22 – Haunts

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Draft 1 – Updated 28 November 2025 (C022/D001)

Captain Croft had no illusions. It was not the first time he had been ordered to risk his life. It would not be the last. He was the First Ranger.

His first stop after leaving his meeting in the stone chateau was the barracks. He found Marlow and some others there. He explained the mission and its risks. More volunteered than were needed, so he picked the best riders with the best horses and told them to be ready to ride at first light. Then he stopped by the mess hall to make sure the cooks would have breakfast ready…and then, finally…he was able to have his supper.

In the morning, Croft, Marlow, and the rest of the rangers were saddling their horses when two slaves entered the stable and led out a four horse team. At first, Croft assumed they were preparing a wagon destined for Siouk. As he led his own saddled horse out of the barn, though, he realized the slaves were hitching the four-in-hand team to the coffle wagon used for the steeper eastern slope. That was the direction he would be going. 

“Croft,” he heard Malcolm call before turning to see his smug face. “Governor wants to see you.”

Croft understood what was happening. He wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t surprised either. Every young officer led their first mission at some point.

“Marshal Hilmer will be leading this mission,” Governor Ducot announced. “You will support him.”

“If we’re bringing back more than butcher,” Croft replied, “A wagon is the wrong way to do it.”

The governor waved him off. “Work it out with Marshal Hilmer,” he commanded.  “Just make sure he comes back alive. My sister will never forgive me if anything happens to her boy.”

When Croft returned to the stables, the slave wagon was ready to go. Hilmer and his deputies were gathered in front of the wagon, waiting for sufficient daylight to lead it down the hill. 

“What’s the plan, Marshal?” Croft asked. 

Malcolm smirked, relishing his victory. “We’re bringing the butcher back.”

“I understand”—Croft nodded—”But Butcher can ride. What’s the wagon for?”

“Butcher might not be there. The wagon’s Plan B.”

Croft pulled Hilmer aside. It was the kid’s first mission. He didn’t want to undermine him in front of the men.

“There’s no way that wagon will make it down before sunset,” Croft said, keeping his voice low. 

“They’ll probably make it most of the way,” Malcolm replied with a shrug. “We can ride back up and bring the wagon the rest of the way after daybreak.”

Croft took an impatient breath. He understood who he worked for. He was accustomed to the family’s casual cruelty. But this was likely murder.

“They’re unarmed,” Croft said. “They can’t even fight back.”

“You want me to arm slaves?” Hilmer scoffed. 

“Give me two rangers,” Croft proposed. “We’ll stay with them overnight and bring them out in the morning.”

Hilmer thought about it. “No”—he shook his head—”I might need your rangers in Three Mills. I don’t want to lose—” 

“You could lose the horses as well as the slaves,” Croft interrupted. “And the wagon.”

“Haunts don’t bother horses,” the marshal retorted.

“There are predators in the Beard more dangerous than haunts.”

Hilmer thought about it for a few heartbeats. “The wagon is a long shot,” he admitted. “If we lose it, we lose it.” He turned to walk away, then stopped and turned back. “The rangers will come with me to the river camp,” he said. “You can stay to protect the slaves.” His eyes sparkled with malicious delight.

Lighter, faster, and better riders, the rangers went down first, led by Marlow. They would scout the road ahead and arrive first in the river camp. The deputies, slower, were led by their young marshal.

“Have you ever been down this hill before?” Croft asked the coachman, who was sitting in the wagon-driver’s seat. He was a man of about fifty with mustard yellow teeth and greasy flaxen hair. One of his blue eyes was cloudy and a red knot swelled on his jaw. It looked painful.

“Been going up and down this mountain sssince I got here, sssir.” His mouth bubbled with saliva and he winced over some of his words. 

“How about you?” the ranger asked the stocky black postilion, who was mounted on the team’s left lead horse.

“Me too, sir,” the man replied. “Not as long as Wagoner. But most ah my life.”

“Good,” said Croft. “We need to get as far as we can by sundown. But we can’t afford a wreck. We’ll spend the night in the Beard, if we have to.”

The wagon driver nodded in agreement and snapped the reins to get the team moving down the hill. Croft trailed a safe distance behind, keeping a lookout for mountain lions. 

The grade down to the river camp was erratic. There were short straight stretches where the coachman was able to let the horses take up a steady trot. On other stretches, long stretches, the horses were forced to walk. And there were several tight switchbacks that had to be navigated carefully, requiring the postilion to get down and guide the team through the turn. 

Croft was a ranger not a coffle man. He’d never traveled with this pair, but he knew enough to be impressed with their skills. The postilion kept a sharp eye on the trail and communicated effectively with the coachman through a system of calls and hand signals. When they sensed the horses tensing up as sheer drops and rises appeared on either side of the trail, they knew exactly what to do to keep the animals calm and confident. Both were intimately familiar with the details of the road.

As skilled as the driving team was though, it was the horses that impressed the ranger most. Experienced mountain travelers, the four-in-hand team did not take an uncertain step. Not a moment was lost or wasted. And as the sun began to set, the team was much further down the hill than the First Ranger could have predicted. Having passed through the worst of it, the slope here diminished and the road widened.

Croft trotted forward and came up alongside the driver. It was getting dark and it would be a while before they reached the river camp. They needed to make plans.

“Gone be a dark night,” the postilion called out over his shoulder to the driver.

“I ssspect you right, Postie” the driver replied. “Keep ya eyess peeled now.” He glanced at Croft before quickly averting his eyes.

Slaves were not allowed to address masters directly. So they often spoke to each other when they had issues they wanted to raise with their masters.

“How do you think we should handle this?” Croft’s question invited them to speak.

“Well, ssssir,” the driver began. “Getting hard to sssee the road aready. We might oughta walk the horsssess.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Croft agreed, bringing the group to a stop and stepping down from his mount.

The driver pulled the brake on the wagon. Then he and the postilion dismounted too. When all three were on the ground next to the wagon, Croft caught a look sneak between them. It was subtle, but something was on their minds.

“How long you boys been at the Shadows?” Croft asked the driver. If he kept the lines of communication open, they would find a way to bring it up. 

“Been here my whole life, sssir,” he replied. The postilion nodded the same.

Neither were young, but the postie was probably twenty years younger than the driver.

“Only been at the Shadows about ten years myself,” Croft admitted. “Ain’t been in the Beard out of season more than twice though. And I’ve never run a wagon down this hill.”

The men looked down, silently. They didn’t seem very confident.

“You know this road better than I do,” Croft stated frankly to the driver.

“I’m counting on you to lead us out of here.” 

Both of their chins came up.

“Yess, sssir,” the driver replied with a twisted, painful grin. “Then we oughta get a move on.”

The postilion, who had been riding the left front horse, moved back to lead that horse. The driver released the brake and took the right lead. As Croft tied his own horse to the back of the wagon, he looked up and peered through the trees, searching for the sky. He could not see the sun, but the weakness of the light told him it was nearly gone. When he moved up to accompany the driver, the wagon started moving forward once again.

The Beard around them was dense and dark. A squirrel chattered angrily at something unseen. There weren’t many leaves or needles on the branches this far below the canopy. What hung below was a twisting tangle of bare branches punctured here and there by meandering game trails that vanished into murky shadows. High above, the leaves and needles of the canopy blotted out the sky.

“Ever seen anybody taken?” Croft asked the driver as they made their way down the slope.

“By hauntss?” The driver seemed surprised by the question.

“You figure it’s haunts, do you?” Croft asked. “That take people from the Beard, I mean.”

“Yess, sssir,” the driver replied. “I mean…I ssseen ‘em do it.”

“You’ve seen a haunt?” Croft’s eyebrows lifted. He’d met lots of men who claimed they had. The Shadows’ barracks were full of them. Not one of their stories had convinced him their haunts were actually haunts. “What’d it look like?” he asked.

“Ssshadow, mosstly.”

“So…dark. Like a wolf.”

“No, sssir. Bigger’n a wolf.”

“As big as a bear, then.”

“Weren’t no bear, sssir,” the driver assured him respectfully. “Bears make a awful racket coming through the bush.”

“Haunts ain’t got no feet, sir,” the postie put in, peeking around his horse’s head. 

“So they fly,” Croft concluded.

“Ain’t heard no wings flapping neither,” the driver said.

They weren’t the first eye witnesses who’d told him that about haunts. But Croft wasn’t convinced. Animals tended to make sounds of some kind. Not everyone was trained to hear them, though.

“Have you seen many?”

“Seen hauntss three timess,” the driver said.

“And they never made a sound of any kind?”

“No, sssir.”

It would be terrifying to see something you thought was a spook, Croft reasoned. Few would be calm enough to pay attention to details.

“So how do you think they move?”

“They hauntss, sssir,” the driver again seemed surprised. “They move like hauntss. They kinda float like they on water. But through the air.”

“So they’re kind of slow then?”

“No, sssir. They fast. Real fast. You don’t barely see a haunt. Just a…dark blur. Then they gone.”

“And you can’t hear their wings.” Croft repeated the man’s earlier claim. Then he asked: “Do they make any kind of sound at all?”

“None I never heard.”

“How about you, Postie?”

“I ain’t seen but one,” the postilion confessed. “It never made no sound neither.”

Rangers were trained to pay attention to details. People without training got so caught up looking at things, they usually forgot to listen.

“The ones you saw,” Croft asked, moving on, “were they alone or was there more than one?”

“Only ever seen ‘em three times my whole life,” the driver responded. “Never seen more than one at time.”

Croft found that interesting. People tended to embellish. They added drama to what they had seen. If what they saw frightened them, they made their story frightening to listen to.

“You say you saw them take people. Can you tell me how they did it?”

“Whatchu mean how they done it?”

“I mean…did they knock ‘em down first and then come back for ‘em later? Or did they pin folks to the ground and rip their guts out? Or do things some such other way?”

“They just snatched ‘em up,” the driver said. “They was there. Then they was gone.”

“And when they grabbed people,” he asked, “did the people scream? Did they call out for help and the like?”

“Ain’t heard no screams.” His face frowned in thought. “Just a kind ah grunt, I guess.”

“I ain’t heard a scream or nothing,” the postie put in. “No grunt neither, though.”

Again. No drama. Croft wondered if these two had actually seen something. It wouldn’t be the first time he learned something new from slaves.

“What else didja notice about them?”

“Like…what?”

“Like, who’d they take?”

“Like their names?”

“No”—he thought about how to better phrase his questions—”types of people. Like…did they take the smallest? Or the oldest? Or…people off by themselves maybe?”

The silence was uneasy and immediate. It was the kind of silence that looms when a slave is afraid his answer will not be well received. Free men will often start to answer questions even before they know what they are going to say. But slaves are different. The stakes for them are different. They have to take an extra beat when speaking to their masters. They have to consider how poorly the person they are speaking to might react to the truth.

“Ain’t never ssseen one take a ssslave,” the driver said, eventually, with a measure of caution in his voice.

“Haunts ain’t never took a slave that I know of,” the postilion carefully backed his partner up.

Croft understood the code. They wanted to talk, but they weren’t sure they could trust him.

“I’ve heard that,” Croft admitted. “Some say haunts are the ghosts of dead slaves. Kill a slave; make a haunt, they say.”

There was another long silence.

“You think that’s true, sir?” the postie asked.

“I think it could be true,” Croft replied. “Makes as much sense as anything else I’ve heard about haunts.”

It was several minutes before anyone said anything after that.

“The only time I ever ssseen more than one taken by hauntss was up in the sssummer meadow,” the driver confessed. “Near the Beard, but not in it.”

Croft could hear the trepidation in his voice.

“We wass ssstacking branchess after a limbing. Haunt come out the woods and snatched up one of the bossess. Didn’t see nothing. Just heard a grunt. And he was gone.”

He paused as if expecting some pushback. Then continued.

“Other bosss lined uss all up. Led uss back to the gate. But we didn’t get more’n halfway before he wass gone, too.”

There was no embellishment here. No drama. If felt, to Croft, like truth.

“You see what got him?”

“Jusst a ssshadow, sssir. A kinda blurr.”

“Big? Small?”

“Sssize of black bear maybe. Hard to tell. It was ssso dark and ssso fast.”

“No one else?”

“No, sssir. We all high tailed it for the gate after that.”

The toe of Croft’s boot bumped a sapling and branches brushed his britches. He realized they were straying too close to the edge of the trail. It was dark. Too dark. The chill of the night was settling in. 

“You boys have coats?” he asked.

“Blankets,” the postie responded.

“Better grab them,” he said. “Imma get my coat.”

He made his way back to his mount, located his saddlebag, and pulled out his duster. Then he had a thought and put it back. He pulled out a blanket and wrapped it around his shoulders.

“We’re gonna need our own light for a bit,” he said into the darkness in the direction of the slaves. 

Making his way to the wagon seat, Croft lifted the lid on the toolbox. He fumbled for the tinderbox, a spill, and a lantern. He then moved several paces behind his horse to a spot where the sparks and sounds were unlikely to startle the animals. Dropping to one knee, he opened the tinderbox to remove the items inside.

Just as he readied the firesteel to strike the flint, the ranger sensed a presence. Something…close. He peered into the murk, scanning. There. Two or three fathoms above the road, a few paces behind him, in his peripheral vision, was a lump, denser and darker than the shadows around it. 

The ranger paused. He calmed himself and fully opened his senses to the woods. His horse, tethered to the wagon behind him, snorted a nervous warning, but he heard no other sounds. Nor were there any unusual smells. Horses, slaves, ranger, and forest. Nothing else stood out.

The air was chilled. Quiet and still. Sometimes, when a creature was evil, for example, he could feel more than a presence. Some creatures made the air hot, or dense, or frightening in some twisted way. But this shadow did none of that.

He knew it might be nothing. No more than a lump that would appear perfectly normal in daylight. Yet Croft could feel a gaze. It was a sense he had developed over decades as a ranger. The familiar tingle of a predator’s eyes. He dared not look at the shadow directly. If it was a predator it might mistake his look for a challenge.

Croft measured what he knew about the Beard against what this shadow might be. A single strike of the steel might provide a flash bright enough to illuminate it. The flash, the sound of steel striking flint might even scare it away. Or…or it could provoke an attack. Given they had just passed beneath it, though, flight seemed the least likely outcome.

The firesteel in his right hand hovered uncertainly over the flint in his left. The three fingers holding the D-shaped steel ring flexed and relaxed as Croft weighed his options. The wagoneer and his postilion, waited breathless in the dark next to the horses. They were probably unaware of the shadow, but surely they understood that Croft’s utter silence signalled the danger nearby. Why else would they remain silent?

An eternity later, Captain Croft moved cautiously back to the wagon and gently replaced the unlit lantern on its hook. “We’ll wait for the moon,” he whispered. “Keep low and stay tight to horses.”

*****

At the bottom of the slope, in the river camp, the rangers had taken up positions around the spot where the trail emerged from the Beard. The sun was down and the valley was being swallowed by the shadows of dusk. Marlow could not see what was happening inside the black forest. But he could hear hooves pounding. He could hear men shouting. Arrow nocked, bow drawn, eyes fixed on the exit, he was prepared to take down any hostiles who might follow his comrades out of the Beard. 

The first rider, Marshal Hilmer, burst into the open and shot past him at a full gallop. The disciplined rangers did not flinch; their arrows remained trained on the open space behind him. Moments later, a second rider appeared. Then a third…a fourth…a fifth. One by one, nine horses with riders streaked past them into the open road separating Emmett’s farm from the river camp. Then there was a break. 

The horses were panting. Emmett’s dog was barking and every dog in the valley was barking back. The noise made it difficult to hear hoofbeats. Where was the tenth deputy? Marlow strained his eyes, searching the shadows. Then a pale form appeared. He tensed as the shape grew larger and trotted into the fading light. The last horse, relieved of its rider, had slowed but continued moving down the trail to join its herd.

“Did we lose one?” the marshal asked.

“Pale horse,” Marlow replied. “Looks like it was Buck.”

Hilmer took a look around and did a quick inventory. “Nine deputies and six rangers. Pretty good. As long as we can find the wagon in the morning….”

Marlow eased the tension from this bowstring. “We should look for Buck,” he said, striding toward the treeline.

“We’ll look in the morning.” Hilmer’s tone was alarmingly dismissive.

Marlow stopped. “He could be dead by morning.”

“He could be dead now,” Hilmer snapped. “Captain Croft is right behind us.” His tone implied an order. “He’ll bring him out if he finds him. Or we’ll find them both in the morning.”

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