Enigmatic Pilot_ A Tall Tale Too True - Kris Saknussemm [150]
“You know this woman?” Hephaestus demanded.
“Aye that,” Rapture assented, not wanting to say more.
“And you trust … her?”
“Yes,” Lloyd answered decisively, still curious about the tethered creature, which was quite obviously of the same mind regarding them.
Hephaestus took stock. They had just fled civilization, well before their preparations were complete, to embark on the most difficult leg of their entire journey, having witnessed some kind of nightmare magic that had beset their hosts, then buried the evidence of the atrocity in an unmarked grave on the edge of what was to them real wilderness, with the possible charge of murder hanging over their heads, and maybe even more serious trouble awaiting them if anything like what his son had hinted about was true. In this mix of moonlight and mist, the idea of following a total stranger—a woman who looked like a man and who wielded a kind of gun that he had never seen before, and had some kind of monster animal, no less—seemed if not reasonable to him, then at least possible and maybe even advisable.
Fanny led them around the stand of trees to two wagons, one of them large and of odd design, and several improvised structures, which Lloyd recognized as Indian-style tepees made of animal hides supported by wooden frames. The rest of the camp, whoever they were, seemed to be asleep, except for a short, stocky man who had been leaning against a wagon wheel with a large cudgel on his knees. He got to his feet when Fanny gave a tight whistle.
“Who’s this now?” he whispered.
“At first light,” Fanny replied, as if to say no more would be said until then.
She ushered the Ohioans into a squat tepee pitched in the lee of the larger wagon and ducked her head in when the family had straggled through the slit.
“I’ll unhitch your horses and give them some feed. We don’t have much for our own, let alone yourn. But they’ll get some rest. We rise early and we’ll be on the trudge earlier than usual. I reckon you should do the same. But take a load off now. Whatever called you out on the move at such an hour won’t have an easy time making worry for you for a few hours at least. Now, no questions till birdsong. Get as much shut-eye as you can.”
Suddenly, the hardened woman was gone, and the Sitturds were left in deeper bewonderment than ever, but more than a little grateful not to have been attacked by the beast or waylaid by dark men with even darker designs. All three were bone-fagged and brain-sore, and still coming to terms with the crazed events of the day. Lloyd felt particularly bleary, since he had not slept more than an hour the previous night owing to his encounter with the Quists and the Bushrod Rangers.
Something in the performance with the Eye had drained him, he felt, and perhaps had also energized him in some new way, which he considered might account for the spell that had overcome him when caning Josh Breed. He had no explanation for the women in white. Then the shock of finding the Clutters, and all the questions their grisly situation called forth! It was all such a jumble, and yet he sensed that just to the edge of his mind’s sight was an explanation that brought it all together. The hint of it toyed with him for a while, as he lay clutching his bag of precious items on the hard bedroll in the skin-smelling tepee that kept the night damp at bay.
For a few moments he listened to his parents’ emphatic whispering, trying to clear his head—trying to feel the protective presence of Lodema and to imagine where his beloved Hattie was, hoping she was out of danger and knowing that almost certainly she was not. It was in this anxious, exhausted, wondering state that a dream began to enfold him.
He had the idea that he was hunting for Hattie, trapped inside a giant music box. The inside of the box was like an empty