P. K. Pinkerton and the Pistol-Packing Widows

by Caroline Lawrence

  The wig muffled my hearing and the black poke bonnet was like the blinkers some horses wear. I could only see a blue-tinted tunnel before me. As I was crossing Musser Street, I almost got run down by a six-horse Concord stage. The driver cursed me in language unfit for publication, but apologized when he spotted my white-painted bamboo cane.

  When at last I reached a smooth sandstone sidewalk, I heaved a sigh of relief. But I had not gone a dozen paces when I was nearly trampled by a crowd of cigar-smoking men coming from the other direction. They were laughing & talking in loud voices.

  My yelp of alarm was genuine & must have been convincing. Immediately, one of the men came to my rescue while the others turned to watch with interest.

  This was not what I wanted. I had hoped to stay invisible. I had hoped my blindness would make people shy away from me.

  The man who rescued me was short & stocky with shoulder-length gray hair & bright black eyes.

  “Why, madam!” he cried. “We nearly knocked you over. Can you ever forgive us? How can we make it up to you?”

  I made my voice kind of whispery. “Thank you, kind sir,” I said. “I am looking for a body of men called the Legislature.”

  “A body of men!” cried one wag behind me. “She’s looking for a body of men! I reckon you have found a body of men right here.” Behind me I heard a chorus of guffaws, but my escort shushed them.

  “You have found the Legislature!” said the gray-haired man. “It meets right here in this fine sandstone building to hammer out new laws for the Territory.”

  I almost turned to look at the building that I had been aiming for but passed right by. Then I remembered I was supposed to be blind.

  The man was still talking. “I am about to deliver a speech. Please, may I escort you?” Without waiting for my reply he tucked my gloved hand into the crook of his elbow. “Do you not have a protector or chaperone?”

  I used my whispery voice to say, “The Lord is my protector and my chaperone, too. I have come to pray and intercede for the Legislature.” This was the clever Reply I had prepared earlier.

  “Prayer and intercession!” he exclaimed. “What a noble enterprise! There are several other devout Ladies who come along each day. I will introduce you to them tomorrow, but today you must sit beside me in the guise of a personal angel sent to aid me.”

  Two of his followers sprang forward to open the double doors of the Great Basin Hotel for us.

  “May I ask your name?” said the gray-haired man.

  I said, “My name is Mrs. Consuela Clever. I am a blind widow woman from Dayton. I am boarding at Mrs. Murphy’s.”

  “Enchanted,” he said, and lifted my gloved hand to his mouth.

  “May I ask your name?” I said in my breathy Blind Widow Woman voice.

  At this the herd of men burst out laughing again.

  “Pardon their rudeness,” said my rescuer. “They laugh because I am well-known to most people hereabouts.” He gave a little bow, which I could not see as I was “blind.”

  “My name is James W. Nye,” he said. “I am the Governor of this expanse of sagebrush and alkali known as Nevada Territory. This here is my Secretary, Mr. Orion Clemens. The legislators and many citizens have all gathered in one room and I am about to address them. Let us mount these here stairs,” he added helpfully.

  I nearly fainted. I was being escorted to the Legislature by the Governor of the Territory and his Secretary. They helped me up the stairs & onto a landing where we turned right & passed through another doorway into a big room full of people & cigar smoke & an excited babble.

  As soon as we entered, the babble ceased. Through my blue-tinted spectacles I could see there were about four or five hundred people crammed in there: women in hoopskirts and hatless men sitting at desks arranged in curved rows like the frown lines on a judge’s forehead. Facing those desks was a raised platform with a table and three chairs upon it. Below and in front of this dais was a table with reporters facing the crowd. Every head had turned & every tongue was silent. I reckoned all of Carson City was in that room. Maybe all of Nevada Territory.

  And they were all staring at me.

  I tottered on my high shoes & nearly fell, but the Governor steadied me and held me up.

  “I am fine,” I gasped. “Let me stay back here with the other ladies.”

  “I will not hear of it,” he whispered into the ear region of my bonnet. “You must sit right beside me so I can benefit from your prayer and intercession at close range.”

  As we proceeded down a central alley between the desks in their semicircles, all the men stared openmouthed and their heads followed us as the Governor of the Territory guided me up the stairs and right up onto the platform where everybody could plainly see me.

  “Sit here,” he said, and pushed me gently down onto a chair.

  I gasped. For as I sat down, one of the balled-up socks in my corset migrated north. I clutched my shawl closer around me and hoped the populace of Carson City would not notice that one of my bosoms was now higher than the other.

  I felt queasy. Also breathless.

  My bid to remain anonymous and to Blend into the Background was proving to be a spectacular failure. I was sitting beside the Governor with the Eyes of the Territory upon me.

  BANG!

  I nearly jumped out of my ladies’ patent extension steel-spring hoops when a man banged a wooden gavel.

  “Ladies, gentlemen, legislators and reporters,” cried the man who had banged. “His Excellency Governor James W. Nye will now give his annual address!”

  The thunderous applause was so loud that it hurt my ears even through a muffling wig and bonnet.

  Beside me, the Governor stood up & plonked a great sheaf of papers onto the table.

  With a terrible sinking feeling I realized that the unbound tome before him was the speech he intended to read.

  I thought, “We will be here for three hours, maybe four.”

  Then I thought, “Oh no. I think my other sock has just migrated.”

  And finally, “Can anything else go wrong?”

  Before me the clouds of cigar smoke momentarily dispersed. Near the back of the room where people were standing, I noticed a tall & handsome man dressed all in black apart from a white shirt.

  It was my friend Poker Face Jace: the man I had come to spy on.

  And like everybody else in that large room, he was looking straight at me.

  I HAD THOUGHT the Blind Widow Woman would be one of my best disguises. It transpired it was my worst.

  I was sitting in the Territorial Legislature on a podium beside the Governor in view of all of Carson City. My sock bosoms had migrated north. My corset made it hard to breathe.

  Now I had spotted the man I had come to shadow, and he was looking right back at me.

  Beside me, Governor James W. Nye was describing the glorious victories of the Union against the “miserable and treasonous” Confederate Rebels. He used so many big words that I did not understand half of it. But I guess other people did, for three spectators left the gallery, stomping out one after another, each slamming the door loudly behind. I guessed they were Southerners who objected to Nye calling their side “treasonous.”

  Although Jace was also a Southerner, he did not leave. Instead, he started to move forward. Unlike me, Jace has a way with people. The throng of those standing at the back melted before him like shadows in sunshine, without murmur or protest. I noticed some of the women in the crowd looking at him. Women always look at Jace.

  The Governor had moved on to the topic of a Famous New Railroad.

  “With the construction of a transcontinental railroad,” he proclaimed, “a new era dawns upon the commercial history of the world.”

  Jace emerged at the front of the crowd & stood right up against the waist-high rail that divided the people from the legislators
. Tall & slim with broad shoulders and narrow hips, he was dressed as usual in speckless black trowsers & a black frock coat. For once he was not wearing his favorite flat-crowned black hat and I could see his dark hair was longer than usual.

  Now the Governor was talking about Toll Roads. This caused an excited buzz in the gallery.

  Jace seemed unmoved, and as always, his face showed no expression. But because he was not wearing his hat, I could see his dark eyes looking straight at me.

  Had he seen through my disguise?

  I tried to imagine what I might look like to Jace: a slender, sallow-complected young widow woman in a black bombazine dress, holding a shawl about her upper person, with blue spectacles & black ringlets beneath a black poke bonnet, sitting very still & straight with her feet unmoving beneath her hoopskirt & her white cane leaning against the side of the table.

  Now the Governor was talking about Corporations.

  “In the last session of our Legislature,” cried the Governor, “an effort was made to enact a law under which Corporations could be created within our Territory. This effort was unsuccessful.”

  This statement caused angry murmurs from the spectators.

  As I gazed at Jace through the tunnel of my poke bonnet I saw him turn to look down at a woman beside him. She had slipped her lace-gloved hand through his arm and was smiling up at him. She was petite, with a wasp waist & a puffy dress & a tall bonnet that did not hide her pretty face but framed it. Even through my blue-tinted spectacles I could see her long eyelashes and pouty mouth.

  As I watched, the woman in the puffy skirt tugged Jace’s arm and he inclined his head to hear her better. I ought to have been relieved that he was not looking at me anymore but I felt an uneasy prickling of the little hairs on the back of my neck.

  Jace was still leaning down to listen to the petite woman in the tall bonnet. Suddenly she caught his black cravat & pulled his head even farther down & turned his face with a lace-gloved hand. Everybody was facing our way so I reckon those of us at the table were about the only ones who saw the Lady in the tall bonnet kiss Jace full on the lips.

  Opal Blossom had been right! Jace was Playing her False, and with a wasp-waisted beauty in a lighthouse bonnet! I felt dizzy.

  “Corporations should be formed,” said the Governor, “in a way that will secure a successful development of our resources and the profitable working of our mines.”

  Without moving my head, I let my eyes slide sideways to look at the Governor’s speech. He had been talking for nearly a half hour and he was hardly a sixth of the way through it!

  I slid my eyes back to Jace. The Lady was still kissing him.

  Now I felt sick as well as dizzy.

  Dang this blinkering, muffling bonnet & wig!

  Dang these lumpy, migrating socks!

  Dang this pinching corset!

  All of a sudden, the big, crowded, smoky room sped away from me like a runaway stagecoach until finally it overturned & the Governor’s voice faded & everything got blacker than the inside of a buffalo on a moonless prairie night.

  THE POWERFUL SMELL OF ammonia-scented violets filled my nose and made the inside of my head feel bigger than the outside of my head. I recoiled, suddenly wide awake.

  I thought, “What happened?”

  Then I thought, “I must have fainted.”

  And finally, “I swooned like a feeble-hearted woman!”

  The room was buzzing with excited conversation. A man was crying, “Order! Order!” and banging his gavel.

  Someone was waving a little bottle under my nose. The eye-watering fumes were coming from that. Smelling salts! I batted the phial away & tried to sit up but my corset impeded me so I slumped back again, knocking my head on the floor with a resounding thud.

  “Whoa!” drawled a familiar voice. “Take it easy. Are you all right? I would pat you for broken bones, but you might take that the wrong way. I reckon you best pat yourself. ”

  I duly patted my head. Praise God: my wig and bonnet remained firmly in place along with the blue spectacles hooked over my ears. A least I was not unmasked. Next I patted my bosoms. They had both escaped the confines of my corset, but they were still under my bodice and hidden by my shawl. I sent up another prayer of thanks that my disguise seemed to be mostly in place.

  “I am all right,” I replied in my breathy voice. “No bones broken.”

  “Order! Order!” bellowed the man with the gavel. “Order!”

  The crowd was quieting down a little.

  Someone helped me to sit up and the familiar voice whispered in my ear, “At least you have roused people from their sleep.” Then he added in a louder voice, “Where are you staying, ma’am? I will get my assistant to see you home.”

  “She is Mrs. Clever, Sam,” said another voice. “She is boarding at Mrs. Murphy’s.”

  “Order! Order!” cried gavel-man a third time. “Silence for the Governor.”

  I used my breathy voice. “I can find my way. I only felt a mite faint.”

  “Felt a mite faint? Why, you fell off the podium and hit the floor like a sack of turnips.” I had finally identified the familiar drawl. It belonged to Sam Clemens, the Virginia City reporter known to me.

  Had he recognized me?

  It seemed not.

  “Barry,” he said, “will you escort Mrs. Clever back to Mrs. Murphy’s and while you are there fetch my pouch of tobacco? I think I left it on my bed, which is upstairs in the big dormitory. My bed is right at the back of the room on the left.”

  “Perhaps you should get Dr. Pugh to check on her well-being,” added the Governor’s voice from on high.

  “Yes, good idea,” drawled Sam Clemens.

  “No,” I protested. “I do not need a doctor. I only fainted as widows are wont to do.”

  They helped me to my feet & a youth took my arm & guided me to a nondescript rear door near the curtains draping the back wall. This meant I did not have to run the gauntlet of 500 people plus Poker Face Jace and the wasp-waisted Lady in the tall bonnet, who had been sparking him.

  The door opened & I found myself outside in the blessedly crisp, clear air. The youth helped me down some wooden back stairs. The patent extension steel-spring hoops beneath my puffy skirt made this a challenge. When we finally got to ground level, I said, “Thank you. I can make my own way home. I only live a block or so from here.” I tried to remove my arm from the young man’s grasp but he said, “Oh no, you don’t,” and gripped me even harder.

  Then he did something surprising.

  He whipped off my bonnet & wig, and then yanked off my blue-tinted spectacles. “Master Peter Clever!” he cried. “I thought I recognized you. You did not buy those clothes for your blind widow ma. You are wearing them yourself. I suspected as much!”

  That was when I realized it was Master Barry Ashim, the boy who had sold me my disguise. What bad luck!

  I lunged for the wig and bonnet. “Give those back!” I cried. “They are mine.”

  He held the wig and bonnet high in his right hand, fending me off with his left. “Not until you tell me who you are and why you are wearing the clothes you bought for your blind ma. Fess up!”

  I stopped trying to seize my wig & bonnet, and I leaned against the rough sandstone wall of the Great Basin Hotel. I was finding it hard to breathe again. I reckon I looked mighty peculiar with my hoopskirt puffed out in front of me & my too-high bosoms & my spiky black hair.

  I fessed up. “My name is P.K. Pinkerton, Private Eye. I am on a Case.”

  Master Barry Ashim gave me openmouthed, wide-eyed Expression No. 4. He was so surprised that he let his hand drop down. I grabbed the wig and plunked it on my head. It was backwards. I turned it round the right way.

  “You are a Detective?” he said. “Does your poor, blind ma allow that?”

  “I do not have a poor, blind ma,
” I said, taking the bonnet. “I am an orphan. A double orphan, in fact.”

  His mouth was still hanging open. “A child Detective? I never heard of such a thing. Who hired you, and what are you doing here?”

  I took the blue-tinted spectacles from his left hand. They were a little bent so I straightened them. “I cannot tell you who hired me,” I said, putting them on, “but if you promise not to expose me I will tell you who I am shadowing.”

  “All right,” he said. “Who?”

  “First tell me who you are,” I said. “I thought you worked at your father’s clothing store.”

  “I do,” he said. “But I want to be a reporter. A man named A.J. Marsh invented a system of shorthand that we have been learning at our academy. When I found out he was going to be one of the reporters covering the Legislature, I asked my teacher if I could take time out of school to take notes and he agreed. Now tell me who you are shadowing already!”

  I said, “Do you know a man who goes by the name of Poker Face Jace?”

  Barry frowned for a moment. Then he said, “The black-clad Mississippi gambler who was sparking that lady in the tall bonnet?”

  “Did you see that?”

  He nodded. “We reporters sit at a table facing the Legislators. What do you want to know about him?”

  “Does he come to the Legislature regular?”

  Barry shrugged. “It is only Day Three, but, yes, I believe he has been here most of the time. I don’t think he likes it much.”

  “What makes you say that?” I asked.

  “Well, when he’s not kissing ladies he mostly lounges against the gallery wall looking half asleep.”

  “He does not usually kiss ladies in public,” I said. “And when he looks like he is sleeping he is really taking in everything. He does not miss one detail.”

  “Is that so?” said Barry. Then he asked me something surprising. “Say, is he your pa? You almost look like you could be his son. If he had married a Paiute squaw,” he added.