the stables? The one that the beast attacked?"
It was no time to mention that he had addressed me incorrectly, for he was correct! I recognized the old woman, and my heart sank. " Attacked?" Thunderboy asked, darkly. " I ' m afraid the beast may have killed her,"
Percy said, sadly. Thunderboy stood silently for a long while, thinking. " So, it has come to this," he said at last. " The old woman," I began. " Mrs. Frew? Mrs.
Littlewolf?" " Yes," he said, " She asked to meet us earlier this evening. She said she had a secret that she dared not speak this morning. But before we could meet her, a werewolf attacked her!"
" Yes," Thunderboy said, perhaps irritated(?), taking the photo off the mantle. " That is my aunt. She stands with my cousin, Aaron. His father, a white man named Frew, managed construction on the railroad when it was being built. But he is long dead now."
An odd thought struck me: There was much talk of the railroad during our investigation. Maybe a little too much to be a coincidence. When we got back to town I knew that I needed to start inquiring about anyone who might have a grudge against the railroad!
" The spirit will not want to come here, to my home." Thunderboy said. " But perhaps it is time he did. Come, let me show you something."
The young man led us out through the back of the yard. I was worried the wolves might reappear, but the boy was undeterred. He led us towards some gigantic white hills. I have never seen such stark hills set off from the landscape. They glowed in the moonlight … and as we approached, I understood why. They were not hills of white earth, but piles of bones. And as we
got closer, to my great horror, I discovered that they were piles of all the same bone, the skull. For what must have been a mile, buffalo skulls stood stacked into the sky.
" What is this?" I asked, appalled. Percy looked on, the gears in his mind grinding.
" This is the legacy of the railroad," Thunderboy said, leading us through the halls of animal remains towards a small group of people around a fire in the distance. " Once my people hunted the buffalo. It gave its life so that we could live."
I had heard that the American Indians drove buffalo off cliffs, killing hundreds and leaving them to rot in the sun. But compared to that, the waste before me seemed unfathomable. But then I stood corrected as he continued, " We used the hide of the buffalo for shelter and warmth, but the railroad made people want it for show. Train cars packed with people would lean out the windows and shoot the buffalo as the train passed. They abandoned the dead animals to rot in the sun, hundreds to a pile. We used the bones of the buffalo for tools, but the trains brought men who gathered the bones in piles as great as these to grind into bone meal. Our source of life was taken away by the railroad. Now, the Indians fight for survival. Now they starve."
Is this what hunting has become? When I set out on this tour I was prepared to encounter death, but here in this hall of wasted life I could not comprehend what purpose it served. And this poor boy saying that this destruction had deprived his people. Percy looked quite sickened by the waste.
" This is why the beast haunts these people," Thunderboy said. " It is the most cursed creature of all. It is a corrupt man who steals the skin of an animal and devours the flesh of humans. He believes he avenges his people."