Pins (5)

 

Sierra Nevada US
1849

Wind whipped the cliffs. Emmett scoured the camp. He went through the tents and bags. He emptied a leather backpack and loaded it with beans, hard biscuits, dried meat, dried fruit, and coffee. He packed down a tent, and filled Buck's saddlebags with water canteens, horse grain bags, bedroll, pots and clothing, before adjusting the girth, and rebuckling it. 

Inside their own tent, beside the blankets, he found their father's satchel, and from this he retrieved a revolver, a gunbelt, and a wooden box of cartridges. The gunbelt took an age to fix on, but he did not want to ask his sister for help. He did not want her to feel the escalation. After a moment's thought he slid a knife into the belt. 

Abigail knelt at the rise, wrapped in a blanket, crying and shaking. The sequoia around them stirred into sussuration, and within this rhythmic flutter Emmett moved as if in a trance. He was still fiddling with the tack when Abigail called him.

The horse stamped and tossed its head as he led it over to the drop. Abigail seized him by the trouser legs as he passed her. Below them the granite sprawl was shrouded with dust-clouds and across the merged volcanic slabs moved the dim shapes of a small remuda. The shapes clarified with each moment Emmett stood dumb and uncertain until they could hear the steady pulse of hooves through the gale.  

'Darn it,' he said.

Abigail rose, clutching at his arm. He lifted her onto the horse, swung up behind her, shifted his weight, and leg-cued the horse full circle. A dirt track appeared as an aperture in the dense sequoia before them and they trotted down the rocky pass to be swallowed by it.

*

Abigail pulled her blanket close.

'Do you think they all want to find us?' she whispered. 

Trees hemmed the thin track as if they were moving through a tunnel. Emmett reined the horse closer to the shadows. 

'I 'spect there's folks who want some answers,' he said. The branches shook and the wind whistled in hollows. They crunched over twigs and bracken. Vapour sifted from his lips. 

'What we goin' to do?' Abigail shivered. 'We cain't live in the mountains. We ain't got food forever. You cain't even cook. Where we goin' to sleep? I - '

'Abigail, goddamn it,' Emmett said. 'You don't miss a chance to shut up, do you?' 

She leaned forward, away from him. They lapsed into silence. He could hear her stewing, breathing through her teeth. Gangly branches spoked from the path's edges like wiry, grasping limbs. The red patches cutting through the interlocking boughes above them faded. Dusk came, and soon the darkness was all-encompassing. Emmett swallowed and pressed his hand on Abigail's shoulder.

'I'll be a hell of a lot happier when we're a good ways away from them,' he said. 'Then we can get workin' on all that other stuff. I wasn't aiming to make you mad.'  

Abigail shook his hand off.

'Yes you was,' she said.

He clucked his tongue. The horse trotted on through more blind twists, groaning. Branches grazed their faces, rain broke through the foliage, and the wind cast strange shrieking noises overhead. Past a certain point Emmett could no longer distinguish different levels of darkness. Abigail had slumped forward; she was snoring. He squeezed backwards and the horse stopped. 

The pots in the saddlebags clanked as he dismounted. He lifted Abigail down gently and carried her into the wall of trees at the side of the road, leading the horse with his free hand. They stepped between strapping trunks and over bloated, maggot roots. The horse was weaving and stalling on occasion. He stroked it and spoke to it softly. He found this nursed his own rising panic too. When they stepped into a small clearing, a vaguely circular grove, he called it quits and lowered Abigail down.

She was blinking and confused, and he wiped skeins of saliva from her lips with his sleeve. They were both soaked and miserable. He could not distinguish between the various bedroll, tarp, and canvas in the darkness. In the end he strung a line of rope between two trunks, draped some kind of fabric over it, and wrapped Abigail up inside. Then he watered the horse, removed the hackamore, and hobbled it. 

They were neither of them used to this dynamic; he worked from the side, fumbling the straps, whilst the horse pawed and jerked. Eventually it settled, and he loosened the cinches and pulled the wet saddle off. He emptied some grain into its feedbag, attached it, and left it eating in the rain. 

Abigail flinched when he ducked into the makeshift tent. Rain drilled the canvas. He slung his backpack off and rummaged in it. 

'You want some beans?' he said, turning a tin over in his hands.

'You ain't cookin' beans out there, Emmett,' she said.

He brushed his dripping fringe from his eyes and looked mournfully at the tin. Abigail pulled herself upright and lifted the blanket over her shoulder.

'You want some cold beans?' he said, sniffing.

'No,' she breathed, looking at him with concern. 'What do those biscuits taste like?'

Emmett reached for the package that had spilled out the bag, and bit into a hard biscuit.

'Kind of like wood might,' he mumbled, blowing crumbs.

'I'll have a wood biscuit,' Abigail said.

The wind was distorted within the confines of the tent; for a brief moment it resembled a howl, and they stared at each other. Emmett reached deeper into the backpack and removed a fat candle. He struck a match and Abigail saw the dark lines underscoring his eyes. She placed the biscuit to one side.

'Emmett, you need to sleep. You look half-dead, you...'

She trailed off and her eyes welled up again. Emmett had pulled a cloth bag from the backpack. He glanced up and saw her face. He crawled over beside her, pulled her close, and lifted the bag onto his lap. Abigail cuddled into him and watched as he removed a small wooden workbox from inside it. 

'What's that?' she said, rubbing her palms into her eyes.

Emmett opened the box and touched the red fabric lining it. He lifted a little leather notebook out and passed it to her. She looked at it as he removed a tiny black pin, and held it up to his eyes.

'I don't know,' he said. 'I found it in a safe on the train.'

Abigail's head lifted from his shoulder.

'And you just took it?'

He looked round at her bright, wide eyes. Her frizzy shock of hair.

'Well, I... I mean they was all dead, and we was... we don't have nothin', I - '

'Emmett, you shouldn't go stealing from folks! Look at Daddy, he - '

She paused. The little black pin in Emmett's hand flickered and twisted - briefly and elastically - into a series of strange shapes. For a ghostly second it appeared as a webbed sphere, a triangle, and a spitfire rattle of complex patterns beyond their comprehension. Abigail exhaled and clutched at his arm.

'You saw that?' he whispered.

She peered close. He was holding a pin. A little tapered, black cylinder. His hand was shaking. 

'Emmett, I don't like this,' she said. 'It don't look like anythin' you should be messin' around with. You seen some of the folk Daddy knew. We're in enough trouble. You shouldn't of took that.'

Emmett chewed his lip and placed the pin back in its box. Abigail flicked through the leather notebook. It was full of spiderish diagrams. There were long, odd words neither of them recognised, rendered in disconcerting, blockish type. She clasped it shut, placed it back in the box, and wrapped her little fingers around Emmett's right arm. 

'I don't like it, Emmett, and it ain't none of our business. It looks like bad things, or devilwork.'

Emmett tutted and clutched the box.

'There ain't no such thing as devilwork, Abi,' he sighed.

'Maybe it done depends on who's doin' the work,' Abigail said, lifting her hand and nudging his face round to meet her look. 'You should bury that, Emmett, and forget about it. Might be somethin' important to someone, or somethin' someone wants bad, if it was in a safe. If Daddy was willin' to risk getting kilt for it.'

Her face crumpled again and her head fell onto his shoulder. The candle threw warped shadow puppetry upon the canvas around them, spectral images that seemed borne forth from their thought processes. Emmett placed the box beside their blanket and held Abigail until she stopped crying. When she began yawning he blew the candle out and laid her head down on the makeshift pillow. 

In his mind's eye, Emmett saw their father's body, dusty volcanic slabs, lost horses and strange, flickering shapes, and then sleep took him. 

*

The darkness was absolute. For several seconds he had no idea where he was.

Rain on the tarp. Wind. He could hear the horse blowing and snorting. Stamping the ground. Abigail was fast asleep. He rolled over and shrugged the blanket off. The cold hit him. He couldn't see a thing. He felt along the dirt floor for the gunbelt. Panic hit. He fumbled it on. Couldn't get it tight. He grasped at twigs and folds of blanket: the knife. 

He tripped out into a downpour. He saw the shadow of the horse buck wildly, and a separate flutter of movement within the wall of dark trees around them. He palmed his belt, spun, and tried to locate it. Black layers bound and shifted, and nothing was distinct. 

He backed up towards the tent and saw the horse rear again, and then he saw a second horse between the giant sequoia trunks. It was white and ghostly. Its eyes were pure white, and it was steaming and dripping. He made to palm his belt again and remembered he was already holding the gun. Branches broke behind him and he flailed round. He lifted the Colt shaking. Everything was a thatched grid of crooked twigs, impenetrable black and primal phantasma. 

The horse reared again and broke its ropes. Emmett turned. Rain slashed. He looked back towards the tent and there were two shapes standing beside it. Two men. He felt warm urine running down the inside of his legs. The man closest made for him. He saw the duster coat and the felt crown hat. The face swaddled in cloth but for a sliver exposing two lidless, egg-white eyes. 

The man lunged. Emmett's right knee trembled and buckled, and a knife missed his neck. The cloth-faced man was unbalanced and Emmett shot. He heard a guttural hiss. There was a weight against his body, and some kind of black spatter on his hand. It burned. He dropped the pistol. The horse barrelled past him and he rolled, dug his hands into the ground, and pushed the dead body off himself. 

He was attempting to stand when he felt a hot pain across his shoulders. He stumbled and twisted. He saw a second set of lidless white eyes encased in a cloth mask, and a knife swung again as he ducked. It caught his forehead and he ran forward, weaving and groping for his belt. The cloth-faced man hacked wildly as he passed, and Emmett felt his left arm open above the elbow. He collapsed against the tent and heard Abigail scream. He rolled, and the man's knife rent a hole in the canvas. 

When Emmett stood his legs were quivering and blood obscured his eyes. He clutched his own knife and swayed. The grove swayed with him and his eyes stung with tears. Urine pooled in his boots. He dropped down as the man came again with furious, erratic swings. He managed a clean cut through the thigh and heard the same terrible hiss. He pulled the blade free and drove it up between the legs. 

The noise this time was a piercing screech that seemed to oscillate and burrow into his ears. Black fluid seared his hands. The cloth-faced man sunk to his knees. Emmett jerked the knife out, cut the man's throat, and collapsed.
 

 

https://www.abctales.com/story/stephen-thom/pins-6