17
The cowboy with the jack of diamonds tucked into his hatband slunk into the Saratoga at about three o'clock on Friday afternoon. He was still in the red bib shirt and the red bandana that I had seen when I stepped over him at the railway platform, but he must have bathed and had his clothes washed since, because he nearly looked presentable. Also, he was only somewhat drunk.
He spotted my table when he came in off the street, but it took him time to work his way back. First he passed out a handful of cigars, which, he said, were courtesy of Mike McGlue. Then he paused long enough at the bar to knock back a couple of shots before circumambulating on to my table.
“Want a cigar?” he asked.
“Why not?”
The cigar smelled expensive. The band said,
Key West.
I put it into my inside pocket for later.
“I was at the opera house the other night. Remember me?”
“How could I forget?”
“I forget some things,” he confessed, throwing himself into a chair.
“Do you think it might be your consumption of alcohol?”
“I drink to forget. It works, for a spell.”
“I first met you at the bottom of the steps at the railway depot,” I said. “You don't remember that?”
He shook his head.
“Why do this to yourself?”
“Because I am deranged by melancholy.”
He took a ragged newspaper clipping from his pocket and pushed it across the table. It was a wire story from the
Kansas City Times,
five months old, about the Ashtabula Horror. A Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway express was crossing the snow-laden Ashtabula River Bridge in Ohio when the iron trusses failed and plunged a locomotive and eleven cars down seventy feet to the frozen river below. The wooden cars piled on top of each other and became a funeral pyre ignited by kerosene heating stoves and lamps. Ninety-two people died, some of them burned beyond recognition; another sixty-four persons were badly injured.
“What am I looking for?”
“There,” the cowboy said, jabbing his finger at a name among the list of the dead. “That's my sister, Kathryn Murdock. She was only twenty-three. They had to identify her by a favorite necklace she wore.”
The cowboy dropped his face to his forearms, sobbing. “Oh, how she must have suffered!”
“And you've been grieving these five months.”
“I have been drunk these five months,” he said. “I learned of the horror when I was in Kansas City and have been drifting since, drifting from ranch to range, from city to town. My folks in Ohio don't even know where I'm at. Been in Dodge for the last couple of weeks.”
“And they haven't locked you up as a vagrant?”
“They won't, as long as I have drinking money.”
I sighed. “What's your name?”
“Jim Murdock,” he said. “Folks call me âDiamond Jim.'”
“What is it you want to do, Jim?”
“I seen you talk to the dead at the opera house. I reckoned you could talk to Kate for me.” Now his voice grew to a whisper. “There are some things that I wanted to tell her that I didn't have a chance. I would give anything to talk to her one last time.”
Just about every ordinary person who has ever wanted me to contact the dearly departed for them has had a similar wish. We humans, sadly, are an arrogant lot and believe that we have all the time in the world to say the important things. Maybe we just can't face the truth that any of us can be extinguished in the blink of an eye.
“Jim, it's not as simple as it looked the other night.”
“I've got money,” he said, digging into his pocket. He dropped a handful of coins on the table. Silver dollars, mostly, but a twenty-dollar gold piece wheeled unsteadily toward the edge.
I caught the double eagle before it rolled off.
“All right, Jim,” I said, closing my hand around the gold coin. “But if I help you contact your sister, you have to promise me something.”
“Anything.”
“That you'll wire your people in Ohio, straightaway.”
“But they'll want me to come home.”
“You don't have to go home,” I said. “But you can't keep them in the dark, wondering if they've lost another child. You must have driven them crazy with worry.”
“But I'm a ranger,” he said. “A rounder. A lone wolf fromâ”
“You're a kid from Ohio who is on his way to drinking himself to death.”
“Sometimes I don't remember the things I do when I'm drunk,” he said. “I get my dander up pretty damned quick, as Marshal Deger and Old Man Bassett can tell you. Sometimes I do things I'm not proud of.”
“Look, Jim,” I said. “Do we have a deal?”
He nodded.
“Here's how it works,” I said. “Go find a piece of paper and a pencil and write down everything it is that you want to tell your sister, just like you were writing her a letter. Take some time, because you want to make sure that you get it all down, because we might only have one chance to make contact with her.”
He looked puzzled.
“But at the opera house, you said you couldn't contact General Custer because he had been dead for less than a year. How is this going to work for Katie, considering she's only been gone a few months?”
“Oh, that,” I said. “I made that up so I wouldn't embarrass that young soldier in front of everybody. Truth is, the general didn't want to talk to a corporal.”
“Ah,” Jim said.
“Come back here with your paper, along about dark, and we'll see in what shape the ether is in. If things look good, we'll arrange a sessionâa séance.”
“Is that double eagle going to cover it?”
“Let me have the silver and paper money, too,” I said.
Diamond Jim looked shocked.
“I don't want you getting skunked before you write that letter,” I said, picking his money up off the table as he emptied his pockets. “Come back at dark, like I said.”
As Jim Murdock was walking out of the Saratoga, the bounty hunter Jack Calder was coming in. He declined a cigar and gave Diamond Jim a short lecture about the sanctity of private property.
“Professor,” Calder said as he approached the table. He was wearing another blue shirt under the black vest. The shirt matched his eyes. Unlike the other men in Dodge, I had never seen him wear a hat.
“Do you mind?”
“Not at all,” I said, as cool as I could manage. The memory of his rudeness at our first meeting still stung, and I loathed myself for it. “What can I do for the firm of Frazier and Hunnicutt?”
“Not sure,” he said. “I feel a little foolish.”
Secretly, I was pleased.
“Don't,” I said. “Tell me what's on your mind.”
“Saw your act last night,” he said. “I feel foolish because you had me believing for a spell. You were right entertaining, I have to admit. But let's face it, nobody can talk to the dead.”
I smiled. “Do you go to church, Mister Calder?”
“Not regular.”
“But you have.”
“When I was a boy,” he said. “Methodist. Bell County, Texas.”
“But not now.”
“I've been to a wedding or two at the Union Church, up on Gospel Ridge,” he said. As he spoke, he seldom looked directly at me. He seemed, instead, to be looking at a spot just over my left shoulder. “But we don't have a steady preacher. Sometimes the congregations up in Emporia or Topeka will send somebody down the railroad track our way, to wave the Good Book at us for a Sunday or two. What's your point?”
“That you sometimes go to church, and presumably you pray to something you can't see or touch. Now, how is that different than what I do? You can't prove any more than I can that what you're talking to when you pray is really there. Just maybe I'm talking to the real thing, too.”
“Horse apples.”
“All right,” I said. “Let's assume for a moment that I am, as you say, full of horse apples. How does it do any more harm than gathering in that church up on Gospel Ridge and saying some words over a body you're about to plant in the ground? It doesn't do any more harm, I say, and might even do some good.”
“What you have is a business, not a religion.”
“Compared to the other establishments in this town, I'd say I'm performing a civic duty,” I said. “I don't encourage the drinking of alcohol, and nobody is losing a season's wages at the faro table. When people leave my show, they're happy.”
“I didn't say I wanted to close you down.”
“Not yet,” I said. “In my experience, that usually comes just before somebody like you asks for protection money. What do you want, ten percent? Twenty?”
“I don't do that.”
“Then what do you want?”
“To tell you I'll be watching,” he said. “Ever since we met, I've had this queer feeling in my gut, like I ate something bad. You dress strange and you talk funny, and everybody in town knows about your pet raven and your conversations with the dead. If I thought you believe in this stuff, then I might feel a little easier. But I can tell you, Miss Wylde, that in my line of work, I meet a lot of liars. Hands down, you are the best.”
“I'm sorry you feel that way,” I said, and meant it. “I wish I could convince you otherwise. What would it take?”
He rubbed his jaw. “Do you know about this dead girl they found on the Hundredth Meridian marker? Throat cut, nobody knows her name, buried up on Boot Hill. The one the paper says is haunting the Santa Fe right-of-way.”
“I heard something about it.”
“Then ask who killed her.”
I hoped my distress didn't show on my face.
“Then you believe the stories about her ghost.”
“No,” he said, “but you asked me what it would take to convince me. And I have a personal stake in finding who killed the girl and left her on the meridian marker.”
“Why?”
“It was a message,” he said. “The Committee of Vigilance was formed in the early days of Dodge, before the rule of law here was firmly established. We . . . Well, we took care of things. Still should, I think.”
“In an extralegal manner, I take it.”
“We did what had to be done.”
“And the message?”
“There are certain elements that have nothing but contempt for the way civilized people live,” he said. “Whoever killed the girl and left her on the monument was expressing his contempt for justice.”
Justice.
It was a concept in which Calder seemed to believe, but to me it was like debating how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, or reckoning how much hay Noah would need on the ark, or algebra. Just talking about the ghost of the dead girl was making me feel odd. In truth, I hadn't felt like myself since getting out of the city jail and bumping into the frightful creature Malleus and his caravan of wagons.
A sudden and uncommon urge to drink overwhelmed me. Normally, I drink only wine, and then only a glass or two with meals, but now I craved the stuff that Potete had shared before the performance.
I motioned for the bartender and asked for a shot of mezcal.
“You want one?” I asked Calder.
“I don't drink.”
“And they let you stay in Dodge?”
The waiter brought the shot over.
“What's your interest?” I asked, raising the glass. “Is there a reward?”
“No reward.”
I threw back the mezcal.
It burned like before.
“That's a bad way to do business,” I managed in a raw whisper as I placed the empty glass gently on the table. “How do you hope to get paid?”
“It's not like that,” he said.
“Then what's it like?”
“Nobody deserves to get their throat cut from ear to ear, especially not a little blonde girl who hadn't seen eighteen summers. She was somebody's daughter. I'd like to find who did it.”
“And then what?”
“Make him stand trial.”
“You have an exaggerated sense of justice, Mister Calder.”
“No, Miss Wylde. I have an average sense of fairness.”
Now Calder was giving me a stomachache. I know how to play most people, because they are pathetically selfish and easy to manipulate. But here Calder was, apparently sincere in his desire to do something in which he had absolutely no personal stakeâand asking me to make contact with probably the only real ghost in Dodge City.
“Sorry,” I said. “I can't help you.”
18
As I watched Calder walk through the shadow and smoke-filled confines of the Saratoga and out the open door into the sunshine of Front Street, I felt as if a scorpion had crawled up inside my belly.
I blamed it on the mezcal.
“What's the trouble?” Bartholomew Potete asked, pulling a chair far enough out from the table to allow him to rest his bulk. “You look like you've lost your best friend.”
“I have no friends.”
“But you have many admirers,” Potete said, pulling a stack of notes from his vest pocket. “I have a dozen invitations here for picnic lunches or carriage rides during the afternoon, a half-dozen requests for dinner, and three marriage proposals.”
“Not very flattering, when you consider the men outnumber women here a hundred to one.”
“It is a seller's market,” Potete said. He took a deck of playing cards from his pocket and fanned them out in front of him, then expertly tipped them back the other way. “But there is more. Because of popular demand, the opera house would like to book a return engagement of The Reverend Professor Wylde.”
“When?”
Potete riffled the cards. “Tonight.”
“I'm busy.”
“With what?” A strip shuffle.
“A personal obligation.”
“Next Monday, then? After the hearing.”
“I hope to be on the train to Denver.”
“Saturday,” Potete suggested. “There will be a new batch of cowpunchers to charm. The
Times
reports three large herds have crossed the quarantine line in Comanche County, faced down the grangers, and are expected here tomorrow.”
I shrugged.
“Wonderful,” Potete growled. “I'll make all the arrangements. And I have to say, your demonstration was impressive in every regard. And playing Judge Grout that wayâbrilliant!”
“I am going straight to hell.”
“As your lawyer, I advise you that we can beat the charge.”
“You'll have to find a new shill for the billet reading,” I said. “We can't use Timothy again, but I have other work for him. I'll need him tomorrow night.”
“No problem,” Potete said. “Any special instructions?”
“Tell him that I am depending upon him for my safety, so he needs to stick close by. But no guns. I don't like guns and can't stand to have them around me.”
“Understood.”
“Any news from Counselor Sutton?” I asked.
“He has been unusually quiet,” Potete said. “If he has a strategy for Monday's hearing, I can't imagine what it might be. Are you still sure we can't contact anybody from Chicago toâ”
“I'm sure.”
“What about that Sylvestre fellow?”
“I said I was sure.”
“All right, Professor, don't bite my head off.” Sulking, Potete did an overhand shuffle.
“What can you tell me about Jack Calder?”
“Nothing that will surprise you,” Potete said. “With Jack, what you see is what you get. Sure, he's brighter than your average Texan, and good with that Russian on his hip. He's reading the law with Hunnicutt, hoping to go from bounty hunter to barrister. But the law would be a poor choice for Calder, because he may be the only honest man in Dodge City.”
“Then what's he doing here?”
“Unlike the rest of usâwho came because we were bored, or we didn't fit in back where we came from, or we were just looking to make a quick dollarâCalder came here to make a home. Built one, too, five years back. But somebody else lives in it now.”
“Why?”
“Calder said he couldn't stand living in the house, and he couldn't burn it down, so he just walked away from it and began living in a shed back of the law office.”
“Why couldn't he live in it?”
“After he built it, he went back to Presidio County in Texas to fetch his wife and child, but they died somewhere along the trail.”
“How?”
“Don't know. Jack doesn't talk about it.”
“Did he marry again?”
Potete looked at me.
“Forget I asked.”
“No, he is not married,” Potete said. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“I don't know.”
He placed the deck in front of me. “Cut the cards for drinks?”
“You first.”
The king of spades.
“Can you beat that?”
“No,” I said.
I ordered two mezcals.
We clinked our shot glasses together.
“Arriba, abajo, al centor, al dento!”
Potete said, and moved his shot glass in a curious way, up and down, as if making a blessing. Then he drank down the liquor and grimaced.
“Para todo mal mezcal, para todo bien tambien.”
For everything bad, there's mezcal.
And for everything good, there's mezcal.