Monday found me back in the subscription school, the oldest, tallest, and strongest of the twenty-seven children under Mr. Stokes’ instruction, but as soon as he rang that bell, I gathered my lunch pail,
Reader, and baseball, and hurried back to the Armour corrals. The cowhands had returned to work—without Molly—but I did not see Dan Dugdale. I walked past the wagon yards, and across the railroad tracks, and then strode past the rows of saloons on Main Street. And the cribs behind the saloons. No Dan. No Molly, either.
Back home, sitting at our supper table, I could only pick at the boiled potatoes.
“Off your feed, Son?” Mother asked.
I moved the fork from the first-base position on my plate to second, and dragged it back past the pitcher’s lines to the batter’s box as if the fork had hit a long fly ball that resulted in an out.
“You need to eat.”
My eyes wandered up from the plate to Mother’s face.
“We weren’t doing anything,” I said.
“What?”
“That cowboy. On Saturday. He was …”
“I’ll hear none of that.” She stiffened, straightening in her chair, and looked around the dining room with a thank-goodness-your-father-is-still-working-and-not-here-to-listen-to-such-shameful-talk look etched in her face.
“He was teaching me to rope.”
Her tiny fingers balled into iron fists. Through clenched teeth she said, “I saw what you were roping!”
“He roped her.”
“Indeed.”
Silence.
After an eternity, Mother let out a breath. “God did not put you on this earth to be a cowboy, Son.” She was trying a different approach. “You have a gift, and an arm meant for striking out batsmen, not lassoing … strumpets.” The last word came out in a whisper.
“I think he’s a ballist.”
“A ball … a what? Who?”
“Dug Dugdale.”
“Who?”
“The cowhand with the lariat.”
Those tiny fingers of Mother formed fists again while her arms, resting on the table on either side of the plate, remained as rigid as baseball bats. Her eyes hardened. “Ballist indeed. Cowboys are nefarious scoundrels, Silver. Unkempt, unkind, with no redeeming social graces.” She sighed. Heavily. “Not gentlemen like baseball players. Mayhap we never should have left St. Louis. It is not as rancid a cattle town as Kansas City, and—” a dreamy look replaced her iron countenance “—the Maroons. If only we had known.”
The Maroons had replaced the Brown Stockings. They won the Union Association this past season with a 94 to 19 record. Beat the dickens out of KC’s Onions every time they met.
Mother’s stone face returned. “You stay away from those corrals, young man. You stay away from bad eggs.”
Loving my mother as I did, I obeyed her wishes. On Tuesday, I did not go anywhere near the Armour Packing Company corrals. That’s because Mother had arranged a muffin game behind the schoolhouse. The weather had turned a little chilly for baseball, but I pitched a good game, and my team won, 33 to 9. That satisfied Mother greatly, and, honestly, I felt pretty good about it, too.
Wednesday, however, I backslid my way to the corrals. Molly wasn’t there, but Dan Dugdale sat in the saddle of his dun gelding, slapping the lariat against his chaps, urging longhorns through the doors where a number of Armour employees, my father among them, awaited with sledge-hammers, axes, saws, and knives.
“You’re back.” Dugdale smiled as he swung from the saddle, wrapping the reins around the fence post.
“I never got a chance to throw the rope,” I informed him, and immediately corrected myself. “Lariat, I mean.”
“I warrant you didn’t.” He rolled a cigarette, looking up as he licked the paper. “How’s your ear?”
Instinctively, I reached for the ear my mother had grabbed and twisted.
A grin spread across Dan’s face. “I feared she might have ripped it plumb off.”
He didn’t light the smoke, just stuck it over his ear, took the rope—lariat, darn it, lariat!—from the saddle horn, and stepped away from the horse and corrals.
“You bring the baseball?”
I shook my head sadly.
“That’s all right.” He handed me the lariat. I felt like the king of Prussia.
* * * * *
“Guess it’s harder than it looks.” I was sweating despite the autumn chill and a wind that smelled of rain as I handed the lariat back to Dan Dugdale some thirty minutes later.
“So’s throwing a five-and-a-quarter-ounce baseball,” he said.
That surprised me, but Dan Dugdale had astonished me more than once during our lariat-roping and baseball-throwing sessions. The only other person I knew who could quote the weight of a professional league baseball, without thumbing through the pages of the Playing Rules of the National League or Beadle’s Dime Base-Ball Player, was Mother. Well, I knew it, of course. So did Papa. Mother had drilled it into our brains.
Dan Dugdale secured the lariat to his saddle, found his cigarette, and fished a Lucifer from a vest pocket, saying, “Speaking of which, why don’t we throw some, boy?”
“The name’s Silver. Not ‘boy.’ Silver. My name’s Silver King.” I didn’t say that angrily, I just wanted him to know my name.
He blew smoke across the saddle. “That’s one hell of a handle.”
“Well, I didn’t pick it. It’s on account of my hair.”
He grinned. “Didn’t pick mine, either. Hair color or name. I’ve known some who have, though. Picked their own names, I mean. Dan Dugdale. So just call me Dug. You can imagine the jokes I’ve heard about my name.”
“Try being Silver King for a week.”
His smile widened. Shaking his head, he put the cigarette back in his mouth, removed his hat, which he draped over the saddle horn, and began unbuckling the straps to one of his saddlebags. “How about a catch?”
“I told you,” I reminded him, “I left my ball at home.”
“Well,” he said, lips still holding the smoke, “I might be able to remedy that.” His right hand disappeared inside the leather bag.
That’s when we heard …
The Voice.
I whirled, my face paling, watching my mother charge down the alley, umbrella in her left hand, raising a right hand at me. “Silver King,” she said, verifying my name to Dan Dugdale, “I warned you. I told you … you … about this … this … this … wayfarer. You come home with me this instant, young man.”
My right ear began aching, even though she hadn’t tried to tear it off, yet. I moved away from the horse, trying to think of an excuse, trying to explain. After all, Dan and I were the only ones around. No cowboys. No Molly or any other soiled dove.
“Best listen to your sister, Silver,” Dan Dugdale’s voice drawled.
“Sister!” Mother spun. Words choked in her throat, and the umbrella slipped from her fingers. Her Adam’s apple bobbed. “Sister?” she repeated, but this time much, much softer. “I …” Her fists unclenched, and she began brushing the dust off her skirt, then smoothing her hair, before pushing away a stray bang. Next Mother did the damnedest thing. She smiled.
I turned around to face Dan Dugdale, to explain to him that this was my mother, that I was an only child. But words caught in my throat.
He stepped away from the dun, throwing a baseball from left hand to right. On his head was a white cap, two brown stripes on the crown. The type worn by a baseball player. Oh, that cap had stains all over it, dirt and mud and maybe some blood, and I knew those stains had gotten there bouncing around in a leather bag behind a saddle.
“I’m … his … mother,” Mother whispered.
Dan Dugdale’s right hand touched the brim of his cap. His left still gripped the well-worn baseball. “I find that hard to believe, ma’am. But
it’s a pleasure, Missus King, to make your acquaintance. I’m Dan Dugdale. Call me Dug.”
“Call me Samantha,” Mother said.
Honest. That’s exactly what she said.
“We were going to have a catch,” Dan Dugdale said, and tossed the ball to me. I muffed it, my attention solely on my mother. Truthfully, had I not spotted the ball sailing my direction out of the corner of my eye, it would have knocked my teeth down my throat.
“Well, goodness, it’s a nice day for it,” Mother was saying as I chased down the ball before it rolled under the fence and into the corral.
* * * * *
He had just turned twenty in October, and had spent the past summer playing for his hometown club in Peoria, Illinois, and later for a team in Keokuk, Iowa. Now he was drifting.
“I got a lethal case of the fiddle-foot,” he said, and shoveled a forkful of potatoes into his mouth.
“Where you bound?” Papa asked.
Dan Dugdale swallowed and shrugged. “Wherever I hang my hat. I like baseball. Like cowboying. And gold.”
“There aren’t any gold mines in Kansas City,” I told him. And, I thought sadly, not that much baseball. Or cowboys.
“You’re a nice young man,” Mother said. “You should settle down, find a nice young girl. You’re a good ballplayer. Have you considered trying out for the Unions?”
He reached for his glass of tea. That’s right, Mother had brewed tea, and it wasn’t even Sunday. She also had brought out our best blue enamel plates, the ones without chips, dents, or rust.
“You’ve never seen me swing a bat, Missus King.” He mopped up the remnants of his plate with cornbread, and Mother didn’t scold him the way she would have done had it been me. “Hitting is not my strong suit.” He laughed. “Some say it’s not even in my wardrobe.”
I said, “You mean you’re not a real cowboy?”
He reached over to tousle my hair. “Not many trail herds or ranches in Peoria, Silver, but our stockyards are impressive.”
My heart sank.
“But I’ve done some cowpunching. Probably will do some more. It struck me when I was down in Sedalia, working in the yards there, that roping was a mighty good way to keep my arms and shoulders loose. That’s something I learned from our manager in Keokuk. I haven’t been playing baseball as long as some, but I’ve seen plenty of players come down with the rheumatism. Dead arm. You don’t want that. No sir. ‘The human arm,’ our manager in Keokuk said, ‘is not meant to throw a baseball.’ That’s why I told you, Silver, that we needed to loosen up those muscles with a little soft toss before getting down to serious business. Roping keeps my arm going, and, I warrant, sitting in a saddle toughens up my backside so I can squat behind the plate.”
“Maybe you ought to be a doctor,” Papa said. “Hang your shingle somewhere.”
“I’d be better at it than that pill-roller we had in Peoria.”
“How many ranches have you worked at?” I asked.
Mother asked if he wanted any lemon cookies. He did.
Thus, Daniel Edward “Dug” Dugdale became a fixture at our home, supping with us four nights a week, practicing baseball and roping with me, enjoying a pipe with Papa on the porch, and talking baseball with Mother, all through the rest of November and into December. When we were alone, however, Dan Dugdale would regale me with tales of Dodge City—the wickedest cow town of Kansas—of poker games, saloon brawls, and Kansas lawmen. Of panning for gold. And of harrowing escapes from Indians.
By Christmas, however, he was gone.
Silver, the note read, the fiddle-foot has taken me westward. Best to your folks. See you on the diamond one day maybe. Your pard, Dug.
* * * * *
In January, the management of the Kansas City Unions traveled to Milwaukee for the Union Association meeting. Only one other team showed up besides Kansas City, and that was Milwaukee. That’s how they found out that the Union Association had dissolved. In St. Louis, the Union Association’s Maroons had been accepted into the National League, and that news certainly put Mother in a funk. St. Louis had a National League team, and Kansas City was suddenly without professional baseball even though the Unions seldom played like a professional squad.
In February, however, the Western League of Professional Base Ball Clubs announced that it would field teams in Omaha, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Toledo, and Kansas City.
Secretly I hoped Dan Dugdale’s fiddle-foot might lead him back to Kansas City to try out for the Kansas City Westerns, but it didn’t happen.
We cheered the team, anyway. Even when the manager chased the umpire out of town. Even when they played games on Sundays, which riled the Baptists and Catholics and Methodists but not so much the Lutherans or the Israelites or the Presbyterians who preached that baseball wasn’t work and indeed was a good way to relax—after Sunday school and preaching, of course, the Presbyterians and Lutherans sermonized. Luckily for us, Mother was Cumberland Presbyterian. And Papa was a backslider.
We even cheered when Keokuk—which had replaced Omaha, which had gone belly-up in June—came in to play our team at Pastime Park. I had hoped to find Dan Dugdale on the team, but, alas, he wasn’t there. Keokuk did have Bud Fowler, a Negro, on the team. We cheered him, too, when he turned a double play, and Mother ignored the hisses coming from behind us. Well, no, Mother didn’t ignore anything. She turned to face the crowd of Sabbath beer-drinkers and said, “If you cannot appreciate a good play, even when it is turned by our opponent, you lack gentlemanly qualities and perhaps you would be better suited to attend a cockfight rather than a game of skill like baseball.”
The hissing stopped.
Shortly after that, so did play in the Western League of Professional Base Ball Clubs. Cleveland and Toledo folded. Kansas City’s police force, whose chief was a Baptist, put an end to Sunday games. Indianapolis sold its best players to the National League team in Detroit. Milwaukee quit after Bud Fowler led Keokuk to a three-game sweep of the Brewers. That left two teams in the Western League, and although I didn’t think Kansas City could beat Keokuk, a runner-up finish would have satisfied Mother, Papa, and me.
’Twas not meant to be. In July, the league folded. That marked the beginning of a long, bitter summer in which a deadly tornado pretty much destroyed what was left of Pastime Park.
No baseball. Unless you counted the Armour Packing Company’s muffins playing the Long Brothers wholesale grocery house. Or Keystone Iron Works versus Yates Ice Company. No roping. No cowboying. No Molly.
Grandma Hollister died in August, and Mother started dropping hints that maybe we should move back to St. Louis.
What saved us was an important announcement by a couple of brew meisters, Joseph Heim and Americus McKim.
Chapter Four
On February 5, 1886, the National League voted to admit a team from Kansas City into its ranks. Professional baseball would be returning to our city that summer, and not just any professional baseball league, but the National League—the old boys, the real pros, the league that had been established in 1876 and replaced the old National Association of Professional Base Ball Players. It was the home of our country’s first truly professional baseball team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, who had won their first game on the day I was born. Well, it had been home to the Red Stockings, but the National League had kicked Cincinnati out of the league back in 1880. It seems that Cincinnati sold beer, and played games on Sundays. Papa told me—when Mother was out of earshot—that the leaders of the National League came straight out of the Old Testament.
Times must have been hard for the National League. Not only did they bring in Kansas City, but also the Washington Nationals and the St. Louis Maroons—making that three cities, or even teams, that had played in the rival Union Association.
Now, what you need to know about Mother is this: she was not the kind of mother who would pull her only son out
of school, unless something dreadful had happened. So when she came to get me this day, tears froze on my cheeks as I kept asking her, “What is it? Is it Papa? What’s happened?”
“Hush,” she said as she let the Negro help her, and then me, inside the hack.
“Take us to the East Bottoms …”
I stopped crying. The driver lifted his head, his eyes widening.
“The Heim Brewing Company,” Mother clarified to him.
His mouth went agape.
“Now, sir. Before we freeze to death.”
The cabbie whisked us away.
“Joseph Heim?” I asked Mother.
“Of course,” she said, and placed the carpetbag on my lap. I knew what I would find inside.
You might not know Joseph Heim personally—which, trust me, is nothing to regret—but likely you have tasted his beer. Or the lager brewed by his brothers, Ferdinand Jr. and Michael. Or his father, Ferdinand Heim Sr. Long before I had been born, Joseph Heim’s father had left Austria and opened a brewery in Manchester—about twenty miles west of St. Louis—and made a fortune, as residents of St. Louis love their beer. He bought another brewery in east St. Louis, and, back in 1884, his three sons had taken over the Star Ale Brewery in the slums of Kansas City’s East Bottoms.
Mother could forgive a man for producing ardent spirits as some slight foible if he had other redeeming qualities, and Joseph Heim did. He had been one of the owners of the Union Association’s Kansas City Unions, and now he and two partners had raised the money and had been accepted into the National League.
When we arrived at our destination, she paid the hack, and practically pulled me up the steps to the Heim Brewing Company office. The place smelled sour, but Mother did not seem to notice. The place felt drab, the walls bare except for a few plaques. One read:
FIRST PLACE
LAGER
Heim Brewing Company
St. Louis Fair
1884
Another announced a second-place finish for bottled beer from the same fair and same year.
The Kansas City Cowboys Page 3
