Then all three were walking along the sidewalk, the woman’s arm through his, and his other hand in the clasp of the girl. They were the very picture of a family out for a late night stroll, and the citizens of Leadville gave them hardly a glance. When they came to a buggy and team hitched to a rail, the woman told him to get in. Drew was handed the reins. He drove slowly out of town, still dazed by the hope of escape that had been so promptly answered.
They were well beyond the last houses when the girl said, “Mama, it isn’t him.”
“Isn’t who?” said the woman.
“It isn’t the robber man.”
“Sir, are you Lodi?”
“No, ma’am. I guess you haven’t heard the news yet. Lodi’s up in Montana, just robbed a train there last night.”
“But … you are a train robber yourself, are you not?”
“Yes, ma’am, I am. I just told them I’m Lodi for a joke.”
“Well … this is most disappointing, if I may say so, Mr.…?”
“Bones, ma’am, John Bones. I’m sorry you’re disappointed, ma’am, but I have to tell you I’m grateful, and not disappointed in the least.”
“Yes, to be sure you are, but … Oh, botheration, this is not what I wanted at all.”
“His name isn’t what he says, Mama; it’s something else.”
“Not Lodi, by any chance?”
“No, Mama, something else. He keeps hiding it. I think it’s … Doogle.”
“Leave the gentleman alone, Omie.”
“Well, he should tell us the truth if we got him out of jail, shouldn’t he?”
“Uh, ma’am, she’s right. Bones is an alias. My line of work generally sees a lot of them.”
“It really doesn’t matter to me what your name is. It was Lodi I wanted. Now I don’t quite know what to do.”
“Ma’am, it probably isn’t my business, but are you kin to Lodi?”
“Certainly not. I’ve never met the man.”
“I was just trying to figure why you wanted him out so bad, ma’am, excuse me for asking.”
“I’m going to call him Doogle.”
“Omie, be quiet. Mr. Bones, are you an expert robber?”
“Ma’am, I’d have to call myself experienced, but maybe not expert.”
“I assume it was Lodi who planned the work you performed.”
“Yes, ma’am, mostly. Ma’am, how did you get me past that deputy?”
“It really makes no difference now. Is it possible for you to make contact with Lodi, Mr. Bones?”
Drew understood then that his escape had been arranged by the marshals, so they might extract from him some code or meeting place by which he intended reuniting himself with the gang. Such a procedure did exist, but Drew intended to reveal none of it. The breakout should have been staged in a much more believable form than this, with masked men posing as sympathetic bandits, not a one-armed woman and a girl.
“Doogle thinks we’re fakes, Mama.” Omie laughed. “He thinks we work for the marshals.”
“No, Mr. Bones, we do not, and my question is sincere—are you able to rejoin your friends?”
“I … ma’am, I’m not understanding half of what I hear tonight.… Little girl, how do you know what I’m thinking? And ma’am, do you want a train robbed … or something?”
“Yes, oh, yes indeed.”
“Mama, look at his hand! He’s the one that tried to take your ring!”
“Pardon me?” Drew was becoming more confused than ever.
“His pinkie, Mama, it’s gone, and so was the pinkie on the man who tried to take your ring on the train that time, only I wouldn’t let him.”
“Why, so it is! Mr. Bones, what a small world we do live in. Was that Lodi’s work, outside Buena Vista just a short time ago?”
“Yes, ma’am, that was him, and it was me that wanted your ring. Sorry about that, ma’am.”
“You didn’t get it,” crowed Omie. “I wouldn’t let you.”
“Omie, stop this nonsense. Mr. Bones is our friend now, or so I assume.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m beholden to you both.”
“It was Indians that did it,” announced Omie. “They cut off his finger and laughed about it.”
“Well, it wasn’t exactly them who did it.… Little girl, that’s three or four times now you’ve done that. Ma’am, can she … see inside my head?”
“Omie, one more word from you and I shall be most displeased. You’re simply showing off.”
Omie snorted undaintily.
After another mile Drew was told to direct the buggy into a stand of trees beside the road, where three saddled horses were waiting.
His deception appeared to be working. The Sleeping Savage lay in eternal repose inside the casket of glass, a close facsimile of the original. Nevis was pleased with himself; not a single paying customer so far had done more than gape at the sight and declare himself amazed at the thing’s ugliness. Carlson’s Patented Mortuary Putty had borne out the faith Doc Pfenning placed in it, and had caused Nevis no creative difficulties whatever, even when the time came to stain the Savage with old coffee grounds. The color had taken well, and after several applications the twisted limbs of the artifact had darkened to an acceptable hue, with just the right amount of unevenness and mottling to grant it the appearance of the original. The horsehair wig was not quite acceptable to Nevis’s meticulous eye, but nobody seemed eager to question its antiquity. The customers came rolling in, their dollars collected by a scrubbed and coiffured and smiling Winnie at the door.
A customer late on that first afternoon of the exhibition brought to Nevis’s attention a small detail: the glass case was becoming misted, creating a haziness inside that made viewing the Savage less interesting than it might be. Horrified, Nevis went to the case and examined it; the glass was indeed misting over. What was causing it? The bogus corpse had been placed inside the case and all air extracted by a fine-nozzled vacuum pump less than twenty-four hours before. Had the process of extraction been performed inadequately? Where was the moisture coming from? It seemed to be spreading even as he watched, obscuring the object within even more.
“What’s wrong with your Injun, mister?”
“I … suspect the … the ancient gases trapped in his tissues are … are escaping, due to the … unnatural state of airlessness in which he has been placed.”
“Being in ice, though, ain’t that the same thing?”
“No, sir, it is not. Examine ice closely and you will discern fine bubbles of air, usually of an elongated variety.”
“He’s fogged up pretty good in there now. Lookit that stuff crawl along the glass. Mister, I want my money back. I can’t hardly see him at all.”
The customer’s demand was echoed by others pressing around the case, some of them rubbing on the glass in an attempt to erase the mist forming on the inside.
“Please, please … no touching of the crystal casket, ladies and gentlemen! No touching, please …”
“Well, we want our money back. That thing isn’t worth looking at now.”
“Give us our money back, mister!”
“Yes! Yes, you may all collect a refund! Certainly you may, one and all! Please return to the door and take back your money. I do apologize for this disappointment, ladies and gentlemen.… Please, no touching the crystal cabinet!”
When the room was empty and the doors bolted, Winnie came to Nevis with a pile of cash much reduced from its encouraging bulk a half hour before.
“What happened to it?”
“I can’t imagine. Perhaps … perhaps the putty has too much moisture in its content.”
“But wouldn’t having no air in there keep it dry?”
“I don’t know. I have no scientific understanding of such things. It could be that the air seal is defective. What a disaster! Smith should be here to share this!”
Smith, having decided he would not take a bath to suit paying customers, was emptying shitcans as usual.
“Why don�
�t you open it up and see what’s wrong.”
“I suppose I must. This shouldn’t have happened.”
As Nevis unscrewed the air seal he heard the whooosh of air entering the casket, so the seal had apparently been adequate. What, then, had gone wrong? He unlocked the clasps and lifted the lid with Winnie’s assistance. The smell of Carlson’s Patented Mortuary Putty was strong, and the emaciated limbs of the Savage, composed entirely of this substance applied to a stick-and-wire frame, was positively weeping moisture.
“He’s crying all over,” said Winnie.
Nevis began wiping the inside of the glass lid with his handkerchief, then began dabbing at the limbs of the Savage. The putty came away like sticky clay, and he stopped before further damage was done.
“No,” he said. “Oh, no … we’re finished. This will never do. One more touch and he’ll crumble. Damn that Pfenning!”
“Don’t blame him. The stuff probably works fine on dead folks; it’s just not right for what you used it on.”
“Winnie, do you … do you happen to have about your person a certain necessary item …?”
“You need a snort?”
“Most definitely.”
Winnie produced a hip flask from beneath her dress.
“Help yourself.”
Nevis’s Adam’s apple bobbed frantically until the flask was emptied.
“Well,” said Winnie, “Brannan hasn’t built his ice plant yet, or put in the shitters like he said. It’s not like you don’t have a job or anything.”
“But this was so important, so unique, or at least I considered it so when we owned the genuine article. Oh, that woman, that false friend …! What a despicable thing to have done! What a crime against comradeship! How could she!”
“She’s a bitch and a rich man’s whore, that’s how.”
“But what does she have against me?”
“Let me tell you, there’s nothing like a whore that finally smells big money. Once it gets up her nose, you better watch out if you ever knew her before, because she won’t give you the wind from her ass, and that’s a fact. She wants you to go away, is my judgment on it. She knows her man’s going to put you and Smith out of business, and she doesn’t want you finding another kind of business that’ll keep you around here. She wants you gone.”
“And she has succeeded brilliantly,” said Nevis, contemplating the sodden ruin before him. It had required four days to build the Savage, and it had all been for nothing. Lovey Doll Pines had killed what was, in all likelihood, his final creative endeavor. Hers had been an unforgivable crime against art, a slap delivered to the smiling face of friendship. Try as he might, he could not forgive her.
The following day, Lovey Doll Pines received by delivery wagon the empty crystal casket. Inside was a note: This contained a corpse, and does so still. Lovey Doll did not comprehend Nevis’s intention at all. He had been referring, as he penned the note, to the death of their friendship. Lovey Doll read the note a second time, then screwed it up in exasperation, and asked herself if the casket, quite a beautiful thing in its own right, could possibly be included among the parlor fittings.
Clean-shaven again, Drew did not resemble the man who had passed for Lodi. He boarded a train with the woman he had learned to call Mrs. Brannan; he still called her “ma’am” among company, to protect her from unwanted glances. Omie seemed content to call him Doogle, and had ceased her maraudings among his thoughts.
They were headed for Carbondale, where Lodi had friends. Drew had already dispatched a telegram: MR. JOHNSON WILL PRESENTLY ARRIVE. INFORM MR. LINDELL. Johnson was himself, or any other member of the lawbreaking brethren; Lindell was Lodi. The message would be passed on, and when he could manage it, Lodi would come, or else send word to Drew of a location where he could safely rejoin the gang. Mrs. Brannan had thus far been reluctant to share with him the exact nature of the work she wished Lodi to engage in, but Drew was not offended; he owed her too much to allow resentment of any kind to cloud the hours spent in proximity to this highly unusual woman and her even more unusual daughter.
“Show me the wobble trick again, Omie.”
Omie placed a pencil on the floor of the car, and caused it to balance on its point despite the lurching and swaying of the train, then made its chewed end wobble in a circle while the point remained where it was, and then, to amuse Doogle to the fullest, she lifted the pencil into the air without physical assistance of any kind. Drew was fascinated.
“How can you do things like that?”
“I just can,” said Omie, with a smugness Zoe found exasperating.
“Don’t brag so, dear. Mr. Bones may think less of your gift because of it.”
“No he won’t.”
“Really, Omie, you try my patience sometimes.”
“It’s all right, ma’am. I enjoy seeing the things she can do. I never saw the like, really.”
“Well, so long as she doesn’t become tiresome.”
“No, ma’am, she couldn’t do that.”
Zoe had noticed that Omie’s face shone when she was in Bones’s company, and the mother did not resent it. Leo once had elicited that kind of adoration, and betrayed them both with his foolishness as time went by. Zoe intended never to remarry, once her vendetta with Leo was done with, but it would not have displeased her if a likable (despite his trade) and forthright young man such as Bones gave Omie the simple enjoyment of his closeness, his genuine friendliness. A male of character and integrity should figure in the life of every female, Zoe reasoned, and vice versa. The time for such opportunity with regard to herself was past, she truly believed, but Omie’s life had barely begun. Let her be coy and brazen and demanding of the young man seated opposite; he was no enemy, no cruel deceiver, and his delight in such tricks and stunts as Omie could create for him was in itself a wonderful thing to see, even if Zoe had to hide her feelings of satisfaction behind a mask of rectitude and propriety. She was who she was, and could not change now.
“Mr. Bones?”
“Ma’am?”
“Wait, Mama, I want to spin it.…”
Her pencil spun up to the ceiling, hit the stamped tin and fell back to the floor. Zoe looked around to see if such doings had been observed by other passengers, but they had not; the nearest was several seats away, half asleep.
“Omie, kindly desist. Mr. Bones, I believe I may trust you. I have, perhaps, caused you to think I place my trust in no one but your friend Lodi.”
“I’d call him my boss, ma’am, rather than my friend.”
“Regardless, I know you, and not him, and so I wish to share with you the purpose of my actions.”
“Ma’am, I’m listening.”
Zoe took from her bag a newspaper clipping, and handed it to him. Drew read the article and handed it back.
“Ma’am, that’s a piece of goods that’ll be surrounded by more guns than they had anywhere since the war.”
“I am aware of that, Mr. Bones, and there lies the challenge, don’t you agree?”
“Challenge is one word for it, I guess. My own word, ma’am, would be suicide.”
49
Clay had to laugh. He was drunk, but he would have laughed even if he’d been sober. The newspapers were filled with it; the law had captured Lodi at last, then found out it wasn’t him, then even lost the fellow they did have, and couldn’t explain how it happened. He was glad, in a way, that he did not work for the official forces of law, not if they made fools of themselves like that.
He poured himself another drink. The bar was one of Denver’s lowest, and he felt quite at home there. He had lived in a room upstairs for more than a week. Meals were sent up, and liquor, and he sometimes came down to the bar to drink some more. He had run up a considerable bill, and was unable to pay it, but Clay was not bothered. Since walking out of the desert down in New Mexico he hadn’t cared about very much at all. He supposed his life was effectively over and done with; all he needed to do now was drink himself into the grave and find some pe
ace.
“Mr. Dugan?”
The large man before him was unknown to Clay.
“No,” he said. “Go away.”
“I believe I’ll sit, Mr. Dugan.”
“This is my table.”
“It’s the hotel’s table, and you’re drunker than he said you’d be.”
“Who said?”
“My employer.”
“Well, he’s right; now go away.”
“He sent me to find you so I might make a proposition, Mr. Dugan. I don’t know why he’d want a drunk on the payroll, but that’s his choice.”
“You tell him you couldn’t find me, all right?”
“That’d be a lie, Dugan. I’m not lying for you.”
“Then say I turned it down, whatever it is.”
“Don’t you want work? You’re broke.”
“I’m not.”
“Sure you are, and you owe money right here in this pisspot hotel. You take the job that’s offered, you can pay your way out of here.”
Clay contemplated his drink. “What job?”
“Lodi.”
“Say again?”
“You know the one.”
Clay laughed. “You want me to catch him? There must be a couple hundred laws after Lodi, and they can’t do it.”
“The pay’s good. Interested?”
“You didn’t say your name.”
“John.”
The office Clay was ushered into that afternoon was elegant, yet strangely bare. The gentleman behind the enormous desk seemed elderly and frail in appearance, yet he exuded the distinct aura of power.
“Please sit down, Mr. Dugan.”
Clay lowered himself into a wing-backed chair.
“My name is Jones. I have been interested in you for some time.”
“Why?”
“You’re an interesting man, Mr. Dugan. Your career fits no usual pattern. Your calling, if that is the correct word, is for rounding up criminals, but you have never sought the sanction of a federal badge. I wonder why that is.”
Clay offered no explanation.
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