A Tyranny of Petticoats

by Jessica Spotswood

  He was a ghost now, and I would treat him no different than all the others. He’d helped me, and I knew he would want something in return. That was the way of the wandering spirits.

  Perhaps if I didn’t show gratitude, he might not realize how much I was in his debt.

  He turned and watched me through reddish-gold eyelashes.

  My traitorous chest tightened.

  I didn’t know his name, but all last fall I had seen the boy coming and going from the pest tents erected on the edge of the Badlands during the smallpox outbreak. Most men hid in their camps, but he’d helped the doctor tend to those poor quarantined souls and not once turned poorly himself. Then, he had been very much alive.

  Once, I’d passed him on my way to the mercantile, and though he’d looked halfway to dead with exhaustion, he’d paused and smiled at me.

  Then he’d tipped his hat, like a gentleman to a lady.

  I’d turned away, fast, but that smile had clung to me for days. It had led to a great many fancies, most of which involved him coming to ask for his fortune to be told. I’d imagined tracing the lines on his palm and telling him of the many children in his future, and blushing like a witless little girl.

  “Sorry for intruding upon you,” he said, breaking our silence. Though he wasn’t wearing a hat, he tipped an imaginary one at me anyhow, and it was by a force of will that I smothered a sad, pitiful sigh at the gesture. “My name is James Hill, ma’am.”

  I stared.

  A hesitation. “I mean miss.”

  I swallowed, hard. “My name is Fei-Yen. Sun Fei-Yen.”

  I was prepared for scorn, but James Hill apologetically asked if I could repeat that before he attempted it himself.

  “Soon Fay Yen.” His atrocious accent prompted a weak smile from me, which I didn’t like. I did not smile at ghosts. Not even this ghost.

  After a long, long pause, James held out a hand. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  His sleeves were rolled up, and I could tell he had a miner’s arms, strong and dark from the sun. Callused palms and dirt-stained fingernails. There was a presence about him that drew me in, a stickiness that was hard to resist. Few could understand the magnetism of spirits. How they could be simultaneously appalling and alluring, like the opium pipe to an addict.

  James slowly pulled his hand back, embarrassed that I hadn’t taken it. “Please don’t be frightened,” he said, not understanding. He gripped his suspenders again. “I intend you no harm, but Millie Ann said you might help me.”

  Finally my tongue loosened. “I cannot help you.”

  His eyes bored into mine. “I think you can.”

  I tempered my sympathy. I had gotten better at this over the years. After all the ghosts and all their demands. The angry ones, the sad ones, the wronged ones — they all wanted just one thing. “No, I can’t. I’m sorry, James Hill, but you’ll have no vengeance from me. Not against the Sioux.”

  His brow creased. “Pardon?”

  “That’s a Sioux arrow in your back. This land belongs to them. It is a sacred place upon which we are all trespassers. Maybe you deserved to be shot. Maybe we all do.” I inhaled, bracing. “Besides. I’m one girl, and they are warriors. I cannot avenge you.”

  Then, unexpectedly, he smiled, and my heart thundered like a gong, remembering that smile.

  “Did Millie Ann want vengeance after she died?”

  I turned away and busied myself with returning the gun to the drawer beneath the altar and relighting the candles.

  Millie Ann was gū hún yě guĭ — a sad, restless ghost who died too far from home. She had come to Deadwood after being promised work as a waitress. Spent all her money on a train ticket only to find a different occupation waiting for her, and it was too late to go back. Four months later she’d lain dying in a pest tent, covered in those awful sores and crying for her mother.

  I often visited Millie Ann’s ghost when she became agitated, listening to her sad tale over and over again.

  “No,” I said, setting aside the matches. “She asked to go home.” A request I was powerless to help with. “Though some days she’s just hungry, so I bring her sliced apples. But Millie Ann wasn’t murdered.”

  “There’s already a group of men plotting retaliation against the savages for the murders, whether we all deserve to be shot or not. I need your help with something else.” He paused, his body flickering in the candlelight. A faint smile still lingered along the bow of his upper lip. “Though I wouldn’t mind some sliced apples too, miss, if it isn’t too much of a bother.”

  I’d seen hundreds of ghosts in my sixteen years, and Deadwood, barely a year settled, already felt like standing on the bridge to Diyu itself.

  On every hillside I could see the ghosts of the Sioux, donning their animal skins and bear-claw necklaces and glowering at the trespassers who trampled their ground. A treaty had once promised that the Black Hills would be theirs for the keeping, but those signatures meant nothing once gold was found — so much gold it grew up from the roots of the grass, the newspapers reported.

  Gold attracted its own ghosts. Diseases swept through the mining camps. Outlaws and horse thieves roamed the trails in search of easy targets. Whiskey led to brawls and gunfights, and the few who didn’t take to drink found comfort in the opium dens.

  Then there were the soiled doves, many of whom, like Millie Ann, had been promised good paying jobs only to find themselves trapped in a pleasure house with no money and no way out. The ghosts of women who had committed suicide, n guĭ, frightened me almost as much as the hungry ghosts — those whose families forgot to honor them after their death. Hungry ghosts emerged from the gates of hell during the seventh month, seeking food to fill their bulging stomachs and dragging mischief and misfortune in their wake. They were hideous things to behold, some with long needle-thin necks, others with rotting mouths and flaming tongues.

  But at least they came only once a year, whereas suicide ghosts never went away. They wore their desperation soul deep, realizing again and again, day after day, that they were still trapped here. That there was still no way out.

  Ghosts are drawn to wu-shamans like mosquitoes to an oil lamp. Here in Deadwood, I couldn’t leave the laundry without seeing their shadows from the corners of my eyes or feeling them tug at the hem of my jacket. I often took circuitous routes to try and lose them, as it was bad luck for a ghost to follow you home.

  Even now I could feel the ghosts of Deadwood drifting toward me as I followed half a step behind James, my eyes downcast to keep from drawing attention, both from the multitudes of men who filled the streets and the spirits that gathered in my footsteps. When I was little, my mother always sent them away — sometimes with bribes of food, sometimes by chasing them off with a straw-bristled broom. I hadn’t realized what a nuisance they were until she was gone.

  There was something unusual about the ghost of James Hill, though. Despite the arrow in his back, he maintained a light step as he walked down Main Street crisping on the apples I’d smuggled from my uncle’s stores. (After gifting them to his spirit, I’d stashed the physical apples under the walkway behind the laundry, hoping they would rot away before they were missed.)

  We were two blocks from Star & Bullock’s hardware store when I noticed the commotion. A crowd of men was gathered in the street, screaming obscenities. The newspaperman was there too, trying to gather information from the shouting. Not far off, I spotted a finely dressed woman sobbing hysterically and clutching a boy — maybe seven years of age — against her hip.

  Easing through the crowd, I spotted the source of the outrage. A wagon was being pulled by a couple of mules. It was loaded with two bodies and a swarm of flies.

  My heart shuddered, but I didn’t look away.

  James Hill’s eyes were faded in death, his corpse drained of color. Someone had snapped the arrow off at his back, but the broken shaft could still be seen protruding from between his shoulder blades.

  The second bod
y on the cart was one I didn’t recognize. A full-whiskered man with one boot missing off his stockinged feet. Two arrows were stuck in his torso, a third in his thigh.

  I scanned the dozens of ghosts gathered in my periphery, but I didn’t see his spirit among them.

  “Jeremiah was a good, God-fearing man!” one of the louder mouths was saying. “And his son, there, as selfless as they come! Now the Sioux come onto their land and murder them when they ain’t done nothing but work hard to provide for their family. I’ve had enough lookin’ over my shoulder for these savages. These murders must be answered!”

  His words were met with a cheer and a gunshot that made me jump.

  “I’ll offer a hundred dollars from my own pocket for every dirt-worshipper scalp brought back!” the loudmouth continued, to more cheering. The stench of alcohol was already heavy on more than one of them, and the sight of the bodies was spurring their bloodlust.

  I turned to James, but he wasn’t watching the crowd. He was staring at the crying woman and the child. Her face was half covered by a handkerchief.

  “Your mother?”

  James gave a sad nod. “And my brother. Jules.”

  They made a pretty family, all yellow hair and faces like you’d see in a painting.

  With a start, I realized I’d seen the woman before. “She came to me once.”

  James didn’t take his attention from them. “I know. About five months ago, when Jules was sick.” Some tension slipped off his shoulders. “None of the doctor’s treatments were working, and we were desperate. Some of the men in the camp told us you might be able to help.” His gaze slid toward me. “Ma said you called on the spirit of my grandmother, and she told her to make a special tea for Jules, out of plants she could only get from some of your neighbors. She followed my grandmother’s directions to the word. The very next day, Jules’s fever broke, and . . . there he is. Alive.”

  I stared at the young boy, remembering how desperate his mother had been when I suggested the tea, a combination of ginger, cinnamon, peony, and licorice. It was a common treatment, used to improve the healing energy of the body.

  “I’m glad,” I said.

  “Me too.” James rocked back on his heels. “Though I wondered how my Irish grandmother could possibly have known to give him Chinese tea, of all things.”

  James shifted closer to me. I looked away.

  “Fei-Yen, I’ve spent five months making excuses to walk by your family’s laundry, trying to come up with a reason to go inside. I never imagined I would be dead before I finally had the courage to thank you.”

  I dared to look up and hold his gaze again, even though my heart was thrumming as I thought of him walking by our laundry all those times. It was a strange thing to think — that he had wished to speak to me.

  Our conversation had tugged us closer. We were standing nearly toe-to-toe.

  I inhaled sharply and pulled back.

  My heel crashed into a feed bucket and I gasped, arms flailing. James caught my elbow and pulled me upward, locking me firm against his chest for merely a heartbeat before he flickered and vanished.

  I stood on the street, alone, my pulse in my ears. It was difficult for ghosts to affect the physical spaces of our world. Between frightening the prospector earlier and now bracing my fall, he must have used up too much energy. It would take some time before he returned.

  I was almost grateful — almost. At least it gave me time to think, to let my mind clear without being pulled off course by his friendly smile and too-easy gait.

  Five minutes passed before he began to appear again, more faded than before.

  I greeted him with a nod, but I didn’t smile or thank him for catching me.

  “You want me to be your voice,” I said, as James gathered his spirit back together. “So you can tell your family good-bye.”

  To my surprise, he shook his head. “No, Fei-Yen. I want you to help me give them a future.”

  “A future?”

  His voice crackled at first but became stronger as he watched his family. “There’s a businessman in town named George Rinehart. He arrived a few months back and has been buying up claims ever since, mostly placer mines that already ran dry. Turning unlucky prospectors into paid miners. He’s offered to buy our claim. Not for much — says the land is barely fit for goat grazing — but enough that Ma and Jules could pack up, go back to New York. She signed the deed this morning, within hours of hearing about the attack. Heartbreak, I suppose.” A line formed between his eyebrows. “I need you to get that deed back and destroy it. She can’t sell the claim.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we found it, two days ago. There is gold. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.” He hooked his thumbs behind the suspenders. “Enough to live comfortably — here or New York or wherever she wants to go. Jules could go to school. If you got that deed . . .”

  A needle inside me said that Mrs. Hill had willingly sold the claim, so why should this businessman lose just because her son was stubborn enough to wander around after being shot rightfully dead?

  “I don’t owe you any favors, James Hill.” I recited the words I’d silently rehearsed after he’d vanished. “You may have saved me this morning, but I already saved your brother. Five months ago.”

  His face showed no surprise. “I know. I needed to repay my debt to you.”

  “And I owe you nothing.” I wanted to hear him say it. Freedom from a spirit’s control was a valuable thing to someone like me.

  “You owe me nothing,” he admitted, his body no longer vague and wispy. “But I will beg you on my knees to do this, Fei-Yen. Please. Help me.”

  Sympathy seeped through me, and my hand twitched toward him, but I locked it firm against my side. Across the street, his mother was kissing Jules’s head. The driver of the wagon was getting ready to haul the bodies of James and his father away to be prepared for burial.

  Maybe, if she did end up the owner of a working gold claim, Mrs. Hill might be willing to pay a commission off it. In gratitude. Not just for saving the claim but for saving her son’s life when he was sick.

  Maybe it would be enough to take me back to California. I hadn’t wanted to leave in the first place. I tried to persuade my uncle to leave me behind — my skills were more suited to the city — but he insisted we stay together. He believed he could provide for us both, and his laundry was doing well enough, but we both knew I didn’t belong here. Whether or not he regretted bringing me, it no longer mattered. There wasn’t enough money to send me back.

  All I needed was a ride on the stagecoach and a train ticket out of Cheyenne. Enough to let a room where I could conduct the wu-shaman rituals.

  Maybe, when I got there, I could find another shaman to complete my training. Maybe I could even find my mother’s spirit, if she hadn’t yet departed. Oh, how I yearned to see her again. To be home.

  “All right, James Hill,” I said. “I’ll try.”

  I made myself small as James and I darted through the alley between a saloon and the newly constructed hotel. The sounds of clinking glasses, the hollow clatter of dice, and an upbeat piano melody spilled from open windows.

  I was clutching a stack of rough-spun linens in both arms. It had been easy enough for me to persuade the man at the hotel’s desk to give me a key, explaining in poor English that I had to deliver laundry to a guest. All he’d cared about was that I go in through the back door and stop taking up space in his lobby.

  I rounded the corner and spotted a figure outside the hotel’s door, her dress gauzy and her bone-thin arms wrapped around her hips. She was staring up at the second-story windows.

  We both stopped, but it was James who spoke. “Millie Ann?”

  Her head turned, although it took her haunted gaze a moment to follow. “James Hill,” she said in her usual meek voice. “You found her.”

  “I did.” James tipped his nonexistent hat. “She’s been as kind as you told me she would be.”

  A frown carved its way
across my brow. I didn’t like to think of the spirits talking about me around town, appointing me their personal telegraph into the realm of the living.

  “What are you doing here, Millie Ann?” I asked, never having seen her so far from where she died.

  “I was looking for the post office . . .” Millie Ann scanned the walls of the alley. “I wanted to post a letter to my mother. But I seem to have taken a wrong turn.”

  I sighed. She’d most likely been pulled off course because of me. Even as I thought it, the faint ghost of a dark-skinned man in a derby hat drifted into the far end of the alley.

  More would follow.

  It was time to finish this task for James Hill and return to the sanctuary of my incense and altar, where only the strongest spirits could follow me.

  I curled my shoulders over the linens and shoved through the hotel door, certain that Millie Ann would either find her way back on her own or still be waiting there when we returned. She could have followed me into the building, but passing through walls cost so much energy that most spirits never bothered.

  The hotel was eerily quiet. James and I climbed to the second floor, where the walls smelled of fresh timber. I knocked when we reached Rinehart’s room, but there was no response. Balancing the linens again, I slipped the key into the lock, heart pounding.

  The room was furnished with a four-poster bed, a pedestal sink and mirror for shaving, a writing desk, and a reading chair with an ironed newspaper draped over one arm. A round-topped trunk sat at the foot of the bed, fastened with brass buckles and stuck with a dozen labels of different cities — San Francisco among them. My heart squeezed with homesickness.

  “Try here first,” said James, standing at the desk.

  I set the linens down on the bed and joined him, opening the top drawer. Inkwells and envelopes. In the next, blank stationery. The bottom drawer held a newspaper clipping with a photograph of a well-dressed man who James told me was George Rinehart himself. Beneath the paper was a stack of document files. I pulled them out so James could puzzle out the labels printed in a neat hand.

  One window was cracked open, and I could hear men down below, discussing weapons and horses and raving about the godless savages they’d soon be hunting.