Of Grave Concern Part 17

"I miss you so much," I said. "We were so young, and we had so little time together. And I was so much in love with you! You were so naive. And how I came to resent that naivety, to hate how you went to that d.a.m.ned war and left me all alone, forever."

I was weeping, again.

"Not knowing how you died has haunted me," I said. "It would be such a comfort just to know of your last few minutes, to know what comrades surrounded you, to learn what you said with your last breath there in the trenches at Spottsylvania."

At this, Brown squeezed my hand tightly.

"What I wouldn't give to touch your cheek one more time," I said. "What I have tried to give to touch your cheek one more time. Oh, Jonathan, if only you knew, you would be so ashamed. I have been so weak with loss for so many years. I have lost the path. I mourn for the life we should have had. I ache with the thought of our children unborn. I am alone, Jonathan-a woman alone."

I had not cried so in years.

A bubble of snot clung to one of my nostrils, but I kept my grip.

"Nothing, Jonathan?" I asked. "No sign?"

The men were staring at their laps, afraid to look at me.

"Very well," I said, sniffling. "I still miss you more than I ever thought it possible to miss another human being. I have tried everything within my power to reach you, but to no effect. I hope that we will meet again, in Summerland or whatever the hereafter might be called, but I don't think there's such a place. But I will say a prayer each night that I am wrong."

I released the hands on either side of me.

"Thank you, gentlemen," I said. "This ends our session."

"We should stay for just a few minutes," Brown said.

"Careful, Mister Brown, or somebody just might mistake you for a gentleman," I said. Then I buried my face in a handkerchief and blew my nose. "Truly, I'll be fine. I apologize that the session was unproductive."

Kelley and Brown left, and then I urged Timothy to depart as well.

"Go," I said, "I just need to get some sleep."

He shook his head and indicated he would sit at the table while I slept.

"How in the world am I supposed to sleep with a man hovering over me?" I asked. "Thank you for your kindness, but for the last time, go."

I shut the door behind him and turned to Eddie.

"Well, I guess that's that," I said. "What do you think we should do for the next thirteen years?"

23.

I couldn't sleep.

At two o'clock I got up, pulled on my clothes, and walked downstairs. Dodge City was still rolling from the momentum of Sat.u.r.day night. Every joint along both Front Streets was lit up like Nero's Rome. Everywhere was laughter and shouts and cowboy music. In the shadows between the buildings, rough men and easy women made furtive bargains. Over it all, the leaden disk of a new moon hung in the southwest like a cipher.

I shouldered my way into the Saratoga and headed for the bar. In the corner, some half-drunk cowpuncher was strumming a guitar and singing: "As I rode down by Tom Sherman's barroom, Tom Sherman's barroom so early one day."

The bartender smiled and asked if I wanted a mezcal.

"Thanks, but no," I said.

"There I spied a handsome young ranger, all wrapped in white linen, as cold as the clay."

"Whiskey?" the bartender asked.

"Do you have any tea?"

"I see by your outfit that you are a ranger, come sit down beside me and hear my sad story. I'm shot through the breast and know I must die."

The bartender frowned.

"We have coffee. That's what Chalkley drinks, mostly."

"No, I want tea. Hot tea."

"Like the English drink?"

"Exactly. No whiskey, no coffee, no mezcal. Tea."

"Then m.u.f.fle the drums and play the dead marches, play the dead march as I'm carried along."

"We have the stuff we pour for the girls when they're sitting at the tables, so they don't get roaring drunk," the bartender said. "It's tea, I think, but it was brewed yesterday afternoon, maybe."

"Take me to the churchyard and lay the sod o'er me."

"How perfectly horrid," I said.

"I'm a young ranger and I know I've done wrong."

"It's not such a bad song," the bartender said.

"I wasn't talking about the song," I said. "The words are new, but the tune is an old one. I heard it growing up in Memphis and later in New Orleans."

I thanked the bartender and left the Saratoga, bound for the City Drug, thinking that perhaps Doc McCarty might still be at his station, since n.o.body in Dodge City seemed to sleep. If I could find some proper English tea anywhere, I thought, it ought to be there.

But before I reached the drugstore, a familiar voice called to me from the shadows between buildings.

"Katie."

I paused.

"Diamond Jim?" I asked.

"Come here, I want to talk to you."

"Have you been drinking, Jim?"

I peered into the darkness. I could see the outline of Jim Murdock and two others. A bottle was being pa.s.sed among them. Jim took the bottle and took a long pull before handing it off.

"That's not going to please your folks," I said. "Did you contact them, like I asked?"

"Sure did," he said. "Telegraphed them right away, just like you said, after I gave you that letter to my sister. My dead sister."

His manner was oddly aggressive.

"Let's talk about this tomorrow," I said.

I turned, but Jim's hand shot out and grasped my right wrist.

"What are you doing?"

He pulled me into the darkness.

I screamed, but there was so much noise on Front Street already that I doubt anybody heard it. Then he clamped a hand over my mouth and put his face so close to mine that I could feel the heat from his flushed cheeks.

"You played me for a sucker," Jim said.

I tried to pull away, but Jim's friends stepped closer, their thighs pressing against me.

"Oh, you know what I'm talking about," he said. "You're nothing but a fraud. A d.a.m.ned fraud. Do you know what kind of telegram I got back from my folks in Ohio?"

I tried to shake my head.

"Of course, you don't," he said. "You got no powers."

His friends laughed. I was having trouble breathing.

"The telegram said my sister, Katie, was alive," Jim said. "The newspapers got it wrong when they listed her among the dead, because she was identified by the necklace. But she had given the necklace to her best friend to wear. They were sitting side by side when the train plunged into the Ashtabula River. My sister was hurt bad, and was in the hospital and unable to talk for weeks, but she survived. And that means you lied."

He removed his hand and I gulped in air.

"Jim," I said. "It wasn't like that."

"Then tell me how it was like."

"I was trying to help you."

"You have a funny way of helping people. You took my money."

"I only kept five bucks," I said. "I'll give you the money back, Jim, but please let me go."

"I don't want your money," he said.

"Then what do you want?" I asked. At this point, I was expecting to be raped.

"To teach you a lesson," he said.

One of his friends picked me up by the waist, while the other jammed my feet in a burlap sack. I started swinging my fists as hard as I could, but Jim caught my hands and cinched my wrists together with latigo. He pulled off his red kerchief and stuffed it into my mouth, to m.u.f.fle my shouts. They pushed me down in the sack, pulled it over my head, and tied the end shut with a length of rope.

Then one of them slung the sack over his shoulder, with my stomach over his shoulder and my head down. I could feel each footstep in my breastbone as he carried me away from Front Street.

I was now certain that after they raped me, they would murder me. Strangely, I wasn't frightened-but I was royally p.i.s.sed. I wriggled and kicked and spat the wad of kerchief from my mouth.

"Putain!" I shouted. "Put me down right now or you all are going to be sorry you were ever born. I don't like guns, but I don't mind rocks. Come morning, I'm going to find each of you and take a stone about the size of a baseball and hit you so hard in your sensitive parts that you'll be singing soprano in the saddle."

"Jim, she sure does talk," the one carrying me said.

"We'll see how much she talks when we throw her in," Jim said.

I stopped struggling.

"What?" I asked.

We kept walking.

I began imagining all the places they could throw me.

The river, barrels, wells.

"Jim, where are you taking me?"

"Shut up."

Bas.e.m.e.nts, cellars, closets.

"Really, Jim. This is not something you want to do. It's kidnapping, and there are laws against that, even in Dodge City."

"It's what you deserve, you b.i.t.c.h fraud."

Caves, crevices . . . holes in the ground.

Then I could feel the man carrying me was walking uphill, and I could hear the sound of gravel skittering with each step.

The open grave on Boot Hill.

Now I was frightened. No, I was terrified.

I squirmed and wriggled as hard as I could, but I had no leverage and the man holding me was just too strong.

"You other two," I said, "you'll be hanged for kidnap and murder, along with Diamond Jim. Is that what you want? All you have to do is let me go and I won't say a thing."

The man carrying me laughed.