He weighed the bag in his hand, was about to put it in his pocket when something stopped him. The memory of that gunshot, of men out here. He turned and looked about him. His pack, slumped against a tree. His tent. His near-empty bag of supplies hoisted over a branch and the rope tied off around the trunk. He stepped towards it then changed his mind and backed away with his head lifted and his eyes busy, the leaves swishing beneath his boots then, all of a sudden, a stink rising up. Only now did he glance at the ground. The leaves here were damp and the smell enough to make him retch. This was where the thing—the mass of things in the shape of a man—had risen up the evening before. A stinging cold swept over his skin as if those thousands of tiny black bodies had found him. He lurched away with a cry, flailing his arms to fend them off when there was nothing there, batting at his shirt, his pants, his beard. Even when he was yards away the smell clung to the air and he dragged the soles of his boots along the ground as though to rid them of something foul.
In the end he decided on a hollow at the base of the scarred birch. He could tuck his hand inside, just, and the drawstring bag fit snugly out of sight. He kicked some leaves up over the hole then walked away, smacking his hands together and his breath coming fast. A good spot, he told himself, for who could possibly find the bag? No one, for there was no clue to lead them to it, nothing at all so that, unless they’d been watching him, hidden somewhere amongst the trees, his gold was safe.
He glanced toward the creek. The shade had swamped it now, was rising up across the fireweed and grasses, was almost at his camp. He went about the business of collecting leaves for tinder and chopping up a fallen branch, then crouching to blow on the small flames of his fire. When he went to lower his bag of supplies a squirrel chattered at him, its whole body jerking, and he threw a rock and hit it, he thought.
He’d been using a flat rock he’d hauled up from the creek as a seat, and as he sat on it now while water for his coffee heated he couldn’t help glancing toward the scarred tree. He found himself studying the other trees, as though one would stand out as a better hiding place, then at the boulders down by the creek. A couple of times he even got to his feet, meaning to retrieve the bag and stow it amongst those rocks, but he stopped himself and tugged at his beard, the heat from the fire hard on his legs and the cool air of evening at his back. He set beans to boil, never mind that it was late and they wouldn’t be cooked for hours yet, then strode about eyeing the land between the creek and the trees because it had occurred to him that he should settle in here, build a cabin, think ahead to winter only three or four months off, or so old Ezra at the trading post had said. With the heel of his boot he scuffed an outline where his cabin could sit: close enough to the creek to make fetching water easy, far enough from it to be sheltered by the trees. He’d need a saw, a hammer, a chisel and nails, he’d need flour and sugar, salt, jerky, beans and coffee to last him until spring, and if he found more gold in the creek, he could afford it all.
When the beans had come to a good hard boil he moved the pot and settled the lid, then took himself off to piss amongst the trees. The mosquitoes had been drawn out by the cool of the evening and they swarmed about him now, followed him even, so that when he’d finished and was crouched by the fire to feed in more branches, they were everywhere, stinging his ears and the soft skin of his neck. He pulled off his hat and swatted at them and they whirled into the heat of the fire, a plume of them rising up and turning, and something in his chest gave. A shrill sound filled his head and he whirled around as though that horror from yesterday was upon him, because out of nothing evil could congeal upon the air, he’d seen it with his own eyes, and he staggered back, away from his camp, down to the creek where he sat on the bank breathing heavily, his elbows on his knees and his head hung forward, staring at the water twisting and twisting over the rocks.
He didn’t hear a thing until it was upon him. Black, massive, knocking him onto his back and standing over him with its hot breath in his face. A dog. So big it must have weighed as much as a near-grown man, the fur beneath its jaw dripping from where it had drunk from the creek. He tried to push it away but it drew back its lips and let out a growl. His gun, he thought. Back by his tent and useless. But a moment later the dog lifted its head, then wrenched itself around and took off in a strange bucking run toward his camp.
Ingram was on his feet in an instant, plunging after it, mouth open to bellow but the sound stuck behind his tongue because the dog was running toward a man, and that man was watching from just beyond Ingram’s fire. He wore a preacher’s wide-brimmed black hat and black jacket, and was leaning on a stick, one leg bent and touching the ground only with the toe of his boot. “You’ll excuse me,” the preacher called out, and his voice was hard as iron. “I saw your smoke from over the valley. It’s taken me the whole day to reach your camp.”
The preacher was a used-up man, his beard gray and dry-looking, his face thin and full of hollows. His pants pooled around his boots and hung loosely around his legs, and his jacket was stained and torn. He tipped back his hat a little and stared at Ingram through the hot air swimming up above the fire.
Ingram said, “I don’t need no bible teaching.”
The preacher held up one hand as if he intended to bless Ingram right there and then. Ingram’s lips pulled tight over his teeth and the man said, “I’m not here to offer salvation, not unless you ask it of me. No, I find myself in need of help and must throw myself on your mercy.”
“Then it was you shooting off your gun this morning.”
The preacher seemed to think, then he gave a nod. “That was me, sure was.” He sucked at his teeth. “Reckoned somebody would hear me. No one came to my assistance, though, not a soul, but then I guess, I could’a been shooting me a moose for all anybody knew.”
“Hurt youself?” Ingram jerked his chin towards the man’s leg.
“Fell in the creek early this morning, right onto a dead branch. Went clean through my leg, help me Jesus, and pinned me there. Would be laying there yet if the wood weren’t so rotten that it went and broke off.” He touched his left leg on the calf then eased forward and lowered himself, all elbows and stick, to sit on the flat rock Ingram had been using for a seat.
“What d’ya need?”
“Whiskey so the wound don’t go septic. I had none, being a man of God,” and he gave a smile that showed his crooked teeth.
“Done drunk mine, and didn’t bring much anyhow.”
“Then a mule to get me back to the trading post. The fella there does some doctoring.” He looked around him at Ingram’s tent and the gun leaning against the tree, at the bag of provisions hanging above their heads and the trees beyond. He did it stiffly, making a show of looking about him, and Ingram said sharply, “You can see I got no mule.”
“Then I guess there’s nothing for it but to reply on your hospitality,” and he smiled again.
The dog had been sniffing around the tent, at the base of a tree where Ingram had taken to pissing, but now it stopped and pawed at the dank leaves where the nightmare thing had come spilling out on the air. Ingram yelled, “Git!” and the preacher turned his head and snapped, “Here boy.” The dog trotted to his side. With it came the stench of those leaves, and Ingram felt a clutch of unease around his heart.
“Ain’t got much for sharing,” Ingram said. “I’m about out of supplies.”
The preacher raised his gaze to the slack bag slung over the branch. “Reckon you are,” he said, “but I’m not asking for much. A day or two of food is all, until I’m properly on my feet again. You’ll give an injured man that, won’t you?”
A breeze had picked up and the green leaves above them lifted, lifted, scattering the light. Ingram said, “What you doing out here, anyways?”
“Preaching to the heathens,” and the man gave a laugh that made the dog look up. He set a bony hand on its head and it closed its eyes. “Yessir, and a thankless task it is, though I say so myself.”
“Where’s your camp?”
The man’s eyes swung towards him. “Up the valley. Leastways, that’s where I was last night, and farther up the valley the night before that.” He licked his lips slowly. “Had to leave everything behind. Couldn’t carry it, see?” and he tapped his injured leg. “I won’t be a nuisance, I promise you that. Just let me set here, and you go on about your business.”