When you wake, you shall have
All the pretty little horses…
By inches and over hours, nearly still but for her lips, Etta approached Little Snake. And when she was within a hand's distance, she felt the trembling girl's head upon her breast. She was dirty as a miner and smelled as if she slept amid horses. Her breath came in short desperate gasps, like a victim of consumption. But Etta Place held tight to her in that crack of jagged stone. And for the first time since she had discovered her poor father dead in his mansion, she wept.
etective Charles A. Siringo was never comfortable in this much store-bought wool.
He was a cotton man, a leather man. That was the uniform one wore astride a horse, hunting takers of property and enders of lives. Suits and ties tended to hang on him like a scalp from a Sioux wickiup. No tailor ever seemed able to drape his whippet's frame with the exact amount of cloth to make him appear a proper gentleman. They either used too much, the fabric making banners of his arms and legs, or too little, so that he looked like a scarecrow escaped from the field. He remembered well what one poor seamstress from St. Louis had said: that dressing him was like trying to cover the Eads Bridge; his bones the iron girders, his muscles the steel cables.
Of course, when meeting the swells, his blue serge was the uniform of the day and little could be done about it. And once Siringo laid eyes on the sartorial spendor that was Mr. Fred H. Harvey, he was thankful he had not arrived at their meeting underdressed.
One could have cut a fresh-baked loaf on Fred Harvey's lapels. His suit was of the richest gabardine, at first appearing black but then turning an almost iridescent gray-blue at the smallest refraction of light. The ensemble, like all of Harvey's clothing, was tailored on Savile Row in his native London. He made two trips there each year for this express purpose. His vest was a lemon brocade, set off by a black silk cravat and a gold and diamond stickpin large enough to proclaim his wealth but small enough to establish his taste. Harvey's plus fours were a perfect match for the waistcoat. They wrapped themselves around boots that gleamed like a millionaire's landau. Taken as a whole, there was no outfit to match it in in all of Leavenworth, Kansas, other than its brethren within Harvey's own cupboards.
Like the man, Harvey's office was clean and sharp. The desk shined like a new saddle, attesting to the application of twice the layers of stain and shellac a master craftsman would have called for. The bookshelves behind him were laden with the finest volumes stamped in gold and morocco: all of Mr. Dickens, the complete Shakespeare, and Harvey Company records so elegantly bound as to seem sacred texts. No speck of lint marred the rich oriental carpets, no thumbprint marred the fine woodwork outlining the huge room. The red damask adorning the walls must have amounted to ten years' salary for one of his girls. The windows were so clear as to appear glassless.
The world Harvey moved in was one of order hard won. Order carved out of wide spaces in roads masquerading as towns, their ramshakle kitchens striving to replace hog swill with cuisine. The disturbance that Etta Place had caused within his universe had now rankled for many months. The incident had created a flood of disastrous publicity for the company, something hitherto unknown.
And then came the train robberies and killings. Near Medicine Bow, Colorado: Cassidy and his so-called Hole-in-the-Wall brigade utterly destroyed the mail car of the Union Pacific Overland Flyer, blowing it to bits with dynamite and making off with over thirty thousand dollars. Apparently not satisfied, the gang exploded a baggage car at Table Rock in Wyoming, making off with nearly sixty thousand dollars. And at every scene, bystanders were astounded to see a stunning woman, dressed in the finest riding clothes and astride a luminous English saddle. It was she who was assigned to make her way through the first-class cars and rob the ladies of their jewels.
A manila folder on Harvey's desk was open to one newspaper account:
Mrs. Delbert W. Hatcher of Minneapolis, aboard the train to join her husband at a California mining venture, described the young female thief thusly: “I don't think she was more than twenty or twenty-one, and she was most beautifully attired and groomed. I would swear that her hat and veil were from Paris or at least New York. Her clothing reminded me of the style used by fox hunters in England when they ride to hounds. She herself was most lovely with deep green eyes and lustrous auburn hair. Her diction was perfect and she held no weapon on us but smiled sweetly politely asking each lady for her jewelry. Whenever she sensed anything had some sentimental value, such as a locket or a wedding ring, she very politely refused to take it, explaining that she was only here to relieve of us of our gold and silver, not our memories. To tell you the truth, she very much reminded me of Jane, my sister's girl.”
“Jane!” Fred Harvey bellowed to Siringo. “My sister's girl!”
He slammed the cutting down on the desk's gleaming top. “Mr. Siringo,” he said, in his clipped accent, “I pay the Pinkerton Detective Agency a considerable sum to keep the peace in such places as I have establishments. I pride myself, sir, that I have brought some small measure of civilization and refinement to every hamlet and dustbin of this land. And now two of my own, this Della Rose whom my people knew as Bullion and this Place girl, have brought untold disgrace upon my enterprise. Moreover, sir, my solicitors inform me that I am now being brought suit upon by the very rich family of the late Mr. Earl Charmichael Dixon.”
Fred Harvey sat down slowly in his chair and placed a pale hand to his brow.
“I can fight the Dixons in the courts, Mr. Siringo, but not in print. Every little two-bit newspaper throughout the West is repeating their line: that a Harvey prostitute in a fit of jealousy killed their virtuous scion, so full of promise. They print it, Siringo, and the larger scandal sheets in Los Angeles and Denver and San Francisco rip it from the telegraph wires and reprint it in their rags. It matters little that your people have exposed him to me as a degenerate who ruined the lives and reputations of at least a dozen young women—three of them, I have come to find out, girls in my employ. I may know those facts. You may know them as well. But although I am considerably better off than this family of jackals, I have not the means of fighting their news machine and I can no longer abide the bad press.”
Charlie Siringo said nothing, made no move to remonstate or defend himself. It was not the first torrent of abuse he had taken in the service of the Pinkertons and would not, he knew, be the last. And so he stood motionless, not even his eyes moving, and remembered Bartlett Janeway a colonel in the Grand Army of the Republic, who would regularly excoriate his staff officers, Siringo among them; and if such a good man as Bartlett couldn't force an apology or excuse from him, he'd be damned if he'd let this Limey popinjay force his mouth open.
“So here is what you and your men will do, Siringo,” Harvey continued. “The Dixon lawyer, damn his eyes and tongue, has informed me that I might avoid wrongful death damages and a long legal battle if I can deliver this Etta Place to his clients for a proper hanging. Believe me when I tell you, sir, that I have little stomach for such an assignment. I have spent my years in this blessed country making the barren beautiful and the rancid and tasteless delectable. Look around you. I am a man who worships taste and order. This so-called request is untidy, and if there is anything I cannot abide it is a mess. But I am also in no position to pay out over one million dollars in settlements and legal fees for the sake of some too-spirited tart from Philadelphia, of all damned places.”
Charlie Siringo shifted in his chair and ran his fingers across his drooping mustache. He knew no information of any use would be forthcoming from his livid client, and so he allowed his mind to think back over his previous encounters with Hole-in-the-Wall. There had been successes. As recently as July of the previous year his agents had run down two of Cassisdy's minor lieutenants, Elzy Lay and Sam Ketchum. They had been able to bring cases that landed Lay in jail and had set Ketchum at the end of a rope. But the primary figures, the brains and brawn of the outfit, remained elusive. Butch, the Kid, Kilpat
rick, Curry, and his brother Lonny Logan all seemed able to melt into the night even at midday. When he had first heard they were traveling with two women in tow, Siringo had hoped the gang would be slowed down for such purposes as the fairer sex required: shopping for parasols or corsets, perhaps, or the ladies' daily toilette.
He had since learned better.
When four men and a woman who called herself Della Rose had ended up in a Wyoming jail over Curry's shooting of William Hagen, the sheriff of Elko, Nevada, the primary witness had been a mousy, halfwitted, near-hunchbacked fourteen-year-old named Sissy Chandler, who claimed to be the sheriff's niece. Through crooked and blackened teeth she had supplied the testimony that had driven the final nail into the Bunch's casket. In a halting voice only slightly above a whisper, she positively identified Kid Curry as the one who had not only gunned down her beloved uncle but had paused at her hovel in the neighboring county and raped her senseless. The week before they were all to meet the hangman, a stagecoach had arrived from Cheyenne with the reward for the gang's capture: eighteen thousand dollars, mostly in Union Pacific money.
That afternoon Sissy Chandler arrived in tears to collect two thousand of it, the portion that the railroad and Pinkerton had deemed reasonable for her participation in the gang's conviction. As deputy Ronald C. Bradley opened the safe to retrieve her prize, she produced a blue metal Colt .45 revolver from beneath her ragged petticoats and clapped it to his head. With the utmost politeness and a diction that was precision itself, she requested that Bradley please turn over all eighteen thousand of the reward money to her and to kindly provide all cell keys appropriate to the release of Messrs. Longbaugh, Cassidy, Kilpatrick, Curry, Logan, and Miss Rose. Thus had Etta Place not only freed her compatriots but collected the reward for their capture.
Fred Harvey thought he detected a slight smile on the detective's face.
“Quite frankly, Mr. Siringo, I don't care what Pinkerton does with Laura Bullion or Ball of Roses or whatever she might be calling herself today. She is merely for me a matter of embarrassment, not of finance. But I need this Etta Place girl, preferably alive but at the least identifiable. Obviously, the farther away she is found from Grand Junction, Colorado, the less desirable, as her remains will not last over a long distance of ground. Should it be necessary to kill her, it is essential that your men engage the services of a photographer. The Dixons are demanding proof of identity in order to restrain themselves from the aforementioned legal actions. It will come as no surprise to you, sir, that a family that could raise such an accursed bastard as young Earl is indeed a pack of bastards themselves.
“I also hope it is plain to you that discretion is of the utmost importance. That means no bulletins to local idiot sheriffs. No reporting of movements or tips to helpful U.S. marshals. Not even any general knowledge of this girl's whereabouts to any but your closest operatives. The last thing I need is glory-seeking or credit-taking on the part of Pinkerton. You are to find her, Siringo, not some headline-happy lawman or mick cop who wants his mother to see his name in the papers.”
Charlie Siringo rose with his host. He pulled down hard on his coat and vest, the white collar digging into his neck. “Seems a pity, Mr. Harvey,” he said, looking at the crude drawing of Etta that accompanied the article. “Such a pretty young woman.”
Harvey colored, from his well-starched collar to his perfectly delineated hairline. “The pity, Siringo, is that the newspapermen are now asking if I knew the woman. They're asking me just what my relationship with her was. I know what they're after. I know the story they so long to write. You've got to find her! It's costing me thousands in free luncheons, dinners, and liquor to hold them off. In Cleveland and Phoenix I had to hold press appreciation days with oysters and beefsteak and God knows what all. Two more such feasts are planned for Rapid City and Los Angeles.”
Fred Harvey's hand shook slightly as he handed Charlie Siringo his tan Stetson.
“They say that in this country you can have any newspaperman for the price of a drink; that buying the press is a bargain. That may be true, Siringo. But not when you are faced with the purchase of every reporter in America.”
From the
JOURNAL OF ETTA PLACE
13 September 1900
Wyoming Territory
Dear Diary,
It has been entirely too long since I have written you, and much of consequence has occurred. More than anything, I am amazed that in this hard place filled with hard people, something as fragile as love can bloom and that I should be among those to pluck its flower. Even more astounding is that the former misery of the Indian girl called Little Snake should yield my current joy.
Would that I had been so happy with her heretofore! It has been the labor of weeks simply to get the girl to uncurl from her tiny ball, and I sang every one of my old nanny's lullabies simply to get her bathed. During this difficult time she refused to see anyone but your correspondent, and even her trust in me was not complete. The girl would not take food or even water in my presence and refused to meet my gaze, as if the green eyes of a white woman could bewitch her back into slavery.
Yet at night, when she was most afraid, she would demand that I stay by her side, hiding beneath our rough blankets so that not even her black hair might be seen. And in time, once she was certain no monster, real or imagined, would come to wound her, she would slip wordlessly into my arms and lie still within them until daybreak.
And a lovely child she is, blessed with the fine high cheekbones and crow-dark hair of her race. Her figure is lithe and slender, and when, in these past few weeks, she began to stand and walk bedside me, her graceful posture recalled the ballerinas of my beloved Chestnut Street Opera House.
Still, July had long turned to August before she would allow even such a disreputable society as ours to witness this beauty, so great was her shame over Curry's savagery. She need not have worried.
On the day she finally emerged from my tent and walked among us, the Prairie Saints wept for joy. Over those difficult weeks a goodly number of our women had supported me in my effort, offering the poor girl food and clothing and, most vital, the sympathy of their experience. Conversing with them, I would learn to my horror that many had been similarly maltreated: by their procurers, their clients, their husbands, and even their fathers. I can only surmise that to them, the redemption of a child who had endured tortures equal to a dozen of their number must be somehow a victory shared.
Now I know why the Indian enjoys his reputation for fighting spirit, for I believe that the girl's return from Curry's world of brutality is due not to my ministrations but to the grit and courage of her ancestors. I cannot imagine a single white girl, your correspondent included, who would have escaped with her sanity from such afflictions.
But as remarkable as all this is, there was to be one more miracle, and it arrived two days ago in the person of a peddler.
From about our third week together my little friend had begun to shake her head and hiss in a most agitated manner every time I would address her as Little Snake. After several such instances, I at last guessed that this was not her given name but one more humiliation bestowed by Curry. Hence, I had dispensed with any name for her, making do with the soft cooing sounds to which she had so far responded.
Then, Mr. Eli Gershonson appeared. As he is everywhere in this territory, Mr. Gershonson is trusted here at Hole-in-the-Wall. For thirty years he has been known far and wide as a cheerful man who does his business and keeps his mouth shut. The worst of bandits are his friends, the most savage of Indians his valued clientele. On his ragged Conestoga wagon, Mr. Gershonson carries all manner of factory goods, rare finds in these territories where catalogs don't reach: pots, pans, knives, and scissors, silver and china, and (Lord be praised!) bolts of good cloth. I am told he is usually led into our redoubt once or twice a year to do his trading and that he is not only honest but religious, conducting no business on Saturdays, even in a place where most people couldn't tell you which da
y it was in the week.
As Mr. Gershonson and I were haggling amiably over a particularly fine piece of green velvet, my young charge shyly took up a bolt of Irish lace and, running her hands over it, spoke a few words in her native tongue. To my astonishment, Eli Gershonson replied to her with a torrent of words and intricate gestures of his hands. At first I could not imagine that an Indian would be conversant with the language of the Hebrews, but she replied to him and, for the first time since she became my charge, evinced a slight smile. Over the next few minutes they both spoke animatedly, their hands fluttering in the air like pairs of crazed sparrows.
When their conversation was concluded, the old peddler nodded gravely and then turned to me. “Your poor little friend here is a Sioux,” he said. “She wants you to know that when, as she puts it, the snow last fell, she was captured by another tribe and kept as a slave. One of your men here apparently traded two rifles for her, and from what she tells me he wasn't very nice. She says she owes her life to you and that she will always be your koda—your friend. Oh, and one thing more, darling. She wants you to know that her name is a fine one and has nothing to do with snakes.”
I was amazed, but not so much that I couldn't ask what her name actually was. Mr. Gershonson turned to her and said three or four more words. She said only one.
“Hantaywee.”
“Hantaywee.” The peddler smiled. “It means faithful.”
Faithful. I could not imagine a more worthy name for the child I had come to so love. But this is not the only love I have found here. I am only amazed that my emotion is requited, and in a place where its object is desired by so many. But then, mere lust for Harry Longbaugh would be easy for any woman. I have more than once recounted here his abundant charms.
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