It was night. Curtis Macurdy stood amidst sparse brush, watching stew simmer in a gallon lard pail. Sitting or squatting around him were seven men as hungry as he. Other fires, more or less scattered, flickered in the darkness; it seemed to him that more men rode freight trains these days than rode passenger coaches. President Roosevelt talked about economic recovery, and people were halfway hopeful, but times were hard. Perhaps hardest on those men, some no longer young, who'd left families behind, dependent on kinfolk, while they rode freight trains to California's orange groves, Idaho's potato farms, Arizona's irrigated cotton fields, where rumor said jobs could be found.
In the hobo jungle, most were unemployed working men; around this fire, only the grizzled oldtimer who called himself Dutch was not; Dutch and possibly one other. Dutch had lived on the bum a dozen years—since his house had burned with his wife in it.
The other was a seemingly crazy man, whom the rest of them avoided. His eyes were strange, and his lips moved in swift and silent monolog. Usually silent; at times he muttered a monotone of obscenities, the words almost too rapid to recognize. The man's aura was small and murky, its colors indistinct, brownish, with tinges of what might have been indigo. On one side, close to the head, it was black. Focusing more sharply, Macurdy got a sense of apathy, self-destruction, dying.
Dutch put a stick under the pail's wire bail and lifted the stew carefully from the coals. Most of the others got to their feet, anticipating. "Okay," Dutch said, "don't crowd. You'll get yours." Only Macurdy and a burly Indian held back; they and the crazy man. The pail belonged to Dutch, but most of them had contributed to the contents—a tin of beef, one of beans, another of stewed tomatoes, a carrot, a couple of potatoes.... Macurdy's contribution had been a sausage, which Dutch had cut up small. Some of the men had only tin cans to eat from—soup or bean cans, mostly—their rough-cut openings hammered carefully smooth with rocks so a man could drink from them. Dutch, like Macurdy, had an army canteen cup.
"Go ahead," Macurdy said when their turn had come. The Indian looked at him a moment, then held his can out, and Dutch ladled it full with a spoon. Macurdy felt a twinge of guilt at taking any. He'd learned to draw energy from the Web of the World when he needed to, though Vulkan had told him he'd need to eat fairly regularly for other needs. But his stomach grumbled and complained when unfed. Besides, refusing food would make him seem too peculiar.
Macurdy too had a spoon. The stew wasn't bad, he decided, the serving small but thick. Dutch's bindle held salt and pepper. Dutch was looking at the crazy man now. "You better have some," he said at last. "When this is gone, there won't be no more till we rustle up the makings."
The crazy man's lips had stopped. Slowly he got to his feet, staring intently not at the pail but at Dutch, then limped over and stood empty handed, left shoulder hunched.
"Ain't you got no can?" Dutch asked.
The shaggy head shook a negative.
"Anybody got a can for this guy?"
No one answered.
"Where's that bean can we had? That'll work."
His canteen cup in one hand, Macurdy went to where the can lay, and brought it to the crazy man. Its inner rim was jagged with teeth of tinned steel, formed by opening it with a jack knife.
The man held it out to Dutch.
"No hurry," Dutch said. "Hammer down the edges first, or you'll cut yourself."
The can remained unmovingly extended, and shrugging, Dutch filled it; the others had paused in their eating to watch. The silent man drank off most of the liquid, then unflinchingly reached into the can, plucked out pieces and put them into his mouth, licking and sucking stew and blood from his fingers, heedless of ragged steel edges and staring men. When he was done, he retreated out of the firelight and squatted again, sucking his cuts. None of the watchers said a word; after a moment they continued eating.
When they were done, the men withdrew a little distance to sleep, Macurdy and the Indian lying down a few feet from each other. They'd been together since a jungle outside St. Cloud, Minnesota, where a confused and exasperated Macurdy had asked how to find Oregon. "From here," the Indian had answered, "take the Northern Pacific. Don't take the Union Pacific! Oregon's where I'm going, too. I live there. If you want, we can travel together." They hadn't talked a lot in the twenty-odd hours since then; Macurdy didn't even know the man's name. When he'd said his own, the Indian had answered "White people call me Chief," saying it without irony. They felt a mutual affinity, but the Indian seemed reticent by nature, and Macurdy left it at that.
Macurdy's only bedding was a horse blanket he'd gotten from Max, to make a bindle and for appearances. He could keep as warm as he liked by drawing on the Web of the World, with or without a blanket. Just now he wasn't sleepy—not a bit—but it seemed better to lie there and rest than wander around.
Briefly he thought of offering his blanket to the crazy man, who had nothing but the ragged filthy clothes he wore, then decided against it. God knew what bugs the man might harbor.
Somewhere not far off he heard angry voices, and wondered if there'd be a fight. His hand felt for the heavy skinning knife he'd bought in Dickinson, North Dakota earlier that day, sheathed now inside his pant leg against his left calf. In Indiana there'd been no need to go armed, but on the bum like this it seemed a good idea.
The noise was coming nearer, two men arguing drunkenly till they stood by Dutch's fire. Macurdy had raised himself on an elbow to watch. Some of the others had gotten up, wary of potential violence. Suddenly one of the two—seemingly the drunkest—drew a knife and slashed at the other, who staggered backward screaming. The first, off balance, fell on the fire. Then both were screaming, and Macurdy was there, jerking the one from the bed of coals, throwing him down, slapping the flames out with his bare hands. That done, he crouched over the other, who had dropped to his knees, holding his belly and keening.
"Shut up and lay down!" Macurdy ordered, and slapped him sharply. The man obeyed, and Macurdy examined the wound with eyes and hands. The belly had been slashed, the blade slicing fat and muscle, leaving a ten-inch gash that welled blood but had not cut through the abdominal wall. "Lay still!" he ordered calmly. "You're not going to die. I'm going to stop the blood now." The words, though not loud, were an imperative, beyond argument. Macurdy's fingers explored lines of energy, weaving some of them into a web of occlusion to halt the bleeding, and as an energy template for healing, the latter procedure learned not from Arbel, but from Omara, a healing Sister. Within half a minute Macurdy stood up. "Lay still now," he repeated. "You'll be all right if you lay still."
Then he turned to the burned man, who writhed and whimpered on the ground. After stilling him with a command, Macurdy turned him onto his belly and pulled up the charred sweater, the scorched shirt. The burn was less severe than he'd expected, the skin red but not charred, blisters rising. He'd never had great confidence with burns, but now, without Arbel to lean on, it seemed he'd learned his lessons better than he'd realized.
When he'd finished, he looked around. "Who'll help me with these guys?" he asked. The others stared, awed and a little fearful of him.
"I will," said the Indian. "What do we do?"
"We'll help them to the yard and ask the bulls to call an ambulance. These burns can get infected, and that cut's deep enough, it might tear through. If it does, he'll likely die."
They helped both men to their feet, and through the jungle to the railyard. One of the bulls had heard the screaming and called the sheriff's office; a sheriff's car had arrived before Macurdy and the Indian. The car had a shortwave radio, something new in police equipment. The deputy used it to call for an ambulance, then questioned Macurdy and the others while they waited.
When he'd finished, he stared hard at Macurdy. "I should book you for vagrancy, but I won't. Just get out of here and don't let us see you again."
Macurdy nodded—Chief was being as inconspicuous as anyone can who stands six feet and weighs 230—and the two of them headed back to the jungle. "How are your hands?" Chief asked.
"My hands?"
"You used them to beat out the flames in that guy's clothes."
Macurdy peered at them. It was too dark to see whether they were burned or not. "Okay, I guess. They don't hurt." He contemplated the question as they walked. Maybe healing the others had healed his hands, or maybe somehow they'd never been burned. He was pretty sure he'd felt no pain.
Dutch had watched their goods while they were gone, and after asking a few questions, retired to his bedroll. Chief laid dry sticks on the coals and blew them into flame, then the two large men sat without talking, Macurdy examining his hands by the firelight. It was Chief who broke the silence. "I'm going to tell you my name," he murmured. "I don't tell it to a white man very often. Only when I have to, like to get a job. It's Roy. Roy Klaplanahoo."
Macurdy repeated it quietly. "Roy Klaplanahoo. Mine is Curtis Macurdy. You already knew the Curtis part."
Roy nodded. "I saw how you lit the fire. The others thought you used a match, but you didn't. Then when you stopped that guy's bleeding, I knew what you are: You're a shaman. I never heard of a white shaman before."
"Yeah. I apprenticed to a white shaman named Arbel. That was in another country. But then I got away from it."
"What are you going to do in Oregon?"
"I thought maybe I could get a job logging there."
"My brother and me log sometimes for the Severtson brothers. Swedes. They like us because we turn out lots of logs. They're pretty good to work for; don't cheat anyone, not even Indians. And they feed good. Maybe they'll hire you."
"Thanks. It should be easier where I know someone."
That was the end of their conversation for a while. They watched the fire die down again, then went back to where they'd bedded before. "You want to use my blanket?" Macurdy murmured.
"Your blanket? What will you use?"
"That's something else I learned from Arbel: how to keep myself warm."
Roy considered that remarkable statement for a minute, then nodded. "Thanks. I could use another blanket." He got up and laid the blankets on top of each other, then rolled up loosely in them. "When we get where I live," he said, "you can stay with my family as long as you want."
No more was said, and after a while, Roy's aura told Macurdy the Indian was asleep. In no hurry to sleep himself, Macurdy lay awake with his thoughts. At first they were of his ex-wives, Varia and Melody, but after a bit shifted to a giant wild boar named Vulkan, a four-legged sorcerer large enough that Macurdy could ride on its bristly shoulders.
Strange thoughts that soon blurred into stranger dreams.