Tin Swift(16)

Rose didn’t say anything. Not a peep. Wasn’t like her.

He glanced up. She was still standing in the doorway, the shine of light carving out holes of dark against the sweet angles of her face. There was more than just rain falling from the brim of her hat to wet her face. There were tears.

“Rose?” He came out from behind the counter and walked to her. “Rose?”

“I looked into houses. A half dozen houses,” she said. “They’re all dead.” She looked up into his face. “Children too, Mr. Hunt. Little babies missing their feet and hands, all carved up…”

Cedar wanted to tell her not to worry about the dead. To tell her that if they left these people behind it was a civilized choice. But that was not true. The place stank of the Strange. And he had seen the Strange do terrible things with the unburied dead.

“We’ll do what we can for them,” he said. “Give them a grave and a prayer, the only mercy still in our hands.”

Rose wiped at her nose and nodded. “We’ll need to gather them all up. Maybe in the middle of town? The clearing?”

“That should do,” Cedar said. “Let’s get the Madders to help. Quickly.”

Cedar followed her back out into the rain. They mounted up and tracked back to the wagon.

Alun was leaning at the side of it, the huge brim of his hat and the angle of the wagon blocking rain and wind. He puffed on his pipe while the youngest and tallest Madder, Cadoc, paced about, a strange device in his hands.

The device resembled an ear trumpet. He held it up to one ear, a rope running from the ear trumpet to wrap around the top of a cane in his left hand that he stuck into the ground. He paused for a moment, as if listening through the ear horn, then pulled the cane tip out of the soil and swung it to tap the ear trumpet before spiking the cane back into the wet ground again.

Cedar didn’t know what Cadoc Madder was doing, but then he rarely could fathom the man’s actions.

“We’ll be needing your help,” Cedar said. “Bryn’s too.”

“Are we hunting the Holder now, Mr. Hunt?” Alun asked.

“No. We are hauling and digging,” Cedar said. “There’s dead in this town. Rose and I have agreed we’ll see to their burial before we move on.”

Cadoc Madder had stopped pacing. He turned to look at them as if they’d suddenly dropped out of a blue sky and brought the moon down with them.

Alun pulled the pipe from between his teeth and pointed it at Cedar. “What do you think killed all these people? The Holder. It fell into this town, and snuffed their lives out like a wet wick. If a piece of it remains behind, the death will spread, creep to the next town, and kill off the living there. Finding the Holder is a damn sight more important than burying the dead.”

“The Strange have been here,” Cedar said. “Surely you know what sport the Strange can have with the dead.”

“Of course I know! Hang the dead and hang the Strange. If we find the Holder we won’t need to stay here to see any of it.”

Cedar drew his gun and cocked back the hammer. “Rose Small, myself, and these bullets disagree with you.”

Both Madder brothers went stone cold. Even the smoke from Alun’s pipe seemed to stop moving.

“No need for guns,” Mae said as she came round from back of the wagon leading her mule. “Let us tend those who have been lost.” She wore a duster—Cedar thought it might belong to one of the Madder brothers, and though she’d rolled up the sleeves, it was huge on her thin frame. She’d changed her bonnet for a man’s hat—again, Cedar guessed it to be one of the Madders’.

He had no idea what she was doing out of bed, nor if she was in her right mind.

“Enough standing and pointing weapons,” Mae insisted. “Let’s put these people to rest so we can move on and find the Holder.” Her voice was clear. Strong.

Alun stared at her warily, as one might a bowl of nitroglycerin left to boil on the stove. “The sooner we’re to it, the sooner we’ll be quit of this place,” he finally said. “Cadoc, fetch up brother Bryn, and bring the wagon and the steam shovel along.”

Cadoc swung up into the wagon and started off, the wheels sending a spattering of mud to slap their boots.

Alun turned an eye on Cedar. “I hope you know what it is you’re doing, Mr. Hunt. Whole town of the dead is going to take time to bury, and we haven’t that to spare.”

“You bring out the digging device, I’ll gather wood to fire it.”

“Rose and I can gather the wood,” Mae said. “Unless you’d rather we gather the bodies, Mr. Hunt?”