Karen Memory

Chapter Nine

It was a few nights later when Merry Lee declared herself well enough to leave us the following day. That was the night everything changed, and not for the better. Although we didn’t find out what it was about until the next day, it turned out that was the night Missus Parkins’ girls took unwilling delivery of the second murdered nymph du prairie.

It was just Beatrice, Effie, Merry Lee, Priya, and me in the library that evening. Miss Bethel was feeling poorly, and Miss Lizzie was with her. We were all a little agitated, hoping it wouldn’t turn out to be scarlet fever or God knows what, but we were also very cheered by Merry’s recovery. We were drinking sherry and whiskey; Merry was reading aloud from another dime novel while Priya pawed through the pile that remained, deciding what she wanted to hear next. The one Merry was working on was about the Dodge City Marshal Ed Masterson, a Canadian who was shot down just that April by a cowboy in the line of duty but swiftly avenged by his brother Bat.

That’s what the book said: swiftly avenged. It made me angry at first. Like avenging anything brings back the person you lost, or makes it hurt any damned less that they ain’t with you anymore.

And then I thought, But if Peter Bantle does anything more to Priya, I’ll fucking kill him.

As if she had heard me thinking of her, Priya suddenly looked up, grinning. Just as Merry finished a chapter, Priya blurted, “Here’s one about your friend, Karen!”

The red-and-yellow cover she flourished held a completely unrecognizable image under lurid words that read: BASS REEVES: THE LONE MARSHAL OF THE INDIAN TERRITORY.

“Lone?” Effie scoffed. “Don’t Marshals always got a posseman?”

“Marshal Reeves mentioned one,” I allowed. Still, I itched to get my hands on that book. But I knowed better than to let Effie see me eager. She didn’t mean ill, but she’d never let me forget I cared, either. And she’d try to make it as if I was romantically inclined toward him, which just weren’t the case.

Maybe a little fascinated. And maybe a little envious as well.

Priya leaned forward. She wasn’t playing Effie’s game. She handed me the book.

I flipped it over. Shootist. Legend. Master of Disguise. Lawman in a land without law!

For the law-abiders in the Indian Territory, Deputy United States Marshal Bass Reeves is the Last Recourse.

“Master of disguise.” I riffled the pages.

“We can read that one next,” Beatrice said. She had a grin on her face, too, but not a teasing one. I started to think maybe she liked the Marshal as well as I did. And he hadn’t even saved her life.

Bea has pretty good horse sense when it comes to who to trust and who not to, and I took a note. Sure, I liked him. But if Bea liked him, that meant something. “Master of disguise,” I muttered again.

Now they was all looking at me.

“Priya, I might know how to get a message to your sister. Maybe even how to bust her out.”

“First you have to find her,” Merry Lee said, lowering the book about the Mastersons — there were three of ’em in all, Mastersons and lawmen, that was.

I tried to hold in my grin, knowing it weren’t appropriate. But it crept across my cheeks as irresistibly as dawning before I let myself say, “If this works, Peter Bantle hisself will tell us right where to find her.”

I looked up right after I said it — and right into the wide, wide gray eyes of Miss Francina, who was leaning in the library door. She blinked them, and I jumped up from my chair and opened my mouth to explain. I’m not sure I’ve ever thought so frantically in my life, saving right when Da died.

Miss Francina held up a finger and said, “Shh.” Just like that. Like it was a word. She looked us over, one by one. Not a one of us had the moxie to pipe up to her.

Then, shaking her head, she continued, “Oh, you girls. No, not a word more. I don’t know what you are thinking … and I want to be honestly able to say I didn’t know what you were thinking, either, if you follow me.”

The door clicked shut behind her on a last glimpse of jiggling yellow corkscrews, and Beatrice, Effie, Priya, and me all looked back and forth at one another.

It seemed like we had a friend.

Priya watched the door shut, then put her elbows on her knees and hunched at me like a hairy-shouldered buzzard. Whatever demand was in her pose and her expression didn’t make it into her voice, though. It was hesitant, afraid to hope. “You have a plan.”

“We need to talk to Marshal Reeves,” I said.

* * *

As luck would have it, he came by just after breakfast the next day — or maybe the meal was luncheon for him. I wasn’t sure the Marshal ever slept. Or if he did, maybe it wasn’t on any kind of a regular schedule. He kept long hours, I guess I’m trying to say.

Crispin came in to tell me I had company while I was still sitting in the dining room after everybody else had gone. The funny thing is, I was writing out a note to the Marshal to go in the afternoon post and wondering who he’d find to read it and trying to phrase everything so there was nothing suggestive in it. Suggestive the wrong way, I mean: I didn’t care if people took it as a proposition. That was as good an excuse as any.

The Marshal had left us the address of the hotel he was staying in, and I guessed they’d have a concierge or somebody who could read it out loud. Anyway, I wanted to get it done fast, because I didn’t want anybody to catch me writing it and it was cold in my room for writing.

This time, the Marshal wasn’t alone. He had what looked like a full-blood Indian with him, and not Priya’s sort of Indian, either. And they asked for me special, at the door.

Crispin led them into the dining room, where I was the last one at the table, having pushed aside plates once piled with Connie’s flapjacks and bacon and sausages to write. “Karen,” he said, “the Marshal’d like a word with you.”

I snorted at my failed letter in amusement.

“Thank you, Crispin.”

He winked at me—Karen’s got a special friend — and left again without comment. I’d take it from Crispin in a way I wouldn’t from Effie, because I knowed Crispin didn’t feel no need to fix me, file off my edges to make me more comfortable to be around.

The Marshal took my hand and stood to one side to introduce me to his companion. “Tomoatooah, this is Miss Karen Memery. She’s helping with our inquiries. Miss Memery, this is Tomoatooah, my posseman. He’s a Numu. You’d say Comanche.”

“Hello, To … Tomoatooah,” I stumbled over his name, and tried again. “Tomoatooah?”

He corrected me. The vowels weren’t quite shaped like any sounds I was used to hearing. I tried again.

He shook his head and said, “I wish a good day to you, Miss Memery.”

I looked at the Marshal curiously. “I’d say. You wouldn’t?”

Marshal Reeves smiled tightly. “I lived on tribal land for a long time, between when I ran away and the end of the war. I speak some Indian.” I could tell by the way he said “Indian,” ironic, that he meant he spoke several kinds of Indian. You might not know this, but it’s a fact that they have as many languages as white folk has. Maybe more.

Tomoatooah had a Roman nose, narrow and arched, like a warm-blood stud’s. Full cheeks and a small chin, but a strong jaw that made his face look square in profile. Eyes like jet beads, glittering, and hair chopped at the shoulders except for two longer braids. He wore a lady’s hat that would of been plain and black except there was a pale blue muslin scarf with black polka dots tied around it as a band, and he wore a gray wool coat over a red sprigged cotton shirt and buckskin trousers. But his real glory was the necklace, or breastplate, or what have you: long stark white Campbell hairpipe beads, hung horizontal between smaller bits of silver and wampum. It rustled a little with each breath he took, and I thought it very fine.

I asked him, “What does your name mean?”

His eyebrows arched as he replied, “What does yours?”

I hadn’t thought about it until he said something, but his question was as good as mine, weren’t it? “Karen,” I said. “It’s Danish. From my mom. It means ‘pure.’” I held my hands up flat and shrugged. It was what it was. “And Memery, that’s Irish. My dad’s dad was a horsebreaker in Ireland before the potato famine. They came here to escape. I don’t know what it means.”

“Escaping famine,” he said. “My people too have traveled for that. Thousand miles, or more. And horsebreaking, that’s a good trade. My own name means ‘Child of the Sky.’”

“Does that commemorate a deed?”

“Of my namer,” he said. “Not of my own.”

“Won’t you sit?” I asked. “Have some flapjacks and bacon?” The servers still rested on the table.

“Don’t mind if I do,” the Marshal said. He proceeded to pull a plate from the warmer and load it up, finding some beans that I’d missed. “Oh,” he said, discovering the sausages. “Mysteries!”

He handed that plate to Tomoatooah and filled one for himself. The two men fell to as if they hadn’t seen food in a week. Maybe the Marshal treated it like sleep: a requirement of lesser men, until the need came unavoidable.

I knowed the Marshal hadn’t just come for breakfast, so I weren’t surprised when he got past the first flash of hunger, slowed down his fork wielding a mite, and poured himself another cup of still-warm coffee from the pot. Tomoatooah kept eating, chewing each bite meditatively before washing it down with coffee, but never slowing in his pace. Connie poked her nose out of the kitchen just then, saw that we was engaged, and backed out. I heard soft clattering behind the doors and wondered how long it would be before another piled-high covered platter appeared. Connie liked to cook for folk with an appetite.

“Miss Memery,” the Marshal said. He paused and sipped coffee and started again. “Another girl’s dead.”

My mug rattled on the table when I set it down. “Who?”

He pursed his lips and shook his head kind of sideways. Judicious, like. “We don’t rightly know. She was dumped outside Missus Parkins’ kitchen door last night, or more like early this morning. Done up the same way as the other.” That last he said with particular distaste.

I looked at him again — the weather-beated creases at the corners of his eyes, the tight-curled hair oiled and combed into a crinkle, pressed flat in a ring where his hat usually sat. Wrangler tonsure, my da would of said. His skin looked gray under his eyes. Maybe he weren’t so immortal after all.

As I studied the Marshal, I was aware of Tomoatooah studying me. The Marshal broke the triangle, though, gazing off into the distance as if his eyes tracked an invisible killer across an invisible range.

We might still have been there if there hadn’t been a thump and a creak — familiar to me, if not to the gentlemen. I started anyway, tossing my head up like a high-strung colt, and I swear the Marshal actually reached for his gun. Tomoatooah just folded another rasher into his mouth. That was the correct reaction; it was just Signor opening the door with his trick of jumping at the handle. He sauntered in, purring in a self-pleased fashion that about rang the crystal, and proceeded on a circuit of the table. He put a paw into my lap — he was big enough so it wasn’t much of a stretch for him — and butted his big, round head against my elbow. He was begging for my bacon scraps, of course — but the wobble of his belly made a pretty convincing argument that he didn’t need any.

Still, it broke the tension and made me able to talk again. “You think there’s a reason the killer’s doing that,” I said. “Dumping the dead girls that way.”

The Marshal glanced at me, then forked another flapjack and a couple of mysteries onto his plate. “I think it was good fortune and happy happenstance as led me to you, miss. And I think I’ve been an idiot not to realize before now that there’s some link between your nemesis and my murder writ.”

I knowed the word “nemesis.” It turned up in Bullfinch’s Age of Fable, which I’d read cover to cover about five times. I pushed Signor down gently. He reared up again, purring all the harder. In a minute, he’d start to caterwaul louder than a puma. Being deaf as a stone, he didn’t know his own power.

I said, “My nemesis … you mean Peter Bantle.”

“Given how he seems determined to threaten you lot, and you in particular, miss — and the fact that the first dead whore, begging your pardon, was dumped in your rubbish? I’d say it’s a fair guess he’s got it in for you, miss, personally as well as categorically.”

That made sense. I nodded, and when I followed Tomoatooah’s gaze back to his face I found him nodding, too.

“I did tell him to get the hell out of my parlor. And I didn’t let him see I was scared of him, neither.”

The Marshal looked at me with the same look he’d given when he’d said he’d seen folk survive worse floggings than the dead sparrow’d gotten. Like maybe he knew something about folk who needed to see you scared of them. He said, “He’d hate you for that.”

We were briefly interrupted by Connie with a fresh pot of coffee and a plate of corn cakes, of which I took one just to be companionable. I weren’t too hungry, having just had breakfast and all, but a hot corn cake fried in grease, with a good drip of molasses, ain’t to be missed.

Once I’d gotten myself around a good forkful — the rest weren’t going to waste, not with the Comanche’s dedicated trenchermanship at hand — and poured myself some of that fresh coffee, I starched up my nerve and said, “Marshal … I had an idea.”

At this point, Signor determined that he’d get no satisfaction from me and went to bother the Marshal. I winced, thinking of sharp claws and of white fur on black trousers and of how some range men ain’t tolerant of pets. But as I was trying to figure out what order to put the coffeepot down and get my feet under me in, so I could retrieve Signor and eject him from the dining room — not that that ever lasted — the Marshal lifted his arms, leaned back, and made room for the cat in his lap.

I watched in wonderment as all stone and a half of Signor thumped into the Marshal’s lap and tea-cozied up, purring even louder.

Reaching carefully around the cat, who was now rubbing his face against the Marshal’s waistcoat buttons, the Marshal put his cup out. I switched the stream of coffee from my cup to his.

“He don’t usually cotton to strangers,” I said, nodding to Signor.

The Marshal fed him a bit of bacon. “I like critters,” he said. “Can’t be a good horseman if your horse don’t take to you.”

I stared, blushing. That was it, I realized. Though one was black and the other Irish, this man reminded me of my da. It took me several good seconds before I could manage, “Well, you’ve got a cat for life, now. Or at least as long as the bacon holds out.”

The Marshal smiled, sipped his coffee somehow without dragging his mustache through it, and said, “I’m all ears.”

“You’re all mustache,” Tomoatooah corrected, and they shared a tired grin.

“Let’s hear the lady’s plan,” the Marshal said. When I set the coffeepot down, he poured for Tomoatooah and we all drank silently together for a few moments as I collected myself.

“It requires an awful lot of you,” I started hesitantly.

His mustache did that thing I was starting to learn was a silent laugh — a kind of quiver, as if his upper lip was writhing behind it. “Miss,” he said, “I believe I told you how I came twelve hundred miles — as the crow flies; I’m pretty sure I covered half again that — by rail and pony and mule and my own two feet—”

“And mine,” Tomoatooah added between bites. He talked with his mouth full. I’d better make sure Miss Bethel didn’t see that.

Fortunately, she was still abed with her gripe. I only say “fortunately” because she was already feeling better from the night before, you understand.

“Anyway,” Reeves added, pushing his polished plate back. There was still one smear of butter and molasses on it: he picked up a corner of flapjack off Tomoatooah’s plate and scrubbed it away, then disposed of the evidence. “I’ve already given an awful lot of me to this case. I can only hope that Judge Parker will still pay my expenses when I get back, and they’ll probably only do that if I get my man. Now, I ain’t no Texas Ranger—”

Tomoatooah worked his jaw as if he meant to spit, then recollected the dining room rug and took a swig of coffee instead. I was getting to like this rough man. Comanche had a reputation as the fiercest of Indian braves; I knowed even the other Plains tribes was afraid of them, though I thought they was all supposed to be on reservations since that Quanah surrendered a few years back. And this one might of been a hardened killer — but so was the U.S. Marshal sitting across from him, and I was finding myself more and more enamored of both their senses of humor.

“Tell me your plan,” Marshal Reeves finished.

I hid my scorching cheeks behind my hands, thereby losing any chance of pretending it was just the cold in the room growing as the fire died down. “I read in a dime novel that you was a master of disguise,” I said. “Now I know them books ain’t worth the dry yellow paper they’re printed on. But…”

The Marshal’s mustache was doing its little burlesque shimmy on his lip again. “Master of disguise? You know not to believe what you read—”

Tomoatooah leaned across the table and jabbed him in the shoulder with the handle of a butter knife. “She’s got your number, gunslinger.”

I had to finish on a rush, because otherwise I just wasn’t going to get the words out. Quickly I told him about Priya’s sister. I finished, “So. If you was to go to Bantle’s crib,” I said. “And say you was to say you’d heard he had a girl called Aashini that gave a real good ride. And wanted to have a go…”

“But according to what you just said, your friend Priya said she didn’t know if she was at Bantle’s, last she knew.”

“You don’t know Peter Bantle the way I do. Priya meant something to him. Nothing good. But she got away, and so he’s gonna get his hands on her sister to punish her. Same as he’ll do whatever he can to punish Madame, and me. And Effie too, I don’t wonder. I’d wager Aashini Swati’s in Bantle’s crib now, because he knows it’d make Priya suffer.”

It was a little while before I recognized the look on Marshal Reeves’ face, though it silenced me. It was respect, and I hadn’t seen that from a man who weren’t Crispin since I don’t know when. “That’s not half-bad,” he said, having chewed it over for a bit. “And it might of worked, too. Except Bantle knows I’m here, now, and he knows I’m looking for … well, not him, maybe. Unless he’s out of town often, on a lot of long trips…?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I wish I could say so. Hell, I wish he was gone so often we’d never heard of him.”

“It was too much to hope for, really. And I’d still be glad to help you, on account of your friend’s sister might be able to tell us a thing or two about Bantle and his friends. But anyway, the meat of it is, he knows I’m here. And while I know a few tricks — making myself look smaller in the saddle and the like — I can’t change out my nose for another.” He tapped it with a forefinger. “More’s the pity.”

“Damn.” I looked at Tomoatooah. “Maybe you—”

“Only thing lower than a nigger is a savage,” he said, shaking his head, the long muslin tails of his scarf rustling over his beadwork. “It wouldn’t work. Even crib whores aren’t for sale to Indians.”

“Goddamn.”

“Karen, darling. Language, dear.”

A horrible shock seethed through the pit of my belly, cold and sharp. I turned in my chair to see Miss Francina pushing the hall door Signor had cracked the rest of the way open, frowning down at me.

“How much of that did you hear?” I asked her.

“Enough to know what a bad plan it is,” she said. She pursed her lips and shook her head. Signor purred at her from Marshal Reeves’ lap, arching his neck to see over the table.

“But Priya—” I started.

Miss Francina held up one kid-gloved hand. “Yes, Priya. I’m not insensible, sweet child.” She flipped a glorious waterfall of golden ringlets behind one white shoulder, baring the delicate line of her collarbone and the creamy swell of her little bosom. I didn’t know how she managed that effect, but I knowed some small-chested girls who might kill to find out.

She tapped her fingers on her lips. Then she sighed and said, “Well, there’s nothing else for it. I’ll do it.” And as we all three gaped at her, she smiled with one half of her mouth and said, “I can pass for a man, sugar. I’ve known enough of ’em. Besides, it’s for Priya.”

* * *

We determined to strike while the iron was hot. Having helped Merry Lee pack up her few things — and let her into the plan, because we could think of nobody in all Rapid City more qualified to lead a daring rooftop escape if we should need one — we resolved to do the thing that very night.

We also agreed not to tell Priya just yet. It would be cruel to get her hopes up while there was still so much that could go wrong. We couldn’t bring Aashini back to Madam Damnable’s, either. She hadn’t expressly forbidden it, but she had not beaten around any bushes in making it plain that she didn’t wish to work her way any further into Bantle’s bad graces.

Merry Lee said she had a place and Bantle had never found it. And that he never would find it, she figured, since Chinatown residents didn’t have much to say to Peter Bantle. “He had his girls led through the streets in collars once a week,” she said. “To show off the wares. It’s the only sunshine most of ’em get.”

There was not much any of us could say to that stone look in her wide-set black eyes. So we all sat dumb, and after a while she took pity and said that she’d feel safer all around if rather than telling Miss Francina where her safe house was, she just waited for Miss Francina and Aashini to make their escape and then guide them to it.

“Well, I’ll wait with you,” the Marshal said, which kicked off a brief argument that wasn’t settled until he agreed to let Tomoatooah and me come with him, too. He looked dubiously at me at first, but I reminded him that I could handle a gun, and he finally tipped his head and shrugged in that way he had. “Well, ain’t you a regular little Annie Oakley.”

Once that was settled — and I make it sound easier than it was, but there ain’t no point in regurgitating fifteen minutes of circular arguing — Miss Francina raked a hand through her curls, snagging her fingers on a jeweled comb. “All right then,” she said. “We won’t meet here.”

“There’s a bar down by the docks,” the Marshal said. “It’s called the Lion’s Den. You know it?”

Miss Francina smiled. “I know it,” she said. “I’ll see you there at three A.M.”

But then Marshal Reeves looked at me, kissed air, and said, “Miss Memery, can you ride?”

I purely don’t mind saying my heart fell through to my boots. No, well. Actually, I do mind saying it. But that’s what happened, all the same.

I just concentrated on keeping all my doubt and confusion and sadness off my face while I figured out what I was going to say.

“If I gotta,” I answered at last, and the Marshal was kind enough to leave it at that.