The Case of the Petrified Man

by Caroline Lawrence

  “Nostrils,” I said, to show I was paying close attention.

  “Correct,” said Jace, tapping some ash onto his empty dinner plate. “Of course, you have got to look at the whole picture, but train yourself to notice that flaring of the nostrils.”

  I remembered how Ludwig Hamm had taken a deep breath right before he hauled out & struck me. I rubbed my sore ear and wished I had known that useful tip before.

  “Stonewall taught me that,” said Jace. “Didn’t you?”

  We both looked at Stonewall.

  He was still sitting by the fire, staring down at a piece of thread in one hand and a needle in the other.

  “I cannot seem to do this,” he said in a low voice. I reckoned it was hard for him as his eyes pointed in two different directions.

  “Here,” I said. “Let me. My eyesight is sharp.”

  I threaded the needle & handed it back.

  Stonewall took the threaded needle and regarded it for a few moments as if it was something he did not recognize.

  Then the man who had once pressed a Le Mat revolver to my forehead began to weep.

  Ledger Sheet 31

  WATCHING STONEWALL CRY made me feel mighty strange. Like the time Ma Evangeline banged her head on the table when she was coming up from cleaning the floor. When someone as brave and fearless as Ma Evangeline or Stonewall starts to cry, you feel your world is collapsing into crumbs.

  I looked at Jace.

  Jace was blowing smoke out & slowly shaking his head. But he had a soft look in his eyes.

  “What’s the matter, Brose?” said he. I had never heard him use that name before.

  “My pard Tiny used to do the sewing.” Stonewall’s big head was down & big tears plopped on his mending. “But Tiny got shredded at the Battle of Shiloh.”

  “Was it bad?” I asked. “Fighting in the war?”

  Stonewall lifted his big head. “That is like asking if burning in H-ll is bad,” he said. “Everybody told me it would be all trumpets and glory, but it turned out to be mud and blood and minie-balls and bits of flesh and men begging to go home. But Shiloh made the other battles look like paradise.”

  Stonewall gazed at the wall. His eyes pointed two different directions but he did not seem to be looking at anything. “They say the rout started because of a lieutenant in one of our other companies. They say he was Petrified. Petrified with Terror. I don’t know his name but it was his first battle. They say he stood there like a statue while men dropped on his right and on his left. Then his men turned and ran. They swept us along with them.”

  Stonewall hung his head. “We ran past a regiment of Tennessee boys and they called out taunts after us: ‘Flicker, flicker! Yellowhammer!’”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  Stonewall shrugged. “Yellowhammer is the State Bird of Alabama,” he said. “We call it the flicker. I guess those Tennessee boys was saying we were scared like birds. I guess they were calling us yellow.” He looked down at the needle and thread in his lap.

  “War can make people animals,” said Jace. “Not everybody stays to fight like a bear. Some freeze like possums and some flee like flickers.”

  “Well, I was a fleeing yellow flicker,” said Stonewall. “If I could of flown I would of. But I had to walk. I set my face west and did not stop except to eat and sleep.” He looked up at me. “Took me a month and a half to get here. Jace told me I should’ve come earlier. Wish I had.”

  I looked at Stonewall’s sad & ugly face and wondered how I would behave in a battle with men getting shredded around me. Would I fight like a bear? Or flee like a flicker? Or freeze like a possum? I reckoned I would freeze, too, because when the Shoshone attacked us two years ago, I found myself sitting on the grass by dead bodies and burning wagons and I do not remember anything that happened before that. It was all a blank.

  “What happened to the man who froze?” I asked. “The lieutenant of that other company?”

  Stonewall shrugged. “I reckon he is dead. Those minie-balls was so thick they sounded like wasps buzzing around us. If those waspy bullets didn’t get him,” he said, “our firing squad would of.”

  “Your own people would’ve shot him?”

  Stonewall nodded. “They shoot cowards and deserters as a lesson to the rest. Specially officers.”

  “Did you ever kill anyone?” I asked Stonewall.

  “P.K.,” said Jace, “do you always interrogate people like this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Jace leant forward. “I mean you can’t just ride a Question straight at somebody like that. It is just like a battle. They will either throw up their hands and flee, or freeze, or they will fight back.” He drew on his cigar. “That may well be why this Hamm person beat on you.”

  I did not know what to say, so I said nothing.

  “You got to come at them from the side,” he said. “A flanking maneuver is what they call it in the army. Weave your way round to the question. If you want to know where somebody was on Friday evening, ask them if they ever go to the Melodeon or the Dog Fights of an evening.”

  “There are Dog Fights here in Virginia?”

  “That ain’t the point. Do you understand what I am trying to tell you?”

  I nodded. “Yes, sir,” I said. “Don’t charge straight at them but come around sideways.”

  Jace sat back and tapped some cigar ash in the ashtray. “I suggest that you continue to interview the suspects on that list of yours, but try out this new method on them. Sideways, not direct.”

  I looked at Jace. He sat relaxed & calm & smoking his cigar. He had taught me more useful lessons about Human Nature than I had learned in the previous 12 years. He was helping me with my Murder Investigation & even advising me on how to Interview a Suspect.

  It was time for me to do something for him in return.

  It was time for me to help him play poker.

  Ledger Sheet 32

  STILL WEARING MY BLANKET Indian disguise, I went out the nondescript C Street exit of the International Hotel and wove my way through crowds to the Virginia City Saloon on B Street. I did not want to arrive before Jace, so I wandered up & down for a few minutes, making sure that nobody was “shadowing” me.

  Confident that I would not be recognized in my disguise, I went past the Flora Temple Livery Stable. Torchlight showed that some carpenters were already at work replacing the south wall. I saw Sissy, Sassy and some other horses in the corral, and the skinnier of the two stable hands dozing against a wall, with a scatter gun across his knees. I heard a soft nickering and turned to see the buckskin mustang with his head raised and his ears pricked towards where I loitered. Had he recognized me? Even in my disguise? That was one clever horse.

  I resisted the impulse to go over & stroke him. Instead, I made my way back up to the saloon on the west side of North B Street.

  When I enter a saloon, I generally enjoy bursting through those swinging doors, if they have them. The Virginia City Saloon has them, but on this occasion I ducked under so as to enter unnoticed. The room was full of cigar smoke, whiskey fumes, men’s voices & the entrancing sound of a banjo.

  It was not the first time I had been to the Virginia City Saloon. Less than a week before, a couple of desperados had tried to fill me full of lead there. I was certain nobody would try such a thing again. They say lightning rarely strikes in the same place twice and on that other occasion I had been wearing Disguise No. 3—a pink calico dress and bonnet.

  Today I was in a different getup.

  Wrapped in my Paiute Blanket and rattling my begging cup, I attracted a few glares but nobody complained outright. It was up to the barkeeper whether Blanket Indians and other undesirable types were allowed to frequent the place. I guess Jace had probably already had a quiet word with the barkeeper, because he just gave me a little nod.

  I quickly glanced around and saw Jace already seated at a round table covered with green baize. As usual, his back was to the wall and the brim of his hat cast
a shadow over his eyes. I sat where I could see him as well as the feet of the four other men at his table.

  My Indian ma taught me to always look for the exits in a room in case you need to make a hasty escape. There was the front door with its swinging butterfly doors. There was a normal wooden back door over near the banjo player. There were also stairs leading to an upper walkway, with numbered rooms of the Virginia City Hotel and a door at each end of the walkway. I myself was flanked by a spittoon on my right and the faro table on my left.

  The Virginia City Saloon is pretty well lit, with oil lamps on the wall and a big chandelier with glass globes hanging from the ceiling. There were half a dozen tables with men gambling. A few hurdy girls in low-cut dresses were leaning against the wall or lingering near the bar.

  I turned my attention to Jace’s table. There were four other men playing cards with him. Two of them had big droopy mustaches and one had a waxed one. The fourth man was Absalom Smith. The reason I recognized him was thanks to his pipe tobacco, the same as Pa Emmet’s, and his eyebrows, which almost met over his eyes. I was surprised because I thought he would have been performing at the Music Hall. Then I saw the clock said midnight so I guessed the show at Topliffe’s had finished.

  “What is put on the table and cut, but never eaten?” Absalom Smith was posing conundrums.

  “Undercooked potatoes?” suggested someone at the table.

  “No,” laughed Absalom Smith. “A pack of cards!”

  Over the next hour or so his puns got worse as he got “tighter.”

  About halfway through the fifth hand Absalom Smith said to the man with the pointy waxed mustache, “Ain’t you going to see my raise? Or are you yellow?” His Southern accent was more noticeable, probably because he had been drinking.

  “I’m sinking,” said the man with the waxed mustache. It took me a moment to realize that he was a foreigner and that he meant to say he was “thinking.”

  “Flicker, flicker. Yellowhammer,” drawled Absalom Smith.

  Whenever someone tells me a new expression or word, I suddenly hear it everywhere. I remembered Stonewall saying these very words just a few hours before.

  I looked over at Stonewall, who was hunched over the bar. But he was lost in his cups & had not heard.

  “What zee h-ll is ‘flicker yellowhammer’?” said the man with the pointy waxed mustache. I guessed his accent was French.

  “I believe he’s calling you a poltroon,” said Droopy Mustache No. 1.

  “What zee h-ll is ‘poltroon’?” said the Frenchman.

  “It means a ‘big coward,’” said Droopy Mustache No. 2.

  The Frenchman looked from one man to another, then folded his cards facedown on the table. “I finish with zis game!” he said.

  “Flicker, flicker. Yellowhammer,” said Absalom Smith again.

  “You shut your mouth or I shut her for you!” said the Frenchman, leaping to his feet.

  “Now, boys,” said Jace in his deep voice. “Let’s keep it civil.”

  The Frenchman stood for a moment, breathing heavy, then spun on his heel & stalked out of the saloon.

  Jace watched him go & shook his head & took a suck of his cigar. “You in?” he asked the others.

  They all nodded and finished betting.

  “Read them and weep, gentlemen,” said Absalom Smith as he spread his cards out for all to see.

  His hand must have been good because everybody sat back except Absalom Smith. He leaned forward to rake in the pile of coins.

  “Mind if I join you?” asked a familiar voice. It belonged to a tall, slender man with a blond goatee. He spoke with an English accent, like Ma Evangeline’s. It was not until he sat down in the Frenchman’s recently vacated chair that I recognized him by the small circular scar on his cheek.

  It was Langford Farner Peel, the new Chief of the Comstock.

  Ledger Sheet 33

  YOU HAD BETTER NOT call this fellow a coward or a poltroon,” said one of the men to Absalom Smith.

  “Or tell him any more of your bad puns,” said the other. “He is a famous shootist from Salt Lake City, ain’t you?”

  “I just want to play a little poker,” said Farner Peel, puffing his pipe.

  “You are welcome to join us as long as you play fair,” said Jace. “My name is Jason Montgomery but everyone calls me Jace.”

  “They call him Poker Face Jace,” said Absalom Smith in a loud voice. “So you’d better watch out.”

  Farner Peel turned to Absalom Smith, the smile still on his face. “And what, if I may ask, is your name?”

  Absalom Smith gave a little bow and said in his Southern drawl, “I am Absalom Smith: actor and punster extraordinaire. Singer, too, sometimes.” And he began to sing, “‘Oh, I’m the fool of the family, and people do what they like with me…’” They were the words to the song I had heard him whistle once or twice.

  Mr. Jasper Leeky, the barkeeper and proprietor, brought a bottle of whiskey and a fresh glass for Peel to the table. “Compliments of the house,” he said.

  Suddenly I saw Mr. Jasper Leeky’s chest swell & his nostrils flare, just like Jace warned me about. But he did not throw down on Peel. He extended his hand & said, “It is an honor to meet you, sir.”

  Peel shook his hand & Mr. Leeky filled each man’s glass.

  I guess Mr. Leeky just needed that breath for courage to shake the shootist’s hand.

  Everyone took a sip of their drink except Jace, who was dealing.

  The saloon fell quiet for a few minutes. I think people were waiting to see if Farner Peel intended to pull out his six-shooters and start blazing.

  But he played cards quite amicably & soon the buzz of conversation in the saloon was back to its normal level.

  I carefully watched the feet of the men at Jace’s table to find out who was confident and who was bluffing. If someone had dancing feet or their toes pointed upwards, I gave a light jingle of my tin begging cup and then put it down with the handle turned towards the man with the Happy Feet.

  If someone hooked their feet around their chair legs, or drew them back under the chair, that meant they might be bluffing. In that case I gave the cup a jingle & aimed the handle, but kept it in my hand.

  Everything was going well at Jace’s table. The men were drinking & betting & everybody won a hand or two, though Jace always won more. The cigar smoke and late hour was making me drowsy. Once or twice I nodded off & had to pinch myself hard to stay awake.

  Then something happened.

  At Jace’s table there was about $400 in the pot: a lot of money, even for Jace. The other three men had folded and this game had come down to Farner Peel and Jace.

  Absalom Smith was dealing. Peel and Jace both asked for one card. When they got their cards, Jace remained very still, as usual, but Peel frowned & stroked his mustache & sat back in his chair. I was expecting him to fold, but instead his chest swelled a little as he took a deep breath & pushed three gold coins forward & said, “Sixty dollars.”

  Immediately after this statement, I saw Peel hook his ankles tightly around his chair legs. He was also sitting as still as a statue & holding his breath. From these clews, I reckoned he was bluffing. I let Jace know by giving my cup a soft jingle & keeping it in my hand, with the handle pointed towards Peel.

  I know Jace saw my handle pointing accusingly at Peel, but he did not act on this information by matching or even raising Peel’s bet. Instead, he said, “I fold,” and put his hand face down on the table.

  “Flicker! Flicker!” muttered Absalom Smith, taking a drink. “Yellowhammer.”

  Langford Farner Peel stood up so suddenly that his chair fell back with a crash. He held his arms away from his body and we could all see the flaps of his holsters were open.

  Everyone in the saloon fell instantly silent.

  “Don’t shoot me!” slurred Absalom Smith, holding up both his hands. “I meant it for Jace…not for you.”

  But Farner Peel was not looking at him. Or at Jace. />
  “You two,” said Peel. “Over by the door. Have you come for me?”

  All heads turned towards the door, including mine.

  Two men stood in the doorway, each held open one of the slatted wooden doors. After a heartbeat, they stepped inside, their spurs jangling, and let the doors swing closed behind them.

  “No,” said Boz in his whiny voice. “We ain’t come for you.”

  “We come for him!” said Extra Dub in his raspy voice.

  Then they both turned towards me, their guns already in their hands.

  Ledger Sheet 34

  I DID NOT NEED to look for flaring nostrils to know to move quick.

  Five shots rang out in quick succession as I flung myself to the right.

  Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

  I picked up the full spittoon, hurled it at the desperados, then dived left beneath the shelter of the faro table.

  The flying spittoon made Boz recoil against Extra Dub & they both went down into a puddle of slimy tobacco-tinted spit.

  Bang! Bang!

  Their pistols discharged harmlessly into the ceiling. One ball hit the chandelier & glass sprinkled down. Women were screaming & men were cursing & some more shots rang out from other parts of the saloon.

  Bang! Bang!

  From my vantage point under the faro table I saw Farner Peel standing there with two smoking Navy Colts. He was not even breathing hard.

  Boz, on the other hand, was writhing and whimpering on the floor. The two black eyes I had given him were swollen so much I wondered he could see out of them. He was slick with tobacco juice and blood.

  “Dub!” he whimpered. “Dub, where are you? I is shot!”

  “Your friend has departed,” said Farner Peel in his English accent. “Look behind you and you will see the doors still swinging behind him.”

  Boz peered up at Farner Peel. “Why did you shoot me?” he whined. “I warn’t doing you no harm.”

  Peel shook his head. “I detest cowards and bullies,” he said in his soft voice. “Rise up and get out of this town. If I see you again, I will put a ball between those two black eyes of yours.”