Ransacker

by Emmy Laybourne

  Sissel wasn’t sure if he was headed to the farm or if he just wanted to get out of town so his raised voice wouldn’t be heard by the townsfolk. Yelling was imminent.

  Only when they were a fair distance from town did she dare to speak.

  “Can you walk slower?” Sissel asked. “Please?”

  Stieg spun around as if she’d stung him.

  “I told Hanne we’d be fine, you and me. I told her that we were close. That it would be good for you to have some independence. And you’ve … you’ve lied to me at every turn!”

  “I’m sorry!”

  “Tell me you are not the reason McKray struck gold!” he said.

  “I’m not,” she said.

  Stieg’s eyes went wide.

  “You lie to me still?”

  He spun away, hands on hips, too angry to speak.

  “Stieg, you are right. I have lied to you, but not about that, because McKray hasn’t struck gold.”

  “I credit myself as being an intelligent man, but, Sister, you have lost me.”

  “I will tell you the whole story,” Sissel said. “I have been stupid and deceitful and you must know all of it.”

  And so she told him about sneaking out to practice her Nytte, and about running into McKray. Then she told him about Alice’s combs, and how he had tricked her into revealing her Nytte.

  They continued to walk as the story poured out. She talked about her ride with McKray, and how he had given her the wanted poster and asked for her help.

  She told him about her afternoon with McKray when the newspapermen had ambushed them. And the twenty dollars she had earned. Then she told him of McKray’s business proposal.

  “He wants to give you half of his money?” Stieg said.

  “Half of his business prospects. I don’t know all the details.”

  “Wonderful. Excellent,” Stieg said sarcastically. He rubbed his forehead and exhaled deeply. “Is that it? Is that absolutely everything?”

  Sissel shook. Her body trembled. She hadn’t said a word about James. She feared if she didn’t tell him now, about how she had told James about her Nytte, that there would be a wall between her and her brother. One she might never be able to breach.

  “No,” she said. Tears came to her eyes. “I was stupid, Stieg. I did something so foolish … Oh, I am so ashamed!”

  Stieg stepped forward. He placed his hands on her arms.

  “What is it?” Stieg asked.

  “I told James. About my powers.”

  “Oh, Sissel,” he said.

  “I am so sorry. He seemed so broken and sad.”

  “McKray figured it out on his own, but you told James yourself?” he said.

  “It was a stupid thing to do,” she said.

  “No. I’ve been the stupid one. I was too trusting—” Sissel tried to break in, to apologize, but he cut her off with his hand. “Rolf was right. I have not used sufficient caution. I got comfortable and complacent.

  “We must leave,” Stieg said bitterly. “We have no choice but to leave. Too many here know about us. We must go where we know no one, and keep it that way.”

  “Are you sure?” Sissel said. “McKray … I think he’s sincere. It could be such an opportunity.”

  “He’s a swindler and a cheat! He tried to buy our land, Sissel. Our one bit of property in the world, just so he could sell it off to a bunch of gold-crazy prospectors!”

  “But he offered us more than what we paid for it…”

  Stieg didn’t seem to hear her, just started walking back to town.

  “We’ll go after I dismiss school tomorrow. I couldn’t live with myself if we left before I finished the term. It wouldn’t be fair to the children; they’ve worked too hard.”

  “What about McKray?” Sissel asked.

  “What about him? He tricked you and manipulated you. Now he wants to use you to find gold.”

  “I think he’s sincere,” Sissel said.

  “He’s tricked you three times, Sissel. Have some dignity.”

  Sissel drew back. It was unlike Stieg to be so cruel. His face was twisted in anger.

  “What a fool I’ve been!” he said. “Thinking the freedom was doing you good—”

  “It was! It did!”

  “When you’ve been sneaking around with McKray doing God knows what!”

  “Why do you feel that you must control me so?” she said. “It’s my Nytte. Why can’t I use it as I see fit?”

  Stieg stopped in the middle of the dusty road and turned toward her.

  “You got a Nytte, and without one thought for the safety of your brothers and sister, you started showing off for some man we hardly know!”

  “I wasn’t showing off!”

  “Do you have any idea the sacrifices we have all made to keep you safe? To keep you alive? The Baron is still looking for us, Sissel. We know this. If he knew of your gift, he would send all the Berserkers he has after us. And you revealed your powers to two outsiders!”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I am.”

  Stieg nodded. “I’m sure you are.”

  They walked together. A farm they passed had a field of rippling wheat, nearly ripe. Soon the fields would be harvested, and all the schoolchildren would be needed at home to do their part.

  “I am half of a mind to leave now,” Stieg said. “We could pack up now and slip out. With all the commotion at the hotel, I don’t know that anyone would notice.”

  Sissel’s breath caught in her throat. She couldn’t leave Alice without saying good-bye! And to leave McKray without an answer would be rude.

  “But it seems more kind and fair to leave tomorrow after school,” he said. “It would cause a commotion if I disappeared without ending the term properly.”

  Stieg walked ahead without casting Sissel a glance.

  “We will tell everyone Owen has found work in Texas.”

  “Texas?”

  “Yes. And then we’ll move east, to a big city. We’ll change our names. Try to disappear.”

  “What about Helena? Your job?”

  “We can’t stay in Montana, where so many people know us. So now you see—” Stieg cast her a glance. He must have seen how stricken Sissel was, how terrible she felt about the loss she had caused him, because his face softened.

  “Now you see why Mr. McKray’s offer is out of the question.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “You and I will speak with Mr. McKray together. We’ll turn him down once and for all.”

  Sissel said nothing, only trailed a few steps behind him as they made their way back to Carter.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  James stood in a small copse of aspens a good fifty feet off the road. He was crouching there, for the Hemstads had changed direction and were now coming back. He had trailed Sissel and Stieg, keeping far enough away that he now had trouble making out their argument. It was either about him or about McKray’s odd appearance at the school, or both. He should be concerned about Isaiah McKray turning up, but mostly he felt confused.

  James had spent the day feeling foggy headed and disoriented. The whiskey he drank with Peavy the night before hadn’t helped. Between them, they drained the bottle, then started a new one, and gotten a quarter of the way through it before James nodded off.

  More troubling than the hangover was the whole idea of Sissel having power of some kind over metals. Peavy had hailed James as a hero repeatedly, talking about how happy the client would be. James argued late into the night that it was all the delusions of a fragile, hysterical girl, but Peavy didn’t care about Sissel, or her health, or whether she had powers at all. What he cared about was pleasing the Baron and getting a bonus.

  As the liquor had taken hold, Peavy started wondering if he’d make enough money to buy the store outright. Or maybe, he fantasized, the Baron would give it to him as a reward.

  James felt it might be best to leave town. He had an uneasy feeling about the whole thing. Sissel had cooled on him—he could see that she
regretted baring her soul to him. She wasn’t about to get her heart broken if he left.

  Let some other idiot take over guarding her. Someone who believed in the occult.

  He wanted more whiskey, that’s what he wanted. To liberate him from his thinking, which went round and round, and to ease the guilt that kept chafing his conscience.

  In the end, it was all for the best that the Baron knew about Sissel’s “magic.” He was protecting them, wasn’t he? Maybe he’d get her a good doctor.

  Here they came now, passing him by. Neither looked to the left or the right. They continued on straight and steadfast, no idea they were observed.

  He had a mind to jump out. To scare them.

  Then he’d tell them, “Look! All along you’ve been carrying on while other men have been protecting you! We’ve been keeping you safe this whole time and you never knew!”

  He said nothing, just squatted there in the bushes, feeling mostly like a coward.

  He trailed them at the leisurely pace they set all the way back to town. They went into the hotel, where a large crowd was gathered on the porch.

  After they were inside, James ducked into the store.

  Peavy was in the front, selling overpriced gear to some newbie prospectors. Peavy gave James a salute and a wink. The store had gotten so busy with the land rush that Peavy had had to hire on two new boys to help behind the counter. One was Howie from school. James had put in a good word for him.

  Howie was now weighing out sugar for Mrs. Denmead, who looked thoroughly irritated at the commotion.

  “How was school, son?” Peavy asked as James came behind the counter.

  “Fine,” he said.

  “Nothing interesting to report?”

  James shook his head. “Nothing of note.”

  “Good,” Peavy said. He was wrapping a hardtack in brown paper for a prospector with few teeth and little hair. “I need you here in the store. We’ve never been so busy.”

  James leaned in close to whisper, “What about the hotel?”

  “Clements is on it,” Peavy said.

  Good, James thought. The less he had to do with the Hemstads, the better.

  “I believe those men over there want several pounds of beans.” Peavy pointed to three men arguing near the pickle barrel.

  “I’ll get right to it.”

  “Oh!” Peavy said, clapping his hands together. “We’re making money today!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Back at the hotel, a new order had been established. Those waiting to see Mr. McKray had been shooed out onto the porch. As she and Stieg pushed through the throng, Sissel saw scraps of paper in the hands of several of the waiting parties and wondered what they were.

  In the lobby she had her answer. Collier had a stack of them on his desk. They were numbers.

  Two men in travel-worn suits stood at the desk, talking to Collier, who looked far more in control than he had the day before.

  “Mawkins, Noah, and Paul.” Collier jotted into a ledger. “And what’s your business?”

  “What do you think we’re here about?” one said crossly. “We’ve come to town to prospect. And found your McKray holds almost all the promising land available for sale. So we want to buy a piece from him.”

  “And we’ll pay extra for a good one,” the other fellow said in a low, conspiratorial tone. “Put that in your ledger.”

  “I shall indeed, gentlemen. Your number is forty-six. I wouldn’t expect to talk to him before tomorrow.”

  “But in the meantime, we can take a room here? That how it works?” the first one sneered.

  “Hardly. We haven’t got a single room to let. But you are welcome to sleep in our stables, free of charge. Or on the front porch.”

  The two men took the number and walked out, muttering to each other.

  Collier sighed and blotted the words he’d written in the ledger. He looked up, and finding Stieg and Sissel there, he smiled.

  That was a surprise.

  “Ah, familiar faces,” Collier said.

  “Good evening, Mr. Collier,” Sissel replied.

  She wondered how much he knew about his employer’s feelings for her. Collier’s manner had certainly changed toward them.

  “It’s been a long day of dealing with angry strangers,” he said. “Mr. McKray can’t sell the land fast enough to suit them.”

  “Yes, he’s a shrewd businessman, to be sure,” Stieg said coldly.

  “This afternoon he started trying to tell the men that there’s no gold to be found. That his mines haven’t proved up the way he’d hoped. If anything, it made them want the land more!” Collier said. “They think he’s protesting to cover up some huge deposit. Imagine! And some of these men! The roughest sort—”

  “We’d like a word with Mr. McKray,” Stieg cut in.

  Collier straightened up. He’d been settling in to chat.

  “Well, be my guest,” he said, gesturing to the stack of numbered slips on his desk. “You can expect to speak to him in the morning.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Stieg said. Sissel laid her hand on his arm.

  “Mr. Collier, I’m sure that if you tell him my brother and I are here, he will want to see us.”

  She was right. Collier only opened the door to the office and spoke their names and McKray came to see them. His eyes lit up when he saw Sissel. It made her feel sorry for him; he wasn’t going to get any good news.

  “We’d like to speak to you in private,” Stieg said.

  “Please come in,” McKray said, gesturing for them to enter his office.

  If the lobby of the hotel was overbearingly feminine, McKray’s office was masculine efficiency to an extreme.

  The walls were paneled with oak, and a fireplace was set into the far wall of the room. Two leather armchairs stood in front of a massive desk loaded with neat stacks of papers. Behind the desk was a bookshelf with stacked volumes. Sissel saw Stieg’s eyes flit to the books. Most seemed to be law books and ledgers along with a large dictionary and a thesaurus.

  The only decoration in the room was a large map of the territory nailed to the wall. This had pins stuck into it and pale blue lines outlining parcels of land, with further subdivisions within them marked in green pencil.

  The office was, Sissel realized, a fairly good expression of McKray’s inner character. Sturdy, unfussy, and all about business.

  It made her smile. She was fond of him, she realized, despite all his scheming.

  “Please, sit,” McKray said. They seated themselves, Sissel and Stieg in the armchairs and McKray behind the desk. “May I call for coffee and cake? Are you hungry?”

  Sissel nodded yes, but Stieg said no.

  “Sissel had told me a long story this afternoon, and I must say, McKray, you have abused her trust in a way I find most deplorable.”

  McKray nodded his head. “Yes, I agree.”

  “You agree?”

  “If I could do it again, Mr. Hemstad, I would do it all differently, I would. I can’t go back and do it over, but I can promise you that going forward, I would have only her best interests—”

  Stieg shook his head. “There is no ‘going forward.’ My sister Hanne has asked us to join her and her fiancé. We are leaving tomorrow.”

  “I see,” McKray said. He straightened a stack of papers that was already square. “So you’ve discussed my business proposal—”

  “There are many reasons why I would not allow such a partnership, Mr. McKray. Sissel’s age would be one—”

  “I can wait until she comes of age.”

  “Her susceptibility to your particular brand of manipulation would be another—”

  “She sees right through me. That’s one of the things I most admire about her.”

  “But the greatest one would be that I don’t trust you. And there’s nothing you can say that would reverse my position on that.”

  McKray looked toward the window, clearly composing a retort.

  “I suppose it wo
uldn’t forward my case any if I pointed out that she’s nearly an adult and should be allowed to make decisions for herself?”

  Sissel felt a surge of pride in McKray at this. She spoke before her brother could.

  “It doesn’t mean much to him, but it does to me,” she said. “Mr. McKray, I agree with my brother. I can’t help you with your mining business. I must turn you down, although, I will say, that I’m pleased you asked me. And I appreciate the way you offered.”

  Stieg stood. His neck was red.

  “We should settle our bill before we go.”

  McKray waved it off. “Please, don’t. I don’t want your money.”

  Stieg placed six dollars down on the table. “This is for the past several weeks. Now we’re paid up. Thank you for taking us in.”

  McKray got to his feet.

  “I wish I could do the whole thing over,” he said. “It truly pains me that we part this way.”

  “Come, Sissel,” Stieg said. He took her by the arm and led her from the room.

  * * *

  SISSEL SLEPT POORLY, tossing and turning. She hated to leave town this way, running scared. To leave Alice, her only friend, without ever telling her the truth and making up. It didn’t feel right at all.

  Around midnight she had an idea. She’d wake early and go visit Alice before school started. Though she couldn’t tell her friend why they were leaving, she could at least have a private moment with her and try to apologize for the distance that had come between them.

  At dawn, she rose and put on the lovely tan dress Alice had given her.

  Sissel had used some of the twenty dollars she’d earned from McKray to pay Bridget for all the laundering she had been doing for her. Now, thinking of it, she put a dollar in an envelope and wrote Bridget’s name on the front—a little tip, and she knew Bridget needed the money. She left it on the floor of her empty armoire.

  Sissel wrote a note to Stieg, saying she was going to visit Alice and that she would see him at school. Sissel looked at herself in the mirror. She tucked a few stray strands of hair into the bun she had made. She looked older, she thought, maybe because her eyes looked a bit sad.