felling axe. A lump of chaw bulged his cheek. “Legends, guess ya might say.” It was no secret how much ‘Grandpa Moses’ loved to spin a yarn. His companions immediately paid heed, leaning closer toward where he sat, white hair and beard wild and snarled, little orange sparks shooting as he rasped his axe.
Horn became agitated. “Aww, dontcha go on, old man. No call for that kinda talk while we’re hunkered here in the woods at night. No sir, no sir.”
Stevens guffawed. “What’s a matter, kid? Your mama put the fright in you back in Kentucky?”
“Hush yer mouth ’bout my mama.”
“Easy, kid. Don’t get your bristles up.”
Miller didn’t speak, yet misgiving nagged him. He’d dwelt among the Christian devout as well as the adherents of mystical traditions. There were those who believed to speak of a thing was to summon it into the world, to lend it form and substance, to imbue it with power. He wasn’t sure how to feel about such theories. However, something within him, perhaps the resident animal, empathized with the kid’s fear. Mountain darkness was a physical weight pressing down and it seemed to listen.
Bane paused to gaze into the darkness that encroached upon the circle of the cheery blaze. Then he looked Stevens dead in the eye. “I knew this Injun name o’ Ravenfoot back to Seattle who come from over Storm King Mountain way. Klallam Injun. His people have hunted this neck o’ the woods afore round eyes ever hollowed canoes. He told me an’ I believe the red man knows his stuff.”
“Who’d believe an Injun about anything?” Stevens said. “Superstitious bastards.”
“Yeah. An’ what tickled yer fancy to speak up now?” Horn said, his tone still sour and fearful. Ma squatted near him, head lowered, digging into the dirt with a knife. Miller could tell the brute was all ears, though.
“That map of your’n,” Bane said to Stevens.
“What the hell are you chinnin’’ about? The map? Now that don’t make any kind of sense.” Stevens took the map from his pocket, unrolled it and squinted.
“Where’d you get that?” Miller said, noting the paper’s ragged border. “Tear it from a book?”
“I dunno. McGrath gave it to me. Prolly he got it from the Supe.”
Now Bane’s eyes widened. “My grand pappy was a right reverend and a perfessor. Had lots o’ books lyin’ ’round the house when I was a sprat.”
“You can read, Moses?” Calhoun spoke from where he reclined with the wide brim of his hat pulled low. The men chuckled, albeit nervously.
“Oh, surely,” Bane said. “I kin read, an’ also write real pretty when I take a notion.”
“Recites some nice poetry, too,” Ruark said without glancing up from whetting his knife. “I’m partial to the Shakespeare.” These were the first and only words he’d uttered all day.
“But Grand pappy was a dyed in the wool educated feller. He took the Gospel Word to them heathens in Eastern Europe an’ the jungles of Africa, an’ some them islands way, way down in the Pacific. Brought back tales turn yer hair white.”
“Aha, that’s what happened to your hair!” Stevens said. “Here I thought you was just old.”
Bane laughed, then spat. “Yeh, so I am, laddio. This is a haunted place. Explorers wandered ’round Mystery Mountain in the 1840s. Richies in the city, newspapermen mostly, financed ’em. Found mighty peculiar things, they say. Burial mounds ’an cliffside caves with bodies in ’em like the Chinee do. A few o’ them explorers fell on hard luck an’ got kilt, or lost. Some tried to pioneer and disappeared, but onea ’em, a Russian, came back an’ wrote hisself a book. An pieces o’ that book wound up in another one, a kind o’ field guide. Looks like a Farmer’s Almanac, ’cept black with a broken circle on the cover. I seen that page afore. Ain’t too many copies o’ that guide not what got burned. My mama was a child o’ God and hated it on account o’ its pagan blasphemy, documentin’ heathen rites an’ sich. Grand pappy showed me in secret. He weren’t a particularly devout feller after he finished spreadin’ the Lord’s Word. Had a crisis o’ faith, he said.”
“Well, what did the Russkie find?” Calhoun said.
“Don’t recall, ’xactly.” Bane leaned the axe against his knee and sighed. “Ruins, mebbe. Mebbe he lied, ’cause ain’t nobody backed his claims. He was a snake oil salesman, I reckon. They run him outta the country.”
“I think,” Miller said, “that’s an amazing coincidence, your ending up on this hunt.