“I thought you knew right off,” she said. “Most men know right off . . .”
“Of course, I knew,” he said, lying to put her at ease. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve an escort home. It’s that twisted ankle that concerns me, not your choice of a profession.”
And when she put her hand on his arm, accepting the help, he almost believed the words himself.
Her home turned out to be a parlor house, and one of the nicer brothels in the saloon district that clustered around Holladay and Nineteenth Streets. She’d come to be living there after being thrown out of her own home, she said, sharing a story that was probably all too common.
She’d once been as virtuous as any other Victorian girl, until her father died and her mother remarried and the new stepfather felt he had a right to take liberties with her. She was horrified at first and shamed as things continued, but altogether too frightened to do anything to stop the situation. Then one afternoon her mother found her with the stepfather, and put her out into the street. Her protestations that it was all his doing and none of her own fell on deaf ears. The stepfather called her a scheming strumpet who had planned the seduction to discredit him in the eyes of his beloved and worthy wife, and her mother chose to believe the lie. So all at once, the girl found herself homeless and moneyless with no training to become anything other than what she was.
She was fortunate to have found herself a position in that Denver parlor house, as there she had the security of a house mother who made sure she was dressed and fed as long as her customers paid up. The streets were full of girls who didn’t fare so well. There were hurdy-gurdy dancers who wore short skirts and showed themselves off in the saloons, street-walkers who enticed men out of passing carriages, whores in dingy shacks called “cribs,” and billboard girls who sat holding advertising signs and doing business from the stools they sat upon. Parlor house prostitutes didn’t have to lower themselves to such baseness to make a living, only open their well-appointed bedrooms to men who paid them good money for what some girls had to do for free. That was the way the girl looked at it, anyhow, considering her present circumstances better than the horror of being regularly molested by her mother’s husband.
After hearing her sad story, Tom couldn’t quite bring himself to accept the offer she made him in repayment of his kindness. She’d called him a gentleman and he felt compelled to behave as one, though he was sorely tempted not to be. Why not accept such an offer and take an available girl when there was no hope for a future with the one he loved? Mattie would never be able to give him such pleasure, and neither would Kate. . .
It was the unbidden memory of Kate Fisher that made him take a hasty leave of the golden-haired parlor house girl and head for the first saloon he could find. Thinking of Kate in St. Louis, where he was surrounded by memories, was understandable. But thinking of her now, and in the same thought with Mattie, seemed like a sacrilege. It was Mattie he loved and Mattie he’d vowed to remember always and, in his own fashion, he was trying to be faithful to her, but having Kate Fisher’s memory insinuate itself into his mind made him feel more unfaithful than sleeping with a whole host of fallen angels.
It took a tumbler of whiskey to wash away the uneasy memory of Kate Fisher, but by the time he’d headed back to his little room above Long John’s Saloon, he could hardly remember what had made him so distressed in the first place. Kate had been nothing but a diversion to him, and was less than nothing to him now. Mattie was his love and always would be, and he felt a sudden need to write to her again, filling three pages with stories about the Union Pacific Railroad, the rampaging Sioux, and the Centennial excitement in Denver. And by the time he’d signed his name and dried the wet ink with a dusting of sand, he almost believed himself that his life was nothing but a pleasant travelogue.
Almost. There was still a weight on his soul that wouldn’t let go, a weight of watching two men die at his hand and knowing that he could never go back to being the man that he had once been. He wasn’t a gentleman anymore, at least not the kind of gentleman that Mattie had known. He was Tom McKey, Faro dealer, and he couldn’t think of any good reason not to take the parlor house girl up on her tempting offer. It was convenient that she lived just one street over from Long John’s Saloon, so he wouldn’t have to wait long for the pleasure.
There was a newsboy at the corner of Holladay and 16th Streets, like there was at every major intersection in town, hawking the Rocky Mountain News. But unlike most days when the newsies had to scramble to sell off their load of freshly printed papers, the lad on Holladay Street was scrambling to keep from being knocked down by a crowd of men fighting to get a copy of the paper. The headlines he hollered out explained the frenzy:
“Satanic Sioux! General Custer’s command slaughtered like sheep! Seventeen commissioned officers and Custer family killed! The battle field a slaughter pen in which lie three-hundred and fifty boys in blue!”
The paper was filled with the rest of the story and Tom McKey could imagine it all as he read those first reports out of the Black Hills. Custer was already a hero before he died and became a legend immediately after. But he was less than one month dead when another hero fell and entered into Western legend right behind him, making that Centennial Summer a summer of legends—and the papers were full of the stories.
Wild Bill Hickok was a different sort of hero than George Armstrong Custer—a gambler, gunfighter, and sometime lawman who was known for his flashy cross-draw and flashier clothes. But even Custer, for whom Hickok had once been a scout, recognized Wild Bill’s finer qualities, calling him, “One of the most perfect examples of physical manhood I ever saw . . . entirely free from bluster and bravado . . . his skill with rifle and pistol unerring.” Skillful as Hickok was, however, he couldn’t see behind his back, which was how the cowardly Jack McCall was able to shoot him to death at a card table in Deadwood, South Dakota.
Wild Bill had gone to the gold-gulch of Deadwood to do a little prospecting and a lot of card-playing, as he was doing on an August night at the Number Ten Saloon. The poker game had been going on for hours already and Bill was about to play the winning hand when a shot from a Colt’s revolver shattered the smoky air. The bullet hit Wild Bill in the back of the head and he toppled over backwards before he could put down that winning hand—a pair of aces and a pair of eights that quickly became known as “The Deadman’s Hand.”
The ignoble death of Wild Bill Hickok might have inspired Tom McKey to keep his own pistol loaded and ready to pull, but he was wary of getting himself into trouble as Denver had a gun ordinance and thirteen overzealous policemen who liked to enforce the law. So he left his pistol packed away in his traveling case and kept the Hell-Bitch with him for protection instead, slid neatly down into the leather shoulder holster he’d had made for himself in Galveston.
And if what Mattie wrote was true, in the letter he received in answer to his own, the real danger wasn’t in Denver anyhow—but all the way back in Georgia.
Mattie must have written to him as soon as she received his own letter, as hers was dated just a week later, though he didn’t get the letter for another month after that. The trouble was, he hadn’t gotten used to his alias yet, and didn’t notice the name T.S. McKey listed in the Advertised Letters column of the newspaper. It was the parlor house girl who pointed it out to him when he brought the paper along with him one hot summer afternoon.
“Why, that’s you, Tom,” she said with something like surprise. “What’s the ‘S’ stand for?”
“Sylvester,” he replied, figuring he might as well give his uncle’s middle name since he was already using the rest of it. And as long as he was using all of that, he might as well add to the charade by giving a place of residence as well. “Thomas Sylvester McKey, late of Valdosta, Georgia.”
“Valdosta. That sounds lovely,” she said, as she helped him out of his jacket and herself out of a ribbon-tied chemise. “What does it mean?”
“Nothin’, really. It’s a
play on the name of the Governor’s plantation: Val d’Aosta. Which was named after a castle in Italy, so I hear. I reckon namin’ the town after the Governor’s place was meant to curry his favor. But all Valdosta seems to favor is bugs. Summers are mighty humid and natty there, not like here. Used to be, the air felt so close you couldn’t catch a breath in August.”
“I’m glad you like it here,” she said, smiling. “I like having you here.”
She certainly seemed to, the way she welcomed him whenever he felt like stopping by and only charged him half her usual fee. She would have given her time for free, she said, if her house mother would have allowed it. But she was a working girl and had to show a profit for her favors, and Tom didn’t mind paying the price. Besides, not paying her would have made the visits seem like something more than he was willing to make them—and she was, after all, just a prostitute. And knowing there was a letter waiting for him, most likely a letter from Mattie, reminded him that he was only in the parlor house for a little pleasure, and nothing beyond that.
The letter made him forget the golden-haired girl, or anything else, with the news it brought from Atlanta. For behind Mattie’s affectionate words was a warning he hadn’t expected. Though he had tried to hide the killing in Fort Griffin from her, she’d heard all about it already—from a Pinkerton’s Detective who came calling at the Hollidays’ home in Atlanta.
We didn’t believe him, of course, Mattie wrote in her delicate and feminine hand, heart-felt words still believing the best of him.
Who could believe such a story? For though I have sometimes chastised you for being reckless and quick-tempered, I know, dear cousin, that you would never do such a thing as the man from Pinkerton’s has accused you of. So, knowing that he was mistaken in his charges against you, charges which I do not have the heart to here repeat, I felt it no wrong in keeping from him that which he came seeking, which was a photograph of you. Of course, I have one, the daguerreotype you had made in Philadelphia, and which I cherish as a memento of you.
So thinking it then the best thing to do, I lied straight out when he asked if we had any such possession, and told him we had nothing to help him. He seemed disatisfied to hear the news, as the Detectives Agency has been commissioned by the Army to aid in finding you, and without a proper portrait of you they cannot accomplish much. Mother was fearful of displeasing the man, after what we have heard of that company’s dealings in Missouri, and would have shown the portrait to him herself, if Lucy hadn’t shushed her. I have never seen my sister Lucy shush Mother before, so you can imagine the family’s astonishment—and my own grateful feelings for having such a loyal and clever sister.
It has been a blessing to have my family here with me. I say here and by that I mean Atlanta, as Mother has let our house in Jonesboro and moved with my sisters and Jim Bob here to be near Uncle John and his family. Her circumstances have been very difficult, as you might imagine, since her widowhood, being left with a large and helpless family and no means of support for her household. Uncle John has been kind, as always, in helping to provide for us here, taking a house for us just down the road from his own home. We are happy here, as much as can be without our dear father to provide for his loving children and wife. Mother still grieves, though she tries to hide it from the children.
She cannot hide it from me, as I have a heavy heart of my own, worrying over you every day. How I long to have you back home again, safe from these awful charges which I cannot bring myself to believe! I will not believe them, unless you tell me in your own hand that they are true.
Please write soon, and tell me that all is well with you. Until then, my prayers are with you always, as my love is always, dear John Henry.
He read the letter over twice to make sure he had understood her properly, then tried to settle his shaken thoughts. The Army had followed him after all, at least far enough to know that he wasn’t in Texas anymore, and had trailed him all the way to his relatives in Georgia. But thankfully, no one but Mattie knew of his whereabouts, and she would never tell them that he was far off in Colorado. He was safe for awhile in his life as a Denver Faro dealer, though it wasn’t only his own safety that concerned him, but that of Mattie and her family.
They had reason to be fearful of the Pinkerton Agency, as Mattie’s mother was surely well aware. The detectives had caused a national outcry earlier that year trailing the outlaw Jesse James and his gang, hounding them day and night and putting an armed guard around the home of Jesse’s mother. Jesse wasn’t there, but his young half-brother was, and when the Pinkertons threw a bomb into the house, it was the brother who died and the mother who lost an arm in the explosion. It was an unfortunate accident, the Agency said, but worth the cost if the outlaw was captured in the end.
They hadn’t caught the James gang yet, but with their dogged determination and their motto We Never Sleep, they would probably catch them soon enough. And what if the Pinkertons went after John Henry like they’d gone after Jesse James? What if they went back to Mattie’s home, waiting for his return that she was always hoping for, and made some awful mischief there? What if it were Mattie who ended up paying the price for his misdeeds the way Jesse James’ family had paid for his? The thought that his own actions might cause her any harm left him shaking and sick at heart.
The solution was obvious: leave his alias and his Colorado safety behind and go back to Texas where the Army could have their shot at him. Then the Pinkertons would have no wanted man to trail nor any reason to molest his relatives back in Georgia. The solution was obvious—but he couldn’t bring himself to consider it. Going back to Texas now, if the Army were still looking for him, would likely mean hanging for that unintentioned killing of the Buffalo Soldier. If he’d meant to kill the man, he might have been willing to take the consequences of his actions. But it had been nothing more than a drunken mistake, and he wasn’t ready to throw his life away for that. The best he could do was to ease Mattie’s concerns by writing and telling her what she wanted to hear—that the Army was wrong in their charges against him and that soon enough the Pinkertons would realize as much and give up their search. As for easing his own concerns, he’d send a letter back to Fort Griffin asking Shaughnessey to find out what he could about the Army’s plans and to let him know when things settled down some there. And in the meantime, he’d have to keep on pretending to be Tom McKey, with nothing but Faro and parlor girls on his mind.
The world of a Denver sporting man covered only a few city blocks, encompassed by the winding bed of Cherry Creek to the west and 16th Street to the east, by Curtis Street to the south and the tracks of the Union Pacific Railroad to the north. Most of the saloons and brothels, the gaming halls and varieties theaters lay within those confines, making the sporting district a little world of its own. Unless a gambling man had important business elsewhere, he could spend all his days and nights on Wynkoop or Wazee, Blake Street or Holladay Street, Larimer, Lawrence, or Arapahoe and never venture out into the more proper neighborhoods of the city.
The unofficial boundary line between sporting district and city proper was the brick bastion of the Inter-Ocean Hotel occupying half a block at 16th and Blake Street. The Inter-Ocean had claim to be the swankiest hotel west of the Mississippi with its only competition being its sister hotel, the Inter-Ocean in Cheyenne, since both boasted gentlemen’s saloons, billiard parlors, basement barbershops, and annexes that housed bathrooms with real indoor plumbing just a short walk from the guest rooms. But what really set the Inter-Ocean apart from any other hotel in the West was that its millionaire owner, Mr. Barney Ford, had started out life as a slave—a story that all of Denver couldn’t help rumoring about.
He’d been born on a Virginia plantation in 1822, but as soon as he went to work in the tobacco fields, Barney knew he was meant for better things. Past the fields and up where the smell of manure on the tobacco didn’t foul the night air, Barney’s white master lived in easy elegance in a sprawling manor house on a hill. Barney spent his days
pulling tobacco and gazing up at that house, and promised himself that someday he would have a house even grander than his master had. But other than running away, there was little hope for him to ever break free of his slavery. So young Barney determined that as soon as the chance came, he would run for his life and become a free man.
The chance was slow in coming, though. Barney’s master sold him down south to a Georgia hog-farmer, an ignorant man who hardly knew how to manage his own affairs, much less care for his Negro slaves. The one thing the master did do well was to beat his slaves whenever he’d been drinking too much mountain whiskey. But he wasn’t a discriminatory man; he beat his own wife about as hard as he beat his slaves, and his children only a little less.
Then one year when the hog business was going slow, the farmer hired Barney out to a gold camp in the north Georgia mountains, and Barney got his first case of gold fever. Men were getting rich just by filling tin pans full of gold-laden water from the cold mountain streams. It didn’t seem to take any talent to get that gold—just patience and a little luck. Barney had patience, he figured; living in slavery had taught him that. And as for luck, he figured he could get a little of that, too.
But first he had to get his freedom, and in Barney’s mind that meant getting out of Georgia. So when the hog-farmer hired out some of his Negroes to a man who ran a riverboat on the Mississippi River, Barney made sure he was one of the ones who went. They said the Mississippi was a wide watery road that led from the slave states in the South to the free states in the North, and Barney was headed for freedom. When the riverboat dropped anchor at Quincey, Illinois, he jumped ship and made for the Underground Railroad and didn’t stop running until he got to Chicago.
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