Marshal Wallace had consulted with this pioneer science-wizard many times before, always finding him pressed deeper and deeper into the frontiers of expanding American power. The Operator claimed always that he was trying to escape such influences, but it appeared to Wallace more likely that he was helping to extend them.
In his shacks and out of the backs of his wagons, the Operator designed and tested a series of devices that he claimed would enable far-reaching communications without post riders or semaphore. Another of many dubious claims, but the man was able to offer clues and messages that Wallace desperately needed, so it was better to humour him.
That these messages came from some spirit world, far outside the understanding of common men, was clear. That the man did it, with so-called "telegraphs", which he claimed to be more advanced than his European counterparts, using some queer language to detail biocommunications and other sorceries, was more unsettling than the idea of spiritism.
At least, in the world Wallace knew, spirits made sense.