The Case of the Deadly Desperados

by Caroline Lawrence

  My pa hoped Temperance would be an Oasis of Holiness in a Desert of Sin. But Temperance is not an oasis. It is a failure. The stagecoach only stops there if someone is standing in the middle of the road waving. And it usually only stops if there is room on board, or if the person flagging the lift is either pretty or rich. It is two miles to Dayton, and from there the stage goes up the Toll Road to Virginia City & all those big moneymaking silver mines on the Comstock Lode.

  The 4 o’clock stage was due any minute and one way or another I wanted to be on it.

  I had to get out of Temperance fast.

  When I snuck out of the house that day, the day my foster parents were killed, the first place I ran to was the privy. I hoped Walt & his men would not be anywhere near there, because I needed it real bad. After I did my business, I came out at a crouch & threw myself down on the dust. I wormed my way from sagebrush to sagebrush, heading for the western end of town. With only half a dozen buildings that did not take me long.

  Usually you have to wear itchy black trousers & a starched white shirt & heavy boots to school, but because it was my birthday Ma had let me wear my new attire, a set of butter-soft fringed buckskins that she had sewed herself. They were a pale gold color, so I blended in real good as I crawled through the dust. I was heading towards a big clump of sagebrush by the road.

  When I got there I smelled a bad smell and saw a dead coyote with flies buzzing around it. I recoiled when I saw it & thought of moving on. But that bush was the only cover around, and it was nearly time for the 4 o’clock stagecoach. I shoved the coyote corpse under the bush with my elbow & lay there on my stomach with my heart pounding & feeling kind of sick.

  Then I prayed.

  When I lifted my head again, I noticed there were two horses & a mule standing behind Gould’s Dry Goods. I had never seen them before. The horses were a blue roan gelding & a bay mare. The big mule was a dirty white color.

  I thought, “Those must be Walt’s mounts.”

  I also thought, “When is that stagecoach coming?”

  And finally, “What could be in my medicine bag worth dying for?”

  I pushed myself up on my elbows, pulled the medicine bag out from the neck of my buckskin shirt. It was made of buffalo hide & decorated with red & blue beads in a little arrow shape. It was as big as my right hand with the fingers spread out. My Indian ma had given it to me before we set out on the wagon train west.

  I had been wearing it around my neck during the massacre but I had not seen it since my foster parents put it in the hiding place under the floorboard. I thought I remembered what was in it but I wanted to make sure, so I opened the flap and spilled out the contents onto the dirt. Apart from the $20 gold coin, there were three things in there: my Indian ma’s flint knife, a piece of folded paper & a brass button that belonged to my original pa.

  My original pa was named Robert Pinkerton. He was around awhile after I was born but he went off to be a RailRoad Detective and never came back. I was seven when my ma got word that he had died defending a train against robbers. But I had not seen him since I was about two and I do not remember him. The only thing he left me was that brass button off his jacket. She told me it fell off his jacket the day they met & she had always meant to sew it back on but had never got around to it.

  My Christian ma Evangeline loved Detective Stories & Dime Novels. When she & Pa Emmet first took me in & I told them my original pa was Robert Pinkerton, a RailRoad Detective, she got real excited. She said my pa’s brother was probably Allan Pinkerton, who had established a famous Detective Agency in Chicago & coined the phrase “Private Eye.” That made him my uncle.

  She told me a Detective is someone who uncovers the Truth & brings Justice.

  She told me a RailRoad Detective is someone who defends passengers & goods from bandits.

  She told me Allan Pinkerton was a champion of the Negro & that he employed Lady Detectives as well as men & she said a FreeThinker like Allan Pinkerton might be glad to have news of me.

  So Ma Evangeline wrote to Allan Pinkerton in Chicago, to ask him if his dead brother had ever fathered a child by a Lakota squaw around the year 1850. We waited eagerly for a reply, but we never got one. We were living near Salt Lake City in Utah Territory then.

  Last year, when the newspapers told how my famous uncle saved Abraham Lincoln from an assassination attempt, she wrote to him again, asking if he knew about me. But then we set out for Nevada Territory. If he sent a reply, it never found us.

  Lying there in the hot dust by that sagebrush, I held my dead pa’s button in my hand for the first time in two years. Now that I could read, I saw the small button had writing on it. Curved around the top was the name PINKERTON. Curved around the bottom it said RAILROAD. And right across the middle it said DETECTIVE.

  I slipped the button into my pocket. It meant a lot to me, but I doubted it was what Walt & his gang were after.

  The flint knife was good for skinning rabbits, but you could get a flint knife anywhere. Sometimes you could pick them right up off the ground.

  I reckoned it was the piece of paper they were after.

  I remembered it had been in my Indian ma’s medicine bag when she gave it to me, but of course I could not read then.

  I unfolded the piece of paper & examined it.

  It was a Letter addressed “To Whom It May Concern.” It promised “The Bearer” several acres near Pleasant Town on Sun Peak, between the Divide & the Creek, & also “the stone cabin on Grizzly Hill & all the goods therein.” It was signed by E.A. Somebody. The surname was a scrawl. It might have started with an O or a G or even a D. I did not know where Pleasant Town was, or to which Divide or Creek it referred.

  Then I saw the signature of the witness. It was signed Rbt. Pinkerton and it was dated Nov. 21, 1857. I had just turned seven at the time he witnessed the Letter, but I had not seen him for years. I reckon he must have been killed shortly after he witnessed this Letter because we had word of his death that Christmas.

  I folded the paper carefully & put it back in my medicine bag along with my ma’s knife & the twenty-dollar coin, but I kept the button in my pocket.

  I figured the stagecoach was due any moment. I pressed my ear to the dirt & heard the faint rumble of horses’ hooves coming in the distance.

  I thought, “If I can just stay invisible for a few more minutes I will be safe.”

  I tried The Bush Trick.

  But it was hard to pretend to be a sage bush because the dead coyote kept reminding me of my dead ma & pa.

  Something else was bothering me, too.

  It was that prickly feeling I sometimes get when I am being watched.

  Then I heard a voice yell, “There he is! Get him, boys!”

  Ledger Sheet 5

  I WAS UP & RUNNING as fast as a jackrabbit, but then someone tackled me & I went down hard. All the air burst out of my lungs & I got a mouthful of dirt. I spat it out. My attacker rolled me over & sat on top of me.

  I was relieved to see it was only Olaf, one of the three school bullies. All three lived in Temperance & all three were as mean as skunks, but Olaf was the worst. He nodded to his pardners. Abe put a foot on my left wrist and Charlie stamped down on my right. They were not wearing soft moccasins like me. They were wearing heavy school shoes.

  “Why were you running away from us?” said Olaf in a pleasant tone of voice. He was sitting on me & I could hardly breathe. “You didn’t think we would beat on you today, did you? Ain’t it your birthday?”

  I nodded.

  Olaf stood up and looked at Abe & Charlie. “Shall we give him a birthday present?”

  “Yeah,” said the other two. They took their feet off my wrists.

  “Do you like punch, P.K.?” Olaf was smiling.

  I am not good at reading people.

  Ma Evangeline to
ld me you had to look at a person’s face real careful to know what they are thinking. She taught me five Expressions to look out for.

  If someone’s mouth curves up & their eyes crinkle, that is a Genuine Smile.

  If their mouth stretches sideways & their eyes are not crinkled, that is a Fake Smile.

  If a person turns down their mouth & crinkles up their nose, they are disgusted.

  If their eyes open real wide, they are probably surprised or scared.

  If they make their eyes narrow, they are either mad at you or thinking or suspicious.

  I was pretty sure Olaf was giving me Expression No. 2, the Fake Smile. But the sun was right behind his head & there was dust in my eye & I could not see his face clearly enough to tell.

  “Do you like punch?” he said again.

  I like punch more than getting beat up. So I nodded, even though I was pretty sure it was a trick question.

  I was right. It was a trick question.

  Olaf looked at the other two. “Let’s give this Freak of Nature twelve punches,” he said. “One for each year. Ha, ha, ha.”

  They bent over & started punching me, so I curled up like a wood louse.

  All of a sudden they stopped beating on me & Olaf said, “Look. The rest of his filthy tribe is coming to save him.”

  “Those don’t look like no Indians I ever seen,” said Abe.

  “Does that one in front have blood on his tomahawk?” asked Charlie. His voice was kind of wobbly.

  “Are those scalps hanging off his belt?” Abe’s voice cracked.

  I unsquinched my eyes & turned my head to see where he was looking.

  Walt & his two fake Indian friends were coming down the road on foot. Walt was holding the hatchet that had been buried in my pa’s chest. It was still bloody. They were heading straight towards us with purpose & intent.

  “Dang!” cried Olaf. His eyes went real wide. He was either surprised or scared, or maybe both. “Let’s skedaddle!”

  He & the others ran off towards some scrub pines about half a mile distant. I do not think that was very clever. If you meet a bear & you skedaddle, he will run after you. Sure enough, as soon as they started running, Walt & his gang tore after them. One of Walt’s men pulled out a pistol & started firing. It was a Colt’s Navy Revolver from the sound of it. This made my schoolmates run even faster. I could hear them yelping like coyotes pursued by a bear.

  For some reason Walt & his gang had not noticed me. Wearing my buckskins, I reckon I looked like a little bump on the ground. Also, I think they were too busy chasing Olaf, Charlie & Abe. Those three boys were wearing their black pants & white shirts and they stood out real good against the pale desert.

  Meanwhile, the stagecoach had appeared. It was rumbling through town & raising a plume of yellow dust behind it.

  I knew it would not stop for a muddy-skinned, buckskin-clad kid like me.

  That suited me just fine.

  I did not want it to stop in case Walt & his pals noticed.

  I just needed it to slow down.

  I scrambled back to the sagebrush, pulled out the dead coyote by one of its stiff hind legs & nudged it out into the road so that it would be in the direct path of the horses. It was about the same color as the dirt road and I hoped that meant the driver would not notice it too soon.

  Horses do not like to trample on things. Even the best driver cannot easily make them run over a person or animal in their path. This driver was a good one. When he saw the stiff coyote in the road, he tugged on the reins to slow his team & to steer them around it. The coach passed close by my bush & before it could pick up speed again I leapt out & jumped up onto the mail boot on the back.

  I clung on like a tick to a dog and prayed Walt and his pards would not notice me.

  Ledger Sheet 6

  AT THE BACK OF THE STAGECOACH was a big leather pouch for mail along with some canvas straps for extra luggage. I clung on to the straps for a while and hoped the great cloud of dust would hide me from view.

  When I judged we were out of sight of Temperance, I clambered up the luggage straps and flung myself on top of the stage. Sometimes there are crates or luggage up on top but on that hot afternoon there were only a couple of carpetbags lashed to the low rail that ran around the roof. Because the rail was missing at the back, I clung on to the front part so I would not slide off. Then I made myself as flat as a postage stamp on a Letter.

  Once or twice I lifted my head & glanced back to see if Walt & his pards were in pursuit, but the dust obscured everything behind me. I tried listening, but it was too noisy to hear anything apart from the horses’ hooves pounding & their harness jangling & the coach rattling & creaking beneath me.

  We had been rocking along for a few minutes when I heard the driver cry “Whoa!” & I felt the coach slow down.

  I was praying, “No, don’t stop.”

  I kept my eyes tightly shut until I heard him say, “Off! You get off now!”

  I glanced up. Sure enough, he had twisted round on his seat and was glaring down at me.

  He raised his whip & said, “No danged Heathens allowed. You savvy?”

  I lifted up my head & said, “Please, sir. Please keep driving. My life is in danger. I am not a Heathen. I am a Methodist. Also, I can pay.”

  The driver narrowed his eyes. “You the reverend’s foster kid?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  He spat some brown tobacco juice onto the ground. “I’ll let you come along, but you have to stay there. Can’t have your sort riding down below.”

  Ma Evangeline used to say it is a mark of ignorance to despise folk who have different-colored skin, because everybody’s blood is the same color. I know she is right about this—I have seen enough blood to know—but I always felt different from her and Pa Emmet. Not just from them, but from everybody. I nodded to show the driver I would stay put.

  He flicked his whip & the coach rocked forward again.

  The dust was settling, so I darted a look behind to see if Walt was in pursuit. There was nothing but sagebrush and desert behind us. I was mighty relieved.

  I clung on to the rail & pressed myself back down onto the smooth lacquered roof of the coach. It was hot that day & I felt like a fried egg on a griddle as we rattled towards Dayton. I tried closing my eyes, but every time I did that I saw a vision of my ma & pa lying in a pool of blood. So I turned my head to the right & watched the dusty plain pass by.

  It wasn’t long before the coach slowed a little and I heard the rumble of the wooden bridge as we crossed the Carson River. I lifted my head and saw the flash of a coin flipped by the driver to the toll house keeper. Then he whipped up the team again, and shortly after we arrived in Dayton.

  I go to school in Dayton, but this was the first time I had ever taken the stage to get there.

  Dayton used to be called Chinatown because there were so many Chinamen living there. But most of them moved up to Virginia City, or went off to work on the new RailRoad back east. So now it is called Dayton. Pa Emmet told me it is the oldest town in the Territory, though Mormon Station also makes that claim. Both towns came into being in 1849, which makes them 13 years old, a year older than me. But I am older than Virginia City, which has only been around for three or so years.

  When the stage stopped outside the Nevada Hotel on Main St. in Dayton, I lifted my head a little. It was real quiet all of a sudden. I could hear the horses snuffling & snorting, also the voices of men & a woman laughing. The stage rocked a little as someone got on or off. I couldn’t be sure & I didn’t want to look, in case I betrayed my presence on top.

  I could hear a bird singing & I could see the line of cottonwood & willow trees that marked the riverbed. I thought of the schoolmarm, a spinster named Miss Marlowe. She had always been kind to me. I was tempted t
o get off & ask her to hide me. Maybe I should have.

  But I wanted to get as far away from Walt and his gang as I could, so I made the mistake of staying on that stagecoach.

  Ledger Sheet 7

  NOT LONG AFTER THE STAGE left Dayton, we came to that new toll road that goes up through Gold Canyon. The road curved & twisted between yellow-turning cottonwoods and giant gray rocks. At first the sun was in front of us, for it was late afternoon & we were heading west, but soon it traveled along beside us as we headed north. That new road was so smooth that we hardly jounced at all, but the grade was so steep that I had to hang tight to the rail at the front or I would have slid back off the slippery top of the stage.

  After maybe half an hour we slowed to a stop. The driver called out “Silver City!” & picked up one of the carpetbags strapped to the rail beside me & tossed it down. Its absence made me feel exposed, so I kept my head down while someone got on. Soon we were off again.

  Although Virginia City is only a few miles from Dayton, I had never been there before. Ma wanted to look around when we first arrived, but Pa forbade it. He called it Satan’s Playground.

  He said Virginia City was the vilest place on earth, even worse than San Francisco. He told us that the first twenty-seven men buried in the graveyard had all been murdered. Pa said that you were considered of no account until you “killed your man.” He said the most respected man in Virginia City was not the preacher or the police chief, but the saloon-keeper with a big diamond pin on his lapel.

  Pa once told us there is a whole street for “Soiled Doves.” When I asked what a Soiled Dove was, he said it was a low-class woman who sparked men for pay. He said you could tell the Soiled Doves by their gaudy dresses trimmed with black lace, and by the fact that they did not wear corsets. I asked him what “spark” meant. He said it meant to kiss & cuddle. He was going to tell me more but then Ma shushed him.