by Bowen, Peter
We slept and she snuggled close and her breath was warm and sweet.
I sleep light and the knock on the door came damn early and I had the pistol I keep under the pillow in hand like that—I cultivated being ready, it was a real good idea, but it was just a knock and when I went to the door there was a waiter with one of them little carts all covered with breakfast. I found some small silver for him and I took the cart and I was about to close the door when he says:
“Your train leaves in two hours.”
Wrong room, I thinks, but I wanted to go back to sleep, not to argue, so I just nodded and shut the door.
When I turned around Alys was pulling on her clothes and had that look women get when there’s a lot to do and not much time.
“Your train leaves in two hours,” I says.
“You’re coming with me,” she says.
“Hell I am,” I says. “I am staying right here in this nice room I paid for, handy to good grub and Rosie’s whorehouse and a nice long rest.”
I was annoyed.
Alys just got up and walked over to me and hauled off and slapped me hard enough to move my head a ways.
“Rosie’s?” she says, damn near spitting. “You have the goddamn nerve to mention Rosie’s to me.”
I nodded and she wound up to belt me again but I caught her wrist.
“You are touched,” I says, “if you think I am getting on a damn train. I don’t like the East, and I ain’t going.”
“Aren’t I better than any whore at Rosie’s?” she says, lower lip quivering.
Goddamned women, I thought savagely, they always play dirty and cry.
13
ALYS HAD HER OWN private car, of course, and we got in and the damned wench handed me a wedding ring—fit, too—with a remark that people in the West minded their own damn business and folks in the East minded everybody’s.
“Did goddamn Darwin have words about women evolving for no better reason than to drive men crazy?” I snarled.
Alys just made a purring noise, like a big soft cat.
“You’re a lucky man, Kelly,” she says, “and too damned dumb to see it. How about this?”
She hands me a paper, which is, so help me God, a marriage license, right down to the Wyoming Territory Seal and a fair forgery of my signature.
“Very nice,” I says. “Now did this actually happen when I was taken drunk, or does my memory still work? Is your family at the other end of this track?” I says. There was a possibility for devilment somewheres in this. I have got in more trouble from my damn dick than any other foul and treacherous friend and no, buddy, I do not want to hear your story neither.
“All dead,” she says, “but for Uncle Digby. Believe me, you will understand one another perfectly.”
That was scant comfort.
I dug a bottle out of the liquor cabinet and poured a dram of whiskey and sat by a window looking out at all the horse turds in the streets. The train blew and the couplings clanked and we begun to move out on to the main lines.
Alys had real good taste, I will say that for her. The car was in blue and pale cream and there was paintings on the walls, a couple by George Stubbs, and no man painted horseflesh as well as he. Rich folks I had known well enough to be in their houses seemed to think several layers of rubbish on every flat surface was high fashion. Well, I supposed it was.
I was trying to stay surly but really I was just as glad to be going. I have many talents, but one I lack is luck at cards. There may be more unsuccessful gamblers than me, but they all shot themselves some time ago. Boredom over the winter would likely cost me all I had in the bank.
Several worthy tinhorn gamblers would starve to death in Laramie, I thinks. It cheered me some.
No doubt Alys had her reasons for all of this, and in time I would learn them. This could be worse, I thinks.
Train travel then was a slow business compared to later, the engines was able to go at most forty miles before stopping for water for the boilers, and from Laramie I figured eight, maybe even ten days to get to the East Coast. If that was where we was going. Alys hadn’t seen fit to tell me where the journey ended yet. And I was damned if I was going to ask her.
There in her own domain she got back to her customary haughtiness, it was in her blood for sure. There was three servants, all women, and she was both kind and firm with them. One round-faced old Irishwoman, one of them servant ladies knows everything about the family, Alys treated with real deference, though, if it warn’t in front of the other two.
Mrs. McGinniss. She reminded me of a couple of great-aunts of mine.
We come into Cheyenne in the evening, right after an excellent Irish stew and trifle for supper, and from here on we would be out on the Plains clear the hell to Omaha. Travel was safe, I had heard, and the Indians had been beat back both by soldiers and the railroad workers, almost to a man veterans of the War, and able to drop a pick and shoulder a rifle just like that. The Indians had killed more men than accidents had on the Union Pacific tracks while they was a-buildin’ it, though as usual disease killed the most. The Central Pacific run east from California, and largely built by Chinese. They drank tea and the water had been boiled, while your Paddy fool would drink out of the nearest ditch. Cholera come soon after.
We layed over a couple hours in Cheyenne, and then the train pulled out—the night was pitchy black. Mrs. McGinniss pulled the curtains in the parlor of the car and bade us good night. Alys had a big bedroom the other side of a bath, even had hot and cold water in taps.
We retired. Cool she might be around the servants, but she was just as hot in her own parlor car as she had been in the buffalo robes in Washakie’s camp. She had ice on the surface, but it weren’t thick, and that over molten stuff, like the rivers of red-hot stone that flow under volcanoes.
She was her own, for sure.
I drifted off, lulled by the train’s wheels clacking soft over the cracks between the ends of the rails, and the swaying. Felt safe there, rolling along over the Plains.
At least it did until glass shattered and rifle fire in the night sent bullets through the holes where the windows had been. I woke up right smart then and had my Navy Colts to hand and the train was slowed down a lot and seemed to be getting slower.
Indians. They was out there yelling like mad, and they must have done something to the tracks. I could hear firing coming from the cars up ahead. We was the next to last car on the train.
Mrs. McGinniss, in a thick white nightdress, was flat on her face in the parlor, crying out to the Virgin to save us all.
Most of the ructions was up ahead, I supposed the Indians was trying to kill the train crew so the train couldn’t go anywhere. Alys had run around blowing out the lamps, just a few small ones, and we was in the dark and the wind was blowing cold through the two broken windows on the north side of the train.
Suddenly a warrior appeared in the window, trying to dive through, and I shot him at a range of eight feet and the big slug shoved him out and he made no sound as he fell. I was down then below the sill of the window and I knew I stuck my head up I’d likely be killed.
From the whoops and the fire I guessed there was a hundred or so warriors out there. I had no idea what the train had by way of defense. But there was a steady stream of fire pointed out and I hoped there was some soldiers in uniform or out and that they had plenty of ammunition.
Alys threw me some clothes as I lay there, and I struggled into them, guns close to hand, and pulled on my boots, so if the fight moved outside I would have a chance.
Mrs. McGinniss was praying mighty hard. She seemed well occupied so I left her be, she was down low enough so she was about as safe as she could be, under the circumstances.
A hand grabbed the sill above me and then the other and I fired through the wall of the car and the fingers stiffened and slipped off, and I scooted flat away from where I had been and several slugs holed the wallpaper.
Then something thumped on the roof, a warrior was up th
ere and must have slipped and fallen, and since the roof was thin it bulged and I shot at it and heard a yelp. I fired again and either missed or killed him.
Then it suddenly got real quiet and the firing up front fell off.
The Indians had left, or they’d overwhelmed the men up there.
Then a conductor busted through the door, minus his hat, a repeating rifle in his hand. He was young and had a bad scratch on the side of his head and an epaulet of bright red blood.
He seen Mrs. McGinniss and he bent down to make sure that she was all right and then an arrow appeared in the top of his head and buried itself in him up to the fletchings and he just crouched there quivering, already dead.
There was maybe half a second all this took, and then a shotgun boomed, sending loads back down the narrow hall. I heard the breech being opened and I looked over and there was Alys thumbing two more brass shells into the scattergun and she snapped the breech to and she pointed it back down the hall and she waited.
One bubbling groan.
The train started moving again and I heard cheers up in the cars in front of us and I started to move back to where the Indian Alys had shot was. It was jerky going, what with me swiveling my head to see if there was any others coming through the windows behind me.
“I’ll watch the windows,” says Alys. And I got up to a crouch and ran into the hall.
The warrior was dead. One load had ripped into his chest and the other into his face. He still clutched his short bow in his right hand.
The other two servant women was dead, brained with a war club. There wasn’t anything behind us but the caboose and I looked out the window in the door. It wasn’t there.
Somehow the warriors had got that coupling undone.
There was fire coming from the caboose, but there was a lot of Indians surrounding it.
The Indians was easy to see, because the roof of the caboose was on fire.
The men in it didn’t have a chance, they’d have to run.
Alys’s shotgun fired again and I ran back to see what there was.
14
WE STOPPED IN THE next town, and things was so confused I can’t remember where it was exactly. There’d been quite a few wounded in the cars ahead, and they was carried off to hospital and the dead—eleven, including the two servants in Alys’s car—was hauled off by an undertaker. A lieutenant came through, inspecting, and he said he was sorry, the attack had come from nowhere.
It had come from the Cheyennes, actually, but there was no way, ’less you stood soldiers every quarter mile from Omaha to Cheyenne that you could keep the Indians from attacking they had a mind to.
Alys got Mrs. McGinniss topped up good with laudanum, and the old lady finally went to sleep. She’d wore bare spots in the carpet she prayed so damn hard.
The train got moving again pretty quick and some carpenters the railroad hired quick boarded up the holes where the glass used to be in Alys’s car and they was let off at Oglala to catch a train back.
Some railroad muckety-muck, all oil and smiles and hand-wringing, oozed through offering sympathies and by the bye making the point that it warn’t the railroad’s fault. He was worried that if passengers felt there was a high possibility they could be killed and scalped, they’d likely not buy tickets.
Since one of the dead servants had been the cook, we was forced to go up to the dining car, a fairly long walk up carpeted aisles to an elegantly appointed coach, with white linens and vases was stuck to the tabletops had flowers in them. Of course having your own table was out of the question, and you had to take such seats as you could find. We waited a bit till the worst feeders gobbled and left and then we went to a half booth had one gent in it, a survivor of the fight back West. He had a huge bandage round his head, like a turban.
We settled down and looked at the menu a bit and then I happened to glance up at our tablemate and I about had my gun out ’fore I could help it.
Blue Fox, of course, in a suit with vest, a fob, and watch. I saw he was a member of the Elks.
“Good evening,” says the son of a bitch.
“You buy a ticket or happen to find one?” I says.
“Miss de Bonneterre,” says Blue Fox, “allow me to introduce myself. I am William Drouillette.”
Them half-breed Frenchy Indians was all over the damn place, so for all I knew he could be William Drouillette. Had his braids all tucked up under the bandage. I could see his point—Indians was not well thought of on the train at the moment.
Alys looked at him cool for a moment.
“Are you now,” she says, finally.
“He will help us on the expedition,” I says, in a low voice. I hoped she’d not set off a riot in the dining car.
“Delighted,” says Blue Fox. “I’ve heard so many good things about you.”
“Indeed,” says Alys.
I noticed a long fresh cut on the back of his hand.
“You need couriers to carry papers back to an agent,” says Blue Fox, “and I am at your service.”
Alys warmed to him after that, and we had a terrible meal and when we left Blue Fox come along with us. Least I could do was offer him a drink, seeing as we would be working together, so to speak, come the next spring.
Mrs. McGinniss was out cold and snoring like a beached walrus, far gone in opium dreams. Alys finally went into her room and rolled her on her side so the booms wouldn’t drown out all conversation, and Blue Fox and me and Alys sat by the porcelain stove, snifters in hand, us gents with seegars and Alys with one of her Spanish cigarettes.
“Cope, eh?” says Blue Fox. “Hear the man speak at college. Clever, and he knows it.”
“This Dartmouth man,” I says to Alys, “is also Blue Fox of the Northern Cheyennes, and utterly reliable long as he feels like it.”
Blue Fox peeled off his turban and his braids flopped down: they was a good yard long.
The Cheyenne Alys had filled with buckshot had been hauled off, of course, and we both was mighty curious what hand Blue Fox had in our entertaining evening. Alys asked.
“Done against my advice,” says Blue Fox. “Better to keep after the soldiers and the buffalo hunters. Strike the regular rail service and you’re striking at money, and money is what America worships most.”
“How much does he know?” says Alys to me.
“You’re hoping to make Marsh and Cope look like fools,” says Blue Fox, “and strike a blow for the rights of women. You want equality, come join us Cheyennes. Oh, we go off and scalp and kill and have a high old time, but us warriors is about the most pussy-whipped fellers on earth.”
Alys threw back her head and roared.
She had a real laugh, not one of them feminine titters.
I thought of a curious fact, that women who was kidnapped by the Plains tribes almost always chose to stay with them, even if they could return to white civilization. They got a lot more respect with the Indians than they would in the East, for sure. Too, there was always the suspicion that they would have been raped and worse yet, enjoyed it. You know how them Christians is about sex, they just can’t get enough of bothering other folks about it.
“I believe you saw Red Cloud recently,” says Blue Fox.
I nodded. The son of a bitch knew we had, and I was fairly sure he knew down to the last grunt our palaver together.
“Well,” he says, “just make sure that you eat what you kill.”
With that he got up and wished us good evening, and wrapped his head up in the bandage again. And he was off, walking up the moving train to wherever he was riding.
“What an interesting man,” says Alys.
“Oh, he is that,” I says, “and don’t never trust him. I ain’t sure what he’s up to, and he’d keep close counsel. We’ve tried to kill each other on a few occasions, and I expect we will again.”
Suddenly we was both exhausted, all the fear that had run us the night before drained out of us and we was just plain damned tired. So we went to bed.
Ov
er the next few days Blue Fox was a frequent guest, and him and Alys spend a lot of time chattering about Darwin and some feller name of Wallace who was in on the evolution business at the same time but was less well-known.
Blue Fox said there was a small museum at Dartmouth devoted to natural history, and that Professor Othniel Marsh was there once, visiting. He asked to see the museum’s collections, and the bursar said of course, but he would have to be accompanied by not one but two guards. Seemed that Marsh was notoriously light-fingered around specimens Yale didn’t have.
Marsh still managed to steal three small fossils, which was discovered in his rooms while he was out giving a speech.
The bursar left three little notes in their place.
Marsh never said a word and neither did anyone else, and in time he was sent off on the train, handkerchiefs fluttering, and no unseemly accusations from the college.
“But about two weeks later a very skilled burglar broke in to the museum and removed the specimens, and the burglar was never caught. One of the fellows from the college was at Yale and contrived to find the three specimens. He lodged a complaint with the president, but that worthy simply said that no Yale man would think of stealing—which wasn’t the same as saying no Yale man would—and so the fellow from Dartmouth hired a burglar, who filched them and they were returned.”
Alys snorted.
“This essay in scholarship is a marvelous tale,” says Blue Fox. “One wonders how grown men find time to so indulge themselves.”
Alys had a few stories of her own. I didn’t much mind that these idiots wanted to steal rocks from each other, but there was something in this that didn’t bode well for the summer.
The fellers I had hired was a tough bunch, and if a price high enough was put on it, they’d cut a throat or two to get the specimen. And I expected Marsh would have men equally eager for all that fun and profit. The West attracted men like that, and most of ’em come to early ends, not, I think, that they cared all that much.
The train rolled across the wintered fields of fat and prosperous Illinois toward Chicago, and the thousand miles of track that led on to New York.