Chapter 30

Olive Augusta Radley, 1909

There was an old bridge a half mile south of the new bridge on Coal Creek…that was called Hold Up Bridge and it deserved the name.

—LeRoy Ward, 1938. Indian-Pioneer Papers Collection, interview by Grace Kelley.

I sink down on the steps out back of the church house and let my head fall against the wall. I'm numb to the bone from serving the women's club meeting and washing the dishes all by myself. Tula went with Amos to help some old lady finish picking field peas and okra before the August dry comes and burns it all to nothing.

My hands are raw, my arms are skinny as a hen's legs, and my good pinny dress looks poor, even though I try to wear an apron whenever I can borrow one. Mrs. Grube made her way to the meeting today, which must mean Mr. Grube is away working the trains. Her eyes got big when I wobbled on my feet, carrying a teapot.

"Why, Hazel!" she said, and leaned back to get a better look at me. "Good heavens. I hardly knew you. Are you quite all right?"

"Yes, ma'am. Just workin' hard."

"Too hard, I'd say."

"Oh, no, ma'am. Not that hard." Then I saw she was looking at my hands, so I stuck them behind my back.

Her lips pushed together over her gap teeth, and she grabbed my chin, moving my face this way and that, studying on me. "How is your mother's health, child?"

"Oh, it's better. Better every day."

"And your little brother?"

"Growin' like a weed. He likes it real well at the house Daddy moved us to till Mama gets past her ailment." I wanted to tell Mrs. Grube, I been reading your articles in the paper, but the handbell rang, calling the ladies to take their seats.

Mrs. Grube ignored the bell. "I would very much like to speak with your mother," she said before finally turning loose of me. "Today the women's club will be discussing the fundraising to provide scholarships for girls of good manners and fine potential. Girls such as yourself, Hazel. It's imperative that young ladies in this new state of ours have the opportunity to remain in school. A society is only as good as its women."

"Oh yes, ma'am. My mama says that very thing."

"Does she, now?"

The bell rang again, and I was never so glad for a bell in my whole life. I took two steps back to get away from Mrs. Grube's questions. That put me close enough to grumpy old Mrs. Tinsley to hear her saying that restarting the library wagon's visits would have to be postponed. Even with the July Joyner gang finally in jail, the roads were still not safe. Just days ago, a widow woman's wagon got held up at Jack Crossing by wild boys wearing masks cut from sackcloth. One of them threatened the old woman with a pocketknife and took her lunch basket before galloping away on a scrawny calico pony.

I could hardly keep on with my work after that. My hands shook, and all day long I waited for one of the ladies to ask, "Hazel, don't you have a spotted pony?"

Nobody did, but all alone on the church's back step, I can't help thinking how wrong I was to let the boys keep the mule and Skedee after they made good money working on a hay crew. The first chance Dewey got to split off from Amos, he took Finnis and Fergus, and instead of hunting for more work, they went hunting trouble.

From the sound of Mrs. Tinsley, they've found it.

Soon as I see Tula, we'll call a council and make a vote on what happens to liars and stealers. But if we throw them out of Shelterwood, we'll have to give back their hay money. If we give back their hay money, we won't have enough to buy some used shoes, plus food stores and seed. We already don't have enough.

I think on it while I wait for the last clubwomen to leave so I can pick through the trash. Maybe we don't need so much, if everything's like we left it at the old place—crocks and shelled nuts in the spring house, sacks of seed corn hung in the cabin rafters, buckets, hoe, rake, and shovel. Saws and hammers. Quilts and beds. The pretty blue-and-white china canisters that read Flour, Sugar, Salt, and Tea. Daddy carried those from Fort Smith to surprise Mama, and her with her hand on her hip saying, "Keyes Radley, you shouldn't have done that. I've got no more need for such fine things."

"Sadie-gal, you are a fine thing," he teased, and grabbed her up and swung her around. "We'll make a good life, you and me. Like I promised when we planned to come up the mountain."

The remembering makes me smile and hurt at the same time. I want that cabin with the whole family in it, not just dishes and quilts.

My eyes go closed, and I get lost in thinking I can want it bad enough to make it real. For a minute, it is real, but then I hear, "Hazel…Hazel…come in here, please." It's old Mrs. Tinsley. The back door of the church is open, and she can see me sitting on the steps.

"Hazel! Come here please!" Now it's for sure there's trouble. She's figured out about the pony. I hop up quick, but the rucksack's weight throws me off, and my foot goes from wood step to nothing.

I tumble through the air and hit the stone walk flat on my back. The breath goes out of me. Black specks swirl around my eyes as I stare up at the sky and listen at Mrs. Tinsley running down the steps.

"Oh, good heavens!" Her shadow blocks the sun. "What have you done, now? You are such an ungainly little thing."

A hand clamps over my arm, a man's hand, big and strong. It lifts me up like I weigh nothing at all, and I figure I'm in for it from both Mrs. Tinsley and the parson. Stumbling up the stairs into the church house, half carried, half dragged, I try to think of what I can say to get past this trouble, but soon as we're in the door, I know that's not the parson who's got me by the arm.

I smell fodder and manure, whiskey and sweat.

And W. E. Garrett snuff.

The stink of all the times I got hauled to the barn and had the fire whipped out of me by Tesco Peele. I know him even before he dumps me on the floor, and I push to my hands and knees, my elbows buckling and my ribs aching while I gulp for air. My bonnet's come off, and my hair hangs in a dark curtain. Through it, I see his boots, bull-hide bottom, tall roughout tops stained with the blood and sweat of horses he's torn up with his spurs.

Mrs. Tinsley's black button shoes are behind his, one toe tap-tapping on the floor. "Well, there you have the girl," she says. "Deal with her as you will." She leans over me. "Runaway! And a liar, as well. Shame! For shame. Sir, I suggest you take her in a firm hand, lest she continue in her wayward behaviors."

"And I plan to." Tesco thanks her kindly for the help before she leaves. The door slams shut, and then it's just him and me.

"C'mon, now, you ain't all that hurt," he says like always, so you'll know he can hurt you a lot worse. "Git up and tell me how you come to be here, Ollie Auggie…because I been lookin' a-a-all over for you."

Where usually I'd stand my tallest and face him for the stubborn of it, this time I stay down, cough and choke, try to figure out how I can get away.

"I said, stand up." Squatting beside me, he clamps a hand over the back of my neck. "There you go, get a breath. Now answer me, Ollie Auggie. What are you doin' here? Yer mama's been missin' you real bad."

"Muh…muh-ma?" I wheeze.

"There, see, you can talk after all." One finger traces along my cheek, pulls my hair away so I can see him leaning close. "She's been bad worried. Walkin' the floors night and day, waitin' on you to come home."

My heart cracks open. More than anything, I want to believe Mama's at the window, not facedown in the bed from her powders and whiskey. She's watching for me. The house is warm, and there's food. My bed is waiting up in the attic…

"Everything's gonna be different now." Tesco's voice goes soft, friendly.

I nod. I'm worn out of being bone-tired and scared and trying to make it on my own.

"Nobody's mad at ya."

I nod again, finally catch a real breath.

"That's a good girl," Tesco says, syrup-sweet. "Now, where's our lil' Nessie Bessie? 'Cause we been missin' her, special."

Where's our lil' Nessie Bessie…

…missin' her, special.

I think of him standing over Nessa's bed. I think about what happened to Hazel. Every word from Tesco Peele's mouth is a lie. If Mama did have her mind back, she wouldn't send Tesco to look for me. She wouldn't even be with him at all. She'd leave him and come find me herself.

Nessa can't go back there, ever.

I lift my arm, point a finger like I mean to show where she's at. "Over th…there."

The minute he turns, I slam my hands into his knees, push off, scramble up and run as he topples onto the floor. The dry goods store isn't far. If I'm lucky, the screen door's still open in back. I can…

I don't even finish thinking it before Tesco's on his feet, his long legs splayed out like he's hazing a wild heifer in a cattle pen.

A smile slides under his thin, hay-colored mustache, but it ain't a nice smile. "Where you goin', Ollie? Tryin' to get back to the whorehouse? You been whorin' like your mama? Runs in the family, after all."

"You shut up!"

"Oh, now"—Tesco wags a finger—"surely Keyes Radley did you the favor of tellin' you the truth about your mama. But then, it is Keyes Radley we're talkin' about; Keyes and the truth wasn't close travelin' partners."

"Don't talk about my daddy like that."

"Your daddy?" Laughing, he looks me over head to toe. "And I always thought you was a smart little girl, Ollie. Do you see any part of you that looks like Keyes Radley? Next time you git at a mirror, study on whether you look more like Mr. E. Niles Lockridge's two pretty little daughters. The ones that's got his name. Keyes Radley ain't your sainted papa. He's just a two-bit hustler and sometime fur trapper. Only real job he ever had was bein' a body man for Lockridge, and he couldn't even do that honest."

"You stop it! You stop!"

"You know what a Lockridge body man does, Ollie? He gits rid of them dead Indians…the ol' widows or little kids that's killed off by a sickness…or…well, say…some accident happens after Lockridge has his name on their land papers, oil papers, guardian papers. Ain't gonna be the high-and-mighty mister that dirties his hands haulin' away the carcasses. He needs somebody else to take the dead ones off into the mountains, bury them where nobody will ever know. That's what Keyes Radley was."

I push back against the wall, dig my fingers into wood and stone. My mind spins. "That's a lie! You shut up! Anumpulit issa! Anumpulit issa!"

Tesco's head ticks side to side like a rooster's. "Why, Ollie, you been talkin' Choctaw since you left us? Because that's where I hunted for you after we seen your picture in the paper with them girls from the Choctaw boardin' school. You gave ol' Lockridge a real toad choker when he read that name printed, Hazel Rusk. He thought lil' Hazel had come back to git him, but there was your sweet face instead. You fit right in, though. Kind of figures you would. Folks say there's some Choctaw blood in the Lockridges, but you'd have to ask your real daddy if that's true."

"You stop it! Keyes Radley is my daddy. You're a liar. You always lie."

"I'm your only friend, Ollie," Tesco coos. "I am your one friend 'cause I'm the only thing keepin' Miz Lockridge from packing you off to someplace far away. And that's because I swear up and down that I am married to your useless mama, and I sired you. I claimed the baby boy, too, but he wasn't mine, either. That's what I git paid for, Ollie Auggie. To keep your mama and you nearby because the old man likes it. I guess I can thank Keyes Radley for the job, since he was fool enough to run off to the mountains with Lockridge's whore and Lockridge's pretty lil' whelp in tow, plus try to steal oil money out from under Lockridge's nose. It was a brassy plan; I'll give Keyes Radley that much."

I know Tesco's lying then. I know all of it is a lie. It's filthy, like he is. "My daddy didn't steal anything."

Tesco's laugh fills the church room. "What? You think he took in Hazel and Nessie out of kindness? He found out them two little girls was soon to become money orphans, and he made a plan to get to them before Lockridge could hear about it. Keyes thought he could hide them on the mountain and work a backroom deal to be their guardian. He only done it to get at their money. Keyes knew Sadie wasn't gonna stay with him unless he could keep her in high style."

I think of the pretty blue-and-white canisters, of Mama saying, Keyes Radley, you shouldn't have done that. I've got no more need for such fine things. "They loved each other. Mama waited for him all the years he was away in the army."

Tesco shakes his head. "Keyes never even knew Sadie back then. That's why you don't remember him being around when you was small. Tell you the truth, I doubt the man's name even was Keyes Radley, but he sure wasn't your papa." He makes the soft, mean sound that lets you know you're about to get hit, and he's looking forward to it. "It's time to stop believin' in fairy tales, Ollie Auggie. Keyes was a liar and a fool. Ain't nobody gonna git away with crossin' E. Niles Lockridge. Radley got what he asked for, and your mama's just lucky ol' Lockridge wanted her back, or she'd be buried in the same hole with Keyes."

"You killed him." I can see through Tesco clear as glass now. That's why he was at the Commercial Hotel in Talihina when Mama took us there. He knew she'd have to leave the mountains before winter because he knew my daddy wouldn't ever be coming home. "What did you do to him?"

"Now, Ollie—" He makes a soft tsk, tsk against his teeth. "I'm a ranch foreman, not a hired gun. I ain't the killin' kind. But Keyes Radley did it to hisself, anyhow. Died of a overdose of stupid. The big men get the oil, and the coal, and the timber…and the money. The little men do the sweatin', and the shootin', and the buryin'?"—his eyes, sharp as a snake, settle on mine—"and the fetchin' home brats that belong to the big men. Now let's git Nessie Bessie, and I'll carry y'all on back to your lovin' mama."

Think,I tell myself. Hurry, think of something. I know, sure as I know daylight from dark, that I can't take him to Nessa.

"I'll…" I stop and clear my throat because my voice is squeaky with fear. "I'll go get her and bring her back here. The lady at the house where Nessa is, she can't abide strangers."

"Oh, I think we'll be just fine."

"That lady shoots at people." I try to cypher the distance between Tesco and the wall without turning my eyes that way. I might could make it past him…

"That's why I got you. To talk to the lady. Tell her you're nothin' but a couple runaways, and I am here to claim you both." He comes another step closer. I wait for my chance. "After that's all done, we'll stop by the Talihina Jail and grab that scrawny pack pony you stole outta my barn. I had ol' Gowdy put out the reports for a thieved medicine hat calico gelding months ago. It's about time the rascal turned up."

"That pony is mine!" My heart pounds wild. Dewey, Finnis, and Fergus got caught with Skedee? What'll happen to them? How much did they tell?

"You know what they do to horse thieves, don't you, Ollie? Because there's some half-growed boys that'll find out soon enough."

"I rented them my pony. Twenty-five cents for all day." I swallow hard, tip up my chin. "We best stop by the jail and tell the deputy. Then we can go to that lady's house for Nessa." Letting my head sag forward, I start toward the door.

"Good girl." Tesco's hand slips under the rucksack straps, his long fingers circling my neck again. The muscles twitch like they want to do more. "But you oughta know better than to play with boys, Ollie. We'll fetch our Nessie Bessie now."

The last of the valley light blinds me as we step out. Back in Shelterwood, everybody will be wondering where I am pretty soon. Tula and Amos probably made their way home already and checked how much wood the little kids gathered and whether they got a fish or two. Maybe Cora's caught something in her snare traps and skinned it for supper. The younger kids are playing and laughing and jabbering around the fire, waiting on food.

They're looking for me, watching the footpath that goes to Sleeping Beauty Bridge and the sandbar we use when we come in along the creek with the horse and the mule. Treasure Island, that's what I named the sandbar.

That's where I hid our coins in the sycamore tree…the grubstake for Shelterwood Town. Tears sting my throat. I swallow hard, blink my eyes clear. All of it can't die because of Tesco Peele. I'll find a way to get back to camp. We'll gather everything and go up the mountain.

"So, where you been all summer, Ollie Auggie?" Tesco asks as I lead him through the streets, past the dry goods stores, and the land brokers, and the empty laundry building. Mr. Brotherton is sweeping glass off the boardwalk at the newspaper office. The front window looks like somebody bashed it with a rock. Maybe they didn't like the stories in his paper about Miss Kate, and women wanting to vote, and grafters, and guardians, and children who had to run away to the woods.

He told Tula's story, and Amos's, and Dewey's in his paper. Why, just recently a kindly woman who had come here to enjoy the political speeches expressed concern over wretched waifs appearing at her farmhouse, begging for food. Emaciated wanderers dressed in rags, left to live alone in the forest, to forage like animals. "People tell stories," this woman remarked, "of elves which inhabit the woods, but they are not elves. They are children, hiding in unthinkable conditions for lack of help, for fear of men who would take them as tiny prisoners, rob them of their land estates and their very lives, all for a profit…"

"Hello, Hazel," Mr. Brotherton says as Tesco steers me over glass pieces that glitter in the late-day sun. "Careful there, it's sharp." He looks tired, but he's still got those pretty blue eyes.

I want to scream, Help me! Instead, I say, "Those boys at the jail. I lent them my calico pony for twenty-five cents. They didn't steal that pony. They didn't." Tesco's fingers nearly pinch the life out of me, and he pushes me along.

"Hazel…" Mr. Brotherton calls after us.

"Mind your business," Tesco barks out, and we walk on.

I go roundabout through the streets, this way, that way. I drag my feet.

"You're tryin' my good nature, Ollie," Tesco finally says against my hair. "Quit circlin', or we'll find us a woodshed, and I'll give you some of what you got comin'."

"I…I was lost a minute."

"This town ain't that big."

Through the gaps between buildings, I see the Winding Stair, tall enough to hold up the whole sky. I stare so hard I stumble over my too-small boots. Hauling me up by a handful of rucksack straps and hair, Tesco gives me a hard shake. "Ain't nothin' up there gonna help you. That mountain where Keyes Radley built his hiding place? Lockridge Timber Company is gonna cut it bare, drag the logs down over Keyes Radley's mangy bones."

I think of our hanging valley, of the old spreading oaks. "No!"

"Hazel?" Mr. Brotherton's voice calls out from someplace nearby. He must've got worried and tried to follow us. "Hazel, is that you? Are you quite all right?"

Tesco pulls my dress collar so tight I choke. His mustache brushes my ear. "One more word, and I won't just hurt you. I'll hurt lil' Nessie Bessie, too. You be good to me, Ollie, and you can keep her safe, just like Hazel did. You understand what I'm sayin'?"

I nod, but my mind scrabbles for a way out. I can't do what he says. I'd rather be dead in a ditch. No matter what it takes, I've got to get away from Tesco, find Nessa, and run.

I look where we're at, and a plan rushes in…one that might work if I'm lucky. "The house is there at the end. The one with the pretty red roses grown up all around, see? I should go to the door by myself, though. Like I told you, that lady shoots at people."

"I ain't turnin' you loose."

"She won't like it that a man's with me…a man she's never seen before."

"You lyin' to me, Ollie? Because if Nessie ain't in that house, I am gonna take it outta you."

My heart pounds and my breath comes shallow and hurried. I try to steady it. A good tale is all it takes to outwit most folks, Ollie girl, Keyes Radley says in my mind, while he tosses a fat katydid into a yellow garden spider's nest to show me how fast the spider can wrap up a meal. Spin your yarn quicker than a slow mind can move. Speedy and smooth, like that spider. See?

"She's a old Choctaw widow woman, and she's real strange. Dresses all in black and with a long black veil over her face. I ain't dared to ask her why. She shot at the milkman because he woke her from a nap in her chair. Only reason she keeps Nessa is because Nessa's quiet as a mouse and talks Choctaw. That lady even gave Nessa a new name, Pinti. That's mouse in Choctaw."

Tesco's fingers loosen a little on my neck, so I keep spinning spider silk. "And all day long, that lady says, ‘Mouse, get me some water from the dipper,' and, ‘Mouse, bring me my shoes,' and, ‘Mouse, go chase the crows away.' Crows settle in that lady's yard by the dozens. Buzzards, too. I heard she buried three different husbands out there. All dead of poison." Tesco is fearful about things like buzzards and witches and poisons.

The dress collar goes slack at my neck, and he shifts behind me when we reach the front gateway, where Mrs. Paulson's roses grow so thick over the trellis they're tangled together halfway down the arch.

"I'm real scared of her," I whisper. "She casts spells. I only left Nessa here because I was afraid if I didn't do like she said, she'd turn me into one of them elf children with the bony arms and all-black eyes."

I make my shoulders quiver to work his grip even looser. Tesco doesn't seem to notice. It's like he's forgot where his hand is. He just looks up at that house.

"I best call to her from here," I whisper. Then I take in a big breath and push my shoulders up high. Loud as I can, I belt out, "Mrs. Paulson! Mrs. Paulson!"

The noise scares a half dozen crows from the big elm tree and startles Tesco so bad he loses his feet. When he tries to catch himself on the fence, he grabs thorns instead. Quick as a wink, I'm out from under his hand, down on all fours through the bottom of that arbor, and then up and flying across the yard, fast as my legs will run.

"Mrs. Paulson! Mrs. Paulson!"

Behind me, Tesco roars as he tries to push through that gate and the brambles grab his clothes. Ahead, Flannery steps out the door with an iron pot hook in her hand. Crows cackle and take flight from the porch rail when I run up the steps, duck around Flannery, and keep going right through the house and out the back. I fly across the yard, shove open the alley gate, then dart to the washhouse, all the while thinking, Don't look back. Cat quick, I push the rucksack through the little washwater dump hatch, and I scramble in after it.

Far back under the corner table as I can get, I wrap my knees to my chest, bury my head, and think, Please, please, please.

Outside, there's Tesco hollering, and Flannery telling him whoever he is, he better get out of Mrs. Paulson's yard, and then I hear the twin boys squalling at the back door. Finally, Mrs. Paulson's voice joins in, and things quieten down.

"I got a runaway girl here someplace, and another one inside!" Tesco is right across the washhouse wall from me when he says that.

I squeeze hard into myself. Don't move. Don't breathe. He'll hear.

Mrs. Paulson tells him he must have the wrong house. "Now, I'll ask you kindly to leave, sir, before I am forced to involve the law. My husband would never approve of a man on our property while he is away. We have had girls to do the laundry, yes, but none today."

My heart stops at the word laundry. What if he thinks to check in here?

He pounds the wall with a fist, and the whole building shakes.

"Sir!" Mrs. Paulson says. "You will leave this instant, or I will have you escorted away."

"Be gone with ya now," Flannery says. "Yer runaway, she's legged it out the gate and left it hangin' open. A little scapegrace, that one. Knew it all along."

Tesco growls and pounds the wall again, and then his bootheels dig the ground as he runs out the back. I hear Flannery gathering the twins and arguing at Mrs. Paulson to go back to bed. Finally their voices fade, and the screen door slams, and the air quietens.

Even the birds settle after a while.

Inside the laundry house it's hot as a cookstove with all the doors and windows shut, but I sit there and wait and sweat. If I try to get away in the daylight, Tesco…or somebody…will find me before I ever make it out of town.

My stomach rumbles and my head swims and sweat soaks my clothes. Seems like three days pass before dark sets in and I climb out the dump hatch. The night air slides over my skin like cool water as I take a few steps, stop, listen in case Tesco is someplace nearby. Everything in me wants to go find Skedee, to get him free, but I know I can't. It's too much risk. That stubborn old pony will belong to Tesco Peele now. Skedee's been a good friend to me, and he deserves better. Nothing should belong to Tesco Peele, ever.

Tears sting my eyes, but I have to wipe them away and keep moving shadow to shadow, through the alleys and along the fences. I smell food and cookfires, hear horses rustling in their stalls and chickens bedding down for the night. I hear pans clanking and voices talking and a baby laughing. The sounds of people who have places they belong. Even their animals have places to be.

Something in me pulls and tugs. I shouldn't do it, but I cut loose and run, right down the middle of the shanty street, past the house where they shot at Amos, and all the way out of Talihina.

I know every step of the way to Shelterwood, but it's different in the woods at night, alone. Dark birds fly from limb to limb and animals rustle in the thickets and slide across the pine straw. I think of Tesco and the laundryman and outlaws. But the stars cut a path through the trees, bright and sure, and the lightning bugs come out to show me the way home. Over Sleeping Beauty Bridge and into Little Snake Creek I go.

The dark is so much thicker there. A timber rattler shakes its tail way too close. I back up, then climb the branches to Sleeping Beauty Bridge again. Without a torch to see by, there'll be no getting home till morning. All around me, lightning bugs sparkle in thicket vines while the hours pass and I wish for Tula and Amos, and Nessa and Cora, and all the other kids at our dugout.

Maybe the boys are there, too. Maybe Mr. Brotherton got them free, and they brought back Skedee. We'll call a council and then we'll start up the mountain. Tesco lied about cutting down the trees in the hanging valley, just like he lied about my mama and daddy. The old place is waiting, the shelterwood standing with arms stretched wide and tall, touching a blanket of stars.

By the dark of the moon, I wish and wish and wish. A hundred wishes. A thousand.

I fall asleep wishing and go to a place where wishes come true. I see all of us together in the hanging valley. I see our church and school. Two chickens and a rooster scratch around the garden.

The cabin door is open, and Mama comes to stand in it, and she smiles at me.

"You're here," I say. "You came back."

First light wakens me, and the words are still on my lips. I whisper them into the morning air, and tell myself that all the wishes really are true. Everyone is waiting at Shelterwood Camp, safe.

They'll come running from the morning fire, so happy when they see me. We'll gather our things and go up the mountain.

I think on just how we'll do it as I make my way down the branches of Sleeping Beauty Bridge, and along the dry wash.

"I'm almost home," I whisper when I hear Sweetwater Creek making her music.

But as I turn from the dry wash, no smoke hangs above the low fog. There's no smell of logs banked and burning low, no coals ready to be stoked for morning.

Amos wouldn't let the night fire go out.

I throw down my walking stick and run the last of the way, afraid of what I'll find.

And what I find is the thing I was afraid of.

Horse tracks litter the ground. Shod horses, different size shoes. Boot tracks, different size boots. Men's boots. Everything's been taken away. Our packs. The food pokes we hang in the tree branches so bears and other critters can't get them. The water can.

Even the money we hid in the tree for Shelterwood Bank is missing. The boys must've known where it was. They told. They told all of it.

I stand there with my heart banging in an empty shell, my body numb.

"Nessa," I whisper. "Tula, Amos, Cora…anybody?" Their names echo into the dugout, come back at me, but nobody answers. I run inside anyway. The pallets are torn up, everything scattered and trampled.

Back at the fire pit, I turn a circle, see a blur of leaves and rocks and water. A flash of light catches my eye, and I stare down at broken glass and smashed tin cans and twine. All that's left of our magic lanterns. Ruined like everything else.

Sinking into the dirt, I strain glass from ashes, watch the thin gray dust fall through my fingers and run away on the morning breeze.

Everyone's gone.

I'm the only one left.

"Nessa!" I call out, and the sound bounces off rocks and trees. Who took her? Tesco? The Talihina deputy?

Someone else?

Where is she now?

A rustle in the brush jerks me upright. Scrambling to my feet, I whisper, "Who's out there?"

I think of Gable and Milk the mule way back last spring, of Dewey calling, Who's out there? while the rest of us hid in the thicket. I tell myself the same thing happened when these men came to ruin Shelterwood. The boys got here ahead of them and warned everybody to run. Hide. Don't make a sound. Now they've heard me call for them, and they're coming up the trail, like magic, like a fairy story.

But when I turn around, only two shadows sift from the morning dim. They move slow and careful, joined at the hands.

I know them even before I can see their faces.

"Nessa!" I cry, and she lets loose of Koi and comes running.