The Empire of Shadows (13 page)

“I don't really understand,” Mary broke in. “These woods hardly seem to need protecting, especially not if they're as vast as you say. Why can't they be developed?”

William turned to Mary. “That, Missus Braddock, is precisely the question the legislature has been chewing on for years. It's not a simple issue, and there are plenty of reasonable men who have opposing views on it. Take logging. Some say that properly managed, these forests can be logged indefinitely. The problem is with the watersheds for rivers like the Hudson. Men like Colvin argue that logging damages the rivers and reduces the ground's ability to retain moisture, thereby lowering the water level in feeder streams to the Hudson.

“Damage the Hudson and you damage every city and town from here to New York, the Erie Canal included. One thing everyone agrees on is that the Adirondacks a very special place. It is unique. Even the logging companies will tell you that. And, there's a growing sentiment that these forests deserve to be protected. There's been so much damage already, it's clear that if nothing's done this wilderness could be gone in another generation.”

Tom, who had been listening to Durant, pointed with his fork and said, “Right now I don't know much about the Adirondacks, but what I have seen is extraordinary. I have one question though. I don't mean to offend anyone, but Frederick and William here—aren't you part of the problem?”

Frederick looked a bit taken aback, but William smiled, holding up his hand to his cousin who appeared about to answer.

“You're quite right, Tom, quite right,” William admitted. “You're referring to our development of this area, I take it?”

“Well, yes. Doesn't it work against the preservation interests to be building hotels and putting steamboats on the lakes? You're drawing more people here all the time. They hunt the deer and catch the fish and do plenty of damage in other ways, I'd imagine.”

William, who had steepled his fingers and was now peering over them at Tom, wore a satisfied smile.

“Let me explain, Tom, if I may,” he began.

“First off, as you know, the Adirondacks are very remote. It takes quite some time and expense to get here. It also means that the people who come must have leisure time, which in turn means they must have money to fund their activities.” William tapped his fork on his plate as he made each point, the click, click, click sounding like pieces of his personal puzzle fitting into place.

“You've probably noticed,” Frederick added, “that the guests at the Prospect House are from the upper classes. They not only can afford to come, like yourselves, but they are in many ways leaders of society.”

“Fred is quite right,” Duryea agreed. “You should see the hotel register sometime. The very best; doctors, judges, men of business, lawyers,” he nodded at Tom, police captains. Leaders of opinion, Tom.”

“Just so, Hi. Just so,” William said. “These are the very sort needed here, the sort with influence, political connections, and the economic power to quite literally alter the fate of the Adirondacks.”

“So long as there aren't too many of us?”

They looked at Mary, who had voiced what they all were thinking.

“Well, yes. Not to put too fine a point on it. We can't encourage too many to come, and at the same time not too few,” William admitted.

“So,” Mary said with a wry smile, “you need to have just enough damage to these woods to be noticed in the right circles but not too much to spoil our fun.”

William chuckled and shrugged his shoulders with a smile. “Sometimes a part must be lost if the whole is to be saved.” William's smile melted then and his face took on an earnest cast. Leaning forward on the table he said, “The whole of this region is worth saving, and it will be saved if it's in my power to do it, even if it's just a few thousand acres. But I pray it will be more, much, much more.”

The talk turned to the construction of camps as they drank their coffee, with William talking at length about his ideas on design, architecture, decoration, and furnishing.

“My entire aim is to blend, as far as possible, the structures with the environment they're in. It's a simple concept really, an appreciation and a mirroring of their natural surroundings. It all comes from loving these woods. I want to bring as much of them into my buildings as I can.” He paused for a moment, seeming about to explain more, but finally said, “I'd like you to come out to Pine Knot tomorrow. I'll show you what I mean.”

When plans were set the entire group went outside, following the sound of the guns. They found the Duryea boys and Mike about a hundred yards in back of the house. A field had been cleared out of the forest here and targets were set out against the rising ground, the natural slope of the hill behind providing a backstop for their bullets. Tom saw right away that Mike was overmatched. Though he took his time and aimed as carefully as he could, Mike wasn't as comfortable with the Winchester as the Duryea boys were with their rifles. One had a Sharps, the other a Model seventy-six Winchester, lever action, with a beautifully grained, checkered stock. They handled them as if they were extensions of their bodies, aiming with the sure eye of long practice.

The firing was deafening up close and Rebecca held her hands over her ears and hunched her shoulders. The Sharps was a .44-40, the Winchester a heavy .45-75. Between them both the effect was like a physical assault. Slaps of sound dizzied the senses and stung the ears. Tom's .30-40 sounded tame by comparison. It was a good shooter and Mike did well with it. His bandaged thumb couldn't have helped. When the boys stopped and they went out to examine their targets, Tom put a hand on his shoulder. “Pretty damn good, Mike. Considering you haven't had much practice, you did some fine shooting here.”

Mike shrugged a shoulder at the Duryeas' targets. “Couldn't come close to them.”

“Hell,” Tom muttered. “You did as good as I could have with that rifle.”

Mike straightened out of his slouch a bit and Tom pointed to the target. “Shoots a little high and to the right,” he said, circling a cluster of holes with his finger. “Need to adjust the sight a bit. One over, one down, I'd say at this range. By the way, how's that thumb feeling?”

Mike claimed it didn't bother him much. New targets were set up and another twenty-five rounds shot. Most all were in the black. Mike stood a little taller.

Duryea asked if Tom had brought his pistol.

“I happen to have it,” Tom admitted while Mary pursed her lips and arched her eyebrows at him. She knew he went nowhere without it and, being a fairly new gun, he'd spent lots of hours at the range “getting the feel of it,” as he'd put it, though it was beyond her how one gun was any different from another.

“So, will you treat us to an exhibition of police marksmanship, Captain?” Hiram asked in a way that made Tom forgive the goading. “If you're as good with your Colt as you were with those Spencers, we'll be in for a treat,” he said.

Tom frowned as he took out the Colt, a new .41 double action with a five-inch barrel. Opening the cylinder he added one bullet. He always carried the Colt with the hammer on an empty chamber, an old habit that hadn't died despite better safety designs that allowed the hammer to rest in a notch between chambers.

Chester Duryea was about to set out a new target when Tom said, “Haven't done much paper target work in a while actually. You have some cans? I'll show you what I've been working on.”

One of the boys ran to fetch a few from the kitchen.

“I figure if I need to use this, my target likely won't be standing still. In fact he'll probably be shooting back, which means I'll be moving, too,” he said with a crooked grin. “Conventional target practice isn't worth a damn for that.”

Chester came running back with a bag full of cans.

“Good. Now you three boys each take two cans. On my signal I want you to throw them out one after the other.”

“Okay,” Mike said. He'd practiced this with Tom and knew what was coming.

“I want them in different spots. Spread 'em around.” Turning to the rest, he said, “It's more about pointing, like I said, than aiming, exactly. Here, you'll see what I mean. Go!”

Chester threw his cans first, tossing one about twenty feet away, the other much farther. As the first one left his hand, Tom turned and brought the Colt up with both hands. The can hadn't touched the ground before the Colt barked, making the can sing and skitter. Turning, the Colt tracked the second can in the air. Again the pistol cracked and the can jumped. Harry, trying to make it more difficult, tossed his cans farther apart and to the sides but the Colt followed them like a magnet while Tom pivoted behind. Mike threw his in equally difficult locations and at differing speeds, but the results were the same. The four cans were hit one after the other. Mike beamed. Chester and Harry stood dumbstruck.

“The trick,” Tom said as he turned back and flipped open the cylinder of the Colt, ejecting the shell casings in a small shower of brass, “is to hurry up slowly.”

“Bravo!” Duryea exclaimed. “Bravo. I haven't seen shooting like that outside of Buffalo Bill's show.”

The ladies clapped and both the Durants expressed their admiration while the boys collected the cans. Chester was anxious to try the same himself and insisted he go next with a pistol he produced as if by magic. Chester, then Mike, and Harry after him all tried to duplicate Tom's shooting. Only Mike managed to hit more than one and none were hit while still in the air.

When Tom stepped up again at the ladies' insistence, he said to the boys, “Your problem is you've been aiming. Ready?” he asked. With no warning and with Tom facing the wrong direction, Chester, then Harry threw their cans out so fast there was hardly any spacing between them. Tom whirled about. Boom, boom, boom, boom, the Colt struck like a thunderous snake as it swung from target to target. Mike threw his late. The final two hits were like nails in a coffin. Nobody spoke for a full three heartbeats until Tom finally said, “Aiming's one thing. Shooting's another.”

 

Three hundred miles downstate, in the heart of Manhattan there was a knock on the darkened oak of Van Duzer's office door. Without waiting for an answer a clerk scurried in on the balls of his feet and mumbled, “Telegram for you, sir.”

Van Duzer didn't look up. He grunted an acknowledgment and continued reading the papers before him while the clerk slid out, the door closing with a soft snick of the latch. The telegram sat for some time as the sun sank, sending a line of shadow creeping across the desk. Van Duzer's pen scratched the papers from time to time while the wall clock ticked off the minutes unnoticed.

When at last the old man looked up from his work, he adjusted his glasses and seemed to see the telegram for the first time. With an age-spotted hand he opened the thing and read the short message, peering over the tops of his spectacles. His eyes tightened as he did and a grim ghost of a smile touched his mouth.
HAVE ARRIVED
, it said.
EVENTS SET IN MOTION STOP ALL GOING AS PLANNED STOP MORE SOON END
.

Van Duzer looked through his window up at the fading light. It wouldn't be too late to stop at the club for a late supper. Perhaps he'd see his banker there. He'd need to see more of the man soon, he thought as he let the telegram slip through his fingers and fall to the floor. With a grunt, he bent and retrieved it.

Opening a small drawer in his desk, he rummaged for a box of matches and drawing one out, struck it. The match flared in the growing gloom of the dark-paneled room, casting the old lawyer's face in a ghoulish light as it burned to a steady flame. He set it to the paper and dropped it into an ashtray. Van Duzer sat still as stone and watched as the little fire consumed the message. Going back to his papers, he picked up his pen and scratched out a message of his own.

He'd been lucky to find the man. Van Duzer wasn't a believer in luck though, tending instead toward crediting himself for whatever luck seemed to work in his favor. He believed that a man made his own luck through hard work and shrewd decision. He'd started the search long before Ella Durant walked though his door. Her appearance had simply been a happy coincidence, an added dimension to a scheme he'd been germinating since he'd had his first meeting with J. P.

The Nose had asked him then to look into Durant's dealings upstate, dig through his affairs, and discover his weaknesses. Though Morgan was an acquaintance and perhaps even a friend of William's father, that in no way prevented him from seeking whatever advantage he could. Morgan wasn't one to let friendship interfere with business. He simply sought points of leverage. Once those points were found, pressure would be applied until he got what he wanted and at the lowest possible cost.

So, Van Duzer had done his search and uncovered many an interesting tidbit on William West Durant. In fact, he'd have wagered that he knew as much about the man as he did about himself.

Although Van Duzer had found much of interest, there was one item that caught his attention, a matter of land bought for back taxes, a suit to recover the same, and a family thrown off a place they'd considered theirs since well before the war. He sent a letter and got one in return, a letter hot with hate, even though there'd been years for it to cool. He'd dangled a “business proposition” before the man and an invitation to come to New York to discuss the possibilities in detail.

They had met some weeks ago, before his meeting with Ella. The man was an enterprising fellow, a man of physical action, a man used to work and hardship, a man who would do what was necessary. No genius, but clever enough in his way, clever enough for the work ahead.

Van Duzer didn't want to know how he was going to accomplish their goals, only that he had a clear understanding of their aims. That those aims would coincide once Morgan's deal was done was made very clear. There would be reward far beyond what he and his family had lost. He simply had to apply leverage. How he did that would be of his own choosing. The man had ample motivation, he was sure of that, ample opportunity as well. All Van Duzer asked was to be kept generally informed. Specifics were forbidden. Ignorance would be Van Duzer's best defense.