By Andrew Sharp

Gunpowder Trails is a serial novel. It debuted online with chapter one in November 2015, and is slated for release chapter by chapter over the coming months.

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three

Chapter Four

The meat was tough, seared outside and almost raw inside, but Charles chomped it as if it might still be thinking of running away. His stomach wavered a little at the rush of rich food, but Charles figured he would worry about the eating and let his stomach worry about its own troubles.

Those who had shot the animals got to pick their cut of meat, and then, by tradition, a couple of the leaders stood over the roasted wild boar and deer carving off chunks and doling them out. The smugglers gnawed the bones clean, and some even ate the liver and other parts of the guts raw. When they had eaten everything else, a few whacked the bones with rocks and licked out the marrow, or scraped fat off the hides.

Then the band heaped the leftover scraps on the bonfires so the smell of blood and meat would not draw bears, panthers or cats. Then they sat around the fire, licking fat and blood from their fingers and joking and laughing as they had not done for many days, although a few looked uneasy as their stomachs gurgled complaints.

“I’m still hungry,” Jake said, picking his teeth with a twig. “Would’ve been nice to have a little left over. Might have if James hadn’t shot a tiny little fawn.” Smugglers grinned.

“Better than the one you shot,” James said. “I didn’t see you bring it in – where are you stashing it?”

“I was waiting for one worth shooting. Hate to waste my time on five bites.”

“Wasn’t any problem for James to haul this one in,” Eileen chipped in. “He just threw it over his shoulder and walked back.”

“At least I didn’t waste a perfectly good arrow like Pete did,” James said. Pete sat roasting a squirrel on a stick. “Who’s still eating?” he said, waving them off.

“You should save that hide and get it tanned when we get home,” Dan told him.

Pete pretended not to listen to the laughter and attempted to look blissful while grinding at the rubbery meat with his teeth.

Charles would have been flustered and defensive if the smugglers mocked him like that. But it would be nice, he thought, if they cared enough to make fun of him. The last time he had gone hunting, he had shot his arrow three feet over the deer’s back. Jake had seen it happen but just shook his head and never said a word about it.

At least now everyone was in a better mood. If they went back to ignoring the slaves it would be better than open hostility. Nobody had complained when the slaves got an equal share of meat, so that was a good sign.

Tomorrow the work would begin, now that they all had food in their stomachs. If there was plenty of game and wild boars didn’t gore anybody and the hunters shot straight, they could replenish their packs in just a few days. If predators were on the prowl, or if the deer were scarce, it might take a couple of weeks to stock up. They might even have to try a new area further south.

They would figure that out later. For now, the smugglers had the afternoon to rest and recharge from the relentless pace they had kept up since Scranton. Deepening their relief was the knowledge that they were far out of range of any pursuing soldiers.

They lounged against packs and trees, napping and chatting. George even let those who had run out of their own tobacco, which was almost everyone, dip into the leftover trade supply for a celebratory smoke.

“There’s plenty of it,” he said. “May as well get rid of it – just more to carry, anyway.”

And you can score some easy points to help them forget the way you’ve been driving them, Charles thought.

Smoke curled upward into the leaves, and the pungent smell of tobacco wafted through camp. Without alcohol to fuel the mood, it stayed mellow.

“A story,” Jake said. “Time for a story. Who’s up?”

“Eliza,” James said, and others picked up the sentiment.

“Aww, I was just getting comfortable,” Eliza said, but she sat up. Most of the time Eliza preferred thinking to talking. She was not shy, but had light brown eyes that looked inside your head, which made people uneasy. But everyone listened when she made up her stories, or told the traditional tales, altering the angles and adding details that made them new. Her art had already done great service many times by distracting the smugglers from their misery after the weary days.

As she began to speak now, people gathered around and dug out fresh tobacco to chew or smoke.

Long ago (she said), in the darkest days of the Calamity, people fled from the cities, leaving behind even the bodies of their friends and family. They found little safety in the countryside, because everyone else fled there too. The farmers tried to protect their land, but in the chaos the crowds burned the farmhouses and stole the grain from the barns.

Hunger stalked them long before spring came. Most of those who made it to spring had no seed for crops, and wouldn’t have known how to plant it anyway. Disease had come with them from the cities, and the pestilence killed many before hunger could get them.

Whenever anybody started to get the hang of primitive life and got a nice village started, along would come more people would come fleeing from the cities who would wreck everything and steal their food, and so the fighting went on until the cities were empty and almost everyone in the countryside was dead too. The land finally grew quiet when only a few were left and their civilization was dead. Then like Noah and his family, they began to learn to hunt and live off the land and grow enough food to make up the difference.

The pestilence never would leave for good, but it came less often, and a few people always lived to carry on. They told stories to each other about the luxuries of the old world, the medicine that could cure any sickness, the markets full of food, and the marvelous machines that did your work for you. Nobody ever went back to the ruins of the cities, though, where death hung like a fog, and ghosts went abroad even in the daytime.

The people in the little villages scrounged in the dirt and poked through the woods for rusting metal scraps to make into good plows and nails and horseshoes and shovels. They also began to design metal weapons, some based on memory, some on trial and error.

But they soon used up all their metal scraps, and more children lived long enough to grow up, and everyone hoarded metal like jewels.

In one of our villages, some say it was in Easton, there lived a blacksmith named Paul. Easton was just a small village on the edge of the water then, not being any greater than any of the others. Paul’s grandfather had told him stories about the great cities, and the part about whole buildings made out of metal was what interested Paul the most.

Paul knew from his grandfather, and from travelers, that the cities were still populated, the ghosts of the residents drifting among the buildings. The ghosts were irritable, his grandfather said, because there was nothing to do in the cities anymore, and also they were angry at the descendants of the lucky few who still had any. The ghosts with living great-grandchildren were more cheerful, his grandfather said, and if you could find them, they would give you luck and protect you. But like as not they were resting in peace and nowhere to be found.

Paul was a skeptical man and he did not believe these ghost tales, except deep inside, in the small part of him that got worried on dark nights. But he kept thinking about the metal, and the riches and prosperity and ease it would bring him. He imagined how much food the village could grow if everyone had a steel plow. And how easy it would be to defeat their enemies if they fought wooden spears with steel swords, and could deflect arrows with their armor. Or if they had guns. Most of the guns left over from the old days were very rusty now and there was no ammunition for them, but the concept was pretty simple and he knew he could make a simple one that worked, if he could figure out how to make powder for it.

Paul thought about this for a couple of years while he worked at his blacksmith shop, until finally, finding he had almost no metal to work with, he decided to travel to the closest ghost city and see if he could spirit some away.

Nobody else would go with him, so Paul went alone, and arrived at the city as night was falling. Twisted leaning towers loomed up in the twilight. Towers made out of metal.

He camped a respectful distance away to wait until morning, however, because his skepticism about ghosts was waning again.

It did not help that a ghost came to his camp that night. Paul was having a little after-supper whiskey as he sat by his fire, when he heard footsteps coming through the leaves. Before he could jump to his feet or pull out a knife, a figure in a dark cloak stood at the edge of the firelight, its face hidden in the shadows of its hood. Paul sat with his flask of whiskey still halfway to his mouth, staring, and then, pulling himself together, decided he must say something stern. “Whaaa … whois … ahrgh! … he said.

The figure did not reply. Instead, it sat down on the other side of the fire, hands on its knees, and looked around the camp, which troubled Paul deeply, because there was no chair.

The figure’s voice, when it spoke, bothered Paul even more. It was a sort of moan, like the wind in the eaves on a stormy night, except this wind formed words. Paul listened carefully, as he did not want to interrupt and ask the figure to repeat itself.

“Nice fire,” the figure moaned. “I have not seen one of those for a long time. It makes me want to warm my hands.”

“Oh, by all means, certainly,” Paul said. “Here, I’ll add some wood.”

“Fool,” the figure said. “I cannot feel it. All is cold to me now.”

“What,” Paul said, “can I do for you, exactly, then?” although he was more preoccupied with what the ghost might decide to do.

“Nothing,” the figure said. “But you can do something for yourself. Stay out of the city. It is sacred ground. If you enter it, you will die.”

“How bad is dying?” Paul asked.

“Bad. Worse even than being alive.”

By this point, Paul was having trouble maintaining his lack of belief in ghosts. He had not yet drunk enough whiskey to be able to manufacture such a grouchy and cynical apparition as he was talking to now. He took another swig of his whiskey and rolled it around on his tongue experimentally, hoping it tasted different than usual. It did not. He took a couple more gulps anyway.

He eyed the ghost, if that is what it was. It did not seem to be overly hostile, although he reflected that reading body language in a disembodied being might be hit or miss. But he was a practical man, and although the hair was prickling at the back of his neck, he realized he did not know how to fight a ghost if it did decide to be hostile, and if he could keep it talking, maybe he could distract it from whatever ghosts did to you when they decided to get on with their evening. Plus, it occurred to him that, if ghosts could make threats, perhaps they could also be reasoned with.

“Now, thanks for the warning,” he said. “But it doesn’t really seem fair, you all hoarding all that nice metal you can’t even use, with us poor peasants scraping by on scraps.”

“Baloney,” the ghost said. “At least you’re scraping by. Look at us — dead as doornails. Didn’t even make it out of the city. You call that fair? We’re stuck here, so we’ll keep the metal. I’d call that even.”

“But what are you going to do with steel?”

“What are YOU going to do with it?” the ghost asked.

“Make plows and drainage pipes and woodstoves and handy stuff like that.”

“Anything else?”

Paul squirmed. “Well …”

“Like swords or arrowheads or guns, maybe?”

“Not me personally,” Paul said. “I’m a peaceful man myself. I mean,” he added, looking away from the ghost’s gaze and sipping on his whiskey, “maybe for hunting or self defense or something.”

“All that apocalypse and you all haven’t learned a darned thing,” the ghost said. “I ought to let you have the metal and let you ruin everything again, I really should. It’s not our job to babysit the living.”

“It will be different this time,” Paul insisted. “We’ve really learned our lesson.”

The ghost had a good laugh at that. “Tell you what,” it said. “I’ll have a talk with the others. Maybe we don’t care as much as we thought we did.”

Paul did not go into the city the next day, thinking it might be best to wait for permission before exploring. He didn’t know if the ghost could make good on its threat to kill him, but he wasn’t sure he cared to experiment. He felt silly though, feeding his fire in the broad daylight, and by the end of the day, he had about convinced himself he had been dreaming the night before. Then at twilight, the ghost came back.

“Bet you thought I was just a bad dream,” the ghost said.

“Oh no, not at all,” Paul said. “Been looking forward to seeing you again.”

“None of your sass,” the ghost said. “Listen, we’ve been talking, and we’ve decided to call your bluff. We don’t have the energy to patrol around here all the time trying to stop you from sneaking in and pilfering metal. We have regrets to stew on. You just take all the metal you want and put it to good, peaceful, harmonious agricultural purposes. Just don’t come in here at night when we’re trying to walk around haunting things, or we won’t answer for the consequences.”

So Paul promised again that he wouldn’t make any weapons, and the ghost left, laughing itself sick. And Paul (scrupulously working only in the daytime) gathered a large load of steel and aluminum, took it back to his shop and started selling metal tools and goods at a great profit.

When everyone else saw the riches he was building from his metal monopoly, they figured out where he was getting the metal. Seeing that he was able to go unhaunted into the cities and work, they rushed to get their own. Paul warned them to stay out of the cities at night, and to not use the metal to make weapons (which he only made for personal use). The warning about nighttime they heeded with care, but they did make weapons (for their own personal use and the use of their closest and richest friends).

“And they say,” Eliza concluded, “That during wartime, you can hear the ghosts laughing in the ruined cities.”

Twilight had fallen while she told her story. A few people got up to get more wood for the fire, while the rest sat staring into the flames.

“Thanks a lot, Eliza,” Dan said. “Such a cheerful story. Just the thing to relax on a fine evening.”

Eliza laughed. “I just have to remind you guys how rotten you are, once in a while.”

“It’s a good reminder,” Henry the tailor said, “especially of the perils of turning to science instead of God. The Calamity was God’s judgment on us for …”

Groans arose around the fire. “More stories!”

So at their insistence, Eliza moved on to lighter tales, starting with the one about the people long ago who flew to the moon, and what they did there.

But Charles rolled up in his bedroll and only half listened to the talking as he fell asleep. Tomorrow would bring a lot of work, and he was weary. He slept without the nightmares about food that never filled him, indeed, without any dreams at all.

 

The slaves and a few smugglers stayed behind from the hunting the next day to guard the sulfur. Most of the band were expert hunters, able to stalk silently through damp leaves and rustle through dry leaves like a harmless squirrel. They could feel twigs under their feet and pull away before the snap that would give them away. They knew the language of the forest sounds, and could hone in on the flicker of a deer’s ear or a hog turning its head. When the time came, they could put their arrow exactly where they wanted it. Even an animal with a running start could not always escape.

The animals that kept the band alive were mostly white-tailed deer and wild hogs, which were large enough to be worth the trouble of pursuing. They were also plentiful, especially the hogs. On rare occasions, the smugglers might get to feast on an elk. They ate black bear and turkey if they could get them.

They shot cats whenever they saw them, but only ate them if starvation was the only other option. They did keep the fur as a prized hunting trophy. John had an elaborate dress hat made of cat fur at home he liked to bring out on social occasions, and many of the band advertised their status as expert woodsmen by wearing catskin caps, with the tails hanging down at the back. Cat fur also made a good bow decoration. Each color had its uses — orange and white were popular for decoration, and tabby made good camouflage.

The slaves usually stayed back at the camp to dry the meat, pulverize it and mix it with fat to make pemmican. Properly made, this mash would last months, and aside from taste and texture, it was the perfect food.

For once, the slaves had the easiest job. The hunters had to wake up in the dark, stoke the fires, and eat a few mouthfuls of pemmican before crunching off into the gray morning woods. The slaves could stay in their warm bedrolls until the sun rose up into the trees.

They did have to get up in time to prepare in the event of a successful hunt. To begin, they chopped saplings with a hatchet, then hacked them into four-foot sections. Sharpening one end of these sections into points, they drove them into the ground and cut notches into the tops. Then they looked for smaller, straight branches to run between the stakes, making a drying rack to hang the meat from. Maple shoots, straight and supple, worked well for this.

The hunters brought in two small pigs by noon. They chopped off the haunch of one of these for their lunch, and turned the rest over to the slaves.

To get started, Charles and Gary roped the back feet of one of the pigs and hauled it up to hang from a tree branch. Then, slicing the skin away from the hocks, they gripped slippery handfuls of it and hauled down on it until it peeled away, making additional cuts as needed to encourage it away from the carcass.

Once the skin was off, they cut the red meat off the bone in large chunks and handed it to Marguerite, who sliced the meat with a steady hand. She was better than anyone else at slicing the neat strips that ensured the meat would dry as evenly as possible. She then hung the strips over the drying racks.

Gary was good at skinning the animals, but his heart wasn’t in it. He always looked disappointed when he wasn’t among the hunters. While Charles chafed at having to skin a hog when he would rather be safe at home tinkering or reading, Gary was irritated to be skinning a hog when he could be out pursuing one, being one of the gang, an expert woodsman and a hardened smuggler.

Charles doubted Gary would ever fulfill his dream of being a hardened smuggler. He was too soft-hearted, though he tried to hide it, and he cared too much what the others thought of him. The veteran smugglers were vain, of course, about their hunting skills and ability to handle the hardships of the trail, but they also didn’t need anyone to pat them on the back. They were good at what they did, and they knew it.

Gary had the powerful build to take care of himself on the trail, but his talent with weapons was marginal, and he didn’t come across as very intelligent. Charles thought this was because he tried too hard to look competent, and so he talked even when he really didn’t know what he was talking about. He also had thick eyebrows that gave him a brutish look and did nothing to dispel the idea that he was less than brilliant, and he had awkward large ears. But from working with him day after day, Charles knew Gary was as intelligent as any of the other smugglers, and could go far if he just quit trying so hard.

As they worked now, Gary broke the silence.

“I’ve been thinking a bunch about that ambush,” he said. “If we can figure it out, maybe we won’t have to worry about our own skins so much.”

“Huh,” Charles said, not really in the mood to talk.

“Now, the first thing you’d think of, of course, is maybe somebody in the band was a spy for the soldiers.”

“Ah.”

“Now, you ask, why would they do that? Money,” Gary said. “These smugglers are outlaws. Most of them are pretty loyal, but the thing they want most is money. That’s why they’re smugglers in the first place. Give them enough money, they’ll do anything.”

Thanks for explaining to me what smugglers are like, Charles thought. I’ve only been around them for seven years.

“How would the soldiers get in touch to offer their bribe?” Charles asked.

“There,” Gary said, “that’s just the thing I’ve been thinking about.” He stopped pulling on the pig skin and lowered his voice. “The traitor could have sold us out last trip. Made a deal — we’ll be at such and so a spot when we come back, wait there.”

Charles stared at him. “The only one who could make that happen would be a leader. I can’t think of any of them who would do that.”

“I can,” Marguerite said, although she had not appeared to be paying any attention.

They looked at her. She didn’t offer any more comment, just kept slicing meat.

“Or,” Gary said, glancing over at the nearest smuggler on guard over the sulfur, and navigating the conversation back to safer ground, “maybe someone from Easton paid a smuggler — anybody in the band — to tip off the soldiers. Could have been either side that did the bribing, if you think about it.”

Charles gritted his teeth. Once Gary got an idea in his head, he wouldn’t let it go. “Listen, you’ve still got the same problem. How would anybody except a leader know where to set the trap? And the other thing — nobody from Easton has any reason to try to stop us. They can’t get enough sulfur, trading on their own. That’s why they talk big about shutting us down but never do it.”

They started skinning the second hog. It slipped in the rope a little, and Charles heaved it back up and pulled the rope tight around its legs again.

“Well, all right, that’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Gary said. “There had to be a mole of some kind. Maybe it wasn’t one of us at all. Maybe that guy in Scranton — Jeff.”

“No way,” Charles said. He’d never do that. Besides, Jeff doesn’t know our plans. He just waits for us to knock.”

After a pause, Charles suggested, “What if there was a traitor in the band, who just sneaked out to tip off the soldiers and then hiked back?”

“Hey, there ya go,” Gary said. “Coming up with some ideas for once instead of just poking holes in everything.” He wiped his face with his arm, holding the knife away to keep from smearing blood on his clothes.

“I’ll poke holes in it,” Marguerite said, in a tone of voice suitable for explaining that it doesn’t snow in the summer. “Whoever it was would have had to hike a couple of days ahead and back again, without anyone noticing. Impossible.”

“Well,” Charles said, “maybe they sneaked out at night. Went to a farmhouse or something to pass the message along, then sneaked back before dawn.”

Marguerite sighed. “First, they would have had to sneak out of a camp without making enough noise to wake anybody up. And these are people who wake up easily. Then they’d have to walk far enough away to light a lantern, which by the way I don’t think we have, and walk all by themselves all night without getting eaten by a cat.”

Charles’ ears were burning. “All right, all right, fine, it’s a bad idea.”

“Then,” Marguerite went on, “they would have had to get back before morning after a night’s hike, sneak back in without anyone noticing, and not look horrible in the morning, and get up and hike, full of energy, all day. They’d have to do all that, of course …”

“FINE,” Charles said. “I get it.”

One of the smugglers on guard glanced over at them.

“Keep your voice down,” Gary said.

There was a sullen silence for a while. Done deboning the pork, Gary and Charles switched to helping Marguerite finish up the slicing work.

“Now here’s an idea,” Gary said. “Carrier pigeons. All the guy would have to do is just walk slow that day, signal a pigeon flying overhead, attach a message, and off it would go to the soldiers.”

“Signal a pigeon?” Charles said. “How many pigeons have you seen flying around in the mountains?”

“Well … none, but I’m not looking for them,” Gary said. “Anyway, maybe it would come out from the city and be trained to look for a certain color cloth or a kind of hat. Who wears the brightest hat? Any suspicious outfits?”

“Can pigeons even see color?”

“Why shouldn’t they?” Gary said. “Doesn’t everything see color?”

“No.”

“What are you, the eye expert?”

Charles, having had his ideas demolished, now was enjoying passing the favor along to somebody else. “What if the pigeon flies over at a bad time, and the traitor is sitting there eating supper and a pigeon with a message on its leg comes and sits on his head?”

Marguerite laughed, something Charles couldn’t remember hearing before. He was glad, though, that he had distracted her from remembering how bad his own idea had been.

“Come on, maybe it’s a hand signal or something,” Gary said.

And at this unsatisfactory juncture, they let the discussion drop, because they were done cutting up the meat. They saved the heads and livers for supper, and gathered up the rest of the entrails, hides and bones and burned them.

Not long afterward, the hunters started coming in for the evening. They did not bring any more animals with them, and Charles was grouchy to see them pull off strips of drying meat the slaves had just spent so much time preparing, to supplement their supper of heads and livers. He glanced at Marguerite to see how she was taking the destruction of her handiwork. She just sat eating the last of her pemmican, seeming not to care.

The next day, with no new meat to cure, the slaves gathered acorns instead. Acorns tasted good, kept well, and would keep you alive even if you had nothing else. The smugglers sometimes mixed them with pemmican, or ground them with stones to make a rough flour for biscuits or flat bread.

Acorns were bitter fresh, but repeated soaking in warm water rendered them edible. The slaves cracked the shells, pried out the nuts, then dropped them in small copper pots of water, where the bitterness turned the water dark as it seeped out. Then the slaves soaked them again, and again, until the water stayed clear. After that, they spread the nuts out to dry.

Some years there weren’t many acorns, but this year when they found stands of oak trees, the acorns were thick on the ground. The slaves gathered them into bags and by lunchtime, had a mound of them back at the camp. Picking out the ones with wormholes and throwing them away, they started cracking the rest and warming water in small copper pots.

As they worked, Gary went back to the conspiracy theories, apparently not overly discouraged by the squabble over pigeons.

“I had another idea about that ambush,” he said. “Maybe it was spies.” He paused as if waiting for Charles to break in. Hearing no rebuttal, he went on. “Maybe they were just patrolling around, and then when they saw us coming, they’d run off to report.”

“But they’d have to live out in the woods for weeks by themselves. They’d be cat lunch way before we came along,” Charles said.

“Aw, you’d risk it for enough money,” Gary said. “Anyway, maybe it was a group of them. They’d make a little camp, or patrol together.”

“What if we walked by on the other side of the mountain and they never saw us?” Charles asked.
“Maybe they got lucky.”

That seemed far-fetched to Charles. “Anyhow,” he said, “the whole bunch would have to wait until they saw us coming, then they’d have to not just beat us back but find the soldiers in time to have them be waiting at just the right spot. And we never saw any tracks or anything.”

Gary cracked acorns in silence.

Fine, Charles thought. Gary didn’t have to get all sulky when his ideas turned out to be stupid.

“There’s always that first option, that one neither of you wants to talk about,” Marguerite said. “The only one it could be.”

Charles frowned. “It doesn’t have to be that one.”

Gary peered from one to the other. “This one? That one? What one?”

“None of your other ideas made any sense at all,” Marguerite said to Charles.

“That one doesn’t make sense either,” Charles said.

“WHAT one?” Gary said.

“The one both of you are afraid to say,” Marguerite said. “That it was George. Or Warren. Or John. Or that old bastard …”

“Oh, that idea,” Gary said.

The only sound was the cracking of acorn shells between flat rocks and the plonk as Marguerite threw the nuts into the kettle. Gary and Charles had stopped working and were staring at her. Just thinking that kind of idea was dangerous, and here she had practically shouted it out. They glanced at the smuggler guards. She’d be dead if one of them overheard, but they did not seem to have noticed anything interesting.

“What are you going to do, tell on me? Go right ahead.”

She couldn’t really mean that, Charles thought. But she didn’t seem to be daring them to tell. She was simply letting them know that meeting a grisly end at the hands of the smugglers or cutting up a hog were about the same to her. It was the hopelessness he fought off at his worst moments, but she seemed to be past fighting it.

Aside from that, her treasonous theory didn’t seem plausible. “I know George better than that,” Charles said. Internally, he added, Well, I think I do. Aloud: “He’s no saint but he makes plenty of money. He wouldn’t need a payoff. Neither would the others.”

“All of them,” Gary said, “would take a payoff if it was big enough. But,” he added, “I’m not saying George would do that.”

“Maybe,” Marguerite said, “it’s somebody else who wants to run the band.”

Charles wondered if she were spilling a secret that she actually knew about Old Harry, or just conjecturing about the leaders in general. The idea of Old Harry whispering his dreams in her ear was ludicrous, both because he didn’t care for her emotionally in any way, and because he certainly knew that if he were so foolhardy as to confide in her, she would take the information straight to George and then sit back to enjoy “The Disembowelment of Old Harry” in its first and only performance.

 

The next day the slaves gathered acorns again, and nobody interrupted them by bringing meat. In the evening, the hunters returned with two deer, but they were not celebrating, because they also had one less smuggler and had spent the better part of the afternoon searching for him.

George stamped around camp with a deep scowl. Warren didn’t say anything, but sat and stared into the fire. Old Harry sharpened his knife to a fine point.

The next day, the hunters brought no deer, but had two fewer smugglers. This time, it was getting dark and they hadn’t noticed in time to do any searching.

The camp that evening bristled with angry smugglers, gesturing and denouncing. The usual rumble of tired talk was replaced by an agitated buzz like a rattlesnake den.

Pete sat across the fire from Charles, not joining in the discussion. He looked more numb than angry. Both the missing smugglers had been his close friends. They’d frequently hunted and hiked together, retold each other’s stories and laughed at each other’s jokes. Now he was here and they were out there in the darkness, either dead or in the process of becoming that way.

Pete poked the fire with a stick, his jaw working. This, Charles realized, was as close as he had come to seeing a smuggler cry.

“Hey, uh, I’m sorry about this, Pete,” Charles said. Pete didn’t look up or respond. Charles went on, “If there’s anything I can do …”

Pete looked up then, and his eyes drilled through Charles. He pointed the glowing end of his stick across the fire at him. “If I ever find out you slaves had anything to do with this,” he said, his voice quivering, “I will cut all your throats myself.”

 

The next night, the hunters returned grouchy, with only a small pig and a grouse that Pete had arrowed, but with the same amount of smugglers they had left with.

Pete impaled his grouse on a stick and came over to where Charles was standing to roast it. Pete stood silently for a few minutes, shifting the stick from one hand to the other. Charles ignored him.

“Ah, hey,” Pete said. “I … about what I said yesterday. I was pretty mad, and I didn’t mean it.” He glanced at Charles. “I, well, I know you guys were back here at camp and had nothing to do with anything that happened. I … well, I was a complete asshole. Sorry.”

Charles could not remember the last time a smuggler had apologized to him for anything. His hostility deflated.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said.

Pete nodded. “Thanks.” He pulled the grouse away from the fire, poked at a couple of spots, and then thrust it back over the flames. “Want some grouse when this is done?”

Charles eyed the singed gangly bird, with its blackened stubble of feather quills. “I think I’ll stick with acorns tonight,” he said.
“Fine with me,” Pete said. “I need my energy because I’m on firewood duty.” He put on a smile but it left quickly.

 

As the evening cooled and the sun sank into the trees, Pete and a few others made a last firewood run, while the talk around Charles’ fire turned to what to do next.

“I really think Warren might be right,” James said. “I think it’s time to get out of here.”

John put down the venison bone he had been gnawing on and stared at him. “What are you talking about? I never ran away from a fight in my life and I’m not going to start now with a bunch of savages.”

“You ran all right from that ambush,” James said.

“A retreat in battle is not running,” John said, jabbing a finger at James. Both the twins had quick tempers, and though James was the more diplomatic of the two, he knew how to needle John when he wanted to.

“You’re an old fool,” he told John. “What’s there to stay and fight about? Ego, is that it?”

John stood up, his face flushing. “Maybe you’re a coward, but I’m not,” he shouted. “I’m not going to die with an arrow in my back!”

“I don’t plan on dying at all,” James said. “Especially over a miserable patch of woods with no deer or hogs in it. It’s not about running. It’s about strategic position.”

“What strategic position? There’s woods here, and woods farther along. You just want to run to Harper’s Ferry and get a room at an inn.”

People began leaving other fires and drifting over to listen. Nobody liked to interfere in the twins’ spats, but they were interesting to watch.

“I’ll tell you why it’s strategic, since you won’t use your own head,” James said. “We’re in the heart of Appalachie territory. There’s a lot less of them closer to the towns. The farther from here we get, the easier the hunting will get and we can quit having people get killed for no reason.”

“No reason? No reason? As soon as we let the Appalachies know we aren’t willing to fight, they’ll harass us every step, every trip,” John said. “We’ll be finished in this business.”

James shrugged. “Maybe we just underestimated them all along. Maybe the only reason we ever got through is they decided to leave us alone.”

Watching John, Charles wondered how far veins could expand without bursting.

“You can go back to tanning leather if you want then! Not me!”

“You can go to hell if you want,” James said.

John picked up a log and threw it down onto the fire, raising a shower of sparks in the gathering twilight. Then he stomped off to a different fire.

James just sat staring into the fire, jaw set.

Charles decided it would be more peaceful in bed, and proceeded to get out his bedroll. But before he finished unrolling it, Dan came over to the fire.

“Do you guys know where Pete is? I can’t find him.”

“He said he was on firewood duty,” Charles said.

Dan frowned. “Should be done by now. It’s getting dark.” He walked around to the other fires, questioning. People shook their heads.

Jake walked over to the edge of the firelight and shouted out into the gloom, “Pete! Hey Pete! Suppertime!”

The woods were silent.

They found him sitting with his back to a poplar tree. Five arrows pinned him to the tree. One of them had caught his hair just above his ear and held his head up, twisted slightly to one side, his empty eyes staring out over a gully at the rising moon. Pete’s battered hat sat on his head as always, and the firewood he had gathered was scattered over his lap. His bow sat beside him, all the arrows still in the quiver.

They pulled him loose from the tree with gentle hands and closed his eyes.

“You old bastard,” Dan said, his voice breaking. “What did you stop and take a break for? Always looking at the view.”

Then he straightened up and faced the direction the arrows had come from.

“Come out now and fight like men!”

“Like men,” his echo mocked back.

“We’ll kill you for this! Do you hear me? Do you hear me?”

Back at camp, James and John had forgotten their fight in their mutual anger at the Appalachies, and James abandoned any talk of leaving.

Warren said, “I still think —”

“No way,” George said. “What kind of coward are you?”

“I’m just —“

“We are not going to go running into Harper’s Ferry to get away from the Appalachies.”

“We ran from the soldiers, why not —”

“We were outgunned two to one!” George shouted. “We are not going to go running into town begging them to save us from a handful of wild mountain men. If we can’t fight them we may as well give it up now and go into politics. Maybe you’d like to.”

Warren stiffened. “You want to take that back?”

“All right, all right, stop,” James said, adopting the peacekeeper’s role with no apparent sense of irony. “No sense doing the Appalachies’ work for them.”

“We’re staying here,” George said. “Anyone who wants to stay and fight, can. Anyone else — he glared at Warren — is free to leave for Harper’s Ferry any time.”

Warren, no matter how much he disagreed, was not going to strike out through the wilderness alone, so they all focused on hunting again, this time for Appalachies. This was made more difficult because they still had to hunt for food. They stalked deer while keeping an eye out for Appalachies, and stalked Appalachies while listening for deer, and caught neither.

George set traps. One group of hunters would set out, and another group would trail them just out of sight. Any Appalachie trying to stalk the lead hunters was liable to be interrupted by an arrow. But none ventured into the trap.

George also sent out snipers to sit at strategic overlooks, but this took inefficiency to greater levels. At least two or three smugglers had to go to each spot, as nobody cared to get into a shootout with an entire band of Appalachies alone. And in a forest that stretched from the ocean in the east to nobody knew where in the west, the odds weren’t especially good that an Appalachie would happen to stroll by the exact place the snipers were sitting.

“How about a decoy?” Dan suggested once. “Not like we’ve been doing, a whole big group. An easy target, somebody hunting alone. We can have two or three people waiting behind them.”

“Who’s going to be the decoy?” James asked.

Nobody raised a hand.

“We could use a slave,” Old Harry said.

“Your slave?” John said.

“We don’t need to go to that extreme yet,” George said.

Not yet, very kind, Charles thought. He just doesn’t want to lose a valuable slave. But then, maybe he was being unfair. Why would George care about preserving him if he were going to set Charles free after the trip? Maybe he had no such plan. Or maybe he actually did care. George would make it easier if he would just behave either like a black-hearted smuggler or a normal human being.

 

Finally, after several days of poor hunting on all fronts, John swaggered back to camp swinging catskin hats and sporting shell jewelry. He and Dan had shot down two Appalachies and left their bodies for the other Appalachies to find. Charles guessed they had not taken care to leave the bodies in a respectful funerary state.

Dan kept no trophies. “That was for Pete,” he said. “Don’t want to even touch anything they’ve touched.”

The hunters clashed with the Appalachies again the next day. A small group of smugglers surprised a handful of the tribesmen as the Appalachies were sneaking through the woods, apparently absorbed in stalking smugglers. The two sides sent arrows at each other and pincushioned a few trees, but the Appalachies slipped away as soon as they could, leaving their arrows behind for the smugglers to pull out of the trees if they wanted them. Neither side left bodies on the battlefield, although one smuggler claimed he had arrowed an Appalachie in the leg.

The smugglers, despite their tough talk, could not afford many more casualties. They had lost a third of their strength in the ambush, and another seven so far during their hunt, including Pete and his steady veteran influence. They were down to only thirty-four total: thirty-one smugglers and three slaves.

Of that total, about ten or fifteen had to stay in camp every day and guard the sulfur, and the slaves of course had food storing duties. George had taken away Charles’ weapons when the band turned hostile toward the slaves, but he returned the weapons now, and John finally agreed to give Gary a gun as well.

“Don’t get used to it,” he warned Gary. “This is only for absolute emergencies.”

Old Harry sensibly declined to arm Marguerite, no matter how dire the situation.

The slaves helped keep an eye on the packs of sulfur, because they had little to do at the camp besides continue to gather acorns. Nobody had shot an animal for several days.

“It’s not just that we have to watch for savages,” Dan told George. “Thing is, they’re hunting the animals too. I figure most of the animals cleared out when they realized they were living in a war zone. But I found a great spot we can hunt tomorrow.”

At the end of that day’s hunt, he explained, the hunters had ranged farther than usual, and Dan had found a watering hole that, from the tracks and heavily worn trails, was drawing wildlife from miles around in the drought.

Dan planned to leave as early as possible in the morning and strike straight for that watering hole, without wasting any time hunting along the way. Once they got there, they could sit for the rest of the day at strategic spots around it to see what turned up. He was sure something would.

Dan’s excitement spread to the rest of the hunters. If they got enough meat, they could leave this death trap with dignity, not retreating but calling the mini-war a draw. They wanted revenge, but they also wanted to make it home alive.

They left only a handful behind to guard the sulfur in the morning, albeit with two loaded six-shooters apiece. Charles was disappointed when George put the slaves back on acorn duty. He could have contentedly gone a long time without seeing another acorn.

“We need as much food as we can get,” George said. “We’ll bring the meat, and you all get as many acorns as you can. Then we’ll have plenty when we leave.”

So the slaves once again began the routine: Fill the bag, haul it back to camp, dump it in a pile, repeat.

This could be the last day we have to do this, Charles told himself. One good hunt, and we can head toward home again. Please, let that happen, he asked someone for whom he did not have a name.

In times of need like this, Charles found himself without anyone to appeal to. He had been raised neither pagan nor Christian. Easton was a mishmash of religions, mostly varieties of Christianity that had become popular when people found they needed help and protection. But Charles’ owners in Easton had been more interested in knowledge and wealth than in faith, and though Charles sometimes wished for a powerful being to call on, he had little confidence that there was such a being and less desire to spend his life parsing religious texts to dictate his existence.

As they worked, neither Gary nor Marguerite showed any inclination to talk, and Charles enjoyed the quiet. Nothing moved in the woods, except a pileated woodpecker that flew over giving its petulant staccato call. The wind sighed high above in the high tops of the oak trees. The weather was cooler now, though still very dry, and the leaves were turning yellow and red. Charles was glad for his blanket at night and glad for the ending of summer’s heat.

He found a rich seam of acorns and followed it, his bag filling quickly. Hearing Gary’s footsteps behind him, he straightened up and turned to remark about how fast they’d be done with this many acorns.

Three Appalachies, their faces painted brown and black, stood only feet away, with their guns pointed at him. Charles opened his mouth to scream, but one of them shook his head and pulled the hammer back on his ancient rusty gun. Charles closed his mouth again.

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three

Gunpowder Trails is a serial novel. It debuted online with chapter one in November 2015, and is slated for release chapter by chapter over the coming months.

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Trying to look on the bright side, Charles considered whether the heat wave was all bad. The smoldering air and sizzling rocks that baked his feet helped distract him from his moaning stomach, after all. He also had to drink constantly, giving his stomach something constructive to do besides chew on the rest of his organs.

Logically, hot and thirsty and hungry were not a major improvement on hungry, but Charles did not let himself dwell on the fine points of the reasoning. In the wilderness, where rain, heat, cold and bugs offered a constant reminder of why houses were invented, learning to ignore basic facts of misery was key to contentment.

All the smugglers relied on their canteens to keep from wilting with the plants around them. When the group didn’t cross a stream for a few hours, the “water run” cries would start up, and George would call a halt and send the slaves downhill in search of water, hauling along bundles of empty canteens.

On the first day the smugglers fled Scranton, dark clouds blew over and Charles was all set to complain about hiking in the rain. But it was a dry heave of a storm, an empty wind that filled the air with dust and left the ground more parched than before. The skies stayed relentlessly clear in the days that followed, and the wilderness, already brown from summer, turned crackling and brittle.

On water runs, the slaves sometimes had to scrape out mud from springs to make a puddle deep enough to dip the canteens into. Sometimes the spring or stream was simply dead. That was bad news for the slaves, because when they brought empty canteens back to cranky and thirsty smugglers, they were treated to a vivid demonstration of the “blame the messenger” phenomenon.

“Dammit, don’t bring me back an empty canteen!” John shouted once. “You didn’t even go down to the stream, did you?”

Charles just nodded, but Marguerite wasn’t taking it.

“Yes we did! It was dry.”

“Then dig a little,” John said. “Or keep looking.”

She glared at him. “There’s some.” She pointed to a small cloud off near the horizon.

John probably would have slapped her, but slapping another man’s slave brought with it more trouble than it was worth. So he walked away.

And so after all the smugglers had gotten their complaining in, everyone simply had to move on for as many miles as it took to find water, or what passed for it.

Despite these miseries, the leaders set a rapid pace for the first few days. George refused to stop and hunt until the band had put more miles between them and Scranton, so the smugglers resentfully nibbled a dwindling pemmican supply, only eating enough to keep off the worst pangs. The hunger was bad enough, Charles thought, but worse was opening an almost empty food pouch, smelling the pemmican inside, and forcing himself to scrape out only a mouthful or two while his stomach, reminded of its emptiness, roared for more.

The band did not follow a worn footpath like the many forest trails optimistically called roads in the kingdom of Easton. No such path existed. Instead, pushing through spiderwebs and thickets, and towering groves of ancient trees, they stuck to certain ridge lines and avoided others, steering clear of swamps, dead ends, and dropoffs.

They would have made much faster time had they been able to follow a preordained route, cleared of branches and brush. But the band had no time to repair trail erosion, clear brush or saw fallen logs. Even if they had, following a sharply defined trail each trip would have been suicide when it was well known that smugglers were using the mountains to transport the most coveted black market commodity.

Even their vague route did not fool the Appalachies, who coveted sulfur as much as anyone, and who recognized trees in the forest like civilized people knew their own furniture. The Appalachies could not have helped but note the entrails from game animals the smugglers killed, the broken ferns, the disturbed leaves and the remains of campfires, not to mention the smoke of the live fires and the loud voices through the trees. The Appalachies, George told Charles once, knew the route about as well as he did.

George had drawn secret maps of the routes. Between trips, the leaders gathered several times in George’s study, correcting the maps and filling in details, tracing out springs and streams, good places for game and bad places for predators, and listing notes on major landmarks. They also fine tuned their plans for the next trip. The authorities from Easton and Scranton would have liked very much to acquire these state secrets of the smugglers.

Another advantage of the uncertain route was that it gave any band members who might be inclined to make trouble incentive to reconsider. While almost all smugglers had enough navigation knowledge to know more or less where they were, and could probably make their way out of the wilderness on their own eventually, a precise knowledge of the route certainly increased the odds of getting out. Only the seasoned, proven veterans knew the trails well, and only George had the maps.

Charles knew the route as well as anyone. But he was not in demand for navigation decisions, and as he hiked along behind the leaders he was free to think less of the route and more of bread with honey dripped all over it, and hot gravy over potatoes, and oyster stew, and pan-seared rockfish. During one painful interlude, he hiked for several hours with vivid images of hot crab cakes he could nearly smell but could not dispel. He tried to get back to thinking about the heat.

He walked fast enough to stay close to the front, near George and the other leaders. In the past, Charles had preferred to hike on his own, near enough to George that he could technically respond to a summons, but far enough away that George might find it too much effort and leave him alone. But now, when the smugglers passed him on the trail, they wouldn’t look at him, even the ones he had been on friendly terms with in the past. Once or twice, one of them clipped his pack or cut him off on the trail, but did not apologize. He noticed one evening as he carried wood for the fires that people lapsed into silence when he walked by, and started muttering when he was out of earshot.

The next morning, the slaves found a tepid stream to fill the canteens in. Usually, the smugglers gave some kind of brief ‘thank you’ when the canteens were full, but this time, one after another simply snatched the canteen without thanking them.

One evening, after a couple of days of hiking, George summoned Charles away from the fire he was staring into. This was unusual, because after the fires were built Charles was usually free to do what he wanted, which was usually staring into the fire. But now George called him over to the fire where only the leaders sat in the circle, in a voice loud enough for the whole camp to hear. Charles’ face flushed as he got up and the talk died down, the other smugglers turning their heads to watch him go by. One of them laughed.

He took a seat in the circle and looked around at the faces, searching them for clues. John, grim. James solemn, maybe a hint of sympathy. Or was it contempt? Warren, a brief smile. Old Harry, the friendly stare of a wet cat. George, stern.

“I think you know what this is about, Charles,” George said. “You’ve served faithfully for many years, but some in the band have raised questions about you and the other slaves. If you’re innocent, you have nothing to worry about. If you’re not, don’t try to hide anything. If you’re honest, it will go better with you. Much better.”

Charles’ stomach flopped. He could not lose George’s trust. If he made a mistake now and said something stupid, or worse, if he had too many enemies in the circle, he might have had his last good meal. If only he could have had one more piece of juicy venison before the end. It was strange, he thought, what went through your mind when disaster loomed.

“So why don’t you just start by telling us everything you know about what happened the day of the ambush,” George said.

Charles could see band members at the other fires looking over in their direction, whispering. “I don’t know anything,” he said.

George frowned. This did not seem to have been the right answer. “You don’t remember anything you did that day?”

“I got up, filled the canteens, and hiked, just like any other day,” Charles said.

“You didn’t see or hear anything unusual?”

“No.”

“Did any of the other slaves say anything to you around that time that you didn’t understand, or that sounded strange?”

“No.”

“You aren’t going to do yourself any favors by refusing to cooperate with us, Charles,” John said. “Give us details.”

“I don’t have any details! If I did I’d give them to you.” Did that sound too defensive? He hoped not.

And so it went on. Was he happy in the band? Had he seen anything unusual before the trip began? Did he suspect anyone else? Had anyone approached him with any offers? The circle of questions drew tighter around the central, unasked one: Are you a traitor? As Charles tried to answer in an unsuspicious way, he wondered if that made him sound suspicious. Did he sound too eager to convince, and thus guilty? How could he sound innocent, but not like he was trying too hard to sound innocent? How could he think straight when he couldn’t even concentrate on what he was saying?

Now Old Harry jumped in. “You’ve been unhappy for quite some time, haven’t you Charles?” he asked.

“No, I mean, no more than …” Charles struggled to find the right response. “No, I feel fine. Just like usual.” That, he thought, was not the right response. Lame. So lame!

“Are you planning to stick with the band when you’re done with your service?” James said, poking the fire with a stick. A cloud of sparks few upward.

“Well, I …”

Old Harry jumped in again. “Would you have been happy if the ambush gave you your freedom?”

“Well, no,” Charles said.

“No?” Old Harry said. “You prefer slavery?”

Charles glanced at George. “I’ve been treated well.”

“Ha,” Old Harry said. “That doesn’t answer the question. You’re not answering many questions, actually. But you’d better answer this one, and answer it straight: Did you help set up that ambush or did you just stay quiet about what you knew?”

“That’s enough,” George said. “Let’s stick with the facts, not with trap questions.”

“I was under the impression,” Old Harry said, “that we were going to question all the slaves the same way, without any favoritism.”

“I have no problem with hard questions,” George said. “None whatsoever. What I have a problem with is you fishing for the answer you want.”

“Fine,” Old Harry said. “Fine. As long as when my slave is questioned we play by the same rules.”

“If you have a problem with the way I’m handling things, you should say so now,” George said.

Old Harry held up his hands. “Oh, no. No, just clarifying.”

They glared at each other.

“Hrm,” Warren said. “I think Charles has told us everything he knows. There’s really nothing else to ask, except ‘Are you a traitor?’ And I’ve heard nothing from him that would make me believe that.” He pinched a mosquito that had gotten stuck in his beard.

Charles felt a rush of hope.

“I’ve heard nothing,” Old Harry said, “that would make me think he isn’t a traitor. All the usual stuff they all say. ‘I don’t know anything.’ ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’”

That was too much.

“I … am … not … a … traitor.” Charles fired out the words. “I fought back that day. I could have been killed like any of you. A traitor had no reason …” he stopped, a little embarrassed. “No reason to, ah, to run.”

They sat in silence. James threw a branch on the fire.

“We all ran that day,” Warren said softly. “You don’t have any reason to feel ashamed of that, Charles.”

George cleared his throat. “OK, Charles, you’re dismissed.”

That was it. No thanks for his cooperation. No apology.

John went to get Gary for his interrogation. Well that was good at least, Charles thought. At least he hadn’t been singled out alone for humiliation. But he might not be off the hook, either, especially if Gary said something stupid or tried to make up a story to clear himself.

Back at his fire, as Charles cracked branches to feed the blaze, the other smugglers didn’t say anything to him. Or much of anything to each other, when he was within earshot, although a group at a fire out toward the edge of camp was laughing loudly over something. Charles looked over to where Gary stood in the flickering light of the leaders’ fire; James pointing, Gary shaking his head.

Charles wished he had known about the ambush. Then he could have made sure it was a success and those ungrateful bullies had gotten what they deserved. After all his service, to treat him that way. He snapped the branches as if they were necks. With all those bullets flying, how had those idiots missed Old Harry? How had Big John died and those other smug bastards survived?

As he got absorbed in his task and the fire leaped up brightly, burning off the chill, his rage began to die down and smolder. He was going to turn into Marguerite, if he wasn’t careful: silent and resentful and everyone waiting for him to explode one day.

Still, there was another emotion, too, that was tugging at him, poking at him, demanding attention, rising out of the relief, anger and shame. What was it? He was tense, and his breathing was fast. Then he recognized it. Rising terror.

If George turned on him — or needed to sacrifice him to satisfy an insurgency — Charles would have a better chance with the cats. Would George sacrifice him? Charles thought he might. He realized his hands were shaking. Stop it, he told himself. Stop. Here he was with a fire warming his hands, instead of a rope binding them tight against the bark of a tree. Things could be worse.

Warren came by as Charles was setting up his bedroll, and stood beside him, holding his hands out over the fire and shifting from one foot to the other. Now what, Charles wondered.

“Hey,” Warren said. “I wouldn’t worry too much about all the questions.”

Charles was not about to offer up his fear and anger for Warren’s inspection. He shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”

“Everyone is hungry, and tired, and sick to death of all this heat and not having enough water. And they’re scared. Don’t blame them too much, Charles.”

“Thanks,” Charles said, a sheen of sarcasm floating on the word.

Warren sighed. “You have to remember, too, George is getting pressure about you. He has to go through the motions and show that he’s taking this seriously, or the band will turn on him.”

Charles wondered just how much pressure George was under, but didn’t feel it would be a good idea to ask. And he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know the answer.

“Just be careful,” Warren said. “Stick with George. I don’t know of any threats against you but I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”

And with that comforting remark, he crunched away through the leaves.

Whatever the leaders had decided about the slaves, they took no immediate action, a result Charles could live with. Action meant hot knives or coals, small bits of flesh sliced off a little at a time, a rope around the neck, or a stake at his back with wood piled high around him. In a smuggling band, a conviction on charges of being a traitor did not come with the possibility of parole.

Mindful of Warren’s advice, Charles was even more careful to stick close to George. He could still feel hostility from the smugglers, but it remained at a stalemate with a grudging cease fire, and everyone settled down into the routine of mountain travel.

Each morning at daybreak the slaves woke up, or if they didn’t, were shaken awake by their masters. The slaves kept any complaints to themselves, rolled out of their bedrolls and wrapped them up, threw more branches on the fire and stood, blinking in the smoke and stretching their aching muscles, as the trees emerged from the darkness and bird songs filled the silence. Then they grabbed the canteens, and staggered downhill to the closest water.

The clang of the canteens, the crunching footsteps in the leaves and the splashing water jarred away the last sleep. It took several trips to fill all the canteens, by which time Charles’ muscles warmed up and started to hurt less.

Eileen and her group of slave suspecters had quickly wearied of rising early to send someone to accompany the slaves to get water, as it defeated the purpose of having a slave do their work for them. So Eileen just warned the slaves they were being watched, and that they had better keep that in mind, news the slaves received solemnly until her back was turned.

While the slaves hauled water, the smugglers up at the camp stretched and complained about their sore muscles, analyzed the weather, compared blisters, bug bites and tribulations and talked about how that was always the way, wasn’t it, and how they were going to take up something easy like blacksmithing so they wouldn’t have to ever put themselves through this again, ate small mouthfuls of pemmican, drank from their newly filled canteens, laced up their boots and began eyeing their packs unhappily.

When George gave the command to move out, the band heaved on their packs, with the help of groans when necessary.

The slaves’ last chore was to put dirt on the fires, a job they did with extra care because the drought had parched the woods into kindling. Nobody cared for the idea of trying to outrun their own campfire later in the day.

The band waited for the leaders to move out, and then followed them in tight bunches that gradually trailed back into a thinner and thinner line, with lone hikers or knots of people in conversation. Any who fell too far back, however, hurried to catch up. Getting out of sight or earshot of the others might be mistaken by the Appalachies as an invitation to appropriate a pack of sulfur.

From Scranton, the smugglers had traveled south and east, and were well into the Appalachian mountain chain now. They followed the mountaintops as much as possible. Once they had reached these heights, the ridges often ran mostly level for miles. Sometimes the band threaded over sharp summits only a few feet wide, like the peak of a roof, with sides dropping steeply out of sight, and other times they walked through broad grassy meadows. Although the meadows were treacherous in a thunderstorm when hikers were alone and walking almost among the clouds, Charles would have welcomed the cool rain washing the air clean and resurrecting the streams.

Eventually, the ridges gave way, sometimes hastily, where the rivers had worn away the bank for eons, and the smugglers had to pick their way down the diving slopes, searching out footholds and trees to hang onto as they dropped toward the increasing roar of the water.

Once down, they faced the steep climb back up the other side. Some attacked the hill dead on, scrabbling straight up the face, while others angled back and forth, trading speed for a more gradual climb until the slope grew less severe. As a reward for their climb, they faced the mountaintop still rising ahead of them through the trees, always just up over the next rise, and the next rise, and the next rise, and the next rise, until finally the next rise was the last rise. On good days, another gently undulating stretch of even ridge lay ahead at the top. On worse days, the mountains were relentless, taking them thousands of feet down and back up repeatedly. The miles went slowly on those days, and the hunger bit harder.

These elements repeated daily, but not monotonously. Each mountain dressed in forest, but some donned mostly oak, others hickory, and others pine or hemlock. Each had its own rock formations and new patterns of gullies. Some were benevolent and gentle, others rough and grudging.

Frequently the smugglers passed overlooks, where rock cliffs dropped hundreds of feet down. Sometimes they paused there to rest, swinging their legs out over the emptiness. The mountain range ran in rows, long waves of peaks side by side for miles, fading purple into the distance. Often the travelers saw eagles or hawks below their feet, riding the updrafts along the mountainside.

Despite the vistas, the route was harsh. Rocks waited under every weary step to pummel Charles’ feet and turn his ankles. Only a fool would travel this way, over the roughest, worst possible route, instead of down in the valleys where the terrain was gentler and the water more plentiful. That was what made the mountains the ideal smuggling route, though: They were lonely.

Even the ancients, it seemed, had found these places too tough for habitation. Artifacts were everywhere in the valleys — rusty steel doorknobs, frozen rusty hinges, crumbling plastic, scattered bricks. Up in the mountains, the smugglers rarely found such leavings of a vanished civilization. Only the ghost roads. These flat lines of gravel and black earth ran for miles where the ancients had somehow cut straight through the mountains, leaving behind perfectly sheer, impossible cliffs. They had used these routes to get across the mountains, not to arrive at them.

It was on one of these plateaus that the smugglers dropped down, groaning, when George called a halt after the fifth day out of Scranton. Some slumped forward, heads on knees, and others stared off over the valley ahead, not really looking at it. They began to rummage in their packs for a bite of food.

“Get your rest, everybody,” George said. “Tomorrow” — smugglers watched him without enthusiasm — “we’re going hunting.”

Smiles spread around the group now, and a couple of weak whoops, mixed with some murmuring about it being about time. A few of the smugglers took out their bows and started waxing their strings.

Dan, the hunt organizer, had wandered along the plateau some distance, and after poking around the leaves, he called George over and pointed at the ground. George bent to look closer, and then straightened and put his hands on his hips. Soon they called over the rest of the leaders. A few of the band, Charles among them, wandered over for a look as well.

“What is it?” one of the smugglers asked.

“People have been along here very recently,” Dan said, pointing to the rumpled trail in the even surface of the leaves. He pulled the leaves aside in a couple spots. The ground underneath was powder dry, but still soft enough to show the outlines of moccasined feet.

The smugglers considered the tracks in silence for a while.

“Appalachies,” Dan said, unnecessarily. No civilized trappers or hunters would ever venture this far out.

The news got around the camp quickly and many of the smugglers came over to see for themselves. More of them began to string their bows and check their revolvers.

“All right, pack up,” George said. “We’ve got to get farther downhill, away from that cliff wall. You couldn’t ask for a nicer shooting view from the top of that.”

“So are we still going to stop and hunt here, or keep hiking tomorrow?” Warren asked George.

George pondered this. “I think we have to stop here.”

“We have enough supplies for one more day, at least,” Warren said. “If we send out hunting parties with Appalachies around, odds are good someone won’t come back.”

George shrugged. “Odds are good someone won’t come back if they sign up to go on a smuggling trip. If Appalachies are following us, a day’s journey isn’t going to make any difference. And …” he lowered his voice, “I can’t make them walk much farther. I’ve pushed about as hard as I can.”

“Maybe the men won’t want to stop, if there are Appalachies around,” Warren suggested.

George studied him.

Dan interjected, “They know we’re here anyway. They always know. There’s no way they’re this close to us and don’t know. If they don’t, they will soon. Harper’s Ferry is too far away to try to get there and sneak in there and buy food.”

George nodded. “The longer we wait, the weaker we get. We’re just going to have to risk it.”

“I just hate for anybody to get killed if they don’t have to,” Warren said.

“Better if we can avoid it, but it happens,” George said. “They knew what they were signing up for. I tell them all ahead of time.”

Warren cleared his throat. “Ah. But …”

George set his mouth and began to look off into the distance as he did when he was done with a conversation.

The smugglers moved downhill from the cliff and set up a new campsite, without the flat spots to sleep, but with a clear view through the trees in every direction. Anyone who approached would find the band waiting.

Charles joined a group throwing together a fire toward the middle of the camp. He didn’t like the idea of sleeping on the edge with Appalachies prowling around.

“I wonder how many of those white devils there are out there?” one of the smugglers, Pete, a stocky man with a gray beard, said. Pete was popular. Steady and responsible, he was always ready for a friendly chat or a joke.

Dan, striking a flint to shower sparks on a pile of twigs and wood shavings, said, “Oh, hard to say, but from the sign I’d only say one or two.”

“Yeah, but I mean, how many all over this wilderness? Think if they had the guts to fight and the weapons they’d be a match for us?”

John scoffed. “No way. There’s only a handful in the whole wilderness. You never run across any more than just a trace here or there. If there were any big tribes of them anywhere, you’d find villages. Trading posts. All you ever see is some savage in cat skins, hoofing it away from you as fast as he can go.”

“You can tell they’re afraid,” Dan agreed. “Slinking around the way they do. If they had any numbers they’d show a little more courage. And we’d get to pay them back for their sneaky little murders.” He spat. “Knife and run, that’s all they do. A bullet in the back is the only thing good enough for ‘em. I’ll kill the last one if I can.” He blew on the small flame in the twigs to get it going.

“I’m always a little worried about shooting them,” Pete admitted, fanning smoke out of his face with the battered hat he always wore. “I seen them around a few times when I’m out hunting and I’d of loved to drop them in their treacherous little tracks. But I never knew how many might be just over the hill. I’d get to thinking about how I might look with arrows coming out every which way, and just let the bugger keep walking.”

“I heard they ain’t really people at all,” a smuggler named Jake broke in. Enthusiastic and always ready for a good time, Jake got bored if the adventure didn’t keep coming. He had been bored for some time now, so he was delighted to stop and hunt, and even happier that there were Appalachies around, although he made a concerned face about it. “Yeah,” he went on, “They’re more than human, I always heard. That’s why they survived out here when the rest of the people was dying off in the Bad Times. They don’t need food. And they never got sick like anyone else. That’s because …

“Good God, Jake, enough of that nonsense,” John said. “They’re human all right. At least they shit like any human I’ve ever seen. You’ve never run across one of their piles? They’re just a low-grade version that’s more like an animal sometimes.”

“But where do they come from then? They ain’t nothing like us,” Jake protested. “White as sheets. And skinny and sickly looking.”

“What I heard,” Charles began, but Jake cut him off.

“Shut up. Nobody asked you for an opinion.”

Charles imagined what it would be like to beat Jake over the head with a limb. He guessed it would be fulfilling.

“My old Pop,” Pete said, “used to say they were the original people in this part of the world. Legend had it new settlers came from lands over the sea and drove them out, ran them out of their villages and killed them off so they had to run up into the mountains to survive. Guess they had the last laugh when the Bad Times came ‘cause they missed the whole thing.”

“I’ve heard that story,” Jake said dubiously. “But I don’t know as I give much credit to it. Nobody’s ever found these lands over the sea, no matter how far out they go.”

“Now, I don’t know about that,” Warren weighed in. “There are maps and artifacts that indicate pretty strongly there really were — are, I guess — countries over the sea. Now the Appalachies being the original people, you may be right about that being just an old tale. Myself, I believe the theory that the Appalachies were just like anybody else. When everything fell apart, they were the ones living on the edges. They fled into the woods and got away from it all. Most people came back, eventually. I guess they just stayed.”

“But why are they so white, then?” Jake persisted, unwilling to relegate the Appalachies to mere boring mortals.

Warren considered this. “Well, nobody really knows that. Maybe there just were so few of them they just inbred too much and it made them weak and sickly. Or maybe something else. A lot of strange things came out of those times that we can’t really explain. Take the cats.”

“If I was stuck up in the mountains skulking around living on cat meat,” Jake said, “I’d beat my way to the nearest village and find a nice local girl to settle down with.”

“Ha,” Pete said. “You’d get yourself shot. If some wild Appalachie came down out of the woods and courted my daughter, he’d settle down alright. Permanent, like.”

They laughed.

“Pete’s right, though,” Warren said. “Culture is a strong thing. Who would accept them in now? They’re outcasts.” He sounded almost sympathetic, a sentiment Charles never remembered hearing in a conversation about Appalachies.

Charles wondered again about Warren and where he had come from. He talked differently. He knew a lot about a lot of different subjects, and spoke with authority. If someone challenged him, he’d start citing books most of them had never heard of, at which point his challenger would concede the field, but go on disbelieving him.

Charles remembered hearing many stories about the Appalachies around the fireplace in Easton, stories often not much more sophisticated than these homespun rural tales Charlie and Pete were bringing up. In some stories, Appalachies were true humans, just with uncanny woodcraft and an insatiable hatred of civilized people. In others, they rose to the level of mythical beings, elf-like forest people with ghostly white skin who could travel without a sound and who painted their faces to blend perfectly into the brush. Sometimes they had magical powers of invisibility or seduction. Sometimes they were the only really good people left in the world, a simpler and nobler people. Some people considered it bad luck to talk about them at all.

Parents warned their children to behave or the Appalachies would get them, a threat that children in Easton began to doubt once they became more fully aware of the flat mountainless terrain around Easton. Maybe the threats worked better in Scranton, Charles thought. For his part, he’d been terrified of them when he’d been small, afraid of even being out on the street when shadows started to get deeper.

Whatever their nature and origin, the Appalachies probably made the smuggling route more safe than otherwise. There were so many tales about travelers and capable hunters who went out too far into the wilderness and disappeared. Many of the stories detailed the unpleasant events in the lives of the incautious adventurers just before those lives came to an end, although sources were hazy. People heard from someone who knew someone who found the body or who saw it all but escaped.

As Charles sat now in the gathering twilight, watching the full moon moving upward through the tree branches, he wondered what the Appalachies were really like. His time in the wilderness had taught him little about them. He had seen their handiwork in person: the arrow-riddled corpse of poor old Jumpy, after he had lagged behind the group one day, and the bodies of the small group of smugglers who, about six years ago, went downhill for a water refill and never came back. That’s when the water job had been delegated to the slaves.

He had never actually seen an Appalachie up close, only glimpses of forms running through the woods at a distance, or flickering shadows that he couldn’t be sure weren’t actually shadows.

That was about to change.