Chapter 8

"Should we burn it down?" Percy stared back at the cabin as his brother finished loading the wagon.

Dean and Hannah watched Wynchell and Will work at the wagon. Dean looked at the lonely cabin. "And why would we do that?"

Percy threw his arms up and huffed. "Add to the mystery, I guess."

"We ain't burning nothing down," Will quipped. He was tightening up the bolts fastening the wagon wheels to the axis. The wrench he held looked far too heavy for him, yet he wielded it in one hand as if it was a stick he found lying on the ground.

Y was with Hannah and Dean, paying more attention to the sounds of the dim morning and hoping they would wake him up. He had been given coffee during their quick and meager breakfast but it had so far failed to sustain any drive in him. He wanted to go back to sleep.

They were headed for a place called Hera in Minnesota. Supposedly it used to be a big town along the Great Lakes railroad since succumbed to Sioux raids and mostly abandoned. Whoever remained there did so because they were outlaws like the Hollis Boys. Dean knew it. Bragged about it--guaranteed they'd be safe there. The best part was that Hera was close to a place called Wilmington, a sort of resurrection of Hera that had blossomed into the modern metropolis Hera was supposed to be. And they had a very nice bank, according to Dean.

"Days of riding out in front of us and we ain't got shit for food," Hannah said. "We ought to stop at--"

"We ain't risking that," Dean said firmly. "We get to Hera as quickly as possible. Should make it in less than a week."

"A week? Dean, what will we eat? Where will we sleep?"

"Less than. I said less than a week. You're so busy readying a complaint you can't listen for nothing. And we got money, we got hunters."

"Hunters who can't shoot," Hannah stole a look at Y but the youth ignored her. "Anyway, where are we gonna stay when we get to Hera?"

Wynchell finished with the last of their luggage and went around to the front to hitch the rig to Acorn.

Will came over and slapped Dean on the shoulder. "That should do it, then. I'll be glad to get out of the wilderness."

Dean laughed. "Ah, but we are creatures lost in the wildernesses, lost and involved with it as anything else. What do you say, Y? To Hera?"

Y looked up at him. "I'm sorry?"

They rode out just after seven and didn't pass another traveler until they swung out around the prairie where they had hunted ground sloth, rode alongside the tracks for a few miles, then joined the main road to the northwest. They rode on through lunch, Y taking a bit of dried and salted venison to sate his hunger and the rest settling for a wad of tobacco. Y rode atop Old Nectar, Dean's big blonde warhorse. When he saw Hannah, astride her mare Donna, spit a long brown ball of saliva into the air he about fell off the horse. He could never imagine his mother chewing tobacco. He remembered how she hated to catch his father with it.

The sky above them stayed overcast and drab for most of the morning, threatening rain. There were even subtle echoes of thunder. But no storm came. Rather the sky began to lighten, and while the clouds remained sunlight passed through them and warmed the earth gradually.

For many miles Y kept quiet, answering Dean's various attempts at conversation with simple, monosyllabic replies. As the sun appeared, however, and as they drove out into new country and pastureland, Dean became more serious.

Old Nectar went at a lazy gait. Donna and Acorn and Percy's mare Glory went on at a trot, gaining a considerable lead on Dean and Y.

"Let's talk Y. Man to man."

"Okay."

Dean held the reins in one hand. The other brushed casually against his side. He turned his head so that Y could see half of his face, one of his eyes.

"What happened back there, with Percy and Wynchell, that weren't anyone's fault, understand? Sometimes unfortunate things just happen, and you have to be a man and react to them accordingly."

Y thought he knew what point Dean was driving at and didn't want much of a part of it. "That man, his kid...they was just as surprised to see us as we was to see them. Couldn't we just have lied and made off like we're doing now?"

Dean looked back again with a blank expression. "No, Y, we couldn't have. See, we had that train job planned for weeks. Knew the schedule, speed. We chose that cabin as part of the whole deal. Scouted it out. 'Removed' its former occupants. Ambush wouldn't have worked without it. These things, our life...and it is, 'our life', it's that of a soldier. We fight for our way. We fight them that need it. For the small folk--our folk. And you know what they say about war.

"In our life, decency gets you caught. Getting caught gets you killed. Life or death, the soldier's way. For your daddy it's the same. That's why he's a hero. I been a soldier all my life. I seen you and knowed you had it in you. Was I correct?"

Y didn't know. He certainly didn't think of himself as a soldier, didn't look like one either. On the other hand it was what he wanted. He knew that. He was going to fight Indians just like his dad. When he answered "yes" to Dean's query, it felt good.

"Damn straight I was correct. You're a soldier. You'll be a proper one by the time we get to Deerhead. I'll see to that personally. So if you're a soldier, who is your general?"

"You, I guess."

"You're guessing? I don't know no 'U' either. Just a 'Y'. So, who's your general?"

"Dean Hollis is my general."

Dean turned back with a huge grin, slapping Y's shoulder as Will had earlier done to him. "That's right, kid. And I'm gonna make you a hell of a fighter, and rich as all hell besides that."

"That's a deal, then." Y looked down at his hands, wanting to fidget, to feel something small in his palm, something he could squeeze or throw or jam in his mouth--anything that could but dream of resisting him. He smelt then the foliage carried on a vigorous wind, and looked out across a swollen belly of green pasture turning golden in the sun thinking of running, only running, through the pasture and the prairie, back over the hill where the farmhouse stood...

"We've been doing this a long time, too," Dean continued. "Up and down the country, from Springfield to Deerhead to Little Luxembourg in Wisconsin. You been? Aw, hell, what am I saying? We are experienced in the fine art of self-emancipation. A game of survival, Y. Us versus them, and we are winning. Don't forget that. Can seem a little like we ain't but always we are ahead. I know the score."

"Is Hera a pretty town?" Perhaps that would do it, a pretty town. Some soldier he was. Postulating escape. "I have a notion all the little farm towns look one way and feel another."

"You're right. Hera, though, she's pretty. Will and I stayed there a few years back. Met some fine people. They're just getting by. Haunted by that massacre, no doubt. But they persevere. Ain't no one gonna make them move."

"Let's hope they like us, then."

Dean flicked his wrists. The reins leapt and snapped. Old Nectar whinnied and picked up pace. The tails of the other horses flapped and switched ahead of them. They dwindled into dappled shadow as the sun came down upon them, their shadows and the swishing tails made a living picture in the road.

"Fine day's ride never fails to brighten my spirits," Dean said to no one in particular. He caught up to the rest of his gang and soon after they went off the road to rest for the night. After their dinner and campfire storytelling, when most everyone else was drunk and washed out, Y once again caught Hannah stark sober staring above at a silvery stream of stars. He followed where he thought she was looking. It was like looking at glitter, a cosmos more akin to firmament than astrology, or perhaps those were one in the same. The wind had calmed to a whisper. Owls mourned in the night. A fox screamed. Nocturnal rodents scampered in the brush and timber just out of sight.

When Y looked back for Hannah, she was gone.