“My English is more than serviceable,” said Ilges stiffly.
“I regret to have put it so brutally, but you know what I’m saying. It is not a question of an accent but of origins.”
“I need some time to think about this,” he said.
“I can ask for no more,” I conceded, getting to my feet. “But before I go I have one last thing to say. I know Walsh’s character. I can interpret him, read him. He is a volatile man who, in the heat of the moment, does not always mean what he says. It can be useful to you to have the services of a translator.”
“Why would I consent to any of this, put myself in your hands?” he said as if musing aloud. “You are Walsh’s man.”
“Believe me,” I told him, “I am no one’s man – at least in the sense you mean.”
“Then why are you doing this? What do you hope to gain?” Ilges looked genuinely perplexed.
“I only wish to make myself useful. To be of assistance to my country. And if I succeed in doing that, I will be of assistance to you too, Major Ilges. Like it or not, the powers that be have yoked you and Walsh together. The question now is whether or not you will pull together.” That said, I left him.
If the Major and Ilges are a strange pair, Walsh and I may be a stranger one. He sees everything in black and white. There are no greys in his world. I suppose it falls to me to point them out to him.
Walsh once told me that he envied me. When I asked how that was possible, he said I had had the great good fortune to see action at the Battle of Ridgeway and he had not. The Major has a strange idea of good fortune. When I saw General O’Neill’s name in that document Dunne left with Walsh, I was brought back to the moment that the Irish hero had looked down at me from the back of his horse, the contempt with which he treated me after our defeat, the haughty glitter in his eye. In such circumstances, I doubt Walsh could have swallowed O’Neill’s condescension the way I did.
But to speak the truth, the scorn of the enemy did not cut me very deeply. It was the disdain of Pudge Wilson, brother officer, erstwhile friend, that slashed me to the bone.
SIX
CASE AND MCMULLEN HAVE given up hope that Peregrine Hathaway will show. The three had agreed to meet at six o’clock for supper at the Oxbow, but when the hands of the wall clock pointed to six-fifteen, McMullen said, “Enough is enough. Time, tide, and Joe McMullen wait for no man. I’m ordering.”
It’s now nearly seven-fifteen and McMullen is looking forward to a night of frolic. This afternoon he paid a visit to the Tonsorial Palace and still smells powerfully of bay rum; his freshly shorn temples gleam white, and the moustache he had had the barber wax into a set of bristling whiskers twitches and vibrates as he chews his pork chop. “Most likely the pup’s piddling on that girl’s door post, marking his territory,” Joe observes to Case.
“Perhaps. He feels that territory under threat. The visit he paid her he found a rival in the parlour, and beat a hasty retreat. Yesterday, the young lady’s mother told him the object of his affections could not receive visitors because she was resting her voice. Peregrine took that as a flimsy excuse, a sign Miss Tarr didn’t want to see him. He believes that his adversary has won the day.”
“Then he better give it up. Two fellows contending for the warm regards of a young lady – that’s dangerous business. I learned that lesson years ago. Almost got myself killed over a sweet young thing by name of Lurleen.” McMullen gives a sly grin. “Don’t tell me I never acquainted you with that episode?”
“No, but you will. I see it coming at me like a runaway carriage.”
“Lurleen,” says McMullen, “was the one who come between me and my boss, Fancy Charles. Fancy had a woodhawker’s station about a hundred mile downriver from here. Made his living selling fuel to the steamboats. Old as Methuselah, but lord almighty that man could chop and buck wood. Damn near killed me trying to keep up with the old bastard. Now of course woodhawking ain’t exactly my line, I don’t care for work that comes with blisters, but a empty belly leads to compromise. Ain’t that so?”
Case nods. It is the only thing a man can do once McMullen starts one of his anecdotes bouncing downhill.
“Anyways, after that first day on the end of a bucksaw with Fancy, I was so tuckered out I didn’t have the strength to force a fart, and just as I was dropping off to sleep I heard something peculiar.” Joe’s eyes widen in mock awe. “It was the voice of a young gal. Coming from t’other side of the cabin. Now you best believe, a voice coming out of nowheres was a shock to the system, but what it was saying, why it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up.” Joe pauses, and with a thoughtful air adds more white gravy to his plate. “She was saying, ‘Lurleen been thinking about this all day. Lurleen been having nasty thoughts all day about what she’s going to do with Fancy’s peeder.’ Well, I sat up in bed and ran my eyes every which way looking for that girl. But she wasn’t to be found. It was old Fancy himself talking in that high, sugary, oing y voice, addressing his very own carrot. And it was the same thing next night, and the night after that, and the night after that. Now he might been old as dirt, but Fancy worked his peeder just as hard as he did his bucksaw. No sooner we crawled into our pallets of a night and Lurleen would start whispering to Fancy’s doowinkle, telling how she’d been wanting it all day, studying on exactly what she was going to do to it, and what it was going to do to her.”
“Joe, you lie whether it’s called for or not. Just to keep in practice.”
McMullen solemnly crosses his heart. “No, sir, hope to die if this ain’t the unvarnished truth. Three weeks I had to listen to that dusty old coot and Lurleen carrying on in a bed not eight feet from my own. And every morning Fancy would get up and go about his business as if he was in his right mind, felling cottonwoods and whistling away, happy as a lark. But it was coming near to destroying me. Hearing him and Lurleen carry on in that fashion each and every night was making me desperate jumpy and nervy. So one afternoon I hoists up my courage and I says to Fancy, ‘I ain’t deaf, you know,’ and he looks puzzled and says, ‘Who said you was?’ like he didn’t have any notion to what circumstances I might be raising. So next time we settles down in our cots, I thinks to myself, ‘Well, see how it suits him, a taste of his own medicine,’ and before Lurleen can start romancing him, I says, ‘Hello, Mr. Joe, Lurleen come to pay you a visit this evening. Slide over and let me get in alongside you, you handsome man.’ And then Lurleen cries, ‘Oh my good Lord, but ain’t it big!’ And I went on to say a good deal more to commend my privates, but I won’t burn your tender ears by repeating it all.”
“And that did the trick? You got him to mend his ways?”
“Mend his ways? No, sir, it did not. It made him jealous. Why every time I turned around, there he was staring at me, hate writ all over his face. And you never seen a more terrible sight than old Fancy Charles with a double-bit axe in his hands, calculating when and where to split me like a chunk of cottonwood. I could see my days was numbered. But lucky for me a steamer hove to a couple of days later, so I seized the chance, resigned from woodhawking without giving notice, piled aboard that boat just as she threw off her mooring lines and started downriver. I took leave of the sweethearts from the deck rail. ‘Goodbye, Lurleen! Goodbye, Fancy!’ I hollered. ‘Never meant to come between you two! If you have a boy child, Lurleen, name him after me!’ ”
“Joe, you stretch the truth like taffy,” says Case, smiling despite himself.
McMullen makes a show of hurt feelings. “Well, I take offence to that. And if you got to call me a liar, you might put the word interesting before it.” Then he raises his eyebrows and says, “Hello. Judas bouncing up and down on a railway jigger, here comes trouble.”
Case cranes his neck to see Peregrine Hathaway wending his way through the tables, face shining like a bull’s-eye lantern, waving a piece of rolled-up paper. He drops down on a chair beside Case and announces, “Miss Celeste did have to rest her voice. She wasn’t trying to avoid me.”
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br /> “Your elders was speaking,” says Joe, “don’t interrupt.” He aims a finger at the boy’s breastbone. “And another thing. I don’t hold with tardiness. You and me leave for Fort Walsh four o’clock tomorrow afternoon, on the dot. If you ain’t ready to go – you get left. I ain’t going to dawdle about playing pocket pool with myself on account of you ain’t learned to tell time. Punctual is polite.”
Hathaway is oblivious to McMullen. “I feel so bad having doubted her sincerity, Mr. Case. But look, it’s all explained,” he says, unfurling a poster on the table. Case and Joe lean over and read.
CITIZENS OF FORT BENTON
TAKE NOTE!
You are cordially invited to an
EVENING OF MUSICAL ENTERTAINMENT!
COME ONE, COME ALL!
A free-will offering will be collected, all proceeds intended for the relief of friends and neighbors driven from their homes and occupations by the continuing menace from Sioux hostiles.
Fort Benton’s own, the charming and talented MISS CELESTE TARR, shall offer a selection of songs both sacred and secular, accompanied by MRS. RANDOLPH TARR on the pianoforte.
MOSES SOLOMON, ESQ., has generously donated the use of the MAJESTIC STAR SALOON for this charitable endeavor. Mr. Solomon graciously extends an invitation to the entire populace of Fort Benton, of every age and sex.
The sale of alcoholic beverages of any variety or description whatsoever shall not take place during the duration of the concert, nor any disorderly conduct deleterious to a full appreciation and enjoyment of the musical program be countenanced.
Program to take place
AUGUST 6TH, EIGHT O’CLOCK SHARP!
ALL WELCOME WHO KNOW HOW TO CONDUCT THEMSELVES!
“Miss Celeste is to sing, gentlemen. That was why she had to spare her voice,” says Hathaway. “I knew her to be charming and beautiful, but I had no idea, none at all, that she is also musically accomplished. It will be a splendid evening. The two of you must both come to see her.”
“Well,” says McMullen, “I ain’t coming because never mind I did go, I’d have to hear about it all over again from you, Peregrine, mile after mile all the way back to Fort Walsh. So I’ll save time and rely on your report. Besides, I already made plans. A fellow in the Extradition Saloon was praising up four whores who got stuck here in Benton when the stage stopped running to Helena. Two sets of twins, identical, can’t tell them apart. One pair of Irish and one pair of Swedes. The Irish ladies is said to be skinny as greyhounds and plasered with freckles. He said if it weren’t for the weight of them freckles those shed hens would lift off and fly skyward in the least breeze. But the Swedes is so plump, pink, and substantial, a cyclone couldn’t tip them over. I think I’ll have a go at one of each set.” Joe stands, gives his pants a hitch. “You best come along, Wesley. It’ll be a experience.”
Case shakes his head. “No, Joe, I shall pass a chaste evening at the recital with Peregrine. One of us must set him a good example.”
“Well, boys, I wish you joy listening to the sweet songstress warble.” And with that, McMullen begins to saunter through the Oxbow, nodding pleasantly to total strangers, passing remarks on the dishes. “My, don’t them short ribs look a mouthful! Don’t Mr. Dagg’s cook have a hand with the parsnips!” Then, from the doorway, he gives Case and Hathaway a cheery wave, settles his hat on his newly cropped head, and is gone.
A saloon bartender guards the door of the Majestic Star equipped with a bucket he shakes menacingly in the face of anyone trying to enter. Donations do not appear to be voluntary as advertised. When he rattles the bucket at Case, its bottom reveals a pond of silver floating several paper bills. Case contributes two dollars to the pail; the bartender moves aside and he and Hathaway cross the threshold of the Majestic into a jammed room.
Instantly, Peregrine begins to squirm his way through the mob, heading for the front of the room where the saloon’s piano stands, displaying a vase of brown-eyed Susans to lend a refined, feminine air to the evening’s proceedings. But Case has no intention of pursuing Hathaway through this crush of humanity, choosing first to take his bearings.
The saloon is hot as a boiler room, steaming with the animal heat of closely packed bodies. All the faces around him are beaded with perspiration. The odour is as extreme as the heat, the vinegary, pickling brine smell of sweat laced with the barnyard aromas of manure, horse, and mule given off by teamsters, bullwhackers, and hoop-legged waddies. An undercurrent of river mud and fried catfish wafts off the boatmen; the hide hunters and wolfers stink of old blood, the sharp tang of rusty iron. Add a dollop of spilled beer, sweet and yeasty, the reek of cheap tobacco, and Case feels his eyes are about to water with every pungent breath he draws.
The din is terrific. Despite the owner’s assurances that tonight decorum and propriety will rule, the inexorable inching of the hands of the clock towards the hour of the concert and the suspension of the sale of alcohol has led to a panic among the Majestic’s customers. They are swarming the bar, banging glasses on the zinc top, jostling for position, shouting and gesticulating to catch the attention of harried bartenders who scurry back and forth slopping whiskey into out-thrust shot glasses.
Case’s gaze falls on the Majestic’s proprietor, Moses Solomon. The one serene, still point in bedlam, he stands with his back propped against a beer barrel, squinting at the room through a haze of blue tobacco smoke. His beard is biblical, long and forked. He wears a crimson satin waistcoat buttoned over a white linen shirt; the red satin rosettes on his sleeve garters perfectly match the colour of his vest. His hairstyle is Disraelian, ruffled ssy-boy waves that sweep over his ears and seem scarcely in keeping with his fearsome sobriquet, Moses Mayhem. Case had learned that when Solomon had established Fort Benton’s toniest saloon, the citizenry had not appreciated his success, and had subjected him to a barrage of insult and calumny. But one day Solomon had turned on two of the most persistent Jew-baiters and shot them down on a corner of Front Street. Since then, people stepped very lightly in his presence.
The skull-cracking uproar, the stench, the sweltering temperature, the tight press of bodies is almost too much to bear. Hathaway has disappeared, swallowed up in the crowd, and Case is at the point of beating a strategic retreat when he sees Major Ilges looming above the throng, beckoning him. It’s a struggle for Case to reach the Major but when he does, he discovers a relatively calm island in the stormy saloon, a row of chairs reserved for the town’s notables in front of the piano, most of them already occupied.
“So glad to see you, Mr. Case,” says Ilges. “Will you be my guest? I’m sure Lieutenant Blanchard would surrender his seat so you might sit beside me.” The officer asked to relinquish his place shows no evidence of a willingness to surrender anything but withdraws with a sullen, put-upon look as Case demurs accepting. But finally he has no alternative but to settle down on the gracelessly vacated chair.
The Major immediately launches into introductions to the Fort Benton quality. In turn, Case is presented to a young dentist who has just opened a practice in town, the pressman of the Fort Benton Record, a goggle-eyed druggist, and Dr. Cornelius Hooper, Fort Benton’s most accomplished surgeon. The town’s biggest fishes follow: the merchant princes T.C. Power, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Baker, the Conrad brothers, and the tycoons’ wives. The gentlemen are solemn and sober in black broadcloth. The ladies are bedecked, bedizened, and loaded down with jewellery, lavishly swathed in yards of taffeta and silk, and severely corseted.
Ilges insists on describing Case as a young man come to Benton seeking business opportunities. Hearing that, most of the leading businessmen’s faces take on a bored, patronizing look, a look that says, How often have I heard that and how often have I seen the results – bankruptcy. Apologetically, Case qualifies the Major’s description. “Not so much business as ranching. In a small way.”
One of the Conrad brothers remarks, “If it’s land you’re after, now’s the time to plunge. Some of the cattlemen are looking to sell up. The
recent troubles have them spooked. If you want to drop by the office sometime, I can give you the name of one or two who are looking for a buyer. I don’t touch land myself. It’s not liquid.”
“Very generous of you,” says Case, becoming aware that the racket is subsiding to a low murmuring and expectant shuffling of feet.
In this instant of almost quiet, Major Ilges leans over, puts his mouth to Case’s ear, and whispers, “What we spoke about the other day – I have weighed things carefully. I am agreeable. Come to see me tomorrow.”
“Very well. I will indeed.”
Behind them, Moses Solomon bellows at those still lingering hopefully at the bar, “Stand back! Clear off! Immediate! Music about to begin!” Fort Benton’s princes of commerce brace themselves on their seats as if a tooth-puller were approaching, while their wives coyly survey the scene over fluttering fans, straining for a glimpse of the musical entertainment. Case hears one of the women say, “Now young Miss Tarr is a dear, sweet thing, but the way Mrs. Tarr acts is another matter. So very superior.” As his eyes search the room for a glimpse of this superior woman, he spots Hathaway loitering hard by the improvised stage, a smile on his face, his Adam’s apple dancing as he swallows his excitement.
There is a voluntary parting, a shifting and stirring of the multitude to make way for the Tarr family. With a stately and measured tread, Randolph Tarr escorts wife and daughter, one on each arm, their white gloves perched on the sleeves of his best frock coat like obedient doves. The saloon falls into a respectful hush as blond, pink Celeste and dark-haired, pale Ada advance on the piano.
A Good Man Page 9