“Son,” said Custer. Although they had discovered they were both born in thirty-nine, Custer liked calling him “son.” It was some kind of need for superiority. “I wish you Godspeed with this message for Terry. We need to tell him the Black Hills isn’t the impenetrable region we once imagined. The Indians don’t need these hills for their happiness. How many are there, anyway? Five hundred Indians for this entire rich land?”
Foster tilted his head skeptically. “I’ve seen more than a thousand up here, in one place at the same time.”
“In any event. This message will speed up the extinction of their claim to these hills. We need to get these Indian dogs out of our manger. They will not dig gold or let others do it. It’s our Manifest Destiny to fulfill, Richmond! One more thing. Stay here until King’s funeral is over. I have to leave now. Your continued presence will add some confidence and faith, and you’re literate enough to give a good eulogy. Don’t mention he died of dysentery, though. Just use the words ‘noble’ and ‘hardworking.’”
Half an hour later, the rest of the Lieutenant Colonel’s command was marching to the strains of the band, while Foster Richmond stood over Private King’s grave. Some men seemed to be truly shedding tears for King, whoever he had been.
Worthing Ludlow had set up his tripod nearby to make some of the respectful photographs Custer requested. As Foster tried to inject some enthusiasm into this eulogy for the fellow he hadn’t even known, his eyes kept wandering to the photographer, fiddling around under his portable darkroom. Already Worth had dark stains on his hands, though he’d just bathed in French Creek. Foster wound up thinking more about Worth’s stained hands than about the poor soldier in the hole at his feet or the monumental message he was to take to Fort Sanders.
Eventually, the only thing that dislodged the image of Worth’s luscious profile was the thought of Bloody Knife’s prophecy that bad medicine would go with him to the fort. He had already created goodwill, Bloody Knife had said, by saving that wife’s nose and now adding literacy to this funeral. Perhaps to hedge his bets, he should do one more good deed before leaving French Creek.
Like beat Worthing Ludlow in the boxing match.
Chapter Two
Laramie City, Wyoming Territory
Tabitha Hudson had read nearly all the books at Albuquerque House, with the exception of the Émile Zola books, as she hadn’t gotten very far in French at school, and the entire Bible.
“What’s this thing, then?” she asked her sister Liberty. From a bookcase in Liberty’s husband’s study, Tabitha pulled down a strange wooden board across which were scrawled the letters of the alphabet, “Yes” and “No,” and the phrase “Carpe Diem.”
Liberty looked up from where she was going over her next lesson for her schoolchildren. Tabitha was very envious of her sisters, who all had productive and rewarding careers in Laramie. Because Tabitha was still in mourning, she had not been able to take on a job, but she was beginning to think about it, at least. “Oh! That old thing. I haven’t seen that in years. That’s a talking board.”
“Talking board?” Jeremiah Franklin was on the floor, untangling the strings of his marionettes. He was a queer fellow, so neurasthenic he’d taken on the moniker “The Lollipop Kid” for his completely round head and features set on stick arms and legs. He had just returned with Liberty after entertaining her schoolchildren with his puppets. “I wouldn’t mess with that. That sounds like all kinds of supernatural stuff, the likes of which you don’t want to mess with.”
“Oh, it is supernatural,” said Liberty. Apparently warming to the idea, she stood and took the board from Tabitha. “Levi, Garrett, and I used to use this board.”
“What’s it supposed to do?”
“Give you messages from beyond the grave.”
Tabitha gasped. “Why didn’t you tell me about this before? We could possibly get a message from Parker.” Parker was her dear husband who had departed the world much too soon almost a year ago now.
But Jeremiah got to his feet before Liberty could answer. “I’ve seen heaps of supernatural stuff in my time. Messages from beyond the grave, my ass! I’m telling you, Tabitha, you don’t want to delve into that.”
Tabitha faced the ridiculous clown. “If it’s false, why are you so afraid of it…Montreal Jed?” She used his former circus nickname to underline the absurdity of what he was saying.
Montreal Jed held a hand to his chest. “Afraid? Who said anything about being afraid? I’m just saying you don’t want to delve into that whole stew of a rathole.” His round eyes dilated with some far-off mystical memory. “I’ve seen creepy things that would make your skin crawl. Spirits materializing out of the thin blue sky. Spirits with the ability to affect matter. Spirits who could throw snowballs.”
Tabitha laughed. “That sounds like just what I need right now! If we could get a message from Parker, I know it would go a long way toward soothing me. Shall we try, Liberty? Show me how it works.”
“Of course!” With her forearm, Liberty swept Levi’s desk clear of papers, shoving everything to one side so she could set the talking board there. From the bookcase she unearthed a strange little basket with a wooden stick woven into its underside. She placed it upside-down on the board. Apparently the stick would point to letters that would spell out messages. “We sit around here, everyone placing their fingers on this rim.”
“Does it work?”
Now Liberty’s eyes shone with a doom-filled warning. “Yes,” she said with great import. “Works too well, sometimes.”
Montreal Jed held out his palms to the floor. “I want no part of this! No sirree, bub! A spirit once told me to take whiskey root for the Saint Vitus’s dance I was afflicted with. Made me hallucinate horrifying things, such as wolves with knives and tiny little jesters dancing across my knees. No, thank you!”
But Liberty grabbed Jed by the shoulder and jammed him into a chair. “Sit. It works better if there are more people.”
“Yes,” Tabitha agreed, taking her own seat. “We’re just spelling out a message after all, Jeremiah, not calling forth tiny jokers. Was your affliction cured by the root?”
“Well, yes,” Jeremiah admitted. “But I’m telling you. I can never look at clowns the same way again.”
As Montreal Jed had gone so far as to actually sit on his hands, Tabitha yanked one from under his butt and forced him to place his fingers on the rim of the basket. “Well, is that such a great loss, really? I mean, how many clowns does one see in a lifetime?”
Jeremiah shuddered. “Plenty, apparently.”
Liberty prattled on happily. “A spirit told us where to find the South Pass mine deed.” Her mines in South Pass had brought them great fortune.
Tabitha asked, “Really? Do tell.”
“Well, Garrett is quite clairvoyant. He had a vision that showed him and Levi where to find the deed. But the talking board—the spirit who controlled it—told them to protect me against one of Father’s creepy college friends.”
Jeremiah cleared his throat. “Um, ladies.”
As was quite usual, the ladies ignored him. Tabitha continued, “Shouldn’t we be asking a specific question now?”
“Isn’t the question about Parker?”
“Yes, I suppose. It would hearten me quite a bit to get a message from him from beyond the veil. I miss him so.”
“It’s about time that you can start wearing gray or lavender, Tabby. You don’t need to mourn forever. I know you miss Parker, but you do need to move on with your life.”
“I know. I did just order a new lavender gown.”
“It would set off your beautiful blonde hair.”
“Ladies!” barked Jeremiah. They both looked at him with vacant eyes. “In case you haven’t noticed, because you’ve been too occupied gossiping like fishwives.”
Tabitha giggled. “Whatever a ‘fishwife’ is.”
Jeremiah glared at her. “The board has been spelling out a sentence.”
Both Tabitha and Libert
y gasped and looked at their fingers on the planchette, which had paused on the letter G.
“We haven’t been looking!” Tabitha looked back to Montreal Jed. “What has it been spelling?”
Jeremiah rolled his eyes. “If you weren’t so busy babbling on about lavender gowns and creepy college alumni, you’d see that it has already spelled ‘Your husband is bring.’”
“And it stopped on the G,” said Tabitha with wide eyes. “Let us continue. O, Spirit Board! What is my husband bringing?”
“You don’t need to talk to it like that,” scoffed Jeremiah. “The board is hardly an animate being. It’s the spirit you really want to address.”
But the planchette had already sped on, spelling out BRINGING YOU A. Tabitha had heard of people’s hearts actually stopping during moments of great shock, but she had never believed it possible until now. Bringing me a what?
“O Spirit,” she whispered, less assured now. “What is my husband bringing me?”
Everyone seemed to hold their breaths as the planchette began to move again. A MESSAGE.
Exhaling loudly, Tabitha pushed her chair back from the desk and strode to a sideboard to pour herself a glass of sherry. “I can’t believe this!” she cried and drank the whole tumbler in three swallows. Whirling to face her companions, she said, “Parker could hardly be coming to bring me a message when he died of typhus a year ago!”
Liberty gestured. “Come, come! Let’s finish it. It could be telling us that he’s bringing you a message from the other side.”
“Yes.” Jeremiah shuddered. “The other side of hell.”
Tabitha poured and gulped another sherry glass. Then, nerves steadied—or at least dulled for now—she returned to the desk and placed her fingers on the planchette. “Oh. What’s this flower doing here?” Sitting on the table before her seat was an enormous sunflower. “Where’d you get this, Liberty? I haven’t noticed any sunflowers in your garden.”
Liberty stared at the flower wide-eyed. “I don’t have any sunflowers in my garden.”
The two sisters’ eyes landed on Jeremiah’s innocent face. “Oh, come now!” he protested. “I was hardly concealing this enormous flower under my waistcoat, just waiting for the right moment to slap it onto the desk.”
“You were in the circus,” Tabitha pointed out. “And everyone in town once thought you were the Cinnabar Murderer.”
Liberty added, “And you called yourself the Great Wizard of the West.”
“But I wasn’t the Cinnabar Murderer!” Jeremiah cried. “Look, let’s be reasonable. Besides, what is the significance of this sunflower? What does it symbolize? Perhaps it has something to do with your dead husband.”
Tabitha said, “I’d be more curious as to how it materialized here while I was drinking sherry.” The flower was freshly cut and not even noticeably wilted.
“Yes, that is a conundrum,” Jeremiah allowed. “Let us continue. O Spirit, what is the message Tabitha’s husband is bringing her?”
The planchette sped to spell out MARRIAGE.
Oh, this is just ridiculous! Tabitha murmured, “Well. I was already married to him. O Spirit! What is the significance of the sunflower?”
Again, the basket tore about the talking board to spell FIND PHINEAS. Then it rested, as though content with its message.
Slowly, everyone withdrew their fingers and rested their hands in their laps, Tabitha fiddling with the sunflower.
“Well,” said Jeremiah. “The logical question is, of course, does anyone know anyone named Phineas?” The sisters shrugged and shook their heads. “Neither do I. All right. Perhaps we can find out more about the nature of this spirit. I’ve got an idea. Something we used to do when in the show business.”
Standing, he went to the sideboard where a copy of the Laramie Frontier Index newspaper was sitting. Jeremiah brought the newspaper to the desk and set it down on a stack of Liberty’s school papers. “This used to be a trick, of course. We showmen would choose a decoy from the audience, someone we had planted there, of course. We’d point to a word on the rag, and the decoy of course would guess it correctly, having planned it all out beforehand. Only now I am going to see if the spirit can guess. Let me ask. O Spirit, are you all-seeing, all-knowing? Can you see things in this room that our physical eyes cannot?”
The pointer moved to the word YES.
Jeremiah continued, “Can you see things outside of this room that our physical eyes cannot apprehend?”
The planchette meandered around for a bit before returning to YES.
“All right, then,” said Jeremiah with satisfaction. Sticking a stiff index finger onto the newspaper off to his side, without looking at it, he asked in a showman’s tremulous voice, “O Spirit, can you spell out which word my finger is pointing to?”
Tabitha stared at the planchette as though fixing to move it with her mind. It was immobile for what seemed like many long minutes, during which Jeremiah repeated his question. Tabitha was about to give up when the pointer started moving. S, C, I, N. Is that even the beginning of a proper word?
“Scintillating,” Liberty exhaled in a sudden rush. “Scintillating!”
Tabitha asked, “Is that even a word?”
They both looked to Jeremiah, who removed his finger from the newspaper slowly, with exaggerated import. He lifted the newspaper closer to his face, and his eyes widened. “Scintillating,” he repeated in a ghostly tone.
Tabitha snatched the paper from him. “What? Does it actually say that?” Indeed, her eyes quickly found the word, right there in the middle of an article about a debutante’s party. She read aloud, “‘The conversation among the high muckety-mucks and big fish was very scintillating.’”
Liberty tossed her head. “Oh, it’s that Henry Zuckerkorn, our local scribbler. He gets very emotional and flowery about things.”
Jeremiah cried, “Yes, but isn’t it altogether too much? What are the odds that I’d point to such a strange word, and then the planchette spells it out?”
“And then this sunflower appears here,” Tabitha breathed, cradling the flower to her breast. For some reason, the flower’s manifestation seemed vastly more important to her than the “scintillating” conversation of debutantes. “Maybe this Henry Zuckerkorn is a key?”
Liberty said, “Henry Zuckerkorn has been a key to many things,” but she didn’t elaborate.
“I’ve always entertained the notion of scribbling myself,” said Tabitha, rising and going back to the sideboard for more sherry. But first she poured water from a pitcher into a champagne glass and stood the flower in it, propped against the wall.
“Oh, Zuckerkorn, that old windbag,” said Jeremiah with disgust. “He’s supposed to be a very good journalist, but I just find him full of blabbing blather. He can talk the hind leg off a donkey. But I can introduce you to him, if you wish to become a scribbler yourself. I have to deal with him quite often in my work for your sister Alameda, and in making announcements for Senator Spiro.”
“Would you?” Tabitha brightened up. “I think it’s time I was allowed out into the world. Don’t you agree, Liberty?”
“Oh, yes,” said her sister. “High time. I know you’ve been getting some recreation in taking riding and shooting lessons from Rudy—”
“Which is acceptable because we’re out on the prairie away from prying eyes,” Tabitha pointed out.
“—but I definitely agree you’ve mourned long enough and can take up some useful occupation. And scribbling would give you an excuse to attend all these functions.”
Tabitha knew the implication underneath her sister’s words. Liberty had been hinting lately at introducing her to some new eligible men. Tabitha simply wasn’t interested. True, she had not known Parker for long before they married. They had only known each other perhaps one entire year when he’d been struck down by typhus. But she had sincerely loved him. That was not a thing one could easily forget or “get over.”
“All right. Jeremiah, bring me to this Zuckerkorn fellow.
Once my new gown arrives, and I can get out of these widow’s weeds.”
“He’ll probably only let you write about society or women’s issues like gardening and sewing,” Jeremiah warned.
Tabitha shrugged. “That’s fine for a start.”
Liberty traced an outline on the desk with her finger. “And Tabitha, I think I should introduce you to Caleb Poindexter.”
Tabitha exhaled with irritation. “No more potential beaux, please, Liberty!”
“Caleb Poindexter?” said Jeremiah, perking up. “I’ve heard of the fellow. He’s some kind of master conjuror who was expelled from Rome on charges of sorcery. Lives like an Indian out in a tepee, or some such.”
Liberty’s eyes flashed at this description of her friend. “The only part you have correct is the part where he’s a master conjuror.”
“And that he’s a charlatan with a mesmeric personality. I heard that he sleeps with a great number of cats so as to create static electricity. That’s how he creates the rapping people hear in his presence.”
“Well!” said Tabitha. “It definitely sounds as though you’ve chosen well for me, Libby!”
Liberty slammed her palm on the desk. “I’m not thinking of him as a beau, Tabby! I’m saying he could definitely shed some light on the results we got here today. He’d probably even know who Phineas is. Aren’t you curious?”
“Oh, of course I’m curious. Especially if this Phineas has something to do with Parker. Oh, my. There’s a giant black dog sitting in your yard. At first I thought it was a grizzly bear.”
“A dog?” cried Jeremiah. “A wolf, you mean?”
“No, it’s definitely a dog.”
As Liberty and Montreal Jed raced to the window to view the dog, Tabitha strode to the front door. The black dog was still sitting calmly on the lawn side of a row of rosebushes. She turned her enormous skull to grace Tabitha with her serene, placid expression. Her tongue hung out under immense jowls that flapped comically, and her square, fluffy ears were set high on her massive head. Her little round eyes had a gentleness, and the silken ruff of her chest encouraged Tabitha to run over and kneel down, sinking her fingers into the fluff. She brought to mind their old family dog, a Newfoundland named Stormalong.
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