Mac decided not to say anything about the outlaws' big mistake with the cows.
The kibitzing onlooker jumped in. "If those two yahoos are gods, why did they get caught?"
One of the other Masons fielded that observation. "Because this is the machine age, the age of science and reason. Maybe their magic ran out."
Charlie cut back in. "Or maybe they got bored. Why should they care what happens? They know they'll get born and reborn again and again. Their hidden treasure, like a dragon's hoard, will be waiting."
He looked at his cards, sighed and folded his hand. "I'll tell you boys this, though. You should be mighty glad the brothers Erickson were caught here. You saw the Injun turtle-barrows going out. Those are symbols of a peaceful, slow, long life, obviously contrary to our Vikings' nature. We were lucky the brothers weren't caught down by the Serpent Mound near Peebles. With it as a locus for power and regeneration, heaven only knows what could have happened." He shuddered dramatically.
"You can have folks show up as Thor himself. You can have them reincarnating simultaneously all over the place, as far I'm concerned," the Columbus photographer declared. "You just better not simultaneously reincarnate an extra ace from up your sleeve in the middle of a hand."
Several hours later the game wound down. Just as the whiskey ran out three of the stray journalists finally found their way back to town after a fruitless hunt for the barn. They were footsore, muddy, hungry and cold. They wailed until the cook managed to locate some stale cornbread and a thick wedge of cheese for them. They were far less grateful to the good woman than they were to Charlie, who went upstairs to fetch them a bottle from his own stock.
"You've saved our lives!" one young fellow exclaimed through chattering lips as he reached for the bottle.
"Don't say that, or you don't get any!" Charlie snapped, snatching the flask away. "Don't you know that when you save someone's life that you're responsible for them from then on?" He looked the shivering unfortunate up and down. "No way I want to be held accountable for your sorry existence!"
"Don't consider that you've saved mine, then," said another of the prodigals, grabbing the bottle in turn from Charlie as the rest of the reporters laughed. "Many thanks all the same."
Mac's cot was right up against the window. Bright sunlight poured itself in on him the next morning. Too brightly — there was a hot, brassy stillness to it that spoke not of spring but of trouble. By the time the journalists had been processed through a late breakfast of oatmeal, sausage, flapjacks and coffee, black clouds had boiled up to encircle the horizon.
The locals didn't conduct the newsmen out of town again till the early afternoon. Whether they were accommodating any straggling journalists who might be arriving in Logan late, or whether they were using the time for one last try at breaking down the brothers, or both, Mac didn't know.
The storm closed in all around as the wagons jounced them to the barn, intensifying the light, compressing it to gold until it seemed like they were traveling within the spotlight of some immense, darkening theater. The farmers didn't bother to disguise the route this time. They clicked their tongues at the mules to make them go faster.
"Twister weather," the reporter from Dayton muttered. Mac wished he were somewhere quiet and still with his paints, so that he could capture the savage bright color.
Once they arrived at the farm and set up, the locals moved fast. Two long ropes were already strung from the barn's yard arm. Two sturdy crates sat directly beneath them. Mac's heart sank. He'd been hoping they'd string the brothers up and toss them out the hay loft door. That would break their necks and finish it quickly.
Instead, they were going to stand the outlaws up on the crates, then kick the crates out from under them. The Ericksons would slowly strangle, jerking like demented puppets for the longest time, knowing that they were dying with their boots just inches from the ground.
Mac sighed and dutifully started sketching. Charlie already had his paper and clipboard balanced on his knees and was drawing like a madman.
The farmers brought Jon and Lars out. They were wrapped in so many chains and ropes that they looked like swaddled babes. There wasn't much they could do in the way of holding things up, but they did what they could — wriggling like fish, then falling over like sacks of grain. It took five sturdy men to get the first of them propped up on one of the crates.
"Flop over now all you like," Jacob's father Samuel panted with satisfaction as he snugged the noose tight around the outlaw's neck. "The devil would just as soon see you a few minutes early."
The desperado reacted by standing up as straight and tall as any churchgoer.
When both brothers were readied a farmer acting as lay preacher opened a Bible and read a few brief and appropriate quotes from the Old Testament. Then he shut the Bible with a snap. "Bad enough you robbing hardworking, godfearing folk of the fruit of their labors. But when you rob good men like Hezekiah and Jacob of their lives — and heaven knows who else — you will make restitution not only with your lives, but with your very souls. You will find waiting for you a judgment and punishment befitting your sins."
Mac wondered if Arthur, believing as he did that Mac had stolen his life, thought Mac would someday pay with his soul.
The preacher nodded his head and burlap sacks were brought up to cover the outlaws' heads, out of consideration for the journalists' refined cityfolk sensibilities.
Lars looked up at the hellish threatening sky and smiled just before they pulled the sack down over his eyes.
"To God, or more likely the devil, we commend you," the "preacher" said, and kicked the crates clear.
Mac looked down at his drawing pad and pretended to scribble busily, not looking up till all sounds of flapping and jerking had stopped. He had to pretend for a long time.
As if the Ericksons' deaths were a signal, the storm closed in. The bodies had stopped twitching barely long enough for the photographers to make their shots when the wind blew up, flapping the cloths up on the cameras, whipping the coattails of farmers and newsmen. The rope-trussed garments of the dead brothers didn't respond, but the bodies began to sway and swing again. Drops of rain, sharp and separate as drumbeats, started to strike the hardpacked earth of the farmyard.
The reporters packed and ran. As the wagons pitched and reeled getting away, Mac looked back to see the vigilantes cutting the bodies down.
The farmers tried to outrun the storm. That quickly became impossible: The first turn in the road took them straight into it. The reporters pulled down the edges of their hats, pulled up the collars of their coats, wrapped themselves around their notes and huddled together against the rain.
"Yow!" said the photographer from Columbus as the rain gave way briefly to a bullet-like flurry of hail. In the confusion of departure Charlie had landed in the next row of "seats" up. The photographer had jumped in next to Mac. His tripod and box of plates slammed into Mac's legs with every bump in the road.
"Hey, Wuest!" someone yelled at Charlie. "Looks like the gods have come to take your boys up to Valhalla in style." Everyone laughed at that, but when lightning began strafing nearby hills they fell silent.
The clouds lifted, gathering upward into a low ceiling. The rain slacked off. This didn't signal an improvement; it simply allowed them to see the funnel dropping down from the underbelly of that table-flat sky. The photographer crossed himself. "Hail Mary, full of grace, get me the bloody hell out of this place," he whispered.
The buckboards jarred to a stop as the wagon drivers shouted to each other, trying to decide whether they should turn and outrun the tornado to a sideroad two miles back, cutting away from it. But there was no predicting its erratic course. They might find themselves fleeing directly into its path. And there was no real shelter any closer than Logan.
In the end they remained where they were, tying up the mules and wagons securely to trees by the side of the road. The farmers stood with the blindfolded and hobbled mules and tried to quiet them. The
newsmen took shelter under the wagons. Even from that incredibly low perspective Mac could see the base of the funnel getting bigger and bigger, bearing down upon them. Branches and other debris were hurled against and into the wagons. The mules, constrained as they were, threw themselves against their traces in terror.
Then the black shape was gone, though the wind whipped at them for long moments. "It missed us!" a farmer yelled. The reporters crawled out and tried to brush some of the mud off. They looked nervously after the departing funnel cloud, which was picking up size and speed as it headed away east and north.
One of the mules had scratched itself badly. The rain turned to drizzle. The road soon transformed into thick sludge. The ride back was slow and cold, but weak with relief they laughed the whole way. Mac knew that many of the newsmen were already thinking of how they'd use the storm to liven up their copy. Charlie helped warm the other passengers by passing around his omnipresent flask.
They came to the fork in the road heading back into Logan. The tornado had paralleled the road, forming a broad new avenue twenty yards to the west. It should have come right on up after them, but at the turtle mound it had jumped the road and passed to the other side of the barrow, heading off to the east. They cheered and thumped one another on the back at the sight.
But they stopped cheering and laughing when they got to town and stormed the railway station to wire their newspapers and get tickets for the next trains out of Logan.
"Telegraph lines went down with that twister," the clerk told them. "And just before they went we heard there's trees blown across the tracks past Nelsonville. All passenger trains east and west been cancelled till tomorrow, at the earliest, till the lines are working again and the tracks are clear."
The newspapermen howled but the clerk, one of those fresh-faced types still boyish at forty, just shrugged. "Nothing I can do about it. You'll have to take up your complaints with God."
Somewhat comforted by the notion that they were all trapped together, so that nobody would get a scoop on anybody else, the newsmen relaxed. The story would be just as fresh a day late.
"Might as well take advantage of the situation and have a hell of a poker game tonight," a reporter from Youngstown said. They trudged back to the hotel to stand in yet another line — this one for a hot bath.
Mac didn't care for gambling all that much, but he would have liked to bet that as soon as the town of Logan knew the train schedule had been cancelled the hotel manager had started stoking extra fire in the hotel's small bath house. And that he had taken pains to stockpile what remained of the town's booze.
After bathing and an early, mediocre supper, the gentlemen of the press started gathering in the lobby again. They didn't have to keep their wits keen for work the next day. If they were lucky and the tracks were cleared, the best they could expect would be to nurse hangovers on a slow train trip back to their respective cities in the morning.
As Mac passed through on the way to the stairs up to his and Charlie's room the saloonkeeper from the bar down the street was dragging in yet another case of liquor. The rain and wind must have started up hard again — the man was soaked and windblown.
And though it was still early, the photographer from Columbus was already piling up several empty bottles and laying the base for a fine edifice of filled ones. The journalists might not have to worry about the need to curtail their drinking tonight, but tradition was tradition. The photographer had done such a fine job the night before that he'd been elected to do it again.
Mac went upstairs and spent an hour or so working on his sketches, polishing them while they were fresh. Then he wrote his daily letter to Maude. With any luck he would hand deliver it to her himself tomorrow night. By the time he finally made his way downstairs again the poker game was in full swing.
"Where are you going?" One of the other illustrators called out as Mac pulled his coat tightly about him.
"I want to check one more time at the station. See if there's been a break. Maybe they've got the telegraph lines working again."
"Are you out of your mind? Pull up a chair and play some cards."
Charlie laughed and waved Mac on. "You don't know Mac. He never sits still except when he works on his sketches. And even then he's not still. Have a pleasant stroll, Mac."
Mac tipped his hat to them and slid out into the night. The wind had abated but the rain still thrummed steadily on the hotel's porch roof. When he reached its sheltering edge he took a deep breath and trotted the length of the street to the station.
He shook himself sharply like a terrier before entering. Water snapped from his coat. The dispatcher looked up from behind the cage window when Mac opened the door. He must have been surprised to see one of the visitors out in this weather, but he didn't show it. With a poker face like that, Mac thought, he should be over at the hotel playing cards with the boys. He'd make a fortune.
"I'm one of the newsmen," Mac said. "Just wanted to see if there were any changes — if maybe the telegraph lines were fixed?"
The clerk shook his head.
"Or if the train tracks were cleared?"
"No trains able to make it from here to Chillicothe or to Athens," the man said.
Mac started to thank him, then shot the clerk a sharp look. "No trains from here to Chillicothe or Athens?"
"Yup. Nope. Those there are the only passenger trains that go through here."
"Are there any other kinds of trains going through here to anywhere else?"
"Yup. Trunk line for freight comes by from Tor Hollows to the north. Transfers from here on over to Nelsonville. A load of cattle and seed grain coming through this evening, 'bout an hour. Those tracks are good, so there's no reason not to expect it."
"But you said earlier that after Nelsonville the tracks were closed again."
"The main line to Athens that those other fellows were asking after, yup. It's right past Nelsonville where the tracks are blocked. But in Nelsonville the Tor Hollow train switches to another trunk line going straight south to Jackson. There's a farm auction center there."
The name Jackson rang a bell. "Can I see a map?"
"Yup."
Thick red lines represented the main routes with passenger service. Thin blue lines traced the freight only routes. As the clerk had said, a thin blue line spidered its way south from Nelsonville to Jackson, where it hooked up with a thick red line. Which headed straight west to Cincinnati. Mac felt giddy with suppressed laughter. He tapped the lower red line with his finger. "Is this route open?"
The clerk reached through the cage to turn the map so that he could see it. "Last I heard before we lost the telegraph lines. Probably still is. That's south of the worst of the storm."
"Do you have a schedule for these lines? And how much are the tickets?"
"Tickets cost nothing because there are none. I told you, those trunk lines are for freight only. There aren't any passenger cars."
"That's all right," said Mac. "I just want to ship some art."
"You look like a drowned duck." Charlie said, liquor garbling the words to gravel tumbling over his tongue. "Are you ready to play and drink? I'll deal you a hand."
"Drowned duckling," a reporter from Columbus muttered. Charlie turned on the man angrily at this slight to Mac's stature.
Mac smiled and waved a hand in deprecation. "I feel like a drowned duckling. I just want to go upstairs and get out of these clothes and warmed up. Maybe I'll come down after that. But I've got to warn you, Charlie, I'm pretty tired. I'll probably just write a letter to Maude and go to bed. Tell you what, why don't you give me a pull on your bottle to fight off the chill?"
He gagged at the taste and noticed that the bottles lined up and waiting were all moonshine. They'd drunk the town dry of the good stuff.
Up in the room, Mac worked quickly. He packed all his art gear together, wrapping it tightly in the oil skin bag that was part of his standard equipment. Then he shoved his cot up against the far window.
He bu
ndled the bed clothes loosely and draped them slightly over the edge of the pillow. He turned out the lamp and opened the door to the room slowly, studying the way the wedge of light from the hall played across the tableau he'd constructed. A few minor adjustments to the bedding and he was satisfied. It should easily fool a more than half-drunk Charlie that Mac was curled up on the cot fast asleep. His efforts were just precaution: from past experiences with Charlie, he'd bet the man would barely make it to the bed before passing out.
Mac loaded himself up with the oilskin bag and his smaller suitcase. He stood for a moment in the shadows at the top of the stairs to be sure that the boys were all still roaring away down in the lobby, then sidled silently down and let himself out the back door. He was glad now that Charlie had shaken him down for his share of the room payment when he'd first arrived.
He grinned to himself. It would take a while, but he knew eventually Charlie would forgive him. What was it that kid juggler had said? One does what one must to survive
Mac hunkered down in the caboose. He'd spread out his overcoat to dry, but he was more miserable from impatience than the cold. Under the swaying erratic light of a kerosene lantern he twitched under the amused glances of the brakeman and the guard. They'd been happy to split the cost of a passenger ticket between them. It was only fifteen miles to Nelsonville, but the train inched along, the smell of the cattle wafting back over them.
The leg to Jackson was longer and slower. At one point the train stopped. Mac looked up at the brakeman.
"Probably water on the tracks," the railroader said.
Mac's heart sank. Then the train lurched and began crawling forward. Mac's heart followed suit. "Let's have a look," the guard said, taking the lantern down from its hook. The three of them stood at the back of the car as he swung the lamp over the tracks. On one side a stream, black as spilled ink, rose to lap at the very edge of the railroad bed. It threatened with the ominousness of dark, silent, secret theft.
Ah, Sweet mystery Of Life Page 4