The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion

by Loren D. Estleman

  There’d been no danger of that; he didn’t even stray so far as to enter a personal expenditure of a nickel into the account-book he kept for the agency. But he entertained himself with the conviction that he’d have made a criminal of the first rank. In order to apprehend one, it was important to understand his mental processes, and in effect to think more like a thief than a thief-taker. In this he had a decade of experience. Certainly, that approach had proven most useful during his interviews thus far in his journey.

  Being of an honest temperament, Rittenhouse would most likely have become a senior file clerk in some business concern but for the chance encounter that had brought him to the attention of the nation’s foremost detective. He never read a newspaper without a pen and a pair of shears close to hand, to underscore and remove items of interest for closer study, and the pigeonholes in his desk in Chicago were packed with lists he’d compiled of mundane details connected with larcenous events, compiled from reporter’s accounts and replies to telegrams he’d sent requesting further information: calibers of firearms, the bandits’ dress and idiosyncracies of speech and behavior, the nature of the containers in which spoils were carried away; there was no end to his patience with regard to such minutia, and he had a mesmerist’s skill for gleaning data from witnesses who insisted at first that they’d been too preoccupied by personal danger to notice whether the robbers were right- or left-handed or what they wore on their feet. Nothing was without interest, and no observation too unimportant to record.

  He applied this same thoroughness to his daily reading of out-of-town newspapers. While other agents satisfied themselves with a cursory examination of the criminal columns, Rittenhouse made it a point to scan the inside pages containing local advertisements, notices, and items of human interest. When the announcement of a visit by a group of itinerant actors calling itself the Prairie Rose Repertory Company appeared in issues of both the Kansas City Times and the Omaha Herald reporting the robbery by a lone bandit of first the Farmers Trust Bank and then a livestock auction, he was alerted; when he learned that the Prairie Rose players had been present also at the time the Wells, Fargo office was struck (again by a man acting alone), he was committed. A close study of papers from Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Tannery, Nebraska, settled the question as far as Rittenhouse was concerned.

  He was encouraged rather than put off by the variant descriptions of the robber involved in each outrage. Here he was tall and well-built, there thin and stoop-shouldered; elsewhere, he left the impression of an adolescent boy. He knew a little something about repertory players and their skill at playing one another’s roles upon short notice, and from the more detailed reviews of the company’s performances he was satisfied that the cast fulfilled all the body types mentioned in the criminal accounts, to wit:

  In the role of young Master Pip in Mr. Ragland’s ingenious abbreviation of Great Expectations, Miss April Clay engagingly and convincingly reverses the Elizabethan conceit for placing young male actors in the guise of women. Had your correspondent not spoken with the lady in costume shortly before the curtain went up on last night’s performance, he would have invoked Holy Scripture to maintain that the company had sneaked a boy into the cast, and unwittingly committed blasphemy.

  So read the notice in the same number of the Cheyenne Leader that had reported the robbery of the Cattleman’s Bank the previous evening. Rittenhouse wasn’t put off by the robber’s description, tall and rough-voiced. It would have been begging the question to present Miss Clay as a boy in both places. The company was bold, but not incautious.

  Rittenhouse shared his certainty with no one, not even the old man. Pinkerton responded to his wire reports with querulous telegrams, demanding to know what in thunder he was doing wasting fares and accommodations visiting such flea specks on the map as Tannery, when his orders were clearly to begin his investigation in Sioux Falls. The fledgling field agent replied that all would be explained in the fullness of time, knowing the tightfisted old Scot would bite through his own lip before he’d incur the expense of withdrawing him and replacing him with a more easily intimidated subordinate. However, he knew also the boundaries of Pinkerton’s patience, and conducted his business posthaste, seldom staying in one place overnight before moving on to the next location.

  Marshal Fletcher of Tannery, Nebraska, was a man after his heart. An unprepossessing figure, fat and lethargic, and manifestly out of favor with the town council, which allowed him to remain in office only until an adequate replacement could be appointed, he impressed Rittenhouse with how quickly he’d acted to investigate the Prairie Rose the night the Planter State Bank was robbed. Although authorities in some of the other towns had taken the same course, none had done so with such alacrity, and still others had ignored the company entirely, choosing instead the standard action of assembling a posse of amateurs to go haring all over the countryside looking for incriminating tracks among the scores leading into and out of the city limits. Moreover, Fletcher remained confident about the propriety of his decision, even as he was at a loss to explain why a thorough search of the Prairie Rose’s traps and possessions failed to turn up so much as a silver dollar that couldn’t be accounted for. Asked for an inventory of what had been found, he produced a sheet from his desk, transposed in his own hand from notes taken by the deputies who’d conducted the search.

  “I won’t trouble you to return it,” said the marshal. “I won’t need it clerking at Pardon’s store.”

  Rittenhouse thanked him, and rose to leave. At the door, he turned back and retraced his steps to give Fletcher his card.

  “I can’t promise anything,” he said. “Mr. Pinkerton prefers his men fit.”

  “I expect Stella Pardon’ll work some of the tallow off me.” Fletcher stretched an arm and tucked the card into the corner of the bulletin board next to the picture of Black Jack Brixton.

  The detective reread the list frequently, riding in day coaches, hanging onto straps aboard the Butterfield, and resting his sore muscles on lumpy boardinghouse mattresses. None of the inventories he procured elsewhere was as exhaustive; Kansas City’s was oral and vague, and in Cheyenne and Sioux Falls the actors had not even been questioned, let alone submitted to a search. Instinctively, he felt Fletcher’s list contained the answer to the mystery that troubled him, keeping him awake even though he’d become inured to the bedbugs’ torment and spoiling whatever appetite he’d developed for watery dumplings and chunks of undercooked chicken floating in curdled gravy. His quest for the solution wore the paper to pieces and continued to elude him long after he’d committed every item to memory: four large trunks; one army dispatch case; two train cases; six satchels, various sizes; one pr. duelling pistols; one Colt’s revolver, .45 caliber; four fence foils; one bicycle; many, many items of clothing, each detailed within the limits of a frontier lawman’s knowledge of such things; and etcetera.

  Any one of the satchels could have been used to carry away the money from those robberies where satchels were reported. The company seemed to prefer oilcloth sacks, but there was no mention of one on Fletcher’s list. Even if there had been, it didn’t explain just how they’d gotten the notes and gold and silver out of town. Whatever plan they used, it would be in place as well in the communities where they hadn’t been searched; they could never be sure they wouldn’t, and this was one gang that took no unnecessary chances. They might have buried it, but that would mean returning to the scenes of all their robberies, braving the very risk they’d taken careful steps to avoid the first time. This wasn’t a bunch of guerrillas, shooting up the town and hollering and riding hell-for-leather into open country, saddle pouches stuffed with cash. The means to retrieve the spoils had to be as clever as the means they’d used to acquire them in the first place. For the first time in his career, Philip Rittenhouse was—well, baffled, as the sensational press often said of the police back East. It was an uncomfortable feeling, and of late he’d become enough of a connoisseur to assign it a rare vintage.

 
; Pondering the problem again after his interview with the Wells, Fargo manager in Sioux Falls, he stopped to buy a copy of the Deseret News in a mercantile that carried several territorial newspapers. The stacked headlines had caught his eye:

  DOUBLE OUTRAGE AT THE OVERLAND

  FREIGHT OFFICE STRUCK TWICE IN A MATTER OF HOURS

  SECOND BAND FORCED TO LEAVE EMPTY-HANDED

  REIGN OF TERROR FOLLOWS

  PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF MANAGER OBERLIN

  Sipping weak coffee—it might have been strong tea—in the window of a restaurant looking out on Main Street, Rittenhouse chuckled over the account of the hapless second gang’s reaction upon finding they’d been outflanked by a rival. He strongly suspected they were Jack Brixton’s Ace-in-the-Hole marauders. Salt Lake City was a plausible ride from Denver, where they were known to patronize Nell Dugan’s Wood Palace; much good that did, with Nell’s lips sealed as tight as her corset. He recognized Breed’s description.

  That was the old man’s headache, with his obsession for protecting railroads, a frequent Brixton target. But he’d wire the office. There was no telling if anyone was reading the farther-flung papers in Rittenhouse’s absence, and in any case Pinkerton wasn’t likely to pay much attention to what happened at Overland. He’d written off stage companies as a vanishing source of income.

  Turning the page, the detective was excited, but not much surprised, to read half a column about the presentation by the Prairie Rose Repertory Company of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow at the Salt Lake Theater.

  He lifted his gaze across the street to rest his eyes from the dense print; at this rate he would soon need spectacles to read. He watched a dusty fellow in range attire lead his equally dusty mount up to a community trough, watched it plunge its muzzle into the water and suck.

  Rittenhouse thought of his memorandum book then, and the notes he’d taken from newspaper accounts and eyewitness testimony concerning the robberies. He saw Marshal Fletcher’s list, as clearly as if he hadn’t discarded it when it had grown too tattered to read. He spilled his coffee, burning his hand. He let it blister. He knew how the thing had been done, and how it was still being done, as recently as Salt Lake City.

  9

  Charlie Kettleman got the job.

  He was the obvious choice. Mysterious Bob’s conversation skills were lacking, Tom Riddle was too loud and too deaf, Brixton’s face was too well known, and Breed—apart from the fact he stuck out among all those Mormons like an ear of Indian corn in a tin of peaches—was far too likely to let his Bowie knife ask his questions. Charlie, who’d stayed outside to watch the horses, was the least likely to be recognized by the Overland manager. In addition, the Kettlemans were experienced negotiators who came away from the table with more than they brought. Charlie got a fresh mount from the corral behind the fallen-in stage stop and rode back into Salt Lake City to find out who had stolen the money that was properly theirs to steal.

  He went to the Overland office first. That was the test. If the manager had happened to look out the window and could place him, he’d have to cut his losses and run. He tethered his horse in front and went inside, resting a hand on the Forehand & Wadsworth in his coat pocket.

  “If you’ve come to rob me, you’ll have to take a seat. I haven’t had the chance to go to the bank.”

  Charlie hesitated. Then he saw the beaten look on the face of the man behind the counter, no recognition there, and knew he’d made a feeble joke. Charlie took his hand out of his pocket and drew the door shut behind him.

  “I heard you had a run of bad luck. I just came to ask when the stage leaves for Ogden.”

  The glum-faced manager exhaled. Clearly, he was relieved to respond to a normal query from an ordinary customer.

  “We canceled that route two years ago. You can take the Denver and Rio Grande straight through.”

  “Oh. It’s been three since I was here last. My name’s Cuthbert. Denver Mining Supplies.” He stuck out a hand.

  “Oberlin.” The manager took it listlessly. “You rode here clear from Denver?”

  Charlie was ready for that one. His horse could be seen through the window and there wasn’t much he could do about the alkali dust on his clothes. “I rented a mount at the livery. I like to go out riding after sitting on a train.”

  “I didn’t know Ike Gunther had horseflesh like that.”

  “I reckon I got all the luck intended for you.” He moved on quickly. “I wonder you don’t quit.”

  “I gave notice today. I’m only staying on to break in the new man, whoever he is. He better be Wild Bill. This country’s gone to the devil.”

  “That’s what I hear. Two gangs in one day.”

  “Well, the second was gang enough. The first time it was just one man.”

  Charlie whistled. “He must’ve been eight feet tall.”

  “He was as long as he had that big gun, as far as I’m concerned. Without it he was shorter than you, and twice as wide.”

  “Fat man, you say? He can’t have got far on horseback.”

  “He doesn’t have to since the railroad. Hop on in Denver or someplace, stop off in Salt Lake City, say, ‘Stick ’em up,’ then hop back on and ride all the way to San Francisco. Why spend money on board and feed when fares are so cheap? You’re in the wrong business, Mr. Cuthbert. Mining’s on its way out. Robbery’s the coming thing, and you don’t need riding lessons.”

  “ ‘Stick ’em up,’ that’s what he said? I thought folks only talked like that in the dime novels.”

  “Well, he never did. ‘Hand over the swag,’ that’s what he said.”

  Charlie laughed. He was that surprised.

  Oberlin’s face darkened. “That’s what he said. Like a pirate in a play.”

  From there, Charlie went to a barbershop and then a bathhouse, where he gave the boy a quarter to brush some of the Utah Territory off his clothes while he soaked the brine out of his skin, but all he overheard from the other customers were stories about the robbery of the Deseret Hotel and the shooting spree that had followed the unsuccessful raid on the freight office. Over a plate of fried chicken in a restaurant he heard a man had lost a finger and a dog its life, but he’d known that already. He learned Mormons were no better cooks than anyone else. That was all there was to get from the locals.

  When he came out onto the boardwalk, picking pinfeathers from between his teeth, dusk had slid in. He wondered if he should ride back in the dark or take a room. Night riding was the worst part of being a desperado, but he couldn’t be sure if Oberlin wouldn’t check his story about hiring his horse from the livery and alert the town; lynch mobs scared him worse than Texas Rangers and mad Indians. He’d just about decided to mount up and leave when someone came down the street pedaling a bicycle.

  Bicycles interested him. Back in Fort Worth, he and Ed had seen an advertisement in a catalogue and had discussed stealing a shipment somewhere and selling them to Comanches, but had abandoned the idea because Indians were suspicious of the wheel. He still thought there was profit in it, if robbery got too various and there was a way to do it without the stigma of legitimate commerce.

  Instinctively, he dropped his toothpick and backed into the shadows as the rider passed. In the light coming through the window from the restaurant, it was a tall fellow in a cloth cap, heavy sweater, tan britches, and boots that laced to his knees. Charlie figured he was a telegraph messenger.

  Charlie was about to turn away toward where he’d left his horse when the rider lifted his feet off the pedals and coasted to a stop next to the boardwalk. He alighted in front of a dry goods store, shut up and dark. There was no one there to accept a telegram.

  The fellow got off, and something about the way he stood looking up and down the street moved Charlie to take another step back into the dark doorway behind him. He watched as the rider leaned his bicycle against the hitching rail and bend down over the watering trough in front of the dry goods. He turned his head left and right again, then tugged up one sleeve
of his sweater, stuck a hand inside the water, groped around, and pulled out something heavy. Water ran off it in a sheet, splashing back into the trough. Oilcloth glistened.

  Charlie couldn’t believe his luck.

  As the rider slapped the bundle into the wicker basket attached to his handlebars, Charlie stepped that way, taking the revolver out of his pocket.

  His luck didn’t hold. The restaurant door opened and someone came out, bumping into him from behind. “Beg pardon, brother.”

  He stuck the revolver back into its pocket. Startled by the sudden activity, the rider threw a leg over the seat, pushed off from the hitching rail, and began pedaling like mad. Charlie pushed the clumsy fool from the restaurant out of his way and took off in the other direction, sprinting toward where his horse was tethered.

  “Gentile!” The man from the restaurant stalked off down the boardwalk.

  The bicyclist was nowhere in sight when Charlie came back that way aboard his mount, but he held it to a canter. The salt flats threw back moonlight like a fresh fall of snow, and that single tire track made a dark line down the center of the road leading west of town, running parallel to the railroad tracks. He had the thing put together now; the man he was after wouldn’t turn aside from that route.

  Outside the city limits, he broke into a gallop. The bicyclist came into view, a vertical mark with reflected light from the great lake bouncing down from a sheet of cloud, bright as Abilene on Saturday night. Charlie drew the Forehand & Wadsworth and fired a shot high. It rang clearly in the dry air.