The Wolf Tree (19 page)

“This here’s my land,” the older man called out.

Stacker placed his hat back on his head and kicked at the cold coals, his back to the two. Stacker could sense things, and he smiled to himself as he noticed their caution, although not yet true fear. They were sizing up the three horsemen: the calm black man with the fine clothes, the massive man with the dense black beard, and the younger one, filthy and long-haired.

“It’s always someone’s land,” Stacker replied, still not facing the two.

“My meaning is that you best get off it,” the old man said.

“Well, you heard the rube, boys,” Stacker said. “We best get off.”

Alston and Hardy did not move. Neither did Stacker. The forest was quiet.

“Don’t they speak?” the old man asked.

Stacker smoothed the fine hairs of his mustache. “When I want them to,” he replied.

The son jerked his Henry rifle at Hardy and Alston. “You take orders from a darkie?”

“Danny!” The older man waved a hand low at his side to his son. Alston and Hardy did not respond, their faces cold and still. The son narrowed his eyes and spat on the ground.

Stacker looked down at the fire pit. “You shot a man here?”

“That’s right. Jayhawkers’ filth,” the old man said. “We’ve had right trouble with them that come out from Kansas.”

“A Darkness drives folk from the western plains,” Stacker said.

“Storms, they says,” the old man corrected.

“They’re no storms,” Stacker murmured.

The old man cocked his eyebrows, but then seemed to remember his intent. “Well, you’ll move on now. I claimed this land near thirty years back. Cleared it. Built my home there with my own hands. I won’t have it overrun now by Jayhawkers and … highway robbers.”

Stacker smiled down at his feet, his expression dissolving from amusement to disgust. “You may try to defend your wretched sty, but it will be in vain. This land is changing. Darkness and tribulations are coming. Not only to the western plains, but all this land. All this country. All will be smitten and plagued.”

“You sound more to a preacher than a road agent,” the son said, flicking his eye at the older man. “Is it Armageddon you speaking of?”

Stacker turned at last to face the two, his eyes aglow with sinister mirth, the clockwork buzzing from his chest. “No, of Eden. A new Eden. A paradise born of the engine and the furnace!” He raised his hands in the air, and the old man and his son backed a step, clutching tightly to their rifles aimed at Stacker.

“Hearken the Machine, fueled by the souls of the meek,” Stacker continued.

Alston’s horse whinnied and stamped his feet. Hardy circled his horse away.

“And a new world will dawn!” Stacker shouted at the two. “Baptized in the blood of the ignorant.”

Alston and Hardy threw back their coats.

Jolie and Conker traversed the wilderness eastward. They followed rivers walled with tree-crested limestone cliffs and slept near blue springs and in darkly weathered caves. Bluffs and boulders gave way to an alluvial flatland, and after a week, they reached the meandering banks of the Mississippi.

Jolie slipped into the river while Conker waited on the sandy shore. “We are not far,” she announced when she returned. “I remember these waters. The trestle is several miles to the south.”

“You can take to the river if you want,” Conker said. “I’ll walk the shore and meet you.”

After Jolie dove back into the water, Conker continued on, walking the remainder of the day along a fisherman’s path that weaved back and forth from the river’s edge into green forests and through quiet clusters of houses. Barges and steamers moved about the river, spewing columns of black coal smoke. Late in the afternoon, the path met a railroad track and he followed it to the trestle. Descending the bank to the shadows beneath the high wooden supports, he found Jolie at the river’s edge.

“You sure this is it?” he asked, as a locomotive roared above.

“I am,” she answered.

Conker eyed the coppery-black waters moving swiftly to the south. The river was wide—nearly half a mile—and Conker whistled. “Then maybe it’s out there somewhere. But how you ever going to find it?”

Jolie smiled and placed a hand on his arm. “The river will help me.”

The following morning, Jolie began her search. Conker sat all day in the shade of the trestle, watching the river and waiting. She emerged at twilight empty-handed. “The bottom is
muddy and there is much debris. I suspect some are the remains of
The Pitch Dark Train
. Do not worry. If it is here, I will find it.”

At the end of the second day, Jolie had still not found the Nine Pound Hammer. She came up from the river feeling discouraged and was surprised that Conker was not on the bank. She settled back beneath the surface, considering whether she should search for him. But Conker came out from the trees after dark.

“Where were you?” she asked, climbing up on the shore.

“We had visitors. You remember those three horsemen, the gunmen we saw just after we left the spring?”

“Why would they be here?”

“I been asking myself that too,” Conker said. “They came up on the tracks, but I was able to take to hiding before they saw me. They spied all about before they moved on.”

“It could have been different men,” Jolie said.

“They weren’t.”

“A coincidence then?”

Conker ran his palm across the heavy knotted end of his ironwood club. “Maybe, but I doubt it. If I see them again, I’m assuming they got reason to be tracking us. And I ain’t going to sort it out first.” He nodded to the river. “No luck today?”

Jolie shook her head.

“I feel the hammer’s presence. It’s out there. You’ll find it.” Conker shouldered the ironwood club. “I best sleep in the woods tonight. I’ll stick there tomorrow too. Be watching for you.”

As he turned, Jolie said, “Conker.”

“Yeah.”

“There.” Jolie hesitated. “On the opposite bank. I found … a grave marker. Fashioned from a sheet of steel. It bears your name.”

He looked at her and then nodded, disappearing into the trees.

Jolie woke the following morning from where she had slept on a submerged sandbar. She rose to the surface and startled a heron into the pink-speckled dawn. Gazing at the forested shoreline, she imagined Conker already awake, waiting for her to return with the Nine Pound Hammer.

She sighed and spoke to the river, “Have you not heard my plea?”

She dove, pushing her way against the swift current to search the tangled grasses and murky depths. Over the past few days, there had been a strange voice, low and distant, mingled in the water of the river. Cleoma had told her of the call that had led the sirens up the Mississippi and along rivers to the west. It was not the voice of the ancient grandmother of the waters, for she never spoke. But it was as if someone was calling from far away. Jolie could not hear the words, but it compelled her to seek its source.

She shuddered and turned her attention back to finding the hammer. As the sun drew high, the brown light filtered down to Jolie. The day was not half spent, but she was already weary. Her wrists were sore from digging through the mud. Her muscles ached from fighting the water’s incessant tug.

How many days did she have to search before she accepted that it was lost? Frustration overcame her, and she shouted a boiling stream of bubbles. Jolie quit struggling against the current and curled into an angry ball. She tumbled along, through the reedy bottom, until her hair tangled in a submerged log. Cursing, Jolie grabbed the branches to keep her hair from being pulled further and snapped at the skeletal branches until she freed her hair.

Something shone a moment in the wavering light. Jolie started breaking the branches again from the log, getting down to where the silt had piled against the trunk. In the soft muck, her fingers met something hard. Digging with her nails, she dislodged a molded square of iron as large as a brick. An oval opening pierced the body.

The Nine Pound Hammer.

But where was the handle? She scattered the mud until a brown cloud surrounded her. Her palm was nearly speared by a jagged piece of wood. Brushing the muck from it, she saw that it was the narrow top of the hammer’s handle.

The handle was broken.

Conker came from the trees as soon as he saw Jolie’s head break the surface. “Did you find it …?” he began, but stopped as Jolie held up the heavy head of iron and the broken end of the handle.

“I am sorry,” she said. “I could not find the other half.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Conker murmured, relief and disappointment mingling in his expression. “You found it. That’s what counts. I … I’ll make a new handle from this club.”

“That would be no better than loading acorns in a gun,” a voice said.

Conker spun around to see the three men. They were on foot, emerging from the shadows beneath the trestle.

Conker swung the ironwood club against Alston’s chest. The hard wood met steel, and the shotgun hidden beneath his long coat fired downward into the earth. Conker brought the club around to Hardy. It struck the man’s chin with a horrible crack.

Alston had thrown open his coat and drawn up the stagecoach gun, but Conker snatched the gun by the barrel and pummeled Alston across the shoulder with the club. Alston dropped to his knees. No sooner had he fallen than Conker had him aloft by his throat. He threw the large man several yards. He broke the barrel from the gun with a snap and scattered the two pieces, then turned to face Stacker.

A shot fired so close to his shoulder Conker felt the fabric of his shirt move.

Stacker’s long-barreled Buntline smoked. He had a razor squared against Jolie’s throat.

“You mistake our intent,” Stacker said. And then with a whisper to Jolie he added, “No need to sing, siren.” Stacker motioned with the gun toward Conker’s club.

Conker dropped it. Stacker lowered the razor from Jolie’s throat. She ran to Conker’s side and wheeled around with a scowl. Stacker holstered his gun and looked around at his men. Alston lay groaning on the ground, while Hardy was unconscious and splayed in the dirt. Stacker shook his head with disappointment.

“At last I find the mighty son of John Henry,” he said.

“You have followed us,” Jolie snarled. Her hand brushed the wrapped whorl of Cleoma’s knife.

“I’ve been looking for you, you could say. I’ve been looking for those that seek the Nine Pound Hammer, and here you’ve found it.”

“How do you know about it?” Conker asked in his deep, rumbling voice. “How do you know who I am?”

“I know many things. Was born with the fey’s gift, you see,” Stacker said. Pointing to the hammer’s head in Jolie’s hand, he added, “You can’t fashion a new handle for the Nine Pound Hammer from that stick of ordinary wood.”

Conker glared suspiciously.

Stacker gestured to the broken bit of handle Jolie held. “Look closely at it. The original handle is of no wood you could find in any forest.”

“Why are you telling us this?” Jolie asked.

“I want to see the powers of the Nine Pound Hammer restored.”

“Why?” Jolie growled.

“Your mistrust doesn’t serve you, siren. Listen to what I have to say and then do what you wish. To make a new handle that will return the Nine Pound Hammer’s powers, you must find the Wolf Tree. Only from its wood can the handle be made.”

“A Wolf Tree?” Conker asked.

“No ordinary tree,” Stacker said. “Some say it’s a pathway. Others the source of man’s spirit. But I wouldn’t know.
Go west onto the Great Plains. Avoid the Darkness. It’s driven the tree from its original home.”

“How can a tree move?” Conker’s brow rippled with apprehension and confusion.

“I can’t explain the workings of the cosmic, but if you find the Tree’s guardians, they’ll guide you.”

Jolie glared at him a moment before asking, “How will we know them?”

Alston was dizzily taking to his feet, and Stacker motioned toward Hardy. Alston lifted his limp body and slung it over his shoulder. Stacker touched his fingers to his hat and answered, “They will know you, those who carry the Nine Pound Hammer. Good luck.”

Conker and Jolie watched, perplexed, as the men went back under the trestle. They heard the whinny of horses and the clop of their hooves galloping away. Conker took the Nine Pound Hammer’s head from Jolie, holding it squarely between his hands.

“I do not trust him,” Jolie said.

“Me neither, but whatever purpose he’s got, I think he’s right. I can feel it in the iron. The powers are gone. A new handle must be made. I’ll have to find this Wolf Tree.”

Conker took the pair of bladders of well water from his sack and handed them to Jolie. “I ain’t asking you to come. You’ve got your sisters to think of.”

Jolie held the bladders and watched quietly as Conker packed the iron head and the broken handle in his sack. When he was finished, Jolie said, “I am coming with you.”

Conker’s eyes drew with concern. “You’ve done your part for me.”

“It is not for you alone that I will go,” she said. “That man said, ‘Avoid the Darkness.’ My sister Cleoma told me of a strange darkness that she believes might have caused my sisters to grow ill. You may have killed the Gog, but his Machine is still out there. Ray and Nel and the others will be looking for the Machine. Maybe this Darkness has something to do with the Machine. Whatever it may be, the Machine must be destroyed. You must restore the Nine Pound Hammer if that is to happen. I am tangled in this web with you and will do my part.”

Conker knew there was no changing Jolie’s mind and said, “I’m glad. Glad you’re coming. Since the well, I feel like a ghost wandering this world.”

Concern creased Jolie’s face. “The waters of the well have a strange effect on those who are not sirens. You were in them for a long time. You will feel yourself soon. You need a friend to remind you of that.”

Conker smiled. “So. We turn back the way we came.”

“And then on west,” Jolie said, “to the Great Plains.”

13
WATER SPIDER