The Shaman's Secret

by Natasha Narayan

  Rachel coughed as we entered the saloon. I could tell she didn’t want to be here. Aunt Hilda strode forward, though, cutting her way through the throng of cowboys, miners and the men playing poker in a cloud of cigarette smoke. I noticed the card players had a beautiful cover on the table. It was made of soft skin and sewn with intricate blue beads. Unmistakably an Apache tunic. It must have been a trophy from their raid on our friends’ village. The sight made me harden my heart even more against my former friend Waldo.

  There weren’t many women here, to be sure, a handful apart from the saloon girls, but that didn’t bother my aunt. You had to admire her. Whether at a garden party at Buckingham Palace or at a raucous bar in the middle of nowhere, she was always precisely the same.

  “What’s your best whiskey?” she barked to the bartender. The sea of revelers parted for her, as if she was Queen Victoria herself. “The very best, mind.”

  “I guess that would be Red Eye or maybe Coffin Juice,” the bartender replied.

  “Ha! I’ll have a double Coffin Juice and, let me see, lemonade for the—”

  “I’ll have a beer,” Waldo said, puffing out his chest.

  I glanced at him. Here he was again, showing off that he was older than the rest of us. By one measly year.

  “Very well, a beer and three lemonades.”

  The bartender returned in a few minutes with the three cold glasses of lemon, the beer and the whiskey.

  “That’ll be fifty cents,” he mumbled.

  “I’m afraid I can’t pay,” my aunt bellowed at the top of her voice.

  “Ma’am?” the bartender mumbled, confused.

  “Drat it, man, can’t you speak English? We’re flat broke. We were robbed and we simply have no money left.”

  Why my aunt chose to boom this embarrassing information so loudly I had no idea. The tinkling piano stopped and every head turned to us, so it seemed. I flushed red and I could see Waldo was mortified. He cares so much about appearances. And, of course, he pretends he is an American now. Down the bar, Red Dobie, who was drinking a flagon of ale with a girl on his arm, turned to us, frowning. I wondered why Aunt Hilda was testing his patience so much. He had been generous, for he was grateful for the return of his horse Carlito. But, as she had already warned us, there were limits!

  “Put it on the tab,” Red Dobie yelled. He paused and his lips curled. “This time.”

  Aunt Hilda had the attention of every man and woman in the room. She smiled, enjoying herself.

  “I haven’t been quite clear,” she said. “I should have said, we can’t pay with money.”

  Out of her bag she drew the diamond and held it up, in the center of her flat palm. We were in the middle of a crowded saloon, blazing with gaslight, glittering with glasses, chandeliers and the showgirls’ cheap jewelry. It wasn’t the dingy bedroom upstairs.

  Yet the purity of that diamond’s glow, its intense blue flame, drew every eye in the room. A silence grew and Aunt Hilda, every inch the showman, let it linger for a while.

  “This,” she said, “is no ordinary diamond. It is a fabled gem. Priceless and unique. Ladies and gentlemen, you see here before you—all the way from the savage shores of the Hindu Kush—the incomparable Gem of Jaipur!”

  A deep oooh went around the room. The pretty redhaired girl on Dobie’s arm, in what looked like a corset and a tiered skirt, was staring hungrily at the gem.

  “As you may have heard,” Aunt Hilda continued, “we are travelers from far away. From good old England. While we were guests in your fine country, one of your fellows robbed us. He took everything we owned, practically down to our gold teeth!

  “This isn’t what I call hospitality, but we’ll skate over that. We were penniless, desperate. If it hadn’t been for Red over here, we would have starved. Thank you, Mr. Dobie, by the way.”

  Red gave a little bow as all eyes turned to him. Aunt Hilda continued, in full sail.

  “We would be in a pretty pickle right now if it wasn’t for one thing. One of my friends, Mr. Cyril Baker, God rest his soul, was clever. Oh yes, he was clever enough to hide the Gem of Jaipur from the robbers.

  “So, I offer this gem to you tonight for auction. Only dire circumstances would force me to sell it, but as you have heard, our situation is truly desperate.

  “Now, lords, ladies and gentleman,” Aunt Hilda said, getting carried away, for there were no lords and few gentlemen for miles, “THE GEM OF JAIPUR GOES TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER TONIGHT.”

  She stopped and closed her hand, cutting off the diamond from general view. Then she sank down onto a barstool. With her left hand, she picked up the glass of whiskey and downed it in one gulp. An admiring buzz filled the bar.

  Red Dobie’s girl turned toward him and cried, “I got to have that diamond, Red. If you love me, if you truly love me …”

  “Now listen here, sweetie,” Red said, licking his lips nervously, “be sensible, cutie pie.”

  “Don’t cutie pie me. I tell you I want that Gem of Jedburgh, or whatever it is.”

  Other drinkers, the more prosperous-looking, were also staring greedily at my aunt. But she took her time, clicking her fingers for more whiskey, which she downed equally quickly. I hoped she wouldn’t be too drunk to auction the diamond.

  “Right,” she said, getting up off the stool and revealing the diamond in her hand. “I am going to start the bidding at one thousand dollars.”

  There was a huge gasp around the saloon bar. Red paled. Aunt Hilda frowned in irritation.

  “I call that a very, very fair starting price. Take this diamond into any jewelry store in New York or Frisco and you would get twenty times that sum, easy profits. How do you put it over here? Fast bucks, ladies and gentlemen.”

  I had no doubt my aunt was telling the truth because the diamond looked rare and valuable. But this was a poor town in a rough desert. There were no pots of gold buried in these people’s backyards, or so I would guess.

  “So who’ll be man enough to bid me a thousand dollars?”

  To my surprise a dozen or so hands went up. Red Dobie’s among them. It seemed I had underestimated the wealth in these parts. Perhaps there really was silver and gold buried in the desert around here, as well as lead and copper.

  As Aunt Hilda led the bidding higher and higher, most of the bidders fell away. There were only a couple left now, Red Dobie and a man at the bar, whose mouth was shaped in a permanent sneer. He wore a ten-gallon cowboy hat and two nickel derringers on his belt. From the way people shrank from him, I guessed he was not popular—an outlaw maybe, or some kind of villain.

  The bidding was up to five thousand dollars now. A lot of money, more money than many people would see in their lifetime. Aunt Hilda abruptly stopped at that. She turned to Dobie and Mr. Sneer.

  “You both desperate for this diamond, correct?”

  “Give my last bullet for it,” said Mr. Sneer.

  “Yeah—we are,” Red muttered, with a glance at his girl.

  “Then prove it. I’ve got all the money we need. In fact, I don’t need to cart a great wad of dollars around. We’ll only be robbed again. It’s other stuff we want now. Horses, provisions, guns. I see the truth of it now: guns are more important than food in the Wild West.”

  “We can give you all that,” said Dobie.

  “We’ll give you a share of the saloon, half of it,” said the girl, flouncing her skirts and shaking her glossy carrot hair at the same time.

  “A tenth,” said Dobie.

  “Red!” the girl snapped.

  “Make it a quarter,” Dobie said.

  “I’ll take a tenth of your saloon,” said Aunt Hilda. “It looks like a good business. I also need good horses for all my friends, provisions, and let’s say a couple thousand dollars to see us through back to Frisco.”

  “Done!” said Dobie, while the other man snarled, “Not so fast. It ain’t a fair bargain.”

  A couple of derringers glinted in the gaslight, one for each hand. People screamed and ba
cked against the saloon walls, others dived under the tables. In seconds a path had cleared between Dobie and Mr. Sneer, both of them holding their pistols. My aunt was still there, sitting straight-backed at the bar, holding her glass of whiskey.

  “Now don’t be a fool, Jack,” Dobie drawled. “You know I don’t allow no gunfights in my saloon.”

  “Seems to me that you gettin’ some mighty preferential treatment, Red. I could stand it when it was just Candy here; she’s a tramp anyway—”

  “You take that back.” Red snarled at the insult to his girl.

  For answer Mr. Sneer raised his guns. But Red was quicker—his hands flashed: bang, bang. In a split second both pistols had been shot clean out of his opponent’s hands. All that remained of them was smoking lumps of metal on the sawdust floor.

  Pure fury glinted in Mr. Sneer’s eyes. He spat at Red, a huge gobbet of saliva, then turned tail and stormed out of the saloon. The doors swung after him, banging violently.

  “Don’t be coming back, Jack,” Red shouted. “As sheriff, I say your sort are not wanted here. This is a decent lawabidin’ town.”

  “I’LL BE BACK,” came the yell through the saloon doors.

  As soon as Jack, or Mr. Sneer, as I thought of him, had gone, conversation started up again. The poker players went back to their tables, the girls flocked together, chattering excitedly. Shoot-outs, it seemed, were not that rare in this bar, whatever rules Red liked to lay down.

  Waldo was whispering in my aunt’s ear. She listened and then turned to Red with a big grin.

  “Hey, Mr. Dobie,” she yelled at the top of her voice. “I forgot to say, we want one horse in particular—Carlito.”

  A huge gasp went up around the saloon. I could see hard-bitten miners shaking their heads. Others started whispering. There was anguish on the face of Red Dobie; you could see him wrestling with the dilemma. His girl put her hand on his shoulder and turned him round to look in her eyes.

  “For me, Red,” she said.

  “All right—take him. Carlito’s yours,” said Dobie. He blinked, his eyes watering.

  I frowned at Aunt Hilda. I thought she was being cruel to Dobie, who after all had been kind enough to us. He had made a big mistake. Surely there were other girls in Chloride City? And beyond in Las Vegas and Dodge City? But there was only one Carlito. And I would take a horse over a diamond any day. A diamond is only a piece of rock, while a horse is a living, breathing treasure, one that can take you to the ends of the earth.

  “A bottle of champagne to celebrate!” Aunt Hilda bellowed. “I’m buying.”

  “We don’t have champagne,” said Dobie, who didn’t look like celebrating at all.

  “In that case, another whiskey for me. Beer on the house for everybody, Red, courtesy of me, Hilda Salter.”

  Dozens of people descended on the bar. Some looked as if they hadn’t washed for weeks. My aunt was hidden by a loud, drunken mass, and for a moment I thought they would lift her on their shoulders. Others began singing, “For ’e’s a jolly good fellow….”

  Apparently they believed Aunt Hilda was a man!

  So that is how we became part owners of one of the wildest saloon bars in the whole Wild West.

  I’d thought of many outcomes for my journey—but not that we would become owners of what my father would have called a low drinking den! Well, you never can tell what life will hold, especially when you set off from the safety of your neighborhood into the great wide world.

  It was several hours before we were able to retire to bed. In that time, I think Aunt Hilda had stood half of Nevada strong liquor. We’d seen the showgirls dance the cancan—and left just before a drunken brawl looked likely to start up, for some of Mr. Sneer’s friends were in a very bad mood after he was denied the diamond.

  I had seen enough of the West to guess that drunken brawls were usually resolved down the barrel of a gun.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  I awoke in the night, feeling uneasy. I was wearing a short-sleeved lace night dress, which Dobie had begged for me from one of the girls. It was scratchy and uncomfortable, and I was drenched in sweat. In the moonshine filtering through the shutters I could see the snake on my arm. It had been crawling upward to my collar bone. But now, unless I was imagining it, it was moving diagonally. Toward my heart.

  Perhaps Cyril’s death had spurred it to move faster.

  Dark horror descended on me.

  Sure, Aunt Hilda had saved the day by auctioning the diamond. We now had enough money to get to the Grand Canyon. But where precisely? Where were we to go? The canyon covered miles of rocky chasms and raging rivers. Cyril Baker had been leading our trip, guided by some map of his own. Though we often worried we were heading into a trap, at least Cyril had known where we were going.

  Now we were flailing in the darkness. A darkness inhabited by ghosts with the features of Cyril’s evil twin.

  I needed to use the toilet. Slipping my feet into some borrowed slippers, I padded softly out of the room, so as not to wake Rachel, and onto the landing. The saloon bar was finally asleep, the whole hotel shrouded in silence. I blundered a little as there was no moonlight here, and bumped into a warm body.

  Terrified, I let out a shriek.

  “Whoa there! Where you going at this time of night?” a voice said.

  For a moment I was thankful that it was only Waldo. Then I remembered and drew myself up stiffly.

  “I might ask the same question of you,” I said.

  “It was a call of nature,” Waldo replied.

  “Likewise. If you’ll stand aside, I’ll be on my way.”

  “What is the matter with you? You’ve been giving me the evil eye for the whole day.”

  “You’re imagining things. I never looked at you once.”

  Waldo sighed and moved toward me. He smelt of sweat and wood smoke. I hastily moved away. I needed to remember that I hated him.

  “Come on. Tell me—what is it that I’m supposed to have done?”

  All I wanted in the world was to be out of there, but the self-pity in his voice made me pause.

  “You really don’t know?”

  “No, I really have no idea why you’ve been glaring at me and jumping aside whenever I come near you. You’re treating me like a leper.”

  “Better a leper than a coward.”

  “What?”

  “You really, truly, have no idea what you’ve done?”

  “NO! For heaven’s sake, no. I already told you that.”

  “Then you are even more boneheaded than I always thought.”

  Our voices had risen in our anger. I saw a shadow slip out of one of the doors and realized we had company. No matter. Waldo’s shame should be broadcast to the world.

  “Just tell me.”

  “Fine. Today in front of the whole of Chloride City you cast a few dozen people to the wolves. You did it casually, without a second’s pity or reflection about the fate of those poor Apaches. Because of you, they will be hunted down—most probably be killed.” I halted for a second, the words choking in my throat. “You might think they’re just savages. But they were kind to us. They gave us food and shelter and horses. Saved our lives. And you repaid them by throwing away theirs. And you know what the worst part is?”

  I paused to let him reply, but he was silent so I continued.

  “The very worst part is you. Waldo Bell. A person so heartless that you didn’t even think about condemning people to death.”

  A lamp was flickering in front of the shadow. I saw it was Rachel. The light danced on Waldo’s face. He looked furious. I expected Rachel to tell me off, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care if they all told me off. I knew we had been in a nasty hole, with the miners ready to skin us alive for stealing Carlito, but there was no need to sacrifice others to save our own skins. There must have been some other way out of the mess.

  “Kit’s right,” Rachel said quietly. “You did a bad thing. I’m disappointed in you.”

  Waldo’s mouth ope
ned then shut. I glanced at Rachel in surprise. She was quiet, but very angry.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” I said. “I thought you’d have had some neat justification ready.”

  “Look here, you’ve got it all wrong. I didn’t give the settlers the right directions.”

  I glanced at Rachel and saw that she was as unconvinced as I was. We had both heard his excellent, precise directions.

  “As I thought. A nice, neat justification all wrapped up in ribbons and—”

  “I’m going back to bed,” Rachel interrupted. “I suggest you do the same.”

  Without another word I sidestepped Waldo and made my way downstairs.

  Most of the town turned out the next day for Cyril Baker’s funeral. Hundreds of people—men, women and a few children dressed in shabby black and sweltering under the fierce sun. I guess any diversion was rare here. Even the funeral of a stranger they had never known was some entertainment. We made a strange sight, here in the desert, surrounded by sand, rocks and cacti.

  This was one of the cemeteries known as a “boothill” because it contained so many who had died unexpectedly—with their boots on. Many graves were little more than mounds of stones, with weathered planks nailed into crosses above them. My eyes wandered over the inscriptions on the makeshift crosses as the mourners gathered and the preacher in white robes stood at the foot of the funeral pyre.

  Here lies MO. He took four slugs from a .44 … Buckskin Joe shot by One-Eye Walt … Rock Johnson. Very Dead … It took three six shooters to Kill Charlie Pinkett. He was dragged here by a cowboy with a rope around his feet.

  The saddest epitaphs were the shortest. The ones with just a plank of wood stuck into a heap of stones and the legend “Unknown.” I think the only happy man in that cemetery was “Smiley Johnson,” who was unusual enough to have “Died of Natural Causes.”

  “People have such short lives out here,” murmured Waldo, who was standing next to Isaac and me. It was true—it was rare to see the grave of a man who had lived to his fifties.