by Matt Braun
Gaylord’s fork paused in midair. She saw something flicker in his eyes, and then he recovered himself. He forked the bite of pie into his mouth and looked at her with an open expression. He chewed away, seemingly puzzled.
“Well, I’ve been called many things, but never a robber. It must be a case of mistaken identity.”
Lillian held his gaze. “They have a witness.”
“A witness to what?”
“Someone who saw you sell the gold from the robbery to Ed Chase. And they know you haven’t any mining properties in Central City.”
“Lillian—”
“You are Earl Miller, aren’t you?”
Gaylord placed his fork on his plate. “I’m sorry, more sorry than you’ll ever know. I’d hoped to start fresh here in Denver.”
“Omigod,” Lillian whispered. “I wasn’t sure until just now. I prayed it wasn’t so.”
“And I forgot what a good actress you are. They sent you here to get a confession, didn’t they?”
“I thought I could clear your name. How silly of me.”
“Where are they now?”
“Sitting right over there.”
David Cook and Jeff Carr were seated at a table across the room. Gaylord looked at them and they returned his look with flat stares. He glanced back at Lillian.
“Time to go,” he said with an ironic smile. “Wish I could stick around and see how we made out. I think it would’ve worked.”
“Wait, please!” Lillian pleaded. “You musn’t try to run.”
“Didn’t they tell you I killed a man?”
“Yes—”
“I won’t be hung.”
“Otis, please—”
“So long, Lillian.”
Gaylord swung out of his chair. He walked quickly toward the front of the restaurant, snaring his hat off a wall rack. As he neared the door, Cook and Carr got to their feet. Carr pushed a waiter aside.
“Earl Miller!” he commanded. “Halt right there!”
Miller, alias Otis Gaylord, stopped at the door. His hand snaked inside his jacket and came out with a Colt Navy revolver. He whirled, bringing the Colt to bear, and found himself a beat behind. Jeff Carr, pistol extended at shoulder level, fired.
The slug struck Miller dead-center in the chest. His shirt colored as though a small rosebud had been painted on the cloth by an invisible brush. A look of mild surprise came over his face, and he staggered back, dropping the Colt, slamming into the door. His knees buckled and he slumped to the floor.
Lillian stared at him as though she’d been shot herself. Her mouth opened in a soundless scream and for a moment she couldn’t get her breath. She buried her head in her hands.
Her low, choking sob was the only sound in Delmonico’s.
The theater was mobbed. Within the hour, the news of the shooting had spread throughout the Tenderloin, and the star of the Alcazar became even more sensational. Everyone wanted a glimpse of the woman assumed to be the dead man’s paramour. The Colorado Nightingale.
Lillian somehow got through her first four numbers. She felt wretched about Gaylord’s death and oddly guilty for having exposed him as an outlaw. But she kept reminding herself of what her father—and her mother—had always taught as the cardinal tenet of the theater. No matter what, the show must go on.
The oldest bromide in the business was her lodestone. A trouper, barring earthquake or flood, went out on the stage and performed. She sang the ballads with heartfelt emotion for Gaylord (she still couldn’t think of him as Earl Miller, robber and murderer). And she belted out the snappy tunes with an insouciance that belied her sorrow.
A comic came offstage as she waited in the wings. Her final number for the evening was Lily of the West, which played well off her own billing. She walked to center stage, steeling herself to hold it all together and close out the night on a high note. She put on a happy face as the curtain opened and the orchestra swung into the tune. Her voice was bubbly and spirited.
When first I came to Denver
Some pleasure here to find
A damsel fresh from Durango
Was laughter to my mind
Her rosy cheeks, her ruby lips
Set things aflutter in my chest
Her name so sweet and dear was Dora
The Lily of the West …
The audience began clapping in time to the music. Her ivory gown shone in the spotlight as she whirled and skipped about the stage, revealing her ankles in a sprightly dance routine. She finished the song with a winsome smile and playfully threw kisses to the crowd, bowing low when she curtsied for a mischievous display of cleavage. The applause swelled into a standing ovation that brought her on for five—then six—curtain calls.
Backstage, she nodded politely to congratulations from the other performers. Burt Tully had earlier offered his condolences about Gaylord, and she hoped she’d seen the last of him for the night. She wanted nothing more than to hurry back to the hotel and climb into bed and hide. She thought she might burst into tears at any moment.
Before she could undo her gown, there was a light rap on the door. She sighed, thinking it was Tully, or Chester come to express his sympathy, and sulked across the room. When she opened the door, a man in his early thirties, dressed in an impeccably tailored suit, stood outside. His mouth flashed in an engaging smile.
“Miss Fontaine,” he said in a modulated voice. “I’m Victor Stanton, from San Francisco. May I speak with you a moment?”
Lillian held her ground. “What is it you want, Mr. Stanton? How did you get backstage?”
“I talked my way past Burt Tully. As to my purpose, I own the Bella Union Theater. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.”
Everyone in show business had heard of the Bella Union. Even in New York, which was considered the center of the universe for theater, the Bella Union was fabled for its opulent productions. Victor Stanton, the impresario, was considered a showman second to none. Lillian suddenly placed the man with the name.
“Yes, of course,” she said pleasantly. “Won’t you please come in?”
There was a small, sagging sofa against the wall. Lillian got him seated and took her chair by the dressing table. “How nice of you to drop by,” she said, trying to gather her wits. “What brings you to Denver?”
“I come here once or twice a year,” Stanton said amiably. “I’m always scouting for new acts, and I must say, tonight was my lucky night. You were absolutely brilliant, Miss Fontaine.”
“Why, thank you!” Lillian gushed. “I’m very flattered you would say so.”
“Let me ask, are you familiar with San Francisco?”
“Well, no, not really.”
“We like to think of it as the Paris of North America. Even more cosmopolitan than New York.”
Stanton went on like a civic booster, extolling the virtues of the City by the Bay. As he talked, Lillian noticed his dapper attire, his polished manner and his chiseled features, and the fact that he wore no wedding ring. A fleeting thought crossed her mind about the rotten luck she’d had with men on her odyssey through the West. She wondered if her fortunes might change.
“There you have it,” Stanton said. “A city worthy of your remarkable talent.”
Lillian realized she was focused on the man rather than his words. “Pardon me?”
“Miss Fontaine, I’m offering you star billing at the Bella Union. How much is Tully paying you?”
“Why … three hundred a week.”
“I’ll make it five hundred,” Stanton said without hesitation. “With a one-year contract and my personal guarantee of fame beyond your wildest expectations. What do you say?”
“I …” Lillian thought she might faint. “I have almost two weeks left on my engagement here.”
“Then you’ll open at the Bella Union on Independence Day. We’ll introduce you to San Francisco with fireworks on July Fourth! I couldn’t think of anything more fitting.”
Lillian felt a sudden rush of memory. Abilene and the C
omique and Wild Bill Hickok. Dodge City and George Armstrong Custer and Cimarron Jordan. Pueblo and Denver and her long run as the Colorado Nightingale. And now, her name in lights in the City by the Bay.
“You’ll love it there,” Stanton said, staring directly into her eyes. “I can’t wait to show you all the sights, Telegraph Hill and the Golden Gate. I predict you’ll never leave.”
“I’ve always heard it’s very nice.”
“Do you prefer to be called Lilly or Lillian?”
“All my friends call me Lillian.”
“And mine call me Victor. I think this is the start of something big, Lillian. Do you feel it, too?”
Lillian all but melted under the warmth of his gaze. The Bella Union, her name in lights, and maybe, with just a little luck, Victor Stanton. Yes, she told herself with the wonder of it all …
San Francisco, here I come.
Epilogue
Victor Stanton made good on his promise. Lillian was billed simply as The Nightingale, and she quickly became the star of the Bella Union. By early summer of 1873, she was the sweetheart of stage and song.
Lillian loved San Francisco. The city was wondrously nestled in a natural amphitheater, with steep hills surrounding the center of the community. The bay was the finest landlocked harbor on the continent, and westward along the peninsula, through the Golden Gate, sailed tall-masted clippers and oceangoing steamers from around the world. The trade had transformed the City by the Bay into one of the richest ports on earth.
A profusion of cultures, it was also the premier city of the West. Along the waterfront was the infamous Barbary Coast, a wild carnival of dance halls and brothels where sailors were shanghaied onto ships bound for the Orient. Chinatown, an exotic city within a city, was like being transported backward in time to Old Cathay, where ancient customs still prevailed. The Uptown Tenderloin, a district reserved for society swells, was filled with theaters and cabarets and plush casinos. To Lillian, it was all a storybook come to life.
The Bella Union, located in the heart of the Uptown Tenderloin, was on O’Farrel Street. There was a casino for affluent high rollers upstairs and on the ground floor an ornate barroom fronting the building. Beyond the bar was a spacious theater, with a sunken orchestra pit and the largest proscenium stage west of Chicago. The floor was jammed with linen-covered tables for 500, and a horseshoe balcony was partitioned into private boxes for wealthy patrons. Crowds flocked there every night of the week to see The Nightingale.
Lillian’s dressing room was decorated in pale blue. The furnishings were expensive and tasteful, a Louis XIV sofa and chairs and a lush Persian carpet. Victor Stanton, as was his custom, lounged on the sofa while she changed behind a silk screen that was all but translucent. For her last number of the night, she slipped into a bead-embroidered gown of lavender crepe de chine. When she stepped from behind the screen, Stanton stared at her as though spellbound. The gown clung like silken skin to her sumptuous figure.
“Do you like it?” she said, posing for him. “I ordered it especially for you.”
Stanton seemed short of breath. “You have never looked lovelier,” he said, his eyes glued to her. “I deeply regret I must share you with the audience.”
“How gallant!” She laughed a minxish little laugh. “Perhaps I’ll wear it only for you.”
“No, no,” Stanton said, ever the showman. “You owe it to your public, my dear. You are, after all, The Nightingale.”
“Then you won’t mind sharing me with the audience?”
“I smother my desires to the good of the show.”
“Sweet Victor, you really are a naughty man. I somehow doubt your resolve will hold after the show.”
Lillian was a very chic and sophisticated twenty-one. She was not a maiden any longer, but neither was she a fallen woman. Any number of times, Victor had asked her to become his bride and share his mansion in the posh Nob Hill district. She was content instead to be his lover, what the society grand dames, given to tittering euphemism, called his inamorata. She enjoyed her freedom.
On Telegraph Hill, her little house was done in the French style, with a magnificent view of the bay. No less than her own home, she loved the independence of $9,000 in the bank and a growing portfolio of railroad stocks. She had renegotiated her contract with Victor three times and now received 5 percent of the box office receipts at the Bella Union. She often thought there was a bit of the extortionist in every successful chanteuse.
Letters from Colorado merely added to her sense of well-being. Chester was happily married, his wife in a family way, and almost certainly destined to become the merchant prince of Denver. Alistair Fontaine, now an ordained minister, reveled in his role as an itinerant preacher in the mining camps. To hear him tell it in his letters, he had Satan on the run and waged war on sinners with the battle cry of “Onward Christian Soldiers.” She suspected God had never had a warrior quite like her father. A Shakespearean was, in the end, more than a match for Satan.
“I’ve arranged supper at the Palace,” Stanton said as she checked herself in the mirror. “I thought it only appropriate for our celebration.”
“Oh?” Lillian adjusted the bodice of her gown. “What are we celebrating?”
“Why, it’s June 28, the anniversary of your arrival from Denver. Surely you haven’t forgotten?”
“How could I forget a year together? And because of you, dear, sweet Victor … the happiest year of my life.”
“Well, selfish fellow that I am, I planned it that way. I told you the night we met you would never leave San Francisco.”
“Yes, it’s true.” Lillian turned, kissed him soundly on the mouth. “I will never leave.”
“Does that mean you’ll accept my proposal?”
“One day, someday, maybe a Sunday. We’ll see.”
“You’re a little vixen to keep me waiting.”
“I know!”
Stanton, as he did every night, walked her to the wings for her last performance. Onstage, a squealing troupe of dancers was romping through the ’Frisco version of the French cancan. Their frilly drawers and black mesh stockings were laughingly exposed as they went into the finale and flung themselves rump first to the floor in la split. Then, screaming and tossing their skirts, they leaped to their feet and raced offstage as the curtain closed. The crowd rewarded them with thunderous applause.
Lillian moved to center stage. The orchestra segued into A Cozy Corner, and when the curtain opened, she stood framed in a creamy spotlight. Her clear alto voice filled the theater, and she glided around the stage, pausing here and there with a dazzling smile and a saucy wink. She played to every man in the room.
A cup of coffee, a sandwich and you
A cozy comer, a table for two
A chance to whisper and cuddle and coo
With lots of loving and hugging from you
I don’t need music, laughter or wine
Whenever your eyes look into mine
A cup of coffee, a sandwich and you
A cozy corner, a table for two
San Franciscans were fond of saying there was only one nightingale in all the world. Her name was Lilly Fontaine.
PRAISE FOR SPUR AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR MATT BRAUN
“Matt Braun is one of the best!”
—Don Coldsmith, author of the Spanish Bit series
“Braun tackles the big men, the complex personalities of those brave few who were pivotal figures in the settling of an untamed frontier.”
—Jory Sherman, author of Grass Kingdom
ST. MARTIN’S PAPERBACKS TITLES
BY MATT BRAUN
WYATT EARP
BLACK FOX
OUTLAW KINGDOM
LORDS OF THE LAND
CIMARRON JORDAN
BLOODY HAND
NOBLE OUTLAW
TEXAS EMPIRE
THE SAVAGE LAND
RIO HONDO
THE GAMBLERS
DOC HOLLIDAY
YOU KNOW MY NAME
&
nbsp; THE BRANNOCKS
THE LAST STAND
RIO GRANDE
GENTLEMAN ROGUE
THE KINCAIDS
EL PASO
INDIAN TERRITORY
SHADOW KILLERS
BUCK COLTER
KINCH RILEY
DEATHWALK
HICKOK & CODY
About the Author
Matt Braun was the author of more than four dozen novels, and won the Golden Spur Award from the Western Writers of America for The Kincaids. He described himself as a “true westerner”; born in Oklahoma, he was the descendant of a long line of ranchers. He wrote with a passion for historical accuracy and detail that earned him a reputation as the most authentic portrayer of the American West. Braun passed away in 2016. You can sign up for author updates here.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
THE OVERLORDS
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three