Portlandtown: A Tale of the Oregon Wyldes (8 page)

Andre stood over the body, waiting to see if Lieutenant Jacoby would reappear. He was glad when his friend did not.

*   *   *

Andre emerged from the sewer to see the sun setting and a young Indian woman with long black hair waiting for him. Naira offered a hand, which completely disappeared into her partner’s when taken.

“You’re going to be late,” she said.

“Perhaps, but I would rather not arrive at the gala stinking of a bog.”

Andre peered into the darkness at his feet. He could just make out a trickle of water running at the base of the tunnel.

“You will see to William?”

Naira nodded.

“Thank you.”

Andre stood for a moment, listing to the city exhale after what must have been a very long, deep breath. It was a sound he’d become familiar with over the years, one he never tired of hearing. The healing would begin soon.

In the calm, Andre became aware of something else: a distant pounding, steady, and coming closer. It, too, was familiar, but from where Andre could not recall.

“What is it?” Naira asked.

“I am not sure. Do you not hear that?”

“Hear what?”

Andre raised a hand as the drum beat thrice more—and then it was gone. He waited, but it did not return.

“Well?”

Andre shrugged.

“Echoes, nothing more.”

*   *   *

Andre splashed water onto his cheeks and opened his eyes to the mirror. Nothing had changed. He still saw the same fear staring back at him, the same truth.

The damned thing was in this world again.

Andre knew it was true. He should have suspected as much after the first wave struck him in the street, but the thought had never occurred to him. After a third pounding brought him to his knees while speaking to a group of civic leaders in the Palace Hotel’s Grand Ballroom, he had been able to think of nothing else. He must have looked a sight, because their initial reaction had been to hail one of the many doctors in attendance, thinking Andre had taken ill. He’d played along for a time, hoping a fever would rise to lay claim to his affliction, but it never came. He would not escape so easily.

Andre used a hotel washcloth to dry his face and then carefully folded and placed it on the small dressing table next to the sink. Once more he took stock of the man hunched over in the mirror. The patches of gray above his ears were nothing new, but he was sure they’d been smaller when last he checked. He tilted his head forward and was pleased to discover no discernible change in the thickness or color of the hair on top of his head. It was a small victory, but he would take it.

Standing up straight, Andre felt each vertebra snap into place as his spine realigned itself. At six feet eight inches tall, he often had to bend at the waist to clear a doorway, duck into a carriage, or descend into the flooded underground. Such height, along with a startlingly muscular frame, had proven useful in certain situations, particularly those involving conflict. After forty-eight years, forty of them above six feet, Andre had participated in few physical altercations, despite his penchant for “rilin’ up the locals,” as his mother was fond of saying. He’d walked away victorious from every one.

Andre preferred to match his less obvious but perhaps more impressive wits against anyone foolish enough to challenge him intellectually. Though he’d had no formal education—not a surprise given the color of his skin—Andre had learned to read at the age of five, a talent he used to devour every book, paper, and periodical that crossed his path. This included all subjects scientific, mathematical, historical, cultural, and mythological. That there was so much conflict to be found in the interpretation of the written word came as no surprise to Andre. Still, after four decades of bending, Andre was regularly thankful for high ceilings and low expectations.

It was his intellectual pursuits that had initially brought him to San Francisco, specifically his time spent studying and living with the Indian tribes of California, Oregon, and the Washington Territory. Andre was fascinated by the myriad of cultures and customs and had made it his mission to share his findings with a populace largely ignorant of the people he considered the original Americans. Accepting Lieutenant Jacoby’s invitation to speak on the effects of Western expansion before the U.S. Pacific Railway Commission had provided just such an opportunity. The lieutenant’s true motivations had not become clear until after Andre arrived.

The novelty of a Negro man speaking on behalf of the American Indian was not lost on Andre. He had encountered more than a few freemen living in the West who found it odd that his considerable gifts of persuasion were being put to use for a people who were not his own. Andre rejected such arguments. His cause was to educate, enlighten, and hopefully pass on something about the nature of mankind. That he chose to stand up for another race of people reinforced the fact that a dark-skinned man could be on equal footing with other scholars.

Andre’s prior pursuits, those that had dominated three-quarters of his life, rarely came up now in casual conversation.

Andre exited the washroom, ignoring the unpacked trunk beside the door. The preceding day’s edition of the
San Francisco Examiner
lay on the bed, the front page dominated by the latest “sewer beast” sightings. A few pages in was an article about the expansion hearings that described a “giant redwood of a man with bark as black as night.” The story also made reference to Andre’s “eloquent and educated articulation,” as well as the nickname first bestowed upon him by Chief Joseph of the Nez Percé Indians, the Voodoo Cowboy. It was silly, but Andre rather liked it, even if it wasn’t particularly accurate.

Was it ever?
Andre thought not. There wasn’t an ounce of voodoo in him and there never had been—he believed that. Unfortunately, a few more of his mother’s words chose that moment to refresh his memory:

“Go on an’ tell yo’self whatever you needs,” she’d said. “Gawd, he know inna end.”

Andre had his suspicions about God, but his mother was rarely off target. What did his intentions matter if the end result was the unleashing of so much evil? He’d wrestled with this line of thinking before and, as a result, had sacrificed much of who he’d been to make amends. On his darkest days, he knew his best efforts would never be enough. How could they?

Andre slapped his hands to his face sharply, breaking the spell before it could steal another moment. He was shocked by the strength of it, the bleakness, and how quickly it had filled him with despair. It wasn’t a true spell, not by half, but rather the memory of the thing calling to him from across a great distance. It had been so long and yet it felt as if it was in the room with him.

That would at least make the damned thing easier to find.

Andre decided to pack, regardless of how he felt. He’d barely unlatched the trunk when the door to the suite opened. Naira strode into the room and stopped in front of him. Both her wide-brimmed hat and worn leather coat were damp, though not overly so. At first glance, she looked more like a teenage boy than the twenty-one-year-old woman Andre knew her to be. He thought it might be the pants.

“Did you find passage?”

Naira nodded. “Seven
A.M.,
pier seventeen.”

“Good.”

Andre turned back to his trunk. Naira stood her ground, never taking her eyes off the much larger man.

“No trouble with the arrangements, I assume.”

“None.”

Andre smiled. There wouldn’t have been any trouble, of course. In their seven years together, Naira had never failed a task he’d given her, regardless of the situation. She had a way about her that simply put folks at ease. It was her eyes. They were larger than any Andre had ever seen, and when a man looked into them, he couldn’t help but feel comfortable, trusting. It wasn’t magic but rather a kind of ocular hypnosis that Naira claimed was a common trait among her people.

Andre had long ago learned there was more to see in Naira than what her eyes revealed, but to him she’d offered the information freely. He had been decidedly slower in sharing his secrets in return.

“I am fine,” he said, folding a shirt and placing it in his trunk.

Naira sat on the edge of the bed, hands clasped in her lap. She said nothing.

“You can sit there and stare at me as long as you want, but there is nothing wrong with me.”

“Can you still feel it?”

Andre didn’t answer right away. He slid open the bottom drawer of the armoire to retrieve a pair of neatly folded shirts. When he turned back to the trunk, Naira leaned in, making her stare even more obvious.

“Yes, I can still feel it. It will not go away, not by itself.”

Naira leaned back on the bed and pulled off her hat. A wave of long, black hair rolled down her back, making it much harder to mistake her for a boy.

“I don’t like it,” she said.

“Neither do I, but would you have me ignore it?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Nor should you think it,” Andre said, flipping the trunk lid closed. “I know you were not with me then—I am thankful for that—but this is not a trivial matter.”

“I know.”

Andre sat on the bed next to Naira. She was beautiful, a fact he’d been keenly aware of since the day he’d found her lying unconscious in a creek bed on the north side of Mount Rainier. Now, as then, his first instinct was to take care of her, to protect her. There was love between them, but it was that of a father and daughter and nothing more.

Naira felt the same, although she might have disagreed as to who was head of the family.

“I do not know why it has resurfaced,” Andre said. “I do not know how. I was very careful to bury it deep, not only in the earth, but the mind as well. If that mind is lost, then so too should the book be.”

“But it’s not.”

Andre nodded. “Of that I am certain.”

“Has it been read?”

“I think not,” Andre said, hoping this was true. “But it will be soon enough. This is a book that wants to be read, after all. Whether or not it is understood—this is where our good fortune will live or die.”

“You speak of it as if it were alive.”

Andre lifted the trunk onto the bed. It was heavy, though not for him.

“Not alive,” he said. “But it does derive its power from the living. Without a soul to turn the page, it is but ink on paper.”

Andre could tell that Naira had more questions, but he wasn’t ready to answer them. He barely had time to process the memories that resurfaced along with feelings about the book. Trying to explain his actions, even to his friend, would be difficult. Fortunately, Naira knew enough of the story not to press Andre for more when he wasn’t ready to tell it.

Andre peered out the window.

“Is it still raining?”

“Waning,” Naira said, twisting her hair into a bun. She tucked it beneath her hat and got to her feet. “The sun will be shining by the time we leave port.”

“Then there is no reason to wait. I would prefer to be onboard before any other passengers arrive.”

Andre retrieved a worn duster from a coat rack by the door. Despite the custom cut, the jacket barely reached his knees. He snatched up his trunk and a wide-brimmed Stetson from the rack and turned to Naira.

“Shall we?”

Naira looked Andre up and down.

“You wear your fear well,” she said.

“Always have.”

*   *   *

The fast steamer
Año Nuevo
left San Francisco en route to Portland at 7:17
A.M.
on Thursday, May 19, 1887. According to the Oregon Steamship Company, which owned and operated the line out of San Francisco, the journey would take between forty-eight and fifty-six hours, depending on sailing conditions. The trip was intended to be nonstop to Portland, but soon after leaving port the captain announced the ship would make an unscheduled stop in Astoria. No reason was given.

5

The marshal sat on the edge of his new bed, fully dressed but not yet ready to join the family for breakfast. In his lap was the empty but suspiciously heavy, wooden box with a rose carved into the lid. The belt he’d used to secure it for the journey to Portland was once again around the old man’s waist. It was the only belt he’d brought and the marshal needed it to keep his pants from falling down. He had reminded himself of this twice already.

In the morning light, the marshal could pick out the faint orange and yellow coloring of the rose. The paint was mostly gone now, but the artistry in the carving was still apparent. The strokes were smooth and well defined, cut into the wood by hands that knew how to use a knife. Once upon a time, he’d been good at something besides chasing outlaws.

“Don’t open it,” he said, just to hear the words aloud.

The marshal hesitated, then opened the lid anyway. The box was still empty. He felt around for the sweet spot and then released the hidden pressure latch with a single deft touch. Carefully, he lifted the false lid out of the box to reveal an additional three inches of space. The compartment was separated into five sections, the largest of which took up the top half and bottom right third of the box. Four of the cells held individual items: a small, oblong flask, a U-shaped wrench, a press mold, and a two-inch bar of solid lead. Tucked tightly into the largest subdivision was an object wrapped in cloth. The shape was unmistakable.

The marshal lifted the Hanged Man’s pistol from the box and unfolded the cloth, letting it fall around his hand so as not to touch the object within. This he hadn’t forgotten.

In his thirty-plus years as a lawman, Jim Kleberg had encountered more ways to kill a man than he cared to remember, but few things did the job more definitively than a Colt Walker pistol. Designed for the Texas Rangers in 1847, the Walker was powerful enough to bring down a horse from a hundred yards. No revolver before—or since—had been forged to deliver such firepower, a fact the marshal took some comfort in. Only God should be allowed to carry so much deadly force in one hand.

The marshal tested the gun’s weight. He guessed five pounds, more than double that of a typical revolver. The length was equally absurd, with the barrel, a gleaming black tube of hardened steel, accounting for two-thirds of the almost foot-and-a-half total. The cylinder, hammer, and loading lever were scorched, rendering them nearly as black as the barrel, and even the trigger guard held little of its original brass luster.