Coyote Horizon (15 page)

“That way.” By then, I’d spotted what I was looking for: a place where it looked as if the frozen grass had been trampled and pushed down, creating a narrow trail that led into the trees. Even though months had gone by, the grass was only beginning to thaw; the trail still remained. Not by coincidence, it ran parallel to the creek. Made sense: follow the creek, find the people.

Goldstein peered in the direction I indicated, yet he didn’t see the clues I’d spotted. “Whatever you say,” he said, standing up and hoisting his own pack. “You’re the guide. Lead on.” A moment of hesitation. “How far do you think . . . ?”

“No idea.” I picked up my rifle, checked its charge. “As far as it took for your friend to find wherever he was looking for.”

Goldstein gave me a sharp look. “You think he was looking for something? What?”

“Don’t know.” Pulling the rifle strap across my left shoulder, I led the way toward the trail. “Reckon we’ll find out when we get there.”

We followed the trail into the forest. It hadn’t been used in quite a while, yet there was still enough snow on the ground, sheltered from the sun by the faux birch that rose around us, that I was able to discern the occasional footprint. As I had figured, the trail ran parallel to the creek; if Cassidy and his people set up camp somewhere nearby, then it made sense for them to be near a source of fresh water.

The terrain was flat, but that didn’t make the going any easier. Faux birch soon gave way to Medsylvania roughbark so tall that we couldn’t see the treetops. The trail had vanished by then, forcing us to rely upon the creek as our only guide; now and then I stopped to pull nylon ribbons from my pack and tie them around lower branches, a precaution I’d learned to take against getting lost. Before long we found ourselves entering a low swamp. Trudging through ankle-deep pools of brackish water, we used our machetes to hack through thickets of clingberry and spider bush.

We were halfway through the swamp when my nose caught an out-of-place odor: woodsmoke, wafting through the woods from a nearby campfire. Goldstein smelled it, too. Looking around, he pointed toward a bright place between the trees where it seemed as if the sun had penetrated. “Over there, maybe?”

I stopped, peered more closely. Yes, it looked like a clearing. “Worth a try,” I said as I tied another ribbon around a branch. “Let’s go.”

Morgan’s guess turned out to be correct. We left the swamp behind and went up a low rise, and suddenly came upon a broad natural clearing, a place where a lightning storm had long ago caused that part of the forest to burn, leaving behind only bushes, rotting stumps, and tall grass. And it was there that we found the camp.

A half dozen dome tents, like blue-and-red-striped pimples, were arranged in a semicircle around a stone-ringed fire pit from which brown smoke tapered upward. The grass had been cleared away, but not recently; tufts of green rose here and there among untidy stacks of firewood and under sagging clotheslines strung from one tent to another. On the far side of the camp was a low, six-sided wooden structure, its windowless walls fashioned from crudely cut roughbark logs, its roof a thatchwork of tree limbs stuffed with lichen. At first glance, I took it to be a Navajo-style sweat lodge. As we came closer, we passed a small, tarp-covered shelter that reeked of urine and feces: a latrine, probably little more than a hole in the ground, with tarpaulins rigged around it for a modicum of privacy.

The camp was run-down and ill kept, as if the people who lived there no longer cared about maintaining it. If, indeed, anyone was still there. There was no one in sight; were it not for the smoke rising from the pit and the damp clothes hanging from the lines, I could have sworn the place was deserted. Frost-covered grass crunched beneath the soles of our boots as we ventured closer; looking down, I realized that I’d unconsciously pulled my rifle off my shoulder and was holding it in my hands, my right forefinger an inch away from the safety.

“Oh, my god.” Goldstein’s eyes were wide. “What happened here?”

“I don’t know. I . . .” Then I glanced his way, and felt my heart skip a beat. “Morgan . . . freeze. Don’t move a muscle.”

“What are you . . . ?” Then he saw what I’d spotted, and stopped dead in his tracks. “Aw, crap.”

No more than three yards to his right, half-hidden among the brush, lay a ball plant. It wasn’t very large, yet its shell was still closed; the immature flower rising from its top showed that it was in early bloom. A bad time to be close to one of these things; the pseudowasps would be coming out of winter dormancy, ready to protect the plant while they pollinated it.

That wasn’t the worst of it. I looked around, saw another ball plant to my left, a little farther away and yet just as menacing. Glancing to my right again, I spotted yet another, only a few feet past the one near Goldstein.

A chill went down my spine. The field was practically evil with ball plants. Which only made sense, in ecological terms. Marshland nearby, affording shelter for hibernating swampers, yet with enough sunlight to allow for photosynthesis. And although these specimens were a little smaller than the ones closer to the equator, they weren’t so close to the subarctic region farther north that they couldn’t survive. I was no botanist, but if they could make it through winter here . . .

“Don’t worry, Morgan,” a voice called out. “Just back away, and everything will be fine.”

A tall, muscular man stood at the edge the campsite, arms folded across his broad chest, long black hair gathered in a braid behind his neck. Tough as a slab of Arizona sandstone; one look at him, and you knew that nothing could ever scratch him.

“Joe!” Goldstein looked around. “Thank God, I thought we’d never . . .” He stopped, remembering where he was. “What do you think you’re doing, camping so close to these things?”

An amused expression appeared on Cassidy’s face. “They’re not so dangerous, once you know how to approach them. You’ll only get swarmed if you come within six feet of them. Just back away, and you won’t be harmed.”

Goldstein was less than confident, yet he took Joe at his word. He carefully walked backward, picking his way across the field until he’d joined Cassidy. I followed him, keeping a wary eye on the plants. Under different circumstances, I would’ve retreated to the safety of the woods . . . yet this was the person we’d come to find, so that wasn’t an option.

“Good to see you again.” Once Morgan was away from the ball plants, he visibly relaxed. “You don’t know how worried I’ve been about you. I mean, you just . . .”

“Disappeared, yes.” Cassidy shook his head. “Sorry I didn’t leave word where I was going, but this was something I just had to . . .”

“Don’t give me that.” Once again, the imperious tone crept into Goldstein’s voice. “If there’s something wrong, if there’s something bothering you, you can come to me. We’ll work it out.”

“There’s nothing wrong, really.” An elusive smile crossed Cassidy’s face. “I don’t expect you to understand, but . . . everything’s fine. You didn’t have to hire a guide to find me.”

How did he know who I was? Sure, it was probably a safe assumption, but . . .

“The name’s Sawyer,” I said. “Like your boss . . . like Mr. Goldstein says, he’s been worried about you.”

“Of course.” Cassidy’s eyes barely flickered in my direction. “I appreciate your concern, but you shouldn’t be here. This place isn’t for you.”

As he spoke, I gazed past him. People were crawling out of their tents, like nocturnal animals cautiously emerging into the light of day. Men and women, their hair unwashed and matted, their clothes threadbare and soiled. Shielding their eyes from the midday sun, they regarded us with silent curiosity, as if Morgan and I were mirages that would vanish as suddenly as we’d appeared.

“Maybe, but . . .” Goldstein’s puzzlement gave way to stubborn resolve. “Joe, I’ve come a long way to find you. I’m not leaving until I get some answers.”

“Mr. Goldstein . . .”

“Don’t ‘Mr. Goldstein’ me.” Morgan stepped closer. “That’s all there is to it. Come clean, or so help me . . .”

“Look”—Cassidy sighed—“I’ll make you a deal. If I let you know what I’m doing . . .”

All of a sudden, he stopped. An absent look appeared on his face. At first I thought that he’d simply lost his train of thought, yet there was a moment, when his head cocked slightly to one side and his eyes shifted to the ground, that he seemed more like someone who was listening to a comment whispered in his ear. He could have been wearing a comlink implant, but . . .

“If I let you spend the night,” Cassidy went on, looking straight at Goldstein once more, “and I show you that we’re fine, will you leave? Leave and promise to never come back?”

“Joe, you know I can’t . . .”

“Please. It’s the best I can do.” Cassidy’s voice became insistent, almost pleading. “If you’d only understand what I’m . . . what we’re doing here . . .”

“What
are
you doing here?” Until then, I’d kept my mouth shut. “I’d like to know myself, if you don’t mind.”

Cassidy scowled at me. “I
do
mind, Mr. Lee . . . but you’re here, so there’s no avoiding that, is there?” He let out his breath, as if resigning himself to the inevitable. “All right, c’mon. Least I can do is offer lunch.”

Already I was feeling uncomfortable about being there. There was something that wasn’t right about the place. Yet it would have been rude to turn down our host’s offer, however reluctantly it might have been made. I fell in behind Goldstein as Cassidy led us through the clearing to his camp . . .

And it didn’t occur to me, at least just then, that he’d called me “Mr. Lee,” even though I’d told him only my first name.

 

 

 

Lunch was rice and red beans, congealed and unappetizing, left over from dinner the night before. Cassidy told us that his group had been getting by on this ever since they’d made camp here; now and then, someone would go down to the creek, chop a hole in the ice, drop in a fishing line, and manage to pull out a brownhead or two. Otherwise, their diet pretty much consisted of what they’d bought in twenty-pound bags in New Boston.

We ate sitting on logs beside the fire pit. After a while, other residents of the camp wandered over to join us. It was obvious that they’d lost weight; their faces were gaunt, their clothes hanging off their slumped shoulders. There were open sores on their faces and hands, and one or two of them looked as if they’d recently lost teeth; one of the men walked with a makeshift crutch, in a bowlegged gait that was an early sign of scurvy. They smelled bad; when a woman bent over me to offer another helping from the rusty pot, I had to hold my breath to keep from gagging. Cassidy was the healthiest of the bunch, yet even he looked malnourished.

No one spoke. That was the weirdest part. On occasion, they’d exchange a word or two, perhaps a gesture, but otherwise they remained silent. Yet despite their hunger and obvious ill health, their eyes remained lively; they constantly looked at one another, exchanging glances that might have been furtive except that they didn’t bother to hide them from us. And between those glances were all the usual expressions—indifference, amusement, dissatisfaction, curiosity—that normally accompanied a conversation, except they came in the absence of speech.

Goldstein noticed none of that. He regarded the camp with disgust, his gaze roving across the dilapidated tents, the unwashed plates and skillets piled beneath the tarp that served as a communal kitchen, the rubbish carelessly discarded here and there. He did his best to be polite, making small talk with Cassidy about how the horses were doing at his estate, yet when a young woman ambled over to a nearby patch of grass to lift her skirt, squat, and pee, he lost his patience.

“For God’s sake, man,” he muttered. “How can you live like this?”

“Like how?” Cassidy shrugged. “You’ve got a problem?”

“Do I have a . . . ?” Goldstein stared at him. “Look at yourselves. You’re living like animals.”

Cassidy studied him for a moment, not saying anything. A smirk inched its way across his mouth. “You’d rather see me back at the manor. Sitting around the fireplace, feet propped up, glass of cognac in hand . . .”

Goldstein’s face went red. “I didn’t . . .”

“You know, you’re right.” Closing his eyes, Cassidy arched his back, his hands resting lightly upon his knees. “I can almost taste it now. And there’s music . . . classic jazz, twentieth century. Herbie Hancock . . . no, wait, John Coltrane . . .”

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not.” Opening his eyes again, Cassidy calmly gazed at his employer. “I miss those evenings, believe me. I wouldn’t mind having more like them. But out here . . .” He let out his breath, gave an indifferent shrug. “That all seems so superficial, so . . . limited, really. A rich man at home with his toys, lonely now because no one will share them . . .”

“Pet.” Standing nearby, a wild-haired man intently stared at Goldstein. “Nice doggy. Ruff-ruff . . .”

Goldstein’s face went pale; there was shock in his eyes. Seeing this, Cassidy became angry. “Ash . . . out!” he snapped, glancing over his shoulder at him. “Go away!”

The other man winced, recoiling as if he’d been slapped, then he turned his back to us and shuffled away. Cassidy watched him go. “Sorry. That was uncalled for.”

Morgan looked shaken. “Thanks . . . thank you,” he stuttered. “I . . . I . . .”

“Ash knows who you are. He assumes too much.” Yet there was a cool tone to his voice that had been absent before.

“Ash . . .” There was something about what Cassidy had called him that got my attention. “Is that really his name?”

Again, the others gathered around the fire pit cast knowing looks at one another. Yet no one spoke until Cassidy did. “His last name,” he replied. “No one ever calls him Gordon, though. Ash has become his tribal name, just as my original tribe gave me the name Walking Star. He’s called Ash because . . . well, because it fits him.”