"Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers
One hundred million angels singing
Multitudes are marching to the big kettle drum
Voices calling, voices crying
Some are born and some are dying
It's Alpha's and Omega's kingdom come
And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree"
--Johnny Cash, "When the Man Comes Around"
Elison went for a walk in the suffocating cold after his reconnoiter at the Red Dragon Inn, and he thought about once upon a time. He needed a little time to understand everything he?d seen, fit it in with his understanding of the Widow Rye. The people here, he decided, were crazy. What did that say about her? What did he want it to say? It was too much to dwell on just yet, and he liked the way the whiskey was sitting easy on his stomach, warding off the frost in every breath. He didn?t want to stir it up, not yet, so he thought about other things.
He?d never told Slow Pete, but that trip up to chase the forty head of cattle to the top of Cold Wyvern Hill?that hadn?t been the first time he?d ridden into the fog and lived to tell it. Pete hadn?t been there for the first time, and he?d never told anyone else exactly what had happened. The first time had been three months after he?d found old Berenger Shaw?s ranch, six months after he?d sent a stranger out to die for him and left the body for the lawmen to find.
He?d ridden out of the badlands half-starved, sick down to the ends of his soul with its crying out for her. Elijah Donaldson had been dead three months, then, and Elison Blue had been born shivering into a new life a thousand times harder than the one he left: one in which every day carried him farther from her and only iron will kept him from going back. He was doing it to keep her alive, he told himself over and over. He?d done what he had to do. He was wasting away on prickly pear and rabbits without an ounce of fat to be had, and in the fire every night he saw the smile she wore as she hung laundry on the line and he told her he?d be back in a day or so, no longer. He could still see the sheets waving at him like mournful ghosts who knew what he hadn?t known then?that the Hexmen were coming, and it was time for him to die.
She used to tease him about how pretty he was, back then, with dark honey-blond hair that just touched his shoulders, and the tan burned into his face and neck, his arms. Madi hadn?t been born in Lofton, and she took a mighty big pleasure in talking about his redneck ways. Sassy little thing. It shouldn?t have surprised him at all to find out that she?d gone on to sling bullets, but it did. As sweet as she was? It just?didn?t seem right. But maybe when he died, something died in her, too.
That was another thought for later.
So he?d found the ranch. The old man had tested him, found that he was every bit as good with the horses as he?d claimed, and hired him on as a hand to work the herds. The business of the ranch was hard work, and he abandoned himself to it. It made it easier to forget. There were market drives twice a year, one in late spring and another in late fall. The cattle had to be herded up to the higher pastures in the summer, where the air and the grass were sweeter. In the winter they had to be brought down close to the ranch house, where it was easier to get the hay out to them. Fence lines had to be checked and mended. Cows and calves had to be looked after. Horses and dogs and people had to be tended to. Incursions of wolves, cougar, rustlers and stranger things had to be dealt with.
Cold Wyvern Hill, the other hands told him late at night on those days when the money and whiskey flowed and superstitions melted, had always been there with its hell-fog and its secrets. Every payday he could count on someone to come up with some tall tale about it, and every story was more far-fetched than the last. ?There be dragons? was the most believable of the bunch. It was a portal to another country, another world, to the big black sulfurous ether between the stars in the sky where the devils lived. The fog was poison and to breathe it was to die. An army of dead men waited for anyone foolish enough to wander up there.
He amused himself with the stories and paid it no mind until the day that Shaw himself decided to ride out on his land. The owner was seventy if he was a day, and he could barely sit a horse. The hands drew straws, and it fell to him to shepherd the rancher around. The trip was uneventful, a boring waltz across the southern pasture that was only livened by the old man?s stories, until they reached the eastern flank of the Hill.
The old man drew rein, sat back in his saddle and peered up at the place where the sunlight never reached the rock. It was late summer, but no matter how much the badlands heat beat on the fog and boiled it off, there was always more to replace it. The rancher?s horse was a swaybacked old nag better put to pasture than ridden, and couldn?t be bothered to twitch an ear. Elison?s horse, a younger bay gelding with more fire in his heart, refused to stand still under the creeping weight of fear rolling down the sides of the hill.
?My grandpappy told me a story ?bout that fog, once,? Shaw said, and pulled his neck rag up to wipe his seamy face. Elison was sitting his twitchy horse close enough that he could smell the old man?s sour sweat over the strong grassy animal scent of the horses. ?He and his sister used to play up in the pine trees when they was little.? A gnarled finger fixed on a stand of twisted millennial pine about halfway up the hill. ?Right there.?
?Yessir?? Elison tugged the reins, got the gelding settled for a bit. ?I?ve heard some wild tales about the place, I won?t lie.?
?Yeh. Something scared his sister one day, and she ran up into that fog. He went after her. He found her after an hour or two, he said it seemed like, and he brought her back down and took her to the ranch house to get her looked over. His ma was sitting on the porch when she saw ?em walkin? up, and she fainted dead away.? The rancher paused to draw breath. ?They?d been gone twenty year. Both of ?em was white ever after, all the color sucked right out of ?em. He used to tell me that he heard voices singin? up there, when he was lookin? for her. Like choirs of angels, he said.? The old man chuckled like knucklebones rattling in a cup. ?My grandpappy was fond of the rye whiskey, though. I never paid it no mind,? he added, and straightening up, he nudged his horse to ride on.
Cattle, like water and people, always seek the easiest way. Generations of animals had beaten a path onto the flank of the hill, carving it down until it was half a foot below the surface of the dirt around it and hard as concrete. The only explanation Elison could give himself, later, was that the old man was more focused on the smooth trail itself than he was on the grassy sides of it. He heard the rattle, and called out a warning, but it was too late. The snake struck the horse?s leg once, twice. Screaming, the old nag reared up?how the rancher kept his seat, Elison never could figure?and bolted up the hill.
There was nothing to be done for it, then. He rode up after, his own horse fighting the bit every step of the way. Twenty of the big bay?s long strides, and the fog was looming up over them. Five more, and he plunged into a whiteout as absolute as a midwinter blizzard.
His horse stopped dead then, sides heaving, head down and shuddering. The sound of the animal?s breathing was stilted, flat. No echoes. Elison stood up in the stirrups and looked around. Nothing. He couldn?t even see the ground below their feet.
?Shaw!? He called, and the fog ate his words. ?Berenger Shaw!? That was louder, to the same effect.
He sat back down in the saddle and strained to listen. He should have heard hoofbeats, should have heard the nag screaming. The old man should have heard him, should have called back. But there was nothing. He turned his head. Nothing. Turned his head. Nothing?
?wait. What was that?
A whisper of sound trickled through the fog pressing hard on every inch of him. A sound like?like?
?was that singing?
Elijah Donaldson was not a man to spook easy. Though he?d been beaten down by grief, neither was Elison Blue. When his blood ran cold in his veins at the thread of sound, of inhuman throats giving voice to something more beautiful than any song he?d ever heard, he refused to turn tail and run. Maybe it was monsters, he reasoned. Like the Siren in the story-books. Maybe Shaw was nearby, and he?d already been charmed by them, fallen prey to them. Shaw was his employer, and he had never in his life let a boss down.
He pulled the Kindler out of its sheath, rested the rifle on his thigh. He took the horse?s reins in his other hand in a good firm grip, and he did the only thing he could think of to do. Maybe if they came for him instead, it would give Shaw time to get away. He couldn?t find the man in this white forever. Maybe they?d both get lucky. He didn?t believe in the Duality, not anymore, but maybe the gods would smile on the poor rancher who didn?t ask for this.
?COME AND GET ME, YOU BASTARDS!? He shouted into the fog.
The voices swelled all around him, a million birds singing in perfect harmony in a tongue he could never hope to understand, no matter how hard he tried later. The fog swirled suddenly. Feathers filled the air, heavy wings beating like the hush after a thunderclap. They pulled him off his horse, then, and bore him up, up, up. His skull filled up with golden light and the sound of their singing.
Then they carried him away.
The hands found him, his horse, and Shaw, a month later. The three of them were fast asleep, laid out at the foot of the hill one morning like the undertaker was coming. It took another day for them to wake. All three of them were bone-white, the color bled out of them, even the big gelding that had been such a dark bay before. The old man took ill from it, and never did completely recover. He made it through the next spring, but died when the aestival winds came. It was only after the man?s death that Elison learned that he?d inherited the ranch. When the will was read before the hands and workers at the ranch, he sat stunned through it.
The solicitor came to him afterward. ?He said you saved his life,? the portly gent said. Elison stared up at him. The solicitor cleared his throat and continued, ?I was told to remind you that he had no descendants, and so there was no loss to your gain. Furthermore, I was told to give you this.?
The note only had three lines:
He was right
You know that now
Guard it well, boy
