“All right, James Hill,” I said. “I’ll try.”
I made myself small as James and I darted through the alley between a saloon and the newly constructed hotel. The sounds of clinking glasses, the hollow clatter of dice, and an upbeat piano melody spilled from open windows.
I was clutching a stack of rough-spun linens in both arms. It had been easy enough for me to persuade the man at the hotel’s desk to give me a key, explaining in poor English that I had to deliver laundry to a guest. All he’d cared about was that I go in through the back door and stop taking up space in his lobby.
I rounded the corner and spotted a figure outside the hotel’s door, her dress gauzy and her bone-thin arms wrapped around her hips. She was staring up at the second-story windows.
We both stopped, but it was James who spoke. “Millie Ann?”
Her head turned, although it took her haunted gaze a moment to follow. “James Hill,” she said in her usual meek voice. “You found her.”
“I did.” James tipped his nonexistent hat. “She’s been as kind as you told me she would be.”
A frown carved its way across my brow. I didn’t like to think of the spirits talking about me around town, appointing me their personal telegraph into the realm of the living.
“What are you doing here, Millie Ann?” I asked, never having seen her so far from where she died.
“I was looking for the post office . . .” Millie Ann scanned the walls of the alley. “I wanted to post a letter to my mother. But I seem to have taken a wrong turn.”
I sighed. She’d most likely been pulled off course because of me. Even as I thought it, the faint ghost of a dark-skinned man in a derby hat drifted into the far end of the alley.
More would follow.
It was time to finish this task for James Hill and return to the sanctuary of my incense and altar, where only the strongest spirits could follow me.
I curled my shoulders over the linens and shoved through the hotel door, certain that Millie Ann would either find her way back on her own or still be waiting there when we returned. She could have followed me into the building, but passing through walls cost so much energy that most spirits never bothered.
The hotel was eerily quiet. James and I climbed to the second floor, where the walls smelled of fresh timber. I knocked when we reached Rinehart’s room, but there was no response. Balancing the linens again, I slipped the key into the lock, heart pounding.
The room was furnished with a four-poster bed, a pedestal sink and mirror for shaving, a writing desk, and a reading chair with an ironed newspaper draped over one arm. A round-topped trunk sat at the foot of the bed, fastened with brass buckles and stuck with a dozen labels of different cities — San Francisco among them. My heart squeezed with homesickness.
“Try here first,” said James, standing at the desk.
I set the linens down on the bed and joined him, opening the top drawer. Inkwells and envelopes. In the next, blank stationery. The bottom drawer held a newspaper clipping with a photograph of a well-dressed man who James told me was George Rinehart himself. Beneath the paper was a stack of document files. I pulled them out so James could puzzle out the labels printed in a neat hand.
One window was cracked open, and I could hear men down below, discussing weapons and horses and raving about the godless savages they’d soon be hunting.
We reached the last file, and James shook his head. “Accounting and travel papers. It’s not here.”
Leaving the papers, I crossed the room and dropped to my knees beside the trunk, pressing up the latches, grateful to find it unlocked. Inside, a bundle of heavy cloth was rolled up and tied with twine, and tucked beneath it — more papers.
James hunkered over them, attempting to decipher the tiny print on the top pages. His eyes brightened.
“This is the deed to the Johnson claim, just upstream from ours.” He looked at me. “Albert Johnson was killed a little over a month ago, also by the Sioux. There’ve been lots of attacks lately, but things had gone quiet long enough that Pa and I thought . . .” His jaw tightened, but he shook the regret away. “I hadn’t realized Johnson was looking to sell his claim too. Rinehart must be buying up the whole valley.”
“Does he know gold’s been found?”
“Could be. If we found it on our land, it’s likely there’ll be more deposits all along the creek.”
“He can’t be pleased that the Sioux have suddenly become so territorial over it too.” I frowned. “Have all the killings been done by arrow?”
James shrugged. “Far as I know.”
“Strange, isn’t it? They have guns. But it’s as though they want it to be known — we’re killing you. This is our land.”
“You said yourself, it is sacred to them.” James dragged a finger along the lettering on the first page. “Can you pull out these papers? Maybe our deed is here too.”