Giving Up the Ghost (15 page)

I felt as if I had been trampled into the dirt by a herd of longhorns. My stomach hurt, but it wasn't as bad as before. The fatigue was bone deep, however, and it wasn't just physical, it was spiritual—what kind of fool was I to blithely put my friends in mortal danger? And to allow that girl, Molly cum Moria, to trick me so badly as to sling a heavy revolver around the dining room at the Clifton Hotel and actually fire a shot with murderous intent, albeit terrible aim? It would have been easy to tell myself that my conscience made me miss, that of course I would have never killed another human being, so I really hadn't been overcome by emotion and violated my own principles. That, however, would have been a lie.

But there was much to do. I didn't have the luxury of feeling sorry for myself for very long.

While still cradling Calder's head in my lap, I sent Delaney to tell Engineer Skeen to ready the
Ginery Twitchell
for travel, and then to commandeer any wagon or buggy he could find and bring it back to the mill.

“What's the plan?” Delaney asked.

“We're going after Moria, of course,” I said.

“But it's night,” he said. “It's too dangerous out on the main line.”

“Don't argue,” I said. “Just tell Skeen to be ready. And stop by the hotel and have our things, including Calder's gun, which was in the middle of a pile of broken china on a table in the hotel dining room when last I saw it, placed aboard the train.”

“Right away,” Delaney said.

He still looked pale and shaken.

“One more thing,” I said.

“Yes, Ophelia?”

“Stop lying to the hotel staff about the cause of all the trouble,” I said. “It might be convenient to blame it on striking brakemen and their telegrapher friends, but in the end somebody might get hurt.”

“It seemed the most reasonable thing to say.”

I shook my head.

“Just tell them the truth,” I said. “It's a mystery that we're trying our best to solve.”

Delaney nodded, then left.

Granny Doom began packing her things into a grain sack. She took the madstone out of the empty pan, put the pan in the sack, and slipped the stone into her sash.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Do not thank me,” she said. “The power came from above.”

“When will I know?” I asked. “The price, I mean.”

“Not until you know,” she said.

Then she paused and regarded me with her ancient, milky eyes.

“Is that what you wanted to hear him say?” she asked.

“Calder? Of course,” I said. “Most men have trouble saying what they're feeling. But I don't know what's so hard about it. It's just three words. You'd think you were asking them to confess to a murder.”

“It won't change things,” Granny Doom said.

“Of course it changes things,” I said, a bit shocked and a little offended. “It changes
everything
. It always does.”

She shook her head.

“What did you say in response?”

“Well, I said it back.”

“No, you didn't,” she said. “You said you knew he felt that way, but you didn't return the sentiment. It wasn't equal. You accepted what he had to say, but you kept your feelings locked up tight inside you.”

I tried to remember. Had I really not told Calder I loved him?

“Will he stop loving me?” I asked.

“Girl, how should I know?” Granny Doom asked. “He might, but it won't be because of what happened tonight. If his love is real, you can't trade it away for anything.”

“And if love is false?”

“Why would anybody want to hold on to that?”

I nodded.

“I don't want to offend you by offering you money,” I said, “but I would like to show my gratitude.”

“Didn't say I don't take money,” Granny Doom said. “What I said is that you can't buy a miracle, just like you can't buy a madstone. For my time, I'll take your money.”

I took a ten-dollar note from my vest and handed it to her.

“This is more money than I see in a year,” she said. “But considering how you were willing to give away your young friend's railway earlier, I'll take this—and you can consider it a bargain.”

“Assuredly.”

She tucked the note into her sash, then flung the grain sack over her shoulder.

“This woman you're chasing,” she said. “She operates through subterfuge. It is the nature of a poisoner. Take care that you do not assume that to be true which is, in reality, false.”

Then she left.

It took no more than thirty minutes for Delaney to deliver the message to Skeen, have our things put aboard the express car, and return to the mill with a buckboard driven by a very confused livery owner, a man with a narrow face and a bald head.

“It was not necessary to hire a wagon,” Calder said, leaning with his back against the door frame for support. “I can walk to the train.”

“Perhaps I'm the one who wanted the ride,” I said, climbing up into the seat.

Delaney, who was in the back, reached out a hand and pulled Calder up, and then they both helped McCarty.

“How're you feeling, Doc?”

“Better than I have any right to expect,” he said.

The livery owner flicked the reins and the pair of white horses pulled us up Seventh Street. As we rounded the corner at the Clifton Hotel, we could see the downstairs was ablaze with light, and people were standing about at the entrance, with their bags.

“What's going on?” I asked.

“The passengers have given up on the railroad,” Delaney said. “They're trying to maintain their place in line for the stage. It's not due until seven o'clock, but the stage only holds six people, and they're afraid to lose their place. By the time the stage actually arrives, I'm afraid there will be fisticuffs.”

The buckboard rumbled on, past the depot—where I could see Cecil still barricaded in the station office—and then on down the siding to the
Ginery Twitchell
, which was hissing and ticking as the boiler came up to operating temperature. Skeen was in the cab, twirling valves and reading gauges, and the fireman was stoking the firebox.

He waved at me as we drove past.

“This isn't a horse you can just throw a saddle on,” he shouted from the cab window. “But give me another ten minutes, and she'll be ready.”

Delaney jumped down.

“I've got to throw the switch to point us west,” he said.

The door of the express car was open, and Delaney had stacked some crates on the ground to use as steps. I climbed down from the seat, and Calder and I helped McCarty up into the car.

“What about my fee?” the bald-headed livery driver asked, still in the seat of the buckboard, his foot resting on the brake.

“How much?” I asked.

“Two dollars,” he called.

“What a bandit,” Calder said. He had found his gun belt in our pile of things, with his enormous gun in the holster, and was buckling it around his waist. Then he removed the gun and flipped the little gate open on the side and turned the cylinder.

“Send a bill,” I said.

“In care of whom?”

“William B. Strong,” I said. “General Manager, Santa Fe Railway, Topeka.”

“That will be another fifty cents, for postage and handling.”

“Make it an even three dollars,” I said.

He released the brake and the wagon rumbled off.

Calder frowned. He tilted the barrel of the gun up, moved a plunger beside the barrel, and an empty shell casing dropped into his palm.

“There's an empty,” he said.

“You don't remember what happened back at the hotel?”

“I remember eating the vinegar pie and getting sicker than a dog,” he said. “I went out the back door and threw my guts up in the grass, and then I passed out. When I woke up, we were in the mill house.”

“Jack, I have something to tell you.”

“Who did I shoot?”

“You didn't shoot anyone,” I said. “But while you were unconscious in the grass, I may have borrowed your gun. You tried to stop me, but you were too weak.”

“You borrowed my gun.”

“Yes.”

“Ophelia Wylde reached for a gun.”

“Well, yes.”

“Were you trying to scare someone?”

“No, I was trying to kill them.”

“The girl, Molly O'Grady?”

“Her name's Moria,” I said. “Yes, I took a shot at her.”

“You missed.”

“Badly.”

Calder thought for a moment.

“How badly?”

“If I had been throwing a baseball, I would have broken a window.”

“This is a four-hundred-and-forty-four-caliber central fire Worcestershire heavy with a thousand grain bullet,” he said—or he said something like that, a bunch of numbers and a name which meant nothing to me, and which I can't remember now; and I won't give Calder the satisfaction of reading this before it goes to press so he can correct it. “This gun can do some damage. Was anybody hurt?”

“The only thing hurt was my pride,” I said. “And it made my hands and wrists sting.”

“You were holding it wrong.”

“Could I have that thing, as a reminder?”

“What, the empty casing? Sure.”

He dropped it into my hand. I slipped it into the satchel.

“You know,” Calder said casually, as he took a cartridge from his gun belt and slid it into the empty chamber, “if your aim had been better, it would have made things much simpler. Want me to teach you how to shoot?”

“Absolutely not,” I said. “I am somewhat appalled that you would ask.”

He slipped the gun into his holster.

“You're the one who borrowed my revolver,” he said.

“You should know me better than that,” I said. “You really don't remember much, do you?”

“Nope,” he said. “But I remember what I told you in the mill. Do you?”

“Of course.”

But I still couldn't bring myself to say it.

“How are you feeling?” I asked instead. “Increasingly better?”

“Surprisingly so,” Calder said. “It must not have been a very strong dose of whatever it was that Molly put in the pie.”

“Must not have,” I said.

Skeen blew the whistle, two short blasts, and we jolted forward.

McCarty, who was on the bench near the post office desk, roused.

“How are you feeling, Doc?” Calder asked.

McCarty breathed deeply, and gave me a look that said he knew more than he was ever going to reveal to anyone.

“Redeemed,” he said.

As the train picked up speed, we passed the switch, where Delaney was crouching with the lever in his hand. As soon as the rear wheels of the express car had cleared the switch, Delaney threw the lever back, and then he ran after us. With a surprising burst of speed, he caught up to the open freight door, and thrust out a hand.

Calder caught his hand and pulled him up into the car.

Delaney, panting, fell into a chair.

His hands and face were smudged with grease from the switch, his hair badly needed combing, and his clothes—that fine pale linen suit—was stained with sweat and dirt, and ripped at the knees and one elbow.

“Young Delaney,” I said. “I think I like you better this way.”

Calder drew the freight door shut, and latched it.

“Calder,” I said. “Remember back at the office in Dodge, what Grunvand, the Pinkerton man, said? He said we should try the vinegar pie. How could he know about it if it wasn't on the menu?”

There was nothing to do except think, as the
Ginery Twitchell
plunged through the night toward Dodge, and hope that we didn't collide with another train on the way. With Grunvand now suspect, Delaney fretted aloud about the safety of the general manager, and how frustrating it was that communication had been reduced to the speed of a locomotive. McCarty sat in a chair, his eyes closed, arms crossed, dozing. Calder slouched on the bench, his boots crossed, thumbs looped over his belt, and would occasionally glance in my direction—an
accusing
glance, it seemed to me.

I sat at the post office desk, the crate from Hopkins's shack beside me, examining the bundles of letters. I spent half an hour examining the correspondence from the telegraphers' lodge, and another few minutes looking again at the letters from the orphans and widows home. Then I took up the collection from Morristown, New Jersey, and idly shuffled through them. Picking one at random, I unfolded it and admired the penmanship of the author, broadly spaced letters in bold strokes that suggested an open, but disciplined, mind. Here and there were the words
telegraph
and
Morse.
I glanced down at the signature.

“Alfred Vail, Speedwell Iron Works.”

The realization tingled like an electric shock.

The impression on the side of the camelback key that Hopkins had given Mackie wasn't a phrase at all, but a name and a place:
A. Vail, Speedwell Iron Works.

I went back to the top of the letter.

Sandwiched between two of the letters was a death notice for Alfred Vail from the Morristown newspaper, dated 1859. It listed survivors, but gave no indication of the cause of death.

“Doc,” I said, packing the letters back up. “Have you ever heard of a man named Vail who was a partner with Samuel Morse in the invention of the telegraph?”

“No,” he said.

“Neither had I, until now,” I said. “These letters indicate that the telegraph key sought by our murderous Moria was once owned by this enigmatic Mr. Vail, who died in 1859.”

“The same year as the Carrington Event,” McCarty said.

“Before his death, Vail made a gift of the key to Hopkins,” I said.

“If she wanted the key so badly,” Calder said, “why did she have to resort to poison? For enough money, couldn't she simply have bought it from Hopkins?”

“I don't think Hopkins was the kind of man who would have sold it, for any amount,” I said. “Or, perhaps the buying or selling of it would have offended the spirit of Vail, and rendered the key useless.”

“You think Vail inhabits the key?” McCarty asked.

“Perhaps,” I said. “Or it is the focus of his unfinished business here.”

I looked out the window, at the dark prairie rushing by and the electric sky above.

“Is Samuel Morse still alive?” I asked.

“No,” Delaney said. “He died six years ago, at the age of eighty-one. All railway men know this, for there was a grand celebration in New York a few months before his death, in which he bid the world farewell—by telegraph.”

“What time is it?” I asked.

Delaney pulled out his pocket watch.

“A little past five,” he said.

“How much longer to Dodge?”

“Another hour,” he said.

“You should try to sleep, Ophie,” McCarty said.

“Sleep,” I said. “Who can sleep when the world is about to be plunged back into the eighteenth century?”