by Max McCoy
“You’d better move aside, Frank,” I said.
I could see Horrible Hank floating in the mirror, his eyes wide.
“You’re not intending to . . .”
“That’s exactly my intent,” I said. “Now, move aside so you don’t get hurt.”
Hank nodded wildly.
The miners hooted.
“Don’t you want a drink first, Miss Wylde?” Gallagher said.
“No, Frank, I don’t want a drink. Move the hell out of the way.”
I was standing at the middle of the bar, one foot up on the brass rail, getting ready to heave the sledge at the mirror. Hank was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t hear him for all the commotion behind me.
“Can’t hear you,” I shouted.
Hank pointed to a spot three feet to the right of where I was standing.
“Right here,” I heard him say.
I nodded.
“Let’s talk this through,” Gallagher pleaded. “Andrew Jackson Miles will have my head if I let anything happen to this mirror. That mirror is worth a fortune, and I can’t let you do this.”
“Andrew Jackson Miles is a horse thief and has commissioned murder and doesn’t deserve a single vote for governor,” I said. “Stand with him or stand aside.”
Frank dove for cover as I drew back the sledge.
“Duck, Hank!”
Now that the miners were sure I was going to do it, they rushed forward to stop me. But they were too late. Keeping my eyes fixed on the point Hank had indicated, I swung the sledge forward with both hands—and then let it fly.
It spun once in mid-air and then struck the mirror perfectly. The head sank into the quick-silvered glass as if it were water, and I turned away as the mirror exploded, shooting a geyser of glass shards spraying over the bar. The sound was like a thousand crystal tumblers shattering on a steel floor.
“Oh, no,” Gallagher moaned.
I turned back.
Some cracked pieces of the mirror remained, mostly at the sides, and a few hung precariously from the top, like a mirror of Damocles, but where I had aimed there was nothing but a splintered backboard and a two-foot diameter hole that led into darkness. The sledge had passed completely through, and there wasn’t even a sign of the yard-long hickory handle.
“Well done,” Hank said, from the reflection in a shot glass on the bar.
Gallagher set off running.
“I bet he doesn’t stop until he reaches Utah Territory,” Hank said.
The miners came forward, their boots crunching on the glass, and they crawled over and around the bar to inspect the damage. They peered into the hole in the backboard, and then one of them said he felt cool air, and another called for a light. The miner took one of the candles offered, lit it, and thrust it through the hole.
“Do you see the sledge?” somebody asked.
“I see more than that,” the miner said, and asked for help as he began to rip pieces of the backboard away, revealing the wall behind. The sledge had gone through the wall as well, and the miners began tearing at it, now using small hammers and pliers and whatever tools they had on them. Out came slats from packing crates, stamped with names like GIANT BLASTING POWDER and VIN MARIANA TONIC WINE. Then, when the hole was judged of sufficient size, more candles were lit and three of the thin miners squeezed through, one at a time.
“What is it?” somebody called. “Tell us.”
A miner stuck his head through the hole.
“Miss, I think you want to see this,” he said.
The miners helped me climb up to the hole, and being about as small as the smallest of the men, I was able to make my way through with only a little difficulty. I found myself standing in a drift, with aging timbers all around. The three miners were clustered to the side, their candles held low. One of them was in front, so I couldn’t see.
“Move, dummy,” one of the miners said, pulling him back.
A skeleton was slumped to the floor of the drift, chains crossing his shoulders. The skull was resting against the wall, and the jawbone had fallen to the bony chest, which was covered in a ragged plaid shirt. On the wall near him, but just out of reach, was a pickaxe.
“Who do you suppose he was?” one of the miners asked.
“Don’t know, but he’s been here a while. A long while. ”
“Miners always put their names on their tools,” the third one said. He brushed the dust away from the handle of the pick with his hand, then brought the candle close and tilted his head to read the name.
But I already knew what he would say.
“Angus Wright.”
We crawled back out of the hole in the broken mirror, and the last miner out handed me the eight-pound sledge I had borrowed.
“Thanks,” I said. “I imagine Augusta Tabor will have this back, or know the reason why.”
“What do we do with the . . . with the skeleton?” someone asked.
“Summon the marshal and the coroner,” I said. “And then the undertaker can do his work. Angus Wright will finally get a proper burial, after all these years of waiting.”
There were more questions from the miners, but I held up a hand.
“I’m tired, boys,” I said. “And it’s time for me to go home.”
I stepped out onto the street and took a deep breath of the cool air.
The Reveille reporter stepped out with me, his hands in his pockets. He looked up at the cloud-flecked sky, then looked at me, and shook his head.
“How did you know what was behind the mirror?” he asked.
“I didn’t,” I said. “But I had my suspicions.”
“Cade Harland, the murderer. He told you before he died.”
“That was part of it.”
“That makes sense,” he said. “But tell me, who is Hank?”
I smiled.
“Son, there are some things a detective just doesn’t reveal.”
It began to snow then, big flakes drifting down to land in our hair and dust our shoulders. I reached out and caught a snowflake in the palm of my hand, where it quickly dissolved.
Then I set off walking, back to Tabor’s Mercantile, to return the sledge and to gather my valise and other things, and to catch one of the twice-daily coaches for Denver.
33
The Denver Board of Education had put all of the crates from the recently closed library association in storage, in a warehouse on Blake Street, pending the construction of a new high school library. It took me the better part of one morning, and uncrating most of the 600 volumes that Patterson had boxed up, before I found Syrinx of the Seven Worlds.
It was then but a matter of minutes to decipher the coded message that Hollister had saved for all of those years (I was now carrying paper and pencil and other necessary things in the brown leather satchel, now my detection kit). The message was, indeed, instructions for Hollister and Miles to steal horses from an immigrant family camped near Auraria City.
After that, I visited Eureka Smith at his studio. After describing the events in Leadville, and what had been found behind the diamond dust mirror at The Great Divide, I had him photograph the old coded message, the relevant pages from Syrinx, and my copy of the library ledger list. Then I asked him to send copies to the biggest Denver papers and the Leadville Reveille.
The political career of Andrew Jackson Miles was over—already news of the discovery of the skeleton of Angus Wright had made it to Denver, and the Republican party made it clear that Frederick W. Pitkin would get the nomination—and be the next governor of Colorado.
But that wasn’t enough, at least not for me. I wanted everyone to know the extent of his thieving and murderous deceit, and I wanted him prosecuted for it—although I knew convincing Decker or anyone else to bring charges based, in part, on spectral evidence was remote.
I asked Smith about his fraud charges, and he said the case had been withdrawn by Decker the day after my testimony. Then Smith asked me to have dinner with him, but I declined, saying I
wasn’t in the mood for fowl. But I did agree to have a cup of tea; then I asked to borrow twenty dollars, so I could buy a train ticket back to Dodge City.
He insisted I take forty.
As I left Smith’s studio, two brutish men in derby hats and dark suits fell in beside me. They didn’t speak, just crowded me so expertly that I was forced against a carriage at the curb side.
Fearing the worst, I turned and faced the pair.
“Hurt me,” I said, “and you will surely regret it.”
Behind me, the door of the landau opened.
“They’re not going to hurt you, Miss Wylde,” a voice called. “At least not until they are instructed to. Please, get in.”
It was dark inside the carriage, because the shades were drawn, but I could see a man sitting inside, with his hands resting on top of a silver-knobbed cane.
“Councilman Miles,” I said. “What an unpleasant surprise.”
“Get in,” Miles said, “or my men will toss you in.”
“When you put it so nicely, how can I refuse?”
I stepped into the coach, taking the bench opposite Miles, and one of his thugs slammed the door after me. Then the driver cracked the whip and the landau jerked forward, then settled into a slow and steady rocking motion. Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the gloom inside.
“Where are we headed?”
“I assume you need a ride to the train station.”
“I’d rather walk.”
“Give me a few minutes of your time,” Miles said. “After all, you have taken so much of mine.”
He gave me a stare that was at once distant and menacing.
“I see you have a taken a prize,” Miles said, indicating the brown leather satchel over my shoulder. “Do you hide a revolver in it as well?”
“It seemed appropriate to put it to less violent uses.”
“It is odd to see someone other than Cade carry it,” he said. “But then, change is the nature of life. One day you’re on top of the world, and the next . . . well, the next you are waiting for indictments to be handed down.”
“Eureka Smith says that you will serve no time.”
“He may be right, but public pressure will demand that I be charged with something, and horse theft is still a capital crime,” Miles said. “But it was so long ago and there are no witnesses save an obscure book and a scrap of paper. I assume both are in your newly acquired bag.”
I didn’t reply.
“You’re safe,” he said.
“Of course I am,” I said. “I had photographs made.”
“You would be safe enough anyway,” he said. “If you stumbled now, I would be there to catch your fall, because anything bad that happens to you would just make it harder on me. It is hard enough already.”
“I’d imagine it would be a relief to know that, in all probability, you aren’t going to spend the rest of your life in prison.”
“There are other punishments,” Miles said. “The wreckage of a political career, for example. Having one’s name dragged through the mud by the newspapers. The reduction of status in the eyes of one’s family and friends. The loss of a certain beautiful cigar girl.”
“Those aren’t punishments,” I said. “They are results of the choices you made, and they don’t begin to reflect the pain and misery you’ve inflicted on others.”
Miles smiled.
“Nobody’s innocent,” he said. “They would have done the same to me, if they’d had the chance. You, of all people, should know this. I have a complete dossier on your previous career as a confidence woman. What’s the saying, you can’t cheat an innocent man?”
“No, but you can kill one,” I said.
Miles snorted.
“What, the insane preacher?”
“He was innocent.”
But was he, I thought? Was he trying to drown me, or did he keep me under the water for so long because he was afraid Cade would shoot me, too? I had turned it over in my mind a thousand times and had yet to reach a conclusion. And I knew I never would.
“I have a proposition, Miss Wylde.”
“I’ve seen your work. Not interested.”
“The damage could be contained,” he said softly. “There is only your word for what Cade Harland and Ben Hollister said about my involvement, and you haven’t given details to the press, or been asked under oath, at least not yet. I can’t deny that I was involved in some youthful indiscretion—my word, who wasn’t?—but it is possible, with your help, to shape this in such a way as to mitigate my involvement. A. C. Ford was the real mastermind, and then Hollister took over after his death, and Cade was the homicidal maniac who began tracking down . . . Well, you see what I mean.”
“You still wouldn’t be governor.”
“No, not anytime soon,” he said. “But the public has a very short memory. Allow a few years to pass, create a home for orphans, build a library or two, endow a university here in Denver. Become the Leland Stanford of the Rocky Mountains.”
I didn’t reply.
“You would be richly compensated, of course.”
“Of course,” I said.
I took the Brothers Upmann from my breast pocket—the cigar I had paid too much for in exchange for information—and removed the wrapper. It had been only slightly bent during the course of the adventure.
“You cannot imagine the kind of wealth I speak of,” Miles said. “What is the most you’ve ever held in your hand at one time, even during the best years of your trance medium days? Five hundred dollars?”
“I was much better than that.”
“A thousand dollars? Imagine a thousand dollars as pin money.”
He produced a small knife, took the cigar, and notched the end for me.
“You could leave Kansas forgotten and far behind,” he said, producing a match and lighting the cigar. “You could return to a city where you feel more at home—Chicago, or St. Louis, or New York. Think of the art, of the culture, of the ease of life.”
I sucked flame into the cigar.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “I can see the thought excites you.”
I puffed and was surprised by the taste—a combination of oak leaves and coffee, if that mix were smoldering and about to spontaneously combust. There was also an acrid aftertaste that trickled down my throat, and I fought the urge to gag.
The landau pulled over and stopped. We had arrived at the station.
“What excites me,” I said, exhaling smoke, “is the thought of you, a broken and pathetic man, living out the rest of your days in that monument to incomplete dreams and unfulfilled ambition you call a saloon at Leadville. I knew the moment I saw the saloon that it was a manifestation of your authentic personality, a clue to your loathsome and self-defeating nature. I am not interested in your money, Councilman Miles. And before too long, you won’t have any money to offer anybody to do your killing and lying for you, because it will have all been taken by those who are like you, but stronger, and who don’t have to answer to the charge of horse thief, no matter whether you serve time or not.”
I stepped out of the carriage, took a last drag on the cigar, and threw it into the gutter.
“Thanks for the ride,” I said.
I hadn’t slept well for a fortnight, and had slept barely at all in the last seventy-two hours. Every time I drifted off to sleep, I found myself on the dream train, on the way to Brookwood Cemetery. It was no different on the trip back home. It was late in the afternoon when the Denver & Rio Grande train pulled out of the station on its way to Pueblo. After a short wait, and a dinner of toast and coffee, I boarded the Santa Fe eastbound, and began the long and gradual descent to the plains of Kansas.
For most of the night, I stared out the coach window at the dark prairie rushing by. Periodically, Hank would appear in the glass, but sensing my mood and perhaps chastened by his brief entrapment in the diamond dust mirror, he left me mostly to my thoughts.
I was afraid to sleep, for fear the next dream aboard the death train mi
ght tip me over into insanity—or that I would impulsively decide to get off the train at Brookwood Cemetery when it arrived, just to have things done with.
But perhaps none of it was real anyway.
Perhaps I had been mad all along.
It was 102 degrees when I walked with my valise up the steps to the Dodge House and paid the twenty-three dollars I owed in back rent. At least, that’s what Jimmy said the official weather station on top of the hotel had recorded just minutes before.
“They say it might get as high as a hundred and ten in August,” he said.
“Something to look forward to,” I said.
“Are you coming back to the hotel?” Jimmy asked. “Your room is still open.”
Paying the hotel had wiped me out, once again. Between it and the train ticket, I had one dollar and twenty-seven cents left.
“I don’t know, Jimmy. We’ll have to see.”
Determined to run up no more debt, I picked up the valise and walked out the door. It was another Sunday and hardly a soul was moving on Front Street. I was tired and longed to put my feet up and simply rest, but there was a stop I had to make first.
It took me only a few minutes to walk to the house on Chestnut Street with the two pear trees out front. I knocked on the door, and in a few moments Molly Howart appeared.
“Miss Wylde,” she said. “Do come in.”
Molly Howart was wearing a dark bombazine dress trimmed in black crepe. She invited me into the room where Charlie Howart had been found hanging. It was the same, with the exception that the windows were open and the curtains drawn, and a bit of black cloth hung over each.
“Would you care for some tea?” she asked.
“No, thank you,” I said. Etiquette may have required I take the tea, but what I really wanted was a strong cup of coffee, but I could not bring myself to trouble the widow. We sat in the straight-backed chairs and Molly held her restless hands in her lap and waited for me to begin.
“Charlie did not commit suicide,” I said.
Tears of relief welled in her eyes.
“How do you know?”