Dragon Frontier

by Dan Abnett

  ‘He thought there were dragons,’ said Horace. ‘He was as mad as a ferret, and he made me as mad as a bear.’

  ‘Just tell what happened,’ said Horace’s aunt.

  ‘I didn’t like getting beat at the spelling bee by a boy who wasn’t in his right mind, so I got mad and I beat him back,’ said Horace.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with Jake’s mind,’ said Mrs Garret. ‘He just lost his family.’

  ‘We thought he was crazy,’ said Horace.

  ‘Where did you beat him?’ asked Garret.

  ‘On Drum Hill, down by the rhododendrons,’ said Horace.

  ‘Tell me exactly what happened,’ said Garret. Horace was an inch taller than Garret and thirty pounds heavier, but that didn’t stop him being afraid of the blacksmith. He soon told the whole story.

  ‘Which is where Trapper comes in,’ said McKenzie as soon as Horace had finished. ‘He can track the boy and find him in no time flat.’

  ‘Know them forests like the back of my hand,’ said Trapper Watkiss, keen to go after the boy.

  ‘I’ll go with you,’ said Garret.

  ‘You’ll slow me down,’ said Trapper. ‘Besides, I need a clear head to follow a trail. I don’t want the worry of a civilian getting in my way.’

  McKenzie put his hand on Garret’s shoulder, partly to reassure him, but mostly to control him.

  ‘He’ll have the boy home by tomorrow, just you wait and see,’ he said. Garret looked hard at McKenzie’s hand on his shoulder, and McKenzie took it away.

  ‘Mind that you find him safe, and mind that you do it quickly,’ said Garret.

  Eliza Garret took her brothers to school. She explained to Miss Ballantine that Jake was missing and that she was helping with the search. Even though she’d promised her parents she’d look after the twins and stay out of trouble, Eliza was determined to help find Jake. It was her fault that he was missing, and she was eaten up inside with guilt. Her belly felt odd and she hadn’t slept, thinking about telling her father what she had done. She couldn’t concentrate properly, and she knew that the only cure for her troubles was to find Jake and bring him home. She’d never forgive herself if she didn’t.

  ‘That’s three of my class missing today,’ said Miss Ballantine.

  ‘Three?’ asked Eliza.

  ‘Jake and you,’ said Miss Ballantine, ‘and there’s no sign of Horace McKenzie.’

  Eliza wondered if Horace had come down with an attack of guilt too. If he felt anything like as miserable as she did, it served him right.

  Walking away from the schoolhouse, Eliza reasoned that, if Horace had felt guilty, he might have talked to his father. Since she had no other leads, she made her way back to the mercantile in search of Horace McKenzie. She kept to the backs of the buildings and then crept around the side of the mercantile to see what she could see.

  There was a small window behind the counter, and, standing on her tiptoes, Eliza could just peek over the window ledge and into the store. She couldn’t hear what anyone was saying, but it was clear that Horace had told his story and that a search party was being sent out to look for Jake.

  Eliza made a dash for home. She wondered how much Horace had said and whether he had shared her part in Jake’s disappearance. After all, if she hadn’t told him about Jake’s fever and about the dragons, Horace might not have thought him a madman in the first place.

  Would the guilt never end?

  Eliza arrived at the forge house, and took an extra sweater and her father’s second-best winter jacket out of the blanket box. She also found the hat that Daniel had worn when he’d gone shooting. She tied her braids on top of her head and pushed the hat down over them. Then she took her gun from behind her bed and shoved a box of home-made cartridges in her pocket. Lastly, she took a pencil and paper out of her mother’s dresser and wrote a note. She placed it on her pillow, where her mother would find it, but hoped that it would be long after she was gone.

  Eliza took the road west from the forge. She thought that Jake might head back to the forest, back to the Natives. Besides, east of McKenzie’s Prospect was mostly farmland, and Jake didn’t know anyone from the rural community.

  Eliza reached the edge of town and tucked herself behind the Murphys’ outhouse. She had a good view of the road from there. Less than half an hour later, Eliza watched Trapper Watkiss and his mule walk down the road. Trapper looked this way and that, sniffed the air and held a finger up every so often. Eliza assumed that it all had something to do with tracking Jake. She waited for Trapper to reach the nearest bend in the path and then began to follow him.

  Jake’s first thought when he’d got rid of Mr Haskell was to get away as quickly as possible. His second thought was to wonder how to scale the steep incline that he’d ridden down on his back an hour earlier.

  It was impossible.

  The sun was rising in a clear blue sky, and Jake believed that a sunny day would follow. It didn’t make the slope any less steep or any less slippery. Just as there had been no handholds on the way down, Jake could see none to help him climb back up.

  He was sure he needed to travel uphill and even surer that he needed to travel through the forest. All he could do was follow the base of the slope and hope that the gradient would ease off enough for him to be able to walk up the slope, back to where he wanted to be.

  The river was wide and the views across it were good. It wouldn’t be difficult for someone to spot Jake from quite a distance, and he didn’t want to be spotted at all. As he hurried along, Jake kept his eyes glued to the slope. Once or twice, he used a tree or rock to try to climb it, but his attempts ended in failure. By mid-morning, he was becoming increasingly fearful that he would be seen. The sun was high, and the mist had drifted away.

  Then Jake had to avoid a boulder that appeared to be leaning against the bottom of the slope. The rock had a deep notch in the side nearest to him, and the top was flat. Somehow, it didn’t look as if it belonged there, and there was no other boulder so large or so close to the slope.

  Jake stood next to the boulder. He wrapped his blanket around his shoulders so that he didn’t have to carry it and put the toe of his right foot into the notch in the rock. It was a perfect fit. He then hoisted himself on to the top of the rock, which was exactly the right size for two adult feet to stand on, facing to the left. Looking up the slope, he saw a clump of grass just above his head. He reached his hand up and realized that the grass was growing out of a scooped hole in the side of the slope. His hand fitted easily inside, and he guessed that he could use it as a foothold if he could just find another somewhere in between.

  Jake scanned the area around waist-level and found a tree root that had woven its way out of the soil and then turned and entered the earth again. It looked just like the rung of a ladder. Jake put his toe on it and lifted himself up, placing his hand firmly in the handhold. Then he began to see more places he could use to pull himself up. He would never have seen them from the ground, but, the more he climbed, the more he saw a way up the slope.

  When Jake reached the top, he spread the blanket on the ground and flopped on to it. The climb had only been thirty feet, but it was a long way to fall without a safety net. Reaching the top had been hard work, but if Jake had been as tall as an adult man he would have found the ladder much less tricky.

  Then it dawned on Jake that the ladder might not be natural, that the spacing was too regular, too convenient. Perhaps the ladder had been built on purpose. He felt a thrill of excitement. Perhaps Natives had built the path; perhaps he was finally on the right track.

  He began to work his way uphill. Everything seemed familiar. He recognized the patte
rns of light as the sun penetrated the heavy canopy and fell in patches on the forest floor. The shapes of the moss on the north sides of the trees seemed familiar. The height and spacing of the shrubs and undergrowth that Jake worked his way through were not new to him, and, when they came into view, the lumps and bumps of the horizon were just as he remembered them.

  There were sounds too. Jake didn’t jump at the calls of birds or at the barks and howls of the dogs that inhabited the forest. He had no trouble estimating distances and directions, and he managed to avoid the larger animals. Besides, he wasn’t afraid of them any more.

  Then Jake’s left arm began to itch. He was still wearing both jackets, and, as well as his arm itching, he was getting hot. He wound the blanket from around his shoulders and folded it carefully before putting it on the ground to sit on. Then he took off Garret’s jacket. He wasn’t sure about scratching his arm, so he gently rubbed it through the other jacket. Then Jake carefully took off that jacket, right sleeve first. There was no sign of anything unusual, and he breathed a sigh of relief. It took him another three minutes to pluck up the courage to take the left sleeve off.

  Jake had seen his arm for the first time during the fight with Horace and his cronies, and he’d shown his tattoo to Mr Haskell only a few hours ago. That first time he’d seen it, Jake had looked at the tattoo in fear and wonder, not sure whether to be impressed or horrified. When he’d taken Daniel’s jacket off to try to stitch the sleeve back on, he’d wrapped the blanket around his body to keep warm and had concentrated so hard that he hadn’t really looked at the tattoo.

  Jake idly picked at the string stitches at the top of the sleeve and then stopped. He didn’t want to have to sew the sleeve back on again because sewing wasn’t as easy as it looked. Finally, he closed his eyes tight and pulled the jacket off in one swift motion. Then he placed his right hand gently over his left wrist to see if he could feel anything.

  The skin felt smooth, almost glossy in places, and puckered in others. It was not sore or swollen, but the itching hadn’t gone away. After another minute, feeling faintly ridiculous, Jake opened one eye and looked at his arm. The tattoo wove around his wrist and up his arm, past the elbow and right up to his shoulder. The fine outlines were beautifully etched into his flesh around the areas of new skin where he had been burned. The wing that spread the length of his arm appeared to be made up of dozens of interlocking shapes, like great feathers. No, more like flames, Jake thought.

  Some of the skin was yellow and some pink, but it was all healthy. The tattoo was pristine. Jake touched the edge of one of the flames with the tip of his forefinger. Where the tattoo had been inked in place, the skin was totally smooth, even though he’d expected to feel a groove in the skin or a raised area. All of the texture was in the areas of his skin that had been burned. There were no blisters or scabs, no rashes and no signs of broken skin or infection.

  Jake looked more closely at the skin and then placed his hand firmly around his forearm, over the wing shapes. He detected the faintest throb and a little heat, which might account for the itching, but nothing else. He decided that he really was much more impressed by his tattoo than horrified.

  He thought about looking at his hand too, but changed his mind. It was sore, and he was sure it was still healing.

  Satisfied that all was well, Jake prepared for the next stage of his journey. First, he shook out the blanket. Most of the mud had dried, and a lot of it flew off easily. So, by the time he was finished, it was fairly clean. Daniel’s old jacket, despite the badly sewn sleeve, was the cleanest, so Jake folded it into the blanket to protect it and put Garret’s jacket back on. He tucked the blanket under his arm and continued walking uphill, through the forest, always aware of the pictures of the landmarks in his head.

  An hour later, Jake could see the horizon and a long escarpment leading towards it. He could not judge the distance, but he knew that he was heading for a spot on that ridge. The itch in his arm had grown more persistent, and Jake rubbed it, as he had done every ten minutes since he’d stopped.

  Some time after that, Jake removed his jacket. The view hadn’t changed much, but his arm had begun to itch more and more, and he brought it up to his face to get another good look at his tattoo. It looked as if the skin up and down his arm was changing colour where the wing was drawn. The tattooed lines seemed darker and even more intense, and the skin tingled and throbbed.

  Jake was convinced that he was heading in the right direction. Everything looked exactly the way it had in his dream, and even his tattoo was reassuring him that he was on the right course.

  Eliza watched Trapper Watkiss, not very carefully or very closely, but she certainly watched him.

  To begin with, she wasn’t very impressed with his progress. He was simply wandering about, apparently directionless, and taking a long time over it.

  She was bored, and she still felt guilty, and she wanted Trapper and his mule to go faster, so Eliza decided to get closer to the old man and actually watch him. There were plenty of rocks and trees to hide behind, and shadows too. After an hour, before they’d even covered the first mile, Eliza suddenly realized that the old man never once looked back.

  Trapper Watkiss knew, as every good tracker knows, that once an area has been covered it’s better not to turn back. Turning back causes confusion. Trapper Watkiss also knew that the most important thing was to get the lay of the land, to judge how firm the ground is, how deep any tracks might be and how long they might remain on the surface. Trapper Watkiss spent the first hour looking for signs of anyone on the road, and then he spent more time working out how long ago each person might have passed by. He knew how tall and heavy the boy was and that his prints would disappear long before a big man’s prints would be lost. He also knew that Jake’s prints would remain long after dog prints were gone.

  Scents were another thing. Scent didn’t last long in the air, but a deer could pick it up. It could see a man and stay calm, but if it caught one whiff of a man you’d never know it had been there.

  Every living thing on earth had to eat, sleep and relieve itself. Every time a man or a beast did any of those things, he left a scent behind. If a man or beast relieved himself, he left his scent for a long time. It was easy to learn the differences between the smells of a dog, a deer, a bear or a man, but to tell the scent of one man from another was a gift, especially if the smell was old.

  Two or three miles further on, Trapper Watkiss stopped for several minutes, examining a narrow path that veered off into the woods. Eliza drew up close behind him, keeping to the shadows, and was surprised to hear the old man talking.

  ‘Got him good and proper, Sarah old girl,’ he said.

  Eliza jumped, convinced for a moment that Trapper had spoken her name.

  ‘You and me, old thing,’ said Watkiss, patting his mule’s flanks. ‘We’ll track this pup down in no time.’

  Eliza breathed a sigh of relief and then giggled. She could hardly believe that the gruff, scary old man would talk to his animals. Some people spoke to their dogs or horses, and Eliza believed that old ladies sometimes kept cats for their laps rather than for catching mice. Even so, she thought it very peculiar that Trapper would name his mule, let alone talk to it.

  ‘We’re sure of his footfalls now,’ said Trapper, ‘but this is the thing!’

  Eliza watched as the old man leaned over and sniffed the edge of the path, between two trees that stood close together.

  ‘Let’s see how often he makes water, shall we, Sarah?’ Watkiss asked the mule. ‘A young man answered a call of nature right here and no mistake.’

  Eliza clapped her hand over her mouth so as not to laugh out loud. N
ot only was Trapper talking to a mule, he was talking to her about Jake’s outhouse habits. Eliza very nearly choked on the back of her hand trying to stifle her glee. When this was all over, she would have a splendid story to tell. Then the very idea that she would tell stories about Trapper made Eliza suddenly very serious. The last time she’d told stories it had ended badly, and she promised herself that she wouldn’t start any more gossip.

  Once they were on the woodland path, Trapper began to move much faster. The earth was wetter and held tracks for longer, and Trapper had no problem following Jake’s progress.

  ‘Like a rampaging bull,’ Trapper told Sarah as he examined a broken twig close to the path. ‘That boy might as well have left a trail of little stones, like what’s-’is-name from Hansel and Gretel. That boy’ll be Hansel to us forever more.’

  Eliza was surprised that Trapper knew a children’s fairy story, but was quite entranced by his conversation with the mule, so she stayed close. Being near the old man also made her feel safe. She had been in the forest with her father, for shooting practice, but not too far or for too long.

  ‘Once upon a time, a man could expect tracking to be a real task, old girl,’ said Trapper. ‘I knew men who could walk ten miles a day and never leave a twig snapped nor a leaf stirred, nor a single footprint neither. I’ve followed men who could move without a sound, and, if they had to make a sound, could imitate any bird or beast. I knew a man who could sound like a fast-running stream or a broad, slow river. French he was, fur trapper in British Columbia. Those were the days, when men was men. Woodland runners we called them. Worked with them too, when I had half the years I’ve got now.’

  Eliza had no idea that Trapper Watkiss had lived such an interesting pioneering life. His stories might not be true, of course, but who on earth would lie to a mule?