I didn’t know if that was correct or not, but I didn’t argue.
“Look how he spelled ‘killed,’” Meshack said.
And that was the first I realized that Meshack had learned how to read, somewhere along the line. He couldn’t have learned it at home; I wondered where he picked up his education.
Between the bobbing heads crowded around the inscription, I read it again.
…cilled a thing heer
D. Boone
While the men chattered excitedly I wondered also, “Was he the man I saw?”
I knew enough about the man to know the engraving might be real; and I knew enough to understand why my ordinarily cantankerous companions were, for the moment, as excited as school boys. Heaster might’ve been our literal patriarch, but Boone was the father of us all—the George Washington of our commonwealth.
His creative spelling only made him more appealing. As I understand the lore, he was barely literate, prone to wandering, occasionally violent; and he lived most of his life in fear of debtor’s prison due to a score of terrible land speculation deals.
Yet even so, he was a patriot and a warrior. He was the man who cut the Road.
And I don’t believe you could find a man in Kentucky who wouldn’t say Boone’s name with pride.
***
Had I seen him? Hadn’t Shirley told me, before leaving Lily Dale, that the spirits would help me if they could? I struggled to recall the ghost’s features, his clothing, or anything else that might give me a clue.
He could’ve been any explorer. He could’ve been any woodsman or fellow of the frontier. He could’ve been anyone.
But he’d pointed at the message as if it meant something.
I looked again at the letters left in the side of the hill, and I clutched at the pocket where I still kept the letter that had summoned me. “Boone?” I whispered. I closed my eyes and inhaled, exhaled, carefully, counting each breath.
***
When I opened my eyes, there was no sign of him.
X
Into the Fray: Reflections from the Road, Daniel Boone, 1775
It must’ve been her feathers that cushioned her against the ground, and against the rustling loud sound of the forest floor crackling and splintering beneath her. But it was so soft, the noises she made—even though she was big, real big. I’d been saying she was the size of a bear, but when I got up close I saw I’d underestimated her by a hundred pounds, anyway. She was the size of a cow, and covered with those long feathers.
I wanted to believe it was a death roll. While I watched her spin, tumbling in a lopsided circle like an egg, it was easy to say she was dying.
With Little Heaster behind me, I came closer. I tiptoed up, trying to sort out the situation. I held the torch over my head, trying to squeeze out every drop of light.
I didn’t come too close, not right away.
Underneath her, the ground was wet. Not soaking, but wet. She was bleeding. I couldn’t tell what part of her was injured.
She was flexing her wings, over and over, using them to rock herself back and forth, around and around. They weren’t bent or shattered so far as I could tell. I’d be pleased if we’d landed a blow to her body. I’d have settled for a broken wing, because at least that’d mean she couldn’t sneak up on us from above; but a wound to her torso might keep her from coming back altogether.
She let out a sigh and a groan. The groan croaked wetly, and I prayed with all my heart that she had a throat full of blood.
Her path in the clearing was being worn slower and slower. The spots where she’d flattened small trees and trampled down plants with her bulk were growing darker with red-black stains, and then she let out one more awful groan—or I thought it was a groan, anyhow—and then there was a cloud of gas and a rushing wet flush of nastiness.
And I knew it wasn’t a groan. Her bowels had released, and the smell of her runny gray shit and piss mingled with the faint metal stink of blood.
She toppled right through it, smearing the mixture across herself and picking up dirt and pine needles too. Everything she touched stuck to her, even as she was moving, and moving slower. And she rolled…almost to the tipping point of pushing herself for another loop…but then she sagged, and merely rocked back and forth until all the energy was gone out of her.
***
I couldn’t tell if she was dead or not. She’d lolled away from me, her feet sticking up in the air like a bundle of twigs.
The stench of her body stuck in my throat and choked me hard.
I gagged, but I clenched my chest up and tried not to show it. Behind me, Heaster was making soft panting noises, as if he were trying to keep himself from vomiting. I didn’t blame him. She smelled even worse up close.
***
Heaster called out, soft but low enough that I heard him all right. “She dead?”
I told him, “I don’t know.”
Still holding the torch in my left hand and the axe with my right, I sidestepped around the place where she’d stopped. I stayed as far away from her as I could. But I came around, past the one sprawled wing that had flopped down, the size of a bed sheet. I shuffled past her twisted neck, and around the ruffled crown.
Her face was angled in the other direction, so I had to go a little farther. I pushed my back up against the tree trunk at the edge of her cleared-away spot. I stayed as far from her as I could, while still getting close enough to see.
I stared at her chest. Her flopping gray bosom was sunken, one breast to the right, one to the left until it was tucked where you might say her armpit should be. Even though my arm was getting tired, I swung the torch out—I held it straight as far as I could, until it was almost over her.
It wasn’t my imagination. With a small lift and drop of that gore-smeared tangle of feathers, she was breathing.
That was fine. She wasn’t dead, and I’d expected that much. But I was uneasy, because she was breathing quickly, one-two, one-two, one-two, like a thing that’s been winded by a struggle, and not like a creature about to breathe its last.
I didn’t like it. I started backing up, and I said to Heaster, “Draw your gun, boy.”
He’d already thought of it. I could see him at the edge of the torchlight, the end of his pistol pointing down at the rounded, filthy, feathered thing that stunk to high heaven.
And then my makeshift torch sputtered. It didn’t go out, but it cracked and spit sparks, and it cast off a small spray of embers down onto the creature’s face.
One smoldering coal leaped in a white-orange arc to fall against her eyelid.
***
Her eyelid jerked, and snapped open like a window shutter. Her beak split, and she erupted into a cry so loud and so close that it made my ears ring and hum—and it was all I could do not to drop the torch right there, because I knew I’d been had.
If she’d been as weak and as dead as she’d pretended, her breathing would’ve been slow and hard. If she’d been so close to death, her eyes would’ve parted some and all her flesh would’ve relaxed, not just her bowels. I knew that. I knew all of it, and none of it had stopped me from going up close, and I felt like an idiot for it.
***
I leaped back away from her, and I was so surprised when she moved that I forgot I was standing between her and a tree. My right shoulder slammed against a very big trunk, and my feet tripped up in its roots.
But I didn’t drop the axe, and I didn’t drop the torch. I swung them both out and towards her; I clapped them against each other and more sparks showered into her face—because God help me, her face was on level with mine, just as quick as that.
One moment she was on the ground, playing possum, and the next she was on her feet and reaching for me—stretching that frayed-looking neck and biting at me with that beak so sharp it could’ve cut timber. And all I could think was how I knew she didn’t like the fire, so I hit the torch again with the axe-head and more sparks sprayed. Some of them singed my eyebrows and pinked up th
e skin of my cheeks, but my buckskin coat kept the worst of it off my arms.
I squinted against the sparks because I had to—because I didn’t like them, but she couldn’t stand them—and that was the only advantage I had against her.
My hair began to cook, adding to the gut-turning stink that filled the night. I didn’t pay any attention to it, even when the smoldering strands were charred all the way to my ears.
She was up, and she was angry. That made two of us, and I had the upper hand because I was scared to death on top of being mad as hell.
She lunged, beak-first and snapping.
I held the torch forward and swung the axe underneath it, right around the level of her throat. But she jerked her neck back, limber as a goose, and popped forward again faster than I could raise the axe a second time. I ducked away, knocking my elbow into the tree but not really hurting myself—and once I had the tree behind me, I could sidle around until I had that big old trunk between me and her.
She bit and beaked at the trunk, first left, then right, then back again to the other side.
I hugged the trunk as close as I dared, and I shuffled right, then left, then right again to dodge her. I stumbled over the uppermost roots but I kept my footing pretty well, all things considered.
***
Heaster hollered something, trying to get her attention.
I said, “Stop it, you damn fool!” Partly I yelled it because I wanted him to stop it, and I wanted him to know he was acting foolish; but partly I did it because I wanted to keep her attention on me.
It halfway worked, which is to say she looked back at him but she didn’t want to leave me while she thought she had me cornered. He distracted her for a second, that was all.
And that was all it took for me to step out around the side of the tree and land a good, hard crack with the sharp end of the axe. It caught her underneath the eye.
She roared, and it was a different sound than the ugly croaking we usually heard from her. I think it was real pain I heard, and I would’ve swung again for the same spot except for she swiped me with one of her wings and knocked me out from my spot of temporary safety.
Those wings of hers were impressive. I’d known it before, but I didn’t fully understand it until she stood there and held them open—she waved them like cranes do, when they’re doing those mating dances, making themselves look all huge to the other birds. Well, she made herself look all huge, all right, and Heaster couldn’t pass up the chance to take advantage of it.
He fired, and the report was louder than a cannon there in the half-dark where we fought her.
I don’t know what he hit but she arched her back, and her roar took on a screaming squeal. She turned to him, and there was nothing I could do to hold her attention, even though I ran right underneath her, right in front of her, but she had something else to worry about now.
She jumped, and she landed on top of him.
He was a big ol’ boy, I’ve said before. He was a little on the skinny side, but he was tall and heavy enough to swing an axe like a big man, so when she flattened him in that one short hop—crushing down on his chest with those feet the size of bedside tables, it amazed me how swiftly she’d moved in to crush him.
And she was wounded, too! How many times did we have to hit her and shoot her and cut her before she could be stopped?
***
I didn’t know the answer to that question, but I wasn’t about to let her have Heaster. I was on her fast as a cat, scared and mad and swinging an axe in one hand and a torch in the other.
She bumped me with her shoulder as I came around to swing and even though that don’t sound like much, I mean to tell you it was as hard and heavy as getting struck with a sack of potatoes. The blow threw me off balance but I still landed one good chop and one good thump with the torch.
My torch was getting real beat-up, though, and it wouldn’t be long before it was going to go out or get stomped out.
So I started holding it away from her. I needed the light—probably, I needed the light worse than she did—and Heaster was under her, but not pinned as bad as I thought. She didn’t have his arms pinned, or maybe she did. But he got one arm free and bless him, it was the arm that was holding his torch.
He brought that torch up to her underbelly and seared a patch there, burning away feathers and flesh and making that bird-thing scream and squeal. She lifted one foot up off his chest.
I’d rolled away from her and was partly on the ground, but when I seen how good Heaster’d got her, I came back swinging again.
She screamed at me, and she moved that other foot off Heaster. He scooted out from under her; I saw his pistol on the ground, but he didn’t have any time to reload it and he knew it, so he left it there while I tried to lure her away. The boy had his torch, and he had an axe someplace—I guess he’d dropped it, or she knocked it away.
I found it fast and ducked down to grab it just as her wing came swooping down over him. She missed him, and I thanked God for it.
I was looking at his shirt, and there were punctures all over it, and the holes were running with blood. They looked like bullet holes, but I knew they weren’t and I prayed they didn’t go so deep. Heaster was standing, anyway. He was standing and he was fairly steady.
“Hey!” I screamed at the thing, because she was looking back and forth between us, trying to back up enough so she could watch us both. “You!” I yelled, and I snagged her attention good.
She took three long strides on those twiggy, sharp-ended feet and I yelped. I held up the axe and got ready to move it, and I held up my torch even though its light was starting to fade. It was all the light I had except for Heaster’s torch, and he was far enough away from me that it didn’t hardly help.
***
She reached out, craning that neck that was longer than it looked, and faster than an arrow she launched her beak straight for me.
I thought she was trying to bite me, and I jumped—but she wasn’t biting at me. She clamped those jaws, those scissor-sharp horns of her face, against my torch and she bit it in half. She snipped it clean out of my hand, as easy as a gardener pruning a rosebush.
I was almost so stunned that I stood there frozen while the lit-up end of the torch dropped down to the ground. My guardian angel was whispering hard into my ear, though, and I leaped backwards before I’d even had a chance to think it through.
By the time the creature had stomped the torch into the dirt, I was back behind another tree and hiding there like a boy.
“Run!” I shouted to Little Heaster, and I watched his bobbing yellow light weave and wobble between the trees.
***
The last thing I saw, before the last little glow disappeared, was the creature’s head—her neck did a full circle, just like an owl’s—and her eyes settled on my hiding spot.
XI
Into the Cave
Uncle John was acting funny. I mean, he was acting funnier than usual.
It started when he was staring at the mark on the hillside rock wall. How did he know it was there? You couldn’t see it, not until you were right up on top of it—and not until you’d pushed away a bunch of dirt and plants.
He stood apart from the rest of us while we got all boyish about seeing what Boone left. After I’d gotten my eyeful, I joined my uncle and said to him real quietly, “That was a strange and lucky thing, don’t you think?”
“What do you mean?”
“You spotting that carving over there. Look at them, all getting along.”
“It won’t last,” he said. “You know it won’t. They’ll forget about it soon enough.”
“No, they won’t forget,” I argued. “They’ll go home and tell everyone they see about it. But they’ll get tired of getting along, and then they’ll snap right back to the old feuding ways.”
***
I was right. Eventually, the friendly happiness we shared from finding the Boone mark was used up; and eventually we made a fire—halfway between th
e spots everyone was arguing about.
I would’ve rather set it farther from the cave, but it was either put it where we did or break out the guns for another round. I loved my long rifle, and it was probably the most valuable thing I owned apart from my house in Iowa; but I wasn’t in a rush to show it off again.
It was only mid-afternoon and we didn’t really need the fire yet. We only made it to mark our spot, and declare our camp. It’s just something men do when they stop on the road.
We stood around it, warming ourselves even though we weren’t that cold.
“We should go in tonight,” Jacob said, hands on his hips, standing like he meant business.
Carlson said, “It’s getting late. And we don’t know how big the cave is, anyhow. We should just camp tonight, and bother with it in the morning.”
But Uncle John pointed out, “What does it matter if the sun goes down? It’s darker inside the cave than outside at night, regardless. Don’t let the hours determine how you approach the place.”
The silence around the fire confessed without words that he’d said something reasonable.
“Maybe,” Titus said slowly. “One or two of us ought to poke our heads in and take a look around—just to get an idea. Anybody here know how deep the Pit goes?”
We all shook our heads.
He continued. “Now, how many of us have gone inside, just a little bit? Most of us have peeked inside, I reckon—even if it was on a dare from our brothers. Meshack,” he looked real pointedly at me. “What about your sister? When she took off, did you come in here to look for her?”I started to say “no” like a reflex, but I caught myself. “We weren’t real sure this is where she went,” I mumbled. “Just ‘cause that’s what she told Momma, that don’t make it true. But I might’ve poked my head in, just a little bit.”
Uncle John frowned at me, not like he was angry but like he was worried. “I thought you’d never been inside.”
I shifted on my feet and folded my arms. “I’ve never spent any real time in there, no. But when my sister was gone, yeah—I might’ve looked around. I didn’t go so far that I couldn’t see the entrance, though, and that don’t hardly count.”