by Pete Dexter
It was a class of people that squeezed you like that. Generals did it, the governor of Colorado did it too. Charley had taken the governor elk-hunting in the mountains near Middle Park and ended up carrying him twelve miles back to camp, through two and three.
feet of snow, after the governor had stepped into the fire and broke his ankle. At least he said it was broke. The governor of Colorado weighed close to as much as an elk himself, and one hundred yards out of camp he got down off Charley's back and limped in, using Charley's shoulder for support. Then he'd shaken hands with Charley for his official photographer, who was disappointed not to get a shot of the governor with a dead elk. The governor paid Charley and said he'd send him a copy of the picture. The bones in Charley's hands were sore for days, and he guessed the picture got lost in the mail.
"Are you and Mr. Hickok partial to Branson Howard?" Mrs. Langrishe asked. He looked at her again, and she'd gotten prettier while her husband was shaking his hand. "Or do you prefer the classics?"
Before Charley could think which side he and Bill took in the matter, she was saying they did both. "Tonight we're offering Mr. Howard's Banker's Daughter," she said, "but next week we have Shakespeare's Macbeth. I'm sure we'll find something to your taste, Mr. Utter. And Mr. Hickok's."
"Shakespeare is one of our favorites," he said. And then he bowed. He was thirty-seven years old, and that was his first one.
He watched them walk back in the direction Mr. Langrishe had pointed. They went maybe two hundred yards and then crossed the street where the boards were laid across the mud, and disappeared into a wood building. Two carpenters were hammering nails into the roof, which was made mostly of canvas.
Charley studied the building and saw that the carpenters had hung the canvas from the top beam and then run it to the lowest point of the roof, securing it there with different-sized pieces of board nailed to the frame. Charley discovered early on that he was not put on the earth to build things—giving him a hammer was like handing a drunk Indian your scattergun—but he knew better than that. It was like packing a wagon wrong, there were some things you just looked at and knew better.
And some things you didn't. Mrs. Langrishe hadn't struck him that way at all.
Charley found Bill back at Nuttall and Mann's Number 10, shooting glasses off the head of Pink Buford's bulldog. The bulldog was fearless. As soon as Bill set a shot glass between the animal's ears, the dog would put his tongue in his mouth so his head wouldn't jiggle, and sit dead still while Bill drew one pistol or the other and shot it off.
Bill was careful at first, aiming, but the dog proved steady, and by the time Charley came in looking for him, Bill was lining up a left-handed, over-the-shoulder shot in the mirror. The dog was sitting near the door. "Well, well," Charley said, "Wild Bill Hickok."
Bill nodded at him in the mirror; a low growl came out of the dog, who didn't want the shooter disturbed. At the same time there was the sound of Bill's shot. The glass exploded, and the dog's tongue rolled out of his mouth, slapped against the flat, wet nose, and then hung there, like a tree leaf in a bad wind.
The sound was softer than most pistols. Bill used about two-thirds the regular load. It gave the pistol less kick—less correction for a second shot—and Bill couldn't see far enough to need a regulation load anyway. Besides, when he shot somebody, he didn't want his lead passing through the body. He wanted it inside, where it would stop up the machinery.
The smell of powder filled the room, and several tourists ordered drinks for themselves and Bill. He was drinking pink gin again. Charley moved in next to him at the bar and said what had to be said. "We are obligated to attend the theater tonight, Bill."
Bill nodded and picked up one of the glasses of gin and bitters. He received all news, good and bad, the same way. Stoical. "We allowed a last meal?" he said.
Charley noticed Captain Jack Crawford then, standing on the other side of Bill, in front of a glass of milk. The bulldog pushed in next to them, and Bill gave him an egg. It was amazing how Bill collected friends.
A drink later, Captain Jack first proposed a hunt back into the Hills. He looked at Charley and said, "I been told you're the best hunter in Colorado."
Charley didn't answer, but he loaded up a look for Bill. "I know a place," Captain Jack said, "a child with a squirrel rifle could get all the moose he wanted."
Charley didn't say anything to that either. He was more particular about who he hunted with than who he drank with. Captain Jack seemed to back away a little. "Just in case you and Bill were to get restless in the city," he said.
"It takes us longer to get restless than it used to," Charley said. "For today, we've still got to investigate the local culture." He thought of Mrs. Langrishe and wondered if she would be in the play.
Bill set an empty glass side by side with another empty glass, starting a new row. "Then we'll go to the theater," he said.
Captain Jack held up his hand for quiet and began a story about his mother. There were dates and illnesses and vows, which Charley ignored and Bill listened to like it was directions to the Lost Saloon. By the end of the story, Jack had promised her to stay away from theaters too.
An hour later, while Bill and Charley were still preparing themselves at the bar, a horse man from Belle Fourche came into the place, a celebration unto himself. He'd sold twenty of his animals to a paper-collar from Cheyenne who ran the Pony Express. The paper-collar had paid him twice what they were worth.
The horse man's name was Brick Pomeroy. He said there was no feeling in the world like stealing from a paper-collar. He bought drinks for Bill and Charley and several of the upstairs girls, who all agreed with him. "How does this paper-collar operate?" Charley said. The Pony'Express was a sort of local joke, like bad weather, and he had contemplated getting into the business ever since he'd heard the first complaints. He thought he might bring his brother Steve into it with him, to prove he'd forgiven him for shooting his leg.
"Damn if I know," he said. "What the man knows about horses is that the legs is supposed to be the same length. He don't have reliable stations, or riders, which is a collection of the sorriest roughs in the countryside. Pays them money in advance. You can't blame roughs for taking a paper-collar's money."
Brick Pomeroy noticed then that Bill was drinking gin and bitters, and asked what it was. He'd never seen anything pink served in a public saloon before. As an answer, Bill pushed one in front of him, and Brick Pomeroy drank that and his mood improved again.
He said, "Some days is so perfect nothing can touch you." He toasted Bill to that, then spotted the glass of milk sitting in front of Captain Jack Crawford. "What kind of sweet poison is that?" he said.
"Milk," Captain Jack said. Then he cleared his throat and the room got quiet. Charley wondered how he did that. "After the war," he said, "in which my father was killed and I. myself was wounded . . ."
Brick Pomeroy waited a respectful time after the story ended and then looked at Charley and said, "The main consideration about a pony express is the Sioux. This paper-collar's got white men stealing from him legal, the Indians is going to take everything he's got ... I caught one of them my own self, three days ago, running off with two of my mares."
"I hope you dealt him out of the game," Captain Jack said. There was hooting in the bar, a couple of gunshots into the ceiling. The dog nuzzled Bill's leg.
"You can rest assured," Brick Pomeroy said. "I shot him, and then my Mex cut off his head. I ain't seen the Mex since." He shrugged. "I guess a man can always find another Mex to clean out his livery."
Brick Pomeroy and Bill toasted to that, too. And then Captain Jack said, "There was a greaser come through here yesterday with an Indian head."
Pomeroy held his hand about shoulder-high and considered the drop to the floor. "Was he about this high?" he said. "Quick eyes, dirty, drunk? Did he have half an ear?"
"I believe we got the right half-eared Mex," Charley said.
Brick Pomeroy nodded. "That would be him,
all right."
"He collected about three hundred dollars for the Indian," Captain Jack said. "They passed the hat at the Green Front, and then Sheriff Bullock gave him the legal town reward, two hundred and fifty dollars."
Brick Pomeroy was drinking a glass of sloe gin when Captain Jack said that, and he put it directly on the bar. In three seconds everything changed but his underwear. "You mean that Mex got three hundred dollars for my Indian head?" he said.
Everybody but Bill took a half step back to give Brick Pomeroy room to receive the news. "At least three hundred," Captain Jack said. "He rode into town holding the head in the air, rode out the same way, only richer."
Charley watched Brick Pomeroy's hands curl into fists. The veins dame out on his forehead. It was the way ordinary people got when they found out a Mex had beat them out of three hundred dollars, but it was useless. Brick Pomeroy couldn't have fought two minutes in that condition, he certainly couldn't hit anything he was shooting at. He could stand on the banks of the Rio Grande and miss Mexico.
It was one of the peculiarities of life that the moment common men went into a fight was the moment they were least prepared.
Brick Pomeroy lifted one of the fists shoulder-high, almost like he was guessing the greaser's height again, and then brought it down in the middle of his glass. "Which way did he go?" he said. His hand was still a fist, dripping blood all over the bar. It looked like there was something inside it that he was squeezing.
"North," Captain Jack said. "He rode back toward Belle Fourche."
"I'll bet the son of a bitch is in Crook City," Brick Pomeroy said. "He's got a Mex whore he goes to see there. They love to hear each other make that fast talk."
Captain Jack nodded. "It could be Crook City."
Charley looked at Bill and said, "We could forget moose and just hunt the Mex."
Captain Jack said, "Stealing is stealing, and it's a code we live by that separates us from the savages. It's got to be on the up-and-up when there's gold for the taking in the streams."
Brick Pomeroy wrapped his hand in a bar towel and headed out the door. He walked across the street, shin-deep in mud, and then beat his horse half to death just getting him turned around. Charley had gone to the door to watch him leave, and when he came back Bill was accepting more free drinks from the tourists. They had been frightened at Brick Pomeroy's blood and temper, and were relieved to have him gone.
Bill drank and looked at himself in the mirror. Charley knew he couldn't have been paying attention to the here and now, not and entertain thoughts of a moose-hunt with somebody that made public speeches about milk-drinking and the code of the West.
"What do you suppose will happen," Captain Jack said, "if he tracks down the Mex?" He was smiling.
Bill stirred from his fix in the mirror. "What happens to any of us?" he said.
"I believe I'll have another shot," Charley said to the bartender. When he'd finished it, he turned to Captain Jack and said, "It's not a matter of if he tracks the Mex. That man's as hard to find as the full moon. For what will happen, you saw them both when they left, what did you think would happen when you told him where the Mex went?"
Captain Jack would not meet his gaze. He turned to the room and said, "Stealing is stealing."
Bill and Charley left Nuttall and Mann's at seven-thirty, to give Bill time to relieve himself before the play. The wind had picked up and the canyon turned cool. Charley had never been anyplace, including the Rockies, where the weather changed so fast.
They went to their camp and got clean shirts. Bill stood behind the wagon with his eyes closed, holding on to his peeder until he finally began to empty. Charley sat on the stump on the other side of the wagon, combing his hair, waiting. He didn't talk or whistle. Bill liked it quiet so he could concentrate.
Charley went through his hair, first with his fingers, then with a brush. Smoothing out the tangles, then parting it in the middle and pulling it back over his shoulders. He rinsed his mouth with baking soda and whiskey and waited, fifteen or twenty minutes, until he heard Bill sigh, and then the sound of piss hitting the mud. Not a steady sound, it came and went, weak and strong, and then not at all. Bill came back around the wagon, tucking himself in. He borrowed Charley's brush, which Charley was not ordinarily disposed to lend out, and ran it through his hair. Bill's hair was thinner than Charley's; it lay flat naturally and collected less insects.
Bill had removed his guns to piss, but now he put them back in his sash and regained his public posture. He set his chin at an intelligent angle, put on his hat, and he and Charley started out toward the theater.
On the way Charley said, "Are you thinking things, Bill?"
"I got to write my Agnes," he said. "Set my affairs straight."
"The place is brand new, and full of old obligations," Charley said.
Bill stumbled into a crate. It looked like the one the Methodist had been standing on that morning, and nobody but a blind man could have missed it. "There's Custer, or Hill City," Charley said. He had never seen Bill stumble over anything before. "This doesn't have to be where we are."
Bill stepped over the crate and they continued uphill toward the theater. "It's the time of day," Bill said. "This half-light, it isn't one way or the other, is why a person can't see."
There was a boy sitting at a table near the front door of the theater, collecting a dollar and a half a customer, but Mrs. Langrishe herself met Bill and Charley at the door and told the boy they were her guests.
The Langrishe Theater was lamp-lit, the back was pitch-dark, and Bill's confidence seemed to change as soon as the contrast allowed him to see again. The stage was built of pine slats, maybe half an inch between them, and was not likely to support anything heavier than a tenor. Stakes had been pounded into the ground for seats, and small pieces of four-by-eight had been nailed to the tops to make them more comfortable.
Mrs. Langrishe walked them down to the front, a hand on Bill's arm, a hand on Charley's, and showed them to their seats. She had changed perfumes to something you couldn't take two ways. Charley thought it might have been gypsy.
"I hope you enjoy Bronson Howard," she said to Bill. "Mr. Utter has told me of your affection for the great Bard, and I hope this small amusement we offer tonight will distract you enough to bring you back for something more weighty."
"Well," Bill said, "if it isn't the great Bard tonight, maybe next time around. You can't live in the past." And he gave her a formal smile.
"I had no idea," she said, a little color coming into her cheeks now, "what a . . . gracious man you were, Mr. Hickok. The reputation pales beside the man."
Bill nodded politely. "This very afternoon," he said, "I shot ounce glasses off the head of Mr. Pink Buford's bulldog, Apocalypse." Mrs. Langrishe nodded, the same nod Bill had used on her. She had forgotten Charley was there, and Bill had already forgotten her. He closed his eyes and swayed. A line of sweat crossed his forehead.
Charley could hear the wind picking up outside. The canvas roof had a foot or two of play in it, and billowed out and then in, like death-bed breathing.
Mrs. Langrishe climbed a wooden scaffold to the stage. "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," she said. There were sixty or seventy seats in the room, every one of them occupied. She waited while the audience gave her a small round of applause. Some of the finest clothes Charley had ever seen were assembled in that theater.
"Tonight, as you know, is the premiere performance of the Langrishe Theater, and it is our pleasure to bring you a light comedy of manners, Bronson Howard's The Banker's Daughter." There was more applause for that, and then again when she announced the players. Her husband, Jack, was the banker. He had powdered his face and stuck on a moustache, but he still looked short.
When the introductions were over, Mrs. Langrishe talked for a moment about the importance of theater to a community, and then, looking right at Bill, she said she hoped to see them all again soon.
When the audience clapped this time, as she left t
he stage, Charley joined in. He didn't know why, but it seemed like she had done something brave. He looked sideways then, just in time to see Bill's eyes jump open at the sound of the applause. That was the only way you could have known he was already asleep, if you saw his eyes. Bill sat dead still, figuring things out, and then, just before the daughter came on stage to begin the play, he slowly stood up, turned to the room, and nodded.
Then he sat back down and nodded to Charley.
The daughter was too old to be a daughter, but they'd dressed her in skirts and painted her cheeks pink. Charley saw they had done the best with what they had. He applauded with the audience again.
The daughter twirled once, showing bloomers, and then put the back of her hand against her forehead and said, "Alas." She had the play book in her hand, but said that from memory.
"Shit," somebody in back of them said, "I hate it when it starts with 'alas.'" The sound of the wind covered the voice then. The wind and the rain. The canvas slammed up and down, gaining more leverage as it loosened the boards.
Jack Langrishe came on from the other side of the stage, reading from a book. "What is it, my pet?" he said. "Why do you look so sad?"
And at that moment the roof blew off the theater. There was a long rumble of thunder, and then a noise like an explosion, and then the rain was coming in as thick as bear piss, blowing sideways with hats and leaves and sawdust and little pieces of board that were left by the carpenters.
On the stage, Jack Langrishe stopped what he was doing and stared straight up. Charley had the feeling he was looking a long way beyond the roof. Hats rolled across the floor, and some of the ladies made blinders of their hands to protect their eyes.
Lightning flashed, and froze the audience in green light. On the stage, the banker's daughter was fighting the wind for her skirt. The rain beaded up on Jack Langrishe's face and rolled down his cheeks without streaking his powder.
Charley and Bill had grabbed their hats at the sound of the explosion, and they sat and watched the scene while the rain made little gutters of the brims. There was a fair amount of noise in the theater—mostly thunder and the popping sound from the torn canvas—but nobody screamed, and nobody left.
