A Longer Fall (Gunnie Rose #2)(48)

Felix leaned back, like a man about to have his favorite drink. “Your patron sent me to check on you,” he said.

“My patron?” Eli looked blank. “You mean Gilbert?”

“Yes, Gilbert.” Felix, who did look a lot like a cat, practically had feathers sticking out of his mouth.

“Gilbert is my immediate superior in the Air Guild,” Eli explained to me. I nodded. Paulina had told me the wizards had assorted special talents: earth, air, fire, water, death, and healing. But hadn’t Eli mentioned someone else in Mexico? His mentor?

“What happened to Dmitri?” I said.

“Dmitri was executed,” Felix said, his face empty of expression.

See, I hadn’t known that. Eli and I needed to have a much longer talk. Maybe we needed to spend more time talking in chairs, and less time in the bed.

“Excellent,” Eli said. “I need some help, Felix. This place is treacherous.” He might as well have hit Felix over the head with a shovel.

“What has happened?” Felix seemed to have the malice knocked out of him.

“Someone prepared for the train wreck and caused it,” Eli said. “It was no accident. We don’t know whether it was caused so the chest could be stolen, or if someone simply took quick advantage of the chaos.”

“If the train didn’t derail so the thieves could take the crate, what reason could there have been?” Felix said, his forehead wrinkling.

“It could have been a guerilla strike.” Eli looked thoughtful.

“Guerillas? There are guerillas here in Dixie?”

It was lucky I was looking down. I thought he meant “gorillas” for a minute, and I was having a picture in my head that was crazy wonderful. Then my brain translated.

“I’m not sure of the size and scope of the movement,” Eli said. “The people involved know they will be killed if they’re found out.”

I thought about Galilee’s parents in the back room of the shoe shop. I thought of the man who worked behind the counter there, and James Edward. You didn’t get afraid like that overnight. It was in the air your whole life.

“You all talk,” I said, and stood. “I got to go run an errand.”

Both the men stood, which was real polite but not needed. Eli gave me a questioning look, but I just nodded to him, told Felix good-bye, and got out of there. I went to the Western Union office, found that the reply to Eli’s telegram had been delivered to the hotel, and walked to the Pleasant Stay. Nellie Mercer was still on the desk. She tried to give me a face with no expression, but she couldn’t carry it off.

“I understand a telegram for my husband has arrived,” I said.

Nellie reached back to our little mailbox and plucked a thin sheet from it, which she gave to me by laying it on the desk and sliding it over the wood with one finger. It might as well have been a dead mouse.

I gave Nellie a real direct look. And had the pleasure of seeing her look as scared as she should.

A white-haired lady with a back as straight as a poker had approached the desk from the stairs, unheard by Nellie. After I’d turned away with my telegram, I heard her say, “I certainly hope you treat the elderly with more courtesy than the young, Miss Mercer.”

I smiled to myself.

I sat on one of the dining chairs on the porch to open the envelope.

The yellow sheet read: No connection Iron H here. Felix en route. Anxious. Tell no one. G

Felix had sure made good time. I didn’t know if it was Felix who was anxious, or “G.” I guessed that was Gilbert, Eli’s new “patron.”

Tell no one, my ass. I had to know what I was looking for. This was ridiculous. I loved Eli’s sense of honor, but I also loved common sense.

And as I sat there mulling this over—Iron Hand, Felix, the crate, the Society of the Lamb, the terrible wreck and its death toll (which a newspaper headline told had grown by fifteen)—I could not make any sense of it. While I pondered it all, a man came by with a dog on a leash, a sight so odd that I stared at him. Pet dogs are pretty rare in Texoma; dogs roam the plains in packs, and to encounter a pack is to encounter painful injuries or death.

I caught the man’s eye as he spit out some tobacco juice. “Little missy, you ain’t never seen a bloodhound?” he said.

“No, sir, I have not.”

“Then let me introduce you to Clete, the best sniffer in Dixie,” the man said, with a lot of pride. He walked over to the porch with Clete, who sniffed at my shoe with a lot of enthusiasm. Clete looked up at me with doleful eyes.

“He hopes you’ll give him a pat on the head,” Clete’s owner said.

Real carefully I reached down to give the dog a little pat, and when that went over well, I scratched him behind the ears. To this he responded with a kind of happy moan, so I did it again. The dog sat and looked up at me.

“What do bloodhounds do?” I looked from the dog’s big brown eyes up to the narrow blue eyes of the man. I’d never known a dog who did anything but attack or bark.

“He’s a tracker, ma’am. He can track anything you give him the scent of. A missing person, a deer, and so on.”

I hadn’t had any idea dogs could do that.

“Thank you for letting me meet him,” I said, not having much idea how to end this encounter.

“You’re real welcome. Clete likes to make new friends.”