As far as Bethany Smith was concerned, the Oregon Trail could go and fuck itself. Probably it'd go to Oregon to do that. That was where it seemed to be determined to get to, God knows why, but she wasn't particular: the trail could fuck itself anywhere it pleased from Independence to Indonesia if it meant it wasn't next door any more, taunting her that whoever else got to leave, she never would.

Not that she'd ever say so where anybody but herself could hear.

Even the folks who agreed with her, and had little enough to lose that they would say it, knew better than to admit that a word like 'fuck' existed within earshot of a member of the Smith Family.

She'd ridden out half a day to the north. Was already outside the town, on the prairie proper, by the time the sun was up. If anyone asked—and any asking would either be on behalf of her parents or inevitably get back to them—she was out here to talk to the railroad surveyors, to remind them how important Mayor Smith knew the railroad was to the future of this great nation's commerce, and to glean any hints at all about the route the tracks would take. But that wasn't a reason she was out here, though she'd no doubt get to it.

That was an excuse.The reason was just over the next rise.

There was a wagon train passing when she reached the top of the hill. They weren't as common as they'd been when she was a young girl: according to Mama those had been the days when the traffic was so thick it might as well have been a single long wagon train from the Mississippi to the coast, a single endless cattle drive from the Rio Grande to the Union Pacific. The dust of them reared like an anvil cloud, and the sound of hooves and wheels were the distant thunder within it. Bethany suspected that account of being somewhat fanciful.

But back in the day the trails had crossed, just outside town. Supposedly the seed of the town had been a trading post that sprung up to supply the cattle drives going north, the settlers going west. Those streams had been plentiful enough that a single trading post had put down thick roots and blossomed into the sorts of fruits that grow from trading posts: saloons, dry goods stores, a missionary baptist congregation and a stop on the pony express. But some unaccountable thing—perhaps a river a state over shifting, perhaps a new pass found in the mountains a state further than that—had gradually nudged the main stream of travel over to the other side of the hills. Now a settler would have to go half a day out of their way to set foot in Statfeldt. Only the few and the desperate did. 

The other trail was already gone: the cattle drives were over and done with, men like Corbiss had made good and sure they were buried.

There wasn't much to see, from here. Wisps of dust rising into the air. The smell of placid oxen drifting downwind through the grass. The faded rough sailcoth over the wagons. Too far away to make out the settlers, to guess at their species or destination. These might be Mormons bound for Salt Lake, prospectors for California or Colorado, disgraced confederates for the Willamette. Just drifters—like that coyote down there, in the poncho, apparently stopped to rest his feet a moment, he had the look—-going with the flow not because they had anywhere to go, but because they had no reason to stay.

Enviable.

She didn't get any closer. From here they might be anyone, on their way to any of the places Bethany would never see.

And what would they see if they looked up? Just a possum, on a horse, in a practical riding skirt and coat, spanish hat instead of a sunbonnet, and a look on her face that even if they were close enough to try they would not a one of them be able to read.

Bethany shook her head and flicked the reins to turn Jeb southeast. Enough lollygagging. Better go see those surveyors, get it out of the way.

Looking at the wagon train had been one of the real reasons she was out here. There'd be another, after.

—

Louie was out on the north fences, like he had been most days for almost a month now. He hated barbed wire with a passion, the stuff was devilish frustrating to work with even given an armadillo's thick skin, but he wasn't the one as got to decide what kinda fences to put up. Just the one who had to do it.

Louie, of course, wasn't really his name. It was what everyone called him, though. Most folks in Statfeldt claimed to hear no difference between “Luis" and “Louie." And that was a frustrating enough talk to have that the armadillo never bothered bringing up his surname anymore. According to Miss Eliza—the last schoolmarm in town, before she'd left town to marry some shopkeeper back in Cincinnati—"Huerfano" wasn't actually a name, it was Spanish for “orphan." She'd guess, she'd said, that whoever had left him here as boy, to be raised piecemeal by whoever happened to be willing to trade a meal and a place to sleep in the barn for a day's work, had been trying to say: this was “Luis, the orphan" but the kind of conclusions one jumps to when one doesn't speak Spanish had been jumped to. So now “Luis Huerfano" was the name that nobody even bothered to use anyway.

Nobody but Miss Bethany.

“Morning there, Luis," the possum drew her horse to a halt on the other side of the fence he was building.

“Morning, Miss Bethany," the armadillo tipped his beat-up hat. “What brings you out all this way?"

“Talkin to you, course." She never had any patience for polite fictions. “And I'll give you this for free: the surveyor's're gettin closer to town. Progressed more'n two miles since last week. See how they like hearin that back at Corbiss's place, maybe."

“Ah well," Luis turned his hat over in his hands, “I don't care much for being a tale-bearer, I guess. How's things in town?"

“Same as always, so don't you try to change the subject on me, Mr. Huerfano," she set her face, “If they ain't gon be happy to hear the news, well that's their affair, but don't that mean it's more'n past time you stopped workin for a man like Sour Pete Corbiss?"

“I tol' you before Miss Bethany, the money's alright."

“Land sakes, Luis!" Jeb, sensing his rider's frustration, stamped his hoof to emphasize the point for her. “He ain't the only person in this pimple of a town as has got money."

“Now, you know what your Pa'd say-" Luis stopped short of retreading the long familiar argument.

“You know we both do," Bethany raised an eyebrow. “What's ailin' you?"

“G'wan then," scoffed another voice, “tell her what her Pa'd say about her bein seen talkin to a dirty piece a shit some vagrant scraped off the trail."

“Rogers," Bethany's lips finished curling into a sneer before she'd even turned around to face the scrawny ferret in the black hat. “You squeak in my presence again and we're gon' find if'n you can still squeak after you've had my ridin' crop across your ugly face."

And perhaps things were meant to go a certain way, at this point. The headstrong town belle, the hardworking and respectful orphan, the two houses alike in obscurity from which they hail locked in a petty small-town real estate war, bitter as only a petty small-town dispute can be, the contemptible hired muscle that hates them both for loving eachother: these are pieces that fit together very comfortably and predictably, and the story they form, when together, is long familiar.

No doubt a mysterious drifter should have appeared, to complete the picture, ready to take no sides, drive the tensions to a final gunslinging showdown, and then ride off into the sunset as mysteriously as he'd come. That may very well have been how this was supposed to go.

But it did not.

For when Bethany opened her mouth, to tell Rafe Rogers to go to hell like the whoreson he was, what came out was not words.

“GreyMountainsMarchAtTheEdgeOfTheSky " she sang.

She had no idea what she was singing.

She had never heard music like this before.

But her's wasn't the only voice.

“DarkMountainsGlowerThroughANarrowedEye " another voice was making its way through the tall grass behind her, lower, breathy but without growl or gravel. Bethany found she couldn't turn her head to see them.

“FromShadowedMountainValesComesABreezeLongBlestAndTheWindRisesSilentFromTheDarkNorthwest " It was hard to clearly hear this other voice, both over herself, and over Luis and Rogers, who were likewise singing.

“ItRushesAsItRisesLikeAHalfRememberedHymnAHymnToSingAtEvensongWhenHopeGrowsDim " Both the men's faces were covered in as much baffled astonishment as she felt.

“AndTheWindSingsHighAndTheWindSingsLowAndNoneOfTheWindsweptPeopleKnow " What was happening?

“HowAllOfTheWindDiedLongAgoYetStillKnowsHowToFly " The music sounded as if a gospel hymn was also a drunken caterwaul in a saloon as well as a thunderstorm sweeping across the prairie faster than a horse could gallop.

“WhenGreyMountainsChargedAcrossTheRampartsOfTheSky " Finally the singer stepped into view. A tall thin coyote, in a rough dust-colored poncho, walking slow like a mayor in a parade, arms spread like oak branches, hands lifted like an Apereostic Father threatening to turn any careless bystander's cider into Blood of the Messiah.

“TheWindSangARequiemTheDayItWentToDie " Whoever he was, he looked entirely comfortable with the music rolling off his tongue.

“TheRainbandsShatteredIntoSoftSilverGlass " the four of them were between them hitting harmonies that Bethany couldn't grasp, but they rang in her mind like strong drink and the smell of distant rain. The music felt like a torrent of cold wind, blowing from unthinkable regions within her and out her mouth, and whatever inside herself was in fact herself was struggling to keep her feet against it, lest she be blown away entirely.

“ForNothingTheWasCouldHaltTheWindOrStayItInItsPass " Beneath her, unconcerned, Jeb chewed a dandelion.

“TheBlackMountainsEchoedTheAstonishmentOfGodsForTheWindIsAsTheSeraphimAndNeverCountsTheOdds " the drifter in the poncho kept his eyes almost closed, his ears perked, and his shoulders relaxed. He swayed almost imperceptibly, in apparent poetic emphasis of the incomprehensible words.

“TheObsidianMansionsShudderedAsTheyFeltNighMoreDreadfulThanItsFuryTheRaptureOfTheSky " Luis and Rafe's faces were both torn between horror and awestruck beauty, but as Luis and Bethany found themselves shifting their stance to face Rafe, alongside the drifter, Luis's expression turned toward awe, and Rafe's toward horror.

“AndTheWindSweepsNearAndTheWindSweepsFar " the three of them were singing at Rogers, now, notwithstanding that he sang along.

“AndNoneOfTheMansionsLordsThereAre " Bethany could feel the song had shifted direction and intent.

“CanMarkTheDayOrPlaceTheHour " There was an abyss of music, somewhere beneath or behind or within her.

“WhenTheWindDiedAtLast " and she could feel how perilously near she was to falling into it and being lost forever.

“TheDarkTowersCoweredAsTheBlastWentBy " It poured out of them and past them, and Rogers sank to his knees, eyes fluttering.

“AndTheWindCriedAlleluiaTheDayItWentToDie "

She felt the song release her as it ended. Bethany clung to Jeb's neck as she fought to get her breath back. A rough paw grasped her ankle, clung for support, she felt thick knobby skin, and glanced sideways at Luis, leaning against Jeb and apparently trying not to vomit.

The drifter ignored them both. He loomed over Rafe collapsed in the dust. “Tell me," his voice, when he spoke, was nothing like his singing, he spoke like a gust tearing suddenly over a hilltop, “do you remember your name? Where you are?"

Rafe's eyes blinked open. The ferret smiled, beatifically, as neither Bethany nor Luis had ever seen the thug smile. Then he shook his head, as if such things as knowledge of his own name were burdens he was glad to be rid of.

The drifter nodded. Apparently this was satisfactory.

Without a word, he turned and strode through the willows, south. Toward town.

“What in the devil's name," Luis finally recovered enough to speak, “was that?"

Bethany could think of nothing to say but “Music, I guess."

—

Peter Corbiss had never been a patient man. Not when he'd been a fortuneless, futureless boy scraping his way westward however he could, nor when he'd been Sour Pete Corbiss, riding herd on the Chisholm Trail in its brief and already mythologized golden age, nor now when he spent his days on his cabin porch at the heart of his ever expanding ranchland, like a tarantula in a burrow.

When something happened, he acted. When he had money, he used it to snap up land. When neighbors refused to sell, money could instead send Rafe Rogers and his 'friends' round, and somehow those neighbors always found themselves inspired to take to the wagon trails toward the Pacific. When he did not have money, he picked surly, sullen, acrimonious fights with the whole town, especially Mayor Smith.

The only things that frightened him were tornados, and not knowing how to react to something.

So this morning the grackle was a frightened man. “And then he jes… left?" he croaked at Louie.

“Yessir, he sure did." The armadillo.

“He didn't say nothin about… what he wanted, or how to get Rafe here back?"

“Nossir."

Corbiss glared between the ferret beside him on the porch, lying spread-eagle on his back and grinning like a loon, and the possum pacing in agitation in the short grass below. If only there were a way to believe this was somehow her fault.

“He did say one thing," Bethany muttered, “he asked if Rafe remembered his name'r where he was."

“Ay there! Rafe!" Corbiss snapped.

The ferret did not respond, unless gazing up into the sky through tears of incoherent joy was a response.

“I don't buy," the grackle had no idea what reaction to have but anything would be better than nothing “yer story, missy. Some no-account hobo sings at my ranch hand and suddenly he's…" his cutting remarks were rather hampered in that he had not the slightest idea what had, in fact, happened to Rafe. “...like that?"

“Nossir," Louie interjected. “T'weren't the fella who sung at him, not only. He made all the three of us sing too."

“Rafe sang too? And y'all?"

“Yessir."

“Why th'hell aint you two gibberin like drunken babies with him?"

“How should I know?" Bethany snapped.

“I aint the only one as is gon' want some explainin," Corbiss snapped back, “Yer own folks've got just as much an interest in Rogers' professional expertise as I done! What 'zactly was you up to, out on mah land so early in the mornin, anyway?"

“What d'ya think? Pa tol' me to go check if the surveyors was any closer, which they are, and then come gloat at you if'n they was, which we got more pressin business now Corbiss!"

“Do we?" Louie was squatting by Rafe's head, trying in vain to get the ferret to make eye contact. “What, exactly? I don't got the faintest idea what we can do about… whatever this is."

“Git him a cup a water."

“We already… ok, sir."

Rafe enjoyed the tin dipper of cool water with evident relish and enthusiasm, but it proved fruitless as a remedy.

“You got a wagon?" Bethany sighed.

Corbiss blinked. “Course I do."

“Well let's get Jeb hitched up," she grabbed her hat, “see if we can get him to a doctor."

She did not bother to wait for Corbiss to do as she suggested. She rarely did so for anyone.

—

It was hardly the greatest frustration of Bethany's life that her parents, Corbiss, Doc Englebert, and indeed all the town knew with perfect accuracy what kind of scheme—butter up the railroad surveyors when they reached town, find out exactly what land the coming rail line would need to purchase for tracks and station and freight yard, use Ma's money and Pa's control over City Hall and the County Deed Registrar which could both more accurately be called the Smith Family Front Parlor to make sure they and they alone owned that land in its totality—said parents were playing, yet everyone pretended complete ignorance. But it was more irritating by far than many of the other frustrations that were otherwise its elders and betters.

Not even in the face of whatever baffling fate had been visited upon Rogers could they think of anything else. And yet they spoke not a word of it.

“Now then Doc," Pa always started any speech he meant to give with 'now then,' “what's wrong with the man?"

“Damned if I know," Doc Englebert didn't look up from the blissful ferret sprawled across an examination chair, also known as a bar chair, since the Statfeldt town doctor was also the Statfeldt town saloonkeeper. “Far as I can figger this here fella's the picture of health!"

“But he don't know his name no more!" Bethany reminded the room.

“It's not catching at all, you don't suppose?" Ma, as always, knew exactly what her priorities were. “Won't be nothin the railroad folks need word on?"

“No surprise as that's the only thing," Corbiss sneered, “it occurs to y'all as a concern."

“Now then, sir," Pa harrumphed, “some of us got to keep this town running! Wouldn't nothin get done if we all wiled away the days hoarding vacant land as ain't goin to no use!"

“You got no call lookin down yer nose at me, Jethro Smith, I knowed Rogers's took yer pay for work every bit as dirty as he done for me!"

Bethany nudged Luis toward the doctor, since she had no need to hear this argument play out for somewhere between the fifth or five hundredth time.

“I should keep my distance, miss," Doc Englebert held up a hoof as she drew close, “I couldn't rightly say if this ain't contagious after all."

“I suppose if t'were, we'd already have it," Luis observed, “considerin' how it happened."

“An' how," asked a voice Bethany hadn't heard before, “'xactly is that, suh?"

Behind the bar, somehow unremarked until now, was an elderly crow, apparently helping herself to a bourbon.

“Mrs. Heckaday," the proprietor grumbled, “you best make up your mind if'n you here to raid my stock or interfere with my patients."

“Ah can handle doin both, doctah," the crow finished her drink in a single gulp, poured a second, and approached like a late autumn mist gliding out of a riverbed.

“Uh, Ma'am, I don't know if-"

“Maggie Heckaday," she cut off Luis's nervous interjection, “purveyor of almanacs and patent remedies," and handed the glass of bourbon to Rogers, “and apparently only one here with the sense the Good Lord gave me! Cause it don't sound like y'all un'erstand how important the question Ah asked is!"

“How it happened, you mean?" A moment a ago Bethany would have agreed with this, well, whatever-she-was, that it was most singular how nobody seemed to believe or care that this had been caused by a drifter's singing. But why did this crow seem to care? And before she'd even heard the account? “Well like I said, this stranger comes up on the three of us, out along one-a Corbiss's pastures. He don't say nothin, he just sings."

“And suddenly we was all three signin' too," Luis hunched his shoulders, as if it were cold, despite the lateness of the great plains summer.

“When it stopped, he were left like that," Bethany concluded. The apparent narrowness of the escape was fluttering about her head, knocking for admittance, eager to point out that for all she knew it could've been her grinning in this chair, sipping experimentally at a glass of bourbon as if she'd never before heard of alcohol, but she refused to admit it. “And then the stranger just walked off!"

Mrs. Heckaday's expression was unreadable. But at length she said and said “Well doctah, Ah got good news an' bad news. Your patient ain't contagious. But he also ain't gon' recovah. Now if you folk'll excuse me, Ah got to see to some business." She departed so promptly, and so smoothly, that Mrs. Heckaday made the front door before it occurred to Bethany that she hadn't answered any questions and indeed had raised several more.

Bethany followed, ignoring Doc Englebert's explaining to Luis that this woman come selling medical supplies, and her mother's hardly-subtle interruption to the effect that surely Louis here had chores to be getting on with, and Corbiss taking that as an excuse for further argument.

For but a moment, there was a coyote in a dust colored poncho standing in the alleyway, behind the livery stable. His eyes met Mrs. Heckaday's, and he nodded, as if in recognition.

“Are you alright, Mrs?" Bethany began, for the first time this woman looked unsteady on her feet.

“Ah daresay," Maggie gulped, and her feathers smoothed a little, “Ah feel Ah could do with another drink. Would you mind helpin' an ol' lady back towahd the saloon, sugah?"

The alley behind the livery stable, where she was still staring, was entirely unpopulated.

“If'n you know anythin' at all bout what's goin' on ma'am…" Bethany took the crow's wing.

“Well honey," Maggie sighed, “this heah is what the newspaperman'd call an 'Act a' God."

—

Rafe Rogers, as predicted, did not recover. He did not seem to mind in the slightest. But there were those who very much did.

Among the ferret's former associates, two especially began to eye eachother, warily, each in suspicion that the other meant to take leadership of the gang and therefore determined to do it first. Randolph “Dandy" Tiltimann, mallard, college-educated and son of a quaker-adjacent commune somewhere in Michigan to whom he still sent a portion of his ill-gotten pay, was rumored to be presenting himself to both Mayor Smith and Sour Pete Corbiss as willing to do whatever unlawful deeds might need doing. Scotsman Jack, a buffalo about whose past the only thing that could be said with certainty was that he was not a scotsman, was determined to prevent him.

For nigh to a week, Bethany watched the two factions cross main street rather than speak to one another. According to Luis, whom she had forbidden from returning to his bunk at Corbiss's ranch, lest the shooting break out there and catch him in the crossfire, these were men who lately had been content to fight and sleep alongside one another, “but I guess when their blood's up, t'won't be satisfied with nothin' but more blood."

Instead of returning to the Corbiss ranch, instead of riding out to check on the surveyors, Luis and Bethany spent days under the plum tree out in the side yard of the Smith house. To be sure, this was the site of many hasty and hushed conferences: Mayor and Mrs. Smith, Doc Englebert, Pete Corbiss when his animosity could be controlled, and Maggie Heckaday who clearly knew more than she could be induced to explain, all had much to discuss. Rumored sightings of the coyote in the dust-colored poncho were, at first, foremost, as well as reports of spontaneous outbursts of singing, which thankfully were never substantiated and produced no further case like that of Rafe Rogers. But tensions among the ferret's former gang soon superseded those as the most pressing matter.

It was carefully not discussed that both the Smiths and Corbiss had played large roles in forming that gang, or that even Doc Englebert would have to concede, if pressed, that he had employed these men for less-than-perfectly-legal purposes.

Yet when matters of municipal crisis were done, and others departed, Bethany and Luis would remain under the plum tree. Sometimes with a pitcher of sweet tea, sometimes with Jeb methodically cropping the grass beside them, but often alone.

“It felt like the clouds openin' up," Luis would often try to describe the feeling of having been rapt within the ineffable music, “and the sun breakin' through, turns the rain into a blaze-a light. It felt like standin' on a hill an' seein' a great thunderstorm on the far horizon, all lit up inside with lightnin'. Or it felt like wakin' suddenly, an hour before sunrise, and walkin out inta the night, lookin at the east sky go pale, and knowin' you's the only person awake in t'whole world to see it." And Bethany would agree, yes it was very much like each metaphor he tried. The only occasion on which they disagreed was when Luis said it had felt like coming home from a long journey and letting the door shut behind you, to which Bethany had replied that it felt more like opening the front door and stepping through to begin a long journey. But this disagreement did nothing to break their otherwise unanimity. Who else was there who had felt what they had, and retained enough wits to discuss it?

But often they would say nothing at all. The possum would take the armadillo's paw and squeeze, and he would place his other paw atop hers and close his eyes. And so they would remain until Ma called that supper was ready.

Ma had put up surprisingly little resistance to the armadillo staying as the Smith's houseguest. Always, in the past, Mrs. Smith had openly and voluminously suspected 'that Louie Huerfano' of trying to seduce her daughter for her inheritance. Such things were not unheard of. Indeed, such an outcome had been among various plans Bethany herself had privately entertained. But that was no longer the kind of story this was.

When the storm finally came to a head, it wasn't the kind of affair where the men faced eachother at high noon on an empty main street in neatly dramatic lines, watching intently for the first hand to touch a holster. Such things happen only in stories.

Rather, Scotsman Jack and two cronies, an antelope and a horned lizard, stealthily followed Tiltimann as he left the barber in the afternoon, guns already drawn. The sitting duck had only time to look up and see the three barrels pointed at him before-

“ThisIsTheHouseThatHeBuiltOutOfBreath " rang out a voice from the rooftops.

Guns froze, triggers unsqueezed, hammers poised but never to fall, in hands suddenly entirely bereft of their owner's wills.

“ThatWasHisLivingThisIsHisDeath " A thin coyote in a dust-colored poncho and hood had somehow gotten atop the general store, across from the barbershop. His voice, raised in song, rolled down main street like a flash flood down a months-dry streambed.

“TheseAreHisClothesThoughHeNeedsThemNoMore " Tiltimann and Scotsman Jack and his gunmen sang as well, eyes wide and baffled.

“ThoseWereHisShoesLeftOutsideTheDoor " pistols slipped from fingers from which all will and purpose had been withdrawn. Not a one discharged when it hit the ground, of course. That would have interrupted the singing.

“TheseArePeeledGrapesButPretendTheyreHisEyesTheseAreHisTeethOfUnusualSize " every citizen curious enough, or foolhardy enough, to look out a front window found themselves caught, joining in, unable to look away.

“ThisIsHisHopefulnessQuiteAtrophiedAndThatsJustTheWindAWhistlingOutside " this song was different, Bethany noted, from the last.

“ThisIsAMessagePerhapsMeantToBeReceivedBySomebodyPosthumously " She let it drag her, unresisting, along its course, or perhaps the drifter's course. How could she say if there was a difference?

“ThisIsHisAltarToUnheardOfGodsHereDidTheyHearHimWhatAreTheOdds " This song was powerful, and fierce, and defiantly, proudly alive. It was laughter amid a storm, it was a ghost story over an autumn fire. There was some threat to it, some martial spirit in it, or some spirit older than war but without which war cannot exist. It was too wild to be a march, it was too holy to be a bawdy ballad, it was too pure to be some pagan chant, but she had no power to deny it was any or all of those things.

“ThisIsHisHeartThatTheyCarvedOutOfWood " Doc Englebert, Bethany noted, despite his expressed determination to remain inside under the certainty that shelter would protect him, had entirely failed. The goat was on his saloon porch, singing as heartily as any of them. But Mrs. Maggie Heckaday, however, at the porch corner, was stonily silent.

“ThisIsHisBody " Rapturous joy and terrified awe wrestled across the faces of the rest of the townsfolk of Statfeldt.

"ThisIsHisBlood " But not so much as on the faces of Tiltimann, Scotsman Jack, and his two unfortunate companions. What were their names? Bethany had no idea.

“TheseAreTheWordsThatAreLeftOfHisMind " The drifter was standing at the center of the circle the four gunmen had formed. When and how he had descended from the rooftops remained a mystery, but his hands and eyes were raised to the sky, preacherlike, all the while.

“AndThatIsTheSkyHeIsSomewhereBehind " The moment the song ended, each of the gunmen turned. They looked, and moved, not like men asleep or in a daze, but like men who have just heard some piece of devastating news that they have not yet had time to understand. But without a further word, they began to walk, in cardinal directions or as near to them as the town layout would allow: Tiltimann went south, Jack north, the antelope east, the horned lizard west. None in Statfeldt ever saw any of them again.

Before anyone could shake themselves back to lucidity, the drifter tossed his poncho over one shoulder. As if nothing whatever extraordinary had occured, he walked into the saloon.

Heckaday nudged Doc Englebert in after him. Bethany and Luis followed.

And perhaps this was not so different from how things were meant to go. The power vacuum among violent and lawless men threatens to erupt, but some mysterious stranger intervenes, and is the only survivor: these are pieces that fit together very comfortably and predictably, and the story they build is not familiar though in this case their form was unusual.

That may yet have turned things back to how they were supposed to go. But it did not.

—

Bethany arrived in time to hear the drifter say, “I would like something to drink."

“You… want a whiskey?" Doc sounded as if he were being made fun of.

“If whiskey is what you have. I have been singing," but the drifter explained with utmost calm, “and I am thirsty."

“You go 'head and put it on mah tab," Mrs Heckaday urged the saloonkeeper. The goat poured a bourbon for the drifter, and one larger for himself.

The coyote accepted the glass without fuss. “I thank you."

“What in God's name are you?" Bethany had a thousand questions to ask, and no idea which was the most important, so she attempted to put them all into one, “and what the hell do you want?" Or one and a half, perhaps.

But the drifter did not look up from his drink. “I have no need to explain myself to you." He had the kind of voice that was audible across the room even in a whisper.

“Well," Bethany had passed beyond frustration into the kind of anger that completely forgets fear exists, “you got any need to not explain yerself to me?!"

The drifter sat up a little straighter. He turned, as if looking at the possum for the first time. The saloon was silent for a moment.

“Very well," said the drifter. His lips barely opened, and he sang a single, wordless note.

Bethany felt Luis's hand clench reflexively on her wrist. But nothing stirred in her throat. No compulsion bubbled up in her mind. And though both her mouth and her armadillo's hung open, it was only in shock.

The drifter's eyes turned to the crow, still standing carefully between him and Doc Englebert. He held out a hand, in a gesture like an older brother encouraging a frightened sibling to step across a puddle.

Maggie's feathers raised, but when she too remained unexpectedly unsinging they smoothed. Then she blinked in realization, took a deep breath, and began humming the same note as the drifter, of her own volition.

The drifter nodded. Tilted his head a little this way, then that, and the note Maggie sang adjusted in pitch till she hit some strange and counterintuitive harmony with which he was apparently satisfied.

Maggie's nod of invitation to Doc Englebert, and his cautious hum, was enough reassurance that Bethany and Luis were driven by curiosity to join in. Hopefully they'd be able to stop if-

Oh. 

In later years, Bethany would find herself unable to describe how she understood the song, or why she understood now when she hadn't before. But she knew what it meant the way a poet or a storyteller knows what their tale means before they begin the struggle to put it into words, and after the best they can do has failed to fully express it. It meant a great cool mass of something, air or spirit, perhaps, if those were indeed different things, hovering over the land. Older than civilization. Larger than mountains. Stronger than death. It meant that it moved, that every motion, every gust, every wingflap, every breath drawn pulled or pushed the entire mass of it. It meant that all the tales told, when mortal folk forgot, it remembered, for the moment they were put into speech they were a part of it forever.

In the same instant Bethany knew that she could stop, and that she wouldn't.

“TheWavesUponTheSilkenSands " the drifter sang softly. It sounded equal parts a lullaby and a lament. For once he seemed content to be a soloist: the four of them in the room with him merely hummed the slowly subtly shifting harmony underneath.

“AreSofterThanHisBreath " and that meant the thousands of years of people who had lived here, once, generations upon generations of them, whose names Bethany had never heard. And it meant the wind remembered them, and remembered their stories.

“WhereHeLiesSafeUponTheSands " and that meant the new people, her people, Luis's people, displacing them by force, telling themselves stories to help pretend it was right and just: El Dorado and the Northwest Passage, Manifest Destiny and the Missouri Compromise. Stories that the wind remembered, whose falsity it remembered as well.

“AsleepAsDeepAsDeath " and that meant the stories of the people who had traveled the trails that crossed here, the hopes carried toward Oregon, the avarice toward California, all the stories they carried from their old countries, the stories of their travels, the stories they had been told, falsely, to induce them to make this journey, the stories that others were even now making up about them to justify more expansion. And the wind remembered these stories as well.

“SoonIWillRiseFromHereAndGo " Bethany saw tears standing in the corners of Luis's eyes, and realized she could feel him, or his mind, beside hers, understanding the things the drifter was singing. She heard, in the note he was humming, the story he wished he could tell, that he'd wished for how many years now, the story of the orphan lucky enough to win the heart of the town belle and settle down, at last, in comfort, and say that he had finally a home. She saw in his eyes that he heard the song in her note, about leaving, traveling, exploring, seeing all the wonders of the world and never setting foot in Statfeldt again. And the wind remembered these stories too.

“DownToTheOpalShore " and that meant the big story, false, hollow, garish, under which rich men meant to bury all the other stories, to pretend there had never been any story but their own. In which there was only a place for you so long as you could pay for it. But the wind saw through it, and remembered all the stories nonetheless.

“AndIWontFearTheSunlightAnymore " and now the future was unrolling in the music, and Statfeldt itself crumbled shockingly fast, as if it had turned to dry sand before a steady gale. And the wind would remember the story of it.

“NoIWontFearTheSunlight " Nowhere in that future was there a place for her and Luis. Not together.

“Anymore "

“Stop." Bethany's whisper was hoarse, but nothing in her resisted saying it.

The hum fell silent.

After a moment, the drifter spoke again. “Have I explained myself, then?"

And how on earth was Bethany to answer such a question? So perhaps it was fortunate that she had no need to.

—

“Doc Englebert!" Sour Pete Corbiss bellowed out in the street, “You send that damned conjure-man or what-the-hell-ever sonuvabitch he's sposed to be out here right the hell now!"

A chorus of angry murmurs supported him. The drifter, it seems, was not the only one in harmony with whom the whole town could sing.

Mayor Smith was beside the rancher, of course. As was Mrs. Smith, for once wholly unconcerned with the foulness of his language. The last remnants of the Rafe Rogers gang had their guns drawn, but this was America, and they were far from the only men, or women, who had guns. And for those who had none, why, there were scythes, or limb-saws, or baling hooks aplenty for the whole town to have their choice. Which was fortunate, for by the looks of things the whole town felt the need to be armed.

“By the authority vested in me by the people of Statfeldt," Mayor Smith declaimed, not to be outdone by the likes of Corbiss, “under the Authority of Nebraska Territory, I hereby declare you an outlaw…"

“Well go on!" shouted someone in the crowd.

“I don't know his name!"

Here there was some hurried and confused civic discussion. Nobody, it seemed, knew the stranger's name.

“And what is this?" within, the drifter had gotten calmly to his feet.

“I think, sir," Luis ventured a guess, “they don't want you in town no more. Think they're a bit unsettled, sir."

The coyote gave the armadillo and the possum beside him a long, unreadable look. But then he nodded, “That is reasonable enough. I am unsettling. But then, all that I came here for, I have." His poncho, as he strode toward the doors, billowed like a squall line crossing the horizon. “Very well."

“I hereby declare you outlaw," but let it never be said that Mayor Smith let a little obstacle like that put him off, “person or persons unknown!"

The crowd moved toward the saloon, but pulled back sharply with a gasp when the doors blew open, as if with a sudden gust of wind.

The drifter and the population of Statfeldt regarded one another. On the one side there was fear, and bafflement, and of their rough marriage was born hostility. On the other side was only unreadable calm, like the cool silent stillness after the rains have passed.

“If it is time to say farewell," Bethany and Luis—perhaps Mrs. Heckaday if her hearing is as good as she claims—were the only ones near enough to hear the drifter whisper, “Then let us say farewell."

“SoIWillBeOutInTheSunrise " sang every voice in town, in thunderous unison.

“InTheLotsWhereOldShopsWereTornDown " weapons dropped forgotten as faces were flooded not with understanding, but understanding of their lack of understanding, of its needlessness, and of the beauty of not understanding.

“AndIWillBeDownEveryAlley " The population of Statfeldt was not large, only a few hundred. But such things are relative. A few hundred is not much for a town, but it is an enormous bounty for parts in a harmony.

“InEveryForgottenTown " It was the most beautiful thing Bethany had ever heard.

“AndIWillNotNeedYourUmbrella " The drifter processed slowly down the saloon steps and into the middle of main street.

“TheRainsTheyWillDoMeNoHarm " the crowd parted for him.

“IllTurnMyFaceToTheRainfall " At some point, the skies above had become overcast, though as far as Bethany could remember the weather had been sunny and clear all this morning.

“AndTheRainfallItKeepethMeWarm " But now the clouds overhead were thick and black, churning heavily, and the light around the edges of them had gone a shade of green that anyone who lived on the prairies knew, and knew to fear.

“AndMaybeAtTheEndOfSomeAutumn " But the drifter feared this no more, clearly, than he had feared their weapons or their enmity.

“AShipWillBeWaitingForMe " The music was thrilling and triumphant, a recessional hymn and a valediction fit for martyrs facing the firing squad with a laugh. It was blended with an immeasurable sorrow, but it was a sorrow that it treasured, that it wove into its own solemn pattern and which only make its shouted heights the more joyful, the more triumphant.

“WhereTheSunWillBeSettingAndSteeping " Bethany was so close to understanding it. She could not shake the intuition that something in the words was meant for her, and her alone.

“ItsColorsAllIntoTheSea " In it she could hear the inevitable death of Statfeldt, of all that she knew, and it was all alright. Those things were never going to last forever. She was never going to last forever.

“IllSayGoodbyeToTheSummer " But she was here now, and while she was here, she was singing. And it was beautiful.

“IllLeaveTheHighwayBehind " When the funnelcloud opened up overhead it was as if it were entirely expected.

“IllTakeTheShipAndForever " The wind around the crowd was roaring, but it did so in harmony, and did not drown out but rather amplified the song, 

“BeSomewhereOutThereWithTheWind " The drifter's poncho was billowing. His face was serene. His feet no longer touched the ground.

“AndThatImAfraidIsMyAnswer " And when he had sung these things, while they beheld, he was taken up by the winds; and the funnelcloud received him out of their sight

“ItsTheOnlyOneThatIOwn " Maybe this was why the town would soon be gone.

“EvenThoughYoullNeverSeeMe " Wasn't it better to end like this? To go down singing, falling apart under a torrent of unearthly beauty which dwarfed your prior experience like the size of a thundercloud dwarfs a whole continent? Like a haystack blown apart by a tornado?

“ThatsWhereIllBe "

“Finally "

"Home "

But the music faded, the wind died, the sky cleared. The people of Statfeldt remained, and the drifter was gone.

It was ended.

—

The railroad surveyors, citing rumors of some kind of episode of mass hysteria, declined to route the tracks through Statfeldt, after all. Rather they turned west, along the preferred route of the old Oregon Trail.

By that time, of course, it no longer mattered. Mayor Smith had resigned, citing failing health, and gone back east to a retirement among his lady wife's kin in Virginia. Pete Corbiss, after a week's long bout of drunkenness, had been found one morning in a ditch, stone dead, by all appearances fallen from his horse. Rafe Rogers, it is rumored, ended his days in a fringe religious community in California, where he was briefly considered a living saint.

In fact, the town of Statfeldt experienced such a population collapse that by the time the land on which it stood graduated from Nebraska Territory to the State of Nebraska, it had dwindled to merely a 'census designated place.' Many residents, in departing, were most cryptic: 'the town'd served its purpose,' and 'what point was there to stayin?' and 'it's all blown away' were representative of the typical remarks. In all honesty, there was only one permanent resident, a Mr. Luis Huerfano, who resided in and maintained what was called, for reasons nobody seemed to know, the Smith House. Even when wind damage slowly, inevitably, over decades, tore down the rest of the unused structures, his home kept in good condition: from the weathervane on the cupola to the plum tree in the yard.

Drifters and wanderers, over the years, came to rely on the place as a reliable stop, where a hot meal and bed were always to be found in exchange for a story. Mr. Luis seemed to have a great passion for descriptions of far away places, though he confessed to no desire to travel himself. “I have my home," he would say, “and that's all I ever wanted."

One drifter, in particular, returned year after year. A Miss Bethany Smith, possum, sharply-dressed, witty, and cosmopolitan. To judge by her stories she had been everywhere and seen everything. She had climbed mountains, crossed oceans, trekked to the arctic circle to see the northern lights. She had danced with Lords in Europe, drunk with murderers in Chicago, and sung with the Canadian National Methodist Choir, who were, in her estimation, “good enough."

Often Luis and Bethany would sing together. Luis's other guests were quite unable to understand any of the words, when they did.

One day, of course, Luis didn't meet her at the gate. He wasn't on the porch. She found him in the kitchen, dishes by the sink washed and dusty, a coffee dried to a stain at the bottom of the cup in his hand. He'd gone, while she was out there somewhere, and on his face was an expression much like Rafe Rogers had worn, in the wake of an unearthly song, once upon a time.

She buried him beneath the plum tree out front, not far from where they had buried Jeb years ago—he wouldn't have wanted to rest anywhere but his home. Between the shovelfuls of dry earth there came the sound of distant thunder, across the plains, and when she laid the last above him a cold wind, gentle but firm, brushed across the hills, traced waves through the long grass, and opened up the skies with intoxicating petrichor and soft rain, to settle the grave before the soil could blow away.

If there had been any other mourners, they would have seen the old possum straighten, ears up, eyes wide, as if hearing at a great distance some long-familiar but almost forgotten sound. Would have seen her turn west by northwest, the direction that once the Oregon Trail had gone, into the face of the wind and coming storm. They would have seen a look on her face that, even were they here to see it, not a one of them would be able to read.

Bethany watched the thunderstorm from the front porch. When it had passed, she made sure all the lights were off, the windows shut, the books in the library, in her handwriting, in Luis's, in the handwriting of all the drifters Luis had taken in over the decades, were in neat rows. Then she locked the doors behind her and never set foot in her childhood home again.

Some weeks later, the law offices of Beranek and Agnelli in Kansas City received a letter, posted from the Union Pacific station in Salt Lake, from a long-time eccentric client of theirs, a miss Bethany Smith. It instructed and empowered them to enter a house she owned, out in the middle of nowhere, and take possession of a collection of books to be found there. These they were to print, bind, and disseminate in whatever way would, in their judgment, best preserve them for posterity. The house, the land, and all other property to be found therein she wished liquidated and the money used to cover any costs of carrying this out. They were not to expect further instructions: she meant to retire out west, in Oregon, or the Columbia Valley, or the Pacific Coast.

Whether she ever reached such places, neither Beranek nor Agnelli could say.

The real estate sold for a reasonable sum: there was a minor speculative boom in farmland on, though this bubble burst before anything could be done to the place but the demolition of the building itself, so ultimately the land remained vacant save for a feral plum tree, gradually and busily transforming itself into a thicket over the decades. The proceeds of the sale, at least, were a little more than sufficient to cover the cost of what were assumed to be Miss Smith's somewhat unusual final wishes. Some of the resulting story collections were donated to the Missouri Valley Room of the Kansas City Library, or to the University of Nebraska, and some of what remained was dispersed to various other libraries, collections, archives, rare book dealers, or second-hand book sales. But the bulk of it remained in the custody of Beranek and Agnelli until the freak tornado of '27 entirely razed the building, leaving behind nothing but the foundations.

If anyone but the wind knows where those stories are, today, then I have not heard of it.

But I am assured the wind remembers.