The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All - By Laird Barron Page 0,116

of slick stone, veined red with alkali and the bloody clay of the earth. The trees were so huge, their lattice of branches so tight, it became dim as a shuttered vault, and chilly enough to see faint vapors of one’s breath.

The game trail cut sharply into the hillside and eventually passed through a thick screen of saplings and devil’s club and leveled into a marshy clearing. A handful of boulders lay sunken into the moss and muck around the trunks of three squat cottonwood trees. Surprisingly enough, there were odds and ends of human habitation carelessly scattered—rusted stovetops and empty cans, rotted wooden barrels and planed timber, bits of old shattered glass and bent nails. Either the site of a ruined house, long swallowed by the earth, or a dumping ground. The rest of the men gathered at the rim of the hollow nearest a precipitous drop into the valley. Fast moving water rumbled from somewhere below.

Horn lay on his back, his boots propped on the body of the fallen buck. Ma and Calhoun were nowhere in evidence. Miller took it all in for a few moments. He finally shouldered his rifle and had a sip of water from his canteen. “He hurt?” He jerked his thumb at Horn. The boy’s coonskin cap had flown off and his long, greasy hair was a bird nest of leaves and twigs. A black and blue lump swelled above his eye.

“Nah, he ain’t hurt,” Stevens said. “Are ya, kid? He’s okay. Got the wind knocked outta him is all. Tripped over a damn root and busted his skull. He’ll be right as rain in a minute. Won’t ya, kid?”

Horn groaned and covered his eyes with his arm.

“He’s affrighted,” Bane said, and spat. The grizzled logger clutched his rifle in one hand and a tomahawk in the opposite. His knuckles were white. He kept moving his eyes.

“Afraid of what?” Miller said, surveying the area. He didn’t like the feel of the place, its dankness, the malformed cottonwoods, the garbage. He also disliked the fact Calhoun and Ma weren’t around.

Stevens and Bane glanced at each other and shrugged. Stevens squatted by Horn and patted his arm almost tenderly. “Wanna slug of this fine awerdenty, kid? Where’d those other boys get to, eh?” He helped Horn get seated upright, then held the jug for him while the kid had pull.

Ruark scowled and ambled to the drop and stared down into the valley. The water thumped and so did Miller’s heart. He tilted his head and stared through the opening above the clearing, regarded the brilliant blue-gold sky. Cloudless, immaculate. Already the sun was low against the peaks. Dark came early in the mountains. The sun seemed peculiar—it blurred and flames radiated from its core and its rim blackened like a coal.

Horn coughed and wiped his mouth on his wool sleeve. “Yeh, tripped an’ smacked muh noggin’. Weren’t no stob, though. No sir. They’s a snare yonder. Prolly more where that come from.” He pointed and Bane went and examined the spot.

Bane whistled and said, “He ain’t blowin’ smoke. Step light, boys. We ain’t alone.”

“Bushwhackers,” Ruark said, turning with predatory swiftness to regard his comrade.

“Ain’t no bushwhackers.” Stevens rose and swiped at the gathering flies with his hat. “We maybe got us a trapper tucked into that park down there. That’s what we got.”

“Shit.” Bane lifted a piece of thin rope, its long end snaking off through the underbrush. He coiled in the slack and gave it a yank. A bell clanged nearby and Bane threw the rope and jumped back as if scalded. “Shit!”

“Yeh, shit!” Ruark said and stepped away from the ridgeline. He had his Sharps in hand now.

Miller said, “Thad, where’s Cal and Ma?”

Horn still appeared confused from the blow to his head, but the grave faces of his companions sobered him a bit. “Din’t see on account I was woozy for a spell. Heard ’em jawin’ with somebody that come up on us. Cal said to hang on, they’d be right back.”

“You act a mite nervous. Something else happen?”

The boy hesitated. “Din’t much care for the sound of whoever they was that jawed with Cal an’ Ma. Not ’tall. Sounded right wicked.”

“The hell does that mean?” Stevens said.

Horn shrugged and pulled on his cap.

“Shitfire!” Bane said, and spat.

“How long ago?” Miller said. He thought of hiding in the trenches during the war, scanning the gloom for signs of the enemy creeping forward. He’d learned, as did most men of violence, to recognize