Across the Great Barrier

CHAPTER 25

TRAVELING WITH WASH WHEN HE WAS IN A HURRY WAS A LOT different from the way we’d traveled the previous summer. We didn’t take a pack animal, and we alternated trotting and walking so as to go as fast as possible without foundering the horses. When Lan asked about speed-traveling spells, Wash said that he’d only ever used one once, west of the Mammoth, and he’d only do it again if someone was likely to die if they didn’t get somewhere on time. Mostly, if there was a real emergency but nobody dying, he’d gallop and walk, then trade his tired horse for a fresh one at the next settlement. We couldn’t do that because settlements only had to provide mounts for circuit magicians, and anyway this wasn’t an emergency yet.

Wash’s estimate for time was dead-on. We got to the Big Bear Lake settlement near sunset of our second day traveling, mainly because it was high summer and the sun rose early and set late, and we rode pretty nearly every minute it was up.

The settlement folks were surprised to see us; they’d only expected Wash. They found room for all of us, though, in the newcomers’ longhouse. That was a big, plain building three times as long as it was wide, meant for new settlers to stay in until they got their own houses built. Most settlements built one first thing, and then after they earned out their allotments they turned it into a general store or town hall. Professor Torgeson said the settlers got the idea from the Scandians and Vinlanders, who’d been building longhouses since medieval times.

It was too late in the day to do much in the way of talking, especially with three of the four of us well and truly tuckered out from the fast ride. Wash was the only one who didn’t seem bothered by it. The rest of us turned in as soon as we could and slept as late as they let us, which wasn’t much later than we’d been getting up at the camp.

Right after breakfast, Wash collected the rest of us and took us to see Mr. Macleod. He was a sturdy gentleman with short graying hair, dressed in an old blue work shirt and bright red suspenders. He lived and worked from a log house right inside the palisade gates. He’d divided the inside in half with a burlap curtain; the front part was where he met with people and did official business, and with five of us there it was pretty cramped. Practically before he had a chance to say anything, the professor asked whether we could talk to the trapper who’d first come in with the news, and she was a mite put out to learn he’d moved on long ago.

“Trappers have itchy feet, ma’am,” Mr. Macleod said. “About the only time you see them in one place for more than a week or two at a time is at the annual St. Jacques assembly or if they’ve been snowed in. Old Greasy Pierre came through back in late March; there’s no way he’d still be here now.”

“Just like the summer men,” Professor Torgeson said, nodding. “I’d hoped for better, but I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“Summer men?” Mr. Macleod said.

“Vinlanders who cross to the mainland to hunt every summer,” the professor replied. “We lose a few every year who insist on staying just a few more days and get caught by an early winter storm. Once that happens, they rarely make it back before the ice dragons come down from the north.”

Mr. Macleod nodded. “Same thing, really. Pierre took it particularly hard on account of these last few years being so good. He got accustomed to taking enough animals to get his summer supplies without so much work, so when things went back to normal, he was right put out.”

“The last few years have been good ones?”

“For trappers,” Wash agreed. “All up the Red River and down to the Middle Plains Territory. Maybe farther.”

“Likely it was all the animals forced out by the grubs,” Mr. Macleod said. “Leastwise, that’s what everyone says.”

“Forced out by the grubs?” Lan said. “But they just ate plants!”

“And when the rabbits and deer and bison and giant beavers and rainbow squirrels have no plants to eat, they leave, and the saber cats and foxes and jewel minks and dire wolves follow,” Mr. Macleod said.

“Why would this year have been a bad one, then?” I asked. “The grub-killed land is coming back, but it’s not the same, and it won’t be for a long time. There might be enough for the rabbits and ground squirrels to eat, but for sure not the giant beavers and deer.”

“Who knows?” Mr. Macleod said. “All I can say is that every trapper who came in from the Far West this year had a scanty catch.”

“Now, there’s an odd thing,” Wash said, rubbing his beard. “I hadn’t rightly thought on it before, but most all the trappers who work south of the Grand Bow River brought in as many furs as they could carry. There were a lot more new critters among them, too.”

“More new animals?” Professor Torgeson said.

“There are a lot of things in the Far West that we don’t have names for,” Wash said.

“Every so often, the boys bring in something strange,” Mr. Macleod agreed. “There’s a fox with a gray patch on its forehead that they’re partial to, when they can catch one, and a thing that looks a bit like a fat squirrel that’s had its tail bobbed. Come to think on it, there’s been more of those furs these past few years than there used to be. But then, the boys have been working farther west.”

“Have they?” Wash said in a thoughtful tone. “The way the trappers I talked to were complaining, I got the notion they haven’t ever gone much past their usual runs.”

“How far west would that be?” Professor Torgeson asked.

“Most of the trappers on the North Plains work between here and … well, draw a north-south line through Wintering Island on the Grand Bow, and that’s about as far west as they’ve ever gone,” Mr. Macleod said. “I don’t know about the Gauls and Acadians. They call themselves coureurs de bois, and they’re right out of their heads, if you ask me, the chances they take.”

“They aren’t accustomed to having a safe place nearby,” the professor pointed out. “Acadian settlement isn’t more than halfway along the Great Lakes yet.”

“If the trappers had their way, they’d stay there,” Mr. Macleod grunted. “They were right pleased when the Settlement Office held up on allowing any new settlements last year.”

“All this building has been eating up their hunting ground,” Wash said, nodding.

“Speaking of hunting,” Professor Torgeson said in a pointed tone. “I believe Mr. Morris indicated that one of your hunting parties brought in something interesting.”

“Yes, well, just let me get it and you can see for yourselves.” Mr. Macleod disappeared behind the curtain for a minute. He came out carrying a stone fawn.

From the look of it, the fawn wasn’t more than a week old. Its legs were folded up under it, but its head was up and its eyes were wide, as if it had just seen or smelled something and was wondering what to do. The stone it was made of had a faint pinkish cast to it, but aside from that it looked just like all the other gray-white stone fragments we’d been collecting for days.

“Yonnie Karlsen and three of his friends were hunting off to the west when they came across it,” Mr. Macleod said as we looked it over. “He said there was a doe, too, caught standing. The others wanted to get out of there right quick, but Yonnie made them rig a sling to carry this little one back with them. Said he didn’t want folks calling it another tall tale.”

“How far west?” Wash asked.

“T’other side of the Red River,” Mr. Macleod said. “They were about a week out, which is why they needed the sling. This statue isn’t very heavy, but it’s awkward to haul around for very long.”

The professor had pulled out her magnifying glass to study the fawn more closely. “Except for that pink tinge, it’s just like the others,” she said. “Well, the pink, and that it’s not broken.”

“It was a fair bit pinker when they brought it in,” Mr. Macleod offered. “It’s faded out quite a bit over the last two weeks.”

“So they brought it in two weeks ago,” the professor said. “And they found it a week before that.”

“Early June,” Mr. Macleod confirmed.

“I’m not liking the look of this,” Wash said.

“What? No, no, it’s amazing!” Professor Torgeson said. “We’ll have to get it back to Mill City somehow without breaking it. I don’t suppose you still have that sling, Mr. Macleod?”

“I don’t think that’s what Wash meant,” I said.

Wash nodded. “Studying up on that statue is your job, Professor. Mine is keeping the settlements safe.”

“I sent word as soon as I saw it,” Mr. Macleod said. “Up here, white-tailed deer birth in mid to late May, most years. This fawn looks to be a week old or thereabouts, so it must have been petrified in late May or early June.”

“So three or four weeks ago, whatever does the petrifying was a week’s travel from this settlement,” Lan said. “It seems to me that if it was coming this way, you’d know by now.”

“Maybe,” Wash said. “Or maybe it just travels a whole lot slower than Mr. Karlsen’s hunting party.”

“If we’re lucky, it won’t be able to cross the Red River,” Mr. Macleod said. He frowned. “I purely do hate depending on luck.”

“You’re assuming that this fawn was petrified this year,” Professor Torgeson said reprovingly. “We have no evidence that that is the case. You’re also assuming that whatever it is can move, which is likewise unproven.”

“Professor, ma’am, that’s true enough,” Mr. Macleod said, “but out here, it’s better safe than sorry, because generally speaking, too much of the time sorry means you’re dead.”

“I would like to speak with your hunting party, if any of them are available,” Professor Torgeson said.

Mr. Macleod allowed as how the Anderson brothers had gone right back out to look for game, heading north this time instead of straight west, but he thought Mr. Karlsen was still about. He went off to fetch him while the professor returned to studying the statue.

“It feels wrong,” I said after a while.

Wash nodded, but Lan and Professor Torgeson gave me questioning looks. “It just feels wrong,” I repeated. “There’s no magic in it, not even a little bit, and there ought to be.”

“Just like the ones back at Daybat Creek,” Lan said, nodding.

“No,” I said. “Those are old, and they’re used to being the way they are. This one is … fresh. New. And it’s wrong.”

“How can you tell?” the professor asked.

“This is some of that Aphrikan magic you learned from Miss Ochiba, isn’t it?” Lan said at almost the same time.

I glanced at Wash, but he didn’t give me a hint what to say, one way or the other. So I nodded. “The ones at Daybat Creek just feel like old rocks. Kind of peculiar rocks, but just rocks. Whatever they used to be, they’ve forgotten. This one hasn’t.”

Professor Torgeson’s eyes narrowed. “And what does all that mean? Rocks don’t think!”

“I’m sorry, I can’t explain it any better than that,” I said.

“Aphrikan magic never has been easy to explain,” Wash said.

“Insight and assurance,” Lan muttered. Professor Torgeson gave him a questioning look, and he said, “It’s what my professor in comparative magic used to say — Aphrikan magic is about insight and assurance. I never did figure out what he meant.”

The door banged open, and Mr. Macleod came in. With him was a middling-tall man of about thirty with a long face and hair the color of fresh-cut oak planks, whom he introduced as Mr. Karlsen. “Nah, just call me Yonnie,” the man said. He spoke with a thick Scandian accent. “Bert says you’re wanting to hear about my hunting trip?”

“That we are,” Professor Torgeson said, and launched into a whole series of questions about where they’d found the stone fawn, whether they’d seen anything unusual, whether they’d been there before, and a whole host of other things.

Mr. Karlsen answered patiently, for the most part. He and his friends had been in that area before, though he couldn’t swear to the exact spot. He hadn’t noticed anything odd; no strange plants or odd smells. It wasn’t an area for sinkholes, just plain old prairie running endlessly on toward the west.

“You could maybe be asking the Andersons if they noticed anything more than I did,” he said at last. “They’ll be back by tomorrow.”

“They might be back tomorrow,” Mr. Macleod said. “They might not. Hunting’s not so easy to say.”

“They’ll be back by tomorrow, or I’ll be going out to look for them,” Mr. Karlsen said firmly. “Nils promised.”

Mr. Macleod looked skeptical, but early that afternoon there was a shout from the lookout and a few minutes later a boy came running in to tell us that the hunting party was back, moving fast, and they’d brought someone with. We’d taken the fawn outside so as to be out of Mr. Macleod’s way (and to have better light and more space to work in), and the professor had spent most of the time taking measurements and studying the fawn through her magnifying glass, while I wrote down measurements for her in a little notebook. Lan had gotten bored and wandered off to talk with some of the settlers, and Wash and Mr. Macleod were holed up in Mr. Macleod’s front room, but they came out as soon as they heard.

So we were all standing around just inside the palisade gates when the Anderson brothers came through. I thought at first that the boy had been wrong, because I only saw the two men, but then I realized that the second horse carried two men riding double. The one in front sagged forward in the saddle, and only the other man’s hold on him kept him from falling right off.

The first man through the gate fairly leaped down from his horse and ran to help the other two, yelling for Mr. Macleod. He got Wash and Mr. Macleod both, and the three of them eased the unconscious rider down to the ground. As he came off the horse, I heard the first rider say, “Beware for the leg! It will not bend.”

I started forward to see if I could help, but Wash turned and shook his head at us, then he and Mr. Macleod and the first rider clustered around the man they’d brought back.

“For God’s sake, get the gate shut!” the second rider shouted, and the boys who were on gate duty jerked out of their fascination and shoved the gates shut. The rider sidled his horse away from Wash and the others, then dismounted.

By this time, half the settlement had gathered. “Nils, what happened?” one of the settlers asked as the second rider handed the two horses over to one of the gatekeepers.

“I don’t know,” the man said. “Olaf — we should never have gone.”

“Gone where?”

The man shook his head and twisted to stare at the little clump of people crouched around the man on the ground.

“Is that Greasy Pierre?” someone said. “What’s he doing back here?”

Right about then, Mr. Macleod stood up and came over. “Eric, Thomas, we need your help carrying him inside. My place. Yonnie, you stay with Nils. Anfred, we’re going to need two bottles of that whiskey you brought back from Mill City; I’ll see you’re paid for it later.”

“Bert, you can reverse it, can’t you?” Nils Anderson said. “We brought him back as fast as we could — there’s still time, isn’t there?”

“Maybe time to save his life,” Mr. Macleod said. “But I’m afraid we’re going to have to take his leg off to do it.”

“No!” a young woman cried. She pushed through from the back of the crowd and Mr. Macleod caught her just before she tried to run for the man on the ground. “No, you can’t!”

“We have to, Martha,” Mr. Macleod said gently. “It’s turned to stone.”