I could see the outhouse & the chicken run & a place where they burned rubbish & the mountainside sloping up.
I went out into the bright morning and looked cautiously around. There was nobody there but some chickens.
Somewhere up on the mountainside I heard a quail say, “Chicago! Chicago!”
I thought, “I’ll be on my way soon.”
I picked my way through the waste area and sage bushes, going up the mountain.
I soon reached the street above A Street. It was not so much a street as a muddy track. From here I could see a large white building with a big smokestack and a sign that read MEXICAN MINE. Turning to look down over the town, I could see my best route was to go north a block, then down Carson to B Street and then to double back.
I took a deep breath of the thin air & lifted my eyes & gazed out at the 100-mile view. The sun was warm & the air was perfumed with sage & I could feel the comforting thump of the mountain.
I thought, “I am always happiest when I am on my own.”
Then I thought, “Does that make me a Heartless Misfit?”
I took one more breath & then started towards Carson Street up ahead.
A faint crash made me look around.
Down below me, a mine car had dumped a load of dirt & rocks & other trash. Somewhere down in the bowels of the mountain, men were digging like ants. The car seemed to be hanging in space over a cliff but as the dust cleared I could see it had gone to the end of a track propped up by trellis supports, like half a bridge. Now a miner was pulling it back the way it had come. I noticed the tracks led back up to an opening in the mountainside.
“See how man has scarred the mountainside in his quest for wealth?” said a voice behind me. I turned to see a Negro sitting on a collapsible camp-chair. He was sketching. A jagged & upthrusting boulder had hidden him from view until now.
“Holes and pits and dumps,” said the black man. “Some people think it doesn’t matter. They think this part of the world is ugly anyway.” He gestured around him with his pencil. “But I think this barren mountain is strangely beautiful.”
“I like the desert,” I said. “I like it a lot.”
“I like it, too,” he said.
I had never seen a Negro up close to talk to. His cheeks were smooth & I reckoned he was not much more than twenty.
“Are you a runaway Slave?” I said.
He laughed. “No,” he said. “I am freeborn. Born in Philadelphia.”
I came closer to him & saw he was making a neat sketch of Virginia City. His style of drawing looked familiar. I looked back up at him. “Are you Grafton T. Brown?” I said.
His eyes opened wide in Expression No. 4: Surprise.
“Why, yes, I am,” he said. “Have we met?”
I said, “We have never met but I just saw your Panoramic View of Virginia City in the office of the Territorial Enterprise Newspaper. I think it is the best drawing I have ever seen in my life.”
He showed even white teeth in a No. 1 Genuine Smile.
“And you remembered my name?”
“I’m good at remembering names,” I said. “But not faces.”
He nodded & put down his pencil. “I have the same problem, believe it or not. But I have a trick,” he said. “A trick of telling people apart.”
“I would like to know that Trick,” I said.
“My trick is ears.”
“Ears?” I said.
Grafton T. Brown nodded. “If you can’t tell one person from another, just look at their ears. A person’s ear is very distinctive.”
I said, “That is easy for you to say. You are an artist.”
“Anyone can do it,” he said. “It is just a matter of training yourself to look. You, for example, have quite a delicate ear. It has a flat, squarish earlobe & a smooth upper whorl. The lobe is the part ladies pierce for earrings,” he added, “and the whorl is the swirly bit around the ear hole. Do you see anything distinctive about my ears?”
I examined his left ear & said, “Your ears are quite round and small for your head. And your lobe is also rounded.”
“Good.” He pinched his own earlobe between finger & thumb. “Would you call mine plump, thin or in between?”
“Plump,” I said. “But I will not have trouble recognizing you again. You are about the only Negro I have seen here.”
“You would be surprised,” he said, “at how many of us there are here in Virginia.” He showed his teeth again in a smile. “White people claim we look alike, but all those bearded miners look the same to me. And I have trouble telling one Celestial from another. Indians are difficult to distinguish, too. That is why it is good to look at people’s ears as well as their faces.”
“Do you live here in Virginia?” I said.
“No,” he said, “I live in San Francisco. I only come here once or twice a year to clear my head and update my views of this town. You would not believe how much it has grown in just a year.”
I said, “Have you ever been to Chicago?”
“Once,” he said. “It was very cold there and that wind is fierce. Is that where you’re from?”
“No,” I said. “But I hope to go there one day.”
“You should come to San Francisco,” he said. “Now that is a fine city. A lot like this one, in fact, but with the ocean instead of desert. And fine balmy weather.”
In the few moments we had been talking, the wind had got up & had begun to spit grit & flecks of sagebrush in our faces.
“Here comes the Washoe Zephyr,” said Grafton T. Brown. “That marks the end of my sketching for today.” He put his pencil in his jacket pocket & closed up his drawing pad.
The wind moaned & tugged at our hats.
As we started down the hill I said, “This wind is real strong. What did you call it?”
He said, “They call it the Washoe Zephyr. It has been known to fling away roofs and even whole buildings.”
I said, “Our dictionary at home defines a zephyr as ‘a warm breeze.’ This is more like a gale.”
Grafton T. Brown smiled. “Virginia humor,” he said, hunching his head into his shoulders & putting up his lapels. “They are a perverse people. They call a hee-hawing mule a Washoe Canary and a gale like this a Zephyr. They don’t stop the mining for church on Sunday but they’ll be stopping it for the funeral of that poor murdered Hurdy Girl.”
“Hurdy Girl?” I said. I stopped walking and so did he.
“A Hurdy Girl,” said Grafton T. Brown, “is what they call one of those girls who lives down on D Street. A Soiled Dove.”
For a terrible moment I thought he meant Belle. But I had left her tied up to Isaiah Coffin and locked in his studio less than an hour ago.
“What was the name of the murdered Hurdy Girl?” I said.
“Her name was Sally Sampson. People called her Short Sally. Got her throat cut from ear to ear.”
“Who did it?” I asked. My throat was dry.
“They don’t know,” he said.
I felt sick. What if Walt and his pards had mistaken Short Sally for Belle? They were coldhearted Killers who would stop at nothing.
The wind buffeted my back, as if urging me back towards town.
What was I doing loitering on the slopes of Mount Davidson?
I needed to deliver my Letter to the Notary Public as fast as I could.
Ledger Sheet 32
WITHOUT EVEN BIDDING the artist good-bye, I started running down the mountain.
I soon found myself near the place where they were dumping rubble. I skidded to a stop at the edge of a steep place where the earth fell sharply away. The ground was still damp from the thawing snow & I almost plunged over. Looking down, I saw dirt & chunks of rock & rotten spars of wood all jumbled together. This was no
t tailings. Tailings were all smooth & pointy, like anthills, because they were made of the fine dust that came out of the Quartz Stamp Mills.
This was a Dump: all bumpy & unstable. This was where that car dumped the rubbish from shafts and tunnels.
I should have gone around it, but I was impatient to get down to the Notary Public on the east side of B Street behind the International Hotel. The howling wind had given me a new sense of urgency. It was like an omen of something bad about to happen.
I leapt down onto the top of the dump and began to descend from boulder to spar. Once or twice I almost fell as a piece of rock shifted beneath my feet or a timber seesawed. But I did not tumble.
As I reached the bottom, a pale-eyed boy rose up suddenly from a crouching position & put out his hand to check my progress. I was going too fast to stop & so we collided & both fell down. I scrambled to my feet & was going to continue down the mountain. But now I saw two other boys had stood up to block my way & a fourth was coming up behind them.
The first boy was on his feet & his icy blue eyes were narrowed into Expression No. 5: Suspicion.
“What are you doing on our dump?” he said. “Are you one of the Savage Gang?”
“He ain’t no member of the Savage Gang,” said a redheaded boy. He held a splinter of wood about the size of my forearm & was brandishing it like a spear. “He is one of the tony bunch. Look how he is dressed.”
“Let me by,” I said. Two of the other boys had rocks in their hands. They were no more than ten or eleven but they had a feral look of cornered weasels. I remembered today was Saturday so they were not in school.
They were dressed in old shirts & pants.
I was dressed in a starched white shirt, serge trousers, waistcoat, jacket & plug hat. And also my sturdy brogans.
Two of them were barefoot.
A fifth boy came down the rubble behind me & grabbed my right arm just above the elbow.
“We can’t let you by,” said the first boy. “We are the Mexican Gang and you are on our territory. You are now our prisoner.”
It was like Olaf & his bully friends all over again.
I did not have time for this today.
I wrenched my right arm free & pulled my seven-shooter out of my pocket & pulled back the hammer & fired it in the air. It did not make a very big bang outdoors & with the wind moaning around us, but it did the trick: they all jumped back. For an instant I smelled gunpowder, then the wind snatched the smoke away. I cocked my pistol again & leveled it at them & swiveled so it pointed at each of them in turn.
Then I said, “Let me by.”
They let me by.
Once I was safely past them, I released the hammer of my seven-shooter & slipped it back into my pocket & ran. I felt bad that I had aimed a loaded revolver at kids my own age. What would Pa Emmet & Ma Evangeline say? What would my original pa say? But I had a mission. I had to get to the Notary Public.
I glanced back over my shoulder. As I feared, the boys of the Mexican Gang were following me. One of them had got a bow & arrow from somewhere. I pulled out my revolver, but they all jumped back behind a privy. I put away my gun & turned & ran down, dodging between outhouses, sheds and rubbish piles until at last I found myself on A Street.
I was back where I had started.
I did not linger to see whether Walt and his pals were still staking out the Recorder’s Office. Instead, I hurriedly crossed the muddy street and found an alley between two buildings. I reckoned it would lead me down to B Street.
I reached a kind of T where the alley went left and right.
I was trying to figure out which way would be the best way to go when a thrumming arrow buried itself in the wooden planks of the building in front of me. That decided me quick. I ran left & then right & emerged onto B Street, near a blacksmith’s shop. Across the street was a livery stable and next to it the Fashion Saloon. Over to my right I could see the flag that marked the site of the International Hotel. The Notary Public was between me & it. I was almost there.
I felt that familiar prickly feeling on the back of my neck. I turned & looked behind me. Sure enough, a few members of the Mexican Gang were still in pursuit. When I stuck my hand in my pocket, they all hid behind the back of the smithy.
The sooner I got to the Notary Public, the better.
The wind was howling and making shutters bang.
As I started to cross B to get to the other side, part of a tin roof flew past me, at neck level. A foot to the left and it would have chopped off my head.
It seemed that Virginia City itself was out to get me.
The flying piece of tin caused a pair of horses to rear up and that made a break in the traffic. Taking advantage of it, I dashed across the muddy street. This part of B Street had no boardwalk and I had to do some fancy footwork to avoid horse manure outside the livery stable.
“Only a little further,” I thought, “and I will be safe.”
As I began to run, the wind blew some grit in my eyes. That was why I did not see the man in black.
He had just come out of the Fashion Saloon & he was standing outside the swinging doors counting his money when I slammed into him. Some gold coins fell on the muddy ground around us. I heard him curse & felt him clutch at me, but I was up & running again.
However, I did not get far. I ran smack dab into a pair of rock-hard legs clad in gray and yellow checked trousers. The black-clad torso above the legs was solid as a block of quartz. Worst of all was the face. It was one of the ugliest faces I had ever seen. The man had a big black mustache & bulging eyes that stared in two different directions.
“Let me by,” I said.
“You ain’t going nowhere, boy,” he said, and I found myself looking down the twin barrels of a fearsome weapon. “Make one move and I’ll blow your brains out.”
The ugly man held one of those big Le Mats that some Confederate officers favor. It was a combined revolver and shotgun. The top barrel dispensed nine big .40 caliber balls and the bottom barrel had a single load of shot that could take off my entire head.
“Give them back,” said the man with the Le Mat. I could barely hear his deep voice above the moaning of the wind.
“What?” I said. “Give what back?”
“Those gold coins you stole off Jace.”
“I did not steal any coins,” I said.
“Then where are you going in such a rush?” he said in his bear growl.
“I am going to the Notary Public,” I said. “It is right behind you, just across the street. Please let me by.”
The man was aiming right between my eyes.
“Are you stupid, boy?” he said.
“No,” I said. “I am smart.”
“Then why ain’t you scared?”
“I am scared,” I said. “I am scared and also angry.”
“You don’t look it,” he said.
“That is because I am a Freak of Nature,” I said.
The man’s bulging eyes widened & he said, “Hey, Jace. Lookee here. This boy has a better poker face than you do.”
The man I had jostled appeared beside us. I did not want to turn my head but I could see him out of the corner of my eye. He was tall & slim & dressed all in black, as far as I could see. He was counting his gold coins.
“This here is Poker Face Jace,” said the walleyed man. “And they call me Stonewall. Maybe you have heard of us.”
“No, sir. I have not heard of you.” I said this without moving.
He pressed the cold barrel of the gun right between my eyes.
“If Jace gives the word,” said Stonewall, “I will blow your brains all over the thoroughfare. Do you believe me?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, “I believe you.”
Poker Face Jace spoke. “Ain’t you scared?” he ask
ed in a pleasant Southern drawl.
“Yes, sir.”
“You don’t look it.”
Poker Face Jace moved round so he could see my face better. As he did so, I saw his eyes. They were dark and expressionless & I suddenly realized that I had seen him before. He was the gambler who had caught me when I leapt from the gallery of the saloon. At the time I had been wearing a pink calico dress and bonnet. I wondered how long it would take him to recognize me.
“There is no evidence of trepidation about you,” he said. His skin was pale & he had gray hair above his ears, but all the other parts of him were black: his mustache, his eyes, his eyebrows. He was even dressed all in black, from his hat to his boots. The wind whipped his black linen duster against his legs, and then blew it open, giving me a glimpse of the walnut butt of a small pistol in his right-hand pants pocket.
He took a cigar from his coat pocket & examined it. “Where are you going in such a hurry?” he asked.
“Some kids from the Mexican Gang are after me,” I said. It was not the whole Truth but when I rolled my eyes to the right I could still see a couple of them lurking on the other side of the street. One held an arrow notched and ready, the other clutched a sharp rock in each hand. When they saw Jace and Stonewall look at them, they turned tail and ran.
“Nasty bullies, indeed,” said Jace. “And yet your face betrayed no fear then, nor does it now with cold metal pressed against your forehead.” He struck a match on the wall & shielded the flame with his hand & got his cigar going. “You are right, Stonewall,” he said at last. “He’s got a better poker face than I do. Put up your gun.”
Stonewall uncocked his Le Mat & pointed it up towards the overhang. “You missing any coins, Jace?” he growled.
Jace sucked at his cigar a few times to get it going. “Nope,” he said at last. “My money is all present and accounted for.”
Stonewall grunted & holstered his pistol. I noticed it was blue steel with a walnut grip.
A crowd of interested passersby had stopped to gawp at us even though the wind was whipping up their coattails & skirts.
Jace took out his cigar & examined the glowing tip. “Now that your pursuers have abandoned the chase,” he said, “will you come inside and talk with me for a moment?”
The Case of the Deadly Desperados Page 12