The Cunning Man || ONC 2021

6: Trouble

Nothing cleared my head and calmed my emotions like a long, quiet ride. The further I got from Stalton Springs, however, the more my conscious lectured me like a tent revival preacher. Walking away from my wife of not even a week, without so much as a "goodbye" after kissing her for what might very well have been the first time in her life, had not been one of my finer moments. I knew after that stunt, I'd be lucky if she was still in Wyoming when I got back.

I rationalized my guilt away with the thought that if that wanted poster was any indication, my past hadn't stayed put in Pennsylvania after all. Nora didn't need to be caught up in anything that had Arthur Kilwin's name associated with it. The man had made his money through coal and the short, miserable lives of the people who mined it out of the earth for him. He was one of the nation's "Captains of Industry" and rubbed shoulders with the likes of Carnegie, Mellon, and Rockefeller. He was a ruthless businessman and a heartless bastard, who cared more about his wealth than his workers.

He was also connected to the supernatural, if his skin walking Pinkertons were anything to judge by. Kilwin had magic, or he hired people who did. Either way, if he was still trying to find me after all these years, I'd bet every last penny I possessed that he was using supernatural means to do so. As far as anyone back in Pennsylvania knew, I'd died in a fire shortly after my own father found me kneeling next to a dead man with the murder weapon still in my hand. The fact that the barn fire that 'killed' me was awfully convenient and sudden didn't matter to most, since God had obviously decided to spare human authorities the bother of bringing me to justice.

I had changed my name, changed my geography, and changed my fate. Skinny Cadwyn Marrick, who was afraid of the dark and had a perpetually broken nose, was nothing but a ghost now. Sheriff Cade Pellar now made certain that the innocent didn't take the fall for powerful men, and he broke noses faster than anyone could break his.

I was still afraid of the dark, though. So it was with some relief that I made it to my destination before nightfall the second day out. The place wasn't much -- a little hunting cabin at the far southeastern end of Captain Josiah Randler's sprawling cattle ranch. I'd worked as a ranch hand for the man for about four years before he made certain I took the place of my god-awful predecessor as county sheriff. In that sense, I still worked for the old Buffalo Soldier. He certainly thought so and made certain to remind me of that as often as he could.

We didn't have what I would call a friendly relationship, but we had a respectful one. He was the only person in Wyoming who knew I had Cunning in my blood, and I was fairly certain that I was the only white man who knew he had Conjure in his. We'd both come about that knowledge thanks to a malevolent spirit and a life debt I owed him because of it.

Debts owed to him, however, would not stop the Captain from tanning my damn hide if he knew what I'd buried on the farthest bit of Wyoming prairie he called his own. My decision to hide a questionable magical artifact on the land of a man who had shown me grace when men who looked like me hadn't ever shown him any, was also high on the list of life decisions I regretted. In a way, I was relieved that circumstances had forced my cowardly ass to take that box back and in doing so, correct a wrong I never wanted known.

Then again, I reflected as I brushed my horse down and set her loose in the little corral behind the cabin, I was fairly certain Captain Randler was one of the most powerful magical practitioners west of the Mississippi. It wouldn't shock me to learn that he'd known all along what I'd buried, and had quietly kept an eye on it while waiting for the consequences attached to it to blow up in my face.

The Captain was like that.

These were the thoughts that kept me company as I ate a cold dinner and watched a storm roll in from the distant Tetones. Better to think about the box and everything surrounding it, than about how I'd tasted honey on Nora's tongue or about the sound she'd made when I'd pulled her hair.