Then he’d tipped his hat, like a gentleman to a lady.
I’d turned away, fast, but that smile had clung to me for days. It had led to a great many fancies, most of which involved him coming to ask for his fortune to be told. I’d imagined tracing the lines on his palm and telling him of the many children in his future, and blushing like a witless little girl.
“Sorry for intruding upon you,” he said, breaking our silence. Though he wasn’t wearing a hat, he tipped an imaginary one at me anyhow, and it was by a force of will that I smothered a sad, pitiful sigh at the gesture. “My name is James Hill, ma’am.”
I stared.
A hesitation. “I mean miss.”
I swallowed, hard. “My name is Fei-Yen. Sun Fei-Yen.”
I was prepared for scorn, but James Hill apologetically asked if I could repeat that before he attempted it himself.
“Soon Fay Yen.” His atrocious accent prompted a weak smile from me, which I didn’t like. I did not smile at ghosts. Not even this ghost.
After a long, long pause, James held out a hand. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
His sleeves were rolled up, and I could tell he had a miner’s arms, strong and dark from the sun. Callused palms and dirt-stained fingernails. There was a presence about him that drew me in, a stickiness that was hard to resist. Few could understand the magnetism of spirits. How they could be simultaneously appalling and alluring, like the opium pipe to an addict.
James slowly pulled his hand back, embarrassed that I hadn’t taken it. “Please don’t be frightened,” he said, not understanding. He gripped his suspenders again. “I intend you no harm, but Millie Ann said you might help me.”
Finally my tongue loosened. “I cannot help you.”
His eyes bored into mine. “I think you can.”
I tempered my sympathy. I had gotten better at this over the years. After all the ghosts and all their demands. The angry ones, the sad ones, the wronged ones — they all wanted just one thing. “No, I can’t. I’m sorry, James Hill, but you’ll have no vengeance from me. Not against the Sioux.”
His brow creased. “Pardon?”
“That’s a Sioux arrow in your back. This land belongs to them. It is a sacred place upon which we are all trespassers. Maybe you deserved to be shot. Maybe we all do.” I inhaled, bracing. “Besides. I’m one girl, and they are warriors. I cannot avenge you.”
Then, unexpectedly, he smiled, and my heart thundered like a gong, remembering that smile.
“Did Millie Ann want vengeance after she died?”
I turned away and busied myself with returning the gun to the drawer beneath the altar and relighting the candles.
Millie Ann was gū hún yě gu? — a sad, restless ghost who died too far from home. She had come to Deadwood after being promised work as a waitress. Spent all her money on a train ticket only to find a different occupation waiting for her, and it was too late to go back. Four months later she’d lain dying in a pest tent, covered in those awful sores and crying for her mother.
I often visited Millie Ann’s ghost when she became agitated, listening to her sad tale over and over again.
“No,” I said, setting aside the matches. “She asked to go home.” A request I was powerless to help with. “Though some days she’s just hungry, so I bring her sliced apples. But Millie Ann wasn’t murdered.”
“There’s already a group of men plotting retaliation against the savages for the murders, whether we all deserve to be shot or not. I need your help with something else.” He paused, his body flickering in the candlelight. A faint smile still lingered along the bow of his upper lip. “Though I wouldn’t mind some sliced apples too, miss, if it isn’t too much of a bother.”
I’d seen hundreds of ghosts in my sixteen years, and Deadwood, barely a year settled, already felt like standing on the bridge to Diyu itself.
On every hillside I could see the ghosts of the Sioux, donning their animal skins and bear-claw necklaces and glowering at the trespassers who trampled their ground. A treaty had once promised that the Black Hills would be theirs for the keeping, but those signatures meant nothing once gold was found — so much gold it grew up from the roots of the grass, the newspapers reported.