The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion

by Loren D. Estleman

  As the train pulled out, the marshal sought his men, only to find them with empty hands and shaking heads, and stepped back to study the passenger windows fluttering past, but none of the profiles he glimpsed there drew a close enough resemblance to the sketch to warrant sending a wire to the next stop. He tore up the scrap of newsprint and walked off the platform, trailing the pieces like Hansel and Gretel in the wicked forest.

  The Northern picked up speed coming down the coast and leveled out at forty with a long blast on its whistle, a catcall to those left behind in Eureka. The Russian couple sat in facing seats; the porters had removed the bath-chair to the baggage car on the assurance that the old woman could manage the trip to and from the water closet with a cane and the assistance of her companion. Major Evelyn Davies snatched off his white wig and scratched his bald head with a furious, motoring movement like a dog.

  Elizabeth Mort-Davies blew exasperatedly through the mass of llama hair covering her face and leaned forward to take the wig and tug it back down to the Major’s ears. “Wells, Fargo pays porters for information. If they suspect anything they’ll have us held in Frisco and wire back to Eureka if nothing comes of it, and something might. Don’t forget Sioux Falls.”

  “You might at least have given me one without fleas.”

  “You might have foregone oysters in garlic sauce the last time you wore these whiskers.”

  At about the time Johnny Vermillion and April Clay were crossing to France and Major and Mme. Mort-Davies were riding the rails in disguise to San Francisco, the Ace-in-the-Hole Gang was in the middle of its worst run of luck since three of its more colorfully named members died under violent and ignominious circumstances, clearing Black Jack Brixton’s path toward its leadership.

  In a vainglorious moment during the robbery of the Pioneers Bank in Table Rock, Wyoming Territory, the president of that institution scooped a Schofield revolver from the belly drawer of his rolltop desk and shot Tom Riddle high in the chest. The rest of the gang responded characteristically, perforating the president with lead, but Tom did not benefit. Shock and loss of blood tipped him out of his saddle a mile outside town and they were forced to retreat to a cave to patch his wound and give him rest. By morning he was feverish and jabbering more than usual; it was clear he needed medical attention to survive. Brixton and Breed were in favor of finishing him off and skedaddling, but Ed and Charlie Kettleman voted to fetch a doctor, and Mysterious Bob broke the tie by throwing in with the brothers, possibly because he suspected his own habitual silence would become oppressive without Tom’s garrulity to balance it. Internal tension had broken up more successful criminal associations than the Pinkertons and the U.S. marshals combined.

  They sent Charlie. He’d proven himself capable of recovering the money from the Salt Lake City debacle, even if he’d lacked the foresight to drive home the lesson by killing the woman he’d found in possession. He went without protest. Brixton was still simmering over Charlie’s failure to secure the woman’s silence in Denver, and when it came to insubordination he’d been known to override the will of the majority with a bullet.

  Leading his horse down Table Rock’s main street to avoid spooking the recently robbed residents, squinting at signs in search of “M.D.,” Charlie caught a bit of luck when a pudgy, gray-haired man in a rumpled suit stepped out the front door of a private house carrying a small satchel just as the bandit was passing. The man paused to touch his hat to a woman standing just inside the doorway, who addressed him as “Dr. Edwin.”

  Charlie waited while the man set his satchel on the seat of a worn buggy in front of the house, then when he turned to untie the equally worn-looking horse that was hitched to it, tethered his own mount to the back of the buggy, stepped up behind him, and stuck the muzzle of his captured Colt against the man’s ribs.

  “You drive, Doc. I got a new one for your rounds.”

  Edwin put up a squawk, said he wasn’t the doctor for him, to which Charlie replied it wasn’t for him, and put an end to the palaver by thumbing back the Colt’s hammer. Edwin climbed onto the driver’s seat without another word and they rode out of town with the big revolver in Charlie’s lap pointing at the driver.

  In the cave, where the atmosphere was thick thanks to Ed having mistakenly tossed a Douglas fir branch onto the fire and filling the place with noxious smoke (and his companions with homicidal intent), Dr. Edwin goggled at the sight of Tom stretched on his bedroll, babbling in his stained bandages torn from a canvas bank sack. “What is it you wish me to do?”

  “Do? Dig out the slug, for chrissake!” Brixton looked more disconcerting than usual with his bandanna tied over his nose and mouth to prevent asphyxiation. He’d taken the precaution of soaking it in Old Gideon and was inebriating himself further with each breath he drew. Needless to say, he was an unpleasant drunk.

  When Edwin remained hesitant, Breed tore the satchel from his hand and dumped it out onto the cave floor to facilitate. Instead of instruments and bottles, books spilled into a pile, with Volume Five of Gibbon perched on top.

  During interrogation, it developed that Edwin was a doctor of philosophy, retained by the woman of the house Charlie had seen him leaving to tutor her fourteen-year-old son in the history of Western civilization. More smoke ensued of the burnt-powder variety, and Erastus Edwin, professor emeritus of the University of Maryland, claimed his own footnote in history as the only Roman scholar to lose his life at the hands of frontier bandits.

  Brixton’s fury having spent itself on the unfortunate pedant, Charlie took his punishment in the form of a fresh horse and a third trip to Table Rock to correct his error. This time, he broke into the office of Benjamin Ruddock, M.D., at the top of a flight of stairs slanting up the outside wall of a harness shop, and finding it unoccupied spent his time while waiting for the proprietor’s return satisfying himself as to the medical nature of the equipment and spelling out the script on a framed diploma on the wall above the examining table. When after forty-five minutes the door opened, he threw down on the rat-faced individual who came in carrying a cylindrical case and explained his errand. Dr. Ruddock shrugged and turned to precede him out the door.

  “Hold on! Let’s have a look in that there bag first. If it’s full of books I’ll plug you right here and save the trip.”

  Ruddock unlatched the case, spread it open, and held it out for Charlie’s inspection. While the desperado peered at the probes, forceps, rolls of gauze, and corked containers arranged neatly inside, the doctor swept a two-pound medical dictionary off a shelf, knocked him senseless, tied him with bandages, and went for the county sheriff, whose office stood next door to the harness shop. Ruddock, as it happened, had just returned from an identical abduction to tend to a member of the Turkey Creek Outfit, who’d lost three fingers blasting open a safe in the mail car of the Santa Fe Railroad outside Bitter Creek two days before; he’d been hot, tired, trail-sore, and in no humor for another enforced house call so soon after the first.

  Ironically, Tom Riddle survived. Breed, impatient over the delay, used his big Bowie to extract the bullet, not caring overmuch whether the surgery was fatal so long as it freed them to ride, and Tom’s miner’s constitution did the rest. When he was strong enough to sit a horse, Ed and Mysterious Bob took him to his sister’s pig farm in Nebraska to complete his recovery and returned to help Brixton and Breed separate Charlie from the jail in Table Rock. This they managed to do while the sheriff was at supper, leaving an inexperienced deputy in charge. So pleased was the gang by this unaccustomed stroke of good fortune that it satisfied itself with binding and gagging the deputy and locking him in Tom’s former cell instead of shooting him. (Ungratefully, the Table Rock Merchants Association added a hundred dollars a head to the reward for Ace-in-the-Hole’s capture or destruction. The late president of the Pioneers Bank was a popular member of its poker circle.)

  When Tom rejoined the gang, he had an anthology of new stories to tell, including a fanciful version of how he’d come by his wound d
espite the evidence of his listeners’ own eyes, and an involved anecdote about his efforts to teach simple arithmetic to one of his sister’s hogs. The others were grateful for the fresh material, and happy to be hearing something other than Bob’s deadly quiet and their own stale thoughts. For a solid week, their “Shut up, Tom” lacked conviction.

  But Charlie Kettleman was never the same after Table Rock. The blow from the medical dictionary had addled him, and during his occasional lucid moments he insisted that a bunch of those long words had leaked into his brain through the crack in his skull, tangling with his thoughts and making them come out incomprehensible and impossible to pronounce. This ruined him for horse trading; brother Ed was forced to increase his own skills twofold to keep the others from dwelling on the wisdom that Charlie had lost his usefulness and ought to be expelled.

  Black Jack Brixton’s theory about this latest setback was simpler than Charlie’s. He was superstitious, it must be remembered, and had formed the conclusion that Ace-in-the-Hole’s sour string had begun with its first encounter with the Prairie Rose Repertory Company, and would continue until they closed the curtain on its final performance.

  14

  In Paris, although they shared a suite in the century-old Hotel d’Hallwyl, Johnny and April were kept so busy by their respective schedules they rarely saw each other except to say good night on their way to their rooms. Each missed the other’s company and perspective, and at length they decided to revive their St. Louis tradition and meet every day at a restaurant they both found pleasing, to renew their acquaintance and compare the details of their day.

  Their choice was the Maison Cador, next to the church of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois and across from the east end of the Louvre, where Claude Monet had stood on a balcony to paint that Gothic pile eight years before. There in a cream-and-gold room decorated in relief and hung with crystal chandeliers, they sat in cane chairs at a pink marble table, sampling the patisserie’s sweets and omelets and correcting each other’s French.

  “Another new frock?” said he one day, admiring her pearl-colored suit and gray silk shirtwaist. Her straw hat wore an abundance of intricately tied ribbons. “Shall we rob the Banque de France, or stow away in a lifeboat during the voyage home?”

  “The Banque is impregnable to our method. I made a point of checking it out last week. In any case, you have our return tickets stitched inside the lining of that hideous caped overcoat. You oughtn’t to leave it lying about.”

  “I don’t consider hanging it in the wardrobe in my room leaving it lying about. You sewed it back up with admirable skill. I didn’t detect it.”

  “I took it to a seamstress, and supervised her work.”

  He nibbled at a cream-filled pastry. “Did you think I was hoarding love letters? I’m beginning to think you’re living your role. Repertory players are especially susceptible when they don’t trade off.”

  “That’s poppycock, and you know it. I wanted to make sure you weren’t selling forged American railroad stock to gullible Europeans. You might end up in the Chateau D’If for real, and then where would I be, a woman alone in wicked Paree?”

  “A bit less emphasis on the second syllable. I distinctly heard the double e.”

  “It’s pronunciation now, is it? Have you been taking French lessons behind my back?” She took a forkful of egg poached in white wine, made a little face, and sipped water to dilute the effect. Parisian food did not agree with her, much to her dismay; she felt it betrayed her American palate to the natives. In consequence, she ordered Parisian only, and bought peppermints by the half pound to put her stomach to rest afterward.

  “Only indirectly. My fencing instructor has taken it upon himself to turn me into a boulevardier. He makes his vocabulary points quite literally.” He touched a tiny scratch on his left cheek.

  “I’d wondered about that. I thought you’d run afoul of a married marquis. Precautionary measures?”

  “I think and hope I’ve fought my last duel. If challenged again, I’ll choose parasols at dawn. I merely wish to improve my form the next time I cross swords with Corny onstage. He’s gotten more graceful, have you noticed? It wouldn’t do for Hamlet to lose to Laertes.”

  “Your poor beautiful face. Haven’t those foils little round beads on the ends?”

  “Buttons. Monsieur Anatole doesn’t believe in them, nor in protective headgear. He considers fear of serious injury a useful learning device.”

  “Un gros sauvage. He’ll put your eye out, and you’ll play nothing but beggars and pirates the rest of your days.”

  “Sauvage, oui. Gros, non. He’s scarcely your height, and I rather think you have the advantage of a pound or two. In all the most charming places, I hasten to add. He’s damnably fast, and I think he has it in for men of greater stature.”

  “He’ll kill you. Or give you one of those horrible white scars that look like tapeworms.”

  “I wonder which will distress you most,” he mused. “You needn’t be concerned about the former. I pay him only after each session, and then by cheque. He’s an officer retired on half pay, with little more coming in thanks to his temperament.” He sipped his coffee. “And what athletics have you attempted? Waltzing with counts?”

  “I tired of the nobility the first week. The men all wear corsets and the women smell like mortuaries. My interests have taken a Bohemian turn. I’ve met the most interesting painter.”

  “Not one of those ragged Impressionists, I hope.”

  “He isn’t that kind of painter. He specializes in houses and bridges, which in this city should keep him employed for life. He has muscles in places I didn’t know they could be grown.”

  “You always fascinate me when you blush,” he said. “It’s a characteristic I’ve tried to develop, but in vain.”

  “For that, you have to have been raised in the Catholic faith.”

  “Oh, but I was. Every Sunday my father and I shared a pew with the governor, where Father delivered his graft by way of the collection plate. So will you surrender your citizenship and rear Anglo-French bastards on the Left Bank?”

  “If I made that choice, they’d not be bastards.”

  There was no banter in this; her tone was cold and metallic. She attacked her eggs.

  They finished the meal in silence. She was gone before he could rise, her skirts swishing over her curt good-bye.

  Johnny finished his coffee in deep thought. He’d never known April to take serious insult to anything he’d said. He wondered if perhaps they shouldn’t leave Rome to the philosophers and return home. Britain and the Continent had begun to corrupt them with its centuries of respectability.

  Gilbert Anatole was a former colonel of the Second Empire, who claimed to have lost his right hand to Prussian grapeshot at Sedan, converted to Marxism under the Commune, and dedicated himself to the overthrow of the Third Republic in favor of a government run by the proletariat, of which as a humble soldier he considered himself a member in good standing. He was an ugly little man with a dark complexion who parted his scant hair in the center and wore a singlet and old-fashioned silk breeches that accentuated his womanly hips and a set of genitals all out of proportion to his small body. Johnny could not help looking at his crotch, to his own intense shame and near disaster to his person when they fenced. Fortunately, although he was convinced Anatole was a pederast, he himself was not the man’s romantic preference. Valèry, the shaggy, paunchy gnome who showed up at the end of each session to drive him home, displayed proprietary interest, and his unwashed body left a tang in the air of the grubby little gymnasium in the Rue de la Glacière several minutes after their departure.

  Preposterous as he appeared when at rest, Anatole was a demon on the mat; a whirling, lunging, unstoppable engine of destruction, lethal at every angle, as if he’d sprouted razor-sharp quills on all sides in addition to the single foil (épée, properly, since the tip was neither blunted nor rendered harmless by a button) in his remaining hand. In place of the other he wore
a curious hook that ended not in a point but in an elongated loop shaped like a narrow spoon with a slot an inch and a half wide in the center. On the rare occasions Johnny defended himself sufficiently to lock blades in a tight clinch, the little colonel inserted Johnny’s nose in the slot and gave it a savage twist that brought tears to the victim’s eyes—and once a deviated septum, which Anatole later corrected by repeating the operation in the opposite direction, wrenching it back into place with a heart-stopping crack and nearly as much pain as the original injury.

  “Damn your eyes!” Johnny sprang back with his hands to his face. Blood seeped between his fingers.

  “Devene un homme, Americain. Be a man. I have left a piece of myself on every battlefield in Europe, and not a single tear. Did you not fight the rebel and conquer the red Indian?”

  “Not personally. If Lee had armed his troops with contraptions like that, they’d be eating grits in Washington. Sometimes I think you forget we’re only practicing. You confuse me with Bismarck.”

  “Ha. If you were Bismarck, they’d be eating crepes in Berlin. You poke when you should pounce. That is a sword, not a knitting needle. We go again. En garde!” He leveled his weapon, hook akimbo.