Then she heard a dog howl, followed by another and another, and for a second she was so scared that her heart actually stopped. She didn’t know what had just happened, but something told her it wasn’t good. She dropped the hoe in the dirt and started walking toward the front yard.
Her son Jesse was sitting in a rocker on the porch, staring off into the trees.
“The war’s a-comin’,” he said, as she walked past him.
“Stay here,” she said, and when he started to get up and follow her, she turned and screamed, “Stay here! Get in your chair and don’t move until I get back. Do you understand?”
He was startled and a little upset that she’d yelled, but he minded her instantly and sat back in the chair.
“Stayin’ here,” he said, and started rocking.
Leigh was so scared she was shaking. She was afraid to leave Jesse and afraid not to go. She looked back at the forest, willing Stanton to come walking out into the sunlight with a logical explanation for what she’d heard.
When his face suddenly flashed before her eyes, her heart dropped. Stanton must be in danger. She started running into the trees, leaving home behind for whatever awaited her below. She set her path in the direction of where she’d seen the birds take flight and wouldn’t let fear lead her astray. She was a woman known for keeping a cool head and today would be no different, but she ran without thought for her own welfare, ignoring the brambles that caught in her skin or on her clothes, stumbling more than once on her downhill race to find the man who was her world.
All she needed to know was that he was okay, but she wasted no breath calling out his name. If the gunshot she’d heard had been a poacher’s bullet, she didn’t want to stumble into something and make it worse, and so she ran, ignoring the bramble vine that ripped the band from her hair. She ran without caution, falling more than once on her hands and knees, and once flat on her belly, causing her to lose her breath. She didn’t know she was crying until she felt the tears roll across her lips.
It was the sunlight coming through the canopy onto the back of Stanton’s red plaid shirt that she saw first. She stopped in midflight and screamed his name.
“Stanton! Stanton!”
Any second she expected he would lift his head and tell her it was just a broken leg or that he’d simply taken a fall. But when she was only a few feet from where he was lying, she stopped as if someone had shoved a hand against the middle of her chest.
He was dead.
She knew that from the bullet hole in the back of his shirt and the amount of blood on the ground beneath him. She fell to her knees from the shock, and then, when she couldn’t get up, began crawling toward him. The lack of a pulse was confirmation of what she already knew, and still she ran her fingers through his hair, through the long tangled strands, sobbing as the tendrils curled around her fingers. Tears continued to roll as she rocked back on her heels, searching the surrounding trees for signs of a poacher, and yelled out, “Are you still here, you bastard? Are you too scared to come out and admit what you’ve done?”
Then she noticed the odd crook of Stanton’s right arm and traced the length of it to the finger pointing at the word he’d scratched into the dirt.
Sound faded. Thought ceased.
A thousand images of the past thirty-plus years with him flashed through her mind, followed by shock and then disbelief.
“No! No, no, no, they didn’t! They wouldn’t! Why? Why now?”
All of a sudden she was on her feet, her heart pounding in growing rage. Then she threw back her head and screamed. Once she began, she couldn’t stop. One scream rolled into another, making it hard to breathe.
Nearby, dogs heard her, heard the devastation in her screams, and started howling. Then other dogs—dogs farther up the mountain and dogs farther down—heard and followed suit, until they were all howling in concert, understanding with their animal senses what humans had yet to discern.
Death had come to the mountain.
*
Samuel Youngblood had the strong bones and features of his Scottish ancestors, and looked like a mountain man with his long hair and simple clothes, but looks were deceiving. He made his living as a small business investor and a day trader, but being inside so much on pretty days like today was wearing, so he’d taken the day off to relax.
He was just getting ready to mow the yard when his hunting dogs began to howl. He looked back toward their pen and frowned. Not only were they all howling, but they were extremely agitated, which was highly unusual.
His wife, Bella, came out onto the back porch, shading her eyes as she looked toward the pen.
“What’s wrong with those dogs?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but it’s not just ours. Listen. Can you hear them?”
She tilted her head and then frowned.
“They’re howling all over the mountain,” she said.
“Something’s wrong,” Samuel said. “Bring me my rifle.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I’m going to take Big Red and find out what happened.”