Missteps Perfecting the Shutterbug Strut Read online

  Murray grumbled and looked back to Alexandra. “What about your native guides? What have they to say of this escapade?”

  She said, “Our guides spoke no English. Not even Australian.”

  Murray let slip the briefest of chuckles. He said, “Though you can barely stand, my dear, you dance about magnificently!”

  Alexandra reached into her satchel and produced a dagger. She’d likely be dead if it hadn’t struck her camera, allowing her to get away with simply being knocked cold. It was a skillfully engraved piece of weaponry honed from the thigh bone of an ostrich-like creature known as a cassowary.

  She passed it to the governor tip first, unable to hold it still enough for him to safely grasp.

  Archibald seized it, fearing a repeat of the “Coolidge Incident.”

  “I’d like to see a photo of those Marind-Anim,” said Hornsby.

  “As would I,” Alexandra shakily stood, “but my smaller camera is lost to the river.”

  Murray stood and placed on his pith helmet. “Chivalry would dictate we set out to find you. Such a venture could have jeopardized the lives of searcher and native alike. The punishment for misleading an officer is ten lashes with a rattan cane. I’m considering leniency.”

  Alexandra gasped and nearly tumbled over. She started rambling, “Lashes with a rattan cane... rattan cane... rattan cane...”

  Murray rushed forward and clutched her arm. “Does she require medical attention?”

  ... “rattan cane... rattan cane... rattan cane...”

  “It will pass,” Archibald assured. When it failed to, he tossed his drink into her face. It worked.

  Alexandra licked a gin droplet running down her cheek. “That was rather unsporting, Father. You could have at least troubled yourself to get a glass of water.”

  Archibald said to the governor, “Alexandra is still young, foolish, and while a finagler extraordinaire, has a good heart to her. I ask that you let her off, just this once.”

  “Gentlemen!” Murray bellowed. Everyone came to attention. He kissed Alexandra’s hand and winked. He then headed down the dark path toward town, whistling a tune in an upbeat manner.

  Alexandra sought Bannister. “Thank you for lugging my camera. For everything, really.”

  “I hope to get to know you better,” he confided.

  “I’ll soon be off for Sydney. Don’t fret, Bannister. I’m a girl full of wanderlust. My priorities are not akin to romantic relationships. I can say ‘goodbye’ in forty languages, but ‘hello’ in only one.”

  She kissed his cheek and listlessly headed for her bath.

  “Many thanks for seeing Alee back. No doubt she was a handful.”

  Bannister turned to Archibald. “Truth be told, she was more apt than I in the rainforest. I fear she holds an indifference toward death. At least she doesn’t mind goading it a bit.”

  Archibald sighed. “I did a fair job raising my two sons, but quite lost with my daughters.”

  “There are more like her out there?”

  Archibald patted Bannister’s shoulder in parting, and solemnly stated, “Not any longer.”

  Chapter 3

  IT WAS THE AGE OF THE majestic ocean liner, and Alexandra Bathenbrook had booked passage on one of the true queens of the sea. In its trans-Pacific duties, the RMS Empress of Australia posed a luxurious ride. After boarding in Sydney, she had postponed getting acquainted with its grandeur. It was tricky enough walking a straight line on land, and the blurry image in her mirror still reflected that of a mutant. She had finally broken quarantine.

  The ship’s decor displayed an Art Deco flair, which remained the rage, and she was eager to take a dip in its indoor pool. Two months of sweltering travel had weened her slender frame to near-nothingness, but the multi-course dinners would dispel that quick enough. It went without saying they’d put her ashore in Vancouver halfway under the table. Prohibition loomed three weeks away, and she felt obligated to indulge before returning to the drought.

  Over her brief stay in Australia, she had sat for an interview with the Sydney Mail. News of her Papuan escapade had preceded her arrival, and the article made it to print the morning of departure. It pleased Alexandra that the journalist had added a photograph of her in pristine outback gear prior to catastrophe alongside the shot of the headhunters. The right side of her face remained a mutable palette of unpleasant colors and partially covered by an eyepatch, lending few aboard to make the connection in her mottled state of incognito.

  Carrying a portfolio and a piece of cake, Alexandra navigated the ship’s honeycomb of passageways until reaching the smoking parlor, which hosted the expectable assembly of black-tied gents chatting over cigars. Two women invaded this masculine lair for a quick smoke without protest.

  She made it three.

  The room’s ambiance appealed to her untapped sophisticated tastes: oak-paneled walls, mahogany chairs, crystal tumblers. A pianist and string bassist played jazzy renditions.

  Alexandra stopped at the bar. The tender lit a candle, and she was off for her father’s table. It was Archibald’s last night aboard. He would disembark in New Zealand.

  “Happy Birthday!”

  “Whatever to wish?” He blew out the candle.

  “I know what Mother would wish for.” Alexandra snickered while claiming a seat. “Did she forward her regards?”

  “Remarkably, yes. Her telegram was heartfelt and inquired over the health of your uncle.”

  Archibald Bathenbrook was born the third son of an English baron, which meant he’d likely remain a commoner and inherit nothing. Before marriage, he had attained a degree in geology, served with the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry, and started his journeys throughout the world. England was an island, forever in need of importing food and raw materials to sustain itself, and a worldwide empire had been established to see to it.

  His duties in the Colonial Office were based on assessing far off lands for ore deposits, precious metals, and, of more recent priority—petroleum.

  It was during a visit to Alberta, Canada, in August 1895 that Archibald’s life took an American turn.

  To any geologist, Butte, Montana, was the motherload. The gold, silver, and copper within “The Richest Hill on Earth” elevated the region to global prominence. An American counterpart had offered a tour of its mining operations. By chance, they traveled to the state capital to attend Mark Twain’s Tour Around the World at the Ming Opera House. As his colleague was a member of the prestigious Montana Club, Archibald found himself immersed in an invitation-only gala at the Hotel Helena to honor the man himself, Samuel Clemens. Helena boasted it held more millionaires per capita than any city in the world, and the affair showcased an eclectic blend of upscale etiquette and wild west bravado. In attendance were ambitious courtiers biding their turn to dance with Larisa Monvoisin, the undisputed belle of the ball. The men of Montana waltzed stylishly with gun belts affixed, but only Archibald could blarney that he was the son of an English baron and that his career was to travel the world.

  Larisa had fancied these qualities, eager to flee her life. She was the eldest daughter of a Chicago banker and financier of one of the region’s more lucrative holes.

  They had secretively courted, as her hand in matrimony was already promised to a French noble. Her spirited personality mixed well with his debonair manner. They had fallen in love and eloped. It came at the cost of Larisa losing her inheritance. She was gifted the family’s summer cottage in Helena under the condition she never return to Chicago.

  Thomas Sawyer Bathenbrook was born eight months later. The young couple had shared fine years traveling to remote lands and expanding their family, but things had turned after Archibald left in 1901 to serve in South Africa. During his long absence, someone had somehow enticed Larisa back into her family’s dark graces.

  Alexandra sensed her father’s sudden melancholy. She asked, “Do you ever regret it all?”

  Of his offspring, three were lost to Heaven, with a fourth broken in spirit. All his hopes for the future now rested with Alexandra. “I regret missing out on you growing into such a precocious young lady. But to lament one’s marriage would be to regret one’s children, so it does not come to mind.”

  Alexandra flashed a warm smile. “So, what did you wish for?”

  “That someday you and I will return to Guiana and find that bloody bird and waterfall.”

  The liquor had loosened him up. She seized the occasion. “When will you divorce?”

  He was not so oiled as to gush anything. He stood and fixed his bowtie. “We have a suitable relationship. I partake in her fortune, and she longs to be a baroness. Off for a tour of the loo.”

  Alexandra mumbled a curse over pushing too hard.

  With others, “Olde Archie” was a gregarious fellow. If he bumped into a veteran of the Boer War, it would take an hour for his return. It amazed her how the Brits spoke of that bloody conflict as if it was some grand fraternal sabbatical filled with wine, women, and sophomoric nicknames.

  She suspected it was how they coped with the utter horror of it all—the bodies of the fallen decomposing under the African sun, being picked apart by hyenas.

  Alexandra closed her eyes and reminisced over happier times.

  The lounge’s instrumental duo was putting out a rendition of Louis Armstrong’s “Heebie Jeebies.” Jazz was to her liking. Alexandra leaned back in her chair, crossed her legs, and recalled with fondness her family trip in 1912 to British Guiana. It proved to be the last time they would holiday together, and it had been a somewhat happy gathering. Her mother and sister remained in Georgetown while she and her brothers joined in seeking the famed Kaieteur Falls. It stood epic in a tamed corner of the Amazon and purported to be the largest single cascade of water in the wo
rld. Her father was keener on spotting a Guianan cock-of-the-rock along the riverway, but such made sense, the English being odd birds in their own right.

  Poor weather had turned them back.

  Alexandra adjusted her eyepatch and sipped her whiskey, sensing a surge of testosterone filling the lounge. Even in her semi-grotesque state, there’d be a need to fend off buccaneers seeking to pass the voyage in her company. She spotted one amateur placing his wedding band in his pocket—the pros having done so just after boarding.

  It was nothing new.

  At seventeen, Alexandra had blossomed from a gawky, loose-limbed girl into a seductively angular young woman. During her first years in college, she had engaged in three sordid trysts: one sober, twice otherwise. It was a rebellious stretch that left her reputation not fleetingly tarnished, but rather rusted into regrettable campus hearsay. She felt on course in tempering such flippant behavior, though if it were the right man...?

  “G’day. You’re too lovely a lass to shivoo with the flies.”

  “I shivoo with all sorts,” she cracked, not knowing what it meant. He was handsome, she’d give him that: six-foot-two, with a reddish tint to his brown hair. His face was so smooth she suspected he had never used a razor and doubted he was even twenty.

  “I’m Alexandra.”

  “I’ve seen you somewhere before,” he said, squinting. “Aboard a ship outside Port Moresby Harbor?”

  She did not take him to be German. “Were you the one yelling for me to service his schlange?”

  The man’s eyebrows jumped off his forehead. “No. My name is Errol Flynn. I won a gold mine in a poker game and took sail there to get a lay of the land. I’m from Tasmania.”

  “Aren’t you the lucky devil?”

  “At least tonight.” Flynn claimed the open seat. “Did a coconut fall on your head?”

  “I had an accident evading cannibals on the Fly River.” For an otherwise suave character, she felt Errol needed to polish up his pickup lines. “Luckily, they find spoiled Americans hard to digest.”

  Flynn pushed back his slicked hair. “I’d like to see that jungle.”

  “Headhunters abound,” Alexandra warned in all seriousness. While they’d likely fail to deflate Flynn’s ego, they just might shrink his head. “They passed on mine. Too colorful a challenge.”

  “I disembark tomorrow. Why not greet the morning together?”

  Alexandra spotted her father enter the lounge and strove to wrap things up. “I’m tempted, but the doctor said to refrain from intimate relations until the last of my leprosy clears up.”

  Flynn turned pale and skedaddled. Alexandra uncrossed her legs and opened her portfolio. Her photographs stirred a sense of satisfaction. She had once longed to follow in the footsteps of Eliza Scidmore and become a contributing member of the National Geographic Society. Such ambition had faded off to wherever lost schoolgirl dreams resided. People were yearning for pictorials with the stories they read and images of wildlife in their native habitats. This adventure rekindled thoughts that travel photography was a vocation she might consider pursuing once escaping college.

  Her father returned, accompanied by a man. It was debatable who was holding up whom. “This is my old chum, Crumpie Foster. We served outside Pretoria together.”

  “Of course, you did. I’m the wayward daughter.”

  “It is an indubitable pleasure.” Crumpie swaggered. “Olde Archie and I go way back and served in Pretoria together. We once were snowbound in Lhasa, finishing the ‘Great Game’ with those Ruskies. Never so delighted to get that treaty signed so we could return to the blessed heat of India.”

  Alexandra was familiar with the Great Game. It had been a century-long competition between England and Russia to sway political influence throughout Central Asia. “Would you be so kind, Mister Crumpie, to pour my father back into his chair and join us for a nightcap?”

  Crumpie tipped his top hat. “Past my bedtime. Cheerio!”

  Alexandra produced her father’s gift. She told him, “I took your advice: ‘Find what they eat, when they eat, and then wait.’”

  He marveled at the photograph of a male Paradisaea apoda in full plumage. “Brilliantly done!”

  It raised her cheeks despite the pain.

  Archibald was a prudent enough man to place contingencies for Alexandra to attain sole control of her trust fund. She had turned twenty-one in June. She had avoided eloping with some cad or birthing a child out of wedlock. All that remained was getting a college degree. It was the only reason she’d gone to start.

  She said, “I can put off school and we can go after the cock-of-the-rock.”

  He exercised his gift for sobering up instantaneously. “We’ll have none of that. Time to retire. I’ll expect you at breakfast to see me off.”

  “Sweet dreams, Father.” He made it out of the lounge in a straight-enough path. Alexandra gathered her belongings, hoping to replicate his exit, feeling tipsy herself. To linger any longer would woo temptation to not reach her cabin door alone and allow some young buck in, like Flynn.

  A group of men browsing a shared newspaper at the bar had their collective eyes on her. She worried she was overstaying her welcome.

  One man stepped forward, obstructing her exit. “La femme photographe magnifique!” The spirited Frenchman bowed and kissed her hand as his colleagues gathered around.

  “Merci.” Another man passed her champagne. The attention made Alexandra blush. The entire lounge rose to their feet, holding up their glasses. They appeared to be waiting for her to make some eloquent toast, but all that sprang from her lips was, “Huzzah!”

  “Hear, hear!” several of them bellowed, while others applauded as she drained her glass.

  “Thank you, gentlemen.” Alexandra started on her way, flushed by the moment, but then turned back. They looked to be a group with much collective wisdom at their disposal. She asked, “Would any of you know, perchance, when the Treaty of Lhasa was signed?”

  The tallest one, who espoused a military air, answered, “That would be September 1904.”

  The stated date hit Alexandra like a sledgehammer. She could only manage a weak smile and nod. Her body teetered. She had been a postscript child, four years removed from the next youngest, Emma. It was her belief that her mother abhorred her for that inconvenience.

  June 1905. It was all bad math. Archibald Bathenbrook could not possibly be her father.

  Desperately seeking her cabin, Alexandra lost her footing and bumped into a tall man donning a top hat. She thought his fingers to be dreadfully cold and bony. He righted her fall before continuing down the passageway without a word. His loping strides lent his long white hair to bounce on his shoulders.

  She moved along and noticed a bracelet was missing from her wrist. It was a colorful braid of horsehair strands purchased from a Chippewa tribeswoman years ago. Though it held no monetary value, Alexandra had always worn it as a talisman.

  She felt too compromised to retrace her steps to find it. Upon reaching her door, she could barely salvage the key from her purse. Tears streamed her cheeks as she collapsed on her bed. After crying for a few minutes, she retrieved a pen and paper.

  Only her brother was left to her. The impulse to confide in her grief subsided quickly. The world was a blur, and she’d wait to post something sober when the ship made its later port of call in Hawaii.

  “If you don’t save me, William,” she whispered, “who will?”

  Chapter 4

  Montana: June 1927

  ALEXANDRA BATHENBROOK would start her life as a millionairess with one suitcase in hand and a rifle slung across her back. She left her room at Hamilton Hall a final time and cut through campus, which remained littered with streamers, confetti, and a few mortarboards left unclaimed from the graduation ceremony for the Class of 1927. She had treated Montana State College as a hideout more than an institute of higher learning, but her four years here were not a total waste. Fond memories of two-stepping with lads at the Bobcat Lair, cheering on Ott Romney’s powerhouse basketball team, and hitching to the local hot springs for a steamy soak were portable mementos, easily summoned.

  She had come to learn that ardent boob-men only paid her passing heed, while staunch leg-men always locked their gaze. As for incorrigible ass devotees, they were but putty in her hands.