Karen Mercury (25 page)

Just as it seemed the hysteria in the church could not reach a higher pitch, Tabitha noted smoke by a side entrance. The black smoke seemed to pour from the door and up toward the ceiling, but no one else seemed to notice it. She had to yank a few delirious women away from Worth in order to shout “Fire!” at him, pointing.

Worth looked but didn’t seem to notice the smoke. He looked at Tabitha with an exaggerated quizzical face. She jerked the arms of a few more men she was familiar with, pointing at the door and shouting, “Fire!” some more, but no one seemed to see what she saw.

As a last resort, she gripped Montreal Jed’s arm and pulled him toward the side door. She had to shove aside many thrashing, stomping people, but by the time she was within ten feet of the door, she knew it was no fire.

Jeremiah complained, “Now, why are you hauling me outside, Miss Tabitha? I was just having a grand old time, just japing like a regular old funster, and you want me to—oh, fuck me dry.”

The smoke had formed itself into a creature that loomed down at them. There was a discernible face to the demon, with hollow, caved-in eye sockets and a gaping jaw. It was about twice as large as a regular human, and an extremely rank, fetid odor emanated from it, like a three-day-old coyote carcass. It lifted up smoky, menacing talons, and Tabitha could have sworn it growled at them. None of this seemed to disturb even the closest revelers, some of whom were rolling a barrel of beer in the side door right underneath the demon.

Tabitha clutched Jeremiah’s arm. “You see that, don’t you?”

“I should say I do!” Jeremiah trilled in a high voice. “It’s looking right at us. It smells like the tent I used to share with Amazing Johnson, the Fat Man.
Run!
”

They ran but didn’t get very far. Jeremiah smacked right into the beer barrel and was instantly draped over it like a giant barnacle, the wind knocked out of him. Tabitha only got a few more steps before she bashed right into Orianna.

For several moments they tried to sidestep each other. Orianna tried to enter the church and Tabitha tried to exit. Orianna’s hat was adorned with so many purple ostrich plumes they got into Tabitha’s mouth, and she batted her hands and spat out feathers.

“Listen,” she snarled, now deliberately blocking Orianna’s path. “I’ve had enough of you. Call off your evil incubus smoke demon thing right now!”

Orianna looked haughtily at Tabitha. Although shorter than Tabitha, she somehow managed to look down her hooked nose at her. “Whatever are you talking about?”

Tabitha grabbed Orianna’s arm and yanked her into the church. She pointed at the black vaporous apparition, which had now shrunken considerably but was still evident. Now it merely hovered and cringed, as though fearful of Orianna.

“Don’t tell me you don’t see
that
thing! Call it off!”

Orianna shrugged and hugged her fur cape closer around her shoulders. “Maybe someone was smoking cigars.” She clearly saw the smoke incubus but was not concerned by it.

Tabitha said, “That’s the same thing that attacked Caleb in the alley!”

Jeremiah had now peeled himself off the keg and stood, wobbly, next to Tabitha. “Yes!” he agreed. “Your damned smoke demon smells like a mildewed saddle blanket, and it’s uglier than a peso’s worth of dog meat. Get it out of here!”

Orianna frowned. “I don’t see anyone else minding the smoke. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

“No,” said Tabitha, rudely grabbing a handful of Orianna’s cape. “I want you to stop harassing my beau, Miss Anderson. We know what you’re up to. Mr. Firestone booted you out of his house in San Francisco, and you’re just here using that poor boy Abe as a weapon to control Foster!”

“And your smoke demon,” Jeremiah added. “You’re using that as a weapon, too.”

A new fellow was punishing the air with his fiddling now, but Tabitha didn’t want to let Orianna out of her sight to look for Foster. Orianna violently wrenched her fur cape from Tabitha’s fist and snapped, “Get your filthy mitts off me, you low-down lick-spigot! Foster only met you a week ago. What makes you think he’d care more for you than for the mother of his son? Step aside, whore!”

Tabitha knew she could wallop this witch into the middle of next week, thanks to the fighting skills Remington Rudy had taught her. However, that would be unseemly in the middle of a church, and that smoke devil was increasing in size again, lowering itself and threatening to envelop Tabitha and Jeremiah. So she merely said with narrow eyes, “The rodeo will reveal the answer to our conundrum, according to
our
demon Ezra’s hand.”

Orianna narrowed her eyes even further. “Oh, much will be
revealed
at the rodeo, that’s for certain,” she snapped before attempting to push past Tabitha again.

Only this time, Foster loomed directly in her path. Tall and formidable, he stepped between the two warring women while Jeremiah said, “Foster, I’m glad you’re here. This
woman
, and I use that term rather loosely, has created this smoky monster you now see hovering over our heads, smelling up the entire damned joint. You
do
see that sewage devil that looks like a trash barge floating on the East River?”

“Yeah,” snarled Foster. Tabitha had never seen him this angry, his pupils shrunken into tiny pinpoints of black. He was dangerous and intimidating like this, his nostrils flaring, his jaw muscles working. “Orianna, I think you’d best leave and take your devil with you.”

Orianna put her hand on her bosom. “I had nothing to do with that smoke. As I said, maybe some men were smoking cigars or pipes.”

“And drawing a cackling, vicious face on the smoke?” Jeremiah queried. He pointed above his head. “Look. It’s got
eyes
.”

“And fangs,” Tabitha added.

When they said that, the grimy, reeking monster took a swipe at their heads with its black, wispy claws. Foster must have noticed, for he took Orianna by the upper arm and steered her back out the door. He glanced back once at Tabitha. The anger fell from his face, and was immediately replaced with a hopeful, gentle look. The look was his entire message, conveying to Tabitha that he would give Orianna the what for and she need not worry any longer.

Jeremiah folded his arms. “Oh, that’s completely predictable. Look. The smoke monster that no one else can seem to see is
following
that sorceress out the door.”

* * * *

Foster noted that the smoke demon followed them out the door of the Baptist church, but once in the open air, it dissipated. He knew he could not just haul off and let Orianna have it. He had to stuff down his inclination to yell blue murder at her, as she could use Abe as a pawn if he irked her. He could dust off his rusty lawyer skills to deal diplomatically with her.

“Listen, Orianna,” he said. She looked petulantly at him, her lower lip stuck out. “I’ve received some communication from San Francisco to the effect that it’s Arthur Firestone who has given you the boot, not the other way around.”

Fire nearly blazed from Orianna’s eyes. “What bastard handed you that pack of lies? It is my decision to reconcile with you, as you are my true love!”

“That doesn’t matter. The fact remains that you really have no other place to go, so I think we can take the possibility of me going to San Francisco off the table. You know I intend to start my law practice again here in Laramie. And further, I’m in love with Miss Hudson. You can stop pretending you’re in love with me and not my gold claim.”

“What gold claim?”

“The one I wrote you about, on French Creek in the Black Hills.”

Wind was picking up. Earlier, Foster had seen black cloud masses ascending above the horizon just as the sun set. This wasn’t a good sign for their rodeo tomorrow, and of course he’d wondered briefly if Orianna had a hand in it. Was her ire capable of altering the weather?

Now Orianna grabbed his lapels and said sincerely, “I have no designs on any of your gold, Foster. I only wish for a loving home where I can raise Abe along with the father he so pines for.”

“And I wish for the same. I guarantee you, Orianna, if you bring Abe out here, I will provide a good home for him. It’s just the husband part I can’t provide you with. Our love was a long time ago, and it was evidently very flawed, or you wouldn’t have gone west to seek a future with Firestone.”

Orianna shook him by the lapels. “And I admit that was a huge mistake, Foster! I was blinded by Arthur’s riches.”

“I made a good income here in Laramie.”

“Yes, but I was an immature parasite, with images of even more money in my dreams, Foster.”

“Look. You must take the train to San Francisco, get Abe, and bring him back here. I can’t escort you to any more soirees. Tabitha and my partner Worth are my life now. You must allow some of these other fine upstanding Laramie men to court you.”

Foster tried not to look around. At the moment, the fine upstanding examples of Laramie men were intent on knocking a bunghole into a new beer cask using a picket someone had torn off a fence and the sole of a boot as a hammer.

Foster added, “Of course, I’d have to approve of who you choose. That Craig Marsten fellow you danced with at the Fowlers is very upright.”

A different sort of smile eased onto Orianna’s face now, and she released Foster’s lapels. “Of course, Foster. I must move on with my life, too. I’m sure you will provide Abe with a fine home.” She hugged her fur cape about her as though in preparation to leave. “I will take the train back to get Abe as soon as the rodeo is over.”

“Good,” said Foster cheerfully. But inside he didn’t feel such certainty. Why the insistence on leaving after the rodeo?

Orianna did turn now but said casually over her shoulder, “After all, you have the Philosopher’s Stone.”

Wait.
“What Philosopher’s Stone?”

Orianna stopped in midstep and turned toward Foster. “That rock that manifested at the séance. It ensures that your gold claim alone is free from the Indian hex. That your gold will be the finest and the richest claim. That you are held blameless for claiming the land from the Indians. No harm will come from your claim as it will to the thousands of others who will try and take gold from the Black Hills.”

“I thought you didn’t know I had a claim.”

She smiled mysteriously. “Orianna Anderson didn’t know. But her higher powers did and led her back to you.”

“You couldn’t hit a bull’s ass with a handful of banjos.”

Worth saw the twinkle in Montreal Jed’s eye, but he agreed with the puppeteer. “I told you. I’m a photographer, not a damned vaquero. That’s why I’m not participating in the hoop-and-pole game or any of that cow wrangling.”

“I’m participating, and I’m just a damned marshal,” said Neil Tempest.

Jeremiah said, “A marshal who owns his own cattle ranch.”

True, Neil Tempest had brought some vaqueros down from his Serendipity Ranch, but Remington Rudy was the star of the rodeo. Rudy was too handsome by far to be anything other than an oil painting, swaggering around in the fanciest leggings Worth had ever seen. In fact, it turned out his leggings had been sewn by a berdache friend of Caleb’s, and the rainbow-hued porcupine quillwork was something to behold. Although Rudy claimed to be a physician now and no longer a circus trick rider, this partner of Alameda and Derrick Spiro had already zipped about Boswell’s ranch doing somersaults and handstands on the rump of his horse.

They were now preparing for the rope-throwing and “cutting” of cattle—and Foster had already impressed Tabitha by riding a wild mustang for eight seconds—but Rudy didn’t want to muss his fancy leggings with that dirty work. Instead, he would participate in the hoop-and-pole competition, having been Tabitha’s trainer.

“You going to play the hoop game?” Worth casually asked Foster. Worth hid a smile. After the drubbing Foster had received at his paramour’s hand the last time they’d tried this trick, he was surprised that Foster said, “Sure. Why not? This wind’s picking up, and I can use it to my advantage. My scout training has to come in handy in some regards.”

Sure enough, it had looked stormy all day, but thankfully by noon not a drop of rain had fallen. Ominous clouds so thick they looked like a muddied river conglomerated overhead. The wind seemed blocked by this muddy wall, and not one blade of long prairie grass had stirred. But as Foster spoke, a nearby stand of grass rippled with a new wind, and lightning fractured the black mass above.

Jeremiah’s eyes flickered. “Should you be racing about with enormous spears in your hands when there’s lightning on the prairie?”

Remington Rudy opened his mouth to answer, but Mr. Hudson was stumbling up. A Johnny-come-lately to the rodeo, Worth already knew that Simon fancied himself something of an athlete. He’d been over by the vaqueros practicing rope-throwing, but the only thing he’d succeeded in lassoing was a vaquero’s sombrero. Everyone backed slowly away from him as he twirled his reata.

“Remington Rudy!” called out Simon Hudson. “Look at me! I’m a vaquero.”

“Mr. Hudson,” ventured Senator Derrick Spiro, “will you join in the hoop contest?”

“Oh my, no,” said Simon. “I’m not such a great caballero on my horse.”