STAVE FOUR: THE LAST OF THE THREE SPIRITS
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'The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached. When it came, Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery.
It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible save one outstretched hand. But for this it would have been difficult to detach its figure from the night, and separate it from the darkness by which it was surrounded.'
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Murdoch blew out a long, silent breath. He was beginning to think that he might prefer even the Little Darling to this quietly approaching menace. He narrowed his eyes, trying to focus on the spectral hand and the mass of blackness the hand belonged to. He thought, as he looked, that whatever Spirit lurked beneath the shroud was wearing a hat upon its head, a wide-brimmed Stetson from which the dark veils fell. And as some unseen wind blew and moulded the shroud to the form beneath, he was sure he could make out the shape of a gun holstered on the right hip.
Murdoch's lips were dry again. It took two or three attempts for him to moisten them. "You are the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come?"
The veiled head moved, inclined itself towards him but the Spirit remained silent, waiting. Murdoch got a strong feeling that the invisible eyes watching him were hostile. For all his distaste for Penny Rose, and the oddity of Sam Jenkins as a giant with bared chest, he had trusted both of them. He didn't trust this one at all.
The fingers of the hand bent into a loose fist, leaving the index finger pointing at him. The Spirit crooked the finger, beckoning in some horrible parody of sly complicity.
"Wait," said Murdoch. "Please wait."
Maybe it was seeing Iain and Young Murdo that had finally dinned the message into his thick head. His eldest son had never talked to him with such freedom and every 'sir' from Scott served to drive another polite wedge between them. And he'd probably have a heart attack if Johnny ever called him 'Old Man' with the obvious affection Murdo had for Iain.
The barn faded into nothing now, but he could still see the wry twist to Johnny's mouth, hear the bite in Scott's tone and the hurt in Teresa's. His chest felt crushed, as if lead had settled there and had pressed down, inexorable and inescapable, squeezing blood and bone and sinew into a deep, dull ache.
"I didn't think..." He rubbed at the spot above the pain. "I didn't think."
The Spirit beckoned.
Murdoch stayed put. "I am beginning to understand my lessons, you know. I realise that I closed myself off twenty years ago when I lost Johnny—"
The Spirit shook its head. Most emphatically. The pointed finger made a little circle in the air, then another behind it and another behind that.
Murdoch frowned. "What do you mean? I thought the whole point of this exercise was to get me to realise that what I've always considered to be manly stoicism in the face of repeated tragedy is, in fact, preventing me being a father to my sons—"
He could swear that the Spirit was laughing, but it wasn't a laugh he wanted to hear. It was the laughter of the open grave. Murdoch shuddered. Once again the Spirit's finger made a little circle, and another behind it and yet another.
Murdoch dropped his head into his hands. "Could you please just speak to me, Spirit? I was never any good at parlour games and I'm particularly bad at charades." He sighed and looked up. "I have it. I understand everything Paul wanted me to understand, I think. I've closed myself off since Maria left—"
He thought the Spirit stamped a spectral foot and certainly the finger twirling grew frantic. And was that a sigh he heard? An exhalation from the grave? And most unnerving at all, the Spirit's hand dropped to its hip and caressed the butt of the gun through the dull black fabric of its shroud.
Under normal circumstances, Murdoch knew he wasn't any better than just competent with a handgun—where Johnny got his skill and speed was an abiding mystery to him—but he was even more disadvantaged by promenading around the world with Spirits while dressed in nothing more than his nightshirt and with his gun hanging on the gun tree just inside the door back home. For the first time, he truly understood Johnny's reluctance to have his Colt more than a few inches from his hand.
He wondered, as he watched the Spirit's hand grope at the shroud, whether this was how men felt when facing Johnny Madrid; that no matter how fast they were and how much they'd practised, they might as well be unarmed and in their nightshirts for all the good it would do them against that blinding speed.
The Spirit didn't shoot him, however. Murdoch sensed that it was a struggle with its better nature (if it had one) but in the end it sighed audibly, straightened up out of its shootist's crouch and stretched out its spectral hand again.
The Spirit beckoned.
At the risk of provoking it again, Murdoch protested. "I can change, now I know where I've been going wrong. Tell Paul that I appreciate everything he did for me, although frankly there are less dramatic ways of getting a man's attention, and I really don't need you to show me more. I can change. I will change and show my sons that I'm not as cold and dour as I'm painted, and now you can go back to wherever it is you Spirits came from and I can go back to bed."
The Spirit beckoned.
Oh well. It had been worth a try. Murdoch gave up and followed it, the Spirit going silently before him, a hulking figure of dark peril. He hoped he wouldn't have to clutch its robe the way he had with the Little Darling and Sam Jenkins. He didn't want to touch the grave-clothes the Spirit had wrapped about itself. That made the inevitable fate of all men a little too close for comfort.
This Spirit felt different and moved them from scene to scene with less panache than Penny Rose or Sam, but more in the way of silence and stealth. There was more of mystery about it. Instead of them whirling and spinning into a town or city or whatever scene his guide wanted to show him, the scene melted out of the shadows around them. Now a town emerge out of the darkness, surfacing slowly as if out of dark water to solidify into shops and houses.
They stood on Green River's Main Street. The hotel was catty-corner across from them with the business district beyond. To their left was the Bull Moose saloon, quiet and almost respectable in the early morning sunlight. Just 'almost' respectable. Cal Freeman reeled out of it and rolled down the steps into the dust of the street, where he lay snoring. But then, Cal Freeman reeled and rolled in and out of the Bull Moose at all times of the day and night and Green River had long ago stopped noticing. Most folks just stepped over him. Indeed, the only interested bystander was a yellow dog, that trotted over to sniff at Cal's boots before raising a leg and anointing them. No one took any notice of that, either. It was Cal's dog.
"Did you hear the news?"
Elisha Higgs, Purveyor of Quality Dry Goods and Mayor of This Fine Metropolis stood on the sidewalk outside his store. He wore his best town suit (from his own stock, slightly shop soiled—a discount bargain that he sold to himself before anyone else could take it), the jacket buttons strained over an ample paunch. His small eyes, almost lost in the folds of flesh around them, glittered with malicious interest. He spoke to Zeke Wilkinson, the barber, whose defining characteristic was a slowness that put turtles to shame and who was ambling past the store at a pace that would have left him struggling to keep up with Higgs's ninety year old mother.
Zeke came to a stop, slow as molasses trickling from a broken jar on a cold, cold day. "Sure did."
Higgs nodded. He stuck his hands under his braces and arched his back to peer up at the sky. "Going to be a nice day."
"Sure is." Zeke touched his hat and ambled on. In his own world, he was probably in a tearing hurry.
Murdoch watched him go, frowning. "Well, whatever this is about, it can't be anything important."
But he knew he was lying to himself there. Nothing the Spirits had shown him so far had been unimportant. He was just missing the significance of this one scene. He looked sidelong at the Spirit, hoping for a clue, but all it did was point down the street to their next destination. He rubbed at his chest where the ache had settled, and followed.
Sam Jenkins's office door was ajar. The doctor himself, the real Sam Jenkins, was at his desk, having shed his jacket and hat and rolled up his sleeves. He had a glass in his hand. He looked tired and rumpled.
Someone came in. Murdoch was interested to see that the newcomer—James Randolph, Attorney—automatically gave the Spirit a wide berth even though he couldn't possibly have seen it. The Spirit's shrouded figure gave off a definite air of smugness and Murdoch would go to his grave... would swear that the face behind the veil was smirking. It was an image he'd prefer not to dwell on.
"Jim," said Sam Jenkins.
"I just heard you were back in town. How are things out there?"
Sam took another pull at the glass. "It was a shock for them, of course."
"But not for you?" Randolph opened the top drawer of Sam's filing cabinet and fished out a second glass. Murdoch wasn't the only man who knew that secret, then.
"Well, I wasn't expecting it, precisely."
Randolph nodded and took the seat opposite Sam. "Look, Sam, I know that you have coroner's jurisdiction in the county, but I've got duties too and I need to think about what reports I'll have to send to the Records Office in Sacramento. Is there anything I need to worry about here?"
"What? Oh. No. No, there's nothing sinister about it." Sam snagged the bottle and filled both their glasses. "At least, nothing newly sinister. It harks back to the trouble last year."
"Pardee trouble?"
"That's the one." Sam blew out a tired sigh. "Do you know, Jim, that thirty years ago when I started out, I'd have lost seven or eight out of every ten gunshot victims? Now I save that many. We know more about the human body every year, learn more of its secrets, know more about treating it." He took a sip of whiskey. "But I still can't take out every single bullet. Sometimes they're too close to something vital, sometimes they fragment and I don't get all the pieces. Whatever gets left behind doesn't always stay put, did you know that? The pieces move around and sometimes they kill, even years after, and sometimes they don't take that long and sometimes they never cause any trouble at all."
"I see. That's what happened?"
Sam nodded. "Bullet fragment worked its way in and nicked an artery. I didn't get there in time to do anything about it. I just can't win them all, Jim, no matter how hard I fight. I couldn't win this one."
Murdoch glanced at the Spirit, not wanting (or daring) to ask. He felt the stirrings of pity. Sam was damn good, but when all was said and done, he was a country doctor who knew all of his patients. The loss of one would hit him hard.
A terrifying thought hit him. "Not Johnny! Tell me it's not Johnny!"
The Spirit's hand moved from side to side to convey a negative. Murdoch took a shaky breath. It wasn't Johnny and Scott had been unhurt... nothing to worry about then. He took another breath, steadying himself, making himself breath slow and deep until his heart stopped thudding.
The Spirit raised its hand, and the scene melted away, Green River melting away with it. A great building loomed up before them instead: the Occidental Hotel, San Francisco, its lamps glowing with a misty nimbus in the fog drifting in from the Bay. Murdoch knew it well. He followed the Spirit inside, up the grand staircase and into the familiar room the Cattle Growers Association of California used for its annual meeting.
Murdoch recognised many of the faces there, but the Spirit glided directly to the one Association member to whom Murdoch would have been distantly civil at best. Tom Watson had a ranch north of Lancer, up around Oakhurst, where he ran 5000 head of indifferent cattle. Murdoch had spent years avoiding Watson's deals and offers and sure-fire-get-rich schemes, always finding some excuse for not buying stock that came at a bargain price and would do nothing to improve the Lancer herds.
Watson stood up against the fireplace, one elbow casually propped on the mantel, his other hand reaching out to the blazing fire. "You heard the news, I take it?"
Charles Kinnard glanced up from the paper. He flourished it at Watson. "It happened the day before yesterday, according to this."
Watson grimaced. "Wonder what'll become of that bull of his."
Watson was obsessed with bulls, knowing all too well that his cattle needed an injection of better blood. For the last few months Murdoch had been deaf to Watson's invitations to visit his ranch and bring Lancer Leonides along with him. He didn't mind visiting other ranches when the invitations involved good fellowship and the pleasure (for his host) of his company, but not when all that was wanted was the agricultural benefit of his breeding bull.
"I'm more interested in the land, but it's too far south for me." And Kinnard (owner of a ranch near Modesto, around 12,000 head of high quality beef and a bull of his own that was good enough to stop him importuning his neighbours for theirs) shook out his newspaper and returned to reading the headlines. A story about a night-flowering cereus blooming in Wilmington took all his attention.
Watson grunted, and turned his discontented gaze onto the fire.
"What was that all about?" wondered Murdoch.
The Spirit gestured to the two men.
"Well, I know the pair of them, of course. I've done business with them both for years. Well, in Wilson's case, I've kept my business out of his grubby little reach but still." He craned his neck to see if he could spot whatever piece of news Kinnard had read in his newspaper, but Kinnard was now engrossed in an article on a climbing rose on a dwelling in Santa Rosa that had more than 5000 roses (verified by Your Correspondent, who had hand counted them). Murdoch shrugged. He hadn't noticed before that Kinnard had an interest in horticulture although he'd known the man could be tediously boring when droning on about bees.
The Spirit beckoned to him, turned and glided on into the shadows, Murdoch grumbling along behind it. This whole silent beckoning, this being dragged along some unknown course without explanation or the chance to participate, this having his opinions and suggestions discounted out of hand and without discussion... well, it was all very galling. It was disconcerting, no longer being in control; frustrating, too, since Murdoch was sure, on reflection, that he could have told the Spirits how to go about the whole thing much more efficiently. After all, he'd been running the biggest ranch in the Valley for almost thirty years. That had to count for something when it came to spectral tune calling, surely?
He pushed away visions of his sons. Scott would be far too polite to point out that it was indeed galling to have tunes called on a man without being listened to in return, although he'd probably at least quirk a knowing eyebrow in Murdoch's direction. But Johnny wasn't nearly so polite. He wouldn't be above a sardonic smile and an even more sarcastic tip of the hat to salute Murdoch's epiphany.
He sighed. All right, another lesson learned and he'd have to do better in making his sons his partners, not just ranch hands to be ordered around. He may have been a touch dictatorial in the past, he conceded, but only to himself. He didn't think he'd like to see either quirked eyebrow or mocking smile right then.
He followed the Spirit out through the door at the far end of the meeting room and straight into Aggie Conway's parlour. He closed his eyes against the faint feeling of seasickness given him by the changes of scene. Somehow the more abrupt, spinning sensation of progress with the two earlier Spirits was less debilitating than this slow seeping from place to place. More natural, maybe, although the use of the word in his present circumstances made him chuff out a laugh loud enough for the Spirit's head to swing to face him. The unseen stare made his skin prickle.
Aggie Conway sat in the overstuffed velvet chair before the fire, her slippered feet on the fender. She stared into the flames, twisting a handkerchief in her hands. Buck Addison stood behind her and if the man had possessed a moustache, he'd have twirled it on the spot. He had the air of a cat with its head in the cream pot.
What was that all about? Murdoch turned to the Spirit, just as the bright modern parlour dissolved and changed into a quiet empty room. All the furniture but for a bed had been taken away; every chair, the dressers, even the pictures from the walls. Only the drapes remained and they were closed, making the room dim and mysterious.
Someone lay on the bed under the covers, a very tall someone, lying very still. Murdoch could see the shape under the thin sheet. The face was hidden, the sheet drawn up over the head, but even in the muted light he could make out the peak of the nose under the thin linen. Everything else was in shadow.
The Spirit gestured to the bed.
Murdoch found that his mouth was dry again, and he had to work it a couple of times to get enough moisture to unclog his tongue from his palate and allow himself to speak. He rubbed at the tightness in his chest. "I'd rather not, thank you all the same. Is this Sam's patient?"
Another gesture towards the bed, but then the Spirit paused. It stood very still for what felt like a long time but was probably only a moment, the veiled head bent. It could be listening to something, Murdoch thought, but all he could hear himself was his own breathing. The place was quiet otherwise. As quiet as the gra—
The Spirit raised its head and turned away. The room dissolved into shadows around them, shifted, writhed, became Main Street again. The thin, spectral hand pointed to a small group of people standing in the lea of the church. Murdoch obeyed the imperious gesture with increasing unease.
The preacher was there and that old virago, the Widow Hargis. Dear God, but she was indestructible. She'd still be there when the Last Trump called.
"A difficult man to get to know," said the Reverend Petersen. "A good man, I'm sure of that. He was a leading citizen and a respectable member of society, but I never felt that I got to the heart of him. There was always a distance there."
"He was a good man," agreed Aggie Conway's foreman, Bill Kerr. "Never met a better man to work with on the Spring Roundup. Happen he was a mite soured, Reverend, that's all. He weren't the luckiest of fellers, not when it came to the ladies."
"He had a lot to be thankful for," sniffed the Widow Hargis. "That big ranch, lots of money. He was lucky enough there."
The Reverend looked disapproving. "Worldly advantages are without meaning, Ma'am, against the might of the One above us who sees into every heart."
Murdoch hadn't ever seen the old harridan blush. He wouldn't have thought it possible. But what big ranch?
Bill Kerr shrugged. "Well sure, he was unhappy in comfort, Miz Hargis. But you know he lost sight of those boys of his for years, and losses like that scar a man. They scar deep."
Lost his boys? What? Wait!
Murdoch's chest tightened. "Me. They're talking about me."
The Spirit inclined its head and Murdoch could have sworn that he heard the ghost of a chuckle.
"Oh," said Murdoch, and absolutely and positively refused to consider what this meant. They could talk about him till the cows came home and he wasn't going to think about why because of course it was all nonsense. He sat down, suddenly, on the church steps and put his head down on his knees, so giddy he thought that he'd faint, swallowing hard to keep the vomit back. He could only get enough air in with huge gulping breaths through his mouth, though it did nothing to quell the roiling acid in his gut. His hands were cold, clammy, like he was already de— No! No, he wasn't. His heart was thudding and his head throbbing to every fast, sharp beat. He could feel them. He wasn't dead and he'd be damned if he was going to give in.
Petersen, Bill and Widow Hargis had frozen like statues while Murdoch wrestled with the shock. When he stopped not thinking about what this couldn't possibly mean and pushed himself up onto shaky feet, the Spirit turned back towards them and waved its hand. They faded away. It reminded Murdoch of an old daguerreotype left out in the sun, the vigour and life of the original waning away until the card held nothing but a faint ghostly imprint.
He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hand. His thoughts were all on death and decay today. Cheerful Christmas fare, that was.
He took a breath and his chest twinged again. He rubbed at it, then stopped, all thought and movement arrested. He'd been having these odd pains. "Was it my heart?"
A slow headshake and the gesture of negation again with the hand.
"Oh. I wondered. I've been getting this pain ever since—" Ever since Iain and Murdo had shown him what he'd truly missed. "For a while now." He put his head down again, thinking. Sam had said something about a bullet moving. Oh, that was it. Day Pardee might have had to wait more than a year, but his bullet found its mark at last.
The Spirit beckoned.
"Look," said Murdoch, a touch exasperated, a touch weary and far more than a touch frightened, "I understand what you've shown me and what Paul O'Brien wanted me to see. Good or bad, right or wrong, I've let the past put a gulf between me and everyone else. People do that, you know, when they're hurt. When the wounds you have don't heal, you put up the barriers to stop yourself from getting hurt again. That's normal. That's human."
The Spirit waited, the head under the veil turning so the hidden face was towards him.
"For the Lord's sake, I'm a man! Don't make me talk about it."
The Spirit waited.
Murdoch's head drooped in defeat. "I don't know what else to say." He ran his hands through his hair, so tense that his bones ached. "What happens to them? What happens to Teresa, and Scott and Johnny? I need to know that, before I say any more. I need to know they're safe and happy. Show me that!"
The Spirit considered, head tilted to one side. At last it nodded and raised its hand.
Boston again. It didn't look any better with a nor'easter squalling in across the harbour, dumping sleety rain and hail over the city. Harlan Garret's dining room was warm, though; dark red curtains closed against the night, bright with lamps and candles and with a good fire burning briskly in the hearth. Dinner was over, and he and Scott were picking at fruit and nuts, washing them down with (knowing Harlan) the best and most expensive of brandies.
"I'm glad you're home, Scotty," said Harlan.
Scott nodded. "Well, at least for a while."
"You aren't thinking of going back there, are you? What on earth for? There's nothing there for you, not now that Murdoch's... not now. Surely you'll stay at home." The 'where you belong' was implicit, but Harlan had seemingly developed enough sense not to say so. Trust him to make the most of Murdoch no longer being in a position to thwart him, though. Harlan always was ruthless.
Scott's mouth curved up at one side in a lop-sided smile. "You haven't changed much, Grandfather."
Harlan laughed and shook his head.
"I don't know what I'll do, to be honest. We got a very good price for the ranch, after all, and I'm not in need of money. At one point Johnny thought he might buy me out, but he didn't have enough for that and he flatly refused to take my share as a gift. It was just simpler to sell up."
Murdoch's mouth dropped open. He spent thirty years building up the biggest and the best ranch in the entire San Joaquin valley, for his sons' benefit no less, and they'd sold it before he was cold?
"I'll take a look about me before I decide what to do next. I promised Johnny I'd go back for a visit sometime soon, as soon as he has his new ranch up and running, but I'm thinking about a trip to Europe first. Scotland, maybe. I've an uncle there, apparently."
"I'm sorry. About him, I mean. Your father."
Scott grinned. "I find that hard to believe, sir." He shook his head. "He was an odd one. I kept looking at him and wondering what of him is in me, but the really sad thing is that I never really got to know him well enough to find out. He kept a distance from us, you know. He kept a distance from everyone. Oh, he was social enough but it was all on the surface. Everything that really mattered was shut away, all the doors and windows shuttered and locked. He was close-mouthed about himself and the past. Neither Johnny nor I felt close to him. Cipriano, our foreman, said he had never really recovered from what happened to my mother and then Maria."
"John being abducted, you mean?"
"No, sir. I mean you abducting me. That was the start of it all."
Harlan flushed and muttered something inaudible.
Murdoch glanced at the Spirit. Its hand was making the little circles again: a circle in the air, then another behind it and another behind that. He blinked. Was that what it had meant earlier, with that odd gesture? That it wasn't the loss of Johnny that put up his barriers, but the barriers had gone up earlier with the loss of Scott? He drew in a sharp breath. What a fool he was! Of course that was the case. Of course. What a damned fool.
How much had that soured what he had with Maria and led to what followed? A memory of the image Penny Rose had shown him surfaced, of the light draining from Maria's bright face when he'd compared her to Catherine. What a thrice-damned fool he was!
"It was sad that we couldn't connect very well. Not many people get a second chance like that. A pity it was wasted." Scott took fruit from the bowl and dug a nail into the skin to peel it. Harlan looked pointedly at the fruit knife beside Scott's plate, but Scott just smiled and continued talking, the tang of citrus filling the air. "You know, the problem was not knowing. I didn't know what he thought about me, whether he cared about me, why he abandoned me here, why he never contacted me. It was if he thought one third of the ranch each was all the answer Johnny or I would ever need. He wouldn't ever talk about the past. It was over and done, he said. It was a country he'd once lived in, like he'd once lived in Scotland, but now he was exiled from it and he didn't have a map."
He offered Harlan a quarter of the orange. The old man took it.
"You know, sir, for all your faults—and we both know that you did things that I don't agree with or condone—well, for all that, I've never doubted your affection. Not once. But I was never sure of his."
Murdoch shook his head, speechless. The dull ache in his chest flared up into white heat. How could he have left Scott in that sort of ignorance?
"I made a lot of mistakes, Scotty, but I'm glad that wasn't one of them. I'm glad you don't doubt that."
"I don't. Not a bit."
Harlan Garrett nodded, and for a moment he and Scott concentrated on finishing their meal, sitting in companionable silence. Harlan broke it.
"I'm glad you're home, Scotty," he said.
Murdoch was almost beside himself with... what? Anger, yes a little, at Harlan's unrepentant machinations. But not so much anger at himself that he was almost blind with it. How had things got to such a pass that his son had had no inkling of what Murdoch felt and thought?
He ignored the dry chuckle from the Spirit on his left. Boston, the dining room, Scott and Harlan trickled away. Murdoch and the Spirit walked along a dry and dusty road bordered with parched fields. Up ahead a little town sat on a rise, the adobe houses a clean white against the blue of the sky. The church, much bigger and grander than anyone could reasonably expect of such a small, poor town, loomed over the main plaza, massive and brooding.
Johnny swung down from Barranca, looping the reins around a verandah post outside the cantina. The post had once been painted blue, but the sun had bleached it until only the ghost of the colour was left, a faint blush over the splintering wood. Johnny ran a finger down the post, smiling.
Cipriano made no move to dismount. "There are horses here that you want for the ranch?" He glanced around the plaza. "Here?"
"Don Altomirano y Marroquín's agent has the horses." Johnny turned on his heel, a slow circuit, taking in every last building, every last man, woman and child watching them in idle curiosity, every last weed pushing up through the dust. "We ain't here for that."
His smile broadened. Not the sardonic one he'd saved for Murdoch most of the time, the one he'd used like armour, but the open smile that was most often reserved for Scott or Teresa or the Roldàns, the one that signalled joy and affection and a love for life; the smile that Murdoch had longed to have for himself but hadn't dared ask.
Murdoch looked to the Spirit, but it hadn't offered him anything but dread silence so far and it didn't seem likely to change now. He'd have to do all the work for himself. The Spirit watched Johnny with an intensity that even Murdoch could see and feel, its hand dropping to its side to caress the butt of the gun under its shroud. Alarmed, Murdoch opened his mouth do say something, to warn Johnny, but a gesture from the Spirit kept him mute.
He'd always been mute around his sons, when it came to anything important. Nothing changed.
"So." Cipriano relaxed, crossing his hands over the pommel. Thank God he was there with Johnny. He'd take care of the boy. "Why are we here, Patrón?"
"I wish you'd stop calling me that. I'm not him."
"You are more like him than you know." But Cipriano inclined his head. "But as you wish, niño."
Johnny chuffed out a laugh. "I don't know that's much better. Come and have a drink."
Cipriano grimaced, but joined Johnny at a table on a verandah roofed with vines and yellow morning glory. "Why are we here?"
Johnny's restless energy was stilled. Something about him softened as he looked at this little Mexican town in the middle of nowhere, like ice melting. "Because this is where I was a niño, Cip. This is Colinas de Rosarito." He grinned, a genuine flash of happiness. "The name's almost bigger than the town, eh? But this was home. This was where I had Mama and my Papa. It's not much of a place, but it's mine."
Cipriano glanced around, visibly more interested. "Here? You were brought up here."
Johnny nodded. "Until they died, when I was pushed into a mission orphanage over in Cantamar run by Dominican nuns. I stayed there about a year, I reckon, before I figured I was better off on my own. At least that way, if I starved I didn't have to take a sermon with it."
Cipriano winced. "How old were you?"
"When they died? About ten when she did. She went the same way as Scott's mama, only my little sister wasn't as lucky as Scott. She died too. It made Papa so mad that the doctor at Cantamar wouldn't come to a poor place like this that he went up against the Don. The rurales shot him a few months later." Johnny's easy manner had drained away. "It wasn't Marroquín. He was farther south and he only bought this land when the old Don died." He gave Cipriano a slow, vicious smile. "Got himself shot one night, did old Don Batista Quintanar."
"Oh niño." Cipriano's hand shot out. He brushed it over Johnny's hair, a brief caress. "Did the Patrón know? I didn't think he had any idea what happened to your mother."
"He never asked. He never asked a thing. Said it himself that first day, the day me and Scott came to Lancer. What was it he said now? 'Good or bad, right or wrong, the past is dead and gone.'" Johnny turned to the cantina owner who had finally come to find out what they wanted. "¡Hola! Tamales and tequila, gracias."
For a long time he sat staring out over the plaza. "You know she told me he'd thrown us out?"
Cipriano nodded. "That was not strictly accurate, niño."
"Well, let me tell you, Cip, there's more ways of getting rid of someone than just coming out and saying the words."
"I know how he searched for you, and how the loss of you and Scott cut him deep. I don't believe it, Johnny."
A shrug was his only answer for a moment or two. Murdoch stood with the Spirit, shaking his head. He was too tired to protest now. Too tired.
"They're buried over there," said Johnny, staring at the church. "First job I ever did, I came back here and gave the priest enough for markers. It's been a long time now, and I ain't been back in years." He returned his attention to Cipriano. "You know, he may have been right, my old man. The past is dead and gone. Well, so's she, and I can't ask her. So's he, and he likely wouldn't have said anyway."
"And so?"
"And so, it doesn't matter." Johnny smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "It doesn't matter, Cip."
"What does?"
This time the smile was so bright that Murdoch's chest ached. "What matters is that this is where Johnny Madrid was born. Do you reckon they'll put the statue over there in front of the church?"
A small sound from the Spirit, a huffed out snort, maybe, and once more they were in Green River and outside the doctor's office. Murdoch sighed and rubbed at his temples, fretful and irritated. He'd had enough of this, of being shown over and over just how badly he had failed. He'd got the message.
Jenkins looked older than Murdoch expected; his hair whiter and his face more lined. He was working in his dispensary, grinding up ingredients to make the pills, medicinal mixtures and purges that he used to save lives.
Or, you know, fail to save them.
Sam looked around sharply as the outer door opened, but his professional smile of welcome changed in an instant to something more genuine. "Teresa! Well, how fares Mrs Petersen?"
Mrs Petersen? Murdoch groaned. Please, please let it not mean that Teresa's religious fervour hadn't waned and he'd lost her to that young whippersnap... he paused, seeing, out of the corner of his eye, the Spirit tense and rest its hand on its gun again. He took the hint. He gave the Reverend Robert Petersen more careful consideration. Yes, the young man had the sort of romantic looks that his female congregation appreciated and the gentlemen deplored, but he also looked earnest and honest. He'd curbed the widow's more acidulous comments with graceful firmness, not caring that he might be upsetting an influential member of his flock. That showed principle and backbone.
Or, you know, a foolish naiveté that would cost him his calling.
The Spirit made a slight movement.
Principle, definitely principle. Murdoch's own dealings with Petersen had indicated a man who seemed genuine in his beliefs. So far as preachers went, this one might go far. Well, all things considered maybe Teresa could have done worse.
Teresa looked thin and, with her hair up like that, far too old and strained for Murdoch's peace of mind. She smiled, put one hand out in front of her midsection and the other behind her back and mimed the waddle of a hugely pregnant woman.
Oh hell, no! Not his little Teresa!
Teresa dropped her hands and the momentary animation in her expression faded. "Clara's very well. I let her and Robert listen to the baby's heartbeat through the stethoscope. They were thrilled."
Sam smiled, sighed, and patted her hand. "She'll be glad of your help when the baby comes."
"I may not be here, Sam."
"Oh?" Sam gave her a searching look. "Have you decided? Are you going to Boston to visit Scott?"
"No. No, something different. I've heard from Emily Zakrzewska at the Women's Infirmary in New York. I have a place at the medical college from next month. I'm going to be a doctor, Sam."
"Full medical training?" Sam looked astonished. "In New York?"
She made an involuntary movement, raising her hands in a gesture of denial. "I need to get away."
"But medicine! It's no job for a woman, my dear."
It most certainly wasn't! Good lord! What was she thinking? The very notion was so indelicate that Murdoch wondered that she couldn't hear his teeth grinding.
"It's what I want to do. I don't want just to be a nurse and follow direction all the time. I'm smart and I'll work hard, and in the end I can do some real good, I hope."
"But Teresa... Teresa, women doctors are few and far between... you won't have many patients, you know! Not many people will trust a woman... forgive me, my dear, but it's true. Many authorities consider that education is deleterious to women's health and her fitness to meet her true calling. I don't say that's what I think myself, but I can see the point that some things are just not fit for women's involvement and participation. Think about what you may be called upon to do – young men, for example, with injuries in places that would necessitate you seeing more of their form than is modest. Or the matters of children and conception, and you unmarried! Some things are just unnatural for a woman to know. They're unwomanly."
"How is any of that more unwomanly than growing up on a ranch and seeing a bull or a stallion do its duty?"
Sam brushed that aside. "I don't like it. You've been a wonderful help to me here these last two years, and I'd hoped you stay with me until you meet some nice young man and marry. I don't at all see how you can combine the two. A woman can only have one career, after all, and she's best fitted for the domestic sphere."
Murdoch felt like rolling his eyes. Sound arguments, all of them. But it might have been more convincing if Sam hadn't just sent her out to check on Clara Petersen's unborn child.
Her smile vanished. She glanced behind her, to the door she'd entered by, as if to look at the scene she'd just left behind. "I don't think I'll marry, not now." She came and put her hands on his arm. "My mind's made up, Sam. Murdoch left me enough to pay for this, and I want to make a new life for myself. I really do need to get away. But maybe, one day, I'll come back and we can work together."
"But Teresa—"
"I think I'll like New York," she said. "It won't be here."
Defeated, Murdoch turned away. "I'd hoped they'd stay together, that they'd look after each other."
The Spirit was silent.
"But that would only have happened if they'd been family, wouldn't it? And they didn't feel like family. Scott had no compunction about going back East. Johnny's gone God knows where, even if he does have Cipriano with him. Teresa's left to grow old and thin with Sam Jenkins, an old maid. Two old maids together!" Murdoch threw up his hands in despair.
The Spirit was silent.
"Look, I do understand what Paul was trying to tell me. I do. If I don't change, this is what will happen, isn't it? I'll die, and no-one will care and they'll all be scattered. Separate. Diminished. Not a family, because I'm too big a damn coward to take the steps to make us one."
The Spirit was silent.
"But it can't be too late. Everything you've shown me can be changed. They're only possibilities, otherwise why bother showing me at all if I can't alter the outcome?"
The Spirit was silent.
"If I can't learn from my mistakes, what is the point in making them?" Exasperated, he did what he'd earlier feared to do. He caught at the heavy black grave clothes.
The Spirit sprang back, the shroud pulling away from it, uncovering it. The shape beneath was indeed a man, black Stetsoned, familiar, mocking, his gun tied low on his right hip.
Murdoch stared. "You! How can you be the Spirit of Christmas Yet To Come?"
The Spirit smiled and tapped its gun.
"Oh," said Murdoch, understanding it all at last. "Of course. That's why you're the Spirit. You're the reason I'm dead... the reason I could be dead if I don't change. But if I do change, then damn you, you lose."
The Spirit smiled, flicked the Stetson's brim with a finger in a sardonic salute.
"I'm supposed to have another chance. That's what Paul said. And you know, when it comes to it, I'll trust to him not you. So." Murdoch stood tall as he could, and hell, but that was damned tall. "You lose. You and whoever hired you." He grinned, hefting the heavy gravecloths in both hands. "I'm supposed to have another chance, but you? You're dead and gone and rotting in the grave, and you're all out of chances. And while I think about it, I owe you one for the bullet in the back."
He tossed the shroud in Day Pardee's face and lunged for him, swinging his fist around in a huge roundhouse blow.
'In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It sought to free itself, but he was strong in his entreaty, and detained it. The Spirit, stronger yet, repulsed him.
Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have his fate reversed, he saw an alteration in the Phantom's hood and dress. It shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled down into a bedpost.'
Damn, but that bedpost hurt! It damn near broke his hand.
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