Before she could finish she was interrupted by a sound more chilling than the blizzard wind—from just beyond the edge of the forest behind them, first on one side and then on the other, came the plaintive, hungry howling of a pack of wolves.
“Oh, oh,” muttered Liam, “that’s torn it!”
He snatched his Colt out of an inside pocket and thumbed back the hammer. Then he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a big handful of the bullets for Maggie’s Webley.
“You’d better keep these handy,” he said to Becky, “with any luck we’ll have enough bullets between us to stop them.”
Becky already had the pistol out and the hammer back. “I’ve never shot a wolf,” she said uneasily.
“I’ve heard it can take a couple of shots to bring one down,” he said, “just keep shooting till it keels over.”
As if his words had been a signal, one wolf after another moved forth out of the screening trees and formed a menacing crescent around Becky and Liam, their jaws hanging open and their tongues lolling out in what looked like hungry grins, while the intermittent moonlight made their eyes glint with cold fire.
“I never could abide dogs,” Liam said grimly, “too many big teeth.” He opened the front of his coat to free the handle of his sword cane.
At that, the wolf that seemed to be in the center of the crescent stepped towards Liam and snarled furiously, wrinkling up its muzzle and baring its front teeth.
“If it takes another step I’m going to shoot,” Liam said.
“Try a warning shot,” said Becky, “maybe it will scare them off.”
The wolf took another step towards Liam and he fired into the ground a foot in front of it, throwing up a big spout of dirt and stones.
Unnervingly, none of the wolves so much as flinched. Instead, the lead wolf stepped forward again and let loose an ear-splitting howl. For a moment the creature just stood there, baring its teeth. Then it seemed to waver like a reflection in a puddle and when it solidified again it was twice as big—a good five feet high at the shoulder—and, Liam thought, considerably more than twice as nasty. It growled ominously, the sound as deep and hair-raising as the lions Liam had heard in the Central Park Zoo.
“Hold this a minute,” Liam said, handing his Colt to Becky.
Then, with the same impossible-to-follow whirling move she had seen on the sidewalk in Five Points, Liam swept the katana out of its scabbard and flashed it through the giant wolf’s middle, so that the two halves of the huge animal simply fell to either side with a thud, gushing blood onto the fresh snow.
For a moment, the tableau froze in place. Then, all the wolves started howling at once until the heaped mess of blood and guts started to stir as if something were trying to emerge from it, slowly drawing together again into a vaguely wolf-like shape until finally the creature stood before them again, its eyes glowing and its tongue lolling hungrily.
“Aw, hell!” Liam muttered, “How are we supposed to kill one of those werewolf things?””
He was interrupted by a loud and insistent yip-yip-yip! from behind them, the sounds wolflike but with a commanding human overtone, and no sooner did they hear it than the wolves melted back into the forest, leaving the snow behind them as smooth and unmarked as if they’d never been there.
“What on earth did we just …?” Becky began, but before she could finish she was interrupted by the sound of sleigh bells and shouts:
“Miss Fox! Mr. McCool!”
As they turned to look they saw a troika—a sleigh drawn by three horses—whizzing towards them through the snow. There were two men in it wearing shubk i, heavy, hide-outside, wool-inside sheepskin coats, and tall, black sheepskin hats called shapki, and as the sleigh slid to a halt next to Becky and Liam, the men leapt out and advanced with their hands outstretched in a mixture of greeting and apology.
“How you can forgive for being such late?” said the sleigh’s driver, a stocky man with a deeply tanned complexion, broad cheekbones and an aquiline nose. “And this when you go to such many trouble for us?”
Liam listened with fascination to the man’s Russian accent, as heavy as any he’d heard back in Five Points, but overlaid with London vowels and a bizarre, French-sounding “r” borrowed from some British teacher who had tried to conquer the Russian burr.
“Chief Crazy Horse?” he asked.
“Vash pokornyi slugá, sir,” the stocky man said, grasping the hand proffered by Liam and shaking it warmly. “Serving you humbly and also you, Miss Fox, be welcome in ancestor land of Dakota Sioux. As Russian invader calls,” he added with an ironic smile, “outer skirt of New Petersburg.”
Becky smiled radiantly and took Crazy Horse’s hand. “I’m delighted to meet you at last,” she said, “as well as your friend Mr….”
She turned an inquiring eye towards the other occupant of the sleigh, a tall, slender, blue-eyed man with a very prominent nose and a slightly receding chin. He gave Becky a gallant bow and swept off the sheepskin shapka to reveal a dense mass of curly blonde hair:
“Laughing Wolf, Miss, very much at your service and praying that you will forgive us for your … ah, rude reception by my namesakes. At least I was able to scold them and send them away before they got rambunctious, though I doubt they would have done more than make a nuisance of themselves.”
“I will happily forgive you both, your lateness and your—ah—pets,” Becky said, “if you will be so kind as to explain the wolves and their curious metamorphoses, uh … General. Ah …”
The blonde-haired man replaced his shapka and grinned at Becky: “Yes, Miss Fox, you have caught me out. In a previous life I was George Armstrong Custer of the U.S. Army, now proudly Laughing Wolf of the Oglala Lakota Sioux and …”
“… to me blood brother and comrade,” said Crazy Horse. “But please, we are explaining that and all other back in Petersburg, where is also the hot drinks and food.”
“S glubochaishim udovol’stviem,” concurred Liam with a big grin, then, catching himself and turning to Becky: “Ah, that’s to say …”
“Yes, Mr. McCool,” she said with mild irony, “I know it means ‘with the greatest pleasure,’ I do believe you’re inclined to underestimate me!”
And with that she led the way to the sleigh, followed closely by Crazy Horse, Custer, and a much chagrined Liam McCool.
Chapter Twenty-Three
An hour later, though the freak snowstorm continued to rage outside, the new acquaintances were snugly ensconced in Crazy Horse’s rooms near the Cathedral of Saints Boris and Gleb in the center of New Petersburg, toasting their feet at the fire and sipping Armagnac. The suite was in the most fashionable quarter of the Little Russian capital, at one side of a vast cobbled square modeled on Moscow’s Red Square, and the muffled tramp! tramp! of booted feet outside as sentries marched back and forth through the snow was a reminder that paranoia was as much in the air here as it was back in Washington.
“So,” said Crazy Horse, who was clutching the medicine bundle as if he never meant to let go of it again. “If all snow flakes outside window can be thanks, still they are not enough.” He grinned and shook his head, still incredulous at having his treasure back again. “You are asking: ‘What? Dirty little skin bag with beads, what is?’” He turned to Custer.
“You have better English, Georgie, explain!”
“Gladly, Zhenya,” Custer said. He turned to Becky and Liam: “If you’d been the Russian who found it on the battlefield at Bol’shoi Rog—that’s the same as we used to call the Little Bighorn before Jackson sold it—and you’d of opened the bag up to have a look inside you’d be scratching your head. ‘Well, if that don’t beat all,’ you’d say, ‘then I ain’t a white man!’ Because there’s nothing in there to speak of but all kinds of little odds and ends like seeds and arrowheads and snake rattles and suchlike, each one wrapped up all special in its own little pouch. But every single one of them has a story behind it that means something in this man’s life as big as the Gospel is to a
ny Baptist. And if you add on to that the fact that he was keeping it not just for himself but for his tribe, you’ll have some idea why it was such a hurtful loss.”
Becky leaned forward intently. “But it has a special importance now, sir, I sense that clearly. Can you tell me why?”
Custer looked towards Crazy Horse who nodded and picked up the thread: “You know what is Ghost Dance?”
Becky nodded slowly—“A very old ritual among many tribes in many places, one at which whites have never been welcome.”
“Sushchaia pravda!” Crazy Horse agreed. “So, I need this bundle to make dance for Oglala as others already dance for their tribes. So that one day, ghosts and living will be together, Great Spirit will come, earth will be new again and white man will go away.”
He waved his hand helplessly and turned to Custer.
“I’ll do my best,” Custer said, “just stop me if I get it wrong.” He looked up at the ceiling for a moment, marshalling his thoughts, then shrugged and plunged in. “Crazy Horse saved my life, you know? I had more arrows in me than a pincushion has pins, and I was leaking blood like a sieve. He tells me he saw something that made him know I had to be saved and somehow he did it, what we would call magic, I reckon.” Custer shook his head, remembering. “There’ll be white men say I’m a dirty traitor, taking up with Indians, but I have to tell you it’s the first time I’ve felt at home. And I’ve learned this much—the Indians, the People as they call themselves, can talk to the world around them like you talk to your mama or your pa and the world will answer them. Crazy Horse showed me how to begin, how to talk in baby talk, and after that I learned more on my own. And I know now that all the dancing and praying for the land to belong to the People again are being answered by the Great Spirit—that’s what the snow and the wolves are about, and the big bugs and animals and plenty more that’s to come yet, as the Great Spirit wills it. Just think about it for a minute: one fine day the white man just strolls in here where the People are living in harmony with Nature and the Great Spirit and he tears everything up by the roots and destroys anything they can’t use. If you don’t happen to like it, bang!, just like having a gang of outlaws come into your house and burn it down and set fire to your crops and send your family off to be slaves in some place you never heard of and all the rest of it.”
Custer grinned ironically and spread his hands. “Why, shucks, I’d say the People are being mighty forebearing just making life uncomfortable for the white man. Now if you left it up to me, there’s a big, unregenerate chunk of that old white George Armstrong Custer that would say: ‘Hey, enough jokes, let’s just kill ’em all!’” Custer shrugged: “So far, getting the white man to understand all this is like trying to explain something to a drunk in the middle of a windstorm, but we’ll keep at it till we start getting through to them.”
“All that sure enough sounds like magic to me,” said Liam doubtfully.
Custer smiled. “It’s not magic like you telling that bottle of brandy there to get up and float over here and pour you another drink and it does it, that’s against Nature, and that’s what us white men are always trying to bring off. So say I’m your regular white man studying on that bottle of brandy and it won’t come over here on its own, what I do is I keep brooding over it and worrying at it and and plotting about it and the first thing you know I’m building me a steam man to pick the bottle up and bring it over and pour me a drink. You get what I mean?”
Liam burst out laughing. “Some,” he said. “Only I don’t have any problem getting up and grabbing the bottle myself.” He suited the action to the word, then took a thoughtful sip and grinned: “Of course, the Brits never have thought us Irish are white men.”
Grinning, Crazy Horse got to his feet, put his arms around Liam and gave him a bear hug. “Bratushka, little brother!” he chuckled, “come with, I show you and Miss Fox your rooms. Tomorrow will be busy day!”
The next morning bright and early, the four of them were seated around the dining table drinking coffee and putting away a big breakfast of eggs and fried potatoes and ham while snow flurries continued to fall outside. Becky was speaking:
“It seems to me that our best bet would be split up into two groups and divide our tasks. Mr. McCool must be in New York again no later than July 3rd, and today is already the 1st. Not only that, everything points to Stanton using the patriotic hoopla of the Fourth of July as a screen to cover his declaration of war against Little Russia. So first we must discover anything we can that puts a spoke in the wheel of Stanton’s plans, at the same time as we’re trying to get answers to the three questions Mr. McCool was charged with: (1) Where is Pilkington’s spy, Lt. Col. Chuikov, and what information does he have for us, (2) What is the war-readiness of the Little Russian Aerial Navy, and (3) Is it true that pitchblende has been found in the lands of the Apache, and if so, where?”
Crazy Horse snorted irritably. “Three is easy. Yes, Russians have found in Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona Guberniia, already Apache slaves dig this filth, die from it. The People will free them, I swear this, and sure, Stanton can have if he comes, wears loincloth like Apache, digs with pick and shovel.” He grinned wolfishly: “All he can take home such way, he can have, free gift from the People. But why? What good?”
“I expect that’s all happened since you left Russia and came out here to the sticks,” Liam said. “The Brits have a scientist that can take pitchblende and turn it into something called calorium, and just a pinch of that will run a steam engine forever and amen. And that’s nice for the Brits because between their colony in Saskatchewan and their protectorate in the Congo they own just about all the pitchblende there is—” he gave Crazy Horse a wry smile, “—except for those mines in Arizona.”
Crazy Horse nodded thoughtfully. “So. Very simple picture for Stanton. Buy calorium scientist, steal mines from Russians and Apaches, kick Brits downstairs.”
Liam grinned. “Pretty much.”
“Kakoi svoloch!” He shook his head disgustedly and turned to Becky: “I may speak Russian?”
“Of course,” Becky said, “and I couldn’t agree more, Stanton is a monumental swine.”
“Ah, what a relief,” Crazy Horse smiled, continuing in Russian, “for me speaking English is like running on one leg. Here’s what I want to know: how can Stanton get away with all this? Why doesn’t your President Lincoln put him in irons? Why don’t your Congressmen impeach him?”
Liam looked towards Becky with a mute question and she nodded. “Believe it or not, we just succeeded in freeing Lincoln from a prison Stanton put him in and getting him to a safe place. The man you and the rest of the world have believed to be Lincoln is actually John Wilkes Booth, the man who tried to murder him. Instead, he now impersonates Lincoln on command, like a marionette with Stanton pulling his strings.”
Both Crazy Horse and Custer looked stunned. After a moment Custer spoke:
“I’ve known Eddie Stanton since he took over the War Department and he is without a doubt the meanest, cruelest and coldest-hearted son of a bitch … ah, pardon me Miss Fox …”
Becky shook her head: “Who could protest such perfect taxonomical precision, General? Please continue.”
“Well, then, I’ll have to tell you, Zhenya, that your question about Congress is miles wide of the mark in two directions. Going one way, every man Jack of those miserable pettifoggers is crookeder’n a dog’s hind leg, and the thought of them rising up in indignation against Stanton’s crimes is enough to reduce a cast-iron hitching post to hysterical laughter. And looked at the other way, even if every one of those scoundrels experienced a sudden, Damascene conversion and started railing against Stanton like St. Paul, Eddie loves himself with a passion so pure and perfect that it would all go right over his head.”
“Well, then,” said Crazy Horse grimly, “since it looks like the People will be in his gunsights sooner or later, I have to ask Liam and Miss Fox what they’re planning to do about him.”
“That’s Miss
Fox’s department,” Liam said with a small smile, “I’m just the muscle.”
Becky raised her eyebrows at him and then turned to Crazy Horse: “I certainly won’t pretend it’s going to be easy,” she said. “Over the last few years, he has expanded his Department of Public Safety so relentlessly that there isn’t a townlet in the U.S. too small to have its complement of DPS ‘Eyes.’ These are people from a variety of rough backgrounds whose entire raison d’être is to serve Secretary Stanton without question, since he has given them equally unquestioned power over the rest of their fellow citizens.”
Crazy Horse shook his head, appalled. “Where is your famous freedom? Your democracy? The People are used to being treated like that by white men, but it’s hard to believe that white men will accept it.”
“Stanton has spent fifteen years—since the beginning of the Civil War—frightening Americans with ogres under the bed—now all he has to do is say ‘Boo!’ and everybody starts weeping and rending their garments. That means our first task is to expose his scarecrows as frauds and keep on doing it until people begin to wake up and see the truth on their own. And that’s why it’s so important to us to expose Little Russia’s ‘war preparations’ as an empty threat.”
“That’s a good start,” Custer said, “and if I may advise you as an old cavalry hand I believe you need to go after an enemy as powerful as Eddie Stanton the way the Sioux go after the white man—hit and run, hit and run, keep nibbling away at the edges until you make him so wild he does something infernally stupid and lets you roll him up like a saddle blanket.”
“I like the sound of that,” grinned Liam, “that’s the way my boys and I like to operate.”
“Which reminds me,” Custer said, “we need to address your questions about Chuikov and the Aerial Navy. Question number one sounds to me like it’s for you and Crazy Horse. It’ll take speaking good Russian and walking around Army headquarters like you own the place, which you fellows ought to have just about enough brass-bound gall to do handsome at. Number two,” he turned to Becky with a smile, “should suit you and me just fine, being more a matter for brains and brilliant Thespian talent. I’ve heard you’re a regular old trouper when you’re on the trail of a story. How would you like to play a nice, meek Mennonite sister, come to spread the Good Word and hand out tracts while I preach and thump the Bible?”
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