CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

“You really kill that bear you’re wearing, boy?” asked MacRaven.

The sad-faced stranger had led the Boy through the rotting pile of wood that was once a tourist lodge to a grand ballroom of warped planks, cobwebs, and guttering candles for an audience with MacRaven.

Everywhere there was dust and broken glass and damage. In the big room, moonlight glared through broken panes of glass set in large windows. By greasy candlelight, a banquet long laid out and thoroughly done to death revealed the carcasses of roasted animals and bones strewn with abandon. The hunger the occupants of the wagon must have possessed during the last moments of their final meal was evident.

At the far end of the room MacRaven sat in a straight-backed chair. Among the shadows his ashen-faced warriors busied themselves in unseen tasks. There was blood on the floor and the sad-faced stranger told the Boy not to slip in it. The tone was friendly.

“I guess you must have killed that bear,” continued the boom of MacRaven’s voice from across the hall. “ ’Cause if you didn’t then you woulda said you did.”

MacRaven, lean and rangy, rose from his chair in the thin light of timid candles.

“So I guess you did.”

The wolfish man walked forward across the rotting boards of the floor.

“There aren’t many that ride the horse these days. That bunch outside would just as soon eat your horse as ride it into battle. All twenty thousand plus of ’em, if Raleigh can count rightly.”

MacRaven stopped before the Boy.

He was younger than Sergeant Presley was. Less than forty.

“I’m trying to build up some cavalry but it’s not on this year’s list of things to get done. Instead I’ve got a few who can ride. Maybe next year. Know what I mean?”

The Boy had no idea what he meant.

“I’ll be direct. You’re not with that bunch you came in with, nor any of those other tribes out there. That’s as plain as day. So I don’t know if you’re a ‘merc’ or just passing through, but the truth of it is, I could use you. If you want work, I can give you that. If you want a way to go, well then I think I have something you might be interested in. An offer you should consider.”

MacRaven walked back to his chair and picked up a hanging gun belt. He buckled it around his waist, one large revolver hanging low against his thigh.

“You don’t want in, fine. Ride on.”

Whatever you say, Boy, don’t say that. He ain’t strappin’ on that gun for nothing. It means something, even if he don’t know what it means, it means something bad. Though I s’pect he knows exactly what he means. Watch yourself, Boy, this one’s a killer.

“So, you in, kid?” asked MacRaven.

The Boy nodded.

“What’s that?”

“I’m in.”

“Just like that. Hell, I didn’t know if you even spoke the English until just now. Don’t matter, I speak most of their languages anyway. That you speak the English recommends you altogether. Fine, you’re in.”

MacRaven swiped a drinking cup from off a table near the chair he’d been sitting in. He raised it to his lips. The tension in the room rose immediately. The Boy could sense the sad-faced man at his side about to burst into action. But then he stopped.

“That’s right. This is poison.” MacRaven chuckled.

He put the cup down.

“That wouldn’t do now, would it, Raleigh?”

Raleigh muttered a tired “No.”

“This Army marches tomorrow,” began MacRaven. “In four days’ time we’ll be at the gates of the Chinese outpost at Auburn. Those bodies in the wagon need to be inside the walls, with the Chinese. Raleigh and the other riders are going on ahead. You’ll join them and make this part of my plan happen. Excellente?”

The Boy nodded.

In the night you ride and are not alone, though you should be, right, Sergeant?

The Boy thought of this atop Horse, riding the old Highway Forty-nine north, in the midst of other riders little more than different shades of darkness on this long night. The mountain road twisted and wound, and at dawn the company stopped for a few hours. Shadows were revealed in the dawn light that followed and the Boy saw the riders for who they were.

They were men. Mere men. And yet, in every one of them was the look of a hard man.

He’s a hard one, Boy. Steer clear.

The Boy remembered Sergeant Presley’s warning from villages and settlements they’d passed through in their seemingly endless—at the time—wanderings, when they’d come upon such a man.

A “hard one” was that mean-faced giant who carried the long board tipped with rusty nails, who’d watched the trade going on at the big river.

He’d had trouble in his eyes.

Trouble in his heart.

But they’d only found that out later, after they’d come upon the corpse of one of the salvagers who’d made a good haul out in the ruins of Little Rock, in the State of Arkansas. Then they knew the mean-faced giant had also had trouble in mind.

Each of these shadowy riders, in their own way, was that man.

Hard men.

Weapons. Spears, axes, metal poles studded with glass and nails. Swords. Machetes worn over the back like MacRaven’s ashen-faced warriors. Whips.

Men who made their daily living dealing in the suffering trade.

In the shifting light of a cool and windy morning near a bridge along the crumbling mountain highway, the hard men seemed tired, and as if the leader of their company led in all things, the droopy-eyed and sad-faced Raleigh yawned as he approached the Boy.

“You take first watch with Dunn. When the sun’s straight overhead, swap out with Vaclav.” He pointed to a thick man with coal-black eyes and a beard to match. Vaclav carried an axe. Uncountable notches ran up the long haft.

The sun rose high over the trees and for a while Dunn took the far end of the bridge while the Boy watched over the sleeping riders.

If I go now, these men will catch me.

That’s a fact, Boy. Now’s no good.

I know too much of what they’re about. They can’t let me go.

But they don’t even know you want to leave, Boy. They’re testing you to see if you’ll become one of them. Mainly ’cause of Horse. No doubt one of them, probably that Raleigh character, is watching everything you do. So whatever you do, Boy, don’t pull out that map.

At times, the voice seemed as if Sergeant Presley was really talking to the Boy. Other times the Boy knew it was his own voice and just something he wanted to hear him say.

It felt good not to think and instead just listen to the noise of the river under the bridge.

He remembered winter and the cave above the rapids.

I should have drawn more.

I never should have left.

Go west, Boy. Get to the Army.

The Boy thought of the marks on the map.

Chinese paratroopers in Reno.

This MacRaven has an army. I Corps will want to know about this and the Chinese in this place called Auburn. Should I try to get away soon, Sergeant?

Now’s not the time, Boy. They’ll be all over you like white on rice.

Sergeant Presley would’ve said that.

In time Dunn crossed the bridge, sauntering lazily with a long piece of green grass sticking out the side of his mouth, back toward where the Boy stood guard.

Dunn was an average man: old canvas pants; dusty, worn boots; a hide jacket. In his sandy blond hair the Boy could see the gray beginning to show beneath his ancient Stetson hat.

“Dunn,” said Dunn, extending a thick and calloused hand.

The Boy remained silent and then after a moment took Dunn’s hand.

“Bear Killer, huh?” Dunn chuckled in the quiet morning, the noise of the river distant, almost fading as the heat of the day increased.

After a moment …

“Might as well be, as opposed to anything else, right?” Dunn paused to spit chewed grass off the side of the bridge. “Times are strange anyway. Names might as well be too.”

“I never said my name was Bear Killer. That’s just what the Rock Star’s People called me.”

The Boy saw a flash of anger rise up like an August storm and slip through Dunn’s easygoing cowpoke facade.

Dunn turned and regarded the far end of the bridge, as if counting off moments to himself.

“That’s one explanation. I’ll buy it today for the sake of being friendly.” He turned back to the Boy. The August storm had passed.

“And I’ll give you this one for free,” continued Dunn, his tone easygoing, his manner quiet. “How you want to spend it’s up to you. Okay?”

The Boy nodded.

“Fine then. You ride hard and watch our backs. We’ll watch yours. Don’t question the work. There’s no such thing these days as dishonorable work. Whatever the work is, someone’s paying to have a job done and a job done is the way we do it.”

After a moment the Boy said, “I can live with that.”

Dunn watched the Boy for a long moment.

“There ain’t nothin’ left anymore. So sometimes work is something that’s just got to be, regardless. We could use a kid like you. But you’re gonna find some of the things we do might not sit right with you.”

Dunn paused.

“If you’re gonna ride with us then you might need to let go of some of those sensibilities.”

Dunn nodded to himself, as if checking a list of things that needed to be said and finding all points crossed off.

“That’s for free, kid. Next one’ll cost ya.”

Dunn smiled, then ambled over to another of the Hard Men to wake him for his shift.

When Vaclav awoke, black fury and a knife came out at once.

As if expecting someone else, Vaclav was ready.

But in that same summer-storm moment, the dark and swarthy Vaclav got up from the dust, then nodded to the Boy.

Hard men, Boy. Each and every one of ’em. You watch yourself.

I will, Sergeant. I will.