The Spirit is Willing (An Ophelia Wylde Paranormal Mystery)

by Max McCoy

  He waded out into the swift water, pulling me with him.

  I pleaded with him.

  “Please,” I said. “I won’t say anything. I’ll do anything you want. . . .”

  “Don’t fight it, sister,” he said.

  We were thigh-deep in the water now, and it was cold, and I could feel the pressure of the current piling against my legs. He released my wrist, just for a moment, just long enough to get a grip on the front of my vest.

  “Do you believe, sister?”

  We were face-to-face, the Sky Pilot standing over me.

  “Oh, God!” I cried.

  “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost!”

  He pushed me down into the water.

  I saw the sky and the mountains and trees disappear and be replaced with a cloud of my own red hair in the swirling bluish green water. The water against my face was cold, shockingly cold, like nothing I had ever felt before. I could hear the hollow rush of the water and the clink of stones as they moved along the bottom. And there was something else—the soft murmur of voices.

  I fought with both hands against his wrist, but I had even poorer leverage now than I did on the bank.

  The sound of the voices was stronger now, and they were all the voices of all of those who had died in the river since the beginning of time, an untold number of drownings and killings and suicides, all the way down to the confluence of the Mississippi.

  The bluish green light above me began to wink and go dim.

  The voices were stronger, gasping and struggling and pleading.

  “No!” the chorus screamed.

  I could feel my heels skitter along the bed of the river; feel my shirttail loose and billowing in the current; feel the icy embrace of the river as it coursed down my back and along my sides and between my legs.

  “No! No! No!”

  And then I realized it was me who was screaming the word, the sound made weird by the water, the meaning rendered useless by the intent of the hulking figure holding me under.

  I had used the last of my air to shout, over and over, a cry of protest.

  Then bloody raindrops began to sprinkle the water. They fell and bloomed and streaked downstream. For a moment I thought I was dreaming again, until the burning in my lungs convinced me otherwise.

  I wanted to breathe, but I forced myself not to.

  The river went dark and soon even the sound of the water began to grow faint. Then everything went dark, except for a single point of light that floated just above me. It was a tiny ball of white light, hard and brilliant.

  My body screamed for me to take a breath.

  I fixed my attention on the light. There was the light, and nothing else.

  Then I was jerked up and out of the water and back into the world.

  I took great gulps of air.

  The Sky Pilot held me yet, grinning madly, the Bible still in one hand. But the water around us was crimson with blood. At first I thought it was my blood, but then I saw the wound to the side of his face, a gunshot that had carried away his left ear and much of the side of his head.

  The Bible fell into the water and floated downstream.

  The preacher released me, and I half swam and half clawed my way to the gravel bar. I rolled over onto my back, wheezing and coughing up what seemed like half of the Arkansas River.

  “Jack!” I shouted, trying to get the hair out of my eyes so I could see. It had to be Calder. McCarty must have told him I’d gone to Denver, I thought, and he had tracked me down from there.

  I sat up and saw the preacher on the gravel bank, ten yards away, facedown. The blood dripped from the side of his head into the water, carried away like red ribbons in the current.

  “Jack,” I said again, turning around.

  “Calling for your partner?”

  An English accent.

  It was Chatwin, the mudlark. He was standing twenty yards behind me, a revolver in his hand, the satchel over his shoulder, and the briar pipe in his mouth. The breeze was bringing the smell of the pipe tobacco in my direction, and it seemed discordant with the scene that had just played out.

  “Calder’s not here, I’m afraid.”

  “But you,” I said.

  “I told you I was going to Leadville. And lo, here I am.”

  “You saved my life,” I said, the phrases coming out in spurts. “I thought I would drown. I was in the water such a long time. And you shot Cade Harland. He killed Howart and also the old man at Oro City.”

  Chatwin walked down the bank, his boots crunching on the gravel. Then he turned and sat on his kneels next to me, holding the nasty little revolver up over his right shoulder, so the barrel lay behind his neck.

  Where I couldn’t reach it.

  “You have it all wrong,” the mudlark said. “The preacher was nobody. I wasn’t trying to save your life. I was aiming at you and hit the lunatic instead.”

  He paused.

  “I’m Cade Harland.”

  “Oh, no,” I said, burrowing the back of my head into the gravel. “The old man, Hollister. He had called Cade Harland the kid. I had just thought it was a gang nickname.”

  “No, I really was a child,” he said. “Barely in my teens.”

  I thought of the boys in Leadville, the ones who had delighted in kicking the preacher.

  “Where did you get the gun?” I asked.

  “I carry it in the satchel,” he said. “It’s a handy little thing, a .44-caliber Belgian-made British Bulldog. I had it when we spoke on the bank of the river at Dodge City, when I said that I was disarmed by your beauty. Alas, you were right—I was merely distracted. If I had known what trouble you would make, I would have killed you then.”

  “Feeling’s mutual,” I said.

  “I heard everything, from around the corner of the porch,” he said. “I had to kill him, before he identified me, before you could get a sworn statement from him. When you went inside for a few minutes, it gave me enough time to come up behind him and do the job. If anybody saw it, they would have thought nothing of it—just a friend with his arm around an old man, leaning close, offering a bit of comfort.”

  “And to think,” I said, “I had made up my mind to allow you into my bed if I ever saw you again. But now I’m reconsidering that decision, because everything you told me was a lie.”

  “Oh, no,” he said. “It was all the truth, except about my name and serving in the place of a rich man’s son and then deserting. Instead, I came west as soon as I reached America, and joined with Jackson Miles and his gang in 1860. I couldn’t really tell you the truth about that, could I?”

  “But why did you tell me you were coming here?”

  “I thought things might lead you here,” he said. “So I told you that so you wouldn’t be suspicious if we ran into each other here. It would make it easier, you know.”

  “To kill me.”

  “But you’ve made things very hard indeed,” he said. “I didn’t count on having to kill the old man before he died of cancer, or chase you down to the river here. But it’s fitting in a way. This is where we met—on the banks of the same river.”

  “So you’re going to kill me here.”

  “Of course, but I’m not going to leave your body here, because it would cause an inquiry. Nobody cares about the crazy preacher—nobody even knows his name—but you, you’ve already made friends with Augusta Tabor, and you’ve told everyone you’ve met that you’re investigating Jackson Miles. I can’t just leave your body here on the gravel bar.”

  I began to shiver.

  “I’m going to haul your body over this bloody rock garden called Colorado and drop your body down one of the old shafts on the hillside behind us, so nobody will ever find you. Just like Angus Wright.”

  “You killed him for Jacks.”

  “He didn’t have the stones for it, but I did,” Cade said. “Old Angus found the bonanza, and Jacks wanted it. I chained him up to a bloody huge slab of rock in the Great Divi
de mine and left him there. Then Jacks built the saloon on the spot, to seal off the drift where I’d left Angus. He’s added to The Divide over the years, made it fancier with that mirror and such, but it is still a monument to greed and murder.”

  “His greed,” I said. “Your killing. A partnership in murder.”

  “Don’t let anybody tell you crime doesn’t pay,” Cade said. “It pays bloody well, and keeps on paying. Jacks has made more money off the silver boom than he did on the gold—and it was old Angus Wright’s gold that made him rich in the first place.”

  “You’ve done all of his killing for him, from the beginning,” I said. “You killed Charlie Howart, didn’t you? Made it look like a suicide. You must have had some conversation with him first, and he may have told you about the haunting, so hanging him over the rafter would seem appropriate. But you didn’t find the book, did you?”

  “Not so bad,” he said. “You might make a good detective after all, if you only had another two or three lifetimes of mistakes to make. Tell me, where was the book?”

  “The kindling box had a false bottom.”

  “Ah,” he said.

  “Do you still take your orders from Jacks via coded messages?”

  He shook his head.

  “No need,” he said. “I anticipate what he needs and take care of it.”

  “Like killing me,” I said.

  I crossed my arms and hugged my own chest. “You’re scared.”

  “I’m shaking because I’m cold,” I said.

  “No shame,” he said. “The fear of death is quite natural. Why, I’ve seen grown men shake like lambs when their time had come.”

  “My only consolation,” I said, “is that Jackson Miles will eventually hire someone to kill you, too. He has to. Once I’m gone, you’re the only thing left connecting him to any of this.”

  “Jacks doesn’t have the stones.”

  “No, but he’ll get somebody who does to do it for him,” I said.

  “Now, isn’t this where you say it would be better for me to go to the coppers? That I’m only safe if Jacks is in prison, or hanged?”

  “You already know that.”

  “Then this is where you beg.”

  “Va au diable,” I spat. Go to hell.

  “You first, love. Now, turn over.”

  “Why?”

  He put the gun in the satchel and tossed it out of reach. Then he pulled a knife from his boot, a knife with a six-inch blade that was crusty with the old man’s dried blood.

  “I told you, turn over, onto your stomach,” he said. “I don’t want to look at your face when I cut your throat.”

  “No.”

  He hit me in the face. Hard.

  I fought back, trying to kick and claw my way free. He climbed on top of me and pinned my upper arms with his knees. He grabbed my hair with his left hand and jerked my head back, exposing my neck.

  Then he placed the cold blade of the knife to my throat.

  “Have it your way,” he said. “It makes it easier for me.”

  Then he pushed a little harder with the knife, and it was so sharp I didn’t feel the cut, but I did feel the warm trickle of blood spilling down my neck. Then he got an odd look in his eyes and eased the pressure on the blade.

  “You know, you’re right about one thing,” he said, leaning so close I could smell the tobacco on his breath. “If I didn’t have to kill you quick to save my boss’s political career, I would fancy having a go—”

  He didn’t get to finish the thought, because a great rock came smashing down on the top of his head. His eyes went unfocused and his mouth went slack, but he did not drop the knife. Then the rock came again, a sideways blow to the temple, and Cade gave a small cry and the blade slipped from his fingers and he toppled over, falling unmoving on the ground.

  I snatched up the knife and threw it in the water.

  The Sky Pilot stood over me with the bloody rock in his left hand.

  The right side of his body seemed to droop, his right arm was limp, and his right foot was turned at an unnatural angle. The gunshot to the left side of his head was wet with blood and flecked with bone and little bits that may have been brain tissue.

  The preacher looked at Cade, and he looked at me, and then he let the rock drop to the ground. He nodded, as if acknowledging I was safe; then he sat on the gravel bar and stared at the river.

  “Jordan,” he said, slurring the word badly.

  “Yes,” I said. “Jordan.”

  “Say it.”

  “Say what?” I asked.

  He tried to make a sentence, and although I heard only two words, “a comfort,” I understood.

  He slumped over and I pulled his head into my lap. He was still wearing the green kerchief I had loaned to him in Dodge City, but it was now caked with blood.

  “‘Take no thought for your life,’” I recited. “‘Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls?’”

  “Amen,” the Sky Pilot said.

  And there he died.

  31

  My jacket still lay folded on the flat rock. The garment still had my notes and the cipher that Hollister had given me tucked safely into the pocket. It was also dry, so I threw it over my shoulders, because I was shivering from the cold. Then I felt the apple, the one the bartender had given me at The Great Divide, and was grateful to have a little something to eat.

  After I finished the apple, I went over to Cade’s body and kicked it, to make sure he was truly dead. He didn’t move, but I wasn’t convinced. So I may have picked up a rock and struck him in the head one or three times more, just to make sure.

  Then I slung the satchel over my shoulder, the one with the ugly British Bulldog revolver, and set out in the direction of Leadville. It was late in the afternoon now, and I did not want to spend the night on the river bank with two dead men.

  My shoes were wet and my feet soon began to hurt, and as the sun got lower in the sky it became colder right quick. But in less than a mile I came to a bend where I could see a coach road close to the west side of the river, and eventually I found a shallow place to cross by hopping from one boulder to the next. I fought my way through a willow tree, then scrambled up the bank to the road.

  Before long, there was a coach. It was going at breakneck speed, all flying hooves and spinning wheels, and it must have been the look on my face that made the driver stop, because I didn’t even raise my arms. He eased back on the reins and stood on the brake, and the coach slowed and finally jerked to a stop beside me.

  “What on earth?” the driver asked.

  “There are two dead men on the bank downriver,” I said. “One is a murderer and the other was murdered. I am a witness and an intended victim, and I would be grateful for a ride to the authorities.”

  “Boy, howdy,” the driver said. “I’d welcome you to Leadville, miss, but it seems you’re already acquainted. Climb aboard. Make some room inside, gents. Just one of you get on top and shut up about it.”

  The door of the coach swung open.

  “Obliged,” I said.

  Then I paused before pulling myself up.

  “There’s also a dead man, murdered, at Oro City.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” the driver said. “Are you all right? You’re bleeding in a couple of places. Maybe you’d best see the old doc when you get into town.”

  “The marshal first,” I said.

  Taking my place among the eight men in the coach, I had plenty of elbow room. Nobody wanted to get too close to me.

  Soon after reaching town a search party was organized and, before midnight, the bodies of Cade and the Sky Pilot were carried back to Leadville. The Lake County sheriff had already found the body of Hollister, and it, too, was taken to Leadville, where the coroner was kept busy all night. I was questioned for three hours by the sheriff and the city marshal, and then was examined by the coroner, who
was also a town doctor. He said I might have a scar on my throat from the knife blade, and that Cade had loosened one of my teeth with his fist, but that my scratches and bruises would eventually heal and that, otherwise, I was fit enough.

  A reporter for the Leadville paper, Reveille, asked to interview me, but I was too tired. I asked him to come back the next day.

  I hadn’t told the law officers about my notes from the library ledger, or the cipher that Hollister had given me, because I was afraid if they were entered into evidence, they would conveniently disappear. Afraid they would search me, I hid the paper in my underthings, but it was an unnecessary precaution. They went through the contents of the satchel, of course, and said they were going to keep the revolver as evidence in the murder of the preacher, and I had no objection because I had no use for guns. They also said they were going to search the river for the knife, but I knew they would never find it.

  But I asked if I could keep the satchel.

  A gruesome souvenir, I know, but I wanted it. At the very least, I had earned it.

  I was allowed to leave with Augusta Tabor. She took me to the mercantile and after a bath and a light supper, I retired to the little sleeping room upstairs. Before I went to sleep, I picked up the hand mirror from the nightstand and gazed into it.

  There was nothing there except my own bruised reflection.

  32

  At ten o’clock in the morning, I walked into The Great Divide in a fresh suit of clothes and with an eight-pound sledge that I had borrowed from Tabor Mercantile over my shoulder. The sledge had an octagonal, steel-forged head with a thirty-six-inch hickory handle. The only thing, I had decided that morning, was to be direct about my intentions.

  “Hold on there,” Francis Gallagher said, throwing his hands up. “You can’t bring that thing in here.”

  “You told me to come back to see you, Frank. Here I am.”

  The bar was full of miners getting an early start in celebrating the Fourth of July, and they began to tease Gallagher about having his manhood flattened by an irate woman with a large hammer. The reporter from the Reveille had seen me walking down the street, obviously intent on mayhem, and he had fallen in behind me and was now standing to the side, furiously taking notes.