A Stranger Here Below

by Charles Fergus

  Now he rode Jack through the brushlands. The cold air made his eyes water. He slitted his eyes and pictured a visage perhaps not too different from the one that had plagued True’s dreams: Yost Kepler’s brutally beaten face. Then into his mind came the judge, head lolling, blood bearding the side of his neck. He got rid of that image only to be confronted yet again with the vision of his memmi lying bloody and violated on the kitchen floor.

  Why did God watch silently over such misery? When his mother was killed, one of the neighbors said it must be part of God’s plan. It hurt Gideon so much to hear that. Because why would God want anyone to be tortured and slaughtered like that? Especially a good woman like his mother. Why would God even let somebody be born, if that was how they were going to die?

  Because there isn’t any God.

  Gideon tried to pull his mind back from that thought. It was like looking into an abyss.

  The whole sky was now red. The road dipped into a low spot where cold mist lay. It climbed up again into clear air. Gideon’s teeth chattered, and his toes felt numb. He reached down and touched the buttstock of the rifle in its leather scabbard, then felt for the pistol in his belt and the second pistol in his boot. He had brought wrist and leg shackles in a saddle bag.

  He rode into the ironworks on the pale blue road. He stopped Jack outside the Burnses’ cabin. Gideon’s father-in-law emerged from the outhouse behind the dwelling. Davey Burns put a hand against the weathered boards of the privy, bent over, and coughed for a long time. He spat, then slowly straightened.

  “Good morning,” Gideon said.

  “Yeah, it’s morning,” his father-in-law croaked. “Can’t say it’s any good.”

  “Did you find George England for me?”

  Burns shook his head. “Nobody I talked to had heard of him or seen him lately. I doubt he got hired here. I checked with the hostler. Seems that dun horse might belong to the man you’re looking for—leastwise he used the name George England. But the horse ain’t at the livery. The man paid up and left a while ago. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “Gottverdamm,” Gideon said under his breath.

  His father-in-law mustered a smile. “Well, Sheriff Stoltz, looks like you wasted your time and the county’s dollar coming all the way out here. May as well waste a little more and have some coffee.”

  Inside the cabin the burly man set out chipped floral-patterned cups that looked tiny in his hands. He got the pot from the hearth and poured. “What will you do next?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” Gideon said. “Maybe the handbills will get some results.” But with each day that passed, he felt it less and less likely that he would find the man. Maybe George England had seen the bills and fled. Gideon thought of the oddly named town, Chincla-clamoose, that England claimed to be from. It lay a long way west through thinly settled country. Perhaps too far to go on pure speculation.

  Davey Burns remained seated as Gideon finished his coffee and stood. The big man coughed again and rubbed the back of his neck.

  “You don’t look well,” Gideon said.

  “Something’s clawin’ at me, that’s for sure.” He hauled himself up off the bench and put his coat on. They went out the door. Davey Burns set off down the road, his shoulders slumped. He stopped again, hacked, and spat.

  Gideon looked around. The ironworks was a sprawling place. Could George England be working here somewhere, despite what his father-in-law had said? Could the old tramp be here, hidden away in a cabin or in one of the buildings?

  Cocks crowed back and forth throughout the settlement. A cow bawled. A woman came out of a cabin lugging a bucket toward one of the wells.

  Sunlight gilded the hilltops.

  The side-angling light picked out a black horse on the road in front of the ironmaster’s mansion. On the horse sat a rider, bare-headed and clad in black. The horse strode along the blue road. Clinkers of slag threw back the rising sun in brilliant spears and winks. As Gideon watched, horse and rider passed from light into shadow, becoming silhouettes against the dull frosted land. The horse broke into a trot, the rider posting rhythmically above its back. Then the rider sat deep and leaned forward and the horse took up a canter, the treble-beat of its hooves carrying through the air.

  Davey Burns scrambled off the road and doffed his hat as horse and rider swept past.

  The horse stretched out into a gallop. The rider crouched behind the horse’s neck. The road made a wide arc, and the horse came on, thundering past the Burns cabin. Thirty yards beyond, the rider reined to a sudden stop, the horse’s rump bunching and its hooves spraying slag.

  The rider wheeled the stallion about and retraced his steps, the horse lifting its front legs high and seeming to dance on its muscular haunches. The ironmaster rode the stallion up to Gideon where he stood next to the gelding Jack.

  Adonijah Thompson wore his hair clubbed back in a queue. Beneath a broad brow, his eyes were set deep in his skull. His cheekbones were sharp and angular, with hollows beneath them, and prominent lines ran from each side of his nose to the corners of his mouth. His eyes bored into Gideon’s.

  The stallion huffed quick breaths, pink in the new light, and sidestepped, tossing his head. The ironmaster paid no need to the stallion’s fidgeting. He hardly appeared to move in the saddle, and his eyes never left Gideon’s.

  “What is the sheriff doing at Panther?” His voice was deep and cold.

  “I’m looking for a man who is a suspect in a murder case.”

  “What man is that?”

  “He may be using the name George England. I heard that he asked for work here, and that his horse was stabled for a while in the stock barn. He is wanted for questioning—”

  “I saw the handbill you put up in my store.”

  “—in connection with the murder that happened in Adamant on the twenty-eighth of October.” Gideon’s heart hammered, and his mouth was dry. He imagined True subject to the unwanted attentions of this fearsome man. He took a deep breath, then spoke carefully. “Mr. Thompson, do you know—or do you employ—this George England?”

  The ironmaster took his time before answering. “Not as far as I know. But I do not know the name of every person who works for me.”

  “Is it permitted for someone who does not work here to stable his horse in the ironworks’ stock barn?”

  “If there are open stalls, they can be rented.” The ironmaster’s stallion switched his tail and danced sideways. “You have been a frequent visitor here of late.”

  “I came here three days ago to post the handbill.”

  “You knocked on my door, also.”

  Gideon made himself return Thompson’s stare. The ironmaster’s eyes betrayed nothing: Adonijah Thompson’s face appeared to have been formed from the same material that was smelted in his furnace and tempered in his forge. Gideon had not intended to raise the subject of the old beggar, but he thought it best to acknowledge what the ironmaster had said. “Yes. As well as searching for George England, I am looking for an old man, a tramp, with white hair and a beard, pale blue eyes, and a limp.”

  “Why do you seek him?”

  He decided to repeat the lie he had invented for the ironmaster’s housekeeper. “The man stopped at a residence in Adamant, where he was given a meal. Some silverware was reported missing.”

  “Nothing has gone missing from my house.”

  “So your housekeeper said. I wondered …”

  The stallion surged forward, taking three powerful, barely contained steps.

  Gideon stumbled back, and Jack snorted and threw his head up and stepped backward. Gideon held onto the reins, laid a hand on the gelding’s neck.

  “I have work to do, Sheriff.” The ironmaster loomed over Gideon. “You are wasting my time as well as your own.”

  Gideon wanted to say that he had heard of the old tramp entering the house in a familiar way, demanding to see “Ad.” But he reckoned the ironmaster would quickly figure out that Gideon’s mother-in-law had told him.r />
  Instead he said, “Do you have any idea who that old tramp could be?”

  The flesh around the ironmaster’s eyes tightened. With the slightest pressure on the reins and, Gideon knew, a straightening of his spine, Thompson caused the stallion to step backward. And again. The horse stopped with his weight gathered on his hind end. “I have no idea.”

  Gideon decided to end the conversation. He nodded and shrugged. “Yes, well. I guess I won’t trouble myself too much over a couple of missing spoons.”

  The ironmaster stared down at him. Gideon thought about how he himself had been attacked in Hammertown. The longer he looked into those hard gray eyes, the surer he became that Adonijah Thompson was behind the assault—either he had sent someone on a murderous errand, or he had done it himself.

  “If you or any of your workers should see the man who calls himself George England,” Gideon said, “would you please send word to me?”

  The ironmaster kept his baleful stare fixed on Gideon. “I need you to leave here right now,” he said. The ironmaster turned his horse aside. The stallion, in all his power and grace, walked away down the road.

  Let’s covet those charms that shall never decay,

  Nor listen to all that deceivers say

  Twenty-Eight

  Gideon pushed back from the noon table, full of food, finally warmed up after his ride to and from Panther on this chill morning. He felt deflated by disappointment—and subdued and undermined by fear.

  “It didn’t go so well,” he told True. “I didn’t find that man’s horse at the ironworks’ stock barn.” He decided not to mention his confrontation with the ironmaster, which had frightened him badly, or anything to do with the old tramp.

  “I’m not sure what to do next,” he said.

  True bit her lip. She looked like she wanted to say something—also didn’t want to say it. The emotions warred on her face.

  “There’s another stable in Panther where that horse might be at,” she finally said. “Mr. Thompson’s.” She reached out and took Gideon’s hand.

  “I’m not much of a sheriff,” he said. “I don’t always think of everything I should.”

  She squeezed his hand.

  “True, I met the ironmaster this morning. He was out riding his stallion.”

  “I doubt he welcomed you.”

  Gideon let out a breath. “No. He pretty much ran me off of the ironworks.” He raised his eyes. “He holds himself above everyone else, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does he fear any man?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “He fears men that are no longer men.”

  “Tell me,” Gideon said.

  “For years Mr. Thompson would go walking around on his plantation at night,” True said. “To make sure everything was in order. You never knew where he might turn up. He saw all manner of things. Drunks staggering home late, trying to figure out which cabin they lived in. Women getting together with other women’s men on the sly. Wolves slinking across the fields. They say Mr. Thompson can move as quiet as a wolf himself when he has a mind to.

  “But he quit doing that a few years back, when he saw something that put fear in him. It was a ghost. The ghost of a man who died in the furnace.” She looked defiantly at Gideon, as if daring him to deny that such a thing was possible. “The man’s name was Calhoun. He was a filler—they work up on the bridge, dumping charcoal and ore and limestone into the stack when the furnace needs fed. Forty times a day—load after load of coal and ore and stone. My brother Jim, he was learning to be a founder then. He said Calhoun used to drink—kept a bottle hid somewhere, probably in one of the bins, and by the time his shift was over he was usually drunk. Jimmy was there that night. And Mr. Thompson showed up to check on things.

  “It’s loud up on the bridge,” she continued, “a roaring that goes on and on. It’s hot, and the light flickers orange and red. Jimmy was down below in the cast house, with the ironmaster watching him, and he called up for more ore. They heard the charging buggy rumble across the floor, and a scuffling sound as Calhoun dumped the load. Then a yell.

  “Jimmy and the ironmaster ran up to the bridge. There was no one there—just the buggy half empty and Calhoun’s rake lying on the floor and a scuff mark in the dust. Jimmy covered his mouth and nose in the crook of his arm and looked down into the throat. Mr. Thompson looked, too. There Calhoun lay, on top of the burden. His clothes had already burned off. Then his arms lifted up like he was begging God to carry him to safety, but in that heat he was already dead. There was a glow all around him as his whole body caught fire. Jimmy said his head exploded, went all to pieces in the blast.”

  She shuddered. “They rang the bell and kept on ringing it. Woke people up all over the ironworks. I remember how I came upright in bed. I was worried about Jimmy, I knew he was working that night. I was just a little girl then, but I tagged along when they all went running to the furnace.

  “It took three hours for the charge to work its way down. By then, there was nothing left of Calhoun’s body. No bones or nothing. They broke the crucible and ran the pour, filled the sow and pigs. The workers clumping around in their wooden shoes, sparks in the air like it was a precinct of hell. Ma took me on home. Some other women took Calhoun’s widow back to her cabin. She was crying and tearing her hair. They tried to comfort her but it was no use.”

  True’s voice was tight. “And what did Mr. Thompson do? He set one of the pigs aside. Sent word to Calhoun’s wife that she could take that hunk of iron and bury it, put up a stone over it with her husband’s name. He gave her ten dollars. The next day he turned her out of their cabin and sent her down the road. She ended up in Hammertown. She sold her body so she could feed herself and have a roof over her head. Then in the spring, when the creek was up, she threw herself in it and drowned.

  “From that time on, Calhoun’s spirit would not rest. Folks would see him at night, wandering around. One time Ma and I were coming back late from a church social, and there he was, setting on the edge of the well.”

  She looked at Gideon, a guarded expression on her face.

  “Please, go on.”

  “He didn’t say nothing, just smiled and beckoned us over, but we picked up our skirts and ran. He means to pull someone down into the water with him. He needs to quench the fire that burned him up. Or maybe he wants folks to die the same way his wife did.

  “Mrs. Glenny told me that one night Mr. Thompson was out patrolling, and he met Calhoun’s haunt. The ironmaster tucked tail and ran. Mr. Thompson came in to the big house white as a sheet and whimpering like a child. Now he daren’t go out after dark. I know, that’s just another one of my ignorant stories. You think you married a simple girl who doesn’t have a lick of sense in her head.”

  “I don’t think that at all,” Gideon said. He got up, went to True, and kissed her. “Thank you for telling me. Thank you for reminding me that the ironmaster has at least some weakness in him. That he isn’t as hard as he appears to be.”

  “Oh, he’s hard, all right.” She shivered. “You’ll go back, I know you will.” She began to cry silently, her face against his chest. “I’m scared. I’m awful scared. But maybe you aren’t. Be careful, Gid.”

  He gave her a long hug and another kiss. Then he stole into the bedroom, where David was napping in his cradle. He rearranged the blanket around the baby. David stirred and thrust out an arm with its perfect tiny hand. Gideon tucked the hand back under the covers. The child thrust it out again. Gideon smiled. He wondered what his son was dreaming about—he had such a serious, workmanlike expression on his little face. He kissed David gently on the forehead, said goodbye to True, and left.

  Let sinners take their course,

  And choose the road to death

  Twenty-Nine

  Riding Maude, Gideon retraced the route that he had taken that morning. It was now the middle of the afternoon. Before leaving Adamant, he had shifted his saddle from Jack to Maude because Jack was not in good shape and Gi
deon did not know how far he might have to travel, and because he trusted his mare to take him wherever he needed to go. He had told Alonzo of his plans. Alonzo volunteered to go along, too, but finally agreed that he should stay behind, mind the jail, and keep the peace in town.

  Dark clouds scudded across the sky, hurried along by a northeast wind. The wind hissed in the treetops. It felt like bad weather coming. But Gideon felt strongly that time was running out. Almost three weeks had gone by since the old tramp visited the judge. Yost Kepler had been attacked and left for dead eleven days in the past.

  He followed the blue road across the ironworks. He looked toward the building that housed the office. Was the ironmaster watching him? The skin between his shoulder blades twitched. But the building was far enough away that he doubted he’d be recognized even if anyone happened to look out a window.

  The ironmaster’s mansion stood on a gentle rise. Tucked away behind it was a small hollow surrounded by mature pines, huge old trees with feathery green needles, trees that had been spared the ax and left standing to provide shade. In that hollow, True told him, lay the ironmaster’s stable.

  Like his fine house, Adonijah Thompson’s stable was built of dressed fieldstone. As Gideon rode up to it, six horses stuck their heads over green-painted half-doors. They whinnied at Maude. All of the horses were blacks or bays. Not a dun among them.

  A man and a boy came out of the stable. The man was sturdily built and bowlegged. The boy, slope-shouldered and with a large blunt head, made Gideon think of an owl.

  “I want to ask you about a horse,” Gideon said.

  “We don’t rent ’em,” the sturdy man said. “These here are Mr. Thompson’s personal riding horses.”

  “Very handsome horses indeed,” Gideon said.

  The man puffed himself up. “We keep ’em polished to a fare-thee-well. Are you here to inquire about Vagabond? You want your mare bred, you will have to talk with Mr. Thompson first.”

  “I don’t want my mare bred. I need to ask you some questions.”