Kamp tried to hang onto the vision he’d seen moments before, but the dream was gone. He rubbed his eyes with both hands, stood up and went to the kitchen to fix himself a cup of coffee. As he waited for the water to boil, he stared into the silent darkness outside. The bear was out there somewhere, and so was Nyx. And somewhere, scattered underground across the blood-soaked country, each of his brothers.
He thought about Shaw’s story about the missionary. As soon as she’d begun, Kamp realized she’d probably loved that man and then wondered whether he should have started asking questions after all. He let his mind drift off the topic and then onto the matter at hand. Since he had a name, Abel Truax, he had somewhere to start, and he resolved to begin his investigation in earnest the next morning.
AT FIRST LIGHT, Kamp pulled on his boots, put on his canvas work jacket and headed out the back door. He pulled two warm eggs from the hen house, tilted his head back and cracked the first one so that the contents dropped into his mouth. He was repeating the process with the second egg when he heard footfalls approaching.
He knew the kid would reappear soon enough, but he’d hoped to slip out this particular morning before he showed up.
The kid said, “Got any for me?”
Kamp heard the shriek of the Black Diamond Unlimited in the distance, and he broke into a run, calling over his shoulder, “Get some yourself.”
He hustled down to the road that ran parallel to the railroad tracks, cutting onto the narrow trail that twisted its way to the bank of Shawnee Creek. The whistle grew louder, and now the headlight of the 2-8-0 locomotive came into view. He knew he’d have to hurry. The kid kept pace with him but only with difficulty.
He said, “Jesus, son, where’s the fire?”
Kamp focused on the ground in front of him. If he tripped now, he was sure to miss the train. He picked his way across the round stones in the creek. Behind him, he heard a loud splash and then cursing, but he didn’t slow down. By the time he reached the gravel beside the tracks, the Unlimited had already passed, except for the last few boxcars and the caboose. Kamp ran hard alongside an open car, timing his leap. He caught the iron door latch, and in a single motion swung into the car in a kind of pirouette. He heard the shouts of the kid and was surprised to see him keeping pace with the train.
It appeared that the kid wouldn’t make it. He ran fast but not fast enough to get in the right position to jump. The kid kept running anyway, putting his head down, balling his fists and pumping his arms and legs.
Kamp looked ahead and saw the railroad trestle just ahead. If the kid kept running and didn’t see it, he’d slam into the abutment. He said, “Don’t jump. Don’t do it! Stop!”
The kid kept running and leapt, catching the latch with both hands. But he didn’t have any momentum to swing his body into the boxcar and instead dangled with his feet inches from the train wheels.
Kamp, said, “Lift up your foot, your left foot. Reach for that step.”
The kid scanned the outside of the car, saw the iron stirrup and lifted his left leg as high as he could and stretched. He came within a few inches of the stirrup but could not touch it. Kamp lay down on the floor of the boxcar and extended his arm toward the kid.
He said, “I want you to let go of the latch and reach for my hand.”
The kid focused on Kamp’s outstretched arm. He let go of the latch with his right hand and tried to keep hold with his left. He immediately lost his balance and tipped sideways, hanging on only by a few fingers. Kamp lunged, nearly flying out of the car himself, and caught a handful of the kid’s jacket and shirt. The kid then let go of the latch entirely and grabbed Kamp’s arm, and Kamp slowly hauled him into the boxcar. Kamp rolled onto his back, breathing hard and letting the tension wash out of him. The kid caught his breath on hands and knees before sitting with his back against the wall.
He tipped the forager’s cap back on his head and started to sing, “Now lis-ten to the jin-gle, and the rum-ble, and the roar’…you know that one, son? Ever heard that ol’ song? You’re trav-lin’ through the jun-gle…”
Kamp didn’t answer.
The kid said, “I know.”
“Know what?”
“I know what you’re wonderin’. And I don’t blame you a bit. I’d wonder the same myself.”
Still lying on his back, Kamp said, “What’s that?”
“You’re wonderin’, with a name like Abel Truax, how could this boy possibly be from West Virginia?”
“What do you mean?”
“The name Truax is French. You’re thinkin’, there ain’t no Frenchmen from West Virginia, right?”
“Not really.”
“Well, that’s a fair point, an’ you’re right. Mostly. Hardly any French to speak of down that way. But my father moved there before we was all born. Said the Lord told him to. So there’s that.”
The kid untied each of his shoes and removed them. Then he peeled off his wool socks as well and laid them on the floor of the boxcar to dry. “You’re right to wonder, though. A Frenchman from West Virginia.” He shook his head at the thought of it.
Kamp propped himself on one elbow and said, “That wasn’t what I was wondering.”
“What, then?”
“If you are, or were, actually a man from West Virginia, why do you live with people who aren’t your parents, people who aren’t your family? Why live under their roof, wear their clothes?”
The kid gave him a grin. “I love the way I think you’s gonna come at me with a straight ahead question an’ then here you come from the sideway. I’m starting to take a shine to you, son. I really am.”
“Answer the question.”
“First off, we grew up in the holler with hardly nothing by way of worldly possessions. My father didn’t believe in no filthy lucre, and we wouldn’ta had no cash to pay for it even if he did. But livin’ at Ray an’ Margaret’s, that fine house, that hot food.”
“You’re saying that once—”
“I’m sayin’ that, yes, once you start farting through a silk sheet, you learn to like it. That’s the first thing. And second, an’ I can tell I’m gonna hafta keep repeating this one. Second, I’m here to find the son-of-a-bitch who killed me. Don’t matter where I live, or how. One place is as good as another ’til I finish what I came for. Besides, this rich kid get-up is the perfect disguise. It’s magic.”
“Then why do you need my help?”
“Well, son, you know people, an’ you see things I don’t and can get into places they won’t let no kid go. An’ you been hardened by war, but you ain’t hard-hearted. That’ll help. And besides, you’s a wild bastard, just like me.”
The kid stretched out on his back and placed the forager’s cap over his face and wiggled his toes.
Kamp said, “Do you realize what would have happened if I hadn’t caught you?”
“Yeah, yeah,” the kid said from under his hat, “you did me a good turn. ’Preciate that.”
“Train would’ve cut you in half, and you’d have been killed.”
The kid lifted the cap a couple inches off his face, turned to face Kamp and said, “Son, when it comes down to it, dyin’ is nothin’. Livin’ is harder.” He stared for a moment out the side of the boxcar. “I sure could use a cigarette, though.”
8
NYX BAUER SMELLED THE SMOKE from Kamp’s fireplace before she saw the sparks spilling from the chimney. She’d spent the night in the woods on the mountainside behind his house. Before she’d bolted from the police station, she’d had the presence of mind to take a heavy wool blanket which had guarded her, to a point, against the approach of winter.
But much as she wanted to seek shelter, to be taken in by Kamp and Shaw, to get warm and be fed, Nyx wouldn’t risk exposing them to the wrath of the law, not to mention the local citizenry. So she camped outside, shivered, and plotted where to go next.
Nyx didn’t regret leaving the jail. During the days she’d spent there, she’d realized that no one intended to let
her go free. At first, the men—the jailers and her fellow prisoners—had been respectful, deferential, perhaps even afraid. But as hours passed and then days, Nyx could tell that whatever special status, whatever magic powers had been ascribed to her, had vanished. The men began leering at her, and not even the druggist Emma Wyles, who came every day to boost her morale and to rail against the jailers, could protect her.
On the night she escaped, an hour or so before she’d heard the insistent knock at the door, the drunken jail-keeper, Obie, had been leering at her. There’d been no other prisoners or police officers in the station, which was unusual, and she sensed that Obie saw it as an opportunity. He’d stood up from his desk, ring of keys jangling at his hip and slowly crossed the room.
He’d focused on Nyx, who avoided his gaze. Obie only looked away to find the right key and turn it in the lock.
Obie said, “Don’t talk” and then made his way into the cell. She smelled the whiskey strongly on his breath. Nyx had previously sized him up. He looked clumsy but still physically imposing with a powerful frame and large hands. She knew that only a well-placed kick to the testicles would bring him down, and she readied herself to deliver it.
At that moment they both heard a knock at the station door, and Obie paused to listen.
Under his breath he said, “Gott in himmel,” then turned back to Nyx.
The knocking had turned to pounding, and then they heard a voice through the door. “Obie, it’s me.”
Obie stood up straight and clenched his fists but didn’t go to the door.
“Obie, open up.”
He cursed again, then said to Nyx, “Just wait once.” He crossed the floor, weaving drunkenly.
Obie turned the lock on the door and said, “Ach, this better be—” and then swung the door open and saw a black bear’s face at eye level. Nyx could see that the person wearing the bear skin was standing on a chair, but apparently Obie couldn’t.
Nyx heard the click of a revolver being cocked and then a kid’s voice, “Sir, I’ll be taking that young lady, and then we’ll be on our way.”
By this point, she was already out of the cell and in the back room of the jail. She found the wool blanket and then went straight for the door, passing Obie and the bear, who stood motionless in the moment they were having. She slipped past them and into the night.
WHAT NYX HADN’T TAKEN from the police station that night was a gun. She knew Druckenmiller kept all of the weapons in a locked cabinet but thought she might not have time to get the key off Obie’s ring. Besides, she figured she’d just get the Sharps from its hiding place, the tool shed behind the house where she used to live.
But by the time she got there the next morning, some of the neighbors and a few men she didn’t recognize had already congregated in the yard. They must have learned of her escape, and perhaps they’d already found the Sharps. Either way, Nyx couldn’t risk retrieving it. And so she’d hunkered down in the woods behind Kamp’s house, wrapped in the grey blanket, watching and waiting.
She watched as Kamp lit the morning fire in the fireplace and emerged at dawn, as usual. She fought the impulse to run to him, knowing that if she did, he and Shaw and their daughter would be imperiled. Nyx also felt certain he would come looking for her regardless, and knowing Kamp, he’d find her.
So she watched as he retrieved the eggs from the hen house and ran for the train with the kid chasing him. When the sun rose higher, Shaw and the girl left the house as well. They walked in the little yard, Autumn stopping every other step to bend close to the ground to marvel at a dead leaf or a caterpillar.
While the little girl played, Shaw began to sing, “Kommt ein Vo-gel ge-flo-gen.” Nyx knew the song by heart, because her mother often sang it to her and her sisters. She felt a stab of grief and fought the urge to cry. Nyx also wondered how Shaw knew the song. She’d never heard her speak German.
And then Nyx Bauer heard the first dog, heard its long, high, wild howl in the distance and another and another until she could discern the baying of a pack of hounds. Shaw heard it, too, and scooped up the girl and hustled into the house.
Nyx stood up and ran, hurrying back into the woods and swinging wide of Kamp’s house by a few hundred yards. She knew that the High Constable’s house was close by and that he probably wouldn’t be home. Nyx smashed a window at the back of the house and climbed through. She scrambled down to Druckenmiller’s cellar where she found a potato sack that she filled with everything she could carry, dried vegetables, a ring wurst, jars of preserves. In the ice box she found a package marked “bear meat,” and she threw that in the sack as well.
Even from the cellar, Nyx could hear the dogs approaching. She was ready to bound up the steps and out of the house when she caught a glint of brass on the other side of the room. She went to the rifle and picked it up, noticing that it was unlike any she’d seen before. It looked sturdy and mean, so she took that, too.
Bursting out through the back door, she heard the hounds close now, and the clatter of hooves. Nyx sprinted into the tree line, toward Shawnee Creek until the baying began to recede. But since the dogs had her scent, she knew they’d find her as soon as they realized she’d left Druckenmiller’s house.
Nyx clambered down the bank of the creek. She clutched the potato sack in one hand and the rifle in the other, and with both hands full, she couldn’t lift the hem of her dress above the water line. Not that it would have mattered. Most places were ankle- to knee-deep, but in some spots the creek reached a depth of a couple of feet. So powerful was her need to get away, though, that Nyx hardly noticed she was soaked in nearly freezing water up to her chest. To escape the hounds, she’d have to travel a good distance in the creek. After a quarter mile or so, Nyx climbed onto the opposite bank.
She didn’t have time to think about the powerful shivering that already shook her body, didn’t have a moment to think about what it would mean in an hour or two. Nyx Bauer only had time to run, and so she lit out for the mountains, real mountains and the safe place she hoped to find there.
THE SCREECH OF TRAIN BRAKES roused the kid from his slumber, and he put on his socks.
He motioned to his feet and smiled at Kamp. “Already dry.”
Kamp winced as he climbed down from the boxcar.
“What’s the matter, son? You hurt?”
He didn’t bother telling the kid about the time he landed all wrong on his leap from a moving train, the leap that nearly destroyed his right elbow and hip. Instead, he scanned the train yard, looking for anyone who might take exception to his presence, or to the kid’s. Seeing no one, he walked straight across the yard and onto Third Street. The kid buckled his shoes, hopped down from the boxcar and ran to catch up.
Before the kid could say anything, Kamp said, “Go do whatever you need to do. Although you might want to stay out of sight.”
“Why would I do that?”
“You held a gun to the jailkeeper’s head and let a prisoner escape.”
“Aw hell, son, no one’s gonna figure me for that. I guarantee it.”
Kamp said, “Think about it,” and he headed off down the street, mixing with the rest of the souls on Bethlehem’s South Side. He pulled his slouch hat low and walked toward the county courthouse. Once inside, he went straight to the part of the building that housed the county records. He knew that in addition to official notices, he could also find newspapers stored in chronological order.
He tiptoed into the room where the newspapers were kept and softly closed the door behind him. Kamp began with the year 1861, the year the kid said he died, sifting through broadsheets filled with stories of death, destruction, and mayhem as well as the occasional heart-warmer about the lost dog who, after a prolonged absence, found his way home. He scanned for news of a murder, which would have gotten a headline, even in Bethlehem. He also worked through the years 1860 and 1862 for the sake of being thorough, and he found numerous reports of killings. He also came across stories of deaths that, while not ruled to b
e murders, certainly could have been. He found an item regarding the demise of a certain Rudiger Schwenk who, according to the paper, was discovered dead in his kitchen. The paper said he’d died from “blunt force from an object” and that a cast iron skillet had been found next to him. Still, the death had been categorized as an accident.
What Kamp didn’t find was the name Truax. He pilfered every broadsheet that contained a story involving a murder or suspicious death, two hundred and seventeen in all. He placed them in his haversack and buckled it.
He moved to the room where he knew the birth and death certificates were kept, locking the door behind him. Kamp heard the courthouse murmuring and sputtering to life around him, the creaking of the floorboards above and the clanking of radiators all around. He went to the cabinet marked “H,” and looked for the year 1861. If Abel Truax had died in 1861, Kamp assumed, the kid would have been born as Becket Hinsdale that same year.
But he didn’t find a birth certificate for Becket Hinsdale in 1861. Presumably the kid couldn’t have been born before Abel Truax died, if the ridiculous logic held. He’d have to have been born in a later year. Kamp went through all the birth certificates for 1862 and again came up empty. He moved onto the next year before hearing a knock at the door.
Through the door he heard a woman’s stern voice. “Excuse me. Is there someone in there?” He heard her trying the doorknob. “Excuse me. Who’s in there?”
He said, “It’s me,” hoping that would suffice.
“And who is me, please?”
“Kamp.”
“Who?”
“Kamp.”
“Well, whoever you are, sir, you need to come out of there.”
“In a minute.”
“Sir, I’m afraid you’ll have to come out now.”
“Go talk to the Judge.” He kept thumbing through birth certificates as he talked. “Tell the Judge, it’s Kamp.”
Trumpet of the Dead (Raven Trilogy Book 2) Page 7