The bicycle wobbled. The driver twisted in his seat, then turned back forward, bent over the handlebars, and made the pedals whir. Clearly, this was not the fat fellow who’d held up the freight office, but Charlie wasn’t confused. He didn’t believe in lone bandits; there was always a silent partner somewhere, and usually several. He let the man gain a few yards, then smacked his reins across his horse’s withers, took aim, and squeezed the trigger again. He didn’t expect to hit the man, and he didn’t, but the bullet must have struck close enough to remind him that a bicycle can’t outrun a good horse. The rider went another ten feet at top speed, then slowed to a stop and got off. He let the bicycle flop over and stood on the side of the road with his hands raised.
Charlie was hauling back on the reins when one of the hands swung down. Something gleamed, but he didn’t waste time trying to bring his own weapon around. He let go of it and launched himself out of the saddle. A hot wind smacked his ribs. His momentum snatched the man off his feet, they struck ground with a woof, and rolled over and over. It wasn’t until Charlie had the man’s gun arm pinned to the earth and his body trapped beneath his own weight that he realized he’d been wrestling with a woman.
“It looks like snow,” April said, “but it isn’t. Still, I’m cold. Explain that.” She’d drawn on Katrina’s shawl from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and paced the hardpack floor of the miner’s shack hugging herself, and incidentally stealing glances at her fetching image in the window’s single unbroken pane. Beyond it stretched the white flats, ending in an abrupt line where salt met black sky.
Major Davies took a pinch of snuff. “Self-mesmerization. Your brain tells your heart it’s salt, but your heart is unconvinced. It’s a condition of womanhood.” He blocked a powerful sneeze and swept away tears with a handkerchief bearing someone else’s initials.
“The other explanation is we’re in a desert.” Cornelius Ragland sat at the warped table, filling sheets of foolscap by coal-oil light and pausing to dip his pen. “It’s a scientific fact that the grains are too loose to hold the day’s heat. The result is the same whether it’s sand or salt.”
“Rubbish. If that were the case, I’d cool my soup by shaking salt into it rather than blowing on it. I am a man, ruled by my brain and not my heart. Therefore I’m not cold.”
“You’re fat,” said April. “You ought to be hibernating. Look at Corny, shivering like a leaf. Does that make him a woman?”
“He’s consumptive. When he isn’t burning up with fever he’s freezing.”
“Actually, I’m neither. This is rather a stirring scene and I’ve let it get the better of me.” He sat back, removed his spectacles, and wiped them on his sleeve.
April bent over the page before him. “What is it this time? Not Dickens, I hope. Except for old hags and insufferable little girls, all his women are simpletons. Lizzie’s Miss Havisham blew my Estella clear off the stage.”
“This one is an original story, based upon the tragedy of Joan of Arc.”
She gasped. “Oh, Corny! I take back everything I’ve ever said about your acting. Will I get to bob my hair and wear a breastplate?”
“That will be up to Johnny. However, if we simulate the flames properly while you’re burning at the stake, you’ll have cover and time enough to slip out and hold up the Denver Mint.”
As if he’d heard his cue, Johnny came in from outside and rubbed his hands above the chimney of the lamp. “Cold out there. You’d think it was snow and not salt.”
“Rubbish!” The Major took snuff.
“Oh, Johnny, I’m going to play St. Joan!”
“Good God, Corny. Why not write about the Virgin Mary and make the challenge impossible?” He caught April’s wrist in midswing. “No, dear. Smite the English.”
The Major blew his nose. “What news?”
“Not a sign. She ought to be back by now.” Johnny took off his coat, black broadcloth with three capes and a red silk lining. He’d seen a photograph of Irving wearing one like it and had had it made to his measure in St. Louis. He looked dashing in it, and with his long flaxen hair and moustaches a bit like a buccaneer.
April said, “You don’t suppose she’s been arrested.”
“We always knew that was a possibility. Hers is the riskiest part of our plan.”
“Your plan, not mine. A posse could be on its way here at this moment.” She touched her throat.
“What of it?” asked the Major. “There’s nothing here to incriminate us.”
Cornelius laid down his pen. “She has the money. That’s incrimination enough.”
“Only for her.”
Everyone looked at the Major, who shrugged. “She would say the same thing, if our situations were reversed. That’s the solid foundation upon which our relationship rests.”
“Are you two even married?” Johnny asked.
“We exchanged the necessary vows. However, I have my doubts about the minister. He played Horatio for five weeks in Philadelphia.”
“We’re sitting hens if she peaches,” said April, “or even if she does not. Someone is bound to recognize her, and the rest will follow. I’ve said all along we should include horses in our arrangements.”
“I haven’t been aboard a horse since Harrow.”
Johnny said, “The Major’s right, dear. He’s too fat to ride, and Corny’s too delicate. The more players we leave behind, the greater our chances of conviction and imprisonment. Even if you and I make the train, the authorities will just wire ahead. We’ll be arrested at the next stop. It’s our word against Lizzie’s if it’s just her, and something else if it’s two against three.”
April sighed. “A fine honorable lot of thieves we are.”
Johnny laughed. “There’s no honor anywhere. I’ve seen the other side.” He unshipped his watch. “We’ll give her half an hour, then start searching. Perhaps she fell and broke her leg.”
Cornelius picked up his pen and dipped it. “Let us hold on to that hope.”
Thirty minutes of silence followed, interrupted only by April’s pacing and the scratching of Cornelius’ pen. Johnny looked at his watch for the twentieth time, then snapped shut the face with finality. “Right.” He threw on his coat.
The door opened then and Mme. Mort-Davies came in, pushing her bicycle. The front wheel was bent and her sweater was torn. The Major struggled to his feet. Johnny lifted the lamp, casting light on Lizzie’s face. One eye was swollen almost shut and blood crusted her chin.
Johnny took the bicycle while April and the Major helped her into the Major’s chair. Cornelius reached inside the picnic basket and gave Johnny the bottle of brandy they’d been saving to celebrate. Lizzie winced when she opened her lips to receive the bottle; the lower one split open afresh and trickled more blood onto her chin. She took two more sips, and between them reported what had happened on the road outside Salt Lake City.
“He got all of it?” demanded Johnny.
“He didn’t offer to divide it. Search me if you like.”
“Don’t take offense. If you stole from us, you wouldn’t stop at one day’s profits. What about the Colt?”
She tugged up her sweater, pulled a small revolver from under the belt of her trousers, and gave it to him. “He took it, but I found that after he left; he lost it when he jumped off his horse. I’m afraid it wasn’t much of a trade.”
The Major asked if he’d assaulted her. She looked at him piteously.
“He knocked me to the ground, cut my lip, and blacked my eye.”
“You know very well what I meant.”
“No, Evelyn. I’m still the same unsullied girl you married.”
“You were living with a fire-eater when we met.”
“Don’t think I don’t miss that.”
The Major balled his fists. “That fellow should be behind bars.”
“So should we,” said Johnny. “Did he say anything?”
“He said, ‘Teats! Jesus Christ!’ Either my disguise is better than I’d hoped or I�
��m not as comely as I once was.”
“Is that all he said?” April asked.
“ ‘Hand over the swag.’ ”
Johnny’s watch ticked loudly in the profound silence.
Lizzie smiled sourly, gasped, and touched her lip. “Annabelle and the Pirate. It brought down the house at the Metropolitan in Detroit in fifty-eight. They held us over ten days.”
“Twelve,” murmured the Major.
Johnny glared at him. “Just what did you say in the Overland office?”
“I don’t remember.”
“If you say anything at all, you say, ‘Reach for the sky.’ We rehearsed it.”
“It’s hackneyed.”
“It’s intended to be. Swag! By God! You might as well have appeared in full costume and handed the fellow a programme. You might have autographed it.”
“What’s the point in directing him now?” April said. “This is terrible, Johnny, terrible. If the manager told this—this bandit what the Major said, he’s told everyone. We’re found out.”
“Quite likely.” He walked over to the table and lifted one of the sheets Cornelius had written on, read for a moment. “This is good. I’m sorry we won’t be able to use it this season.”
“It needs work in any case. My French is rusty.”
A whistle blew, drawn thin by distance. Lizzie pawed at her attendants and got up to help put the bicycle in its trunk. Cornelius found his wrench.
“We have a few minutes,” Johnny said. “Major, the lantern.”
A railroad lantern with a red lens was produced. Johnny lit it from the table lamp. “So much more convenient than waiting at the station,” he said. “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s been a successful tour. We’re long past due for a holiday.”
The Major blew out his moustaches. “There are no holidays in the theater. Except Sundays, of course. Lizzie and I haven’t had Christmas off since the Coliseum burned down in Baltimore.”
“I’m declaring one. I’d intended to, anyway, after Boise. We’re carrying too much gold and paper to distribute among ourselves and in the strongbox and claim it as box office receipts much longer. The time has come to place it in a bank in Denver. Since we’ve demonstrated that none of us can be trusted to do it alone, we shall all go. I see no reason why we shouldn’t spend some of it while we’re there and entertain ourselves for a change.”
April buttoned her traveling cloak. “Does this mean the end of the Prairie Rose?”
“Just for a season, while we cede the headlines to a more conventional breed of blackguard and brigand.” He put on his soft black hat and smoothed the brim. “And then—”
“The show must go on,” said the Major.
Johnny smiled. “If only you remembered all your lines as accurately.”
10
We glide down Pike’s Peak, bluer than the ocean beneath its white coronet, into a hurdy-gurdy metropolis of macadam and brick, teeming with surreys, streetcars, beer wagons, top hats, and spinning parasols, “O Susannah!” fiddling on the soundtrack, white letters with square serifs on the scrim: DENVER. Crowding in for a tight shot of the scripted legend on a sign, swinging crazily from chains attached to a porch roof trimmed in gingerbread, we remove our hats, pat down our hair, and prepare to enter the Wood Palace. We step back a moment to allow a burly party in shirtsleeves and handlebars to hurl a drunken saddle tramp out through the swinging doors, then join the customers inside.
The main room, two stories high and hung with a chandelier that doubles as a trapeze, features green baize gaming tables, a mahogany bar as long as the Mayflower and more cunningly carved, a stage, and a high ballustraded hallway with stairs cantilevering up to it; nymphs and satyrs randy about in oil on canvas at the top, bordered by bronze cherubim. All the tables are in use and none of the six bartenders is idle. The usual chubby quartette gallops in sparkling leotards onstage; if we strain our ears, we may detect the anachronistic notes of a can-can. This is an entertainment after all, and not a historical tale.
We’re just in time to see that high railing collapse and a pair of battlers fall ten feet to the table beneath, demolishing it and interrupting a lively game of faro. Once again the burly fellow goes to work.
We suspect, of course, that all this is staging. The Wood Palace’s real business is conducted behind the numbered doors lining that second-story hallway. From one of them, if our fortune continues (and this is the same as catching a glimpse of Victoria passing through the Buckingham gate in her coach), Nell Dugan may make an appearance before the last drunk is swept out.
Late in life, when the laws of time and nature had packed off with those physical charms that had made her a doubtful subject for serious journalism, Nell told a reporter from the Post that she’d come to America at fourteen with just a dollar and forty cents in her pocket. Matronly vanity gave her license to pare six years off her age, and social discretion to leave out mention of the letter of introduction she’d sewn inside the lining of her shabby coat, addressed by the mayor of Limerick to Michael McFee, president and principal stockholder of the Denver Topical Mining Company.
It was an arrangement of convenience for all three parties. The mayor’s wife had become suspicious to the point of certainty, and Nell had placed in safekeeping a number of letters of an indiscreet character written to her in his hand. McFee, a confederate of the mayor’s before emigrating ten years before, lived like Vanderbilt so far as the scale of life in the Colorado Territory could support, and desired both a mistress and a taste of the companionship of old Erin; Nell chafed at the restraints placed upon her by a puritanical father and a farmer husband who stank perennially of sod. “It was like going to bed in me own grave,” she told the reporter, who recorded the remark in his notes but forebore to publish it. The mayor stood her passage to New York, McFee her train fare to Denver, where the question of her accommodations pivoted upon the impression she made. It was a gamble; but like any good gambler, she was well aware of the odds, and that they were in her favor. A photograph made at the time the article appeared in the Post suggests, beneath the folds of fat of a prosperous middle age, something of the stake she brought to the table at twenty. Forty years of good Irish whisky, half-dollar cheroots, and carnal calisthentics may thicken the waist and coarsen the skin, but can neither alter the impudent tilt of the nose nor dim the devil in the eye.
McFee was a gambler as well, and knew a good hand when it was dealt. He set Nell up as titular owner of a former boardinghouse on Holladay Street that had been converted first into a hotel for prospectors weary of canvas and thrice-boiled coffee, then into a saloon, and finally into a “melodeon”; a designation made popular by San Francisco, promising all the entertainments of a debauched civilization adrift in the wilderness. Opium could be consumed there, as well as liquor in the original bottles, women who did not smell like bacon fat and their last customer, keno and cards, and music by the best third-rate orchestras west of the Gaiety in Kansas City. It was a profitable enterprise, reducing the strain on McFee’s pocketbook, and ran smoothly enough on its own to place Nell’s charms at his disposal whenever his business affairs got the better of his nervous system. Seen in this light, his situation makes it difficult to look upon his untimely death as a tragedy.
“The Wood Palace” was a misnomer with a legitimate pedigree. Built of brick to comply with the new city ordinance requiring all new construction to be of sturdy, noncombustible material, it occupied the site of its original namesake, which had been swept away by a flood in 1864, rebuilt, and consumed by fire in 1870. It was one of the city’s more enduring institutions, respected for its tradition of survival, if not for the nature of its business.
The Panic of ‘73—brought on by greed fueled by the economic boom following the Union victory in 1865—brought thousands of investors from private Pullmans down to shank’s mare, without a penny for a streetcar, while the speculators who had precipitated it found themselves forced to order champagne of a less fashionable vintage. It was in this clima
te that Michael McFee paused to confer with his attorney before the offices of the Denver Times, which had libeled him, and interrupted his consultation to greet a pedestrian who recognized him from the most recent stockholders meeting at the Denver Topical Mining Company. Following an exchange of pleasantries, the stockholder produced a pistol and shot him twice in the stomach. McFee died six weeks later, raving for ice water and oysters; his assailant, who turned out to be a former clerk fired by McFee’s company, took a short drop through a trapdoor and broke his neck.
Nell was saddened, but alert. Through a lawyer, she purchased the Wood Palace outright from McFee’s estate, and continued as she had, only now with full access to the profits, which she reinvested in the business, securing its reputation as the finest establishment of its kind on Holladay, a wide-open street in a wide-open town.
Among the improvements she added was a suite of rooms in the basement, accessible only by a trapdoor hidden beneath a heavy Persian rug in the back parlor, where tenants were accommodated in absolute secrecy, at rates that rivaled those of the Astor House in Manhattan. Although none of the legendary Astor luxuries was in evidence, highwaymen could rest there in relative comfort while heavily armed men combed caves and barns the countryside over looking for them. Nell did not keep a guest book, but had she done so, the signatures of the outlaw luminaries who had taken advantage of her hospitality would have crowned the collection of any autograph hunter of sinister bent.
As a result of her double income, Nell Dugan was the wealthiest unattached woman in Denver. Her dresses were cut to her petite frame from organdy of a quality that came dear after the collapse of the cotton industry in the defeated South—deep purple was her color of choice at night, lavender during the day—and she wore peacock feathers in her thick auburn hair, her best feature, for public appearances at her establishment. She kept her creamy skin pale beneath a vast collection of parasols, and her carriage-and-pair were the envy of Denver’s newly rich. She made it a point to take them out often, and to drop as much as a thousand dollars on a dubious hand at poker, her only addiction, by way of inspiring confidence in her clandestine guests; a woman of such conspicuous means was far less likely to turn them in for the reward than the storied prostitute with a heart of gold. It was a reality of frontier economics that internal organs assayed out at considerably less than twelve dollars per Troy ounce.
The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion Page 8