A Good Man (12 page)

“Joe, you lie whether it’s called for or not. Just to keep in practice.”

McMullen solemnly crosses his heart. “No, sir, hope to die if this ain’t the unvarnished truth. Three weeks I had to listen to that dusty old coot and Lurleen carrying on in a bed not eight feet from my own. And every morning Fancy would get up and go about his business as if he was in his right mind, felling cottonwoods and whistling away, happy as a lark. But it was coming near to destroying me. Hearing him and Lurleen carry on in that fashion each and every night was making me desperate jumpy and nervy. So one afternoon I hoists up my courage and I says to Fancy, ‘I ain’t deaf, you know,’ and he looks puzzled and says, ‘Who said you was?’ like he didn’t have any notion to what circumstances I might be raising. So next time we settles down in our cots, I thinks to myself, ‘Well, see how it suits him, a taste of his own medicine,’ and before Lurleen can start romancing him, I says, ‘Hello, Mr. Joe, Lurleen come to pay you a visit this evening. Slide over and let me get in alongside you, you handsome man.’ And then Lurleen cries, ‘Oh my good Lord, but ain’t it
big!’
And I went on to say a good deal more to commend my privates, but I won’t burn your tender ears by repeating it all.”

“And that did the trick? You got him to mend his ways?”

“Mend his ways? No, sir, it did not. It made him
jealous
. Why every time I turned around, there he was staring at me, hate writ all over his face. And you never seen a more terrible sight than old Fancy Charles with a double-bit axe in his hands, calculating when and where to split me like a chunk of cottonwood. I could see my days was numbered. But lucky for me a steamer hove to a couple of days later, so I seized the chance, resigned from woodhawking without giving notice, piled aboard that boat just as she threw off her mooring lines and started downriver. I took leave of the sweethearts from the deck rail. ‘Goodbye, Lurleen! Goodbye, Fancy!’ I hollered. ‘Never meant to come between you two! If you have a boy child, Lurleen, name him after me!’ ”

“Joe, you stretch the truth like taffy,” says Case, smiling despite himself.

McMullen makes a show of hurt feelings. “Well, I take offence to that. And if you got to call me a liar, you might put the word interesting before it.” Then he raises his eyebrows and says, “Hello. Judas bouncing up and down on a railway jigger, here comes trouble.”

Case cranes his neck to see Peregrine Hathaway wending his way through the tables, face shining like a bull’s-eye lantern, waving a piece of rolled-up paper. He drops down on a chair beside Case and announces, “Miss Celeste
did
have to rest her voice. She wasn’t trying to avoid me.”

“Your elders was speaking,” says Joe, “don’t interrupt.” He aims a finger at the boy’s breastbone. “And another thing. I don’t hold with tardiness. You and me leave for Fort Walsh four o’clock tomorrow afternoon, on the dot. If you ain’t ready to go – you get left. I ain’t going to dawdle about playing pocket pool with myself on account of you ain’t learned to tell time. Punctual is polite.”

Hathaway is oblivious to McMullen. “I feel so bad having doubted her sincerity, Mr. Case. But look, it’s all explained,” he says, unfurling a poster on the table. Case and Joe lean over and read.

CITIZENS OF FORT BENTON
TAKE NOTE!
You are cordially invited to an
EVENING OF MUSICAL ENTERTAINMENT!
COME ONE, COME ALL!

A free-will offering will be collected, all proceeds intended for the relief of friends and neighbors driven from their homes and occupations by the continuing menace from Sioux hostiles.

Fort Benton’s own, the charming and talented
MISS CELESTE TARR
, shall offer a selection of songs both sacred and secular, accompanied by
MRS. RANDOLPH TARR
on the pianoforte.

MOSES SOLOMON, ESQ.
, has generously donated the use of the
MAJESTIC STAR SALOON
for this charitable endeavor. Mr. Solomon graciously extends an invitation to the entire populace of Fort Benton, of every age and sex.

The sale of alcoholic beverages of any variety or description whatsoever shall not take place during the duration of the concert, nor any disorderly conduct deleterious to a full appreciation and enjoyment of the musical program be countenanced.

Program to take place
AUGUST 6TH, EIGHT O’CLOCK SHARP!

ALL WELCOME WHO KNOW HOW TO CONDUCT THEMSELVES!

“Miss Celeste is to sing, gentlemen. That was why she had to spare her voice,” says Hathaway. “I knew her to be charming and beautiful, but I had no idea, none at all, that she is also musically accomplished. It will be a splendid evening. The two of you must both come to see her.”

“Well,” says McMullen, “I ain’t coming because never mind I did go, I’d have to hear about it all over again from you, Peregrine, mile after mile all the way back to Fort Walsh. So I’ll save time and rely on your report. Besides, I already made plans. A fellow in the Extradition Saloon was praising up four whores who got stuck here in Benton when the stage stopped running to Helena. Two sets of twins, identical, can’t tell them apart. One pair of Irish and one pair of Swedes. The Irish ladies is said to be skinny as greyhounds and plasered with freckles. He said if it weren’t for the weight of them freckles those shed hens would lift off and fly skyward in the least breeze. But the Swedes is so plump, pink, and substantial, a cyclone couldn’t tip them over. I think I’ll have a go at one of each set.” Joe stands, gives his pants a hitch. “You best come along, Wesley. It’ll be a experience.”

Case shakes his head. “No, Joe, I shall pass a chaste evening at the recital with Peregrine. One of us must set him a good example.”

“Well, boys, I wish you joy listening to the sweet songstress warble.” And with that, McMullen begins to saunter through the Oxbow, nodding pleasantly to total strangers, passing remarks on the dishes. “My, don’t them short ribs look a mouthful! Don’t Mr. Dagg’s cook have a hand with the parsnips!” Then, from the doorway, he gives Case and Hathaway a cheery wave, settles his hat on his newly cropped head, and is gone.

A saloon bartender guards the door of the Majestic Star equipped with a bucket he shakes menacingly in the face of anyone trying to enter. Donations do not appear to be
voluntary
as advertised. When he rattles the bucket at Case, its bottom reveals a pond of silver floating several paper bills. Case contributes two dollars to the pail; the bartender moves aside and he and Hathaway cross the threshold of the Majestic into a jammed room.

Instantly, Peregrine begins to squirm his way through the mob, heading for the front of the room where the saloon’s piano stands, displaying a vase of brown-eyed Susans to lend a refined, feminine air to the evening’s proceedings. But Case has no intention of pursuing Hathaway through this crush of humanity, choosing first to take his bearings.

The saloon is hot as a boiler room, steaming with the animal heat of closely packed bodies. All the faces around him are beaded with perspiration. The odour is as extreme as the heat, the vinegary, pickling brine smell of sweat laced with the barnyard aromas of manure, horse, and mule given off by teamsters, bullwhackers, and hoop-legged waddies. An undercurrent of river mud and fried catfish wafts off the boatmen; the hide hunters and wolfers stink of old blood, the sharp tang of rusty iron. Add a dollop of spilled beer, sweet and yeasty, the reek of cheap tobacco, and Case feels his eyes are about to water with every pungent breath he draws.

The din is terrific. Despite the owner’s assurances that tonight decorum and propriety will rule, the inexorable inching of the hands of the clock towards the hour of the concert and the suspension of the sale of alcohol has led to a panic among the Majestic’s customers. They are swarming the bar, banging glasses on the zinc top, jostling for position, shouting and gesticulating to catch the attention of harried bartenders who scurry back and forth slopping whiskey into out-thrust shot glasses.

Case’s gaze falls on the Majestic’s proprietor, Moses Solomon. The one serene, still point in bedlam, he stands with his back propped against a beer barrel, squinting at the room through a haze of blue tobacco smoke. His beard is biblical, long and forked. He wears a crimson satin waistcoat buttoned over a white linen shirt; the red satin rosettes on his sleeve garters perfectly match the colour of his vest. His hairstyle is Disraelian, ruffled ssy-boy waves that sweep over his ears and seem scarcely in keeping with his fearsome sobriquet, Moses Mayhem. Case had learned that when Solomon had established Fort Benton’s toniest saloon, the citizenry had not appreciated his success, and had subjected him to a barrage of insult and calumny. But one day Solomon had turned on two of the most persistent Jew-baiters and shot them down on a corner of Front Street. Since then, people stepped very lightly in his presence.

The skull-cracking uproar, the stench, the sweltering temperature, the tight press of bodies is almost too much to bear. Hathaway has disappeared, swallowed up in the crowd, and Case is at the point of beating a strategic retreat when he sees Major Ilges looming above the throng, beckoning him. It’s a struggle for Case to reach the Major but when he does, he discovers a relatively calm island in the stormy saloon, a row of chairs reserved for the town’s notables in front of the piano, most of them already occupied.

“So glad to see you, Mr. Case,” says Ilges. “Will you be my guest? I’m sure Lieutenant Blanchard would surrender his seat so you might sit beside me.” The officer asked to relinquish his place shows no evidence of a willingness to surrender anything but withdraws with a sullen, put-upon look as Case demurs accepting. But finally he has no alternative but to settle down on the gracelessly vacated chair.

The Major immediately launches into introductions to the Fort Benton quality. In turn, Case is presented to a young dentist who has just opened a practice in town, the pressman of the
Fort Benton Record
, a goggle-eyed druggist, and Dr. Cornelius Hooper, Fort Benton’s most accomplished surgeon. The town’s biggest fishes follow: the merchant princes T.C. Power, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Baker, the Conrad brothers, and the tycoons’ wives. The gentlemen are solemn and sober in black broadcloth. The ladies are bedecked, bedizened, and loaded down with jewellery, lavishly swathed in yards of taffeta and silk, and severely corseted.