The Kansas City Cowboys

by The Kansas City Cowboys (retail

  “They’s watching us,” one of the card-playing pitchers said.

  “All right.” Mox McQuery took command. “Let’s show ’em what National League professionals look like. Intimidate ’em, so they’ll fear us tomorrow.” So we sprinted as hard as we could to the visitors’ bench, including Fatty Briody.

  “God … A’- … mighty!” Grasshopper Jim Whitney pressed both hands against the bench and tried to suck in air. Even Shorty Radford sank to his knees, gasping, “Can’t … catch … my breath.” Chests heaving, the two poker-playing pitchers cursed, crossed themselves, and slowly walked toward second base to help Fatty Briody to the bench, or, perhaps, a hospital—if Denver had one. I sat down and lowered my head between my legs, wondering if I would hurl all the coffee and peanuts and Papa’s greasy food from my innards.

  “We’re a mile high!” George Tebeau hollered from the home bench. “The air’s real thin. Takes some getting used to.”

  “Hell,” another member of the Mountain Lions yelled. “Could be worse! You-all could be playing in Leadville!”

  “Be nice, Darby,” George Tebeau told the big cur. “They aren’t used to this altitude.”

  Somehow, I managed to raise my head. The Larimer Street Base Ball Park slowly stopped spinning, and my eyes found that they could still focus at five thousand feet above sea level.

  With a hideous laugh, the burly man—whose name we would soon know as Darby O’Brien—led his teammates off the playing field. All except one. That one, who had been catching, pulled off his gloves, stuffed them and his striped ball cap into a saddlebag, and replaced it with a battered old Stetson. After settling onto the bench, he began to roll a cigarette.

  Even in my delirium, I thought that he looked familiar.

  “Do we practice, Mox?” Fatty Briody asked in a voice that begged for McQuery to forget that foolish idea.

  “Got to … can’t let ’em … show us … up.”

  “Give me a minute,” I said. I sucked in a deep breath, which singed my lungs with frostbite, and somehow managed to walk down the third-base line, turn at the plate, and stop as the Mountain Lions catcher fired up his smoke, took a long pull, and grinned after he exhaled.

  “Dug?” I called out skeptically. It couldn’t be.

  “Been a long time, kid. You roped Molly lately?”

  Chapter Eight

  I took Dan Dugdale over to meet my teammates, who were still trying to catch their breath. Since all of the other Mountain Lions had left the ball park, Mox McQuery decided that we did not need to practice after all.

  “Let’s find the hotel,” McQuery said.

  “I thought we didn’t have a hotel,” I said.

  Everyone, even Dan Dugdale, laughed.

  “Kid,” Fatty Briody said, “you’re greener than a cucumber. Not that I plan on sleepin’ in it, but we’s got rooms at the Albany. You’s bunkin’ with me … if I ever shows up.” Fatty nodded at Dan.

  “I know where the Albany is,” Dan said. “I’ll get him there, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Sure.” Fatty Briody stuck out his hand, and Dan took it, then made his way through all the men with handshakes. Everyone wished him good luck in tomorrow’s game.

  “Now,” Fatty said as I followed Dan back to Denver’s bench, “who the hell can help me to that damned trolley?”

  * * * * *

  “Where have you been?” I asked.

  We sat at the practically empty counter in some ramshackle restaurant on Tennyson Street, which wasn’t any more than a corridor for streetcars.

  “Wherever I hung my hat.” Dan smiled at the waitress as she topped off his coffee. He pulled off a corner of a piece of toast, and popped it in his mouth.

  “What brought you to Denver?”

  “Gold.” He laughed. “One of my weaknesses, if you remember. ’Course, I didn’t find any pay dirt, but I found baseball.” He reached for the cup, blew on the hot brew, and took a sip. “Damn,” he said in a whisper, “you’re on a National League team. You … a kid I met at a packing plant.”

  “You’re a professional ballist, too,” I told him.

  He drank more coffee before lowering the cup. “Big difference, Silver, between the Western League and the National League. How much they paying you?”

  I almost spit out the milk. Dan Dugdale laughed. “You don’t have to tell me. I’ve forgotten my manners.”

  Green as that proverbial cucumber, I figured that I could tell Dan that. Friends didn’t keep secrets. He had asked me. I should tell him.

  “Sixteen hundred dollars.”

  Mother and Papa had decided we would stop renting and buy a house. I didn’t tell Dan that. I did whip the napkin off my lap and help him and the waitress, who had hurried back, to mop up the coffee he had spilled on his plate and the counter.

  Dan was standing, so I figured I needed to do some explaining. “I mean, that’s the contract. It’s spread out over the year … I mean, as long as we’re playing. I mean, I think Mister McKim liked my mother so much … that’s why … I mean … is that a lot of money, Dug?”

  He turned, glaring, but the anger died in his eyes almost instantly, and he sat back on the seat as the waitress carried the soggy dishrag and empty cup away. Dan stared at his water-logged toast, shook his head, and began to roll a smoke.

  “A dollar a day ’punching cattle. Five dollars a game catching for the Mountain Lions. Yeah, Silver, I’ll warrant that, for five months’ work, that is a right tidy sum.”

  I tried to do some arithmetic in my head. A dollar a day. Five months. Thirty days, roughly, per month. Dan would make $150 punching cattle while I was playing baseball. But, he was also playing for the Mountain Lions—five dollars a game. That would … be … if Denver played, say, a hundred games. So … $500. But if he also cowboyed at the same time, like I had been going to school and playing professional baseball—well, not really going to school, but at least doing my lessons. I tried to think faster than George “White Wings” Tebeau could talk. Quickly I stopped. Mother, and the schoolmaster, Mr. Stokes, would have been proud of my ciphering. I wasn’t. I felt ashamed.

  “Maybe …” I tried to find the right words. “Mister McKim … he’s one of the owners … maybe … Well, Dug, it’s like this. They love cowboys, Mister McKim and his partner, Mister Heim. They like gimmicks, I think that’s the word they used. You’re a bona fide real cowboy, Dug, not like that fake Charley Bassett, though Charley’s a real good infielder. So … well … perhaps I could see about getting you on the …”

  I stopped. Dan’s glare had returned. He could stare even harder at a body than Dave Rowe.

  “Is that what I am to you, Silver?” he asked. “A gimmick.”

  The waitress brought over a fresh cup of coffee, but Dan waved her off. Instead, he fished out some coins from a vest pocket.

  “Let me …” I started, but Dan snapped, “No!”

  He laid the change on the counter, pulled on the hat he had placed on the empty stool to his right, and nodded curtly at me. “Your hotel’s at Seventeenth and Stout. Streetcar can get you there. See you tomorrow, Silver, at the park.”

  Once again, Dan Dugdale walked out of my life.

  * * * * *

  If I felt bad at that café, I felt worse when I reached the Albany Hotel. Four stories of impeccable design that seemed to cover the entire block. A Negro in a uniform opened the door for me and offered to help with my satchels, but I shook my head. My misery worsened as I stepped onto the Persian velvet that covered the entire floor of the lobby. Fires crackled, smelling faintly of piñon, in the fireplaces guarded by screens adorned with bronze peacocks.

  “Welcome,” a bespectacled, bald man said from behind a mahogany and marble counter. “You’re the first of the Cowboys to check in, sir. We wish you a most enjoyable stay. Your name, please?”

  “His name is S
ilver,” Cindy McKim said. “Silver King. He’s our best hurler.”

  I had not seen her on the train, just her father as he had boarded, but, of course, we players did not have Pullman sleepers.

  “Howdy …” I said.

  “We’ve been through that before,” Cindy said with a smile. “Haven’t we?”

  I couldn’t answer yet because the clerk had spun around the register, pointing where I should sign. After I had done that, he snapped his fingers, and, magically, another man appeared who picked up my bags and made for the staircase. “Room 203,” the clerk said, and handed me the key.

  “I should …” I said to Cindy, but did not move.

  “You needn’t go with the bellman. He has a passkey,” Cindy told me. “You should tip him.”

  “Oh …” He had reached the stunning staircase.

  “When he comes back downstairs is fine,” Cindy told me. She walked to a plush sofa that faced the fireplace. “You look down, Silver,” she said. “Is it because of Mister Rowe?”

  “No,” I said, and realized I had actually spoken to her. Yet the conversation ended because at that moment her father walked out of the dining room and, smiling, walked to the sofa, where Cindy and I both stood.

  I took his proffered hand and shook it. “Good evening, sir,” I said.

  “Fine city, isn’t it, this Denver?” he said. “I’m not sure even Kansas City has a hotel as nice as this. How’s your room?”

  “Ummm …”

  Cindy laughed.

  “Well, son, you should get a good night’s rest. Tomorrow’s an important game for us Cowboys. Come along, Cindy. We’ll have a busy day tomorrow, too. Busy …” he was practically beaming, “beating the stuffing out of those Mountain Lions.”

  The team’s treasurer, who was paying me an ungodly sum of money to play a game, led the angel away—and just when I’d begun to start up a regular conversation with her. Worse, the bellman had come down the stairs and was making a beeline right for me.

  Me? Who hadn’t gotten the chance to ask Cindy McKim just how much I was supposed to pay this fellow.

  * * * * *

  The next day didn’t fare any better. My bedraggled teammates, winded by the altitude and aching from their night of debauchery, played like a bunch of muffins. We lost, 12 to 3. Dan Dugdale, catching, got two hits and tagged out speedy Radford twice when Shorty tried to score from second base on Dave Rowe’s line drives into the outfield. Denver’s real star that day, however, was Darby O’Brien, who crushed two home runs and added a triple before Stump Wiedman learned to just walk him on seven consecutive pitches.

  The Mountain Lions proved gracious winners, however, waving us over to where four grateful supporters had deposited two kegs of beer. I didn’t feel like drinking, or seeing Dan Dugdale, so I sneaked off and took the trolley back to the hotel. Alas, I didn’t see Cindy McKim, either, and so I sadly went up to Room 203, and slept fitfully until Fatty Briody staggered in around two that morning, crashed onto the bed we had to share, wet the sheets with urine, and began some hideous noise that he claimed, the next morning, was snoring.

  * * * * *

  Pete Conway pitched the first game of our Friday doubleheader. We lost that one, too, though we played a lot better in a 3 to 1 loss. By we, of course, I mean everyone on our team except me. I had become nothing more than a water boy, or the kid they sent to chase down a foul ball so we could keep playing the game.

  Immediately after that loss, we started the last game with Grasshopper Jim Whitney tossing for us against left-hander Harry Salisbury, who had pitched for the Troy Trojans several years earlier and the Pittsburgh Alleghenys of the American Association in 1882.

  “These ain’t a bunch of hard-rock miners,” Mox McQuery said as he settled on the bench next to Dave Rowe.

  “Never said they were,” Rowe mumbled.

  “They’re a damned good baseball team,” McQuery said.

  Rowe spit tobacco juice onto the ground. “Just because they beat us don’t make them a good team, Mox.”

  We were good, however, that afternoon. So were the Mountain Lions. By the seventh inning, neither team had scored. In fact, the only two hits of the game had come off Darby O’Brien’s bat, and both times O’Brien never made it past first base.

  In the bottom of the seventh, however, Grasshopper Jim, uniform drenched in sweat, and his face pale, eyes bloodshot, kneeled down at the bench in front of Dave Rowe. His nose poured blood.

  “Dave,” he said in an ugly whisper, “I’m finished.” He pressed a wadded-up handkerchief against his bleeding nose.

  “The hell do you mean?” Rowe demanded.

  “It’s this … damned … thin air.” Lowering the bloody rag, he held up his right hand and extended the fingers to reveal blisters on the tips of his first two fingers and the thumb. “Besides, I can’t pitch … with these.”

  “Blisters?” Rowe spit again. “Horseshit.”

  Grasshopper Jim turned, spit, wiped blood from his lips and returned the rag to his nose.

  “Must be the air,” Mox McQuery said. “Snot in my nose is drier than a lime-burner’s hat.”

  “Had a nosebleed last night myself,” Charley Bassett conceded.

  “Shut the hell up,” Dave Rowe snapped.

  “Skip,” Fatty Briody said as he pulled on his gloves, “this ain’t no real game. Real season starts the end of this month.” He nodded his two chins at our ace pitcher. “And we’ll need ’em fingers of Grasshopper’s then.”

  Rowe stared up at our fat catcher. “Who in the Jesus-son-of-a-bitching-pig-shitting-asshole-damn-it-all-to-hell-bastard-loving-Christ hell appointed you manager of this team, Fatty?”

  “I’m just sayin’ …” Fatty Briody hobbled off to home base.

  Dave Rowe bent to lace up his shoes, pulled the cap down on his head, and cursed again. “Rub some butter on those blisters, Jim. Or blood. Son-of-a-bitching hell.” Spinning, he yelled at the umpire, a tall man who worked for one of the railroads in Denver, “Mundt … Grasshopper hurt his fingertips, the crybaby. So I’m replacing him with …” He stared at the bench, and his eyes finally fell on me. His grin chilled me. “You’re right, Fatty,” Rowe said, although our catcher had moved far out of earshot by then. “This ain’t no real game.” He raised his voice. “Silver King. Silver King’s my new pitcher.”

  The men and women who packed the stands and sidelines at Larimer Street Base Ball Park roared so hard, the Rocky Mountains probably trembled.

  Chapter Nine

  When the laughter finally faded, I threw four pitches to loosen my muscles, then stopped. The rumble from the grandstands had resumed, not the cackles and hoots and insults at my name, but rather shouts of approval. That’s when I saw, strolling from the Denver bench, the big man, Darby O’Brien.

  The Darby O’Brien if you’ve followed professional baseball for any length of time. Darby O’Brien, a solid, tall, twenty-two-year-old product of Illinois whose time in Denver, Colorado, would end after the Mountain Lions won the Western League championship. The star who would earn the nickname “Flaming” Darby O’Brien while powering the New York Metropolitans and Brooklyn Bridegrooms, losing to the New York Giants in the 1889 World Series but winning the following year against the Louisville Colonels.

  “Low,” he said, and stepped to the plate.

  He did not move, didn’t even blink, as my arm went into the windmill imitation, and I released a ball that flew like a bullet into Fatty Briody’s hands.

  “Chhheee-riiiisstt!” the catcher wailed.

  “Strike,” the umpire said, and tried not to laugh as Briody tried to shake feeling back into his stinging hands. O’Brien squatted to pick up the ball and throw it back to me.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  O’Brien just nodded, gripped his bat, and waited.

  Fatty Briody finally moved back about tw
o feet, pointed at the inside corner of home base, and spit tobacco juice.

  Wetting my lips, I tried to control my breathing, tried not to throw up in front of two thousand Westerners. I rifled another pitch, and again O’Brien watched it without moving.

  “Ye-ow!” Fatty cried.

  “Strike two!” shouted the umpire.

  Minutes later, Fatty Briody nodded again, and set up his hands on the inside corner.

  I pitched, and, this time, Darby O’Brien swung the bat with speed I’d never seen or even imagined. I didn’t hear the contact, but I turned and saw Dave Rowe running toward the fence in center field. The ball did not leave Larimer Street Base Ball Park, but by the time Dave Rowe had caught up with it and thrown the ball to Charley Bassett, Darby O’Brien was walking to the bench, receiving slaps on his back by the rest of the Mountain Lions.

  The next batter was Dan Dugdale.

  I swallowed. Dan’s boots scratched the dirt like a bull’s hoofs. Fatty Briody set up outside. I delivered exactly where he wanted me to throw, but Dan Dugdale, unlike Darby O’Brien, did not watch. He swung. And that ball cleared the fence in right field.

  Right fielder Bill Mountjoy doubled. Third baseman Frank Meinke sent a cannon blast that should have scored Mountjoy, but Charley Bassett robbed him by knocking the ball to the ground. He couldn’t get Mountjoy or Meinke out, but he had saved a run. Not that it mattered. Shortstop Dave Butler sent my first pitch into right-center field, stopping at first base to watch his two teammates score.

  “Time!” Dave Rowe yelled, and trotted in from center field. Straight for the pitcher’s lines—with murder in his eyes, and his right hand reaching behind his back. I swallowed down fear and bile, but Dave pulled out a plug of tobacco, not his Smith & Wesson, and waited for Fatty Briody to join us.

  “Kid’s throwin’ faster than lightnin’, Skip,” Briody said. “Exactly where I show’m. Never seen the likes.”

  Rowe bit off a mouthful and began working the tobacco with his teeth.

  “My hands hurt like hell, Skip,” Briody whined.