No one said anything for moments, taking in that grim bit of news.
“So what do we do?” Gilbert asked.
“Like we’re doing now,” Mackenzie said and scratched at the side of his head. “Try and find the end of this thing, before she bends herself straight up in the air like she did, shaking us out the end like the last few candies from a box.”
“It did feel like that, didn’t it?” Gilbert smiled.
“What if we can’t get to the end? Nathan asked, dreading the question.
“I don’t know, Nate. I just don’t know. Ain’t no sun out there now, so maybe it’s all good. I’ll—we’ll know next time we see it. How much bigger it is. How much closer it’s become.”
That was as good as could be expected, Nathan supposed. He took hold of the latch and pulled it open.
Blackness. Metal creaked and groaned within, and fresh air hit his face, but otherwise it resembled a tunnel leading to a castle’s dungeon. There wasn’t much light, and the light there didn’t last long when the other men shuffled behind him. What Nathan could see didn’t look like any vestibule they’d passed through earlier, and he remembered the last tunnel he’d walked through.
“I hate this part,” he muttered, before straightening his father’s hat on his head and cautiously stepping forward, venturing deeper into the dark. It didn’t feel like metal underfoot, but rather dried rock. He held his Colt before him as he walked, his fingers grazing the wall, which felt like the leather stretched across the ribs of a pliable frame. The floor shifted just a little underfoot, as if he were moving from plate to plate.
Mackenzie’s outline was two steps behind him. The other men were shadows, shuffling forward, treating the floor as if it were a sheet of thin ice.
Mackenzie placed a hand on his shoulder. “Just me,” he said. “Everyone link up.”
Mackenzie’s hand flexed, and Nathan pulled him along, following the wall. He swung his gun hand to the right and cracked it off metal. “Narrow tunnel,” he said.
“Narrow enough,” Mackenzie agreed.
They kept walking, in total blackness that Nathan liked less with every step. There was no difference between closing his eyes and keeping them open. A dozen more steps and Nathan halted, his hand against the wall.
“What’s wrong?” Mackenzie whispered.
“Everyone still here?” Nathan asked.
“Hell yes we’re still here,” Eli said.
“I’m still here,” Gilbert said.
“I’m here, too,” Jimmy sounded off.
“Anything behind you, Eli?” Nathan asked.
A pause then. “Not a goddamn thing. Just the dark.”
“Can’t see the doorway?”
“Not a goddamn thing, I said. I closed it, on account of what Festus said about closing the doors.”
Always close the doors behind you. Always. Lest… something follows you… into this reality. Or the next.
“What’s that?” Mackenzie said. “On ahead.”
Light. A pinprick of light, way off in the distance.
Nathan got walking. At one step, the rock became dirt, and the air became sweet to breathe.
Not twenty minutes later, the tunnel ended.
“My sweet Lord,” Mackenzie said at his shoulder.
The passageway opened to a flat plain, where wild grass grew to one’s knee, and gently swayed to the barest of breezes. A gold sky shimmered overhead, coloring the evening. Not another thing could be seen on that vast stretch of land, and the sight of all that emptiness stopped Nathan two steps back from the tunnel’s end.
“What?” Mackenzie asked.
“Just wait,” Nathan said. “Remember the crabs?”
That stopped them all.
“That was desert,” Mackenzie said, gripping his shoulder. “All I see is good old Saskatchewan prairie.”
Nathan wasn’t sure of that.
Sensing that unease, Mackenzie pushed by him and carefully stuck his head outside of the tunnel.
His shoulders slumped when he studied the area around the tunnel mouth.
“What’s wrong?” Nathan asked.
“You best see for yourself,” Mackenzie said and backed away from the opening, his face gone slack with disbelief.
The rest of the gang pushed forward and exited the tunnel. Nathan saw it first.
The door was a black rectangle in an impossible reality. Nothing framed the opening. Nothing kept it up, but it was there, a magical, sorcerous doorway of non-light where men were cautiously emerging. Once they saw that amazing breach in the very air, their mouths hung open.
Jimmy Norquay stepped around the door, and flinched as if a bull had goosed him with both horns.
Nathan went back there and saw. Drawn by the moment, the others did the same.
There was no depth to the door. The opening was merely height and width, suspended upon the land by laws no one could understand. One couldn’t see the doorway from behind, as it was nothing but air, but if one merely leaned forward, that void-like blackness crept into view.
“This is some unreal shit right here, boys,” Eli said from the other side, sizing up the door as he leaned one way and then the other.
“There’s no thickness there,” Gilbert said.
“Just a flat plane on one side,” Mackenzie added and tensed. “Hold on.”
The door was shrinking, its dimensions steadily decreasing, and gaining speed. If any of them thought about diving back into the tunnel, the few seconds it took to realize the doorway was shrinking made it too late to do so.
In a span of three breaths, the doorway was gone.
The gang stood around the place where the portal existed. Gilbert even extended his rifle and swished it through the empty space.
“Gone,” Jimmy said.
Mackenzie let his breath out in a sigh. “Unbelievable. Amazing. Shocking and far-fetched. I can’t think of any other words to describe what we just saw.”
“How about bullshit?” Eli asked.
Mackenzie frowned at the man. “We’re walking through worlds, here. Worlds.”
Eli and Gilbert glanced around, not impressed with what they saw.
“All right, so where the hell are we?” Nathan asked.
“No idea,” Mackenzie replied. “But I bet if we just stand here… and relax….”
He trailed off, even closed his eyes.
Nathan didn’t need to close his eyes. He felt the pull already.
“So gentle,” Mackenzie said, a smile spreading across his face.
“As gentle as a whore’s tug on your weasel,” Eli said. “That’s your weasel, Mackenzie. I prefer a firm grip and a yank on mine.”
“This is important,” Mackenzie declared. “To finding our way back. The pull, the tug we’re feeling. It’s important. It’s a clue, somehow.”
Without a glance at any of them, Mackenzie took his bearings on where the door had been, sighted a sun to the west of the disappeared portal, and faced north.
“Least the sun looks normal,” Mackenzie muttered.
And it did.
“This way,” Mackenzie said and starting walking through the knee-high grass.
Jimmy Norquay reached down and grabbed a handful of the prairie grass. He inspected it, even took a sniff.
“Well?” Nathan asked.
“Grass,” Jimmy reported, rubbing a few strands through his fingers.
“But where?”
Jimmy shrugged and looked to Mackenzie’s back.
Eli and Gilbert walked by the two men, following the new trail. “Have a sniff for me while you’re at it,” Eli said with a smile.
“Me too,” Gilbert smirked.
The two gun runners marched in Mackenzie’s tracks.
“This isn’t Saskatchewan,” Jimmy said to Nathan.
“No?”
“For one, it’s winter.”
Nathan knew that. “Or at least it was winter.”
The two men regarded each other, remembering how tim
e twisted and bent inside the train.
Without a word, Jimmy got walking after the others.
Squinting at the western sun, Nathan followed.
43
Once again they marched.
Strung out in single file, wading through prairie grass that reached their mid-thigh. Flies buzzed around them, close enough to be shooed away or grabbed for, but never caught. The insects didn’t seem interested in the men’s blood, however, and that was a good thing. The land was flat in an ungodly way, and the horizon seemed to roll away from them in all directions. There wasn’t even a range of noticeable hills or mountains, and if it wasn’t for the sun falling in the western sky, or the subtle pull they were all feeling, Nathan figured they would be lost.
As it was, far as he was concerned, they were lost. And in another desert.
“Sure as hell hope the crab things that got Leland and Shorty ain’t around here,” Gilbert remarked, reminding Nathan of the lost men.
“Ain’t none of that foolishness around here,” Eli said.
“How would you know?”
“Remember the desert? The way the ground was all chewed up?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Not saying there might be something like the crabs around. Or worse.”
“Jesus, Eli. You think so?”
“Just saying is all.”
Nathan frowned, smelling a lie.
“Aren’t any crabs around here,” Mackenzie said, still leading the way, his rifle over his shoulder. “But there might very well be something different. Just keep your eyes and ears open.”
“Like what?” Gilbert asked.
“I don’t know. Anything.”
Gilbert shook his head and sized up the horizon.
Jimmy Norquay was a watch tower, scowling at the landscape to the right, while holding Shorty’s shotgun in both hands. At times, he slowed down and cupped a weed, nipping the stalk between his fingers before releasing it. He’d walk a distance before another ordinary weed took his attention. Every so often he would glance back at Nathan, as if to check he was still back there.
Nathan tipped his hat at him once and got ignored.
“Bet we see some buffalo around here,” Gilbert said. “Geez, that would be some good eating. One big old buffalo. Skin the thing right here and start up a fire. Have ourselves a cook-up.”
“What are you gonna burn?” Eli asked.
“There’ll be trees around here.”
Eli scanned the horizon. “Ain’t nothing around here, Gilbert. Not one goddamn thing. Least with the desert there was something to look at. There’s nothing here except dirt and grass. And whatever the hell Jimmy roots up.”
“What is it you’re rooting up, there Jimmy?” Gilbert asked.
“Plants. Flowers. Weeds.”
“Why’s that?”
“Trying to figure out where we are.”
“Any idea?”
Jimmy shook his head. “No.”
“Keep working on that then, Jimmy,” Gilbert said, in as chipper a mood as any Nathan ever saw him in, despite everything that had happened.
“Wait until night,” Nathan told them all. “When the stars come out. If we’re anywhere near where we want to be, I’ll know.”
“And if not?” Eli asked.
Nathan didn’t answer him.
They continued to walk, sweat rolling down their faces, until they took off their coats one by one. Even then they were sweating, considering they were still dressed for winter in the mountains. Nathan dearly wanted a bath and a drink, and hoped that the air would carry that smell of nearby fresh water, but it did not. Every so often, he’d check on the sun, watching it sink toward the horizon. He saw no looming sun that Mackenzie had warned them about. The trail they left in the grass had disappeared some fifty paces out, leaving an unblemished sea of grass.
The men didn’t talk much, not even when Mackenzie stopped them for a rest. The mail bags full of money were starting to become a burden, and the men were now resenting the added weight around their necks.
No one approached them.
Nothing was seen.
It truly was an empty landscape.
Too tired to comment on it, the men kept walking, guided by that little pull that was strongest when they stopped for a breath. The barest force that nudged them to their feet and continued to steer them north.
The sun descended, and the sky went from gold to orange, with a few purple swaths of cloud for extra color. The flies didn’t thicken with the evening, which was fine by Nathan, but once again he was damn unsettled by the lack of anything around them. No landmarks, no animals, and no people. The lack of any other bugs even bothered him.
They stopped an hour before nightfall. Mackenzie simply halted and dropped his belongings into the grass. With his hands on his hips, he turned and rubbed his head with his scarf. The others got in close and did the same, and a campsite as good as any other was made, such as it was.
“Jesus Christ,” Eli declared. “My two feet are about to drop off.”
“My two feet are wearing through my boot soles,” Gilbert added. “I ain’t never walked so damn much in all my days.”
Looking up at the darkening sky, Nathan had to agree.
“Nothing for a fire,” Mackenzie said.
“Nothing to eat or drink,” Eli had to point out.
“I’m too tired to eat or drink anyway,” Gilbert said as he spread his coat out onto the grass, flattening it. He then dumped a mailbag full of cash onto the makeshift bed, and that was his pillow. Figuring that wasn’t a bad idea, the others did the same, forming a small circle where each man’s feet pointed inwards.
“Don’t suppose we should post a sentry?” Mackenzie asked.
“What for?” Eli asked back. “Ain’t nothing here.”
“Just in case.”
“There ain’t nothin’ here, Mack,” the gun runner stressed.
“Not a goddamn thing,” Gilbert threw in for spice.
“Not a goddamn thing,” Eli picked up. “The only thing I might be worried about is getting a deer tick interested in my dirty bits, and I ain’t worried about that.”
“The wildlife could come out at night,” Mackenzie said.
“From where?” Nathan asked, joining the conversation. “There’s nowhere to hide during the day.”
“Yeah, stop with the worrying, Mack. You’re scaring the beans ‘n bacon outta Jimmy over there.”
To his credit, Jimmy lay on his back, legs crossed, shotgun nearby, and stared at the deepening night.
“Well, just sleep light then,” Mackenzie said.
“Sleep light,” Eli scoffed. “Yes, all right, I’ll sleep light. Here that, boys? Mack wants us to sleep light.”
Gilbert answered with a snore.
“I second that,” Eli said and settled down for the night.
No one spoke, but Gilbert continued to snore, until Eli reached over and swatted the man across the chest. Still mostly asleep, Gilbert flailed back before rolling onto his side. His snoring ceased.
The stars were being shy, but they were up there.
“Warm night,” Mackenzie said in a weary voice.
“Quiet, too,” Nathan said, hearing mostly the buzzing absence of noise.
“Hey Jimmy,” Mackenzie asked. “This must be familiar to you, seeing as you’re from Tail Creek.”
Jimmy didn’t answer.
“Notice anything at all?”
Silence. Then, “No.”
“Nothing?”
“Not a thing.”
Mackenzie pressed on. “I suppose you were just a lad, anyway, when you were around Tail Creek. Before it all burned down.”
Burned down. That extracted a memory that Nathan didn’t like. Jimmy looked to be in his mid-thirties, but he could have easily been the same age as Leland. Tail Creek had been a Metis town in Manitoba, and a sizeable one at that, before a prairie fire scorched it from the map. The subsequent destruction to the buffalo herds ensured the
town was never rebuilt.
Then he remembered Leland saying something about meeting Jimmy in a residential school.
“I recall that Tail Creek was close to a thousand Metis at one time or other,” Mackenzie continued on.
“Mack?” Nathan asked.
“Yes?”
“Go to sleep.”
Mackenzie was quiet for a while, then, as if realizing what he was bringing up might be bad memories for Jimmy, said, “Yes. Good idea, Nate. In the morning then. Ah… sorry, Jimmy. If I dredged up… well. Sorry.”
“I’m fine,” Jimmy said a touch stoically. “I don’t remember anything from then. I was too young.”
“How young was that?”
“Mack,” Nathan stressed.
“Right. Sorry. Sorry, Jimmy.”
Mackenzie settled back then with a sigh and an energetic rustling that suggested he wasn’t pleased with himself, but he left it at that. Nathan decided to not say anything more on the matter. They all had their ghosts. Nathan had his own. And even though the men sleeping about him were his partners, there was no way on God’s earth he was going to talk about his parents with any of them. Not during this business.
He figured Jimmy was pretty much the same.
Quiet. So damn quiet on the plain. Wherever they were.
The night sky slowly came into existence, a calming shift from deep blue to black that slowed the heart and the mind. The stars were once again being shy, however, and Nathan doubted he would be able to stay awake. By the sounds of things, he was already the last to fall asleep. There were one or two stars shining up there, but the full glory of the known constellations was nowhere in sight. He doubted he’d remember them, anyway.
Each blink became heavier, longer, than the one before.
And before he finally did succumb to sleep, Nathan listened. Heard the men breathing about him.
And just under the press of his coat into his ear, he heard the train.
44
Nathan woke first in the morning and cursed himself for falling asleep—although he had to admit, he’d slept pretty damn good. He sat up, looked around, and saw nothing more than that awesome emptiness surrounding them. The sky was a light blue with a few streamers of cloud stretched across it, but nothing else.
Nathan stood with a groan and saw that nothing had changed during the course of the night. No wind blew across the prairie, and the air tasted dry but good.
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