by Jessie Haas
“We’d better shut the door so they don’t get into the oats,” Abby said. “Can you help?”
The door was a wide one, mounted on an iron roller. Abby pushed and Phin pulled feebly, and they got it closed.
“Now back by the stove. You’re going to have another cup of tea and you’re going to sleep some more.”
And he did.
When he woke again it was dark, inside and out. A candle on the table barely illuminated part of the kitchen. The grandmother sat in a rocking chair, a blanket wrapped around her. The shine of her eyes told Phin she was watching them.
Phin sat up. He still ached, but more distantly, and he didn’t feel stronger so much as lighter. It was easy to sit up because he weighed nothing.
The grandmother pressed her finger to her lips. The chair creaked as she got out of it, bringing him a cup.
“Abby says you’re to drink this.”
“I—need to go out first.”
“Go, then. Shh.”
Phin glanced at the shape beside him on the blankets. Fraser lay staring at the ceiling, chewing his lower lip. His eyes still had that over-brilliant glitter, but as Phin rose they turned his way, clear and lucid. Phin felt a jump of alarm, which he hoped didn’t show. He gave Fraser a little nod and slipped out the door.
The moon was up. Phin followed the trail of footprints to the outhouse. Around the corner of the barn he heard crunching and looked uphill. Two horse shapes bowed their heads and pawed the snow. A cow shape stood watching.
The beauty stopped Phin. Weak and clearheaded, he took in the world around him. White pastures stretched up the hill. The color of the leaves was visible in the moonlight; their spicy scent was present in every breath, cooled and freshened by snow.
He walked up toward the animals. The mare whooshed her breath at him. The stallion touched his nose to hers. Phin turned his back, did what he’d come out for. After a moment he felt a nudge on his arm.
He stroked the stallion’s face, his flowing forelock, the hollows above his eyes. The high neck curved around him. The stallion pushed at the pocket of this coat—
—that didn’t belong to Phin. Horse that didn’t belong to him; farm that didn’t belong to him, under a moon that belonged to no one. Nothing belonged to Phin Chase and he felt a wild joy rising; because of that, or anyway. He was alive. Fraser was alive and the horses and cow and the women, the trees—all alive. He wanted to sing, or strike one of those long keening notes on a fiddle; failing that, to run his hand along the neck of a beautiful horse seemed a kind of singing.
The stallion turned away from the empty pocket with a faint sigh. Phin searched his pants for the last nugget of tobacco. His hands found knife, wooden matchbox; Plume’s money.
He looked down at the dimly lit kitchen window. As he watched, it was blocked briefly; the grandmother maybe, peering out. Maybe Fraser had asked her to. He was awake in there, aware. Injured though he was, he hadn’t forgotten his mission, and there was no guarantee as to what would happen next. Phin might get sicker, fall into Fraser’s power. He might waken in handcuffs—
Or it might all go another way entirely. But whatever Fraser was—lawman, Pinkerton agent, some higher-up in the Sleepers, even; that was remotely possible—Phin knew there was one thing he had to do.
His fingers, by now, knew the difference between the money and the letter or list, whatever it was. He took it out of his pocket. Gripping it in his teeth, he pulled off the tight cover of the box and shook out a match, struck it on one of the stone gateposts and held it near the paper.
Last chance; for power, if this was power. To bargain, if Fraser wanted it.
Last chance to read the thing.
Worth the lives of six men.
Maybe they were mine supervisors, like Engelbreit. Maybe they were Sleepers, killers like Plume; or heroes fighting for their people; or both. It didn’t matter. Whoever they were, the power that paper held over them didn’t belong to Phin or Plume. It didn’t belong to Fraser either.
Phin touched the flame to the corner of the paper and dropped the match hissing in the snow. The bright, pure flame blossomed up the sheet, making the handwriting stand out briefly black and stark. The glow warmed his face.
Then the heat reached his fingers. He let the paper fall. It curled, and the flames sank to a tracery of embers. Phin crouched and felt where he’d last seen it. There was nothing left.
24
BLOODHOUND
The 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.
25
THE TRANSPARENT EYE
The 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.”