P. K. Pinkerton and the Pistol-Packing Widows

by Caroline Lawrence

  “You can see their luggage is packed and ready to go.” He pointed towards some trunks and carpetbags stacked inside the front door.

  Hallelujah! I was not too late.

  “I believe they are taking the five o’clock stage tomorrow morning,” he said, in answer to my first question. “That is to say, late tonight.”

  “No, I don’t think they are married yet,” he replied to my second query.

  And finally, “They told me they were hoping to witness the Legislature vote in the Corporation Bill.”

  Triple hallelujah! Jace was still unmarried and here in Carson.

  I ran north along the nearly deserted backstreets, then wove through outbuildings to the rear entrance of the Great Basin Hotel. I expected to find easy access to the Legislature via those back stairs. But instead of it being deserted—as it usually was—there were about half a dozen men at the foot of the stairs, and all armed with revolvers and rifles.

  Mustering as much confidence as I could, I started towards them.

  “Hold it right there!” cried one of the men, a bearded prospector type. “Who are you and what do you want?”

  “I am a friend of the Corporation Bill,” I said. “I want to see a man called Jason Francis Montgomery. I have an important message for him. Is he in there?”

  “He is in there,” said a man with a Colt’s Army. “We know Poker Face Jace all right. But who are you?”

  Another man at the foot of the stairs said, “Why, look at his fringed trowsers and moccasins! I’ll bet he is one of them half-starved Paiutes on the rampage. Get him, boys!”

  Too late, I realized I was still wearing my buckskin trowsers & moccasins & a hawk feather in my black slouch hat. I should have dressed up as Danny Ashim, Jewish Phonographic Reporter.

  I did not linger to explain but turned tail & fled. Shouts pursued me and a few bullets whizzed past my ears.

  I rounded the sandstone corner of the Great Basin Hotel and plunged into the crowd around the bonfire, dodging this way and that.

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  The shots were not fired by my pursuers, but by a man in a plug hat shooting into the sky for silence. The loud reports of those three shots from his Colt’s Army brought the brass band to an untidy halt.

  I was scrouched down behind a woman’s hoopskirt, pretending to tie my shoe, which was really a moccasin. A shiny-haired man in plaid trowsers & a small plug hat stepped up onto an upturned turnip crate.

  “My name is Hal Clayton!” he shouted. “Welcome to the Third House! As you may know, this year’s Territorial Legislature finishes in just over a week. Before it does, we are trying to get the First House to pass the Corporation Bill. We only need one councilman to abstain or change his vote and we will win.”

  Everybody cheered.

  “Keep an eye out for Councilman Hall!” he added. “Also known as ‘Greenback’ Hall on account of they bribed him with fifteen thousand dollars to vote against our bill.” The crowd booed. “He has not arrived yet and if he does we are finished.”

  Everybody growled.

  “P.K., is that you? You look so skinny!”

  I looked up from “tying my moccasin.” Miss Carrie Pixley was looking down at me. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Hiding from my pursuers.”

  “Nobody is pursuing you.”

  “No men with rifles and revolvers?”

  She stood on tiptoe and looked around. In the firelight I could see she was wearing a fur bolero jacket over a pine green corduroy dress. “Nope. Why were they pursuing you?”

  “I was trying to get in there.” I stood up and nodded towards the windows of the Great Basin Hotel, lit from within by candles.

  “Why?”

  “I think Jace is in there. I have to warn him about Violetta De Baskerville. All the rumors are true. She marries men and then kills them for their money and/or toll road franchises.”

  “Tell him tomorrow.”

  “I can’t. As soon as tonight’s session ends, Jace and Violetta are going to get married and then leave town on the early morning stage to Sacramento. I tried the back entrance but I guess they thought I was a rampaging Paiute Indian,” I added. “They will be on the lookout for a kid.”

  “Why don’t you tell him when he comes out?”

  “They got half a dozen Justices of the Peace up there,” I said. “He might come out married.”

  We both pondered this for a spell, she staring into the fire, me gazing up at the Great Basin Hotel.

  “Ladder?” she said.

  “Not tall enough,” said I. “And if they see me trying to get in the window they will lynch me for sure.”

  Suddenly Carrie turned to me and grasped my shoulders. Tiny reflected bonfires in her brown eyes made them look sparkly and gold. “I got an idea!”

  “What?”

  “They might let you in if you was dressed as that poor, blind widow woman. Only a hardhearted devil would turn you away.”

  I shook my head and gazed back up at the Great Basin Hotel. “I vowed never to wear that getup again.”

  That was when I saw a familiar silhouette on one of the pulled-down blinds in one of the upstairs windows. It was a tall, broad-shouldered man with slim hips and a cigar. I knew it was Poker Face Jace. At that same moment, a boy in the Brass Band played a little tune on his fife that made the gooseflesh pop up & my vision get blurry & my heart grow big & my chest swell out. That little tune did more than a whole brass band to muster my courage & my resolve. I had to make a sacrifice and be brave. I had to do it for Jace, who had once saved my life and even risked a bullet in the heart on account of me.

  Miss Carrie Pixley was right. It was time for me to don the hated Blind Widow Disguise and that danged pinching corset.

  I turned to Carrie. “All right,” I said. “I will do it. Will you help me get disguised?”

  “You bet!” she cried.

  CARRIE AND I HURRIED through the ever-growing crowd to Mrs. Murphy’s. As I was opening the door, a dirty white critter scampered inside before us. It was Sazerac, no doubt alarmed by the bangs of revolvers and the pops of firecrackers. His tail had been transformed from a jaunty capital O to an all-wool capital J placed firmly between his legs. He skittered down the hall ahead of us but nipped into my bedroom when I opened the door. Another gigantic boom—it sounded like someone firing an anvil—sent him whimpering under my bed.

  “Poor Sazzy!” I said, tossing him a piece of jerky. “I don’t like those loud noises either.”

  With Carrie’s help I got into my Blind Widow Woman Disguise. As I put on my false bosoms, I was reminded that I had started to grow some of my own. Luckily Carrie was over by the wardrobe smoothing out my crinolines and did not notice the two small bumps on my chest.

  As I was putting on my bonnet, Carrie said, “Wait! Only little girls wear their hair down. Grown-up ladies pin it up, you know, even under a bonnet.”

  “I do not have any pins,” I said.

  “You got any pencils?” she asked.

  I opened a drawer in the vanity table & pulled out a handful of Detective Pencils. Using just three, Carrie pinned up the ringlets of my wig and then put on the bonnet to secure them.

  “There!” she cried. “You look much older than you did before. Maybe twenty or even twenty-three.”

  “It looks bully,” I admitted.

  From outside came a muffled bang. I heard poor Sazzy whimper beneath the bed.

  “Do not fret, Sazzy,” I said. “It will be over soon.”

  “Do not listen to him, Sazzy,” said Carrie. “This will go on for hours.” She had twisted her own long locks, and was holding them atop her head admiring herself in the mirror.

  “You should pin up your hair, too,” I said, as I tied the ribbon of my black poke bonnet under my chin. “It makes you look about six
teen. Maybe even seventeen.”

  “But Sam always calls me Miss P. of the Long Curls,” she said. “He likes my long hair.”

  I said, “He has not taken much notice of your long hair so far this past month. And you just said only little girls wear their hair down.” (My pinching corset was already making me crabby.)

  “True,” said Carrie to her own reflection. She pursed her lips & still holding her hair up she turned first this way & then that.

  Finally she made her decision. “I’ll do it!” she cried, and with a few cleverly placed Detective Pencils she transformed her long curly hair into a fashionable “rotonde” or “fastness” or some such term. I made a mental note to learn to be specific about ladies’ hairstyles.

  “Maybe I should put on a corset and hoopskirt, too,” she said.

  “No time,” I said. “You have to guide a poor, blind widow to the nighttime session of the Legislature.”

  “Very well, then,” she said, and with a lingering glance at herself in the mirror she followed me out of the room.

  Once outside in the dark winter night, Carrie led me by the left hand while I used my right to tap with the cane. I usually do not like to be touched but I was wearing Mrs. Murphy’s black leather gloves so that made it bearable.

  The bonfire was even bigger than before and people were still making speeches, but as Carrie and I came close people turned to look at us.

  “Look! It is that famous Widow!” said a woman.

  “The Pistol-packing one?” said another.

  “No. The blind one. See her stick?”

  “I heard she packs a pistol, too,” said a third woman.

  “Hush! She is blind, not deaf!”

  And a man cried, “Move out of her way! She’s going to the House!”

  “See?” whispered Carrie. “Your Blind Widow Disguise is working.”

  The crowd parted before me and I had almost reached the sidewalk when two men came away from either side of the double doors of the Great Basin Hotel & jumped down onto the muddy thoroughfare & planted themselves in my way. Their firelit faces looked green through my blue spectacles. They wore stovepipe hats & bushy muttonchop whiskers & they carried Henry rifles.

  “You cannot go in there,” one of the men said. “They are taking the vote.”

  I looked up at the windows of the upper floor. Even through my blue spectacles, I could see Jace’s cigar-smoking shadow there on the blind.

  “Please!” I said in my breathiest voice. “I need to go in there.”

  “You cannot prevent a poor blind widow woman,” drawled a familiar voice, “for lo! She has come to pray and intercede. Stand aside!”

  It was Mr. Sam Clemens, my reporter friend, and Miss Carrie Pixley’s Beloved. He had come to my rescue without knowing it was me.

  “Why, Sam,” said one of them, “if you can vouch for her, then that is all right.” The men in the stovepipe hats stepped back up onto the sidewalk & opened the double doors of the Great Basin Hotel.

  “None of you can impede us,” proclaimed Sam, taking my right arm & helping me up onto the sidewalk. “Nothing can deter me. I will stay with you no matter what comes. No matter what nefarious scheme they devise to distract me, it will not stand! Miss Pixley? Is that you? Why, with your hair up you look so mature!” The fumes from his breath suggested that he had been at the cobbler’s punch.

  “Why, thank you, Mr. Clemens,” she said in her grown-up tone of voice.

  He said, “Is it not past your bedtime, child?”

  Miss Carrie Pixley jerked me to a halt at the very threshold, so that she could stamp her foot on the sandstone sidewalk. “I am not a child!” she said. “I am almost fourteen years old! I am nearly old enough to be married and some suitors have already come courting.”

  “Suitors?” drawled Sam. “Little Miss P. of the Long Curls has got suitors? Why, nobody told me the race was on. I have not even got my bets in.”

  Despite his claim that nothing would deter him, he dropped my arm and gave her a little bow. “Do you also desire to mount up to the chamber in order to pray and intercede?”

  “Why, no,” she said, and even through my blue spectacles I could see her dimples. “I would much rather try a glass of that fruit cobbler you love so much and listen to that fine brass band.”

  “The fruit cobbler,” he slurred, “is medicine for my cold, and strong stuff it is, too. I will buy you a champagne cocktail.” He offered her his faithless arm.

  “Oh, Sam!” she cried, taking his proffered elbow. “I would love that of all things.”

  And without a backward glance they abandoned me, a poor, blind widow woman.

  It did not matter. I tapped forward and the top-hatted men shut the double-doors behind me.

  I was in.

  I could smell the scent of Jace’s cigar drifting down. He might renounce me forever, but I had to tell him the truth about the deadly & heartless Black Widow, Mrs. Violetta De Baskerville.

  I pretended to tap my way forward, in case the men were looking at me through the glass windows of those double doors. I reckon they were not looking, for when Mrs. Violetta De Baskerville emerged from the side door of the Magnolia Saloon and said, “Do not mount those stairs, or I will fill you full of balls,” they made no move to help me.

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  From outside came the sound of more firecrackers, or maybe somebody firing a gun in the air.

  I turned slowly, as a blind woman might. Through my dark blue spectacles I saw my enemy. She was standing on my left in the inner doorway that led into the Magnolia Saloon. Through the filter of blue lenses, it appeared she was wearing black traveling silks with a black muff. The muff was pointing at me. I could not see what lay therein but I had no doubt that it was her .32 caliber four-shot pistol, also known as a “Muff Deringer.”

  I said in my breathy widow-woman voice: “What is the meaning of this outrage?”

  “Stop playacting,” said Violetta. “I know who you are. Get in here.” She stood to one side and gestured me into the infamous Magnolia Saloon, where many of the Legislators went to “take a nip” during breaks in the proceedings.

  It was a dim, narrow room with card tables at the back & three billiard tables near the front. This was where they had laid out Abram Benway’s body two weeks before. Across the room from where I stood was a mahogany bar with a long mirror behind it & shelves with colored bottles.

  Apart from a lone bartender polishing glasses, the saloon was deserted.

  I guess the owner had decided that with a rowdy & rambunctious crowd outside it was safer to close the place than keep it open. Or maybe he was the one serving champagne cocktails & Blue Blazers at the trestle table near the brass band.

  I decided to try my ruse one more time. “Where am I?” I said in my breathy voice. I turned on one spot, pretending to listen for her. “Who are you and why have you brought me here?”

  Violetta laughed. “You can stop this pretense, P. K.—or should I call you Priscilla or Petunia, maybe? I know it is you. I might not have guessed you were a girl, but I can see through all your disguises. Why don’t you take off those foolish spectacles? At least that way you can see me properly.”

  I stopped tapping & took off my blue spectacles. Now that I could see the room better, I let my eyes dart around for a way of escape. The front door of the saloon was firmly shut and a shade of painted oilcloth pulled down over its glass window. If there was a back door, it was swallowed in the shadows. The door through which I had entered offered the only hope of escape, but she stood pointing her muff and, sure enough, I saw a Deringer in there.

  “Sit down, P. K.,” she said. “You ain’t going anywhere.”

  I glanced at the lone barkeeper. Was he in cahoots with Violetta? I could not take the chance.

  As I moved forward to sit at the table, I saw myself in the m
irror’s reflection. I appeared to be a slender-waisted but shapely widow in a black poke bonnet and dress. My false bosoms looked bigger than they had in the mirror at Mrs. Murphy’s, maybe because my Smith & Wesson’s seven-shooter was also stuck down there.

  But my pistol might as well have been back in Virginia City, for all the use it was to me; to get at it I would have to undo at least three jet buttons of my black bombazine bodice. Where do you pack a pistol when you are a widow?

  I guess the answer is, in your muff.

  Violetta put her own muff on a round green baize table and sat down.

  As I sat opposite her, my reflection sank out of sight. My back was to the door but she was facing it. Through its glass window she would be able to see people coming and going. That was how she had spotted me.

  Without my blue spectacles I could now see that her traveling silks were not black but a reddish purple: Solferino. The orange glow of a coal-oil wall lamp made her favorite color resemble that of raw lamb’s liver. Her violet eyes looked almost Solferino, too. I thought if the Devil were of a mind to recruit beautiful female imps, she would do nicely.

  Cards were laid out on the table near a pair of lacy gloves & an ashtray & a strip of wooden Lucifers. Some of the Lucifers were gone and the ashtray held three “butts.” From this I deduced that she had been playing solitaire & smoking cigarritos. Drinking, too: there was also a strange beverage at her left hand. In a trumpet-shaped wineglass lay two bands of liquid color: red & violet, with a yellow blob like an egg yolk suspended between the two colors.

  I said, “Why are you not attending the nighttime session of the Legislature upstairs?”

  “Because I cannot endure another second of those droning, spitting men. Besides, it is only that boring Corporation Bill they are discussing. I do not know why Jace insists on being a secret champion to those tedious miners.” She took a sip of her three-colored cocktail. “Now tell me what you are doing here. We had an agreement. You promised to vamoose the Territory.”

  I looked at her and her Muff Deringer and stated my purpose honestly. “I came back to stop Jace from marrying you. I came back to save his life.”