Chase (13 page)

T
he kitchen seemed small when Phin went back in, the warmth stifling. Fraser lay with his face turned toward the door. His eyes followed Phin across the room. Phin stretched his hands to the stove. A smear of soot on one finger; he rubbed it off.

The old woman rose and poured him a cup of tea—different than before, less bitter. The first swallow hurt, the second hurt less, and the third was easy and normal.

“He's to drink, too,” she said. “Can you help him? I don't get down easy this time of night.”

Phin knelt beside Fraser. He smelled match sulphur
on himself. Fraser might notice, but what could he do about it?

He raised Fraser's head gently from the pillow and tipped the tea into him. Fraser swallowed obediently a few times, then closed his lips and turned his head away.

“It's Abby's judgment you may die of this,” the grandmother said in a small, dry voice. “We're trying to give you every chance.”

Fraser nodded, so small a movement that Phin might only have imagined it. His lips parted again. Phin trickled in the tea, waiting while Fraser swallowed. The man's skin shone with sweat. “I—I'm sorry—”

“You've no killed me yet, lad.” Fraser closed his eyes. Phin sat back, handing the cup to the grandmother.

“Scotch, is he?” she asked.

“He's Scottish,” said Fraser, voice light and buzzy as a fly at a windowpane. “I'll tell you about him, so if he dies, you'll know.”

“Should you talk?”

“It's talk or weep, ma'am. Let me talk. What do I call you?”

“You call me Mrs. Collins until my daughter-in-law comes home. Then you'll call me Grandma Collins, if I decide to let you.”

“Your daughter-in-law. I've seen her…in Washington? In the war?”

“She went to nurse my son. She arrived too late.”

“Aye, she had that look…like a blind angel.”

“Don't talk in that novelish way to me.” Tears glistened on the old woman's lower lids.

“Gran?” Abby stood in the kitchen doorway.

Grandma Collins lifted her chin, seemed to drain the tears back into herself. “Did we wake you?”

Abby shrugged. “Keep talking. I'll poach some eggs.” She lit a second candle.

Fraser lay staring at the ceiling, biting his lower lip. His eyes squeezed shut, and then slowly opened. “Is he all right, lad?”

He? Oh. The horse. “Yes,” Phin said, expecting to croak. But his voice came almost normally. What was in that tea?

“He can't eat. The day and night—he won't have eaten. Cut it off—if he comes back—I'll cut it off. But hurry, lad, there's no much time.”

The cruel noseband; that was what Fraser was talking about. That's what the knife had been for. “It's off,” Phin said. “He's fine.”

“What's he talking about?” Abby asked in a low voice.

“The horse is…like a bloodhound,” Phin said. “It's how he followed me. He takes the bit out—and the noseband's very tight, I don't know why—and it tracks just like a dog.”

“Stops him eating,” Fraser said. “He'll no work if he can eat.”

“And the horse tracked you?” Abby caught her grandmother's eye. They looked at each other for a long moment. Wood popped inside the stove and water gently bubbled in a pan. Both women glanced toward the rifle in the corner.

Phin felt the fear in the room. They'd forgotten to be frightened; they'd been too busy. Now he'd reminded them. Ducking his head, he crossed to the blankets and sat down, making himself small and unthreatening. In a back room Lucky whined.

“Speaking of dogs!” Abby said brightly. She left the kitchen. A door opened deeper in the house, and she spoke Lucky's name.

Phin braced for the barks. But Lucky came meekly into the room, tail wagging low. He sniffed Phin thoroughly, eyebrows working, gave Fraser a brief inspection, then flopped on the blankets and offered Phin his belly for scratching. Abby and her grandmother looked ruefully at
each other. The grandmother said, “How much judgment do you think this animal has, Abby?”

Abby laughed. “You were the one who said,
‘They know!'
when he bit the doctor. You've passed a test of sorts, Mr. Chase!”

“Phin Chase,” Fraser said, drawing all their eyes. “Phin Chase was in the wrong place—say Phineas, so the line comes right.” He raised his voice, thin and reedy in song. “Oh-h-h, Phineas Chase was in the wrong place, At Engelbreit's table one day—” He broke off with a grimace. “Hurt some ribs, too,” he added conversationally.

Abby and her grandmother exchanged sober looks. Abby moved the kettle to a hotter place on the stovetop, and took her candle into the pantry.

She came back with another teapot and poured in boiling water. The kitchen filled with a pungent scent that reminded Phin of horse linament. She scraped butter on a slice of toast, put an egg on top, and said to Phin, “Will you come to the table?”

He got up. He still had the coat on. He should take it off, stop reminding them he was a thief. But he felt so warm—too warm, and that seemed right. Sweat out the sickness. He took a chair and picked up fork and knife, though he wanted to ignore the civilized utensils and cram
the food in with his hands. The first mouthful brought tears to his eyes.

“The horse,” Fraser said from the floor. “He's all right, lad?”

“A' righ',” Phin said, muffled.

The grandmother said, “I remember Grampa saying—and this goes back a ways!—that there were men in England that called their horses in by smell. And it was herbs, too, Abby. I wish I knew what. They'd rub a little on themselves—say, where the vein jumps in the neck—and they'd go stand in just the right place for the breeze to take it. By and by the horses would come in, and they'd catch them and go to work.”

“Caught him like that,” Fraser said.

It jolted Phin, how he followed the talk. He seemed to drop in and out of delirium. Was that real? With Fraser you always had to wonder.

He went on, stronger seeming, about working a wild bunch with the Cheyenne. They'd driven the horses with their man smell, with the horses' fear of it—miles, without ever laying eyes on them until they were in the trap.

And Fraser had wondered: If men could catch horses by smell, couldn't horses catch men? Could you train one to? And he'd done it.

“Now who needs men caught? Where's the action? For real scope—go to Allan Pinkerton.”

“And you did?” Abby asked.

“Aye. That's what I did.”

Phin swabbed the last trace of egg off his plate with the last corner of bread. So Fraser was a Pinkerton agent. He felt he'd always known that.

“The Pinkerton Detective Agency,” the grandmother said. “I always think of Emerson—”

“Oh,” Phin said, without thinking. “The transparent eyeball!”

The room went quiet. Everyone was looking at him.

T
he old woman asked, “What do you know about the transparent eyeball, boy?”

“Phin,” Abby said.

“It's—it's in ‘Nature,'” Phin said. “He's talking about the woods—”

“And he turns into an eyeball,” Fraser said. Abby laughed.

“It wasn't written to be amusing,” her grandmother said. “Maybe you can tell me what it's about, b—young man.”

“I—I can quote it.” Phin pinched the fallen petals on the table into little heaps. “He's talking about how nature…lifts you up, and he says—‘I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the
Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.'”

“Aye,” Fraser said. His delirium, or whatever that had been, seemed suddenly cooled. “‘Currents of the Universal Being.' Aye.”

The quiet in the room grew deeper, more emphasized than broken by the crack of wood in the stove.

“Anyway,” Phin finished lamely. “I think Pinkerton's eye is different.”

“I think so, too,” the grandmother said, with a grim smile. “Young man, we've had one account of you. Now I'd like yours. A boy from a coal patch—we were told you'd shot a man. Who are you? How do you know Emerson?”

It felt like a boulder rolled off Phin's heart. After the tumult of the last few days, to have the most pressing question be about a book…

“I read the essays to my mother while she washed clothes. At Murray's Tavern, where I was raised.”

He told of his father, conscripted and marched away to war; his mother moving to Murray's and how she kept him out of the mines; the washtub readings. How, when Phin was old enough to understand that people disapproved, she told him, “‘My life is for itself, and not for a spectacle,'” quoting Emerson again. “I know what's right
for me,” she went on in her own words, “and I'm willing to trust my judgment.”

Then she laughed and said, “We're a pair of spectacles, Phinny!” Phin's voice thickened at that, but he pushed on. Her death, John Engelbreit and his books, and the sunny morning when Ned Plume walked up the path with a pistol in his hand.

And the rest; a sketch of it, anyway. He didn't mention Margaret or the wallet, and he felt Fraser watching, waiting for more.

“And you ran?” Abby said. “I don't understand. I mean—at that moment, of course, but couldn't you go to the constable?”

Fraser stirred. “Ladies,” he said. His voice came deeper, stronger; alarmingly so. “You've heard of the Molly Maguires?”

The women exchanged a quick look.

“That's what Plume is. A Molly gunman—Sleepers, they call them in Bittsville, an old name. It's a secret society…and in coal country, anyone who fires an Irishman's in danger from them. As are the Welsh miners. As are the English. As are half their fellow Irish, truth be told. We don't know who they are, half of 'em…but for sure, the constable's a Sleeper.

“Now the owners—they're fed up. Ready to hang some Irish, set an example. They think Phin killed their man Engelbreit, and…they won't wait for explanations. Sleepers—they've got other reasons for wanting him. Lad's between a rock and a hard place. He did right to run.”

Abby moved from her place by the stove, bringing the candle with her. As she set it on the table, it cast a brighter light on Fraser's face. “But you know he's innocent,” she said. “Did you always know?”

Fraser turned his head on the pillow. “What makes you say that?”

“Phineas Chase was in the wrong place, you said. In your song.”

“What song would that be?”

The question rang false and over-theatrical; false as Fraser's lies in the freight car. Abby looked at her grandmother, communicating something without words.

The old woman said, “Talks like a novel. I know. You're not very good at this, are you?” she said to Fraser.

His eyes widened. He looked from one to the other, between amusement and alarm. “Perhaps not!”

“Why did you chase Phin?” Abby asked. “What are you up to?”

They were entirely on his side, Phin realized. They
simply believed him, a ragged boy who'd stolen from them. Until he quoted from “Nature” it could have gone either way, but now he belonged. He was their kind.

Fraser lay still in his blankets. They'd come to the nub of things.

“My motives are—mixed,” he said, “and maybe you're right. Maybe I'm not very good at this. Engelbreit—I didn't see that coming. I came on the scene—they tried their story on me—and I thought…get you first. So I took the jacket—that I am good at, ma'am—and we trailed you. Lost you on the hill—behind the houses—but there you were. Back at the barn.

“Thought I'd get you off somewhere. Get your story. That had to be done in secret, so I waited my chance—and what do I find? That you're a bit of a rascal yourself, Phin Chase. Forked Plume's wallet.
Plume's!
”

He smiled faintly, shaking his head, and Phin felt himself turn color. He looked away, smoothing his face. Fraser didn't know Margaret's role. Plume hadn't told that part of things, despite the rage that made him careless of other secrets.

Fraser said, “It emerged—you had a paper on you, of interest to me. Extreme interest. You got on the train—what a chance that was! But along comes Plume, drunk as a lord—and off we all go. When he went under—I could
have had you then, lad. But I drove you farther. By then…I wanted to get away myself.

“You left the train. I followed, but you shook me off again.” He grinned, showing his teeth. “My intentions being unbeknownst to you.”

“Why did you want to get away?” Abby asked.

“Because I know what's going to happen.”

He let that hang and Phin thought, Novelish, and none of them obliged him by asking “What?”

“There's an almighty cave-in coming,” Fraser said. “All over coal country. Pinkerton's got us everywhere, picking up scraps to braid into hangman's rope.”

“And have you lost your taste for that employment?” Grandma Collins asked dryly.

“I have,” Fraser answered. “I don't hold with the Sleeper killings, but they're trying to help their people. And yet”—he looked Phin in the eye—“with all my fine scruples, lad, don't be assuming I'll help you.”

“You have to help!” Abby said.

“I've lived a hard life, miss, and I've found there's few things a man has to do. We have a wide latitude.”

Phin knew that. He'd considered leaving Fraser in the snow to die, been free to do that. He would have harmed himself greatly, but that wasn't what stopped him.

“Do I need your help?” he asked Fraser.

“Aye. If I bring you in, you're a witness. If I don't—you're a wanted killer with Pinkerton on your trail.”

“I could disappear,” Phin said. “Tell Pinkerton I'm dead.”

Fraser shook his head. “That won't help either of us. Once Pinkerton's on the trail, he never gives up. He'll open a grave with his own hands to be sure the right man's in it.”

Phin pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to think. Run? Spend the rest of his life a murder suspect? Or go back to testify, and be killed by the Sleepers…

“There's another way,” Fraser said. “You took a paper off Plume. There's a list. Give me that. If it's as important as he thinks—that nets me six big fish, and you don't matter at all, lad.”

“I thought you were through braiding hangman's rope!” Abby said scornfully.

“I don't know what I am and that's straight, or as straight as I know how to be after all this time. But I took the job and I'll carry it through.”

Phin stood up. That said it all, really. He could stand. Fraser couldn't. He reached deep in his pocket and brought out the roll of bills, and bending, fanned them before Fraser's eyes. “This is all I have from Plume.”

Two spots of red blazed on Fraser's cheekbones. His eyes bored into Phin's. “There was no paper?”

Phin shrugged.

“Come, lad, where is it?” He managed to sound threatening, even flat on his back. “Did you read it, at least?”

Phin shook his head. “Decided I'd—rather not. I burned it.”

Fraser's nostrils flared. “Just now? Did I smell it?”

Phin nodded.

Fraser's face twisted for a moment, in intense frustration, and he made a small motion under the blankets, as if slamming his fist.

Then he smiled a crooked, resigned smile, and closed his eyes. “So be it. Consider yourself…my prisoner. I'll…keep you safe. Better pray I live.”

Phin tried to answer, but his throat had closed up again. He poured himself more tea as Fraser said,

“Maybe you'll no have…to testify. If they spring the trap before Plume—”

His voice sliced off. His eyes flew open, staring at the ceiling. “Lad, I'm sorry,” he said after a minute. “I was forgetting. Plume's here. At the doctor's. He saw you get off. Soon as he's able…he'll be looking.”