Paint the Wind

by Cathy Cash Spellman

  Jason seemed nearly as stricken by Aurora's fall from grace as Fancy was; he'd taken such pleasure in the company of Fancy's beautiful daughter, in her adoration and need of him. He consulted the best specialists in New York and was told unequivocally that opium addiction had no cure... that the only known treatment for an addict would consist of replacing the opium craving with laudanum, a drug that would keep the patient docile, floating in a hazy stupor, for years, until she died. He understood Fancy's unwillingness to accept such a bleak prognosis, so although he feared the trip would be futile, he hired guards to get them safely to Leadville and to Wu.

  He told Fancy he would join them there, as soon as he could arrange his affairs. If Wu failed in his ministrations, and Aurora had to be institutionalized, as the doctors said would be the inevitable case, Jason knew of a hospital in the mountains north of Denver where wealthy men of his acquaintance discreetly placed their insane wives or children for safekeeping, with little probability of anyone ever knowing the sad truth. He was a realist, not a mother—he expected that before the month was out the exquisite Aurora would have left the real world behind her for good.

  Fancy left Aurora in the care of the Pinkertons, in a borrowed room at the Crown under Jewel's watchful eye—she couldn't bear to go to Jason's. She'd never felt she belonged in the hunting lodge; for that matter, she no longer felt she belonged in Leadville. What a sordid homecoming, she thought as she spilled out the story to Jewel and Rufus; she could see in their responsive eyes that each remembered the long-ago day when she and Aurora had come home to Leadville to start a new life there together.

  "You sure Wu knows how to cure this thing?" Jewel asked. "I cain't recall ever hearin' anybody got free of opium, honey. Maybe you better keep a tight rein on those hopes of yours."

  "I'm not sure of anything, Jewel, but there's nowhere else to turn. The doctors in New York will put her into a sanitorium and keep her on laudanum forever. Jewel, you know that's nothing but a living death—I can't let that happen to my daughter. There's got to be a way to save her."

  "Ever see anybody cured of opium?" Rufus asked when Jewel had walked Fancy to the door and returned to the bar. Jewel shook her head dolefully.

  "Me neither. She better off daid, 'steada in one of dem asylums." Jewel nodded, unable to speak, and walked upstairs to calm herself with a passage from her mother's Bible. If the Lord was Fancy's Shepherd, He sure had let one of her lambs wander off into dangerous terrain.

  Leadville's Chinatown had grown to be Wu's kingdom. There must be opium dens here, too, Fancy thought with a shudder; she didn't believe Wu would ever be party to them, but she knew they could not exist without his sanction. She was sure she'd heard him say once that there was a cure....

  Fancy waited in Wu's elaborate parlor for him to enter; the room was filled with exquisite objects, and the heady scent of incense perfumed the air. He'd grown far more prosperous over the years than she had ever imagined; Jewel had told her Wu had banking interests in the Chinatown of San Francisco, and that he'd made money on a lottery he began there, but she was startled, nonetheless, by the aura of gilded opulence that surrounded her.

  Wu appeared soundlessly; he wore the robe of a Mandarin, gold threads etched flying cranes on the back and funnel sleeves, and crimson silk trimmed the neck and hem. He bowed to Fancy as in former times; she bowed, too, then ran to hug him, before blurting out her story. Wu shook his head several times during the recitation, his eyes dark with concern.

  "You are aware that the way back from this addiction is steep and treacherous?" he asked carefully, when she'd finished speaking.

  "Then there is a way back?"

  The Chinese pursed his lips; his eyes betraying nothing of hope. "Sometimes... it is possible. Very difficult. Very painful. Without guarantee. But possible." He drew the words out slowly, as if inspecting each one. "Very bad to watch as the addicted one withdraws from the drug. Sometimes they die."

  Fancy swallowed hard. "And if we don't try your way?"

  "Then Aurora will inevitably perish from the drug... perhaps a long time from now, in her own world of oblivion." He'd offered neither condemnation nor sympathy.

  "Then we have no choice but to try to save her," Fancy answered uneasily; what was it he was not saying? "Will you do this for me, Wu?"

  He continued, ignoring her words. "There is more to know. This addiction is a disease of the spirit, Fancy, not the body. We may cure the symptoms, if the Gods are merciful, but the desire for the opium may remain in your daughter. If this happens, she will merely find another method to destroy herself. Most times this is what happens."

  Fancy drew back. It had never occurred to her that if a means could be found to cure the addiction, Aurora would not be saved.

  "All disease begins in the spirit, Fancy, and must be healed there. But opium destroys the spirit... eats away at it and erodes the will to remain in this world. The energy body becomes immured in etheric mucus, so that it is nearly impossible for the addict to reach the higher mind. My medicaments can mend the body, perhaps, but only Aurora can mend her own soul." Fancy sat very still for a heartbeat.

  "You will help me to try, Wu?" she asked in desperation. The old man hesitated a moment, then nodded.

  "Bring her here and prepare your own spirit for the assault she will wage against you. Addiction is a disease of the backbone, too, Fancy... she will blame you for everything, and take no responsibility for her own actions. You may be forced to face your own demons, your own failures, your own worst terrors before we are through... you cannot know now what you embark upon.

  "Bring the oldest clothes you own, clothes you will not want again. By one week's end, we will know if the girl will live, at the end of two we will know her resolve." He hesitated, then spoke again.

  "Prepare yourself to learn, Fancy, no matter the outcome. You can be only a witness on your daughter's path... her choices are her own. This is the Universal Law."

  He let Fancy out the door, a great sadness in his heart as he watched her retreating figure. "Destiny," Wu murmured into the gathering gloom.

  Aurora shrieked vitriol at her mother as she was forcibly dragged into the room Wu had prepared. It was empty of all but cushioned floor mats, big enough for a man to lie on. The windows were closed and shuttered, the door was stoutly barred.

  The guards said they would stay, but Wu politely told them they would not be needed. "She's strong as a bull elephant," the older Pinkerton warned, "and meaner'n bad whiskey. You two watch your step with her."

  "I will subdue her, if need be," Wu replied with equanimity, but it wasn't until Fancy saw him parry the girl's attack, in an astonishing display of physical strength and dexterity, that she understood his confidence.

  Aurora alternately screamed and vomited, sweated, clawed the walls, and slept in fitful snatches. Wu made her sip a pungent liquid, when she was reasonable, and battled her to the ground, when she was not. Fancy's senses reeled from the hatred Aurora spewed forth at her—a vituperative stream of ancient injuries, hugged close through the years, hoarded for this naked moment of brutal confrontation.

  Wu offered Fancy no solace in her maternal anguish.

  "The .gods honor you," he said once, and Fancy stared at him incredulously.

  "They believe you are equal to this test."

  Aurora lived through the week's ordeal; Fancy felt she had not been so ravaged by anything since the night of her daughter's birth. No one should be forced to give birth twice to the same person, she thought, and wondered at her own strange turn of mind.

  Two weeks after she and Aurora entered Wu's home, Fancy gratefully led her daughter back to Jewel's, so exhausted by the ugliness of all she'd endured, so imbalanced by the weight of her own failures, that she wanted only to bathe and to sleep. At least the pain had been worth the price, for Aurora had been snatched back from death. Wu had pronounced her daughter free of the drug that had enslaved her.

  A week after their return from Chinatown, the news wa
s brought to Wu that Aurora McAllister had presented herself at the House of the Plum Blossom where opium was dispensed. She had offered a small gold ring of Fancy's in exchange for an hour of bliss.

  Chapter 116

  Fancy let herself into the hunting lodge near midnight; she'd stayed all evening with Jewel, too disturbed by the news of Aurora's return to opium to face Jason.

  It was one-thirty by the ormolu clock on the parlor mantel, and the servants had long since gone to bed. Fancy's head throbbed mercilessly; even Jewel's compassionate common sense had not been able to console her. The girl slept upstairs, her dreams doubtless drugged and deep. It was inconceivable to Fancy that after the horror of withdrawal, Aurora had again sought the drug... a disease of the spirit, Wu had called it, insanity of some fathomless kind was what it seemed to Fancy. Oh, my dear, desperate child, how can I reach your spirit to save you?

  A glass of warmed milk might help her sleep, she told herself. Fancy made her way across the black-and-white-tiled floor of the foyer, toward the kitchen; tomorrow she must figure out what to do next, for Jason would press her for answers she didn't have, and no matter what he advised her, there was no way on earth she would give up on trying to save her child.

  The voices startled her, Jason's and another man's in animated conversation; the sounds seemed to float somewhere just outside the kitchen window. Fancy halted near the open casement to listen—the voices drifted toward her from the French doors of Jason's study.

  "I have to hand it to you, Madigan," Jason's companion was saying; the voice sounded like John Henderson's, but the man's face was obscured by shadow and she couldn't be certain.

  "Who the hell else could manage to kill a woman's husband and still have her think he's her best friend."

  "Watch what you're saying," Jason growled. "Fancy may come home tonight."

  "Cut the crap, Jason, if she doesn't know by now, she never will. You know, I've been around you a long time and there's not much I don't know about how you operate, but it beats me how you can pull off some of the underhanded maneuvers you do and always come up smelling like a rose. Of course, you ended up with McAllister as your best friend even after you dynamited his mine, so I guess this kind of thing is just old hat for you."

  Kill the woman's husband, he'd said... dynamite his mine... Bandana died in that mine disaster! The words thundered inside Fancy until she thought her skull would explode. She clutched the edge of the kitchen sink for support; bile poisoned her throat and made her swallow hard to keep from gagging. She listened until the two men moved inside the house again, but the first words she'd heard echoed louder than all others in her mind.

  Like a sleepwalker, Fancy made her way up the servants' stairs and let herself into the guest room farthest from Jason's bedroom. If he found her, which was unlikely, she'd use the bad news about Aurora as her excuse for having hidden away. If he didn't find her, she'd simply pretend to have spent the night at Jewel's— whatever happened, she could not pass the night in his bed. She lay beneath the covers, paralyzed by the magnitude of what she'd heard. Jason killed Chance... Jason killed Bandana. She would have to find a way to avenge them both.

  Fancy waited for Jason to leave the house in the morning before making her presence known. She took a hasty cup of coffee and tried to organize her scattered thoughts. There had to be someone other than Henderson who knew the truth of what had happened to Chance. Aurora still slept as if dead; that would give her time to run the truth about Jason to ground. What she'd overheard wouldn't stand up in a court of law, but somewhere in Leadville, there must be evidence that would.

  Caz... the long-forgotten name had popped into her head in the middle of the night. Caz was their friend and an honest man; he might know something useful.

  Caz listened to what Fancy told him, an old sorrow in his heart. He'd always known the day would come when he must answer certain questions, but somehow he'd expected it would be Hart who would ask them. He stood up wordlessly and walked to a locked box in the center of the mantelpiece. He took a small key from his pocket and slowly inserted it into the lock, as if uncertain whether he was doing the right thing. Then he withdrew a piece of folded paper and stood with it held reverently in his hands, for quite some time, before speaking.

  "I thought I did right back then..." he said enigmatically. His eyes came up, seeking hers for understanding. "You were so smart in some ways, you and the boys, Fancy. And so god-awful dumb in other things, after Bandana died. I thought, 'If I give Hart this letter, he'll kill the bloody bastard and hang for it.' I couldn't let that happen, you know, Fancy, he was too good a man to waste on vengeance. There's a saying where I come from... If you go off after revenge, first dig two graves... So I took it meself, I did. Never told no one about it but my Annie." Caz looked to his wife for comfort, and Fancy searched the man's face uncomprehendingly; she saw tears hovering on the woman's averted eyelashes.

  "But the letter don't belong to me at the end, you see. It rightly belongs to Hart... and I knew someday he'd figger it all out and come to me for the answers. I never expected it would be you that'd come, Fancy, never once. Especially not after you married that bastard...." Caz shook his head in consternation, an honest man trying to intuit what was the right thing to do with what he alone knew.

  "I know Hart always loved you, Fancy—more than Chance, I'd say, because he was the better man. So I guess it'd be okay with him if I show you what Chance wrote before he died. Maybe I never should have taken it like I did... maybe they'd both want you to know the truth." Caz handed Fancy the letter and she saw how hard he fought for control.

  "I took the bloody thing off Chance's body that day, you see, when we found him up there in the cabin. I just didn't want Hart to come to harm because it drove him to some terrible vengeance. He was fiercer when he came back from the Apaches, Fancy... I knew he'd take revenge."

  With trembling fingers, Fancy unfolded the letter and read its contents.

  The handwriting, weak and erratic as it was, was clearly Chance's: "Dear Bro,

  I'm leaving this in hopes that one day you'll forgive me what I've done..."

  Caz watched the changes in Fancy's face as she read the damning words all the way to the end.

  "... have a good life and remember me to Fancy. She'll know what I meant to say."

  The woman's hands fell to her lap; she was unable to still their tremors, but her voice didn't falter when she spoke.

  "Hart must see this letter, Caz. He has a score to settle with Jason... and so do I. I'll cable him today to come home to us. Keep the letter safe until he gets here, won't you? And see he reads it the instant he steps off that train."

  She left Caz, unable to think clearly of anything but the fact that she was married to the man who had murdered Chance and" Bandana. Her mind traveled back in time as she rode away from Caz and Annie, the scenes of her life waxing and waning like images in a nickelodeon. Bandana interred forever in the bowels of the Fancy Penny... Chance's blood-soaked body left to die alone in the cabin where they'd first met... Hart's relentless love that had withstood everything but her own good-bye. She thought of all the good people who were lost to her, and counted her own failings honestly. She had urged Atticus on beyond his strength... had sent Chance into the bullet's path... had driven Hart from her life... for no reason, save that she have her own way, as always. Headstrong, they'd all called her in their time, and how she had rebelled against that word... Now she understood.

  She'd need proof to bring Jason to justice—Chance's letter would never be enough, not after all these years and not against a man with Jason's reputation. It was late in the day before she thought of suborning Henderson. There's no honor among thieves, she told herself, the banker isn't really Jason's friend, merely a greedy cohort; perhaps that greed could be turned to her own advantage. What if the man could be bribed? What if she could buy the knowledge he possessed to bring Jason down? Didn't she own a gold mine that had lain untouched through all the years? She would spe
nd the mother lode dry if it would buy her revenge.

  Fancy waited patiently in John Henderson's office. She'd thought of waiting for Hart's arrival before taking action, but even if he embarked as soon as he received her telegram, it would take weeks to cross an ocean and a continent. She couldn't conceive of living that long with Jason, knowing what he'd done.

  The banker nearly choked on his cigar when Fancy made him her proposition.

  "Why on earth should I help you, Fancy?" he asked, buying time to regain his composure. It had never lain easy on Henderson that Madigan had married the widow, after killing Chance. It seemed too like a Greek tragedy not to merit retribution of some sort.

  "Assuming I have the information you desire, Fancy, which of course I don't affirm, why precisely should I do as you ask?"

  "I am making the assumption that you acted out of avarice and not out of malice toward me or Chance, in implicating yourself in what Jason did to us, John. I'll see no charges are brought against you for complicity, and I'll pay you a king's ransom, if you'll help me bring Jason Madigan to justice."

  Henderson shook his head in consternation; Fancy McAllister Madigan could be a formidable ally or adversary, and what she suggested would bear considerable thinking through. Who could tell what she really knew, and whether without his help any of it would stand up in a court of law.

  "Forgive me, Fancy, if I'm naive, but it seems to me that with silver in flux, and Chance dying in financial straits, your major source of income is Jason. You can't be anywhere near as rich as he is, or of as much importance to me in future business, surely you must see that. What you're suggesting hardly makes sense to a man of 'avarice,' does it?"

  Fancy gauged her audience. "Perhaps it would, John, if I told you that I own a gold mine, the likes of which hasn't been seen since Sutter's Mill, and that I'd be willing to cut you in on a percentage of its profits, if you do as I've asked."