Three days passed in preparation for the storm. Gabriel took on the task of securing the house while hired hands and slaves were set to securing the house and property. Having no son, Gabriel involved his daughter little in the process beyond the scope of her own possessions. Otherwise, Ada only helped her mother stock up canned goods and preserve jars.

  Ada and her mother hardly needed a day to finish the inventory. This, of course, left Ada little to do in the coming days but wait. Yet, she refused to do so, cooped up in her room. Likewise, she had no desire to go downtown to the hustle and bustle of markets and ferries. So, she instead agreed to accompany Cora and two young men who were sons of her father’s business associates. One young man was a Dutch boy by name of Willem Van Buren, and another was a lad of Scots-Irish descent by name of Peter Crain.

  Willem was a tall and sturdy farm boy, as blonde haired and blue eyed as his surname might suggest. He had a stout disposition and rugged quality as befit a lad who tended cattle. His shoulders were broad, and his strong forearms suggested one who’d had to reign in an unruly horse or two. He wore a white shirt with sleeves rolled up behind his elbows, a pair of grey trousers with suspenders, and a pair of heavy, leather boots.

  Peter was a shorter, slimmer fellow with bright red hair and freckles. He had a lopsided smile and dressed in a yellow vest, blue coat, and pair of brown trousers.

  Ada got along well with boys. Not because she was by any means a flirt. In fact, the thought of romance never once interested her beyond the drama of a dime novel or the dark tragedies of Mr. Poe. Even in those cases, she rarely concerned herself with the romantic inclinations of the heroine or damsel in distress. More so she admired the qualities of the hero—his chivalry, nobility, undying love, and sense of self sacrifice. These things stirred her heart, but she recognized it as a thrill or sense of admiration rather than a girlish infatuation. Her love of such heroic narratives and daring exploits gave her much in common with local boys, who found her an engaging conversationalist and avid listener.

  Willem and Peter both appreciated these qualities and were more than willing to trade ghoulish ghost stories and thrilling adventure tales of the frontier. Both boys often lamented their fathers preventing their enlistment. They were hot-blooded and eager to bring back the head of the puff-shirted, poncy Napoleon of the West. Of course, they sated their lust for glory on hunts for hogs or white-tailed deer and took great pride in chasing off the coyotes that preyed on their chickens or cattle.

  Cora might have been a little jealous of the attention given to Ada, but Ada, of course, knew that Peter harbored more than a passing affection for Cora. Ada never gave a thought to romance where she was concerned. It was not that the idea held no appeal for her, but simply that she had been too caught up in her youthful imaginings to consider it. Fictional romance was thrilling. Real romance was quaint, and her head was often too far into the clouds to consider anything that had not the least touch of the fantastic. At the very least, her mind must be stimulated by curiosity if not fascination.

  Right now, Ada’s fascination directed her towards the thicket. To her, it was a nexus of imagination. It had all the mystique and exotic allure of Marco Polo’s Orient and all the danger and hidden peril of the wild frontier. Together with Cora and the boys, they imagined it some undiscovered country and themselves the great pioneers who would discover and name it. Of course, their imaginings also inevitably included Black Jack.

  “Perhaps it’s a fae realm,” suggested Peter. “My grandmother told me about the banshee who cries out at night and foretells death to any that hears her.”

  “Black Jack’s not a ‘she’ though,” objected Willem. “And anyway, he don’t make any noise from what I’ve heard. Certainly not a wail.”

  “He could be a redcap,” suggested Peter after some consideration. “They’re short elves with long teeth, fiery, red eyes, and long hair. They kill travelers and soaks his cap in their blood. He’s got long hair…”

  “But his eyes ain’t fiery. They’re black, and he ain’t short at all. He’s a longshanks if ever I heard of one,” objected Willem.

  “Why must we always talk of such morbid things?” groaned Cora. “Poor Ada already had a bout of sleepwalking and a bona fide nightmare from such ghost tales.”

  “Whadda you think he is, then?’ challenged Peter.

  “Them redskins got all kinds of demons they go on about. Take your pick. Whadda you think, Ada?”

  Ada’s eyes gazed up and around at the cloudy sky. Her smile was almost whimsical. “I think…He’s a ghost.”

  “Ghost, huh?”

  “Maybe a ghoul.”

  “Ghoul, she says.”

  “But I dunno what he could’ve been before.”

  “Well, that ain’t like you, Ada,” remarked Peter. “You usually have all kinds of theories about stuff. Like Jean Lafitte or all them goblin tales you hear at the Royal Oak.”

  “Most say he’s from the thicket,” she recounted thoughtfully. “We don’t know what’s across there, but they say the colony before ours was set o’er yonder. I think they all got a disease, or the injuns killed them.”

  “Or they got ate,” interjected Willem. “They got starved like them fellas from Massachusetts. Y’know, the whalers? A gigantic whale sunk their boat afore they even tried anything. Like it knew who they was.”

  “Oh, stop it, Willem,” Cora shuddered. “I swear! Why can’t we have nicer tales like Grandma brought from the old country? Stuff about faeries, gnomes, or beautiful water spirits?”

  “Cause whatever water spirits float around the muddy Brazos ain’t any I’d like to meet,” remarked Peter, wrinkling his nose.

  “Anyway, y’know how them whalers stayed so long at sea they ate each other? Maybe that’s what happened. Maybe the first group got starved by the injuns, or they couldn’t figure out how to farm proper and just started eating—”

  “Oh, stop it!” huffed Cora, already looking green around the gills. “You’re positively awful. Just awful!”

  “Why don’t we look?” queried Ada, pointedly.

  “Look where?” asked Cora.

  “At what?” added Willem.

  “The thicket, of course,” replied Ada with a grin.

  “And get scalped by injuns?” scoffed Peter.

  “There ain’t been injuns within fifty miles of here for about as long as we’ve been alive,” chided Ada.

  “You don’t know what’s past there, Ada,” shuddered Cora.

  “Oh, it’s just within sight of the town. Martha’s family lives hardly three miles from there,” insisted Ada.

  “He can leap ten feet and eats raw meat!”

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “And injuns can outrun horses and eat raw buffalo. So, what makes him special?” Peter scoffed.

  “All them people died, y’know,” Cora piped up. “Maybe they got a disease or something, and it’s still there, and we could catch it and bring it into town.”

  “Ain’t no disease hanging around there now,” Ada scoffed with a wave of her hand. “If there was, we’d have got it long ago. We’ve been eating animals that come out of there and drinking water that come through there. We ought to have had a plague by now.”

  “Well, you can look, but I won’t,” declared Cora, waving her hands in disgust. “Could be snakes or a hog den, and I don’t plan on getting bit or gored for my curiosity.”

  “Well! Some brave pioneers y’all are!” Ada shook her head. “All that talk about how you wanna go bring back Santa Anna’s head on a platter, and you can’t even cross a twelve-mile stretch of brush in your own backyard!” She about-faced and struck out through the woods, hiking her skirt against the brush and palmettos. “Well, I’m going.”

  “Don’t you have enough ghoulish tales to tell without becoming one?” exclaimed Cora in exasperation.

  “Aw, hell,” swore Willem. “C’mon, then!” With that, he jogged after her with Peter throwing Cora an unsure glance and then scurrying close behind him.

  “Ohhh! Pioneers my foot!” blustered Cora, punctuating the statement with a stomp and then darting off after them.

  Far above, the impassive sky darkened to a roiling, vertiginous green and dusky gray like crashing waves of smoke. The breeze whispered through the treetops with a tone of warning. There was a slight clamminess in the air, clashing with the heat that seemed to radiate up from the grass. The branches and palmettos leaned into one another, stitched together by a vast network of vines and greedy roots battling for dominance in the clay. All told, that chaos was nigh impossible to plumb without a hatchet, which necessitated the girls going home first to change into shorter dresses. The boys also took time to retrieve their hatchets from home before meeting back up at the edge of the town square.

  Soon, they left the market square and reached the outskirts, where the finer houses thinned out to a smattering of squat cabins hunched beneath the shade of leaning oaks and pecans. You caught them here and there out of the corner of your eye as you passed beneath the moss-bearded boughs. Some were so shrouded by the trees and brush they seemed to wink out at you for a moment before vanishing again, leading you to wonder if you’d really seen them at all. In fact, the deeper they went, Ada began to wonder if maybe a whole settlement disappearing without a trace wasn’t so mysterious a notion after all. The land near the Brazos wasn’t so idyllic as one might expect on an autumn day. The treetops were not brilliantly painted with a regal splendor of gold and bronze. The air was too damp for that. What died, withered and dulled to an ashen hue to be trampled and forgotten in the clay. Barren branches lifted suppliant fingers to the sullen sky, knotted and bent to drink what fleeting rays would seep from the impassive empyrean.

  As the brush grew thicker and the canopy overhead leaned in more and more to strangle the faint rays of light, the trio had to watch lest they collide with the veritable empire of gossamer pagodas throbbing beneath the long legs of banana spiders. Both boys took the lead whilst keeping well enough apart and hewing a path through the thick grapevines and poison ivy with their hatchets.

  “How has your mother been, Cora?” Ada tried to show consideration and a bit of solidarity with her friend, who was obviously a tagalong on this particular adventure.

  Cora’s vexed expression turned to something of a forlorn smile. “Oh, well enough, I suppose. I haven’t seen her since the morning before you came over. Father said yesterday that she’s taken a trip to see some relatives in San Antonio. He thinks the drier climate will do her some good, and she could stay with my aunt Lydia for a while.”

  “You didn’t bid her goodbye?”

  “No, she left quite early. She worried I might catch whatever ailment she had, and then father would have had to send me with her. The autumn air has made her feverish of late.” She squeezed Ada’s hand and perked up a bit. “But father says she will write to me, and perhaps we might go to join her for Christmas, and then she will come back with us.”

  “Well, that would be a wonderful present now, wouldn’t it?” Ada replied with a smile, draping an arm around her friend’s shoulder. Then she halted and blinked her eyes before staring rightward. For a moment, she did not know why she stared. Her body appeared to react before her mind caught up. For a moment, she could not see the forest for the trees. She felt Cora tug her skirt and glimpsed her face, which betrayed neither fear nor shock, but a kind of dazed and mystified look. She gazed at the trees again and blinked at a spot that seemed to distinguish itself amidst the brush and trunks.

  “Whatsa matter?” queried Peter in a measured voice. He had enough caution to not broadcast their presence lest unsavory things lurk by. “Hog? Bobcat?”

  Willem carefully edged his way around, taking wide steps over fallen branches and worming his way between brush. When he stood next to Ada, he gave a questioning look, swept his gaze around, and froze.

  “What is it?” hissed Peter quietly. Then he stretched out a leg to step over a log. Willem’s hiss and emphatic wave stopped his foot midair. “What, by God?”

  “It’s a man,” hissed back Willem.

  “A man?”

  “Looks like one.”

  Peter spread his hands. “So, it’s a man.”

  The sound of sharp thuds and scrapes hushed them, and they strained their ears in brief silence.

  “What’s he look like?” hissed Peter.

  “I dunno,” replied Willem. “Just a shape in the brush. I think it’s a man.”

  “You think?” Peter was annoyed. “I thought you said it was?”

  “I dunno, Pete! It sure walks like a man!” hissed back Willem.

  “What if it’s a bear?”

  “Ain’t no bears round here, stupid!”

  “Shhh!”

  Ada was silent all the while, her attention engrossed in piercing the sylvan veil. The figure was distant enough that they could make out little more than a general shape and a wide-brimmed hat of some sort. The figure appeared to be kneeling and digging at the ground, like a dog, with its fingers.

  “What’s he doing?” whispered Peter, craning his head.

  “I dun told ya, I think he’s digging,” hissed back Willem.

  “We could get down a bit closer.”

  “Nuh-uh! I like him well enough from here, thank you very much,” snapped back Cora nervously.

  “Whatsa matter? He’s probably just hunting.”

  “Hey, Pete, maybe we should just git back home. It’s looking like a right toad strangler by them clouds,” whispered Willem, already half-turned to go back through the brush.

  “Why’re we whispering? Could be old Bell out hunting, for all we know.”

  “Or Black Jack!” whispered Cora, her hands jittering with urgency.

  “Black Jack only comes out at night, Cora. Everybody knows that. Maybe he’s just a hunter digging for a deer trap or the like.”

  “Look, Pete, c’mon! That storm might be coming, and I don’t wanna be here when it hits—”

  “Leggo of my shirt, Willem!”

  “Hold still, dammit! Yer making too much noise!”

  “Both of y’all stop. Let’s just think—” Ada tried to quiet the scuffle.

  “Not ‘til he let’s go!”

  “Oh, both of you stop, let’s just—” Cora pleaded, trembling and darting glances back through the trees.

  “I’m telling ya to—!”

  “Ow!”

  “Stop!”

  “Leggo!”

  The boys in their scuffle were tangled up in some prickly vines and recoiled, bumping against each other.

  “Got-dang!”

  “Ah!”

  “Git off!”

  Peter dragged up a foot to disentangle it from the vines, striking his tendon against a thin stump of dogwood. His flailing arms fumbled for a nearby branch, but in vain. He toppled backwards into the palmettos and rolled around to get back up.

  “Ah! Dammit, Pete! Will you—?” Willem reached out to his friend and then stopped. Ada saw his head jerk up and stare forward. A slight motion of his hand at his side indicated that they should remain put. He stretched a foot out in a wider stance to brace himself. The thunder rolled overhead, bringing a brief gust of wind that made him shudder. He grabbed a thin dogwood trunk to brace himself and raised his other hand. “Howdy,” he called out with a kind of reserved uncertainty. His head craned around to get a better look through the brush. The thunder growled overhead, and he shivered at the cool breeze that smelled of salt. “Sorry. We was just lookin’—”

  Ada jolted at the crack echoing through the treetops and the snarl of the gloomy sky and instinctively jerked her head up. She felt the movement a second before she heard a sound like a rock dropping into the grass. She cleared her head with a shake and looked up for falling leaves where a branch fell.

  But there were no leaves.

  A shrill noise caused her body to tense up and her hand to jerk impulsively to her ear. Then she turned to her side and realized it was Cora screaming. It seemed the light dimmed around her suddenly, and she wondered if she were fainting. She felt a grip on her arm and cast her head down. She saw the movement of something there, then concluded Willem had fallen. That awful stump! She felt her arm jerked sharply back and nearly jerked a look back in dazed annoyance. Then Cora’s screaming jerked her gaze back sideways. She glimpsed delicate fingers clawing at the white cheeks, with wide eyes downcast. She followed them to the dirt—the dirt where Willem lay. Why was there blood on his head? Then she saw the eyes glazed with shock, like a deer. She felt herself being dragged back, and the world came sharply into focus with Willem limp in the grass, his eyes wide but seeing nothing. It was as she felt herself dragged back, running and stumbling through the brush, seeing the blur of the brush swiping at her as she ran, her mind came sharply back into focus, and a scream warbled out in a moaning wail.