The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion

by Loren D. Estleman

  From there he’d gone on to blasting outhouses, rain barrels, and a bobcat that had scratched him something fierce as he held it down and slipped a collar over its spitting head attached to a snuff tin filled with powder, touched off a fuse made from packing cord soaked in coal oil, and let it go. It was his bad luck that the cat had doubled back his way.

  He recovered more quickly from the burns than from the scratches, which became infected, contributing to his general disagreeability; but the memory of the close call led him to the decision to leave such technical things as timing fuses to someone more qualified like Tom Riddle, who’d blasted holes through solid rock in California looking for color. But Brixton never lost his fascination with the destructive power of a well-placed charge. He’d been known to blow up railroad tracks that could just as well have been barricaded by chopping down a convenient lodgepole pine, and to burst open safes in spite of the presence of a cooperative bank manager with the combination, just for the pleasure of the spectacle. When dynamite came to the frontier in the late 1860s, he’d celebrated by having Tom dump three tons of Rocky Mountain onto a train carrying nothing more valuable than what was in the passengers’ pockets. The account of the atrocity that ran in the Territorial Enterprise marked the first appearance in print of the nickname Black Jack.

  Train robberies were his favorite, because of the amount of explosives required to bring a charging locomotive to a halt and open the doors of strongcars with guards forted up inside. A satisfying blast, with boards and bodies and lengths of tangled rail flying and reverberations that shattered windows in towns a mile away, was often all the compensation that was needed for a disappointing haul. Breed, alone among the members of Ace-in-the-Hole when it came to speaking his mind, had once told Brixton he’d have blown up General Jackson just to see if he was really made of stone. (Brixton, in a mellow mood at the time with bits of brakeman on his shirt, had merely smiled in response.)

  Now, three days’ ride from Wichita, Brixton clung to the timbers of a tall trestle spanning the Arkansas River outside Fort Dodge, watching enviously as Tom bound a bundle of dynamite to a diagonal support and smeared the twine with tar to prevent it from soaking up water in the event of a sudden rainstorm and coming loose. Tom unwound several yards of cord from a spool hitched to his belt and threw the spool underhand to Ed Kettleman, standing atop the trestle where it rested on the high bank. He waited until Ed caught it, then wet the end of the cord between his lips like a bit of sewing thread and tied it to a blasting cap. He then inserted the cap in the bundle with the delicate touch of a surgeon. Tom had fine hands for a former pick-and-shovel man, slender and spatulated at the ends like a piano player’s.

  “Whyn’t you just tie it off and pay it out yourself when you climb back up?” Brixton asked. “If Ed missed, you’d have to climb all the way down to the river to fetch it back.”

  Tom drew a sleeve across his glistening forehead. “You know much about blasting caps?”

  “Not a thing. I got out of the blowing-up business myself before dynamite.”

  “I used to prospect with a fellow name of Spangler. He came up with the same plan. He retired all over northern California.”

  Brixton scowled at the bundle of sticks. “It don’t look like it would blow up much more than a man. You reckon it’s enough?”

  “It ain’t how much you use, it’s where you put it. You could tie it to that there strut and just impress the fish, but if you put it in the right place you can blow up Ulysses S. Grant and most of the Republican Party.”

  “I’d admire to do that. I would for a fact.”

  “That’s where you and me choose up sides. I’m a common thief, not no anarchist.”

  Brixton narrowed his eyes, which never much opened wider than bullet creases to begin with. “What’s got in you, Tom, apart from that Yankee banker’s slug? Sometimes I think you got your brains all scrambled like Charlie’s.”

  Tom thought, not for the first time, of telling him about the woman he’d seen at the Wichita station. But Brixton was unreasonable when it came to that Prairie Rose crowd. His fixation seemed to run counter to Ace-in-the-Hole’s best interests. Once again Tom censored himself. Above all he had to keep secret the euphoria he felt each time he drew a breath. Black Jack wouldn’t understand it, and what he didn’t understand he extinguished.

  “War’s over, Jack. General Lee’s writing his memoirs and the niggers got the vote. We got to stick with what we know best: robbing folks and blowing things up.”

  Brixton grinned, surprising him almost off his perch into the river thirty feet below. Black Jack just never showed his teeth except when he was gnawing on a chicken leg. “You ever blow up a bobcat?”

  “You mean on purpose?”

  “Well, sure.”

  “No, Jack, I can’t say I ever did. I blew up a cinnamon bear once, but it just happened to come along when the fuse ran out.”

  “Bobcat’s a mangy critter, sucks eggs and licks its privates right out there in front of God and Jefferson Davis.”

  “That may be so, but I don’t see the percentage in blowing one up.”

  “You might try it once, I mean when you’re testing a cap or somesuch. But you want to make sure and jump clear when you let go of it. You never know which way a bobcat’s going to run once you got your charge in place.”

  Tom chewed on that. For the first time since he was shot he wished he had a plug between his teeth, just to cover up how much thinking he was doing. There weren’t any rules at Ace-in-the-Hole about thinking as such, but there wasn’t any evidence of it either, beyond the engineering. Weasels put their intellectual activity on hold once they’d found a hole in the henhouse.

  “Well, Jack, I consider that smart advice. If I ever do take it into my head to blow up a bobcat, I’ll be sure and jump clear.”

  But Brixton didn’t appear to be listening. He was watching the Arkansas gurgling far below, carrying away twigs and muskrat huts and clumps of Kansas. “You ever blow up a building?”

  “You mean like a bank? All you got to blow up’s the vault or safe. You can pop open a Smith and Waddell with half a stick if you know where to put it, but a Foreman Choirmaster’s made mostly of iron. Half a stick would just bend it out of shape. Two’d blow off the door and turn all the greenbacks into rat’s nests. I wouldn’t go beyond a stick and a half with no Choirmaster.”

  “I don’t mean like a bank. I mean like a theater.”

  Something about the way Brixton drew out the word—“theeay-ter”—filled Tom with icy dread. The drawl had a drooling quality. The whole conversation had been a bubble off true, but this was hydrophobic.

  He decided to play it out. “Six sticks might do it, if there’s a second story. Maybe one more for luck. Depends on whether it’s board or brick.”

  “Tell you when I know.”

  Brixton seemed ready to continue, but Breed’s harsh twang cut across the noise of the river. He stood on the bank with his fists on his hips.

  “If you two hens are through squawking, that train’s due in ten minutes. Don’t you figure we ought to mount up and make like we’re fixing to rob the U.S. Army?”

  Tom climbed up after Brixton. He’d never thought he’d welcome an interruption from Breed.

  “Goodness me, what has become of our poor frail moth? He’s grown into an eagle.”

  Cornelius Ragland, so hailed, stepped down from the vestibule into the embrace of Little Nell, Lady Macbeth, and Joan of Arc, distilled into one intoxicating beverage. One sip of April Clay and he felt himself floating above the train platform.

  “Ponce de León was misled,” he said, when he managed to land. “The fountain of youth was in the Old World all along; and you have come fresh from it.”

  “Such a pretty compliment.”

  “And uncannily specific,” said Johnny, placing his stick on his shoulder. “How did you know she was in Europe?”

  “I sent him a postcard from Paris. Don’t be cross; I didn’t write anythi
ng on it. What’s the point of going abroad if no one envies you?”

  “The culture, perhaps. The history, the museums, Queen Victoria, the crème brûlée at Le Grand Véfour. If envy was your aim, you could have bought a French postcard in Kansas City and posted it from there.”

  “With a Kansas City postmark? The effect would suffer, don’t you think?”

  “But how would you know where to send it? We all took special care not to tell the others where we were staying.” He took the stick off his shoulder and tapped Cornelius on his.

  “You needn’t try to beat information out of Corny with your silly club. Where else would he spend his holiday, if not Hot Springs? He talked for months of taking the cure. Honestly, Johnny, you’ll never make a successful criminal if you don’t learn to think like a detective.” She lowered her voice to a husky whisper on the last point, although the crowd had thinned out from around them.

  “It was the coastal circuit for us.” Major Davies, attired eccentrically in a deerstalker cap and travel-worn Inverness, wrung Cornelius’ hand. “We were forced to steal out of Eureka in disguise to avoid a horde of well-wishers.”

  “Steal we did. They were quite eager to detain us. Welcome to the wilderness, young man. You indeed look fit.” Mme. Mort-Davies leaned forward for a kiss on the cheek, a service he performed with some discomfort. The cheek was leathery and cold.

  A porter appeared and asked him if he had any luggage to be unloaded. He shook his head, holding up his valise and fat leather portfolio. When the railroad employee withdrew, touching his visor, Cornelius asked Johnny if the costumes and properties had arrived from Denver.

  “I had them placed in storage in the theater basement. We’ll go through it all for damage later. You look to have nothing less than the complete works of Shakespeare stuffed in that case.”

  “The complete works of Ragland, at any rate. I finished mutilating the merry wives on the train. Directly I’m settled in I’ll begin transcribing copies.”

  April pouted. “What of St. Joan? Don’t tell me you’ve given her up.”

  He smiled and drummed his fingers on the portfolio. “I wouldn’t do that, so soon after the French. She’s en deshabille at present, I’m afraid; not fit for your eyes.”

  “You’re overestimating her exposure to the language,” Johnny said. “All she managed to pick up in Paris were a few phrases and forty-four boxes of hats and parasols. She’s been stuck on page ten of a biography of Joan for a month. He means to dress her in ribbons, dear, so you’ll know her for a saint and not a scrubwoman.”

  “Oh, please don’t torment me. I shall make allowances. I must read it right away or perish.”

  Johnny nodded. “I’d comply. She’s pigheaded enough to do what she says, and then we’ll be out our Anne Page.”

  Cornelius set down his valise, untied the portfolio, and handed her a thick sheaf of paper bound with faded ribbon. She seized it in both gloved hands and read the title page. “Oh! It’s in English.”

  “I thought it best,” he said. “In this country you can sing opera in any language but English. The reverse is true in drama.”

  They turned and drifted toward the station. Johnny placed a hand on Cornelius’ shoulder. “I’m happy to see you. The Prairie Rose is back in bloom.”

  The Mexicans, who agreed without exception that Matagordo was a general of uncommon brilliance, had to confess that for a gringo, Señor Brixton was no slouch when it came to tactics and strategy.

  First, he had set them to work with their machetes, hacking away undergrowth in the tall stand of trees north of the Arkansas River, leaving only a shallow fringe at the edge visible from the Kansas Pacific tracks so that it would appear not to have been tampered with. Then he had stationed them a dozen abreast on horseback among the trees where they would not be seen, far enough apart so that as the train approached the trestle they could slide through the spaces between as smoothly as water. When Señor Tomás, the man with all the words and an understanding of dynamite, touched off his two charges, destroying the trestle before the train and the tracks behind it, sealing it between, they would emerge, galloping and shooting and pinning the gringo soldiers in the crossfire from their guns and those of El Jefe Brixton’s men on the other side of the tracks. When enough of the soldiers had been slain, and a number of single sticks of dynamite flung at the train from horseback in order to complete the confusion, both forces would converge, kill or stay the hands of the remaining defenders, and remove the payroll, to be divided among them when they assembled later at a place called Cimarron, in the panhandle of the Indian Nations across the Kansas border. It was a plan worthy of Juárez, only this time with gold rather than glory awaiting them at the end. A man could not eat glory after all, nor use it to bind his bare feet against rattlesnakes and cactus. These Norteamericanos were not so dull and slow-witted as they appeared when they came to the border towns to drink tequila and catch the clap.

  Now the sons of Mexico sat on their tough, grass-fed mounts with carbines unshipped, listening to the clarinet whistle of the train and waiting for the first explosion, which was the signal to put the spurs to their flanks. Even the horses were wound tight as watches, snorting and tossing their manes and pawing the ground; but horses were stupid and carried no memory of previous injuries. They were in it for the oats.

  “If just one of you greaser bastards twitches his thumb, we’ll scoop you all up with tortillas.”

  They turned their heads to a man. Not more than two or three understood English, but the flat smack of the Middle Western voice from behind them was gringo to the core. It belonged to a red-whiskered cavalry sergeant seated in the center of twenty men astride fat horses, and every one of them had a Springfield rifle trained on a Mexican back.

  21

  “It’s a comedy of manners,” Johnny explained.

  The gentleman representing the Wichita City Eagle, a wiry fifty with a tuft of white beard at the end of his chin—the living embodiment of the character the political cartoonists of a later day would christen Uncle Sam—smiled over his glass of wine. So far he’d shown no sign of carrying a notebook on his person. “Most of our readers know the meaning of comedy,” he said. “You might have to define manners.”

  Tim Saunders, proprietor of the variety theater, refilled the man’s glass from one of a half-dozen bottles standing uncorked on the table. “You mustn’t pay much heed to anything Mr. Cyrus has to say,” he told Johnny. “He’s determined to send the few subscribers he has left over to Mr. Dockerty.”

  Dockerty, publisher of the Wichita Beacon, took his nose out of his glass. It was a long nose, and a drop of wine quivered on the tip. “I’m not sure what good they’d do us. Most of them can’t read.”

  Johnny laughed. “Give me a community whose newspapers are out to let each other’s blood and I’ll give you a well-informed populace. Briefly put, The Merry Wives of Windsor is the story of a scheming thief and the wondrous variety of ways he receives his comeuppance.”

  “I’d pay to see that.”

  This statement, and the voice that delivered it with a mild Irish lilt, drew Johnny’s attention to a balding fellow with sleek handlebars. He wore a starched white shirt buttoned to the throat under a town coat and was the only man in the room not holding a glass. Johnny switched hands on his own glass and offered his right. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”

  “Mike Meagher.” The Irishman grasped it firmly and let go. His pale eyes held on to Johnny’s afterward.

  “Meagher’s our city marshal,” Saunders said. “His brother John is sheriff in this county. We pay them a king’s ransom to keep the peace, and they earn it.”

  Cyrus of the City Eagle helped himself to the bottle. “Fortunately, we pay them a straight salary rather than a commission based on the number of men they kill in the performance of their duty. We’d be bankrupt otherwise.”

  An unhealthy silence followed, broken by Dockerty of the Beacon.

  “That’s the edit
orial policy that’s shrunken the Eagle’s circulation and swollen ours: alienation and exaggeration. Without the brothers Meagher, we’d be burying innocent citizens by the day. We approve of cowboys, we do; they work hard, and they spend money like water, to our great benefit. But once they come out from under the harsh conditions of a long trail drive—well, a stampede would be hard put to compare with the damage to life and property. Mike and John remind them of those manners Mr. Cyrus finds so scarce among his readers.”

  “Yes, a corpse behaves well under most circumstances.” Cyrus drank.

  “Mr. Cyrus prefers to keep his collar clean without the unpleasantness of a laundry bill,” Meagher said, “and so I must pay it myself. As a dramatic actor, Mr. Vermillion, how many bows do you take when your villains go unpunished?”

  “None, I’m bound to say. Our audiences will have justice or nothing. However, I’m happy to add that theater is not life.” Johnny took a swift sip from his glass and beckoned to April, standing next to Cornelius and the Davieses with an affectionate hand resting upon the arm of her saloonkeeper mayor. The reception was taking place in a hospitality suite at the Occidental Hotel, with the press and leaders of the community invited. April drifted over, a glittering vision in a ruby-colored Paris gown she wore off the shoulders and a crown of white feathers in her hair. Her smile radiated when Johnny introduced her to the marshal.

  “Such a strong hand.” She squeezed Meagher’s. “I haven’t felt so safe since I left Park Avenue.”