Shadow Falls: Badlands (8 page)

“Please sit,” mewed the crone, proffering a red cushioned seat across a table in front of her. Up close, Galen could see that the crone’s craggy face was older than he had first thought; her pale skin clung tightly to her skull and looked as thin as paper.

She slid a tin plate across the table. “Six bits,” she ordered.

It took Galen a moment to understand, but when he did he took the money from his pocket, then hesitated.

“If you want a reading from Madame Zenitska, you pay six bits.”

“And if I don’t want a reading?”

“Then you leave; but instead of an illuminated path, you choose to walk a darkened one,” the Gypsy told him. “And guessing from the looks of you, I’d say you’ve been treading a darkened path indeed.”

With a dismissive huff, Galen dropped six bits onto the tin plate. The Gypsy withdrew the money and pocketed it. “You are too curious to find out what your future holds, no?”

From her lap came a deck of cards, their red backs worn from constant use.

“You know what this is?”

“I gamble,” answered Galen.

“These are not what you think. These are tarot,” she said as she laid out seven cards in a diamond shaped pattern on the table.

“You’re not from around here,” the Gypsy told him.

“You say that because you’ve never seen me before.”

“You have a troubled past.”

“Every man has a troubled past.” He was becoming impatient.

“Wait, that’s not exactly right.” The Gypsy paused. “You have passed through much disruption and uncertainty. In the future you will come back into contact with a man you have known before—a mysterious man with a coldness shrouded under an exterior charm. He is highly intelligent and sometimes manipulative. This man has a very strong impact on you—”

The Gypsy woman stopped, her fingertips tracing the outline of the diamond shaped layout of the tarot.

“You must leave,” she said, her voice shaking as she gathered up her cards.

“Hold on.”

“No. No, you must leave here now.” She rose from her seat and began pushing Galen toward the door.

“You have to tell me what you saw.”

“I cannot.”

“Lady, you have to tell me!”

With a surprisingly firm hand, she pushed him out and tried to shut the door in his face.

Galen wedged his foot in the doorjamb before she could close it. “What is it? What did you see?”

The old Gypsy peered out past him, as if making sure nobody was around to see.

“You must go now!”

“Why?”

She pushed him from the entrance. “You watched them all die,” she said, shutting the door on him. “And now they’re hunting you.”

*****

CHAPTER 5

W
ith a loud crash, wooden beams collapsed all around him as he fought through the smoke to find the door. Hands and flailing fingers grabbed at his sleeve. Coughing voices called to him to save them. Their screams pooled into a sea of sheer noise, enveloping him more with each step. He pushed them aside—those in his path, their plaintive wails ignored—as he made his way to the escape. For the first time, the door was still open, though clouded by the smoke choking the inside of the burning church. Stepping in front of his path was a woman—her hair and clothes engulfed in flame, her screaming mouth hanging wide open in anguish. He pushed her aside and as he looked back at the door, which was now swinging closed. The man behind it grinned in the way only Cyril could.

Galen woke in his bunk. The nightmare had come again—that he was sure of—though he could not remember the details. Unable to go back to sleep, he stared at the wooden ceiling and thought about what the Gypsy had told him.

“Hogwash,” his breath muttered, though he had a hard time convincing the rest of him. He tried to focus on something else, something distracting.

He thought of Daisy. He had lain with other women before—most times for money and hardly one who was any sight in the daytime. So his mind drifted to the hundred-dollar whore he’d seen at the bar. When it came to tail, he’d seen men throw money like that around. He’d seen prospectors pay an ounce of gold just for the pleasure of having a woman sit next to their stinking selves.

Through a window, he could see sunlight coming up over the city. Many of the other beds in the bunkhouse had been empty for hours. He’d probably missed breakfast while sleeping off last night’s binge.

Suddenly, he was struck with a twinge of panic. Reaching under the bed, he found his coat, his fingers pawing at the pockets until he felt it: the brown paper and twine securing the box that the rancher had given him to deliver. It was still there. Given all the detours he’d taken since arriving, Galen considered this a small miracle.

He held the box up and inspected it. The last thing he wanted was for it to seem like the packaging had been tampered with. And when he tilted the box to examine the underside, he heard it.

Something sliding.

A sound from inside, moving from one end of the box to the other.

He put the box down on the bed and looked around. Nearby a dough-faced farm boy slept soundly, sawing heavy wood with each deep breath of slumber.

Galen looked down. In the eight days the box had been in his possession, not once had he ever noticed it making a noise.

Let alone one that sounded so—

Alive
, he thought.

He sat on the bed for minute, stared down at the brown paper and twine wrapped box, waited for it to make another sound. Finally, he caught hold of his senses, picked up the box, and stuffed it back into his coat pocket.

He made it to the corner of Walnut and Main through the thin blanket of freshly fallen snow. As he had guessed, the bank was now open and fairly busy with early morning customers. Galen entered. One teller sat behind a window and loudly counted out coins for an old man.

“Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen—” she said in a clear voice.

Across the room, seated behind a large oak desk was a man with greased side locks who Galen immediately recognized as the person he’d come all this way to see.

The man caught Galen staring at him. “May I help you?” he asked. He rose from his desk and to Galen’s surprise, kept rising—until over two yards of him had gotten to his feet.

Galen removed the wrapped package from the pocket of his duster and held it out. “Mr. Dunburton?” he asked. “I believe this is for you.”

The banker stepped quickly to Galen, motioning for him to keep the package out of sight.

“Please, please,” he said.

“I don’t understand.” Galen replied. “My employer, Mr. Harrison, asked me to give this to you.”

"And give it to me you shall,” Dunburton said in a hushed voice. “But not here.” He guided Galen’s that hand holding the box back to the pocket from which it had come.

“Tonight, Mr.—”

“Holt, Tom Holt,” Galen lied.

Dunburton spoke as he led Galen to the front door, all the while looking back at the teller who was too busy counting coins to even take notice. “Tonight, Mr. Holt, if you could come by my house and join me for supper, I would be most obliged. This way we could finish our— transaction.”

Dunburton gave him the address: 16 White Oak Lane, “a large colonial near the waterfront.” At seven o’clock that evening, Galen knocked on the door. A large Negro woman answered. Given the way the way she was dressed, Galen guessed her to be the servant.

“Mr. Dunburton invited me for supper,” Galen told her.

Wordlessly, the black maid invited him in and led him through the foyer to the study where the host waited. Along the walls were cases full of books, Old tomes that appeared to have left their shelves. The banker apparently had money. The house was well appointed in rich, dark furniture and fine brocade drapes.

In a glass case near the fireplace sat what first appeared to be a brown turnip on a stand, but closer inspection yielded the truth.

It was a shrunken head.

“A colleague of mine brought that back from South America,” boomed Dunburton. His voice startled Galen, who hadn’t even noticed the host’s arrival.

“Very... interesting,” said Galen, not quite sure what to make of the relic.

“Savages, the lot of them,” Dunburton said. He gestured to a chair for Galen to sit.

“Have we met before?” Dunburton cocked his head and inquired. “You have a certain air about you that seems familiar.”

“Don’t reckon we have,” Galen responded, trying not to break eye contact as to be suspicious.

“Well then, nice to make your acquaintance, Mr. Holt. I am Elias Dunburton, of the Virginia Dunburtons.” He offered Galen a drink.

“Whiskey,” Galen said.

“Bourbon, actually,” Dunburton explained as he poured one for himself. “Pure Kentucky bourbon. Have you ever been to our fair city before, Mr. Holt?”

“My first time. And please, call me Tom.”

Dunburton sipped his drink, savoring it. “So, Tom,” he said, “did you bring along that package?”

Galen reached into his duster and pulled out the box, again feeling the unsettling sensation of something sliding within. He held the box out, feeling relief the moment Dunburton took it from his fingers.

“Now let us look inside, shall we?” Dunburton said. Galen thought that was the last thing he wanted.

With a sharp knife taken from his desk drawer, Dunburton cut the twine and eagerly unwrapped the brown paper.

Inside was a small box carved from a wood that was nearly all black. Dunburton gasped with delight. He ran his fingers over the engravings on the outside of the box, the detail of which Galen could not make out because he dared not get any closer than a few feet. Dunburton carried the box to a side table and stood with his back to Galen. With a soft click, Galen heard the ornate wooden box open, a slight squeal to its hinges. Dunburton clasped his hands —a single clap—before closing the box and stowing it inside a locked drawer.

With a wide grin on his face, he looked up at Galen.

“Now what say we have us some supper?”

The dining room held a table big enough for ten—but tonight it sat only two. Perched at the head was Dunburton with Galen’s reserved seat to his right. Galen looked down at the fine tablecloth, the fancy china, and pristine silverware. In his simple clothes he felt like tumbleweed that had just blown into a church dance.

Entering from the kitchen was the same woman who had answered the door. She carried a silver tray, which was piled with mutton chops and a bowl of roasted red potatoes.

Galen watched as she silently served the food onto their plates before picking up the tray to go back to the kitchen.

“Leave the tray, Matty,” Dunburton told her. Following her orders, she laid the tray down and left.

“Can’t let them leave with the food because sometimes they eat it,” Dunburton said, cutting into his mutton chop. “Matty’s a fine slave. Been with our family all her life, but you still have to keep a tight leash on her. Last week I caught another one of my slaves trying to teach her how to read.”

Galen nodded as he chewed. Not because he agreed, though, but because this was the best meal he’d had in as long as he could remember. With the back of his hand he wiped the juices from his lips.

“Tell me, Tom, where do you stand on the Negro question?”

“Pardon me?”

“You don’t seem to have the kind of accent that would lead me to believe you’re from these parts. You from back east?”

“No,” Galen responded, taking another forkful of food.

“Then where do you stand?”

“Never thought about it much. Reckon it’s because I’ve never had slaves of my own. Been a poor man all my life; never owned much more than the clothes on my back.”

Dunburton laughed as he wiped the grease from his mouth with the corner of his linen serviette. “I’ll tell you this much, Tom. Now that this country has finally fulfilled that American promise called Manifest Destiny and that unnecessary, and some would say unjust, war we started a few years back in someone else’s country is over with, we are coming upon another itch that will have to be scratched: this whole issue of slavery—and I fear that time will come soon enough. For I am a veteran of two wars, the British re-incursion of 1812 and this last one in Mexico. Terrible business, both of them. Terrible.”

Galen said nothing and kept eating the delicious supper that had been prepared for him. As Dunburton drank more he continued his political musings with his houseguest.

“Tom, we are alive at the most exciting time in history. This is the birth of the modern age. The telegraph; the daguerreotype. We are more advanced than any civilization that ever walked the earth.” Dunburton drained his glass again and stared at Galen.

“Sir, I cannot help but continue to think yours is a familiar face to me. Did you say that you served in the war?”

“No,” answered Galen flatly.

“That’s quite peculiar,” the banker continued. “For as I live and breathe, there’s something about your face that strikes me as one I’ve seen on the battlefield. Must be this old bourbon and my flagging memory.”