There was only enough time for the woman to draw breath before he carried her over the lip, still upright, and dropped her feetfirst into the darkness. She landed with a muffled splash, the sound absorbed by her torn dress. The garment and her underthings absorbed water rapidly, became immediately and almost unbearably heavy, and she had to throw herself back to keep her torso afloat. Even so, the dress wanted to drag her under.
Floating in water that was cold, numbingly so, she tried to tear at the lacings around her waist, but they were already sodden and adhering as a thick and expanding knot. Moments later there was a second splash, louder, well behind her; it was only then she realized how far the current had carried her from the opening in the wall. She was also, she noticed, pinwheeling . . . as well as sinking. It was all she could do to keep her mouth above water.
There were additional, softer splashes. The Indians following? She was probably well ahead of them, but what did that matter if she drowned?
Suddenly, she heard rending sounds and began to bob up and down, back and forth, and from side to side. Something pricked the outside of her thigh—a rock?
No, she realized as it stung on the other side now. A knife.
Gannon had been able to jump in after her and was cutting away her dress. She felt herself getting lighter as the garment fell away. She also was completely disoriented as the darkness above gave way to utter pitch below, with the sound of the water echoing and reverberating until it was a roar far greater than its actual size. At least the current wasn’t strong; if she felt rock on either side, she was able to push off with a foot or hand without being dashed against it.
Her legs were finally free, and she was able to straighten them to help with floatation. It was not very long after that she bumped against a curve in the rock, one that slowed and redirected the river. Constance inverted herself and felt flat surface above the ledge. Her clothing was too waterlogged for her to pull herself up, but she held on to it to keep from drifting farther. Moments later, Gannon flowed into her. Grasping the rock beside her, he stopped his own movement.
“I’m going up . . . will pull you!” he said.
There was suction in the water that swung her from side to side like a bell clapper, after which she felt strong fingers under both of her arms, dragging her forward. It wasn’t a delicate move, sheer force, but by grunting, kicking her legs, and wriggling against the stone, she helped him to raise her. She was quickly out, lying with her cheek on flat, cold rock, and thanking God, with tiny gasps, for her deliverance. Not just from the current but from the red man.
In the dark, she felt herself lifted onto what felt like fur, was fur; Gannon’s cloak. It was soaked. It was there that he placed her, shivering. He wrung out a corner of the garment and handed it to her.
“Place this in front of your mouth,” he said. “There are gases here.”
She nodded, while he removed his neckerchief and did the same.
“Wait there,” he said through the fabric. “I want to see if there’s a cave or a nook of some kind.”
“Feel . . . on the ground,” she said. “And watch your step.”
“Why the ground?”
“Gravity,” she said simply.
“Of course,” Gannon replied. She heard him move away on the silty surface of the ledge.
It was too cold to stay still. Feeling above her, Constance was able to stand with at least a foot to spare. She knew, from Sir Charles Lyell’s book of geology, that not just the state but the entire southwest of the continent was ribboned with underground, freshwater aquifers such as this. There were more in fact belowground, in the clay of the earth, than there were aboveground. Some of those were caused by erosion, though she suspected that these tunnels—given their width and length—were probably cut eons before by the eruption of the Pilot Knob volcano.
She wished she could remove what was left of her clothes and beat the water from them, but she did not know where there might be a nearby opening—an opening the Indians could use. They might hear her slapping the garments on the rock. Thinking of the Indians, then, brought back the horror of the night. It did not seem possible that any of the day’s events had happened to her.
They had.
And though she was relatively safe now, she knew that her life would never be the same. Not her life, her soul, whatever equanimity and charity she possessed. But she was also aware that if she did not find a way to go on without hate, there would be no going on at all.
Gannon returned and reported that he had found a break in the rock that would be large enough to sit in.
“And there is fresh air coming from an opening somewhere,” he said. “If we find a way to fix the cloak in front of it, we may stay warm and dry and be able to breathe for a few hours,” he said. “We won’t have light but at least we’ll have water.”
Gannon picked up the cape, took Constance’s hand, and walked her back to his discovery. She wanted to say, “Our first home,” but the words wouldn’t come. The dream seemed to have turned to ash.
He found outcroppings above the entrance and used the knife to make cuts in the cloak. It hung well enough and they sat inside. The small chamber had a salty, iron-like atmosphere—ancient minerals that were exposed to old air and the rising and falling of the underground flow.
“That’s quite a river,” Gannon said. “It must feed the wells and watering holes throughout the lowlands.”
“I’ve read that there is plentiful underground water in Texas and each stream or lake nourishes hundreds of miles aboveground,” Constance said.
“There are people who study only that, aren’t there?” he said with some amazement. “How much knowledge must come from men who saw something as boys that they could not explain?”
“Some,” she said. “So much comes from accidents, too. Mr. Newton and his apple. The spoon lying on a silver plate and leaving its shape behind to give us the daguerreotype—”
“I met you by accident,” he said.
If the comment was meant to console her, to reassure her, it failed. Gannon’s effort to invoke the past only heightened her sense of loss, and she was glad he couldn’t see her eyes crinkle and tear. Nonetheless, it was a pleasanter thought than others that had taken control of her, and she allowed herself to be whisked back—
It had been the late winter of that year and she had taken the class to the river to find different kinds of stones for a building project that was also a lesson in erosion. They were going to construct nests for birds, outside the school, so they could study them throughout the spring. Gannon had ridden by on patrol, watching for Indians. They exchanged no words, only looks, and those looks were like nothing the young woman had ever experienced. And he tipped his hat as if he meant it. One of her pupils, a shoeless boy named Keith Cassidy, said, “Miss Breen has a boyfriend, Miss Breen has a boyfriend.” None of the others joined in, and the chant died on the riverbank. But not the jolt that had made her forget where she was and who she was with until Keith spoke.
The next day was a Saturday, and Constance had gone back to the river to gather more stones—material that she did not need. Her heart thumped hard the entire time because she had decided, after a blissfully restless night, that if he came by and did not speak to her, then she would boldly address him. And if he did not come by, she would find some excuse to visit the stables. Or the Texas Special Police office. The phrase “school project” would open a great many doors to her.
But he did come by. And, seeing her, he did more than tip his hat. He doffed it and dismounted. Henry Gannon stood well over a head taller, and he had eyes that were simultaneously hard as granite and warm as sunshine. And it was true: her knees turned to water. And it was also true, they were true, every sonnet she had ever read, every sentimental line, every seemingly hyperbolic word—true, true, all of it true. Suddenly, no man, no person, no thing, mattered as much as this person who had not yet spoken a word to her. When he did, when she heard his voice lightly sprinkled with the s
ounds of Florida, she married him in her mind with the phrase “till death us do part” repeated over and over.
And then the magic was poisoned—not by Hank nor by her.
Almost at once, the fighting began at home. Her parents did not crave social standing. They were content with their lives, working with their hands. They were in fact proud of that life. It suited their view of the century-old nation as a slate for wiping clean the blight of European class. But they had a different vision for their daughter. Someone who could, through her education and poise, ironically use power to erase the barriers of caste. To them, every life event must be a pitched battle, an extension of the war so lately fought. They had even talked to Senator Delacorte about finding a means to place Indian representatives alongside the Northerners and blacks in the legislature as a means of ending the wars. Their daughter was to be their means of added pressure.
But a goal, however well-meant, did not justify the funneling of all resources to it. Constance had views, too, many of which differed from those of Martha and Albert Breen. She did not understand why men like Hank, who held with a different cultural tradition, should be shut down politically and socially. She had wanted his views heard, as well.
Poisoned, Constance thought, not of the battle fought through three seasons, but of today. The magic was poisoned not by Hank. Not by me. By . . . savages.
Here, surrounded by rock, insulated from all, there was something approaching clarity. Not clarity of answers, but of questions.
“Why did you come?”
Gannon’s question surprised her. “Do you know how many times I ask my pupils questions about why they do things? Pull a girl’s hair, hit a window with a slingshot, fight over marbles. They always muddle through an explanation, but the truth is they had to. Well, I had to.”
Her voice was close, so close he could feel her breath. He felt sick about what had happened, and he wanted to be angry at her for having come out here. It was reckless, not in line with her sensible nature. But her commitment to him moved him in a way he had not felt before.
“How did you do it?” she asked him.
“What is that, Constance?”
“Forgive the Union, the looting, the destruction?”
“I haven’t,” Gannon answered.
“Do you live with hate?”
“I suppose I do,” he said. “Maybe not hate. More like—sadness? I don’t want to hurt anyone. Even when Captain Keel threw me to the dogs, I understood. I didn’t like it, but one thing you learn working the earth the way I did in Florida—God doesn’t order things to suit your preference. You adapt to His world.”
“Even after what was done to your home?”
“I would have died protecting it, as many did.”
“And if those perpetrators showed up here?”
“Are you asking if I’d do what Sketch Lively did?” Gannon asked.
“I suppose . . . yes.”
“I’ve thought about him a lot while I’ve been out here,” Gannon said. “Until today, there was nobody I would’ve kilt for what they did. If it was in my power, I’d kill the Comanche who hurt you.”
“All of them?”
“I don’t know. Probably.”
“You didn’t kill the one I stitched up.”
“No,” Gannon agreed. “I figured that if you had mercy in you, I should, too. But his and my fight is different. Those other Comanche are just soulless things.”
Constance thought for a moment. “You always told me you weren’t very religious.”
“I’m not, in terms of churchgoing,” he said. “But in terms of—” he stopped.
“What is it?”
“I was gonna say in terms of moral right or wrong, but Sketch had a moral right even though it was a legal wrong,” Gannon said thoughtfully. “Christ, why is this all so confusin’? You never hurt anyone, I’ve tried not to—maybe the lesson is to be heartless. Protect your own self.”
“That life cannot be very satisfying,” she said.
“Is this satisfying? Our lives?” he asked. “We’re hiding in an underground cave, both of us injured body and soul, each of us facing an uncertain future. How is that better?”
“I don’t know,” Constance answered truthfully. “Yet both of us just fought to survive.”
“Instinct,” he said.
“Was ‘instinct’ the reason you pushed me in?” she asked.
“No,” Gannon admitted.
The two were silent then.
“Constance, ever since the War started I haven’t known how to fix anything,” he said. “That day I was riding along the river, I had been here three months, and I was still tryin’ to figure out how to relate to Yankees, to black men. I told myself, ‘Just treat ’em like the people they are.’ But I also always asked myself if I could count on them. If there was a fight, would they see me as a Rebel, dispensable, repentant only ’cause I have to be? Would I help them only to prove I wasn’t, not ’cause we had a job to do? I didn’t have answers. Then I saw you and I was able to stop thinkin’, start feelin’. I don’t suppose I liked any of those other people any better, but I do know I stopped hatin’ them in my heart.” He drew a long breath. “So I guess, to answer your question, I started to see a way back.”
Constance took a shuddering breath. The violence that had been done to her, the ruination of her romantic notions of love, did not seem to have a similar path to redemption. Right now, like Hank, she wanted to kill every Comanche in the camp.
Yet she had saved the one. And she had thrown the rifle down with disgust at having killed, even though it was to save her own life and the life of her affianced.
Perhaps there is hope, she thought, shivering and moving closer to Gannon. Instinctively, he put an arm around her. She did not remove it. If there is not, then I would prefer to stay here among things of stone.
But it was not to be as they heard three loud plunks, followed by sloshing sounds, from where they had entered the underground world.
CHAPTER TWELVE
October 21, 1871
The three Comanche came crashing through the darkness, feeling their way as they rode the current, finding the same ledge Constance had discovered, and pulling themselves from the water. Roving Wolf had already told them not to bring a torch into the gas-tainted hollow. They had decided that the three of them would be sufficient to overpower a wounded white man and his woman. Each man carried a knife or club, and they came to the lip of rock with weapons probing the space ahead of them.
The cave with the fur cloak was straight ahead. Gannon could hear them already sniffing the pronounced smell of wet fur; they would be upon the couple in just seconds.
He put his lips against Constance’s ear.
“Stay very close to the back of the cave,” he spoke in a voice barely above breath as he gently urged her back.
The woman lay on her side and tucked herself against the wall with less than a yard behind them.
Gannon had no idea how the men were coming. They could be crouched or on their bellies, which was a favored way of attacking on the lowlands—hiding behind scrub and snaking forward. They could have sent one ahead with two still in the water or one in the water. They were unlikely to have brought guns; even if they kept them dry, firing in the dark would be a bad idea since the bullets could ricochet.
That did not stop someone from firing a weapon. Gannon recoiled against Constance from the noise as a flash and a deafening crack filled their hollow.
* * *
Corporal Evan Bosley was a patient and meticulous young man; his job required it. He could not afford to have shimmied up a large pole and then drop a wire or tool or his telegraph key from sloppiness.
Bosley was born in Bethel, Connecticut, the birthplace of showman P. T. Barnum. From his earliest youth, Bosley was enraptured by one of Barnum’s attractions. It was not the diminutive General Tom Thumb or the Feejee Mermaid but the opera singer Jenny Lind whom he adored. He only heard her once, when his parents to
ok him to New York City, and it nearly drove the six-year-old mad that he could not hear that voice again when he wished. And yet, he thought as they rode the train home, there were telegraph wires in New York and also in Bethel, and there had to be a way to make those sing.
There wasn’t. At least, not that he could discover with his own homemade devices. He obtained discarded lengths of wire and metal from a hat factory near his home. He used nails to put the wire in trees, to see if they made noise. Apparently, they did not, though the wires vibrated in the wind and made sounds. That led him to read about telegraphs and about how sound traveled, how the Indians put their ears to the ground to hear distant hoofbeats, to the rails to listen to oncoming trains. Sound was not just Bosley’s hobby, it was his life.
He was too young to enlist in the army, just fourteen, and he was too young to be on his own: when his parents were killed in a fire, he was sent to Oklahoma to live with his older brother, Gary, who had gone west in search of silver. The younger Bosley helped him as they lived in their tent near the Texas border until failure and poverty drove them both to seek employment. Gary’s experience with a succession of packhorses and mules earned him a job in a stable with the U.S. Army. But Evan did not want to be in the tomb-silent dark. He lied about his age, joined the army, got himself assigned to a military telegraph-battery wagon, and resumed his passion. After the war, the Bosleys pursued their respective trades in Texas, where there was a need for manual laborers who spoke English and young men who had experience with electricity.
Corporal Evan Bosley was not an uncommonly brave young man, but he was an adventurous one when it came to his trade. And as he returned to his post at the northern end of the valley, he took a sip from his canteen and reflected on the encounter. He was dissatisfied with the decision of Sgt. Calvin—a man to whom he did not technically report. Nightingale’s own sergeant, a black man named Fenster, did not know the area, did not know the Comanche, and had yielded decision-making to the police sergeant. The reporter Lee Bates had switched his own attention to the articulate Negro, perhaps wondering if the adventures of a black officer would make for popular dime-novel reading.
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