Friedman pondered what I’d said a while, causing his forehead to get all scrunched up and his hands to ball into fists, because he had learnt what I’d known for the longest time: the Widow Amy DeFee is vile, repulsive, mean, contemptible, and one poor excuse for a woman. She had kidnapped two innocent young ladies, still in their teens, who had never harmed nobody except by lowering their batting averages, and now that evil harlot was holding those young ladies for a mighty big ransom. Plus, she had bet on a baseball game, bet for Breckenridge to win, for she knew we’d have to lose to save the innocent girls’ lives—not that we had much of a chance to win without them—and that didn’t even include the fact that my stepma was making me deliver half of that ransom money to some place called Fort Vasquez.
“Five thousand dollars.” Friedman’s head shook.
“Ten thousand,” Buckskin corrected. “Five thousand to be taken to Fort Vasquez, and five thousand to be left at the game at Breckenridge.”
“That’s a lot of money.”
“Carrie and Ruth are worth it,” I said soberly.
The inkslinger blinked, swallowed, and shook his head. “I mean … can Ed Norris come up with that much cash?”
Buckskin sighed long and hard. “That’s another problem. Norris lit a shuck. With the cashbox.”
Friedman got another dumb look on his face. “What exactly does this Western colloquialism … ‘lit a shuck’ … mean?”
Later, Buckskin told me that Friedman had been in shock, which explained the dumb looks and stupid questions, and I guess that might be expected. Besides, I admit that I felt pretty good when I told the writer that lit a shuck come about because folks lit corn shucks to find their way home, or wherever they was off to, when it had grown dark, and had become a saying used when someone took off in a hurry, often in the dead of night. You knew them kind of things when you grew up in Kansas, of course, unless you was an ignorant writer in Topeka.
“I can get ten thousand dollars,” Friedman said, “but not by tomorrow. Tomorrow’s Sunday. The banks are closed.” He paused before asking: “After the game, our receipts will add up to …?”
Buckskin’s head started shaking. “Won’t be near that much, even on our best day.” He let out another weary breath. “And the crew wants to be paid …” He paused in deep thought, cocking his head the way smart folks do when they’re contemplating an idea, and finally said: “Greeley’s manager was interested in our grandstand and canvas fences.”
“You mean sell it to them?” Friedman asked.
“Yeah,” Buckskin said. “But there’s still the problem of the banks being closed on Sundays. Plus, I arranged a special train to get us to Breckenridge. It’s not a normal stop for the Colorado and Southern line. They’re going to want their money, too, and so will our hotel.”
“Write a check,” Louis Friedman said. “When it doesn’t …”
“Mister …” Buckskin’s tone got stern. “Western men have this little thing called ‘honesty.’ ”
Mr. Friedman opened his mouth, but no words come out. Me, I was thinking that Judge Brett and Snail Snyder was Western men, too, and neither of them possessed nothing near honesty.
Buckskin sighed.
“I have enough to cover the checks … for both the hotel and the special train. Count on it,” said Mr. Friedman. Then he asked the obvious question most folks would ask: “Shouldn’t we go to the Greeley police and tell …?”
“No, absolutely not,” Buckskin said, not even letting Friedman finish his sentence. “If word of this got out, it would be bad for the team … maybe for all female teams. There’s enough people already saying the sport is too dangerous for girls. Can you imagine what they would say if they heard that two of our players had been kidnapped and a ransom demanded? A lot of parents would stop letting their daughters get anywhere near a baseball field, much less play the sport. So, no … that’s not an option. Besides, based on what the kid’s told me about these two … well, I don’t even want to think about it.”
The journalist’s face whitened. “What shall we do?” he asked.
Buckskin looked more tired than I’d ever seen him, even when he was catching a game when I couldn’t do nothing but spike fastballs a foot in front of the plate. We sat in silence.
Finally, Buckskin told us the best plan he could come up with, even though all three of us knew his plan was a risk, especially since we didn’t have any money to put toward the ransom. Besides covering the checks for the hotel and train, Friedman was in charge of making sure Ruth’s mother kept her mouth shut and didn’t go to the police or the press. The inkslinger said he was pretty sure he could convince her to remain quiet and that he even had some kind of tincture which could help calm her.
As we were getting ready to split up, Friedman looked at me and said: “You don’t have to do this.”
It wasn’t like he was volunteering to take my place, and even if he had, I wouldn’t have let him, because I was afraid the Widow Amy DeFee would hurt, or worse, kill Carrie and Ruth.
“I’m doing it,” I said.
“But they might kill you,” he blurted.
Like I hadn’t already figured that out.
* * * * *
The game against Greeley was difficult. We sold our grandstand and canvas fences to the owner of the Greeley Sugars to pay the crew, who were then let go. I had to pitch, even though it wasn’t my turn, and in the written lineup, I was listed as Lady Waddell. Folks in Greeley don’t know nothing about baseball, so they weren’t bothered that I bat and throw right-handed whilst Russ Waddell and Carrie Cassady were left-handers. Well, maybe the fans and players in Greeley thought that Lady Waddell was some switch-pitcher.
We struggled, ’cause everybody on our team was uneasy about Carrie and Ruth, the team being without a manager, and the grandstand and fences having been sold and the crew dismissed. But we won, eleven to seven, on account that Greeley fielded a real bad bunch of fat ballists who played like it was a Sunday after a payday—which it was—and that they had partook of too much John Barleycorn on Saturday night—which they had.
* * * * *
After the game I put on denim jeans, boots, a bib-front shirt, and a floppy hat of brown wool, sort of what you’d find on baseball players from Boston or Morrisania way back in the olden times. I didn’t think any Greeley folks could identify me as a baseball player, even though I carried my bag.
I watched the Bloomer Girls get on “The C&S Bloomer Girl Special,” as well as the two porters, enlisted by Louis Friedman, help get Mrs. Eagan to her berth. I saw Buckskin talking to the conductor before boarding the train, but he didn’t even look at me. Wasn’t long before the special started hissing and chugging and squeaking and groaning as it left the station, leaving me behind, alone and cold.
With clouds gathering, the wind had picked up, and it had turned chilly for August. I wished I’d had a jacket or a coat, because I had to start walking south to Fort Vasquez. Jorge at the hotel had told me that Fort Vasquez, if anything was still left of it, lay eighteen miles south.
Maybe a mile out of town, a terrible racket came up from behind and pulled up beside me. It was an automobile and like nothing I’d ever seen before. The driver wore a leather helmet, big goggles, linen duster, and scarf.
“Get in,” he said once he stopped the thing, then added: “I’m Crazy Uncle Donnie Odom.”
The name meant nothing to me, and he wasn’t my uncle, because my real ma and pa didn’t have no siblings. Crazy Uncle Donnie Odom pushed up his goggles, so I could look into his eyes and see that he wasn’t lying, I guess.
“Blair Baddeley said to give you a ride to the Fort Vasquez ruins,” he told me.
I knew he spoke the truth once he said that, ’cause, excepting me, I don’t believe anyone else was aware of this alias Buckskin had used in the past.
After tossing my bag atop what Crazy Uncle
Donnie Odom called a rumble seat, I got into the seat next to him. I was nervous, never having been in one of these contraptions before, and when he told me to hold on tight, because he didn’t go nowhere slow, I became more nervous.
I can tell you, Crazy Uncle Donnie Odom wasn’t fooling.
Don’t imagine you’ve ever been in a 1905 Buffum Model G Greyhound Roadster driven by somebody who calls hisself Crazy? I advise you—Don’t do it —unless, of course, you’re bound to save the lives of innocent young ladies.
Once we got out of town, Crazy Uncle Donnie Odom had that automobile going so fast that all I could do was close my eyes and hold on while bouncing up and down and sideways in the passenger seat. I just prayed that the tires wouldn’t fly off or that we wouldn’t leap off the road, or that whatever made this thing go wouldn’t blow up.
We covered them eighteen miles in no time at all, with Crazy Uncle Donnie Odom yelling to tell me all about the roadster and how it worked. When he stopped the Buffum Greyhound, he almost launched me over the engine and its loud cylinders right into the dirt road. Once my heart resumed beating and Crazy Uncle Donnie Odom quit laughing, he shifted his goggles, reached behind me, grabbed up my bag, handed it to me, and pointed at the side of the road.
“What’s left of the trading post is through those cottonwoods, kid. It was an adobe trading post back in the days of the mountain men. Just don’t expect to find no Fort McHenry.”
Which I hadn’t been, having never heard of Fort Vasquez before the previous night or Fort McHenry till Crazy Uncle Donnie Odom brought it up.
After I got out of the roadster on my unsteady legs, Crazy Uncle Donnie Odom lowered his goggles and shifted the gear, and the Buffum roared down the dusty path, leaving me alone, the wind blowing, and something dangersome awaiting me once I got through the cottonwood grove. Didn’t know iffen my legs could still recollect how to walk after that nightmare of a ride.
* * * * *
The mountains were behind me, and the cottonwoods gave me some protection from the wind as I moved through them. What lay before me might as well have been Kansas, because it was mostly flatland with a handful of trees scattered across a lot of nothingness. Crazy Uncle Donnie Odom had been right. If there ever had been a fort named Vasquez on these windblown plains, the wind had took the adobe away. What was left were a few rounded, misshapen mounds, some scattered rocks, a few piles of rotted trees, and wood.
Felt like I’d been walking forever, so I took out the pocket watch that Louis Friedman had given me. Well, he didn’t give it to me, as I figured he would want it back. It was a right nice watch, it being a Waltham repeater, solid gold, sixteen jewels, with a name engraved on the back with the date—May 9, 1888—with pictures of an older man and woman inside.
I discovered I’d been in among the cottonwoods an hour, so I couldn’t wait no longer. I was as scared as I had ever been. Like Buckskin always says, felt like the wings of turkey vultures were flapping around in my belly. Still, I made myself step out in the open. The wind practically knocked me down, but I hunched over and moved toward what had once been a trading post. Had to hold the floppy woolen hat on my head with my hand.
When I glanced up, I saw three horses up ahead, saddled but hobbled, and a campfire. The smoke from that fire was being lifted and carried away by the wind about as quickly as it rose above the tall grass and weeds.
I kept moving. When I was almost through the tallest of the weeds, a fellow wearing a long black coat stood up by the fire and spun around to take notice of me. He hollered something, which caused a dude stretched out on a bedroll to sit up right quick. When he saw me, he threw off his covers, grabbed a gun, and jumped to his feet.
Two men. But three horses. I didn’t see Ruth Eagan or Carrie Cassady nowhere.
The two didn’t invite me in, but they didn’t tell me to stop as I continued to walk toward them. The fire, while not big, looked warm, and after being hauled seventeen miles in a roadster driven by a lunatic and the temperature dropping each and every minute, I wanted to warm my hands. So I went to the fire, laid my bag on the ground, and done what I wanted to do.
“Who are you?” the one in the black coat asked.
“Lucy Totton,” I told him.
He give his pard a look, stepped closer, and said: “How did you make it …?” He give a sideways glance at his pard again, who asked: “Was that you in that horseless carriage that we heard out on the road a while back?”
Ignoring the question, I said: “Where are Ruth and Carrie?”
The one who had been sleeping giggled. “Well, they ain’t here.”
The one in black asked: “Did you bring the money?”
Sighing, I moved back a bit from the fire and began undoing the knot that held my bag closed. The two licked their lips greedily. From the bag I withdrew my bat of white ash with red stripes and the big knob at the bottom of the handle that was supposed to offset the weight of the barrel. Holding the bat at my side, I stood and spread my legs out just a little, and gave them a look to let them know that I was serious, even if mighty cold.
The one in the black coat sniggered. Then he pushed back the tail of his coat so I could see the Colt revolver, most likely fully loaded, belted on his hip. The other worked the lever on the repeating rifle, but he didn’t aim the Marlin at me.
Instead he said: “Eugene, what kind of fool brings a baseball bat to a gunfight?”
Them were the last words he spoke, or would speak till them wires got taken out of his jaw, for I swung my bat at him first, on account that he had a cocked rifle in his hands while the pistol remained holstered in the other’s gun belt. The rifle holder had pulled the trigger, but not before my bat sent blood and teeth flying into the grass and weeds around, which caused the three horses to begin to buck and try to kick loose their hobbles. As the man dropped his rifle and fell, saying garbled words that were impossible to understand, I kept on spinning so that when I had spun all the way around I smacked the bat in the ribs of the black-coated fellow, which sounded awful. I’m guessing more than a few of them got busted. He fell to the ground, dropping his Colt. The look in his eyes said he regretted mightily all his criminal ways, because my next swing ended his chance of confessing with spoken words till his jaw mended, too.
That’s when the third man, hiding in the prairie like some snake in the grass, fired at me.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Breckenridge Bulletin
Breckenridge, Colorado • August 4, 1906
Breckenridge is to have some baseball doings that will enliven things and give the fans something to talk about in the near future … It is supposed the whole populace will turn out to see the fair damsels twirl the sphere, wield the bat, and slide for the bases. Old men should wear their glasses.
The momentum and energy used in breaking the jaws of the two ruffians with the baseball bat had made me collapse to the ground, so the bullet from the gun of the third fellow passed over me and spanged off a rock, though it frightened the horses all over again. Scairt me, too, and I moved like a jackrabbit away from the fire and toward what was left of one of Fort Vasquez’s walls. I made it just as another bullet knocked dust and pebbles from the broken wall, and I sank low to the ground, clutching my white ash bat as if it could protect me.
I immediately felt like an idiot, for I had crawled right past a Colt revolver and a Marlin rifle, leaving them with the fellows who had planned to shoot me with them. If them two hooligans hadn’t been suffering pure agony, they could’ve used their weapons, and I have no doubt I would not be writing this account of what was happening to me.
Then a shot clipped weeds and broke prairie sod near me, and I began to think my chances of leaving what wasn’t much of a hiding place and trying to grab the Colt revolver or the Marlin and then defending myself, like the hero in some half- dime novel, were slim to none.
The big rifle roared again. The
bullet buzzed over my head, and I knew if this kept up, I’d have to make a run for it. There was another shot, but this one sounded like it came from farther out. All was quiet as I tried to plan my next move and listened for movement around me, but all I heard was those two suffering men over by the fire and the spooked horses. The wind started really roaring, and that’s all I heard till many minutes later.
“Kid!”
Since the wind was coming from the northwest, I heard my name nice and clear. My heart turned joyful, and I stupidly leaped up and spun around—never thinking that if I was mistaken, the assassin hiding in the prairie grass could shoot me dead.
But I wasn’t wrong, for Buckskin was headed my way, shoving a man, who staggered as he was pushed right over the little mound I had been hiding behind. Buckskin sent him sprawling into the dirt, and I saw the bloody hole through the assassin’s shoulder and knew that this part of Buckskin’s plan had worked out none too shabby. I was sure glad he made it.
Being experienced at stock detecting and shooting criminals, Buckskin knew what he was doing. The two villains whose jaws I had busted wouldn’t be talking, so my pard swapped his rifle for my bat and stood, spread-legged, over the fellow with the bullet through his shoulder.
“Where are the two girls?” he asked.
“You go to …” the man started to say, but he didn’t finish, ’cause Buckskin smashed his knee with my bat. The man screamed. To be honest, I almost screamed, too.
“I’ll ask you just once more,” Buckskin said.
“Breckenridge!” the man shouted, but not all that clearly, because he was near crying.
Buckskin, Bloomers, and Me Page 16