Edward spun around and found the couple that had left minutes before storming toward him. The mother’s face was screwed up in panic while the man appeared more angry than afraid.
“Mr. Leedskalnin.” The man crossed his arms. “Our son is missing. Have you seen him?”
Edward shrank away from the man’s smoldering anger. “Your son?”
“Our middle child.” The man pulled a red handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped the sweat from his brow. “We stopped to get gas on the way out of town and realized he wasn’t in the car. Is he here? Have you seen him?”
“There’s no one here but me, as far as I know. The last two guests just…left. I’m—”
“Mama?” The voice, little more than a whimper, came from just a few feet away, behind an enormous bathtub carved from stone. Edward rushed over with the frantic couple close on his heels and found a dark-skinned boy shivering on the cold earth. The mother dropped to the ground at the boy’s side and swept him up in her arms while the father spun Edward around and grabbed him by the shoulders.
“What have you done to my son?” he rumbled.
“Nothing.” Edward’s knees went weak with fright. “I didn’t know he was there. I swear.”
“Papa.” The whispered word ended in a choked sob. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Son.” The man pushed Edward aside and knelt by his wife and son. “Did this man hurt you?” When the boy didn’t answer, the father grabbed his arms and shook him. “Did he?”
“No, sir. But—”
“Why didn’t you get in the car?” The mother’s even tone carried a gravity no amount of shouting could match. “It’s not safe being on your own, honey, especially when we’re so far from home. You’re only seven years old. What were you thinking?”
“I…I didn’t want to sit in the back with Henrietta.” The boy’s face twisted into a scowl. “She was being mean.”
“She was mean? That’s all you’ve got to say about this?” The father stood and put his hands on his hips. “Your mother almost had a heart attack.” The father trembled with anger, his jowls flapping like a bulldog’s. “Now, get up off that ground and go get in the car.”
“But Papa! You won’t believe what I saw. Those men—”
“Archibald Ignatius Lacan, I do not want to hear another word.” The father’s words echoed in the Coral Castle like an angry god’s. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir.” The boy’s voice was barely a whisper.
“What was that?”
The boy refused to meet his father’s gaze. “Yes. Sir.”
The man turned to his wife. “Take Archie on to the car, honey. I’ll be along in a minute.”
As Mr. Lacan and Edward exchanged awkward apologies, Mrs. Lacan took her son by the hand and led him to the three-ton gate at the front of the park.
“I don’t know what you were thinking.” She rested a hand against the enormous stone. “Don’t you ever try anything like this again, Archie. You hear?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mrs. Lacan let out a sigh. “If you know what’s good for you, I’d suggest you keep quiet the rest of the evening. Your backside is already going to hurt enough when we get to the hotel. You say anything more to your father about this, you’re just going to make him madder.”
“Okay, Mama. I’ll keep quiet.” A mischievous grin crossed the young man’s face, the devious glint in his eye driving away all other emotion. “I can keep quiet for a long, long time.”
14
Cowboys & Indians
One second, Steven stood in an eccentric genius’ castle forged of coral; the next, on a tree-lined ridge covered in snow and ice. To his right, Niklaus stared out across the winter landscape with an expression just shy of disgust.
“Great. Another forest.” Niklaus dropped his duffel bag into the six inches of snow at his feet. “Ugh. And still winter to boot.”
Steven pointed toward multiple plumes of smoke rising into the sky in the distance. “Looks like there’s a town a mile or two southwest. I think we can get there before sunset.” The late afternoon sun rested two handbreadths above the top of the trees. “Assuming, of course, that I’ve correctly guessed the time of day.”
“At least we know which direction to go this time.” Niklaus rummaged in his bag and produced the black trench coat the Matheson family had helped him purchase for the New York winter. “Though I’d take sunny Florida over this frozen ridge any day.”
“Agreed.” Steven scooped up a handful of snow and took a palate-freezing bite. “Great,” he said, wincing. “Brain freeze.”
“Look on the bright side.” Niklaus slid into the trench and buttoned it all the way to the top. “At least I won’t be hopping over tree roots on a broken ankle this time.”
For the next hour, they hiked across a rugged pine stand that had yet to feel a logger’s axe. Snow blanketed the ground and dampened all sound but the rhythmic crunch of Niklaus and Steven’s footfalls. Half a mile into their snowy trek, they startled a family of jackrabbits beneath a fallen tree.
Scattered, Steven considered, just like us.
“So,” Niklaus asked. “Who do you think we’re here for?”
“Not a clue.” Steven held the pouch before him, the white leather bag silent in his hand. “Even when the pouch was leading me to you guys the first time, I was making it up as I went along.”
“Hm.” Niklaus raised an eyebrow. “I figured you’d have developed an intuition about that kind of thing by now.”
Steven laughed at that, his breath steaming in the cold. “At the moment, my intuition has us cross country skiing without the benefit of skis.”
“It’s not so bad.” Niklaus slapped Steven’s back. “We’ve made it this far, haven’t we?”
“I suppose.” Steven slung his duffel bag farther up on his shoulder. “Call me selfish, but I hope it’s Audrey. Not knowing if she’s all right is killing me.”
“I get that.” Niklaus grew silent for a moment. “Something just occurred to me. The pouch led you to each of us before, but as I understand it, that only worked because of the Game. Do we have any way of knowing if it’s going to help us wherever or whenever we are now?”
“I have no idea. When we caught up with Grey in New York, it certainly responded, and I’ve got to believe it didn’t bring us to this place without a reason.”
Steven and Niklaus continued their slow progress through the dense forest for another hour, the conversation sparse other than occasional flurries of speculation about the others and who might await them in the town ahead. Twice they passed clusters of men whose dress appeared Native American. Their features obscured, bundled as they were against the cold and snow, they offered only somber nods as they passed, a gesture that Steven and Niklaus echoed.
“At least there are people here,” Steven muttered.
As the sun began to sink behind the trees, a clearing opened up before them, the snow-covered cut in the trees divided by two parallel ruts in the snow.
“These look too narrow to be tire tracks.” Between the twin furrows were hoofprints, at least four sets. “What do you think?” Steven knelt to examine the tracks. “Wagon? Carriage?”
Niklaus stooped to take a closer look. “Our luck, it’s probably a chariot.”
Steven glanced up and down what was most likely a dirt road covered in ice. “In any case, I’m guessing we’re even further back than last time.”
“Looks that way.” Niklaus started down the road in the direction of the plumes of smoke rising into the sky. “I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
Steven and Niklaus followed the tracks into the edge of a small town that resembled a set from Lonesome Dove. The few homes and barns scattered around the periphery ramshackle at best, the main section of town appeared to be in reasonably good shape, some might even say quaint. The streets were quiet, and other than a trio of horses tied up outside the local saloon, the town seemed deserted. Only a smattering of b
oot prints in the snow revealed otherwise.
Steven peered up and down the town’s main thoroughfare. “Where is everybody?”
“In case you forgot, it’s cold out here.” Niklaus wiped his runny nose on the sleeve of his coat. “I imagine they’re cooped up for the winter. Either that, or Rod Serling beat us here.”
The sound of hoofbeats heralded a lone rider entering town from the opposite direction. He hitched his horse in front of a building marked “General Store” and plodded through the snow in their direction. His brown Stetson pulled down tight about his ears, his pace was that of a man with a mission.
Steven stepped into the street and flagged the man down. “Here goes nothing.”
“You talk funny, boy.” The man in the coffee-colored Stetson stroked his full mustache and eyed Steven and Niklaus with suspicion. His breath fumed like white smoke in the frigid air. “Where you from?”
“Back east.” Steven’s voice trembled, only half from the cold. The windswept town square could have served as the backdrop for any of a dozen Westerns he and his dad watched when he was a boy, and Steven knew how heated discussions on such streets were usually resolved. “My friend here is from Warsaw. Only been in the States a few years.” At the man’s confused stare, he added, “You know, Poland?”
Niklaus glanced left and right at the buildings on either side. “Well, technically—”
“I know where Warsaw is.” The man’s eyes narrowed at Steven. “What? You think ‘cause I’m not dressed up like some east coast dandy, I’m stupid?” His gloved fingers brushed the revolver at his hip. “Anyway, I wasn’t talking to him, boy. I was talking to you.”
Steven took a step back and raised his bare hands in mock surrender. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to offend. We’re just trying to find a place to get out of the cold.”
“Hmph. Try Dottie’s. Down on the corner.” The man bumped Steven’s shoulder as he swept past, his boots leaving two parallel dotted lines in the snow behind his long duster. “Hope you’ve got cash.”
“That went well,” Niklaus said when the man left earshot. “Good thing you didn’t ask him the time. He might’ve parted your hair with his trusty six-shooter.”
“No joke. If everyone here’s as hair-trigger as Wyatt Earp there, we’ll have to really watch what we say.”
Niklaus crossed his arms and donned his best Tonto impersonation. “What do you mean ‘we,’ kemo sabe? He said he wasn’t talking to me.”
“Looks like somebody besides me has watched a few Westerns.” Steven headed for the center of town. “Remind me to laugh when my brain is done defrosting.”
Steven and Niklaus passed the general store and a small building that doubled as a smithy/barbershop before arriving beneath a hanging wooden sign that said in simple script, “Dottie’s Inn.” The door, fashioned of ornately carved oak, seemed out of place surrounded by the dilapidated wooden boards that made up the building’s outer wall. Nine small squares of beveled glass formed a diamond at the door’s center and reflected the white brilliance coming off the snow-covered road.
Steven rested his hand on the brass knob. “You think there’s any chance this Dottie person will let us work for room and board like Matheson did?”
Niklaus let out a quiet chuckle. “Not unless Dottie has a daughter who ends up with a crush on one of us.”
“You know, Nik, if you get any funnier—”
A pair of rough-looking men stormed out of the inn and nearly knocked Steven to the ground.
“We should do it the way the old man said,” said the first, the jagged scar running down his cheek appearing ready to split open as he hawked a gob of brown spit into the snow. “He hasn’t steered us wrong yet.”
“And I say we do it my way.” The second looked out from beneath long black locks wet with pomade, his pair of predator’s eyes flicking from Niklaus to Steven. “Pardon.”
Steven couldn’t have been more surprised by the simple word of courtesy. “Pardon us, umm…gentlemen.”
“Nice coat.” Slick jeered as he headed up the street with his associate in tow.
“What’s your problem, anyway?” Scarface asked as the pair came to the general store. Though they kept their voices low, the quiet of the snow made even the faintest whisper travel. “Don’t you want the money?”
“Of course I do,” Slick answered. “Just remember that it’s…” The pair rounded the corner at the smithy and disappeared from sight, leaving the town’s main street again silent.
“Boy.” Niklaus let out a lone chuckle. “We fit in great here.”
“No kidding.” Steven glanced up and down the street, then eased the door to the inn open a crack. “Shall we?”
Steven had spent many a lazy Sunday afternoon with his dad watching anything from The Lone Ranger to The Cisco Kid to Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns to Young Guns. From the moment he and Niklaus set foot in the small town, his father had been an almost palpable presence. A remembrance of the old man’s countless sarcastic words of wisdom on how to survive the average “Sunday shoot ‘em up” brought a smile to Steven’s face, though he wondered ruefully if any of the advice would apply now that he found himself in the middle of an episode of Deadwood.
Steven and Niklaus stepped into the inn’s deserted foyer, shook the snow from their coats, and moved toward the lone cast iron wood stove at the room’s center. Both slipped out of their wet footwear and held their hands above the stove’s roiling heat till they could again feel their fingers. As Niklaus thawed, he launched into a rant about how every place they ended up was more like the Arctic Circle than the one before and how he had left Poland for one reason and one reason only.
Steven laughed, though his mind was elsewhere, drowning in a sea of questions: Was his father still alive? Was Audrey? The others? Was everything back home going straight to hell in their absence? And above all, who were they here to find?
This Game is supposed to be chess. Steven groaned. Not hide and seek.
The front desk of Dottie’s Inn remained vacant for a good quarter hour as Steven and Niklaus warmed themselves by the foyer stove. Red wallpaper featuring golden roosters covered the walls while a trio of oil lamps and a couple of upholstered chairs rounded out the room’s décor. Steven was flipping through the inn’s ledger when a door behind the desk opened and a young man barely out of his teens stepped out. Dressed in a black and white striped shirt and vermilion vest complete with a gold-chained pocket watch, his rumpled clothes and mussed hair suggested he had just awakened from an afternoon nap.
“Can I help you gentlemen?” His nasal voice sported a northeastern accent.
Steven rose and walked to the desk. “We need a room. Two beds, if possible.”
The man eyed Steven. “We’re pretty full right now, but I might be able to find some space.” He glanced down at his empty palm. “For the right, shall we say, incentive?”
“You’re only the fourth person we’ve seen since we hit town.” Steven eyed the nearly full rack of keys behind the man. “How packed can this place be?”
“Just wait till this evening.” The man’s head tilted to one side. “You’ll see.” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “And where might you gentlemen hail from? Those coats don’t have any cut I’ve seen before.”
Niklaus took the question this time. “We’re from back east. Just hit town today.”
“But the stage doesn’t arrive till tomorrow morning.” The man at the desk furrowed his brow and stared at their soaked pants. “How did you two get here? Horseback?”
Steven stepped in. “Look, do you have a room or not? We’ve been stuck out in the elements for hours and would really like to change out of our wet clothes and get a bite to eat.”
“Of course, of course.” The man’s lips turned up in a strange grin. “Two beds, I believe you said?”
“Two beds.” Steven had a good idea what the man was insinuating. Once again, one thing seemed clear: fitting in wherever and whenever they’d landed promised
to be quite a challenge.
“And how exactly will you two gentlemen be paying?” An obsequious lilt colored the man’s words.
Before Steven could formulate an answer, a blast of cold froze his backside even as the creak of the door leading outside hit his ears. The pouch pulsed on Steven’s hip, and Amaryllis pinched Steven’s collarbone hard enough to draw blood.
“Don’t worry about payment from these two, Levi.”
Though months had passed since Steven had last heard those wheezy tones, he had no doubt as to their owner. He and Niklaus spun around to find Archie standing in the open doorway. Beneath a thick mane of hair that had returned to its initial grey, the old priest’s eyes surveyed the two of them, his gnarled hand resting on the brass door handle.
Whatever youth the Game had temporarily afforded the man had apparently fled.
“But, Mr. Lacan.” Levi bit his lip. “You said that—”
“I know what I said, son, but don’t worry. These two are with me.” Archie flashed Steven a knowing grin. “I’ve been expecting them for some time.”
15
Stars & Stripes
An amalgam of every watering hole from the dozens of Westerns he’d watched as a child, the Wolf’s Bend Saloon left Steven with the surreal sensation that he was merely dreaming and that any moment he’d wake up in the twenty-first century.
Or at least the back room of a 1946 deli.
Beneath a framed painting of a herd of horses charging across an open plain stretched a bar fully stocked with an impressive variety of whiskey along with a smattering of wine and a few other libations from somewhere across the Atlantic. In the far corner, a barrel of beer rested below a mounted bison head with glass eyes that followed Steven no matter where he went.
Five small tables with chairs and half a dozen barstools made room for twenty or so, though only a few seats remained empty. A man at the back wearing a threadbare suit and a brown bowler banged away at an out-of-tune piano, the tickled ivories producing a pleasant melody that registered as familiar, though Steven couldn’t quite place the tune.
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