Apparition Trail, The (10 page)

Feeling myself begin to blush, I deliberately turned my thoughts away from these dream memories. I continued to watch the Indian woman approach out of the corner of my eye, however. I had the distinct impression that she and I were not strangers to one another, even though I was certain we had never met before. I was struck with the peculiar notion that our paths would cross again in the future. But the feeling was gone in a twinkling, and before I could ponder it further the woman approached Four Finger Pete from behind and laid a hesitant hand on his sleeve.

The gambler whirled in his chair like a man challenged to a duel, closing up the cards in his rough hands. “What you doin’ up on this deck?” he barked. “I thought I told you to stay below.”

The woman cringed and glanced down at her moccasins. I noted that one of her pretty eyes had a slight smudge of yellow around it, probably an old bruise. “Child has fever,” she said in a voice as soft as a whisper. She gave the briefest possible glance at the pile of winnings that sat in front of Four Finger Pete. “Medicine at Victoria Mission. When boat stop there, we go—”

The crack of Four Finger Pete’s hand across her face rocked the woman’s head to the side. I was halfway out of my seat, a protest on my lips, when the woman caught my eye and shook her head, her eyes wide and frightened. I could see that it would go badly for her later if I provoked her husband’s anger further. Much as I would have loved to give the fellow a taste of his own medicine, I forced myself to refrain from raining blows upon him.

With narrowed eyes, the gambler gave the woman a look of pure venom. “I told you never to interrupt me when I’m gamblin’,” he growled. “Now git off down below, unless you want me to toss in your worthless hide to sweeten up the pot.”

The woman’s hands clenched, then she turned and hurried away. Feeling my face flush, I leaned across the table in a threatening manner. “You brute,” I growled. “If you strike her again, I’ll arrest you and clap you into manacles. Then I’ll see how well you can sw—”

I felt Chambers’s hand on my arm, and suddenly realized that not only were the others at our table staring at me, but so was everyone else in the saloon. One or two were backing carefully away as Four Finger Pete’s right hand drifted down toward his left hip, where his revolver was holstered.

The gambler’s eyes were dangerously narrow. “I paid that squaw’s father two good ponies and a rifle. She’s mine, bought and paid for. I do with her as I like.”

Anger boiled inside me like a thunderhead, and only with the greatest difficulty did I keep it in check. I reminded myself that I myself was no saint — I’d broken the heart of a decent woman when I broke off my engagement to Mildred Hughes, five years ago, to join the North-West Mounted Police. She’d no other fault but to be too plain for my tastes, and yet I’d shattered her dreams of marriage and broken her heart.

I reminded myself that there were many other men equally as vile as Four Finger Pete. I’d seen cruel things done to Indian women during my time in the North-West Territories, especially by the traders who smuggle whisky into the country, and who would force a woman — or even a young girl — to debase herself for the stuff. Even the honest traders would casually abandon their Indian wives when they return east, leaving these poor women to struggle on alone to feed the brood of children the traders have sired.

Many of the Indian tribes treated their women no better: among the Blood Indians, a woman who had sexual relations outside of wedlock could, according to Indian custom, be disfigured by her husband. I’d seen one poor wretch who suffered this fate: a once-pretty woman with a gaping hole where her nose had been hacked off by a knife. Despite my urgings, she had refused to give evidence against the man who had so disfigured her. I’d taken the law into my own hands then, and dispensed justice with my own two fists — but that was in the past. I was working for Q Division now. And Steele was a man I didn’t want to disappoint.

Chambers tugged at my sleeve. “Please, Corporal, do sit down,” he said in a falsely cheerful voice. “There’s no harm in a man chastising his wife, and we’ve yet to finish our poker hand. How many cards would you like?”

I shook off his hand, angry that Chambers had taken the side of the American lout, then forced myself to take my seat. I did my best to swallow my emotion, and felt a familiar clench of pain in my stomach. Still glaring at Four Finger Pete, who had at last relaxed and moved his hand back to the table, I threw down my discards.

“Two,” I gritted.

Chambers dealt me two cards, then drew one card himself. Not caring who saw it, I reached into my pocket and drew out my bottle of painkiller. Taking a hefty swig, I winced as it burned its way down. The stuff was nineteen per cent alcohol — very nearly a match for the whisky in Four Finger Pete’s glass. As it hit my stomach it burned for a moment, but then I derived some relief from it. I noticed that Chambers glanced thoughtfully at the bottle, then studied my face intently. I hoped he was trying to guess what cards I held, and not what malaise plagued me.

The steward opened with a fifty-cent bid, and the farmer matched it, as did Four Finger Pete. I spread open my cards to look at them, then covered my reaction to what I saw by coughing as if the patent medicine had caught in my throat. Then I carefully arranged my features as if I were hiding a severe disappointment.

“Five dollars,” I said when it was my turn, bidding an outrageous sum. It was just the sort of bid a novice gambler would make when the only avenue open to him is to bluff.

Chambers shrugged and met my bid. The steward uttered an exclamation in French and threw down his hand. “Ees too rich for me,” he said.

The farmer studied his cards carefully, then without a word folded his hand and laid it on the table. He leaned back to watch the rest of us, puffing on his pipe.

Four Finger Pete glanced sidelong at me, and a light came into his eyes. “I’ll see that bet,” he said, tossing five dollars onto the table.

Chambers also remained in the game. “I’ll raise you a dollar,” he said. Four Finger Pete met the dollar and raised the pot two dollars more.

I took another swig of the painkiller, easily swallowing the by-now-familiar mix of camphor, myrrh, and spruce oil, then met the other players’ bets and raised them another dollar. Chambers quickly followed, once again adding a one-dollar raise to keep the bidding going, as did Four Finger Pete. When I increased my “bluff” by another two dollars, and then by another four, both kept pace. Only when I upped it by another five dollars did Chambers drop out.

Four Finger Pete laid a five-dollar bill on the table. “Call,” he said with a smirk. He laid down four nines and a two.

Slowly, all the while ready to lunge at the gambler and grab his hand if he tried to draw his weapon, I lay down my cards: the ten, jack, queen, king, and ace of hearts.

The eyes of the farmer widened. He slid his chair away from the table, putting distance between himself and Four Finger Pete. The steward leaped to his feet and hurried out of the saloon, muttering about needing to tend to his duties.

For a moment, there was frozen silence. Four Finger Pete and I stared at each other, each waiting for the other to blink, while Chambers sat with a bemused expression, as if he’d expected this all along.

“Damn you!” Four Finger Pete shouted at last. His hand swept down — but not for his gun. Instead he picked up his glass and drained the whisky in it in one gulp. He slammed the empty glass back down on the table.

“My whisky’s done, and so am I,” he gritted. Without another word he scraped back his chair, rose to his feet, and stalked away.

I scooped up my winnings, and smiled in satisfaction. I’d given the gambler his come-uppance. But the smile froze on my lips when I realized that Four Finger Pete might take his anger at losing out on his wife.

“Well done,” Chambers congratulated me. “Of course, winning comes easily to a man with powers like your own.”

“Excuse me?” I asked, wadding the money into my pocket. I kept my ear cocked, listening for anything that sounded like a man’s voice raised in anger.

Chambers pushed the poker cards aside, then slid a hand inside his cutaway suit. I stiffened, wondering if he had a pistol concealed under it, but instead he drew from his pocket something that was wrapped in a black silk handkerchief. He unwrapped it to reveal a fresh deck of cards, then spread the cards face up across the table with a sweep of his hand. The deck bore the usual numeric denominations and suits, but the face cards portrayed a wild mix of characters: I saw renderings of what looked like a priest, a Hindu fakir, a Red Indian in buffalo-horn cap, and an Egyptian priestess, among other things. When Chambers gathered the cards together and began shuffling them, I saw that the reverse of each card was a solid black.

“During the poker game, you exhibited evidence of psychical powers,” he said as he shuffled. “These are faculties that extend beyond the normal range of human perception. I’d like to propose a guessing game to test those powers.”

I was still annoyed at Chambers for not acting the gentleman and helping to defend the Indian woman when Four Finger Pete struck her, and I was still listening for sounds of an argument on the deck below, yet I was intrigued by his proposal. All of my life, I had experienced strange hunches, premonitions and spates of luck. Could these abilities actually be measured? If so, I could imagine my father rolling over in his grave — just so he wouldn’t have to look at the proof.

Chambers might be nothing more than a charlatan — a fortune-teller who used these odd cards to gull people into thinking that he could predict the future — but if he did have the ability to measure my abilities, I wanted him to do so.

I decided to agree to Chambers’s test. “How does it work?” I asked.

“Quite simply,” Chambers said, laying the cards face down in a neat stack on the table. He tapped a finger against the top card. “When I turn over this card, what suit do you suppose it will it be?”

I hazarded a guess: “Hearts?”

Chambers picked up the card and glanced at it. A slight downward motion of his moustache as his lips pressed together told me my first attempt was a failure. He laid the card on the table beside the deck. “Again,” he said briskly.

I took another guess: “Spades?”

The second card went down upon the first. “Again,” he ordered.

The farmer still sat at the table with us. Intrigued, he leaned forward, sucking on his pipe, sending pungent wafts of smoke over the table. He was more intent upon the guessing game than I was; part of my attention was still focused on listening for the sounds of a disturbance on the deck below.

Chambers saw that my attention had wandered, and prodded me.

“The ten of diamonds?” I said with a shrug, forgetting that I had merely to guess the suit.

“That was excellent,” he said encouragingly. “You were correct on both the suit, and the number. Let us continue in that vein — if you guess either the suit or number correctly, we’ll count it as a success.”

I didn’t think he was supposed to be offering me any indication, and had a feeling that these new rules were giving me an increased chance of guessing something correctly. I was mildly irritated at this idea, and at Chambers’s tone of voice: it was almost as if he were encouraging a child. I had known since my childhood that some sort of “sixth sense” resided within me, and now I wanted to know its extent without stacking the deck — and without my efforts being coddled.

I guessed at three more cards, following Chambers’s urgings to concentrate long and hard before each answer, but then I had to stop and take another dose of my patent medicine as pain wracked my stomach. The discomfort made me decide to speed up the game. When Chambers laid his finger upon the next card, I guessed immediately: “The queen of diamonds: the card that shows the Negress wearing a turban.”

That startled me. I hadn’t directly observed a card of that sort when Chambers spread out the deck a few moments ago, yet I could picture the black-faced woman clearly in my mind.

I heard the faint snap of card against table as Chambers laid it down and I shook my head to clear it. “Again,” Chambers said, a slight note of excitement in his voice.

We proceeded in that manner through all fifty-two cards. When we were done, two piles of cards lay upon the table. They were about even in height.

“I didn’t do very well, did I?” I said.

“Quite the contrary,” Chambers said. “You guessed correctly on twenty-eight cards. Better than I would expect.” He scooped the cards up and began shuffling them.

“Better than you would expect, perhaps,” I said, adopting a tone my father might have used. “But not conclusive evidence. Twenty-eight correct answers out of fifty-two cards are only to be expected, when either suit or numerical value will suffice. It’s no more than random chance.”

Chambers inclined his head and gave me a quizzical look. “Let’s test another possibility,” he said. “Your ability to receive thought transferences.”

By now, our guessing game had drawn a crowd of curious passengers. I glanced around at them uneasily, made even more uncomfortable by the ache in my stomach. I was under strict orders from Superintendent Steele to draw no undue attention to my investigations, and had instructions not to discuss with civilians any evidence I found of the paranormal. The last thing Steele wanted the new division to be burdened with was a barrage of curiosity seekers and sensationalists. I hoped there wasn’t a journalist in the crowd.