Next to Last Stand

by Craig Johnson

  “There was a big article about you in the Billings paper a few months ago; something about Mexico?”

  I nodded. “I was over my head in that too.”

  “You’re getting over your head a lot these days.” She studied me with a kindness in her eyes. “Is that because Martha isn’t around to look after you?”

  It seemed strange to hear my late wife’s name, but she and Mary had been associates. “Maybe so.”

  Entering through the reading room portion of the McCracken, we took a private door to a hallway with a number of posters on the wall, the entirety of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows in innumerable languages. “He got around, didn’t he?”

  She called over her shoulder. “In 1899 they logged eleven thousand miles and did three hundred forty-one performances in two hundred days.”

  “Wow.”

  Entering another room, she held the door for me. “That includes daily parades and two-hour performances.”

  I stood there, still looking at the posters. “These are all originals?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I have one?”

  “You can order a copy.”

  “Ah, of course.” I joined her in a very well-lit room with a number of workstations containing all kinds of devices and contraptions about which I knew practically nothing. Mary stopped at a cubicle in the corner. “This is the conservation lab, and this is Beverly Nadeen Perkins.”

  “Hello.”

  The woman was on the phone but turned to smile and wave at us as we continued toward a very large table not unlike the one at the Brinton Museum. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  I unzipped the padded folder and withdrew the wax paper sleeve in an attempt to exude professionalism only to watch the thing slip out and land on the floor between us.

  Mary stooped and picked it up, cradling it in the light while adjusting the overhead lamp a little closer, illuminating the intimate battle between the cavalryman and the Indian. “That’s an odd little piece, isn’t it?”

  We both turned as the woman joined us, Mary handing her the canvas. “Anything fun on the phone?”

  She took the partial painting and stepped in between us, adjusting it in the light. “No, just an angry patron who had been at one of our clinics who thought he had an original Remington, which turned out to be an original Klauzowski instead.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  She glanced up at me. “No reason you would. He lived in a second story apartment in Scottsdale in the seventies and sold his paintings on the sidewalk in Old Town for about seventy-five bucks a pop. He was sometimes known to borrow elements from more well-known artists.”

  “Like Remington?”

  “Especially Remington.”

  She lowered the canvas and stuck out a hand. “Beverly Nadeen Perkins.”

  “Walt Longmire.”

  “No middle name?”

  “Not for public consumption, no.”

  Turning the piece over, she studied the back, the edges, and everything except the painted part of the painting. “Interesting. It’s not a real canvas—probably a sack of some kind that’s had gesso applied as a primer; looks like Italian gesso, an animal glue, probably rabbit skin along with chalk, white pigment, probably mixed with linseed oil to allow for the flexibility of the canvas.” She turned and looked at me. “It’s in pretty rough shape.”

  “What period would you say?”

  “I can guess, but I think I’ll use the XRF.”

  She walked back toward her work area, picked up a device that looked like a ray gun, and brought it over. “It shoots out a beam into the sample, which excites the electrons in the elements—usually iron, zinc, or lead—and they respond, but sometimes other elements too. Take cadmium, it wasn’t used until mid-nineteenth century; therefore, if it shows up in a Renaissance painting you know it’s a fake or that some sort of conservation work has been done.”

  “So, you can shoot it with Buck Rogers here and tell me if it’s the real deal?”

  “I can give you an approximate age, but we can get more of a sense of the artist by technique: how they use their brush and palette knife, what paints they used. If you’ve got a primary resource like we do with Remington, then you can just compare that to the paint on the painting.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve got Cassilly Adams’ palette lying around here somewhere?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. The Budweiser painting aside, he was something of a minor painter.”

  “Meaning he wasn’t very good?”

  “Adams was a relatively unknown artist and something of a victim of circumstance. The majority of his illustrations were done for publishers who didn’t credit him for the work, and then the illustrations were borrowed for other books and not attributed to him. He painted a number of scenes depicting frontier life and illustrated the 1883 Frank Triplett book Conquering the Wilderness.”

  “Sounds like he did all right.”

  “Not really—he died in relative obscurity in Traders Point, Indiana, in 1921.”

  “The painting he’s known for, the Custer painting, was destroyed?”

  She nodded. “In 1946 when the headquarters of the Seventh Cavalry burned.” She continued to study the painting portion of the thing under the light. “There is an amusing story connected with Custer’s Last Fight. Just a bit after the first publication of the work, Adolphus Busch had a lithograph sent to the governor of Kansas, who, after he retired, gave it to the State Historical Society where it was put on display in the early 1900s. It created something of a stir when it was observed that the brewery’s name was prominent underneath the painting in one of the state’s public buildings. Things came to a boil when Blanche Boies, a follower of the prohibitionist Carrie Nation, threw open the doors of the museum and entered with an ax in hand. Finding the litho she buried the ax in it before being carted away by the police. I guess Blanche was infamous for attacking taverns in Kansas. Of course, all the museum had to do was contact Anheuser-Busch, and they just sent them a new one.”

  “How many have they printed, back when they had it?”

  “A hundred and fifty thousand of the large ones and who knows how many smaller ones between 1896 and 1942. At one point they were shipping out about two thousand a month to servicemen all over the world.”

  “Goodness.”

  “I think it’s safe to say that it’s been seen by more drunk, questionable art critics than any other picture in American history.”

  I shook my head. “When can you get me the results from the heebie-jeebie?”

  “The XRF.” She thought about it. “Nothing pressing this afternoon; I could get the results to you this evening?”

  “Wonderful.” I turned back to Mary. “Am I to understand you’re having a party?”

  “We are.”

  “Can I get three tickets?”

  “Justin already called me, but do you mind if I ask why you want to come?”

  “I understand that there’s an individual, a Count Philippe von Lehman, who is to be in attendance?”

  “You mean No Count?”

  I shook my head. “Does everybody in the state call him that?”

  “Not to his face. He’s been very kind to the museum and donates a number of paintings each year for us to auction off.”

  “I’d like to meet him.”

  “I’m sure that can be arranged.”

  “I understand it is formal?”

  “Well, Western formal.”

  “Which is?”

  “Tie and jacket, preferably one from a tuxedo and then jeans and boots.”

  “And where does one rent a tux in this wonderful town?”

  “The Village Shoppe on Main Street.” She studied me up and down and then frowned.

  “What?”

  “I’m not sur
e if they’re going to have your size.”

  * * *

  —

  “That, is a very well-dressed refrigerator.” The two of them sat on the bench and snickered at me.

  I turned in the three-way mirror and thought I didn’t look that bad. “It’s the biggest one they have on such short notice.”

  My undersheriff shook her head. “What size is it?”

  “I’m not telling you.”

  Henry studied my boots. “You are going to have to polish those.”

  I looked down; at least the boots and jeans were mine. “I thought I’d just go across the street and buy a new pair.”

  “Tuxedo rental and a new pair of boots—Cody is receiving a financial bounty from your visit.”

  Straightening my slightly stained hat, I figured it was going to have to do. Besides, it gave me a rugged genuineness—at least that’s what I liked to think. Turning to Cheryl, the nice lady at the Village Shoppe, I slipped off the jacket and handed it to her. “I’ll take it, along with a shirt, tie . . .”

  Vic stood and added. “And cummerbund and a stud and link set.”

  I turned to her as Cheryl hurried away. “What’s a stud and link set?”

  She reached up and straightened my collar. “No doubt, the tuxedo shirt will have French cuffs, so you’ll need cuff links and studs for the buttonholes.”

  “Right.”

  “You need to get out more.”

  Henry stood and stretched in his sweatpants, Lame Deer Morning Stars t-shirt, and running shoes. “I think I will take your dog and go for a jaunt at the reservoir.”

  “You don’t need anything for tonight?”

  “No, I have it all in my room, already hung up and steamed.”

  I nodded. “Something I did not know about you.”

  “What?”

  “That you drive around with a tuxedo in the trunk of your car.”

  Vic laughed. “Yeah, like what are you—Formal Man? If a prom breaks out you can get the outfit in your trunk?”

  “In all honesty, I had it cleaned in Billings last month and forgot to get it out.”

  We watched him go, exiting through the glass door and climbing into the T-bird with Dog and driving west. “I think he was embarrassed to admit that he drives around with a tuxedo in the trunk of his car.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  Cheryl arrived with all my worldly needs wrapped up in a garment bag on a hanger. “We open tomorrow at ten, but we’ve had people just leave them hanging on the rod by the back door.”

  “No one ever steals them?”

  She handed me the outfit. “Not this one, they’ll think a rogue grizzly returned it.”

  * * *

  —

  After buying a new pair of boots across the street, we walked back to our lodgings at the Irma Hotel and made it to the bar; we were soon sitting at a window on Main Street. “So, this is Buffalo Bill’s hotel?”

  “His town.”

  She sipped a dirty martini. “Really?”

  I nodded and held up my glass, swirling the ice in the pristine liquid. “And this is what started it.”

  “Water?”

  I nodded. “There were some businessmen, George Beck and Horace Alger, from over in Sheridan who had bought the water rights to irrigate land south of the Shoshone River where it comes tumbling out of the Absaroka Mountains.”

  “Pronounced differently from our county.”

  “Correct. Cody joined in with these fellows, lending his considerable name and money to the Shoshone Irrigation Company, and they began digging the Cody Canal back in 1895, an enterprise the Wyoming state engineer said could not fail.”

  “Uh oh.”

  “Cody didn’t know squat about irrigation or anything else inherent to the project but thought he did and kept interfering. Beck and Alger weren’t too much better and found themselves in over their heads. The canyon where they were trying to build the canal was solid rock, and pretty soon, they gave up on digging the thing and just made it above ground out of wood.”

  “Did it work?”

  “For a while.” I sipped my liquid. “Cody expected the project to attract settlers, but that never came to fruition, so the eastern bankers who had invested in the project started dropping out. Before the turn of the century, Cody was the chief stockholder in a leaking, wooden canal that got washed out by a torrential storm, and they decided that the only thing to do was sell it for the one hundred fifty thousand dollars they had in it.”

  “And?”

  “Nobody wanted it.”

  “So, what happened?”

  “The Carey Act of 1894 that gave each of the states in the west a million acres of public land to develop water resources along with the National Reclamation Act that put the federal government into the water business.” I threw a thumb over my shoulder. “That four hundred sixty-five thousand acre-feet of water reservoir that Henry and Dog are running around right now irrigates ninety-three thousand acres, and the concrete arch dam that makes it possible was the highest in the world at its time. In 1946 the whole kit and caboodle was named for Cody.”

  She toasted. “God bless you, Buffalo Bill.”

  We touched the lips of our glasses. “A better businessman in building towns than irrigation ditches.”

  “He really did help build the town, then?”

  “Yep.” I glanced out onto Main. “You ever wonder why the streets are so wide? It’s so you could turn an eight-horse team around, one of his many edicts. He owned the newspaper, livery stables, blacksmith shop, and a number of ranches. He may or may not have coaxed the B&M, but when the railroad finally arrived, he sank his stakes in this town in one fell swoop.”

  “And what was that?”

  “You’re sitting in it.” I glanced around the hotel. “The only stone building in town, his buddy Frederic Remington lauded it as good a hotel as any in the west. He built a hunting lodge on the way to this newfangled national park west of here, Pahaska Teepee, that ushered in an age of Yellowstone tourism with a fleet of steam-powered cars, and he held Washington’s feet to the fire in getting a circular road built through the park to the new, eastern entrance. He was still doing the Wild West shows in the summer, but then he’d come back here and have spectacular parties in the hotel.”

  She glanced around at the ornate interior. “Why Irma?”

  “For his daughter.” Leaning back in my chair, I thought about the old showman who was probably more responsible for the image of the romantic American West than anybody in history. “By the end of his life he was losing his shirt in gold mining speculation in Arizona and had to mortgage the hotel, deeding the place to his wife just to hang on to it.”

  “You said he died in Denver, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “And was buried there.”

  I sipped my water.

  “Are you ever going to tell me that story?”

  “Maybe someday.”

  “C’mon, you’ve got an ancestor responsible for stealing the body of Buffalo Bill?” She studied me. “Let’s fix up that cabin on the mountain.”

  I sighed. “It’s in pretty rough shape; no electricity and an outhouse.”

  “What, you don’t think I can rough it?”

  “I don’t know, can you?”

  “I used to go to Camp Robin Hood back in Pennsylvania.”

  “Camp Robin Hood?”

  She nodded. “I rode horses and was hell on the archery range.”

  “Why does that not surprise me?”

  “It was supposed to make me a well-rounded young lady, but I suspect it was just to get me out from under foot for a few weeks each summer.”

  “Did your brothers go?”

  “It was a girl’s camp.”

  I pulled out my pocket watch and loo
ked at it. “We’ve got about two hours before we need to be over at the museum, and I want plenty of time to take a shower and get this rigmarole on.”

  She shook her head, gulped down the rest of her drink, and stood. “I’ll help you, that cuff link thing can get kind of tricky.”

  I draped the tux over my shoulder and picked up my new boots, and we threaded our way through the opulent dining room and then headed up the stairs to the second floor and down the hallway, where I fumbled getting the key from my pocket. Finally getting the door open, I pushed it aside and allowed her to enter and then closed it as she walked over to the window and looked down on the side street where they did gun fighting reenactments every day during tourist season.

  I studied her. “You okay?”

  “I sometimes feel like my life is like a TV show in season five, when the writers are just throwing weird shit in to keep things interesting.”

  I laughed—that was the great thing about her; you never knew what was going to come out of her mouth next. “So, who gets the shower first?”

  “Water reserves are still a big issue here in the west, right?”

  “Yep.”

  She stepped in closer and clutched the lapel of my jacket and the smell of her was intoxicating. “What say we conserve precious resources?”

  Boy howdy.

  6

  I did what I did best in just such situations—ate, drank, and stood against the wall like a totem pole. I didn’t go to too many formal events, because we didn’t have too many formal events in the county to go to, so if I did, I usually fell back on a threadbare, mothball-scented, brown-tweed blazer Martha had bought me at Lou Taubert’s in Casper.

  Reaching for a canapé on the buffet table, I had heard a ripping sound somewhere in the depths of my rented tux and stood very, very still.

  “It’s formal, not statuary.”

  I glanced down at my date. She had returned from the bar and was handing me a beer. She was dolled up in high-heeled boots, tight-fitting jeans, a silk top, a silver and turquoise necklace with matching earrings, and an extravagant DD Ranchwear leather jacket complete with fringe and conchos.