Starfish_ A Novel - James Crowley [43]
“Maybe you should wait up in the woods while I have a look around,” he said to the boy. “I know that I ain’t seen no one here for two days, but it still don’t feel right.”
Avery John Hawkins pulled a rifle wrapped in beaded buckskin from the side of his horse and turned the boy toward the woods.
“Now, you keep your eyes open, and if it comes to it, don’t be afraid to flash your Winchester like I taught ya.”
The boy turned his horse and the pack mule and headed toward the stream and the far side of the woods. Hawkins crossed the meadow and stood in front of the crooked lodge, staring at the sagging door.
He looked around the meadow again, then pushed the door open and stepped inside. Hawkins had grown accustomed to returning to the lodge to find it in some state of disarray no matter what improvements he and the boy had made during their brief stays there. Animals of some sort seemed to always find their way in, leaving their mark as they saw fit. In particular, Hawkins thought of the wolverine that he often found inside and had yet to figure out its point of entry. Hawkins proceeded with caution, half expecting the creature to jump out at him with every step.
The lodge was now neatly stocked with a variety of provisions. In a far corner, arrows and bows stood in various stages of completion, and there were hides adorned with beadwork and bundles of feathers. Vegetables, some fresher than others, hung from the rafters, leading Hawkins’s eye to the support beams which now stood under the lodge’s sagging roof.
Avery John Hawkins shifted the heavy rifle in his hand and thought about how long it had been since he and the boy had been able to stay in one place longer than a couple of days. He knew that if they could, this is where he would like to settle, but he quickly dismissed the thought and checked to see how well the boy was hiding himself in the woods.
He stood at the thick glass window near the fireplace, running his eyes across the tree line and the garden, thinking that he had taught the boy well. The boy was nowhere to be seen. He leaned closer to the window and his heavy breathing steamed the glass, revealing a handprint. A print that was no bigger than the boy’s.
A flash of movement caught the corner of Avery John Hawkins’s eye. He stepped back from the window and peered deep into the woods.
Chapter Twenty-Five
CORN POE DROPS THE REINS • A SCUFFLE • SHOTS FIRED • GREETINGS • JUNEBUG • THE LODGE
LIONEL STRAINED his eyes as best he could, but no matter how hard he tried, he could no longer see Beatrice. He knew that she was somewhere toward the edge of the woods, not twenty paces or so ahead, but to the eye, she was gone.
“You can’t spot her, huh?” Corn Poe whispered.
“Shhh. Beatrice said not to say nothing,” Lionel insisted.
“Oh, I can still see her,” Corn Poe went on. “I got what they call the eagle eye.”
Corn Poe’s eyes darted from side to side, tree-to-tree. Lionel didn’t believe him. He was sure that Corn Poe had lost sight of her about the same time as he had, if not sooner. If Beatrice didn’t want to be seen, she would not be seen.
“We should just stay here with Ulysses like Beatrice said,” Lionel whispered, turning back to the horse—but Ulysses was gone.
Lionel whipped around to see that Ulysses was wandering toward the meadow and the strange horse that stood grazing in front of their lodge.
“The reins,” Lionel stammered to Corn Poe. “You were supposed to hold the reins.”
Corn Poe spun around. “Where the hell does he think he’s off to?”
“Beatrice told you to hold the reins. where are you going?” Lionel asked.
“To get Ulysses.”
“But she told us not to move.”
“Well, which is it? were we supposed to watch the horse or not move? ’Cause the horse, he’s movin’!” Corn Poe took off, trailing Ulysses, who was getting closer and closer to the tree line at the edge of the meadow. Lionel followed.
Ulysses made his way through