Chapter 11

The next morning Panther trekked a lonely trek on his stallion, a lithe and skinny racehorse who was like Panther Sprung himself--deceptively strong and imperceptibly quick with a head made of stone.

He was also gentle, quiet and a bit of a sulk. When riding him Panther liked to keep Sathate well-stuffed with snacks of oats, barley and fruits. Intemperate as the stallion was, though, he was tenfold tough and brave.

Like his Black Heart.

He was headed for a ring of conifer wherein a sacred altar had been constructed when the cheiftain was still in his youth. His grandfather had commissioned it before his death, and Panther gave sacrifices upon it in appeals to his ancestors as well as to the living spirits of the tribe. Many Ixopaw did not come to this place out of respect to Panther Sprung, despite his insistence that to honor his grandfather and his devoted labors would indeed involve coming and praying here, but it was no use. To the Ixopaw and Kuroctu, this was Panther's place.

When he arrived he saw the circle of conifers, their shaggy skirts blocking from view the near perfect circle that, when one stood in its center and looked up, offered such a perspective of the sky and the sun it was impossible to not feel intimate and vulnerable, to feel selected by the world itself and for a few brief moments the total of its attention.

Panther passed through the threshold and went to the center. He sat cross-legged there and placed a badger pelt and stag heart before him and sang the praises of their lives. And once he paid this tribute he focused his thoughts on his breaths, on his senses. He felt the conical breeze uplififting. He felt the elder sighs of the connifers, sentinels of a hundred generations. He felt the fearful final beats of the stag's heart and the indignation of the badger. Then he heard the voices of his daughter, long-lost, and he focused. He let free his own pain upon hearing her, let it leak out of his spirit and intertwine with her, to let her know he was here.

"Ah, Ojinjintka, my dear girl. I have found you."

She floated down to him. He could feel her excitement in his breast, though he could not see her.

"My great blessing, I have come so that you know I do not forget you. I have come to remind you of my love, of the love for you which still remains in the world you left."

There was hesitation--there always was some--then a flash of anger and sadness, then joy again. She had accepted his pleas. Even in life she had been careful, ever more so among the spirits. He was proud, for he credited this as a manifestation of himself in her.

"You have made yourself radiant and strong in the afterlife, child," he said, careful to control his emotion. "I am lucky to have you beside me just now. You know not how this relaxes me."

He was shown the visage of Black Heart but he pushed it away. There was not time for her now. She had all the time she needed. Now was for Ojinjintka.

"In due time I will be with you," he whispered. He felt her within, calm, peaceful. He felt love for Black Heart and knew it was her doing.

"I must come and speak with you from time to time," he explained. "It may be selfish but it also keeps you stronger. I can bear this, at least. Yes, just a little while longer. It's just so very nice right now..."

They arrived in the evening of the last Sunday of July to a mud-swallowed town of tawdry hovels and ransacked ramshackle ruin with faint squares of light flickering as occupants spied their coming. One main muddy street brown with horse waste running amongst mud and puddles of rain and shining in the moonlight. At the end of this street a flophouse next to the rickety saloon that was by far the most well-kept structure in the town.

They dismounted round back of the flophouse and Dean went in and got them rooms and came back waving for them to follow him into the saloon. Y walked behind Hannah thinking he wanted to go into his room and read and that was all. His head hurt and his back hurt. He was hungry. He was wet. But he walked through the door to a dimly lit room of dirty midwesterners not happy to see strangers blowing into town.

Dean and Will went straight to the short glossy bar counter hewn from what seemed to be dark pinewood and started chatting up the one-eyed bartender wearing a shotgun coat over a plaid cotton dress. Hannah Percy Wyndell and Y took a table at the wall opposite the bar and brought over two extra chairs for the Hollis boys. Y watched a table of poker players with mud-flecked faces exchange a terse dialogue before beginning another round, the cards snapping down on the table with extra drama and the muddy faces trying not to flinch or scrunch or lighten or even breathe at what their ruddy eyes beheld.

"I ain't like this town already," Percy said in a low whisper. "Let's us hit Wilmington sooner than later and vanish."

"Like a puff of smoke, what was once before is now after as if never there at all," Wyndell scanned them with narrowed eyes.

"We're ghosts, fellas. Ghosts," Hannah, next to Y, seemed also to be fixated on the poker game. "Course we ain't exist. Course we'll be gone in a flash. Keep to yourselves and don't talk to nobody."

"Ovbiously," Percy said. "What we got to talk to Minnesotans about anyhow?"

"Why, Minnesota I s'pose," Wyndell said.

They fell quiet and Y saw a man throw up his arms and hoot and another grow red-faced through the mud while he stood to point and yell at the winner, men set on each other at a tipping point between survival and victory, curtailed at last by protests for drink, the spinning of an empty revolver cylinder and the soothing reassurances of the dealer promising more rounds following the intermission. Y wasn't sure how to feel about his disappointment at the outcome.

A few moments later Dean and Will joined them holding bottles of beer. Dean was glowing and grinning but Will kept quiet and ambivalent touching the top of his bottle to his lips but never drinking, only looking and looking.

"Here's what's what," Dean said, "Liza there, hell of a woman, remembers Will and I. That post job we did, she got a taste of that corporal's package and fell in love with the Hollis boys.

"Some fortune she did. She's got a relative in Wilmington who's a fan of our work. Liza tells me this relative, a cousin I think, can situate us into the vault of the national bank without no fanfare or nothing. Tell me that ain't a blessing from God."

"I know this place ain't no blessing from God. Can't we push on to Wilmington, Dean?" Percy's tone was almost comically childish.

"It's only a night, Percy. You'll live. Don't talk to no one, though. And don't drink in public. Something's sure to start if you do."

"Don't matter to me none," Percy grumbled.

Will spoke up, his tone flat and deep. "Right now we ain't got no worries. Soon as we get to Wilmington, that changes. They ain't forget our good works round these parts."

"That was before your days, Y. Even Hannah, Percy, Wyndell. Was me and Will, and a boy we knew called Horace."

"Now there was a fighter, a true rebel," Will lamented.

"Nevertheless, they's posters in Wilmington, in the papers...these folk know the Hollis boys."

"But they don't know you, Wyndell. Nor Percy, Hannah. And not you, Y."

"This goes right we'll make real money. Real cash. Y, you could chase your father to Napal if need be. Ya'll stand to gain it all, for this is it. This is our opportunity."

"Are you proposing what I think you are?" Hannah said.

Dean and Will shared a look. Dean cleared his throat and knocked back the rest of his beer. "I'm saying we have the contact, the inside woman as it were, and that we got a huge reward awaiting us if we're careful. But Will and I can't be on point. Not on this one."

"So who is?" Even in the dim light the skepticism on Hannah's face was difficult to miss.

Dean shrugged and started fidgeting with his empty bottle. Will sighed. "Dean and I was talking...and we think Y should take point."

"The kid?" Hannah almost screamed.

Upon hearing this Y sank in his seat, his chest emptied of breath and cold chills running down his back. "Taking point" on a bank robbery? A bank robbery! Where was James Copper to write about this? Better yet, where was famous outlaw Gary Dunmar? Or Nina Nells? What would his father say, his mother?

"You are very brave," his mother had told him when she first got sick. "And that is why I worry so much about you."

He had no way of knowing if that was true, but he thought of it just now. He saw her, in his mind. She was shaking her head at him, rolling her eyes. She knew, after all, as she always did. She knew what was inside of him.

Y became faintly aware that there was an argument occurring. Dean had a hand on his shoulder and was looking at him. Hannah had her face in her hands.

"...that's final, goddamit," Dean was saying. "Y, help me out. What do you think?"

A jolt. Tingly vibrations on his arms and down to his fingers. He can't stop bouncing his leg. "What do I think?"