Whistler in the Dark

by Kathleen Ernst

  “I heard what you shed. What you said.”

  He’s drunk! Emma realized with disgust. She took a step back.

  “No, wait.” Dixie John held up one trembling hand. “I know.”

  “You know what?” Emma asked impatiently.

  “What—cher—lookin’ for,” he got out, as if she was an incredibly stupid girl who required great patience. “I dug too good, you shee.” He took another swallow from his cup and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Excuse me,” Emma muttered, but Dixie John managed to grab her wrist. “Itsh the gold!” he muttered. “You won’t believe me. But id—itsh all there. You can find it. You have to look ish … ish … th’ bird’s eye—”

  Blackjack’s hand dropped onto Dixie John’s shoulder. “I suspect Miss Emma has business elsewhere, my friend,” he said pleasantly. “And you are in no condition to talk with young ladies.” He nodded toward the door. “Go on,” he told Emma. “He won’t bother you. He always rambles when he’s drunk.”

  Emma wrenched her hand free and fled.

  CHAPTER 9

  THE WHISTLER

  As she bolted from the saloon, Emma almost plowed into Tildy Pearce. “Oh!” Emma exclaimed. “I beg your pardon!”

  Tildy’s tired eyes squinted into a smile. “I was so excited about meetin’ you this morning, I decided to head in early to make me some money.” She cocked her head toward the sound of the fiddle.

  “Tildy …” Emma hesitated. The skin on her wrist felt itchy where Dixie John had held it. “Is it safe for you to be in the saloon? I mean—some of the men get drunk.”

  “Most of the men are just lonely,” Tildy said with a shrug. “I keep away from the heavy gamblers. They’re the only ones to cause trouble. A man in debt is a desperate man.”

  “Well, good luck,” Emma said, not sure what else to say. “And oh—I haven’t forgotten about your land deed. I’ll ask my mother tonight.” She watched as Tildy disappeared into The Raven, ready to dance the evening away.

  The rain had stopped, and Emma held her skirt out of the mud as she hurried back to the newspaper office. Blackjack’s threat and Dixie John’s ramblings made her uneasy. The haunting whistled strains of Maggie by My Side echoed through her mind. When a passing man nodded politely in greeting, she jerked away, then forced herself to take a deep breath. It was suddenly hard to tell what was real and whom to trust.

  She found her mother and Mule Tom bent over the printing press. “Oh, Emma, there you are,” Mother said. “I was hoping you’d get back before I had to leave. Jeremy’s father and Mr. Boggs and some of the other men are forming a Safety Committee, since we don’t have a sheriff yet. They’re meeting tonight in the room above Mr. Boggs’s store. I’ve been invited to attend and write a story about it. Do you want to come?”

  Emma considered. This would be the first formal gathering Mother attended in her Reform Dress. Heaven only knew what reaction that would provoke! “I don’t think so. When are you going?”

  “In just a few minutes.”

  “Mother! It’s almost suppertime!”

  “You don’t mind going back by yourself, do you?” Mother asked.

  Yes! Emma wanted to say. Yes, I do mind. I always mind when your work is more important than me! Especially when scary things are happening! But the words wouldn’t come out.

  Mother bit her lip. “Emma, I won’t always work so hard,” she said after a moment. “I promise! But I want this story in the first edition of the paper, so we can send it off with Mr. Abbott’s brother when he heads back east. This first edition is so important, Emma! Once it’s done …”

  Emma nodded. She knew how important the first edition was. But she also knew that after that, other things would become just as urgent for Mother. There was no point making that observation, so she changed the subject. “Mother, I need to ask you something. I met a young woman today—Tildy Pearce. She wants to subscribe to the paper so badly that she’s selling dances at The Raven to earn the money.”

  “Gracious!” Mother’s eyebrows raised.

  “She and her husband bought some farmland from Mr. Spaulding. She has a receipt proving that they paid him for the land, but nothing else. She thinks she should have a deed to the land.”

  “Yes, that’s right.” Mother nodded. “Mr. Spaulding forgot to give it to her, no doubt. That man has the business sense of a caterpillar. She needs to press him on it, as I’ve had to do on the things he promised me.”

  “I’ll tell her.” Thinking of Tildy Pearce, gamely bobbing up and down in some lonely miner’s arms on the dance floor, made Emma want to do whatever she could to help.

  Mother pulled her cape from the peg by the door. “Thank you for your help today, Mule Tom,” she called, and to Emma she said, “Come along, dear. I’ll walk as far as the boardinghouse with you.”

  After Mother headed off to her meeting, Emma sat down to a miserable supper of beans and bacon in Mrs. Sloane’s dining room. Resentment simmered inside as Emma picked at her food. Living in a boardinghouse meant Mother never had to fix meals, and she’d hired a laundress to wash their clothes once a week. Living here makes it too easy for Mother! Emma thought. What if Mother decided she and Emma didn’t need a house after all?

  At least Dixie John didn’t show up for supper. Blackjack nodded pleasantly at Emma, then spent much of the meal sparring with Miss Amaretta. A man called Spuddy, who peddled supplies to distant mining camps, was also spending the night, and he talked nonstop about the need for decent roads into the mountains. Emma was glad to escape to her bedroom.

  Once there, she sat down at the desk with her notebook. She hadn’t learned anything useful that afternoon. Blackjack talked in circles. As for Dixie John … Emma shuddered as she remembered the smell of strong drink on his breath. What a horrible man! Surely she couldn’t put any stock in his drunken ramblings.

  Could she?

  Emma forced herself to recall their conversation. Most of what he said hadn’t made any sense. Still, he had tried to tell her something. Could she afford to overlook that?

  Closing her eyes, she listened again to his words exactly as she remembered them, then struggled to write them down. A bunch of nonsense! Itsh the gold! You won’t believe me. But id—itsh all there. You can find it. You have to look ish … ish … th’bird’s eye—

  “‘You can find it,’” she muttered, staring at the page. “‘Look ish’ … look with the bird’s eye? Look in the bird’s eye?” She snorted. What in thunderation did he mean?

  She chewed on the end of the pencil, then wrote Bird’s-eye map? Was Dixie John referring to the beautiful map hanging in Mr. Spaulding’s office? What else could he have meant? She stared out the window, puzzling over the questions as she absently watched a cluster of men hurry up the steps of The Raven—

  “Oh!” On the next line Emma wrote, The Raven? Could Dixie John have been referring to the saloon itself?

  Something else nagged at the back of her mind. Emma curled up in the chair, hugging her knees, as she tried to remember. Suddenly it came to her: Jeremy telling her about climbing the twin pines. “Climbs easy as a ladder,” he’d said, “and you get an eagle’s view once you’re up a ways.”

  Was that what Dixie John had meant? That if she climbed the tree and looked down on the whole town, she’d see something important?

  Emma stared at her notebook, trying to make sense of her ideas. Finally she shoved it away. “This is all nonsense!” she muttered, feeling foolish for even trying to make sense of a drunken man’s ramblings. In the morning, if Dixie John showed up for breakfast and seemed sober, she’d just ask him.

  After washing her face and visiting the outhouse, Emma was reaching for her nightgown when her hand stilled. Should she try to wait for The Whistler again? She eyed her bed wistfully. It had been a long day, and she was tired.

  She decided to curl up in the chair by her own window instead of waiting downstairs. She was turning over the exchange with Dixie John in her mi
nd when she dozed off.

  Whistled notes slid through the night like a ghost, jolting her awake. Maggie by My Side.

  Avoiding the window, Emma shot to her feet, raced through the hall, and skittered down the stairs. The last notes of the chorus reached her ears as she fumbled with the front door. She didn’t want to scare The Whistler away! Then she slipped into the damp night air, heart pounding.

  The whistling had stopped. Emma darted onto the boardwalk just in time to see a shadowy figure disappearing down the street, away from the more permanent buildings. Laughter spilled from The Raven, and a horse tied to the hitching rail out front snorted impatiently. No one else was in sight. Emma turned to follow the man.

  The saloon glowed with lamplight, as did the meeting room above Mr. Boggs’s store, and some of the miners camped near the creek had lit a small bonfire. Most of the town, however, was dark. Following the man away from the lively oasis of The Raven, Emma felt another flicker of unease. I shouldn’t be doing this, she thought—but she couldn’t bear to give up now, not when she was so close.

  The man had a good head start, but her prickling nerves warned her to move stealthily, keeping to the shadows. As she closed the gap, she noted that he was short and slightly built—and that he walked with a limp. Emma felt a sudden sheen of sweat on her skin. Surely this was the man who’d asked about the Hendersons during their journey west!

  The Whistler led her toward the outskirts of Twin Pines, where the scattered cabins and tents were shadowed and silent. Emma’s footsteps slowed. The half-moon slid behind a cloak of clouds, and the saloon noise had faded behind her. A sudden snarl split the night. Emma almost jumped from her skin. It’s just a couple of dogs fighting over an antelope bone, she told herself, but when one of the creatures slunk away from the shadow of a tiny cabin, she saw that it was a coyote instead. She stifled a cry and scurried backward.

  The Whistler had melted into the shadows, but Emma couldn’t will her feet to follow. An icy finger of fear traced down her spine. For a moment Emma stood rooted in the road, heart hammering. Then she snatched up her skirts and fled back to the boardinghouse.

  CHAPTER 10

  A LIKELY SUSPECT

  Emma woke the next morning very annoyed with herself. I was so close! she fumed. Twice yesterday she’d gotten spooked—once in the saloon when Dixie John was holding her wrist, and later following The Whistler. Her father had faced battle without running away! Surely she could have done better. Mother, who had slipped into bed long after Emma had curled lonely and cold under the covers, didn’t notice Emma’s mood. “The meeting was interesting,” she chattered as she pulled on her chemise. “I need to determine how much space we have left in the newspaper for the story. You can help me. Now—what do you think? Are you willing to wear your Reform Dress today?”

  “No!”

  Mother frowned. “Please change your tone, Emma. What has you in such a nettle this morning?”

  Emma twisted her mouth. Part of her longed to tell Mother that The Whistler was in Twin Pines. But Mother would surely scold Emma for not telling her sooner—and especially for trying to follow him alone. Emma was in no mood for a scolding. “Nothing,” she said finally. Mother cocked one eyebrow but let her be.

  Breakfast consisted of sourdough pancakes, stewed dried apples, and viciously strong coffee. Spuddy, the traveling peddler, started an argument by demanding that Mother write an editorial against the proposed treaty between the government and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians. “We need to run them from the territory!” he exclaimed. His poorly-dried deerskin suit rattled like old peapods with every indignant jab of his finger. “And the Utes, too!”

  “As I understand it, our army committed a massacre at Sand Creek in 1864,” Mother shot back. “I will not use my newspaper to promote such outrages …”

  Emma watched Spuddy’s face turn brick red. Lovely, she thought. Someone else who wasn’t happy with The Herald’s editor. The list seemed ever-growing.

  On Emma’s other side, Miss Amaretta launched a genteel assault on Blackjack’s line of business. “I suggest,” she concluded, “that you spend some time reading the Good Book instead of indulging in card games—”

  “My dear Miss Holly.” Blackjack smiled calmly. “Wasn’t it Paul the Apostle who said, ‘Let the women learn in silence. I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence—’”

  “Oh!” Miss Amaretta’s eyes glittered. “Sir. May I remind you …”

  Emma was startled by a sudden revelation. In the heat of a good discussion, Miss Amaretta looked just like Mother. Some people might think arguing was unwomanly, but neither Mother nor Miss Amaretta backed off from a debate. Ha! Who’d have thought Miss Amaretta and Mother had anything in common?

  The only person not engaged in discussion that morning was Dixie John. Emma eyed him over the rim of her coffee cup. His eyes looked bloodshot, and he winced whenever one of the arguments got too loud. Served him right for getting drunk yesterday! Still, Emma was glad when, amid the scrape of chairs and the din of closing conversations marking the end of the meal, she had the opportunity to sidle close to him. “Excuse me,” she murmured. “I’ve been thinking over what you said yesterday, and I was hoping you could explain things better.”

  Dixie John looked startled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Emma cocked her head, considering. Was he lying? No, she didn’t think so. He had been trying to tell her something in the saloon, before Blackjack interrupted them. But clearly he didn’t remember that now. “I was trying to find some answers about our trouble with the newspaper,” she pressed. “And you told me …”

  Something—panic?—flared in Dixie John’s bloodshot eyes. He shifted his weight warily. “I don’t know what you’re going on about,” he muttered. Then he turned and shoved out the door.

  “I want you to set type for me today,” Mother told Emma as they left the boardinghouse that morning. “I did it for the prospectus because time was so short. But you need to learn.”

  “But I have some … some other things to do.” Seeing Dixie John so nervous that morning had heightened Emma’s suspicions, and she’d decided to pursue this bird’s-eye idea further. Unfortunately, she’d have to do it by herself. Jeremy was needed at home today.

  “You need to learn the newspaper business from the ground up. You’ll never make a good editor and publisher if you don’t know—”

  “But I don’t want to be an editor!” Emma knew she was fraying her mother’s patience, but her own patience was frayed, too.

  Mother stepped over a pile of ox droppings. “Emma Henderson! Don’t you realize how lucky you are? I’m trying to teach you skills that will serve you for the rest of your life!”

  Emma swallowed hard. “Mother,” she said, in as docile a tone as she could manage, “may I just go see Mr. Torkelson before I meet you at the newspaper office? I have one more question to ask him about the fire. For my article.” Mother hesitated, then nodded. Emma veered in the direction she had taken the evening before when following The Whistler.

  When The Whistler had disappeared into the darkness, he’d been near a few enterprises at the edge of town. One was a makeshift store of sorts in a big canvas tent, where a man sold merchandise left behind by “go-backers”—folks who had wearied of life in the goldfields or the frontier town and headed back east. Another was a three-sided shack where a huge German with a turnip-shaped nose hammered horseshoes and gate hinges on his portable forge. And beyond those were the cabin, stable, corral, and storage sheds where Mr. Torkelson operated his freight business. Emma wanted to start with him. He was friendly and wouldn’t mind answering questions.

  When Emma surveyed the commotion in the freight yard, she saw only Mr. Torkelson’s sons unloading goods from a wagon train. No sign of a slight man with a limp. She found the wiry proprietor in the office with a customer. “Three cents a pound, firm,” he was saying.

  “Two and a half!�
�

  Mr. Torkelson shook his head. “No, three. I got to transfer everything from the wagons to pack-jacks to get up to the mines, ya? Three cents!”

  Emma waited until Mr. Torkelson was finished before approaching. “Excuse me. I have a question. Does a man with a limp work for you?”

  Mr. Torkelson frowned, rubbing his chin. “Ya. Why? Hass he caused some trouble?”

  Emma hesitated. What could she say that wouldn’t sound ridiculous? “I heard him whistling my father’s favorite song. It gave me a start. What’s the man’s name?”

  “George Troxwell.”

  The name meant nothing to her. “Has he worked for you long?”

  “Oh—joost a week or so. I needed an extra hand, and he iss good with the animals.”

  “Is he here now?” Emma’s heart began to skitter.

  But Mr. Torkelson shook his head. “He left early on a run. Won’t be back till tonight, I don’t think.”

  “Mr. Torkelson …” Emma hesitated. “Is Mr. Troxwell the hauler who was here the day of the fire? You said one of your men had been here just before the fire started.”

  Mr. Torkelson’s eyes narrowed. “Ya. He iss the one. But he left before that paper burned.”

  I don’t believe it, Emma thought, but since she had no proof, she couldn’t speak her mind. Instead, she forced a smile. “I’ll probably stop back later to meet Mr. Troxwell.” She turned to go, then paused. “Oh—one more thing. Night before last, was Mr. Troxwell making a late delivery?”

  Mr. Torkelson eyed her dubiously but reached for an account book. He traced down a list of entries with a dirty finger. “Ya. Here it iss. He wass gone overnight, hauling a cookstove out to a ranch.”

  “Um, can you see if he was in town the two nights before that?”

  Mr. Torkelson frowned again. “Ya. Joost that one night he was gone. But why—”

  “Thank you!” Emma hurried into the morning sunshine before he could ask her questions. Nothing made sense yet, but she was making progress. The Whistler had appeared outside the Hendersons’ window every night but one: the first night Emma had sat up to wait for him—the night Troxwell was gone on a freight run.