I turned and ran the opposite way along the maples, the bags banging against my ribs and back, their weight slowing me maddeningly. As I exhausted the limits of my legs and lungs, I reached the mare I’d tethered in a thicket on the other side of the graveyard, a quarter mile from the wagon. I’d dubbed her “Plan B” as I walked back to the livery stable for the wagon team. Now Plan B would have to save my ass. I knotted the bags together, slung them over the saddle, and mounted. My face pressed into her mane, I urged her forward and tried not to imagine bullets crashing into me from the darkness.
We galloped from the cemetery, bursting through the maples. Branches clutched at me. I heard shooting in the distance. I pointed Plan B toward the hills to the northwest. She kept a steady pace across open fields and wagon ruts winding through the foothills. It took more than an hour to circle Elmira and approach it again along the Chemung. Plan B’s hooves clopped on the packed dirt of Water Street. She was breathing hard, her flanks foam-lathered. My first impulse had been to make a long dash all the way to Binghamton or Corning, but she clearly wasn’t in shape for it. Still, I felt reasonably safe. If my attackers had escaped the ghost soldier and were still searching for me, I didn’t think they’d look for me in the center of town. We ambled toward Main Street.
My rapping echoed inside in the foyer as I stood outside the Langdons’ front door. After several minutes a sleepy-eyed servant peered through a peephole.
“Emergency,” I told him. “I’ve got to see Mr. Twain.”
“Missuh Twain? There’s no—”
“Clemens,” I said. “Get Clemens here!”
“I don’t ’spect it’s proper to rouse Missuh Clemens just now, suh.”
“Look, this is a crisis!” I tried to contain my frustration. “He’ll never forgive either one of us if my news has to wait for morning! Bring him down and let him decide! Go, quick, and don’t wake the rest!”
The peephole closed. I paced the long veranda in the darkness. At length the door opened. Twain appeared in robe and slippers, smelling of tobacco, hair disheveled, squinting at me.
“Sam? What in thunder are you up to?”
I drew him close. “I’ve got it!”His face changed. “The money?”
I told him what had transpired at the graveyard.
“Holy Jupiter!” he breathed. “They were laying for you. Costigan leaked the scheme, sure as perdition. How’d you get out?”
I told him of the apparition. “Is that place haunted?”
“Wasn’t till now.” He regarded me from hooded eyes. “I’d be some worked up in your shoes, too.”
“No, I really saw it. So’d the Fenians, believe me.”
He nodded, unconvinced, and looked at the street. “This town’ll be on its ear in the morning. Anybody see you come?”
“I don’t think so. Help me with just a couple of things and I’ll be on my way.”
We walked Plan B to the Langdon stable at the far end of the grounds. Twain didn’t seem much more at home with livery tasks than I, but between us we managed to wipe her down, provide her water and a bit of grain, and transfer her saddle to another horse.
Twain said, “I’ll give Robert—he’s the one who answered the door—a princely amount to fetch the nags back here. He’ll let on he found yours in the hills south of here. Robert’ll keep his lips tight.” We shook hands. “You’re cut from different cloth, Sam.”
“That’s what I tried to tell you,” I said, mounting.
“See you in California,” he called softly as I started off, Plan B in tow.
Riding through the darkness I occupied my mind with visions of the uniformed figure. I couldn’t help thinking that it had intervened deliberately, to spare my life.
The station in Chemung, a hamlet fifteen miles north, was little more than a shack. I cinched the horses behind it according to Twain’s instructions and used the money sacks as pillows to bed down in an old wagon. I slept until wakened by sunlight on my face and the chuffing of an approaching locomotive. I edged cautiously around the building. Nobody was in sight. I hoisted the bags and stepped onto the platform. Moments later I was aboard.
Waverly . . . Barton . . . Smith bow . . . Tioga . . . Owego . . . Campville . . . Union . . .
We stopped at every woodpile and water tank. I gazed dully out my window and tried to stay awake. My shoes and pants were caked with mud. The canvas bags clinked provocatively with the car’s movements. A few passengers’ gazes burned into me. My crotch burned too; I was horrendously saddle sore.
We pulled into Binghamton, the area’s main junction, around ten. Past this point I’d be reasonably safe. With the derringer in my pocket I moved through the station. I remembered the circling bird that had appeared here; I could almost feel again the whistling strafing rush and see the arrowlike flight through the door. It had seemed to lead me to the encounter with Twain. Then there was the horrible-voiced bird in the graveyard, and the other bird at the Mansfield station just before my first vision of the soldier figure. Maybe they worked in tandem to guide me. Or maybe I was just totally fucking crazy.
I bought a Penn Central ticket. Two hours to kill. Nobody seemed to be watching me. I ate breakfast, got shaved and trimmed, and had a bootblack work on my shoes. I purchased a stylish four-dollar Stetson and pulled it low over my eyes. Then I bought a leather gladstone to stow the money sacks in. My right arm felt six inches longer by the time I’d lugged it on board.
It was dark when we pulled into Philadelphia. In a hotel room near the station I bolted my door and
