The Empire of Shadows (24 page)

Tom got up off the rock and rubbed his rump, gone numb from the cold, hard stone. He leaned against a birch whose bark seemed to glow, magnifying the moonlight in a spectral kind of way. He listened to the breeze in the branches, the lake lapping the shore, the hollow sound of their boat bumping against unseen rocks. It had been many years since he'd been out in the natural world at night. He didn't count the city as the natural world, though he'd seen plenty of it by gaslight. Not realizing it, he had missed the great outdoors. He hadn't known it was so. Thinking back, it was one of the things he recalled fondly from the war, the solitary hours standing guard under the stars, the sharpening of the senses when the world lay still.

Braddock didn't realize at first that the hollow bump, bump, bump he heard was not entirely of their boats' making. Other boatlike sounds had crept in on the lapping waves. Perhaps it was the breeze that was picking up. It blended the sounds so they became almost one.

The craft was upon him before he knew it was there, sliding by just a couple hundred feet from shore. Startled, Braddock raised his rifle. He strained to see the sights but couldn't and cursed as he aimed. He thumbed back the hammer and nestled his finger on the trigger, tightening as he focused on his target. The rifle boomed, a tongue of flame lighting the scene for a fraction of a heartbeat. In that brief instant of Winchester lightning, Tom saw it was Mike he'd shot at.

 

Tupper heard the shot. His head snapped around and he cocked an ear to catch the echoes. His neck ached with the sudden movement and his head swam.

“What you make of that?” he asked his grandfather's spirit sitting silently in the stern. He knew the shot was not directed at him. It had been too far off. He knew, too, that his pursuers would not have given away their position like that.

“Some things a man knows, some he believes. The rest he guesses,” the spirit said as Tupper held the oars still. “What a man knows is but a drop in an ocean of knowing.”

“Hmph,” Tupper grunted. The old man's spirit said nothing.

“Shot was over ta Forked Lake,” Tupper said at last, as if the old man was really there. The fact that the spirit was no longer just inside his head, but sitting in the back of his boat, made no impression on him at all. It seemed a natural enough thing, a manifestation that was just as real in its way as the physical, simply different. He gave it no thought.

The shot convinced him he'd done the right thing to double back. Whether it was the men he'd seen, the big cop and the guide, or just a hunter, the way to Forked Lake was blocked. He cursed his luck. If he'd been able to gain just a few more hours on them he'd be halfway to Long Lake by now.

“Goddamn steamers!” he said. “No man rowing could have caught me up like that.”

“Fire and water,” his grandfather said. “White men turn the world against us. The beaver in the pond and the trees in the forest are weapons in their hands.”

Tupper's shoulders slumped over his oars. He wilted under his grandfather's words and his aching body sent waves of pain coursing through him. His head hung and his oars dragged as he thought of the truth in those words. But it was a momentary thing, a passing thunderhead of despair.

His boat rocked in the breeze that swept in gusting breaths across the lake. Tupper looked about. There was nothing to be seen, save a pinprick of light where he knew a camp to be. He was alone.

“Ain't caught yet, goddamnit,” he said aloud. He flexed his arms at the oars, feeling the bruises and scrapes, but also feeling the strength that was in them. His grandfather's spirit smiled.

“Quiet old man! Heard enough from you,” Tupper said with a warning frown. The old man seemed to laugh.

“Good. Good,” he said. “The trout does not jump into the boat, Jim.”

Tupper had to smile at that as he picked up his oars again. He remembered his grandfather saying that in another lifetime, when his pants were short and his hair long. “No, he doesn't,” Tupper said as he started to row again. “The
Honio'o
may think they have me, but they do not. Not all the steamboats on all the lakes can make it so. They must catch me man-to-man, in the forest or on the water. Here I am strong and they are weak.” The long oars groaned as Tupper pulled. The craft sliced through the water. Tupper knew where he was going.

 

“Mike! Mike!”

Busher came at a run, his rifle ready.

Tom held a hand out. “It's my son. Don't shoot,” he said, wading into the lake as if he might walk out to the boat. He'd only meant to fire a warning shot, to capture Tupper alive, but in the dark the best he'd been able to do was point somewhere ahead of the boat. He couldn't be sure.

“Dad?”

“Jesus, Mike, you all right?” Tom called as he splashed into the lake up to his waist, his voice cracking. The boat turned toward shore, a deeper shadow on the blue-black water.

“Don't shoot! It's me. It's Mike.”

Tom caught the bow of the boat without a word, reaching for Mike with groping arms. An oar bumped him as he caught Mike's hand. He pulled the boy to him, rocking the boat and nearly capsizing it in his haste. He hugged him in the dark, an awkward embrace with the hard edge of the boat digging into his middle.

“Dear God, Mike I thought I killed you,” Tom said, gripping him in vicelike arms. Mike hugged him back. Tom could feel him tremble.

“I'm okay, Dad.”

“You're sure you're all right?” Tom asked, squinting in the dark, holding him at arm's length. “I—” he started to say, but Busher interrupted. He pulled at the bow of the boat, saying, “Best get you dried off, cap'n. I'll stoke the fire.”

Once the boat was beached and Busher had added wood to the fire, Tom started stripping off his wet clothes. Mike took off his boots, propping them on sticks near the fire. Tom hung his wet pants from a nearby branch and, like Mike, propped his boots and socks as close to the fire as he dared. All was done in a silence punctuated only by the snap and pop of the fire. The flames grew, casting them in shifting reds and yellows so that at last they could see each other. Neither of them looked. The sides away from the flames were all in shadow.

When they had taken care of their wet clothes and Tom had rummaged in his pack for dry things for himself and a fresh pair of socks for Mike, he stood on the opposite side of the fire as Mike put the socks on.

“What the hell are you doing here, Mike?” Tom asked. There was no anger in his voice, only fatherly exasperation and a hint of something else. Mike picked up his head and looked straight at Tom. He could have sworn there was a touch of pride in the question. His jaw almost dropped. The fire crackled, sending a flock of sparks up into the blackness.

“I had to,” Mike said, rubbing his hands by the fire.

A grim pursing of his lips and a nod were Tom's only reactions. He noticed Mike's hands in the firelight. They were red and raw.

“You rowed all that way, didn't you? Didn't take a steamer.”

“Yeah,” Mike said. “Didn't want anybody to see me.”

“Your mother know?” Tom asked. He figured he knew the answer.

Mike shrugged with a guilty twist of his head. It was the one thing he wished he'd done.

“If I left a note…,” Mike began.

“You figured she'd have sent them after you,” Tom said. He took a deep breath. “She'd have been right to. You know that, don't you?”

Mike didn't say anything. He didn't have to. Tom heaved a sigh and shook his head slowly.

“We're gonna have to get word to her,” he said as he rubbed his temple. It had been throbbing since he'd taken that shot. “She'll be crazy with worry. You know how she can get.”

Mike, who had been watching Tom with quiet intensity, allowed a tight grin to play across his lips. “Yeah, I know,” he said.

Busher got up another pot of beans, cutting chunks of pork and tossing them in as the pot began to simmer. He tossed a can behind him. It bounced and clanked in the darkness.

“You didn't eat much, I figure,” he said, squinting an eye at Mike. “Long pull from Blue.” He stirred his pot for a moment as they stood watching the fire. “Got somethin' for them hands,” he said. “Get it for ya after you sup.”

Ten minutes later Mike was gulping down his dinner as fast as he could shovel it. Tom and Busher watched in silence, Tom with a furrowed brow, but the hint of a grin, Busher with a look of puzzlement. When he was done, Mike told them how he'd taken a boat when nobody was looking and pulled at the oars all day while keeping an eye out for them and for any pursuit.

“How'd you figure to find us, boy? You never been on these lakes before, have ye?” Busher asked. Mike grinned in a way that told them he knew how foolish he'd been, then said, “Didn't have much of a plan, I guess. I wasn't so worried about finding you as I was of finding Tupper.”

Tom barked a grim laugh. “Lucky you didn't.”

“Yeah,” Mike said. “Came near to getting shot just finding you.”

“Aw, now you know that was…,” Tom started to say, but Busher and Mike laughed him past his apology until he laughed, too. “I swear,” Tom said, “I doubt you'll ever let me live that down.”

Mike nodded in mock seriousness. “Not any time soon,” he said grinning.

Tom grinned, too, and said, “That's my boy.”

It wasn't long before exhaustion crept up on them all. The fire burned low, swallowed by their yawns. At last Busher got up, fetched his rifle, and as the darkness closed in on the dying fire, said, “I'll just take a turn for a while. Wake you in a couple hours.”

Tom grunted a reply and he and Mike were soon lying curled in their blankets under the lean-to Busher had built. Sleep overcame them in minutes. The blackness of the deep woods blanketed them as they slept.

Tom didn't know what woke him. It was not a pleasant awakening. It was a jolt, a sudden, violent shift of reality that jacked his eyes wide and set his senses crackling. He strained his eyes and ears for the thing that had stolen his sleep. Lying still in the womb of the night, his senses slowly filled the void around him. He heard Mike's even snoring. He smelled the hemlock boughs that made his bed. He heard the gentle kiss of the lake as it lapped the rocky shore, the restless rustle of the forest as the wind stirred the treetops. He smelled their dead fire and the damp loam of the forest floor. Under that carpet of leaves and moss and withered vegetation, the earth was black, blacker than the night.

None of these things had broken his sleep. He knew that, or rather sensed it. Tom strained his eyes to take in whatever light and contrast they could. The only light that was plain and true was the light of the stars. He could see some through breaks in the trees. He thought, too, that he could make out a bit of the ghostly reflection of the moon on the lake, a scattered blur of silver through the trees. He lifted his hand before his face, moving it back and forth. He couldn't see it.

Living in the city, where gaslight and electric street lamps shooed away the dark, he'd forgotten how black the night could be. Usually that would not have bothered Tom. He wasn't one to fear the dark or fill it with demons. It was not superstitious dread that put the butt of the Colt in his palm, it was the sense of a presence, of watching eyes. He pointed the blued-steel barrel at the night. It was little comfort.

Slowly, Tom rolled to his knees, letting the blanket fall away. Again he spent minutes testing the air, listening, motionless. The wind breathed hard for a moment, setting the forest whispering, swaying, creaking. There might have been rustling steps down toward the shoreline. Tom couldn't be sure. He pointed the Colt in that direction, but when the wind subsided the rustling died too.

There was one noise that didn't stop with the wind, though. Tom couldn't identify it at first. It was a rhythmic creaking that he at first took for branches rubbing together. But there was something not right about that guess. He knew that sound, had heard it before, but here out of the context of the city noises he knew, he could not place it, though it was oddly familiar. The creaking subsided and was still, leaving him guessing. Tom came up to a low crouch, balanced on the balls of his feet. He thought to wake Mike but decided against it. He didn't want to risk the noise Mike might make and he didn't want to turn his back on whatever was out there.

Busher lay sleeping on the other side of the campfire. It felt like more than a couple of hours had passed and he imagined that the guide had fallen off, forgetting to wake him. Busher disdained sleeping in shelters like a sport, he'd said. He preferred to sleep in the open “whilst the weather cooperates.” Tom suspected there was more than a little boast in it, a way to let a flatlander know who was the guide and who was the sport, even if their quarry ran on two legs.

There was no sound from where Busher lay. Tom couldn't make out his form either. Stepping around the dead remains of their fire, he figured he might risk waking the guide. Tom was prepared to give Busher hell for falling asleep. Busher'd been reluctant to watch through the night and confident that Tupper wouldn't attempt to attack the camp.

“He can count, I guess. Three of us don't make good odds fer him. We can sleep easy on that account.”

As Tom stepped past the fire in its small circle of stones, he could feel the faint heat of the still-smoldering coals. A smoky, orange ball glowed up at him like the devil's own eye. Tom didn't care for the image. There was too much of the devil in the man they were after.

Tom moved to where he thought the guide lay, crouching low and groping like a blind man. Busher wasn't there. Puzzled, Tom kept searching, feeling the forest floor. He thought to strike a match, but the thought of making himself a target didn't appeal much.

“Hell,” Tom mumbled, “Tupper could be standing right beside me, I'd never know it. Busher,” Tom called in a hoarse whisper. “Busher, where the hell are you, man?”