Hamelin Stoop: The Eagle, the Cave, and the Footbridge
Chapter 1
Trackers from Another World
The campfire was almost out, but it didn’t matter that they were letting it burn down to its last smoky smell. The trackers were coming, but for just a moment longer, Simon wanted to look at her lying in the crook of his arm and at the infant asleep between them.
Funny what you think about when you should be panicked. Would their baby boy have his momma’s blond hair? She was still, but Simon knew she wasn’t asleep, so it didn’t surprise him to see the tear slowly run from the corner of her eye down onto the baby’s head. She opened her eyes.
“Okay, we both know what we’ve got to do,” she said.
“Are you sure, Johnnie?” Simon asked. “There’s got to be another way.”
“No,” she said in a loud whisper and sat up, cradling the baby in both arms. “I will not let him be taken by those monsters! They almost got us last night, and they won’t miss again. There’s nothing else to do.”
For a brief moment, Simon wished he had stolen the two-year-old ’49 Chrysler he had seen the day before. But there was no time now for regrets. They were stuck with fleeing the trackers on foot. Still, he tried to argue. “But . . .”
“I had the dream again. They won’t miss the next time.”
“Johnnie, look, not all your dreams happen. Sometimes they’re just—”
“If I’m wrong, we can still come back and get him, but I won’t let them take him back there!”
Simon didn’t know where “there” was, but he knew that Johnnie, his wife of more than a year, was determined that, if they were caught, their baby boy would not be taken along with them—no matter what.
“Okay,” he agreed. “We both know what we’ve got to do.”
“I left the bag of sand by our mesquite tree,” Johnnie said. “You know the one.”
Simon smiled at the memory but then turned his thoughts to their plan. “They’ll be closing in on us again tonight. I’ll make sure there is enough of a fire for them to find us.” He stood up and looked at the fire. He stirred the embers with his foot and asked, “Is . . . is that blood on one of the baby blankets?”
“Yes.”
“Where’d it come from?”
“Don’t worry, Simon. It’s mine.”
He looked down.
She touched his arm. “It’s okay. Just be sure they see you’ve got him when you leave. The tree first, then run like crazy toward the Little Cliffs. And be sure they’re behind you when you—”
“I know the plan. They won’t get him. I promise.”
Simon looked again at the fire, added a few more dried mesquite branches to it, and quickly felt the sharper smoke in his nose and eyes. He pulled their light blanket around them all again. It was about three o’clock in the morning. He lay there without sleeping. If things went as they did last night, it wouldn’t be long before Ren’dal’s men tracked them down again. He would move out first, and then Johnnie. He waited and closed his eyes.
* * *
What was that? He had dozed off, but he thought he heard something. In an instant, they both were wide awake, their hearts pounding. The baby squeaked, and they could sense the soft movement in the brush. Simon slowly rose to a crouching position and took the baby, who cried softly as he was pulled from his mother’s chest. Simon wrapped him in a blue blanket and tiptoed away. Johnnie never moved, but her eyes and ears strained to follow Simon’s every movement. He was quickly gone, and she could hear Ren’dal’s trackers as they followed.
* * *
The trackers wanted the mother and the father too, but they had been given very clear—and threatening—orders to make sure they got the baby. They followed as Simon moved off into the brush with the bundle in his arms. They tracked him quietly at first, keeping space between themselves and the figure with the bundle. Now that the father and baby were separated from the mother, they would make sure their noises didn’t awaken her so they could come back to get her. But first, above all, the baby.
About fifty yards away from the campsite, their prey began acting strangely. And his pace quickened.
“What the devil is he doing?” hissed Thurel.
“Don’t know,” said Procker, the other tracker, followed quickly by, “Hey, where’d he go?”
“We better not have—”
But there he was again just ahead, though now, with the bundle still in his arms, he was running.
“Pick it up,” said Thurel. “He must know he’s being followed!”
The man and the baby were heading east from the campsite. Why was he running? There was no escaping now. There was nothing east of them but more empty ground, with no cities or small towns for miles in the direction he was headed—no one to help. They might as well run too and get it over with—get the baby and then head back to grab the woman. But Thurel was starting to look wildly around. They hadn’t scouted this side of the campsite before approaching—how could they have been so stupid? His nostrils flared with a new smell: water! It wasn’t rain; it was flowing water, and now the tracker could hear it—it was nearby!
“Procker, you hear that water?” he yelled.
“Yeah, so?”
“So? So don’t let him get to it, stupid! Get him!”
“Who cares? What’s he gonna do? Swim carrying the kid?”
But now, though still about forty yards behind Simon, they were close enough to see what lay before them. Thurel took it all in and groaned.
The father, with his bundle, was running pell-mell toward what locals called the “Little Cliffs.” From the top of the Little Cliffs was a sheer drop of a hundred feet right into a collecting pool of the Middle Concho, which from there flowed mostly eastward toward San Angelo, Texas, where it joined other waters to form the Concho River.
“No!” roared Thurel, screaming and running furiously toward his prey. The sharp eyes of both trackers had enough light from the breaking dawn in front of them to capture Simon’s silhouette. They saw the young father race to the edge of the cliffs and—after looking back toward them and hesitating momentarily—throw the blue blanket and its contents over the cliff with a furious two-handed cast.
It had been an extremely wet spring, extending all the way through June in that part of West Texas, and the waters of the Middle Concho a hundred feet below were already flowing strong, well fed from the surrounding watershed. Only seconds later, when the trackers made it to the edge of the Little Cliffs, Simon was on his knees with his head buried in his hands. They grabbed him immediately and loudly demanded to know—though they had seen his violent heave—where the baby was. All he could do was look down toward the river below. By the time they ran around the top of the sheer drop and scrambled down the hillside next to the cliffs, all they could find was the muddy, bloodstained blanket caught on a riverside branch. They searched the banks and the shallows and then the rocks, scrubs, and tall grasses on the near riverbank slightly downstream. But the baby was gone.
While the trackers furiously looked for the baby, Simon got to his feet and began to run. But Thurel saw him. “Procker! Go get that fool!” Procker easily ran him down and tackled him from behind. Simon was young, athletic, and wiry, but these were hardened men, clearly heavier, stronger, and trained to fight—he was no match for them. And they were in no mood to be gentle. Thurel yelled, “Hold him, Procker!” And when Simon tried to wrestle free, Thurel arrived in time to slam him hard in the stomach with his knee, which doubled him over with a gasp of pain. Procker then added a two-fisted hammer blow to the back of Simon’s head that made his eyes bulge and stunned his neck and upper back. He went to his knees, and the brief fight was over.
They pushed Simon back toward the campsite. “You fool!” Thurel screamed in his ears. “You have no idea what you’ve done! Ren’dal will go crazy!”
Procker was so mad, he suddenly began to pummel Simon with his fists.
“That’s enough, Procker!” warned Thurel. “You know what we were told. Ren’dal wants him too. So we gotta have him healthy enough to make the trip back. Right now, you better be thinking about catching that woman—and then figuring out how we’re gonna explain letting that baby get killed by his own father.”