Of course, I couldn’t blow his head off. He was too big a man for that, big in importance, that is. I figured that the law would do everything they could to find his killer, and suspicion just might fall on the widow whose ranch he’d bought for pennies on the dollar a year or so before. No, poison was best, and I knew just how to give it so that no one else would get hurt.
Like most men who come from nothing, the colonel liked to impress people with expensive things. He took great pride in bringing out a fine bottle of Kentucky bourbon when he wanted to show he was so rich that cost didn’t matter. But the colonel was a poor man at heart. He came from nothing, but you would’ve never known it from his appearance, his accent, or his deportment. He had transformed himself into a man of means first in South Carolina, then in Colorado. But blood will out, and when he was alone, he pulled out a bottle of moonshine from the bottom left corner of his credenza. I know because he trusted me enough to tell me, though he wouldn’t insult me by offering it to me. He gave me bourbon. This was before I turned his offer of marriage down, of course.
I had the how, now I needed the when. The colonel would go out with his cowboys to round up his cattle from the summer grazing grounds in September, and I targeted that as the right time. I had the perfect cover for Jehu and Hattie; I’d been going into the mountains for a while to be alone and to hunt. No one but me knew that the hunting wasn’t merely to stock our smokehouse for the winter. Killing animals sated the bloodlust in me that had been awakened with Gernsbeck. For a year that need tortured me. What kind of woman gets a thrill from killing? You almost expect it from men, especially here in the West, but a woman? I convinced myself that poisoning the colonel would eradicate it from me, that I could move on, so by the time I left for my hunt, killing the colonel had become life or death for me.
I watched his ranch from the foothills for three days. The first day they were preparing for the drive, shoeing their horses, stocking the chuck wagon with food, cleaning and oiling tack, taking care of their guns. They left at dawn on day two. I lay on a flat-topped boulder and watched the ranch through my husband’s spyglass, the same one that had ridden with him during the Charge of the Light Brigade. A couple of green cowboys were left behind, and Zhu Li was going in and out of the kitchen.
The morning of the third day I went farther back into the foothills and killed and dressed a deer. I was back at my post by ten a.m., cooking deer steaks to sear in the blood. I watched and waited through the third day, to be safe, but nothing wavered. At midnight I made sure my horse was hobbled, took my saddlebag full of cooked meat and my sawed-off shotgun, snuck down the hill, and crept across the pasture. Clouds snuffed out the stars, and it was a moonless night. I made it almost to the barn before the dogs started barking. I dropped down onto the ground and waited for the green cowboys to come and investigate. They were into their whisky, as I suspected, and were more annoyed with the dogs breaking their peace than concerned there might be a legitimate reason for the barking. One of them kicked a dog, who slunk off whimpering, and the others went with him.
—Bastard.
I waited until I was sure the threat was gone and made my way to the barn. The dogs growled at me but didn’t bark. I pulled out chunks of deer meat and tossed it to them. I waited while they ate it eagerly, and they came over for more. I let them smell me, scratched them behind the ears, and murmured a few sweet words. When they started licking me, I knew they wouldn’t trouble me again. I dumped the rest of the deer meat from the saddlebag and made my way to the house.
In the middle of nowhere, there’s hardly a need for locks on the windows, which made getting into his office easy enough. I was putting the poisoned moonshine back in its place when Zhu Li walked into the office, a gun on her shoulder. She said something in Chinese, and I held my hands up. She moved forward and lowered her gun when she finally saw me.
—Miss Margaret?
—Hi, Zhu Li.
—What …
Her eyes went to the opened cabinet, and I closed it slowly.
—How is he treating you? Good?
—OK, for a white man.
—You can come with me, you know. I have a place, I think you’d like it.
—You aren’t mad at me?
—Why? For taking a job? No. Never.
Her shoulders relaxed and she lowered the gun.
—You’re a better boss.
—That goes without saying.
—How is everyone? Jehu? Hattie?
—They’re …
I stopped and smiled at my old friend.
—I haven’t seen them since we left.
She knew I was lying, and why. I picked up my gun and stepped out the open window. I tossed my waiting saddlebag on my shoulder and asked her one more time if she wanted to come.
—No. I have a man, working on the rail to Santa Fe. He won’t know where to find me.
—Good for you.
—He’s a nice man.
—Then you need to keep hold of him.
—You take care, she said.
—You, too.
I never considered killing her, though leaving her alive was a risk. The poison was slow acting; it would take weeks for him to die, and by the time they needed to plant him, the ground would be frozen solid. I like to imagine his dead body in the ice house, covered with horse blankets, during the long, dark winter.
I pushed open Callum’s slightly ajar office door with the barrel of my gun. He looked up from his ledger and stared at me almost as if he’d been waiting for me. He sighed, dropped his pen into the crease of the ledger, and leaned back.
—You’re like a damn cat, you know.
—Or a bad penny. That’s probably a better analogy for you. What are you wearing today? Nickel? Tin?
He narrowed his eyes but didn’t take the bait. I watched him put his arms on the sides of his desk chair.
—Salter and Wilson?
—Both dead.
He nodded.
—You really are a killer. I didn’t believe Dorcas.
—You’ll be dead before you pull that gun from under your desktop.
—Maybe I’m going to shoot you through—
His chest exploded in a spray of blood. His head dropped forward and he patted ineffectively at his gaping wound. Blood bubbled from his mouth and he tried to speak.
—Or maybe not.
I set the gun on the desk and swiveled Callum’s chair to face me. I put my hands on the arms and leaned down. He was still alive, but just barely.
—You should have never threatened Hattie and killed my friends, you son of a bitch. You tell your father when you see him in hell that a woman has fucking beat you all, at every turn.
I pushed the chair away and went to the safe. It took me six tries to crack it, but considering I’d been cut open barely a week ago, had sweat running into my eyes, and had a dying man groaning behind me, I’d say I did all right.
The safe was full of cash, papers, and a gold-plated version of Connolly’s mask, one I hadn’t seen before. I stuffed the cash and papers in my bag and lifted the mask. It was heavier than I’d thought it would be, too heavy to wear. I turned it over and saw the stamp of Nathaniel Hill’s Black Hawk smelter. I used a letter opener to scratch a deep groove in it. Solid gold. I put it in my bag with the cash.
I flipped through the blood-splattered ledger. Callum was correct: some of his businesses were bleeding money, others were leveraged to the hilt. Only a few were healthy (the ones Dorcas acquired, I imagine), and he was using those profits to invest heavily in a lead smelter in Oro City. Still, there was loot here to be taken.
I rifled through the papers on Connolly’s desk, jotted notes down on a scrap of paper, closed the ledger, and rolled the dead man back to the desk, facing the wall. Dorcas is in for a shock tomorrow morning.
I made it back to my bolt-hole drenched with sweat and bleeding slightly from my bandages. No one asked any questions or offered to help me up the stairs, that is the kind of pla
ce this is, they just watched me with calculating eyes, gauging how vulnerable a mark I am. I felt the bag, heavy with the mask, knock against my thigh. I pulled my jacket back, exposing the shotgun hanging on a leather strap from my shoulder to an especially seedy-looking woman, and made myself take the stairs with a strong tread. It took every ounce of my strength to move the dresser in front of the door, and I collapsed onto the flea-ridden mattress.
I woke to a gunshot in the distance, the sound of music floating from the saloon and brothel across the street. The dresser was firmly across the door, and my bag lay where I’d dropped it, the mask bright against the wood floor. I rose shakily to my feet, put the mask on the dresser, and saw the blood spot on my shirt. I found my spiked whisky and took a large swig. The alcohol burned my throat and I coughed, spitting a portion onto the dresser mirror and mask. A few deep breaths later and my arms relaxed with the comforting buzz of eighty-proof alcohol and laudanum.
Bandaging myself took considerably longer, and by the time I was finished, I was sweating and breathing heavily. I lit a cigarette generously seeded with hashish and sat down to write today’s events.
It’s nearing dawn now, and my cigarette butt is cold, but it snuffed out the jitteriness left over from the job, and the pain is dulled, which was the goal.
Five thousand dollars lie on my bed, as well as four government bonds that Hattie and Jehu can hold on to for the future. This, plus the value of the mask, is enough. I know it is. Well managed, they won’t ever have to worry about money again. I should go back to the Hole, run Spooner off, and—
The thought of returning to the ranch to die fills me with an unexpected terror. Sitting in a rocking chair on the gallery, people waiting on me, dissecting my every move, wondering when the inevitable slide to mortality will happen, wasting away … Does that actually appeal to people? It doesn’t appeal to me. I watched Thomas die, and it isn’t an experience I wish on anyone else.
The bed is too inviting. I have to rest.
I dreamed of outlawing. Seven of us: me and Grace, Hattie, Stella, Joan, Ruby, and Jehu, raiding up and down the range. Split up and hitting targets at the same time, confusing the inept businessmen. We are never disguised and take full credit for our success. Women and girls line the street cheering for us when we ride into town, tossing gold coins shaped like lemon drops to everyone we see. The men want to chase us, but they have no bridles, and when they realize they aren’t wearing britches, they run away, screaming with embarrassment. The women of the town throw a party for us, and there is dancing and singing and the whisky bubbles out of the ground like a spring. Opal plays the accordion, and we all dance until we are dizzy. Luke watches from the end of the bar with a smile hidden beneath his luxurious mustache. Ought-Not, Domino, and Sly Jack play poker in the corner, a small volume of Walt Whitman’s poems in the middle of the pot. Jehu and Hattie slow dance, and Grace and Ruby sit in the corner, heads together, plotting our next move.
I woke up with a start when someone knocked on the door. Dr. Avery. She comes and leaves. Remembering her concerns from before, I donate handsomely to the cause to buy her silence and hopefully assuage her concerns. I won’t live to see suffrage, but I hope Hattie and the girls do.
She was impressed with my bandaging skills, told me to change my bandages regularly, and gave me a bottle of diluted carbolic acid to put on my bandages to decrease the risk of infection. I wondered aloud if I should bother with it, all things considered. Part of me was hoping she was going to change her diagnosis. She closed her medical bag and remained silent.
I’m alone again, and all I can do is wait for you all to return. Two more days is all I’m waiting. I don’t want to die alone, but I’m not going to die here.
27
Claire Hamilton’s Case Notes
Friday, August 24, 1877
Denver, Colorado
I am in over my head.
In the last forty-eight hours, I’ve seen five people shot and had a few stray buckshot pellets picked out of my arm. Tomorrow I’m leaving with Hattie and Ruby to hopefully meet up with Stella, Joan, and Luke Rhodes to try to break Jehu out of jail.
How did I get here? More importantly, how do I survive?
I hardly know where to start. I’ll skip over Margaret’s account of how she ended up in Black Hawk, incomplete as the story was. If things go as planned, the journal I transcribed her story into will be in my possession. ‘If things go as planned.’ What plan?
This is not the time to be despondent.
At Lana’s boardinghouse, Hattie was in the kitchen, being held under a gun by two Pinkerton thugs and Salter. Ruby and I had taken Callum to see Margaret on her deathbed. He settled down to wait for her passing and sent me downstairs to make him a sandwich. I readily agreed, and Ruby went with me. When the door was closed behind us, I said we had to find Alida. Ruby crossed her arms and refused to move.
“What was that in the kitchen?”
“Me, buying us some time.”
“Are you a Pinkerton?”
“I was, but I’m not anymore. I mean, I’m a detective, but not right now.”
“You’re either the law or you aren’t.”
I could tell from her stance that she had no good opinion of the law. “I was, and I hope to be again. But right now, I’m trying to save our lives. I know Salter, and he would make sure our end was miserable.”
She uncrossed her arms. “I know. What’s your plan?”
I grabbed her hand and pulled her toward Alida’s room. “It’s so crazy, I’ll talk myself out of it if I tell it twice.”
Alida agreed with me. “You want me to give hawthorn to my patient, who is recovering from a major surgery? I’m dreaming, aren’t I? Because that’s an insane idea.” She clasped her robe together at her breast. We’d woken her from a deep sleep.
“I know it’s used for rapid heartbeats, yes?”
“Yes. To slow them down to normal, not to mimic death. Who would even think of that?”
I placed my hands in front of my lips in a prayer pose. “You’ve been asleep, so you are unaware that there are three Pinkertons in the kitchen with guns trained on Hattie, and Callum Connolly is in Garet’s room, waiting for her to die.”
“Callum Connolly!”
“Do you know him?”
“I’ve been called to treat some women who have been on the receiving end of his …”
“We get the picture,” Ruby said.
“We need him to believe she is dead. The hawthorn is in case he wants to listen to her heartbeat. Hopefully a mirror test will do. What we really need is for you to put your name on the death certificate.”
She reared back at the idea. “Claire, you’re asking too much.”
“I promise, if you have to sign one, the death certificate will never make it into the official record,” Ruby said. “We need you to convince Connolly she’s dead. That’s all.”
“And give her hawthorn.”
“Can we put it in broth?”
“Yes, or tea or whisky. It’s a tincture.”
“Put it in laudanum, then,” I said.
“Do you want to kill her? Yes, right. You do.” She pulled two bottles from her doctor’s bag, a pint of whisky and a smaller brown bottle. She mixed them together in a glass and handed it to Ruby. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
“I’ve got to go make that bastard a sandwich.”
The scene in the kitchen was much as I’d left it, except Salter was sitting at the table, carving up a block of cheese and eating it off his knife. Hattie was bound and had been beaten. She leaned against the wall, keeping a wary eye on the two other Pinkertons. She glared at me when I walked in, and I had a moment of doubt about my plan. But she was playing her part, just as I was.
“There’s the detective,” she sneered.
I asked where Lana and Frank were.
“Haven’t seen them,” Salter said.
“Callum wants a sandwich.”
“Make him one,” S
alter said.
“See there, Grace. Or should I call you Claire? No matter what you do, they won’t treat you like an equal,” Hattie said.
“Shut up, Hattie.”
“Truth hurts, don’t it?”
I saw the guards look at each other and snicker.
“I’m going to find Lana.”
“Here I am,” she said, and by God she walked into the kitchen holding a Peacemaker in front of her with both hands. Salter didn’t move, but the two henchmen swung their guns around.
“Put it down, lady,” one of the men said.
“Where’s my son? Where’s Zeke?”
“Was that his name?” Salter said. He put another hunk of cheese in his mouth.
“What did you do to him?”
“I didn’t do anything. George back there is the one who shot him. I’ve never been good at distance shooting. I’m more of a ten-paces-and-turn kind of man, or hiding behind a corner and shooting from safety. You live longer that way.”
“My boy is dead?”
The pleading in her voice broke my heart. Hattie nudged my arm. I moved close to her. “Get ready to duck,” she said in a low voice.
“I imagine he is by now. We left him a canteen of water, but the way his leg wound was seeping, he probably didn’t last for long.”
“What kind of man leaves a boy to die alone?” Frank Chambers asked. He stood a little behind his wife.
“He wasn’t a boy, and he made his choices. Now, you have a choice, too, Mrs. Chambers. Put the gun down.”
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