Ransacker

by Emmy Laybourne

  “Lower your guns, Adam,” the smarter one said.

  “I can hit them both at the same time.”

  “If Knut lets her go, you’ll be dead before the bullets leave the gun,” Stieg said.

  “I’m game to see that!” the redhead scoffed.

  “Adam! Set down your fancy goddamn pistols. Now!”

  The redhead spat on the ground to show what he thought of the order. He slowly put down his shining guns.

  Hanne felt Knut take a deep breath of relief. He released his hold on her, thinking, perhaps, the danger was past.

  She darted forward. In three steps she had the redhead by the hair. She forced his head backward until he fell onto his back, then she put her boot on the side of his skull.

  “Easy, Hanne, easy!” said Owen. He rushed to her side.

  “Ask what you want,” she said. She added just enough pressure to make him gasp in pain. “He’ll answer.”

  They learned the men were Pinkertons, professional detectives. Hired by the Baron Fjelstad, who was on his way, and that they had orders to protect Sissel at any cost to lives. Sissel was in a cave up above, with others guarding her.

  Stieg directed Knut to hold on to the smart one, and Hanne was allowed to restrain the redhead, with a promise she would not kill him. Stieg, Owen, and McKray withdrew a few paces to discuss. They spoke in hushed tones—incredulous, fearful, angry. Pinkertons had kidnapped her? Peavy was one of them? What of James, then? And most of all they spoke of the Baron. The Baron was coming?

  Talking, talking, talking. Like the chattering of starlings.

  All Hanne had heard that was important was that Sissel was being held in a cave above them.

  Finally, Owen and McKray came and bound the hands of the two men, using some rope Owen had brought from the horses. McKray hauled the redhead up, and the man spat again at his feet.

  “I’d watch it if I were you,” McKray said.

  The redhead cussed and said such dirty curses that Owen shoved his bandanna in the man’s mouth and tied it with more rope.

  “Might as well gag the other one, too,” McKray said. He used more rope and his own clean handkerchief to do so.

  “Let’s move,” Owen said. He jabbed the redhead in the back with the barrel of his shotgun. Silenced and bound, the man started to climb, sending dirty looks over his shoulder from time to time.

  * * *

  FIVE PINKERTONS NOW crowded into the cave. Sissel sat at the back, on her pallet. The lamp sat nearby, throwing dancing shadows up the uneven rocky walls.

  O’Brien had gone to the mouth of the cave and whistled three times.

  They’d all listened.

  No reply had come.

  A few minutes later he whistled three times again. A signal, obviously.

  Then he turned, grim faced. “Jesus Christ,” he cursed. “We’ve lost six men?”

  He turned to a young man. “You sure Smith was dead?”

  “He was brained with a rock, sir. I saw the girl do it.”

  “What about the doctor?” O’Brien asked. “Oaktree?”

  “Oakman, sir. He went running when the shooting started, sir.”

  “Goddamn it! All right. Shaw, set the gun,” he said. “Men, make some space!” he told the Pinkertons crowded near the mouth of the cave. “You two help Shaw.”

  Several of the detectives helped move the massive gun and adjust the legs.

  Now the Gatling gun stood in the center of the mouth of the cave, aiming out. Shaw was behind the gun, his fingers on the handles. Another man took the lid off one of the wooden cases, and Sissel saw hundreds of gleaming cartridges.

  “Please,” Sissel said. Her high voice cutting through the low mutterings of the men. “Let me talk to them. I’ll get them to leave.”

  No one answered her.

  “They are very young. Please!” Sissel cried. She rose from where she’d been sitting onto her knees. Held her bound hands in front of her, beseeching. “I beg you!”

  “Quiet her,” O’Brien said.

  “Hanne!” she yelled, then Baker stuck a greasy cloth in her mouth and her cries were muffled.

  “Damn this fog! Shoot at any sign of motion,” O’Brien told the man behind the Gatling gun. “We keep the girl safe and alive at any cost.”

  “Yes, sir,” Shaw said. He wiped his hands on his pants and gripped the handles again. It seemed to Sissel he was smiling.

  * * *

  OWEN AND MCKRAY forced the Pinkertons up the narrow path ahead of them.

  Stieg used one hand to climb up the rocky trail. The other he kept pressed to his temples. He summoned all the fog he’d made and pushed it now ahead of them, issuing a slow, steady breath as best he could.

  The fog was unnaturally dense and impenetrable. It was thick in Hanne’s nose and throat.

  They came up onto a ledge of rock, maybe ten feet across, and Hanne saw it through the fog: the dark, jagged slash of the entrance to the cave. Sissel was there! Inside! So close now and all between them were bad men in need of dying.

  Knut put a restraining hand on her shoulder.

  “Steady, Hanne!” Stieg said.

  Owen spoke to her. “We aim to trade these men for her. We’ll get her back, I promise you.”

  Talk, talk, talk. Hanne grabbed her head. She felt like ripping it off.

  * * *

  SISSEL HAD TO save her siblings. She had to.

  She cast inside, flinging her mind open to her Nytte. There was the giant gun: steel, brass, gunmetal. The alloyed metals clanged and clashed in her mind, ringing with sick triumph over her, so loud she felt her head would shake apart. She couldn’t even touch the Gatling with her powers, much less control it or move it.

  She let her Nytte drop and sagged down, slumped in a heap.

  * * *

  AS THEY APPROACHED the cave, the captured men began to call out urgently from behind their gags.

  “We have your men,” Stieg shouted. “We want to trade.”

  There was a pause; then a steady voice said, “Come get her.”

  Hanne moved forward, but Knut grabbed her by the arm.

  “Wait!” he said.

  Owen and McKray pushed the Pinkertons toward the cave’s entrance. They dug their heels into the ground, struggling.

  * * *

  SISSEL DID NOT hear but felt the commotion. Baker stiffened beside her. All the Pinkertons shifted eagerly to see out the mouth of the cave. She saw Peavy leaning forward to watch.

  Sissel crawled forward on her belly and got a clear line of sight through the legs of the men, through the legs of the tripod.

  Two men with their hands tied were pushed out in front of the cave and mowed down, bullets shearing the air, discarded shells spurting from the Gatling gun like sparks from a blacksmith’s forge.

  The men reeled back, their bodies doing a sick jig from the bullets, and toppled to the ground. The mist around them was red with blood spray.

  She saw Hall make a slashing motion with his hand to cut the fire, but it was too late. The men were dead.

  * * *

  HANNE TRIED TO break from Knut’s restraining hand. His grip was like an iron band. “Sissel!” she shouted.

  * * *

  SISSEL THOUGHT OF her beautiful sister.

  She could not allow Hanne to enter that jagged frame of sunlight and face the Gatling gun.

  She cast her Nytte at the gun again. Though it sickened her, though it was like oil and acid flooding her mind, she cast her senses fully inside the wretched machine.

  She identified brass! Brass she could pull. The small, lithe brass-cased bullets that sped through the steel barrels.

  Sissel ground her teeth together and pulled those bullets hard enough to jerk the whole gun off its tripod.

  The bullets ripped into the roof of the cave, firing through the neck of the man responsible for feeding the gun in a spray of blood. The Gatling gun ate the rest of the bullets in the chain, as the cave began to rain down rock.

 
The cave walls began to tremble, then the ground to heave.

  A rock hit Peavy on the head and he fell.

  Sissel saw Baker look up, confused.

  He pushed her back, under the ledge of rock, then he threw himself down on top of her.

  He’s trying to save me, Sissel thought.

  And the rocks continued to fall.

  * * *

  A TERRIBLE ENEMY was waiting inside the cave, a gun that spat out bullets faster than she could dodge them.

  Hanne cast her eyes about. She needed a shield. Was there a rock she could carry in front of her?

  Then there came a deep, low rumble from the cave.

  “Look!” Owen cried.

  A section of the rock wall high above began to shift and fall in on itself.

  “No!” McKray shouted.

  The rocks crumpled, as if sucked down by mud. Stieg, wonderstruck, let the mist fall all at once. A heavy white blanket settling on a bed.

  Hanne broke from Knut’s restraining arm and raced across the rocky ledge.

  Dust and shale bellowed out of the cave. She was blinded. One man threw himself out, bumping into her. She pushed him away. She heard the cries of men inside snuffed out as the rocks crushed down. Sharp rocks skittered out the mouth of the cave. The cave was filled, fallen in on itself, and she could not enter. There was nowhere to go. She could not move forward. All was stone.

  Hanne fell to her knees and howled.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Owen, Stieg, and McKray stared, shocked and grieved, at the rockfall where the mouth of the cave had been.

  The survivor, a heavy-set man in a black suit, scooted back from the cave toward the edge. He crawled over the bodies of his shot-up companions and sneaked off over the ledge. No one thought to stop him.

  Hanne lay where she had collapsed. She did not want to be consoled, or touched. Her Nytte had ebbed away, and she was herself again.

  The hunger that came whenever she used her Nytte engulfed her, and she welcomed it.

  All her worst nightmares had come to pass. She had become possessed by the Nytte again and slain men. But that was the least of it—she failed Sissel. Now Hanne only wanted to die so she could join her.

  “Hanne must eat,” she heard Stieg say.

  “I’ll go to the Pinkerton campsite and see what I can find,” Owen said.

  Hanne was curled up on her side. Tears coursed out of her eyes and ran down her face to the ground. Her body cried out for food. She clamped her arms around her stomach and shut her eyes.

  Some time passed.

  Daisy found her and licked at her face, wriggling with joy at being reunited. Hanne turned from her, pushed the dog away.

  Owen came and put in front of her a loaf of brown bread and a leg of cured ham, almost whole, only a few slices shaved off the front of it. Her stomach rumbled and her mouth watered, and she turned her face from it.

  Daisy lay down next to Hanne, tucking her body against Hanne’s spine.

  “I’m so sorry,” Owen said. Kneeling beside her. “I don’t even know what to say. But you have to eat, Hanne. Or you’ll get sick…”

  He took out his knife and began to hack off pieces of the ham, setting them on the ground near her. He also set his canteen near the bread.

  “Please eat and drink, Hanne. Do that for me.”

  She heard love and tenderness in his voice.

  It seemed impossible to find her way back to it. The Berserker had taken her too far over the edge. She didn’t think she could navigate back to the mild Hanne or the Hanne the lover, or Hanne who had hope for the future.

  She closed her eyes and would not speak. After a few moments Owen rose from her side and went back to the others.

  There was no way Sissel could have survived the cave-in, they said. They were making plans to flee from the Baron. They were saying Hanne must eat and rest. They were saying, “Do we try to hide the bodies, or do we just run like hell?”

  * * *

  HANNE HEARD A THUMP. Then another thump.

  “It’s no use, Knut, you’re wasting your strength,” she heard Stieg say.

  Then three thumps in rapid progress.

  Hanne sat up.

  Knut was clearing rocks from the mouth of the cave.

  He was hurling them across the ledge, clearing room.

  “She’s gone, Knut.”

  Knut shook off Stieg’s restraining hand and continued to move the rocks.

  Hanne fumbled on the ground for the ham. She tore off a mouthful, and began to chew.

  “McKray! You know there’s no chance she could be alive in there. You’re a mining man.”

  “It’s a slim damn chance, that’s for sure, but Knut has the right of it. We should dig.”

  McKray crossed to Knut and began to help.

  Stieg and Owen stood back talking, then they, too, went to the mouth of the cave.

  Hanne drank down some good, clean water.

  She brought the bread with her and ate with one hand as she began to lift smaller rocks away with the other.

  It was grisly business.

  The first of the corpses were mangled so badly that both McKray and Stieg stepped away to vomit. Knut continued lifting out the rocks, without stopping, even the ones stained red with blood or black with bile. The second corpse they recognized—it was Mr. Peavy. Knut didn’t pause when he saw who it was, just pulled the man’s mangled body out and left it on the ground behind him.

  It fell to McKray, Owen, and Stieg, to drag the body farther away as Knut continued moving in, prying out the rocks that glutted the cave. They forced Hanne to do the easier work, hauling rocks away from the mouth and dropping them down the side of the mountain, to keep room clear to work.

  There seemed no hope at all, but after they cleared several feet of rock and boulder, they found a man alive! When Stieg took the man’s arms to pull, he woke up and screamed with pain. Both legs broken, a terrible gurgling sound coming from his rib cage when he breathed, but alive.

  He passed out before they got him outside.

  It was decided, then, that McKray would ride to town for a doctor, and for a few men to help. He said he had some men he trusted whose silence could be bought about the nature of the cave-in, if it came to that.

  He departed as quickly as he could along the treacherous ravine, winding his way back down the rocky trail to where they had left their horses tethered in the foothills.

  Owen made another trip to the Pinkerton camp and came back with blankets, a tarp, lanterns, and more food. He draped the injured man with the blankets, then he piled the corpses onto the tarp and wrapped them up as best he could.

  The light began to fail, but still Knut moved rock and Stieg and Owen dragged it out and Hanne pushed it over the side of the ledge. Night descended and they hauled rock.

  The skin on the palms of Hanne’s hands blistered and burst. Fatigue landed on her. She had eaten the rest of the bread and the ham when the spasms of hunger demanded it, but all she wanted to do was dig.

  Stieg was working through a terrible headache. He was too weak to carry rocks for long, so he held the lantern for Knut.

  They cleared the rockfall from the entrance to the cave. One great, slanted rock face of the two that had formed the cave was still largely intact. It was the other face that had sheared away. This seemed promising. The one stable wall might prevent any further collapse.

  Some hours past midnight, McKray shouted that he was coming up and not to throw down any rocks on him.

  He appeared, holding a lantern and leading Dr. Buell from town up the craggy ravine onto the ledge. He had six miners with him. Six! All of them geared up with picks and shovels and wearing their heavy canvas jackets and hats with candles.

  He also had fussy Mr. Collier with him, the last person Hanne expected to see, hauling a sack with more supplies.

  “Dear God in heaven!” the doctor exclaimed when he lifted a lamp and saw the corpses they had piled near the edge of the ledge.
/>   “We must drag these away before all else!” Dr. Buell said.

  “No,” McKray said.

  “The stink will draw animals, and flies will come!” the doctor protested.

  “If there’s any chance our sister is alive,” Stieg said, “we need to work fast. We don’t have time to spare for the dead.”

  The doctor, corrected, said no more about them. He and Collier began to tend to the wounded man, who was still unconscious. The miners surveyed the cave.

  “Form two chains,” one of them said. He spat out a mouthful of chewing tobacco. “Three here, three there. Just toss the rocks out. Fast as we can go.”

  Knut would not leave the front, so he became the first link in one chain. McKray wanted to be the other. The six miners arranged themselves into two lines behind the lead men. The rocks got handed out and back through the line. The last man on each line threw rocks down the ravine.

  Owen and Hanne fell into each other near the wounded man, exhausted. They sank to the ground as the miners began moving the rock with a much improved speed. Stieg came to sit near them.

  “I should have brought a stretcher,” the doctor mumbled to Collier. They were taping the man’s rib cage, Collier carefully shifting his weight up so the doctor could pass the tape underneath.

  “I’ll go for one whenever you say,” replied Collier.

  Hanne watched Collier dully. Then she got to her feet and joined one of the stone brigades.

  Owen got up and joined the other.

  * * *

  A LINE OF yellow light appeared out in the distance. Sunrise. The dawn painted the bellies of some low clouds pink. As the light grew, Hanne saw the great Montana wilderness spread out before them. She had not realized how far up the mountain their chase had led them.

  The rocks came back, endlessly.

  Tears had started to flow down Hanne’s face some time ago. The miner to her right told her to take a break but she would not. Owen begged her to rest but she didn’t want to.

  It was just that it had sunk in. Every rock was only bringing them closer to Sissel’s crumpled body.