Spin

by Peter Zheutlin

  Soon enough, though, someone involved, someone likely under the influence of drink, went bragging, and within days the whole scheme, and the events leading up to it, was known. You see, Helen Beulah first met Mr. Hardin when she was looking for a lawyer to represent Martin on a charge of cattle rustling, and their affair began straight away. When Martin learned of it he got two friends to send threatening letters to Mr. Hardin daring him to come to Juarez to come face-to-face with Martin. He did, but Mr. Hardin had company when he traveled to Juarez, Police Chief Milton and U.S. Marshal George Scarborough. When they arrived at the meeting place, Martin was absent, but a fistfight ensued between Hardin’s and Mrose’s men, the ones who had been threatening Mr. Hardin. Mr. Hardin pulled a gun, but Marshal Scarborough intervened, and the party left. Miraculously no one was killed.

  Furious that Martin had been too cowardly to show up, Mr. Hardin decided to get his revenge. But he didn’t do the deed himself. He made a plan with Chief Milton, Marshal Scarborough, a Texas Ranger named Frank McMahan, and another man named John Selman, to lure Martin to El Paso with the prospect of a business deal involving some land and then up to the dump the night of your lecture. There was already a $1,000 reward for Martin’s capture or killing on the cattle rustling charge, and Mr. Hardin proposed the five men split the reward plus whatever money was found in Martin’s pockets.

  Remember how distracted Mr. Hardin seemed the night we met him after your lecture? Well, I’m sure his mind was on the events he hoped were unfolding over at the dump. But there’s more.

  After the killing, because of the complicity of someone from every level of the law in El Paso, no action was taken against any of the conspirators, and Helen Buelah, now a widow, moved in with Mr. Hardin. But in the weeks after the killing Mr. Hardin became more ornery than ever. He threatened to kill several of the men he would gamble with, he was almost always drunk, and according to Helen Buelah he even threatened to kill her.

  On the night of August 19—I am writing you just three days later—Mr. Hardin was at the Acme Saloon gambling when Constable John Selman, father of one of the men who killed Martin Mrose, burst through the saloon doors and shot Mr. Hardin three times before Mr. Hardin could even move. Now, no one knows why Constable Selman killed Mr. Hardin, but rumors are all over town. Some say the junior Selman and Mr. Hardin argued over the reward money, that Mr. Hardin threatened to kill him, and that the senior Selman was protecting his son. Some say the senior Selman wanted a share of the money taken from Martin Mrose’s pockets. No one seems to really know.

  So, Miss Annie, you can see that it has been anything but dull here in El Paso since you left town on your wheel. Do write me a letter from time and time and tell me of your life. No one here will soon forget you.

  Fondly,

  Euphreisa Sweeney

  It’s quite a story isn’t it? Imagine your little old grandmother making the acquaintance of one of the Old West’s most notorious outlaws!

  * * *

  After the lecture I spent a few more days in El Paso, implored by nearly everyone to remain through the July 4 holiday, when part of the celebration would include bicycle races. There, several men took turns riding on a tandem bicycle with me, but few could keep up as I took the lead seat and pedaled furiously. One of my favorite bits from the newspapers described what happened when a man named Bart Allen decided to take a turn.

  “The way Miss Londonderry pulled Bart Allen around the track on that tandem greatly amused the crowd,” wrote the Herald. “She pulled him along so fast that it was all he could do to keep his feet on the pedals.” The Herald predicted a tremendous welcome when I reached Boston and that I would then select “the fortunate man upon whom she will see fit to bestow her fair hand.” Little did they know.

  Three days later, on the seventh of July, an escort rode with me back up to Strauss, and from there I headed north alone, following the tracks of the Santa Fe.

  Fourteen

  Chicago was eighteen hundred miles ahead of me, and I had just over two months to get there if I wanted to lay claim to having satisfied at least one of the terms of Colonel Pope’s wager, that I make the circuit in fifteen months. But I immediately ran into some bad luck.

  Near Anthony, a short way across the border with New Mexico, I suffered a tire puncture and had to wait until the next morning for a repair kit to arrive from El Paso. No sooner was I on my way again than a deluge struck; it rained cats and dogs all day as I struggled along muddy roads to Las Cruces, thirty miles of the worst riding I had yet encountered. The rain did not relent, forcing me to spend three days in Las Cruces, three days I could ill afford if I were to make Chicago in time.

  Without realizing it, I had also ridden straight into the middle of a bitter feud between the editors of the town’s two newspapers, the Independent Democrat and the Rio Grande Republican. Their rhetorical battle over my authenticity would soon be joined by other newspapers in the New Mexico territory, and rage for weeks in my wake. It was a kerfuffle, really, but you’d never have known, judging by the intensity of the war of words and the cross fire in which I soon found myself thanks to a lecherous drunk named Allen Kelly, editor of the Democrat. I suspect the battle was so intense because the stakes were so small!

  Kelly met me at my hotel for an interview shortly after my arrival in Las Cruces. Fifteen minutes into our conversation, during which his hands shook so badly he could barely take notes, those same trembling hands started to wander where they did not belong, and I delivered a solid smack to the side of his face. He reeked of alcohol and was clearly drunk, and I demanded that he leave the premises immediately, which he did, though not in a straight line. The next day, stung by my refusal to let him have his way with me, he published a lengthy screed in which he denounced me as a fraud and used many other libels. Sensing an opening to discredit their rival, the following day’s Republican came to my defense.

  With the usual disregard for veracity, and the usual eagerness to fill up blank space, the Independent Democrat devotes nearly four columns to Miss Annie Londonderry, the lady cyclist passing through Las Cruces. While purporting to roast Miss Londonderry, the writer succeeds only in making a clown of himself. Such buffoonery is probably a relic of bear-training days, and it was thought those antics would please the readers of the Democrat. The people of our town, however, have become very tired of this kind of thing. When it is fiction they want, they know where to find something readable and less nauseating. While not hoping for a reform in this line from our contemporary, we cannot but think how refreshing it would be to at least see an attempt made at something near the truth once in a while.

  (Rio Grande Republican, July 19, 1895)

  Now, the imbroglio grew because I fertilized it. A couple of weeks later, when I reached the town of Las Vegas, New Mexico, and was asked by a reporter from the Optic about Mr. Kelly’s attacks on me (word travels, especially in newspaper circles), I told the reporter, and he duly reported, that Kelly had been on a “whiz” when he met me and that his beef was that I refused to go buggy riding with him. I told a reporter from the Santa Fe New Mexican the same thing.

  Mr. Kelly simply could not let the matter go. A whole month after I’d left Las Cruces, Mr. Kelly, having read my version of events in the other papers, defended himself in print and demanded retractions from the Optic and the New Mexican.

  The New Mexican ran Mr. Kelly’s letter demanding a correction for what he deemed “a stupid slander,” but wasn’t willing to put the matter to bed just yet. Next to Kelly’s letter was a delicious response from the editor.

  Allen Kelly has been sloshing around in his editorial mudhole for over a year, butting his cranium against nearly everything and everybody in sight, emitting copious quantities of splenetic nastiness. He ought to be more careful whether dealing with his brethren of the press or with an unprotected female bicycle agent.

  (Santa Fe New Mexican, August 5, 1895)

  The Optic, however, had come around to Mr. Kelly’s side by the
time I left that city.

  Her declarations about Allen Kelly were spread all over town by Miss Londonderry. The Optic doubted its truth at the time, classing it with many of her traveler’s yarns. Since then this paper has become assured of its falsity. Mr. Kelly, it has been learned, is not a whizzer in Miss Londonderry’s sense of that term, nor does he invite strange women to take buggy rides with him. He was convinced of Miss Londonderry’s unreliability, as were a large majority of those who came in contact with her, and with a fearlessness and a plainness of speech which has won him a distinguished position in New Mexico journalism, he told his convictions to the world. Miss Londonderry, unable to answer his charges, attempts to besmirch his character.

  (Las Vegas Optic, August 6, 1895)

  Still not content to let the matter drop, Mr. Kelly had more to say on the subject in his newspaper.

  The alleged female person in nondescript apparel who went through here on a wheel some weeks ago claiming to have ridden around the world, did not succeed in fooling the editor of the Las Cruces Independent Democrat as easily as she did some others, and he exposed some of her extravagant pretensions. The libel is the assertion that we wanted the jade to go driving with us, but that is mitigated by the allegation that we were drunk at the time. Nobody in his sober senses would have sought the intimate society of the woman, as she appears to have realized that in order to give the appearance of probability to the one assertion it was necessary to prefix the other.

  (Las Cruces Independent Democrat, August 14, 1895)

  I have to hand it to Mr. Kelly; that’s one clever piece of writing. I sure stirred up a hornet’s nest out there, which was, after all, the point!

  But I have gotten ahead of myself, for the journey from Las Cruces to Santa Fe and Las Vegas was not without drama of another kind.

  * * *

  Socorro is about one hundred and fifty miles from Las Cruces, but it took me nearly a week to get there. Part of this stretch is called the “Jornada del Muerto,” or Journey of the Dead Man, a broad, flat, desolate valley that in a normal summer bakes in the heat and sizzles when a sudden thunderstorm breaks open. Unfortunately, I was riding into one of the worst stretches of weather the region had seen in years. Violent thunderstorms and monsoon-like rains plagued my trip north. Only the three section houses I passed following the Santa Fe tracks provided escape from the elements over six long and exhausting days when I was often forced to push the Sterling through mud several inches thick. Where I could ride, the going was rough, whether over the ties or alongside the rails. The weather was so bad even the trains had stopped running, for several railroad bridges across shallow arroyos, normally dry that time of year, had been washed out by the raging torrents of water that ran through them. It was the first time during the entire journey that I thought I might perish, alone and far from help of any kind. But for the section houses, I had to sleep on the ground with only the clothing I wore for protection. By smashing some tins of food with a rock, tins found in the section houses, was I able to eat—the only sustenance I had for six days. No part of my journey had been, or would be, as miserable. I began to have serious doubts I would make Chicago in time.

  When I arrived in Socorro on the fourteenth of July I was a sorry mess, drenched to the bone, covered with mud, exhausted, and hungry. I had shipped my steamer trunk to Albuquerque from El Paso, but had little faith given the condition of the tracks that it would be there with a much-needed change of clothes. I headed directly to the rail station in Socorro, where my luck improved, as I learned that despite the troubles farther south, the train was running between Socorro and Albuquerque. I inquired of the stationmaster about the likelihood that my steamer might have made it through.

  “If you put it on the train a week ago, you can count on it being in Albuquerque,” he said. “It wasn’t until three days ago that the through trains stopped running.”

  I was much in need of this dose of good news. The stationmaster was very kind and provided me with towels and a dry shirt from the lost and found. And though I was not supposed to accept any gratuity, he refused payment for my ticket to Albuquerque. I thanked him profusely.

  “You have been through quite an ordeal, Miss Londonderry,” he said. “That much is obvious. The railroad won’t miss your dollar.”

  “That is very kind of you, sir. I am grateful,” I replied. “You know who I am, obviously.”

  “Of course! They ship the El Paso newspapers north and the Albuquerque newspapers south through here, and I have more idle time in this outpost than I know what to do with. I read them cover to cover. Would you oblige me with your autograph?”

  “I will trade it for my train fare,” I said with a smile, thus hewing to the conditions of the wager. I signed the back of a discarded ticket for him. “With gratitude for saving a drowned rat,” I wrote, “Annie Londonderry of Boston, Spinning Around the World.”

  He took it in his hand and looked at it for a long moment.

  “We don’t get many world travelers through Socorro,” he said. “This will be a valued reminder of our meeting. Thank you. I hope the remainder of your journey is easier than the last few days have been.”

  “As do I. As do I,” I replied.

  “Your train will be arriving from the north within the hour, and then turns around and goes back to Albuquerque,” he offered. “Owing to the present condition of the bridges, it cannot travel farther south. Might be a few weeks until repairs are made.”

  “Thank you. I shall be very happy to get there,” I replied. “May I ask one more favor? Please wire and reserve a room for me at the San Felipe Hotel and let the Morning Democrat and the Daily Citizen know I am on my way?”

  “Of course, Miss Londonderry. It will be my pleasure.”

  He extended a hand.

  “I will always remember the small part I played in your story. Godspeed to you.”

  “And to you, sir. Your kindness has been restorative.”

  * * *

  My trunk was indeed at the train station in Albuquerque. At the hotel, I signed the guest register, “Annie Londonderry, Round the World on a Wheel,” and after a much-needed bath and change of clothes met separately with reporters from the two newspapers. I spun the usual tales, and I especially liked the description of me offered up by the man from the Daily Citizen the next day.

  She is a charming, vivacious talker. The broad rim of a jaunty white straw hat trimmed with black ribbon bent and shook itself in response to her animated movements of the head when speaking. The right leg was thrown over the left, the hands crossed at the knee and from under the bottom of a plain, black skirt a shapely foot was visible. She carries a pistol on her body, and the quick penetrating flash of her dark eyes shows that she would not hesitate a moment to use it. One half of the so-called courageous sex of humanity would not attempt what this brave little Boston woman has accomplished.

  (Albuquerque Daily Citizen, July 15, 1895)

  During my two days in the city, my battered Sterling was displayed in the window of a local store, for which I was paid a few dollars.

  The weather improved, and I left Albuquerque on the sixteenth, arrived in Santa Fe on the nineteenth, and, as was now usual for my stops, lectured and raced some of the local riders to show off my strength and skills on the wheel. I stayed just the night and was off the next day for Las Vegas, a bustling town of more than two thousand souls, including, to my surprise, a sizable community of German Jews who had settled in the town decades before. Why they chose this remote New Mexico outpost I don’t know, but for the first time since leaving Boston I found myself in a community that had a little taste of home.

  The big department store in town was Ilfeld’s, owned by Charles Ilfeld, who had come to New Mexico as a teenager in the 1860s and, with his brothers, built a successful business empire. There wasn’t then, but there is now a town in New Mexico that bears his name. I met him when I wandered into his store toward the end of the week to see if he might be interested in engagi
ng me as a celebrity salesclerk for a few hours, a way to earn a couple of dollars for me and attract customers for him, not that he needed help. The store was filled with people. One of the clerks led me to his office and introduced me. He knew who I was, for he read several newspapers a day, he told me. I suspected he was Jewish from the name, but the Hebrew prayer book on his desk and tefillin hanging from a hook on the wall left no doubt. I later learned that several years before my visit, Charles Ilfeld was instrumental in forming Congregation Montefiore, the first synagogue in Las Vegas, and had donated the purchase price for the land on which it had been built. But at the time, I knew only that he was the store owner.

  The Ilfelds of New Mexico.

  “Miss Londonderry,” he said, shaking my hand and bowing slightly, “this is a pleasant surprise. There was a rumor that you might be passing through our town. It’s a pleasure.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Ilfeld. Likewise, I am sure!” I replied.

  “I have read of your journey in the papers,” he said. “It’s most extraordinary. Most extraordinary. But I see you are also kicking up some dust here in New Mexico.” He said this with a wry grin, suggesting he found it all rather amusing. He was referring, of course, to the row involving the newspaper editor Allen Kelly.