Leaden Skies (2 page)
Cecil paused on the boardwalk, pulled his handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket, and wiped sweat and rain from his face. It was a July night, but here, ten thousand feet up in the Rocky Mountains, the cold froze the moisture to his skin. It was only when an icy breeze whispered through his hair that he realized he’d left his hat at the bordello.
For a moment, standing on the slick and weather-warped boards, jostled on all sides by passersby, he wasn’t sure what direction he faced. How strange, for him. He prided himself on his sense of direction, always able to pick out north, no matter if he stood in a coal cellar or the middle of a windowless factory floor.
He squeezed his eyes shut, blocking out the sights of State Street—the dance halls, saloons, hotels. But he couldn’t shut out the sounds or smells. Male voices clashed in argument and drunken laughter. The oompahs and blats from brass bands outside dance halls and saloons competed to lure in customers. Smoke from thousands of wood- and coal-burning stoves mixed with sulphur fumes from the smelters and the wet heavy scents of mud, manure, unwashed men, and wet wood. Over it all, like a light blessing from the hand of God, lay the clarifying smell of rain.
After the debacle back home with Rachel, he’d let his supervisor know that he would accept the first assignment available out West, no matter where. Leadville had been a challenge he’d taken gladly. At first, all had gone well. He had been able to push his personal woes aside, be the professional strider that would make the company nod with approval. He met the local officials, explained his business, then dutifully went from building to building and explained his business again and again to owners and managers. Some were accepting, some wary, others downright hostile. He took notes in painstaking details, not to be hurried. Each night in his cramped hotel room, he carefully drew up his diagrams and forwarded his sheets once a week to the home office. The work had filled his days and nights, kept the darkness that was his failure with Rachel at bay.
But all that changed when he first knocked on the door of the brick brothel on the corner of Second and Spruce. Miss Flo had been more welcoming than most. She’d listened intently to his explanations, examined his credentials, and then, with a brilliant smile, hooked an arm through his, and gave him a personal tour of the building. The woman who looked like Rachel had passed him on the second floor, glancing at him once. With that single glance, something inside him faltered. His moral determination melted.
Chills, not all from the cold and wet, racked him. “I can’t go back there,” he whispered through chattering teeth. “God give me strength.” He pulled his jacket closer around himself.
A violent jostling, followed by some creative cursing from the man who’d knocked into him, nearly sent Cecil off the boards and into the muddy river that served as the street.
Cecil clapped his hand to his jacket pocket and almost swore out loud in return. His hat was not the only thing he’d left at that cursed brothel. His firearm, which the doorman had insisted he check, also waited for him.
He remembered the words of warning from one of Leadville’s city fathers:
Only a fool goes about at night unarmed.
At that moment, someone across the street shouted, “Train’s down by California Gulch! They saw the light!”
It was as if someone had opened the floodgates. People streamed across the street toward Cecil, heading toward Third Street. He was caught up in their sheer numbers, dragged along with the current, unable to stand fast against the unending flow.
As he neared Third, he saw bonfires lining the sides of the road, police standing at intervals with local militia, straining to keep pedestrians, carts, and riders on horseback from surging onto the road where General Grant would pass by. He halted, in the middle of the cross street, behind the human barriers, unable to move in any direction. The deep mud sucked slowly at his boots. Mire oozed in over his boot-tops, began to attack his gartered stockings with cold intent.
He caught a glimpse of the shining black hulk of the locomotive, now stopped at the foot of Third. Spots of light from the bonfires set the wet black bulk agleam, steam from the smokestack rising through the rain. It looked nearly alive as it disgorged small figures, one after another. The iron horse, he thought.
A carnivorous horse
whispered back a voice from deep inside. He started shivering again.
A compact, gray figure appeared on the platform, hat in hand.
The crowd surged forward, and cheers rose from a thousand throats.
The General, he realized. Ulysses S. Grant. Civil War hero and past president.
As if in confirmation, the massive engine emitted an ear-splitting shriek.
A commotion to one side drew his attention.
Two pistol shots cracked.
People nearby screamed, squeezing back. Police broke ranks, converged on a shadow figure yelling above the wash of cheers, “Butcher! He was nothin’ but a butcher for Mr. Lincoln’s War!”
The police wrestled the would-be avenger of the South to the ground, but not before a last gunshot rang out.
A constriction and jolt transmitted through the mob and slammed into Cecil. At the same time, a thunderous
crack
sounded, not a block away. The blue and red of fireworks lit the frenzied multitudes.
Cecil stumbled sideways, off-balance, crashed into the person next to him, and collapsed to one knee. A commotion behind him. More screams. He couldn’t tell if they were made in anger, fear, or warning.
With one hand in the mud to steady himself, Cecil twisted around. A rearing horse plunged down, hooves flashing, missing his face by the merest breadth. His heart, his breathing, froze.
More commotion and warning shouts came from those who had been quicker to evade the terrified horse than he. The rider slid from the saddle and knocked Cecil aside, all the while saying urgently to the horse, “Easy, easy, Lucy girl. Whoa!”
Cecil’s supporting hand slipped, his elbow and left side landing in the mud, while the rider fought to keep the horse from rearing again. With the horse finally under control, reins gripped taut in one hand, the rider hooked a shrinking Cecil under one arm and hauled him to his feet.
Cecil blinked, inches away from the ashen face of the rider. Smooth, sharp features were branded with fear, anger, and something else. The phrase “exhaustion of the soul” popped into Cecil’s numb mind from somewhere.
Cecil watched, as if from a distance, as the rider’s mouth opened. He fully expected a stream of curses to emerge, accompanied by a blow or a knife to the gut.
An undignified end seemed imminent.
Automatic words surfaced, wrapped around his mind, as familiar and smooth as the worn beads of his childhood:
O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee—
Instead, the mouth croaked:
“Jesus! I almost killed you!”
It took a moment for the fact to penetrate his numbed senses that the voice belonged to a woman. Details pricked through the fog of misery and self-loathing that enveloped him: She was dressed, absurdly enough, in men’s attire. Tall, about his height. Her face, illuminated by the stark light of a nearby bonfire, held none of the feminine softness he so admired in his Rachel’s face. Instead, high cheekbones echoed overall angular planes. Eyes cut through him with a gaze sharp as the knife he’d been expecting. Dark, unaccountably short hair hung loose, plastered to her cheeks. Her mouth tightened, thinned out by anger or perhaps worry. The grip on his arm shook as if with palsy.
Someone seized his other arm.
“Are you injured?” A masculine voice, too close, almost at his ear.
Cecil shrank from the concern in the tone. He didn’t deserve it, this compassion.
The gentleman addressed the rider. “He doesn’t appear hurt, Mrs. Stannert. Mostly shaken. Those shots, it’s a good thing the police were nearby. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more mayhem in store. For certain, that fellow isn’t the only one plotting against Grant. In any case, we should take this gentleman somewhere where he can recover. Perhaps to your saloon.”
His mind tried to wrap around what he was hearing:
A woman. Dressed as a man. Who works in a saloon. What manner of woman is this?
She spoke rapidly, with intensity. “It will take forever to get up State to the saloon in this crowd. We can’t cross Third until the procession passes. I don’t know. He looks like he’s not altogether right in the head. Can he walk, do you think? Can you walk?” This last was directed at him. Without waiting for a response, she continued to her cohort, “Should we put him on one of the horses? Turn him over to the police for safekeeping? What do you think, Reverend?”
Cecil blinked. Confused.
Reverend?
The man’s somber dark garb, mellifluous words, the professional sympathy—now, it all made sense. The reverend hemmed and said to the strange woman, “Perhaps I should take him to the church. Or the mission. It’s not far from here. Someplace quiet until he recovers.”
The situation suddenly came clear to him.
A man of the cloth. And—
Another she-devil from State Street
.
His strength returned. His feet came unstuck from the mud. He ripped from their holds and bolted, pushing his way through the crowd, heading toward Harrison, the main street of town. Rain pelted his face, ice-cold needles driving into his flesh.
He stopped only when he reached the cross street that would lead him to the brothel.
I can’t go back. I shouldn’t. Not now. I should go to the hotel. Get my hat and gun tomorrow. Or buy new ones.
Even as these possibilities crowded his mind, he was moving toward State Street, shaking, every nerve screaming for release, sweat soaking his undergarments and seeping into his outer clothes to mingle with the mud and rain. He pushed against the tide of humanity pouring in the opposite direction, all moving as one to greet the incoming train.
“My God,” Inez Stannert whispered. “Oh, my God.”
The sweat, which had coursed down her back as she’d fought to bring her horse Lucy under control, was now an icy sheet on her skin. Her fingertips tingled inside her gloves from the force at which the older man had twisted away. “I almost. Almost.” Her throat closed up.
She couldn’t say it.
I almost killed him.
Inez closed her eyes, blocking out the night and the shimmering rain made visible by the bonfires.
A hand found hers. Reverend Sands’ fingers tightened on her own, a warm presence.
Inez opened her eyes and turned to Sands’ gaze.
She sensed that the reverend was peering at her, even though his face was cast into darkness under his soggy, wide-brimmed hat. His voice wrapped her chilled soul like a blanket, soothing, offering comfort. “The man, just now, he’ll be all right. We helped him get to his feet, and he ran away. He lives because of your quick thinking.”
He drew her close, in a brief hug. Inez allowed herself to relax into the familiar yet furtive embrace, stolen, as it was, in tight quarters and within the possible observance and subsequent disapproval of surrounding strangers. Inez and the reverend were shielded from eyes in one direction by her horse Lucy’s proximate bulk and from eyes in the other direction by a sea of backs and general disinterest. Any possible spectators had turned away, no longer entertained, now that the show of near death was over. Instead they all strained forward on tiptoe, attempting to catch a glimpse of Grant and his entourage, to hear the distant voices of Leadville’s city fathers delivering their initial greetings.
Sands let her go. Inez, pushing unwelcome events into the past, looked to the train and saw that most of the arrivals and welcoming party had mounted into carriages, wagons, and other conveyances. Lucy huffed, a weary breath that expanded and collapsed beneath the saddle cinch. Inez stroked Lucy’s wet and matted mane. “Soon, Lucy. Soon,” she murmured. “I’ll get you to a stable where you can rest.”
The procession on Third jerked into motion. Inez tightened her hold on Lucy’s reins to keep her from responding to the crowd that was backing up against them, squeezing away from the streets. Mounted police and military companies passed by first. Colorado state cavalry were followed by a drum corps, infantry, a band, and the battalion veteran corps.
An open-topped barouche, drawn by four black horses and nearly invisible beneath red-white-and-blue decorations, came abreast. Figures waving from the seats. A beard-rimmed square face, just visible beneath a hat.
“Is that General Grant?” she asked.
Reverend Sands nodded.
As neighboring spectators pressed around her, jostling for a better view, Inez held fast to Lucy’s reins and prayed that there were no more men intent on violence. Waiting. Men waiting for the right moment.
Grant’s carriage passed up the street. More vehicles followed, occupants shrouded in wet weather wear and hidden under umbrellas. The city’s hook and ladder company was next, followed by volunteer fire companies and trailed by the town’s prominent citizenry in carriages.
As soon as the last of the mounted police went by, the people lining the road flooded into their wake.
Inez turned to Sands. “What is the parade route?”
“Spruce to Chestnut, then Harrison to the Clarendon Hotel. Grant is supposed to speak briefly there.”
Inez nodded. “Going up State Street would be best. It probably won’t be as crowded.”
They crossed Third, walking their horses, and proceeded toward State. The bonfires, which had illuminated the path of the parade, receded, leaving them to travel in the dark as quickly as they dared. Bone-deep weariness tugged at Inez.
They squeezed their horses onto the hitching bar by the State Street entrance of the Silver Queen Saloon. Even though there was little room amongst the twitching, wet beasts of burden, the saloon seemed unusually quiet. Inez gazed at the lamplight pouring from the windows. She bet that her business partner, Abe Jackson, waited within, even though every other soul in the city seemed to be jostling for position out on Harrison for a view of the procession.
Probably not a single customer with belly to the bar. But perhaps that will work to our advantage right now.
She turned to Reverend Sands. “I’ve no desire to stand shoulder to shoulder to the crowds out here. We’d have an excellent view of the procession and speeches from the rooftop of the Silver Queen. Interested?”
He smiled, and pushed the door open, holding it for her.
Inez walked in, noticing that indeed, the place was deserted, except for Abe and their bartender, Sol Isaacs. Both stood by the half-open main Harrison Street entrance, watching the crowds on the boardwalk. Both had tucked their thumbs into their apron bands. They looked, Inez thought, like disparate bookends—Abe carved from ebony, Sol from ivory.
The two men swung around in unison as Inez and the reverend approached. Abe’s brow, etched with worry, smoothed out; his concern visibly fell away.
“Mrs. Stannert, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” said Abe, by way of greeting. “Me ’n Sol here were gonna close up the saloon and grab some lanterns, and come look for you.”
“I’m all right, Mr. Jackson.” Inez moved toward him, hands held up, a gesture meant to allay his fears. “I’m sorry to have caused you such anxiety. We came back as quickly as we could, but we weren’t able to get through the streets until now. As you see, we’re back, and none the worse for wear.”
At least, on the surface.
She added, “There was a bit of trouble on Third. Someone in the crowd took a potshot at General Grant. The police were on him right away. I don’t think anyone in the parade even noticed, what with all the fireworks and confusion.”
Abe crossed his arms, grim. “None of us need that sort of thing. Those folk, if’n they don’t like Grant bein’ here, they oughta just crawl back under whatever rock they came out from.”
“Agreed. But there’s naught we can do now except be aware. It’s just another reminder that we need to be extra-vigilant these next few days while Grant and his visitors are in town.”
She lightened her tone to deflect the questions brimming behind Abe’s troubled gaze. “I thought we could catch a glimpse of Grant from the rooftop, hear the speeches. The crowds will not let the general disappear into the hotel without a few words from him I’m certain. And the mayor is not about to let his prepared remarks go to waste, no matter whether it’s nine in the evening or two in the morning.
“Abe, Sol, why don’t you lock the doors and meet us on the roof?” Inez reached behind the bar and extracted the little-used key to the rooftop and a lamp while Abe and Sol barred the doors.
The group headed up the stairs to the second floor of the saloon and proceeded down the hallway, lit only by a pool of light cast by the lamp Inez had handed to Sol. A door to one side led to the saloon’s office and Inez’s private rooms; another, further down, to the now deserted gaming room. At the end of the hall, they stopped. Inez inserted and turned the key in a lock that seemed to be part of the wall. A door, unframed and built to look like part of the wall, gave a discontented creak as she pushed it open. The abbreviated staircase that greeted them was more ladder than stairway. The same key unlocked a trapdoor at the top, allowing the group to emerge, one at a time, out onto the flat rooftop of the Silver Queen. They all stepped around the puddles dotting the roof and headed toward the edge for a better view of the main street of Harrison.
Inez ventured closer to the edge of the rooftop, bringing Harrison into view. Leadville’s entire population, over thirty thousand souls, seemed squeezed along the boardwalks. From above, the mob looked like a strange species of plant, the tops moving and oscillating, wet and glistening. The noise of the crowd was backed by the roar of minute guns, and the explosions of fireworks and small arms. Colored bonfires stained the long procession green, blue, red. A speaker’s platform had been erected in front of the Clarendon Hotel. A grandstand adjoined, heavy with people.
Mounted police had forced a passage through the crowd for the carriages, now halted by the hotel. Inez thought she recognized the editor of the
Evening Chronicle
among the figures on the grandstand. He was arguing with the procession’s grand marshal, who had disembarked from the first carriage and was now pointing at the speaker’s podium and jabbing at the editor’s chest with an emphatic forefinger.
Standing by the pressman was a tall, lanky familiar figure. Inez squinted, certain that, yes, it was Jed Elliston, editor of
The Independent
, taking the
Chronicle
man’s side and adding his own gesticulations to the argument. The grand marshal leaned over the grandstand, beckoning to the policemen below. The men in blue lumbered up the stairs and herded the members of the local press off the platform, just as the crowd began chanting, more or less in unison, “General Grant!”
The former president had exited the carriage along with others of his entourage. He turned to either side, shaking the swarm of hands thrust out at him. Two local lawmen, accompanied by what appeared to be a private bodyguard, tried in vain to clear a path for the visitors.
The honored guests were escorted, foot by foot, to the stands, police shoving the way clear. As Grant mounted the stairs at one end of the stand, Inez noted the pressmen were returning, storming the stairs at the other, with Elliston leading the pack. The parade marshal headed them off, accompanied by the private guard. An apparent order to quit the premises ignored, the bodyguard collared Elliston and threw the newsman from the stand. Elliston disappeared, arms milling, into the crowd awash with the red light of the colored fires.
A commotion in the other direction, barely overriding the sounds from Harrison, caught Inez’s attention. She turned her back on the proceedings to look west, toward Colorado’s highest peaks, now invisible behind the night, the low-lying clouds, and, closer in, a strange glowing light.
Inez crossed the rooftop, curiosity shadowed by a growing foreboding. At the far end of the roof, she could no longer fool herself about the origin of the flickering glow and the attendant smell.
She stared down at the evolving chaos in Leadville’s red-light district, figures like small, black cutouts dashing hither and thither in the unnatural light. It felt as if a hand closed over her throat.
“Mrs. Stannert.” Abe had followed and now stood beside her. “Is that—?”
His voice unfroze her mind and her stance. She turned to Abe, hardly able to see him, his dark skin and eyes blending into the night. “A fire. On State Street. And the fire companies are trapped in the procession!”