By Gaslight

by Steven Price

  They came around a curve and slowed. The platform hove into view.

  All right, his father was shouting. Mr. Wyatt, Mr. Mueller, William, you exit from the front with me. I want the rest of you out through the back. Keep your heads.

  William felt a foreboding come over him. The platform was crowded with men and ladies in bonnets and bustles all of them awaiting the 4:10 postal express. He stared the length of the narrow platform but recognized no face. They came in past the water tower and a small wooden outbuilding once painted blue but weathered now and peeling in the cold and they were still at such speed William thought for a moment they would overshoot the station until the carriage jolted sharply in a quick sequence of brakings and they came to a snorting halt in the centre of that crowd.

  His father was glancing from the faces on the platform to the photograph in his hand to the faces again and then he shouted, There, in the blue duster. At the back of the platform.

  William looked but could not see.

  The men were already up and moving heavily their boots clattering in the aisle and the floor juddering under them. William swung down behind Mueller with Wyatt at his back and they cut single file through that crowd of onlookers, the more curious turning to regard them as they passed. The air smelled of rain and horses. He could not see where he was going and kept close to the Hessian and then the crowds parted and he saw the other men had formed a loose circle around two figures bent in conversation neither of whom had yet looked up. He saw his father step forward and speak some word and the bigger of the two men glanced up and went for his gun.

  It was that fast. William lunged in from the back and grabbed Reno around the chest and one arm broke free but then he had him, he was pinioning his arms to his sides and Mueller was leaning into the fray twisting the outlaw’s wrists and locking the iron handcuffs into place. The man was writhing and William tasted tar and spit and sweat in his neck and he had his face crushed up against the back of the man’s head when Reno leaned forward then smashed his skull back into William’s brow. He staggered dazed but he did not let go. Then Wyatt stepped in and struck Reno twice with his fists and reached down and slid the man’s pistols from his belt with a soft liquid clatter and William’s father was knocking Reno’s hat from his head and shoving an empty flour sack down over the twisting fury.

  The crowds had drawn back in confusion. Reno was shouting from within the sack and William scanned the faces for sign of any confederate but he could see only terror. Winscott was hollering bloody murder at them and grabbing for the arms of the nearest man and Wyatt stepped forward and set two strong hands on the middle of Winscott’s chest and shoved him hard and he went backward into the crowd. All this William saw as he looked wildly about but he was already dragging the kicking man backward on his heels and Mueller was fighting to get a hold of one boot and then a second man had seized the other and they carried him like that through the recoiling crowds at a half run as if he were a sack of feed.

  Goddamnit, his father was shouting. Get a move on, go—

  William thought he saw a cattleman in the crowd pushing towards them and he did not see his father and then the cattleman went down and then they were hauling Reno still squirming up into the passenger car. When he turned he could see over Reno’s thrashing legs his father behind them again. Winscott had pulled a knife and he watched his father turn and get in close to Winscott with one strong arm and with the other he hammered at him sharply on the skull with the butt of his revolver and the man’s legs went out from under him like a calf on new ice and he collapsed with the blood already in his eyes.

  Then his father was running for the buckboard and hauling himself up and waving to the conductor and they were away.

  On board the men were whooping and slapping their hats against their legs and banging each other on the back and William turned from them to lean out the window and watch the platform shrink into distance. He could see no sign of pursuit.

  His heart was still battering in his chest and he was breathing through his mouth as he made his way down the swaying carriage to the rear.

  John Reno. In the flesh. Wrists in iron bracelets at his back. He had been tied and double-tied in a long winding zigzag of new white rope until he looked like a package of beef strung up for transport. His hat had been lost in the melee and his long black hair was greasy and standing in clumps on his scalp and his mouth and left eye were swollen. Mueller was holding him by the arms to keep him from sliding onto the floor.

  William sat. Hooked a thumb in his waistcoat, nodded to Mueller. The Hessian grinned back. He could feel his own uneasiness as he studied the outlaw. The men were still laughing and hooting near the front of the carriage and passing a bottle amongst themselves and after a moment his father came down the aisle.

  He held the creased photograph for the outlaw to see. Took off his coat and folded it over the seat behind him then sat down and William watched the big man’s eyes shift to take in the two revolvers at his hips.

  You don’t know what you just done, the man said. This ain’t even legal.

  His father raised his eyebrows, smiled across at his son.

  You look at me, Reno shouted suddenly.

  His father looked.

  The big outlaw had gone very surly, very dark. My name is John Reno and my brothers is Frank and Simeon and you give us two pistols apiece we ain’t afraid of no man living.

  Wonderful, his father said.

  Reno turned his head and spat. His gums were bleeding.

  William’s father leaned in. Do you know who I am, John?

  Reno grinned a bloody grin. You’re a corpse with boots on.

  Wyatt hollered from the front of the carriage. What size collar you wear, Johnny boy? There’s a judge in Gallatin mighty curious.

  Reno said nothing.

  You may fear no man, his father said quietly. But you will fear me.

  The carriage clattered and shivered, William swayed in his seat. Mueller’s knuckles were white where they gripped Reno’s arms.

  You ain’t the law, Reno said.

  No.

  His father was no longer smiling.

  Reno turned his face, stared out at the passing fields. Beyond the windows the Midwest plains were vanishing and William could see the distant orange glimmer of a settlement.

  The passenger car darkened further.

  Now I’m going to describe a man to you, his father was saying softly. I’m going to describe a man and I want you to tell me if you ever heard of him.

  In that first fall after Margaret’s death he would sit alone in the evenings with a stack of his late father’s books beside him and reread the popular tales of the Eye That Never Slept and in the reading he would once more hear, faint, under the crickets and the slicing wind in the long grass, the rasping half-articulated voice of his father. His own hands liverspotted and old. His father he knew had not written those books but there it was all the same. He would hear his father’s shouted defence of his female operatives, see again the froth and spit as he stormed out of his office. Or his father’s crumpling of receipt dockets and shouting down George Bangs’s protestations. He thought of his father like a tide washing in and receding and leaving some polished strangeness behind in the sand, evidence of some other world. His father at his country house, striding out in all weathers on his twelve-mile walk or coming downstairs with his cheekbones red and steel-grey hair soaking the back of his collar from the cold bath he would take each morning. All that and the long brooding evening train journeys in which his father would turn to the glass and study his own watery reflection and speak to him over the clatter of the tracks about the nature of the hidden and of what might be seen by any who would choose to see it. William knew his father did not believe in the invisible world. But he would understand only very slowly in those years that his father was thinking of the phantom Edward Shade.

  In none of those books was there any word of such a figure real or imagined. William had at one time believ
ed this to be the shame of a man ridiculed but as he grew older he would come to think otherwise. He would come to believe his father wanted the story of Shade for himself, wanted to keep close and secret the delicious possibility of Shade’s existence, even into his final years.

  And as his father grew the more frail he would take to sitting in the garden among the flowers, his square head nodding, and William would sit with him in silence watching the bees work the roses. And it would seem to him sometimes that a third sat with them, some ghost his father’s glance would shift to, shift from. In the end the old man in his confusion would look up at his son in astonishment, then lift a trembling hand and lay it upon his son’s knee and murmur, his eyes wet: Oh I have been looking for you such a long time, sir.

  And William would say nothing.

  All that too would fade to sepia and fog. William’s own eyesight would begin to weaken. In his dotage he would turn the pages of his father’s books with his feet set square on the ground and his knees apart and he would look out at the fields and think of that day in Seymour when his father took John Reno and the western outlaws were born in blood and lead and he would shake his head for the madness of all that had happened once, all that was real.

  Three days after delivering John Reno to the courthouse in Gallatin, Missouri, William opened the gate of his house in Chicago and waded the deep snow of the lane and stropped the ice from his boots on the porch steps with his suitcase standing between his legs and one hand on the frozen railing and looked up in time to see through the lighted windows of his living room his wife in her nightgown dancing with another man.

  Standing in the cold, the air burning his lungs.

  That man was her brother just in from California and he knew this and yet still the sight of it pained him. He swayed there in the snow-swept darkness for a long time, surprised by the hurt he felt. His face was wet, his hands were wet.

  At last he watched her brother bow in an exaggerated fashion the orange light catching in his whiskers and his wife curtsied and then the man lit an oil lamp and went upstairs. William stood with his breath steaming out before him and frost crackling in his hair and he waited and when his wife had gone through into the back kitchen he picked up his suitcase and crunched down off the porch and around to the rear of the house and he went in.

  She was twenty years old that winter and as beautiful a creature as any he had seen. She had strong white hands and a long throat and hair the colour of sunlight on a shallow stream bed in summer. Her voice was low for a woman and this was something he had always loved about her. They had been married one year and already he could not imagine any life other.

  When he shut the door behind him she was staring at him in amazement with both hands gripping the back of a kitchen chair. She looked so young, so much a girl still.

  Surprise, he said.

  Good lord you give me a fright William, she breathed. She went to him and pulled his head down and kissed him and he pulled back and wiped the snow from his moustache and she kissed him again. Good lord, she said again. What are you doing here? I thought you said tomorrow. I would’ve had something laid out for you. I was just about to go up to bed. David just went up. She put a hand to her mouth. David’s here, she said.

  It’s all right. I know.

  We have stew, she was saying. Are you hungry? She paused then, she gave him a strange look. How long were you out there?

  He shrugged.

  Let me get a look at you, she said.

  He stood obligingly.

  You weren’t shot.

  No ma’am.

  Well that was clever of you. You still have all your teeth.

  Yes ma’am.

  She was silent a long moment then and then she said, Oh, William. Oh you look so tired.

  He did not know what to say to that.

  Here, sit, she said. She took his hat from him and helped him from his oilskin then folded it dripping over one arm and went into the parlour. A puddle was forming under his boots and he scraped them on the roughage mat laid down just inside the door. I said sit, she called from the front hall.

  He sat.

  She came back in. Never mind about David, she was saying, David can wait. There’s plenty of time for visiting. She set a saucepan on the stove and unpinned the cheesecloth from the top of the day-old stew and ladled some out and opened the stove door and stoked the coals and using the poker she shut the door with a clang.

  How’s the baby? he said, watching her.

  She smiled without turning. When she’s fed she’s happy. She’s missed you.

  He nodded.

  David’s got plans for a boarding house in San Francisco. He’s going to talk to you about it tomorrow. I think he’s looking for investors.

  Investors.

  Just go easy on him, she said. I like to see him like this. He’s hopeful.

  He’s something.

  She poured him a glass of milk and set it before him at the table and laid out knife and fork and plate and then she gave him a long appraising look. So is it done then? she asked. Is it finished?

  He shook his head.

  You have to go back.

  He opened his hands in a gesture he had learned from his father. There’s still the others, he said. Frank’s the real trouble. I expect he’ll take over now his brother’s been taken.

  Will they try to get him back?

  If they don’t I’ll look a fool.

  No you won’t.

  I will. I told my father to expect it. William glanced at her. He set out his big hands on the table and closed his eyes. It’s not the Renos I’m worried about, he said tiredly. The whole country out there is angry. There’ll be a vigilante mob five hundred strong if the governor’s not careful.

  Your father’d like that.

  William opened his eyes. She came over to him and nudged the table clear of his chair with her hip so that she could sit in his lap and then she sat and folded her arms around his neck. She wrinkled her nose.

  I haven’t washed, he said.

  He put his hands on her waist as if to lift her but he did not yet.

  And what does Mr. William Pinkerton think of it? she said.

  Of what?

  Of vigilante justice. Do you agree with your father?

  He frowned and peered at her but said nothing. When he saw she was in earnest he said, My father was born in a place where justice had nothing to do with the law.

  You think it’s different here?

  I think it could be.

  She kissed him softly. Good answer, she said.

  He kept his eyes on her as she got up and smoothed her skirts.

  Hiya, he said. Come back here, you.

  She slapped at him with the dishcloth. Watch those hands. I’m married you know.

  You got a sister?

  I thought you were hungry.

  I thought so too.

  Well, she said. Aren’t you going to ask what I think?

  About what?

  She gave him a look.

  Okay, he said. What do you think Mrs. Pinkerton of a mob breaking into a courthouse and dragging a man out by his boots and stringing him up without a trial?

  I’m glad you asked, she said. I don’t think I like it. No sir.

  His gaze drifted over to the stove where the pot of stew was simmering but she was not finished. Her voice went serious. She said, Sometimes when you’re asleep and having a bad dream you make this little whimpering sound. Like a pigeon.

  A pigeon?

  She puckered her lips and cooed, cooed.

  I never.

  You do. You do so. I have to reach over and shake you by the shoulder. You don’t wake up but you roll over. I guess the dream changes. At least you stop whimpering.

  I don’t whimper, he said. She seemed so very beautiful, smiling at him in her heavy winter gown, her hair down her back in that long thick Celtic braid.

  I think that’s what this country is like right now, she was saying. It doesn’t
want to know about justice. It’s there, it’s just not a part of the dream. But it could be. We’re asleep and when the whimpering gets too loud something will come along and shake us out of it, into a different dream.

  William rubbed at his face. Or maybe we’ll wake up.

  No one wakes up. Not really. You still want that stew?

  He grunted.

  You aren’t hungry?

  He smiled. My jaw’s getting tired.

  She put a hand on the back of his neck and it felt warm and clean and right to him. He put his own rough hand up and they stayed like that a moment as the snow whirled down in the silent blackness beyond the windows and the oil lamps dimmed.

  You look tired, he said after a while.

  I feel tired.

  He twisted in his chair, put his arms around her. I don’t mind tired in a girl. Just so long as she’s got green eyes. You got green eyes?

  You know what colour they are.

  He pressed his face into her neck, smelled her hair. He was still a young man. His entire life lay before him. The house creaked in the darkness.

  That’s all right, he murmured. They don’t need to be green.

  Inventing the Devil

  *

  1885

  LONDON

  THIRTEEN

  William woke with his fingers creeping through the cold scoop of his bedsheets, missing his wife. All night and into the morning the man from the tunnel had come to him, a crescent of light etching a cheekbone, a splinter of whiskers, that sorrowful liquid darkness in his eye. Foole. Adam Foole. He opened his eyes, breathing, remembering the grief that man had kept under control on behalf of a woman he had loved. He thought of Margaret in their blankets on winter mornings, fitting her bed slippers to her feet, while the mattress shuddered gently under. She hated how her body had thickened after the children but he did not mind it and he loved the soft heat of it still.

  A weak daylight was leaking through the curtains and he kicked clear of his blankets, crossed the freezing floor, poured cold water from the carafe at the basin and wrung out the flannel and began to wash. Shade was likely dead howsoever his death had found him. Shore believed it, the man Foole claimed it, different though each account did prove. Margaret would ask him what was in his heart. He had learned over a lifetime to trust her counsel and his own thoughts did refract and clear in the hearing of it. He thought of Adam Foole’s quiet sure grief as he levelled his accusation against William’s father. The hell with it. What was in his heart? His heart told him the Saracen was real, though there was no reason to believe it and though the mudlark Muck Annie was most likely decomposing in some churchyard lime pit.