Nothing except that sometimes when he woke he had dreamed dark dreams, would come awake planning crimes that were not his kind of brutality, actions against others that disgusted him, would wake to ugly suggestions and to the hoary presence that wouldn’t leave him alone, that was more real than any dream. But then sometimes he’d wake feeling easier and was aware of the prison cat beside him, lying warm and invisible on the seat next to him—nothing to see, the seat empty except for his sandwich wrapper and his spread-out newspapers. But thecat was there, curled next to him. Reaching into the empty space, Lee could feel his warmth, and when he could feel the rough, thick texture of the tomcat’s fur, and when he stroked the ghost cat, a gentle paw pulled his hand down closer, the big invisible tom enjoying the stroking just as much ashe had in real life.
Lee told himself he imagined the cat, and that he’d imagined the dark presence in his dreams and in his cell that last night, told himself he had only imagined the evil in that puny little blue-eyed salesman. But he knew he had imagined none of it. He knew what he’d seen, that both the ghost cat and that chill shadow were more than real as they followed him onto the train.
He was happy to have the cat, he was good company, a friendly and comforting spirit to steady and embolden him. But he didn’t need his darker traveling companion. Spirit, haunt, whatever you’d name him, Lee knew it was the same unworldly presence that had tormented his grandpappy when Lee was a boy. He didn’t need this chill spirit that had made a bargain with old Russell Dobbs and for which Lee himself was now being prodded—being pushed toward the devil’s due, as some might call it, that the dark spirit seemed to think he deserved.
It was May of 1882 when Russell Dobbs, in the line of his work, relieved the Indiana Flyer of ten thousand dollars’ worth of gold bullion just north of Camrose, South Dakota. Stopping the train where it slowed at a curve, Russell boarded with his partner, Samil Hook. Samil was a little man, wiry, and a crack shot. Dobbs towered over him, muscular and rough shaven. Between them they took down the conductor and the four crew members, left them tied in the express car while they loaded eight canvas bags of gold bullion into a small spring wagon.
Leaving the train, the two men separated. Samil drove the wagon, keeping to the deep woods along a narrow timber trail to a cabin hidden in a stand of pine trees ten miles north of Agar. Russell didn’t worry that Samil would double-cross him, Samil feared Russell with a passion far more powerful than greed. Samil knew Russell wouldn’t kill a train man if he could avoid it, but that he would kill a friend who deceived him as casually as shooting a rabbit for his breakfast.
Leaving Samil and the wagon, Russell rode alone to Cliffordsville where he holed up in the Miner’s Hotel. The proprietress always took a keen pleasure in sheltering him. She would swear he had been there for better than a week. It was the next morning, early, one of the bartenders came to Mattie Lou’s door to tell Russell a gentleman, a stranger, was asking for him.
As far as Russell knew, no one but Mattie Lou had seen him slip in through the back entry, and Mattie Lou had told no one. He finished dressing, strapped on his gun belt, and went down the back stairs so as to come on the visitor from behind.
Halfway down, a man stood in the shadows of the landing. City clothes, fancy dark suit, embroidered cravat, soft black pigskin gloves—and the gleam of metal as his hand slipped inside his coat. Russell drew, fired twice point-blank, close enough to blow out the side of a barn.
The man didn’t fall.
Russell saw no wound, no blood. The stranger eased up the stairs never taking his eyes from Russell, his Colt .36 revolver fixed on Russell as steadily as his smile. Russell fired three more rounds, again hitting the man square in the belly. Again, he didn’t fall, didn’t jerk, didn’t seem to feel the impact.
“Perhaps by now, Russell, you have guessed who I am?”
Russell had seen his bullets enter a man and disappear into nowhere. Hadn’t seen them strike anything behind the man. He fired again knowing the impact should put the man down, knowing it wouldn’t. He looked toward the hotel lobby expecting that people would have heard the shots.
“No one can hear us, Russell.”
“What the hell are you?”
“I think you know what I am.”
Russell wasn’t a religious man. If the way he lived sent him to hell, so be it. But he sure hadn’t expected hell to come seeking him. “What do you want?”
“I want your help. In exchange, of course, I offer you a gift.”
Russell waited.
“I can give you freedom from death and injury, I can make you impervious to any wound including those caused by a knife or bullet.”
Russell had heard that old saw around a dozen campfires. But the man smiled.“Maybe you have heard it, Russell. This time, it’s no tall story. Freedom from sickness, too. From pain. From death by any weapon. Freedom to live in health until you are an old, old man.”
“An old man? How old?”
“Past eighty.”
In those days, fifty was a respectable age. Russell waited. The man straightened his cravat, leaned comfortably against the hotel wall, and laid out his proposition.
“There are two families, brothers. The Vickerses and the Loves. Bad blood between them. With every coast-to-coast train worth taking down, it’s a standoff who gets in position first to rob it.”
“I know all that.”
“Last week, the Loves robbed the mail train out of Topeka. The law was on their tail, and they had half a dozen lookouts when they buried the gold. Meant to return for it that night. The Vickerses found it, dug it up, then turned Lem and Cleve Love in to Pinkerton.” The man smiled. “They did it to cut down the competition. You can imagine how that inflamed the feud.”
“So?” Russell watched him warily.
“Cage Vickers is the only one in his family who doesn’t steal. Some kind of throwback, maybe. Whatever his problem, he’s pure as a newborn. And,” he said, smiling, “he’s fallen for Tessa Love, he means to marry her.”
Russell turned away. This was of no interest to him.“I have a friend waiting.”
He was stopped cold, couldn’t move, he couldn’t touch his gun in the holster.
The stranger continued.“Neither family would allow him to marry Tessa. He’s decided to get rid of them all, to kill them all, including his own brothers. He tells himself they’re all without virtue, that he’d be doing the world a favor.”
Again Russell tried to move, but he was locked in a grip as tight as if he’d been turned to stone.
“When the next big gold shipment comes through out of California, heading east, Cage plans to set up both families to be caught red-handed when they try to stop the freight. Once they’re locked up and convicted—he’s hoping safe behind bars, on long sentences—he means to marry Tessa, leavethis part of the country, and vanish.”
“Fine. Then the trains will all be mine.”
“I don’t want that, I’ve taken a lot of trouble manipulating the Midwestern railroads. Through the right people in Washington I’ve been able to infuriate every settler who thought he was going to buy railroad land for a dollar an acre, I’ve worked to increase the land prices, to foment a strike against the railroad that has escalated into a small civil war. It’s already cost the railroads a nice sum, and the public, enraged by the government railway, has turned to protecting the train robbers. No,” he said, smiling, “I like things just as I have them, I want no change, I don’t want the gangs stopped, I want Cage Vickers stopped. I don’t like his plan. I want Vickers brought down.”