Alone in the Pullman car, heart still rippling from our close escape, I marvel at the rich appointments: the tasseled lamps, the velvet drapes, a redwood desk featuring an ornate oil lamp and a disturbing paper weight of a naked man cringing in ecstasy. A faint smell of cedar mixed with aromatic pipe tobacco and saddle leather permeates the car. My soft chair is finely upholstered. I sip from a water goblet made of expensive European crystal. Oh my, holy jeez crap. I can’t believe I’ve been transported from the dangers of the frontier to a place of safety and mostly good taste. Gradually, my beating heart resumes normal tempo. I’m thankful it is no longer in my mouth. Medical professionals have deemed this tendency odd and fraught with hazards. I wish it would stop.
My Inner Spinster and Inner Bawdy Woman have ceased their panicked brawling. Inner Spinster sullenly tends to bruises dotting her face. Inner Bawdy Woman naps with mouth open near my temporal lobe. In my left ear, hearing returns in time for me to detect a discreet knock on the cabin door. From the landing outside, Mr. Grey’s private secretary steps inside the car. I bite my lip and give my eyes a practice roll. For a large man, he moves softly, gracefully. Dressed in a neatly pressed dusty suit, he displays an extensive array of facial scars. Grey’s secretary sneers at me. In his cultured English accent he says, “Is there anything you require, Miss? A jug of whiskey? Some gingham? Fiddle music?”
Contempt falls from him like wool at a sheep shearing; contempt and something sinister and cruel. I find his facial scars most disturbing, particularly the horizontal one running from one ear, under his eyes and across his nose to the other ear. It’s as if he were held down while someone tried sawing off his head.
“I’m quite fine, I’m sure.”
He indicates a long cord hanging from the ceiling. “Should you require anything at all, perhaps a corn cob pipe, education, morals, simply engage the sash.”
He departs, taking my parasol without comment. I hope he returns it.
What had I done to deserve such treatment? My Inner Spinster rolls her eyes, cackles, then drinks deeply from my spinal fluid causing me to temporarily lose all sensation from the neck down. I mumble, murmur and whisper, wishing I’d accepted Butte’s offer to accompany me inside the Pullman car. Despite his deplorable gun work, he’d behaved gallantly on the road, saving me from robbery, as well as mutilation by Indians. Eileen Harrison will be deeply in my debt. But then my Inner Spinster reminds me that Butte also saved his own life and property. Where is the gallantry in that? Argh. I have made an inner pirate sound. Why?
Voices rise from outside the train. I peek out a curtain. Grey’s secretary supervises the unloading of the dynamite. Butte tends to our horse team, speaking with a man beyond my scope of vision. This man, this Mystery Voice, sounds youthful and confident, serene, commanding. I blush, bite my lip twice and listen.
“’Butte Parker?’ Didn’t you scout for the late Major Artis?”
“Told him not to go up the Rosebud. Only a few of us made our way back to Fort Sheridan.”
I marvel. Are Indians so torpid that indifferent marksman Butte Parker could shoot his way to freedom? Not on the evidence I have seen. I open the window a bit wider, drawn to the Mystery Voice like a cow to a salt lick.
“Parker, I’ve been told your tracking skills equal those of the savages. They say you could find an Indian in the middle of the desert, half drunk, blindfolded and snake bitten.”
“Me or the Indian?”
“Let’s begin with you.”
“Even so afflicted, I reckon I could, if you cut my sign.”
“Do they bind you upon capture, the Indians? Rawhide thongs. Very tight.”
“Might. Depends. If mutilation is on the plate—and it usually is—they’ll tie you; otherwise you’ll buck some and spoil their work.”
“Could you possibly obtain me an Indian, or Indians, who might be persuaded to demonstrate their binding skills? In return, I would improve their station in life with training in basic hygiene.”
What a noble sentiment. Who was this Mystery Voice, reaching out to those less fortunate? Clearly, he possesses high moral standing. I go into a half swoon.
Butte responds tersely. “The Red Man’s around here in numbers and eager to make your acquaintance. Me and Anna Ironhead were just about hell-served-for-breakfast until your English fella and his men rode up.”
“I shall assume that is a ‘no?’”
"Reckon you cut my sign."
“By Hercules, sir, I always get what I set out after.”
Butte spit a stream of tobacco juice.
Rapid footfalls ascend to the platform outside the car door. I let the velvet curtain drop and assume a more dignified position. I pre-blush and prepare my most business-like murmur. The car door opens and Grey’s secretary pokes his marred face inside to announce, “Mr. Lash Grey will attend you now.”
Back lit by the sun, a shadowy figure steps inside.
I nervously rise to greet him but stumble like a drunken farm horse, knocking over the ornate oil lamp and starting a small fire. As the secretary extinguishes the blaze, I blush furiously, my color hidden by the smoke and a two-minute coughing fit.
Windows are fully opened, airing out the car. I am startled to find myself coughing into the cravat of a young, attractive man in an expensive suit unmarked by mud or horse apples. His fascinating eyes impale me, one pupil gray and the other a shade of teal. His reddish hair is combed back and his teeth are even whiter and more incandescent than those of Romegas. What’s more he is clean; cleaner even than Harney Calhoun.
With a ghost of a smile, he cocks his head and says, “By Hercules, girl, you are clumsy as a calf with square hooves.”
“I’m so very sorry, Mr. Grey,” I murmur, blocking a gasp at his handsome features.
Grey dismisses his loathsome secretary. “That will be all, Manclutch. And do sit, Miss Ironhead. What the deuce became of Miss Harrison?”
My chair is only slightly scorched by the recent blaze. From my bag, I remove the paper with Eileen’s questions as I crisply whisper, “Unfortunately, Miss Harrison was wounded covering a shooting at R.I. Perryman’s Sporting Palace. But she has sent me with her queries, which I understand will be published in the
Wolf Tongue Chronicle.”
“I regret her maiming. Miss Harrison’s persistence and drive are quite admirable. Now then, interrogate as you will,” he says and I wonder if he’s laughing at me. His domineering voice and odd eyes make me feel strange in a feminine way that defies description but involves DOWN THERE.
I stutter from nervousness.
“Who is your pa-pa-partner in the Grey and Grey Railroad?”
“No one. I enjoy hearing my name pronounced twice. Sit up straight, would you please? I loath slouching.”
So arrogant. So controlling. I immediately comply.
“Do you have a great many engines and cars?”
“Yes. Quite a few.”
“Do you have cabooses as well?"
“I do. I like to see a caboose on the end of every train. It’s like a period at the end of a sentence, brandy and cigars after dining, being hog-tied and caned after
. . . never mind.”
Is he again laughing at me? And what of these questions? Eileen must’ve written them under fire. They stink like dish water in which miners have bathed. I note Lash Grey’s exceptionally long ring fingers and recall the worlds of Butte Parker. Suddenly my mouth opens like a coal chute and words tumble out unbidden, “Are you a Dandy Man with a yen for obtuse delights?”
Part I,
Part II,
Part III
