“It’s peach,” she said. “Not peaches from the States, but Salt Lake. Dried peaches, of course. That’s about all I could find at Rockfellow’s. No raspberries, no cherries, and he had just sold out of currants. I will not pay a dollar a pound for blackberries and detest canned fruits, especially when he’s charging twenty-two dollars for a case of peach airtights.”
She tried again. “Please.”
His trembling right hand reached out and took the nearest pie. He almost dropped it. Swallowing, he looked briefly at the young woman, nodded, and stared at what remained of his brogans. “Thank you, ma’am,” he whispered.
“You take care of yourself,” she said. “And good day to you, Mr. Brill.” Boone heard her lace-up shoes leave the boardwalk, cross the street, reach the other side of the road. After a few footsteps, her voice sang out, “Might I have your name, sir?”
Across the street, the angel stared at him.
“Boone, ma’am,” he answered without thinking, a whisper at first, then he called out loud enough for her to hear. “Boone. Mason Boone.”
“What a charming name, Mr. Boone. A good day to you, Mr. Boone. And to you, Mr. Brill.”
He watched her walk to the corner, turn on to Wallace Street. A moment later, her fine voice called out, “Pies. Dried-peach pies. Five dollars. Pies. Pies. Fresh-baked pies.”
“I’ll be a clubfooted bastard,” the old man whispered.
After lifting his gaze, Boone turned toward the livery owner, who fished the pipe from his mackinaw and fumbled in a shirt pocket for a match. “Today’s your lucky day, Mason Boone. Five-dollar pie. And a two-dollar job. You ought to try your hand at faro over at Esterhouse’s layout.”
He started to strike the match, stopped, stared at the pie, then at Boone’s face. “You ought not ruin that pie eatin’ it with your filthy fingers. They’s a spoon in my office. Top drawer on the right-hand side. Wash it when you’re finished. I’m goin’ to the Liquor Emporium. Today just ain’t my day.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Keep your hair on,” Professor Thomas Dimsdale yelled at the tramp printer standing over the Degener & Weiler printing press in the back of the Montana Post office.
The Irish printer muttered an oath.
“Your job is to set type, Patrick, and run a proof. If anything is incorrect, I shall make the necessary corrections as I read the copy.” He sighed, ran his fingers through his dark hair, and shrugged at Nelson Story. “Sorry, Nelson. You were saying?”
Story smiled and sipped the tea the editor had brewed.
“I said I’ve made a fortune in my mining investments.”
The editor reached for the pencil that rested over his right ear.
“This isn’t for you to print in the Post.”
The young man’s pale face seemed to drain of even more color.
“We’re talking, businessman to businessman, friend to friend,” Story told him.
“As you wish.”
Story set the cup on the saucer. “The Monson, Julia Ferina, Farragut, Oro Cache did well. The half interest I owned in Christenot’s mine over in Pine Grove did fine, too.”
“Bully for you.” Dimsdale found the silk handkerchief in the pocket of his waistcoat and dabbed his mouth.
“But the pickings get smaller every day. Meaning my profits get smaller, too.”
The Englishman sighed. “Alas, this is a story I hear wherever I travel up or down the Fourteen Mile City.” He straightened, and spoke in alarm. “You don’t mean to pull out of Last Chance Gulch, do you?”
“Not yet.” Story’s head shook.
“How’s your store in Summit doing?” the professor asked.
Story let out a short laugh. “When you can charge nine dollars for a hammer, and no one tries to haggle, I’d say you’re doing all right. But I came here to mine.”
“And you have succeeded.”
“Yeah. So far.”
“If you mean that legislation being bandied about in Washington City, Nelson, I don’t think you have much to fear. Justice Hosmer left to straighten out these foolish politicians. And others are joining him, not to quash a law that would make miners bid on claims they already, and rightfully, own—ridiculous, asinine, an absurdity—but to promote statehood. Imagine, Nelson. Virginia City, state capital of Montana. Not territorial.”
“Are you smoking opium these days, Professor?”
The befuddled look on the journalist and schoolteacher’s face bemused Story, who chuckled. Nelson Story, everyone in the territory would say, rarely attempted a joke.
“Oh, I see. But let me point out that Nevada got statehood just last year.”
“Last year, we were fighting a war.”
The handkerchief returned to Dimsdale’s pocket.
“Paris Pfouts left for the East. Hoping to secure investments.”
Story waited, and the Englishman continued. “There’s money back East, Nelson. Lots of money. You should go to New York City. Philadelphia.”
“I’m considering it.”
“Is that for publication?”
“After I depart, you can print it. Not before. There are still some in the gulch who would like to see me dead. Robbing a stagecoach is a pastime for many banditti.”
“Surely we have rid the Fourteen Mile City of the last of the nefarious brigands.”
Story chuckled. “Professor, half the population of Virginia City still think I’m a nefarious brigand. N. G. Story. No Good Story.” He nodded at the newspapers rolled up on Dimsdale’s desk.
The editor studied the papers, confused, and looked back at Story.
“You read papers from all over the territories and the states, Thomas,” Story explained. “Where do you think the money is?”
Now life returned to the newspaperman’s eyes and his face seemed to flush. Dimsdale laughed heartily. “Nelson, you should never ask a newspaper editor for financial advice.”
“That’s the damned truth,” the tramp printer yelled from the back.
Ignoring the Irishman, Story repeated his question.
Dimsdale sighed again, shook his head, and said, “I don’t know, Nelson. There’s grain. Farmers are moving into the Gallatin Valley. But that likely means the price of grain will decline, dramatically. And I don’t believe farming is a wise investment. A hailstorm. A drought. Too much risk involved. Have you thought about opening a bank?”
“I think about everything.”
“Well, what is it that you truly desire?”
“That Ellen didn’t have to sell pies on the streets.”
“I think she just does that for joy.”
“A wife of mine should not have to work.”
Dimsdale turned his head, probably because a professor like him, from England to boot, didn’t understand Nelson Story’s way of thinking.
“She’s pregnant, Thomas,” Story said.
The man whirled, stunned, blinking repeatedly. “And, no,” Story told him, “you aren’t printing that in your paper, either. What I’m looking for from you, old friend, is what all these newspapers you get are reporting. About what people want. About what’s gonna make a man with ambition his pile.”
When the Englishman stopped blinking, and after he found his piece of silk to dab his mouth, he sipped his own tea, swallowed, and said, “Nelson, a newspaper prints what its editor believes. If the name of the newspaper is the Republican, you can bet it’s leaning toward the party lines. If its banner reads Democrat, there you have it. And if it says Independent, the editor is a damned liar.”
“Yours says Post.”
“Because that’s what John Buchanan named it when he started this rag back in ’64, and I was just too lazy to give it another name after I bought him out.”
A silence filled the office, except for the printer as he set type.
“Professor,” Story said after a long while. “You know me for what I’ve done since I came up here with Ellen. Want to hear my biography? I started college, never finished. My pa died.
So did my sister. But that’s not what I’m telling you. I freighted in Kansas. Chopped wood. Hauled wood. Hell, that’s how I first met Ellen. I’d buy a calf and sell it, buy a hog and sell it. Clerked in a mercantile. Pushed a broom. Mule skinner. Sold fence rails, posts, worked for a farmer or two. Drove a wagon to Denver during the Pikes Peak rush. Tried mining. Tried selling stuff to miners. Even ran a mercantile. Did just about everything and hardly cleared a dollar.”
“You’ve cleared more than a dollar now, Nelson.”
“And I’d like to keep what I’ve earned. And make more. So my wife, when she’s in the family way, doesn’t have to sweat over an oven and walk the streets selling pies.”
With a shrug, Dimsdale reached for the nearest rolled newspaper, tore off the wrapper, slid it out from the string, unrolled it, and laid it across his desk after moving the cup and saucer to the far side. He pointed. “This is the Galveston, Texas, newspaper, but this article is from a Dallas paper. Says Missourians and Kansans are ruining the beef market because of this egregious lie about Texas cattle killing off local cattle with something they call Spanish fever.” His finger moved down the column, up to the top of the page, and partway down until stopping. “Here . . . no . . . this just decries the actions of the Freedmen’s Bureau. What could you expect from an improvident Texas newspaper?” The finger moved again. “The pecans are lovely.” He looked up. “Pecan pie. Oh, my, fresh pecans.”
He slid the Galveston paper to Story and found another newspaper delivered by stagecoach. “Here. The Tribune from Chicago. Likely more reliable. Well, here’s a report on the progress of the transcontinental railroad. Railroads, Nelson. Now there’s something to consider.”
“I think those railroaders would rob me blind before I knew what I was doing.”
“I would not try to counter that argument. Beef prices are . . . interesting. I did not realize beef was in such demand.”
Dimsdale leaned back in his chair, swiveled, and sighed as though he were dreaming of eating peach pie after a supper of beef à la mode. He pretended that the silk handkerchief was a napkin.
“When’s the last time you ate a steak, Nelson?”
Story grinned. “That wasn’t elk?”
Dimsdale returned to the Tribune, scanned down the column but stopped, and raised his head. “Did not you say one of your previous enterprises involved selling a calf?”
“Two calves,” Story said. “Bull calves, to be precise.”
“And you profited from this initiative?” the editor asked.
CHAPTER NINE
José Pablo Tsoyio tried to lift his face out of Texas caliche, but the sole of a boot pushed his head back into the gravel, then twisted, tearing out the old man’s fine hair, bending his nose back and forth, ripping his lips even more.
“When I let you up,” Big Bobby Cupid said, “you gonna go back to that cook shed and you gonna cook up something fit to eat. Like I hired you to do, greaser. You savvy that, Heliot Ramos?”
Heliot Ramos was the name José Pablo Tsoyio had chosen to use for this job. Perhaps had he picked another name . . .
The boot rose. Men chuckled. And Big Bobby Cupid moved away.
Slowly, José Pablo Tsoyio rolled over. The back of Big Bobby Cupid—now there was a man undeserving of his name. He was neither big, nor—definitely—Cupid. The Texan reached the porch of the bunkhouse, took the plate from the hands of the cowboy named Chase, and dumped the contents onto the earth. “This slop ain’t fit for hogs,” Cupid said as he turned around and tossed the plate. It landed on the side, spun, rolled, and toppled not far from José Pablo Tsoyio.
Chase and the three other cowhands laughed.
“Get up, bean-eater,” said one of the men, a tall hombre who thought his mustache to be a masterpiece. He twisted its ends, then took the bottle of rye another cowboy passed his way. “And make biscuits this time. Your corn bread tastes like sand.”
They laughed again, guzzling their whiskey, as José Pablo Tsoyio sat up. He wiped blood, sweat, and caliche from his face, spat out more blood, and tried to smooth and straighten his long, black and silver hair.
“Mis buenos amigos, perdóname . . .”
“No, no, no, no, no.” Big Bobby Cupid shook his finger as though he were scolding a child. “We gone through this before. Speak English. You want to go back to your home country, you can speak all the Mex you want. But on my place, you talk English, boy. You savvy?”
Whispering, “Nací a treinta kilómetros de donde me siento . . .” he looked to the southwest, remembering his home, remembering when this country was, indeed, his own country, and when no one spoke English.
“What’s that you just said, Heliot Ramos?” Chase asked.
“Nada. Nothing, my friends.”
“Didn’t sound like nothin’,” said the pockmarked one with the powder burn on his right hand, the one whose name José Pablo Tsoyio could never remember, perhaps because he used so many. That caused a bloody smile to form on the old man’s face. For likewise, José Pablo Tsoyio often changed his name with the seasons.
“I will cook your supper again,” José Pablo Tsoyio assured the men, and spit out more blood.
“Be sure it’s something fit for white folk to eat,” Big Bobby Cupid said.
“And leave out your damned peppers,” Chase said. “They give me the trots.”
The norteamericanos laughed. The bottle made its way back to the curly-haired man who did not look like much, but was more than good with a running iron. Never had José Pablo Tsoyio seen a gringo so good at changing another man’s brand as this youngster. An artist. He could have made a fortune working for someone other than Big Bobby Cupid.
“You got an hour,” the boss man said. “And it better be good. Else we’ll kick your ass all the way down to the border, and there’s a passel of mesquite thickets between here and the Rio Grande.”
Laughing, the men entered the adobe cabin, while José Pablo Tsoyio loosened his bandanna, wiped his face gingerly, and wondered how a man like him, who had ridden with pride as one of Don Sebastian Degallato’s vaqueros for so many years, could wind up here, like this, on a hardscrabble outfit working for pesos and being abused by ruffians with no manners, and no taste for fine cuisine.
Groaning, he tried to stand, couldn’t, and had to crawl all the way back to the porch bunkhouse, where he used the railing to pull himself to his feet. He found his hat on the warped floor, dusted it off, set it gently on his aching head, and moved toward the cook shed, slowly, always limping. He stopped by the plate Big Bobby Cupid had tossed aside, and had to slide his right leg out before leaning down to pick up the tinware. And that, José Pablo Tsoyio knew, was why he was here, cooking for a place to sleep and maybe, por favor, a little money to get by instead of dressed in refined clothes, riding as gentlemen, as caballeros . . . dancing at the balls with the prettiest señoritas in the villas.
One bull. One horse wreck too many. One leg that could no longer bend. One gringo who laughed once too often, only to lie on his back while trying to hold in his guts after the knife of José Pablo Tsoyio had ripped the fool from bowel to ribs, in San Felipe del Rio. And this is what had become of that magnificent caballero, José Pablo Tsoyio.
As the norteamericanos liked to say, “What the hell.” José Pablo Tsoyio lifted his right leg through the opening of the cook shed and struggled inside.
* * *
Most days, José Pablo Tsoyio thought, have bad moments, but as long as you end the day with a prayer on your lips and remember that you are blessed by the Virgin Mary and her Son, you will not remember the bad things that have happened, only the good. And thus you will know that tomorrow might bring wonders you have never seen.
His mother often said that. Or something like that. José Pablo Tsoyio was too old to remember much of what his mother had said, but it sounded nice. Sounded wonderful. Like the stew he had been sweating over for the past thirty minutes. He brought up the ladle, sniffed, grinned, and set the ladle on the counter bef
ore moving outside, finding the cast-iron rod, and using it to lift the cover of the oven. Yes, the biscuits were ready. Browned on the top. He hoped they were cooked thoroughly, for the man named Chase was particular about biscuits. Ah, but only if a man like Chase, or any of those who rode for Big Bobby Cupid’s rawhide outfit, could have tasted one of José Pablo Tsoyio’s sopaipillas, then he would have understood what Jesus served his disciples at the Last Supper, and what awaited everyone who walked the streets of gold.
He moved back into the shed, found the heavy towel so he could lift the stewpot and limp his way from here to the bunkhouse. There was a stove in the bunkhouse, but Big Bobby Cupid said that stove was for heat—as though anyone ever needed to warm up in this country of hell—and for white men only.
Carefully, José Pablo Tsoyio moved out of the shed, straining, limping, daring not to spill any of the mouthwatering stew as he moved. Someone must have been watching, waiting, from inside the bunkhouse because Chase and Big Bobby Cupid stepped outside and moved to either side of the open door.
“Stop,” Big Bobby Cupid said after José Pablo Tsoyio managed to climb onto the rough porch. He obeyed the order, and the big gringo stepped closer, looked at the cook’s battered face and then down into the pot.
“Smells good,” Chase said.
Cupid spit into the pot.
“Jesus,” Chase said.
Laughing, Cupid stepped back. “Why didn’t you fix this to begin with?”
“My apologies,” José Pablo Tsoyio said.
“Yeah.” Big Bobby Cupid turned and yelled, “Chow’s on, boys. Goat stew. With onions.”
A rebel yell sang out from inside, and José Pablo Tsoyio gingerly made his way to the heavy table, where he set the pot on a pad. He moved toward the door.
“Where you goin’, buster?” the magician with the running iron yelled.
“For your biscuits, compadres,” José Pablo Tsoyio told them.
“Biscuits. Hot damn. Biscuits and stew. Run fetch ’em, Ramos. I’m practically starved.”
José Pablo Tsoyio, alias Heliot Ramos, made his way back to the Dutch oven, put the biscuits on a platter, and returned to the bunkhouse. The biscuits were snatched up in a moment, but José Pablo Tsoyio found a bowl while the other men settled into their chairs and began to eat.
A Thousand Texas Longhorns Page 5