The White City (4 page)

“From the steamcoach.” Jolie nodded with understanding. “So we will not be seen?”

“Hopefully.” He shook Élodie’s reins. She kicked up clumps of rocky soil as she set off to the west.

The land rose gradually as they continued throughout the day, and the sagebrush and other tough grasses grew sparser and sparser. They came upon stagnant puddles where Élodie could water, but the creek beds were little more than baked networks of flat bricks. Ray did not mention to Jolie that B’hoy had seen no water ahead, but he didn’t have to. Her somber expression and the way she cast her eyes around to the horizon told him she understood their dilemma.

Cresting a hill, they looked down on a large number of pronghorns with heads reared, standing statue-still. As Élodie galloped toward them, the deer all turned, flashing their white rumps and darting nervously, bunching together and then thundering away in a great herd. They reminded Ray that the last of Redfeather’s pemmican was nearly gone. But there was no time now to hunt. He would have to hope the wasteland ahead could provide something to eat, even if only lizards.

As the herd disappeared, Ray noticed the toby was trembling ever so slightly against his chest. He took a hand from the reins to clutch it. There was a tickle in his fingers. He lifted his hand. A strange and soft pull began, as if tiny bits of string had been laced through the skin at his fingertips. He extended his arm and moved his hand slowly back and forth.

“What are you doing?” Jolie asked.

Ray pulled back his hand. “If I concentrate, I feel a tug.” He held out his hand again, flexing the fingers wide. “It’s like the lodestone. Do you remember? But also a warmth, like when it became the rabbit’s foot.”

“Is it your father you feel?”

“No,” Ray said. “It’s like there’s something out there that shouldn’t be. Something unwelcome in this wilderness.”

“The Hoarhound,” Jolie said.

Ray’s heart gave a jolt and he drew his hand into a fist. He knew she was right. He had felt it before, back at the battle in those eerie badlands. He could feel the Hound. But how? he wondered. Where was this power coming from?

They did not make camp until well after dark. Even in the moonlight, Ray could see that Jolie looked weakened. Her skin had grown ashen, and dark circles rimmed her eyes.

“How much longer do you think you can go without sleeping in water?” Ray asked as he lay out his blanket for her.

Jolie slumped to the ground and curled up onto the soft padding. “I am not sure. A few more days, I hope. How far ahead is the steamcoach?”

“Close now. We might be able to pass them tomorrow. I’ve sent B’hoy to watch them.” And to look ahead for water, but he knew better than to tell her this.

As Jolie fell into a fitful sleep, Ray closed his eyes to link with B’hoy. He found him perched beside a boulder several yards from the agents’ camp. No guard was posted, and the Gog’s agents huddled together around a cookfire, grumbling to one another.

“… we’re nearly out of water …”

“… the most forsaken hellhole I’ve ever been in. Hot as blazes and not a patch of soft earth anywhere …”

“… you sure the Hound is still leading us to the boy?”

De Courcy was asking this, and as he did, the other agents
grew quiet and shifted their narrowed eyes to Muggeridge. Muggeridge seemed at first to ignore them as he chewed and spooned more beans from his tin. He took another bite and frowned up at De Courcy.

“The Hound still has the scent,” he said, smacking his food as he spoke. “The boy is heading west into the mountains.”

“We haven’t seen that crow of his,” one of the agents said.

“Yeah!” another added. “And how could he cover ground faster than us, anyway?”

“Mister Muggeridge, you sure the Hound ain’t broke somehow?” Murphy asked. “Possible one of them wolves damaged his sense of smell or whatnot.”

“I’m the commanding officer,” Muggeridge said coolly. “We have our orders, and we’ll continue our pursuit even if it takes us to the Pacific Ocean. I’ve endured worse than this desert. The Rebs locked me up for a year in Anderson. So I know hardship. This ain’t hardship! I want no more of this bellyaching or I’ll have Pike here start drawing up terms for mutiny. We clear?”

The men turned their eyes down and grumbled. Pike shifted uncomfortably a moment before rising. “Get your rest, men. We’ve another hard day ahead. I’ll take watch for the night.”

Muggeridge nodded and cast his empty tin out into the shadows, scattering pebbles at B’hoy’s breast. The crow rose in the dark, took flight on midnight wings, and soared on to the west.

The parched landscape seemed to stretch on endlessly. Barren hills rose one after the other like half-buried skulls. Tiny cyclones
of dust and sand twirled up in the heat. They had seen no signs of humanity—no herds of cattle, no cowboys, no ranches, no long-distance wagons or stagecoaches carrying prospectors and westbound travelers. As Élodie rounded a butte, Ray spied the black sail of smoke and then the trudging locomotive.

“There they are!” Ray said, pointing. Jolie only gave a feeble nod.

Ray got down from Élodie and untied a branch of the sagebrush. He took a dash of saltpeter from the tin in his toby and blew it to make a flame as Redfeather had taught him. He lit the leaves, which began to burn slowly. A thin, fragrant smoke formed. He took a glass jar from his rucksack and dropped the burning sage inside. The smoke escaped from the jar’s mouth. Climbing back into the saddle, he handed the jar to Jolie. “Can you hold it?”

She nodded.

“If it burns down, let me know and I’ll get another branch.”

She gave no reply but rested the smoking jar on her thigh. Ray kicked his heels to Élodie’s side and shook the reins. The little quarter horse galloped across the land with the sweet-smelling smoke trailing behind her.

They grew ever closer to the steamcoach, keeping whenever possible to the north side of the hills out of the agents’ sight. When they were only a mile apart, Ray could make out the men with their bowler hats tilted low over their brows. No head turned. No reaction showed that they had spied the horse and its two riders passing around them.

“It’s working,” Ray said. Jolie didn’t reply.

Late in the day, Ray stopped Élodie in a dry riverbed. Kicking the mud with his boot heel, he opened up a small hole for the horse to drink from. Ray kicked open another and sifted the silty water through his bandana into the mouth of the waterskin. He looked up anxiously at Jolie. She sat on Élodie’s back, her eyes half closed. Ray handed her the waterskin. “Drink,” he said. She took the skin with a nod.

Ray walked out a ways while the horse continued watering. He reached a spire of earth and climbed it. Gazing around in the fierce late-day sun, he saw the enormous range of mountains to the west, rising like a wall beyond the flat waste. Turning around, he spied the steamcoach’s smoke several miles behind.

“We’re ahead of them!” Ray said excitedly. “And those huge mountains are up ahead. They have to be the Rockies. We’ll hopefully catch up with Sally before—”

He looked back just as Jolie dropped the jar of smoking sagebrush and slumped forward across the saddle, her hands barely holding onto the horn.

“Jolie!” He scrambled down the spire, leaping the last eight feet. Élodie was stamping nervously, and Ray had to tug at her bridle and whisper in her ears to calm her. He put his hands to Jolie’s shoulders to brace her as he asked, “Jolie? Can you hear me? Jolie!”

She lifted her head. “Keep going …,” she muttered. “Do not … lose … the steamcoach.…”

“Shut it,” Ray said, climbing up behind Jolie to help hold her in the saddle. He forced the waterskin to her lips. “Drink some more.”

But she didn’t take the waterskin, and Ray felt her growing limp. He drew one arm tightly around her waist and with the other shook Élodie’s reins. “Ride!” he called out.

Racing westward, Ray searched for B’hoy with his thoughts. He could not find him. B’hoy was still out scouting somewhere ahead. Ray raced Élodie, scattering dust and loose stones. Heat made the horizon wavy, and the blistering sun scorched through his coat. Ray squeezed his eyes shut against the glare and sand and the terror growing in his chest.

As the sun finally set behind the distant mountains, Ray spotted the black form of the crow ahead in the falling light. Ray quickly linked to him with his thoughts. B’hoy began a long stream of rasps and caws, but Ray had no energy to focus on the bird’s speech. “Not now! We’ve got to find a river.”

B’hoy swooped down across their path and began to lead the way. The horse raced through the night. The moon rose at their backs and the stars swung overhead. And when dawn eventually broke, Ray spied tufts of grass at Élodie’s feet, and the hills ahead had low, gnarled trees. They had made it out of the wasteland.

“Are we getting near?” Ray called out to B’hoy, fear shaking in his voice. “She hasn’t much time!”

Even as he said it, he saw the green tips of cottonwoods peeking from a depression in the ridge of hills. He kicked Élodie’s flanks, and she raced down, foam flecking her jaws and blood speckling her distended nostrils. She wove back and forth to descend until they came to a rippling creek.

Ray leaped from the saddle and pulled Jolie off into his
arms. “You’ll be all right. You’ll be fine. We’re here,” he soothed over and over. Ray stumbled on the rocks at the shore but continued walking out into the slow-moving waters.

He lowered her down until her hair spilled out over the water’s surface. Still holding her securely, Ray let her sink beneath the water. After a moment, she came up on her own, her bleary eyes searching for him.

“Ray …,” she said weakly.

He gave a heavy exhale of relief. “You … you were nearly …”

Holding onto his shoulders while she floated, Jolie dipped her cheek so that only part of her face was above the water. “His voice,” she murmured. “I hear him … He is calling …”

“Who?” Ray asked.

Jolie seemed only half aware of what she was saying, her eyes dim and her voice thin. “He calls my sisters.…”

Ray held her for a while longer as she seemed to sleep, watching her anxiously.

With the sun glowing through the trees overhanging the creek, Jolie at last opened her eyes. Ray saw clarity in her gaze and knew she was finally alert, even if she wasn’t quite recovered. He gave deep shudder.

“What is it?” Jolie asked.

“I thought … I was going to lose you.”

“I am still here.”

Ray gave a pained smile. “When we lost each other, after the train, the explosion …” He was not sure what he was trying to say, but he felt the words bubble up heedlessly. “All those times, once I started my new life at Shuckstack, I would go out
into the wild. To be alone. I was learning to be a Rambler. I thought I did not mind being alone. But I did, Jolie. I kept thinking that I wished you could be there with me. And … I guess I thought I’d never see you again.” He knew he wasn’t making any sense.

Jolie simply stared at him, her fingers laced behind his neck.

Ray sighed. “I’m just glad you’re here. Once we get through all this, we can go back to Shuckstack. You can see the mountains there. You’ll love it—”

Jolie abruptly slid her fingers from his shoulders. “I should sleep. You need to also.”

Ray was not sure if he had said something wrong, and his cheeks felt a little hot with embarrassment. But Jolie was right—the heavy weight of exhaustion was coming over him. “Right. I’ll just be up on the bank.”

Jolie nodded and gave a grateful smile before she slipped beneath the water.

Ray woke in the night, hungry and momentarily uncertain where he was. He looked around. Patches of shadow and moonlight crisscrossed the forest. He heard a whinny and found Élodie walking along the bank, her head bent down to the soft grass growing at the edge. Ray walked over and took her nose in his hands. “You’re a good girl. You saved her.”

The horse beat her head side to side and turned again to eating. No longer sleepy, Ray walked among the trees, prodding his knife here and there to dig up roots and collect mushrooms
growing in the damp. He built up a cookfire and made a meal. Lifting his hand at one point, he again felt the pull and knew the Hoarhound was out there. Behind them and distant, yet still following.

When he had finished eating, Ray found B’hoy resting in the branches of a cottonwood.

The bird was awake and peering down at Ray with inky eyes. Ray could sense his exhaustion and his suppressed annoyance. “You tried to tell me something,” Ray said. “When we were riding. I’m sorry I was short with you, but—”

The crow spoke in low, raspy croaks. Ray’s eyes widened as he listened.

As B’hoy had been searching ahead for water, he had found a girl and a wolf. They were at the start of a pass going up into the mountains.

“How far away are they?” Ray asked.

B’hoy croaked: less than a day ahead.

Ray ran down to the riverbank and splashed into the water. He called Jolie’s name, but she did not rise. She was beyond being roused, he realized. She would need to rest longer to recover.

But Sally was so close! He could almost reach her tonight if only …

He came up from the river and gazed at B’hoy. They might reach her by horse in less than a day, but a crow could fly faster.

Could I? Ray wondered.

He had mastered the crow’s speech. He had learned to see from his eyes, to link with B’hoy’s thoughts over a short distance. Was he ready?

B’hoy swooped down from the tree and landed in front of him momentarily before taking flight. Ray closed his eyes.

He took slow, deep breaths until he calmed his mind. He felt the moonlight on his skin. The damp forest and the vast wilderness surrounding him. He felt the weight of the earth beneath his knees. As B’hoy hovered above him, the bird’s flapping wings became the only sound he could hear. His mind drew on all this and then went dark.

The crow beat its wings against the still night air. Ray looked down. In the dark of the forest floor, he saw himself tranquil and kneeling among the underbrush and fallen leaves. The crow beat its wings. The night was dark. Black feathers against black sky.