The Cat, the Devil, and Lee Fontana

7

The rocking rhythm of the train and the stuffy heat of the car put Lee to sleep again in a luxury of malaise. He had no need to wake and hustle around, no prison job to go to, no lockdown time to think about, not even a set mealtime. He woke and ate his sandwich, and when the vendor came around, he bought another for later. He slept and woke as he chose, enjoying his freedom, looking out the window at the green pastures and at the long orchard rows fanning by so fast they dizzied him if he looked too long. Or looking down at the streets and into the windows of the small towns where the train crept through, or out at the boxcars crowded into the freight yards, and then as they gained speed once more he’d ease back, soothed by the green hills, or by the climb into the dark and wooded mountains, the train rocking and tilting, taking the narrow curves. He liked traveling, liked moving on, he liked the speed that made him feel suspended in time, with nothing to stop him or fret him.

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 the cat 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 as he 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, leave this 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.”

“So do it, you’re the one with the power.” Trying again vainly to move his feet or to reach the butt of his gun though he doubted a bullet would faze the apparition.

“I can’t stop him, the stupid boy is totally pure, he can’t see me, can’t hear me, he’s beyond my influence.”

Russell scowled. “I’m sure you’ll find a way.”

“I can’t change events. I can only influence the players—some of them. There has to be a respectable amount of evil in a man before I can reach him.”

“Hell, I’m not killing Cage Vickers, if that’s what you want. And I’d be a fool to try to warn his brothers or the Loves. Any one of them would fill me full of holes.”

The visitor waited.

“I gather this bargain wouldn’t take effect until after I’d done the deed. That your protection of my life wouldn’t begin until I’d already risked my neck for you.”

“That is so. However, if you don’t stop Cage Vickers, I’ll take great pleasure, when the time of your death arrives, in seeing you suffer, eternally, in ways you can’t yet imagine.”

Russell said nothing.

“With the bargain I offer, you will have a long, pain-free, and profitable life, any kind of life you choose—youth and wealth and beautiful women, enviable power and superb health.

“You have only to stop Cage Vickers, see that none of the brothers are apprehended, and not go to the law yourself.

“If you refuse my bargain, I have within my power many creative ways to annoy and harass you for the remainder of your miserable life, runaway horses, train conductors who are fast and accurate and lust for blood, women who, once you have made love to them, feel an overwhelming desire to maim you as you lie sleeping beside them. Little things, Russell, accomplished through the minds of others, but oh, so effective.”

Russell remembered stories of multiple calamities that beset some men over an entire lifetime, innocent men saddled with strings of disasters that defied all laws of probability.

“If you work with me,” the dark spirit said, “you will know no sickness, no wound or pain, no bullet will ever touch you, you will not die of any cause until you are an old, old man and still healthy and vigorous. Even then, your death will be peaceful, no pain and no fear.”

“And in exchange,” Russell said, “I stop Cage Vickers from getting the Loves and the Vickerses arrested, so they can go on robbing trains. That seems simple enough.”

“That is the bargain.”

Russell was a born gambler, that’s what robbing the trains was all about. But he’d never played for stakes like these. “Under what circumstances,” he said softly, “would you consider that I had bested you?”

“Under no circumstances. If you do as I say, that won’t happen.”

“If Cage’s plan fails, if neither family takes the train down successfully and no one of either family is arrested, I would be free of you?”

“You would.”

“And you would uphold your bargain.”

He nodded.

“Would you throw in that Cage and Tessa marry anyway, and live long and happy lives together, without the ire or retribution of either family?”

“Why would I do that? I told you that my powers are limited. I can only influence, I can’t twist fate.”

Russell looked back at him and kept his thoughts locked tight inside himself. He received so penetrating a look in return that he had to fight to keep from glancing away. He stared at the stranger until suddenly the figure vanished. The stair and alley lay empty.

Russell stood in the alley shivering. And slowly considering his options.

His question had not been answered. He had no real promise from the stranger. He thought about that a long time, then at last he turned and made his way back up the stairs, to his lady friend.