Dance with the Devil

by Victoria Wilcox

  But the alligator didn’t eat him, which seemed like a good sign, and as he shaved and dressed the next morning and took a drink to steady his nerves, he hoped the dream was right.

  Russell Kistler met him at the door of the Exchange Hotel, madden-ingly cheerful about the morning’s coming events.

  “Well, you’re famous in Otero already, no matter how the hearing goes. The judge called the trial so early yesterday I was able to get the type set in time for this morning’s press. ‘Course today’s story could make the headlines, too, depending on Hoodoo’s call.”

  John Henry wasn’t sure how he was supposed to react to such exciting news, but was sure he didn’t much like reporter Kistler.

  “I’ll try not to disappoint you,” he commented as he pushed past the newspaperman and made his way into the dining room—more crowded this morning than it had been the day before. If Hoodoo did make a murder charge and the thing came to a real trial, they’d have to build a new courtroom to accommodate all the spectators.

  But Hoodoo Brown didn’t make any charge at all, and instead, had his constable Jack Lyons read the court’s brief decision that there wasn’t enough evidence to make a charge against anyone—yet. As soon as something turned up, or was made to turn up, the case could come to a hearing again. But John Henry was too relieved at the temporary stay of execution to worry over what might come in the future, and when Russell Kistler asked for his comments for the readers of the Otero Optic, he could only shrug and say, “I reckon I’m lucky.”

  But as made his way back out of the Exchange Hotel and into the summer sunlight, the warm wind seemed to carry a sound like a haunted laugh:

  That man be Hoodoo, mon. Good luck with that man be bad luck.

  As reporter Kistler had said, the story of the unsolved murder of Mike Gordon made the morning paper in Otero, and went from there to every other town in the Territory. It was just the kind of thing Russell Kistler liked to write about, extolling the excitement of life in New Town Las Vegas and warning of the dangers of too many sporting men and not enough police. Kistler, it seemed, was on a crusade to clean up New Town while promoting its growth. In his vision of things, New Town would soon overtake Old Town as the real Las Vegas and leave the Plaza and the Nuestra Señora de Dolores in a sleepy siesta.

  It was the newspaper article that brought Kate back to Las Vegas, the story of the murder of Mike Gordon having been picked up from the Otero Optic and reprinted in the paper in Santa Fe.

  “I was hoping to see you hang,” she said tenderly on the afternoon that she swept back into town and found him at the Senorita Saloon. “I’m sure you deserve it for something or other, even if you didn’t shoot Mr. Gordon.”

  “Oh, I shot him, all right,” John Henry replied, his tone matching the sarcasm of her own, “but I don’t consider that I killed him. He’d still be alive if he’d been sober enough to find a doctor. His own fault for drinkin’ too much and tryin’ to tree the town. I was only doin’ my civic duty in protectin’ my establishment. But I suppose the paper neglected to mention that part.”

  “I don’t recall,” Kate replied, pulling off a soft leather glove and running her hand across the construction dust that covered the bar. “So you’ve given up dentistry for something more sophisticated, I see.”

  “Not entirely. I’m just makin’ a little money off the railroad boom. I’ll get my tools out again when things quiet down.”

  “And how was Dodge?” she asked, as though they were having a real conversation instead of preparing for a duel.

  “Muddy. But Colorado was nice, though I had to hurry back before I could see much of the Royal Gorge. It wasn’t exactly a pleasure trip.”

  “Wasn’t it?” she said, one brow artfully raised. “You seemed quite pleased to be leaving me.”

  “I was, at the time,” he replied, letting the almost imperceptible pause convey his meaning. If Kate had come to reconcile, he was willing. If she had only come to spar, he was willing to do that, too.

  But her own momentary silence showed she had caught his intent.

  “Otero got dull,” she said with a stage sigh, “and Las Vegas never did interest me much. So I went on to Santa Fe and auditioned for a role in the theater company there. I was about to accept a part in a new play they’re staging when I noticed the story in the newspaper. Of course, I had to come and see if the shooting outside Doc Holliday’s Saloon had anything to do with you. The newspaper said there’d likely be a hanging once the culprit was discovered.”

  “So that explains why you’re wearin’ your best gown,” he commented, though her attire was more suitable to a fancy party than a frontier strangling. She was wearing a bosom-baring frock of midnight blue satin with black velvet trim, an outfit entirely wrong for the season, but entirely fetching on her—which she knew, of course.

  “I thought you should see me looking well before you died,” she replied, but there was a light in her eyes that said she was enjoying the repartee.

  And so was he, having missed the kind of cat-and-mouse conversations Kate was so good at. “Well, I am sorry to disappoint you in regards to the hangin’,” he said. “But if it’s any consolation, I did think of you while I was away.”

  “And now that you’re back?”

  He smiled wryly. “It’s hard not to think of someone who says she wants you dead, but dresses like she hopes there’s plenty of life in you yet.”

  “But it’s really the undressing that proves the life in a man,” came her quick reply, and by the way she smiled when she said it, he knew she’d be proving him again soon enough.

  Kate’s comment on the sophistication of keeping bar for a living inspired him to make another real estate deal: he purchased the eight-foot alleyway between his saloon and the building next door with the intent of planting a dental office on it. Eight feet wasn’t much space across, but it was enough to set up a chair and a dental engine, especially since his saloon could serve as waiting room and laboratory. During the slow afternoons, before the real gamblers and drinkers came around, he could amuse himself by doing a little dentistry—and appease Kate that their life was still something more than cards and booze. And to prove his acceptance of her return, he had her name added to the deed as well, though the judge questioned his intent. After all, a man didn’t have to share his property with a real wife; why make such a legal entanglement with a woman who only pretended to be Mrs. Holliday? But John Henry was resolute: add her name to the deed regardless of who was pretending what. He knew that he could never offer what Kate really wanted, but he could give her part ownership in his land, at least.

  The Senorita Saloon reopened for business on the second Saturday evening in August, and on the following Tuesday, its owner was arrested for keeping a gaming table. In any other town, he’d have considered the fine just a normal business expense, a license fee of sorts for the privilege of banking bets. But when the gaming charge was followed the next day by a warrant for his arrest for carrying a deadly weapon, he knew there was more to it than just license fees. It was Hoodoo Brown who was finding excuses to have him arrested again and again, playing a kind of shell game with John Henry’s life—and keeping him wondering when Mike Gordon would rise from the dead to seek his revenge.

  Kate thought his suspicions unfounded. “Why would he have you arrested just to pay off an old debt?”

  “Not to pay it off,” John Henry explained, “to settle up. I ran out on him and now he’s gonna take his revenge, one arrest at a time.”

  “But you said he never even spoke to you after the hearing, and didn’t really speak to you there either. What makes you think he remembers you at all? Why, I passed him on the street yesterday and he didn’t take any notice at all, and I used to be a big star back in St. Louis.”

  To hear Kate tell it, she’d been the toast of every town along the Mississippi instead of just a varieties actress with a mostly male following. The truth was, she had never quite made the big time and probably never would. Even h
er supposed starring role in the Santa Fe theater company would have been nothing more than a chorus part. But he had no need to tarnish the silver-lining of her dreams, so he let her remember herself as the West’s Greatest Actress. What did her past matter now, anyhow?

  His own past, however, mattered a great deal. In spite of Kate’s assurances to the contrary, he knew that the coroner wasn’t quite through with him yet. It was one of those things only another card player would understand: the wariness that came from a half-seen glance across a table, a second-sense foreboding that ran under the skin. Hoodoo Brown might be arresting him on proper grounds, but Hyram Neil was finding opportunities.

  Hoodoo’s harassment only lasted a few days, however, before the town was taken over by the excitement of a robbery on the Barlow and Sanderson Stage. The stage was on its regular route from Santa Fe to Trinidad, carrying payroll for the military post at Fort Union, when it was set upon near the village of Tecolote, eight miles from Las Vegas. According to the driver, three masked riders came alongside the coach flourishing shotguns and commanding the express messenger to open the treasure box and throw down the payroll bag. As it was a small payroll and not worth endangering the lives of the passengers, the messenger did as he was told and the robbers rode away satisfied—but not before the driver recognized the masked bandits as three lowlifes from Las Vegas.

  Though the robbery was County Sheriff ’s business, the Coroner was quick to send his own police to aid in the chase—an irony not lost on the residents of New Town. For it was common knowledge that the three robbers had also done work for Hoodoo Brown, which made it seem unlikely that the Coroner would make any real attempt to apprehend them. More likely, he was sending his police to lead the county sheriff off the trail, and would be paid for his efforts out of that stolen military payroll. And when another Barlow and Sanderson stage was robbed a week later, the irony seemed like proof that something mysterious was going on in Las Vegas—especially when the driver identified the bandits as three of Hoodoo Brown’s underlings.

  This time, the stage company didn’t leave the investigation to the local authorities, but brought in their own man to make the chase, a part time officer of the law from Dodge City by the name of John Joshua Webb.

  Josh was still proudly sporting his shiny gold tooth when he walked into the Senorita Saloon, though his smile was lacking.

  “Seems like the old Dodge City gang has just moved on down here, or at least the lesser aspects of it,” he told John Henry over a short glass of whiskey, Josh never having been one to drink to excess, especially when he had business to conduct. “Fact is, so many of the gang have left town, the Lady Gay isn’t doing much business at all anymore. Trouble with a cowtown: when the cows are gone, so are the cowboys, which leaves things quiet and poor. Which is why I took this job with the express company to make a little money on the side. But the express won’t pay if I don’t find their robbers.”

  “And you think both robberies are connected?” John Henry asked. “Couldn’t they just be random highwaymen takin’ advantage of the summer weather?”

  “Could be,” Josh replied, “but the express ain’t going to wait around and find out. They’ve lost two payrolls in a week, and that’s too much. They keep losing money like that, folks won’t trust to have them ship anymore.”

  “So where do you reckon to find these robbers?”

  Josh considered a moment, looking around as if wary of overhearing ears. “Fact is, Doc, I was hoping you could help me with that, which is why I stopped by your place first. You’ve got your ear to the ground, most of the time. I figured you could give me the heads-up on what’s going on in this town.”

  John Henry took a sip at his own whiskey glass before answering.

  “I’m afraid I’m in a bad position to help you out, Josh. Seems the guilty parties already have an interest in seein’ me in distress, and I don’t want to give them anymore cause. But I can tell you that what looks like law around here is more like a cover for law-breakin’. The rest you’ll have to cipher for yourself.”

  Josh nodded. “That’s pretty much what I expected, what with the names that keep turning up on the express wanted list. I’m just surprised they haven’t tried to rob the train as yet.”

  “The stage is easier, you know that. You only have to down a horse to stop a coach. But I wouldn’t put it past this gang to try the rails next. Seems like they’re gettin’ mighty cocky and self-assured. ‘Course, the way they keep gettin’ away with things, maybe they have some Jamaican luck on their side and a cause to be so cocky.”

  “Jamaican luck?”

  “That’s right,” he said, keeping his eyes on his whiskey glass. “I heard about it back in St. Louis, from a colored down on the levee. He told me that Jamaican luck is bad luck. He had a name for it, even.” He paused, as if waiting for the word to come to him, then shrugged. “Can’t remember what it was, just now. But that’s the thing you’re lookin’ for, Josh. You find that Jamaican luck, you’ll find your bandits.”

  He didn’t dare say more, but knew that if anyone had enough imagination to figure out the clue, Josh Webb did, black magic not being all that strange for a man who believed in sea monsters.

  Though Kate claimed to have no jealousy over John Henry’s rumored romance with Flor, she still fired the girl the first chance she got. John Henry had been away from the saloon that evening, trying his own gambling hand at Close and Patterson’s down by the railroad tracks, and by the time he got back, Flor was gone and Kate was serving the drinks instead—and wearing a look that said she wasn’t going to be challenged over the arrangement. So it was Kate, not Flor, who got the pleasure of pouring for Hyram Neil when he came into the saloon later that evening, looking for a poker game. At least, Kate acted like it was a pleasure, flirting and trifling with Hoodoo Brown as if she had a real interest in him.

  “I’m only being nice to the customers,” she said, when John Henry mentioned her surprising behavior. “Seems like you’d want a high roller like Hoodoo Brown to be happy in your saloon, so he spends more money. But you act like you want him out of here.”

  “I do want him out,” John Henry said under his breath. “I wish he’d leave Las Vegas altogether, and I wish you’d stop playin’ up to him.”

  Kate smiled and slid her arm around his neck. “Are you jealous, my love?”

  John Henry brushed off her seduction. “Just cautious, that’s all. Neil is still tryin’ to settle up with me somehow. I can feel it, and I don’t want to give him any advantage in doin’ it. And your flirtations don’t help any, encouragin’ him.”

  Kate’s arm slid back down and her smile turned to a frown. “I suppose I can flirt with anyone I want, as long as I’m still a single woman.”

  It was the same old complaint she’d always made and that he always tried to ignore. Make Kate his wife? It was a ridiculous thought.

  “Why, Kate, if I were to marry you, I wouldn’t have a mistress anymore. And a sporting man can’t be without a mistress; it doesn’t look right.”

  For a moment, she seemed torn between crying and slapping him, then she tossed her head and laughed.

  “Then you can’t complain when I flirt with other men! And I happen to find Hoodoo Brown quite charming in spite of your guilty notions about him. He’s only come here to play cards, not seek revenge.”

  She said it with such a dramatic flair that he almost laughed himself, until he glanced toward the gaming tables and saw Hyram Neil looking his way, dark eyes glinting. He’d seen those eyes before, in the alligator dream. Hoodoo was after him all right, he had no doubt of that.

  But there wasn’t any black magic in the saloon that night, only card games, and the Coroner left with a respectable profit and nothing more; although, when he came back the next night and the night after that, even Kate began to wonder why he had taken such a liking to Doc Holliday’s Saloon.

  “It’s you, my dear,” John Henry said, taunting her. “He’s recognized you, after all, and
is challengin’ Silas Melvin for your affections like another stage-door Johnny.”

  “And you’re still jealous of Silas!” she said with satisfaction. “But Hoodoo won’t be fighting you for me, not now.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because he’s going to be busy fighting Marshal Joe Carson instead. From what I hear, Mrs. Carson agrees with me about the Coroner being charming, and he thinks the same of her.”

  “Marshal Carson isn’t a man to fool with,” he said, remembering the impressive physical presence of the leading lawman in Las Vegas— two-hundred fifty pounds, at least, packed onto a frame something over six feet tall. “Seems like suicide to fool with his wife.”

  “The Marshal doesn’t know about it just yet,” Kate replied. “Joe’s been out with your friend Josh Webb, chasing those stage robbers while his wife philanders with Hoodoo.”

  “So how did you happen to come upon this information?”

  “Women’s intuition,” Kate said smugly. “Some things I just know.”

  “Well, it’s knowledge you ought to keep to yourself, Kate. A story like that could get someone killed, true or not.”

  “Oh, I hope so,” she said. “It’s been altogether too quiet around here so far.”

  Kate’s quiet was good news for John Henry’s business, as it meant the gaming tables at the Senorita ran undisturbed nearly night and day. And whenever a gambler came in with a toothache or a broken bit of bicuspid, Dr. Holliday ushered him into the lean-to dental office next door for an extraction or a new gold crown. There were some days when the dental office brought in more than the gaming, which made John Henry feel almost like a professional man again.

  When he wasn’t doing dentistry or playing the games, he was up Gallinas Canyon taking the water cure for the consumption. And it had been a real cure, the attendants at the hot springs all assured him, as his lungs sounded so clear that there surely must be no remains of the disease. John Henry wanted to believe them, and there were days that he did as he lay in the sulphureted water smelling the pungent perfume of rotting eggs and Piñon pine. There were days that he stepped from the bath into a waiting wrap of Turkish toweling to be swaddled and set to dry in the clear mountain air and felt almost his old self again. And on those days, staring up at a sky of startling blue broken by the evergreen of the pine-covered mountains, he felt like he might live forever. Twenty-eight years old he was that summer, with the whole rest of his life before him still.