Free The Walking by Bentley Little Page A

in Sycamore. He thought of his mother and remembered how difficult life had been for him as a child, but if anything, settlements in the West were less tolerant than the more sophisticated and civilized cities of the East. The people here were less modern, less educated, filled with the superstitious dread that had afflicted their forefathers, indiscriminately afraid of anything they did not understand.
    So he kept moving, living in Deadwood, in Cheyenne, in Colorado Springs, staying just long enough to make some money and load up on supplies, not long enough to arouse suspicion. He tried to stick to trading and trapping and other respectable ways of making a living, but somehow someone would always find out who he was, what he could do, and he'd end up helping them out.
    These days he always left immediately after
    He was by nature and necessity a solitary man, used to being alone. He was also, like his mother before him, familiar with forces unseen. But often, as he traveled across the great expanses, he was afraid. Moving through this vast country, he realized how small and insignificant he was, how puny and limited was his power, his gift. A heavy, brooding untapped energy lay beneath the surface of this rugged country. It ran in continuous currents beneath his feet, in veins the size of rivers.
    It hung thick in the oppressive silence of the windless air. He could sense it in the huge dark mountains that hunkered waiting on the horizon, in the thick stands of ancient trees, which were home to far more than animals. And the Bad Places... They scared him.
    He'd been traveling west now for over a month, nearly
    losing himself in the mountains, coming through only with the help of the ravens. His supplies were almost gone, but he had some pelts he could trade, and he found a trail through the foothills that connected to a wagon-rutted road on the plain. He followed the setting sun, and on his first night on the plain he could see, maybe one or two days ahead, the small twinkling lights of what looked like a fairly large town.
    He felt nothing beneath his feet, heard no voices, and he slept peacefully next to his untethered horse, not waking up until dawn.
    The town was neither as far away as it looked nor as big as he'd hoped, and William knew by midmorning that he'd reach it some time in the early afternoon. The knowledge did not excite him as much as it should have, however, and he did not know whether his trepidation came from a legitimate premonition or merely reflected his disappointment at not finding a bigger settlement after all this time alone.
    The sun was straight up when he reached the graveyard.
    The witch graveyard.
    It was several miles away from the town, out of sight of even a rooftop or flagpole, far away from the regular cemetery. It had not been fenced and had no headstones to mark the grave sites--witches did not deserve such amenities--but it was clearly a burial tract. Rectangular indentations in the barren soil, sunken from the packing of weather, identified the individual plots. A rusty pick and broken-handled shovel were embedded in the hard ground next to what was obviously the most recent grave.
    William stopped his horse. No weeds grew within the graveyard, he noticed. Nothing grew. The desert bushes and cactus that rimmed the periphery of the spot were all dead and had turned a peculiar orangish brown.
    From the branch of a lifeless tree nearby hung the frayed end of a thick rope.
    "Bastards," William said to himself.
    He dismounted, leaving his horse to graze among the low clumps of pale weeds that grew next to the wagon trail. He could feel the power here.
    Not the wild power of the land, but a familiar pleasant tingle in the air that he recognized as the energy of fellow witches.
    The energy was dead, though. It was like the lingering smell of a campfire that remained in the air long after the flames had been put out, and he felt an odd sadness settle over him even as he enjoyed the warm,