Dance with the Devil

by Victoria Wilcox

  There was something else disappearing in the arid emptiness of the Staked Plains: the bloody cough that had sent him, terror filled, into a liquored fog of forgetfulness. The dry air was drying out his lungs, and by the time he laid over awhile at Fort Concho, then took the stage to San Antonio and the Alamo where Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett had died glorious deaths, he began to think that maybe he wasn’t dying after all. He was still tired, but still alive as well—and not sure what to do about it, living a sort of shadow life and waiting to see what would happen next.

  He crossed over the border at Eagle Pass, made some money pulling teeth for the Commandante at Nuevo Laredo, and practiced target shooting with the soldiers at the Mexican presidio. At night, he played Spanish Monte until he could best the Mexicans at their own game, his hands getting to be so agile with the cards that he could almost feel the markings. But it wasn’t until he started swearing with the soldiers in their own language, his smattering of childhood Spanish learned from Francisco Hidalgo, his father’s Mexican serving boy, turning almost to fluency, that he knew it was time to go home—or back to Dallas, at least.

  It was one thing taking a leisurely wander across the Staked Plains and the border country, and another taking a hard stagecoach ride all the way from Mexico to north Texas. By the time the Butterfield Overland reached Fort Griffin on the last long stretch to Dallas, John Henry was worn out and ready for a layover before going any farther. With all the jostling over rough roads, his body was aching and his nerves were as tight-drawn as the springs of the coach, and he feared the illness was coming back on him again. So he was already in an irritable mood when he climbed out of the stage and saw a crowd of blue-coated Negro soldiers parading the streets and said as much to the driver, commenting that there were altogether too many Yankees in town for his liking.

  “Leave day,” the driver remarked. “They’ve been away chasing horse thieves and Comanches, so the commander gave ‘em some time off as a reward. Guess the whores in town’ll make some money tonight.”

  John Henry bristled at the thought, though he didn’t begrudge the soldiers their amusement. After what he’d seen of the Llano Estacado, he knew that Indian service on the Staked Plains was worthy of whatever reward the Army wanted to offer. It was the color of those leave-day soldiers that rankled him. Most of the prostitutes in town were white, and the thought of those black men having the pleasure of them went against his well-trained Southern ways. It wasn’t right, that kind of intermingling, no matter how eager the girls were for some federal pay. But distasteful or not, the soldiers’ couplings were none of his affair. All he needed to concern himself with was getting a glass of whiskey and a place to sleep before continuing on with his journey back to Dallas.

  The red-haired Irish saloonkeeper welcomed him back like an old friend, with a free drink and a cheap room for the night upstairs.

  “Why the favors, Shaughnessey?” he asked, taking the whiskey, “you don’t hardly know me.”

  “Well, lad, maybe I’m just a do-gooder at heart. But more likely it’s that Claddaugh ring you’ve got on your little finger there. Either you’re Irish yourself, or there’s an Irish girl who’s got your heart, and either way, you’re countryman to me. Now empty that drink and I’ll pour you another glass you can pay me for. You look like you could use a whole bottle full after that long ride.”

  The whiskey was good and quickly made him forget the pains of the road as he found his room at the top of the stairs, pulled off his boots, and slumped down onto the lumpy mattress ready for a blessed long nap. By morning, his nerves would be unwound and he’d think about a bath and a shave, but for now, only sleep. But he’d only just drifted off when he was startled back to wakefulness by a loud pounding on the bedroom door, followed by the louder sound of a man’s laughter.

  “Open up the door, whore, and lemme in! I’se ready and able, iffen you know what I mean.”

  The sudden awakening left him shaking, and he picked up one of his discarded boots and threw it at the closed door. “Wrong door!” he said angrily, then rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.

  “Shanssey say this door,” the man called back at him, “so you move it on out and lemme in. I only got jest so much time fo’ leave, and I need’s a woman.”

  “You’ve got the wrong room, boy,” he said derisively, recognizing the sound of a colored voice. “But you keep knockin’, and I’ll give you some-thin’ to remember me by. My pistol’s loaded and it’s ready and able, too.”

  But his threat only got a laugh from the man on the other side of the door.

  “Well, suh, I got more’n a pistol out here, more like a Sharps Fifty rifle. You ask that whore which gun she’d rather have goin’ off. ‘Cause I ain’t never seen a white woman didn’t prefer a big buffalo gun to a white boy’s little derringer.”

  In one fast move, he lunged from the bed to the door, his pistol cocked and ready to fire. The man had not only insulted him, but all white women as well, and deserved to be taught a lesson. But as he swung the door open and took a fast aim, his pistol hand wavered.

  The intruder was the biggest black man he had ever seen, filling the doorway and casting a shadow that darkened the whole hall. He looked more like a big farmhand on a Georgia plantation than a United States soldier, though he wore the blue uniform of the Tenth Cavalry. And the arrogant way the man stood there, laughing in Yankee blue, turned John Henry’s angry irritation to rage. The man might be big enough to swat him down with one massive hand, but his own loaded pistol evened out the odds.

  “I said this is the wrong door, boy,” he repeated imperiously. “You git or get what you deserve.”

  But the man clearly didn’t understand the seriousness of the situation, because instead of retreating as he’d been told to do, he threw back his head and let out a mocking laugh. Then foolishly, the soldier dropped his right hand down to his coat pocket going for a gun.

  John Henry didn’t wait to see the man’s pistol. With all the speed of weeks of Mexican target-practice, he let loose with his Colt’s and sent a blast of smoke and lead into the soldier’s blue-coated chest.

  The gunshot and the sound of the man’s heavy fall to the wood plank floor brought Shaughnessey’s girls rushing out of their rooms, and the Irishman bounding up the stairs close behind them.

  “Dear mother of Mary!” Shaughnessey cried, crossing himself. “What’s happened here?”

  “Damned Nigra tried to pull his pistol on me, so I shot him!”

  But Shaughnessey’s words made his rage go cold. “How could he have pulled on you? Buffalo Soldiers aren’t allowed to take weapons off the post. They’re never armed in town. Everyone knows that.” And to prove the point, he reached into the man’s coat pocket, pulling out nothing more than a folded bit of paper with a number scrawled across it.

  “His girl’s room number,” Shaughnessey remarked. “Looks like I gave him your room number by accident. Sometimes I get confused when things are busy down at the bar. Did anyone else see the shooting?” Then another of the girls came out into the hall and started to scream. “Stop that!” Shaughnessey commanded. “We don’t want to make a scene here. There’s just been a little accident, that’s all. Now go on back in your rooms, girls, and stay there.”

  “What do we do?” John Henry asked, staring at the big man’s body in disbelief. Had he killed an unarmed man over nothing more than irritation and mixed-up numbers?

  “We don’t do anything,” Shaughnessey replied. “You’re getting out of here, right now, before any of his companions finds out about this.”

  “But where will I go?” he asked, still standing dazed, the gun hot in his hand.

  “Out of Texas! And mighty fast, too. The law here in the Flat might not pay much attention to a darky getting his in a saloon, but you can bet the military authorities will pursue the matter. Now go and get yourself together while I move the poor man’s body out of the way. Once you’re gone, I’ll say I never saw the fellow who did it—maybe
the army will even think it was one of their own men in a fit of jealousy over one of these girls.”

  But John Henry stood motionless in the hall, staring blankly at the soldier’s body and trying to believe what he was looking at. He knew he wasn’t a killer, but he’d killed his second man. He was no killer—but the body on the floor showed that he was.

  “I said go!” Shaughnessey whispered harshly, “or there’ll be hell to pay for sure!”

  He couldn’t go back to Dallas now, at least not until news of the soldier’s shooting died down. He couldn’t go much of anyplace else without having an income to support himself, and as his dental office equipment was still back in Dallas, he’d have a hard time practicing without asking for a loan to get himself setup somewhere. But where could he go? And from whom could he beg the price of a dental chair and all that went with it? The answer came to him soon enough, spurred on by his desperation. And all he needed to reach the source of that loan was a twenty-dollar train ride on the Kansas & Texas Line, cutting north across the Indian Territory and east across Missouri to where the city of St. Louis rose up in smoky splendor on the banks of the Mississippi River.

  He hadn’t seen Jameson Fuches in four long years, not since taking a sudden departure from St. Louis after losing a high-stakes poker game down on the Levee—and the poker game was reason enough for him to avoid St. Louis altogether now. But if the friendship they had developed in their time at the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery still counted for anything, Jameson would be willing to help him out of his current difficult circumstances, and that was worth the risk. Jameson Fuches had saved his life once before, nursing him through a bout of pneumonia in Philadelphia, and making him a loan to save his skin now should be a reasonable enough thing to expect.

  But the more John Henry thought of it on the long train ride from the Red River to the Mississippi, the less he liked the idea of telling Jameson why he was running from the law. He still remembered how Jameson had gone white-faced at hearing his preceptor Dr. Homer Judd’s tale of gold-rush greed and murder in California. Even with Jameson’s idol-worship of Dr. Judd, the older man’s confession had been a hard thing for the young dentist to hear. Jameson had talked about Dr. Judd’s shooting of the gold-panner for many evenings after that, as though by talking about it he could somehow come to accept the crime. But at least that killing was something long done, having happened years before Jameson had ever met Dr. Judd. It was in the past, and could be forgotten.

  John Henry’s own dilemma was still smoldering, and telling Jameson about it would only make matters worse. Better not to mention it at all and come up with some other plausible excuse for his sudden reappearance in St. Louis after being away all those years, and the explanation seemed obvious: he’d finally tired of rural life after having tasted the pleasures of the city in Philadelphia and St. Louis. So he was leaving the South behind and taking a gamble on the Gateway City of the West, hoping to make St. Louis his home for awhile—if Jameson would consider taking him in as a partner.

  That was what he planned to say, anyhow. But when he arrived at the Fourth Street house where Jameson and his German aunt had lived, his plans fell apart. It wasn’t a kindly old woman who answered his knock at the door, but an old man who apparently spoke even less English than Tante had.

  “Ja? Was wollen Sie?” the man asked.

  “Dr. Fuches?” John Henry replied, hoping that perhaps the man was another of Jameson’s German relatives and would understand the request.

  But the man stared at him suspiciously from under overgrown gray eyebrows.

  “Doktor Fuches?” the man asked. “Nein, da ist kein Fuches heir. Nein.”

  “Dr. Jameson Fuches,” John Henry said, trying again before correcting himself and using his friend’s German name: “Dr. Auguste Fuches?”

  The man’s suspicious stare continued as he closed the heavy door to just a crack. “Nein, nein,” the man repeated, then added something under his breath that could have been a curse.

  John Henry felt like cursing as well, frustrated at not finding Jameson where he should have been. For though he, himself, had spent the last four years moving from one place to another, somehow he’d always envisioned Jameson in the same snug little front-parlor office. But he couldn’t very well just wander the graveled macadam streets of St. Louis calling out Jameson’s name, hoping someone would understand and point him in the right direction.

  The only thing he could think to do was pay a visit on Dr. Judd at his office as Dean of the Missouri Dental College. Surely, Dr. Judd would know where his protégé had relocated, and it was even possible that Jameson was teaching there at the dental school. After all, Jameson’s scholarly ways had earned him the nickname “Professor Fuches” while he was still just a first-year dental student himself. And in spite of his own difficulties, John Henry had to smile at the memory of it.

  Then he remembered Jameson’s disapproval of his evening diversions in St. Louis, and a pair of memories swept back: Hyram Neil, the Levee gambler who’d tried to steal his inheritance; and Kate Fisher, the hot-blooded Hungarian actress who’d almost stolen his heart. Kate might be in the city, too, if her performing company wasn’t out on tour somewhere. And though he’d never responded to any of her letters and had done his best to sweep her lusty image from his heart in devotion to Mattie, he suddenly found himself hungering to see her again. But Kate wouldn’t be able to offer him any help in finding Jameson or getting himself established in business, so he pushed the tempting thought of her to the back of his mind, and made his way to Nineteenth Street and the Missouri Dental College.

  But Jameson, it turned out, wasn’t even in St. Louis anymore. According to Dr. Judd, he had returned to Philadelphia to study medicine at the Jefferson Medical College, one college degree not being enough for someone with his abilities.

  “I did the same thing myself, of course,” Dr. Judd explained, “though the other way around: Medical degree first, then the Dental degree. But I understand Auguste’s desire for further education. The first thing one learns in medicine is how much more there is to know.”

  “Yessir,” John Henry replied, feeling somehow inadequate with his single college diploma. He had never given a thought to going back to school once he was finished, and had happily started into practicing what he had learned. As far as he could see, the purpose of his education was to give him a career, and he had already attained that.

  Except that his career was back in Texas with his dental tools and he was in sore need of some means of supporting himself. Finding Jameson gone and unavailable to help him out came as a hard blow.

  “How long are you staying in St. Louis?” Dr. Judd asked politely.

  “I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “Not long. I was hopin’ to see Jameson before movin’ on . . .”

  There must have been something telling in his unfinished thought, for Dr. Judd looked at him quizzically a moment.

  “So you are traveling without plans, then?”

  “I reckon so . . .” he said hesitantly.

  “And you mentioned having left Texas rather hurriedly.”

  “That’s right,” he said cautiously. He’d had to make some excuse as to why he didn’t know where his friend was, and had come up with the story of a misplaced bit of correspondence before a hasty trip. But though the explanation sounded plausible enough to John Henry, Dr. Judd seemed to be seeing right through it.

  “And you traveled here by way of the Indian Territory?”

  “That’s the way the railroad runs,” he replied uncomfortably. “It’s either take the train or take the stagecoach, and both of them run through the Territory.”

  “True, true,” Dr. Judd said with a nod. “And all rails lead to St. Louis, to coin a misused phrase. How convenient that the transportation from Texas to the Mississippi is so obliging, and how unfortunate that you left home without so much as noting your friend’s whereabouts.”

  John Henry shifted in his hard-seated chair,
feeling the same scrutiny that had made Jameson squirm in Dr. Judd’s too-observant presence. There was a long silence as he tried to think of something to say, with Dr. Judd waiting patiently for him to answer some unasked question. And as he’d been trained to give a reply when a professor asked for one, he felt compelled to tell something of the truth.

  “I had some difficulty there, Sir, and wasn’t really thinkin’ about much but leavin’ Texas. The fact is, I didn’t know until I got into the Indian Territory which way I was even goin’. St. Louis was sort of an afterthought, under the circumstances, but I was hopin’ to see Jameson while I was here. I was hopin’ maybe he would be in a position to help me out a little and let me work in his practice for awhile.”

  Dr. Judd nodded and stroked his neat gray goatee.

  “I’m sure Auguste will be happy to have your assistance once he returns to the city. But sadly, he won’t be arriving for some weeks still. He plans to stop in Illinois for a visit on the way back. There’s a young lady there, I understand, for whom he has developed a certain fondness. I believe he may even be thinking of making a marriage proposal before returning to St. Louis.”

  Of course, Jameson would have found himself a young lady and be thinking of marriage. It was the right and proper thing to do at his age and in his position. An unmarried medical doctor might have difficulty in establishing a practice with female patients, as the bachelor status was viewed with suspicion in polite society. So in his usual thoughtful way, Jameson would allow himself to fall in love with just the right young woman and marry her at just the right time. His life would always be one of order and propriety.

  “Then I don’t reckon I can wait around for his return,” John Henry said. For though he was across the Indian Nation and clear to the banks of the Mississippi River, he still felt too close for comfort to Texas and the United States Army that was no doubt looking for the man who’d shot a Buffalo Solider in Fort Griffin. He needed to be moving on, with or without financial aid from Jameson.