Dreamwood by Heather Mackey Page B

him.” Her father, wearing a colander and goggles, pointing to a rock. Headline:
Ghost Clearer Gone Mad.
    The next day the railroad went in with dynamite and blew the Maran Boulder to smithereens.
    Lucy sucked her lip. People in Wickham believed in ghosts, but not
rock spirits.
She was a laughingstock among her friends. “My father lost his teaching job. No one would hire him, not even for ghost work. Then we lost our house and . . . just moved on.” She stared out at Pentland’s modest, weathered storefronts—their displays of burl art and saw blades—suddenly pierced with homesickness. It wasn’t even Wickham that she missed so much, just the way things used to be.
    Pete thrust his hands in his pockets, perhaps hoping to find something useful there to say to her. “That’s rough,” he said, not quite meeting her eyes.
    She shrugged. “It’s all right.”
    A few doors down, there was bang of doors and another man was thrown out of a saloon. Lucy watched him roll like a tumbleweed into the street.
    She hadn’t told Pete the worst of it: her secret. Sometimes she wondered if her father had gone crazy; she wasn’t sure she believed his obsession with nature spirits and the Maran Boulder. Maybe he was wrong. And maybe he suspected her of thinking that. Since that day he hadn’t taken her on any more clearing jobs. The day she slipped into the crevice did more than ruin her father’s reputation; it changed something between them.
    But what was the Darrington motto? Onward.
    She straightened her shoulders. All her posture lessons at Miss Bentley’s hadn’t been completely wasted. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s find that Climbing Rose.”

T he Climbing Rose was a saloon on the far end of town set away from the other buildings. Its outside was painted with eyes and a mouth, like the faces she’d seen on the Lupine poles. Ancient rose vines climbed up its sides, and beyond stretched a muddy flat grown thick with blackberry brambles. Beyond that was a gray and tumbling river. A pack of skinny dogs trotted by, following a trail of scent along the mucky ground.
    Inside, the place was dark, with a hammered tin ceiling reflecting the glints of hurricane lamps. An elk’s head hung on one wall, the antlers so large across that a grown man could lie down inside them. A motley assortment of drinkers were gathered about the bar, seated at tables, or in the back, throwing darts. The men looked to be mainly of two kinds: big and mean or scrawny and trigger-happy.
    The bartender had two long braids and a scar across one cheek. He was polishing a glass and put it down when Lucy and Pete came in.
    â€œThis isn’t a place for children,” he said. “Get on with you.”
    Children? Her eyes narrowed. If he thought that was going to get them out his door, he was sorely mistaken.
    â€œWe’re looking for my father, William Darrington,” Lucy said in as loud a voice as she could manage.
    Pete, who’d also bristled at “children,” stepped forward, blocking her way. “Lucy, I can handle this.”
    One of the men drinking at the bar sniggered at Pete’s bravado, and Pete shot him an angry look.
    â€œI can handle this myself,” she told Pete. She clambered onto a bar stool to get everyone’s attention. “We heard some of you here knew William Darrington.”
    Pete looked up at her in embarrassment. “What are you doing?” he hissed.
    At her father’s name, a few men had looked up from the table where they sat. Dark-eyed, with their black hair worn long, they were First Peoples in settler dress, wearing dungarees and flannel. One had a string of bear claws on a leather thong around his neck. She thought of Niwa and wondered whether these Lupines lived in Pentland among settlers.
    At the far end of the bar, a man in a worn deerskin jacket inched his hat down lower on his