In a night of already ghostly and fuzzy memories, the fates had brought back yet another layer of mental images to worry my clouded mind. Across from me, an hour past my usual bedtime, sat an angel in a woman's garb, with the kind of radiance in her eyes that is usually reserved for great paintings of seraphim and the like. She stood about five foot six -- a pinch taller than my recent drinking companion, whose words were still rattling around in the back of my mind, as I tried to believe who she told me she was.

She resurrected a whole passel of fond memories of Emmett McInnis, a lithe and energetic man I had befriended a year or so before, who had come out from the East as a surveyor, reckless of danger and apparently heedless of his own scalp. He had had enough sense at least to make sure his affairs were well ordered, and he had delivered his records to me for safe-keeping just before he left the Saint Louis barracks under the command of Col Bonneville late last year. I had thought of Emmett often -- he was a kindred soul, adventurous, unafraid, but intelligent in a way which I found far too little of in the ordinary circles of life in Saint Louis, and we had enjoyed several fine dinners together, laughing and talking until late in the night.

"Of course, Miss McInnis, I remember your brother with great fondness; we were friends as well as associates, and I expect we still will be the next time he returns to town."

"Then you believe me??", she asked, somewhat startled.

"Emmett spoke of you often; I think next to the wide open skies and lands West of here, you were perhaps the fondest thing in his heart."

Her eyes moistenend, but her chin held firm.

"Do you have any notion of where he may have gone, Mister Huntington?"

I knew I was under her spell, because I noticed that I did not want her to address me as a "Mister"; something in her eyes told me that all I would ever need in my life would be to be close to her, as close as two souls could be; but it could have been the whiskey in my veins. And, too, there was a well formed soldier from the Barracks standing behind her as an escort. So I dug my left thumbnail into the flesh of my fingers hard enough to make me wince, and recovered my composure.

"He mentioned he was off on a surveying expedition to hills west of here, ma'a'm," I replied. "He gave me no more information."

Her deep and dazzling eyes fell briefly, giving me searing twinges of the heart. So I hastened to offer what comfort I could.

"He did, however, leave me some papers expressly instructing me that I should deliver them to you, should anything befall him. It would be within my discretion to decide, since you say he has been silent so much longer than normal, that current circumstances fulfill that criterion."

She looked at me in a way that could make a sober man trip over his own toes, and gave me a small, forlorn smile.

"Oh, please! Would you?"

So I brought out the small iron strongbox I used as a safe, and from it drew out the bundle of oaken papers bound in a small brown cross-tie of string, with my note under it indicating the owner's name and the date I had secured it for him.

I can only say that the light in her eyes, when I handed her those papers, was as precious and clear as a song from a herald angel with a whole chorus of harps joined in. It would have set my heart reeling, if it had not already been.

It was with the greatest reluctance that I saw her to the door, Emmett's papers clutched under her arm and her military escort following resignedly, a few paces behind her.

I locked up, my mind in a sea of wonder, recovered Hera from the rail outside The Byway, and wandered to my lonely domicile across town by the shores of the Missouri.