Breath and Bones (28 page)

“Denver or Climax?”

She remembered the list of towns Amy Oggle had mentioned. “Boulder.”

“You'll have to round the mountain and pass through Denver.” The agent, chafing at having to remain at his post while others investigated the events downtown, pushed a scrap of beige cardboard under the grille. “Two dollars and twenty.”

It seemed like little enough. Famke leaned against the counter, searching her jacket pocket for the handkerchief that held what was left of the thirty dollars she'd brought with her. It was not there.

Trembling, her left hand dove into the other pocket and explored it thoroughly before Famke faced the ugly fact: Her money, like her clothing, was gone.

“
Fanden!”
Too late she realized what had happened: The boys who swarmed around her in the street had found out where she kept her money and, when an opportunity arose, took it from her. Probably the one who'd begged a penny of her when she arrived had done the scouting. As she groped further in her jacket, she realized the thief had even taken Myrtice's spectacles.

“If you pay no money, you get no fare,” the agent snapped. He pulled back the cardboard stub and retreated from the window.

An untraveled man's idea of a mountain is of a tremendous, heaven-kissing surge of rock, earth and snow, rolling up at once from the dull plain like a tenth wave of a breaker, and fairly taking your breath away. But a mountain range grows upon you gradually
.

B
ENJ
. F. T
AYLOR
,
B
ETWEEN THE
G
ATES

Viggo never tired of looking at these American hills, blazing yellow now on this October afternoon. In Denmark, it was said that if a man stood on a beer crate he could see from one end of the country to the other; but here, it seemed, there were more mountains than towns, each one as magnificent as the picture on the jigsaw puzzle he'd played with at Immaculate Heart.

Mæka: After swooping from New York to Chicago, through the Midwest and over the vast stretches of Nebraska and Wyoming, the continent to him now was like a giant puzzle of cities, plains, and forests, cut into pieces by rivers and streams that grew rarer with each mile traveled west. The most splendid pieces were the mountains, whether craggy and brown or still lush with lingering leaves and flowers. Viggo looked toward them now as the farmer's wagon jolted slowly away from the big, quiet metropolis of Salt Lake and toward the little town called Prophet, where the Mormon officials had told him he might find his fellow-orphan. He watched the mountains turn bloody red, reflecting the sunset, as he climbed down in front of Brother Nathan Fitzhenry's house and memorized directions for the Goodhouse place.

“You might stay the night in town,” Brother Fitzhenry said, scratching his beard. “They've had some trouble out at Goodhouse's lately.”

Viggo's brow furrowed. If such were the case, it was imperative that he
go there immediately, tonight: Famke might need him. He had a clear picture of her now, with long wet red hair and a terrified expression, just like the ship's figurehead in that painting in New York. He would reach her before the waves swallowed her up.

“Thank you,” he said to Brother Fitzhenry. “I will walk.”

En, to, én, to
, Viggo recited to himself as he marched, soldierlike. The sun finished sinking and the hills turned black; it was a long hour before the moon rose high enough to light his way, and then the coyotes began to howl. Their howling grew louder as he took the turn for Goodhouse's farm, and louder still as an odd-shaped muddy house came into view, its yellow lamplight illuminating a farmyard containing a half-built hut and a large square barn. Viggo heard horses and cows bellowing inside the barn and chickens squawking in their coop; every animal on the place was disturbed and protesting. It was small wonder, then, that no one answered his first knock. He had to knock twice more before a short, skinny boy opened the door and stared up at him with dark adult eyes.

“What do you want?” the child demanded rudely.

Viggo smiled and extended his hand for the shaking. The boy seemed fascinated with the knotty scars over it, and he poked the back of the hand as if to make sure it was real.

“Heber the Younger!” a woman's sharp voice cried out in irritation. “You close that door now—I can't stand that howling another minute!”

“It's a stranger, Ma!” the boy shouted back, and that brought the woman at a run, shoe heels clicking against the floorboards.

“Who are you?” she asked, almost as rude as her son had been. Viggo noted a distinct family congruence, though the woman's face had settled into hard lines.

“My name is Viggo,” he said in his best American. “I have come for Ursula Marie. For Famke.”

Sariah Goodhouse folded her arms. “You aren't another correspondent, are you? We've had enough of
them
, coming down from Salt Lake in their green suits and side whiskers, claiming she left them messages in their hotels . . . not that we'd disbelieve that for a minute . . .”

“Our Mother sent me,” Viggo said, as clearly as he knew how.

“Ursula's mother!”

“She told us she was an orphan,” the little boy said on a note of triumph.

“
Gud, nej, jeg mener
—er, our mother the nun. From the orphan home.”

Sariah pulled him inside amid a torrent of language—exclaiming over his resemblance to Famke, introducing herself and her children, seating him at the long family dining table and offering him a lukewarm and distinctly unpleasant brew she called “tea.” It was clear she now assumed Viggo must be Famke's relation, but he did not disabuse her of that idea even though he knew the two of them were in no way alike. He did everything as she guided him, meanwhile looking eagerly around at the bare white walls, the old oak sideboard with its stacks of chipped dishes, the lone photograph of too many people crowded into one frame.

The room filled up fast with an abundance of children who looked like clumsy copies of their mother. Where was the fire-haired sorceress? “Is Famke well?” he asked. But no one seemed to hear.

The last arrival was dramatic: A stocky blond woman, bearing the same facial traits as all the others under a blanket of extra flesh, staggered in from somewhere upstairs. She was led by a little girl and held a handkerchief to a green mouth. “So you are Ursula's brother!” She gasped, falling into a chair. “I am Myrtice Goodhouse Black, a widow.”

Viggo noticed a newish gold band on the woman's left ring finger. That she was pregnant, though not swollen yet, he could see just as easily; he wondered if she might like some of the camphor in his bag to offset her nausea, but he could think of no way to offer it without broaching what ladies thought to be a delicate topic.

“But where is Famke—Ursula?” he asked, when he felt it was polite to do so.

Myrtice Goodhouse Black mopped at her forehead. “You aren't the only one who wants the answer to that question. Why, right this very minute, Brother G—”

Mrs. Goodhouse silenced her with a look.

Viggo struggled to maintain his good manners. “I think I perhaps misunderstand.”

“She is gone,” Mrs. Goodhouse told him starkly. “And so is my husband, looking for her—he has some idea she must be among the Catholics to the south of here. She has ruined our family business, burned down our silk house, and robbed us blind. I hope you intend to make some restitution.”

The three silver Graces still entwined each other in their dance, smoother than satin, softer than silk. Alas, however, they now did so in a shop-keeper's window rather than in Famke's pocket.

The little box was all she'd had of value, and reluctant as she'd been to part with it, Famke had done so as soon as she could the morning after the fire. The shopkeeper had said the silver was of little valuation here, but he'd pay her for the artistry; yet ten dollars was all that had been worth to him, and when he put the box in his window it was dwarfed by a large, striated cube of pyrite. Fool's gold.

As the train steamed downhill away from Leadville, Famke did not weep. She merely opened the yellow pocket and rearranged its contents: Albert's blurry sketch of herself in Dragør, the newspaper clippings about him and herself, the twenty-three royal matches (heads now blunt and nearly phosphorusless, thus of no use to anyone but her). Then she coughed away a few cinders and left her seat to find the primitive water closet at the back of the car. It was almost as nasty as the shipboard latrine, but it would serve her purpose: The wall held a tiny rectangle of polished steel, and she could see well enough in it to cut her hair.

With fifty cents of her precious haul, Famke had bought herself a sharp Bowie knife for protection, thinking no boy should pick her pocket again. It lay on the lip of the washbowl now as she doffed her hat and unpinned her hair, letting its gleaming waves fall past her waist for the last time. She refused to look long at it but picked up the knife and began to saw away just above shoulder length, where most of the miners and ranchers seemed to keep their hair.

It was quick work. The bright hair filled the washbowl to overflowing and dripped in ringlets on the floor. Famke ran her hands through it; how quickly it had gone cold, away from her body. She selected one of the longest tresses and rolled it around her finger, then tied it with another strand. This memento could sit with the matches and papers in her flattened yellow pocket. The rest of the hair she stuffed down the hole of the latrine, to land on the tracks and blow away. When she was finished with that, she put the hat back on her head.

It was far too big for her.

The Denver newspapers were already full of the misfortune Famke had witnessed at Dixie Holler's. “Leadville: Dynamite Gang Strikes Again!” boomed the headlines in the
Daily Times
. As she waited for a connection to Boulder, Famke bought the paper, particularly intrigued by that word “again”; it was most interesting, and perhaps somewhat comforting, to think that the fire that had robbed her of so much was one in a chain of events plaguing the region. After a vivid description of the blaze, the correspondent described the culprits:

This raging inferno was almost certainly the work of those whom the press are now calling the Dynamite Gang, believed to be a band of miners turned away from Golden Junction for questionable morals. Those same individuals are charged with having captured a shipment of Swedish-receipt dynamite destined for blasting the riches from those hills. They appear to be traveling throughout Colorado, and the recent disasters at Gunnison, Central City, and Salida are laid to their account. Their method is unmistakable: a fire set first for distraction, then an explosion that destroys what is loveliest and most valuable in the city's monuments. The Grand Hotel here lies in rubble, along with its collection of marble sculptures in imitation of Canova and its copy of Rubens's
Little Fur.

Several places of low repute burned also, including the notorious Dixie Holler's boardinghouse. No decent person can much regret the closing of Mrs. Holler's business, or for that matter of the unsavory hotels, catering to itinerant miners and ne'er-do-wells, directly behind it. What we must regret is the impulse toward violence and destruction that prosperity seems unable to breed out of those who enjoy it, even as we celebrate the enterprising spirit that caused one Leadville shopkeeper to declare, “We will build again, bigger and better!”

When she came to that hopeful conclusion, Famke searched for the author. She thought the article sounded like something Harry Noble would have written, but the writer's name was not one she recognized. She looked, then, for news of the art world in the rest of the paper, but discovered only some directions for making a Dove-in-the-window patchwork quilt.

The best use for this newspaper was as a blanket. She draped it over herself and slept fitfully, compensating for an equally fitful night in Leadville's depot. In those mountains with their switchbacks and branch rails, Boulder was several hours and another change of trains away.