The White City (10 page)

“Rambler?” Sandusky called through the heavy wooden door. “I thought you said your friends were coming. Oh, hey.
Looks like they did come. And wouldn’t you know, they ate your dinner, see. Sorry about that.”

Ray could hear another agent snort before Sandusky left.

By the next morning, Ray’s hunger was growing unbearable. The guards brought him water, but it was stale and offered no satisfaction to his stomach.

He woke in the afternoon with De Courcy standing over him. Ray had not heard him unlock the door, and this worried him because it meant he was becoming less aware without food.

De Courcy’s bandages were gone, and he had his hands behind his back. Fearing that he might be carrying a club or some weapon, Ray scrambled to sit back against the wall.

“What’s got you so jumpy already?” De Courcy asked. “I just came to tell you an interesting story, yeah.” He took a step closer. “See, when I was a youngster, I used to make these slipknots. They’re easy to make. You ever tried? No? Well, believe me, I got pretty good with them. If you set one of those slipknots up on a limb or fence, or in this case here tonight, the ground outside this brig, and you put something attractive in it—something like that little red pouch of yours, yeah—you can catch all kinds of things.”

Ray felt his pulse quickening.

“I used to put bits of bread and food in them as a kid. Snag a dove or sometimes a squirrel. Yeah, positively lots of fun to be had with slipknots.”

“No!” Ray lunged to his feet.

De Courcy swung a fist, catching him in the ear. Ray fell
back against the wall, toppling into the dirt. His vision swam, and as he tried to sit up, he saw De Courcy holding B’hoy by the neck and feet. The crow beat his wings against the agent’s chest and squawked.

“Where are your pals, Rambler?”

Ray held up a hand. “Don’t.”

De Courcy tightened his grip. “Are you lying to us? Is anyone coming for you? Or is it just this stupid crow?”

“No,” Ray pleaded.

De Courcy scowled down at him. Then, with a twist of his wrists, the wings stopped. De Courcy dropped B’hoy to the dirt and walked out, locking the door behind him.

“No. No.” Ray crawled to him. Tears blurred his vision as he reached for the limp crow. He picked B’hoy up and held him to his chest. “No. Why did you come here? Oh, B’hoy …” He grew quiet as he heard the guards laughing in the other room.

Ray wiped his nose and sat with his back to the wall and B’hoy in his lap. He shook with silent sobs as he ran his fingers over B’hoy’s black feathers.

Pike and Muggeridge did not come the following day. Ray no longer felt hunger, only weakness and a dull pain beneath his ribs as he thought of B’hoy. When De Courcy and Sandusky came on duty that night, De Courcy opened the door to put down a pail of water. Ray glared at the man angrily, B’hoy still in his lap.

Before De Courcy shut the door, Sandusky called, “Hey, why don’t you let me go talk to our friend in there and find out if the Rambler cavalry is ever going to show.”

De Courcy closed the door and locked it quickly. “Pike wanted me to make sure we didn’t go in with the prisoner anymore.”

“I only need a damn minute,” Sandusky said. “Aren’t you ready to get back home? There ain’t no Ramblers coming for him. That paw is hid out there somewhere. Sooner we get him to tell us where, sooner we’re back in Chicago.”

“Come on, Sandy,” De Courcy said. “We going to play cards already or what?”

Ray listened as the men settled down to the table and began shuffling the cards. “Look what I got us,” Sandusky said. There was a tinkling of glass and the squeak of a cork being pulled out.

“That whiskey, yeah?”

“Kentucky bourbon!”

“Where’d you get that?” De Courcy laughed.

“Bought a few bottles off one of the soldiers.”

“Well, pass it over, my friend.”

The men began dealing cards and laughing more and more as they drank the bourbon. A plan formed in Ray’s mind. It wasn’t a particularly good plan, he admitted, but he was desperate. He got up to stand by the door, listening intently. After an hour, De Courcy stood, stumbling out of his chair as he rose. Sandusky laughed. “Where you going?”

“Relieve myself. Be right back.”

After De Courcy left the cabin, Ray said through the door, “How about some food in here?”

Sandusky’s chair clattered. “The hell? What you going on about?” His speech was slurred with the bourbon.

“I’m hungry.”

“Yes sir, it gets to you, don’t it?” Sandusky came over to the door. “You ready to tell us where that Rambler charm is?”

“I want some food first,” Ray said.

Sandusky chuckled. “We ate it all, and believe me I ain’t walking all the way to the blasted mess hall for more tricks from you.”

“How about a drink of that liquor, then?” Ray asked.

“Kid, you’re too young to drink.”

“Do you want the rabbit’s foot?”

“What are you going on about?”

“I’ve got it in here.”

Sandusky snorted. “Got what?”

“The foot,” Ray said

“You know something? If you’re fooling around with me, I’m going to bust this damn bottle over your head.”

“Unlock the door,” Ray said. “It’s right here.”

With a jangling of keys, Sandusky opened the door. Ray backed into the shadows. Sandusky wasn’t wearing his bowler hat, and with his mop of orange hair and disheveled shirt and drunken expression, he looked somewhat like an unruly child.

“So where is it already?” Sandusky said, an empty whiskey bottle dangling from his hand.

“Right over there,” Ray said, pointing to the shadows on the other side of the cell.

Sandusky turned his bleary-eyed gaze to the floor. “Where—?”

Ray charged at Sandusky, catching him in the stomach. As he did, De Courcy staggered through the door. “What’s going on?” he shouted.

Ray knocked Sandusky flat to the floor of the cell and made for the door. De Courcy drew his gun from his belt. “Back in that cell! Sandusky, get up.”

Regaining his sense, Sandusky snapped around toward Ray. “Nope,” De Courcy told him. “You fight him, we’ll have Pike down here in a minute, yeah, and if he sees us drinking …”

Sandusky spat at Ray and grabbed the keys still in the lock. Before he pulled the door shut, Ray spied his red toby on a bench by the door of the cabin. The door closed, and darkness returned to the cell.

“What the blazes were you doing?” Ray heard De Courcy ask.

“He said he had that rabbit’s foot with him.”

“Yeah, and you believed him?”

“Shut up and deal another hand.”

As Ray slumped to the floor, his eyes fell to something lying in the dirt. The empty whiskey bottle.

Ray may not have had his toby, but he had a charm now. He grabbed the bottle and looked at the floor. A sliver of light from under the door was enough to locate Sandusky’s footprints in the loose dirt.

“Another pair of jacks?” De Coury scoffed. “Come on, Sandy. You’ve won the last four hands already.”

Ray removed the cork and slowly sifted the dirt that formed Sandusky’s footprint in through the narrow mouth of the bottle.

“Yes sir, going to win the next one too,” Sandusky said.

Once the footprint was collected, Ray replaced the cork with a firm tap.

“We’ll see about that,” De Courcy laughed. “I’m dealing this hand.”

Ray stood at the door and shook the dirt about the inside of the bottle. “I’m ready to come out,” he called.

The two agents were silent, then a chair slid back. “You hear that, Sandy? The Rambler’s ready to come out. Yeah, well, shut up in there so I can concentrate on my hand.”

“Unlock the door,” Ray ordered.

Keys jangled from the table. “What are you doing now?” De Courcy asked Sandusky. “Didn’t I tell you we can’t rough up the kid?”

Footsteps came to the door, and the bolt unlocked.

“Sandy?” De Courcy called out with a perplexed turn to his voice.

Ray put his hand to the door. “Mister Sandusky, knock Mister De Courcy out.”

“That’s it, Rambler!” De Courcy shouted. “Yeah, I’m coming in there to—”

There was a scuffle and then the sound of splintering wood before a body thumped to the floor.

Ray pushed open the door slowly. Sandusky stood there, looking dimly down at De Courcy’s unconscious body with his bleary-eyed gaze.

Ray turned back to pick up B’hoy’s body. He left the cell. “Put De Courcy in there,” Ray said as he came out of the cell. Sandusky dropped the broken back of a chair and picked up De Courcy’s feet, dragging him into the cell. Ray locked the door behind Sandusky and placed the whiskey bottle of dirt on the table. Grabbing his toby, Ray opened it. His charms were
all stowed inside. He quickly tied a knot around his neck and tucked it beneath his shirt.

He pushed open the door and peered outside. A thin crescent moon was rising over the palisade. Dawn was not far off. Cautious to every sound, Ray made his way past the steamcoach and over to the stables. Crouching in the shadows, he heard the faint voices of guards standing watch at the entrance to the fort.

Ray went into the stables. In the first stall, a black mare turned her head. Ray whispered soothing words like he had often done with Élodie and saddled the horse. He led her out and tied her on the back side of the cabin. Then he went back in the stables and opened the gates for each of the horses, whispering all the while to the animals, explaining as best he could in their speech what he was planning.

Then, with the saltpeter, he lit a fire in the back of the stable and ran out to the black mare. Climbing onto her back, he whispered, “Be calm, girl. We’re going for a ride.”

Smoke rose from the stables, and soon one of the guards at the fort’s entrance cried, “There’s a fire!”

As the guards ran toward the stables, the horses stampeded out, whinnying and shrieking. The fort exploded with the thunder of horse hooves and men rousing from their barracks to help with the fire.

Kicking the black mare’s haunches and weaving among the terrified horses, Ray rode to the fort’s entrance. He leaped from the saddle and clutched the mare’s reins, pulling the lever to open the gate.

“You there?” a soldier called. “Are you with those
Pinkertons?” He was only half dressed, without even boots or a sidearm on his belt.

Ray jumped into the saddle.

“What are you doing?” the soldier shouted.

Ray whistled loudly and shook the mare’s reins. The horses turned at his call and scattered the soldiers as they clattered through the gate.

Ray heard the soldier crying behind him, “The prisoner! That horse thief, he’s … stealing the horses.…”

He raced the black mare out into sagebrush prairie and toward the west, where the first rays of dawn were catching on the distant Rocky Mountains.

B
UCK SAT ON THE STOOL WITH HIS BACK AGAINST THE
wall, his hands folded in his lap, as he had done nearly every waking hour of every day for the past week. He sat, and he listened, and he learned.

The room where he was kept under the watchful eyes of Stacker Lee and the Gog’s agents was high above the floor of Mister Grevol’s Hall of Progress, as the agents called it. The Hall of Progress had an enormous open floor over a thousand feet long, containing hundreds of displays for what Mister Grevol and his staff considered “the future of America.”

The hall was tall as well as vast, rising to a height of a hundred feet. Mounted to the girders and framework of the ceiling were a series of offices and rooms, accessible only by elevator, each with windows overlooking the exhibits below.

When he was first brought up to the room, Buck made sure to remember which way they had come from the elevators. He knew the number of steps from the elevators to the doors leading out from the hall. He knew how many tumblers clicked in the lock when the key turned the bolt. He knew the make of each gun carried by his guards, and that one of the agents had an old bullet wound in his hip by the sound his footsteps made.

Although Buck could not see the view from the windows in his room, Stacker Lee and the Bowlers could, and one of them was constantly on watch for John Henry’s son or his three companions.

They expected Conker to come. The Nine Pound Hammer was mounted in a central display directly below their room. The legendary hammer apparently was drawing huge crowds.

“I’m going out,” Stacker said.

Below, the voices of the last visitors to the hall had faded an hour earlier, and it was around this time, when Mister Grevol’s agents left Stacker and Buck for the night, that Stacker would venture out. Buck rose from the stool and lay on his bed, the stiff mattress springs squeaking.

“I’m not partial to these cramped quarters, Buckthorn,” Stacker said, as he did nearly every night. Stacker clamped the shackle that was bolted to the bed frame to Buck’s ankle. “Need a little air to clear my head.”

Buck said nothing. The swish of fabric and whisper of felt told him that Stacker was putting on his coat and donning his fine Stetson hat.

“Want me to leave the lantern on for you? Oh, of course
not.” Stacker chuckled at his well-worn joke. The door closed with a thump, and the click of a key locked the bolt.