Breath and Bones (26 page)

The laudanum took quick effect. Famke's cough faded and her eyelids drooped; she smiled. “Do you know where he is now?” she asked.

“You might try the smaller towns. Fair Play, Leadville, Boulder,” Amy told her, still stroking Famke's hair. “But what do you want to rush off for? A girl with your face and your hair could do well for herself here.”

The Railways of Colorado are famous for their bold engineering, and their wonderful achievements in the passage of lofty mountains and unparalleled gorges. They have been built in advance of population, and the rapid growth of the State is in part due to their agency
.

M
OSES
K
ING
,
K
ING'S
H
ANDBOOK OF THE
U
NITED
S
TATES

The big, loud trains that had borne Famke across the country were no good in these complicated mountains. Carrying a secondhand satchel with her female clothes inside, she bought a fare on what the ticketmasters called a Slim Princess: a narrow-gauge train that could negotiate the cramped tunnels and precarious passes. The Princess was only a third as wide as the big trains, but she was better tended, with bright red and green paint and shiny brasses.

That first morning, Famke felt well rested and full of energy, thanks to Jo's laudanum (a mere nickel added on to the dollar charge for her whiskey), and took heart at the sight of the pretty little locomotive puffing steam through the station. She mounted with a light step and found a bench to herself in second class, mindful that a man would sit with ankles and knees apart, rather than pressed together in the way of lady Catholics and Saints. She was proud of another detail that had occurred to her that morning: She had hung the yellow pocket around her waist with the tinderbox inside, where its bulge added an authentic touch to her male impersonation. She had also slicked her hair down with macassar oil and pinned it tightly, with the willful hat practically sewn down on top. She would keep it on during the ride.

“Morning, ma'am,” she greeted a fellow-passenger, and then had to fight to keep the grin from her face. From the woman's scandalized expression,
Famke could tell her disguise was succeeding, and she had been what Sariah used to call “overforward.”

But the day did not go as Famke had hoped. After riding as far as Fair Play at a bone-jolting sixteen miles an hour, she came to an impasse: Although she visited all five of the town's inexpensive bagnios, called boardinghouses, and paid an extra premium for a drink at a fancier parlor house, she found no trace of Albert.

After some moments' despair, she decided he must have continued west. So she bought another ticket and breezed toward Garo, found nothing, and went on to Buffalo Springs with the last train. This was home only to a hog ranch, which Famke deduced after some confusion meant a warehouse for decrepit prostitutes who sold themselves cheap. The “ranch” was a flat, un-painted building in the middle stages of falling down; about a dozen aging women lurched around it baring pockmarked breasts and gap-toothed smiles at all comers. They'd never heard of an Albert Castle, and they laughed at the thought of being preserved on canvas.

For economy, Famke spent that night among men in a nickel-a-night flophouse that looked like a cousin to the hog ranch. Bedbugs, nerves, and the men's various means of leaking wind kept her awake, but at least no one recognized her as a woman. Lying there with her hat on and her face pressed to a drafty chink in the wall, she made up her mind to travel as far as Leadville, as she was familiar with that city from her newspaper reading; it was the sort of violent, wild place that would attract a man in search of new myths and inspiration. It was also the city of highest elevation in North America, and Albert must be interested in a place with such a pedigree.

Another Slim Princess pushed her deeper into Colorado, gliding down tunnels and over bridges, through clouds of butterflies dying with the autumn. This was dramatic, terrifying country. While the other second-class passengers kept up lively discussions, played cards, spat tobacco, and ate noonday dinners, Famke gazed transfixed at sheer dropoffs and mountainsides blazing with color. She saw huge hollow bowls in the earth from which silver had been pulled, conical tailings where the waste dirt and rock slag were piled. In prosperous regions there was scarcely a tree to be seen, as they'd all been harvested to build a town or shore up a mineshaft.

In midafternoon the Princess dipped sharply south to round a towering mountain, then turned north again at Buena Vista and labored upward.
Under the engine's soothing rhythm, Famke began to give in to her drowsiness. But then, a few miles above Granite, the Princess began to shriek. Her brakes dragged along the rails, and sparks flew up to strike the windows.

Famke pulled back in alarm, as if the glass were no protection. She came fully awake as the ladies in the car around her exclaimed, and a few of the children began to cry. They all sat in suspense for several long minutes, breathing in the smell of hot iron, speculating wildly on the delay.

Eventually a gangly conductor burst into the passenger car and rushed down the aisle, on the way to something important. A rough-looking man in front of Famke grabbed him by the arm; the conductor's cap fell from his head and nearly knocked Famke's hat off too.

“What's the production?” the man demanded.

“Derailment,” the conductor said. The passengers around him gasped. “Not ours,” he reassured them hastily. “Word is it's a mercy train jumped the rails. Fortunately we're going uphill, so we stopped in plenty of time.”

“A mercy train!” repeated the rough man's refined wife. She wore a high comb in the back of her hair, like a Mexican woman. “All those precious little orphans . . .”

“They're right as rain, ma'am,” the conductor assured her as he detached his sleeve from her husband's grasp. “Nobody hurt at all. Nobody
there
—the engine's warm, so we know it happened within the afternoon, but we can't find trace of the merest orphan or minister or any other body. No engineer, either, or coal stoker or conductor. Now, if you'll pardon me—” He retrieved his cap and dashed off again.

The Slim Princess waited long hours while the crew got word to Granite, where the stationmaster telegraphed a warning northward to organize a locomotive with a team of men and mules to right the derailed mercy train. It took many more hours still for them to effect the movement, using the light of the moon and the lanterns they'd borrowed from idle miners. Famke's fellow-passengers cleaned out their picnic baskets; those with first-class money descended upon the dining car, where the Chinese waiters emptied what was left of the larders. The commotion outside meant there was little sleep for anyone that night, but Famke could not have slept anyway. She shook with chills and worried that if Albert were in Leadville, as she had managed to convince herself he must be, he might move on while she was stalled here, a captive of the rails.

As she lay on her hard wooden bench, she imagined Albert in Leadville's famous Opera House, or ensconced in a fine room in the Grand Hotel, drawing or painting. No, he would choose a simpler hotel, one with good light and a low price, just as he'd done in Denmark . . .

“Honestly,” the lady with the comb whispered to her husband, “the manners!” That lady was forced to sleep listing on her husband's wakeful shoulder.

It was midmorning before the Slim Princess had a free path, past noon when Famke got out stiff and sore in Leadville. She was glad to find herself on the ground again, using her legs among good solid wood and brick buildings. She made a few inquiries, then headed for the business district on Harrison Avenue.

Within a very few steps, Famke felt her breath begin to fail. Here the air was thin indeed; any exertion seemed to weaken the supply to her lungs. She loosened her masculine collar and leaned against the depot bricks:
Breathe in, breathe out
. It was like being drunk. She felt cold, too, and wished she'd bought the more expensive wool jacket in Denver.

As if in a dream, she found a small boy was tugging on the cotton jacket tail, blinking up at her with practiced winsomeness. “Spare a penny, mister?”

Famke was too weak to deny him. She dug into the pocket of her jacket for her money, which was still knotted in Sariah's handkerchief, and gave the boy exactly what he'd requested. He didn't ask for more but didn't thank her, either; he stood watching expectantly. Famke forced herself to walk on.

The farther she got from the station, the more slowly she had to move, until it felt as if she were crawling. She stopped again to sag, gasping, against a saloon wall vibrating with music. Inside she could make out the words to a song that would have raised Sariah's hackles—

My sweetheart's a mule in the mine
I drive her all day without lines

On the car front I sit
And tobacco I spit

All over my sweetheart's behind
. . .

Famke felt a surge of nerves and a consequent constriction of air, but she managed to drag her feet toward a general store with a soaring false front.
There, she thought, she might take a seat with the customers around the cracker barrel or checkers table, perhaps drink a refreshing bottle of blood-purifying sarsaparilla and soda and, eventually, ask about a man who'd come to paint the women of the town.

She was in luck. As she sank down into a chair, surrounded by shelves comfortingly laden with foodstuffs, clothing, and hardware, she found a pair of old-timers already discussing art. Nodding to acknowlege the addition to the group, a maimed man continued drawing in the air with one good hand and one wrist that ended where a hand would begin. His friend hung on every word; he seemed to be missing most of a leg, but from the way he was sitting Famke couldn't be certain.

“The dangedest thing you ever saw,” said the man with one hand, “and it's all painted on the same canvas you'd use for your wagon.”

Famke forgot to breathe. “What do you mean?” she asked.

He looked sideways at her, and she knew she hadn't pitched her voice quite correctly. Yet he trusted her enough to report that a Mrs. Suky Rummell had just decorated her boardinghouse lounge with a portrait of her nine girls, all in their prettiest dresses and posed as if they were virgins from good families whose fathers were arranging a coming-out ball.

“Do you know who painted it?” Famke asked.

“Does it matter?” The one-legged man, hitherto silent, spoke up and crowed. “Suky's got the freshest gals in town. Expensive, too.”

“But that picture ain't a patch on what's over to Dixie Holler's place,” the one-handed man continued as if he hadn't heard. “Now I'm gonna get all poetical, but that's just what this picture makes you feel. Dixie's got a band of girls all dressed up—”

“Or undressed, more like,” said his friend.

“—as an army of lady warriors, all iron girdles and horned hats. Angels with swords—they could slay a man and collect his thanks along with his scalp.”

Famke listened breathlessly, trying to silence even the beat of her heart. As the one-handed man described it, the lady warriors clustered worshipfully about the figure of a man whose head was half-turned from the viewer and partially veiled in one woman's flowing hair: “That rapscallion could be any man, you or me or your brother, and that's just how I like it.”

“That do sound like a picture,” the other man said, “but I patronize Ma
Askling's myself. Her girls is all wool and a yard wide, and they're at bargain prices every day.”

“No, Dixie's is worth the extra,” promised the first. “Not just for the girls, but because of this thing she's got hanging there—makes even the old hogs look plump and tender. Bill, my friend, you won't believe your eyes, and you'll want to give 'em a dig for yourself.” He swished his tobacco wad to the front of his mouth and spat into the brass cuspidor.

Famke couldn't help it. She coughed. She coughed so hard the tears squeezed from her eyes, and she didn't want to look at what was left on her handkerchief. The two men watched her, impassive.

“You new to town, boy?” asked the man with one hand.

Still coughing, she nodded.

“A lunger,” he observed to Bill, shaking his head wisely. To Famke he said, “You got no business going down the mines, boy—you'll be laid up inside a week. Look what it did to me.” He held up his stump. “And I was pert as a parrot when I stepped in.”

Belatedly, Bill thumped Famke on the back and very nearly knocked her over.

“I am not a miner,” Famke said, when she could speak. The cough had made her voice appropriately gravelly and deep. “I have no intention to go down.”

The portly shopkeeper came toward her with a tray, saying in a stout voice, “That's fine, my friend. The air aboveground'll do you a world of good.” He set the tray on the barrel; a collection of bottles, blue and green and clear, tall and thin and short and squat, rattled upon it. “Meanwhile you might want to throw down a taste of these cures.”

“No, thank you,” Famke said, thinking of the nasty taste of Deseret's Elixir.

“Just a sample, why not,” the shopkeeper wheedled. “First swig free of charge.”

“Doesn't pay a man to be in any business but cures these days,” said Bill, with a sigh and a twitch of his leg stump. “Silver ain't worth the sweat it takes separating from the rock.”

It was much the same opinion as Famke had heard in Denver, and his friend agreed. “May as well get into the burying business. For folks like us, no money a-tall's to be got
out
of the ground.”

Leadville is one of the most interesting cities in the world to the tourist. It abounds in scenes of a novel and characteristic nature, and presents views of life entirely foreign to the conventional
.