Somewhat hidden in the shadow of the man-bear, a rather sickly-looking young man, seventeen or eighteen in years, long and lean with straw-colored hair, stifled a dragging, core-shaking cough with his fist as he leaned against the wall. If he was aware of the three empty chairs at the table, he was ignoring them. His dark eyes stared off into the distance, endlessly tired and desperately forlorn with large purpled bags hanging below them. They were inattentive, emotionless, dead eyes. If he cared at all about the conversation being had, it didn't show. He was handsome in his indifference, but the Gentleman wondered how he might look in better health with a soul restored to those dim eyes. The Gentleman grinned at the sight of him.
A lifetime of training his ears to zero in on the smallest sounds, ready for an ambush, allowed the Gentleman to hear in the midst of the banker and the bear's whispered exchange the words "train," "robbery," and "Fourteen Mile City." The Gentleman downed his whiskey, his grin widening. He'd found himself a trio of gold thieves, it seemed. Leaving his glass on the counter, he sauntered over to make introductions.
"From the sound of things, you boys are lookin' to rob a train." All sound, all movement, nearly all signs of life at the corner table ceased. The banker's eyes grew wide and wild, like a trapped animal's, as they looked up at him. The Gentleman put his hand on the back of a chair as if waiting for an invitation to sit down.
Man-bear scowled at him, looking out from under his hat. Very slowly, with malice the likes of which the Gentleman hadn't heard before, he said, "Ain't none of your business."
"But why try to rob a train out of Fourteen Mile City, loaded with gold and heavily guarded, when you could make a much bigger haul with much less effort?" Pulling a chair out from the table with one hand, the Gentleman swung a long leg over the back to straddle it. With his duster pulled back at such an angle, the grips of his pistols hung exposed on his hips. The initials "VA" inlaid in gold and mother of pearl on the deep mahogany of the gun stocks gleamed in the light of the oil lamps as if they were on display. As the Gentleman sat, the banker suddenly became awestruck. Even the boy in the shadows stirred to life and took notice.
"Y-you're—" the banker started.
"The Virginia Gentleman," the boy whispered.
"Yes! Gentleman Blankenship, the Virginia Gentleman," the banker continued frantically. "That's you."
The Gentleman casually pulled a rolled and flattened newspaper from the inside pocket of his duster and began to straighten it. "You boys flatter me."
"But—but—" The banker drew in closer, still nervous and reaching for his breast pocket. "How did you hear about what we were—?"
"You gotta have good ears to hear the marshals sneaking up on you, friend." He laid out the newspaper, a nearly month old edition out of Billings, the full top half of it dominated by detailed etchings of a bejeweled young woman in a long flowing dress, a coal-fired railroad engine, and a narrow, plummeting waterfall. "You boys see this gal here?" He jabbed a finger at the illustration for emphasis. "She's some rich princess, duchess or what-have-you from over t' Europe. Loaded rich. Crown jewels and all that. And they say she takes everything she owns with her wherever she goes, even takes her big ol' four-poster bed along. Now, she's headin' into the Yellowstone to do some sightseein', see? Travelin' all the way from New York and Chicago to come see all us out here. And those passenger trains? Even the ones tha'd be carryin' the likes of this gal here? Are much less guarded than the gold trains you boys were fixin' to make over. The way I see it, among the four of us, we can—"
A thick, brown splash of tobacco juice sprayed onto the Gentleman's newspaper, globs of it splashing back up to hit him in the face. The banker's expression grew pale. The Gentleman drew silent. And the man-bear slowly wiped a hand at his lips before asking, "Why should we let you in on our score?"
Without looking up, the Gentleman answered, "Because I've got a much bigger, much better plan than you three amateurs. And it saves me the trouble of finding my own gang of boys. 'Course, if you don't want me along—" In one fluid motion, an initialed six-shooter was resting squarely between the man-bear's eyes, forcing him to stare down the underside of the barrel of a Colt revolver, the hammer back and the Gentleman's finger on the trigger. "I can ensure these boys a much bigger cut right quick."
The card players and barroom dancers carried on, oblivious to the situation arising in their midst. The piano player banged out a few more bars of whatever lighthearted tune he was attempting to play on the out-of-tune instrument. A hand of poker ended in a poor man's favor with cheers arising from the table. The barkeeper wiped down a row of glasses to prepare a round of drinks. The man-bear showed no fear and kept right on looking down his nose. The boy at the wall watched intently but showed no emotion. The Gentleman's face remained set and determined. Indeed, the only person in the whole of the saloon to raise a fuss at the sight of a drawn pistol was the banker, who wore his own pair of six-shooters on his hips for all the world to see.
"M-M-Mr. McCoy, do you know who this is? The Virginia Gentleman has robbed more stages than I could count. He's killed men—countless men!—for far less than what you just—"
"I'd listen to your friend if I were you, Mr. McCoy," the Gentleman said, drawing out the name with sharp tongued disdain.
Mr. McCoy chewed his tobacco cud, still paying no mind to the revolver level with his forehead. He leaned over to spit on the floor, the Gentleman's aim never straying from its mark under the floppy-brimmed black hat. Righting himself, McCoy cleared his sinuses in a hefty-sounding snort. Tilting his head forward slightly, he said finally, "I'm listening."
"Good." The Gentleman re-holstered his weapon as swiftly as he'd un-holstered it. Rather than cover it once more, he left it exposed: a reminder to prevent further interruption. "Now," he continued as he took his silk handkerchief from around his neck to wipe the remains of McCoy's expectoration from his face, "as I was saying, with four of us, it would go down like this: two on the train, two waitin' to pick up. If we catch the train up in Laurel, the passengers won't have much time to get a good look at us before we hold 'em up. There's only a handful of depots between there and Livingston, which is where the line splits to head into the park."
The Gentleman leaned forward and made a point of looking each of his prospective gang members in the eye. "The train with our duchess and all her goods pulls through there on Thursday—this Thursday. Which means we have to high-tail it up t' Montana 'tween now and then and buy two of us a ticket t' Livingston. So, if all you boys are in, I suggest we all have one for the road and then hit the trail."
McCoy and the banker exchanged a long glance. The banker's expression shifted from emotion to emotion as he tried to read and deliberate with the stone-faced McCoy. After a strained silence, the banker looked back to the Gentleman, nodding his head uncertainly. "Yes. That is that we—that we are—"
"We'll do it. For equal shares, all of us," McCoy said.
The Gentleman leaned back in his chair, his grin returning. "That's fine by me, boys. Looks like we've got ourselves a partnership." He looked to the banker. "You?"
He jumped at being addressed directly. "Me, sir?"
"What's your name?"
"W-W-Wilton, Wilton Harward."
"Well, Wil—" The Gentleman dug in his pockets for a few coins, handing them to his new slick-haired, well-dressed, bespectacled partner in crime. "—buy the four of us a round of the best whiskey."
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir," Wilton said, heading toward the bar before the words could even escape his lips.
The Gentleman's grin widened as his eyes followed after him. He liked Wilton so far. He might even keep him around, depending on how things went over in the end. The Gentleman turned his attentions to the remaining unnamed member of their party, the straw-haired youth who kept his position in McCoy's shadow. He stifled another cough as it shook his core—"What about you?"—and twitched at being acknowledged. "Who might you be?"
"He's my boy," McCoy answered before th
e young man could draw breath to answer.
"Is that right?" the Gentleman said lightly, scratching at the stubble on his chin.
McCoy righted himself in his chair, bringing his whole hulking form to tower over the table. "He ain't your concern."
Wilton returned just then with four glasses, each of which clinked out a different note as he lowered them to the table. He looked proud of his modest accomplishment, but at the same time he couldn't bring himself to stop trying to reach for his breast pocket. The Gentleman offered him a glass, and then offered one to both McCoy and his "boy." All took their whiskey, although the boy did so under the scornful eye of his keeper.
"To our partnership," the Gentleman toasted over the tobacco-stained newspaper that held their foretold fortunes. "May it be brief, but fruitful."
"Hear, hear," Wilton cried as he and McCoy clinked glasses with the Gentleman, and all downed their drinks, even McCoy's boy, who broke into such a coughing fit afterward that he was forced to take a seat at the table with the others until he caught his breath.
*~*~*
"I fear I'm asking you on a fool's errand," Elizabeth O'Hern lamented as she finished her tale of woe. The young woman was plain-faced, but still pretty. Sitting in the detective's bare, gray office, something about her presence brought to mind the image of the wildflower-spotted prairie in mid-July. Her black-dressed and bonneted gargoyle of a chaperone, standing protectively behind her chair, meant she was not yet married, and the detective had to wonder why. A bright, if not quite beautiful, young woman, born into a family of wealth, land and enterprise—if the detective were so inclined, he might have asked for Miss O'Hern's hand himself. It would not have been too steep a payment for the task she was asking of him.
"But if there is even the slightest chance that Elliot might be alive, I have to find out."
Some years ago, her dear younger brother, then only a boy of eight, had been assumed killed in a stage robbery that had claimed the life of the O'Hern family patriarch as well as a handful of his employees. However, three months ago, a telegram had come by way of a small hospital outside of Denver, claiming that Elliot was deathly ill and wished Elizabeth would come see him one last time. Naturally quite startled to be receiving such correspondence from someone she had assumed dead for nearly ten years, Elizabeth and her family had wired back asking for further details about this supposed long-lost family member. When a reply finally reached them, it wrote that Elliot had left the hospital in the care of another gentleman with no word as to where they were going. With the incident still weighing heavily on her mind all these months later, Elizabeth had decided to hire a private detective to attempt to track down her brother, hopeful that he might yet find his way home.
The detective leaned back in his chair, scratched his bare chin, and looked down his nose through his half-moon glasses at the two folded telegrams and old O'Hern family photo he held in his hand. He wasn't so much studying them as he was deliberating with them. It was a needle-in-a-haystack search if ever there was one—and this haystack was as large as the entire west, the entire continent—hell, even the entire world! The poor woman's brother could be anywhere. And while the phrase "I'll pay you whatever you like" had come up once during their conversation, it wasn't so much the thought of riches that swayed the detective's tongue toward acceptance. He'd worked on a handful of cases over the past years that kept his stomach full and his office paid for. It was more an unspeakable need to escape the bustling streets of St. Louis for the promise of adventure on the open ranges and untouched expanses of the now legendary "west" which led the detective to set forth his terms.
"I'll give it one month," he said. His gaze never left the telegrams and photo in his hand. "If I've not found anything about your brother by then, I'm sorry, but I won't be able to help you."
Elizabeth put her hands over her heart, and her plain face became the very definition of happiness. "Oh, thank you! Thank you ever so much! I am forever in your debt! Really, I am—"
"May I keep these?" the detective asked distractedly, holding up the telegrams and photo for a brief moment. His mind was already busy working out his departure, formulating strategies, attempting to remember the names of contacts; there was no time for affection. However, something about the look forever captured in the tintype eyes of his latest target made him linger over the photo longer than needed to simply remember a face. Posed portraits rarely captured any life in their stiff, slack-faced subjects. But the look in the eyes of this eternally seven-year-old Elliot O'Hern … There was life showing in those dark eyes.
"Yes! Anything you need, simply name it!"
He tucked the telegrams and photo safely into his breast pocket, giving them a pat for added security. "I've a horse and a set of six-shooters. That ought to be enough."
*~*~*
With the Virginia Gentleman leading the way on his sure-footed dappled mare, the four of them crossed the Shoshone River under the glow of the Thunder Moon. From there, they followed Sage Creek towards its headwaters. With the moon beginning to set and dark clouds rolling in with the promise of rain to obscure their remaining riding light, they stopped to bed down for a few hours in a narrow coulee. They'd have to ride like hell the next two days to make it to Laurel in time to catch their train, and there "weren't time for lollygaggin'." Once first light broke over the Big Horns, they'd continue on up the valley toward Montana and their final destination in Laurel.
Wilton had pulled down a bed roll from his mount and laid it out on the softest piece of parched ground he could find. After his prayers, he carefully folded his glasses to put them in a hard-sided case, pulled a few papers from his breast pocket to look over one last time, then tucked himself in, and fell asleep with little effort. It was a light, fitful, disorienting sleep that caused him to toss and turn and wake up to check his surroundings every so often, but it was sleep nonetheless.
After dismounting and tying his and his boy's horses, McCoy found himself a rock, sat down, leaned against it, pulled his hat down low over his eyes, and proceeded to hibernate. His snorts and snores echoed up and down the coulee, occasionally causing Wilton to stir and look about himself. McCoy seemed to be a man of few words during the waking hours, but he sure could make a racket at night. The Gentleman had to wonder at how anyone was able to sleep through such noise, let alone make it.
The boy had bedded down beside McCoy; he'd curled into a ball and folded one arm under his head for a pillow. In competition with his keeper, he would take a coughing fit every half hour of so that filled the basin between the Big Horns and the Absaroka with cacophony. He'd sit up for a few minutes and struggle to breathe, all the while staring into the fire the Gentleman had built from the dried sage in a hastily constructed rock ring. Then, once the fit was over and he was still huffin' and puffin', but breathing nonetheless, he'd lay his head back down, tuck his knees in tight to his chest and begin the whole process over again.
As for the Virginia Gentleman, he found sleep difficult. Even with the warmth of his fire easing the aches in his tired body, his mind and his senses wouldn't allow him the privilege of quiet. Never mind the calculating and planning going on in his brain keeping him awake, he suffered from a near constant feeling of being watched. Twice he'd stood to look over the edges of the coulee and across the open landscape, almost hoping to see a distant rider or curious coyote moving toward him, but neither materialized out of the northern Wyoming night. With no threat coming from abroad, the Gentleman turned his suspicions toward closer quarters.
The horses dozed as heavily as they could while still saddled and antsy with anticipation. They stood in a row with their heads hung nearly parallel to the ground, the occasional swish of a tail their only movement. With no animal eyes upon him, the Gentleman then began to look over his new-found gang. Wilton, with his back to the rest of them, was an unlikely candidate, and the feel of his drowsy, half-seeing eyes when he roused and looked about was an entirely different sensation than the one that kept the
Gentleman awake. While McCoy's gaze was piercing to say the least, the Gentleman doubted it could penetrate the thick black wool of the floppy-brimmed hat that kept his face obscured. Which left only one. The Gentleman found his gaze returned by a pair of dark-rimmed eyes peering through strands of fire-lit hair. He grinned at having found the source of his paranoia to be so seemingly non-threatening. "Can't sleep?" he whispered.
"Naw," the boy replied hoarsely.
"Me neither." The Gentleman turned his gaze back toward the fire. The flames crackled and danced across the dry brush, giving their home for the night some semblance of warmth and comfort. A sudden idea took hold of him and he turned, saying, "Come over here and keep warm. Sickly kid like you, I figure you need all the warmth you can get."
With no small amount of hesitation and with his eyes constantly chancing a look over his shoulder toward McCoy, the boy obliged, taking a seat at the fire about two arms' lengths away from where the Gentleman sat sprawled against the side of the coulee. He pulled his knees in close to his chest as he had while sleeping, wrapping his arms around them tightly. The two of them sat there, basking in the glow, exchanging small smiles in lieu of conversation for what felt like hours. Finally, curiosity got the better of the Virginia Gentleman and he asked again, "What's your name, anyway?"
The boy stiffened and again looked back to where McCoy slept. His expression was like that of a spooked jackrabbit, unsure whether to run or cower. The Gentleman hadn't expected such a marked response to the question, but then again, he hadn't expected to have the question cut off without being answered at the saloon, either. "Just seems peculiar to keep callin' you 'boy' if you've got a name," he explained.
Private Dicks Page 17
