1883, Late June

Elizabeth West loaded one of the Winchesters and then another as the dogs outside continued to howl and whine. This had the makings of another Indian attack, and an attack at the worst possible time. Adam and Frank were far from the ranch. There was only herself and Dorothy Richards, and Dorothy wasn’t answering, no matter how much Elizabeth shouted.

But Elizabeth tried again. What else could she have done?

“Dotty! Dotty! Dotty, where are you!” she cried.

Still no answer.

The dogs continued to howl as Elizabeth placed one rifle on a table and clutched the other tightly in her hands.

She looked out a window by the front door. The dogs were howling at something over the hill. They stood like sentries rooted to the spot and when they barked, they barked so forcefully their bodies quaked.

Elizabeth prayed the dogs wouldn’t die. The Indians killed their dogs the last time they attacked, and several cattle as well.

Whatever was over the hill would not reveal itself. The dogs kept barking, and barking, and Elizabeth began to suspect that whatever they were barking at wasn’t a band of Indian raiders. The Indians didn’t wait like this last time. They shot the dogs, and then rode up to the ranch, firing blindly into the air in an effort to scare them out.

After a minute of waiting, Elizabeth was sure that she wasn’t dealing with a band of raiders. But what were the dogs barking at? What could it be? A wounded animal, maybe? Something too damaged to move but too large for the dogs to attack?

Or maybe--a wounded person?

“Dotty?” Elizabeth called out again. “Dotty, are you hurt, girl?”

Elizabeth slowly unbolted the door and crept outside. She cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted. “Dotty! Dotty, are you there? Are you hurt?”

There was still no answer.

Then the dogs stopped barking. They became as still as statues.

And then, yipping and whining, they bolted toward the house. They nearly knocked Elizabeth to the ground as they scampered to a hiding place in the back of the house.

Elizabeth then saw why they ran.

Slowly, over the hill, rose a large, red shape.

It was four-legged, but that was where its similarities with any creature Elizabeth knew ended. It was covered in fur the color of blood. It was large, so large, Elizabeth never knew something could be so large. Its legs were long like stalks and its neck long like a snake. Its neck twisted about as it threw its head back and roared.

It was a cry that brought Elizabeth to her knees in prayer.

Through her tears, she could see something white on the creature’s back, something round like a shell, but it didn’t cover the entirety of the red back.

The white something on its back nearly went horizontal as the creature brought its legs up, and then down, again and again, hammering at the ground.

Its blows echoed through the prairie like thunder. Elizabeth shut her eyes tight and repeated her prayers.

Even when the thundering stopped, she didn’t dare open her eyes. She sat in silence, rifle clutched in her hands, and waited. The whimpering of the dogs in her bedroom was the only sound she heard.

She thanked God when she saw Adam and Frank come riding over the hill, for she believed that her prayers had been answered, but as they got closer, she saw that something was terribly wrong. Their faces were bloodless and bore expressions of purest fear. When they approached the porch, they didn’t bother to hitch their horses, they jumped out of their saddles and bolted through the door.

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Adam hugged Elizabeth tight. She sobbed in his arms.

“Adam, oh, Adam! There was a monster over the hill! A red monster! It was horrible, like something from a nightmare!”

“It’s okay.” Adam whispered. “It’s all okay.” But as his hands lowered her into a chair, Elizabeth could see that things were far from okay. She looked over Adam’s shoulder and saw Frank Richards. There were tears in his eyes.

“Where is Dorothy?” Elizabeth asked. “I…I couldn’t find her. I screamed and screamed for her when the dogs started howling but I couldn’t find her! Where is she, did you find her?”

The men did not answer, but Frank recoiled as if a blow had struck him. He tightened his fist. Through his fingers, a mass of red hair seeped like blood from a wound.

1883, Mid-July

Whistle came to a sudden stop and Ernst, Morton, and Glass were tossed forward by the momentum, stopping only because of the ectoplasmic straps that secured them to the sides of the hollow carriage.

“We’re here.” Martin Glass said. The youngest member of Ernst, Morton, and Glass undid the straps that fastened him and his friends with but a touch. His brief education under the thaumaturgists of the Ror Raas had left him with esoteric skills, including the ability to reshape ghosts and all their ectoplasmic manifestations with a touch, as if ectoplasm was mere clay to his hands.

The three trampled over the hay that littered the inside of the hollow carriage as they left. The hay glowed like fairy gold.

Whistle was a horse, and horses knew only a little of how the world worked. In Whistle's experience, enclosed spaces, such as his barn, had hay, and so he assumed that hay had to be inside the little enclosed space that was always attached to him whenever he left his barn. Whistle expected there to be hay, and so there was hay. It was the same reason why the featureless shadow of a coachman sat above the carriage and held his reins. He expected there to be a coachman when he was out and about, and so there was.

“Ah, this weather is so nice!” Joseph Morton stretched his massive, wrinkled body and soaked in the sunlight like a wilted plant. “Weather this nice is wasted on the Yanks. Blackwall is nothing but cold air and moisture by comparison! And look at that sun! Beautiful!”

Martin Glass wiped down his glasses, and kept his eyes shut while doing so, lest his friends see how blue his eyes really were, and ask why they were such a vivid purple color. It was just one of the secrets he kept from them.

He put them back on his face and joined Joseph in marveling at the sun. “That really is an incredible view. The wonders of the sky are preserved out here in Arizona. There aren’t any steam beasts or five story buildings to get in the way.”

Matthew Ernst gestured to a white ranch house marked with a gaeite candle, the universal symbol of manesologists. “It’s nice to see this, too.” he said quietly. “A real wooden building! Back home, you have to go all the way out to Epping Forest to see wood in any form besides a table.”

Ernst, Morton, and Glass had arrived at one of the many stations used by the American Manesological Society, or Poeists as they were commonly called, built across the Americas. England was a small country, and so their single office in Blackwall was sufficient. But America was huge. The Poeists’ first station, built several years ago in New Jersey, might as well have been placed in China for how far away it was from the Arizona territory. Thus many Poeist stations came to dot the American landscape, and every few years another sprang up.

A man in a duster coat and stetson hat came outside the station to greet Ernst, Morton, and Glass. “Welcome back to America!’ he said as he approached.

The silver star pinned to his chest said DEPUTY US MARSHAL and proclaimed his authority, but it was his skill with the revolver strapped to his side that guaranteed it.

This man was Bass Reeves, a man who was a storied and colorful character before he ever joined the Poeists. Once the slave of a man named George Reeves, he escaped after beating George severely for cheating him in a game of cards and spent several years living among the Seminole, Creeks, and Cherokee. When the Ror Raas brought an end to the American Civil war in 1863 and the institution of slavery by placing fires in the sky over the Battle of Shiloh, Mr. Reeves used his newfound freedom to become a farmer in Arkansas.

In 1875, he was made a deputy marshal of the Indian territory under marshal James Fagan and judge Isaac Parker. Though a black man, no one could not deny that Mr. Reeves’ knowledge of the land and fluency in several Indian languages made him an ideal deputy, and Mr. Reeves became one of the greatest lawmen America had ever seen. He had captured more than a thousand outlaws and was known for his skillful marksmanship with revolvers and rifles.

Bass Reeves joined the Poeists in 1880, and found the work not too dissimilar from law enforcement. Both involved hunting down targets over a vast area. Both required quick thinking and quick reflexes. Both were highly dangerous professions. Mr. Reeves continued hunting down human criminals without missing a beat--his work with the Poeists just increased the number of men on his list.

Mr. Reeves was 45 years old, but age had affected him little, if at all. His beard was thick and dark without so much as a touch of gray. His skin was without a trace of wrinkles.

Mr. Reeves shook the trio’s hands and then turned to Whistle. “So this is the legendary ghost horse!” he said.

Mr. Reeves touched the creature’s snout. “And he’s just as friendly as they say!”

“Would you like to feed him a carrot?” Joseph asked.

“He eats?”

“Well, he thinks he eats.” Joseph produced an orange treat from his massive pockets. “Here, try.”

Mr. Reeves took the carrot and smiled as Whistle first sniffed it, then chomped it between his teeth.

“Ectoplasmic carrot?” Mr. Reeves asked.

Joseph pointed a thumb at Martin. “He makes them. Not the most glamorous use of thaumaturgical powers, but Whistle deserves a treat every now and then, and normal carrots just fall right to the ground through his chin.”

“Thank you all for coming such a long way from England.” Mr. Reeves said.

“Not a problem.” Matthew said. “Whistle makes distances a trivial matter, and we’re always glad to help our American cousins.”

“And it’s good thing you’re here, we need your help. The Bisclavret siblings are back home in Louisiana investigating sightings of a human-shaped shadow that reportedly ate a person near Honey Island and Dirk Peters is in Washington, because they keep seeing Lincoln’s ghost, so we need the extra hands for this case.”

Mr. Reeves pointed to Whistle's carriage and rider. “Do we need to move any of that?”

“No.” Matthew said. “They’re part of Whistle, like how the clothing of many a manes is part of them. Whistle believes he needs a carriage and coachman when he’s out and about, and so he has a carriage and coachman.”

“So we don’t need to hitch him?”

“Not at all.” Matthew pointed to two square pieces of leather placed at the sides of Whistle's eyes. “We figured out when we first met Whistle that as long as his blinders are on, he’s passive.”

“Oh, but if you take them off, look out!” Joseph said. “He’ll crash around like a four-legged tornado--but worse!”

“Well, if Whistle's good to sit out here, then we can head on inside.” Mr. Reeves led Ernst, Morton, and Glass into the station.