Big Wheat (20 page)

Chapter 31

The Night of the Fox

The Windmill Man cruised at an easy thirty-five, not taking any chances on skidding out of control. The Krueger kid had led him on a hell of a chase, he had to give him that. And he was a hell of a motorcycle rider. But he had left a trail that a myopic clerk with cataracts could follow, and now that it was dark, the kid wouldn’t be able to go as fast. His fate was sealed. This time, there would be no missed departure or empty campsite. The shopkeeper had said he was headed into the foothills of some little mountains. What an idiot. He was running into a dead end.

The road blended into the rest of the countryside now, and if it hadn’t been for the track of the motorcycle, he wouldn’t have been able to tell where it was anymore. The new snow told him that Providence was back on his side again. It had to be. He slowed down to thirty, then twenty-five. The track wandered back and forth for a while, as if the rider had been looking for something. Then it straightened out again, and in the distance, maybe two miles ahead and a hundred feet above him, he saw a fire. So the kid had finally stopped for a rest. And the pathetic fool had built a campfire! Well, why not? He must be damned cold and tired by now. Might as well die in comfort.

The Windmill Man killed his headlights, drove perhaps another mile, and then stopped. He would sneak up to the camp on foot, and Krueger would be dead before he knew what hit him. No bleeding for this one. He might survive a mere bleeding. This one would be fast and sure. He felt his temples throb.

***

The fire was in a stone ring in the center of a small grove of mature hardwoods. There was a pup tent pitched there, too, with its end open to the warmth. Ten yards behind the tent, the motorcycle lay on its side in a small ditch. It had a tarp over it, which had already accumulated a heavy coating of snow. Had the idiot seriously thought he could hide it there? Even with the new snow over them, the tracks between it and the fire ring were easy to read.

The kid must be really tired, he decided. He must have been hoping the snow would hide both the motorcycle and the white pup tent, and he had probably promised himself he would only have the fire for a short time. And then, of course, he had fallen asleep. That was exactly how it would have happened. He was sure of it. He began to feel hot, and he opened his coat.

He circled the outer perimeter of the entire grove, shotgun at his shoulder, looking in all directions, careful to make no sound. Finally, satisfied there was nobody else up and about, he approached the pup tent from the end that was away from the fire and toward the dumped motorcycle. Inside, he saw a sleeping bag with a body in it. Without the slightest hesitation, he emptied both barrels into it. Then he reloaded, went up much closer, and did it again. He hated denying himself the pleasure of the full fugue, but he was taking no chances. He was about to draw his pistol, to deliver a final
coup de grace
, when he heard an odd hissing sound behind him, followed by a voice.

“I figured that was about how you would do it.”

“Krueger?” He whirled around. The kid was maybe twenty feet away, and he had a pistol aimed squarely at him. The Windmill Man realized with some chagrin that he must have been under the tarp, with the motorcycle. He had underestimated him, badly. But a face-off would still go to the one who could kill without hesitation or remorse, and he certainly knew who that was.

“Bacon, to you. But that’s not important. You should have looked in the sleeping bag. Don’t draw that pistol, by the way, or you won’t live long enough to see what a mistake it was.”

“Your hair is different, Krueger.”

“It’s Bacon. And a lot of things are different.”

“Not the ones that matter.” His hand moved toward his holster. “I’m going to—”

There was a deafening roar behind him, and he felt as if he had been hit by a locomotive. It knocked him to his knees and made his eyes bulge. He felt something odd at the side of his head, and when he touched it, he found that his ear was gone. His back and legs felt prickly all over, and he felt weak. He dropped his arms at his sides, letting the empty shotgun fall to the ground.

“Mr. Hale has a lot of stuff back in his store, including dynamite. He was the one who told me it works better for killing if you use some rocks for projectiles. That’s why the sleeping bag looked so full. He also told me it wouldn’t matter if I buried the fuse in the snow.”

“This can’t…possible. I’ve never…” He suddenly found it hard to speak. He could form the words well enough, but they didn’t seem to want to make complete sentences. What the hell was happening to him?

“I just want to know one thing. Why?” The kid’s voice was blurry, somehow, as if it came from under water.

“Why? Why what?”

“Mabel Boysen. Me. Any of it.”

“My work.” He tried to make a broad gesture at the prairie behind him but found it horribly painful. “Holy calling. I’m purifying the land.” His legs failed him, and he slumped backward on his haunches. “Keeps the earth from taking its own revenge. If I let you stop me, let you turn me in, then… Well, then, a storm like nothing in history, nothing in the Bible, even. Storm, yes. Sweep across the plains, wipe out everything. Any fool can see that.”

“Well, I guess I must be a special fool, then.”

“I don’t—”

“Not just any fool. Fool enough to believe that evil can be killed.”

The Krueger kid walked up to him, put the muzzle of his revolver against his forehead, and pulled the trigger. The Windmill Man had a split-second vision of a black storm cloud the size of a mountain range, rolling across the prairie, overwhelming him. It was the last thing he ever saw or thought.

Chapter 32

The Place of the Five Trees

Charlie woke before dawn. He threw off his blankets and the scorched remnants of his tent and poked at the embers of his dying campfire with a stick. There were enough coals to rekindle a fire, and he quickly added fresh tinder and fuel. Then he sat on a rock in front of the fire and looked inside his burlap sack to see what was left of the food Mrs. Logan had given him. One apple, three oatmeal cookies, and a ham sandwich. He munched on a cookie while the fire gathered strength.

“You need some coffee with that.”

“Yes I do. But I figured if I waited a while, maybe somebody would bring some. Hello, George.”

“Hello, Charlie Bacon. It took you a long time to get back.”

“It felt like long, that’s for sure.” He stood and embraced the big Lakota, who, as expected, had a coffee pot and two cups in his hands.

“Did you bring tobacco this time?”

“As a matter of fact, I did. Got it at a place called Hale’s Corners.”

He reached in a jacket pocket and produced a pouch of Bull Durham and a pack of Zig Zag cigarette papers. George Ravenwing solemnly threw a pinch of the tobacco in each of the four compass directions and a fifth one into the fire. Then he rolled a cigarette, took a long drag, and passed it to Charlie.

“I don’t smoke.”

“This is not smoking, this is ceremony.”

“Well, that’s different, I guess.” He took what he hoped was a respectable size puff and worked hard at not coughing. They passed it back and forth several more times without talking, and then George set about brewing coffee.

“Who’s the dead guy back in the ditch?”

“I called him Hound. I’ve never known his real name. A lady I know says he’s evil.”

“Not anymore. I won’t ask if you killed him, but if you did, that’s good.”

“He didn’t give me a whole lot of choice.”

“Then maybe he was part of what you needed to do. Maybe you killed some evil in yourself, too.”

“I know better than to argue with you, George.”

“Then you know more than the last time you were here. Have you found the god of steam, too?”

“There is no god of steam. There are a lot of things to know about it, and it feels good knowing them, but there’s no god. I found a lot of fine people, though.”

“Did Wakan Tanka speak to you?”

“I honestly don’t know. I couldn’t remember his name, for a while.”

They poured coffee, and Charlie shared the last of his cookies. For a long time, they munched and drank in silence. It was George Ravenwing who finally broke it.

“So now you will go back to the real world?”

He nodded. “Not the one where I started, though. And never as Charlie Krueger. First off, I have to help a bunch of other people on their journey. They’re counting on me.”

“And a woman?”

“And a fine woman, yes.” He smiled as he remembered what George Ravenwing had told him about women. “A woman who doesn’t care about owning land.”

“Ah. I think Wakan Tanka did speak to you, whether you remembered his name or not.”

“Maybe so. The dead guy had a Model T pickup, by the way. Any chance you might want it? It’s got a star painted on the door that you would have to do something about.”

“Sure, I can use it. Maybe I’ll paint it brown and white, like a pinto horse.”

“You’d look good in that, George.”

“I’d look better on a horse, but sometimes you have to take what you get. Will you be coming back to this place again?”

“Yes. Not any more this year, but I will come back. Maybe every fall.”

“Then you will always prosper. Goodbye, Charlie Bacon.”

“Goodbye, George. Thanks.” He stood up to shake the man’s hand, but the Lakota was already walking away. That seemed right, somehow.

Suddenly Charlie found that he was tired, right down to his bones, and he put some more wood on the fire and had a long nap before setting out on the road again. He didn’t know how long he slept. When he woke, the snow had stopped, but the sky was uniform gray, and he couldn’t tell how high the sun was.

He packed up and headed back on the Indian. On the way, he noticed that the body of the man he had called Hound was gone, along with his Model T. Were they ever real in the first place? He didn’t let himself think about it.

***

The snow amounted to about eight inches, but now it was on the verge of melting, turning into heavy slush. Oddly enough, it was easier to navigate than the mud or rain had been. The thick cover seemed to help the motorcycle stay upright. Charlie could still see the traces of the two sets of tracks, from the Indian and the Model T. That made him smile, for some reason.

Back at Hales Corners, he again bought gasoline, including a couple of extra one-gallon jugs of it to put in the saddlebags.

“Everything turn out all right?” said Jason Hale.

“Pretty much. Thanks for asking.”

“That guy who was following you, um…”

“I don’t know his name, either.”

“Yeah. Anyway, was he a little off in the head?”

“Definitely. But what makes you ask?”

“Well he was wearing a sheriff’s uniform, but he told me he was a weatherman.”

“Yeah, I think he told me something like that, too.”

“He’s crazier than a clock going backwards.”

“That he is. But he’s gone back to Mercer County now. They can worry about him there.”

“Good riddance. Can you stay for some lunch?”

“Thanks. For a change, I have time.”

***

It took him until the following morning to get back to the Wick farm. He pulled the Indian up on its stand and took off the snap-brim hat and goggles just in time to see Emily burst out of the front door of the house. She ran to him and wrapped herself around him, and he thought of that first day he had seen Maggie Mae greet Jim Avery.

“I told them you’d come back.”

“Not even God could keep me from it.”

“Nor evil?”

“No. Annie was wrong about that. Sometimes you can kill evil.”

Annie herself appeared at the door then, squinted a bit, and put her fists on her hips. “You look to me like a man who needs a big plate of ham and eggs.”

“Annie, as usual, you are absolutely, dead-on right.”

“Well, get in here, then. Praise God!”

They went inside, and Charlie sat at the kitchen table while Emily poured coffee and Annie threw a bunch of extra corncobs into the stove.

“Are you still on the run, Charlie?”

“Not unless somebody is after me for stabbing that deputy.”

“That sorry piece of work? Joe and I took care of that. We took all the bodies into town and told another deputy that the man from Mercer County did all the killing and then took off.”

“I’m shocked, Annie. You actually lied?”

“Certainly not. Joe did it for me.” She threw a slab of ham onto the griddle top and cracked eggs into a bowl. “So you’re all clear now? No more phony lawman, either?”

“No more.”

“You know, Joe and I have lost all our children now. I don’t suppose you and Miss Emily would like to stay with us, maybe take over the farm someday?”

“Oh, Annie. There was a time when I’d have died to hear you ask that. But now there are other people who need me, and I can’t just abandon them.”

“I respect you for that. I surely do. Maybe it’s for the best. Joe’s been wanting to sell out here, maybe go to California and buy an orange orchard.”

“I hear it’s nice in California.”

“Nicer than the high prairie, anyway. Do you know they don’t even have tornados out there? How do you like your eggs?”

“I like them any way you want to do them.”

“I’m proud to have known you, Charlie.”

“Likewise.”

***

Back outside, the Peerless had been cleared of all its straw cover, and Charlie shoveled coal in the firebox and lit it off. As soon as he had steam up, he blew a long blast on the whistle and then climbed to the platform atop the boiler. Soon the crew of the Ark was gathered around in a loose circle.

“Listen to me, people! The harvest is a hundred miles north of us now. We need to get up by Winnipeg and work our way west.”

“Are you taking over for Jim?” said Jude the Mystic.

“Any problem with that?”

“Not from me.”

“Not from anybody,” said somebody else.

“All right, then. You folks know the routine. Let’s get packed up, cleaned up, and hooked up.”

Emily climbed up onto the platform with him, wearing Maggie Mae’s old striped train engineer cap. She stood up on tiptoes and said something in Charlie’s ear.

“Oh yes,” said Charlie, quietly. To the group, he said, “Time to part the Red Sea, people!”

***

They rolled across the prairie, Emily and Charlie riding the engine and Jude the Mystic acting as fireman, keeping the firebox stoked.

“Did you ever find out who that horrible man really was?” said Emily.

“Not really. He was a crazy man, that’s for sure. Said he was saving the world.”

“From what?”

“From a storm. The biggest, most god-awful storm in all of history, he said. He said it will happen soon now.”

“You know what, Charlie?”

“What?”

“We can weather it.”