Whistler in the Dark (11 page)

Emma wrenched her hand free and fled.

C
HAPTER
9

T
HE
W
HISTLER

As she bolted from the saloon, Emma almost plowed into Tildy Pearce. “Oh!” Emma exclaimed. “I beg your pardon!”

Tildy's tired eyes squinted into a smile. “I was so excited about meetin' you this morning, I decided to head in early to make me some money.” She cocked her head toward the sound of the fiddle.

“Tildy …” Emma hesitated. The skin on her wrist felt itchy where Dixie John had held it. “Is it safe for you to be in the saloon? I mean—some of the men get drunk.”

“Most of the men are just lonely,” Tildy said with a shrug. “I keep away from the heavy gamblers. They're the only ones to cause trouble. A man in debt is a desperate man.”

“Well, good luck,” Emma said, not sure what else to say. “And oh—I haven't forgotten about your land deed. I'll ask my mother tonight.” She watched as Tildy disappeared into The Raven, ready to dance the evening away.

The rain had stopped, and Emma held her skirt out of the mud as she hurried back to the newspaper office. Blackjack's threat and Dixie John's ramblings made her uneasy. The haunting whistled strains of
Maggie by My Side
echoed through her mind. When a passing man nodded politely in greeting, she jerked away, then forced herself to take a deep breath. It was suddenly hard to tell what was real and whom to trust.

She found her mother and Mule Tom bent over the printing press. “Oh, Emma, there you are,” Mother said. “I was hoping you'd get back before I had to leave. Jeremy's father and Mr. Boggs and some of the other men are forming a Safety Committee, since we don't have a sheriff yet. They're meeting tonight in the room above Mr. Boggs's store. I've been invited to attend and write a story about it. Do you want to come?”

Emma considered. This would be the first formal gathering Mother attended in her Reform Dress. Heaven only knew what reaction that would provoke! “I don't think so. When are you going?”

“In just a few minutes.”

“Mother! It's almost suppertime!”

“You don't mind going back by yourself, do you?” Mother asked.

Yes!
Emma wanted to say.
Yes, I do mind. I always mind when your work is more important than me! Especially when scary things are happening!
But the words wouldn't come out.

Mother bit her lip. “Emma, I won't always work so hard,” she said after a moment. “I promise! But I want this story in the first edition of the paper, so we can send it off with Mr. Abbott's brother when he heads back east. This first edition is so important, Emma! Once it's done …”

Emma nodded. She
knew
how important the first edition was. But she also knew that after that, other things would become just as urgent for Mother. There was no point making that observation, so she changed the subject. “Mother, I need to ask you something. I met a young woman today—Tildy Pearce. She wants to subscribe to the paper so badly that she's selling dances at The Raven to earn the money.”

“Gracious!” Mother's eyebrows raised.

“She and her husband bought some farmland from Mr. Spaulding. She has a receipt proving that they paid him for the land, but nothing else. She thinks she should have a deed to the land.”

“Yes, that's right.” Mother nodded. “Mr. Spaulding forgot to give it to her, no doubt. That man has the business sense of a caterpillar. She needs to press him on it, as I've had to do on the things he promised me.”

“I'll tell her.” Thinking of Tildy Pearce, gamely bobbing up and down in some lonely miner's arms on the dance floor, made Emma want to do whatever she could to help.

Mother pulled her cape from the peg by the door. “Thank you for your help today, Mule Tom,” she called, and to Emma she said, “Come along, dear. I'll walk as far as the boardinghouse with you.”

After Mother headed off to her meeting, Emma sat down to a miserable supper of beans and bacon in Mrs. Sloane's dining room. Resentment simmered inside as Emma picked at her food. Living in a boardinghouse meant Mother never had to fix meals, and she'd hired a laundress to wash their clothes once a week.
Living here makes it too easy for Mother!
Emma thought. What if Mother decided she and Emma didn't need a house after all?

At least Dixie John didn't show up for supper. Blackjack nodded pleasantly at Emma, then spent much of the meal sparring with Miss Amaretta. A man called Spuddy, who peddled supplies to distant mining camps, was also spending the night, and he talked nonstop about the need for decent roads into the mountains. Emma was glad to escape to her bedroom.

Once there, she sat down at the desk with her notebook. She hadn't learned anything useful that afternoon. Blackjack talked in circles. As for Dixie John … Emma shuddered as she remembered the smell of strong drink on his breath. What a horrible man! Surely she couldn't put any stock in his drunken ramblings.

Could she?

Emma forced herself to recall their conversation. Most of what he said hadn't made any sense. Still, he had tried to tell her
something
. Could she afford to overlook that?

Closing her eyes, she listened again to his words exactly as she remembered them, then struggled to write them down. A bunch of nonsense!
Itsh the gold! You won't believe me. But id—itsh all there. You can find it. You have to look ish … ish … th'bird's eye—

“‘You can find it,'” she muttered, staring at the page. “‘Look
ish'
… look
with
the bird's eye? Look
in
the bird's eye?” She snorted. What in thunderation did he mean?

She chewed on the end of the pencil, then wrote
Bird's-eye map? Was
Dixie John referring to the beautiful map hanging in Mr. Spaulding's office? What else could he have meant? She stared out the window, puzzling over the questions as she absently watched a cluster of men hurry up the steps of The Raven—

“Oh!” On the next line Emma wrote,
The Raven?
Could Dixie John have been referring to the saloon itself?

Something else nagged at the back of her mind. Emma curled up in the chair, hugging her knees, as she tried to remember. Suddenly it came to her: Jeremy telling her about climbing the twin pines. “Climbs easy as a ladder,” he'd said, “and you get an eagle's view once you're up a ways.”

Was that what Dixie John had meant? That if she climbed the tree and looked down on the whole town, she'd see something important?

Emma stared at her notebook, trying to make sense of her ideas. Finally she shoved it away. “This is all nonsense!” she muttered, feeling foolish for even trying to make sense of a drunken man's ramblings. In the morning, if Dixie John showed up for breakfast and seemed sober, she'd just ask him.

After washing her face and visiting the outhouse, Emma was reaching for her nightgown when her hand stilled. Should she try to wait for The Whistler again? She eyed her bed wistfully. It had been a long day, and she was tired.

She decided to curl up in the chair by her own window instead of waiting downstairs. She was turning over the exchange with Dixie John in her mind when she dozed off.

Whistled notes slid through the night like a ghost, jolting her awake.
Maggie by My Side
.

Avoiding the window, Emma shot to her feet, raced through the hall, and skittered down the stairs. The last notes of the chorus reached her ears as she fumbled with the front door. She didn't want to scare The Whistler away! Then she slipped into the damp night air, heart pounding.

The whistling had stopped. Emma darted onto the boardwalk just in time to see a shadowy figure disappearing down the street, away from the more permanent buildings. Laughter spilled from The Raven, and a horse tied to the hitching rail out front snorted impatiently. No one else was in sight. Emma turned to follow the man.

The saloon glowed with lamplight, as did the meeting room above Mr. Boggs's store, and some of the miners camped near the creek had lit a small bonfire. Most of the town, however, was dark. Following the man away from the lively oasis of The Raven, Emma felt another flicker of unease.
I shouldn't be doing this
, she thought—but she couldn't bear to give up now, not when she was so close.

The man had a good head start, but her prickling nerves warned her to move stealthily, keeping to the shadows. As she closed the gap, she noted that he was short and slightly built—and that he walked with a limp. Emma felt a sudden sheen of sweat on her skin. Surely this was the man who'd asked about the Hendersons during their journey west!

The Whistler led her toward the outskirts of Twin Pines, where the scattered cabins and tents were shadowed and silent. Emma's footsteps slowed. The half-moon slid behind a cloak of clouds, and the saloon noise had faded behind her. A sudden snarl split the night. Emma almost jumped from her skin.
It's just a couple of dogs fighting over an antelope bone
, she told herself, but when one of the creatures slunk away from the shadow of a tiny cabin, she saw that it was a coyote instead. She stifled a cry and scurried backward.

The Whistler had melted into the shadows, but Emma couldn't will her feet to follow. An icy finger of fear traced down her spine. For a moment Emma stood rooted in the road, heart hammering. Then she snatched up her skirts and fled back to the boardinghouse.

C
HAPTER
10

A L
IKELY
S
USPECT

Emma woke the next morning very annoyed with herself.
I was so close!
she fumed.
Twice
yesterday she'd gotten spooked—once in the saloon when Dixie John was holding her wrist, and later following The Whistler. Her father had faced battle without running away! Surely she could have done better. Mother, who had slipped into bed long after Emma had curled lonely and cold under the covers, didn't notice Emma's mood. “The meeting was interesting,” she chattered as she pulled on her chemise. “I need to determine how much space we have left in the newspaper for the story. You can help me. Now—what do you think? Are you willing to wear your Reform Dress today?”

“No!”

Mother frowned. “Please change your tone, Emma. What has you in such a nettle this morning?”

Emma twisted her mouth. Part of her longed to tell Mother that The Whistler was in Twin Pines. But Mother would surely scold Emma for not telling her sooner—and especially for trying to follow him alone. Emma was in no mood for a scolding. “Nothing,” she said finally. Mother cocked one eyebrow but let her be.

Breakfast consisted of sourdough pancakes, stewed dried apples, and viciously strong coffee. Spuddy, the traveling peddler, started an argument by demanding that Mother write an editorial against the proposed treaty between the government and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians. “We need to run them from the territory!” he exclaimed. His poorly-dried deerskin suit rattled like old peapods with every indignant jab of his finger. “And the Utes, too!”

“As I understand it, our army committed a massacre at Sand Creek in 1864,” Mother shot back. “I will not use my newspaper to promote such outrages …”

Emma watched Spuddy's face turn brick red.
Lovely
, she thought. Someone else who wasn't happy with
The Herald's
editor. The list seemed ever-growing.

On Emma's other side, Miss Amaretta launched a genteel assault on Blackjack's line of business. “I suggest,” she concluded, “that you spend some time reading the Good Book instead of indulging in card games—”

“My dear Miss Holly.” Blackjack smiled calmly. “Wasn't it Paul the Apostle who said, ‘Let the women learn in silence. I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence—'”

“Oh!”
Miss Amaretta's eyes glittered. “
Sir
. May I remind you …”