The Fang of Bonfire Crossing

by Brad McLelland

  There had been a quick debate about how to travel with the unconscious Ranger. The only solution was to tether the man to Saint Peter. They had to work together—Keech and Duck at the legs, Cutter and Quinn at the shoulders—to lift Doyle’s limp body into the saddle and tie him off with ropes.

  After bundling up to the cold, the young riders set out, Quinn once again mounting Lightnin’. Duck hauled Nat’s horse by a lead rope, while Keech took the burden of guiding Saint Peter using one of Doyle’s backup lariats. Hector glanced back at the Kelpie as they rode, and Keech wondered if the two horses had once shared adventures together, hauling the Enforcers across the Territories. They certainly seemed at ease with each other.

  Back on the prairie, Keech studied the vague endpoints of the crescent moon—a navigational technique that Pa Abner had once taught him and Sam. “From here we head southwest,” he said. “Mr. Horner told us we’ll find the next bending tree about twenty miles away, near a clutch of round boulders.”

  Quinn whistled. “Twenty miles in the dark?”

  “Snow cover means ground we can’t see,” Duck said. “That’ll be dangerous for the ponies. We should keep in single file.”

  Keech pulled his scarf up over his nose. “We can camp after ten miles or so. With any luck, the weather will hold, and we’ll spot the rocks tomorrow before dark.”

  Cutter pointed to the Ranger’s knapsack, which Quinn had lashed back onto Saint Peter’s croup. “I don’t fancy riding with a bunch of bones. It feels like a bad omen.”

  “Doyle must find them important,” Keech said. “If he wakes up to find them gone, I worry he won’t help us.”

  For several freezing hours, the horses crept over snowy flatland. They plodded under the sliver of moon, especially when clouds lingered over the crescent, but they held their course.

  Sometime in the deep of night, Keech heard Quinn’s lilting voice start up his Odyssey song again. “That ol’ Minerva … she hid them away in darkness … and led the boys out of town…” the boy crooned.

  Keech smiled.

  Long hours passed before the horizon began to glow a steady rose color. Heavy flakes wafted down onto Keech’s hat as the young riders stepped into a valley cut by a winding brook. He called for a break, and the troop watered the ponies and snacked on pecans and jerky.

  Doyle awoke for a moment as the group rested. He raised his head. The purplish veins on his neck had crept up to his jawline, and his breathing sounded thin. “Son?” the Ranger muttered, then collapsed again over the Kelpie’s saddle horn.

  Cutter walked over to check on him. “Our lawdog—if he even really is one—ain’t doing too good. We best not let him kick the bucket. I’d hate to rattle John now that he’s grown fangs.”

  “He needs medicine, or he will kick the bucket,” Quinn said.

  Keech scoured the valley for something that could help Doyle’s wound—though he doubted anything would help a wound magically inflicted. The early snowfall had deadened most of the prairie grasses, but he found a small patch of yarrow beneath the snow near the creek. He pulled up a handful of the wet wildflowers, took them to Doyle, and pressed a smooth bundle of them over the leg wound.

  “What’s that stuff?” asked Cutter.

  “I call it Old Man’s Pepper,” Keech said. “It’ll help slow the blood loss, at least till we can find the Ranger proper help.”

  The troop rode on for the rest of the morning. Occasionally they passed through clusters of cottonwood trees, where they would pause to gather branches and place kindling inside their saddlebags for drying. Keech kept his eyes peeled for crows but spotted only a pair of hawks probing the plains for mice.

  At one point, as the sun reached the peak of the sky, Cutter gestured to several dark shapes meandering over a low ridge. “Look! Buffalo.”

  The sight of the herd reminded Keech of the bending tree near the Moss farm, the way the sugar maple’s shadow had fashioned itself into a buffalo head. The memory took him back a few hours more, to the moment they saw the small Osage band traveling toward the tree. He recalled how they had disappeared without a trace in the snow-covered field. He thought about the young girl riding with them and wondered if perhaps she’d been riding with her father, maybe to a buffalo-hunting camp.

  Sometime later, Keech spotted a snow-capped ridge in the distance. “Let’s camp there for the afternoon. The bulge over that slope will hide the ponies and block the wind so we can build a fire.”

  Gathering in the cold hollow, the young riders hauled Doyle down from Saint Peter and leaned his body against the limestone. The gang laid out the kindling from their bags, and Quinn volunteered to build a Dakota fire pit. Soon a well-hidden campfire flickered to life. They huddled close to the flames, listening to Quinn’s dream-like singing. Keech grabbed a few cold corn dodgers from Doyle’s ration bag.

  He was handing out the cakes when a dreadful squawk made them all glance out across the prairie.

  A dark bird circled overhead, flying low over the ridge. The kids shrank back against the limestone wall. Quinn’s Odyssey song died away, but he kept murmuring under his breath, as if trying to pray the creature out of the sky. Duck put a finger to her lips, but Quinn shook his head.

  The bird maneuvered east to west, appearing unaware of the group. It lingered below the clouds, swiveled slightly north, then, with another loud screech, soared away.

  “That was awful close,” Quinn said.

  “Do you think the noon sun blinded it?” Cutter asked.

  Keech pondered, then smiled. “Maybe Quinn’s song hid us like Doyle’s humming.”

  Quinn looked happy at the notion. “Maybe I’m finding my focus!”

  “Or sometimes a crow is just a crow,” said Duck.

  After finishing their corn dodgers, the Lost Causes curled up in their blankets and tried to find sleep. Keech dozed off quickly, but not long after, a muttering sound made him stir. It was Duck, crying out—most likely another bad dream. He put a hand on the ankle of her boot, wishing he could invade the dream so she wouldn’t be lonesome inside it. Just one afternoon before, they had shared the dream of a terrible cavern filled with light, and Duck had been more hopeful after discovering she hadn’t walked there alone.

  Duck woke with a start, her wild eyes roving. She had retrieved the scruffy doll from her pocket and now lifted it close.

  “That was my daughter’s.”

  The gruff voice gave Keech’s heart a jolt. He turned to see Edgar Doyle staring at the figurine in Duck’s hand.

  “She called her Turnip.”

  Propped up under his blanket, Doyle looked like a ghost, his eyes sunken and wet. He glanced around the campsite. When he spoke again, his words were cracked and full of desperation. “Where is Eliza?”

  Keech frowned, confused. “Who?”

  “My daughter.” Doyle’s voice hitched, and he coughed. “I assume you’ve dug through my gear. Please tell me you didn’t leave her behind.”

  “The bones are safe,” Keech said. “We left them in your satchel. Maybe you ought to tell us why you’re hauling a skeleton around Kansas.”

  Doyle said nothing for a moment. Then he sighed. “Eliza was John Wesley’s younger sister. The joy of my life—all our lives. She used to run around the yard with her puppy. Sometimes I’d find her playing with her dolls at the top of a tree or wrestling with our shoats in the pen. Her dresses were always covered in muck.” The Ranger chortled, then coughed.

  Rustling around the campfire drew Keech’s attention. He saw that the others were sitting up, listening.

  “She drowned in the Erinyes River earlier this year, just before the turn of spring,” Doyle continued, his voice fragile. “She could swim as well as I, but the Erinyes could be a rager in the rainy season, and we worried every time she played near the banks. We should’ve been watching her that day.”

  Keech dropped his head at the news.

  “I went out of my mind with grief. My wife, Gerty, and John Wesley wanted to mourn an
d move on. I couldn’t.”

  “What did you do?” Cutter asked.

  “I took Eliza’s body from the ground and rode west. I had a plan.” He lifted his bruised face, and copper flame reflected in his eyes.

  Keech recalled the words Bad Whiskey had spoken at Bone Ridge—The Char Stone is life. It’ll restore me. I’ll finally be whole again—and he suddenly understood Doyle’s scheme. “You believe you can bring her back, don’t you? That’s why you broke into my mother’s grave and stole the Char Stone.”

  Doyle grunted. “As I said, I went out of my mind.”

  “The Stone is gone,” Duck said. “Coward ran off with it.”

  More violent coughs racked the man’s lungs. Quinn moved to help him, but Doyle pushed him gently back, showing a hand covered with purple veins. “I’m all right.”

  Keech knelt closer to the campfire. “Ranger, before my pa died, he said the Enforcers met up in Missouri in 1845 and formed a plan to hide the Stone from Rose. He said you all took the Oath of Memory to cloud your recollections. So how did you find your way back to it? How did you get the Stone?”

  “After the skirmish at the Blackwood place in the spring of ’45—” Doyle interrupted himself and smiled feebly at Keech. “After what happened at your old home, Rose’s men went back into hiding. Isaiah insisted they would come back. He said the Stone was too dangerous and the Fang too tempting. So we set out to lose the artifacts, put them back into hiding like the Key.”

  “The Key?” Duck glanced at Keech, but he could only shrug. Pa Abner had never mentioned any sort of special key.

  Doyle ignored Duck’s question. “We buried the Stone in Erin Blackwood’s grave, then took the Fang to the Osage elders—two beloved friends who had assisted the Enforcers in the past. We begged them to help us conceal it.”

  “In Bonfire Crossing,” Keech said.

  “Yes. Our friends agreed to help, but insisted we all take the Oath to ensure we wouldn’t be tempted to reclaim the relics.”

  Cutter spat into the fire. “But you found a way to break it.”

  On this, Doyle’s face darkened, and his voice dropped to a murmur. “The loss of Eliza drove me to tap a dark energy—the only one I knew that could sever the binding on my mind and recover my memories. The energy is known as the Prime.”

  A recollection of Pa Abner scolding Bad Whiskey at the Home struck Keech: You’ve borrowed the Prime. Your soul’s sunk deeper into rot than ever.…

  Doyle went on. “I conducted an ancient ritual, recited what’s called the Black Verse. This made contact with the dark power. It shattered the Oath’s wall around my mind, but not before it turned my daughter’s body to bones. For a trade, you see. With dark magic, there’s always a terrible trade.” He took a quick, shuddering breath. “You would all do well to remember that.”

  “What’d you do then?” asked Quinn.

  “I traveled back to the Osage and sought the Protectors, the group designated to watch over Bonfire Crossing. I told them I wanted back in, but they refused, wouldn’t even allow me passage to speak to the elders.”

  Duck’s face tilted with curiosity. “We saw the Protectors, didn’t we? They were the horsemen that were traveling just past the Kansas River. You told us you’d seen them before, on the prairie.”

  Doyle chuckled. “Nothing gets by you, Duck Embry.”

  Keech’s mind toiled quickly at other pieces of the puzzle. “Pa Abner said the Crossing moves location. That’s why you haven’t been able get back in, right? Even when your memories of the Crossing returned, the Osage were able to hide the way. They knew you would try to recover the Fang.”

  Doyle tried to appear unruffled by Keech’s accusatory tone, but the sudden quiver in his face betrayed his desperation.

  When he didn’t speak, Keech pressed him. “What happened after the Protectors turned you away?”

  “I headed to Missouri to fetch the Char Stone.”

  “And you went through Floodwood,” Keech said.

  “I did. There was no way around that infernal wood.”

  “Which means you traveled to the cave,” Duck said.

  The Ranger simply nodded.

  “We found an Osage man with a longbow in that cave,” she went on. “He’d been torn up by a monster bear. He left a warning in blood on the wall.”

  Doyle’s head tilted downward.

  “Don’t tell me. You knew him,” Keech guessed.

  Doyle’s face glistened with sweat. “His name was Wandering Star. He was a nice young man, smart and funny. He’d spent much of his youth training with his uncle to be a Protector of the Crossing. When the Protectors turned me away, he followed after me at a distance. When I confronted him on the trail, he said he was curious about my intentions, but I later learned he wanted to report my actions back to his uncle, as a means to prove himself to his troop.”

  “Did you tell him what you were up to?” Keech asked.

  Doyle’s expression was one of weary resignation. “I figured he could be a great help to my mission, so I told him only what I thought he should know. That I was tracking a dangerous object, to keep it safe. The two of us struck out for Missouri, located Floodwood, and were trapped for several days in the tormenting loops. That is, till my young companion found a strange door on the side of a red mountain. My amulet shard opened the door’s lock.” As he said this, Doyle patted his chest, apparently searching for the shard, and made a sour face when he turned up nothing.

  Keech lifted the Enforcer’s charm out of his coat to show he’d taken it. “I’m holding this for safekeeping,” he said, then tucked it back down. “That was my Pa Abner’s door, by the way. He built it to hide the path into the cave.”

  “I know. The second I touched it, I remembered helping Isaiah cut the planks.” Doyle smiled a little, then pushed on. “After we entered the cave, we ran into the great bear. We tried to stand against the beast, but it killed Wandering Star, and I was forced to run.”

  “You abandoned him?” Duck said, her tone severe.

  “No. I stood by his side. But once I saw he was finished, I knew I had no other option but to flee to the river. I never meant for the boy to fall.”

  “Did you ever tell his family what happened? That he chased after you to seek the truth?” Duck asked.

  “I suppose I don’t have the courage yet to show my face to his loved ones.”

  Keech sighed darkly. He could still see Wandering Star’s corpse slumped against the cave wall, his bony finger pointing to his final message of doom. “So you walked to Bone Ridge and dug up my mother’s grave and left that doll in place of the Stone.” He pointed at the figurine clutched in Duck’s hand. “Did you intend to send Rose a message?”

  “No,” Doyle said. “I left Eliza’s doll to explain why I had to reclaim the Char Stone. I hoped if any of my fellow Enforcers ever came looking for it, they’d understand I had to take the Stone to save my little girl.”

  “You must know you can’t save her,” Keech said. “The Char Stone is cursed. And whatever this Fang of Barachiel can do, it won’t bring her back. At least not the Eliza you love and remember. Nothing cursed brings anything good.”

  Doyle gazed deeply into the fire, his bruised face shiny with tears. “I need rest.”

  The young riders asked him a few more questions, but the Ranger didn’t respond. Keech stepped over and touched his shoulder. The man didn’t stir. Were it not for the shallow rising of his chest, Doyle could have been mistaken for a corpse. “He’s passed out again,” Keech said.

  After tending to Doyle’s wound, they spoke for a while longer, mulling over the many things Doyle had shared. Keech wondered why John Wesley had claimed the man had killed his mother, when according to the Ranger’s story, she had been alive when Doyle fled with Eliza’s body.

  “Maybe John’s grief made him lose his mind, too,” Quinn said.

  “John’s mind is fine,” Cutter returned. “I’m sure he’s got his reasons.”

  “Let’s get
some more sleep,” Duck said, but before tucking back into her blanket, she gave the ragged doll a curious look, then placed it in Edgar Doyle’s hand. “He needs it more than I do,” she said.

  Keech’s thoughts rattled with questions and theories. To calm himself, he wandered the camp’s perimeter, allowing his eyes to read the area.

  A minuscule line of pockmarks in the snow told Keech that a field mouse had scurried past the camp recently. He listened to the steady moan of the wind curling across the plain. Plump clouds piled upon one another, obscuring the sun like a candle flame behind stained glass. He closed his eyes and imagined the journey of the buffalo they’d seen on the prairie, the weight of their hooves against the ground, the sounds of their breathing in the herd.

  Energies exist inside everything you can see and smell, taste and touch, Doyle had said not long ago.

  Something pulsed deep inside Keech, a vibration across his gut. Then another quiver caught him, as if a taut string within his heart had been plucked. He felt as if something were tugging at him from the direction of the distant woods.

  The first step to connecting with these buried energies is to clear your mind of distractions.

  A stand of snow-coated trees stood alone on the curving horizon. Keech narrowed his eyes, searching for movement within the wooded cluster. He saw nothing. The hair on his arms stood up and, somehow, he knew the camp was being watched.

  CHAPTER 26

  SHADOW OF THE ELK

  The young riders reached the round boulders just as dusk rolled over the prairie.

  When Keech spotted them—a cluster of large sandstone masses that stood on the crest of a broad white promontory—he thought of giant cannonballs left to rust in the Kansas weather. There were at least two dozen of them, each capped by a layer of snow, and they formed a natural rampart of sorts on the flat top of the knoll.

  Keech drew rein below the strange formations. “This must be the place. Mr. Horner said the bending tree would be down the hill. Let’s head to the other side.”