Two in the Field (11 page)

Twain stiffened as if stung. “I demand to know the meaning of this!”

“He has a revolver,” the servant said quietly behind me.

“It’s me. Sam Fowler. I shouldn’t’ve barged in. It’s just that I’ve come so unbelievably far.…”

The little man seemed fascinated. Livy sat very still. In his anger Twain had begun to bob up and down, pigeon-like.

“I had a beard then,” I said desperately. “In ’69. The Red Stockings. Elise Holt.” I held back from mentioning the Elmira grave robbery. “Remember?”

Twain stared daggers.

“Don’t you remember me, Mark?”

“Don’t call me that,” he snapped. “I don’t know you, sir.” He pointed to the door. “Get the hell out.”

 SEVEN 

“You shouldn’t have gone in there,” Slack said, barely visible beneath a huge tree on the property’s edge.

I nodded numbly, wondering if Twain really believed he didn’t know me. I was beginning to doubt my own experience again. Had I fantasized everything?

No, Sweasy had remembered.

We were deciding what to do next when we saw the servant approaching with a bundle. “Missus Clemens won’t deny folks in need.” He gave the bundle to Slack and handed me a folded note.

Scrawled in Twain’s hand, it said
“11 am Whelan’s.”

“What’s Whelan’s?” I said.

“Billiard saloon,” the servant replied. “On lower Main.”

Twain wanted a meeting. I felt myself start to breathe normally again. “What’s your name?” I asked the man.

“George, sir.”

“Thank you, George. I apologize for my rudeness tonight.” He showed no reaction. “Please tell him I’ll be there tomorrow.”

With a nod he turned toward the house.

The bundle held bread, cheese and apples. We devoured it all by the river, where we laid out our kits and fell asleep to the sounds of flowing water.

Slack came up with the idea of walking between horse-drawn drays as if we were their handlers. That way we didn’t stand out so much on Hartford’s broad downtown streets, where trees bloomed above the stone sidewalks and the gentry were on display, women in rich overdresses of colored silk, men in fancy linen coats.

We waited self-consciously in front of Whelan’s Billiard Emporium, which boasted brass rails and cuspidors. A sign by the door listed the limited hours during which spirits could be served. Slack muttered something about blue-noses.

Twain showed up twenty minutes late, resplendent in a dove gray waistcoat and pink shirt. “Apologies for the muddle last night,” he said. “Since we moved in last November, we’ve had an infernal flood of houseguests. Some of my old Western pals are a mite rough and require getting used to. George had strict orders about unexpected visitors. Anyhow, I didn’t place where I’d known you until after you’d gone. Thank the stars that George caught up with you.”

I suspected that he’d known very well who I was. But he was a respected family man now, and a giant tramp had stormed into his house with a weapon. For all Twain knew, maybe I wanted blackmail money now that he was wealthy.

“And who is this?” he said, looking curiously at Slack. “Don’t I know you as well?”

“I worked for you once up in Buffalo. You used to say I was only fit to set lower-case type.”

“Wait,” Twain said. “Backwater …”

“Slackwater.”

“That’s it! Dandy man at the cases! Why’d you leave?”

“Call of the open country.”

“A lot of that in these times.” Twain looked wistful. “If you want to feel it mortal bad, tie yourself to a house.” He looked at our clothes; we’d hidden our kits at the river and cleaned up as much as we could, but the results weren’t very impressive. Without Twain I doubted we’d have been allowed inside the pool hall. “How’d you two get together?”

I told of being robbed and Slack told how we’d helped each other get out of St. Louis, including the tangle with Brawley.

“You have a knack for running afoul of hard men.” Twain looked at me appraisingly. “So you got down on your luck and I came to mind?”

“I thought you might trust me with a loan, since I made good on our last venture.” I stopped as Twain’s eyes flashed a warning.

“Yes, you sent my share.” He offered cigars and lit them for himself and Slack. We sat clouded in smoke. “But you didn’t invest as we’d agreed, in Freddy Marriott’s flying steam carriage.”

“We agreed I would only if it looked like a good thing,” I corrected. “Which it didn’t.”

Slack looked back and forth between us.

“Maybe we were too soon,” Twain said. “Cross-country air journeys are coming, sure as shooting. “My brother Orion’s got a flying machine he’s drawing up, and I hear Freddy’s enlisting new backers for what he calls an ‘aeroplane’.” His drawl made it three long syllables.

The patent office, I told him, would reject Marriott’s design as impossible.

He fixed a hawkish stare on me. “Exactly when
are
mortals gonna travel upstairs?”

I tried to recall the year Orville and Wilbur lifted off. “Early nineteen hundreds.”

“So you still hold to be back here from the future?”

Slack’s jaw dropped as I nodded.

Then I poured out what had happened since I last saw him: meeting Cait in Cincinnati; going west on the new Pacific railroad; being snatched back into the next century and doing my best to return.

“Spins out a good yarn, don’t he?” Twain said to Slack, who had edged away from me. “Folks accuse
me
of owning a rapid-fire imagination, but Sam’s is a world-beater.”

Hearing what I thought was a note of pain, it occurred to me that he might wonder if I’d had foreknowledge that his father-in-law would die not long after his wedding, or that his first-born, an infant son, would perish of pneumonia.

It seemed a good time to change the subject.

“The Red Stockings are here tomorrow,” I said. “I expect to learn where I’ll find Cait.”

“And you need cash to do it.”

“A loan,” I repeated.

He considered it. “Would a hundred suit you?”

Slack looked like he was about to have an out-of-body experience.

“It would literally suit me,” I said. “First thing I’d do is buy clothes.”

He gave me a guarded look. “And as for that matter in the past?”

I assured him that I sought a loan, nothing else, and that our past dealings would stay strictly between us. “Once I find Cait, I’ll get work and repay you.”

He evidently concluded that blackmail wasn’t my intent, for he said, “How about you two coming as
invitees
for dinner tonight?”

I readily agreed.

“No offense,” Slack said, “but there’s too many blue-blood swells here for my taste. I’m thinkin’ to catch out directly.”

While Twain went off to visit his bank, I tried to persuade Slack to stick around.

“You
want
to go respectable, Sam,” he said. “It’s written all over you. But I’m of no mind to clean up. The road’s callin’ me, along with my ma.”

“At least let me buy you a haircut and shave,” I said. “Your ma will appreciate it.”

Twain returned and handed me a pouch heavy with coins. “I’ll make up something to tell Livy,” he said. “Come at six.”

The barber eyed us narrowly when we entered his parlor, but Twain’s money quickly changed his expression. Soon we were lying back with hot towels over our faces.

“Been swell trampin’ with you,” Slack said later when we were outside again, Ayer’s Hair Vigor splashed liberally over our scalps. My shaved face felt brand new, my cheeks tingled with bay rum. “You can always get hold of me, Sam. Even when I’m on the road I wire Ma every week to let her know I’m still kickin’.” He told me how to telegraph her in Rochester. “Good luck findin’ your Cait.”

I watched him disappear around a corner.

Already I missed him.

At Rucker Clothiers I got fitted for two suits at fifteen dollars each, and paid two-fifty extra for same-day service. Prices, I had discovered, were lower than in ’69, the result of economic depression. At Bjarkman’s Worsteds & Linens I picked up underdrawers, a fancy dress shirt and collar with extra buttons—I was prone to breaking and losing them—and added shoes at Bradshaw’s Bootery. Blue jeans and everyday shirts were available at Schroeder’s Ready-Made Apparel. My shopping completed, I spent two dollars on a top-of-the-line room with steam heat at the Park Central Hotel and settled down to soak in the zinc tub at the end of the hall. Muscles relaxing, clean for the first time in days, I decided that I was back roughly where I’d been before the robbery: all set to roll.

I just needed a destination.