The Curse of Jacob Tracy: A Novel

by Holly Messinger

  He passed a mercantile and a café, the feed store and the pharmacy, stepped down into the street and headed toward the livestock yards. The air smelled of burning coal. Evanston was a mining town, supplier to the railroad that had birthed it, and the air was constantly full of smut and smoke from the charcoal kilns. A dozen trains a day passed through town, carrying beef back east and horses to San Francisco, quality folk from Denver to California, military to and from Fort Laramie, and Chinamen out to the head of the line. There was a sizable Chinese population in Evanston, crowded into ramshackle slums where the streets were rife with strange smells and stranger speech.

  As Trace got closer to the stockyards, the earthy bleating and surging of men and animals swelled to drown out the rhythmic clang and clatter of the rail yard. He skirted a flock of sheep, along with their shaggy Basque tenders, and sauntered over to join Hanky and the Kid at the rail of their rented corral.

  “Where’d you get off to?” Hanky said.

  “Bank,” Trace said. “What’s happening here?”

  In the corral, Boz was putting a palomino mare through her paces before a well-dressed lady and gentleman. The man was a slicked-up dude in striped pants and a beaver hat; the girl was dolled up in virginal white and blue ribbons, though the rouge on her cheeks and the hardness in her eyes suggested she was not as fresh as advertised. Nevertheless, the Kid was eyeing her as if she were a steak dinner at the end of the trail. She had noticed his interest and kept darting glances over her shoulder, while her protector spoke to Boz.

  Trace could tell by Boz’s posture that he was running out of patience.

  “Lady wants the horse,” Hanky explained. “Gent don’t wanna pay for it. Keeps tryin to talk Boz down on the price.”

  “You don’t say,” Trace murmured, as the slicked-up dude noticed his arrival.

  “Sir! You must be Mr. Miller.” The man strode toward Trace with his hand out. He was affecting an English accent, Trace guessed, though his flat, nasal tones bore little resemblance to Miss Fairweather’s cultured speech. “Sir Ashley Ravens, newly arrived from London, to rusticate in your fine mountain air.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Trace said, “but I’m just a visitor like you. That fella there is Miller’s chief trainer, he’s the one you wanna talk to. Hey, Boz!” he hailed, as if they hadn’t clapped eyes on each other in a year. “Miller ain’t fired you yet, you old so-and-so?”

  Boz picked up the cue right away. “Why, Jake Tracy, ain’t the law caught up with you?” He came over and they shook hands and clapped each other on the shoulders. “Here for your new racers?”

  “Yeah, you set me back the number we agreed on?”

  “Sure did, six of Miller’s best with your name on ’em.” Boz glanced at Ravens. “Just let me finish up with Mr. Ravens, here, and we’ll talk.”

  Trace said that was fine, and turned to lean against the rail while Boz led Ravens back toward the two or three horses they had been discussing. Ravens’ ladybird, meanwhile, sidled over to the Kid, all bold eyes and tossing curls. The Mormon boy, interestingly, seemed to get taller, more relaxed, more there under her attention. It was like watching the mismatched images of a stereoscope slide into focus, as the Kid focused in on the girl. He bent his head close to hers and said something Trace couldn’t hear, but her eyes lit with a dark heat that he could read as easily as a scent.

  “What was that about?” Hanky said, dragging Trace’s attention back to Boz and Mr. Ravens.

  “Fella’s a four-flusher and a screw,” Trace explained, “tryin to get as much as he can by claimin the stock ain’t up to scratch.”

  “So why’d you act like you were buyin—?”

  “Cause swindlers are the easiest to swindle. My guess is, he don’t have a feather to fly with, but he’s tryin to start a game here in town, showin folks he’s got money with a prime fancy and a flash horse. So Boz gave him the idea I’m in a dishonest business, too, and that makes Ravens figure, if Boz’ll do some under-the-table dealings with me, he’ll be likely to knock down his prices for Ravens.”

  “Oh,” Hanky said, chewing his tongue. “But you don’t want Boz to knock down his prices—”

  “Just watch,” Trace said.

  Sure enough, Boz called out, “Kid? Go bring Black Iron out here from the stable.”

  Black Iron was a five-year-old gelding that belonged to the ranch remuda, and he was the laziest, most contrary thing on four legs. He would lie down if anyone tried to saddle him. He would fall asleep if left to stand for even a few minutes. He had a tendency to lag when harnessed in tandem. The only thing he showed any interest in was food, and he would nip at the mares and other geldings to steal their grain.

  Despite all that, Black Iron was a handsome brute, gleaming black with an undercurrent of red in his coat and a fine arch to his neck. Trace had brought him to town in hopes of meeting a buyer like Mr. Ravens.

  When the Kid returned from the stable it was obvious he had taken a moment to run a brush over the animal’s hide: Black Iron usually had a smudge on one side where he had been lying, but that was gone, and he wore one of the better halters. He looked very much like a pampered show-horse.

  The girl cooed and exclaimed over him, and cooed and exclaimed over the Kid, too—how skilled he was, how kind and patient he must be, how brave—horses quite terrified her, they were so big—despite the fact that Black Iron had snuffled once over her hands and then stood there, lock-kneed and dozing. The Kid took her fawning with surprising aplomb, watching her with an intense, low-lidded expression that would have credited an experienced lady-killer.

  Mr. Ravens made a show of examining Black Iron’s teeth and feet, while Boz helpfully lifted the horse’s hooves and opened his mouth.

  “He is truly a beauty,” Ravens said. “What do you think, my dear?”

  “Oh, he’s a beauty all right,” the girl purred, without taking her eyes off the Kid.

  “Is he what you want?”

  “He’s exactly what I want,” the girl said in a throbbing voice.

  “Very well, Mr. Bosley, I’ll give you fifty-five dollars for him.”

  Boz shook his head. “I dunno…”

  “Sixty-five.”

  “Really, Mr. Ravens, I don’t—”

  “Seventy, and not a penny more.”

  Boz exhaled hard, his hands on his hips. He gave Black Iron a pat—the horse snorted and opened his eyes—and then extended the hand toward Ravens. “All right, you convinced me. Seventy it is.”

  Which was not bad at all for a twenty-five-dollar horse, and Hanky gave a soft whistle of admiration through his teeth.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  “I been thinkin,” Boz said several hours later, over their pushed-back plates.

  They were in the hotel’s saloon. The place was a roundhouse for cowboys and railroad workers, spare and utilitarian, but the food was decent and the owner didn’t allow brawling or whoring on the premises. There were a few local girls hanging around the piano, trying to get the men to dance or buy them drinks, and Hanky had coaxed and bullied the Kid into joining him there, once they’d finished supper.

  Trace had no objection to that, since it kept them out of his hair but still in sighting distance. He was writing up the day’s sales for Miller’s records, and Boz had his own personal bank book out. He’d been doing some deep and mysterious tallying in that thing for several days now, so Trace figured there was something portentous behind Boz’s casual tone.

  “You gonna tell me about it, or I have to guess?” Trace said. “I know we’re not broke, this time.”

  Boz tapped his pencil on the table. “No, we’re doin all right, for a wonder. Matter of fact, I been thinkin, why don’t we go into the horse business for ourselves.”

  “We can’t be doin that well?”

  “We still got eight hundred seventeen dollars from what’s-her-name, plus Miller’ll owe us another eight hundred at the end of the season. That’s enough for ten or twelve decent mares and a stu
d. Or eight really good mares and a stud. We can take our pay in horseflesh from Miller, or we can take the cash and hit the auctions ourselves.”

  “I don’t like the idea of competin with him.”

  “Me neither, but we know his markets. We can go someplace else. It’d only take a dozen head to get us started.”

  “What’re we gonna do for land?”

  “We can bid for a homestead.”

  “Out here?”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, Emma, for one.” Trace’s half-sister was still at school, in St. Louis.

  “You could bring her out to live with us. Be good help to have a woman around. Hell, you’d probably have her married off before she could unpack.”

  “She’s fifteen!”

  “All right, all right—But you been sayin it’s time she got out and saw somethin of the world. She might meet somebody. Or I might. Or you might.”

  “I ain’t lookin.”

  “No, I guess not.” Boz cut a glance toward Trace’s right hand.

  Trace realized he was rubbing that scar again. He flattened both palms on the table and fixed his partner with a glare, daring him to say anything about it.

  Boz smiled slightly. “What’d she say?”

  “What?”

  “What’d the witch say? Ain’t she answered you yet?”

  Trace ground his teeth. “I just wired her today.”

  “Well hell, Trace, we been in town two days. Surprised you ain’t gone into a decline by now.”

  Trace told him, explicitly and at length, where he could go and what he should do with himself when he got there. “And I don’t know what you think is so damn funny—”

  “You are,” Boz said, still wearing that thin smirk. “You are, partner. So’d you tell her about the werewolf?”

  Trace glowered at him. “I told her there was suspicious activity in the area and I wanted to know if it looked like anything she’d seen before—”

  “Like Mereck?”

  “Or the bloodsuckers. Or anything else she knew.”

  “Hunh.” Boz looked away, across the room. “You was dreamin about me the other night, wasn’t you?”

  Trace’s anger drained away, left him feeling tired. “Yeah.”

  “Worse?”

  “More of the same. You in danger, Reynolds callin me out, and I can’t figure out how to stop it.”

  Boz looked down at his ledger, rubbed a hand over his mouth. “Well. I guess I could work for Miller another year. Still work out, just take me longer.”

  Trace felt a curious cooling sensation in his chest. “You got somethin you wanna say to me, partner?”

  Boz studied the length of his pencil. “Just been thinkin about stuff, lately.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like, for all the worryin you do, that folks around you is bound to die … could be Miss Fairweather’s one you don’t have to worry about. Seems to me she might know how to stand up to a curse or two.”

  The words seemed to come at him slowly, pregnant with meaning. “Boz, if you’re worried about those dreams, it ain’t—”

  Boz rolled his head back on his shoulders with a groan. “I’m tired, Trace. Get it? I’m tired of you havin one foot out the door, and I’m tired of you usin me for your excuse to run away from your life.”

  “I’m not—”

  “You are. You the worst man I ever knew for bein afraid of what you want. An’ I guess I can’t blame you, all the spirits ridin you for years, and folks dyin, and now the first woman you wanted in a dog’s age is a lyin hateful bitch—”

  “Now hang on a min—”

  “And I ain’t sayin you’re in love with her or nothin like that. I’m not sayin you ought to be. But the two of you got gumption together, Trace. She’s like your…” He made a winding motion with one hand. “What’re those Greek ladies who tell the hero where to go? Opticals?”

  Trace stared at him. “Oracles?”

  “Yeah. And I didn’t get it til I saw the two of you together. That damn séance, from the moment you was in the room, her eye was on you. Just like she was trainin a horse. And you watchin her for the signs, puttin every foot where she wanted—”

  “That was the deal we made,” Trace said, rankled.

  “I know it. And I ain’t sayin it’s a bad thing. It ain’t so different from you helpin me steer that dude in the corral this mornin.” Boz pursed his lips and looked moody. “Look, you and me … we like an old married couple. And nobody can say you ain’t done right by us. But all the time I known you, Trace, it’s like you been holdin yourself down. Like God’s gonna strike you dead if you step outta line. And what I seen you do this spring…” He shook his head, awed and angry. “Ain’t one man in a thousand could do what you did on that train. Or in the print shop, even. But you woulda never done it if she hadn’t been drivin and cussin you all the way. And you got no business turnin your back on that, specially if you’re right about somethin worse comin down the pike. You need to be back there with her, figurin how you’re gonna deal with it.”

  Trace hardly knew what to say. “You don’t even like the woman.”

  “Nor do you, but it don’t seem to make a difference. You spent the whole spring moonin over her, you turned down that Baptist woman’s invite to Montana—”

  “That wasn’t the reason—”

  “It’s all part’n parcel of the same thing, Trace! I know you think I don’t get it, but I do. She likes this thing in you, and you like that she likes it. And you can holler all you want, but I think she’s the perfect woman for you, only you can’t see it cuz your head’s all full of that Catholic crap, says you ain’t livin right unless you miserable.” Boz’s nostrils flared in distaste. “And I think she’s even more kinked than you are, but since you met her it’s like … you’re bigger, somehow. It’s like I finally see you, proper.” Boz waved a disgusted hand toward Trace’s neat black suit. “And you ain’t no roughneck ranch hand, partner. You clean up better than that.”

  They had to look away from each other then—Boz scowling across the room as if he’d just bitten into a lemon, and Trace trying to absorb the sting of Boz’s words.

  He was not wrong, was the hell of it. Miss Fairweather was the first person in twenty years that he’d been able to tell about his curse, and not fear the repercussions. And he did crave the approval she so willingly spooned out, knowing it kept him coming back, to learn more, to understand better, to believe he wasn’t irrevocably damned. He despised himself for it, but there it was.

  But the idea of her as a lover was ludicrous. She was English. And rich. And too damned smart for her own good. And even if she was impervious to his curse, her feud with Mereck was sure to make for a short life expectancy. For both of them, if he got involved in it.

  “She might not have me back,” he said at length.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And anyway, I don’t dare leave til this … wolf thing is settled.”

  “Whyn’t you just pack up the Kid and take him back to her? You know she won’t refuse a treat like that.”

  Trace felt his lips twitch, imagining the excited tremor beneath her cool demeanor … but then remembered his dream—the wolves bearing Boz on a platter, the familiar but faceless Russian toasting him across the table. “It ain’t just the Kid, though. I can’t help but think—” He glanced toward the piano, and sat up straighter. “Damn. Where’d they get to?”

  Boz turned and looked, too. Hanky had moved against the wall, in close conversation with a flaxen-haired girl, but the Kid was nowhere in sight.

  Trace swore, got to his feet and gathered up the record book. He stuffed the loose pages inside and shoved the whole into the leather portfolio. Boz pocketed his bank-book and threw down coin to pay for their meals, while Trace went over to Hanky and asked him where the Kid had gone.

  Hanky looked around, surprised. “He musta left with that girl.”

  “What girl?”

  “The one he was mashing on this
morning—remember? She came to the corral with the English swell.”

  “Alice,” put in the flaxen-haired girl. “She’s got a room over at the Yellow Rose.”

  “How long ago did they leave?” Trace asked her.

  She shrugged. “Couple minutes.”

  “Hanky, I need you to take these up to the room.” Trace handed over the portfolio. “Do it right now, hear? Put ’em with my saddlebags and then you can come back down and buy this young lady a drink.” He produced a two-dollar coin, to Hanky’s astonishment.

  “Where’re you goin?”

  “Me’n Boz got some business down the street. Don’t you leave the hotel tonight, understand? I’m countin on you to keep those records safe.”

  “All right,” Hanky said, concern knitting his brow, but he levered himself off the wall and waved an elbow toward his companion until she looped her hand through it.

  Trace and Boz headed for the door without further discussion.

  The evening was clear and cool, and there were a lot of people on the sidewalk and on the street, merry spectres drifting in and out of doorways and lamplight. Trace crossed the sidewalk and stepped down into the thoroughfare, throwing open his senses without half thinking about it, feeling out through the morass of thoughts and emotions, searching for the the Kid’s peculiar double aura—

  Boz lengthened his stride to keep up. “Is somethin gonna happen?”

  “I don’t know. I hope not.” Some of his worry was only practical—the Kid was unpredictable, and the thing driving him even more so. It had lain quiet for almost two weeks, and Trace recalled what Miss Fairweather had said about intervals getting shorter with use.

  But his power was pushing at him, as well. Not the sharp prickle of alarm he got from demons or ghosts, just a nagging, seasick feeling that something was astir.

  The boy couldn’t have gotten far. Trace knew he’d only been distracted for a few minutes. Now that he paid attention, hints and flickers of emotion came to him—furtive lust, sly excitement, and pure, predatory intent.