The Empire of Shadows Page 8

  A waiter arrived and cleared the table, taking their orders for coffee and ice cream before scurrying back to the kitchen. William watched him go.

  “You’ve managed to get good people in here, Fred. Must’ve been a problem.” There hadn’t been enough people living in the vicinity to provide even half the staffing needs, not if every man, woman, and child had been put to work.

  “Had to bring people in from all over. Some even from New York, but mostly from Glens Falls and Saratoga.

  “Hiram! Over here!” he called as Hiram Duryea strode into the dining hall. Duryea craned to see where the hail had come from. It was a big room. “Come, join us,” Frederick said, waving him into a chair. “We were just about to have coffee.”

  Hiram Duryea was a prosperous man who owned a hugely successful starch business. In his late-middle years, he still had all the robust vigor of a much younger man. He’d been brevetted a brigadier general for distinguished conduct at the battle of Gains’s Mill and still wore an air of command as naturally as some men wore a hat. He loved the Adirondacks, too, and had built a camp about six years before on a point about a half mile up the lake from the hotel.

  “Evening, gentlemen,” he said, with a smile that took in both Will and Fred. “Not interrupting anything, am I?” he asked, hesitating just enough to be polite. He may have noticed the fleeting frown that passed across William’s aristocratic features.

  “’Course not, old man!” Will assured him. “By all means, join us.” He shot Fred a quick glance as the general sat. There’d be no more talk of Morgan and Huntington this night.

  She had been off duty for some hours now, but she hadn’t gone back to the maid’s quarters like the rest. Instead, she had done a little detective work. She found out enough to keep her interested too.

  Letitia Burman—“Lettie,” as everyone called her—knew what his name was, and what his father was, too. It was only prudent to check on these things after all. Mike was a beautiful boy, as handsome in a slightly dangerous sort of way as any she’d seen this summer. But handsome wasn’t enough. There were plenty of handsome loggers and river drivers to choose from back in Warrensburg. They were fine if she was lonely enough, but she had yet to find one of them who could rub two dimes together.

  So, she’d done her homework. New York City police captains could do very well, from what she heard, as good as a doctor or lawyer if the precinct was fat. That’s just what she wanted, too, had come all the way to the middle of nowhere to find. Not that her motives were purely mercenary. She’d have to love the man she picked, not any police captain’s son would do.

  Lettie walked almost the entire hotel without luck. Maybe he was back in his room, she thought. That bite on his thumb looked nasty, though Mike had done his best to look rakish for her through the pain. Maybe if she didn’t find him she’d think of some pretext to knock on his door. She dismissed the idea almost as soon as it came. If she wanted to keep her job there were proprieties she’d have to observe. This had to be a chance encounter, if she could arrange it. The rumble of bowling balls on maple drew her. The bowling alley was the only place she had yet to check.

  Mike rolled another ball with his left hand. The last one had bounced into the gutter as ’Becca laughed and clapped. It was the first time she was beating her big brother at anything. She was enjoying every minute. Lettie watched from the corner near the door.

  He really was beautiful, she thought. She took him in from ankles to ears, lingering on the best parts in between. Little butterflies swirled and fluttered in her middle. She almost lost her nerve, but she forced herself to stay. She watched as Mike rolled his ball at the pins with a frown of concentration. The ball stayed in the alley this time and toppled seven. The pin boy scrambled to clear them and set up for the next frame.

  “Not bad for an injured man,” Mike heard from behind him. He turned to see the girl from the pharmacy watching him with a mischievous smile on her face. He stood stunned for a split second while his brain somehow ceased to function. He’d had almost the same reaction in the pharmacy, a sudden suspension of all rational thought. It didn’t last long.

  “I,” he said, pausing for an eternal second as his brain shifted gears, “I’m not much of a bowler, even with my good hand.” He held up his bandaged thumb like it was something she needed to see. He gritted his teeth through a ridiculous grin, knowing how incredibly stupid that sounded. Still, she smiled back as if they had some secret understanding.

  “I’m Lettie,” she said, extending a white hand. Mike took it. It was small in his fist, soft on the back, but rough on the thumb and fingers, a working hand. He looked into Lettie’s blue eyes, marveling at their light as if he’d never seen their like before.

  “I’m Mike,” he replied at last. “I’m Mike. We’re staying here, at the hotel,” he went on, knowing with instant horror how obvious and stupid and unsophisticated and bumptious he was, and how he could never hope that a dazzling gem of a girl like this could ever see past it and to the real boy who clutched her hand in his sweaty palm. Lettie just giggled. She loved what she could do to a boy, especially the beautiful ones.

  “Tired?” Tom asked Mary as she stifled a yawn.

  “That nap this afternoon wasn’t long enough by half,” Mary said, her words slow and cottony. Tom put a strong hand around her waist, pulled her close enough to breathe in the scent of her.

  “We can sleep late,” he said. Mary grunted, doubting every syllable. “You think our little darling will let us?”

  Tom shook his head, but said, “Miracles could happen. Maybe the mountain air will put her out.” The Utowana bumped into the dock and the thrumming of the steam engine suddenly ceased. The silence of the wilderness filled the void, as if its weight alone had stopped the engine. Tom and Mary filed off with the rest of the guests ambling up the slope toward the glowing hotel, now silent after the band had packed up.

  “What’re the odds those two are back in their room?” Tom asked with an appraising twist of his mouth and one raised eyebrow as he looked at his pocket watch.

  “Sixty-forty against,” Mary said. “’Becca can run circles around Mike if she gets going. I wouldn’t bet against her.”

  They had just entered the main hall when Tom said, “Care for a port before bed?”

  “Ooh. That sounds nice. I hope it’s not too late,” she said, looking about at the few guests still in the place. “Lead on, Captain.”

  The dining hall was empty, except for a group of three men at a far table and a young couple seated near a window. The couple leaned close across their table, drinking each other in as they spoke in intimate whispers. Tom noticed how Mary looked at them. “I remember when you used to look at me like that,” Mary said after they’d ordered. Tom couldn’t quite tell if she was serious, or if it was just one of her teasing provocations.

  “I look at you like that all the time, Missus Braddock,” he said with mock seriousness. “You just don’t notice,” which was quite true. There wasn’t a day that went by that Tom didn’t appreciate Mary’s looks. But Mary, for all her dark beauty, didn’t see herself as beautiful, and never truly had. She knew that men seemed to think her so, but she didn’t believe it, not really.

  “I notice more than you imagine, Tommy,” Mary said more seriously than Tom was expecting. “I notice how you come home so tired you fall asleep in that old chair of yours. Not that I’m any better,” Mary said, holding her hand up when she saw Tom about to protest. “We’re an old married couple,” she said with a tone that was a mix of warmth and remembrance, but of longing, too, and perhaps just a little fear.

  “I suppose we are,” Tom said. “And what of it? What else are we supposed to be? We are old; well, not old really,” he said, because he didn’t see himself and Mary as old. “And we are married,” he went on. “Funny. I used to dream about what this would be like, being married to the same woman for years and years.”

  “It hasn’t been that long,” Mary said. “You make it sound like
forever.” Though she frowned as she said this, Tom could see the play in her eyes.

  “No. Not forever at all. Not nearly long enough.” Tom nodded toward the other couple. “Those two, they’ll find out if they’re lucky.”

  “But it’s not luck,” Mary said. “It’s work in a way, I mean staying together when there are a million things that could pull people apart if they let them. We’ve managed to make it. I mean, your job could have separated us a dozen times if we’d let it. My…” Mary lowered her voice “…houses, what with the payoffs, and politics, and problems with the girls; any of that might have separated someone else. And Mike…”

  Tom sighed. “Yeah, Mike. He’s put enough strain on us for any three kids.” Tom made an effort to brighten the mood, though, and smiled, saying, “Then there’s ’Becca.”

  Mary smiled too and reached across the table for Tom’s hand. “An angel,” she said, but it wasn’t just an endearing phrase. “She’s everything I ever imagined. Even Mike loves her.”

  Tom smiled. “Yeah, I suppose he does. No. I know he does. He’s a good kid. He just needs to get over this rough spot.” Tom knew how trivial he was making Mike’s troubles sound. He’d seen the night watchman, seen the burned warehouse. But he still had faith.

  Mary nodded. “He’ll come out stronger,” she said. “This trip…”

  “Yeah, A couple of weeks away is just what he needed, us, too, for that matter.”

  “We’ll have to work on him,” Mary added. “Well, not work exactly. Just pay attention really, time and attention.”

  “The boy needs to know he’s loved,” Tom said. “You get right down to it, and that was what hanging with that gang was all about. They’d been like family long before we ever came along. Things like that you don’t give up easy.”

  “No,” Mary said. “You don’t. I suppose that’s what old married couples do,” Mary said. “Not give up.”

  Tom smiled. “And we haven’t, have we?” He squeezed her hand. “You know…” Tom searched for the right words, and looked over at the spooning couple before he found them. “We may be an old married couple like you say, but I would never change that. I am precisely where I want to be. Precisely,” he said with an urgency that drew them even closer.

  The corners of Mary’s wide mouth turned up and her dark eyes flashed. “From time to time Tommy, you do say the right thing.” Her eyes flickered from him for an instant as her foot stroked his leg under the table. “They’re watching us,” she murmured with an imperceptible nod toward the other couple. “I hope they’re jealous.”

  They sat nursing their drinks for some time, talking softly of things they had done and things they had yet to do.

  “I want to spend some time with Mike,” Tom said. “Just the two of us. Thinking maybe we’d go fishing.”

  Mary nodded. “It’d be good for both of you,” she agreed.

  “I’ll see about getting us set up with a guide, maybe that Busher fellow.”

  Mary smiled in a playful sort of way. “What is it about men and catching fish?” she asked, not really expecting an answer.

  “Ah, my dear,” Tom said with the voice of an old sage. “This is a question women have pondered for thousands of years. It is one of the mysteries of manhood, a closely guarded secret known only to the male of the species and passed down from father to son.”

  Mary laughed. “In other words, you don’t know.”

  “It is unknowable,” he answered.

  They were laughing when Tom felt someone looking at them. Turning to his right he noticed that the three gentlemen from the far table had gotten up and were strolling toward the door. One of them seemed familiar to him. He was about to say something, when the man asked, “Do I know you, sir? You seem familiar to me in some way, but I can’t place you. Have we conducted some business or other, or was it perhaps from the service I recall your face?”

  Tom looked at him hard but nothing came. “I was with the eightieth New York,” he said. “Served all over. Could have—wait!” Tom said, pointing a finger at the man. “Hold on. You’re General Duryea.”

  “At your service, sir. And you are?”

  “Thomas Braddock. Sergeant Braddock,” Tom said with unusual emphasis. “Currently Captain of the Third precinct, New York City Police. And this is my wife, Mary,” he said as he rose to shake Duryea’s hand. There was a look of shock on the general’s face, as if Tom had just produced a rabbit from his hat.

  “I never thought to see you in the living world again, Sergeant,” Duryea said, his eyes in a squint as if they might be deceiving him. He shook Tom’s hand hard, pumping it with vigor as his wonder turned to delight. “My friends,” he said, turning to William and Frederick. “I’d like you to meet a dead man.”

  Seven

  Civilization is pushing its way even toward this wild region.

  When that time shall have arrived where shall we go to find the woods, the wild things, the old forests?

  —S. H. HAMMOND

  Tupper dozed as the train rumbled northward. The trip up the Hudson had gone well. Nobody except the waiter had taken notice of him. He’d got a bit of dinner on the boat, as much as he could afford. His pockets were stuffed with buttered rolls when he left the table, not knowing how long it might be till he could afford to fill his stomach again. Tupper nodded off thinking of breakfasts he’d had the winter before when he was logging near Long Lake. Stacks of wheat cakes, bushels of eggs, corn bread, fried hams, blackened steaks, and rivers of coffee had his stomach growling.

  Tupper slipped into a dream. He was in the longhouse of his old village. He saw the council fire but it was just ashes. All was in silence. He kicked at the ash and watched as a gray cloud rose. The ashes spread as he watched. Snaky gray tendrils groped in the longhouse. They seemed to almost have life and will, fanning out, blotting the contours of the lodge.

  He stood speechless. He looked down and saw he was a boy, as he had been when he last saw the council fire burning. The cloud towered above him. It billowed in the darkened rafters and writhed in the corners devouring the place. He feared to move. The cloud would know. It would know, and come for him. But to stand still was to give up.

  He turned to run but found himself falling. He fell and fell, landing on his back, staring up at the ashen cloud as it reached for him. He held out his hands to ward it off, but it did no good. It touched him on his legs and arms and chest. A deathly chill spread like ice on a pond.

  Tupper woke with a gasp. He looked about him. People were staring. He put his head down again and tilted his hat over his face. He knew he should have slipped into a freight car. Tupper looked at his boots, stretched out before him. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d walked the Adirondacks. By his reckoning, it would be thirty-five or forty miles to where he was headed. If he stuck to the woods by day and the road after dark he could cover that in a day and a half. He took a deep breath. The prospect of a long walk sent a warm rush through him, though the horror of his dream still lingered.

  “The dream world is for men to use and learn from, Jim,” his grandfather had told him once when he’d been troubled by a nightmare. “Nothing in it can hurt you. The real monsters walk on two legs in the sun.” Tupper grinned to himself at the memory. He wondered what his grandfather might think of him now.

  Tupper put that thought aside. He considered the things he’d need. A couple of buttered rolls were not going to see him through to where he was going. A good rubberized canvas tarp, a pack basket, some salt pork, a frying pan, and fishing line were added to his mental checklist. The trick was getting them without being remembered. Tupper closed his eyes once more, certain that something would come to him. Something always did.

  Hours passed. North Creek had arrived and now was far behind. Tupper had walked off the train and out of town without looking back. The man from the North River docks got off the car behind, blending with the small crowd of tourists. He was different now. His clothes had changed and he looked like a local. Though
he watched Jim go out of the corner of an eye, he made no move to follow. He waited for the stage with the others.

  Tupper had been walking all through the afternoon and the dying of the day. The fancy clothes were gone. A sturdy pair of canvas pants and a plaid flannel shirt had replaced them. He was still disturbed at finding his bayonet missing.

  He’d discovered it when he’d changed on the boat early that morning. He was still angry and couldn’t imagine how he’d lost it. The only thing he could think was that it had fallen out of his boot somewhere between Fat Bess’s and the docks. He’d liked the weapon and especially the bone handle. It had been made by a man who knew his knives, though it wasn’t made for cutting.

  Jim promised himself he’d fashion one just like it when he had the opportunity, and thought about how he’d make it as he walked north. All he carried was his small satchel. He’d stuck to the woods until he was beyond North River, though the going was rough and his progress slow.

  Once dusk had settled on the forest he came back to the road. It had been empty as far as he could see. He made good time, though he had to watch his footing on the rocky, rutted ground. Glancing at the moon he guessed it was somewhere after eleven. Tupper loved the moon, always had.

  Soíka gaákwa, was the moon in the tongue of the Iroquois. Unlike the sun, it demanded nothing. He could gaze upon it and not lose his sight. It would not burn the skin nor wring the water out of him as its sister the sun would in the summer. The moon was there for him to touch, to enjoy at his ease as he would a lover. Though it wasn’t his totem, it was always a source of power for him, a heavenly guide and secret strength. The night was Tupper’s friend.

  He walked stumbling little, though the blackness was almost complete. His stomach was empty. One last roll, flaking and hard, bounced in his pocket. He saved it for the time when his energy flagged. But for now his legs were strong and his lungs bottomless. He would walk like this for hours before food was necessary. He’d learned long ago how to put hunger aside, to dig deep into the reserves his grandfather had taught him were his.