Dead Warrior

by John Myers Myers

  But it was Faith who was with me now, the prettier for being stirred up, and I smiled at her appreciatively as I took her hand. “Out shopping?” I asked her, knowing very well that such was not the case.

  “Out looking for rabble-rousers,” she answered, with the directness I admired in her. Without further explanation she thrust Dick Jackson’s scarehead under my nose. “Is it true that you started the disgraceful riot which ended in having that poor man’s body dragged all over town?”

  Not liking to be condemned by a friend without a hearing, I stared aloofly back at her. “It’s so, if you wish to believe it,” I said.

  Her expression told me that I had thrown her off balance, putting her on the defensive, where she had thought to find me. Unfortunately for my position of quiet dignity, though, Hangtown Jennie passed along the walk just then.

  “Howdy, Baltimore.” Sober, she might have recognized Faith. Suffice it to say that she did not, although her eyes took the girl in. “You’re sure gettin’ some swell-lookin’ actresses in that joint of yours.”

  “This is Miss Foster,” I said hastily. “You remember her, Jennie.”

  “Hell, Baltimore, I can’t remember all your girls,” she reminded me. “What’s her act; trapeze, cancan?”

  “She’s not on the stage,” I blurted. “She lives here.”

  “She does, eh?” This time regret was mixed with the look of interest Jennie bestowed on Miss Foster. “I wish she was on my string. Well, I’ll be seeing you, pardner.”

  “That’s the woman who was on the stage when we rode into Chuckwalla,” I said, before Faith could ask any of the questions I saw forming in her mind. “She’s getting a little old and her eyes aren’t what they were; otherwise she would have recalled you.”

  “I see.” Faith was watching Jennie, as the latter rolled on down the street. “Why, look; she’s going into a saloon!”

  “Is that right?” I marveled. “Well, well; she’s quite a frontier character, you know.”

  “You seem to be on very good terms with her,” Faith observed. “What did she mean by — ”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” I said, taking the copy of the War Whoop from her. “Now let’s get back to this business of Ace Ferguson.”

  Safely on that ground, I was doing well with my exposition of the true facts, when Dolly came cantering along, riding sidesaddle and facing our side of the street. I hadn’t seen a rattlesnake on Apache Street since the early days of the camp; but when Dolly was about forty yards short of us her horse reared, as a sidewinder wriggled out from under the boardwalk. While her mount had two feet in the air, a gun appeared in Miss Tandy’s hand. With it she blew the reptile’s head off.

  “That’s shootin’!” a passing man applauded.

  Acknowledging that tribute, as she urged her horse ahead, Dolly brightened her smile when she caught sight of me. “How about an editorial asking people to keep their rattlers chained or muzzled?” she called.

  I chuckled reservedly, Miss Foster not at all. “I wonder if that’s the young woman Laura Slater was telling about,” she said. “Is she a frontier character, too?”

  Dolly was nothing if not that, but I didn’t like the way Faith said it. “She is a lady of my acquaintance,” I replied, looking at her steadily but feeling sorry for myself at the same time. It seemed hard lines to be in difficulties with a girl I was more or less courting over one whose company I was more or less avoiding. “Her name is Miss Tandy.”

  It took a moment for Faith to realize that I was referring to the town’s celebrated female gambler. “Dolly Tandy?” she finally gasped. “I didn’t think she’d look like that.”

  “I imagine not,” I said, reflecting that the church social gossips had probably envisioned something on the lines of Hangtown Jennie, amplified with horns and a tail. In spite of my uneasiness, I couldn’t restrain a twitch of the lips at that train of thought. It was this involuntary action which pulled Faith from her horrified daze.

  “If you’re looking for somebody to laugh at,” she glared, “stay with the sluts you bring to your vile variety hall. And as for that Dolly Tandy — ”

  Seeing my face stiffen with a look of disinterest, she broke off. “I just don’t like the people you associate with,” she finished, “and I’m not going to be one of them from now on.”

  Sorry about the matter, I shrugged it out of my mind as best I could. There were no polite events on my social calendar then until McQuinn told me that Dolly’s indefinite invitation had been made a specific one.

  Unable to visualize Miss Tandy in any state of domesticity I had wondered what her premises would be like. When Terry and I stepped inside her house, however, I recognized the inevitability of what I saw. Dolly herself flashed strong colors which walked an inch inside the line of good taste. Her house was like that. Having talked with her, I was not surprised at the bookcase or the quality of the volumes it held. Seeing her dressed as a hostess for a formal occasion, it was not hard to believe she could play the piano which occupied one corner of her living room.

  Colonel Peters was there, trim and handsome in the black and white dinner clothes which matched the ones worn by McQuinn and myself. We made a deceptively civilized appearance, in view of the circumstances. As Droop-eye strode forward to shake hands, I could detect the outlines of the gun beneath his coat. Blackfoot Terry would no more have stepped abroad without a revolver than he would have dispensed with his trousers, and I was armed, too.

  “You took longer to get here than I thought you would,” McQuinn said, when we had sipped the sherry which accompanied the soup course. “It didn’t seem like you to pass up the highest stakes east of ’Frisco, Colonel.”

  “I have had to move pretty far afield,” Peters told him. “I was in San Francisco itself, for one thing, going from there to the Sandwich Islands and returning by way of Mexico City.”

  “How is the gambling there?” I inquired. Not caring in the least, I was only making polite conversation, but he cast me a sharp look before the lids came down over his eyes again.

  “I certainly had no complaint on the score of the stakes at issue,” he said. Here he took a sip of wine as a turning point for a change of subject. “I understand that you had much to do with the founding of this place, Mr. Carruthers.”

  “Purely in the way of accident, but yes,” I said. “Incidentally, if you’ve heard anything about my powers of divination, don’t believe it.”

  “The things I have heard are mainly about the camp itself, which seems to have had an interesting history.” Peters moved his arm to permit the removal of his soup plate by Dolly’s Mexican maid. “Word of the Duchy of Dead Warrior sifted down to Mexico City while I was there, for instance.”

  In response to my own and Terry’s reminiscent chuckles, Droop-eye smiled, though gravely. “I realize that the declaration of independence was in this case made in a spirit of buffoonery, yet that need not always hold true.”

  Glancing at Dolly for a cue as to what value to put on that statement, I caught her in the act of shaking her head at Peters. The latter did not notice the signal, however. Absorbed in his thoughts, he stared at the embroidered tablecloth as though he were conning a map.

  “It is the sort of thing that could well take place,” he said in a low, brooding voice. “It is not right for this imperial domain of ours to be no more than a satrapy of the United States.”

  “Have you heard that Ham Gay won’t have the new incarnation of his place ready before next fall?” Dolly asked, and I knew she was trying to divert Droop-eye from his topic.

  “Joe Trimble’s postponing the grand opening of the re-glorified Glory Hole, too,” I said, trying to help her out. “It seems that one heard the other had decided to have pictures and statuary imported from Paris — the one in France — and neither is willing to be outdone.”

  “I will have the gambling concession in the Happy Hunting Ground when I return,” Colonel Peters remarked.

  “Are you leaving us
so soon?” I inquired.

  “Unfortunately I have appointments elsewhere, Mr. Carruthers.”

  “I think I’ll arrange for a misfortune that will get me out of the heat here during the summer, too,” Terry laughed. “Will a disaster befall you, too, Dolly?”

  “During July, August and September,” she affirmed. “Won’t you carve, please, Colonel?”

  After the coffee and brandy Dolly played for us. At first there were some classical pieces which she rendered with a certain slapdash competence; then, at Terry’s insistence, she sang a few songs. Most were familiar but one for which McQuinn signified favoritism by calling for several encores was not. It dealt with a man astride of a meteor, and even Peters swayed slightly to the drawling, plains-rider rhythm of it.

  Alone in my quarters that night, I tried without success to figure out the relations between my three dinner companions. Whatever the tie between Dolly and the hauntingly familiar-looking Droop-eye, I judged it not to be emotional. As to McQuinn and Miss Tandy, I was of two opinions. At times theirs seemed the ease of old friends, while at others Terry seemed possessed of an almost boyish eagerness to please her.

  Try as I would, too, I could make nothing of the colonel’s words relative to the defunct duchy. He was entirely right about the extent and intensity of its fame, however. That, together with the hideous romp which had capped Ace Ferguson’s execution, had not only captured the imagination of American journalism but stimulated it to remarkable flights of fancy.

  Originally famous as a bonanza of huge dimensions, Dead Warrior had come to be known as the human Jack Horner pie of the West, the tough and zany cornucopia from which newspapermen could draw copy when all the rest of the world failed them. Going through newspaper exchanges for anything I myself could use, I now constantly ran into stories about Dead Warrior which began where history ended. Every shooting was reported as the blood feud of the two best gunmen on the frontier. Every practical joke — real or invented by the reporter — was magnified into the horseplay of titans.

  “To drink with Ace Ferguson” was the new national synonym for hanging. There were vaudeville jokes, such as the one about the bride’s biscuits that thought they were tough until they came to Dead Warrior. Poetasters didn’t neglect the camp, either. Appearing in one of the leading magazines was an effort signed by that popular versifier, H. Randolph Cain. Insofar as I am aware he had never been to Arizona, but he knew something about the bandits who now and again harried the passengers of the Carruthers and Wheeler stage line.

  I asked an editor’s advice; he gave it to me freely:

  “Go West,” he said. “I will,” I said. “And thank you, Mr. Greeley.”

  So I picked Arizona, first among our territories

  For mining hoists and gallows trees and other scenic glories;

  But as the stagecoach rolled along I heard a rider order,

  “Pay over for Dead Warrior before you cross the border.”

  He let me look into his gun, clear down it to the bullet,

  And so I sat as quietly as any roosting pullet

  While that kindly customs officer began collecting duty;

  A connoisseur, he liked my watch and said it was a beauty,

  And there were other things of mine which drew his praises freely,

  And as he took each one he murmured, “Thank you, Mr. Greeley.”

  As the poem progressed, all the things that could happen to a tenderfoot on the frontier befell the unhappy visitor to the Duchy of Dead Warrior, which Cain had revived for the purposes of his work. Moreover, he had at least one experience that was unusual.

  How many wooden crosses stand in tribute, given freely

  To that prince of Western Judas goats, one Mr. Horace Greeley?

  I cannot really say I was not welcomed to the duchy:

  A land of nature’s noblemen, though sometimes rather touchy.

  They’ll hang a man for stealing nags or marking cards by pinching

  Or just to keep in practice they’ll decide to have a lynching,

  And there was I, a foreigner, on deck when one was needed;

  They took me out to hang me. Being experts, they succeeded,

  Though when I had completed all my kicking and my strangling,

  True scions of Dead Warrior, they didn’t leave me dangling

  But cut me down and loosed the rope, so I could tipple freely —

  And voice, too, were I so inclined, my thanks to Mr. Greeley.

  Although most big-city journalists were content to enjoy our town from afar, Dwight Lewis was sent out from New York to inspect the elephant in person. I first learned of his presence when Dick Jackson, mayor pro tem of Dead Warrior by then, brought him into my office.

  “This gentleman came to the War Whoop to inquire about the riotous doings here,” Jackson announced, “but I told him that on my paper we merely reported violence instead of instigating it. This is the notorious Baltimore Carruthers, Mr. Lewis.”

  The latter was a florid-faced somewhat pudgy fellow, aware of a New Yorker’s superiority to all provincial journalists but too much the man of the world to emphasize the fact. “Save the tall ones for the next guy,” he said, following a look which let me know that he wasn’t impressed by any degree of notoriety. “Just tell me what’s really going on in this burg.”

  “Well,” I said, naive enough to think he wanted to know, “we’re opening a library.” I was particularly proud of that, because it had been my own idea. “We’re hoping to have books available by the first of August.”

  “A library!” Lewis’s expression suggested that I had mentioned introducing the perversions of Gomorrah. “You’re pulling my leg.”

  When anyone belittled Dead Warrior, even indirectly, he had me to fight. “In the opinion of many Eastern educators,” I said, thinking of Dr. Hatfield, “the Atlantic seaboard hasn’t got a leg worth yanking on. Would you be interested to know that we’re opening a school in November?” This hadn’t been promoted at my suggestion, though I was a member of the board of trustees. “By next spring we hope to open a high school.”

  “What for?” Dwight protested. “You act like you think this camp isn’t going to blow away like all the other bonanza towns.”

  “Dead Warrior won’t,” I guaranteed. “We’ve got gold, cattle are starting to flood the surrounding ranges, to feed us and the reservation Indians, the railroad will be here before next spring, and that will be the signal for industry to move in. Give Manhattan back to Holland, if you’re worried about the competition, and move out where things are happening.”

  I took Lewis on a tour of the town after lunch, without being able to give him satisfaction of any sort. Beginning with myself, he was disappointed with the people he met, too. He wasn’t impressed with Bill Overton, who, though a skillful dealer and deadly gunman, looked like a kindly seacow rather than a shark. Not impressed with Dwight, Rogue River Pete kept away from us when I brought Lewis into the Paradise Enow. Even Jennie and Seth Potter, encountered together at the Happy Hunting Ground, froze up in the presence of a man who showed more interest in them than they thought a stranger should.

  By evening I had noticed a change in Lewis. Starting out by telling me he was not to be taken in by Dead Warrior’s reputation for toughness, he remained to pray for some justifying sign of it.

  Seeing things through his eyes, I couldn’t help but be a trifle sympathetic. It was hot, and nobody exerted himself more than he had to. That first day there wasn’t even a good dogfight in town. Most of the people that he met were matter-of-factly attending to occupations of the sort by which men earn their living everywhere; and they spoke in terms of economic prospects, where he had looked for talk of hair-raising antics, sudden death and thousands pushed across gambling tables at gunpoint. Busy myself, I finally had to cut him adrift, although out of a sense of craft fellowship I urged him to make my office his headquarters. He had returned late in the afternoon of the second day and was seated at a table, frowning over so
me notes, when I heard a voice I remembered.

  “Old Baltimore himself! By God, this is good seein’.”

  Thus hailed out of conference with Clint Fellowes, I turned, and as I did so I caught a look of hope on the New York correspondent’s face. At last he was beholding frontier color in the flesh.

  Citizens of Dead Warrior habitually dressed in commonplace work clothes or business suits. The man who advanced to pump my hand was a fashion-plate range rider, from pearly hat and blue silk bandanna down through embroidered vest and boots. Guns were no longer openly worn in town except by men who might be expecting trouble from some specific source. This fellow had two strapped to his thighs. From my personal knowledge of him, I would have judged that he had killed nothing more lethal than a horned toad, but each of the revolvers was nicked with a row of sinister notches.

  “Hello, Sparks,” I said. Having dumped him out on the town of Nutmeg at the conclusion of our last meeting, I might have been embarrassed at his cordiality, had it not amazed me so much. “What rock did you crawl out from under?”

  He grinned at me from beneath his dashing, Mexican-type mustache. “Just hit town and come around to see you before I even found a saloon.”

  That was a lie I didn’t see fit to challenge. At the same time I wasn’t impelled to take the hint until Lewis caught my eye again, and I thought I saw a way to get them both off my hands. As usual, there was a bottle in one of my desk drawers. There were some shot glasses, too, but it occurred to me that it would be more in keeping with the correspondent’s idea of the frontier if we dispensed with them.

  “Roy Sparks, Dwight Lewis.” After I had thus introduced them, I pulled the cork and threw it out the window. “Lewis represents one of the big New York newspapers,” I said, as I thrust the flask toward Sparks. “Try dredging the alkali from your gullet with this stuff, pardner.”

  “From New York, eh?” Sparks said, when he was leaning back in a chair, puffing one of Lewis’s cigars. “Well, if you want real stories about the West, you’ve come to the right man in Baltimore here.” From Dwight, Roy turned fondly to me. “I’ve been hearin’ about you, old boy. Heard about you when I was way over in California, clearin’ outlaws out of the Coast Range.”