The Case of the Deadly Desperados

by Caroline Lawrence

  “Here,” she said breathlessly. “In here!”

  She pulled me into a washhouse full of big wooden vats of sudsy water & more staring Celestials & back out into an alley. She looked around frantically, then pulled me through a door with only a curtain across it. We found ourselves in a hot and steamy shack that smelled of starch. There were maybe five Chinese men standing behind tables with flat irons sending up clouds of steam. They looked up at us with puffy chipmunk cheeks as we came in, then went back to their ironing as if there was nothing strange about a Soiled Dove and an Indian Youth barging into their workhouse. There were two small wooden tables in the center of the room. These were piled high with clean sheets waiting to be ironed. Some of the sheets were falling down around the table legs. Belle ran to one of the tables and tugged the sheets further down to make a kind of tent.

  When I went to join her she pushed me away.

  “You go under that one,” she said. “There ain’t room for both of us under mine.”

  So I went under the other table and pulled some of my sheets down to hide me from view. When I was satisfied that nobody coming in would suspect my hiding place, I parted two of my hanging sheets and peeped out. The door we had come through was only covered by a cloth curtain, which occasionally swelled to let out steam from the room and then subsided again.

  Watching the Celestials at work, I understood why they had bulging cheeks. It was because their mouths were full of water. They would expertly squirt this water from their mouths onto the sheets & then slam down their flat irons to make hissing clouds of starchy steam billow up.

  Over at Belle’s table, I could see her pink hoopskirt sticking out from under the sheets she had draped to hide her from sight. But whenever she pulled it in on one side it would pop out the other. When I heard the menacing jingle of spurred boots coming closer & closer, I began to worry.

  My heart nearly stopped when the cloth over the door was wrenched aside & the steam parted to show a man in a black slouch hat and biscuit-colored duster.

  I knew it was Walt or one of his men.

  He glared around and just at that moment some of Belle’s hoopskirt popped out from under the sheets.

  “There you are!” cried Whiny Voice & his spurs jangled as he strode towards her with purpose & intent.

  Ledger Sheet 10

  AS THE WHINY-VOICED DESPERADO in the black hat stomped towards Belle’s hiding place, I took action. I slipped out from under my table & grabbed a cold flat iron from an empty table & I threw it at him.

  Whiny yelled & staggered back & clutched his face with his free hand. His nose was spurting blood.

  When the Celestials saw their shed full of snowy white sheets endangered by this flood of crimson, they sprang into action. Three of them shoved Whiny back out of the starching shed. Another one grabbed me, and the last one yanked Belle from her hiding place. In a moment they had ejected all three of us into the alley outside. They were shouting at us in Chinese.

  “Dang you!” cried Whiny, shaking himself free of the Celestials and rounding on me. “You broke my nose! I’m gonna kill you both!” He pulled out a Colt’s Navy Revolver from the right-hand pocket of his duster coat & cocked it & drew a bead on me.

  But before he could pull the trigger, a shot rang out. Belle had fired her Pocket Pistol. The ball must have struck the desperado in his hand or wrist because his gun flew up in the air and fell down. As it struck the ground it went off with a bang & the man yelped. “I been shot!” Whiny held up one foot and we saw the heel of his boot had been shot off. “Shot by my own piece!” He held up his bloody hand. “And you creased my thumb, you blank!”

  “You make one move,” said Belle, lowering the gaze of her Pistol, “and I will shoot you in your Privates. Now get your hands up!”

  “You already shot your load,” he said with a sneer.

  “This here’s a Double Deringer,” said Belle. “You can see that it has only one barrel but two hammers. There is another forty-one caliber ball in there just waiting to be discharged.”

  “You filthy Hore!” he said. But he held up his hands. Blood was still leaking from his flattened nose & he looked at us with a kind of squint. I knew from his whiny voice that he was the one Ma Evangeline had brained with the skillet.

  Belle quickly used her left hand to pat him down. She found a few silver dollars and some paper money. She stuffed these down the front of her neckline and then said, “Close your eyes, you ugly Varmint, and count to a hundred!”

  Whiny did as he was ordered. While his eyes were squinched shut and his lips were mouthing the numbers, Belle grabbed my hand & pulled me through the crowd of Celestials. They had stopped yelling and were watching us with interest.

  I dropped Belle’s hand soon after and followed her through a corral with a few horses in it. She slipped in some manure and cursed, using language unfit for publication. I helped her up and soon we were out of the corral & clambering up a steep slope between a lumberyard and the back of a brewery.

  We made it up to the next street and Belle picked up her soiled skirts and ran. Her hair was coming unpinned & her feathered hat bobbed up and down like a dead bird on its perch.

  We were on a flat street now. I followed her past lots of little wooden shacks & a few brick houses & a tent or two. Some of the shacks had blue or red lamps in the windows. There were a fair number of houses under construction & even a few lots vacant.

  Chinatown had been a warren of narrow alleys, but this street was wide enough for traffic. I saw carriages & mule carts & a milk wagon. The big horses pulling the milk wagon shied as Belle Donne swished past and their driver had to calm them.

  A shiny black buggy approached, and as it passed, the lady driver called out, “Are you in a hurry, Belle? Do you need a ride?” She was a pretty woman in a frothy lemon-colored dress & matching bonnet. She did not wait for a reply but laughed and touched her white horses with a whip.

  I heard Belle mutter something about “Danged Short Sally and her airs,” and then she had crossed the street and was squishing her skirt so she could pass through the open doorway of a half-built frame house. The structure had walls, but no doors or glass in yet, and no roof. We sat with our backs against the wall beneath an empty window. Being unused to such thin air, I was gasping for breath. I felt dizzy and for a moment I thought I might pass out.

  As I began to recover, I glanced around. This must be one of the cribs Belle had mentioned. The shadow of the mountain had started to creep over the town and I guessed the workmen had gone home. Either that or they had run out of funds and temporarily abandoned it. Because it had no roof, I was able to look up & see a few clouds in the deep blue sky above. They were lit pink & gold from the setting sun.

  Outside on the road, I heard the comforting sound of normal traffic. My sharp ears detected no jangly spurs or urgent hoofbeats in pursuit.

  Belle was fiddling with her hat, trying to pin it back into place. “I would love a smart little rig like Sally’s,” she said, her chest still rising & falling. “And two ponies of my own. I could keep them up at the Flora Temple Livery Stable.” She patted her hat, which was only a little crooked.

  I held on to the sill of the unglazed window & lifted my head & peeped out.

  “I think the coast is clear,” I said, and glanced over at Belle. She had emptied the contents of her purse onto the raw plank floor. I saw a small powder flask & a rammer & some little brass percussion caps. She was reloading the strange gun with its single barrel and two hammers. I saw it took grooved balls the size of chickpeas. She must have noticed my interest for she said, “This here is a Double Deringer. A Mr. Lindsay invented it after his brother was attacked by two Indians and he only had one ball in his pistol.”

  “May I see it?”

  “I’m afraid not,” said Belle, pressing the second percussion cap on.

 
She raised the freshly loaded Deringer and pointed it at my heart. “I am going to have to ask you to give me your twenty-dollar gold coin,” she said. “And that Thousand Dollar Letter, too.”

  Ledger Sheet 11

  I STARED AT BELLE DONNE in dismay.

  Her blue eyes glittered and her cheeks were real pink.

  “You will soon learn,” she said, “it is every man for himself here in Virginia. And every woman, too. Now give me what you have there.”

  This is what I was thinking: “Once again my Thorn has led me into trouble.”

  I quickly glanced around, looking for something to fight back with. But there was not a single spare plank of wood and I still felt dizzy.

  She cocked both hammers of her strange handgun. “Do not even think about it,” she said. “Give me what I asked for.”

  I reached into my medicine pouch and took out the $20 gold coin and the folded-up Letter and handed them over. Without taking her eyes from me she opened her beaded wrist bag and put those two things inside.

  She gestured with her Double Deringer. “What else have you got in there?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Just my Indian ma’s flint knife and my pa’s Detective Button.”

  She said, “What is a Detective Button?”

  I did not reply.

  “Tell me,” she said. “Or I will shoot you.”

  I took the button out of my right-hand pocket and showed it to her. “It is a button from my dead pa’s jacket,” I said. “It is all I have of his. He was a RailRoad Detective.”

  She frowned. “What is a Detective?”

  “A Detective is a person who uncovers crimes by following clews. Like Mr. Bucket in Bleak House. A RailRoad Detective protects people and goods on the train.”

  She said, “Who is Mr. Bucket and what is a Bleak House?”

  “He is an invented character in a book by Charles Dickens,” I said. “Have you never heard of Dickens?”

  She did not answer my question. Instead she said, “Is that button valuable?”

  “Only to me,” I said. “It has sentimental value.”

  “You do not seem to be a sentimental type of person to me,” said Belle Donne. “You are a cold and heartless child to be able to speak of your parents’ death with no emotion.”

  “That is my Thorn,” I said. “I cannot express emotions easily. Nor read them neither. But I will miss my ma and pa dearly.”

  She said, “Did they ever beat you?”

  “No.”

  “Then you should count yourself lucky.”

  I said, “I do count myself lucky. They were both real good to me. Ma Evangeline taught me to read and write and Pa Emmet taught me the Word of God.”

  Belle Donne said, “Turn around and sit Indian fashion. I am going to bind your hands.”

  I turned around and sat cross-legged.

  I felt her bind up my wrists behind me. Later I found out she used a red ribbon from her hat.

  I said, “What you are doing is wrong.”

  She said, “I need that gold coin more than you do, P.K. I have a bad habit.”

  I said, “All I want is enough money to get me a ticket to Chicago.”

  “Lie down on your side,” said Belle, “and bend your knees. I am going to tie your ankles to your wrists.” As she bound my ankles she said, “What is in Chicago?”

  “My uncle Allan Pinkerton runs a National Detective Agency out of Chicago. He has lots of Detectives working for him, including some women.”

  “Does he?” She pulled my feet back towards my hands.

  “Yes. One of them is named Miss Kate Warne. She disguises herself and pretends to be someone she’s not.” I quoted from a newspaper Ma Evangeline had once showed me. “‘In this clever guise Miss Kate Warne obtains confessions from the culprits.’ Sometimes she ‘shadows’ people,” I added. “That means she follows them.”

  “How do you know that?” said Belle as she tied my ankles together.

  “It was in a newspaper.” I turned my head and tried to look over my shoulder at her. “I reckon if my uncle employs women as Detectives, then he might hire children, too. Especially if they are his own flesh and blood. If I could get to Chicago, I feel sure my uncle could use me in his Detective Agency as a Private Eye.” I added, “If I can overcome my Thorn.”

  “What is a ‘Private Eye’?” she asked as she bound my ankles to my wrists.

  I said, “A Private Eye is a person you hire to spy out the Truth for you.”

  “Well, I hope you succeed,” she said as she tied off the ribbon. “But right now I need that coin and I need that Letter.”

  I said, “I saved your life back there when I hit Walt’s pard.”

  She gasped. “Whose pard?”

  “Walt’s. That’s what they were calling him, anyways.”

  Her face came into view as she moved around in front of me. “That man was Whittlin Walt?” she said. The color had gone right out of her face and her voice was breathy.

  “Not the one you shot,” I said. “The other one. The one who spoke to you when I was hiding under your skirt.”

  “He was Whittlin Walt?”

  “I do not know his full name,” I said. “I only know the other two called him Walt.”

  “Dear God.” She buried her face in her black-gloved hands. “Oh dear God, no!”

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  “Whittlin Walt is the most feared outlaw in the Territory,” she said. Her voice was muffled by her hands. “Do you know why they call him Whittlin Walt?”

  “No.”

  She lifted her face and looked at me with one of the few expressions I can easily recognize: Fear.

  She said, “They call him Whittlin Walt because he whittles pieces off his victims while they are still alive.”

  Ledger Sheet 12

  BELLE WAS OUT THE DOOR and running before I could ask her to tell me more about this terrible desperado who was after me.

  My first acquaintance in Virginia City had robbed me and tied me up. My wrists and feet were bound and I was lying on my left side on planks of raw wood. I considered myself lucky she had not gagged me, too. Dusk was here and soon it would be night.

  It seemed to me there was only one thing I could do. Yell for help.

  However, I do not like having to yell for help.

  I do not even like having to ask for help.

  I like to do things myself.

  It was getting darker by the moment.

  I heard some quail in the sage somewhere nearby. They said, “Chicago! Chicago!” as if to remind me of my goal.

  Then I heard a chorus of coyote yips down in the canyon. Coyotes will eat just about anything and I knew they would not turn up their noses at me because I was half Sioux and half White. That decided me: I did not want to be eaten alive by coyotes.

  “Help!” I cried. “Help me please! I have been robbed and I am lying tied up in this half-finished crib. I do not want to be eaten alive by coyotes!”

  I had only been yelling a short time when I heard a footfall outside the open doorway and I caught my breath. I suddenly realized that the only people who cared to find me were Whittlin Walt and his two pards.

  Had my shouts brought them right to me?

  At that moment, fighting off a passel of hungry coyotes seemed preferable to facing Whittlin Walt and his Bowie Knife.

  I closed my eyes and tried The Half-Finished House Trick. That is where you pretend to be a half-finished house and hope you blend in.

  It did not work.

  My nose caught the scent of lye and of something chemical but unfamiliar. I opened my eyes to see two wooden-soled sandals. Above the sandals were a pair of loose, faded blue pantaloons, and above that a blue shirt and a
Chinese boy looking down at me.

  I could not read his expression.

  He squatted down. “Be quiet, Fool!” he hissed. “I think the man who is after you is nearby!” He began to fumble with the knotted ribbon around my wrists. He was trying to untie me.

  I said, “In the medicine bag around my neck there is a flint knife.”

  He found my medicine bag and took out the stone blade. With a few swift strokes he cut me free.

  “Come!” he said, handing back the flint and the bits of red ribbon Belle had used. “Chop, chop!” He pulled me roughly out through an opening in the wall for a back door.

  My wrists hurt and my ankles had pins and needles but I managed to stumble after him up a dusty slope. Both of us used stunted sage bushes as handholds to pull ourselves up. We startled the family of quail who had been urging me to go to Chicago. They skedaddled.

  The slope here was so steep that some of the buildings had their nether regions propped up on tall stilts. The young Celestial took me under one of these, where the shadows were deepest. He stopped and looked quickly around to make sure the coast was clear. Then we scrambled up more slope until we reached a kind of alley between two wooden buildings. I am not plump, or even stocky, but I could barely squeeze through. The Chinese boy was taller than me but maybe a little skinnier. I reckoned he had not been dining as well as I had.

  At last we emerged from the alley onto a dusty street with crowded boardwalks on either side. I had never seen so many people crammed together in one place. In the jostling crowd I could hear women laughing & men shouting & music playing. The noise was made louder because lots of buildings had balconies, which formed a kind of roof over the walkways & threw back the noise. Some of the buildings were wood, some were brick & over on the corner to our right was a six-sided mansion made of gray stone. The street was full of carts and carriages, all sending up clouds of dust.

  “Skirt boy!” said the Celestial. “Stop staring. Come.”

  “Skirt boy?” I said.