Every Hidden Thing

  “The pterodactylus was a good find, I grant you. But I wonder if we’d have all of it to ourselves, if you hadn’t been friendly with Samuel Bolt. As for the brontosaurus, anyone would have found that. You were just lucky enough to stumble over it.”

  For a moment I was speechless with hurt at how easily he belittled my contributions. It was as if he wasn’t at all proud of me, not one bit. And despite my anger, no matter how hard I tried not to, I began to cry at the sheer injustice of it.

  “There, there, my dear,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t be so distressed.”

  “I am not distressed!” I said. “I am furious!”

  “This is entirely my fault,” he said. “This is no fit occupation for a young woman.”

  “It’s the occupation I want more than anything,” I said, swiping the last tears from my cheeks and glaring at him. “And I am very good at it.”

  “I was wrong to be so encouraging when you were little; I can see that now. I’ve in no way helped you prepare for the life ahead.”

  “My life ahead includes university,” I said. “You can send me home, but you can’t take university away from me.”

  “I never agreed to university, my dear. And recent events have made me realize you’re not fit for a scholarly life.”

  I swallowed, mute with shock.

  “Your judgment on this expedition has been very poor. You nearly broke your neck when prospecting.”

  “And discovered the pterodactylus!”

  “You’ve allowed yourself to be manipulated by a young man who was only interested in spying on us.”

  “Nothing I told him had any bad effect on us!”

  He wasn’t listening to me. “You’ve shown yourself to be sentimental about the Indians. I fear you lack the necessary objectivity for serious study of the sciences. You are far too emotional.”

  “And what about you?” I retorted. “Didn’t you come out here to defeat a rival? You’ve stolen his telegrams, blocked his publications. Isn’t that emotional?”

  “You are very vocal in your criticism, young lady, and I have tolerated it in good humor thus far—even in front of my students. But no longer. At a university, a student learns to respect and accept the teachings of his superiors—something you clearly are unable to do. You will stay at the camp today, and ready your things. Tomorrow, you’re going back to Fort Crowe.”

  Infuriatingly, he just walked off without giving me a chance to defend myself or protest. I seethed. I paced, fists clenched, fingernails digging into my palms. It was so unjust. I was going to be packed up and shipped back like a sack of fossils. If my father had his way, I’d become a fossil, petrified in his library.

  I stopped pacing and stood looking at the sun clearing the buttes. It didn’t have to be this way. I had a map to the Black Beauty. I had a young man who’d asked me to marry him. He had a plan—and together the two of us could make a good team.

  Mind churning, I was stomping back to my tent when Mr. Landry approached and tipped his hat to me.

  “Good morning, Miss Cartland, I’ve come to say good-bye.”

  I blinked. “You’re leaving?”

  “The encounter with the Sioux has left me shaken, I’ll confess.”

  “It was very frightening.”

  “Oh, the fire certainly. I was talking more about the treatment of the boy they caught.”

  I looked at him anew. I’d been too quick to assume he was just a toady of my father, obediently chronicling his triumphs.

  “I meant to thank you, for speaking out the way you did,” I said. “I thought I was the only one who was shocked.”

  He smiled and shook his head.

  “Well, you must certainly have enough material for your article. I’m afraid we may not come off looking very well.”

  “I think you will come off just fine.”

  “I’m sorry to see you go, Mr. Landry.”

  “Well, to be honest, your father encouraged me to leave today.”

  I sniffed. “So we’ve both been expelled.”

  His eyes telegraphed his surprise.

  “Yes. I’m being sent home for my own safety.”

  “That’s a great shame. You have a fire for this kind of work.”

  “Thank you.” I smiled, not just at the compliment, but because a critical piece of my plan had just come together like meshing gears. “I imagine you’ll be riding past the Bolt camp this morning on your way back to Crowe.”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “Mr. Landry, could you please deliver a letter for me?”

  When Ned and I made it back to camp, Father and Hitch were just settling down to breakfast. They’d both slept through the fire and gunshots—they were too far away to see or hear. They listened in amazement when we told them what had happened last night.

  “I’m thinking we might want to stick together from now on,” Ned said.

  Father frowned. “We’ll cover much less ground that way. Do you really think the Sioux bear us any ill will?”

  “Yesterday I didn’t think so,” said Ned. “But after last night, I’m not sure they care if we’re wearing army coats. It was a terrible mistake for them to capture that boy and beat him. Not to mention sawing off those heads in the first place.”

  I was dead tired, chilled from sleeping in soggy bedclothes under a wagon. My black eye throbbed. My head throbbed. How was I going to see Rachel again? I needed my proposal answered. I went to the tent to change into some dry clothes and only meant to lie down for a minute, but I must’ve fallen asleep. When I woke, the sun was high, and Hitch was making lunch on the cookstove.

  “Saved you some,” he said.

  “Thanks, Hitch.” I went and sat with him and gratefully ate the stew he put on a tin plate.

  “Did Ned and my father head off?”

  He nodded. “Ned said don’t wake you.”

  Not my father, but Ned. He wanted me to get enough sleep. I felt pretty crestfallen as I sat there. But Hitch was a very comforting presence. He was so calm and orderly. When he ate, he just ate. When he cleaned up, that’s all he did, methodically. When he took out one of his favorite books to read, his attention was focused on that and nothing else. He always seemed to be living completely in the moment, without any distracting chatter in his head. I envied him.

  My head was all chatter. What had happened between Rachel and her father after I was sent off? Would he really send her home? Would he confine her to camp? When Ned and I had left, I overheard two soldiers saying they might have to move camp, because all the nearby forage for the horses had been burned. There was no way I could get near her in the camp. Her father had probably given orders for the soldiers to shoot at me—maybe without warning shots this time.

  But there was a small chance her father had let her stay on. If yes, would she be at the brontosaurus quarry today? I might be able to get to her there. I’d have to be a lot more careful. But I needed to see her. Needed her answer, one way or another. I wasn’t hopeful. Last night in the rain she’d seemed almost angry with me.

  I was getting my pony ready to head out when Hitch came up to me, looking apologetic. He held out a crumpled envelope.

  “The man gave this to me. Mr. Laundry.”

  “When?”

  “This morning. You were sleeping.”

  I ripped open the envelope, pulled out the single piece of paper. It was quite a long letter, with Rachel’s name at the bottom. And at the top, the first word was “Yes.”

  21.

  AT THE PIONEER

  IT TOOK MOST OF THE AFTERNOON TO FIND them. I rode to the place Rachel described in her letter, the place she’d last seen them working, and kept looking from there. Finally I saw Withrow and one of his men, working a coal seam high on a slope. I trudged up. They glistened with soot.

  “Not much luck,” said Withrow, loosening his neckerchief, swiping his grimy face. He’d been using a trowel, loosening the soft coal in the hopes of revealing bone.

 
“You won’t find much there,” I said. “Not what you’re looking for anyway.”

  “That right?” He laughed a little and took a pull from his canteen, then offered it to me.

  I drank. “I know where you should be looking.”

  He sat down with his back to the rock, removed his slouch hat, and rubbed at his damp hair. “Tell me more.”

  “We need to settle a few things first,” I said. “I can lead you to the Black Beauty, but I need to know what I’ll be paid.”

  His eyebrows lifted only slightly. “Your father know you’re here?”

  “This has nothing to do with my father. I’m striking out on my own.”

  He didn’t laugh as I’d expected, just nodded, his eyes on me. “So it’ll just be you—no helpers, no equipment, no great professor.”

  I knew he was trying to make me feel like I wasn’t much of a bargain.

  “I can find bones as fast as my father, and I’m faster at piecing them together. Also, I have a map.”

  I told him about the tooth and the Sioux boy.

  Withrow looked over at Thomas, his Sioux guide, who’d been listening in. “The boy may not have told the truth.”

  “He was already cut free. He could’ve run. He didn’t have to draw me a map.”

  “Still,” said Withrow. “A big if.”

  I waited, saying nothing.

  “So we’d be fronting you food and supplies and labor.”

  “For me and my partner.”

  “Who’s your partner? Ned Plaskett?”

  “No.”

  “Why do you need a partner? Why do I need your partner?”

  “It belongs to both of us. And I left the map with her.”

  Withrow grinned. “Her?”

  I pressed on. “So how much is the Black Beauty worth to you?”

  He named a figure, and I mentioned another figure and then we hemmed and hawed and talked a bit and juggled some other figures and eventually shook hands.

  “So. Lead the way,” Withrow said.

  “Yep,” I said. “I just need to get married first.”

  He nodded, like this was unsurprising to him. “That Cartland girl by any chance?”

  I couldn’t help grinning, I felt so happy and proud. “Yes. Tomorrow.”

  “Well, congratulations. I think you’re headed for a world of trouble, but maybe we can help out.”

  Daniel Simpson deposited me in the parlor of the Scots Hotel—one of the very few appropriate places for an unescorted young lady to wait, I supposed—while he and the soldiers went to the train station to arrange shipment for our crates and get our mail. I sat in a lumpy chair, where the hotel clerk could keep an eye on me. In an hour or so I’d be collected, taken on to the fort, and transferred—like a convict!—into the custody of the commander and his wife.

  It had been a dry little good-bye between me and Papa early this morning. I think he was surprised I didn’t put up more of a fuss, shout, and refuse to climb aboard the wagon, which I might have done, if I hadn’t had a different plan in my head.

  A fly battered itself against the glass, over and over, and all I could think about was all the possible mishaps. Had Mr. Landry actually delivered the letter? Had he given it to the right person? Had Professor Bolt opened it instead and tied Samuel to the wagon to stop him meeting me? Had Samuel got the letter, but something stopped him from coming? Had he fallen on the way and broken his leg? Had he been attacked by the Sioux? Had he changed his mind altogether and was, right now, looking for the Black Beauty on his own?

  I stopped myself here. What I knew for certain was this: If he was coming, I needed to give him more time. Simpson and the soldiers would come back for me soon, and once I was at the fort, there was no way Samuel could reach me.

  I watched the hotel clerk. His eyes swung from his ledger to me with the regularity of a metronome. He even gave me a rather roguish smile at one point. I walked to the counter.

  “I will be taking a room for the night,” I announced.

  He tilted his head in confusion. “I thought you were waiting here for your friends, miss.”

  “I have changed my plans,” I said with what I hoped was the right amount of haughtiness. “I’ve decided to spend the night and have a bath before continuing on.”

  From my pocket I pulled a dollar bill and placed it on the counter, to show I wasn’t making an idle request.

  “Very good.” He consulted his ledger. “I do have a room.”

  “Does it look onto the main street?” I asked.

  “It does. Just the one night?”

  I told him yes and took the key and fifty cents change.

  “Do you need any help with your luggage, Miss Cartland?”

  It was all on the wagon. All I had with me was the map Samuel had drawn and his promise to marry me. “They’ll bring it later,” I said, and proceeded upstairs.

  Inside the room I bolted the door and sat down on the edge of the bed. The mattress was soggy. The smell of floor soap was so cloying it must have been covering some other noxious scent that haunted the room. My heart pounded. After a few moments I opened the window wide. The air that came in was fetid with manure, but at least it didn’t smell like soap. I positioned a chair so I could watch the comings and goings on the street. I would see him if he came. When he came.

  It felt like I was watching a rehearsal for some kind of amateur play: people coming and going, shards of inaudible conversation, shouts of anger that were cut short by the clatter of hooves and a wagon, the windblown sound of hammering from offstage. I was waiting for my real life to begin.

  The knock on my door came later than I’d expected. I’d planned what to say.

  I opened the door to Daniel Simpson, who looked perplexed and distinctly uncomfortable, his hat in his hands.

  “Miss Cartland, are you unwell?”

  “I am, yes. I wanted to lie down, and it seemed simplest to take a room. I’d like to stay the night before carrying on.”

  He nodded, looking at me a bit more closely, maybe trying to diagnose my affliction.

  “Should I send for the doctor?”

  “No, no. I think it’s just the heat. A good night’s rest will fix things. I’m sorry to be a nuisance. Did the crates get off all right?”

  “Yes. It’s just . . . the soldiers are anxious to get you to the fort. It’s not two hours’ journey. You don’t think you could manage it?”

  He was suspicious. He’d seen me work full days in the badlands with no ill effects.

  “I’m so sorry; I really can’t.”

  He nodded some more. “All right, we’ll make arrangements. Shall I have your luggage brought up?”

  “Oh, yes, the small case, please, thank you very much.”

  I resumed my watch at the window and tried not to think words like “foolhardy” and “disastrous” and “madness.” Simpson knocked again timidly and said through the door that he’d left my suitcase outside. Three o’clock and I watched the street. Four o’clock and I watched the street.

  I was hungry, so decided to go downstairs to see if they were serving dinner. I was relieved to find the dining room nearly deserted—no sign of Simpson or the soldiers—and I asked for a table near the window. I had never sat in a restaurant alone before. I stared at my menu without reading a single line, my eyes pulled constantly to the street. I ordered the thing that seemed least likely to be disgusting. It came—and was disgusting.

  Suddenly the hotel clerk was standing over me with a folded piece of paper.

  “Excuse me, Miss Cartland. This message was left for you.”

  I waited till he left before I opened it. The message was written with the terseness of a telegram. “Abandon meal. (Looks disgusting.) Cross street to the Pioneer. I’ll be waiting inside. I love you. Sam.”

  Through the window, I watched her cross the road. My heart hammered away. I thought: This is her walking down the aisle. This is her coming to marry me. My heart did another run. She squinted in the harsh li
ght, looked furtively left and right, then back over her shoulder. Like she was afraid she’d be followed or stopped. I was afraid too. With every step she took closer to me, my fear grew. Someone would come and snatch her away. Or no one would stop her, and she would cross the threshold of the saloon and we would do this mad, momentous thing.

  I went to the door so I was right there when she came in. She gave her slightly wary smile, and I laughed with sheer happiness.

  “Why are we meeting here?” she whispered, looking at the bar, at the gaming tables.

  “Well, it turns out Mr. Murchison, the proprietor, is also the justice of the peace.” The last time I’d seen him, he’d been standing on top of the bar with a smoking shotgun, telling us to clear out. “So he’ll be marrying us.”

  “In a saloon?”

  “The cathedral wasn’t available. Are you ready?”

  “Don’t we need witnesses?”

  I wondered if she was having second thoughts. Possibly third. “Murchison’s getting a couple from the barber.”

  At that moment he walked in with a man who still had a daub of shaving cream on his prominent Adam’s apple.

  “Just need one more,” Murchison said to me. “I’ll get someone in back. This way.”

  He lead us to the door beside the bar.

  I took Rachel’s hand. “Are you ready?”

  She gave the smallest nod I’d ever seen. We followed Murchison down a narrow hallway to a cramped office. There was barely room for us around his surprisingly fancy desk. Reassuringly large and official tomes sagged on a shelf. The open top drawer of a filing cabinet bristled with ledgers that promised legality.

  Which was good, because Murchison himself looked none too reputable. He was heavyset with gopher eyes and a torso that sagged like a discouraged letter b. Teeth mottled brown. One tooth on top seemed to bob up and down and sometimes even switch places with its neighbor. I couldn’t be sure. He kept his left hand buried in his trouser pockets and jingled some coins for emphasis. First off he asked if we had the license fee. I counted out two dollars. Then he asked our names and ages and places of birth and wrote them down on a form with a fancy insignia on top.

  I was just about to ask where the other witness was when the door opened and Mrs. Cummins came in, made-up and brightly dressed. When her eyes met mine, she registered no surprise. No recognition.