Chapter 5

The last two weeks were like nothing he'd ever experienced before. From dawn to dusk there was something new and different to explore each day, something to find, to take. Dean Hollis had taken pains to accommodate him, lending a nice sleeping space in the warmest corner of the cabin. He taught him tricks with a pistol and how to con a man in a game of poker. Will kept his distance mostly, but leant Y books from his personal collection and took time to talk about them when Y had questions. They bonded particularly over the works of James Copper, a writer whose works about the frontier Y had read back home, and whose book Laramie Y still carried around in his satchel. Then came Emerson, Thoreau and a poet named Whitman. Will said he had a fondness for rugged imagery.

Percy took Y fishing, showed him how to gut and cook panfish and what drinks paired best with it. He was a quiet and private man but he livened considerably when plied with gin, which was often enough. Percy also played a guitar, and regaled the group in the evenings with songs he picked up across his travels. He sang "The Battle of New Orleans" one evening and all the men were left stunned with tearful eyes. Y, who had been drinking with them, despite his utter confusion teared up as well. His personal favorite of Percy's repertoire was "Oh Susanna" because he knew the words, and the group let him beller the lyrics alone and clapped and cheered at his performance.

Wynchell was a gentle soul who was probably most fond of the boy next to Dean. He took frequent hikes around the area surrounding the cabin, found all kinds of trails and even the remains of an old settlement. He took Y with him and showed him various leftover relics, tools brown with rust and blended into the ground, a collapsed wooden shelter absorbed into overgrowth, a wagon missing one of its wheels, slumped over like a drunkard passed out at the bar. There was a burrow nearby that he thought might house a badger and said for Y to avoid it as much as possible. You didn't want to disturb a badger. The giant knew how to brew basic medicine and showed Y good berries from bad, how to set traps, skin furs and the ins and outs of reinforcing boots and clothing with protective layers of animal skins. By the end of one afternoon, Y's boots were transformed into two large animals swimming up his legs. The leather had been wrapped with treated possum and fox hide so that they were not only warmer and effectively winterized but now also significantly more waterproof. He began showing Y the finer points of riding a horse, and Acorn made a great volunteer for the exercises. She was content to chew on anything Wynchell fed her, and had a special lack of interest in doing anything but clopping about at a moderate speed. Still, after the first week, Y felt that the horse regarded him with certain affection, as she loved to take things out of his palm as well. She never bucked him.

The only one to keep herself an enigma to Y was Hannah, who kept skeptical watch of him but otherwise ignored him. She seemed to be the one who gave orders and kept everyone in line. Often when Y was off doing something fun with one of the group she would come upon them fuming, demanding they do something useful rather than mess about with "the boy". She was also the only one to have made a trip to the nearby town, which she did once to sell Wynchell's furs and to buy dry goods. Sometimes late at night when Y couldn't sleep, he would hear footsteps going through the cabin, and then the front door creaking open and then closing. When he investigated, he found Hannah outside, alone and under the stars, not doing anything except for staring. He had no idea what she could be thinking, if she was sleepwalking or in some kind of a trance. He hadn't worked up the courage to ask her about it, but it was just another thing about her which fascinated him. She seemed vicious and mean, but also lonely and sad, and he found himself asking the men about her only to have those questions laughed off. "Give her time," they all said, in one way or another, "she'll come around if you can make us some money."

Now the momentum of the Hollis Gang's great train robbery was coming to an ebb, Hannah said. When she went to town, she said, most folks assumed the robbers had fled the state. It was time they actually did so. She brought it up at dinner to all of them, which Dean didn't appreciate, and the consensus was that she was right. It was time to move on, go to Minnesota. Then Dakota Territory. That meant Deerhead.

"By the end of summer you'll be there," Dean had said to Y. "In New Attica."

"How exciting for him," Hannah had said.

"And New Attica means gold," Will added.

"What of it?" said Hannah.

"Come on, Hannah," Dean said, "just think on what a few renegades could get up to in New Attica."

"Don't need to," she sniped. "I read the papers."

The next morning Y was awoken early by Percy and Wynchell, who wanted to go hunting. They whispered to him to hurry up, and when he met them outside they showed him a Rhineland rifle. Will had carved a ground sloth into the stock.

It was yet dark. Wynchell carried two glowing lanterns and handed one to his brother. Percy rode a grey mare who was supposedly ancient, and went trotting ahead with her. Y was sat up on the back of Acorn and handed the rifle.

"Keep that close, hear? The Lady Dark brings with her tenants of evil," Wynchell then spurred on Acorn, and they were off in the wake of Percy.

They rode at a quiet, easy pace through natural trails of trampled earth. The anticipation of finding a giant ground sloth distracted Y from his exhaustion. He had read about them at length, and used to study illustrations of them which appeared in a book called The Great Encyclopedia of North America's Megafauna. The drawings showed a lumbering creature with shaggy earthen coats and long, rackish claws that curved like hooks.

"Remember that badger's lair," whispered Wynchell, once they had come off the trail and entered into a clearing. Prairie grass reached up and tickled Acorn's neck, swallowed up Wynchell's boots. "That beast finds us we're breakfast. Keep that rifle steady."

Y held it tightly with one hand while the other gripped Wynchell's massive shoulders. Up ahead he could make out the distant shadow of Percy on his mare.

Nature was waking up. They had been riding for some twenty minutes or so and the dark sky was starting to brighten. Turkeys gobbled out from their hidden roosts. Small creatures scattered leaf and twig. Branches stirred with the wakening of sparrows and swallows whistling their morning tunes. And somewhere off in the distance, but not too far, there was the twinkling music of running water.

"Okay, just a little ways ahead now," Wynchell whispered. "See that giant oak?"

"I think." Wynchell was pointing in front of him. There were many large oaks about but one in particular was Gargantuan, bearded with ivy, its limbs nearly as thick as another tree's trunk. It's bark was ashen with green acne. Percy appeared out of the dark brush, silhouetted against the tree.

"That's our mark."

Acorn brought them over and when they got there Percy dismounted. He was holding a pair of binoculars. On the other side of the oak the land dipped and flattened into an expansive section of prairie. Percy stuck the binoculars to his eyes and looked from side to side.

Y dismounted and Wynchell brought Acorn over to Percy's mare, lazily hidden in a patch of thick scrub.

"Hey Wynchell," Percy whistled. Wynchell came and stood next to his brother, gesturing Y to do the same.

"Still there?" Wynchell said.

"Still there. They're awake yet too."

Percy offered the binoculars to Y. "See if you can spot em."

Y looked where he thought Percy had but couldn't see anything. The grass was too high and thick. But as he scanned back through the prairie he came across a dark copse in the middle of it all. He kept scanning and found another one. He thought it a little strange. Then the copses moved. Their leaves were not leaves, their trees not trees. Limbs swam up and out of the high grass. What seemed to be a head lolled about a rack of huge shoulders. Y's heart raced. His eyes grew huge. He gasped. "They're massive!" he said. "Just look at em!"

"We got to get closer to take a shot," Percy said. "Let's head us down a ways and keep to the trees. Where timber turns to pasture is where we'll post up."

He and Wynchell took the lead, Y with the rifle tailing them in a single-file march down the slope. Y was able to keep his feet without much concentration and was thankful for the extra layers of protection on his boots from the thistle and thorn which tore and bit after him as he passed. The closer they came to prairie the taller the grass became, till it was like the walls of an old fort, thick with secret and the dark, holding within it untold visions and nightmares. He wondered how he'd ever get a shot off at this angle.

Then Percy and Wynchell stopped. They stood at the base of a gnarled red maple, whose gangly limbs just cleared the tall grass. The first rays of dawn began to melt the dark, starry sky above.

"Up and at em," Percy said. He and Wynchell turned and faced Y.

"Be like the bear, claim your feast," Wynchell said, taking Y by his shoulders and staring into his eyes. "Don't fear the fall, but the shame of failure. But most importantly, don't fear."

"And engage the safety on the rifle," said Percy.

"I'll give you a boost up," Wynchell said.

Y went over to the maple and Wynchell grabbed his waist and hoisted the boy onto his shoulders. With the rifle, safety on, strapped around his back Y reached up and took hold of a thick branch above his head. Even standing on Wynchell's giant shoulders and trying to launch with his feet flat would not get him up and over, however, so Wynchell had to take hold of Y's ankle and lift him up.

Y, now straddling this branch, made for the next. There was a crevice he used to jockey his weight. Swinging himsef from left to right and launching, he caught the next highest branch and swung up over it. Below he saw Wynchell and Percy miming their adjulation. Over the next branch, again navigated by gaining a foothold with his left leg this time, Y gained a wide field of view of the prairie in front of him. He guessed he was only five or so feet up from the grass, maybe twelve feet from the ground, but he could see out across the undulating prairie and make out the dark lumps he had earlier mistaken for copses. Now that he was closer, the mistake seemed absolutely foolish and naive. These beings were unmistakable.

He unslung the rifle and nearly lost his balance. He tried a few positions but ended up lying on his belly along the branch, which was just wide enough to support him. He extended the rifle before him. He kept his elbows on the branch so that the barrel had maneuverability, and he began surveying the lumbering behemoths in the grass.

His heart thumped wildly inside of his chest. His eyes swallowed his surroundings greedily. There was one sloth in particular that caught his attention, one which would catch anyone's attention, for down its back ran a swath of orange, reddish hair which in the morning sunlight filtering through the yellow-green prairie grass positively shone with regal magnificence. Y, turning off the safety and pulling back the bolt to chamber a round, nearly felt heartsick for a moment. It struck him how cruel it would be to end such a beautiful creature's journey unceremoniously, and he tried to think on what his father would be saying. Hold your breath, control your breath. Ignore your heart. Ignore everything but what you have in your sights. Take a breath, shoot. Squeeze the trigger slowly, shoot.

Suddenly, he didn't want to do it, but he also didn't want to disappoint Dean nor any in his group, as Y had come to have an affinity for these new...well he wouldn't be too embarrassed to call them "friends". Maybe a little hesitant, sure, but they were as much his friends as anything else.

He fired his shot.

Its declarative pop rang rippling through the high grass like a shockwave. Percy and Wynchell could be heard hooting and shouting below. Y, his heart beating so violently it felt like he could see it in his shirt, felt immediate pangs of tragedy and guilt. His eyes dropped from the orange-backed ground sloth as his grip on the rifle went limp.

Then he heard a roar. A bloodcurdling, tremors-of-the-earth roar. The whooping and cheering below dissipated at once.

"Y! Get down right now, boy!" Percy yelled up at him. There was concern in his voice.

"Jump!" Wynchell cried. "Jump down and I'll catch you. He's rearing!"

"You pissed him off, kid! Jump!"

Y, in his scramble to even sit back up on his branch, lost control of the shifting of his weight and went careening sideways off the tree. He went down hard, his hips crashing against a lower branch, while twig and stick scratched him and raked his skin. He landed with a shock in Wynchell's arms. The rifle had been sent into the tall grass.

"Run!" Percy cried. "Run run run!"

Y felt himself being carried. In a daze, he opened his eyes and nearly wet himself at what he saw. It came crashing out of the grass, furious and powerful, a huge sloth barreling after them with its powerful limbs. It moved not unlike a bear, but with its longer arms it seemed to be much faster.

"Into the grass!" Y screamed.

The sloth was closing in on Percy.

"It's gonna kill us we have to go into the grass!" Y screamed again.

"Do it, Wynchell!" Percy shouted, cutting a sudden left and bounding into the cover of the prairie grass.

Wynchell followed suit.

Grass slapped at them as they rushed through it. The creature's howls came closer and closer, and the tremendous commotion of the beast crashing after them was like the sound of that train engine starting up after the robbery.

Y heard gunshots popping ahead of them. Percy must have been trying to create a stampede of sorts to confuse the monster. Smaller creatures like rabbits and foxes, and larger ones like deer went bounding and scampering by. The ground sloth kept its pace behind them.

"Can you see it, Y?" Wynchell yelled. "Shoot it!"

Y reached down and took Wynchell's revolver out of his holster. It was a double-action, the likes of which Y had never shot and which he didn't at first recognize, but when he aimed it over Wynchell's shoulders and fired into the grass he was glad the hammer jumped right back to where it was supposed to be and the cylinder rotated promptly.

For a moment nothing happened. Hoping the horror was over with Y and Wynchell began to regroup. They were both surprised, however, when a claw shot like a blade out of the grass on their right side, catching on Wynchell's bear pelt cloak and digging into the flesh above his hip.

Wynchell howeled much like the sloth did, and he collapsed face first into the ground, launching Y forward in the same manner. Y at once turned about and screamed out in horror as the sloth emerged full bodied upon Wynchell and began to rip at his torso and face. Even Wynchell's massive arms were not enough to keep the creature's fearsome force at bay.

Y, still holding onto the double-action, aimed it two-handed at the ground sloth and emptied the cylinder, all shots in rapid succession colliding with the large target. The sloth reeled backwards, making like it wanted to lunge at Y, but instead collected its forelegs underneath it and propelled itself into a retreat back within the grass.

The world went eerily still around them, and only Y's and Wynchell's panting breaths could be heard.

Y went over to Wynchell and offered him a hand. But the big man lumbered to his feet on his own.

"You ok?" Y asked him.

Though raked with large gashes across his chest, and one along his forehead, and his hair and beard and clothes all matted with his own blood, Wynchell nodded. Y handed him his revolver back.

"You have saved me," Wynchell said breathlessly.

"And you me."

Wynchell grinned till his eyes lit up as if just remembering their predicament. "Where's Percy? Have you seen him? Percy!" he called out. He cupped his hands around his mouth and called again: "Percy!"

They heard nothing back.

"Son of a bitch," Wynchell said. "Let's see if we can get out of here, quick. We was headed that way, I believe." He looked up and behind him to reference the sun.

Y followed him and it was some time before they at last came out of the grass and into another timberline. This cluster of elm and oak was sparsely pocketed and through the gaps and spaces between the trees they could see country and pasture again. The hill leading up to the massive oak was behind them but lateral with the hills rolling upwards and out of the timbergrowth.

On the other side of the timber, where the pasture stretched westward in a sort of valley, hills climbed again to the horizon, and set upon them was what looked to be a farmhouse.

Y was staring at it when he heard his name called.

"It's Percy!" Wynchell said. "I found him!"

Y went with him deeper into the timber, where they found a narrow stream. It flowed lazily at their feet, and on the other side of it Percy was washing himself.

"I'm all damned tore up," he said, rubbing at a gouge in his shoulder.

Wynchell crossed the stream and knelt beside his brother, washing and scrubbing at his own wounds in a like manner. "Least it wasn't no ground sloth got to you."

"Hell, you're just as big as one of them bastards." He glanced at Y and went back to his business. "Will ain't going to be pleased bout you losing that rifle."

Y's head dropped. "I'm sorry about all of that."

"Well...next time you ought to--"

"Hiya fellers."

Y looked up.

There was a man standing there, and a boy. The man had on a straw hat and a pair of coveralls. He wore thick black boots and a pair of thick white cotton gloves. He had a groomed dark beard but a shaved head. His son had long, auburn curls, and was wiry, thinner than Y though he appeared to be the same age.

"Howdy," Percy said tentatively, standing up and brushing his hands on the front of his pants.

Wynchell kept quiet, crouching over the stream.

"Don't suppose that was you making a fuss out there," the man grinned. He was carrying a shotgun around his shoulder. "We was aiming to do a little deer hunting ourselves. Didn't know there was other folk about."

"Yes, well, we seem to have gotten a little lost," Percy chuckled, feigning embarrassment. "Sprung up on a ground sloth burrow, I guess. Spooked our horses and nearly clawed us in twine, each of us."

"You fellers are lucky to be alive," the man said. "You ain't come from town, I guess. Couldn't be you're at the Vanderburg cabin? That was supposed to be abandoned."

"I couldn't say," Percy said. He shot Wynchell a terse look but it went unnoticed.

"Folk are all jittery after that train robbery couple weeks back. They're saying lights and noises are coming from that old place. Awful strange."

"I reckon, but we need to find our horses now."

"I don't doubt it," the man said, still grinning stupidly. "Say, my boy and I, we know this land, it's our land, here to that farmhouse on yonder. We could help. It'll cost you though."

Wynchell stood up at last, looking grevious and menacing. He looked from Y to Percy then back to Y.

"That's ok, friend," Percy said. "We'll make out."

"Aw, it ain't nothing. We don't ask for much. Maybe a couple dollars. Call it twenty dollars. We'll help for that."

"Twent dollars! I ain't got no twenty dollars, sir. And besides, them horses ain't worth twenty dollars put together. Couple of ol nags is all they are."

"Suit yourself, but perhaps we'll help you out in other ways."

Y thought from the man's tone and the glint in his eyes that he was awfully pleased with himself.

"We really best be getting on, but humbly thank ye--"

"Perhaps I'll help keep your secret, that is," the man said. His son looked up at him, grinning stupidly.

"Our secret? Sir, whatever--"

"I ain't a fool." The man's tone was suddenly serious, though he was still smiling. "I knowed what was up when I seen you. I knowed. Don't think I can't see at night--"

"You and your accusations, sir, got no place--"

"--and being I'm your closest damn neighbor--"

Wynchell took Y's arm. "Let's go," he said.

"But--" He couldn't do anything to protest, Wynchell was dragging him away.

He heard the man's banter with Percy growing louder and higher-pitched. It was becoming angry.

"What's gonna happen?" Y asked, trying to wrench his arm free and wincing at the pain.

"Something you don't need to see. Let's get the horses. Acorn'll be glad to see you."

"But Wynchell, your brother!"

"He'll be fine, boy. Trust me."

"Wynchell!"

Then he heard them. Two gunshots, loud and final, ringing out through the timber.