by Sword Stone Table- Old Legends, New Voices (retail) (epub)
This reporter inquired as to its provenance, and Pendragon colored briefly, saying only “Hauled it out of Lake Erie back in 1875. It’s called Excalibur. Came to me loaded with silver bullets, but I don’t keep anything in it these days.” He laughed, rather ruefully. “It’s for effect, I suppose. Don’t tell my father I said so.”
“Pistols aren’t typically given to floating,” this reporter commented, angling for a better look. Loaded or not, the revolver appeared to be a Colt .45, a so-called Peacemaker.
“Of course, it wasn’t the pistol that was floating,” Pendragon clarified.
“What was it, then?”
“A lady was swimming in the lake, and she—”
Ambrose saw fit to interrupt by bringing forth his own weapon, a Remington rifle. “A gift of Eliphalet Remington himself,” he informed the assembled before firing into the nearby wood, from which emerged a black-haired girl, dressed as a miniature of Mr. Ambrose himself, leather waistcoat, Mexican silver buttons, a substantial pendant of crystal about her neck. The young woman dragged a dead and bleeding deer into the open and then brought a wild plum out of her garments, pressing it into the deer’s mouth. The deer shook itself and departed, springing over the field like a creature that’d never been shot.
“That there’s Moony, my apprentice!” shouted Ambrose to scattered, bewildered applause as the girl twirled her own pistol and bowed. “She’s a genuine Indian princess born beneath a hunter’s moon, and I’m learnin’ her all there is to know in every last category!”
The assembled reporters licked their pencils and set to noting, and in the brief, scratching silence that resulted, this reporter glanced toward Mr. Pendragon, who was looking into the distance.
“There was a lady in the lake,” Pendragon muttered again. “Came up out of the water, pistol in hand, and it was after I’d done something that I—”
“What year was this again?” this reporter inquired. “I ask because I found an article in the archives about a shipwreck on Lake Erie in 1875, a ship registered to the Pendragon Company.”
Pendragon looked at this reporter again. “Can’t say I’d know anything at all about that. What’d you say your name was, boy?”
“I didn’t,” this reporter answered.
“You seem familiar,” said Pendragon. “Have we encountered each other before?”
“We haven’t,” this reporter replied, and departed to the picnic tables. He joined the company of assorted hoboes, Joes and Bills and Georges, hungry men in ragged overcoats, straggling from the station, carrying their worldly goods on their backs, accompanied by astrologers, minstrel-show singers, farmers and miners, all having in common this sad state of affairs, that walking across the country was better than standing still and starving.
Why would a millionaire such as Arthur Pendragon fund this march of broken men, this reporter wondered, not for the first time. Why would he seek to cultivate revolt, when the things that had broken these men were the same ones that had made him wealthy? What was his secret? These questions, and more, to be answered in subsequent dispatches.
To be continued…
12. Prophecies, a chapbook, self-published, 1873
Written by early American cowboy poet Merle Ambrose. One poem is dog-eared.
MAYDAY
When you set yerself to roam
Out there upon the range
Best check a lady’s Bible
’Fore assumin’ that she’s strange
The hist’ry of this country
Is one of blood n’ woe,
And mebbe yer own daddy
Did things you dinna know
Yer daddy spied yer mama
Though she were not his wife
And roped her into trauma
He ruined her whole life
He crawled into her tent flap
Made up just like her man,
Without so much as askin’—
That’s how yer life began
But Mama had three daughters
Before you were her boy
Afore her husband’s slaughter,
they were her pride and joy
When you came in the picture
Them gals got sent away
Just ’cause you never met ’em
Don’t mean that dogies stray
That gal who’s lookin’ purty?
Think twice upon that bliss
You’ll get your future dirty,
A-ramblin’ with yer sis
It’s yer bairn that girl’d be bearin’
Beware the first of May
Yer doom’ll be unsparin’
Erase yer sin, or pay
13. A typewritten manuscript, secured with brass tacks
Heavily damaged by fire, edges charred. Edits throughout, done in burgundy ink, though it is unknown whether the edits were done by the original author or by a later hand.
The Autobiography of Kay Ector
(Unpublished)
The day the betrayer was conceived was a bright day for such darkness, a shining day in August 1874.
“Look out into the square,” said my brother Artie. We were at the Company office, and the windows were open wide. Out there, was a woman. She was tall and strong, her mouth a crooked line. She looked like Artie, if you want to know the truth of it, though Artie had white hair and blue eyes, and her hair was black, her skin brown. She was pretty like the end of the world, but the end of the world wasn’t nothing to us. Artie’s wife, Gwinn, he hadn’t met yet. Our boy was still a bachelor, breaking and buying, and that was his way.
Artie was a dowser. He could look at a piece of rock or riverbank, and see the metal beneath it. He’d stand there, staring out at the sky like a bird dog, and then start in, hacking away with his pick. Said it smelled to him like green blood, sap welling out of a tree. His mentor Merle Ambrose had advised him into land in Montana, and Artie got gold there for his dad’s company. Then the gold went bust, and the silver came up like seed. That was what made the bulk of the money for The Pendragon Company and what made all us follow him too. Artie loved money like some men love whiskey, and he was generous with it, passing bullion around the table like those same men would pass a bottle. He was our king and we treated him like it, even though he still had to report to his daddy and to Merle.
We were a gang of men, moving Artie’s money from Montana to Ohio and across the lakes to Canada. We carried knives and some of us had pockets full of bullets, but we dressed like we were proper. Artie was one of us then, in his own flat cap, his sleeves rolled up, and though he was our head man, it was nothing anyone could see from a distance. Artie could ride any unbroken horse, make his way into any mine like he was a night-roaming bird, and swim in lake water like a trout. For all that, he had a way that made most men willing to walk with him. Sometimes he met an enemy. Not often was he struck.
Merle Ambrose was Artie’s godfather or something like it. Some said Merle was the son of the devil himself, got on a mother that didn’t know who was getting on her, and some said that Merle was the Pendragon family’s angel, the man who made them the money, always by the side of the men of the family, advising and insisting. Nobody knew how old Merle was. He claimed he was personal friends with George Washington, but that was a tall tale. He and Uther were thick as thieves, Merle forever coming round at Uther’s behest, or at his own, with plans for Artie’s future, first with books to read, next with companies to buy, later with women to marry to get himself out of trouble. That’s how he got Gwinn, around the time he needed a wife to walk beside him, someone to help him look like the straight and narrow of society was where he belonged. Artie came into being with the assistance of Merle too: Artie’s dad was sailing with Merle on Lake Erie one fine day
in 1850, and stopped at an island to shoot birds. That’s where he met Artie’s mother who he’d seen wading into the lake, gathering mussels, on land her family’d occupied for centuries, the legend goes, and then her husband was killed in an accident, and maybe that was the true story and maybe it wasn’t. Uther took his new wife back to Chicago, even though she had three daughters. The daughters were brought to the mainland and dropped off at an orphanage. One got herself to medical school and became a doctor. The other two ended up married off and gone. When Artie was born, Artie’s dad sent him off too, and what Artie’s mother thought about that I don’t know. Artie was brought to my dad by Merle Ambrose just after he was born. It was Merle’s maneuvering that left me with Artie as my brother, so I couldn’t hate the man. Artie had a younger sister too, who came out of nowhere, father unknown, after Artie was already well grown. I remember the day she arrived out here. She was maybe 13 years old, called herself Moony, came up to the door and said “I’m the one who’ll set this to rights.” She got to working for Merle, learning all his tricks, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think it was Moony who-
All the bad things were Uther and Merle’s ideas, though, hear me on that. The running for President, the March on Washington, some attempt at fixing sins best kept in the—and who ever knew what those sins were? I didn’t. Artie wasn’t a man for confession.
Don’t let me get distracted. Back to the girl and the betrayer.
Artie had a weakness for girls as well as for gold, but his dowsing often went wrong when it came to women. Artie had bastards all around the country, and some of those girls he’d promised to marry, and others he’d negotiated in rooms full of whiskey and bees, and it’s not my place to say that Artie took after his daddy in this regard, but
“Who’s she really?” I asked Artie.
He laughed and said “A guest of the Pendragon Company, Jerome Lought’s wife. I invited her to lunch.”
Jerome Lought worked for Artie. I knew, just by looking, that Margaret Lought would bring Artie nothing good. Try telling Artie that, though. The only men Artie ever listened to were out of town, both of them, on a monthlong trip to Chicago. The girl smiled at Artie, and he smiled back at her, and that was the end of any chance I had of preventing the end of everything from happening.
14. A birth certificate
The father’s name is redacted, but over time the silver pen used to fill in the certificate has bled slightly through the black ink meant to obliterate it. The name is unclear, but its ghost floats just beneath the ink.
Name of Child: Dred Moore Lought
Mother’s Name: Margaret Lought
Father’s Name: █████ Jerome Lought
Date of Birth: May the First, Eighteen Hundred Seventy-Five
15. A small wooden crate
Addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Jerome Lought with a return address to Mr. Arthur Pendragon. Containing a child-size baseball glove. Box labeled Return to Sender. An additional annotation scored into the crate, likely with a knife: How dare you —M
16. A clipping from the Chicago Record, March 25, 1894
A March of Destitutes & Demons
THIRD INSTALLMENT
Massillon, Ohio. At approximately five o’clock in the morning on the 24th of March, the first freight train pulled into the station in Massillon, and men emerged from coal car empties, all en route to the Pendragon estate. Neither Ambrose nor Pendragon seemed startled by this turn of events, and throughout the day, men continued to pour into Massillon, thousands of them, certain employment awaited if only they asked. By evenfall, the grounds were thronged with men of all stripes.
“In the morning, we march!” Pendragon shouted from a platform recently erected in the center of the grounds. “Tonight, you eat and drink your fill! All of you! There’s more where this came from!”
With that, barrels of whisky and whole spit-roasted pigs were brought out. Vats of hot coffee steamed in the chilly evening air, and all in all, the effect on the assembled was as though God had appeared on Earth. With cries of rapturous good feeling, the newly enlisted men of Arthur’s Army kicked up their heels, and the press corps did, too, though the press, to a man, continued to take notes. This reporter made his rounds to the edge of the woods where Miss Moony stood, watching the proceedings. This reporter noticed that one of the Mexican silver buttons had become unstudded from her vest, and that she was tossing it in the air to entertain herself.
“And you?” this reporter asked her. “Why are you here?”
“To set things to rights,” she replied, and smiled. “And you?”
“To set things to rights,” this reporter replied.
“I’d look into the old man,” she said. “If I were you.”
“Which one?” this reporter replied, somewhat in jest. Though there were indeed several old men in evidence, there was one much older than the rest.
“Any of them,” Miss Moony said. “They’ve all got secrets they’re hiding. People say Merle Ambrose is nothing but the son of the devil himself, and Arthur Pendragon, well—”
She tossed her silver button high into the air. This reporter could have sworn it merged with the waning moon. “You don’t need me to tell you. If I’m not mistaken, you’re here to dig all the secrets out. Everyone’s got their own way of doing it. Me, I’ve got some dyed turkey feathers and some leather fringe, and you’d be surprised what you learn when you don’t look to them like you’re learning. Or mayhap, you wouldn’t be surprised in the least. I’ve got a loaded pistol, and you’ve got a loaded pen, and both of us walk around here under their noses. We might as well be a couple of cigar store Indians, for all they notice us.”
She adjusted her headdress and winked at this reporter.
“It’s all in the trick shots,” she said before striding away into the dark.
Mr. Uther Pendragon happened at that moment to appear, riding in a small phaeton pulled by a white mare.
“Strike up the band!” shouted Ambrose, and a brass band of disconcerting volume strode out from the Pendragon mansion, playing as they marched.
“Bring out the girls!” he shouted, pointing up at the sky, where a flock of birds was once again passing. Suddenly, and this reporter must acknowledge his own consumption of whisky, there were a number of girls in the grass, all dressed to dance.
When this reporter found his way to bed, it was nearly dawn, and he was not the only one up late dancing on the portable dance floor Merle Ambrose had seen fit to install.
To be continued…
17. A photograph
A young woman in an embroidered silk gown, black hair parted in the middle, cheeks and lips hand-tinted pink. A gum label on the reverse reads Gwinn Ever-LeGrande,*4 1882.
18. A letter, handwritten in burgundy ink, from Gwinn Ever-LeGrande to Arthur Pendragon
Richmond, Virginia
April 15, 1882
Dearest Artie (if I may),
Tell me all your secrets! No girl can marry a man whose secrets she doesn’t know, and you’ve been in the world longer than I, so you must have some, mustn’t you? My father says you’re a good man. Are you a good man, or just a rich man? Does he think you’re a good man because he works for you and your father, or because he knows you?
Tell me every single detail about your parents, about your boyhood, which must be filled with intrigue! Tell me what it’s like to be your wife! I’ve a trunk full of the latest fashions from Paris! What is it like in Ohio? Will there be dances?
All I know of you is that you’re handsome and tall, and that you’ve never married, and that you’ve asked my father’s blessing. He’s given it, but my mother tells me I must withhold mine until I receive a full accounting.
With warmest wishes,
Miss Gwinn Ever-LeGrande
19. An invoice, annotated
On letterhead printed with a logo of an eye and the slogan We Never Sleep.
Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency
Chicago, Illinois
21 June 1882
For services regarding the tracing of one boy: $2000. $0.
* * *
—
Having discovered the former whereabouts of the missing boy, I’ve additionally discovered that the missing boy is no longer living, having passed away due to fever at some point in the intervening seven years. Please find enclosed a piece of naïve art discovered in the course of investigation. As requested, I return to you, as well, your initial letter and its enclosed clipping. No copies have been made.
Your Investigator,
Allan Pinkerton*5
20. A child’s drawing
In colored pastel, two figures: one a small boy with a shock of white hair, the other a tall man with a shock of white hair. Both depicted smiling. The drawing is water-stained.
21. A clipping from Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer, June 2, 1875
Loss of the Malory
Cleveland. On the stormy night of May 31st, the passenger steamship Malory was engulfed near West Sister Island. Certain observers hold that the vessel had departed Cleveland early that morning wholly un-crewed, and others maintain that a single man was seen weeping on the dock, carrying a bundled cargo piece by piece to the ship, before returning to two other men who waited on the shore.
Malory proceeded without incident until midnight, when a chaotic storm commenced, lightning, thunder, and gale-force winds, and Malory collided with the barge Questing Beast, careened over to the leeward side and went down directly.
As the fog dispersed, the crew of Questing Beast was astounded to discover, in Lake Erie’s waters, an infant. Captain Lusk reports that the baby had distinctive white hair, and that he looked up at the Captain himself with a stormy expression before beginning to swim.