Houjin remained dubious. “But how do we get it to the jail, even if we catch it?”

“We’ll start with a net. This one.” She indicated a large lump that bulged out of the oversized satchel she’d left on the table. “It’s a fishing net, but it’s clean and mended. It can hold a few thousand pounds of salmon, so it’ll hold a few hundred pounds of sasquatch.”

He was not yet convinced. “We’re going to tie it up in a net?”

“No, we’re going to catch it in a net, then we’re going to tie it up with regular old rope, which is also in that bag. I’m not a dummy, Houjin,” she said, almost crossly. “I’m not out to get any of us killed.”

Rector sighed. “So that’s all we’re bringing? A net, some rope, and…” He looked at her torso, strung with the two bandoliers of very sharp blades. “And your knives?”

“Guns make too much noise. We don’t want to attract rotters, and we don’t want to kill the creature, so we’re not bringing guns. But you boys keep the axes and clubs you picked up. I want you able to defend yourself, should the worst occur.”

Rector complained, “A gun would defend us better.”

And she retorted, “Spoken like someone who hasn’t fired one very often, or fired one down here. If I thought any one of you boys was a Texian sharpshooter, that’d be one thing. But I won’t have no amateur gunslingers shooting willy-nilly; you’ll hit each other as likely as anything else. Now make sure you’ve got everything you’re likely to need, and let’s head out while the sun’s up. We’re burning daylight, boys! And the weather’s not even half bad up there. I hesitate to suggest it, but I do think we’re starting to warm up for summer.”

All the way over to the carts, and on the ride up the hill, Rector worked hard to keep from thinking about Miss Mercy and the things she’d told him with that stern, almost-pretty face of hers. He fought against everything she’d said, even as some wretched, insistent little spot in the back of his head whispered that she was right.

It was the same little spot that used to hold Zeke’s ghost; it was the place where phantoms rested and waited, even without the sap to fuel them. As Rector rode in the rattling cart, pumping the lever up and down without thinking about it anymore, he wondered what else lived in that awkward, cobwebby corner. Zeke’s ghost was gone. Zeke himself sweated, puffed, and pumped like a champ directly across from him on the repurposed mining car; and that meant he’d never been dead, and had never haunted Rector or anybody else.