Free Of Grave Concern by Max McCoy

for—”
    â€œFor what?” I asked. “What do you take me for?”
    â€œI take you not at all,” Calder said. “Your business is your own, miss.”
    â€œMy name is Ophelia Wylde,” I said. “I prefer ‘Ophelia’ or ‘The Reverend Professor Wylde’ to ‘miss,’ if you don’t mind.”
    â€œOf course,” he said, the corners of his lips betraying him. “Reverend.”
    â€œFrom the train, I saw a cemetery at the edge of town. Could you tell me the name of it?”
    â€œYou don’t know?”
    â€œI would not ask if I did.”
    â€œThat’s Boot Hill.”
    Â 
    Â 
    I left wicked Front Street—and the smugly disapproving Jack Calder—behind.
    On Bridge Street, I worked my way north, then ambled west along Chestnut, where most of the brothels on the north side were concentrated, and then on Walnut. The blocks north of Walnut were where most of the permanent residents of the city lived, and their homes ranged from shacks to limestone cottages, all with clotheslines and vegetable gardens out back. The hill I had seen from the train encroached on the northwest corner of town, with some homes and a few businesses hard against its flanks.
    But Boot Hill was really more of a ridge, pointing south, than a hill. I hiked up, discovering it to be composed of a peculiar mixture of clay, sand, and rocks, with patches of buffalo grass and soapweeds. The tops of the scattered soapweeds, a type of yucca, were heavy with their bell-shaped white blossoms. Loose sand and gravel skittered beneath my feet as I climbed, and a few times I slid back a few feet when I attempted too steep an angle.
    The hill came to a bulbous point overlooking the town, and it afforded a good view of the Arkansas River, which serpentined across the plain a half mile south. Even at the summit, there was the stench of cows. Herds of several thousand longhorns dotted the valley.
    No buffalo.
    No Indians.
    On the opposite side of town, I could see the brick-and-stone Ford County Courthouse, by far the largest building in town. A few blocks from the courthouse, atop a low ridge, was a white steepled church.
    In the center of town, I could see the Dodge House, and it was clear now that it was really several buildings stitched together. On the roof of the main building bristled an array of meteorological instruments for the government weather station. I could see the west window of my corner hotel room, and much of both Front Streets.
    The saloons on both sides of the tracks blazed with light, and little knots of cowboys drifted from one to the other. Their rough laughter carried to me on the still air. There were a few soldiers, little groups in blue, having come from Fort Dodge, a frontier outpost five miles to the east.
    From up on Boot Hill, it was easy to imagine the cowboys and the soldiers and the townspeople as animals. The good citizens and the soldiers were mostly herd animals, I decided, but the cowboys ran in packs, like wolves. The most unpredictable and therefore most dangerous of the cowboy animals were the loners—the lobos.
    I walked over to the cemetery, on the side of the hill facing town.
    There were a few dozen graves, identified by white crosses or wood markers, and a few rectangles of sunken earth that had not been marked at all. A cemetery visit is essential research for any medium, because you very quickly gain the names of residents and a brief family history, told in years and ages.
    But at Boot Hill, there was scant information to work with.
    The town was too new, having been settled only five years before. There hadn’t been time for many permanent residents to have been planted here. Most of the wooden markers, at least when the graves had markers, indicated transients, murder victims, or other unfortunates.
    Some carried brief, hand-lettered epitaphs:
    Jack Reynolds shot dead 1872 by railroad track layer.
    Five buffalo hunters,