“Thank you, Brothers. I will try to be worthy.”
“There is only the signing left,” says one of the others, in Spanish now. “Your arm, please?”
He holds out his arm and the man cuts a slit in the crook of his elbow, then hands him a quill pen as the other, who Diosdado has seen reporting at charity events for the Correo de Ultramar, lays the articles out on the table.
He dips the point of the quill in the pooling blood and writes his name. It takes quite a while, Diosdado Concepción. They must not keep these, he thinks — what a bounty for the guardia if their agents discovered a pile of initiation documents. He finishes his signature and looks up. He is a member of a secret society, an imposter still, but an imposter for Liberty.
“Have you chosen your code name, Brother?”
Padre Peregrino’s lesson that day was the Arcadian story of beautiful Io, so lusted after by Zeus that he transformed her into a cow, hoping to hide her from the jealous wrath of his wife Hera. Hera discovered the ruse and set the hero Argus Panoptes, who possessed at least an extra set of eyes on the back of his head, if not a hundred of them spread over his body, to watch over the herd and warn her if Zeus approached. The Padre is a great lover of mythology, drawing, with his Jesuit wit, moral lessons from the pagan stories.
“Your name, Brother?” asks the tallest of the hooded men, the hero of Paombong. They are all watching Diosdado now, who stands with a thread of blood dripping off his fingertips to the polished floor.
“I am Argus,” he tells them. “He who sees all.”
SKAGUAY
Hod is working on the wagon road three miles out of Skaguay, felling trees and dragging logs through the mud with a chain rig, when a dude strolls up with the road boss.
“That’s the one,” says the road boss.
The dude, checked sack suit, street shoes and the only straw boater Hod has seen since coming north, cocks his head and speaks loud enough for Hod to hear over the chopping and whipsawing and cursing of laborers.
“I expected a larger man.”
But he continues to watch Hod work, a little dude smile on his face, smoking three cigarettes and dancing out of the way as trees are felled, as logs are dragged and dropped on the corduroy road, and is waiting when the shift ends.
“Niles Manigault,” he says, offering a soft hand and smiling. “And you are?”
“Brackenridge.”
“Splendid. May I ask, Mr. Brackenridge, if you are a practitioner of the fistic arts?”
The words make no sense at first. Hod rolls his shoulders, feeling the chafe marks where the chain cut in. “I fought a couple guys. In Montana.”
“Montana.”
“Three fights. With other miners.”
Niles Manigault nods, considering, then taps Hod on the chest with his finger. “No matter. The lure of ample recompense should outweigh any lack of experience.”
“You offering me a job?”
The young man has a markedly Southern accent and a very neatly brushed moustache. “A business opportunity, yes.” He indicates the hodgepodge of felled trees around them. “Something of a step up for you, I would imagine.”
“What I have to do?”
They walk back toward town over the roadbed that has already been laid, Hod with his ax over his shoulder, the dude trying not to sink his street shoes too deep in the muck.
“You’ll need to absorb a certain amount of punishment,” says Niles Mani-gault, smiling. “And, if able, to deal some out.”
An older colored man with a pushed-in face sits in a battered wagon pointed toward town.
“Our barouche,” says Manigault, gesturing for Hod to get in. Hod climbs onto the bed while the dude sits up front by the drayman, and they begin to thump home over the logs, passing the other road workers slogging back through the mud, lugging their tools over their shoulders. “This is our new pugilist, Smokey,” says the dude. “What do you think?”
The negro casts a quick look back at Hod.
“He gonna beat Choynski,” he says, turning his attention to the slat-ribbed nag pulling the wagon, “he best carry that ax into the ring with him.”
The new docks have pulled all the action from Dyea here to Skaguay, and the town has more false-fronted wood buildings than tents now, new structures being thrown up on every block of the grid the original claim jumpers laid out, the frozen-mud streets swarming with new arrivals in a hurry to reach the Pass and merchants and buncos hustling to pick them clean before they get there. There are dogs everywhere, dogs too small or stubborn or weak or vicious to be useful pulling sleds on the trail, dogs of all shapes and sizes formed into packs that fight over slops thrown on the street or over territory or just for the mean dog delight of it. A half-dozen of them crowd around barking and snapping as Smokey guides the wagon past the little brewery, then scamper away when it’s clear there is nothing worth eating or killing. Hod and Manigault climb down onto the board sidewalk that runs in front of the buildings and tents, weaving around stampeders and drunks and the tame Russian bear doing tricks and a hatless, startle-eyed wild man predicting that the usurers, whoremongers, and worshippers of the Golden Idol who rush about ignoring him will soon be cast into a lake of fire.
“Any idea how much you weigh?” asks Niles Manigault.
“A sight less than when I got here,” says Hod, and then the dude pulls him down onto Holly Street.
He has passed Jeff Smith’s Parlor several times, but prefers the big dance halls on Broadway or Clancy’s on Trail Street. All the resorts are pretty much the same, dedicated to separating a man from what’s in his poke as quick as possible, but some do it with a lighter touch. Smith turns out to be another Southerner, a bearded, dark-haired, dark-eyed man in a big-brimmed wideawake hat, leaning back with elbows propped on the bar and one bootheel hooked over the brass rail.
“You’re not a boxer,” he says, looking Hod up and down.
“Never claimed to be,” Hod tells him. Manigault takes a seat on a stool, the bartender laying a short whiskey in front of him. “I just been in a fight or two.”
“And how did you fare?”
“Held my own.”
A half-dozen other men drift close around him, watching with appraising eyes. Smith has a soft voice and a friendly manner.
“Take your shirt off,” he says. “We’ll have a look.”
Hod hesitates, then begins to peel the layers, draping his work-grimed clothes over the bar counter. They are paying six a day on the wagon road, good wages on the Outside, but prices in Skaguay leave nothing much to show for it, and on every corner there are a dozen busted stampeders ready to work for coffee and johnnycakes. When Hod is down to his skin, Niles Manigault puts in a word.
“Devereaux says he’s the strongest of the lot out there, best stamina, most stubborn—”
Jeff Smith raises a hand to silence him, steps close to lock eyes with Hod.
“Young man,” he says, smiling, “how would you like to earn an easy one hundred dollars?”
The fight is only a few hours away, and Niles explains that it will be necessary to meet with his opponent first.
“Merely a formality,” he says as he and Smith lead Hod, struggling back into his clothes, across the muck on Broadway. “Our previous champion being indisposed—”
“Stiff as a plank,” says Smith. “Passed out drunk in a snowdrift last night and froze to death.”
“—you are something of a last-moment replacement. They need to be reassured that you’re no ringer.”
“I never even had gloves on.”