felt the boom in my bones.

“Faster,” I said, and drove my knife into the log.

Drove it in too deep.

Pulled it out too rough.

The log rocked. One a’ the stones holding it steady slipped. Sick feeling hit my stomach and I saw it all happen like it was going at half speed. Penelope’s weight on the log helped it shift. I caught her eyes, wide as mine.

I hurled my pack onto the bank and lunged for her, felt my side rip fresh. She scrambled to get away from the log but it was turning in the flow, pushing her away from me.

“Elka!” she kept shouting, trying to run in the water, against the log, against the current.

Thunder crashed above us but I didn’t care none for the thunderhead in that moment. All I cared for was getting that girl out.

But I couldn’t get to her. The log twisted, rolled, sent Penelope under, pulled her downstream toward them sharp rocks and white water. My heart thudded and the cold stole all my air. Couldn’t shout for her.

I got out that river fast I could and ran down the bank, eyes on that log. Eyes on the white spray, looking for her white dress. I kept up with the log but the river was quick and I was hurting.

“Penelope!”

Found my voice. Found my air. Blood was flowing for the running.

“Penelope!”

The log caught ’tween two rocks and I dashed into the water. Second later blond hair burst out the spray, pale arms clung on to the bark. Heard the wood straining ’gainst the river and the rocks. Awful creaking, cracking sound.

“Penelope,” I shouted, “let go a’ the damn log!”

I got closer. Creaking sound got louder, like a drumroll reaching its peak. She weren’t letting go. She pressed her face up against the log, hugging it.

“Goddammit, girl,” I raged, “let go!”

Stubborn prissy thing she was. The river slammed into my side and set my vision blurring and spinning. The cold and pain and dog-tiredness sent dizziness right through my head. My bare feet slipped but I caught myself. Shook it away. This weren’t no time for wussing out.

I grabbed Penelope’s arm.

“I got you,” I said, voice loud over the roaring water. “Let it go.”

She looked at me with wild, red eyes. Seemed to take her a minute to know me but when she did, she let the log go. We struggled out the river, had my arm around her waist, holding her up. Didn’t notice my ribs. Didn’t care if they didn’t like my efforts.

We got out onto the bank and right away I started pulling off my clothes.

“Take off your dress, quick,” I said, then noticed, with a bit a’ shock, that she managed to hang on to her shoes. Let myself smile as the shivering set in. Noticed blood spilling down her leg and a nasty cut just south a’ her knee. Wild takes its pay wherever it can.