I had my own notion as to what was behind this, but I wanted his. “Were they sent?”
“That’s what I don’t know.” The saloonkeeper shook his head. “Stand a bandit up beside a lot of them beef nursers, and you can’t hardly tell the difference, Baltimore. Maybe the fellows was just liquored up and feeling mean.”
I wrote a general story and editorially urged enforcement of the municipal law requiring revelers to check their guns before getting a skinful. Aware that the law itself was a feeble one, aimed only at drunken malefactors while missing sober ones, I couldn’t hit the right note of thundering support for it. Jackson did much better than I in a story which, without making any direct accusations, suggested that the Happy Hunting Ground was the natural locus of such disgraceful outbursts of violence.
Grimly scanning the War Whoop, I saw that its account had one thing in common with that of my own paper. Neither sheet had mentioned that the shot which saved Overton’s life had been fired by Miss Tandy.
I spent the next few nights at the Happy Hunting Ground, losing a little money to Peters or Overton, but mostly lounging at the bar, watching for developments. Dolly knew why I was there, though we seldom spoke. When she gambled, she had no time for other pursuits, and when she was through, her carriage called for her.
She would send a waiter out to tell me she was leaving, however. That was as near as we came to touching on the subject until I was watching the colonel deal in the small hours of the third or fourth day.
“I am going now,” she said, after her touch on my arm had turned me to face her. “Thanks, by the way, for the flowers you sent recently.”
“I didn’t know the whereabouts of the victim,” I remarked, “so I reasoned that the person who fired the shot was next of kin. Did you know that you’re looking prettier every day?”
As a matter of fact she looked tired, as she always did after the nervous strain of an evening spent in dealing, but her eyes lighted up. “You should see me some time with a rope around my neck. Good night, my dear.”
For the next two days nothing happened. Then, just as I had concluded that the first invasion had been accidental, the raiders came again. There were a full score of them this time, and their actions showed that they had profited from their defeat of the previous week. From where I sat behind my stack of faro checks I could see half of them deploying in the bar to watch for hostile moves on the part of the management, while the rest marched into the gambling room.
Some of the players rose to leave in advance of the oncoming storm. Under cover of their departure I moved to lean against the wall near a huge oil painting called “The Day Dreamer.” This particular visionary indulged in her reveries while sitting naked on a rock, dangling one foot in the water. Directly behind this foot was the hiding place of a shotgun, which I could now reach, should necessity demand it.
Dolly meanwhile had sauntered toward a bronze statue entitled “The Wistful Captive.” Presumably the subject of this artistic study was wistful for clothes, her captors not having seen fit to provide her with any. Nevertheless, she would offer good cover from behind which to fire.
Miss Tandy had been able to move unobtrusively, as her table had been passed up in favor of Droop-eye’s. I could see the gambler standing there, imperturbable and looking half asleep. Then he was obscured by the taller figures of the range riders.
Just what happened I don’t know. I had been waiting for a series of moves, similar to the ones which had caught Overton in a squeeze. These men did not wait to go through the motions of provoking gunplay, however. All of a sudden a shot rang out, and the raiders started piling through the door beyond the colonel’s table, which was the one opening into the street.
If Peters had fallen right away, our reprisal would have been swifter. But he was still erect, looking much the same as he had a minute earlier. Then as I peered, trying to figure out what had happened, blood gushed out of his mouth and he collapsed.
Most of the assassins were already safely through the doorway. Not waiting to pick a specific target, I cut loose with both barrels on the rear guard.
The scatter charge must have hit others, but I saw a man stagger and drop the pistol in one of his upthrown hands. I had dropped the shotgun myself and had my revolver out by the time I reached the street. Just outside the door I had to jump over a body sprawled on the wooden walk. I snapped shots at figures fleeing toward Apache Street, then flattened out to let counterfire whistle over me. In another minute they were all in the saddle, whooping and shooting as they tore away.
Men were converging from all directions, eager to find out what was afoot. Leaving others to answer their questions, I walked back to the fellow I had brought down. By the light pouring through the doorway, I could see that the man’s back was horribly mangled, though he was still alive.
Just as I bent over him, he twisted to lie face up. Probably he couldn’t feel the contact of his wound with the sidewalk because of injury to his spine. His eyes were open, and they studied me while I steeled myself to question him.
“Are you the one that got me, Baltimore?”
In turn I perused his features, but their contorted pallor stirred no chord of recognition. “Shakespeare,” he reminded me. “I’m Smith, or that’s who I said I was after you’d saved our necks from the Apaches. We had a good time that night, didn’t we?”
I didn’t find it easy to ask help of a man who knew I had given him his mortal wound, although he seemed to be past the point of bearing hard feelings. “Who paid you and the rest to kill Droop-eye?” I demanded.
“Was that his name?” Even sliding into the grave, Smith didn’t abandon the code of thieves. “You know it wouldn’t be square to peach.”
That denial, which he would doubtless have worded more carefully under other conditions, told me what I wanted to know. By then several had discovered that all of the raiders had not got away. Sending one man for a doctor, I went to see how Peters was doing.
The colonel wasn’t doing; he was done. He, too, had been shot in the back, the powder burns suggesting that a gun had been held within inches of his body. Having ascertained that much, I pushed through the crowd around the corpse. Without knowing how she would take to the offer, I had to see whether the dead man’s partner was in need of any assistance.
She was seated at her faro table, shuffling and reshuffling a deck of cards, while Gay hovered near uncertainly. “Should I send for your carriage, Miss Dolly?”
Her shoulders, which had been held unnaturally stiff, relaxed at the sound of my voice. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said, without looking up.
“And may I call on you, after I’ve made arrangements with the undertaker?”
“Please do,” she murmured.
Dead Warrior’s leading undertaker, a fellow named David Leeming, surveyed the bodies of Peters and Smith, then lying side by side, with professional interest. “Neither one shot in the face or hands,” he remarked with satisfaction. “I can make ’em look good.”
Lacking his enthusiasm for his craft, I merely nodded. “But you’re going to let the town marshal look at them first?”
“Oh sure. We team up like beer and pretzels,” Leeming declared. “Who’s paying for them, Mr. Carruthers?”
“Smith is my responsibility,” I replied. “Although I imagine the estate will take care of the colonel’s funeral expenses, I’ll guarantee them, if that’s what’s necessary.”
“It’s all I wanted to know,” the undertaker said. “Come around to the parlor tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll show you two of the best-fixed-up corpses in Arizona Territory.”
My first stop was at the bar, where Gay poured me a half tumbler full of whiskey. Several men tried to buzz questions at me, but the landlord shooed them away.
“Baltimore don’t feel like talking now,” he told them. He watched me gnaw at the liquor, which was soon dispatched. “You need another, old-timer?”
“One will carry me as far as I’m going, Ham.” G
iving him an appreciative slap on the shoulder, I left for my next port of call.
Faithful to his habit, Magistrate James Pickering was playing poker with a few cronies in the back room of the Gold Beaver. He threw in his hand when he saw me enter, and rose to meet me halfway.
“I’d heard about it,” he said.
Pickering was a lank man with shrewd eyes in a face which was otherwise that of a country gawk. The questions he asked might differ from those put by magistrates elsewhere, but I was prepared to answer them as earnestly and carefully as I would those of any other officiating jurist.
“What would you like to know, Judge?” I asked.
“Let’s see what I already know.” He looked around for a cuspidor and got rid of surplus tobacco juice. “They got Droop-eye and you got one of them; but this wasn’t self-defense, the way I get it, as nobody was gunning for you. What would you say was your intent?”
“I didn’t have any,” I answered, “at least as far as this particular fellow was concerned. It was like shooting ducks, Judge. I fired at a whole bunch of them, as they were squeezing out the door, and one of them dropped.”
“It couldn’t have been personal malice, as you didn’t know who you was hitting,” he mused. “Was Droop-eye a friend of yours, Carruthers?”
I thought before I answered. There was much about the colonel that I had found difficult to understand, yet I had also found much to like and admire.
“Yes, I’d say that we were pretty friendly.”
“So when your pardner dropped, you had a natural instinct for reprisal.” Pickering nodded. “Well, I can’t think of any good reason why you wouldn’t.”
Dismissed by the court, I was at last free to proceed to Dolly’s house. She was dressed in white rather than the dashing costume she had worn at the Happy Hunting Ground. I thought she had been crying, but she was now composed enough to talk without strain.
“I’ll see about having the will probated, if the colonel left one,” I offered. “Do you know about that?
“Yes,” she told me. “I am executrix.” Not astonished, in view of their known partnership, I nodded. On her part, Dolly smiled sadly. “I don’t believe the terms of his will can be carried out, since he left all his money to what would be regarded as a treasonable enterprise. Will you get us each a pony of brandy, Baltimore?”
After I had poured from the decanter in readiness on a small table, she went on. “If you’ve thought about it at all, you may have imagined many reasons for the association between the colonel and myself without hitting on the right one. To begin with the simple part of it, I was his niece; and to confuse you absolutely, both he and I have been the secret operatives of a nonexistent nation.”
Now knowing why Peters had always looked familiar, I wondered why I hadn’t observed the family resemblance. Next my mind flashed back to my original meeting with the colonel, when he had tried to sound out my politics.
“Good Lord! The Confederacy?”
“Not in the old sense, but in the form of a new Jeffersonian empire, where its traditions could somehow be perpetuated. He was a young regimental commander whose heart cracked at Appomattox. His head cracked, too, but it took me some years to find that out.”
Many of the things which had puzzled me about the colonel were thus explained, but the master clue was lacking. “What gave him such an absurd idea, anyhow?”
“There are men who die without a cause to die for,” she said. “But he would probably have found a more normal answer for his need, if he hadn’t come West. The sight of so much unused land gave him the idea that he could be a combination of William Walker and Moses, an archfilibuster, seizing a country where conquered Southerners could raise their heads anew.”
Seeing a chance to find answers for some of the questions I had long wanted to ask about Dolly herself, I let embryo empires lie. “How long have you been out here?”
“Since I was orphaned at seventeen.” Dolly looked back into time. “As my mother’s brother, the colonel was my closest relative, and he came to see what I wanted to do. I had a choice between taking shelter in somebody else’s home or of taking a chance with him in the West.”
Her use of the word “chance” cued my next question. “But how did you happen to take up dealing?”
“So I could serve the cause instead of being a tag-along. Having always been good at cards, I was convinced that you didn’t have to grow a beard to bank faro.”
Thinking how correct and chivalrous Droop-eye had always been, I shook my head at the incongruity. “Didn’t the colonel object?”
“He did until I brought up Belle Boyd and other feminine patriots. After that the idea appealed to him, and he agreed to teach me what I had to know, including the use of weapons.” Once more Dolly’s smile was one of rueful reminiscence. “The only stipulation was that there was to be no nepotism. As an operative of the organization, I was a soldier not a niece, and all mention of our kinsmanship was banned.”
Asking permission, I helped myself to more brandy. “I still don’t see what gambling has to do with such a plot as you mentioned,” I told her.
“It takes a treasury to make a nation,” she reminded me, “and nothing but gambling gives such quick returns and freedom of movement. Our winnings — over and above our considerable living expenses — went into a war chest, which in turn was mostly spent on the endless meetings between my uncle and other dedicated souls, or the soldiers of fortune or downright cranks they were able to enlist. They’d meet in New York or San Francisco, and once even in Hong Kong. I made that trip myself, and we returned with the assurance of some other adventurer that the British Empire was eagerly awaiting the chance to recognize the new country.”
“Did it have any contours outside of dream?” I asked. “Where was it to be?”
“There were dozens of plans; but after hearing about your duchy he definitely settled on the Southwest, which he was convinced could not be defended from a small but determined band of revolutionaries. You would have to meet as many ‘My sword is my fortune’ wanderers as I have to understand that. They live on hope as butterflies do on mites of nectar. Nothing really happens; but there’s always good news, with events being masterfully shaped toward the right time to strike. Oh, the poor dear!”
“I’m thinking about what his niece went through,” I said.
Dolly waved that away. “She had a wonderful time, being noble and secretive all at once, which is a delicious combination. I worshipped the colonel and his purpose, being full of war and reconstruction bitterness myself — almost as full of those things as I was of ignorance.” Draining her glass, she rose to place it beside the brandy decanter. “It took some years for all three to wear off,” she remarked, when she was again seated beside me on the divan.
There was no need for me to ask about the money with which Terry had once entrusted me. It had something to do with the Peters organization, whose details were not a proper subject for my curiosity.
“And you couldn’t let your uncle know.” With a troubled face, I thought of what it must have been like to discover that all her effort and idealism had been lavished on a madman’s fantasy. “I don’t know that I think your uncle’s patriotism was any more wildly quixotic than your devotion to him, after you’d separated fact from mirage, Miss Dolly. What have you got out of it, or what will you do now?”
“Deal faro,” she said. She didn’t like the shifting of sympathy from Droop-eye to herself, and the note of pensive sorrow was gone from her voice. “Gambling’s what I got out of it, and I love it. It’s not just because I’m a woman with some claims to good looks that I can make my way in any camp where the stakes are high enough to bother about. Everybody in the West knows that I’m as good a dealer as there is; and nobody ever bamboozled me or stole my bank, either, except that one time when I bet on the wrong side in a gamblers’ war.”
While she was talking her violet eyes glinted with competitive fire, enabling me to glimpse the insatiable lust for ex
erting skill and matching wits which I had noticed in Blackfoot Terry and other professional dealers. After her reference to Midas Touch, however, her face chilled, and I knew she was going to ask the question I had been expecting.
“Was it Barringer, Baltimore?”
“Yes,” I said. “I can’t prove it, yet, but I know.”
“He mustn’t beat us,” she said; and I knew that with her the will to triumph barely ran second to a desire for evening accounts. Jumping up, she paced the floor, then stopped and shook her head in frustration. “But is there a way to get at him?”
Such an appeal from her to me was something new between us, and my voice deepened as I answered. “I have the means,” I said.
Chapter 20
THE TOWN’S TWO DAILIES were again at odds, this time over the passing of Droop-eye Peters. Dick rubbed the cobwebs from all the proverbs which reprove a life of violence and hung them up to mark the passing of the frontier. The colonel, according to Jackson’s summation, was a symbol of the bad old days of the West which were being put out of date by the rise of such great cities as Dead Warrior. “The era of the gunman-gambler, and all he stands for in the way of feckless recklessness must and shall,” the War Whoop concluded, “give rise to the serene and enlightened day of unlimited commercial prosperity.”
The best I could do was to write of Peters as one of the picturesque characters who had helped to make the West synonymous with adventure. In the main, though, I was writing for an uninterested public. Dick’s “unlimited commercial prosperity” phrase got home to the very people whom I had previously been able to count upon.
I found that out when I called a meeting of the vigilantes that evening. What I asked was action to stop the raids conducted by gangs riding in from the range. I got nowhere.
“We shouldn’t have trouble like that.” Stephen Holt, president of the Dead Warrior Bank and Trust Company, pulled at his long sandy side whiskers, as he always did when making obviousness do duty for an important pronouncement. “In my opinion, nevertheless, we should first find out just where the fault lies.”
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