“And the stolen watches?”
“Ah, yes. Well, the chain does not match the current watch you wear. The watch is quite new, and the chain is old.”
“Would that not be the second watch, then?”
“No, because the clasp on the chain has been altered twice. Once for the second watch, and again for the third.”
Arvel sat back and laughed. “You are a remarkable fellow, Mr. Chaney. “Now, let me give it a try.” Arvel grabbed his chin and stroked it, observing the fat man.
“Okay, Mr. Chaney you are a man. You like to eat…a lot.” The fat man started grinning. “You were in the GAR. You are a mason. You like to wear Homburg hats, and you sell cash registers.”
“Well done sir, well done.”
“But Mr. Chaney one word of advice. If you’re going to sell cash registers here, you might want to get rid of your GAR pin and mason fob. There are many former confederates in these parts, and not a small number of Catholics and Jews. Money has no political affiliation, or religious agenda. You’ll do well to not advertise these things.”
“Point well taken,” he began removing the items and placed them in his vest pocket. “This calls for a celebration, Mr. Walsh.” Chaney was always pleased to make the acquaintance of men like Arvel Walsh. He pulled out a large flask and two small silver cups. He poured each of them a drink. “This is the finest Bourbon I could find.”
They drank and Chaney looked out the window. He finished his cigar and sat back in his seat. “Mr. Walsh, I am an old, fat man, and all alone in the world. I have my work, and I have my travels. So, I spend my money on indulgences of food, clothing, fine spirits and cigars.”
“Sounds like a comfortable life, Mr. Chaney.” He smiled at the man. “What did you do in the war?”
“You will be shocked to hear.” He puffed his chest out. “I was a commissary officer.” He smiled, and patted his belly. “One thing I know, Mr. Walsh, is food. It was not a glorious post, but crucial, none the less.”
“Agreed. We always appreciated our grub, Mr. Chaney. It may not have been home cooking, but it kept us alive.”
“And you, sir?”
“Infantry.”
Chaney poured again. He raised his cup, “To the Infantry.” Arvel drank.
“To the Grand Army of the Republic.”
They drank and chatted and laughed through the rest of the trip.
XIII Muses
Arvel delivered the mules to his client without incident. It was refreshing to travel unmolested, and Arvel felt strange. The land up north was so much more civilized than down south. He did not need to touch his guns. He was feeling better now, but not quite ready to return home. He decided to take a detour and stop at a place known as Walnut Canyon. He and Rebecca had visited this place a year before she died. Rebecca loved the history of the place, and Walnut Canyon had been the home of cliff-dwelling Indians many hundreds of years ago. For reasons unknown, the place became abandoned, and was a treasure trove of relics. Rebecca decorated most of their hacienda with the items they had found there. Arvel always considered it to be a rather eerie and lonely place, but his conversation with Chaney and the ride on the rails drew him to the past, and memories of Rebecca and little Kate. He felt that visiting the ruins would do him good.
It was a fine day, hot, with a nice steady breeze, and he dozed as he rode along. His mind wandered with the steady rhythm of Tammy’s gate. He began to dream of music, the kind that he once heard in Philadelphia with Rebecca. It was Mozart’s dance music, and he swore he heard it for real, rather than in a dream. He pulled himself out of his stupor and listened more intently. It was coming from the center of the canyon, magnified by the echoes common to the place. He began to follow it. Off in a distance he saw movement, and as he approached, could see two lithe figures, dressed in flowing white togas, dancing about the waters at the floor of the canyon. Off to the side, a young man’s voice could be heard, calling out directions in a muffled voice. Arvel finally picked him out among a copse of trees, his head buried under a black cloak behind a camera. Arvel sat a little straighter in the saddle and rubbed his eyes. He knew that he was not dreaming.
Suddenly, one of the young nymphs looked up and shouted to the others. “Oh, goody, a cowboy!”
The two young women ran to him, lifting up the skirts of their togas to keep them from dragging the ground. The young man emerged from behind his camera. He attended to the gramophone. They all smiled as they addressed him.
Arvel stood up in his saddle and bowed, tipping his hat. “Ladies.”
“We were dancing.” One girl looked at him and giggled. They were all slightly inebriated.
“I am sorry to disturb your party.”
The other young woman grabbed his hand. “Come, you must join us. I am Ellen, and this is Jess. We are having our photographs taken.” She beckoned him off his mule. “This is André.” She pointed to the young man, who wore a loose white shirt, untucked from his trousers, and a wide leather belt, in the style of a Russian peasant. “André is an artist.”
Jess leaned close to Arvel and whispered. “He is in a foul mood. He doesn’t believe photography is really art, and it’s put him in a terrible state of melancholy.” She suddenly became distracted and flitted away to the phonograph and got it started again. The music was a strange addition to the already surreal scene.
“Oh, don’t mind her,” the other young woman took his hand, leading him to their encampment. “André gets into moods all the time. He is a suffering artist.”
“I am not in a mood!” André threw his head back, pushing his locks out of his eyes. He bowed to Arvel, nearly to the ground. “It is true, sir, that I love my work, and am too often disappointed in myself, and it is, also true, that photography is a crude medium. It is not an artist’s medium.” He looked away, not a little dramatically.
“Oh, show him your work, André.” Ellen, seemingly the most lucid and sensible of the two, spoke again. She pulled Arvel to a marquee tent set up in the center of a meadow by the stream. Arvel was impressed with the camp, and knew by its location, and care by which it had been laid out, that these three were not alone. He stepped through the flap in the tent and observed André’s collection.
“Maurice says photography is a rubbish medium.” André looked on at his work.
“Maurice is an English Philistine who knows nothing of art.” Ellen stroked his long tresses, attempting to comfort him.
“Well, he is studying this year at Cambridge.”
“And learning to ape the old masters, in old, outdated and boring mediums. You, meanwhile, are pushing the very boundaries of art. You will be famous some day.”
“Famous, some day!” Mimicked Jess, in a babyish voice, then hiccupped. Then looked on at Arvel and giggled.
He had some works of the canyon, and many of the young women, in various poses, with the dwellings in the background. They were intriguing.
The first young woman pushed her way into the tent. “Show him the naughty ones, Ellen.” She giggled again.
“Shush.” Ellen pushed the silly one, admonishing her with a glare. “They are not naughty.” She smiled, and began to giggle herself. “I swear, you are silly.”
“All rubbish, all rubbish.” The young man looked on with a pained expression.
“If I may be so bold,” Arvel continued to survey the photographs. “These bring to mind the artist Cameron. You certainly would not say she was no artist, sir.”
André brightened. “Do you mean it, sir?”
“I certainly do. I saw Cameron’s work back in Philadelphia, just after she died. You must know her work.”
André stood, pensive for several moments. He smiled at Arvel. “You are an oasis in the desert, sir.”
“Oh, show him the naughty ones.” The silly one was flitting around the inside of the tent, she brushed against Arvel several times, extending her sheer toga with outstretched arms, as if forming wings. “He is an aficionado. He will appreciate the artistic me
rit in them.”
“You are a shameless exhibitionist, Jess.” The more sober woman seemed to be having second thoughts.
“I would like to see them, if they won’t embarrass Miss Ellen.”
André pulled aside a large canvas to reveal the “naughty ones.” They featured Jess and Ellen in various poses, in various stages of undress. They were well done. The girls were nude, certainly, but not in any way to be compared to the pornographic material he had seen in the Dunstable’s collection.
They insisted that he stay, and camp with them for a few days. André, in addition to his art photography, had been commissioned to chronicle the West. He asked Arvel to pose for him, as he was a “real” cowboy, as Jess had put it.
Arvel settled the mules down for the evening and let the young people continue their activities in front of the camera. He spotted an older man dozing under the shade of a tree. He approached him. “I thought you fellows never sleep.”
The man looked up at him under the brim of his hat and smiled. “That is just the Pinkerton hoopla.” He stood up and rubbed his head, then stretched. He extended his hand.
“Name’s Thoby, Henry Thoby.” Arvel shook the man’s hand. He was well dressed in city clothes and wore a big six shooter. He had a Winchester and shotgun close by. He offered Arvel some tobacco, and Arvel offered him a pre-twisted one from his pack. They sat down and smoked.
“I imagine you did not expect to find that out here.” He pointed with the end of his cigarette toward the young troupe.
“Can’t say that I did.”
“You are looking at the heirs to eighty percent of the wealth in this county, Mr. Walsh. The tall one, Ellen, has a family in railroads; the other girl is in shipping, and the boy, coal.” He crushed the cigarette out on the sole of his boot. “God help us.”
The girls began to splash each other as they danced through the river. The young man called out for them to stop getting his equipment wet, then joined them. They began rolling around in the grass and laughed and giggled to exhaustion.
Thoby smiled at them. He didn’t really mind them. They were spoiled, and useless, but not unkind to him. He had been hired as an escort through the Pinkerton agency. It was a high profile job and Arvel knew the man must be capable, despite his years and mild exterior.
They were planning to stay out West until Christmas, moving their way on to California, where they were going to get a ship for New York. Other than this rough plan, there was no real itinerary.
“How is the travel south, Mr. Walsh?” Arvel understood what he meant.
“Mr. Thoby, you have to be careful south of Tucson. There are a fair number of bandits, white, Apache, and Mexican. They will not be kind to your entourage. I would recommend train travel in these parts. I’m not certain what you can expect if you stay north, and move on to California overland. I’m not familiar with that territory.” They were interrupted by more commotion.
Jess had captured a frog and was chasing the others with it. Arvel and Thoby looked at each other and Thoby just shook his head.
“You will not believe this when I tell you that those girls have had the best schooling money can buy. Their parents would be mortified if they knew of this behavior.”
Arvel enjoyed them. He watched them run wild. “Are they romantically involved with the young lad?”
Thoby grunted. “There is no risk of progeny from those loins, Mr. Walsh, if you get my meaning. On the contrary, I do make up two cots, but the boy does not enter into it.
Arvel felt his face flush. “Oh, I see.” He smiled at the girls; running, playing, just being happy with each other.
André called him over, beckoning him to get in front of the camera. “Go ahead, Mr. Walsh, he has taken enough likenesses of me and the gals. It won’t hurt a bit.”
Arvel took it in stride. André photographed him with his hat, without his hat, holding his Henry Rifle, holding his revolver, holding a rope. While André was fiddling with his camera, Arvel began twirling his rope, the way he used to do to entertain his daughter. He was quite handy with a rope and soon the girls were oohing and ahhing at his prowess. Soon, Jess got some creative ideas, and had Arvel rope her, pretending to be a slave girl, feigning distress. Ellen joined in. Arvel was enjoying the silly behavior. The girls reminded him a little of how he felt around Chica.
Arvel saw a man ride up, older yet than Thoby. He had a small doe carcass slung over his saddle horn.
“Mose is back!” Jess jumped up and down, clapping her hands. Mose was the other escort, and responsible for, essentially, everything related to the care and feeding of the trio. He nodded to Arvel, who suddenly felt a bit silly; Mose treated him indifferently.
Arvel watched the old man work. He was an interesting fellow. He had known Jess’s father for many years and was a man of many talents. He quickly went to work on the deer, preparing the heart and liver, starting it in a skillet with some onions and lard while he skinned the animal and prepared the remainder of the meat for later.
Eventually they sat around a big campfire Mose had built up. They dined on fresh meat and red wine. Everyone laughed and enjoyed the fine evening. When they were finished, Ellen stood up, a little unsteadily. She grabbed Jess’s shoulder for support. “Time for performances.” She nodded at Arvel. He looked at his hosts, confused.
Jess grabbed Ellen by the arm, and stood up next to her. “Everyone has to do something for their meal.”
Arvel smiled, uneasily. “Such as?”
“Sing, or recite, or dance, or sing and dance, and recite,” said André, whose mood had improved significantly since Arvel’s arrival.
Thoby smiled at Arvel through a cloud of cigarette smoke. “No getting around it, Mr. Walsh. You’ve had your meal, the girls must be compensated.”
“Compensated,” Jess hiccupped.
Arvel thought for a moment. He stood up, and put his hand in his vest. The words came slowly, but more easily as he went along:
“Love is sunshine, hate is shadow,
Life is checkered shade and sunshine,
Rule by love, O Hiawatha!"
From the sky the moon looked at them,
Filled the lodge with mystic splendors,
Whispered to them, "O my children,
Day is restless, night is quiet,
Man imperious, woman feeble;
Half is mine, although I follow;
Rule by patience, Laughing Water!"
Thus it was they journeyed homeward;
Thus it was that Hiawatha
To the lodge of old Nokomis
Brought the moonlight, starlight, firelight,
Brought the sunshine of his people,
Minnehaha, Laughing Water,
Handsomest of all the women
In the land of the Dakotas,
In the land of handsome women.”
He stopped speaking, and no sound was heard for several moments. Suddenly, Jess began clapping frenetically, “c'est magnifique!”
It was the girls’ turn. They looked at each other and giggled. They sashayed a little distance away, then crawled up on a high rock, using a ladder Mose fashioned to get them into some of the dwellings.
“Watch for snakes,” said André, nervously. He did not like to range far from the fire after dark.
The girls faced away from the party, looking down, into the ravine. They began singing in harmony:
“She is far from the land
Where her young hero sleeps,
And lovers are round her, sighing;
But coldly she turns
From their gaze, and weeps,
For her heart in his grave is lying.
She sings the wild songs
Of her dear native plains,
Ev'ry note which she loved awakening -
Ah! little they think
Who delight in her strains,
How the heart of the Minstrel
is breaking.
He had lived for his love,
For his cou
ntry he died,
They were all that to life
Had entwined him -
Nor soon shall the tears
Of his country be dried,
Nor long will his love
Stay behind him.
Oh! make her a grave
Where the sunbeams rest,
When they promise a glorious morrow;
They'll shine o'er her sleep
Like a smile from the West,
From her own loved
Island of sorrow.”
The cavern echoed their plaintiff chorus, and gave the impression of several beautiful nymphs, singing through the ages. Arvel blushed. He quickly lit a cigarette and let the smoke burn his eyes to hide the tears that he could not control. He did not know why he was so emotional.
The other men bowed their heads, and tried to look distracted, while the hair on their necks stood on end. It was a moving and sad song, befitting their surroundings. No one clapped, as the girls returned, hanging on each other as if to give support for fear that the emotion had drained all the energy from their limbs. Jess was sobbing, and kissed Ellen. “That was beautiful.” She sniffed, then wiped her eyes with the back of her hands. “Mon cœur se brise.”
The Mule Tamer Page 16
