Power in the Blood

by Greg Matthews

  Omie had enjoyed her trips through the shed: the suddenly intensified rumbling from the wheels; the immediate darkness enfolding the train; the sense of speed intensified by the closeness of the wooden walls outside the car windows. The conductor had gone through the train, telling all the passengers to close their windows before the entrance to the shed was reached, to save them all from the filth and smell of the locomotive smoke and fumes that would sweep back along the train as it passed through. He had not said the fumes were poisonous, but Zoe had told Omie of a freight train that had lingered too long in another high-pass tunnel, elsewhere in the Rockies, and of the engine crew that suffocated in their open cab, overcome by the belching of the thing they tended. That had been a tunnel through rock, Zoe said, and the snow shed was made of wood, with sunlight visible between the slats, but Omie saw that with the shed buried beneath snow as it was, the interior would be darkened as surely as if it ran through solid rock. The three-mile shed would be a dangerous place now, because of the snow piled above and around it, and trains passing through could not pause for any reason, or risk death by suffocation for everyone aboard.

  Her wings stiffened and folded, and Omie fell from the sky, plummeting back into her body, which promptly fell over. Her legs were without feeling from having been held beneath her while she flew, and as the blood returned to them in a prickling rush, Omie heard her name being called. Mama must have become worried about her being outside the cabin for so long, and gone outside to look for her. Omie could not call out to her, so intense was the tingling fire sweeping along her legs, but she smiled in anticipation of what Mama would say when Omie crawled from beneath the spruce, because Omie knew how to rob the train without her uncles having to fire a single bullet from their gun.

  53

  Rowland had brought the pictures to Leo’s notice with some expectation of anger, but was surprised at its extent. Leo became outraged as he looked at the half-dozen skilled renderings of himself in gross caricature, mounting a voluptuously overblown Lovey Doll Pines. From his own inked lips came the words: What a fine piece of flesh you are, Imogen; and the woman beneath him sighed: For such a wealthy fellow as you, Leo, I’d he a Lovey Doll.

  The sketches were signed: Rembrandt van Rubens.

  “Where did these abominations come from!”

  “Everywhere you look. Someone has gone around the town at night, pasting them up wherever there’s a wall.”

  Leo gaped at another rendering of himself and Lovey Doll; this time he wore a crown, and was saying: A whore, a whore, my kingdom for a whore! Lovey Doll, her legs splayed like a tree hit by lightning, responded: I have whinnying ways, and will never say neigh to you, my rich man love, for your lust is unbridled.

  “Find the person responsible, and bring his name to me!”

  “Yes, Leo.”

  Another was examined; Lovey Doll gazed at herself in a mirror while Leo labored behind her, sweat popping from his brow. Lovey Doll said: Mirror; mirror, in my hand, who’s the richest in the land. Leo’s reply was: That must be me she’s talking about. How lucky I am to own a whore who cares!

  “Don’t just stand there!”

  “Of course, Leo.”

  Rowland left, wondering again if he had hitched his wagon to a falling star.

  Leo pored over the renderings again; was he really that big in the belly, that bald around the pate? Lovey Doll would pay for this. There was no one else to affix blame upon, so she would carry the burden. She sickened him in any case, with her servile acquiescence to his every whim; she did it for his money, as depicted by the anonymous caricaturist, and Leo was ashamed, humiliated that his private vice had been displayed before the public gaze. No matter how rich he was, no matter how people might smile to his face, he would never live down such biting sarcasm. He was not sure what he would do with the guilty party, when found. It was a shame such a distraction should arise when every fiber of Leo’s being was concentrated on the nearing of his golden elk. That was the thing most suited to his thoughts, not the squalid snipings of some hate-filled individual out there armed only with only a pen and ink.

  Could this somehow be the work of Zoe, he wondered?

  When the Dugans and Fay left Lodi’s cabin, few words were passed. Lodi wished them well in their enterprise, and Levon expressed a wish to come along, but without conviction. Nate said not a word, and set the seal on their departure with a stream of tobacco juice from his lips onto the snow.

  A line drawn between Carbondale and Glory Hole by crow flight would have measured little more than sixty miles, but on horseback the journey was closer to ninety, and required four days. In Leadville, Drew gathered up every newspaper for bulletins on the progress of the train, and learned that it had been delayed again near the Kansas line by snowdrifts on the tracks too deep to plow through; it was at least three days from its destination, and probably five. There was time enough for the Dugans to visit the site of their ambush and perfect the details of their proposed plan to steal the elk away.

  The original trail to Glory Hole that Zoe and Omie had traveled along with the El Dorado Engineers was now little used, all freight and most individuals preferring to travel there in comfort aboard the twice-daily train from Leadville. The Dugans saw no one as they rode along the winding roadway reaching for the mountain passes, and were grateful for the railroad and for the cold that ensured the aloneness essential to their plan, which was, they all agreed, Omie’s plan.

  When it was proposed to him, Clay was amused, then annoyed at so flagrant a denial of common sense being accepted by Drew and Zoe. “It can’t work,” he had told them, “because there’s no guarantee she can do this thing she wants to. If she can’t do it on demand, at exactly the right moment, then it won’t work.”

  “And we’ll ride away, sadder but wiser,” Zoe said, “and live well on the money Omie and I have hidden in a safe place.”

  “It’s pure foolishness to build your hopes on something so wild and unpredictable as her being able to do what she says, exactly the way she says. I’m against it.”

  And yet he went with them when they saddled their horses to leave. Omie had said he would be there, and somehow he could not fight against involvement so mandated, no matter how harebrained the scheme that placed him there. His mouth uttered misgivings, but Clay’s thoughts were all directed to the atheist’s prayer—naked trust and a pair of crossed fingers.

  Omie knew the shack would be there, perched on a bluff overlooking the snow shed’s western entrance. They assumed, after listening to her description of its appearance and location, that it was some kind of service shack, probably stocked with items necessary to maintenance of the shed itself, and Clay anticipated having to shoot off the lock he presumed would hold its door secure against thieves and unwarranted interlopers. But when they arrived at the place, the Dugans found it occupied by as unlikely a party as themselves.

  Lovey Doll blanched as her eyes passed over the sketches. She knew immediately who the artist was. “Rembrandt van Rubens” was the name Nevis Dunnigan had used when he concocted funny drawings for her amusement back in Kansas City. She had not realized it was a joke until some years later, in the library of her San Francisco rich man, who owned an extensive collection of books containing reproductions of the world’s finest art. The question facing her now was whether or not to tell Rowland Price.

  “Outrageous, aren’t they,” said Price, but Lovey Doll was aware of the smirk on his lips. “Leo is determined to find the fellow who drew these. Do you have any idea who it might be?”

  “No.”

  “If Leo is unable to find the guilty party, he’ll be very angry. On the other hand, anyone assisting him will be rewarded. I might add that Leo is rather surprised that anyone in Glory Hole should know your real name.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Miss Pines, do you think Leo is such a fool as not to know everything about you. This is your name,” he said, pointing to the words spilling from the mouth of the woma
n beneath Leo Brannan. “Lovey Doll. Please don’t waste my time by denying it.”

  Lovey Doll felt faint. Could Leo’s change of nature have been prompted by his discovery? Would he still be inclined to marry her now that he knew who and what she was? She felt tinglings of panic begin to swarm across her skin. If Leo abandoned her, where could she go, what could she possibly do? Nevis had betrayed her with his lewd drawings, turned her expectations upside down.

  “Dunnigan,” she blurted. “Nevis Dunnigan.”

  “Ah, the erstwhile promoter of the Sleeping Savage.”

  “Tell Leo I want him punished,” said Lovey Doll.

  Rowland’s smirk deepened. “I advise you to make no demands at all on Mr. Brannan’s tolerance of you; in fact I’ll go so far as to warn you that he would consider it a favor if you were to pack up everything you own and depart Glory Hole as quickly as you can. You and your friend Dunnigan have attempted to make a fool of an important man.”

  “It wasn’t me! It was Dunnigan! I won’t leave.…”

  Rowland placed his hat upon his head and began walking to Lovey Doll’s front door. “That is a decision only you can make, Miss Pines, but bear in mind, you are not the owner of this house. You live here on Leo’s sufferance. Do think seriously about what I’ve said, won’t you. And by the way, Miss Pines, may I convey to Leo any news of the little one?”

  “Little one …?”

  “You informed him some time ago that you were with child. I must say I can see no evidence for such an event. Are you too tightly corseted, Miss Pines, or shall I tell the father that he is not to be any such thing?”

  “Get out … Get out!”

  When she heard the door close behind him, Lovey Doll fell to the floor and began to spit and scream, rolling back and forth along, the carpet, utterly without control of herself. If she could have shot Nevis Dunnigan she would have, but she had no idea where he lived, and in any case, she had given him her only pistol some time ago, in the vain hope that he might become so distrustful of Rowland Price he would kill the man. That had not happened, and now everything was at risk—her marriage to Leo, even her continuation as his mistress; Nevis had destroyed it all. Only when she began literally to choke upon her own rage did Lovey Doll stop herself and lie quietly on the floor, listening to her galloping heart, listening also to the distant shattering of her dreams.

  Rowland went to the offices of the agent whose store had been rented by Nevis Dunnigan for display of the Sleeping Savage, and was given the address of the lessee. Rowland explained matters to Sheriff Simms and his deputy, and all three went to Nightsoil Smith’s residence, where they found no one at all, only the odoriferous honey cart, with a message chalked on its tank: LEO BRANNAN AND HIS WHORE BELONG IN HERE.

  Clay and Drew watched from a ledge above the shack near the entrance to the snow shed. There were three people below, two men and a woman, and all appeared drunk. Their open wagon, with the legend ICE on its side, was nearby.

  “They aren’t railroad people,” Clay said, “or they would’ve come on a handcar along the tracks, and what’s a woman doing with them?”

  “To keep them warm?” Drew suggested.

  “There goes the bottle again. They’re having a high old time. Well, we can’t use that place, not with them in it, unless you want to pretend you’re a railroad man and go down and tell them to leave.”

  Drew shook his head. “It wouldn’t be smart to let anyone know we’re here, even a bunch of drunks. Maybe there’s a shack at the other entrance.”

  It was decided to ride further along the pass to see if such a shack existed. Drew volunteered to do this while Clay went back to explain things to the women. Everyone was cold and in need of shelter. The weather had been kind, without further snow, but temperatures at night were well below freezing. Drew returned after a difficult ride through deep snow, and reported that there was another shack at the far end.

  “I saw wheel ruts too,” he said. “Those drunks drove their wagon along the railroad tracks from Glory Hole, not along the trail from Leadville. They must’ve had lamps and come straight on through the shed.”

  “Bunch of fools. They’re lucky a train didn’t meet them halfway in.”

  “The shack’s like the one at this end, big enough for all of us, and there’s a draw just a few hundred yards from it that’s protected from the wind good enough for horses, practically no snow at all in there. We can use it if we want to, Clay.”

  “Doesn’t look like we have any choice. I went and looked at the drunks again, and they’ve unhitched their team and put them in the shack. They’re not going anywhere.”

  “You don’t think they’re fixing to do what we’re fixing to do?”

  “Three drunks, rob a train? They couldn’t be so stupid, liquored or not, and one of them’s a woman.”

  “Most of our bunch is female too,” Drew pointed out.

  “But we’ve got Omie,” said Zoe, “and they don’t.”

  The fact that everything depended on Omie made Clay uneasy. It was a cowardly way to attempt such a thing, he believed, even if the plan would not place her in harm’s way, if it came off as intended.

  Once across the Colorado line, as the train began climbing the gentle slope that would carry it away from the plains, Boysie Frazier felt his nervous state enter a new kind of excitation. Perhaps it was the air, which grew more rarefied as the elevation of the rails increased, or maybe it was the reduced number of days and hours remaining for bandits, should they wish to attempt a robbery. This was so remote a probability Boysie tended to dismiss it, but he could not help but be aware of his own anxiety.

  By the time Denver was reached, near midnight, nine days after the train had left Pittsburgh, Boysie was fidgeting unconsciously, making more outside inspections than before, and causing comment among his men, all of whom were heartily tired of the assignment by then. Boysie promised them all a change of clothing and as much soap and bathwater as they could use, once Glory Hole was reached and their work was done. The weather was fine, although cold, and it was estimated that, barring any sudden avalanches in the mountains, the train should arrive in Glory Hole sometime in the afternoon, the day after next. Boysie had received a clutch of reports from a representative of the Denver Pinkerton office. Telegrams from Pueblo, Salida, Buena Vista and Leadville all confirmed that the tracks were open and passable.

  While the tender’s fuel and water were replenished, Boysie looked across the darkened marshaling yards and attempted to reassure himself all was well, and would continue in that vein until the job was completed. He admired the way in which the local office had distributed false news that established the train’s time of arrival in Denver at a little after dawn the next day, by which time it would in fact be approaching Pueblo. It was a precaution taken to lessen any chance of the train’s being mobbed by the curious, and Boysie fully approved of the deception. Subterfuge practiced in the name of the law was a good thing, unlike its outlaw cousins, cunning and deceit.

  He strolled around the train, along one side and back down the other. Like everyone else aboard, Boysie was irritated by his own grime and the uncomfortable bunks that had provided too little sleep. The company had considered changing the complete team three times during the trip, then lowered the cost of that plan by deciding to change the team just once, at the midway point, then finally calculated that it was far cheaper to keep just one team aboard the train, from Pittsburgh all the way through to Glory Hole. It would mean considerable hardship for those concerned, but would save the company a lot of money. The job of overseeing what would undoubtedly be a somewhat cantankerous crew by journey’s end befell Boysie Frazier, who was known to have qualities of physical endurance few other men possessed. He had been instructed to set an example, and thus far was confident he had done so, despite the trying circumstances of having been delayed, for days sometimes, by the early onset of winter.

  But he did wonder about one small yet disturbing thing. During those occasiona
l moments when he was able to sleep, Boysie had experienced a recurring dream. He was not given to dreaming as a rule, and had never dreamed the same dream twice, so far as he could recall, and yet he had seen the girl with the blue face four times now. She had spoken without moving her lips, always the same message: The tunnel. Don’t go in. He had come awake from each of these baffling visitations, shocked by the accelerated pace of his own heartbeat, the sweat covering his skin and the peculiar tingling of his fingertips. It had been the same each time, but it was not the repetition of the message that upset Boysie so much as the separate inquiries he had received from three other men aboard the train. In every case, the men had asked if there was a tunnel anywhere along the line to Glory Hole. Boysie had assured each man that there was not a single tunnel, no stretch of track that burrowed into rock for even a few yards, and had witnessed the relief in their faces. When asked by him why they wished to know, the men had said they were merely asking for the sake of it. Their replies were unconvincing, their manner shamefaced. How was it that four men (and possibly more) had dreamed identical dreams? Boysie did not dare raise the subject for fear of ridicule and a loss of general confidence in his ability as leader, but he could not forget the message or the messenger.

  She still could not reconcile herself to being with the Dugans. If she had been with Drew alone, Fay might have been able to maintain her composure, but surrounded as he was by family, Drew was distant with her, even a little short-tempered. She had thrown in her lot with them for his sake, and she could not see why he chose to be so ungrateful. Nothing about being with the Dugans appealed to Fay, or led her to believe in the success of their plan. A robbery perpetrated by a girl was not something she could truly believe in, and Fay hoped, as they waited together for the train, that Drew at least would see sense and declare himself unable to proceed with so idiotic a scheme. Fay supposed the mere fact that Omie was herself a Dugan, or at least half a Dugan, gave the rest a kind of faith in her abilities, however remote from the business of train robbery Omie’s talent might be. Fay was not a Dugan, and feared for them all.