The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion

by Loren D. Estleman

  While the spring runoff was floating miners’ tents on the eastern face of the Rockies, the entire Ace-in-the-Hole Gang stayed dry snoring and playing poker (for stakes much lower than Nell’s notorious “thousand-burners”) in the hidden rooms beneath the Wood Palace. The money Charlie Kettleman had reclaimed from Mme. Mort-Davies made the stop affordable, and the fuss the gang had created in Salt Lake City made it imperative. The Pinkertons had never stopped looking for them in response to the robbery of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, and the wire Philip Rittenhouse had sent Allan Pinkerton after reading of the Overland fiasco in the Deseret News had announced their recent whereabouts to the national press. That very day, agents of the Denver branch had searched the upper and lower stories and the basement storage rooms on the other side of four feet of solid masonry.

  “You should of put a round in her.” Black Jack Brixton threw in his cards.

  Charlie raked in the pot. “What’s the point? We got the money.”

  “It would of put her fat friend in some other line of work. Next time we open an empty safe I’ll shut you up in it.”

  “That’s my job,” Ed Kettleman said. “He ain’t your brother.”

  “If he was I’d dig up my mother and punch her in the mouth.”

  Tom Riddle listened to the conversation with a hand cupping one ear. “You told me your mother’s alive.”

  “I’d shoot her and bury her first.”

  Charlie said, “I never busted a cap on a woman or a child.”

  “You never busted a cap on a bottle of Old Gideon,” Ed said. “You couldn’t hit a three-hundred-pound Chinaman with a scattergun.”

  “Amateurs got to be discouraged,” said Brixton. “You kill a man’s woman, it takes the fight right out of him.”

  Ed shuffled the deck. “You ought at least to put the boots to her before you let her go, or brung her back for the rest of us. I do like to shinny up a tall woman.”

  “She had a face like Tom’s bay mare.”

  “What’s that? It was dark, weren’t it?”

  Breed said, “We going to jabber or play cards?” He was down a hundred and fifty.

  “That bay mare’s a good ride,” said Tom, who’d only half heard what Ed said. “I ate the best horse I ever had in California. One time—”

  “Jacks or better.” Ed dealt. “You know, there’s a mint right here in town. I don’t reckon them James-Youngers ever bought into a pot that big.”

  Brixton said, “That’s because the federals got the whole army guarding it. This bunch can’t even stick up Mormons.”

  “We got the money,” Charlie reiterated.

  “I don’t appreciate being made to look the fool. You should of at least found out who the fat man was that got there first. We could of rendered him down and ate him with onions.”

  “I ate an injun once,” Tom said. “He might’ve been a half-breed, meaning no offense to the breed present. California, it was. We’d been out prospecting—”

  “Shut up, Tom,” said the others in unison.

  Ed said, “You could leave out California and make your stories shorter. Everything you done was in California before you joined up with us. What made you leave in the first place?”

  A chorus of oaths followed this injudicious query. A hail of red chips bounced off Ed’s slack-jawed face.

  “There’s a story behind that,” Tom said. “It was up around Eureka; coldest place I ever been. Don’t let no one ever tell you California don’t get—”

  “Why not the mint?”

  Even Tom fell silent, waiting for Mysterious Bob’s next remark. Bob, who disliked poker for the conversation required, sat on one end of a brocaded settee, most of whose springs were at odds with one another, lubricating an unidentifiable component of his Winchester with an oily rag. All the other parts were spread out on the cushions.

  “I been fighting the army a dozen years, same as you,” Brixton said. “They don’t beat.”

  “New gold, that’s all they care about.” Bob traded the odd-shaped part for the barrel and peered inside. “I always wondered how those boys got paid, the workers and soldiers and such. You reckon they just scoop it out of the bin?”

  Charlie said, “That’d make too much sense. The government don’t work that way. They send it out from Washington, same as at Fort Lincoln.”

  “How do you know how the government works?” Ed asked. “You voted for Greeley.”

  Bob ignored Ed. “How you reckon they send it?”

  “How’s anybody send anything?” Charlie’s face changed. “Holy Christ.”

  Breed looked up, frozen in the act of stealing a card from Tom’s deadwood. “Goddamn.”

  “By train,” said Brixton, who’d forgotten whose bet it was.

  Bob began swabbing the inside of the barrel. He’d used up his conversation for the week.

  We who are privileged to sources not available to historians and the makers of legend can enjoy the frisson of knowing that while the Ace-in-the-Hole Gang was planning what scholars argue might have been the most spectacular train robbery in American history, two-fifths of the Prairie Rose Repertory Company were enjoying the more celebrated diversions on the second story of the Wood Palace, two floors above their heads. Johnny Vermillion, looking more Byronic than usual with his shirt unbuttoned halfway down his smooth, hairless chest, greeted Cornelius Ragland from the depths of a tufted velvet chair in the sitting room of his temporary suite over a glass of Napoleon from Nell Dugan’s cellar, which had recently been swept clear of Pinkertons. “Congratulations,” he said. “I was afraid you’d succumbed.”

  Cornelius blushed and filled a glass from the decanter. “Only to conversation, which is quite as expensive as the other. Not that I’m consumptive; just weak. My father was a butterfly and my mother a wisp of smoke.”

  “You ought to write that down.”

  “It seems to me I did. Do you know I’ve submitted poetry and stories to every periodical in North America without a single acceptance? That requires talent.” He slumped onto a divan with part of the Bayeaux Tapestry wrought in the maple frame. “You’re the only man on God’s fertile earth who hasn’t tried to convince me I was born to be a secretary.”

  “You’re a born thief. It’s a natural mistake.”

  “I’m serious, Johnny. You’re the first person in my life to look at me and not through me. If you told me to assassinate the Czar of Russia, all I’d ask is what method you preferred.”

  “A bomb, naturally. The only socially acceptable way of destroying an emperor is to blow him to smithereens. I often wonder where the Smithereens may be. In the Scottish Highlands, I suspect.”

  “You’re drunk, Johnny. I’ve never seen you this way.”

  “You should have known me in Chicago.”

  The hall door opened and Major Davies tottered in. He wore his morning coat and his necktie was in disarray. Without preamble he plunked himself down beside Cornelius.

  “You’re as red as a radish,” Johnny observed. “I thought you were back at the hotel with Lizzie.”

  “She’s gone shopping with April. I left a note that I was going for a walk.”

  Cornelius said, “She’ll see through that. You haven’t walked more than ten feet from one chair to another since you joined the troupe.”

  “What you young single fellows don’t understand is the stability of a seasoned marriage. She’ll forgive me. Is that sherry?”

  “Brandy. Pour him one, will you, Corny? I haven’t any smelling salts.”

  The Major accepted a glass and drained it. “Mother’s milk. I have a grand constitution, never fear. I shall be ready to rejoin the battle in thirty minutes.”

  “I only have this room for another fifteen. At this rate you’ll be impoverished in a week.”

  “I doubt that. Lizzie keeps the books. Have you seen today’s Post?” The Major patted his pockets, withdrew a fold of newsprint, and sailed it into Johnny’s lap.

  He unfolded it. It was torn fr
om the front page and contained an account of that day’s Pinkerton raid on the Wood Palace. A paragraph described the Ace-in-the-Hole Gang’s reign of terror in Salt Lake City. Johnny finished reading and held it out for Cornelius to take. “I’d wondered what those fellows were about. I confess it gave me pause until I realized they had no interest in me or Corny.”

  Cornelius returned the scrap to the Major. “Lizzie had a near thing. Brixton’s men are rough customers.”

  “Next time, one of you can ride the bicycle, or April. She’s more accustomed to carrying a firearm than my dear Lizzie.”

  “We’ll discuss it,” Johnny said. “At least we can rest assured Black Jack and his gang aren’t here.”

  Brixton dreamed he was back at Lone Jack, facing the entire Yankee cavalry with two empty pistols and no cartridges on his belt. He awoke with a yell and staggered out of his room to find Breed and the Kettlemans playing three-handed stud and Bob putting his carbine back together. “Where’s Tom?”

  Breed said, “He went upstairs for a drink. He said that badger hole in California ruined him for tight places.”

  “Why in hell didn’t nobody stop him?”

  “It’s just so damn peaceful with him gone,” Charlie said.

  “Go fetch him. Anyone recognizes him, we’ll ride our next train in irons.”

  “Deal me out.” Charlie threw in his hand and rose.

  “Don’t you get recognized,” Brixton called after him.

  Charlie found Tom leaning against the wall just inside the batwing doors to the street, smoking a cigar. “Jack says come back. He got up on the wrong side.”

  “He went to bed on the wrong side. Let me finish my smoke first.”

  “Me, too, then. Nell’s scared we’ll set the place on fire we light up down there.” Charlie got out his makings and rolled a cigarette. “What’s the fight about?”

  On the boardwalk in front of the building, a tall woman in a flat straw hat and a big bustle stood with her back to them, waggling a finger in Clyde Canebreak’s big polished black face. Clyde, in his bright red Zouave tunic, greeted customers at the door and threw out undesirables, often two at a time.

  “The old lady says her husband’s inside, wants to talk to him. Clyde ain’t having any.”

  “She ought to be happy he’s still got lead in his pencil.”

  “I reckon she likes to have him do all his scribbling at home.”

  Clyde laid one of his coal-scuttle hands on the woman’s shoulder and turned her gently aside from the door, toward the carriage she had waiting. Charlie recognized the gold device of the Coronet Hotel on the door.

  He saw her face then. The match he’d lit stung his hand. He cried out and dropped it.

  She started at the noise and looked his way. The blood slid from her face in a sheet.

  11

  “Really, Lizzie,” Johnny said, “this is a domestic matter between you and the Major. There was no reason to pull us all out here. Miss Dugan doesn’t approve of messages from outside. I’m surprised you were able to talk Clyde into it.”

  “It cost me a double eagle. It was the first thing that came into my hand when I reached inside my bag.”

  They were seated in a private room at the Auraria Restaurant, the entire troupe gathered around a table cloaked in crisp linen and shimmering with silver. A heap of freshly opened mussels steamed in an enormous tureen in the center. April, fetching in a powder-blue suit she’d bought that afternoon, fretted. “My message was waiting for me at the hotel desk. None of us even had time to change for dinner.”

  “I wouldn’t care if you were naked.” Lizzie was in an agitated state. “I saw him.”

  The Major said, “My dear, you’ve drawn the wrong conclusion. I went to that place merely for male cameraderie. You have always been more than woman enough for me.”

  “Forget about yourself for once, you old goat. I don’t care where you drop your seed or with whom. It was the lying I came to protest. You haven’t gone out for a walk since the war with Mexico. The man I saw today was the man who knocked me down in Salt Lake City and stole our money.”

  Johnny put down his mussel shell still containing its prize and wiped off his fingers with his napkin. “Where?”

  “At the Wood Palace. Why did you think I sent you that note?”

  “I thought perhaps you were hungry. You’re certain it was him? The description you gave that night was quite general.”

  “I haven’t Corny’s talent for word pictures. But I trust my eyes. Moreover, he recognized me. I saw it in his face.”

  Johnny said, “You mean to say he just stood there, a wanted man, knowing you could identify him to the nearest police officer?”

  “I mean to say he darted away like a sparrow, taking his companion with him, a short fellow with a wizened face. I’m sure they went to report to their accomplices. That’s why I sent that note and hurried here. My driver carried April’s message back to the Coronet.”

  “Nell must have a priest’s hole of some kind to conceal their like,” said Cornelius. “But Denver is a big place, and they haven’t the freedom to mount a search. They wouldn’t know where to begin looking.”

  “I had the carriage from the hotel,” Lizzie said. “I’m sure he saw it.”

  “Johnny!”

  He patted April’s hand. “There is every reason for optimism, and none for panic. These road agents are more frightened of us than we are of them. That’s why they fled at the sight of Lizzie. They have the money. What else could they want from us?”

  Lizzie said, “He knows I can identify him. You said so yourself. They’ll murder me to prevent me from turning them in for the reward.”

  The Major sucked out a shell and daubed at his moustaches. “We’ve been overlooking an opportunity, and Lizzie has placed her finger square upon it. We should notify the authorities immediately and collect the reward for the whole gang.”

  Johnny said, “I question the wisdom of making ourselves too familiar with law enforcement. We’re fugitives ourselves, don’t forget. In any case those bounties are seldom paid in full, and we’ll have made ourselves notorious for something less than we might remove from a safe in some fat mining town or cattle camp with a servicable theater.”

  “Guerrillas are territorial,” Cornelius pointed out. “We pricked their pride in Utah. If they haven’t forgotten the war in nine years, I doubt they’ll have forgotten us in a few weeks. Lizzie isn’t the only one who’s in danger of their revenge.”

  The party fell into a grim silence while a waiter entered, removed the course, and glided out of the room.

  “This changes nothing about our plan for a holiday, apart from the venue,” said Johnny then. “We’ll draw what we need from the bank for living expenses and separate. We’ll meet again in Wichita and launch the fall season.”

  “Absolutely not.” April set down her wineglass with a thump. “Cowboys pinch and grope and belch whiskey. They do everything but bathe.”

  “They also spend money as if it were grass,” Johnny said. “Other rowdies, when they see something they approve of onstage, throw pennies; cowboys throw silver dollars. Sometimes more. In Amarillo, Lotta Crabtree fished a poker chip out of her bodice after a performance and redeemed it for a hundred dollars.”

  “I’ve seen Crabtree,” said April. “She could fit the table stakes and the dealer in there as well.”

  “Do I detect a shade of green?” asked Lizzie.

  “We can’t all be cows.”

  Madame’s cheeks colored. The Major choked, coughed, and spat a stuffed mushroom into his napkin.

  “Dear me,” said Cornelius, who preferred writing scenes to experiencing them.

  “Yes. Separate holidays are best.” Johnny sipped from his glass. “Shall we order dessert?”

  Someone tapped three times at the door to the underground suite, paused, and tapped again.

  “That’s Charlie and Bob.” Ed Kettleman got up to unlock the door.

  His brother came
in first, unhooking the wire-rimmed spectacles he believed provided an impenetrable disguise. An old photograph he and Ed had unwisely posed for in a studio in El Paso was floating around Texas, and although it had yet to appear on wanted posters circulated nationally, the spectacles came out whenever he separated from the gang, in case he ran into a lawman visiting from the Lone Star State. Mysterious Bob, known principally by his description, merely bent his legs to dissemble his height and put on a dirty bowler hat he’d shot a carpetbagger out from under in Dodge City. Together they looked like a pair of drummers no one wanted to buy anything from.

  There was a general rattle of firearms being taken off cock and returned to their holsters; Ace-in-the-Hole hadn’t much faith in such things as passwords and secret knocks.

  “Put one in her this time?” Brixton was sawing at a longhorn steak with Breed’s big Bowie and angry energy. The bill of fare at the Wood Palace posed no threat to Delmonico’s, despite charging two dollars for a bowl of oxtail soup (twenty-five cents extra for evidence of an oxtail).

  “She checked out,” Charlie said; and yelled when the Bowie stuck in the lath-and-plaster six inches to the right of his head.

  Ed said, “There ain’t no call for that, Jack. He went soon as you told him.”

  “He’s lucky Breed didn’t throw it. I’m out of practice. He should of shot her when she was in range.”

  Breed put down his bottle of Old Pepper and got up to jerk his knife out of the wall. “You probably bent it cutting up that steak.” He examined the blade.

  “I couldn’t shoot the old bat in the street,” whined Charlie. “We’d be up to our ass in law.”

  “Nell’s rules,” Tom Riddle reminded Brixton, over a game of patience. “No trouble in the Palace.”