This time they had pulled two lengths of canvas out of the wagon, tied them to long wooden poles, and lashed them down the wagon sides. Ropes ran slack from various points on the canvas poles, and then were gathered up into the hands of Bryn Madder, the middle brother, who sat in the driver’s seat instead of his eldest brother, Alun.
Cedar noted that Bryn had donned a pair of dark goggles and a woolly hat that flapped down over his ears and tied beneath his beard. He looked ridiculous and was grinning like a fool.
“They’re going into the river?” Cedar asked.
“Onto, if what they say holds true,” Mae said. “They said we’ll make better time on the ice.”
Cedar ground back a frustrated growl. “They can’t be sure the ice is thick enough. They can’t be sure they aren’t all going to fall in.”
“I asked about that,” Mae said. “They have a device that can tell them if the ice is solid. Brother Cadoc was already down on the river testing it. He says the ice is at least a hand deep. It will hold.”
“I do not share their confidence, and don’t like them risking our supplies.” Cedar started off toward the wagon, and caught himself just before his knees gave out.
He was tired. More than that, he was exhausted. Mae was right. He couldn’t go on much longer.
It wasn’t just the walking. It wasn’t just the cold. The moon was coming up soon, and it would be full. But if the beast took him over in this state, and ran through the night chasing and killing Strange, Cedar would wake in the morning, naked, more than exhausted, and lost in the blizzard.
Wil, standing in front of Cedar, glanced back at him. The intelligence and concern in his brother’s eyes were clear.
“Fine,” Cedar said. “I’m fine. I’ll be better if the Madders don’t fall through that damn ice with everything we have.”
Cedar took another step. Satisfied he wouldn’t fall, he kept moving.
Mae walked beside him. He didn’t say anything, didn’t pull away when she slipped her hand into his. They walked, together, hand in hand, through the blizzard toward the wagon.
The wagon and mules, urged forward by Cadoc and Alun Madder, tipped onto the slope and made a rather quick journey down the bank.
Mae gasped, but the whole lot of them—man, beast, and contraption—came to a full and surprisingly easy stop several feet away from the bank of the river itself.
Miss Dupuis, who stood beside her horse at the top of the bank, just shook her head at Bryn Madder’s whoop of excitement. “They enjoy this,” she said. “I believe they truly enjoy this.”
“Come on down!” Bryn Madder yelled. “The water’s fit as a fiddle!”
Miss Dupuis hesitated. “Do you trust their judgment?” she asked Cedar.
“Doesn’t matter if I trust them,” Cedar said, already making his way down the hill, and helping Mae to make hers. “Right now, we have to rely on them. In my experience, they’ve never been the sort of men overly interested in reaching their graves early.”
After another, probably sensible, moment or two of doubt, Miss Dupuis left the horse, who was too tired to wander off, and started down the slope too. Cedar saw to it Mae had her footing on the ice. She made her way over to the wagon, where Alun Madder was waiting, his hand extended for her.
Cedar turned and met Miss Dupuis halfway up the hill and helped her down.
A Strange reached out of the snow and slapped at her. It tugged a lock of her dark hair out from under her hat, pulling enough to hurt.
“Ouch,” she said.
Cedar took a swat at the thing and it disappeared, as insubstantial as air.
“They are thick here, aren’t they?” She lifted her skirts to step over a twisted root.
“The Strange?” Even though he and Miss Dupuis had been traveling together for some time now, and had even fought the Strange together, he often forgot that she too could see the creatures.
She couldn’t kill them, although some of the weapons the Madders and other devisers had made could hold, slow, and harm the Strange. As far as Cedar knew, only he and his brother Wil, both tied to the Pawnee curse, could kill the Strange.
Two men against an entire country full of ghouls and bogeys. Two men cursed to kill them all.
It was madness. A task they could never fulfill. The Strange were growing in this country, more and more each day.
“I can see them,” she said. “Do you see them now, Mr. Hunt? You and Wil?”
“Yes,” Cedar said. “The storm is lousy with them. I’ve never seen so many in such a small area.”
“Poor weather doesn’t usually bring them out,” she said. “Most Strange prefer rain and lightning storms, if they’re to be in bad weather. Not blizzards.”
“Oh?” Cedar asked, extending his hand to help steady her.
“We’ve studied them, Mr. Hunt. We of the Guard. We know some few things about their ways.”
“Was there a chance you might want to fill me in on your knowledge of the Strange? Knowledge of the Guard for that matter. The Madders talk in riddles whenever I ask questions.”
“I had hoped there would be time to speak of such matters on this trip, but…” She shrugged. “Everything has been difficult.”
“Perhaps when we reach Des Moines,” he said, “you and I could spend more time together.”
Miss Dupuis glanced up at him through her thick snow-heavy lashes. The expression on her face was part surprise and something more. Something like pleasure. “I would like that very much, Mr. Hunt. To spend time with you.”
Then she took the last few steps with him to the edge of the ice.
Mae, who was helping the Madders lead the mules onto a platform they’d lowered from the back of wagon, glanced over at him. Miss Dupuis released his hand like she’d been caught cheating at parlor games. She tipped her chin up just a fraction and waited for Mae’s reaction.
Mae frowned, then went back to work.
“Bring the horse, will you, Mr. Hunt?” Alun called from the rear of the wagon. “We’ve got room for him too. And a long way to go.”
“Shouldn’t be long to reach Des Moines,” Cedar said.
“We’ll go where the winds take us,” Alun said. “Find a smaller town to wait out the storm. Trust me, it will be for the better.”
He’d just told Miss Dupuis trust didn’t matter. But there was something about the three Madders’ avoidance of Des Moines that wasn’t adding up. Still, they’d saved his life more than once, even though they’d made sure he was owing to them for their favor.
“Find us shelter and you’ll have no argument out of me,” Cedar said. Then he turned and, with Wil beside him, climbed back up the bank to fetch the horse.
Chapter Two
Rose Small tucked her head against the spit of rain brushing down the roofs of Hays City, and avoided a steam cart full of barley rattling down the street. A little bad weather couldn’t keep the people of this Kansas town from their work, chores, and errands.
Nor would a little bad weather keep her from running down that low-life, cheating son of a grease licker Captain Lee Hink.
It was eight in the morning, and the corner baker had already sold out of the day’s bread. A storm was on the horizon and creeping close with the promise of rain. Folk were hurrying with their necessities, business, and trade, all that hustle giving the town the feel of a kicked beehive.
The sweet faraway clang from off north a ways, where the blacksmith was bending horseshoes and rims for the steam carts, called her heart like a church bell ringing for service. The noises of the city just proved the whole town was open for business.
And so was Sweet Annie’s Saloon.