The Case of the Deadly Desperados

by Caroline Lawrence

  “I saw you hiding under skirt of bad woman. I follow you.”

  Then I knew he was the boy who had been pegging up sheets outside HONG WO, WASHER.

  I said, “You are the boy who was pegging up sheets outside Hong Wo, Washer. My name is P.K. Pinkerton. Thank you for rescuing me.”

  He said, “I am Ping. Now shut up and come. Chop, chop! I am taking you to a place where you can change clothes. You stand out like a cricket in a bowl of rice.”

  I had no choice but to follow him & hope he would not try to rob & kill me as Belle had done. As he led me through the jostling crowds along the creaking boardwalk, I observed that almost all the men were miners. I could tell because they sported flannel shirts & pantaloons & knee-high boots & bushy beards. The men outnumbered the women about ten to one.

  I noticed that every other building we passed appeared to be a saloon or a hurdy-hall. I could tell because I could hear music coming out: “Camptown Races” mostly. But there were other buildings apart from saloons. I saw a Dry Goods Store, an Assay Office, a Wells Fargo Bank, etc. There was even a Chinese Laundry up here.

  People were looking at me and suddenly a woman with yellow ringlets and a low-cut pink bodice caught my arm and turned me to face her.

  “Oh, look,” she said. “A sweet little Indian boy all in fringed deerskin. Ain’t he pretty?”

  The man beside her spat tobacco juice onto the boardwalk near my feet.

  Ping was right: I stuck out like a cricket in a bowl of rice.

  Beckoning me to follow, Ping jumped down off the boardwalk onto the wide & dusty street. He crossed in the gap between two slow-moving lumber wagons.

  As I stepped out from the awning to follow him I saw a big brick building across the way. It was the fanciest building I had ever seen. It was three stories tall, with shops on the street level & columns holding up a balcony that ran all around the front & side with big arched windows leading out onto it. A lofty sign near the top of the building announced that this was the INTERNATIONAL HOTEL. Another sign on the part that curved around the corner read: OFFICE CAL STAGE CO.

  I thought, “That must be where the stagecoach to Chicago stops.”

  The crack of a whip and a juicy oath brought me to my senses and I got out of the way of a brace of oxen just in time not to be trampled to a paste. Looking both ways, I hurried across the dusty street after Ping. He was up on the boardwalk talking to a Chinaman who was dressed in a suit like a banker. I jumped up, too, and waited.

  Ping and his friend seemed to be embroiled in some deep argument, so I wandered over to look at a notice outside the International Hotel. You show me something once and I never forget it. This is what the sign said:

  After I read that sign I went to look in the window of Wasserman’s Emporium and to admire the painted plaster statue of a man outside a Shooting Gallery.

  Ping was still arguing, so I sidled down to where the Stagecoach Office was situated, keeping an eye out for Walt & his men and also for Belle.

  When I got to the corner, a crudely painted street sign told me that I was on C Street & Union. C Street was flat, but Union was the steepest side street I had seen yet. It was so steep that it made the International Hotel look like a wedge of cake on its side, with the frosting its front & the tapering part its back.

  Then I found what I was looking for. On the outside wall of the Office of the Cal Stage Company was a list of stagecoach destinations & prices. I ran my finger down until I found the fare from Virginia City to Chicago.

  It was $100.

  That seemed a Vast Fortune.

  I needed to find Belle and get my Letter back. Then I could buy a ticket to Chicago and get out of this place where every man and beast seemed so intent on killing me.

  I was just turning back to see if Ping was coming when I heard the crack of a pistol, and a man came running along the boardwalk straight towards me.

  Ledger Sheet 13

  THERE WAS A BIG WOODEN BARREL outside the Office of the Cal Stage Company. I dived behind it as the gunman came running towards me. He was a beardless blond and he was firing an old Colt’s Dragoon Revolver into the air. It made a thunderous noise and produced a fair amount of smoke. He fired four more shots and kept pulling the trigger even after the chambers were empty and the gun went click. Then he fell down onto the boardwalk almost at my feet. A woman screamed & a horse tied to a hitching post reared up, but most people laughed.

  I did not think he was Walt or one of his men but I gave a sniff just in case. I could not detect the smell of Bay Rum Hair Tonic. But I could smell whiskey.

  People had come up and were bending over him.

  “Is he dead?” I heard one bearded miner ask.

  “Nah, he’s just drunk,” said another. He held up the big Colt’s Dragoon. “And I got me a new gun. Yee haw!” The man put the unloaded revolver in his waistband & then ran off down the boardwalk whooping.

  I felt a hand grip my arm so hard that it hurt. It was Ping.

  “Chop, chop!” he said. “I must get you to a safe place.”

  I let him pull me away from the drunken gunman and around the corner. We went up the steep side street called Union, then turned left onto one of the flat letter streets. I guessed it was B Street as we had been going up the mountain.

  Even though we were keeping to the outside of the boardwalk, people kept jostling us. I suppose a Chinese boy and an Indian did not command much respect here. At one point we had to squeeze through a group of men in frock coats & plug hats. They were fat & smoking big cigars & behaving as if they owned the place. I reckon they were Lawyers. We passed two more Saloons, a Restaurant and a Saddle Maker’s.

  Up ahead, I saw another cross street and I said to myself, “Carson Mills Silver Under Trees Some Where. Trees equals Taylor.”

  Sure enough, another crudely painted notice on a side of a building told me it was Taylor Street.

  We let a four-mule cart rattle by and then we crossed over.

  “Where are you taking me?” I asked Ping.

  “I bring you here.”

  He had stopped in front of a shop on the east side of B Street. Ping tried the door handle. It was locked. He took a key from his pocket and as he unlocked the door I took a step back to see what shop would offer me shelter. A neatly painted sign read: ISAIAH COFFIN’S AMBROTYPE & PHOTOGRAPHIC GALLERY.

  At that moment, I caught the familiar scent of Pa Emmet’s pipe and turned to see a girl about my age emerging from the shop next door. The sign above that door read: BLOOMFIELD’S TOBACCO EMPORIUM.

  The girl had curly brown hair and big brown eyes. As she looked at me her eyes seemed to grow even larger. Was it Expression No. 4: Surprise? Or something else? Yet again, I wished I knew how to read people. I wondered if she wanted to kill me, too.

  Before the curly-haired girl could pull out a six-shooter and fill me full of lead, Ping had opened the door of the Photographic Gallery & yanked me roughly inside.

  A bell tinkled as the door closed behind us.

  It was dim in Isaiah Coffin’s Ambrotype & Photographic Gallery & the room smelled of strange chemicals. There was a wooden counter on the left and a big picture window straight ahead and on the right a painted canvas backdrop showing a herd of Buffalo & a Wagon Train on the Great Plains. The artist had put Indian Te-Pees in the background and also some clouds and mountains. It brought back sad memories.

  In front of the painted backdrop were two chairs with dangling fringe on their arms and between them a couch with a buffalo skin draped over it. There was also something that looked like a black accordion with wood and brass at either end. It was fixed to a sturdy walnut frame with cast-iron feet.

  “This is studio of Isaiah Coffin,” said Ping. “He is best photographer west of Rockies. I work for him sometimes. He not here right now. You wait. Sleep in buffa
lo skin in there.” He pointed to a door half hidden by the canvas backdrop. “Lots of costumes in there,” he said. “He stores them for a theater friend. Sometimes customers dress up for picture. Costs more.”

  I pointed at the black and wood accordion. “Is that a camera?” I said.

  Ping ignored my question. “You change clothes! I have to go now but tomorrow early I will take you to Territorial Enterprise Newspaper. My uncle Joe works there. His boss will help you find that Lady and Thousand Dollar Letter.”

  “How do you know about my Thousand Dollar Letter?” I said.

  “I hear you talking to that lady,” said Ping.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked.

  He folded his arms across his chest. “I do this for money,” he said. “I want half. Five hundred dollar. Agreed?”

  I was beginning to understand Virginia City. Nobody ever did anything through Christian kindness. The sooner I got out of here the better.

  “Agreed?” said Ping. He wore a scowl and even I could tell he was angry.

  I said, “I was led to believe that all Celestials were even-tempered & calm.”

  His scowl deepened. “Agreed?” he said. “Five hundred dollar?”

  I said, “All right. But only if I can get cash money for that Letter. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  He stuck out his hand and I shook it even though I do not like touching people.

  He said, “You stay here. I see you early morning. No touch anything. No let him find you here or he get angry.” Ping gave me the key. “Lock door after I go.”

  “Ain’t you staying?” I asked him.

  He said, “Uncle mad at me. Other uncle. Hong Wo, not Old Joe. I must go now or he will beat me.”

  The bell tinkled & the door slammed & my scowling rescuer was gone.

  I stared at the door. I was scared & tired & hungry. My foster parents were dead & scalped because of me. I had nothing but a flint knife and a Detective Button and a set of clothes that made me look like a cricket in a rice bowl. Added to that, I had three murderous desperados on my tail.

  I thought, “Can anything else go wrong?”

  (As I am now writing this at the bottom of a 200-foot mine with those three desperados still on my scent, you will judge that plenty else went wrong.)

  Ledger Sheet 14

  AFTER PING CLOSED THE DOOR behind him, I locked it as ordered.

  Then I went through the open door into the costume cupboard. It smelled of wool & mothballs & lavender & it was filled with more clothing than I had ever seen in one place.

  I saw costumes with velvet and ruffs like in a Shakespeare play Ma Evangeline took me to one time. But there were also modern clothes like a miner’s getup of knee-high black boots, canvas pantaloons, a red flannel shirt, etc. Also a Banker’s Suit and a Fireman’s Uniform and some Ladies’ clothes including corsets & hoops for under their skirts.

  I guessed Isaiah Coffin’s Theater Friend liked to put on modern shows as well as old-fashioned ones.

  There was even half a rack of Mexican, Chinese & Indian outfits. The Indian clothes were fancy with more fringe & beads than my buckskins, & even a feathered headdress.

  There was the dark blue overcoat of a Union officer & pants to match. Hooked over the hanger was a Colt’s Baby Dragoon Revolver like my Indian ma used to carry, only this one had an ivory grip. I thought such a weapon might prove useful. I checked it was unloaded & tested it, but the hammer was busted and it would not fire. I put it back on the hanger.

  I thought, “I would like to see a play with all these characters in it.”

  Then, behind one of the big racks I found the best thing of all: it was a smaller rack of children’s clothes.

  As I looked through the garments, one item gave me an idea. It was a long-sleeved dress made of red calico with little white flowers on it, so when you looked at it from a distance it seemed pink. It had white lace frills around the collar & the cuffs. Also on the hanger was a matching bonnet & there were white socks & bloomers, and little white boots like Belle Donne’s. There were two small women’s wigs, as well. One with curly blond ringlets. One with dark ringlets.

  I reached up & stroked my head. I have straight black hair. It is short because last month I had nits & Ma Evangeline washed my hair in turpentine & when that did not vanquish the vermin she shaved my head.

  I pulled the blond wig over my head and inspected myself in a tall & narrow mirror on the wall. The golden curls looked wrong with my sallow complexion & dark eyes. But the dark wig with its dangling ringlets transformed me.

  I took off my buckskins and put on stockings & bloomers & a chemise & a white petticoat & over it the calico dress. The lace trim prickled my skin. Next I put on the white ankle boots. They just about fit. It took me a long time to do up all the little buttons with a buttonhook. The wig and bonnet formed the finishing touch. Dressing as a girl was time-consuming and tedious, but when I finally tied the ribbon of the bonnet under my chin I judged it was worth it. I doubted if either of my mas would recognize me.

  Now I was “In Disguise” like all the detectives I read about.

  Ping had told me to stay, but I was too jittery to sleep, so I thought about what I could do.

  I remembered Ping said his uncle worked at a Newspaper and that the boss might help me. Also, I remembered Belle had said the Recorder’s Office on A Street was opposite a Newspaper. Maybe Ping’s uncle’s boss would have records and maps up there and he might even know of Belle Donne. I would go there first to do a bit of Detecting & find clews that would lead me to Belle. I would recover my Letter & take it to the Recorder’s Office & collect my fortune.

  Then I would buy that stagecoach ticket to Chicago & become a Detective like my pa.

  That was my plan.

  I slipped my medicine bag around my neck and tucked it inside the neck of the calico dress. The bell tinkled as I went out onto B Street. I locked the door behind me & slipped the key into my medicine bag and turned north. It was almost dark and the sky was that deep blue color you get sometimes on a cloudy night. It was cold and although it was not even October it smelled like snow. I thought of going back for a shawl but then I decided not to waste time.

  I crossed over Taylor without incident and headed north along B.

  Lively fiddle music spilled out of saloons on either side of the street. I tried not to get entranced. As I approached one saloon, the swinging wooden doors flew open & the nearest one nearly smacked me in the face. I stood back & waited for gunshots but it was just two men with cigars. They set off south along the boardwalk. As the doors of the saloon swung back & forth behind them, I glanced in. In the dim glow of oil lamps, I could see lots of men lined up at a bar & brass spittoons every so often. There were a few women in there, too, in fancy low-cut dresses. I reckoned they were Soiled Doves or Dancers.

  I turned left up the steep side street called Union and then turned right on A Street, scanning the buildings right and left. It was pretty dark up here with only a few tall pitch pine torches planted in the ground beside some unoccupied hitching posts.

  “Can I help you, little girl?” said a stout woman in black. She had something wrapped in newspaper under her arm. Fish, by the smell of it.

  “Please, ma’am,” I said politely in a little girl voice. “I am looking for the Newspaper across from the Recorder’s Office.”

  She said, “The Territorial Enterprise is right up there on the next corner. It is that building with the flags hanging down.” She patted me on the bonnet and moved on.

  Torchlight showed me a building with two limp flags on the corner of A Street and Sutton. It was a flimsy one-story wood-frame building and as I drew closer I was able to make out a big sign that read: OFFICE OF THE TERRITORIAL ENTERPRISE. Built up against the far side of the building was a kind of shed with
a slanting tin roof and light pouring out of a window.

  The light attracted me, so I went there first. Peeping in the window, I saw lots of men in white shirtsleeves sitting at a long table & eating. There were bunks on either side. I thought it looked more like a boardinghouse than a Newspaper, so I went back to the main building.

  The door had the words PONY EXPRESS EXTRA painted across it in big black letters. I reckoned the door needed a new coat of paint as the Pony Express had stopped bringing letters by horseback nearly a year ago when the telegraph came in.

  I turned the handle and the door swung open.

  A single room was lit by some coal oil lamps and warmed by a potbellied stove at the back. On one side of a long wooden table was the iron printing press. (I could tell because some writing on it said, WASHINGTON PRINTING PRESS.) On the other side up against the wall were some rolltop desks.

  There were two men in the room. One was sitting at a desk with his back to me. The other stood at the far end of the table putting little cubes in a kind of metal tray. The seated man did not turn around, but the standing man looked up. His fox-colored hair & beard were lightly powdered with pale yellow alkali dust; likewise his blue woolen shirt. He was smoking a pipe that smelled as if something had crawled in there & died. He looked more like a prospector or miner than a reporter. (I had never seen a real-life reporter before, but I imagined them to be ink-stained and bespectacled.)

  When the bearded man saw me, he took his foul-smelling pipe out of his mouth & said, “I am afraid you have come to the wrong place, miss. The nearest saloon is two doors along.”

  The man in the chair looked over his shoulder at me. Seeing what he took for a little girl in a pink bonnet, he chuckled. He had a long face & sticking-out ears. His black mustache & billy goat beard were neatly trimmed. He looked more like my notion of a reporter than the man with the foul-smelling pipe.

  “I do not want the saloon,” I said. “I am looking for the boss here. I have a Life or Death Problem.”

  “Does your life or death problem involve a Scoop?” said the dusty man with the foul-smelling pipe. “I am the new Local. It is my first day & I badly need a Scoop.”