“Mr. Leeds, I must ask you, have you ever tasted this bird pepper sauce that’s become such a point of contention between my colleagues?” Matthew asked.
But Mr.Leeds didn’t answer, because Mr. Leeds wasn’t there.
On a hunch, Mr. Reeves opened the door to Mr. Leeds’ room and found his clothing neatly hung over his chair.
Joseph whistled. “So he went past us, took his clothes off, went past us again, and left without any of us knowing it. It is incredible how fast he moves.” Joseph said.
“I sometimes forget how quick he is.” Martin said. “I remember how a cannonball smacked into him and didn’t so much as bruise his flesh and I get to thinking of him as like Joseph--big, strong, and slow.”
“Slow, am I?” Joseph smirked.
“Slow you are.” Martin said.
“Slow compared to who, Martin?” Joseph asked. “I tend to recall a time when we went hiking through Epping forest to check on the Black Pool and you were lagging quite some ways behind me--or am I remembering several times, Martin?
“Only because of your freakishly large stride…” Martin mumbled.
“He’s faster than my draw.” Mr. Reeves said. “He’d be the greatest quickdraw in all of America if we could somehow convince him to learn how to hold a gun.” he looked down at his holstered gaeite lantern. “If people could build this contraption, they could build something for his hands, I’m sure of it.”
“He’s a gentle soul.” Martin said. “The way he hunts may be off-putting, to say the least, but he learned those behaviors at a young age, and he would never think of turning his teeth upon another man, or harming another man in any way.”
“Perhaps it’s good he never learns. Violence does change a man.” Mr. Reeves said. “And not for the better. I know this all too well.”
“Well, gentlemen, I’m going to finish my coffee, and I’m off to bed.” Martin said. “I suggest you all follow shortly. The Red Ghost still prowls Eagle Creek, and if we can’t capture him, at least we can patrol the area and make sure the innocent are kept away from any possible danger. If he’s teleporting from us, he’s not hunting them.”
The door to the electrograph room opened and Matthew stepped into the main room. “The message has been sent to Fort Bowie and they promise to forward it to nearby post offices. With any luck, the population will keep itself inside.”
The Third Day
As on the previous morning, Mr. Reeves was the first to rise. He checked in on Mr. Leeds and found him sound asleep after his night of aerial play, then he made coffee, tea, and biscuits.
At breakfast, Martin drowned his biscuits in bird pepper sauce until the dry, crumbly bread was wet and pink.
“Good lord, do you have to put it on everything now?” Joseph asked.
“Bury me with a bottle.” Martin said.
“We’ll drown your coffin with it.” Joseph said. He wrinkled his nose from the smell.”Ugh! How does that not knock you out?”
“Says the man that smokes like a chimney.” Martin said. “You know what, I think that’s your problem, Joseph, you’ve dulled your sense of taste. You simply can’t enjoy bird pepper sauce, it’s wonderment is beyond you. Breathe the smell in deep, old man, it’s vitalizing, you could use it.”
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“There’s nothing vitalizing about that horrid red substance.” Joseph said. “I am convinced that you would die on the spot if you tipped the whole bottle down your gullet. In fact, I'll bet you a whole crown that you can’t drink that whole bottle.”
“You’d take money from a dead man?” Martin asked.
“I’ll claim it from your ghost.”
“I have to intercede here, children.” Matthew said. “But we’re here on business, and I’m not going to let Martin scald his insides off a bet.”
“What if I made the bet a crown and two shillings?” Joseph asked.
“Speaking of business, I checked the electrograph today.” Mr. Reeves said. “Fort Bowie sent a reply to your electrogram, Dr. Ernst.”
“What did they say?” Matthew asked.
“About what you’d expect. They’ve sent word up and down Eagle Creek for people to stay in doors and keep away from the Red Ghost. They're also slightly upset that we haven’t resolved the haunting yet.”
“That’s usually how the authorities treat us outside Blackwall.” Joseph said. “They want the ghost gone and they want the ghost gone now. It makes me appreciate Chief Constable James. Sarcastic though he may be at times, he’s always had our backs. I know you Poeists don’t have a central base of operations, what with you covering the entire bloody continent, but do you have anyone like Chief Constable James? Someone in authority that’s always got your backs?”
“Well, like you say, we’re very decentralized, but our two main stations are in New Jersey and West Virginia, and the governors of those two states are usually on good terms with us. Usually. But we don’t have a Chief Constable James. I wish we did…no wait, you know what? Would Judge Isaac Parker and Marshall James Fagan count?”
“Who are they?”
“Friends. More my friends than friends of the American Manesological Society, but friends nonetheless. Judge Parker is who I send all my bounties to, the ones with pulses, and he sometimes sends them back to me when he’s done with them--their ghosts, that is. They call him Hanging Judge Parker.”
“Doesn’t sound like a very merciful man.”
“I suppose that’s fair to say. It’s hard to call a man that’s stretched the necks of so many men merciful. But consider the nature of Indian territory. Back in 1828, Jackson’s Democrats uprooted the Indians and pushed them west of the Mississippi, to Indian Territory, and promised them protection--protection which never came. Like Judge Parker once said when he defended himself from men that called him brutal, it fell to the courts to provide some of that long-promised protection, the courts and their officers, like myself and Marshal Fagan. Men, that I would scarcely call men, that Judge Parker calls devils in human form, cut their teeth on bloody sin back east and flee west, to Indian Territory, to try and escape the law. The United States exports the worst of their criminals to Indian territory. I’ve seen the worst evil that comes on two legs. I’ve put bullets in some of them, but most I capture alive to face Judge Parker. And I can’t rightfully say I feel sorry for most of them.”
“We’re no strangers to the rawest evil of man.” Joseph said.
“True. There was that killer back in 1866, the “Werewolf of Blackwall” you called him, right?”
“Yes. He liked to cut young women of the night and watch them bleed out as they ran from him. We never encountered his ghost, but a friend of ours did, and dealt with him properly.”
“The Bisclavret siblings never liked how you called him the Werewolf of Blackwall.”
“Apologies. It was before shapeshifters were known to the world at large. They clung furtively to the shadows back in 1866. But regardless of what we called him, he was certainly the kind of man Judge Parker would have called a devil in human form.”
“True. But the Werewolf of Blackwall was one devil from one city. Indian territory is a lake of filth whose tributaries are the dirty cities of the east, Dr. Morton. There was this one half-breed, went by the name of James Foy. He killed a man the local natives called the barefoot school teacher, all because he happened to have a roll of bills in his hand at the time. James Foy hid his body in the mountains where it moldered for years until a Seminole boy found it. His name, even after several years, was still legible on the fly-leaf of the book he had in his coat pocket, and that led me to James, and I led him to Judge Parker’s gallows. That’s one devil, Dr. Morton, just one of many. If Judge Parker is a hard man, he’s a hard man because this is a hard territory. I spent time among the Cherokee and Seminole and Muskogee after I escaped slavery. They were good to me. If I have to send some men to Hell to return the favor, I will.”
“I see your point. But what about the other man, this Marshal Fagan?”
“Judge Parker is the one that signed off on my star, but Marshal Fagan is the one that pinned it on my chest. He used to be a Confederate, if you can believe it.”
“A Confederate deputized a negro?”
“A Confederate general, actually. He was at Shiloh when the Ror Raas brought an end to the war with their sky-fires. When the Confederacy started to dissolve under economic strain, General Fagan was appointed Marshal Fagan, and Marshal Fagan appointed me.”
“Even though you were a negro?”
“I speak Tsalagi, among several other Indian languages, I can ride to beat the devil and shoot his horns off, and I’m as good a shot with my left hand as my right hand. A Democrat would have appointed me, and Marshal Fagan was never a Democrat. He was a Whig, then he joined the American Party. He never owned a slave and he clearly has nothing against my race. He gave a negro the power to arrest white men, didn’t he?”
“That seems odd to me.”
“Nothing odd about it. Not every man in the South fought because of slavery. Anyway, Dr. Morton, Marshal Fagan and Judge Parker are my friends. But I’m not sure they would count as counterparts to your Chief Constable James.”
“I would say they would count, even if they’re just your friends. Really, that’s all you need sometimes--someone who knows you and can sympathize with you.”
When they finished breakfast, the men boarded Whistle’s carriage and took to the Arizona sky. Though Matthew found the Red Ghost to be just as hard to pin down with the Aldi Operation as yesterday, it would not be long before the manesologists found another clue left by the Red Ghost.