Chapter 8 #2
Just then a bell started to ring in the camp—three short rings and one long, resonant one.
“I have to go,” Michael said.
Emily wracked her brain for what the code meant. “What is it? I’ve forgotten this one.”
Michael smiled. “It’s the lookout code for lights spotted on the trail heading toward us. I have to go with Andrew, Troy, and Jeff to make sure we’re safe.”
“Okay,” she said.
“It’s probably nothing,” Michael said.
The last three times the warning had gone out, it had indeed been nothing.
Just some travelers looking for a place to spend the night.
The last ones, Troy and Jeff had brought into camp.
It had been a party of mostly women and children.
They’d stayed two days and then moved on. Perhaps this time would be the same.
Back at the campfire, Emily sat with Julie and Lizzy.
“Diana and Tilly are with Ethan,” Julie said. “He’s much better today. He’s still weak and in pain, but I think he’ll be fine.”
“I can take over later,” Emily offered, feeling suddenly guilty that she hadn’t done a shift sitting with the sick man in the medical tent.
“Sure, if you want to,” Julie said. “You and Lizzy can take a shift together. It’s better when there are two of you.”
The women regarded each other and nodded. “That will be nice,” Lizzy said, succeeding in sounding more enthusiastic than Emily felt.
There was still tension between them. Despite all the water under the bridge and Emily agreeing to have neighboring houses, nothing seemed to really change the fact that she had written letters to Troy and come to town in the hopes of marrying him.
Even though it was never meant to be, and he loved Lizzy and she loved Michael, it was always there between them, like a mountain range they couldn’t seem to climb.
“So, what’s happening?” Felix asked, appearing from between the tents. He was holding a deck of cards. “What was that bell ringing?”
“It was a code,” Lizzy said, patting the seat beside her for Felix to take it. “It means there were lights spotted on the track leading to town. We have to keep watch because the bandits that forced me and my friends from our town down south have followed us and are trying to intimidate us again.”
“But they never bet on Andrew and the others,” Julie said with a firm nod of her head. “They got into the camp once when we weren’t prepared. They haven’t made it in again.”
“Ah, is that why there are all those areas we’re not supposed to go near?” Felix asked.
“Yes,” Lizzy said. “We set up booby traps.”
“And there I was thinking those traps were just to keep the coyotes and wolves out,” Felix said with a chuckle.
Just then Tim came by. He had the raccoon with him, perched on his shoulder. Its little hand was bandaged.
“Where are you going?” Lizzy asked.
“To the lookout,” Tim said with a shrug.
“No, you’re not,” his older sister said. “You have school tomorrow.”
“It’s Friday today, Lizzy,” Tim said, rolling his eyes. “You spend too much time with your machines, honestly.”
Lizzy turned to them, looking surprised. “Is it really Friday?”
Emily nodded. “It is,” she said. “What day did you think it was?”
“Wednesday,” Lizzy said. “How did I miss two days?”
Julie and Emily shrugged.
“Hey, Tim!” Lizzy called, and she got to her feet hastily and ran after him.
“That is one smart but strange woman,” Felix said with a sigh as he began to shuffle his deck of cards.
“She’s been working on a problem. The smelter has a crusher that keeps getting stuck.
It’s jammed with dust. She’s working on a new filter.
I told her all she has to do is change the angle of the impact, and all the dust will slide down into the basket.
But what do I know? I’m just a card sharp. ”
Emily rolled her eyes at his self-pity.
“I wasn’t always a louse who just played poker all the time,” Felix went on.
Emily sighed. He had to know all the terrible things she said and thought about him. That made her feel wretched, even though they were true.
“Once upon a time, I was a foreman in a smelter,” he said.
“Really?” Julie asked. “Then maybe you could help while Ethan is recovering.”
Felix turned to Emily before answering. “If it won’t disrupt your world …”
“Don’t act like that,” Emily said. “All I’ve ever wanted you to do was hold down a proper job, and working in the smelter is as proper as you can get.
” She hesitated. “This isn’t one of your tall tales though, right?
You’re not saying this so that you can try to get in my good books, and then you mess it up because you don’t know what you’re doing and I end up looking like the bad guy again? ”
“No, I really do know what I’m doing,” Felix said. “I have a degree in metallurgy. It was working with all the chemicals, the mercury and arsenic and such, that stopped being appealing to me. I found that playing cards was far less dangerous.”
“Only when you win,” Emily said.
“Yes, well, there’s that,” Felix admitted. “So, should we play a game of gin rummy while we wait? As I recall, Emily, you were always a dab hand at it.”
Emily decided to let her dislike of card games go this once. It might be a good idea to feed Felix some of his own medicine.
By the time Michael and the others came back to the campfire, she was three games up to Felix’s one, and poor Julie and Lizzy, who had come back in time to be dealt in, hadn’t won anything yet.
“What was it?” Emily asked Michael as he sat down next to her.
He smiled. “A family,” he said. “We’ve given them a space to set up their camp for the night. They seem like good folks. They have three children and the wife’s mother with them. So, I doubt there’s anything nefarious going on.”
“Good,” Emily said, and she put down a full house, the king of hearts right through to the ten.
Felix took one look and swore.
They stayed by the fire a while, and then it was time for her to go and care for Ethan. She let Lizzy sleep while she sat up and watched the candle burn low, her thoughts on her uncle and her treatment of him.
Around her the sounds of the camp grew still and quiet, and soon there was nothing to hear but the night noises of the animals and birds. At first, all the calls, hoots, and snuffling sounds had scared Emily, but she was fine now. She was used to them.
Only this time there was a jarring note in the noises. It was like the crunching of gravel under boots. A shadow passed by in front of the tent. Emily sat up. The shadow looked familiar.
“Uncle Felix?”