“I told you not to use it,” Walker said on a harsh exhale, and kicked Lilith into motion.
They raced across the plain. The stallion’s smooth, long strides ate up the ground effortlessly. She relaxed her grip around his middle, found that he was perfectly capable of running on his own and that she could sit him quite comfortably without a saddle. Maybe he’d been spelled to ride bareback. “Where can we go? How do we fight?”
“Fight?” Walker gave her a disdainful look. “We’re going to find somewhere to hide. Against the Pinkertons, we’re outmanned and outgunned. Best thing we can do is get the hell out of here and hope they don’t give chase.”
The horses all sensed their urgency, and they raced straight across the green-gold field, pointed roughly northeast. The herd of mustangs rejoined them. Hettie’s galloping heart was just one tiny beat mixed in with the earth-trembling stampede. The black stallion gave a triumphant whinny, and he was answered by a piercing cry from the other horses. Exhilarated, Hettie couldn’t help but smile. Ling let out a whoop and grinned when some of the horses replied in kind. Hettie laughed when she noticed he had Cymon slung across his lap on Jezebel’s back. The dog was the only one who looked unhappy.
She glanced over to find Walker smiling crookedly at her. She grinned back. Danger, disaster, death—it felt as if they could outrun it all.
As they neared a hilly area, the stallion let out another loud cry and peeled away from the group. Jezebel and Lilith followed.
“Lilith, whoa!” The mare didn’t obey. Walker pulled on the reins. “Where’s he going? Hettie—”
The stallion chuffed as she patted his neck. “I think he’s taking us somewhere safe.”
“Why on earth would you think that?”
“Because Jezebel trusts him.” She tilted her head toward her father’s horse. The old mare was too stubborn to take orders from an upstart wild mustang otherwise.
The valleys between the hills deepened into arroyos, the rock and earth rising up all around them to form a deep canyon. The horses slowed, panting. The black stallion took the lead and kept walking into the close, dark gulch.
“I don’t like this,” Walker muttered. “This is the perfect place for an ambush.”
“No, I don’t think so.” Ling stared around hard. “There’s something here. Do you sense it?”
A profusion of vines climbed tenaciously from the shadowed canyon floor up the jagged walls toward the light. Hettie thought she saw something move behind the curtain of vegetation. A cold draft draped itself across her shoulders.
The horses chuffed and plodded on, and they exchanged horsey noises as if in conversation. Cymon hopped off Jezebel’s back and snuffled around but stayed close, giving a skeptical woof.
The canyon dead-ended in a roughly circular area with steep walls on all sides. “This can’t be good,” Walker said as Lilith finally allowed him to rein her in. “We’ll be trapped like animals if the Pinks track us here.”
“All those horses running with us would’ve stamped out our tracks,” Hettie said. “I think that’s what this fella here was telling them to do.” She patted his neck and rubbed his withers. His muscles rippled, and he gave a sigh.
“This place is sacred.” Ling dismounted and paced slowly over the ground, inspecting the long, bowed grasses. The sun was low in the sky and cut a wide crescent across the far wall of green. That cool breeze tickled Hettie’s nose once more. Ling’s gaze panned the area slowly. Then he pointed. “There.”
Against the far end of the canyon on the rock face were a bunch of symbols etched across the stone. Hettie wasn’t familiar with any of the languages of the local Indian tribes, but the pictographs did look vaguely familiar. Walker dismounted, staring intently at the ground. He knelt and brushed the grass aside.
A long, stained bone jutted up from the ground. Walker flinched but continued pulling the vegetation away until he revealed a complete human skeleton lying in a fetal position on its side, head turned so the skull grinned up at them.
“We’re on a damned burial ground.” He straightened. “We shouldn’t be here.”
“No. Not a burial ground.” Ling walked back toward them with something in his hands. He held out a rusted old rifle. “A massacre site.”
Walker grabbed Lilith’s reins and pulled, but the chestnut mare wouldn’t budge. “We need to get out of here. We have to leave before night falls and the ghosts rise.” He looked spooked. “I’d rather face the Pinks than risk a haunting.”
The stallion tossed his mane and snorted, then advanced on the bounty hunter with his head lowered menacingly. Walker didn’t back down, but he did release Lilith’s reins.
“I think he’s trying to tell us we’re safer here than out there.” Hettie couldn’t help but smile at the way Walker sized up the stallion.
“Maybe we should stay,” Ling said slowly, staring around. “This place is steeped with magic.”
“What do you mean?”
“Something about the place is … focusing magical energy here, containing it.” He held out a hand and uttered a few words. His palm flashed a brilliant white that banished the shadows briefly before settling down to a warm glow. Ling regarded the light thoughtfully. He lifted his shirt to reveal an ugly yellow-and-black bruise on his side. Hettie gasped—it had to be quite old. Why hadn’t he healed himself before? He laid his hand on his side, and the blemish disappeared. “Interesting. Must be why this place was considered sacred to these people.” He nodded at the markings on the wall again.
“We’re in some kind of … magical funnel?” Walker asked.
“I think so. All the power that would normally leak out of me is staying right here. I’d bet it’s enough to hide Diablo’s magical signature. Staying here might keep the Pinkerton agents from finding us, at least for a while.”
“And if you’re wrong, they shoot us like fish in a barrel. Either that, or we have our souls torn apart by angry spirits.”
Hettie didn’t relish sharing her bed with vengeful ghosts. There’d been all kinds of tales of hauntings in town, some of them real, most of them embellished. The worst spirits had been those of the men wrongly hanged in town, but they’d been exorcised by the elders quickly. Who knew what the dead here would do to a bunch of hapless travelers? But they couldn’t hide out on the plain, and they couldn’t ride all night. “I vote we stay. Blackie wouldn’t lead us here if he didn’t think it was safe.”
Walker lifted an eyebrow. “That’s what you’re calling him? Blackie?”
“Unless he tells us his name.”
The stallion blew out through his nostrils. She could’ve sworn he’d just rolled his eyes.
“The magic is strongest in this part of the canyon.” Ling walked softly over the long grass. “We should make camp here.”
“I am not sleeping on the bones of the dead,” Walker protested.
Ling scrubbed the bristles on his chin. “Perhaps I can ask for permission.”
Hettie glanced at him. “You’re a necromancer?”
“Nothing like that. But I can make an appeal—a ritual offering, if you will, to appease the spirits. I need a few things, though. A sacrifice, for one.”
“I’m not wasting good food on the dead.” Walker pointed to the mouth of the canyon. “I’m setting up camp there. Come midnight, try to keep your screams down. I can’t do a thing to protect us against angry spirits.” He stomped off.
“I don’t know how a man with so much power can have so little faith.” Ling sighed. “Will you help me, Miss Hettie? If nothing else, I’d like to perform a ceremony to honor the dead.”
They set out a snare, hoping to catch something they could both have for dinner and offer to the spirits. Hettie collected a few flowers and braided some long sweet grass to burn as makeshift incense. Ling set a few large stones in a semicircular shrine and placed the items in the center. By the time they caught
a thin raccoon and gutted it, night had fallen. A damp chill settled in the air and clung to her skin.
Over at the far end of the canyon, Walker lay by a small fire, watching them sullenly from beneath the brim of his hat, his sidearm and rifle both at the ready. They wouldn’t do a thing against spirits, of course. Blackie, Jezebel, and Lilith munched contentedly on the grass. Cymon sat a few feet from where Hettie and Ling worked, unwilling to come closer. He gave a short whine, then lay down, head between his paws.
“Can I ask you a question?” Hettie ventured. Ling nodded for her to proceed. “It’s just that … well, you said this place is a magic well. And this tribe must have had some gifted among them.” She indicated the pictograms on the walls. “How come they didn’t use the magic here to drive their attackers away?”
Ling gathered his thoughts. “I don’t know enough about this tribe to know what spells they had at hand, but there’s a simple answer to that question: metal is immune to magic. Whoever killed these people had that many more guns. Maybe even a few sorcerers of their own to counter whatever they threw at them.” He stared into the bruise-colored shadows as if he could see more than darkness there. “I imagine history would look very different if magic could stop a bullet.”
Ling scooped up the raccoon entrails and set them in the shrine. He lit the sweet grass. The smoke wafting from it was white and thick and smelled like honey.
He directed Hettie to kneel beside him and place her palms together. She followed along clumsily as they both kowtowed before the burning grass, flowers, and pile of stinking raccoon guts. She felt a little silly, but really it was no different from saying grace—Ma had always said everyone had their own ways of doing things, and they were all strange to someone. So she didn’t laugh.
Besides, laughing might be what angered the ghosts.
Ling’s alto chant had a hypnotic, soothing quality about it. He said something in his throaty native tongue and waited in silence. Then he bowed again. “Your turn, Hettie. Ask the spirits if it would be all right to stay the night.”
She stared at the far wall of rock and earth, watching the huge, shifting shadows cast by Walker’s fire. It’d been a long time since she’d even prayed openly—she’d always attended church with Ma, but it had been out of habit rather than faith. The preacher had been a fire-and-brimstone man, and she’d hated how he’d described hell with its blazing inferno and endless torture. He talked about it as if he’d been there, and seemed convinced Hettie was headed there, too, the way he always met her eye when he screamed, Damnation!
Pa had stopped going to church because of him. Hettie only went because she hadn’t wanted Ma to be alone.
Talking to ghosts was like talking to God, she supposed. It was likely at least one of them was listening.
“Spirits…” she began tentatively. “My friends and I have been traveling a long time … and we need a place to rest tonight. You see, my sister, Abby, was taken by some terrible men, and I need to find her. My uncle is out there, too, somewhere…” The words stuck in her throat, and she had to clear it before continuing. “There are some men after us. We’re not criminals … not really. Blackie over there brought us here, and I ain’t ever known a horse smart as him, except maybe Jezebel, so I thought maybe we were okay here, but Ling said a bunch of you were killed in this place, and we don’t mean any disrespect. We just really need to stay here awhile, if that’s okay.” She knew she was babbling, but she supposed it was best to be clear when it came to talking to the dead.
The wind whistled over the top of the canyon, rustling the leaves and grass. Something moved behind the curtain of vines. Hettie stared at the spot, sweat breaking on her upper lip. It was just a trick of the light, she told herself. Nothing was there. Nothing was watching her.
“You didn’t have to tell them the whole story,” Ling said, a little amused. He paused, closed his eyes. “I think we’re going to be fine tonight. If they didn’t want us here, they’d have let us know by now.”
How they would communicate something like that, Hettie never wanted to find out.
A heatless bonfire blazed before Hettie. Huge shadows shifted against the canyon walls stretching endlessly above her, but she couldn’t see what cast them. The hairs on her neck prickled. Where were Walker and Ling? Where were Cymon and Jezebel and the others?
A figure darted outside of the firelight. “Hello?” Her voice was distant and faint in her own ears. Fighting the urge to curl up into a ball and hide, she followed the shadowy movement into the deep gloom.
Her bare feet went from soft grass to cold stone. She couldn’t see her hand in front of her face, but she sensed her quarry fleeing.
“Come back!” Fear climbed into her throat, an utter sense of desolation closing in on her.
Her feet sloshed through a sticky wetness. Dark, crimson blood frothed and swirled around her ankles. She looked for its source but saw nothing.
Something behind her moved, and she nearly jumped out of her skin when a little girl appeared before her. Her long, dark hair fell down past her shoulders. Her eyes were large and empty, like twin caverns, glowing from a dark face. The girl wore a roughly cut smock made of buckskin leather. She was barefoot. She couldn’t have been much older than eight.
The girl extended a hand. Hettie wasn’t sure why she took it. It just seemed … right. Her fingers were icy-cold and not quite solid. It almost felt as though Hettie were dipping her hand into a fast-flowing stream. The little spirit girl towed her deeper into the gloom. She didn’t say anything as the world slowly changed from inky blackness to a land drenched in silvery-blue predawn light.
The earth became solid and uneven beneath her feet, long grasses slippery with dew. The clearing was deserted, yet Hettie felt a suffocating closeness. Then, shouts and cries, the rapport of a gun. More rifle blasts, and then high-pitched screams and heart-wrenching mourning wails. A few rough voices, the rattle of wagons trundling away. The cries of children faded along with everything else…
Hettie glanced down. The little girl was gone. She looked around frantically, not sure how she was supposed to leave this ghost world without her guide.
“Crying Sparrow is long dead,” a voice behind her said.
She spun and met the sad eyes of an Indian woman seated on the ground. Hettie had had few dealings with the People, apart from those who lived in town, so she couldn’t say for sure what tribe this person was from. Her face was that of a young woman, her body lean and strong, but an air of exhaustion hung about her. She gestured for Hettie to join her by the fire.
“It is rare that anyone journeys along the road in between. Even rarer when they are led here by one of our own.”
“So … this isn’t a dream?”
“Some might think it such. This is simply the place between life and the spirit realm.” She studied her. “You are not dead … but you’re not totally alive either. Why are you here?”
Hettie didn’t know what to say to that, so she told the truth. “I’m looking for my sister. We didn’t mean to disturb your bones, but it was getting late, and my horse…” She snapped her mouth shut as the woman’s lips firmed and her dark eyes cast downward.
Get ahold of yourself, you gabbling goose. She marshaled her manners. “Tell me, what happened here?”
“The same thing that happens whenever we try to protect what is ours.” The woman’s fists closed. “We gave up our land, our livelihood, our heritage and past. But when they told us to give up our children, that’s when we had to fight back.”
“Someone took the children?”
“They told us they shouldn’t be raised among savages. They told us they would take care of them, send them to proper Christian schools. We refused to let them go, so they took them by force.” She cupped her fists against the sides of her head as she gave a broken sob. “We were helpless to save them. They were not better off. They were not sent to sc
hools…” She rocked back and forth.
“What happened to them?”
“Crying Sparrow … she was a dream walker. She could travel between places, guide others there. She showed us where they’d taken her, showed us her living nightmare. We saw her last days, saw the cruel, evil things done to her and the other children. Her visions drove some of us mad. Those who were left tried to rescue the children … but we were few, we were weak, and they had strong magics.”
Hettie’s skin pricked with goose bumps, and her heart pounded in her throat. “Where were they taken?”
“South,” she said. “To the land of red sand.”
That was too much of a coincidence. Her throat closed as terror took hold. “Can you tell me anything about the people who took your children?”
But before she could answer, the scene jarred, the fire went out, and Hettie found herself flat on her back on the dewy ground, head spinning as she stared up the barrel of a very big gun.
Pretty stupid of you two to be sleeping without a guard,” Jeremiah Bassett growled. A few feet away, Ling shot out of his bedroll and sprang away from them, crouched and wild-eyed like a cat caught unawares. Uncle sneered. “If I were anyone else, you’d all have your throats slit by now.”
A gun cocked behind him. “And you’d have a hole in the back of your head.” Walker stepped from the shadow, rifle raised.
“Uncle.” Hettie was relieved he was alive, of course, but his arrival stirred all kinds of questions in her. He took his boot off her neck, and she sat up, rubbing at the tender flesh. “You got away from the Pinkertons.”
“Yeah.” He holstered his weapon, and Walker lowered his Winchester. The old man squatted by the campfire and rubbed his hands. “Been trackin’ you awhile now. Didn’t get a bead till you fired off that damn gun again. Where is it?”
“Safe with me.”
Jeremiah narrowed his eyes. If he noticed her advanced age, he didn’t say anything. Cymon pushed his head into Uncle’s hands in greeting, tail wagging. Some guard dog he was.
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