A Big Sky Christmas (5 page)

The saloon didn't have a sign on it, just the word
SALOON
painted in big letters on the upper part of the false front. Swint, Bodie, Hinkley, and Green tied their horses at the hitch rail in front of it and went inside.

 

 

The noise faded from his memory and blended in with the racket from a piano in a corner of the Bella Royale that a sleeve-gartered entertainer had started pounding. Bodie was back in Kansas City again, sitting at the table with Swint, Jake Lucas, and several other members of the gang.

The rest of the robbery had gone off without a hitch, a couple weeks earlier. The train had rolled in and stopped just like it was supposed to, and the rest of the gang had swarmed over it, taking control of the engineer and the fireman in the locomotive cab, the conductor in the caboose, and the travelers in the two passenger cars.

Swint, Bodie, Green, and Hinkley got the drop on the messenger in the express car. The man had thought about putting up a fight, but with four guns staring him in the face, he had thought better of it.

And so they had ridden away just as Bodie had hoped, without firing a shot.

Even so, they had left a dead man behind them, a dead man whose face still haunted Bodie's dreams from time to time.

What made it even worse was that he hadn't been able to leave the gang like he'd planned. Swint was dragging his feet on divvying up the loot. He had said they would do it once they got to Kansas City.

Bodie hoped that was true. He wanted to get away from these men. He hoped he could persuade Jake to take his share and come with him. If they partnered up, they could start a fine ranch somewhere with the money they'd have.

“I sure wouldn't want to tangle with MacCallister,” Jake was saying. “No telling how many badmen he's sent over the divide in his time.”

“Stories like that always get blown up bigger than they really are,” Swint insisted. “I ain't afraid of that old man, or anybody else for that matter. He'll get his comeuppance one o' these days, and if he ever crosses me, I'll give it to him myself. I'll blow his lights out, I will.”

Part of Bodie would have liked to witness such an encounter. He thought Swint was completely wrong about Jamie Ian MacCallister, and it might be satisfying to watch the results.

Swint changed the subject. “Did you boys notice that theater when we were comin' into town? Posters out front said there was gonna be a show. I hope we haven't missed it.”

“Hark! What light through yonder window—Dadblast it! Who put that board there? I almost tripped and broke my bloody neck! We open tomorrow night, my friends. We can't have things like this happening!”

Savannah McCoy put a hand over her mouth to stifle the laughter she felt trying to bubble up her throat. The sight of Cyrus O'Hanlon's portly figure in tights and doublet was pretty ridiculous to start with, and the way he had stumbled as he crossed the stage and nearly fallen on his face made him seem even more like a comedian. He would have made a good one, Savannah thought, if he hadn't considered himself the greatest dramatic actor of his generation.

Of course, great dramatic actors didn't head up troupes that played in second-rate variety theaters and opera houses across the Midwest, occasionally venturing as far out on the frontier as Kansas City, which seemed like the Wild West of penny dreadful fame to Savannah.

She pushed back the rich brown ringlets of hair that kept trying to fall in front of her face when she leaned through Juliet's “window,” which was part of the set the troupe had erected on the stage of Mr. Channing's theater. She pulled up the neckline of her dress. Cyrus had designed the costumes, of course. He had a hand in everything the troupe did. He'd had the neckline cut low enough to display what Savannah considered a scandalous amount of cleavage, especially when she leaned forward to say her lines.

“Give the rubes in the front row what they want to see,” he always said.

Savannah didn't like it. Most people already considered actresses to be little better than harlots. They didn't see that it was a true calling, like any other artistic endeavor. She didn't think it was a good idea to reinforce their prejudice by dressing like a saloon girl.

So she pulled the dress up as much as she could, but in the end, Cyrus was the boss. That was why, at the age of fifty-five, he was playing the stripling youth, Romeo. Savannah, though six or seven years older than Juliet was supposed to be in the play, was at least a lot closer to the right age.

Cyrus took off the hat with a tired-looking feather plume that he wore, ran his fingers through his mostly gray hair as he recovered his composure, and pulled the hat back on. “We'll begin again,” he said in a loud, ringing voice. He was so accustomed to projecting to the back of the house that he talked that way all the time.

He launched once again into Romeo's balcony speech, and Savannah tried to concentrate on what he was saying so that she couldn't miss her cues. It was difficult to keep her mind from wandering. She had been doing this scene for months, ever since the platform behind the “window” had collapsed during a performance in Chicago, dumping Cyrus's wife Dollie, the previous Juliet, on her amply padded rear end.

Even though she hadn't been injured in the fall, following that accident Dollie had declared that she was too old to be clambering around on scenery and told Cyrus to find himself a new Juliet. The role had fallen to Savannah, who had been with the troupe for about a year.

After Cyrus had made that announcement, Dollie had taken Savannah aside and told her, “Cyrus sometimes gets carried away and thinks his love scenes with his leading ladies ought to continue offstage. In fact, that's how the two of us wound up married.”

“Oh, I'm sure that won't ever happen,” Savannah had said. “Mr. O'Hanlon is much too professional.”

“It had better not,” Dollie had warned her. “If it does, you're liable to find yourself stranded in some backwater with more livestock than people. Don't think your acting talents would help you then.”

Since that day, Savannah had learned that there was some truth to what Dollie had told her. Cyrus had made some advances—subtle ones, to be sure—but unmistakable in their intention. Savannah had gotten quite skilled in fending them off without seeming to do so.

She realized that Cyrus had paused and knew it was her line. For a split second, she couldn't think of where they were in the scene, but then it came back to her. Her acting instincts were good and hardly ever let her down. She leaned out the window and delivered her line, and below her on the stage Cyrus started emoting once more.

Savannah's mind strayed again, back to the stately white mansion in the Georgia city that had given her name to her. At least, the name she was currently using . . .

 

 

“
No daughter of mine is going to be an actress!” William Thorpe thundered as he stalked back and forth in his study.

Again Gillian had to restrain an impulse, the urge to pick up one of the paperweights on his desk and throw it at him.
Just a female
, indeed!