Of Grave Concern

by Max McCoy

  “You cheated me out of ten dollars gold and I aim to have my satisfaction!” the teamster bellowed, the knife flashing overhead. “Now hold still, so I don’t take more than’s fair.”

  I shrank back and pressed myself flat against the wall of the Saratoga.

  “You’re crazy, Gary,” the cowboy protested, showing far more pluck than his position would suggest. “It’s not my fault if your luck is as rotten as your teeth.”

  Gary held the cowboy’s head down with one meaty hand while the cowboy fought and kicked and chewed on the fingers caging his jaw. The teamster drew back the knife—and it was a wicked knife, with a brass guard and a blade that must have been ten inches long—and took a sweeping stab at the cowboy’s ear. Just as I thought I was about to see the blade pierce the cowboy’s skull, the teamster was jerked explosively backward by somebody who had grabbed a fistful of his long hair.

  The blade sliced empty air.

  “Drop it,” the man holding the hair said, and I thought I could hear a bit of Texas in his voice. He was tall and lean, wore a blue shirt under a black vest, and on his right hip was strapped an absurdly large handgun. He knelt and drove one knee into the small of the teamster’s back.

  The teamster bellowed in rage. A string of expletives flew from his mouth that threatened to peel the green paint from the bat-winged doors of the Saratoga.

  “Is this how you want to finish your hand?” The Texas drawl became more pronounced. “Down in the mud, with me on top of you like you was a steer? Or do you want to get up and walk away from here like a human being? Your choice, Garuth.” The man drew out the name, getting almost four syllables out of it.

  “Don’t call me ‘Garuth,’” the teamster roared. “Nobody calls me that!”

  “If you don’t drop that knife, everybody’ll be calling you ‘the dearly departed.’”

  “You think you’re something just because they let you carry your iron north of the deadline,” Garuth said, his eyes narrowed to hateful slits because the man in the blue shirt was pulling the skin of his face toward the back of his head. “If you didn’t have that horse pistol strapped to your leg, you wouldn’t be so brave.”

  The man in the blue shirt sighed and nodded for the cowboy to come over.

  The cowboy, who had the blood from Garuth’s fingers smudged across his lips, edged over and carefully drew the gun from the holster. I don’t know guns—I hate guns—so I can’t tell you what kind of firearm it was, except to say it was shiny and one of the biggest revolvers I have ever seen.

  “All right, Garuth. Now we’re even.”

  “Get off’n me!”

  “You’re between hay and grass now.”

  “You can suck eggs, Jack Calder!”

  “Drop the knife before somebody gets hurt.”

  “Just try and make me.”

  Calder sighed.

  “Hit him on the crown of the head with the butt of the gun,” he told the cowboy.

  “What?” Garuth shrieked.

  The cowboy turned the gun around so that he held it by the barrel and began lining up the handle with the back of Garuth’s head.

  “Do it already.”

  “I want to do it right,” the cowboy said.

  Garuth dropped the knife.

  “Shucks,” the cowboy muttered.

  “Thanks,” Calder said as he took the gun and returned it to his holster. Then he rubbed the palm of his right hand on his jeans. “Garuth, you have to take a bath every so often. Your hair is full of. . . I don’t know, smells like horse apples and axle grease.”

  “But I just hit town.”

  “You could take the time to bathe. If you can’t afford a hotel, there are plenty of cheap tent baths.”

  “You going to take me to jail?” Garuth asked.

  “No,” the man said.

  “But—”

  “Shush up,” the man said. “I don’t have all of tomorrow morning to spend testifying to Judge Frost about how Garuth insulted your person.”

  “But he tried to kill me!”

  “You could have lived without your ear.”

  “But it was my good ear.”

  He told Gary and the cowboy to take off and plan on spending the night at opposite ends of Front Street, or there would be hell to pay. They sprang away as if magnetically repelled.

  Then Calder glanced over and saw me still pressed up against the saloon.

  “Are you all right, miss?”

  “Just startled,” I said, peeling myself off the wood. “But thank you for asking.”

  “Sorry about that,” he said. “They’re not wicked boys. Just stupid.”

  “Well, Mister Calder,” I said. “Are you an officer of the law? I don’t see a badge. Perhaps you just go about town dispensing justice as sort of a public service?”

  “Hardly,” he said.

  “Are you a Pinkerton, then?” My voice broke only a little.

  “No,” he said, and coughed. “But I’m a member of the Vigilance Committee. I also work for the businessmen who put up surety in exchange for bail at the district court here.”

  “You work for them? How?”

  Calder smiled. He was looking down, inspecting my clothing, and I could guess he wasn’t thinking anything complimentary. It occurred to me that I’d rather have this man as an ally instead of a foe, considering how decisively he broke up the aural assault.

  “I track down those who fail to appear and deliver them to the court.”

  “You’re a bounty hunter.”

  “Some call me that,” he said coldly.

  “Do you also collect rewards?”

  “At times.”

  “Then you’re a bounty hunter. That’s why you can carry a gun on this side of town and the others can’t. What did Garuth call it? ‘The deadline’?”

  “The tracks are the deadline,” Calder said. “North of the tracks, you can’t carry firearms. South of the tracks, anything goes.”

  “Dodge City is full of demarcations, isn’t it?”

  “If you’ll pardon me,” he said, “I have business. . . .”

  “Of course, how rude of me,” I said. “Do you have an office?”

  “Across from the courthouse,” he said. “Frazier and Hunnicutt. I work out of the back.”

  “Ah, I’ll remember.”

  “Why?” He seemed puzzled and somewhat alarmed.

  “I may have to turn myself in,” I said. “There’s a considerable reward, they say.”

  He looked at me as if I had just fallen from the sky.

  “That was an attempt at humor, Mr. Calder.”

  “It doesn’t strike me as funny.”

  “It would be, if you knew my situation.”

  “I’m sure I don’t,” he said.

  “Nor would you like to, apparently,” I said.

  “I have no time for—”

  “For what?” I asked. “What do you take me for?”

  “I take you not at all,” Calder said. “Your business is your own, miss.”

  “My name is Ophelia Wylde,” I said. “I prefer ‘Ophelia’ or ‘The Reverend Professor Wylde’ to ‘miss,’ if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course,” he said, the corners of his lips betraying him. “Reverend.”

  “From the train, I saw a cemetery at the edge of town. Could you tell me the name of it?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I would not ask if I did.”

  “That’s Boot Hill.”

  I left wicked Front Street—and the smugly disapproving Jack Calder—behind.

  On Bridge Street, I worked my way north, then ambled west along Chestnut, where most of the brothels on the north side were concentrated, and then on Walnut. The blocks north of Walnut were where most of the permanent residents of the city lived, and their homes ranged from shacks to limestone cottages, all with clotheslines and vegetable gardens out back. The hill I had seen from the train encroached on the northwest corner of town, with some homes and a few business
es hard against its flanks.

  But Boot Hill was really more of a ridge, pointing south, than a hill. I hiked up, discovering it to be composed of a peculiar mixture of clay, sand, and rocks, with patches of buffalo grass and soapweeds. The tops of the scattered soapweeds, a type of yucca, were heavy with their bell-shaped white blossoms. Loose sand and gravel skittered beneath my feet as I climbed, and a few times I slid back a few feet when I attempted too steep an angle.

  The hill came to a bulbous point overlooking the town, and it afforded a good view of the Arkansas River, which serpentined across the plain a half mile south. Even at the summit, there was the stench of cows. Herds of several thousand longhorns dotted the valley.

  No buffalo.

  No Indians.

  On the opposite side of town, I could see the brick-and-stone Ford County Courthouse, by far the largest building in town. A few blocks from the courthouse, atop a low ridge, was a white steepled church.

  In the center of town, I could see the Dodge House, and it was clear now that it was really several buildings stitched together. On the roof of the main building bristled an array of meteorological instruments for the government weather station. I could see the west window of my corner hotel room, and much of both Front Streets.

  The saloons on both sides of the tracks blazed with light, and little knots of cowboys drifted from one to the other. Their rough laughter carried to me on the still air. There were a few soldiers, little groups in blue, having come from Fort Dodge, a frontier outpost five miles to the east.

  From up on Boot Hill, it was easy to imagine the cowboys and the soldiers and the townspeople as animals. The good citizens and the soldiers were mostly herd animals, I decided, but the cowboys ran in packs, like wolves. The most unpredictable and therefore most dangerous of the cowboy animals were the loners—the lobos.

  I walked over to the cemetery, on the side of the hill facing town.

  There were a few dozen graves, identified by white crosses or wood markers, and a few rectangles of sunken earth that had not been marked at all. A cemetery visit is essential research for any medium, because you very quickly gain the names of residents and a brief family history, told in years and ages.

  But at Boot Hill, there was scant information to work with.

  The town was too new, having been settled only five years before. There hadn’t been time for many permanent residents to have been planted here. Most of the wooden markers, at least when the graves had markers, indicated transients, murder victims, or other unfortunates.

  Some carried brief, hand-lettered epitaphs:

  Jack Reynolds shot dead 1872 by railroad track layer.

  Five buffalo hunters, names unknown, frozen dead after blizzard 1873 north of city.

  Barney Cullen, railroad employee, dead 1873 saloon shooting spree.

  Unknown boy found hanged west of town 1875.

  Texas Hill and Ed Williams shot dead for cause, Tom Sherman’s barroom 1873, Dodge City Vigilance Committee.

  And so forth.

  Death by natural causes seemed to be virtually unknown in Dodge City. It would be a healthy place to live if only you could duck the flying lead, avoid knives and ropes, and keep from freezing to death in winter.

  The epitaphs were colorful, but hardly useful.

  No family groups, no birth dates to determine ages, no relative sizes of monument to indicate status. It was all horribly and rustically democratic.

  Near the top of the hill was an open grave, having been prepared sometime in the last day or so, judging from the freshness of the sides of the earth, but it had not yet received an occupant. There was a shovel driven into the mound of earth beside the grave.

  Were the city fathers anticipating another wild weekend? Or was the Vigilance Committee just sending a warning?

  I sat down next to the open grave.

  The sun had nearly set and the sky had turned a deepening blue. The evening star blazed brightly in the west, and overhead a few faint stars were emerging.

  I leaned back on my elbows to look up at them.

  Then I stretched out full beside the open grave and put my hands beneath my head for a pillow.

  There was a gentle breeze from the southwest, chasing away the smell of cattle and replacing it with the scent of rain and grass. It was cool, but not cold. Soon I was asleep, or nearly so.

  Then I felt something slither near my elbow.

  I shot up like a skyrocket.

  A rattlesnake the length of my arm was undulating along next to the open grave, following its pink flicking tongue. A cold thrill passed from the center of my chest to the top of my head as I realized it could have bitten me at any time. I took a few steps back as I caught my breath.

  Perhaps the snake was merely seeking warmth.

  Then again . . .

  “Paschal!”

  12

  It was silly of me to shout Paschal Randolph’s name at Boot Hill. I had hardly spoken his name (which rhymes with rascal) in the two years since he had been found dead in Ohio. The coroner ruled his death self-inflicted, because the gun that had delivered the fatal bullet was found beside him.

  He was forty-nine.

  I was in Chicago when I heard the news, and it sent me into a deep melancholy. For weeks I wore only black and frequented that city’s Graceland Cemetery, walking among the deathly mansions of the rich. I hadn’t seen Paschal in seven years. When we separated in 1868, in Jackson Square in New Orleans, during a thunderstorm, I felt there was a hole in my chest, where my heart had been. No, I wasn’t in love with Paschal, even though it would have been natural for others to assume so.

  When I walked away from Paschal, the rain plastering my hair to my face and smearing my dress against my thighs, I knew that any chance I ever had of contacting Jonathan was gone. If anybody could have helped me reach him, it was Paschal—magician, mesmerist, trance medium, medical doctor. He was of mixed blood, had been a fervent abolitionist, was a recanted Spiritualist, and remains the smartest person I’ve ever known. He was also twenty years my senior and married.

  After reading all of his books, especially Human Love and Dealing with the Dead, I became determined to seek Paschal out. I found him in New Orleans the summer after the war ended, teaching newly emancipated slaves how to read. He took me on as a pupil as well, and shared with me the secrets of his life’s misadventure.

  All human beings are spiritual beings, Paschal said. As children, having been recently born of spirit, we are in touch with the spirit world. Children are much better at seeing ghosts (and elves and fairies and all manner of otherworldly beings) than adults. But as we grow older, we give ourselves over to the material.

  We doubt our gifts.

  And even when as adults we glimpse the world beyond—knowing, for example, when a family member is upon death’s bed, or being certain a letter from a friend you haven’t seen in a long while is about to arrive, or just having the sensation of having somehow lived through an event or conversation before—we are at first mystified, then confused, and finally frustrated.

  The frustration sets, Paschal said, because the revelations are all so damned random. It seems that we should be able to control this marvelous gift, that this spiritual telegraph should be able to serve man as reliably as the electro-mechanical kind. Faced with such frustration, Paschal said, we begin to deny and then to doubt our gifts—or our sanity.

  But with careful training, some control could be exerted over these other powers. There were a few important rules to remember: Ghosts always have unfinished business, and the dead never lie, although true ghosts will not usually respond to a direct question. If you want information from a ghost, Paschal said, you had to learn to listen. Demons will always respond to a direct question, he said, but will only answer truthfully if asked in the name of Jesus Christ or something else holy.

  Once spirit communication was established, Paschal said, it was possible to influence the weather, to change the turn of a card . . . and, with special
training, to summon the dead. It was a risky business, he said. If not done properly, it could result in the spiritual ruin of the living parties involved.

  For Jonathan, it was a risk I was willing to take.

  After three years as Paschal’s apprentice, I was finally ready.

  We attempted the forty-nine-day magical rite that was required to establish contact with Jonathan. Granted, the rite itself was shocking, but Paschal said such an intense shock was required to break the grip our senses had on illusory reality and to forge a permanent connection with the spirit world. It would work, he said, if our hearts were pure.

  The rite failed.

  On the dawn of the fiftieth day—April 13, 1874—I found myself shivering on a slab inside one of the plastered and whitewashed tombs in St. Louis Cemetery Number One. In New Orleans, the dead are placed in vaults on top of the ground, to keep them from floating away. I had gone to the cemetery the night before, brushed away the bones of the previous occupants, wrapped myself in winding sheets, and waited for Paschal. By the time he got there, a few hours before dawn, my skin was about as cold as one of the permanent residents of the cemetery.

  That’s what Paschal wanted.

  For the past seven weeks, we had practiced intimacy in increasingly shocking ways: in public, with others, drunk on absinthe, and at midnight in the apse of a church. For the last month, Paschal had allowed me to eat practically nothing. I became pale, cadaverous—and compliant. The final sacrilegious union, he said, on Easter Sunday in the old cemetery, would complete the great rite and summon Jonathan’s spirit from the dark beyond.

  But in the cold light of that April morning in the old cemetery, there was nothing manifest in the tomb except crumbling plaster and peeling paint. It was raining outside. The lilies Paschal had brought were drooping, but the damned immortelles were as bright as ever. I pulled a sheet stained with sweat and semen around my shoulders, trembling, and watched a water moccasin slither across the wet floor.

  I held my head in my hands and thought with shame of Jonathan—and was stricken with terror because I could not remember his face. It was then I knew that I had to get out and leave Paschal behind, no matter how smart or well-meaning he was. While he pleaded with me to stay, I pulled on my dress and fled barefoot in the rain toward the Vieux Carré.