The deep voice tumbled and rolled with the measured cadence of the dead. Though I strained my eyes to the edge of their sockets, I could not see him behind me and I dared not turn my back on the prospector.
“What was that?” The man twisted his head. I couldn’t tell if he meant the whisper or the flicker of candlelight.
I wet the roof of my mouth. “He says that gold has been found,” I said, dropping the fragmented English to better echo the ghost. With so few chances to communicate with the living, spirits could be sensitive about being misunderstood, and translating them falsely could lead to more upsets than a few coins in a tin cup were worth.
The prospector turned wary. “What’re you on about?”
The ghost appeared at the edge of my vision, gripping the straps of his suspenders as tight as one would grip a butcher knife. His messy yellow hair was full of dust, and a feather-tipped arrow jutted from between his shoulder blades, like a flag marking its territory. The shaft was striped in the traditional red and blue paint of the Sioux. Blood had crisped to dark brown on his shirt.
There was something unnervingly familiar about him, but I couldn’t see his face, and anyhow, all the white men with their bushy mustaches and dirty linen shirts looked the same.
He was much too calm to be è gu?, and I could be glad of that, at least. Even after all these years, the hungry ghosts terrified me. Perhaps he was yuān gu?, a wandering spirit seeking justice for a wrongful death. The arrow would suggest as much.
“Tell him,” the ghost said, moving past me, “there is still gold to be found in these hills.”
“A male spirit has arrived,” I said, before repeating his words.
The prospector’s eyes widened. He followed my look, but to him there was only empty air. Maybe a shadow. Maybe a spot of cold. Maybe his own superstitions creeping through the candle smoke. “Tom? Tom, that you?”
The ghost shook his head. “Thomas Manning is gone.”
I wasn’t surprised. “No, he says Thomas Manning has gone on to —”
The prospector spat onto the wood floor. The glob passed through the ghost’s shoe. “You are a witch.”
The ghost inhaled — a sharp hiss. “She told you what you wanted to hear, you ignorant ass.” Though he was so close, I knew the prospector couldn’t hear him, and I wasn’t about to repeat those words. I thought again that maybe I should shoot the prospector before he shot me — the pistol was still warm in my palm — but then the walls and floorboards began to tremble, the candlesticks rattling, the brass bowl vibrating across the floor.
The prospector turned ashen.
“Tell him,” said the ghost, “that while there is gold to be found, he’ll see not one nugget nor a pinch of dust. Death is painted in ashes upon his forehead. He’ll die if he stays in Deadwood.”
I gaped at his back. Though I was willing to make up fortunes to satisfy my patrons, it was rare to hear one from the lips of a true ghost. They were secretive beings, and even now it was unclear to me how much of the future they could see, and how much of it could be changed.
“Is that true?” I whispered.
The ghost cut a glare at me, his pupils dilated with anger, and I gasped at seeing his face.
I’d been right before. He was familiar, and a sorry sight to my eyes.
“Just tell him,” said the ghost, at the same time the prospector stammered, “Is what true?”
Again, I repeated the ghost’s words. Perhaps the prospector could see the truth in my face, for he did not gut me like a pig after all, just lowered his gun and cursed, a lot. “You goddamn Celestials and your goddamn superstitions,” he railed, but there was more fear in his voice than gall. “You should all be hanged for bringing your curses down on us!”
Despite his hubris, he snatched up his filth-covered hat and fled, shoving his way through the curtain. I wondered if by morning light he’d be hitching a ride on the first stagecoach, or discovered whiskey-drunk in a saloon.
Summer heat seeped back through the walls as the ghost’s fury began to ebb. My pulse stayed erratic. My palm would be ridged with lines where the gun’s handle pressed into it.
I stared at the arrow in the ghost’s back and waited for him to speak, willing away my distress at recognizing him.
He was a ghost now, and I would treat him no different than all the others. He’d helped me, and I knew he would want something in return. That was the way of the wandering spirits.
Perhaps if I didn’t show gratitude, he might not realize how much I was in his debt.
He turned and watched me through reddish-gold eyelashes.
My traitorous chest tightened.
I didn’t know his name, but all last fall I had seen the boy coming and going from the pest tents erected on the edge of the Badlands during the smallpox outbreak. Most men hid in their camps, but he’d helped the doctor tend to those poor quarantined souls and not once turned poorly himself. Then, he had been very much alive.
Once, I’d passed him on my way to the mercantile, and though he’d looked halfway to dead with exhaustion, he’d paused and smiled at me.