He thought about what Sam’s reaction would be to Jem taking the time to ponder such things and laughed. It was like Sam was sitting next to him, looking at him sideways, chewing a cut of sweetweed. “You expecting that signal to send itself, son?”
Jem spat a mouthful of sweetweed juice into the dirt, and worked the rest of it into the crook of his lower lip with the tip of his tongue. “No, sir,” he said, and started up the path.
The pass was overgrown with thick brush and spiny branches, every inch of them covered in curved thorns. Jem dismounted and grabbed a handful of vine that speared his glove and left broken thorns in his palm. He pulled off his glove and tried to dig them out with the tip of his knife.
One of the thorns was deep and he had to cut away the skin to pry out its hooked tip. He stuck his head up to yell in frustration and saw a half-naked young man looking down at him from high above, on a ledge. His long black hair whipped in the wind and two younger boys, kids really, were crouched at his side, trying to stay hidden. This one stood his ground, staring down at Jem in defiance.
Jem stuck the knife back in his hand and cursed as he dug out the rest of the thorn. He cleaned the knife on his pant leg and sheathed it, then whistled for his destrier. He pulled himself into the saddle and started up the pass when the boy raised a stick high over his head and shook it, letting out a high-pitched screech.
Jem waited for him to finish and looked up. “I know who you are. Heard that scream once before when I was just about your age. Didn’t scare me then neither.”
By night fall, his stomach was growling. There were birds perched on the bushes, but they hardly seemed worth the effort to shoot. His Defeaters would leave little except a pile of wet feathers and the meat would taste like gunpowder. He had a bottle of whiskey in his saddle. He reckoned he could eat raw bassaricus as long as he had the right thing to wash it down with.
He rode until he came upon a herd of leapers crashing through the brush. They ran in a pack, their long legs kicking high in the air at each step. The herd’s alpha was obvious. A large, muscular brute with antlers that spread out as wide as Jem’s arms. A smaller buck ran behind him, racing to keep up. Jem drew one of his pistols and fired, dropping the leader in the dirt so that the rest of the herd had to jump over him to get away.
Jem grabbed a hold of its antlers and dragged it off the path. He slit the animal lengthwise, cutting through the tendons and separating the carcass to remove its internal organs. It had been years since he field dressed a leaper. Sam had been a good instructor.
He laid out the tenderloins and ribs on a blanket of hide and went to gather an armful of dry branches that would go up like an inferno with one match strike. By nightfall, he was turning the meat over a roaring fire and the dripping grease sizzled in the flames.
Jem ate until he was full and drank a portion of the whiskey. The temperature started to drop. He stoked the fire, trying to build up the flames enough to burn long into the night, thinking of the howl he’d heard earlier. Whatever made that noise was still out there and would be walking around while he slept in the open. Jem swallowed whiskey until the howling, the cold, and night under the open sky ceased to matter.
Jem removed the rest of the meat from the fire and set it aside, saving it for morning. He laid out a blanket and leaned back to watch the flames dance and interweave, thinking of the Alvarez sisters, thinking of Anna Willow…
He opened his eyes at the sound of a step so light on the ground it could have been just a leaf blowing across the dirt. The oldest Beothuk boy was creeping past the fire, reaching for the meat. Jem cocked the hammer of his gun, freezing the boy in place.
The gun was aimed at the center of his chest and he stuck out his chin and pulled back his arms, daring Jem to shoot even though his lips quivered slightly and his shoulders rose and fell with excited breaths. His chest was finely muscled and hairless. There was a light growth of baby hair across the boy’s lip that looked like it might crawl off the side of his face. Jem made him out to be fourteen.
“You’re the one that squawked at me. Where are the others? You come alone? Must be the brave one.” He waved his gun at the meat and said, “Go ahead. Take it. I don’t know what the hell you all are doing out here, but you must be hungry. Have it.”
The boy remained motionless.
“You understand anything I’m saying?”
The boy looked at the gun, then back to Jem. Jem decocked the hammer on his Defeater and put it into his holster. As soon as the gun was out of his hand, the boy took off into the shadows.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Jem called out. He thought he could make out where the boy was, or at least had a rough idea which patch of darkness he’d vanished into. Jem picked up the spit and held it out. “Here. Take it. It’s all right. I’ve got enough for all three of you.”
Hours later he shivered himself awake and opened his eyes to see the pale sky. His fire was a pile of smoldering ashes and the food was missing from the spit. He checked for tracks around the campsite, but saw neither animal nor Beothuk boy footprints. The destrier was standing only a few yards away, gnawing on branches. Jem tucked a pinch of sweetweed behind his lip and climbed up into the saddle.
It was noon. Sweat dripped from the brim of his hat when Jem took it off to wipe his forehead. Coarse thorn-ridden vegetation spilled over the edges of the cliffs above him in long vines that swept the trail on either side of him. There were piles of leaper bones tangled in the vines, their blood spattered across the rocks beneath.
Jem stopped his destrier and dismounted. The bones were picked clean but the blood was fresh. Strange paw prints were stamped into the ground around the kill site from an enormous animal with razor sharp claws. No, he thought. Several animals.
His destrier snorted and stomped impatiently for Jem to climb back on. He unholstered a Defeater and cocked the hammer back, scanning the trail and cliff walls. “Easy,” he said, patting its neck. “Nothing to worry about.”
He steered through the vines, forcing her to walk slowly as he kept his head on a swivel and his gun at the ready. The trail bottomed out into a dried riverbed with massive stones sunk in the clay. The damp muck sucked the destrier’s hooves as they travelled the embankment, searching for a path that would let them up onto the other side.
Jem saw them enough times that he gave them names.
He called the oldest boy Squawk. All three of them would ride along the edge of the cliffs above Jem, but it was only Squawk who stayed whenever Jem looked up. Squawk who stared back. Squawk who let Jem know he was not afraid of the White Man.
The second boy was thin and long-limbed with a hooked nose and inverted chin. His appearance reminded Jem of a character from a book that his mother once to read to him. He called that boy Ichabod.
The smallest had long, dark hair and a face that resembled Squawk’s. He scurried out of sight whenever Jem looked, but laughed and made it a game. Squawk reproached the boy every time, looking thoroughly annoyed. It didn’t matter. The game continued. Bug, then, Jem decided. Your name is Bug.
The mountain pass ended at a wide meadow made of tall, swaying grass and cool air that blew across Jem’s face. The destrier licked the air with its long red tongue, lapping at it playfully. He eased her down the embankment and she trotted across the flat land, kicking her knees in the air and flinging mud from her hooves. “Feels good to be back on soft ground, don’t it?” he said, patting her side. The destrier snorted and spun around in the air, whipping her tail.