by Denise Dietz
One Klansman pointed a double-barreled shotgun, one a Colt .38-caliber pistol, a third stood leaning against a fence post. “On-ward Chris-chun sol-jurs,” he sang in a high, squeaky voice.
“Here, take this.” Cat held out his mandolinetto with both hands. The man with the Colt reached for it. Cat swung, and heard a roar of pain as the man dropped his gun and clutched at his face. With regret, Cat glanced down at his splintered mandolinetto.
Before he could retrieve the fallen pistol, he felt a gun’s barrel against his belly. “Move again and I’ll shoot,” said the man who held the shotgun.
“Shoot ’im now,” whined the Klansman who’d been struck, who still held his face as though nursing a bad toothache.
“We’re supposed to bring him alive to be tarred and feathered,” said Shotgun. He looked at Maria. “Git along, Sen-whore-rita. If you warn the hands, we’ll come back for ya.”
“Gato?”
“Go, sweetheart, and keep your mouth shut.”
After Maria was safely out of sight, Cat decided what the hell and stepped back a few paces. Clasping his fingers together, he swung and heard bones crunch. A nose, he thought happily, as Shotgun gave a painful yelp and dropped his weapon.
Immediately, Cat felt several pairs of restraining hands. One man spat on the blade of a knife, brandished it in front of Cat’s face, and severed Cat’s shirt until it hung in tatters.
“You just made a big mistake, nigra,” Knife growled.
Cat saw the blackjacks before they landed. The thudding sounds reminded him of Tonna beating a carpet. The moon spun and he shut his eyes, still hearing, as if from a far distance, the strange soprano-voiced Klansman singing, “On-ward, Chris-chun sol-jurs, march-ing off to . . .”
* * * * *
Hell, thought Kate, peeking over the side of the car.
Nurse said how bad people went to hell. Nurse said Kate was bad when she got her clothes dirty. Oh, no! Kate went and got her nightie dirty so now she was in hell.
Hell had a moon and candle stars. Hell had a twisting trail that led toward a high ridge. Kate looked east and saw evergreens, brush, briars and ghosts.
The ghosts were missing mouths, and on their faces where they should have had eyes and noses there were black holes. Holes, not hole-stirs. Kate remembered the revolver and drew it out from under her nightie.
The sky was black, except for the moon and candle stars. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the ghosts were still there. She started crying and tried to stop, knowing the ghosts might hear her tears and find her in the car. But she couldn’t stop. She didn’t like hell and wanted to go home. Daddy would drive her home. Where was Daddy?
Flinging her leg over the Alpine Eagle’s side, she waited for Mike to lift her across Rosalind Tassler’s window sill.
Mike? Mike who? Silly Kate. She needed to find her daddy, not a man named Mike. She slid down the side of the car and felt pebbles through the soles of her slippers. The ghosts hadn’t noticed her yet, probably because she was dressed in white, too.
She had never been so scared in her life, not even when the dynamite went boom and the ground shook, not even when Pearl Jolly said to collect the women and children and run for the ranch, ignoring the soldiers’ guns.
Confused, Kate stood by the Alpine Eagle, her thoughts twisting and turning, making no sense. Her daddy would tell her who Mike was—and now this new name, Pearl Jolly—if she could only find him.
Two ghosts moved sideways and Kate saw a man on the ground. Was he Mike? Had the ghosts killed him? He looked dead but Kate saw him raise his face a little, glance around, then close his eyes again. Mike was pretending to be dead.
“You can have the honor, Lytton,” said a man’s voice, and Kate saw a piece of fire being passed along until it stopped and glowed brightly. Would they throw the stick of fire so that Mrs. Bebout’s Saint Bernard could chase it?
Who’s Mrs. Bebout? What’s a Saint Bernard?
“Don’t use my name, you idiot,” yelled the angry voice of her daddy.
Thank God. Daddy was here in hell and could take her home. He’d tell her ’bout Mike and Pearl and the Saint Bernard who chased fire-sticks.
Kate tiptoed forward and aimed her pretty gun at the ghosts, even though she was fairly certain you couldn’t kill a ghost. As she pulled back on what Steven called the hammer, she caught sight of a ghost standing next to a big wooden cross.
The ghost raised a flaming torch and she smelled fire.
Tents! Dug holes! Children hiding! Soldiers! Smoke! Fire!
Kate’s mind cleared. Years of cloudy images vanished. She focused on the white-robed man with the torch, and saw a soldier igniting the side of a canvas tent.
Ludlow! The strikers’ colony! Kate could hear the roar of flames, the shrieks and sobs from the wounded. She pictured a band tied round her arm—a white band with a red cross. Red cross! Cross fire! Soon they’d be caught in the cross fire.
“You bastard!” Kate raced toward the white-hooded figure who’d lit the cross, the soldier who’d flamed the tent. She was only a few feet away when she pulled her revolver’s trigger.
She’d aimed too low. She saw blood stain the hem of the soldier’s white robe. The soldier screamed and fell to his knees. She shot again. This time a hole appeared in the soldier’s hood—a smoking red mouth, not far from where his mouth should have been anyway.
Kate laughed and shot her pretty revolver until it clicked.
Horror-struck, Cat watched, along with Shotgun, Knife, and the other Klansmen.
Cat staggered to his feet, sprinted toward the girl, scooped her up in his arms, turned east, and zigzagged through the densely shadowed evergreens. The girl twisted away from his chest, aimed over his shoulder, and shot her empty gun toward the spot where Ned Lytton lay in a heap.
It had to be Lytton. Cat had heard somebody shout for Lytton to light the cross.
As he ran, Cat broke out in a cold sweat, even though he had a feeling there wouldn’t be any pursuit. Despite the yellow ribbon and pearls encircling her lustrous dark hair, the girl in his arms had looked like an avenging angel, her white nightgown sustaining that illusion. The superstitious, cowardly Klansmen wouldn’t give chase.
Cat’s bruised body was sending signals to every portion of his brain. His calves and thighs felt hot with pain. He stopped and eased the girl to the ground. Breath raspy, he said, “What’s your name, my brave little friend?”
“Kate Loutra.”
Once again, Cat felt cold sweat bathe his body. Hadn’t Fools Gold mentioned Ned Lytton’s eldest daughter, Kate? Hadn’t Kate married a man named Mike Loutra?
Cat had seen three bullets—maybe more—shatter Ned Lytton’s ankle, face and chest. This beautiful young woman had just killed her own father.
Thirty-Four
“Rain, rain, go away,” Flo crooned to her daughter. “Come again some other day. Tonnagay Lytton wants to play.”
It was June second, 1922, and the gray sky looked like a piece of blotting paper.
The constant pitter-pat of raindrops had lulled Tonnagay into a late-afternoon nap. Flo covered her daughter with a light blanket then sat in front of the nursery’s window. The sky’s color reflected her mood, and she’d heard that the Arkansas River was overflowing its banks, menacing the nearby city of Pueblo.
Pueblo was only a few miles from Trinidad and Ludlow.
Eight years ago the Ludlow strikers had given up their fight. Eighteen months after the fire and massacre, John D. Rockefeller Jr. had toured his Colorado mines. “These beans are bully,” he’d said, eating a meal at a company boardinghouse. He danced “The Hesitation Waltz” with a miner’s wife, fretted over a mule’s harness gall, put on a suit of overalls, descended into a mine, and hacked away at a coal seam for ten minutes.
“We are partners,” he told the miners.
Although these events had happened long ago, they were all new to Kate.
Upon regaining her memory, her first tearful q
uestion had been, “Where’s Mike?”
It took Edward three days to discover Mike Loutra’s whereabouts and secure his release.
Mike wouldn’t accept “Lytton money,” even as recompense, so Flo proposed that Edward buy Mike and Kate a house—a belated wedding gift.
Now Flo reached out and retrieved the letter that lay on top of Tonnagay’s bureau. Kate’s neat script filled two pages of pink stationary. Mike still crabbed about Grandfather’s payoff, Kate wrote, but she, for one, was incredibly grateful for the house on Long Island, so close to New York City and Mike’s work. She had bought a Saint Bernard puppy and named it Cat, after Cat McDonald, who had saved her from the “ghosts.” And Flower should tell Grandfather that “Chutzpah Loutra” was doing that new dance, the soft-shoe, inside Kate’s belly.
Aunt Elizabeth had taken her to see The Emperor Jones—a Broadway play that used eight scenes to explore themes of justice and retribution.
Mike had written a book about convict labor gangs, to be published by Doubleday, and he took great pleasure in Kate’s home-cooked meals. Right now he was away from home, campaigning for Samuel Gompers to beat John L. Lewis in the June election. Four or five years ago—she still had trouble with dates—Lewis had traveled to Colorado, declared the union bankrupt, and purged it of its militants. Mike loathed Lewis.
Had Flo read The Sheik by Edith Hull? Its story told of a beautiful girl carried off into the desert by an Arab chief.
“It reminds me of Mike,” Kate wrote, “even though Mike didn’t carry me into our Ludlow tent. I practically carried him. Daddy never really knew Mike.”
Here, Kate had written a few lines and scratched through them.
Her doctor wore a goatee and felt Kate’s mental health improved daily. “Dr. Rubenstein says Daddy’s death was justice and retribution,” Kate wrote, “just like Eugene O’Neill’s play. I wish I could believe that.”
Believe it, dearest sister, Flo thought. Justice for Ned’s part in your illness, retribution for Blueberry’s abandonment.
Flo had searched her heart, but could feel nothing except relief over Ned’s death. She was only sorry that she and Ned had never performed the final confrontation reel.
With a tight smile, she pictured Claude DuBois raising his megaphone. “This scene is filled with pathos, Flower. Your father is dying. Fall to your knees and clutch his hand. Your tears purify his wounds.”
“No, Claude, my tears cauterize his soul.”
The Klansmen insisted an Angel of Death had “come out of nowhere” and shot Ned. The authorities couldn’t find the murder weapon—now safely back in Johanna’s hatbox—or even a suspect, but Flo maintained they ditched the investigation because they couldn’t depict an Angel of Death on a Wanted poster.
Putting Kate’s letter aside, she peered through the rain-streaked window at the rolling lawn, blooming plants, and fat, sassy livestock. The estate thrived, despite Edward’s illness. Bedridden once again, he had accepted Ned’s death stoically, even agreed to the Denver Klan’s request to bury Ned in their own cemetery.
“Are you sure you don’t want Ned buried in the family plot?” she had asked.
“My heart is failing, darling girl, not my ears. I heard your words inside the barn. You’ve been watched and protected ever since Tonnagay’s birth.”
Edward never mentioned his son’s name again.
* * * * *
On Tonnagay’s third birthday, Edward died in his sleep. He had requested that his body be cremated. Flo saddled Rubaiyat, rode through the Garden of the Gods, and climbed to the top of a red boulder.
Edward adored high places, she thought, remembering their drive through Fat Man’s Misery. Edward would enjoy his ride atop the wild duck.
The sky was a blaze of twilight colors as she flung his ashes into the breeze. “I love you, Grandfather,” she whispered.
A few days later, she dispatched a brief note to Cat, inviting him to Edward’s memorial service. Although Cat sent back an equally brief letter of sympathy, he didn’t appear. She heard the echo of his words: I’ll wait forever.
She’d half expected him to visit the ranch, sweep her up into his arms, and gallop toward the gold hilltops. Why didn’t he? The answer was simple. His love had waned. Forever wasn’t such a long time, after all.
Naturally, she learned all about him during Jane’s frequent visits.
Jane’s innocence had disappeared along with her curls. She played the part of the vamp in her popular films, wore daringly short skirts, and rolled her stockings below her dimpled knees. Her hair was bobbed, her eyebrows plucked thin, her amber eyes enhanced with black kohl.
Today, July fourth, 1923, Flo sat back in her chair and tugged at the hem of her own short red skirt. “Remember how you once begged for sound in motion pictures, Janey? A man named De Forest has demonstrated sound. He even included a performance by an orchestra.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Janey, are you all right?”
“Please understand that the newspaper and magazine stories about wild parties and my broken engagements are merely studio publicity.”
“Of course. May I assume, then, that you have no special fellow?”
“You sound like Cat.” With a smile Jane withdrew a flask of bootleg whiskey from her beaded purse and added the contents to her glass of lemonade.
“How is Cat?”
“I wondered when you’d finally get around to asking about my mule-headed brother.”
“Mule-headed?”
“Yes. He’s been learning how to fly.”
“Airplanes?”
“Yes. Did you think I meant flapping his arms like a bird? Ever since they inaugurated the municipal airport in Tucson, Cat talks of nothing else. I keep remembering Vernon Castle’s air accident, and Vernon even served with the Royal Flying Corps in Europe.”
“Cat’s outsmarted death before. He’ll be fine.”
“Then why did your face turn pale when I mentioned flying?”
Ignoring Jane’s query, Flo sipped from her glass of unaltered lemonade. “How’s the ranch?”
“Better. Luke laughed at Cat’s idea to raise hogs. Luke would, since he so closely resembles the swine. But in his last letter, Cat wrote that hogs on the hoof were bringing the highest price ever.” She sighed. “Luke’s causing trouble again. His slimy Klan friends have convinced him that the JMD would make an excellent resort, but I’m sure they plan to serve up more than fine cuisine and horseback rides. Frankly, I’m scared for Tonna and Black Percy.”
“Luke can’t do that. When your father died, Cat inherited the ranch, and it’s only Cat’s incredible generosity that allows Luke to remain there at all.”
“Incredible stupidity, you mean. I think my gorbellied slug of a brother plans to fight Cat for control of—hey, look! Who’s cutting across your pasture?”
“I’ve no idea.” Flo stood, shading her eyes from the sun’s glare with her hand. “Most of my guests chug up to the gate in their smelly automobiles. It’s been a while since I had a visitor on horseback.”
“Why, it’s Black Percy.” Jane pushed back her chair and stood next to Flo. “He’s riding Avalanche. I hope nothing’s wrong at the ranch. They know I’m here because I planned to visit after tonight’s party.”
Flo watched the tall man dismount and walk toward them. Jane stepped forward and greeted him with a hug. “Is everything all right at home, Percy?”
“As right as it was last time you come. Dang, it’s hotter than the trail along the Pecos.”
“Why didn’t you drive one of Luke’s automobiles?”
“On a day like this I’d have to stop every few feet and fill the radiator, probably burn my hands to cinders in the bargain. You look fit, but skinny as a newborn eaglet. Tonna will tan your hide before she stuffs you with strawberry muffins.”
Flo nodded toward a pitcher. “Would you care for some lemonade, Mr. Percival?”
“Thank you kindly, Mrs. Lytton.”
“Ha
ve you ever met Black Percy, Flo?”
“Once, Janey, a long time ago. He kept me from fainting in the aisle at a bullfight, and seemed to understand my pain at the brutality of the event.”
“Don’t cotton to the torture of animals. People, neither. The hands keep watch day and night to prevent that very thing from happening again. Can I talk to you a short spell, Mrs. Lytton?”
“Only if you call me Flo.”
“Why don’t I water Avalanche?” Jane grasped the gelding’s reins.
“Please sit down, Mr. Percival,” said Flo, after Jane had kicked off her heeled pumps, removed her stockings, and dashed barefoot toward a lily pond.
“You talkin’ to me or someone named Mister Percival?”
With a grin, Flo indicated the rattan chairs, copied from the furniture that decorated the Antlers Hotel’s sun parlor. “Won’t you please set, Percy?”
“Thank you kindly. These old bones don’t have the strength they used to. A dang steer could bulldog me.”
“Did Cat send you?”
“I like a gal who gets straight to the mountain without twistin’ off the trail. No, Cat didn’t send me. But he’s the reason I rode here.”
“Anything wrong?”
“There’s lots wrong, but that ain’t why I’m here. My wife Tonna pestered me till I thought her words would go clear through to the other side of my head. Let me ask you one question. Dimity-Jane says you have a child you call Tonnagay. Is she Cat’s little girl?”
“Yes.”
“We reckoned so. Couldn’t figure why you’d choose Tonna’s name otherwise.”
“I promised Cat during the river accident, but I’ve always thought the name beautiful.”
“Your husband died last year?”
“Yes.”
“Then why ain’t you rode to the ranch and paid Cat a call?”
“You’ve asked me three questions, Percy.” When he didn’t reply, she forced a swallow of lemonade down her throat. “I figured Cat didn’t want to see me. I assumed he didn’t love me anymore. Why are you smiling?”