“Good heavens, Burrows, what a rascal you are! Mr. Wiltshire and I are shocked, are we not, sir?”
I knew that voice. It was one of the most recognized in the city, and it belonged to Theodore Roosevelt.
“Miss Gallagher!” He propelled himself out of his chair with his usual vigor. “Good to see you again!” Seizing my hand in both of his, he gave it a hearty shake, sending a familiar buzz of energy up my arm. Most people who met Mr. Roosevelt put that strange tingle down to charisma, but I knew better. Theodore Roosevelt was lucky, and his powers were perfectly suited to a politician. Brilliant though he might be, it was the uncanny magnetism of his luck that drew people to him like moths to a flame. Though he’d lost the mayoral election a few months ago, there was little doubt he had a bright future in politics, and I was very proud to have saved his life. (Twice, not that I was counting.)
“You’re looking well, sir.”
“I suppose you mean well-stuffed,” he said amiably, patting his belly. “I blame the exquisite restaurants of Europe.”
If he’d put on weight, I didn’t see it; his stocky frame looked as powerful as ever. A lingering suntan and hints of red in his hair and mustache only added to the impression of vitality. “And what brings you to us this afternoon?” I asked, though I had a sinking feeling I knew the answer.
He flashed a toothy grin. “Why, have you forgotten? I did warn you back in October that I’d have some business for the two of you come spring.”
“In Dakota. I remember.” Forgetting something and putting it out of one’s mind are not quite the same. Taking a seat next to our other guest, I added, “I didn’t realize that business involved Mr. Burrows.”
“Does my presence offend you, Miss Gallagher?” The gentleman in question gave me a lazy smile, as though he didn’t much mind about my answer. Which he probably didn’t. Jonathan Burrows had the sort of good looks and careless charm that routinely sent Fifth Avenue princesses to the fainting couch, and he knew it. Add to that a fortune to rival the Rockefellers, and you had a man too pleased with himself by half. He was also brave and loyal and generous, but he could be thoroughly exasperating, and hardly a week went by that I didn’t want to break something over his pretty golden head.
I made sure my gaze said as much. “Don’t be silly, Mr. Burrows. I’m only thinking of our client.”
“We did discuss the need for discretion when we spoke last fall,” Thomas put in, shooting a warning glance of his own at his mischievous best friend.
“Much appreciated, both of you,” Mr. Roosevelt said. “But few gentlemen of my acquaintance are safer with a secret than my old college chum here.”
“There we cannot argue,” Thomas said. “Moreover, I gather from what you said before Miss Gallagher came in that the two of you have discussed the matter already.”
“A little, yes. It came up in a roundabout sort of way. Burrows and I were having luncheon earlier, and I mentioned that I’m completely ruined.” Mr. Roosevelt’s laugh was even higher-pitched than usual. “Then I recalled that the three of you were close confederates, so I felt free to unburden myself.”
“Ruined?” I exchanged a look with Thomas. “Do you mean financially?”
“That was my principal meaning, but at the risk of sounding sentimental, I will confess that I am also utterly heartbroken. We’ve had a terrible winter at the ranch, you see. I lost a great many of my backwoods babies. Cattle, that is.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “Was it a very large herd?”
“Thirty-two thousand head,” he replied wistfully. “Plus more than a thousand calves. That was last fall, mind you. As of now, I couldn’t give you a number. We’re still rounding up the stragglers, but we estimate the losses at about sixty-five percent.”
Thomas jerked forward in his chair. “Sixty-five percent? Good heavens! I’d read in the papers that the industry had taken a blow, but this … why, it’s staggering!”
“I fared better than most, if you can believe it. And though perhaps ruined is a touch overstating the case, I am exceedingly strained, and I don’t know that I can sustain the investment.”
“It’s hard luck, Roosevelt,” Mr. Burrows said.
Our guest grunted. “What an interesting choice of words, old fellow. It’s some kind of luck, if I have any nose for it.”
Thomas narrowed his eyes. “Are we to understand that something more than nature was at work here?”
“I will not claim to master all the secrets of Mother Nature, Mr. Wiltshire, but one thing I know for certain: Something strange is going on in the Badlands. Something evil. And the way things are going, by this time next year, there will be no one left to stop it.”
CHAPTER 3
CAMPFIRE TALES—POWDER KEG—A MURDER, A MONSTER, AND MAGIC
“Evil?” Thomas arched a dark eyebrow.
“It sounds dramatic, I know,” Mr. Roosevelt said. “Please believe I use the word quite deliberately. There has simply been too much death and mishap to put it down to chance. This horrid winter is just the latest episode. When I came to you last fall, I would have sworn things couldn’t get much worse, and now here we are.”
“Perhaps you’d better start at the beginning,” Thomas suggested.
“Indeed.” Mr. Roosevelt sank deeper into his chair, as if settling in for a long tale. “Misfortune comes in threes, isn’t that the saying? It certainly has in this case. It all began last spring, or thereabouts.”
“Thereabouts?” I echoed. “You can’t be more precise?”
He shook his head. “What you must understand, Miss Gallagher, is that the Badlands is a rough bit of country in every sense of the word. Calamities big and small blow through town like so many tumbleweeds. That being the case, it’s hard to say for certain when it all started, but it seems to me that it was around this time last year when things began to feel … off.”
“How do you mean?”
“I don’t know quite how to describe it. A turn in the air. A sense of foreboding. I put it down to restlessness and melancholy, to which I confess myself occasionally prone. It’s only with hindsight that I realized this period coincided with two very unhappy events. The first was a murder. At least, that’s the theory; they never did find a body.”
“Who was the presumed victim?” Thomas asked.
“A prospector by the name of Benjamin Upton. He’d only been in town for a few weeks, but he was already quite the local celebrity. He’d made a great success of it in the Black Hills. One of the last lone wolves operating down there, as I understand it. Didn’t need a geologist to tell him where to look for gold. Cut from the same cloth as your forefathers, Burrows.”
“My foremothers, actually,” Mr. Burrows said. “It was my great-grandmother who had the nose for gold. I’m told it smelled like sugar, but perhaps that was a metaphor.”
“What does it smell like to you?” I asked, my curiosity momentarily getting the better of me. Mr. Burrows had earth luck, of a sort that allowed him to sense the elemental composition of anything he touched. I’d often tried to imagine what that would be like. He usually referred to it as tasting or smelling, but I suspect it was neither, or maybe something in between.