Genevieve Sinha - [BCS294 S02] - Claudette Dulac and the Devil of the North (html) Read online

  That was fine by me, long as I found Papa and paid the company’s debts. I wasn’t in a choicy position by way of companions, regardless. I spit into my bare palm to seal the vow with a shake. He eyed me askew but removed his gloves, spat, and we shook on it. Behind us, the lake swallowed his steam-sled with a plop. Deals are better than promises.

  That’s how a fur trapper’s daughter and a big city inventor linked up to hunt the Devil, and things were fine for a while.

  Until the next snow squall.

  For the better part of a week, Horatio and I crisscrossed the frozen lakes in search of a trail, any sign of the Devil. The weather favored us with skies clear and blue as a glass button on a city lady’s frock.

  Provisions being low—seeing as how I was feedin’ two on rations packed for one—I set traps for easier prey. We roasted rabbits over the fire, and Horatio picked the meat from the bone with delicate manners. We’d have to turn back soon.

  “I’d rather stay out here,” Horatio said.

  “And starve?”

  “I’ll never hear the end of it from my creditors or my professors, if I come back empty-handed. I need to find the Devil.”

  “If we can’t find the Devil,” I said, “let’s make him find us.”

  “How so?”

  Well, I’d been thinking ‘bout it.

  The Devil’d had no business with Northaven or the other towns until that loud ‘lectric station came in. The only hunting parties that found the beast had tech: Papa with True Heart, and the Sheriff’s men with the noisy Wife’s Beloved. And Horatio with his thun’drous sled, if he’d truly distracted the Devil away from me. The Devil was drawn to the opposite of what a stealthy-silent hunter would do.

  “We need to make noise. Mechanical noise. Can you do that?”

  “You need me to build a noise-machine?”

  “Yes. Something real loud, like your sled.”

  “If you recall, any parts we had sunk to the bottom of a lake.”

  “Not all,” I said, presenting him with ‘Lectric Oathkeeper and Portent O’ Doom. “Mightn’t these work?”

  He took them and turned them, those last of Maman’s wicked guns, over in his hands. I hoped he wouldn’t notice my own hands were shakin’.

  “Very fine inventions. It’s a shame to take them apart.”

  I thought of getting Papa back, or at least of finding his body. Our blood ran deep and true.

  “Just do it.”

  “I’ll honor these. I promise.”

  City-folk are good at making noise, and it’s not just all the talkin’.

  Horatio’s machine was an uncanny mess. He’d mashed my ‘Lectric Oathkeeper and Portent ‘O Doom into a single device. There were metal tubes, and the hammers and keys of all my guns lined up in a neat row, and a metal plate twisted into an amplifyin’ funnel. All we had left were simple spears from Portent O’ Doom.

  He strapped this new invention to the sled, and the dogs, ears back, reluctantly pulled us around the lake. Horatio toggled a switch—oh, he’d invented a noisemaker, alright.

  We circled the lake long enough that my ears felt numb from the racket. Then the blue skies, which’d been clear all day, suddenly roiled up with thick clouds. Wind blasted down the long lake, bringin’ with it a cold that froze my eyelashes together.

  On the horizon of the lake, a terrible storm had kicked up. A wall of tight-fallin’ snow was closin’ the distance across the ice. And, through the furious swirlin’, we saw two angry, glowing blue circles—the Devil’s eyes.

  “Do you feel that?” Horatio asked.

  There was a thrummin’ that I felt more than heard through the lake ice, up the sled and into my boots. The clasps on the dog harnesses started to rattle. The ice underneath us creaked. I hoped our deep northern cold would hold fast.

  Then the storm was almost on us. The dogs were useless with fear, so together, Horatio and I turned the sled against the oncoming fury and dove for shelter behind it.

  Then the the wall of snow hit us, like a punch in a midnight saloon fight. The sled shifted, and Horatio and I braced ourselves behind it. There was a strange smell in the air, something close to Papa’s gun oil and a litte tangy like ‘Lectric Oathkeeper’s blasts.

  “Horatio!” I yelled. “Get the spears!”

  He struggled with the sled tarp but soon freed them and handed me a shaft. I clenched it tight; the wind nearly blew it from my hands. The spears were all we had left.

  A great rumble went from right to left, and then left to right. The beast was crossing in front of us, gettin’ closer and closer with each pass. Then, with a powerful shove, the Devil hit my sled, flinging it sideways. My dogs yelped, but the wind ripped their cries away.

  Then the Devil was loomin’ over us. I stumbled backwards as a blast of snow tore my hat clear off. Up close, the horrible, glowin’ eyes were big as the wheels of a summer wagon.

  “Horatio!” I shouted, struggling to keep my feet. “We have to rush it together!”

  We couldn’t see anythin’ but those eyes. No soft underbelly, no vulner’ble heart. Then again, Papa always said if I ever found myself in a fight, go for the eyes.

  “The eyes!” I yelled. “Aim for its eyes!”

  Together, Horatio and I ran at the Devil. Usin’ the sled as a step-up, we launched into the air and drove our spears toward the shinin’ eyes.

  They struck somethin’ hard as rock, and Horatio and I were flung backward onto the ice. We lay there in a jumble of arms and legs a-kilter, stunned from the fall, starin’ up at the Devil.

  Our spears were lodged in the blue eyes, which blinked—or were they flickerin’? The Devil moaned in pain—or was it the grindin’ of gears comin’ to a stop?

  The wall of snow abrupty dropped, dumpin’ a half-foot of fresh powder on our heads and across the icy lake.

  At last, we saw the Devil of the North.

  But it wasn’t exactly what you’d expect.

  The Devil wasn’t a bear, or any other natural beast. It was a machine, big as the Dulac warehouse and shaped like a large, metal, horseless carriage. A cleverly welded ladder ran up the side. Our spears were stuck in a mess of mangled gears and glass casing.

  Now, I’d thought Maman’s guns were marvelous practical, and Horatio’s sled a work of pure ‘magination, but this machine was different—somethin’ dangerous, if it could destroy all those buildings and Northaven’s fancy new ‘lectric tower besides.

  With a sudden clang, a hatch on top of the machine lifted, and out came a young man in a fine suit, absurd beaver-felt top hat fit for a city stroll, and huge fancy coat trimmed with white ermine at the sleeves. He clambered down the ladder and onto the ice.

  “Horatio, old chap!” he cried out.

  “Edmund? Edmund Fairfield?”

  This so-called Edmund Fairfield skittered across the lake on wooly-socked toes. He didn’t have any boots on.

  “Horatio, you are a sight for sore eyes! Here now, shake my hand. Give it a good shake.”

  “What are you doing here, Edmund? Last I saw you, you were still tinkering with your thesis at Puttleman’s.”

  “This is my thesis,” Edmund gestured back to the contraption. “I’ve been here for weeks, trapped inside. Thank God you found us today. It’s gotten tight in there, and we just ran out of supplies. Why, just last night, we boiled my leather boots for dinner.”

  Then, astonishingly, a pack of men climbed out of the machine. The wind shifted in our direction, and you could smell every day they’d been trapped inside.

  First came the three men from the Sheriff’s expedition: Jacques Landeau, Malcolm McArthur, and Pierre-Marie Charbonnier. And then, bringing up the rear, my own dear Papa. I’m not the prayin’ kind, but I nearly thanked the heavens.

  “Claudette,” he said gruffly and embraced me. He smelled of sour sweat and boiled leather and, underneath all that, familiar chicory coffee and gunpowder.

  “Papa,” I said. I hadn’t squeezed him this tight since Maman’s
funeral. “I’m glad you’re alright.”

  He looked at that foolish lump-of-metal Devil, spied our spears, and proudly grinned. “That was the right weapon for this beast, ma fille.”

  That made my eyes go all watery, but we had more important matters at hand. “And what is this beast, exactly?”

  “A weather distortion machine,” boasted Edmund. “The first ever! A groundbreaking scientific invention. It could bring immeasurable value to society. Imagine being able to control rain, allowing farmers to grow more crops than ever. Or, here in the north, wouldn’t you like it to be a little warmer now and then?”

  I pointed out that it’d been colder as of late, not warmer.

  “A malfunction,” Edmund sniffed. “This is my prototype which, I confess, may not have been ready for use. It was very effective in my lab at creating microclimates. But once we reached Northaven, everything went haywire.”

  “’Bots don’t work in the north,” Papa and I said at the same time. His whiskers twitched in amusement.

  “This ‘bot’ is perfectly insulated against the cold,” retorted Edmund. “Indeed, it malfunctioned, but only because I snapped the control switch inside. Ah, human error—the bane of all scientists. Without any way to turn off the machine, I was surrounded, day and night, by a raging snowstorm of untold strength and size. I had only a viewfinder and a listening device to locate any hint of civilization, but I could barely see or hear anything. I tried to communicate, but anyone who got too close was caught inside the storm. I could open the hatch to let these men inside, but we couldn’t leave; you saw that squall. Really, old chap, your timing couldn’t be better.”

  No wonder my Papa hadn’t caught this beast. Maman’d been the genius with machines.

  “Thank you, M’sieur Fairfield, for the education,” I said. “Truly, we’re all in awe of Puttleman’s reputation for turnin’ out mighty creative inventors. But now that all’s well and the Devil has been caught, we must discuss the matter of payment.”

  “Payment?”

  Of course, I was pleased my Papa would live to slay that hundredth bear. But there was a two-thousand-dollar reward on the line and, as I saw it, at least six interested parties.

  “Yes, payment,” said Jacques Landeau. “We did catch the beast, after all.”

  “As did I,” said my father.

  “As did we!” Horatio interjected.

  “Now, now,” I said. “Let’s approach this rationally. If you were to shoot a bear and in its stomach find a whole doe, would you say the deer slew the bear?”

  “I suppose not,” grunted Malcolm McArthur.

  “And would you, in catching a fish, give credit to the worm for its cleverness?”

  “No; the skill is with the fisherman,” decided Pierre-Marie Charbonnier, stroking his beard.

  “Indeed. The worm is simply the bait,” Papa agreed with a knowin’ wink.

  “Then Horatio and I needn’t give any of you credit,” I concluded. “We’ll take the reward ourselves.

  “But in recognition of your sufferin’, we’ll offer a deal. We could make repairs, and you could ride in that contraption of M’sieur Fairfield’s back to Northaven. No? In that case, Horatio and I’ll take you back, free of charge. It’s only hospitable. We have an agreement? Let’s spit on it. It’s not distasteful at all, M’sieur Fairfield. Everyone knows it’s not a deal otherwise. And, M’sieur Landeau, kindly bring me a knife. I’ve got to collect from this machine what passes for proof somehow.”

  “A pelt more than fairly won,” my Papa said, as I prised off a frozen gear and presented it to him.

  That’s how I slew the Devil, found my father, and rescued the Dulac Company from its debts.

  The Sheriff demanded the univers’ty pay me the reward money, given that their particular brand of teachin’ had resulted in a great deal of consternation and property damage. The news from New York City was that Edmund Fairfield spent many more years as a student to restitute the power company and all our ravaged towns.

  Once the Devil was gone, the investors, speculators, and company men returned to Northaven. Horatio, suddenly a celebrated name and the only inventor in these woods, was paid a handsome fee to develop winter-proof tech. Edmund Fairfield’s weather-changin’ machine came in handy, after all. So nowadays, railroads thread through the north like stray stitches in an old huntin’ shirt, and even newspapers such as yours take an interest in the dark wild tales of the hard north, though you city folk got what you wanted, after all—it’s become less dark and wild and hard with time.

  But not the dark, wild, hard northern winter that the Sheriff shook my hand when I presented him with an iron pelt and demanded the reward money. Not the winter that my Papa did what most men never have the chance to do—laugh at his own gravestone. Not the winter that Claudette Devil’s-Bane was so named. We paid off our debts, Papa continued huntin’, and the Dulac Company thrived. He got his hundredth bear and more besides, though he never bothered fixin’ the record.

  Killin’ the Devil had endeared my name to more than a few folks and soon ‘nough I found myself sittin’ in the Sheriff’s chair. I had a bigger gun cabinet, and an even greater amount of book-keepin’, but still some huntin’ to do. It didn’t involve too many wild animals, though plenty of ‘em were devils in their own right.

  A while after he’d opened his inventin’ shop next to Teddy Freckletoe’s mercantile, Horatio came by my new office. “I made you a promise some time ago,” he said.

  “You comin’ to apologize for breaking it?”

  “Not at all.” There was a big case in his hand. “In fact, I’m here to keep it.”

  He opened the case, and there was Portent O’ Doom and ‘Lectric Oathkeeper. They shone bright, metal polished and new as the day Maman’d invented ‘em.

  “I remade them. Added some improvements, too.”

  As I held my precious ‘Lectric Oathkeeper once again, I thought a promise fulfilled is p’raps better than a deal, after all.

  So, your readers want to know: is this the gun that killed the Devil of the North? I reckon the answer is sure, in a particular way, it is.

  © Copyright 2020 Genevieve Sinha

 

 

  Claudette Dulac, Genevieve Sinha - [BCS294 S02] - Claudette Dulac and the Devil of the North (html)

 

 

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