The Wolf Road (6 page)

Tears came pouring down my cheeks. My daddy killed the woman I wanted as my momma, only woman what was ever kind to me, and he acted all friendly about it. ’Course he did. Trapper always said it’s kinder to kill a calm animal, kinder to kill one what ain’t fearful. Trapper took the fear right out a’ Missy afore he did what he did.

That ain’t what a daddy’s supposed to do. But he weren’t blood, he weren’t kin, he was what I chose and I chose wrong.

Words like spiders came crawling over my eyes.
Tell my little girl, I love you.
Blood parents say that, even in a letter, even when they miles and miles up in the far north. Trapper—Kreagar—never said that, not once. I wiped my eyes, told myself them tears was from the heat a’ the fire, the burning down of an old life. I left my nana and didn’t look back, didn’t have no choice after that thunderhead. Figured I could do the same with Trapper. Least till I got my head and my heart right, then maybe I could come back and hear him out, figure his side, let him tell me his truth. Then we’d see. Part a’ me said my head was thicker’n a redwood, that he done all them things Lyon said, all them scraps a’ skin told his truth. But another part a’ me, getting smaller the more my cabin was eaten up by them flames, wanted to think best a’ him.

I needed to be away, get myself some distance, figure it all through.

I had my knife and I had a few strips of jerky from that young buck I’d shot the week afore. Didn’t need much more’n that.

Can’t go living in the back-then, I always say. Back then was Trapper. And I weren’t at all ready for Kreagar to be my here-now.

Whoever he was, he’d killed people. For fun, for sport. That weren’t right by any measure. He killed women and at least one kid. He’d killed Missy. I didn’t remember all that much from my years with that man, my head had put memories behind doors and locked them tight. But I remembered her and now, seeing that box a’ scalps and hair, I know what he done.

“Dammit,” I said loud, watching the fire. “Kreagar Hallet. Kid-killin’, lyin’, murderin’, Kreagar Hallet.”

I knew that bastard had a name. All this time he had a name.

“You was my Trapper!” I shouted. “You taught me fire lighting and snares and how to clean a rifle barrel. Goddamn you for tending my cuts and bruises when all this time…all this damn time…” I dropped down right on my knees in the dirt and I cried all the fiercer.

The heat off that fire made my tears hiss and steam, like the world was telling me he weren’t worth the water. And he weren’t. He was what Lyon said. He was what was in that box and I was done with it.

Any happy feeling I had with him these last ten years burned up with my house and tears. I knew the truth, really down deep maybe I always had, and knowing Trapper, he’d kill me quick as I could say
Promise I won’t tell no one
.

Wolf hunting, my eye. Worst damn wolf hunter in BeeCee and this country’s full of ’em. I was a fool not to see it. I ran to the woodpile and threw logs onto the flames. I picked up that ax and threw that on too. Feed it. Burn it all to ash and shit. All them lies go up in smoke.

There are some lines you just don’t go crossing. Rules of life. Killing for fun is one of them. It does no one any good. You kill for meat, you kill for survival, you don’t go killing for sport. Forest’ll eat you whole if you do and spit out the grit.

I walked in circles. Out into the trees, back toward the hut, again and again. I didn’t have nowhere nearby to go to. Didn’t have nothing to trade. Didn’t know a soul to lean on for help. Thought ’bout running to Ridgeway, begging in the street to any stranger who’d take me in. Thought ’bout going to Dalston, finding Lyon, and saying, I do know him, he killed all them women so you go kill him.

I don’t know if it was pure fear a’ that woman or damn idiot loyalty to Trapper, but the thought a’ him at the end of her six-shooter made me sick. That feeling mixed up with smoke and fire got in my lungs and sent me coughing on my knees. I had to get gone afore he came back and took my scalp for his little box. Had to get as far away from that place and that Kreagar as my legs would take me. But after my screaming and shouting and cursing I was empty. All I had left inside my head was words from some years-ago letter.
Tell my little girl, I love you.

Trapper asked me once about my momma and daddy and I told him they went to find their fortune. He laughed and said they must a’ been simple folk, probably dead by now. But I bet they did find it, bet they living the life of luxury, covered in gold up there in the far, far north, just waiting for they little girl to come join ’em. I’d have a real momma and a real daddy and they’d be so rich they’d have one a’ them indoor outhouses my nana always wanted. They’d have a room just for me what I could call my own and a bed so’s I wouldn’t have to sleep on the floor. They’d have people what would tidy up after them and work their mines for them so’s they could spend their days with me. I’d have arms ’round me what was loving arms and they’d say them I-love-you words right to my face and mean it.

Soon as I figured it out the thunder came, hammering through the sky. My toes went cold, the wind whipped up the fire so’s it ate the wood quicker. Even with my house burning down right in front of me, heating me up to boiling, my bones shook. Shook worse when I realized I had to go right into that storm. I had to walk into the thunderhead if I was going to get clear of Kreagar and find my parents. I took out my knife, deep barbs cut in the blade, and held it up at the storm.

Sky went dark and fierce. Lightning flashed and thunder cracked stone. Fire lit up my face and I yelled, for all to hear, “You ain’t getting me today, thunderhead! I’m comin’ for you first!”

I ran at it, screaming like a wild thing, screaming out all my angry and tears at what my Trapper was ’neath the skin. That storm saw me, saw into my eyes and down deep into the heart of me. It saw what I was intending for it when I caught it, punishment for leaving me with Kreagar, and that cowardly storm blew itself out. Skies went calm quicker’n you could draw a pistol. It left the clouds white and split down the middle, showing off a thin blue line of sky. That blue line pointed due north. That blue line pointed to my momma and daddy, to their fortune and my new home.

The thunderhead was giving me safe passage, for now. I didn’t say thank you or nothing, didn’t sacrifice a goat like some folks would a’. It was the least the damn thing could do after dropping me in the lap of that murdering, kid-killing Kreagar Hallet. I had so much anger in me, it killed any speck a’ sensible thinking. I didn’t bother to cover my tracks or take a zigzagging path. It never crossed my idiot head that he’d come looking for me.

Ten days straight north I went. Sometimes when I looked back I saw the smoke a’ the hut curling up into the blue. After four days it turned white, meaning the fire was out, and after six, I couldn’t a’ spotted it for anything. Couldn’t a’ spotted my home no more and I figured that was the wild telling me I didn’t have one. If all that was true ’bout Trapper then I weren’t even close to being far enough away from him. There was still some nagging bit a’ me what said Lyon was wrong, but every time I thought ’bout turning back and finding that man I called daddy, a picture a’ them shriveled-up scalps flashed up inside my head. Weren’t nothing wrong in that. Weren’t no lies there. So I kept walking.

Trees started changing the farther I went. Thinned out, got taller and broader. It was lighter and brighter in those dying summer days, cool enough not to sweat through your shirts and warm enough to not lose your toes to the bite. All that made for easier walking. I was following the Mussa River, sleeping rough and hunting hand-to-mouth. Sick of squirrels by day three, sick a’ nights on stones and tree roots. Seemed all the other critters were hiding so’s even I couldn’t find them. My snares were coming up empty. My deadfalls triggered but when I went rushing to check them, something bigger had taken my prize. Forest was working against me in those days.

I missed him. I’ll confess that right now without no shame. I missed Trapper in them days. Thought ’bout turning ’round more’n once and seeking him out. But without no hut to go back to I didn’t know where to start. Wondered brief if he’d come looking for me, but I figured he’d be too busy keeping clear a’ Lyon and that six-shooter a’ hers.

But then I saw that dead black hair burning. Saw his charcoal face on that poster and I told myself another lie: Trapper’s dead. Kreagar Hallet killed him. Murdering bastard Kreagar Hallet killed my daddy. Then I didn’t miss him so much no more.

Day ten the ground sloped up steep and I figured I’d got to the top of the valley. River narrowed and I lost it over a high rock face. Never been this far up the world afore. Never seen the Mussa go thin, turning more a stream, trickling over boulders and sand, than the big ol’ snake of the valley.

I had no chance of climbing that rock wall, and much as I didn’t want to leave the river and the only water for miles, I didn’t see no other way. Kreagar always taught me to keep the water close. Water is life and death in the wild. You’re dead in three weeks without meat but only three days without water. Cruel way to die, that is. You get head pain something rotten, it sucks the water out your mouth till you feel you’re eating dust, then you start to see things. That’s the worst. Most a’ the time it ain’t the desiccation that kills you, it’s thinking your sweetheart is just over the ridge and running to get to her, arms open, legs flailing. You lose all your senses, all your smarts go flying out your head and you trip and fall off a damn cliff. Seen more’n a few smiling bodies at the bottom of Coats Canyon. Cruel a’ the forest to let that happen but anyone stupid enough to go out in the trees with nothing in their head and nothing in their hands got it coming.

I filled up the old Conflict flask Kreagar gave me years ago. Wondered brief if he’d got it off a soldier he killed like that rifle a’ his. I had enough water for a day if I was careful and I knew I’d get up the hill and back to the skinny Mussa in half that.

But I didn’t.

That rock wall curved, long and wide and far away from the river. The trees were the same everywhere I looked. I realized, quick and with a big stone falling in my stomach, that I was in one of them False Forests. One of them that they cut down and regrew in straight, soulless rows. Every tree the same size, ground flat as a calm lake, same sickly smell of pine, and nothing in the world to navigate by. Fat green leaves blocked the sky and I only figured it was getting dark when the sundown crickets came chirping. I kept the wall to my right side, made sure I could always see it, always reach out and touch if I needed. Always got to keep your heading straight and true when you’re stuck in a False Forest.

Mussa is just over this rise, I kept saying. Just over this rise.

But it weren’t. Mussa was nowhere. I had an inkling that it went ’neath the rock, hiding from the sun and bears. A fluttering went through my chest. Night was coming quick and I was nowhere close to where I needed to be. I had two fingers of water left and the cold was setting down roots.

Then I saw something that put the fear in me. Some twenty feet north I saw a tree that weren’t like the others. It weren’t uniform and plain. This one had a great gash taken out of the bark. Whole bottom of the tree, from more’n a head higher’n me down to my knees, was stripped of rough brown and taken right back to yellow flesh. I went up to that tree, trembling like a babe. Ground all around was rucked up, muddied even though it hadn’t rained in a week, grasses and moss dead and gone.

I reached out my hand to that tree and prayed I wouldn’t feel what I knew I would.

Warm wood. My blood went colder’n snow melt. I pulled a tuft of brown hair out a snag. Rubbed it ’tween my fingers. Knew it like a kid knows its momma.

This was a brown bear’s rubbing tree. Big bear too, probably close to eight feet on two legs. Tracks led off to the northeast, same way I was going. I hunted bears afore, killed one too, but damn if that weren’t with a rifle and Trapper by my side. On my own, with just a knife? Shit.

I turned tail then. Looked south, back where I came. Figured there might be another way ’round the rock. Maybe I could cross the Mussa, find a way up the other side. But I’d walked a day north and was near out of water. I was
invested
as Trapper would a’ said. The bear tracks, wide paws, claws longer’n my fingers, led up a rise. Mussa could be over that rise. Bear wouldn’t go too far out of his way just for a rubbing tree.

As I stood there trying to figure out what to do, night was settling down. Tracks quick disappeared and all a sudden I couldn’t see my hand in front a’ my face. Bears can see a whole lot better in no light than I can. I cursed myself. I was in bear country and I didn’t have no fire. No shelter. No hope.

“Shit,” I said and spooked something small on the ground.

Owl started hooting from somewhere up high, starting his dusk hunt. Everything in these woods was out to kill something else. Normal times I was right at the top but that night I could a’ been a lame rabbit for all the chance I had ’gainst a hungry grizzly. Out in the open like that I was fair game for anything. My eyes woke up to the dark and I could see outlines, and that was worse’n not seeing. Everything looked like death to me, a bush was a hunched-over grizzly, a skinny tree stump was a wolf staring right at me. My heart was thumping and kicking in me like it was trying to get free a’ my stupid.