The Gentleman Outlaw and Me--Eli

by Mary Downing Hahn

  At this, Caesar whined and nudged me with his nose as if he too was aiming to save my soul.

  The murmuring grew a little louder. One lady said, "Let the child play. If he loses, I'll give him a dollar myself."

  Before Calvin could accept her offer, a tall, thin gentleman stepped up to the box and laid down a ten-dollar gold piece. "I'll play for the boy," he said. "If I win, he can keep the money free and clear." He returned the silver dollar to my pocket, and the crowd clapped and whistled.

  Calvin glanced at me, his face pale. He'd clipped the corner of the ace of hearts so I'd be sure to find it. If he put that card on the table, the stranger was bound to notice. It was clear Calvin would have to go on cheating. Either way, he was taking a risk, I thought, as the gentleman had a sharp-eyed, hollow-cheeked look that reminded me of a half-starved wolf.

  "Well?" The gentleman eyed Calvin impatiently. Or was it suspiciously? "Do you accept my offer or not?"

  From the corner of my eye, I made a further study of the gentleman's appearance. He wore a fancy black coat over a white shirt, a black tie knotted loose around his neck. In its folds glittered a stone that might have been glass but more likely was a genuine diamond. On his head was a slouch hat. Its brim hid most of his face but not his fancy handlebar mustache, waxed to perfection, or his long brown hair.

  A revolver hung on one hip for all to see. I didn't doubt for a moment he knew how to use it.

  In short, the fellow was the very image of what Calvin himself wanted to be—handsome, well dressed, and dangerous. If he were to step off the train in Tinville, someone would run for the sheriff straightaway.

  I felt as edgy as a dog in a thunderstorm, but if Calvin was rattled, he didn't show it. Without hesitating, he went into his routine of fast shuffling.

  The gentleman's sharp eyes followed every move those hands made, but Calvin kept his patter going and then stood back to let the gentleman try his luck.

  The gentleman studied the cards intently. Sunlight sparkled on the golden eagle he'd laid on the box. It was so quiet I thought I heard the fleas on Caesar's back hopping from one spot to another.

  Finally the gentleman leaned over the crate and picked a card. Quick as a wink, he held up the ace of hearts. Everyone in the audience gave a huge sigh of relief to see my good fortune.

  Except me. I knew full well there was no ace among those three cards. It was up Calvin's sleeve. When the gentleman leaned over the crate, he must have slipped an ace out of his own sleeve.

  It seemed Calvin had met his equal in tricks, maybe even his better. From the look on his face, the Gentleman Outlaw was no doubt thinking the same thing.

  Taking a matching gold piece from Calvin, the gentleman turned to me with a smile and handed me the two coins. "Put these someplace safe," he said, eyeing Calvin. "The money's yours and yours alone, boy."

  "Thank you, sir." I dropped the gold eagles into my overalls pocket, gazing into the gentleman's dark eyes all the while. It was a little like matching stares with a deadly snake.

  Although I expected him to denounce Calvin as a fraud, he didn't utter a word. He simply stood there watching the Gentleman Outlaw begin his spiel again. Calvin's forehead was beaded with perspiration, but his fingers were as quick as ever and his voice didn't shake.

  I admired his nerve. Doc Holliday himself couldn't have been more composed under pressure than Calvin Featherbone.

  After a while, I remembered I was supposed to lie low till it was time to board the train late at night. If folks saw me with Calvin, they'd guess I was his accomplice. There was no telling what kind of ruckus that might cause.

  I looked back once. The tall gentleman was still watching Calvin. I don't think either he or Calvin noticed my departure.

  Using my silver dollar, I bought supper for Caesar and me and went over to the depot to wait for Calvin. A pretty little crescent moon smiled down at me from the starry sky, but the night air was cold. I was grateful to have Caesar beside me, big and warm.

  To pass the time, I pulled my harmonica out of my pocket and began playing. Just for myself, not for money, enjoying the happy sounds I was making. No sad tunes tonight. We were rich, Calvin and me. Tomorrow we'd be on our way to Tinville.

  All of a sudden, a tall figure in black stepped out of the shadows and sat on the baggage cart beside me. It was the mysterious gentleman, my benefactor. He'd moved so silently I hadn't even heard his footsteps.

  'You play very well," he said in a voice honeyed by years in Dixie. "Tell me, do you know 'Shenandoah'?"

  "Sure." I played the song nice and slow, bringing out all its sadness, and he sat beside me, smoking one of those long, skinny cigars, a melancholy expression softening his bony features.

  When I was done, he thanked me and asked if I still had the two gold eagles he'd given me.

  I touched my pocket to feel their outline under the cloth. "'Course I do."

  "I'm glad to hear it, boy," said he. "Because that's just about all you've got in this world."

  I stared at him, thinking of the hundreds of dollars Calvin had collected from the townsfolk. I realized too that he knew there was a connection between Calvin and me. My mouth dried up and my heart beat faster. "What do you mean?" I asked, trying to keep my voice from shaking. "Where's Calvin? Has he been robbed?"

  "The fool lost every cent at the faro table," the gentleman said. "I warned him the game was as rigged as three-card monte, but he insisted he could outsharp the dealer. Serves him right, I suppose."

  I couldn't take in the man's words. "But Calvin's the best card player alive today," I stammered. "His daddy taught him everything he knew, and he was even better than Doc Holliday himself."

  "Was he indeed?" The man's laughter turned to a cough. When he recovered, he reached into his pocket and gave me two more gold eagles. "If you plan to go on shilling for a tinhorn gambler, you'll need this, my boy."

  My face turned so red it's a wonder it didn't light the night like a candle. "How the Sam Hill did you know Calvin and I were working together?"

  The man laughed again. "I'd be a daisy if I failed to notice something so painfully obvious." He leaned closer and tapped my knee. "To tell the truth, your friend was fortunate he attracted a crowd of ignoramuses today. Three-card monte is a beginner's game, boy, a beginner's game. Tell Calvin not to try it in the streets of Durango or Silverton. He'll be run out of town on a rail."

  Getting to his feet, the man gave Caesar a pat on the head. "My train's arriving," he said. "Farewell, young fellow. And good luck to you."

  Touching the brim of his hat, my mysterious benefactor strode down the platform and vanished in the cloud of steam billowing out from under an incoming locomotive.

  "Thank you, sir, thank you," I called, half tempted to follow him onto the train and beg him to take me to Tinville. He seemed worthier of my trust and gratitude than Calvin Featherbone.

  But the gentleman didn't look back. Nor did I have the nerve to chase after him like a lost puppy.

  Long after the train left, I sat on the baggage cart, fingering the four gold coins and thinking. Surely Calvin hadn't gambled away our fortune. It made my stomach churn to think of it. If the money was gone, how would we ever get to Tinville?

  Gazing into Caesar's big brown eyes, I showed him the gold coins. "I've got forty dollars, boy. Do you think we should leave Calvin and go off on our own?"

  Caesar whined and licked my nose.

  "Is that a yes or a no?" I asked.

  Caesar curled up beside me, sighed, and closed his eyes. When he started snoring, I figured he was advising me to stay. And, to tell you the truth, that's what I was inclined to do. If nothing else, I wanted a chance to tell Mr. Calvin Thaddeus Featherbone, the Second, exactly what I thought of him and his no-good, low-down ways.

  12

  ALONG ABOUT 2 A.M CALVIN WOKE ME UP. I'd fallen asleep on the baggage cart and was so stiff I could barely move, but I had little time to think of my own discomfort. To my extreme shock and utter di
sgust, the so-called Gentleman Outlaw was drunk to the point he could scarcely talk.

  What he did say I wished I hadn't heard. Every word the mysterious gentleman had spoken was true. Calvin had gambled most of our money away and then spent the rest on whiskey.

  "The dealer cheated," Calvin claimed. "I saw him, and when I spoke up he threatened to shoot me. All that saved me was not having a gun. The scoundrel said he'd never fired at an unarmed man and didn't intend to begin with a greenhorn like me."

  Calvin spit in the dust and nearly fell on his face. "The very idea," he mumbled, "calling me a greenhorn! If I'd had my Colt, I'd have put a bullet between his eyes, which were so crossed I don't know how he could see straight."

  Taking Caesar with me, I slid off the baggage cart and put some distance between Calvin and me. He reeked of whiskey and cigars and all sorts of sinful nastiness. If this was what men came to, maybe being a girl wasn't as bad as I thought.

  "If you expect me to take pity on you, you're in for a mighty big surprise," I hollered, thinking if I yelled loud enough I wouldn't cry, which would be a very girlish thing to do. "That was our train fare, you low-down skunk! Now how are we going to get to Tinville?"

  To my surprise, Calvin commenced to apologize, making promises so foolish nobody with a grain of sense would believe them. Suddenly he seemed downright pathetic, all dirty and rumpled and still acting like a fine gentleman, using big words when little ones would have done just as well if not better. Though I struggled against it, I felt my heart go as soft as a rotten apple.

  "How far will twenty dollars get us?" I asked, keeping my voice as tough and hard as Little Homer's. Calvin knew I had those two gold pieces, so it made no sense to hold them back. But the other twenty dollars were my secret. Calvin had no way of knowing the mysterious gentleman had taken pity on me twice. And he wasn't going to find out.

  Calvin walked over to the ticket window and squinted at the fare table. "It appears we have enough to get to Alamosa," he said. "We'll earn some money there and then go on."

  By the time the ticket agent showed up, Calvin had doused his head in a horse trough and sobered up a bit. I handed over two of my eagles, but I kept the other two in my left shoe where I hoped they'd be safe.

  ***

  We rode third class again, which meant seats about as comfortable as church pews, but since it was now 4 A.M., the three of us fell sound asleep in no time.

  When I woke up, the sun was shining in my eyes. It was a little after six and we were pulling into Cuchara Junction. The mountains were much closer. Bigger too. After seeing the flat land of Kansas all my life, I noticed the sky seemed smaller here. You couldn't see forever the way you could back home.

  "Those are the Sangre de Cristo Mountains," said Calvin, sounding more like his regular old smarty-pants self. "It's Spanish for Blood of Christ."

  The train jerked to a stop and the conductor yelled, "All out for breakfast. Train leaves in twenty minutes, so make it snappy, folks."

  I shoved Calvin. "If you want to eat, get moving."

  He gave me a bleary-eyed look and shook his head. "No thanks, Elijah. I can't stomach the food I'd be likely to get in that hellhole."

  "Well, mind Caesar then. I'm half starved."

  Somehow I managed to grab a table and get coffee and rolls from a waitress even sloppier than the one we'd met in Pueblo. I wolfed it down and ran back to the train without a minute to spare.

  After we left Cuchara, the train climbed higher and higher into the mountains. Sangre de Cristo. I rolled the words around in my mouth, savoring their foreign taste. It was a peculiar name, but maybe it meant those old Spanish explorers suffered a lot looking for the cities of gold they never found.

  We made a short stop in a little town called La Veta to unload freight and take on a few passengers. Then we went on up the mountain. On one side of the train was a rocky wall. On the other, the ground dropped way down so all you saw out the window were sky and more mountains in the distance. For once I didn't stick my head out to get a better view. Frankly, I didn't want to know how far up we were.

  Sometime after eleven, we arrived in Alamosa, another dusty town abustle with the usual mix of folks—railroad workers, miners, cowboys, gamblers, Spaniards, and Indians. Some were heading south to Espanola in the New Mexico Territory, and others were heading west toward Durango and Silverton to try their luck at the silver camps.

  "So what do you intend to do now, Calvin?" I asked. "Thanks to you, we're dead broke." It was a mean thing to say, but I wanted to see him wince.

  Calvin was busy wiping his boot on the side of a horse trough. When he'd scraped it clean, he turned to me. "We're not quite broke, Eli."

  With a smile, he reached toward me and pretended to pull two gold eagles out of my ear. "My, my, where did these come from?"

  Too late, I grabbed at the coins. The rotten pick-pocketing son of a gun must have stolen them while I was dozing on the train.

  "Give them back, you thief!" I shouted. "They're mine!"

  'Yours?" Calvin eyed me. The coins jingled in his pocket. "And from whom did you steal them, Eli?"

  "The gentleman who outsmarted you at three-card monte gave them to me! Me—not you!"

  Calvin's eyes widened in surprise. "That scoundrel? Why, he's the very one who took me to the gambling house where I lost my money. It's my belief he and the faro dealer were a pair of swindlers. That rogue wouldn't give a penny to his own mother, let alone some scalawag like you."

  "All's I know is he found me down at the depot and told me you'd lost all our money at the faro table. Claimed he warned you the game was rigged but you wouldn't listen. Oh no, not you who knows everything and thinks he's better at cards than Doc Holliday himself!"

  I was hopping mad, but my temper just made Calvin laugh. To shut him up, I kicked his shins with my old clodhoppers. A woman passing by gave a little gasp.

  Calvin winced. "You wretched little urchin," he muttered. "I ought to give you a good whipping for that."

  I put up my fists just as Little Homer did when he got into one of his many scrapes. "Go ahead, try it. I'm ready for you, I'll give as good as I get!"

  Calvin backed off then and tried to calm me down. "Listen, Elijah," he said when I was breathing normally again. "This money will finance the scheme I've been perfecting."

  "Oh, tarnation," I muttered. "What lunatic idea has lodged in your brain now?"

  Calvin smiled. There was something in his eyes I didn't especially trust.

  "Why are you looking at me like that?" I asked, edging away as I spoke.

  "You're the dirtiest boy I've ever seen," Calvin replied. "I don't believe you've taken a bath in all the time we've been together."

  "Well, how the dickens am I supposed to wash?" It seemed to me this conversation was headed in a bad direction. Finding privacy for my natural body functions was hard enough without figuring out ways to bathe so Calvin wouldn't see anything he shouldn't see.

  We happened to be standing in front of a sorry old hotel that advertised baths for a penny. Soap and towels two cents extra.

  Calvin pointed to the sign. "Since it's essential for us to look respectable, I'm going to see you get a good scrubbing."

  I started running, but Calvin was too fast for me. Quick as a rattlesnake, his hand flew out and grabbed my overalls straps. He hauled me back so fast my feet lifted clear off the ground.

  "Sic him, Caesar," I yelled at my dog. "Bite the miserable son of a gun's leg off!"

  Unfortunately, Calvin had worked his charm on Caesar long ago. Pretending it was all a game, the mangy mutt frolicked about, grinning and wagging his tail and trying to lick my face as well as Calvin's.

  Calvin dragged me wiggling and shouting into the hotel parlor. Caesar circled us, still wagging his tail and barking good-naturedly.

  The Royal Hotel was the dirtiest, most wretched place I ever saw in my life. Mean-eyed men were lounging around, chewing tobacco and spitting on the floor, though there was a perfectly
good spittoon within easy reach. Maybe they were scared of soiling it. They all stared at Calvin, Caesar, and me as if they'd never seen our like before—and most probably they hadn't, as I was still screeching and hollering and flailing about. The desk clerk scowled and demanded to know what Calvin was up to.

  "This filthy child and I are here for a bath," Calvin said, making an effort to be heard over my howls.

  "No!" I screamed, still kicking. "No!"

  Without intending to, the desk clerk saved my hide by telling Calvin he only allowed one bather per tub. "If you both wish to wash—which I highly recommend—you'll have to pay for the use of two tubs."

  It was just an excuse to gouge money out of dirty travelers, and Calvin knew it, but for some reason that bath was so important to him he coughed up six cents with only a faint mumble of complaint.

  "As for the dog—" the clerk began but then just sort of ran out of words.

  "Don't worry about Caesar," I said. "He's never had a bath in his life and he doesn't plan to start now."

  The clerk sniffed and made a face, but I imagine he'd smelled a lot worse than Caesar, working in a dump like this.

  Turning away, he called a woman to fetch hot water, towels, and soap.

  In the washroom were a couple of hip tubs separated by a sheet hung on a rope. Not much privacy—especially if a person has a reason to hide his or her body. What saved me was the hot water. The woman brought a cauldron from the stove. When she poured it in the tub, the steam rose up dense enough for me to strip fast and jump in before Calvin saw anything—which meant I just about cooked myself.

  I scrubbed till I was as pink as an Easter ham. If I missed a spot, Calvin might decide to wash me himself. I could hear him on the other side of the sheet, splashing around and singing "O, Susanna!" It seemed to me he'd recovered his spirits mighty fast.

  After a few minutes he called out, "Are you clean, Eli?"

  'Yes!" I hollered, but he came to check anyway. Thank the Lord, he'd put on his trousers. I sunk down in the water, glad my chest was still as bony and flat as a boy's. As for the rest of me, I prayed the soapsuds were thick enough to keep him from noticing anything strange about my lower regions.