The front man slacked the reins he’d been holding tightly.
The horses breathed heavily. One of them snorted and looked over at where Lee and Alex lay hidden in a hollow behind the mass of roots. The horse’s breath wafted toward them. Lee flattened herself against the earth and stayed still.
The second man took a canteen from the sled. Both men took their hats off and wiped their sweaty foreheads with big, red handkerchiefs. When they poured water into the hats, the horses whinnied. The men held the hats full of water up to the animals. They sucked as they drank, their tails swatting at the clouds of insects on their rumps.
The men put their hats back on, took turns drinking water from the canteen and tied it back onto the sled. They sat down on stumps along the road. The lead man pulled a small metal box from his heavy wool pants’ pocket. He took out something brown for each of them. They popped it into their mouths and started chewing. The other man rubbed his arm.
“Does it hurt still, John?” the first man asked. He wiped his face again with his handkerchief, leaving a streak of dirt across one cheek.
“Just a little. We’ll have to be more careful tonight.” His stubbled chin showed, but the top part of his face was hidden by the hat’s wide brim. He spit a small stream of brown juice onto the road.
“I hope the water’s calm.”
“That woman worries me,” John said. “I saw her drawing tree stumps.”
A small trickle of brown juice ran down the other man’s chin. “She’s that painter,” he said, wiping his face.
“She says she’s a painter. But I don’t know,” John shrugged. “She’s awful strange. I don’t like her snooping around. She walked up to our place with a pack of dogs, looked around, shook her head ’nd left. She didn’t say a word.”
“She’s all right.”
“What if she talks?” John insisted.
“I’ll make sure she won’t.” He snapped his suspenders against the front of his heavy plaid shirt, making two small clouds of dust. “Giddap,” he said, taking the reins.
The horses pulled and snorted. Their flanks quivered as they moved their load slowly forward. John kicked the log with one of his heavy, laced boots before he walked down the hill beside the sled.
John and the sled had rounded the next bend before Lee and Alex got up, scratching their mosquito bites.
“Let’s look around while they’re gone.” Alex pointed up the hill.
After following the road for a short while, Lee heard whacking sounds, as if someone was chopping wood. She pulled Alex’s sleeve and put her finger to her lips. He nodded. They moved carefully from tree to tree, making sure not to step on twigs.
Lee and Alex froze in their tracks. In a large clearing stood the homestead shacks, but the walls no longer had holes. The creepers and shrubs were gone. Grass and weeds grew around the shacks. The small window frame in the larger shack held a pane of glass. A black stove pipe stuck out of a wall.
They crept a few steps closer to the fire pit in front of the shacks. Crouching behind a shrub, they looked at the thin wisps of smoke coming from the pit.
“Like Emily Carr’s,” Lee whispered, pointing to the grill with a kettle.
Some blackened pots and dishes lay by the small creek that ran beside the fire pit. A tall, wooden fence protected one area. When Lee crept closer, she saw it was a garden with corn, carrots, lettuce and other plants in rows. There were even some new, small apple trees across the creek, where the big, older ones used to be. They were fenced off as well.
Farther back stood an outhouse. Someone had strung a clothes line between the smaller shack and the outhouse. On it hung two rags and an old, faded blouse.
The people that moved into the homestead had worked fast. Lee and Alex were here only two weekends ago, picking green apples off the old trees and telling ghost stories.
Two children, looking so much alike they had to be twins, slowly pulled a huge saw with a wooden handle on each end through a felled tree, back and forth, back and forth. To be high enough to reach the saw handles, the children stood on wooden boxes. Even though they had only cut a short way through the trunk, they looked tired, or bored.
The boy wore pants that came to just below his knees. Two patches were sown onto the seat. The girl had on a dress that hung down to her calves. Both children wore long stockings.
Farther along on the same felled tree stood a small woman. She swung a double-bladed axe above her head and down on a branch with a thud.
Alex nudged Lee. “Let’s explore,” he whispered, pointing to the shacks, their doors wide open.
“I don’t know. It’s too buggy. No wonder they’re wearing all those clothes.”
“We might find evidence.” Alex crawled through the bush along the edge of the clearing.
Evidence of what? Lee wanted to ask. She hadn’t seen any tire marks coming up here. But she didn’t say anything and followed Alex into the bigger shack.
In one corner stood a metal barrel on a stand, with a door in the front and a stove pipe in the back, connected to the wall. In another corner stood a bed with a pile of sheets on the mattress. By the wall lay two more small mattresses with blankets. In the middle of the shack, on a table made of planks and logs, stood an old-fashioned lantern, the kind that used gas or oil. Apparently, there was no electricity. Five rough chairs, made from blocks and strips of wood, stood around the table. From the ceiling hung a skinny, yellow strip of paper with a small roll dangling at the bottom of it. Dozens of flies were stuck to the strip, but hundreds more flew around the room.
A set of shelves, built from logs and planks, stood along a wall. Lee walked over to look at the books and newspapers. She picked up a book that said Holy Bible, then put it back and flipped through a photo album.
Many pictures were of babies, by themselves or two together. They wore the same knitted bonnets and sweaters, one blue, the other pink. One photo showed a man and a woman in old-fashioned clothing, holding the two tiny babies. They stood proudly in front of a house and flat farm lands that reached far back to the horizon.
Lee wandered to another shelf. It held jars of beans, dried apples, flour, salt or sugar and tea. There were some cooking utensils and candles. Beside it stood a wooden box made into a doll house. Some paper dolls and clothes lay in it. Lee saw a small box of paints and a brush as well. She thought again about painting with Emily Carr. Part of her wanted to go back down the hill to talk to the painter. She felt excited about having met her, felt almost as if she’d somehow known her before.
Lee looked around the room. She didn’t want to touch anything else on the shelves. Two weeks ago this place had been empty, old and creaky. Were these people ghosts come alive, the ghosts she and Alex had made up in their stories? She shivered.
“What are we looking for anyway?” she whispered. “None of our stuff is up here. Let’s go
