The Gentleman Outlaw and Me--Eli

by Mary Downing Hahn

  "Whew," said Calvin. "Just look at that water. It's positively black. I hope that's proof you've scrubbed the dirt off."

  All of a sudden he reached out and grabbed my locket. "What the dickens is this?"

  I tried to pull away, but I was afraid of breaking the little silver chain. Besides he already had it open and was studying Mama's and Papa's tiny faces.

  "This is a peculiar thing for a boy to wear around his neck," Calvin said.

  I huddled in the dirty water, so scared I could hardly breathe. "That's Mama and Papa," I whispered. "I wear it so's I won't forget them."

  Like Miss Pearl, Calvin nodded sympathetically and snapped the locket shut. Letting go of the chain, he watched it fall back against my chest. "Do you intend to soak in that dirty water all day?"

  "You go away," I muttered. "Then I'll get out."

  Calvin laughed. "If you aren't the biggest Nancy-boy I ever saw. Do you think I care what in Sam Hill you look like naked?"

  When he reached for my arm, I slid under the water, praying I was too slippery for him to get a good grip on me.

  "Lord, Eli, if it bothers you so much, I'll turn my back. I don't want to be responsible for a drowning."

  When I was sure he'd done as he promised, I scrambled out of the tub and pulled on my clothes without even bothering to dry myself first. I couldn't help noticing how nasty my shirt and overalls felt against my clean skin. They were so dirty they could have stood up all by themselves.

  "Are you decent yet?" Calvin asked.

  For an answer, I wanted to kick him in the rear end, but I didn't dare. I just said, "Yes," and stood there red-faced while he inspected me.

  "Except for the lamentable condition of your clothing, you look almost respectable," he said. "Not perfect, mind you, but definitely an improvement."

  Taking a deep breath, I followed Calvin and Caesar outside, still feeling shaky. First the bath, then the locket. I'd come perilously close to giving away my most precious secrets. If my true name and nature were gold coins, the Gentleman Outlaw would surely have pulled them out of my ears by now.

  13

  OUR FIRST STOP WAS A GENTLEMEN'S CLOTHing store. After tying Caesar to a hitching post by the door, Calvin led me inside.

  "Good afternoon, sir," he said to the clerk, just as polite as can be. "My brother and I need to be outfitted with a decent set of clothes, as you can plainly see."

  The clerk nodded. He could indeed plainly see. And smell, too. Wrinkling his nose in annoyance, he said, "If you're seeking to buy overalls, try the general store on Front Street."

  Calvin gave the man a stare cold enough to freeze his eyeballs and slapped my gold eagles down on the counter. "I don't wish to repeat myself," he said softly. "I want a suit for the boy and one for myself, as well as shirts, ties, good shoes, stockings, and proper underwear. All of the finest quality. Do you understand?"

  The clerk began to perspire. "Certainly, sir, certainly," he murmured. "I'll begin with your brother. A fine lad, sir, a fine lad indeed."

  For reasons of my own, I was even more nervous than the clerk. My raggedy overalls and shirt were all that shielded me from the world. If I had to strip, I'd have a heap of explaining to do.

  Calvin must have sensed what was bothering me because he said, "Eli's as shy as a girl. I doubt he's wearing proper underwear, so give him a set to put on before you start measuring and fitting him for a suit."

  In the privacy of a closet under the stairs, I managed to button myself up decent in a suit of boy's underwear, but I felt mighty peculiar walking around the store in such skimpy apparel. Neither Calvin nor the clerk noticed anything amiss—which proves, I reckon, that folks see what they expect to see. Dress like a boy, walk like a boy, call yourself by a boy's name, and everybody will believe you are indeed a boy.

  I stood real still and let the clerk go about his business with a measuring tape. Under Calvin's watchful eye, he outfitted me in a black Eton jacket and matching knee-length trousers, a white shirt with a stiff stand-up collar, a neck tie tight enough to choke a pig, scratchy black wool stockings, and shiny black shoes that pinched my toes. By the time he was done with me, I hardly recognized myself. I looked for all the world like the sort of pitiful pantywaist Little Homer would delight in tormenting.

  "You're a dandy now," Calvin said, placing a black yacht cap on my head. "I wager your own father wouldn't know you."

  I would have laughed up the sleeve of my new jacket if I hadn't been so worried about the cost of it. My suit was over three dollars, my shirt was sixty-five cents, my cap a quarter, underwear half a dollar, hose a quarter, and shoes a dollar sixty, for a grand total of almost seven dollars. I had never thought I'd see the day anyone would spend that much money on me.

  As for Calvin, his outfit brought the cost to seventeen dollars and twenty cents. I swallowed hard when the clerk dropped my precious gold coins into the till and handed Calvin two dollars and eighty cents change. We left our old clothes for the clerk to throw away. They weren't good for anything else.

  Outside the shop, Calvin lounged against the rail while I untied Caesar. I was scared the poor dog might not recognize me, but he wagged his tail and licked my hands as if he were complimenting me on my new appearance.

  Finally I turned to Calvin. "What are we going to do now?" I asked, not even trying to control the fear that pitched my voice high as a girl's. "All we have is two dollars and eighty cents. Where are we going to sleep tonight? How are we getting to Tinville?"

  Instead of answering my questions, Calvin gestured at the crowded boardwalks. "Take a good look at the men of this town, Eli."

  "I see them," I grumbled, surveying the scene. Miners led donkeys laden with saddlebags. Drunken louts roamed from gambling hall to saloon and back again. They cursed and yelled and shoved each other. Every now and then some fool would shoot a gun into the air and holler. I'd seen their kind in almost every town we'd passed through.

  "A fine bunch they are," I said. "Ignorant fools and loud-mouthed braggarts. And you no better than the worst of them."

  "Right in your assessment of them," Calvin said, "but wrong in your assessment of me." Laying a hand on my shoulder, he grinned like a hungry fox. "What you see, Eli, is a passel of jackasses begging to lose a year's earnings in a couple of hours at the gambling tables."

  "And you're just the one to help them do it," I muttered, kicking at a clod of dried-up horse dung.

  Calvin tipped his expensive new hat and gave me a smile no one could resist, man, woman, or child. "Come along, Eli. Hold your head up, show off your new finery, attract attention."

  Tipping his hat to ladies and gents alike, Calvin moseyed along the wooden sidewalk. In spite of myself, I began to enjoy the way folks looked at us. I'd never gotten a second glance from anybody before. Not as a girl in faded, outgrown dresses nor as a boy in raggedy overalls. But in my new duds, I cut a fine figure. People turned their heads and stared at me as well as Calvin.

  Even Caesar held his head up. If another dog looked his way, he ignored him. Today he was just too good to squabble with ordinary old town dogs.

  After a stop at the barber shop for twenty-five-cent haircuts and a dash of good-smelling tonic, Calvin and I rented a cheap room at the Broadwell Hotel. The walls were thin, and noise from the saloon downstairs came up through the floor, but Calvin said we'd soon be in a position to afford better.

  Caesar made himself comfortable in the middle of one of the beds. He wasn't supposed to be in the room, but the way things were, I figured he had no more fleas than the miners. In fact, the poor dog was probably in greater danger of catching something from them than the other way around. Anyways, we had the best old time bouncing on the bed till grumpy Calvin hollered at us to behave ourselves.

  "We're supposed to be grieving the loss of our dear mother and father, who departed this vale of tears one month ago."

  I stared at Calvin, puzzled by his words. "Where did they go?"

  He sighed. "They died, Eli."r />
  "Well, tarnation, why didn't you say so instead of going on about veils of tears and such?"

  "An educated person avoids offending the delicate ears of others with such bald, unadorned truths."

  I poked Caesar. "Listen to the gentleman, sir. He's attempting to fancify us."

  Caesar rolled over on his back, paws in the air, and played dead.

  Calvin wasn't amused by Caesar's antics. "Please make an effort to be serious, Elijah," he said in that soft rattlesnake hiss he used when he was riled about something.

  Sitting me down on the bed, he explained his latest scheme. We were greenhorns from back east, he said, grieving the loss of our parents but planning to make a new start in Colorado. In the saloon, Calvin would have a couple of whiskeys and pretend to be drunk. The miners would think him an easy mark and invite him to join a card game.

  "I'll lose for a while," Calvin said. 'You'll beg me to stop, but I'll go on playing. The stakes will rise. When I'm down to my last silver dollar, my luck will suddenly change."

  I stared at Calvin, thinking he'd gone plumb stark raving mad. "And just what are you planning to gamble with? I doubt the miners are generous enough to let you play for free."

  Calvin smiled. "Leave that to me, Eli."

  When he headed for the door, I jumped to my feet. "Where are you going? What are you aiming to do?"

  "Let's just say I'm going to see a man about a dog." Calvin paused and looked at me. 'You stay here, Eli, and try to stay out of trouble."

  I watched him run down the steps to the hotel lobby, my head awhirl with speculations. Was he planning to rob a bank, pick people's pockets, hold up a stagecoach? Had he bought a gun when I wasn't looking? Or, more likely, stolen one?

  And why in tarnation did he want another dog? Wasn't Caesar enough?

  Unable to stand it another second, I ran down the stairs after Calvin, but by the time I got to the street, Caesar at my heels, there was no sign of him. I pushed through the crowds, ducking and shoving, looking in saloons and gambling halls, but even with Caesar's nose to help sniff him out, the Gentleman Outlaw had just plain vanished.

  Finally I gave up and trudged back to the hotel. For a while, I played my harmonica and made Caesar practice his tricks. When I grew tired of that, I lay on my bed and watched the shadows change on the walls as the sun sank lower and lower.

  Every now and then I'd get up and look out the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of Calvin's curly head, but he was never among the crowd traipsing the streets.

  The later it got, the more I worried. Where in tarnation was he? Why didn't he come back? What if something bad had happened to him?

  Just as I was about to give him up for dead, Calvin strode into the room, looking as jaunty as a millionaire.

  "Where have you been?" I asked him. "I've been worried sick!"

  Calvin shrugged and brushed a speck of dust off his sleeve. "I told you. I went to see a man about a dog."

  "Well, where is it?"

  "Where is what?"

  "The dog."

  Calvin stared at me. "Dog?"

  "The one you went to see the man about," I said, trying my best to be patient. "Did you tie him up outside or something?"

  Calvin sighed as if realizing he hadn't yet plumbed the full depth of my ignorance. "That is an expression one uses when one does not wish to reveal the true nature of one's business," he said in the snootiest voice he'd come up with yet.

  I flopped down on my bed and scowled at Calvin. Here I'd been thinking Caesar was about to have his own friend and traveling companion. I was glad I hadn't mentioned it to him. The poor dog might have gotten his hopes up.

  "Well, just what the Sam Hill were you doing all this time?" I asked.

  Calvin reached into his pocket and pulled out a leather pouch. With a grand flourish, he emptied it on the bed. Silver dollars rolled off in all directions, clinking and jingling like sleigh bells. The two of us gathered them up, and Calvin stacked them neatly on the dresser.

  "One hundred dollars," I whispered. "Wherever did you get it?"

  "Perhaps I pulled it out of people's ears," Calvin said, pretending to find more coins in my ears.

  I jerked away, irked by his teasing. There was only one way Calvin could have gotten that much money. He'd gone and robbed a bank without taking me along. I didn't know whether to be mad at missing the experience or glad I hadn't seen Calvin risking his life.

  'You didn't shoot anybody, did you?" I whispered. Lord, I wasn't about to touch money tainted with some poor man's innocent blood.

  Calvin shook his head. "Of course not, Eli. It was a very polite transaction. I didn't even raise my voice. And I remembered to thank the tellers for their trouble. Why I even apologized for the inconvenience I caused them."

  "Did you wear a mask?"

  He waved his fine new handkerchief under my nose. "We are in no danger, Eli, I swear it. No one will come after us. I made a clean escape."

  I laughed with relief and bounced on the bed. "That's enough money to get us to Tinville, Calvin! We won't have to do the orphan swindle after all. We can leave on the very next train."

  I hugged myself with pleasure, thinking how much closer we were to Papa. Of course, it worried me some that Calvin had broken the law to help me on my way to Tinville, but I supposed he'd robbed banks before. Breaking the law was nothing new to the Gentleman Outlaw.

  As for me, I figured I'd ease my conscience by making sure Calvin gave money to the poor and needy we were bound to meet along the way.

  Sad to say, I soon discovered going to Tinville wasn't what the Gentleman Outlaw had in mind. Not yet. He said a hundred dollars was nothing compared to what he could get in the gambling halls and saloons of Alamosa.

  "This is merely my stake," he said, "my entry into the game."

  I tried to argue, but Calvin won me over with promises of diamond rings and gold stickpins, pearl-handled revolvers, fine horses, expensive hotels, the best dinners money could buy, champagne and oysters for breakfast. And candy. All the candy I could eat.

  "Just imagine how proud your father will be when you step out of a first-class Pullman car," Calvin summed up, "dressed in fine clothes and carrying yourself like a perfect gentleman."

  Though I couldn't tell Calvin just how much such a thing would truly astonish my father, I went along with his grand plans. Greedy as it sounds, I liked the idea of being rich for a change. Sleeping on soft mattresses, eating good food, wearing fine clothes. Why, it was like a fairy tale. My reward for all I'd suffered at Aunt Mabel and Uncle Homer's house.

  14

  THAT EVENING, CALVIN AND I TOOK SEATS ON the hotel's front porch. It was so blasted hot I thought I'd die. My suit was wool and as itchy as poison ivy. My shirt was buttoned up tight and starched so stiff it would have stopped, a bullet. The collar just about rubbed my neck raw every time I turned my head. I might as well have had my chin in a vise. For the first time since I'd given up dresses and petticoats, I hated my clothes.

  "Stop fidgeting," Calvin hissed in my ear, "and look sorrowful. Remember you're grieving for your dearly departed mama and papa."

  Since I truly missed Mama every day of my life, it shouldn't have been hard to obey Calvin, but the heat and dust and flies were so tiresome I couldn't do anything but squint and scowl and squirm.

  Finally I poked Calvin. "Can't I go up to the room and see what Caesar's doing? Sure as shooting he's bored stiff."

  Instead of answering, Calvin squeezed my hand so hard I thought he'd cracked my bones. "See who's coming, Elijah? Look sad."

  A gang of ruffians were riding toward the hotel, raising dust, scattering chickens and pigs, yelling and laughing and cursing. It was clear they could scarcely wait to throw their money away on whiskey, women, and cards.

  "They appear to be mighty mean," I whispered.

  Calvin sneered. "Ignorant, drunken scalawags. I wager there isn't an ounce of intelligence in all of them combined."

  By now the miners were tramping
up the steps, heading toward the saloon. They passed by without giving us a glance, but they left behind a smell a skunk would have been hard pressed to equal.

  A few minutes later, Calvin unfolded his long, elegant body from his chair and pushed the saloon door open sort of slow and cautious like he wasn't used to entering such places.

  For a few seconds, he hovered on the threshold with me beside him, peering into the smoky depths. It was a scene to make a preacher weep. Ladies dancing and singing bawdy songs, men snorting whiskey like it was water and cussing each other with every breath they took. On the wall behind the bar was a picture of a lady as naked as Eve in the garden and twice as big as life. Lord, I couldn't look at her or the dancing ladies without being ashamed of my sex.

  When Calvin was sure we'd been noticed, he moved cautiously through the crowd.

  "Please don't buy any whiskey, brother," I begged, remembering what he'd told me to say. And meaning it too. 'You promised Mama when she lay dying that you'd be good."

  "Don't mention that angel's name here," said Calvin, pretending to wipe tears with his handkerchief.

  "She's looking down from heaven right now," I sobbed. "She sees you itching to spend our inheritance on the devil's drink."

  By now we'd reached the bar. The miners stepped aside, making room for us. It was obvious we had their attention as well as the bartender's. Taking in the black mourning bands tied around our upper arms, he asked what we fancied.

  "A sarsaparilla for my brother," Calvin said softly, "and a whiskey for me."

  "No," I wept, warming to my part. 'You promised not to touch it. You know what whiskey does to you, Calvin."

  Nobody but a squint-eyed miner paid any attention to me. "What's the matter with you, boy?" he asked. "A man's got a right to his whiskey. Your brother don't need no trouble from you."

  The man next to the miner laughed. Peering down at me, he said, "Now don't you pay no mind to Old Bill here. The poor cuss don't know what he's talking about or where he is most of the time."