Of Grave Concern

by Max McCoy

  “Do you have any tea?”

  “I see by your outfit that you are a ranger, come sit down beside me and hear my sad story. I’m shot through the breast and know I must die.”

  The bartender frowned.

  “We have coffee. That’s what Chalkley drinks, mostly.”

  “No, I want tea. Hot tea.”

  “Like the English drink?”

  “Exactly. No whiskey, no coffee, no mezcal. Tea.”

  “Then muffle the drums and play the dead marches, play the dead march as I’m carried along.”

  “We have the stuff we pour for the girls when they’re sitting at the tables, so they don’t get roaring drunk,” the bartender said. “It’s tea, I think, but it was brewed yesterday afternoon, maybe.”

  “Take me to the churchyard and lay the sod o’er me.”

  “How perfectly horrid,” I said.

  “I’m a young ranger and I know I’ve done wrong.”

  “It’s not such a bad song,” the bartender said.

  “I wasn’t talking about the song,” I said. “The words are new, but the tune is an old one. I heard it growing up in Memphis and later in New Orleans.”

  I thanked the bartender and left the Saratoga, bound for the City Drug, thinking that perhaps Doc McCarty might still be at his station, since nobody in Dodge City seemed to sleep. If I could find some proper English tea anywhere, I thought, it ought to be there.

  But before I reached the drugstore, a familiar voice called to me from the shadows between buildings.

  “Katie.”

  I paused.

  “Diamond Jim?” I asked.

  “Come here, I want to talk to you.”

  “Have you been drinking, Jim?”

  I peered into the darkness. I could see the outline of Jim Murdock and two others. A bottle was being passed among them. Jim took the bottle and took a long pull before handing it off.

  “That’s not going to please your folks,” I said. “Did you contact them, like I asked?”

  “Sure did,” he said. “Telegraphed them right away, just like you said, after I gave you that letter to my sister. My dead sister.”

  His manner was oddly aggressive.

  “Let’s talk about this tomorrow,” I said.

  I turned, but Jim’s hand shot out and grasped my right wrist.

  “What are you doing?”

  He pulled me into the darkness.

  I screamed, but there was so much noise on Front Street already that I doubt anybody heard it. Then he clamped a hand over my mouth and put his face so close to mine that I could feel the heat from his flushed cheeks.

  “You played me for a sucker,” Jim said.

  I tried to pull away, but Jim’s friends stepped closer, their thighs pressing against me.

  “Oh, you know what I’m talking about,” he said. “You’re nothing but a fraud. A damned fraud. Do you know what kind of telegram I got back from my folks in Ohio?”

  I tried to shake my head.

  “Of course, you don’t,” he said. “You got no powers.”

  His friends laughed. I was having trouble breathing.

  “The telegram said my sister, Katie, was alive,” Jim said. “The newspapers got it wrong when they listed her among the dead, because she was identified by the necklace. But she had given the necklace to her best friend to wear. They were sitting side by side when the train plunged into the Ashtabula River. My sister was hurt bad, and was in the hospital and unable to talk for weeks, but she survived. And that means you lied.”

  He removed his hand and I gulped in air.

  “Jim,” I said. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Then tell me how it was like.”

  “I was trying to help you.”

  “You have a funny way of helping people. You took my money.”

  “I only kept five bucks,” I said. “I’ll give you the money back, Jim, but please let me go.”

  “I don’t want your money,” he said.

  “Then what do you want?” I asked. At this point, I was expecting to be raped.

  “To teach you a lesson,” he said.

  One of his friends picked me up by the waist, while the other jammed my feet in a burlap sack. I started swinging my fists as hard as I could, but Jim caught my hands and cinched my wrists together with latigo. He pulled off his red kerchief and stuffed it into my mouth, to muffle my shouts. They pushed me down in the sack, pulled it over my head, and tied the end shut with a length of rope.

  Then one of them slung the sack over his shoulder, with my stomach over his shoulder and my head down. I could feel each footstep in my breastbone as he carried me away from Front Street.

  I was now certain that after they raped me, they would murder me. Strangely, I wasn’t frightened—but I was royally pissed. I wriggled and kicked and spat the wad of kerchief from my mouth.

  “Putain!” I shouted. “Put me down right now or you all are going to be sorry you were ever born. I don’t like guns, but I don’t mind rocks. Come morning, I’m going to find each of you and take a stone about the size of a baseball and hit you so hard in your sensitive parts that you’ll be singing soprano in the saddle.”

  “Jim, she sure does talk,” the one carrying me said.

  “We’ll see how much she talks when we throw her in,” Jim said.

  I stopped struggling.

  “What?” I asked.

  We kept walking.

  I began imagining all the places they could throw me.

  The river, barrels, wells.

  “Jim, where are you taking me?”

  “Shut up.”

  Basements, cellars, closets.

  “Really, Jim. This is not something you want to do. It’s kidnapping, and there are laws against that, even in Dodge City.”

  “It’s what you deserve, you bitch fraud.”

  Caves, crevices . . . holes in the ground.

  Then I could feel the man carrying me was walking uphill, and I could hear the sound of gravel skittering with each step.

  The open grave on Boot Hill.

  Now I was frightened. No, I was terrified.

  I squirmed and wriggled as hard as I could, but I had no leverage and the man holding me was just too strong.

  “You other two,” I said, “you’ll be hanged for kidnap and murder, along with Diamond Jim. Is that what you want? All you have to do is let me go and I won’t say a thing.”

  The man carrying me laughed.

  “Ain’t nobody ever hanged for killing a whore,” he said, his voice as cold as ice on a winter pond. “And that’s all you are—a bit higher priced than the ones in the cribs along South Front, but a whore just the same.”

  “What about you, the other one?” I asked. “Please, you can’t let them do this. I’m not a whore! I’m a woman, just like your mother, or your sister, or your wife.”

  “You is not like them at all,” the other man said drunkenly. “You maybe isn’t a whore, but you is for damn sure a witch. I seen you at the opera house once and twice and knows you is a witch, and the Book says not to suffer a witch to live.”

  “But it also says a lot of other stuff,” I pleaded. “Jesus said to turn the other cheek, to go and sin no more, to love thy neighbor as thyself. Don’t just take the part that justifies murdering somebody.”

  “Daddy readed me the Book. But him died afore we got past Numbers.”

  We stopped walking.

  “Here we are,” Diamond Jim said.

  “Please, Jim. No.”

  “I’ve heard about all from you I ever want to,” Jim said.

  “Don’t bury me alive.”

  “Shut your mouth, witch.”

  “Shoot me,” I pleaded. “Please shoot me. Then you can toss me in. Just make sure I’m dead first. A bullet in the head. I won’t struggle or say another word, I promise. And I’ll die quiet.”

  The man carrying me shifted my weight from his shoulder to his arms, hugging me to his chest like he would a child.

>   “See, I’m being good. Shoot me now. Do it quick.”

  The man took a step forward.

  “You don’t understand.”

  I could feel his arms tense, ready for the throw.

  “I’m afraid of the dark.”

  24

  It seemed like it took a long time for me to hit the bottom of the grave, as if I were falling from a mountaintop. I know it was just a trick of the mind, like when you drop a plate and you watch it falling slowly. You can’t react quickly enough to catch it and keep it from shattering.

  And I shattered when I hit bottom.

  A thousand things shot through my mind at once: Was the rattlesnake I saw earlier down in the grave with me? Was any part of the exhumed gambler from Ellsworth left behind? Would I die of suffocation first or of fright? Would I, too, become a ghost that walked the streets of Dodge City? Were there any bugs or scorpions in the dirt that was raining down in clods? How long would it take for my flesh to fall from my bones? Would I stink much, and for how long? Would I get a hand-lettered wooden marker like the rest? What would the Dodge City Times write about me? Was there anybody left in Memphis or in New Orleans who would even know who I was? Did Tanté Marie still live? Would Paschal’s widow ever forgive him or me? Would Potter Palmer be saddened by the news of my death, or would he rejoice? Would the bacon baron in Louisville give Diamond Jim the thousand dollars for killing me? Would Michael Sutton claim that Kate Bender had finally been dealt justice?

  And, at the same instant as the rest of it, came the most troubling thought of all: What would become of Eddie?

  Knowing you’re about to die isn’t like what you read about in novels, or at least it wasn’t for me. I had no urge to confess my sins or appeal to God or any other foolish thing. What I wanted most was for it to be over. I hated the darkness and the rasp of burlap and the growing weight of dirt above me. Things became very close there in the sack. I was turned over on my left side, with my knees up and my hands near my face. I covered my mouth and nose so that I wouldn’t be eating any dirt or burlap when the end came. It was cold there at the bottom of the grave, so cold that I began to shiver uncontrollably.

  I thought about the warm night sky, arching above me. Just knowing it was up above made me even more miserable. If only I could have one lungful of that night air, I would have been eternally grateful. Then came a keen desire to turn over, to lie on my right side. But of course, there was too much dirt pressing down on me to allow me to move even an inch.

  There were so many things I had taken for granted, and now they all had been taken away by a drunken kid, who had buried me alive. That thought made me furious, and the anger was something hard and bright. I fought with elbows and knees against the inevitable. I felt like a child whose arms and legs were being held by her mother to stop a tantrum, but the smothering grave won. After a few minutes, I was exhausted and realized I was using up any air I had left.

  My face was dewy with sweat, but I was colder than ever.

  By and by, my teeth stopped chattering. It wasn’t that I felt warm, exactly, but that I was ceasing to feel anything.

  My mind began to drift. I forgot that I was furious. . . .

  In my mind, it was no longer spring above me, but deep winter. I saw snow covering Boot Hill and Dodge City below it, and the sky was the color of the lead type used at the Times. All the doors and windows of the saloons and hotels and brothels were shut tight. Not a soul moved on either Front Street, and the sun dipped low in the sky. Eventually a single wolf loped into town. His hard eyes shone and his bright tongue dangled over a row of ivory teeth. His head was low to the ground and swung slyly from side to side. Behind, his tracks stitched the snow from the railroad and across the bridge and wound far below the Arkansas.

  Then the wolf lunged and his teeth snapped and he caught a crow in his mouth, ruby blood splattering and black feathers floating down to the snow. I gave out a cry and was surprised to find myself back in the grave.

  I was back for only a moment, however, and the darkness came down around me like a curtain.

  It was as if the darkness had separated my soul from my body, but my soul was reluctant to leave and lingered nearby.

  “Who is there?” a girl’s voice said in Russian.

  Now, I don’t speak Russian, but I could understand every word. The voice was fine and young, and filled with sadness. I asked who was calling out in the darkness.

  “Is that you, Andrei? Oh, Andy, where have you gone?”

  I’m not Andy.

  “Andrei, I don’t understand. I’ve been so alone. Are you coming back?”

  Tell me your name.

  “All I can remember is that night, that last night, that night. When you leaned down to kiss me and took out your knife. I remember that night. Why did you do that with your knife, Andrei?”

  It was no use. She knew someone was close, but she couldn’t hear me. Just like Hank could never hear me.

  “It’s cold.” Another voice. A man. “It’s so cold.”

  “I know it’s cold, but we got to hold out. We can’t be far outside town.”

  Another male voice, then another:

  “We need to get up and walk, or we’ll freeze here. I seen it at Camp Douglas during the war. You freeze to death when you stop moving.”

  “Would you shut up about the war already?”

  “We should have stayed with the herd. Why didn’t we stay with the herd instead of trying to beat the storm back to town? We could have shot a cow and dragged the guts out and crawled inside. It would have been warm.”

  Five male voices now, some talking at once:

  “Too late now to talk about what we should have done.”

  “We have to get up and walk, or we’ll die.”

  “How far back is the mare the wolves killed, you think? A half mile?”

  “I can’t tell which way is up or down in the blizzard, much less east or west.”

  “If we don’t know which direction we’re headed, we might be walking away from Dodge.”

  “The carcass of that mare is frozen stiff by now.”

  “You think the other horses will come back around?”

  “Not a chance with the wolves out there. I can’t see them, but I can hear the hungry bastards.”

  “Do you think the wolves will . . .”

  “At Camp Douglas, one man froze to death standing still.”

  “. . . wait until we’re dead?”

  “They didn’t with the mare, did they?”

  “I’d like to get just one clean shot at that biggest bastard.”

  “Reckon we ought to draw lots.”

  “For what?”

  “The man with the short straw kills the others, so we don’t commit a mortal sin.”

  “Then what do you call murdering someone?”

  “A mercy.”

  “What about the man that’s left?”

  “That’s why we draw lots.”

  “Or maybe we just kill the man with the short straw.”

  A beat.

  “Say what you mean.”

  “We kill the man what draws the short straw, and we hollow him out—”

  “To hell with that. I ain’t wearing any of you like a robe.”

  “That’s the stupidest idea you’ve had yet, Jimpson, and you have been full of stupid ideas from the start, you lumber-headed fool. We start skinning each other and the smell of blood will drive the wolves into a frenzy. We’ll all die ugly and painful.”

  “I can’t feel my toes.”

  “It was just a suggestion. It wasn’t like I said we should start eating each other. At least not yet.”

  “I can’t feel anything.”

  “They say it’s peaceful, freezing to death. At least, that’s what those said at Camp Douglas that nearly froze but were thawed out in time.”

  “Somebody will find us, right?”

  “Sure, by the spring.”

  “Pretty soon we’re not going to be able to . . .” />
  “Ha! Remember the time Mike McGlue nailed shut all the doors of the privies behind North Front? Now, that was a joke. I can’t remember who McGlue was that night. Was it Hoodoo Brown?”

  “. . . we’re not going to be able to . . .”

  “No, that was young Tom at the jail.”

  “We saw some dancin’ that night, I’ll say.”

  “. . . we won’t be able to pull the trigger.”

  “The camp was on Lake Michigan, and I never felt anything as cold as the snow and ice as it came off that lake. Until now. The Yankees took our clothes away to keep us from escaping, and it weren’t right. They starved us.”

  “When they find us, do you think they’ll know who we are?”

  “Not after the wolves finish.”

  “I’ll miss old Mike McGlue.”

  “You know who I’ll miss? Captain Drew.”

  “The whore?”

  “The same. Jessie is a wicked girl. I’m sorry I’ll never see her again.”

  “Can’t stay awake.”

  “I’m sorry I called you lumber-headed, Jimpson.”

  “It don’t . . . it don’t matter now . . . anyway.”

  The male voices faded into a murmuring chorus.

  A calm, middle-aged male voice called out pleasantly, “What’s your game?”

  Are you asking me?

  “Sit down, son. Name’s Charley Morehouse. Now, you don’t seem like a lad who is too familiar with the baize tables. There’s faro, of course, but that’s a game for those who have some practice and skill. There’s keno or chuck-a-luck. . . . What? No, I don’t remember you. . . . Poker? Don’t care for the game. It was popular up in Deadwood, and Hickok was murdered while playing it, shot in the head by a kid named McCall. You’re not planning to shoot me, are you? Now, are you?”

  “It’s so cold. . . . It’s so cold.”

  “Who is there?” In Russian. “Oh, Andy, where have you gone?”

  Then all of the voices began talking at once—the buffalo hunters and the gambler and the Russian girl, and then they were joined by a couple of desperates named Texas Hill and Ed Williams, who were killed by the Vigilance Committee, and a carpenter at the Essex Hotel who was somehow shot by the cook. Only the buffalo hunters could hear each other, and the result was a cacophony of ghosts.