by Don Webb
Ivy thought awhile. “We can still have a damn good time with ten men. We’ll just take the last eight cars.”
He opened his case. He gave a gun to Moses and me, one to Parsimonious Pete and Half Face and kept one for himself.
“I bought these from Judge Cooley so ditch ’em if you get caught. Judge Cooley told me he’d hang anybody who showed up with his guns.”
The burial party made its way back singing a low, mournful tune. As soon as they saw Ivy they shut up. Ivy’s thinking all the time—there’s a fire inside his brain and sometimes you can see that fire through his pupils. Stops a man to see that fire ‘cause he always realizes he’s in the presence of a man who is a little quicker than he is.
“The train will be along in two hours. Formeter’s Circus will be in the last sixteen cars. We’ll take the last eight. When the train starts up the big grade it’ll slow down to two, three miles per hour. Parsimonious and Half Face will take the eighth car and unhook it. The cars will start rolling backwards. Everybody else will be on their cars by then. Our mulligan-maker and Moses will take the caboose. The railroad bull will be there with the circus strongman. Take ’em out. I’ll take the fourth car. The money box. I’ll cut up the payroll ten ways. The cars will roll for twenty miles. We’ll get the circus to put on a little show for us—then we’ll let the cats loose as a little gift for John Law—then we’ll ride off in ten separate directions on the horses the circus has so kindly provided for us. By the time they’ve sent a train to pick up the uncoupled cars we’ll be forty miles away. Boys we’ll go down in history.”
There was some questions and some answers. Everybody speculated on what we might find. One man had seen a hootchy-kootchy dancer in a circus at St. Louis. He picked up a rag and danced round the fire to show us what kind of gyrations to expect. Another had seen a talking dog.
Stumps Magee asked that if we came across a talking dog we should give it to him as a talking dog would be a great aid in his begging. We took a vote. A talking dog for Stumps.
A third man had had his fortune told. A gypsy woman had dealt the cards. You will travel the country whole and not die until very old.
Parsimonious Pete said, “You mean they’ll be gypsies on this train? I don’t like it. Gypsies can hex you bad.”
“Oh I’ve got something stronger than gypsy curses,” said the man who just told the story of his fortune, and he pulled from his vest pocket a wooden pig about two inches in length. “I’ve got this pig and when I’m getting shot at I say, ‘Little pig, little pig don’t let me get shot at ‘cause if they get me who’s gonna take care of you?’ or if I’m in court I say, ‘Little pig, little pig don’t let me go to jail ‘cause if I go to jail you’ll go to jail too.’“
“Where’d you get the little pig?” Ivy asked.
“I found him in the hands of a dead hobo. He was the oldest ’bo I ever saw so I figure he’s got to be lucky.”
The man polished the pig and returned it to his pocket. I could see the fire in Ivy’s eyes. He was thinking about that little pig.
Half Face Joe doused the fire. It was time to take our positions. As we walked to Dead Man’s Hill, I thought I saw Half Face open his four-bit mickey and tip it into the hole in his head. I swore that if I get out of this caper, I would stay among men that were fully alive.
We crouched behind bushes and trees. They were running two engines on the train, which was one too short for the grade. Most of the train was still on the valley floor when the engines labored past. Sixty cars would have to pass before the circus would’ve begun to pass. Moses was coughing heavy in the coal smoke.
He was still coughing when our time came. The train was going maybe four miles an hour—still strong enough to knock your wind out if you catch wrong. We all sprang out. Moses came from one side and I from the other. I knew they could hear him coughing so I pushed him ahead of me into the caboose. The railroad bull was up and firing. He sent two slugs into Moses and Moses wounded him in the shoulder. The strongman tried to squeeze himself between a side bench and the ceiling. Half Face and Parsimonious had uncoupled the car because suddenly we began rolling backwards. Moses and the bull went down. I put a bullet in the bull’s neck and then I plugged the strongman in the chest—just above a leopard spot. I never saw a man so surprised to die. He stepped off the bench and raised his arms as though to yawn and then he fell on the card table busting it to flinders.
I checked out Moses. He was dead. I heard a shot from up the train.
We were gaining momentum. Moon-silvered trees blurred by. I went through Moses’ pockets. Two five-dollar gold pieces and some silver. The strongman didn’t have anything but a bar of some soft metal doctored up to look like steel. It was easy to twist around. I pocketed it—figured I could win a few bets. The guard had three paper dollars and a brass token for a drink at Sally O’Mara’s in Denver.
I tossed the bodies of the guard and the strongman off the train. Then I realized that I’d tossed out the guard’s gun as well. Your own dumbness always trips you up. We were in the valley now all scrub oak and tall grass. The train rolled on at about twenty per and we were beginning to slow. I lay Moses out on a bench. His eyes jerked open and I thought he might be alive so I talked with him a spell.
“Sorry that cough killed you. A cough’s a terrible thing. My mother died of a cough. She kept coughin’ and coughin’ and my dad got her some capsules. Four grains quinine and one sixth a grain morphine. To be taken at bedtime. These didn’t do a damn bit of good. She kept us up all night. Cough, cough, cough. Me just thirteen and going to read my Caesar everyday. Omnia Gallia est divisa in partes tres. And Dad a-laboring in his pharmacy. We just couldn’t take it. The sleeplessness. Know what I mean?
Moses nodded or maybe the train just jiggled his corpse. I started to break off the legs of the card table. I’d get some linen from the back of the ’boose and soak it with coal oil. We’d need torches when we stopped.
“Poppa and I wore pretty thin. Everybody said that whole Wilson family weren’t nothing but a pack of ghosts—no offense Moses—so Poppa compounded a new remedy. Five and one sixth grains of morphine. No quinine. Stopped Mother’s cough right away. Same way sixty grain of lead stopped yours. If you see Mother tell her that I love her.”
The train was down to two-three miles an hour. Parsimonious applied the hand brakes on the first car. Its wheels shot sparks into the frosty grass. Then the second threw his brakes, then the third, and so on up to me. The train shuddered to a stop. The air smelled of hot iron. An elephant trumpeted. I began lighting my torches.
Preachin’ Ivy jumped off and shot his revolver in the air.
“I don’t want nobody moving excepting my men. If anybody sticks his head out of a car. I’ll blow it all the way to Dead Man’s Hill.”
I jumped off the caboose carrying all four torches blazing together. I handed one to the wooden pig man, who stood between the second and third cars, one to Ivy, one to the hootchy-kootch man, and one to Half Face.
“Moses didn’t make it to the promised land.”
“Well there’s a little more for us. We’ll have a moment of silence for Moses.”
The elephant ruined the moment of silence by trumpeting again.
“Open up that damn car. Let’s see that elephant. Maybe we can cut its tusks off for ivory.”
The wooden pig man opened the ride door of the tall boxcar. Loose straw drifted out along with the smell of a hundred barnyards. Someone had already tusked the elephant. The elephant couldn’t stand up all the way and sort of crawled forward. His big yellow eyes looked scared. He was looking for someone. It lurched out of the boxcar with a half-liquid motion. The pig man wasn’t quick enough. The elephant’s front foot smashed the pig man into the frozen ground. This really scared the elephant. He trotted a few yards away from the boxcar. Ivy shot the elephant’s rear. It bellowed and went crashing off into the scrub oak.
“Damn murderin’ elephant.”
The pig man was a breathing bloody mess. There
would be no getting up for him—no way to separate the flesh and the earth. Ivy walked over to him. The pig man nodded and Ivy let him have it through the heart. Then Ivy bent down and pulled the wooden pig from the dead man’s vest and put it in his own shirt pocket. The elephant bellowed again.
“Can’t ever have too much luck,” Ivy said. “Let’s open the other cars one by one and see what we’ve got.”
“Let’s divide the coin first,” said Parsimonious Pete.
“Eight ways comes to seventy-five dollars apiece.” Ivy started laying the gold and paper in neat piles. Counting out loud where everybody could see. Then we went forward one by one and claimed our share.
The first two cars held the horses. Half Face opened ’em up and peeked inside. Tack was there but the saddles must’ve been in the main train.
One of the bindle stiffs opened the third car. Eight chimpanzees came stirring out. Parsimonious started shooting, but Ivy yelled at him to stop. Couldn’t he see that they were doing no harm? The chimps made a four-three-one pyramid. Then they leapt off and tumbled and scrambled over the cars. One of them stole Parsimonious Pete’s cap and was shot for his trouble. At the sound of renewed gunfire all the chimps jumped off the train and into the bushes. They vanished almost instantly but we heard their chatter as long as we were there.
Half Face went into the chimp car. There were eight little desks with eight little typewriters. Each of the chimps was turning out a five-cent novel. Frank Reade and his Steam Man of the Plains, Frank Reade and his Steam Horse, Frank Reade and his Steam Team, Frank Reade Jr. and his Steam Wonder, Frank Reade Jr. and his Electric Boat, Frank Reade Jr. and his Wonderful Airship, Frank Reade Jr. and his Electric Velocipede. In stacks of crates along one side was the whole of the Half-Dime Library. Nowhere was indication that the hard-working apes had received a penny for their labor. In fact, it wasn’t clear to us whether the chimpanzees were the authors of these works or were merely typing them up from memory as a sort of entertainment. Parsimonious felt badly about shooting one as all yeggs and hoboes have a soft spot for literary men. Ivy told him not to take it so hard. It was a well-known fact that Mr. Edison was working on a device to produce half-dime novels automatically. Ivy had been to Menlo Park and had not only told us of the coming light bulb, but had stolen one to show us. If he could have only stolen a method of electrifying it—it would have been quite the novelty.
Parsimonious left the monkey car. He was outside, bawling his head off and looking for coin in the pig man’s pockets.
The next car had held the lucre. Now the only thing of interest was a dead bearded lady and her pearl-handled six-shooter. The hootchy-kootch man asked Ivy if he could have the gun and Ivy said sure, why not? One of the other men said it must’ve been hard to shoot a woman and Ivy looked at him. I wouldn’t’ve wanted to be on the receiving end of that look. It was a special Ivy look and there was death in it. Ivy said, “If it’s got a beard it ain’t a woman.”
I said, “Ivy, we’ve made real history. Even the James brothers never stole the train.”
Ivy smiled and we all breathed easier. The moon was going down. Bloating near the horizon.
The next car had held the elephant. We collected Parsimonious, all covered in blood and tears. Half Face opened the sixth car. It held a tank and three cages. We each walked through the length of the car—passing the torches backwards so each man got a good look. It was early morning now and much colder so our breath and the breath of the animals steamed considerably. After this caper we would each ride off in different directions, but I knew in a few weeks we’d all be heading south.
In the tank: A half-man/half-fish swam in stagnant green water. It looked as though someone had hollowed out a thirty-pound albino catfish and stuffed a baby in it. The arms and legs were well-formed—just like a baby’s—except covered in scales, each about the size of a dime. The head was large but fishlike. Its silver eyes were scaled over. I think it was blind, but it sensed our passage with its whiskers. Its little mouth worked. O. O. O.
In the first cage to the left: A two-headed black rooster beat its wings at us. It looked just like the chicken that I’d cut up for my mulligan (save for its having two heads). The left head had been fighting the right head. It had pecked out the closer of the right head’s eyes. I think we all had to fight to keep our mulligan down—except for Half Face. He was the last one through. He couldn’t stand to see this creature with two faces, when he had one half of one. He opened the cage and grabbed the rooster. He wrung both its necks in contrary directions, then he threw the bird out in the cold. It ran around in the frost with both heads trailing.
In the cage to the right: A rose bush bloomed. Each blossom was perfect and lime-green. The hootchy-kootch man reached into the cage to pluck a rose for his lapel. Two branches swished forward raking his hand with thorns. He gave a squawk and pulled his hand back. The branches resumed their normal position. Blood dripped down into the terra cotta pot that housed the rose—enriching its soil.
In the second cage on the left: Only musky straw—a sexy-musky smell. Each man shuddered as they wondered what had been here—what kind of ghost the cage held. We were glad for the cold outside air.
We all regrouped outside. There was one unexplored car. We heard a train whistle from far away. That would be the train backing down Dead Man’s Hill looking for its lost cars. More-n-likely it also meant John Law.
“Time to mount up, boys,” said Ivy.
“Not me, boss,” I said. “I’m going to see what’s in that last car.”
The train whistled again and the elephant trumpeted as though calling to its mate.
“Give me your gun then. I told Judge Cooley that I wouldn’t let any of his guns fall into lawman’s hands.”
I hated to be without the gun, but I knew Ivy would take it if I didn’t give it to him.
“Here.”
“It’s your own funeral, Tim Wilson.”
The boys were mounting up—heading off in the direction Ivy pointed. I opened the last car. There was a long glass case in the middle of the car. In the case still as death lay a young red-haired woman. If it was a mannequin it was the most perfect mannequin I’d ever seen. She was dressed as a bride. She held a bridal bouquet of silk flowers—roses and daisies. A small plaque on the side of the case read, “The Amazing Sleeping Beaty. Miss Daisy Miller fell into a hypnotic trance in 1893 while watching a traveling mesmerist’s act. Her parents have taken her to the most expensive doctors in Europe and America to no avail. What does this sleeping girl dream of? What sustains her in her five-year sleep? Will she ever awaken?”
I opened the case. I felt her cheek; to my surprise it was warm. I bent over and listened. I couldn’t hear any breathing. I had to get all the details. I could live off this story the rest of my life.
I took a long pull on my four-bit mickey to sweeten my mouth.
I kissed her. Full on the mouth.
Hell, what would you do?
She smiled a little, but she didn’t awaken. I heard the train whistle—much closer this time. I left Miss Daisy Miller and ran to the horse cars. The horses were all gone, but there was a zebra gelding left. I put a bit in its mouth.
We rode east toward the rising sun.
BILLY HAUSER
The dusty streets of Amarillo lay still. Tired cowboys drank warm bourbon on the wide steps of the Amarillo Hotel. Vultures circled the city, their forms wavering in the thermals. Horses slept. Rosa told fortunes. A young man limped his way toward town walking on the railroad. He wore a costume new to the 1890’s: white Stetson, blue satin shirt, black pants, white leather chaps, ivory-handled six-shooters. First Midnight Cowboy here on a September noon. Somewhere a harmonica played.
When he got a hundred yards from the station Rosa spotted him through her tent flap. She flipped over the thirteenth Trump, Death. The harmonica stopped. The sheriff looked up from his fortune at the young man. The young man tripped on a tie and fell in the boneless manner of infants. The sher
iff rushed to the fallen. Rosa gathered her cards. She already had the dime.
The sheriff yelled and the bored cowpokes gathered round. “Get the doc” and somebody got the doc well into his mid-afternoon stupor. The doc had them carry the fancy pants to the lobby of the Amarillo Hotel. The doc splashed some whiskey on the innocent face and the young man rose. He said, “iwanttobeagunslingerlikemyfatherwas”
“Whoa, hold up there son.”
“Iwanttobe agunslingerlike myfatherwas”
“Slower, boy, easy now. Have a whiskey.”
And the kid looked at the whiskey as though it were something new, something unknown, and marvelous. He took the shot glass and swallowed it all at a gulp. Then he coughed, spit, and danced ‘til he’d brought the whiskey up in fine spray over the bystanders.
“He must be a Yankee.”
“Must be a foreigner. Look at how he’s dressed.”
“He’s from one of them airships like crashed at Aurora.”
“Who are you son?”
“I want to be a gunslinger just like my father was.” The kid smiled. He’d got it right.
“Gunslingin’s no life for a boy,” said the sheriff. “Where you from?”
“I want to be a gunslinger just like my father was I want.”
“He’s crazy from the heat.”
The kid handed his shot glass to the bartender. He started to speak again—thought better of it and pulled out two letters. The sheriff pocketed them quick like.
The sheriff said, “Doc why don’t you and me and the kid here mosey over to the jail and have a little talk.”
The cowpokes hated the sheriff for hogging the mystery, but a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. The harmonica started again.
The first letter was addressed to John Wesley Hardin. The sheriff hadn’t worn that name in sixteen years. How had they found him? He felt like a stagehand suddenly illuminated in the spotlight. The faded creased letter read:
Dear John,
This here is my son. His father rode with you. I don’t know his father’s name, but I remember when you rode into town. You’s the famous one. You’s the one to train him for the life he’s gonna lead. I’m returning to my family back East. Please take care of him. Raise him like his blood calls for.
