Yea Though I Walk

by J. P. Sloan

  I’ll give Denton this… he’s dedicated.

  “That’s good.”

  “It’s funny. I expected you to be my muscle. I never figured you’d end up being my conscience.”

  Truth be known, neither had I.

  ur ride back to the homestead is quiet and tense. Folger seems to have lost his conversational mood. I tie up and tend to Ripper while Folger works up some manner of hash for us to eat. We talk about food, the care and keeping of a horse, and a little bit about some damn Frenchman whose book Denton had been reading.

  We do not discuss Richterman.

  Folger takes to bed early, but I’m not sleepy. I’d taken lately to knocking out before his wife set foot in the house. Either that, or she’d made sure I was out before wandering upstairs. When she opens the door well after the sunset to find me staring into space, she freezes. She always does that when she finds me awake and aware, like I’m some kind of animal she has to figure would attack or run.

  “You are awake,” she states, stepping wide around me toward her herbs.

  I nod.

  “I assumed you would be… asleep.”

  “My nerves are up.”

  She busies herself with one of her concoctions, brewing up something savory and floral over the stove. When her mind draws full into her work, I steal a glance at her. She’s wearing her human face. I found she does that more often than not, as if she identifies with her human life more than the monster. Though how she treats with the other monsters most of the nights when she takes her leave of the homestead I can’t say.

  “You are staring at me.”

  I look away, shifting in my chair. It’s stupid feeling embarrassed about it, but I don’t want her to take the wrong notion. Nor Folger, for that matter.

  Nothing about this arrangement is sitting right with me.

  “I do not care,” she adds, turning to me as she whips away at something in her mortar. “You do not frighten me.”

  “No, I don’t reckon I do.” I grab for something to talk about. Something besides my attention being on her. “I want to talk to you about Denton.”

  She cocks her head and nods to the bedroom with a sly grin. “Maybe you should whisper, then.”

  “Don’t think he’s awake.”

  “I know he is not.”

  “Fine, then.”

  “Is there a problem? Did something happen in the town?”

  I stand up and pace. “We lost a man. Name of Sayles.”

  “I know him.”

  “Denton had me ride out to talk to him. Question him, whatever. Didn’t pan out like we’d hoped. He popped a few warning shots, tryin’ to scare me off his land. That’s when Scarlow and company rode up and dropped the hammer on him.”

  “He is dead?” she asks, lazily swirling her pestle in the bowl.

  I nod.

  “Do you feel that Denton blames you?”

  “I wish he would. Fact is, he looks untouched by the entire episode. Seemed more worried about how it’d play out in the paper than anything.”

  She sets down her bowl. “And this surprises you?”

  I blink. “I suppose.”

  “Why?” She gathers her black lace gown and seats herself like a queen at the table. “What did you expect?”

  “I figured he’d be at least as tore up over Sayles as he was with the Hitchens boy.”

  “He was close to Chris. Sayles was an angry old man.”

  I shake my head. “Should that matter? Shouldn’t he want Sayles to live?”

  Katherina rolls her head, stretching her neck. “I am sorry, but I know a very different Denton Folger than you do, Mister Odell. My Denton is a crusader. He does not retreat from the enemy, even when he should. He believes in his cause, so deeply perhaps it means more than any single life. But that has been the quality of great men in history. What would Napoleon have conquered if he had sat vigil for every man who had fallen in his ranks?”

  I bristle, enough to catch her attention.

  “I had not realized you were a soldier,” she whispers with a curl in her lip.

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “I have lived a long life, Odell. The War was not so long ago.”

  I run a hand through my hair and pick up my pace. “I’ve known field commanders. Denton ain’t that.”

  “Which side?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Which side did you fight for?”

  I wince. “Union.”

  “Did you?”

  “It’s what I said, ain’t it?”

  “But your heart is racing.”

  I instinctively cover my chest with my hand. She’s right. “Don’t have a whole mess of good memories of the War.”

  “What were you? Infantry? Cavalry? Artillery?”

  “What damn difference does that make?”

  She straightens her gown over her legs and folds her hands neatly, lifting her brow like a schoolmarm dressing down a piss-taking student.

  I stuff my hands in my pockets and lean against the wall near the stove. “Infantry.”

  “You ride a cavalry horse.”

  I give her a look, and she doesn’t turn away. If anything, she’s grinning. Some kind of mischief is playing out in the corners of her mouth. Can’t quite tell if she’s making fun of me, or if she’s just happy to talk to some other damn person but Denton.

  “I found Ripper just outside Chattanooga.”

  “Quite a battle there.”

  “That’s a fact.”

  “And how does an infantryman happen to ride away from a Union victory with an army horse he just ‘found,’ might I ask?”

  I give her another hard look. “I suppose you know the answer to that question already. You get some thrill pullin’ it out of me?”

  “I am not judging you.”

  “Feels otherwise.”

  “Let me be direct with you, Mister Odell. War suits me. Perhaps I should say that it suits my kind. The Strigoi. We have made a habit of following soldiers. They often die slow deaths, and no one wonders where the blood goes. And your recent war was particularly bloody.”

  I purse my lips. Her face has taken an edge. It ain’t demon form just yet, but her eyes are dark. If I could see her teeth, I imagine they’d be sharp enough. And though she’s being very direct about the exact kind of wickedness the Godpistols were formed to fight, I can’t help but feel a touch respectful about her forthrightness.

  Honesty is a commodity in my business.

  “Is that why you came to America?”

  “More than just the War, though that made it easy to take the voyage. Imagine how difficult it is for my kind to travel by ship. We lost thousands in the exodus.”

  “Exodus?”

  “Quite a number fled our Motherlands for the Americas. There have been so many changes of late. Gas lamps. Cities growing larger and larger. Men of science with minds honed sharp as steel, aware of our kind and how to kill us. Movable print like Denton’s made it easier to share knowledge. The world has become hard for us to thrive in, but there are yet new lands and frontiers for opportunity. You think that wouldn’t appeal to our kind as much as yours?”

  “I suppose.”

  “So, here we are. A scavenger”—she lays a hand on her breast—“and a coward.” She draws the hand toward me.

  “If it’s worth anything, the damn horse was as big a coward as I was.”

  “You rode west, did you not?”

  “Hmm?”

  “After Chattanooga. You rode west. Why west?”

  I start pacing again. “Safety. Union weren’t as strong out here as it is now. And now they don’t much care to track down deserters. Union’s moving into the future. I’m the past.”

  She looks over to me with those eyes, again. They’re soft and open. No edge, now. Nothing of the monster. Hell, they’re bright and comely, soft brown in languid lids, drawing up at the ends with a touch of Hun’s blood. Her hair drapes over her shoulders, a river of raven silk.

&
nbsp; Jasmine blooms strong in the room.

  As I start to ball up fists, trying to suss out whether she’s doing this to my mind or if I’m just feeling particularly weak… something clicks itself together in the back of my head.

  “Richterman has a plan for this land, right?” I mutter.

  Her eyes harden a touch.

  I ask, “How many are there?”

  She maintains a stone-faced glare.

  “So, a Strigoi like Richterman comes sweeping into this town, playing the part of a Justice. The townsfolk are hip-deep in a tragedy, what with the mine collapse. That’s as much as I’ve combed out of Denton’s old articles. Richterman comes in with his own posse of Strigoi. Then he puts his mind-twist onto Scarlow and his men. Now he has muscle on both sides of the sunrise. Whoever he can’t scare off in daylight with guns and fists, he can send his Strigoi in to bleed out.”

  “He does not use the Strigoi.”

  I wag my finger. “Doesn’t he? I saw the Strigoi what laid into those bone-chewers. It was a coordinated attack. They had gathered in numbers, taken high to the trees, and dropped in on the Parson and that fat fuck with a quick, decisive strike.” I add with a point of my finger, “And you were there.”

  She lifts a hand to her brow and squints. “You have a point?”

  “I don’t know what your situation is with Richterman, to be honest. But I get the sense he counts on you to show up with your tidy little army in tow.”

  Katherina stands up and busies herself with her herbs again, turning a shoulder to me. “You assume much.”

  “Maybe I do. Those Strigoi attacked Magner’s little pet Parson. The Parson came sweeping down onto your homestead in reprisal. I remember what you told me, Katherina.”

  She stops, nearly dropping the bowl, her head jerking to me. The sound of me saying her name seems to put a hook in her.

  “What did I tell you?” she whispers.

  “You said I wasn’t the one who led them to this house.”

  She returns to her mortar, whipping the pestle viciously.

  I continue, “Because it wasn’t me they came for. And it wasn’t Denton. It was you.”

  She turns her back to me and continues with her poultice.

  “Do they all answer to you, or are some loyal to Richterman?”

  “I cannot help you.”

  “Richterman doesn’t have a Strigoi army, does he? He brought Scarlow in because he doesn’t have an army. He has you.” I step around her to face her full-on. “Doesn’t he?”

  She looks up at me with a hard, dangerous glare.

  I take a step back.

  “No, Mister Odell,” she grumbles. “He does not have me. I have him.”

  I take another step back. “How do you mean?”

  “Yes, I sent the orphans to the Parson that night. I did it because Richterman had overextended himself. I had to deal with it.”

  “You’re saying… Richterman answers to you?”

  “I wish that were so.”

  I cross my arms. “Why is it upon you to deal in his affairs?”

  She slams the bowl down onto the table. “Because I made him.”

  stare for a long moment. “You made Richterman?”

  “Yes. He was… a mistake.”

  “I’m trying to follow you. You’re saying Richterman is a Strigoi because of you?”

  She glowers. “That is not what I said.”

  “But it’s what you meant?”

  “I’m responsible for Lars. I unleashed him upon this town. And the others listen to him. They listen because they need his vision.”

  I take a seat. “And so that’s why you never took him out? What, is there some kind of rule with you people about killing the ones you make?”

  “The reason I have not killed Richterman is Denton, alone. I would never do anything to betray his trust in me.”

  She reaches across the table quicker than I can see, and rests her hand on top of mine. I give half a thought about pulling away, but I don’t.

  “Do you understand me?” she asks in a low voice, finally whispering.

  “I feel like I do, but it ain’t easy to be sure with you.”

  She pulls her hand away.

  My head fills with clouded thoughts, all hazy, all uncomfortable. I stand up and start to pacing again.

  “You need sleep,” she states, snatching her bowl and giving it one more mix. “This is for you.”

  “What is it?” I grumble.

  “Do you want to know what is in the bowl or what it does?”

  I shrug. “I don’t suppose I’d care what’s in the bowl, and I figure you got yourself some kind of sleeping potion. But I don’t need to sleep. Been sleepin’ fine.”

  “You have not. I am awake when you are asleep, and I know how restless you are. You need this.” She steps forward with the bowl.

  “I ain’t eatin’ that.”

  “You do not eat it,” she mumbles as she dips her fingers into the dark green muck within. She reaches out and smears it on the sides of my temples. The smell is pungent, full of cedar and something like licorice. “Just allow it to do its work. It will take care of you.”

  When she finishes smearing the goop onto my skin, she sets the bowl aside and gives me a look over her shoulder. With that, she sweeps across the room and out the door in a rush of wind, leaving me alone with the cedar smell filling my nostrils.

  I hunker down onto the cot, thinking about Katherina and Richterman. I can see how she’d carry a sense of responsibility for the man’s deeds. As likely a reason to stick around Gold Vein as any. I can also understand her dedication to Folger’s wishes.

  I’d made an assumption or two about Folger that, in hindsight, may have been a bit uncharitable. Folger isn’t a weak man. He isn’t some soft, East Coast lamb without a lick of fight in him. His way of war is different than my own, and perhaps just as strange. As I drift to sleep, I muster some respect for Folger, and as I do I begin to embrace his fight.

  I awaken the next morning to Folger shaking my knee. I sit upright with difficulty, rubbing my head as it swims.

  “Good morning,” Denton chirps, moving for the stove to make coffee.

  “Hmm. Morning.”

  “You were snoring.”

  “The hell you say.”

  He snickers. “Enough to wake me a couple times.”

  I pull myself off the cot, giving my head a minute to steady itself. “That wife of yours gave me something to make me sleep.”

  “Oh, that.” He opens the stove and strikes a firelighter. “I wouldn’t let her do that too often. She’ll drug you to sleep every night, if you let her.”

  “She has a strange way with those herbs, no doubt.”

  “It’s the old ways from her homeland. I don’t believe the modern world suits her.”

  I manage my way to the table and drop into a chair. “You seem to have found a way to avoid modern trappings well enough.”

  He blows the stove to life and shuts the iron hatch before straightening up. “See, that’s where we disagree. I feel like this is the new world.”

  “How’d you figure?”

  “Space, Lin. Space. Wide-open space to define yourself. Reach out your arms, stake a claim. No assumptions beyond what you’ve actually accomplished. Anything can be built out here in the frontier. Anything is possible.”

  “Excepting, you think, for all the damn Strigoi and what not.”

  He smirks and shakes his head. “Still with these ghosts and goblins?” Folger massacres some beans in Katherina’s bowl and tosses them into a short pot. “We’ll get some coffee into you, and by the time we reach Gold Vein, you’ll be as aware and unpleasant as ever.”

  “What’s our plan for today?”

  “There’s someone else I want to get on record. Grangerford and his wife live east of Gold Vein near the point of the valley.”

  “That chicken-neck, Amil. That’s his boss?”

  “Yes, or rather was. Rumor has it Scarlow paid the
m a visit last month, but hasn’t been back. Their land is farther from town, but they are in a commanding point of approach from Cheyenne. I suspect Richterman has designs on their property, along with the rest of the valley, and they’ve had a conversation. If I can get Grangerford on our side, we might be able to bait Richterman into a confession that’s printable.”

  “You talk with this Grangerford yet?” I ask.

  “Not yet. My reputation seems to have preceded me.”

  “Reputation for what, getting people killed?”

  He steels his face, and I grit my teeth.

  “Sorry. That came out a mite bastardly.”

  Folger waves his hand. “I’m not that delicate, Lin. And, for what it’s worth, you’re right. Grangerford is a rancher by trade, and I suspect he’ll be in the field by the time we ride up.”

  “You’re going to pinch his wife first?”

  He nods. “I know she’s worried about Richterman. If I slip into her good graces, she’ll put me together with her husband and maybe whisper our cause into his ear in the middle of the night.”

  “You have a strange way of saying things, Denton.”

  Our ride into town is a measure more cordial than the previous evening, though I find myself struggling against a powerful case of the blinks. We bypass the town to the east and head south toward the intersection of the last two piney ridges of the valley. The Grangerford ranch sits on a narrow patch of land bounded by the easy slopes of the ridge lines. I cast an eye to the west, wondering if Magner’s monsters ever made their way this far along the forest.

  Denton points me to a ranch house poised in the morning shadow of the pines, and I urge Ripper along. When we settle to a rest, Denton turns to me and gives me a brow-rolling eye.

  “You look like Hell, Lin.”

  “Thanks?”

  He puts a hand on my shoulder. “Considering the diplomatic skills you demonstrated with Sayles, perhaps we should set ourselves up for success today?”

  “You do the talkin’?” I ask with a long nod.

  “Better yet, why don’t you just take a rest here in the cart? We’re well clear of the town. I doubt Scarlow would have seen us ride in.”

  “Lest he’s already tailing us.”