The Empire of Shadows (21 page)

“Pick 'im up, Buck! Atta boy. You sniff 'im out, Bear. You ain't fooled, aire ye? Ho Daisy-girl! You show them fellers how it's done, lassy!”

They responded to their master's voice, spurred on by the encouragement. Still, they'd lost precious time while the dogs circled and sniffed in confusion, their noses snuffling through the leaves, over wet stones and mossy logs. It was a slow business. Tom wanted to surge ahead. He started to wade up the stream, the way he knew he would have gone if he were Tupper.

“Stay back o' the dogs, chief,” the handler said. “Cain't go no faster.”

“He's right,” Owens said as the handler turned back to his children, mumbling something under his breath. The one word Tom caught was “city.”

“It's slow now, but it's the only sure way,” Owens added.

Tom held back. He knew that Tupper had to be widening the gap as the dogs searched for the scent.

Finally the hounds caught the scent again and started up the streambed. Their progress was fitful as the hounds lost then regained Tupper's trail. They went on like that for maybe a mile, alternately bounding after the baying hounds, then waiting as they snuffled and growled in confusion.

After a fitful half hour of progress the dogs lost the scent entirely. They milled about, noses to the ground, making no sound but an occasional, confused yip.

“C'mon, Daisy-girl,” the handler said, encouraging the dog with a rough pat on the shoulders, “You can outsniff them two brutes any ol' day.”

Daisy cast a doubtful eye at her master but still got back to the task, working the area in widening circles. “Damn strange,” the handler said, easing back his slouch hat to scratch at his sweat-matted hairline. “Never seen 'em lose a track like this.”

Tom felt his throbbing head as he watched the dogs. “Sure as hell he didn't grow wings and fly away,” he said. The Duryea boys laughed. Owens didn't, neither did Busher nor the handler. Owens stood on a large rock, his rifle in the crook of his folded arm. He scanned the forest in silence.

“Get-up there, Bear!” the handler shouted as the dog sat for a moment, looking as confused as the men. “Damnit boys, don't sit down on me now!”

The dogs milled, casting baleful eyes at the men, their tongues dragging. They weren't used to losing a scent either.

Looking back down the stream, Tom noticed something.

He recalled a man he'd once chased through the narrow maze of the Five Points. The fugitive had gone up a drain pipe at the end of an alley and disappeared over the rooftops, a feat that at the time had confounded Tom.

“Think we went by him,” Tom said almost to himself. He started back down the stream and stopped under an overhanging branch about a hundred feet away. Tom holstered his pistol. The others didn't pay him much mind, especially not Owens and the dog handler.

“I'll be damned,” one of the Duryea boys said. “Hey, Mister Owens, take a look at this,” he said, nodding in Tom's direction.

Braddock had picked a good-size rock to stand on, and with a powerful leap grabbed the branch above him. Going hand over hand, he'd been able to get to the main trunk, swinging himself up so that when Owens and the rest turned around, they thought at first he'd disappeared.

“Havin' fun?” Owens called with a bemused grin.

Tom didn't answer. He clambered into the branches of a big pine while the rest watched. From there he swung into the branches of a partially fallen maple, which some recent storm had lain against the pine.

By then the handler was watching too. “C'mon, Buck! Hey, Bear! Ho, Daisy-girl!” he called. He ran to the spot where the trunk of the maple met the ground. A huge semicircle of root and dirt stood out of the forest floor. Tom was working his way down the fallen trunk when the dogs met him near the roots. In an instant they started baying again, picking up the scent where Tupper had hit the ground. Owens grinned at Tom as he jumped down from the reclining trunk.

“Not bad for a flatlander,” Owens said in a grudging way. Tom rubbed his hands on his pants, his head was pounding and his palms were scraped from the rough bark. He looked at Owens.

“I don't hunt animals much, Mister Owens, but I
do
hunt men,” Tom said with a look at his raw hands. “Let's move!”

The dogs, with the men crashing behind, were already out of sight, lost in the thick undergrowth. Tom and Owens hurried after their racket.

“My boys got a good scent now,” the handler huffed when they caught up. “Won't be long, we'll make up fer the time we lost.”

The ground was rising steadily the farther they went. Though they crossed another stream the trail did not vary.

“Heading for high ground,” Owens commented.

“Have 'im treed proper,” the handler added. “Looks to be headed fer Castle Rock.”

Owens grunted and wiped sweat from his eyes. “Damn fool thing,” he said.

“What the hell's Castle Rock?” Tom asked as they stood for a moment, catching their breath.

“lt's nowhere Tupper wants to be, Braddock. I can tell you that.”

 

Tupper knew well enough where he was going. He'd been there before, many years back. He and his grandfather had gone there. He remembered how they'd sat on the massive, sloping boulder at the crown, watching an eagle soar above Blue Mountain Lake far below.

“This is a place of power,” he'd been told, “a place where the spirit soars like the eagle. A man becomes light in his body in such a place, light and strong.” There had been no hotels then, no steamboats, no electric lights.

Jim's grandfather had been a member of the Eagle Society. He'd dreamt a soaring dream, with visions of mighty wings. To dream such a dream was the only way into the Eagle Society, that, or having been cured of illness by the rites of the society.

“The eagle is our brother,” his grandfather had told him. “If you dream as I did, you will come to know the eagle well.”

In time, Jim had dreamt of eagles and had been introduced into the mysteries and rituals of the
shádotega
, one of many Iroquois secret societies. He had learned the songs and the secret chants, had felt their power, and known the miracles they could perform. He would need a miracle.
tain'tciade
, the “heaven land,” would surely await him if he failed.

He began to chant as he ran, preparing himself and invoking the eagle's spirit. The hounds baying in the narrowing distance were a distraction and a spur. He answered their clamor with concentrated power, adding depth and intensity to his invocations. The chants grew stronger as he went, seeming to come from deep within his burning lungs and from somewhere beyond. The fire in him was a sign, a transforming power burning inside. His legs burned, too, as he struggled up the steepening slope.

Huge boulders, thrown off the mountain in ages past, littered the forest floor. He went around them when he had to, used them when he could. The fire in his legs came to equal that in his lungs, but still he went on, never stopping, never resting. He knew the fire for what it was and believed in its power. He felt the chants work their magic.

The crown of Castle Rock loomed above him, a steep, boulder-strewn slope littered with stunted spruce packed together in thrashing masses. He climbed hand over hand, hardly slowing the pace or breaking the rhythm of his incantations. He wished he had his old gourd rattle and calumet fan with the four eagle feathers. They would be a help.

But they were no more, and his only hope lay in his burning lungs and legs and mind. The dogs closed in behind. He could hear them crashing through the undergrowth, their baying triumphant as they sensed him. Tupper's chant reached a crescendo then stopped. It would be no ordinary man the hounds discovered.

“Jesus Christ!” the handler cursed. “What's he doin' to my pups?”

The baying of the hounds hundreds of yards ahead had suddenly changed. A howl pierced the forest, followed by a chorus of confused barks and growls. The howl became a pitiful series of yelps. The dog's pain echoed through the forest, eerie and knifelike.

“That's Daisy! Goddamnit, 'e hurts my dogs, I'll gut him proper, sonofabitch!” the handler shouted.

The rest said nothing. They all stood frozen for an instant, listening to the dog's pain. The Duryea boys peered about uncertainly, gripping their rifles, fingering the triggers. Tom was grim. He wiped his hand on his trousers. He liked a dry grip on his pistol.

The handler cursed a steady stream and they started up again, following the calls through undergrowth so thick they could not see more than thirty feet ahead. They went as fast as they could toward Daisy's yelps. The baying of Buck and Bear seemed to separate from the other dog, going farther up the slope, but the men kept on course for Daisy.

“I'm comin', girl. I'm comin',” the handler called. Daisy seemed to answer. They found the dog on her side, a log lay across her hindquarters. Blood was on the leaves.

“Oh, Daisy-girl! It's all right now. Daddy'll take care o' ye.” The handler bent over the battered dog. She licked his face weakly. They pulled the log away. It took both Busher and Owens to do it, lifting it carefully off her.

Then, from high above, the baying of Buck and Bear changed again. They all turned to the sounds, the five of them stunned by what they heard. The baying again turned to angry barks, followed by yelps of pain and a long howl the likes of which none of them had ever heard. An instant later there was a single scream, high-pitched, birdlike, yet human. There were words in that call, but none that any of them understood. Then there was silence.

The death of the day had come hours before. Mary waited while night rose up from the forest floor like an incoming tide, drowning everything, even her hopes. The halo of light thrown off by the hotel could beat back the Adirondack night only so far. Blackness hovered beyond, waiting to claim its right to all that was. Electricity had its limits.

Mary heard the wagon long before she saw it. It rumbled and rattled through the little collection of buildings that was the town. It was the only wagon moving this night and the only sign of life beyond the sheltering light of the hotel. No one seemed to be venturing far. Not even the steamboat, which lay tied up and silent by the shore. Mary took anxious steps forward toward the sounds she had been straining to hear. She was unwilling to leave the safety of the light entirely. Still, she walked toward the sound until the hotel behind seemed as if it existed in a silvery bubble against the blue-black sky.

Slowly the wagon drew closer, though she still could not see it. For an instant it seemed as if the sound was too close for it not to be seen, and the hairs on the back of Mary's neck stood on end at the thought that it was a ghost she heard. But a solid wagon was conjured out of the night, taking shape just yards away.

“Tommy!” Mary cried. “Thank God. I've been out of my mind with worry.”

The wagon pulled up before her and she stepped to its side. “What happened?” was all she could add. When she got close she was shocked by what she saw. Tom sat slumped with exhaustion, his head caked with dried, brown blood. His clothes were filthy, his shoes and legs covered in black mud. His pants and shirt were torn and tattered and he bled from half a dozen scratches and scrapes.

“Tommy, you look a sight!” she said as he got down. She hugged him, heedless of the mud and blood. Owens, who was driving, tipped his drooping hat and said, “Don't we all, ma'am.”

Mary noticed for the first time that the guide was as bedraggled as Tom.

“Thanks, Owens,” Tom said to the guide, extending a hand, “I'm going out again after a few hours rest. Sorry you can't come.”

Owens just nodded and drove off; the Duryea boys, who sat in the back with Busher said nothing, but tipped their hats to Mary as they disappeared.

“Tom, what happened?” Mary said as they started walking back to the hotel. Tom limped and winced as they went.

“He's gone. Disappeared.”

“What?” she said, stopping to look at Tom in disbelief.

“Just gone. I don't know,” Tom said with a confounded shake of his head and a squint that Mary found disconcerting. She had rarely seen her husband confounded by anything.

“Couldn't find the body after he jumped,” he said. “The dogs dead or injured. Bottom of that cliff is a maze of—lots of big, tumbled boulders. He could be down in some crevice somewhere. We just don't know.”

“I heard the dogs,” Mary said, “howling from across the lake. Gave me chills.”

Tom just nodded. “Never seen anything like it. The man hurt two dogs and killed another. Threw one off Castle Rock,” he said, then, by way of explanation, “big cliff on the other side of the lake.”

After a moment, he added, “Tupper jumped, too.”

“My God!” Mary said, shaking her head slowly. Putting a gentle hand on Tom's head she asked, “How'd you do this? Looks nasty.”

Tom shrugged and said, “Got hit with a chunk of ice.”

“Ice?” Mary said.

“Don't make me explain.”

They walked to their rooms in silence, followed by the stares of guests and employees. Conversation ceased as they went by and started up again in their wake. Everyone seemed to have something to share in the light of the hotel lobby.

They hadn't been in their room for more than a few minutes, enough time for Tom to get out of his clothes and into a long robe, when there was a knock at the door. He'd planned on spending a long time in a very hot tub. His shoulders shrank at the interruption, but he squared them as he opened the door. Frederick Durant was on the other side.

“I just heard,” he said, looking from Tom to Mary. “I've been at Pine Knot since yesterday evening. Just got back. William told me. Who was this fellow?”

Tom explained how he'd matched the description to Tupper and how he'd quickly examined Lettie's corpse, matching her wound to the one that reportedly killed the steward from the Albany night boat.

“This man was working for William?” Frederick said, shocked that an escaped murderer had come among them so easily.

“No way for William to know,” Tom said. “The important thing to me, though, was the descriptions of how this man, Tupper, or Littletree by his Indian name, was killing his victims.”

Tom explained how Tupper's other victim shared the same unique wound. A look of surprise and relief washed over Frederick's face.

“He's killed at least two people in precisely the same way,” Braddock repeated, “and I can prove it.”

“Tom,” Durant began quietly, “I'm so glad this has come to light. I mean, well you know, for your sake and your son's. I never really thought that your boy—”

Tom didn't let him finish. “Once your doctor started with his accusations, you had to follow through. I know. I don't like it,” Tom added with a direct and piercing look, “but I respect it.”

Frederick nodded. “Understood, sir, understood.” he said. “You'll understand then that it isn't I who can clear your son, I mean officially. When the sheriff gets here, I'm sure he'll…”

“Yes, yes. I know.”

“Good,” Durant said with a slight smile. “And where is this Tupper fellow now? Where are you holding him?”

Tom and Mary exchanged a quick glance.

“We don't have him,” Tom said.

“But, I thought you'd…”

“He jumped off Castle Rock,” Tom added.

“Castle Rock! Then he's dead, surely,” Durant said, looking from Tom to Mary.

“I agree. Don't see how he could have survived a fall like that. Still…”

“What?” Frederick asked, clearly puzzled.

“We haven't found the body.”

 

Van Duzer gave an annoyed
‘hmph'
from somewhere back in his substantial throat. The Durant woman was already putting restrictions on him. She'd heard the news about the fire, apparently, and seemed to think he had something to do with it.

“The temerity!” he mumbled. Who did she take him for, some rosy-cheeked lad, fresh from the bar exam? He crumpled her telegram, an equivocating message full of self-doubt and guarded words.

The time for second thoughts was over. Though he had to admit that torching barns and murdering maids had not been precisely his instructions, neither had he put any restrictions on his man. Van Duzer had expected damage to the Durants' interests. How to best accomplish that was his man's affair. Van Duzer had been very careful about that, authorizing nothing illegal, at least not in writing.

The man had shown a stroke of genius when he'd used the Indian's escape as he had. He'd shown a violent streak beyond Van Duzer's reckoning, too, a fact that could be a bit disturbing if dwelt on. Van Duzer wasn't one to dwell on things he could not control. Like a force of nature, he'd set the man loose.

Van Duzer's job now was to nail his shutters tight and wait out the storm. Besides, it was not for Miss Durant's interests alone that he worked. He'd been looking for a means to accomplish both the great man's needs as well as his own.

If Van Duzer had been a religious man, he'd have called it Divine destiny, though even he had to admit that “Divine” was a tad too pious a word for what he'd set in motion. But “destiny” was not. How else could one describe the opportunity presented by that Indian? Elizabeth Durant's doubts had no place in his plans. Doubts could be as dangerous as daggers.

He looked at the other telegram that had arrived a few minutes before hers. Things in the Adirondacks were going dangerously well. A raging bull is a hard thing to let go of once you've got him by the tail, Van Duzer thought, and a harder thing to hold on to. But then, that was what lawyers were for, wasn't it? Prudence had gotten him this far, after all, and he was not about to abandon it now.

In the interim there was the Durant woman to consider. Van Duzer set about writing a vague note full of lawyerly double-talk about honoring her wishes and understanding her concerns. It would keep her soothed for a while. He smirked as he wrote.

 

Tupper floated in the black water of the lake, looking up at the stars. He imagined he was among them, drifting through space, soaring high above the earth on eagle's wings. He
had
flown, but his landing had been hard. His side burned like the belly of a stove on a subzero night. It was scraped raw from hip to shoulder. The huge wound oozed through his tattered clothes. His hands were raw, the skin torn away when he'd clutched at the big spruce that had broken his fall. He was bitten on the legs and hands and arm, where the dogs had gotten him. He mumbled the prayers of healing once more in the darkness as he floated in the shallows of Blue.

He grinned through his pain. The incantations had worked. He had been one with the eagles, if only for an instant. He had flown into the branches of the tree, whose top barely peeked above the edge of the sloping cliff. The men who tracked him had been slowed by their injured dogs and their belief that he could not have survived the fall. He was gone before they climbed down and worked their way to where he'd landed. He heard them calling long after the sun sank, listening as he crouched in the cool water.

He had laughed silently though his side erupted in fire. He could not keep it in. It welled up, triumphant, fueled by the giddy knowledge of what he'd done. It was almost more than he could control, a euphoria that swept him along, washing away the pain that burned him in a dozen places. The best he could do, the only control he had was to keep his laughter silent, no louder than the kiss of the water against the rocks. That laughter never ceased, save for the death of winter's ice.

Tupper had but one regret. He loved dogs.

As the outlines of the shouldering mountains faded and lake turned to black, Tupper saw a small, wispy column of smoke rise above an island out in the lake. He couldn't see the fire. He didn't need to.

“Only man, of all God's creatures, makes fire,” his grandfather had told him when he was very small.

“It is an eternal sign of the Creator's love for our people. Fire is a sacred trust. Use it well.”

His grandfather's teachings echoed in his head as he gauged the distance across the sleeping water. A quarter of a mile at least, he figured. Tupper stood and stretched, easing his sore muscles, but lighting up his side again. He took his boots off and slung them over his neck by the tied laces. With hardly a ripple he eased into the icy lake and started a slow paddle for the island. With luck, he'd have what he needed and be long gone before
ende'ka gaa'kwa
painted the morning sky.

 

Braddock rested only a few hours. He'd made plans to go back to Castle Rock and search by lamplight. He was determined to find Tupper, alive if possible.

“Can't sweat a corpse,” Chowder used to say.

It was hours before dawn when Tom met Chauncey Busher. The guide stood waiting with two horses and kerosene lamps. Busher had been the only man Tom could get to go back with him. Owens said he had a client in the morning and the Duryea boys were so wrung out he didn't even ask. The other guides were either engaged or oddly reluctant to venture after Tupper. Some made excuses with comments like, “Any man jumps off Castle Rock's just a corpse,” which seemed to sum up the prevailing wisdom on the subject. Nobody could explain why Tupper hadn't been found.

“This whole business's got the men spooked,” Busher said as they rode. Tom yawned so hard and wide his whole body shuddered. The rest hadn't been nearly enough.

“What with the tales of folks with holes in their noggins,” Busher said as he watched Tom yawn, “crazy Indians running about tearin' dogs limb from limb, disappearin' like steam off piss, you know it makes men jumpy.”

Braddock understood. Already the stories were overblown.

“He's just a man, Chauncey. Just a man.”

The hike to Castle Rock was tough in the dark, but they were able to ride partway in on a trail the horses could navigate. Neither man said much until they got close to the foot of the cliff. Just getting there was a steep, rocky climb and had them breathing hard. They found the spot where Buck had landed, marked by a large pool of smeared blood running across the stone. Busher stood over the spot, looking first left, then right, then up the sloping face of the cliff. It seemed to disappear into the black sky above them, a looming mass against the stars.

“Can't hardly believe he threw a dog off this cliff,” Busher said.

They both stood, looking up, their faces yellow in the lamplight. Busher shook his head and turned away. “So, where'd he git to?” the guide mumbled.

They searched for hours, working their way over, around, and under the massive, tumbled boulders. There were many small caves, crevices, and black, inaccessible holes. They peered into each. Again they climbed to the top of the cliff from the other side, retracing the route they'd taken the afternoon before. After a long search of the densely wooded crown they paused at the edge. They both feared that Tupper had somehow hidden himself after killing the dogs, that he hadn't jumped at all, but had somehow gotten by them.

“Woulda been tough to go far,” Busher said. “We were close. He couldn't have gone more'n a hundred feet through that stuff,” he said, waving back at the densely packed pines. “You'd hear a man in there.”

Tom just grunted. The sun was rising behind them by then, painting the forests far off in the west a glowing yellow while the lake below them remained in shadow. An orange reflection in the distance caught Tom's attention.