Ragtime Cowboys

by Loren D. Estleman

  “It’s run by a bird named Fall. Maybe you crossed trails sometime. He was a cowboy before he got into politics.”

  “So was Tom Mix—though not politics—but we never met either. What’s it signify?”

  “Maybe nothing. But it’s a sure thing he knows a lot more about the country west of the Mississippi than a president from Ohio.”

  “What this all has to do with a stolen horse is what I’d like to know.”

  A groan from the direction of the armchair drew Hammett’s attention. “Welcome back, Feeney. We were just talking about you.”

  But Feeney’s eyes remained closed.

  “Last time a little buffaloing put a man out this long, he had a bad brain leak,” Siringo said.

  “Well, he can’t afford it.” Hammett scooped up the big pitcher and splashed him head to foot.

  Feeney sat up straight, spluttering like a horse. A hand went automatically inside his coat. Hammett showed him the .45. The thin man glared, water dripping off the end of his long nose. “Everybody’s a tough gee with a rod in his hand,” he said.

  “Everybody except you. Who’s your partner?”

  “Flo Ziegfeld.”

  Feeney’s long legs were stretched out in front of the chair, his buttocks perched on the edge of the cushion. Hammett hooked a foot behind his ankle and jerked. The thin man skidded forward and fell hard on his tailbone on the floor. Vile insults followed.

  Hammett started coughing from the exertion, his hacking mingled with cursing from the man on the floor. Siringo, concerned about the neighbors, set his glass on the table, got off the bed, and kicked Feeney on the side of the knee, hitting the knob of bone that sent pain rocketing in all directions. Feeney howled.

  “Stop disgracing yourself and get back up in the chair. I don’t believe you know what Mr. Hammett’s ma did for a living. That was just idle speculation on your part.”

  “You wrinkle-ass old piece of—”

  Siringo drew back his foot for another kick. Feeney’s slash of mouth snapped shut like a trap and he levered himself up off the floor, supporting his throbbing knee with one hand as he climbed back onto the chair.

  “You okay?” The old detective looked at Hammett.

  “Yeah. Just swallowed another piece of lung.” He studied the white lawn handkerchief folded in his hand, then stuck it into an inside pocket. “Who’s your partner, Feeney? Don’t say Fanny Brice. She’s too picky for the likes of you.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  Hammett scooped up the pitcher to give him another douse. Siringo touched his arm.

  “Don’t waste it. I got a better idea.”

  As the young man watched, Siringo unplugged the electric lamp on the table next to the bed, picked up the lamp, and broke the cord near the base with a yank. He put the lamp back down and took his bowie from the valise. He stripped two inches of fabric insulation from the two strands of wire, one copper, one silver, put them on the bed, then laid the wires aside while he opened the room’s only window and used the knife to slash the screen free of its frame. It peeled away with a shower of rust.

  At a nod from him, Hammett held the prisoner at bay with the big pistol while Siringo snatched up each of his feet and stripped it of shoe and sock. Then he lifted them again to slide the screen under his bare soles. There was black dirt between his toes and his nails were as thick and yellow as old isinglass. Finally Siringo connected the strands of electrical wire to the edges of the metal screen and got up, holding the plug out for Hammett to take.

  The young detective had caught on by this time. He belted the automatic, took the plug, and knelt by the baseboard outlet, waiting for his cue.

  Feeney grasped the arms of his chair, prepared to spring to his feet, but was restrained by Siringo’s stubby revolver trained on his sternum. When Siringo picked up the pitcher of water, he knew what was going to happen, but before he could cry out, he was soaked once again from head to feet. Hammett, grinning, lined up the prongs of the electric plug with the slots in the outlet.

  “Jesus!” It was a shriek. “You’ll fry me alive!”

  “Why are you trailing me?” Siringo asked.

  “I don’t know!”

  “Plug it in,” Siringo told Hammett.

  “Just follow you wherever you go and report back, that’s all I was told! Nobody ever tells me nothing. Oh, God, don’t kill me!”

  Siringo looked at the other detective. “You know him. He that good a liar?”

  Hammett remained kneeling, poised with the plug a quarter-inch from its connection. “Take a whiff. You tell me.”

  The stink of corruption rose to Siringo’s nostrils. He lowered the pitcher. “We had a saying: ‘If he shits—’”

  “‘—he ain’t shittin’.’ It was still around when I came on. But I told you Clanahan doesn’t confide in a mutt like Feeney.”

  “I believed you. I just wanted his measure. Your turn.”

  Hammett blew on the end of the plug, brushed an imaginary piece of lint from a prong, bent again to his task. “Who’s your partner? Say George M. Cohan. It isn’t every small fry can say he blew out all the fuses in a ritzy joint like the St. Francis.”

  Feeney hyperventilated.

  Siringo thought. “What was the name of that first fellow they electrocuted, back in ’89?”

  Hammett touched the prongs to his lip, thinking. “Kemmler: killed his girl. Something went wrong with one of the electrodes. He crackled for ten minutes. They said it smelled like a barbecue in a shithouse. Nobody consulted Kemmler on his point of view. He was black enough there was some discussion about burying him in the colored section of the Auburn Prison cemetery.”

  “That was a fluke. They used too big a jolt, that being the first electrocution and they wanted to make sure, and they didn’t wet him down properly. That won’t be a problem here. Feeney looks like he just came in from a swim around Alcatraz. Fire him up.”

  Hammett spat on the plug, aimed it at the outlet.

  “The eel!”

  Hammett stopped, shook his head.

  “Horseshit. The eel only works Mexico, everyone knows that. It’s the chair for him the minute he shows his face this side of the border. Stand back, Charlie.” He leaned forward on his knees.

  “It’s the eel! Oh, Christ on the Cross! It’s the eel! The eel!”

  Hammett sat back on his heels, nodded at Siringo.

  Siringo kicked the screen out from under Feeney’s feet. The thin man’s belly filled with air, becoming almost a paunch, then let out. He found a cracked yellow handkerchief in a pocket and mopped his face.

  “How skinny do these fellows get?” Siringo asked. “Feeney looks plenty eel-ly to me.”

  Hammett stood, twirling the plug by its cord. “I think they call him that because he slips in and out without so much as a fish fart. I can’t think of a soul who knows what he looks like, except Clanahan. The eel’s a top-notch shadow, but his real specialty is filling graveyards.”

  Siringo looked at Feeney. “Who’s Wyatt Earp?”

  “What’s that, a cure for hiccups?”

  “What do we do with him?” he asked Hammett.

  “Kick him loose. Feeney wouldn’t swat a fly, on account of it might swat him back.”

  “G’wan, shamus, talk big. Forest Lawn needs daisies.”

  “I sort of hate to see him go,” Siringo said. “I made a lot of friends singing cowboy songs. He and I could write one together.”

  “Feeney can’t read or write. It’s a great loss to literature. Maybe we should put out his eyes and send him on the road like Homer.”

  “Try it, peeper; just try it, and bring your pal Homer along, whoever he is. You two and the old bird’ll wind up swimming across the bay with a coal wagon tied to your backs.”

  “You call it,” Hammett said.

  “You’re right. He wears thin on close acquaintance.”

  Hammett unlocked the hall door and swung it wide. “Fly, flea.”

  Feeney fumbled into h
is shoes and socks, stood, swept a hand under his nose, and looked down at the result on his knuckles. Cocaine-dipper, Siringo thought. He’d worked with some, against others; it was the character of a man that affected the outcome. “What about my gat?”

  “What’s a gat?”

  “Hogleg,” Hammett told Siringo. He unshipped the heavy automatic, kicked the magazine out of the handle, and offered it butt-first to Feeney; keeping a finger inside the trigger guard. Siringo knew what was coming.

  “Smart guy.” Feeney reached for it.

  Hammett executed a neat border-shift, twirling the pistol on his finger until the butt rested in his palm and the muzzle pointed at Feeney. “One in the chamber, Young Wild West. No charge for the lesson.” He worked the slide, springing a glittering brass cartridge out of the chamber onto the rug, and turned the weapon over to its owner.

  “Smart guy. Smart guy.” Feeney tried twirling the weapon, nearly dropped it, flushed, and socked it under his belt.

  Hammett hoisted his brows nearly to his white hairline. “History in the making, Charlie. Aloysius McGonigle Feeney ran out of patter.”

  “Go fuck yourself.” The thin man left, his feet squishing in his shoes.

  Siringo and Hammett gave him the respect of a minute to the elevator, then began to chuckle.

  “You don’t know Mrs. Bloomer, but you remember Kemmler.”

  Hammett stirred the half-melted cubes in his glass with his forefinger. “I know my criminals down to the ground. I’m working on the rest of my education from the noose on up.”

  “We’ll attend to it.”

  “That was a swell trick with the lamp. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself.”

  “You yonkers take electricity for granted. All part of your education. How much do you know about phrenology?”

  “I learned just enough to break up a fortune-telling ring in Sausalito.”

  “It’s science, not palmistry. I wouldn’t have been a detective without it.”

  “It was just a paycheck to me.”

  “How’d that work out?”

  Then, for no reason worth examination, both men broke into bunkhouse guffaws, ending in three minutes of coughing on Hammett’s part. While he was catching his breath, Siringo did the honors, emptying a Mason jar into their glasses, just enough to float the ice.

  8

  “How’s your head?”

  “My bump of regret’s pounding fit to bend my hat,” Siringo said. “How’s yours?”

  “No complaints. The thing I don’t get about drys is how can a man wake up knowing that’s as good as he’s going to feel all day long. Did you remember to pack some hair-of-the-dog?”

  Siringo patted the new bedroll strapped behind the cantle of his hired saddle. Hammett grinned, excavated the flask from inside his whipcord coat, and helped himself to a swig. His companion shook his head when he offered it. “I’d go slow, too. No sense making things easier for this eel character.”

  “I think we’re safe this trip. I never heard where he had any equestrian leanings.”

  The proprietor of the livery, an elderly Chinese in traditional dress garnished with yellow rubber boots to his knees, had placed the money they gave him under his mandarin’s cap and brought out a dappled mare and a blue roan gelding for their inspection. Siringo checked both from teeth to fetlocks, pronounced them sound, and selected the mare for himself. The two detectives rode them to the Golden Gate ferry, paid the fare, and loaded them aboard. Leaning on the railing, they smoked and watched a luxury liner steaming north where the Pacific met the sky, pouring black smoke into the latter. Siringo had thought the Titanic would have put an end to all that, but folks were restless.

  “They say they’re going to build a bridge across the bay,” Hammett said. “The bill’s in the legislature. That’ll make a cozy retirement for Clanahan and every other tinhorn politician in town.”

  “Ain’t interested. Talk about something else.”

  “That’ll be a challenge. I don’t go to church and I gave up baseball when Chicago threw the Series. I can’t impress you with my detective stories. Politics is all that’s left.”

  “I ain’t voted since Taft. When I saw what we got I figured I didn’t qualify to make that decision.” Siringo shifted his weight from one foot to the other. They’d only ridden a few blocks and already his backside was as sore as his head.

  “I cast my ballot for Debs.”

  “There was a vote wasted. You can’t go from the hoosegow to the White House.”

  “If Doheny gets his way it may go the other way around.”

  “Better a crook than a radical, I say.”

  “They jailed Debs for speaking out against the Espionage Act. Wilson was using it to open his opponents’ mail. If that makes Debs a radical, what was Thomas Jefferson?”

  “Change the subject before we end up drawing down on each other.”

  Hammett coughed and spat over the railing. “What’s this lie you called Earp out on?”

  “Ancient history.”

  “Oh. A gentleman.”

  Siringo chuckled around the stem of his pipe. “That’s one accusation nobody never made before. I don’t own a stick and I’d rather cut my throat than put on a stiff collar.”

  “Prettiest man I ever saw in a dinner jacket cut up his wife and shipped her to Boston in a trunk. It isn’t a question of dress.”

  Siringo had on the new Stetson he’d bought with Earp’s money to replace his disreputable old one, his canvas shooting coat with cartridge loops on the breast over his ribbed trousers, stovepipe boots without spurs; he’d left them at home under the impression his riding days were behind him. Hammett wore a slouch hat, old work boots, and the bottom half of a retired pinstripe suit, worn shiny in spots. He carried a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver with a four-inch barrel in one deep coat pocket and a set of brass knuckles in the other, the material sagging under their weight. They had five guns between them and Siringo’s mare, which was having trouble making peace with the scabbarded Winchester slung from the saddle. It kept trying to reach back and bite through the strap, but couldn’t get inside range, like a man with an itch in the middle of his back.

  “Why be coy about Earp? He didn’t hold back on your account.”

  “I done my damage. No use raking it up again.”

  “I thought all you old-timers were braggarts.”

  “I strangled the truth around my share of campfires, but I growed out of it. Earp never did, and that’s one of the differences between us.”

  “Well, then, tell me about Billy the Kid.”

  “He’s dead. Anything you hear to the contrary’s horseshit. He ain’t selling dry goods in Chicago and he wasn’t seen last year in South America wearing a plug hat and smoking a cigar. He never left that hole they dumped him in down in Fort Sumner.”

  “You met him, though.”

  “I was the first to call him Kid.”

  *

  Siringo was riding fence for the LX Ranch in the Llano Estacado. He spotted a cut in the wire, the ends still shiny, and followed fresh hoofprints to where he found the Kid rounding up LX strays inside Palo Duro Canyon. He wouldn’t have thought anything of it except for the cut fence and the fact that he’d never seen the slender youth around the bunkhouse.

  The Kid was seventeen then, and the pistol on his hip was largely there for ballast. Alone and concentrating on the uncooperative longhorns, he wasn’t aware of the twenty-two-year-old ranch hand’s presence until he rode right up on him, threw his lasso over his bony shoulders, and jerked him out of the saddle. Siringo dragged him twenty or thirty yards to take the fight out of him, then disarmed him, bound his hands to the horn of the Kid’s own saddle, tied a lead, and towed him into town and passed him over to the marshal.

  He’d never known a pleasanter journey. The Kid was affable, remembered every joke he’d ever heard, told it with just the right pauses, sometimes in dialect—he had an ear, Billy had—and sang in flawless Spanish in a bell-cl
ear tenor, interrupting himself in mid-lyric to insert a piece of conversation:

  “You snared me good, cowboy. When I was in the air I thought I was struck by lightning. You must’ve been born with a lariat in your hand.”

  “I was for a fact. It made all the medical journals.”

  “My name’s Henry. What do they call you?”

  “Charlie.”

  “Charlie, you reckon you can teach me how to throw a loop like you?”

  “I’d admire to, kid, if they don’t put the rope on you first.”

  “Every ranch started with somebody else’s beeves. They can’t hang you for that.”

  “Can and have. Also that horse you’re riding wears the LX brand.”

  “I got a bill of sale somewheres.”

  “I believe you, kid, I really do; but that saddle’s got my boss’s initials carved in the fender.”

  *

  “Why’d he give you a false name?” Hammett asked. “I never heard where he skulked.”

  “He didn’t. He was Henry McCarty. I reckon he lived to regret changing it. What politician worth the graft would bother to put a price on somebody called Henry the Kid?”

  “Hard to believe he was good company. I thought he was blood simple.”

  “I can’t answer for what come of him later, though I rode down two good horses going after him for the reward. I’d of brung him in, too, instead of shooting him in the back in the dark. I do know the first time he was arrested it was for stealing clothes from a Chinese laundry.”

  “Gooseberry lay, no kidding? I didn’t read that in your book. It was all shoot-outs and midnight rides.”

  “It’d be a shame to write a whole book and not make one sale.”

  “Did you know Pat Garrett?”

  “His letter got me into the Agency, though I never liked him. He was tall as Abe Lincoln but not half so honorable. He became a tax collector after he assassinated the Kid. He got himself shot by nobody knows who while he was pissing on the side of the road.”

  “Were you there?”

  “Not guilty. But folks will talk, and I’m a good listener.”

  “I’m starting to think everything I ever read about the West got it all backwards.”

  “Not everything. But when they say it’s both true and authentic, you can bet it’s neither.”