The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion

by Loren D. Estleman

  “She didn’t say nothing about out front.”

  Bob spoke up. “She weren’t checked out yet when we got to the hotel. We talked to the carriage man, he said he dropped her at the Auraria Restaurant. We missed her there, and when we went back to the hotel, she’d checked out.”

  Brixton hauled out his big American revolver. Ed and Charlie scrambled for cover. Mysterious Bob scooped up his Winchester and levered a round into the chamber. “Hold on, Jack.”

  “If you two didn’t have pig shit for brains, you’d of split up and covered both places.”

  “I needed Charlie along to point her out. If I went around shooting every tall old ugly woman I seen in hotels and train stations, I’d run out of shells.”

  “He’s right, Jack.” Charlie crouched behind the settee, covering Brixton with the Colt he’d taken from the old woman. His hand shook.

  Tom Riddle said, “Let’s all put up our irons now.” He’d drawn his Remington.

  When every muzzle was lowered, Brixton returned to his meal. “You at least get her name?”

  “Elizabeth Mort-Davies,” Bob said. “One of them two-part names, like that Englishman we strung up in Dry Gulch. You want to know who she checked in with?”

  “If it was Ulysses S. Grant, I hope to hell you shot him.” But Brixton put down the bone he’d been gnawing like a gaunt old wolf. Bob had never talked so long nor with anything close to enjoyment.

  “Man named Davies. I reckon he’s her husband. He’s fat, the clerk said.”

  “Fat like the man stuck up the Overland office in Salt Lake City?” Breed wiped his knife on his pants, smearing them with grease and plaster.

  Bob ignored him; the only man in Breed’s experience to do so.

  “They weren’t alone, neither,” Charlie said.

  He was the center of attention then. He was standing now, the Colt dangling at his side. You never knew when Black Jack would flare up again, like a heap of ashes in a campfire.

  He said, “They’re running with a bunch of actors. They all checked out at the same time. Waiter at the restaurant said they ate there together.”

  “Horseshit,” said Brixton. “No bunch of actors ever stuck up no place. Whores and pansies.”

  “Shut up, Jack,” Tom said.

  A terrible quiet followed, like the space between a flash of lightning and the roar of thunder; but there was no thunder. Of all the members of Ace-in-the-Hole (except, perhaps, Mysterious Bob), Tom Riddle was the least likely to be shot by any of the others, even Brixton. It would have been like stopping a church bell. The awful empty silence that came after would have driven them all mad.

  Tom alone appeared unmoved by his breach of outlaw etiquette. “Let’s hear the rest, Charlie.”

  “They call themselves the Prairie Rose,” Charlie said. “I wasn’t sure I heard it right, so I made the clerk say it again. I remembered, on account of I heard folks talking about them that day in Salt Lake City. They pulled out right after the Overland was hit.”

  Brixton swallowed a piece of gristle and chased it down with Old Pepper. “They hit other places too, to be staying at the Coronet and eating at Auraria. They won’t be hard to track. Those outfits cover the country with shinplasters telling folks they’re coming and the papers write about them after they leave.”

  Tom said, “They’re spooked now. They’ll scatter to cover and stay there.”

  “They’ll herd up again, just like we done. Gold don’t go so far since the war.”

  Ed Kettleman said, “What good’s tracking them? I never saw where they’re wanted no place. They’re probably selling us to the marshal right now. That rug won’t keep the Pinkertons out of that trapdoor twice. We’re the ones on the run.”

  “That’s part of it,” said Brixton. “They owe us for what we didn’t get from that payroll train we didn’t rob.”

  Breed scowled, looking exactly like the woodcut on his poster. “I want their hides as bad as you, but there ain’t no market. They can’t carry what they stole around with them any more’n we can. They’ve buried or banked it, or spent it same as us.”

  “Who said anything about taking it out of their hides? We’ll just follow them around like we do trains and hit them next time they take on a big load. We don’t have to worry about the Pinkertons or the law.” He laughed. “Hell, it might not even be illegal. Just like milking a cow.”

  “Then we butcher it for the side meat,” Breed said.

  “Well, sure. I’m surprised you had to say it.”

  They arranged to take three separate trains spaced out over two hours and avoid gathering in a group at the station. Farewells were brief, with April and Lizzie embracing swiftly to indicate that all rancor was past and the men shaking hands. No personal plans were discussed, again by mutual consent, in order to prevent anyone from betraying the others’ movements under duress.

  “The Merry Wives of Windsor, I think, in the fall,” Johnny said to Cornelius at parting. “We must acquiesce to the Major’s superstitions, and you have to agree that Twelfth Night started us off splendidly last season. Do you think you can winnow it down without inviting the Bard’s vengeful ghost?”

  “The merry Wife, perhaps?” The playwright’s smile was sad; and then he was gone.

  Somewhat to his surprise, Johnny realized he’d miss him most of all. The former secretary’s awkward expressions of gratitude and loyalty at the Wood Palace, however inspired by the pleasure of conversing with whores, had moved him to an emotion he’d thought had died on Blue Island.

  The Major and the Madame departed with all the pomp and fustian of exiled royalty, he popping his silk hat and directing the cabman with his stick like a concert conductor, she fretting aloud about the fate of the bags they’d sent on from the hotel. “San Francisco would be my guess,” April told Johnny, waving as they rattled off. “The Diplomat Deposes and petty larceny the whole way.”

  “Just so long as the old ham doesn’t try to hold anyone up at gunpoint,” said Johnny.

  To confuse pursuers, Johnny and April were traveling together to Colorado Springs as Mr. and Mrs. John McNear of Chicago. There, they would separate and proceed to their chosen destinations.

  On their way to the station, Johnny had their driver stop twice to let him out on errands. The first stop lasted just long enough for him to hand a cash deposit to the clerk at the storage facility where they’d sent their theatrical costumes and properties on from Boise when their plans to play that city had changed. The second was longer, and he did not confide its purpose to April, who sat twirling her parasol irritably, then in alarm at the thought that he might have been waylaid. She started when he leapt back in beside her, and would have set her sharp tongue to work had he not held out a small square parcel wrapped in cloth-of-gold with a scarlet ribbon.

  “The shade’s a bit off,” he said. “I asked for vermilion.”

  “If it’s a key to your sleeping compartment, I shan’t accept.”

  “It might have been in St. Louis. Those chivalrous buffoons I’ve been playing have had their effect upon my deportment in general.”

  “A few more, perhaps. There’s still a bit of shanty Irish in your g’s.”

  “I hope to correct that over these next few months.” He waggled the parcel.

  She took it then and twitched loose the bow. Inside the pasteboard box was a container shaped like a miniature humpback trunk, covered in green velvet. “Oh, Johnny,” Her tone was dubious.

  “Opening it does not imply commitment.”

  She tipped back the hinged top. The garnet inside was the deep red of pigeon’s blood, set in a band of twenty-four-karat gold (she knew her precious metals) with a delicate filigree.

  “I had my mind set on a ruby,” he said, “but they paled in comparison.”

  She snapped the lid shut with a smile. “I cannot, of course. Please take this advice for the future, as you might from a sister. Proposals are made with diamonds. This is for the wedding ceremony.”

 
Johnny laughed. “Good God, woman! Don’t confuse me with the parts I play. If we’re to carry off the act of man and wife, we’ll need a convincing prop.”

  She exhaled, relieved. “Take no offense,” she said. “I’m fond of you. I loathed casting you in the role of disappointed suitor. Such a wasteful extravagance to fool a ticket clerk and a conductor.”

  Their driver cleared his throat loudly.

  “One more moment, my good man.” Johnny lowered his voice. “I’d be inclined to agree, if it were them only. The concierges of London and Paris are far more sophisticated.”

  She stared at him with eyes like hazel planets.

  “I don’t know your plans,” Johnny said. “If you could postpone them without serious inconvenience, I thought perhaps we might discover for ourselves whether the capitals of the Old World are as corrupt as the ones we know. Allow me.” He unbuttoned her left glove and slipped it off.

  She hesitated, then slid the ring onto the third finger. It was a snug fit, most flattering. “When you put it that way, I don’t see how a lady can refuse.”

  As this pretty scene was playing itself out in Denver, rapid fingers were tapping on copper keys, sending messages streaking back and forth in high-pitched staccato surges along wires strung across fifteen hundred miles of desert, prairie, and crowded metropolis:

  ALLAN PINKERTON

  PINKERTON NATIONAL DETECTIVE AGENCY

  CHICAGO ILL

  WELLS FARGO TRAIL ENDS HERE STOP AM SATISFIED IDENTITY

  PERSONS REPEAT PERSONS RESPONSIBLE STOP REPORT ON

  WAY U S MAIL STOP FOR REASONS EXPLAINED THERE THINK

  UNLIKELY APPREHEND BEFORE FALL EARLIEST STOP SUGGEST

  RETURN CHICAGO UNTIL THEN STOP PLEASE ADVISE

  RITTENHOUSE

  PHILIP RITTENHOUSE

  DESERET HOTEL

  SALT LAKE CITY U T

  RETURN NEXT TRAIN STOP TRUST REPORT EXPLAINS NO

  BOARDINGHOUSES AVAILABLE THERE

  PINKERTON

  The detective took one last look at Salt Lake City through the window before the train began rolling, after that first curious backward lurch, as if it were as reluctant as he to be heading back the way he’d come. He thought it unlikely he would ever be that far west again. His adventure had ended. Wherever his investigations led from there, genuine field agents would follow.

  He swung down the patented Pullman footrest and settled in to read. He’d bought a copy of that day’s Deseret News, and seldom ventured anywhere without his pocket edition of Tennyson bound in soft calfskin, but he left them on the vacant seat next to his and slid the folded programme out of his inside breast pocket. A woodcut of an obstreperous-looking rose decorated the front. He opened it to read the one-line descriptions of the acts and scenes of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, adapted by Cornelius Ragland from the story by Washington Irving, and the names of the characters and cast. Once again, he drew out his memorandum book and compared the names to the list he’d made in his own hand. Next to each name was penciled the initials of a city where the Prairie Rose had played, based upon the description of the thief in the armed robbery that had taken place there. Now he uncapped his pencil and wrote SLC next to Major Evelyn Davies. Then he put everything away and closed his eyes to sleep.

  III

  The

  Grand Tour

  12

  The 1875 London social season began splendidly for the pilgrims from America, with more invitations than they could possibly accept during their six-week stop, and ended on a sour note, with a challenge to a duel.

  The S.S. Columbian docked at Gravesend in calm weather, at the end of three days of rough seas that left Johnny Vermillion grateful for the support of the fine alderwood stick he’d bought in New York City and April Clay powdered more artfully than usual to conceal a gray pallor. She had, nevertheless, been a popular dancing partner for many of the male passengers during balls, and Johnny had charmed the ladies over games of whist. They went directly from the boat train to the Langham Hotel in London and registered as Mr. and Mrs. John McNear of Chicago, U.S.A. The suite included gas fixtures, a bath with running water, a magnificent Regency four-poster bed, and a divan in the sitting room for Johnny to take his rest while April slept behind lock and key with her little Remington beneath her pillow.

  This last was the only condition she’d imposed, and since her arm in his improved his social opportunities every time they appeared in public, he honored it without protest. Their arrangement had already furnished him with one shipboard liaison while the woman’s husband was engaged at poker in the main salon; the absence of a romantic commitment spared Johnny chagrin at April’s own conquest of a commander of the British Empire that same night. At breakfast the next morning they celebrated each other’s success with champagne cups.

  To those who’d heard it before, the name McNear was vaguely associated with power in the great Midwestern city whose beef graced many an English sideboard. Because politics and trade were forbidden topics of discussion in a class whose estates had benefited from investments made during the American Civil War, neither Johnny nor April had been required to utter a single untruth about their livelihood. This was a relief, since to confess to a background in the theater would hardly be more disastrous than to account for their activities in banks, express offices, and pursers’ cabins over the past year. Whatever small gaucheries they committed in their new company were applied to their Yankee pedigree: “Quite charming, don’t you know, and neither of them appears to chew tobacco.”

  In private, the couple made sport of their late acquaintances as they had their victims in the cities and hamlets out West.

  “They’re as witless as bullwhackers beneath the accents,” Johnny had confided over that congratulatory breakfast. “One wonders if their cashiers and clerks are as ripe to pluck.”

  “Shopkeepers and clarks, dear.” April pouted. “Don’t forget, we’re on holiday. And Scotland Yard is not a citizens’ posse.”

  “You’re right, of course. How old Scipio Africanus would chuckle to learn I’ve become a slave to my profession.”

  “It’s time you emerged from his shadow. You’re a better thief than ever he was.”

  “A successful run depends upon a talented cast; the leading lady above all.”

  They clinked glasses.

  The connections they’d made at sea had provided them with introductions to West End society, and also created the necessity to drape themselves properly for garden parties, shootings on weekends, and evenings at the opera. They learned quickly that what was considered the zenith of fashion in St. Louis and Denver had had its season when Gladstone was at Downing, and that high collars, round lapels, and prominent bustles had become inexpressibly provincial under Disraeli. Standards (such as those that governed adultery) were relaxed during the transition of an ocean voyage and reinstated rigidly in Westminster. Johnny spent his first full day in London on Praed Street, being measured for morning dress and tails and wardrobes for both city and country, while April consulted a Regent Street seamstress among yards of taffeta and bolts of Chinese and Italian silk. Parcels and hatboxes piled up in their suite and their memorandum books filled with appointments for additional fittings.

  The days sped past. April, striking in a new scarlet habit, took riding lessons in Hyde Park; Johnny shot at grouse at Fulham and clipped the elbow off a marble statue of Hermes; April saw a Russian grand duchess in a portrait in the British Museum whom she insisted was her fabled grandmother; Johnny lost his watch at darts in a public house on Northumberland; April dined at Simpson’s with the third son of a baron and returned to the hotel the following morning to find the suite filled with carnations; Johnny sprained an ankle jumping from a balcony adjoining a married lady’s boudoir in Kensington. They toasted and commiserated over kippers and tea, laced with cognac from a hammered silver flask Johnny had bought from a peddler in the Tottenham Court Road.

  “What did you say to him?” She leaned forward eagerly.
/>
  “ ‘Well, which is it? Irving or Henry?’ ”

  She laughed, turning heads at the restaurant as toward a fresh breeze through crystal pendants.

  He looked rueful. “I’d overimbibed a bit. I daresay I won’t be invited back to the Garrick, and I may strike Irving’s name off my list of professional contacts.”

  “Poor dear. I’m afraid you’ve had the short end of things.”

  “Not a bit of it. I came to Europe for adventure and the old girl hasn’t let me down.”

  His next encounter with Old World customs dampened his taste for exploits.

  Johnny and April attended Lohengrin at Covent Garden; and more than a few pairs of opera glasses turned their way when they entered their box. Her fuschia gown was a flicker of rose flame and his black cutaway and snow-white waistcoat called attention to his broad shoulders and narrow waist. At intermission, he excused himself to seek lemonade for them both, but did not return until the lights were lowering for the second act. His face was nearly as pale as his collar and he was empty-handed.

  “What’s happened?” she whispered.

  He looked at her in silence for a moment, then gave a short hollow cough of a laugh. “I saw a woman of my acquaintance in the foyer—and her husband, whom I did not know. It seems we’re to meet with pistols tomorrow at dawn.”

  “Oh, Johnny!”

  “Where the devil is Hampstead Heath, anyway?”

  April said, “I don’t understand why we don’t simply cut short our visit and sail to France.”

  They were riding in a hired brougham through the predawn damp. He wore his caped overcoat, she an embroidered shawl over a white dress. A cold mist condensed into drops on her opened parasol, white also.

  “The husband is something in shipping,” said Johnny. “He’d have me pulled down the gangplank and shot under the blasted rules of chivalry.”

  “Next time you seduce a married woman, make sure you’re not on an island.”