Of Grave Concern Part 12

"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 from-"

"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 d.a.m.ned quick, as Marshal Deger and Old Man Ba.s.sett 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 embarra.s.s 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 session-a seance."

"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 sanct.i.ty 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, n.o.body 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 a.s.sume 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 n.o.body 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, n.o.body 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 b.u.mping 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s. "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 gla.s.s gently on the table. "How do you hope to get paid?"

"It's not like that," he said.

"Then what's it like?"

"n.o.body 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 stake-and 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."

"Sat.u.r.day," 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.