“You’re all under arrest,” Meagher said.
Major Davies said, “I fail to see why. I knew nothing about any stolen money being placed aboard a train. My wife did not, and you’ve given me no reason to suspect either Miss Clay or Mr. Ragland. Actions taken by Mr. Vermillion without the knowledge of the rest of us reflect only upon himself. We are actors, not thieves.”
“Oh, Evelyn,” said Lizzie. “You really are the most contemptible creature.”
Rittenhouse smiled at the Major. “I wasn’t being untruthful when I told you in San Francisco I admired your talent. You’ll have the opportunity to play before an appreciative audience when your case comes to trial; you all will. Just in case the witnesses I’ve established fail to identify each of you positively as a bandit in a series of robberies from Missouri to Utah, I have a preponderance of evidence that the Prairie Rose was performing in each of those places at the time of the outrage and a stack of glowing reviews testifying to your ability to assume disparate roles at the drop of a hat. It shouldn’t be hard for a competent prosecutor to prove the possibility of so talented a crew to appear in two places at once.”
“That won’t be necessary in my case,” April said. “I helped plan the robbery of the Longhorn Bank.”
Johnny laughed his old laugh; once again he was back in character. “If you believe that, Rittenhouse, you belong to a legion. Miss Clay is a gifted actress.”
“I helped as well,” Cornelius said.
Lizzie said, “We all did. Stop spluttering, Evie. You know perfectly well you can’t survive without me.”
“Oh, blast.” The Major dropped onto the dressing-table chair and emptied his glass. “I suppose I’ll play Sidney Carton if I must. I despise Dickens.”
Rittenhouse rubbed his hands. “Since you’re all so willing, I’ll ask the marshal to manacle Vermillion only. I doubt he brought enough for the entire troupe.”
Meagher grunted and fell to the floor, sprawled facedown on top of his shotgun. Every eye in the room rose from the bloodied back of his head to the man standing in the open doorway behind him, holding a large yellow-handled revolver by its barrel. He spun it on his finger, palming the butt with a smack and thumbing back the hammer. His long granite face was burned as dark as his hat and his worn and faded clothes were streaked with lather. He stank of horse and spent powder. “Everybody stay put!” he barked. “This here’s a snake that bites from both ends.”
“Who the devil are you?” said the Major.
“Black Jack Brixton.”
The newcomer swung his gaze on Rittenhouse. “Last man called me that wound up right where your friend is. Put them hands high. I heard enough to know you’re heeled.”
The Pinkerton raised his hands.
“You’re Brixton?” Johnny said. “I thought you’d be taller.”
“I’ll look plenty tall when you’re all bleeding out on the floor. This is the second time this herd of yours cost me a payroll train.”
“What train?” April stepped in front of Johnny, who grasped her shoulders to hold her back.
Brixton lunged and took her wrist in his free hand, tearing her out of Johnny’s grip. Johnny stepped forward. A harsh metallic clack stopped him. Heads turned toward a tall man standing in front of the blanket that divided the room, holding a Winchester against his hip with the barrel level and a fresh round racked into the chamber. He was burned as deeply as Brixton, his clothes stained from the same hard ride.
“That there’s Mysterious Bob.” Brixton spun April to face the others, twisting her arm behind her back. She cried out. “We call him that on account of nobody knows just when he’ll cut loose with that repeater.”
“What do you want?” Rittenhouse asked.
“I want you to wire Dodge City and get me that bank money I heard you squawking about,” Brixton said. “But that can wait till we settle with these five.”
“Why do you want to kill us?” Lizzie sounded as calm as the chambermaid in The Diplomat Deposes. “You got back all the money from the safe in Salt Lake City.”
“That’s spent. We had to quit Denver when you spotted Charlie Kettleman there. We was all fixed to hit the army train headed for the mint. Then we got ourselves shot to hell out by Fort Dodge on account of you seen Tom Riddle here and told the army. I think maybe I’ll shoot that fat husband of yours first so you know what’s coming.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “I don’t know any Tom Riddle.”
Brixton made a movement that drew a gasp from April and rested the barrel of his revolver on her shoulder, pointing it at the Major, who sat holding up his empty glass as if waiting for a refill.
Johnny made a long stride to his right. As the revolver pivoted that way, he swept up a fencing foil leaning in the corner and swirled the blade in a lazy S. On the upstroke, the button point snagged the inside of the muzzle and tore the weapon from Brixton’s grasp. It made a slow arc and struck the floor near the outside wall, jarring loose the hammer. The report rang like a huge iron bell. A piece of gilded wood jumped off the frame of the dressing table mirror.
“Bob!” Brixton’s shout was muffled in the echo of the shot.
Mysterious Bob placed the muzzle of his carbine against the back of Johnny’s head. The foil dropped to the floor with a clank.
Rittenhouse had his hand in the pocket where he’d put April’s derringer.
Brixton gave April’s arm a yank. She screamed. “Take it out and drop it or I’ll snap her arm clean off.”
“Let her go first.”
She screamed again. The Pinkerton drew the pistol out slowly and let it fall.
“You, sir, are a knave,” said the Major.
Brixton let go of April’s arm and shoved. She stumbled forward. Johnny caught her in his arms. Brixton went over and picked up his revolver. “I got five more in the cylinder. That’s one for each of you and I’ll let Bob finish this one.” He kicked Meagher in the temple. The fallen marshal, who had begun to stir, groaned again and fell silent.
“What about me?” Rittenhouse said.
“I ain’t got that far in my figuring. If you do a good job getting me that bank money maybe I’ll let you see Chicago again.”
Johnny said, “Someone must have heard that shot. The sheriff is the marshal’s brother. He’s probably on his way here with deputies.”
Brixton grinned. “Well, then, I reckon I better get to it. Stand up, you.” He turned his barrel on the Major.
“No!” Lizzie took a step. The Major flung out an arm, stopping her. He placed his glass carefully on the dressing table and heaved himself to his feet with a grunt.
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,” he said. “I should have died hereafter.”
Brixton thumbed back the hammer and took aim at the Major’s broad middle.
An explosion shuddered the room. The Major winced and fell back against the dressing table. He groped at himself, opened his eyes.
The impact of the bullet had slammed Black Jack Brixton into the wall behind him, jarring the revolver from his grasp. This time it struck the floor without discharging. He slid down the wall with a look of wonder on his face. Then his chin fell to his chest and his hat tilted forward over his eyes.
Mysterious Bob lowered his smoking carbine. His unreadable face turned toward Rittenhouse’s. “You’ll have to take my word on it,” he said. “I threw my badge away in sixty-five. You can’t ride and camp with the same men for ten years and keep a thing like that hid.”
V
The Comeback
24
Allan Pinkerton made three attempts to write The Prairie Rose and the Detectives and gave up after fifty pages. Although General Matagordo, a paid Pinkerton informant of years standing, was alive and well and mourning the death of his favorite carrier pigeon in San Diablo, Robert Jules “Mysterious Bob” Craidlaw had committed many questionable acts in his efforts to win the trust of Black Jack Brixton and the Ace-in-the-Hole Gang, and no amount of literary licen
se could guarantee that the attention would not blacken the all-seeing eye of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. His publishers, G. W. Carleton & Co., agreed to accept a substitute case history, and The Spiritualists and the Detectives appeared in 1877.
For this reason, and the fact that numerous legal maneuvers delayed the trial of the members of the Prairie Rose until June 1876, when news of the massacre of George Armstrong Custer and the Seventh Cavalry at the Little Big Horn crowded every other story out of the lead columns, the larcenous adventures of Johnny Vermillion and his company of artists occupy no more than a line in the few histories of the West that take notice of them. Yellowing documents of court proceedings report the following:
Evelyn Beverly Davies, referred to variously as “the Major,” “Old Porky,” and, in England, “Sir Rot Rotter of Rotting Lane,” was released by the State of Kansas for lack of evidence connecting him to the embezzlement of the Longhorn Bank in Wichita, but ordered to stand trial in Salt Lake City for the lone robbery of the Holladay Overland Mail & Express Company office. Daniel Oberlin, the Overland manager, identified him positively—mostly by his “plummy” voice—as the masked fat man who had commanded him to “hand over the swag.” He was convicted and sentenced to serve three years at hard labor, which the judge reduced to probation because of the defendant’s age and physical condition and the fact that it was his first offense.
Elizabeth Jane Mort-Davies, his wife, née Janey Timble, formerly of the Ten Tumbling Timbles, withdrew her confession to complicity in the Longhorn case on the grounds that it was made under duress. The charge was dropped against her as well, and although the Pinkerton National Detective Agency attempted to have her held pending the result of its investigation of the other robberies in which the Prairie Rose was suspected, none of the eyewitnesses who were questioned would submit that the “tall bandit wearing a bandanna” was a woman. She was released.
April Clay, alias Emma April Klauswidcsz, did not retract her confession, but her tearful appearance in the witness box, dressed fetchingly in widow’s black lace, convinced the twelve men of the jury in Wichita that she was innocent. They acquitted her.
(No records exist to indicate that any attempt was made to try April Clay elsewhere. It’s believed all such plans were abandoned after the case collapsed against Mme. Mort-Davies.)
Cornelius Ragland was convicted on the evidence of his confession in the presence of Marshal Mike Meagher and Agent Philip Rittenhouse. The judge rejected the defense team’s plea for clemency on the grounds of his delicate health, but suspended his two-year sentence because it was his first offense. He was immediately extradited to Wyoming Territory, where he was convicted of the robbery of the Cattleman’s Bank in Cheyenne. He served eight months at hard labor in the territorial penitentiary and was released four months early for good behavior; guards told parole authorities he was an industrious worker “for a skinny feller,” who gave them each a sample of the poetry he wrote in his cell.
LaVern Munn, charged with embezzlement and conspiracy to embezzle funds from depositors’ accounts in the Longhorn Bank of Wichita, did not stand trial. He pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of conspiracy and received a sentence of six months. The sentence was suspended, with a warning never again to seek employment with a financial institution.
Johnny Vermillion, alias John Tyler McNear, spent nearly two years on trial in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and the territories of Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah. He was convicted of all charges and sentenced to serve a total of forty years at hard labor, beginning in Kansas.
Topeka Daily Capital, Tuesday, March 8, 1878:
Authorities throughout the state have joined the hunt for five convicts who escaped last night from the Kansas State Penitentiary while Warden Lawler, many of his guards, and the majority of the convict population were gathered in the prison cafeteria to watch a theatrical presentation of The Count of Monte Cristo, performed by members of the incarcerated community. All of the men who are reported missing belonged to the cast.
Staff and penal servers alike appeared to be entertained by the play, adapted from the novel by M. Alexandre Dumas the Elder (ironically, about an escape from prison) by one John T. McNear—known also by the name Johnny Vermillion—who was also its director and lead player. So engrossed were the spectators that they sat for several moments staring at the crudely painted set after the makeshift curtain rose on the last act before realizing that the dramatis personae had fled.
Subsequent investigation revealed that each of the players had practiced assuming one another’s role, and that by changing costumes created the illusion that no member of the cast was out of sight of the hundreds assembled for longer than two or three minutes. By this ruse they managed to take their leave of the prison piecemeal by means of a homemade rope ladder slung over a section of wall rendered invisible to the guards in the corner towers by deep shadow. Those still remaining took advantage of the brief interval between the second and third acts to follow in their path. The trusty who pulled the rope to raise the curtain has been isolated for questioning, but as of this writing continues to maintain his ignorance either of the plan or of the whereabouts of its practitioners.
All of the escapees are characterized as dangerous felons sentenced to periods of long servitude. McNear, who is believed to be the ringleader, is a convicted bank robber, described as . . .
Philip Rittenhouse, seated comfortably in his spartan office in Chicago, scanned the item quickly when it took its due place on top of his stack; then read it again slowly and with the pleasure of a man enjoying a good book. Then he picked up his shears and began to cut.
The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion Page 21