Glorious (24 page)

Bob Pugh predicted that the first additional business to open in Glorious would be a full-scale whorehouse, and briefly he was right. A hustler from Phoenix arrived with five tired-looking Mexican whores in tow. He set up shop in a patched tent next to the prospectors' camp and charged two dollars a turn. The new enterprise did booming business for a few days; then a customer complained to Joe Saint that someone had stolen the wallet out of his pants while he was
with his whore. The wallet was found in the proprietor's possession. The sheriff returned the wallet to its owner and told the whoremonger to leave town. Afterward several of the men who'd dallied with his whores found themselves afflicted with groin itch. They went out prospecting every day anyway, frantically scratching all the while.

•   •   •

T
EN DAYS AFTER
the Turner news broke, there was the first murder in town history. Prospectors Kid Barson and Willie Ward argued over a claim site. Each swore he'd put down markers first. They first quarreled in the Owaysis, screaming and shoving until Crazy George pulled the lead pipe from his boot and chased them outside. The next day they harangued each other outside the dry goods store. Joe Saint separated them. Ward went to the dry goods store to buy some canned goods, and when he came out Barson stabbed him to death. He pulled his dripping knife from the body of his victim and told the stunned onlookers, “I'm justified because the sumbitch provoked me.” Barson offered no resistance when Joe Saint arrested him. The sheriff took Barson to the town jail and locked him in a cell.

“Now what?” McLendon asked Pugh. “Does the man get a trial? There's no court here.”

“Joe will send word with the Florence stage driver for the sheriff there to telegraph Tucson,” Pugh said. “There's a court there, Judge Palmquist's, and the deputy U.S. marshal will be dispatched here to collect the killer. Then Barson'll be tried in Tucson, all good and legal. It's a speedy process. Hunky-Dory will no doubt be here within a few days.”

“‘Hunky-Dory'?”

“Hunky-Dory Holmes is the deputy marshal, and a fine, cheerful
fellow he is. He gets his name from the song he sings when he arrives anywhere. He composed it his ownself, and changes the words around to suit the location. Hunky-Dory's famous for it. When he arrives we'll make a point of being on the spot—it's something not to be missed.”

Four days later, Hunky-Dory Holmes arrived, driving a buckboard behind the Florence stage. Holmes was a thin-faced fellow with dark, scraggly eyebrows. He hitched his mules near the livery and walked across to the jail. Pugh and McLendon tagged along.

“Have you had a spot of bloodletting, Joe?” Holmes asked Saint. “The miscreant in the cell there, is he the perpetrator?”

“He is,” Saint said. “I suppose a murder was inevitable, given the town's new crowded circumstances.”

“I've heard your happy good news,” Holmes said, and broke into song:

“Oh, when a town is poor,

All the people stay away.

They head for dear ole Tucson,

If they're of a mind to play.

But Turner made his strike,

Now it's quite a different story.

And in the town of Glorious

All things are hunky-dory.”

“Told you he'd sing,” Pugh said to McLendon. “Ain't he a wonder?” McLendon agreed that he was. The next day, Hunky-Dory Holmes followed the stage back to Florence. Barson, in shackles, rode up on the buckboard bench with the deputy marshal, who was singing as he left town.

•   •   •

M
C
L
ENDON FELL
into a funk. It had a combination of causes. Gabrielle was apparently lost to Joe Saint. Collin MacPherson had designs on McLendon's friends in Glorious. McLendon was also tormented by thoughts of Ellen Douglass. The more he tried not to think about her, the more the memory of her pale, dead face haunted him. Collin MacPherson and Rupert Douglass seemed so much alike—was it McLendon's fate to always attract the wrath of such powerful, ruthless men? How much of his trouble was his own fault? What things should he have done differently?

One afternoon when his mood was especially dark, he told Bob Pugh that he had a headache and needed to sit down for a while. Instead of closing himself in the livery office, he went over to the Owaysis, thinking that if he couldn't force troubling thoughts from his mind, then he'd flush them out with alcohol.

Except for Crazy George behind the bar and Girl and Ella sweeping around tables, the saloon was empty. Mary Somebody was in Tucson scouting whores, and all the prospectors were off in the mountains. McLendon had a few drinks, feeling simultaneously guiltier and sorrier for himself with each swallow of red-eye. He brooded about MacPherson, about Ellen, about Gabrielle and the sheriff. He was so lost in miserable contemplation that he was startled when Ella touched his arm and asked if he was all right.

“You generally don't drink so hard, especially in the afternoon,” she said. “It's causing me concern.”

McLendon was moved by her words. Somebody cared about him. Her hand on his arm stirred him too. It had been so long since he'd been with a woman. That was with Ellen. He suddenly remembered
with particular clarity how Ellen would reach for him, eager and desperate at the same time.

“I know that you require an appointment in the afternoon,” McLendon said. “Is there any possibility that you might make time for me now?”

“I thought you felt obligated to abstain,” Ella said. “Aren't you worried that your fine lady in town might hear of it and be offended?”

“She's not my lady, as you and everyone else well know. And I don't care what she thinks.”

“In that case, let me put up my broom,” Ella said. “I'll just inform George that I'll be otherwise occupied for a bit.”

The whore's crib where she led him made McLendon feel even worse. It was cramped and dreary, with just enough room for a bed and washbasin. But Ella was adept at her craft. Correctly assessing McLendon's mood, she took the initiative and skillfully proceeded until physical pleasure temporarily overwhelmed him. Afterward they lay twined together.

“Don't worry about the time,” Ella murmured. “Miss Mary is away, and George can't make out the face of the clock. We're all right for a while. Relax and tell me why you're so troubled.”

McLendon didn't mean to say too much. But to his own amazement he began talking about St. Louis, his early life there, how he came to work for Rupert Douglass and then met Gabrielle and loved her, and then Douglass's offer of his daughter. Ella was a good listener, drawing him out with requests to tell her more. He did, describing his brief, troubled marriage and the circumstances of Ellen's death, how he'd had to run because he knew for certain Douglass would send Killer Boots after him. Ella was fascinated. She murmured
comforting things while McLendon described his flight from New Orleans when Killer Boots showed up there.

“No wonder you seem so bothered,” she said. “Just the thought of this Boots person makes me tremble. But at least you can feel confident that he'll never find you here. Perhaps your father-in-law will have called off pursuit by now?”

“He never will. I'm certain of that. Rupert Douglass has all the money in the world, and he'll be prepared to spend it. Men like him never give up until they get what they want.”

Ella nodded. Then she said that as much as she was enjoying her time with McLendon, she had to get back to the saloon. Soon it would be evening and the prospectors would rush in, eager for whiskey and fifteen-minute turns with her.

“Are you close to saving the amount needed for passage back to England?” McLendon asked. “I know how eager you are to go home.”

“I'm still short of funds, but due to recent circumstances I feel confident that I'll soon be sufficiently solvent,” she said. “The good Lord willing, I'm not long for Glorious.”

McLendon suddenly thought about Gabrielle. He didn't want her to know that he'd had sex with the town whore.

“Here's your twenty dollars,” he told Ella as she dropped her dress down over her head. “Promise me you won't tell anyone about this.”

She took the folded bills and winked. “I won't tell a soul. It shall be our secret. Do you feel better now?”

McLendon did, a little.

•   •   •

T
HE TOWN FOUNDERS
bubbled over with renewed optimism. Mayor Rogers predicted full town status would be granted at the next session of the territorial legislature in Tucson. Territorial governor A. P. K.
Safford himself was rumored to be coming out for a look at Glorious. With all his rooms consistently spoken for, Mulkins anticipated bringing in a work crew soon to finish the second floor of his hotel. He briefly promoted himself to colonel, but the new rank didn't take. Everyone continued calling him Major. And Bob Pugh informed McLendon that the two of them would go to Florence to buy mules.

“What with our recent run of customers, I've got enough to purchase six or seven,” Pugh said. “There's a fellow in Florence who charges ninety dollars for a broke-in, healthy mule, but I think I can get him down to eighty or even seventy-five. With the new ones we'll be bringing back, that gives us eighteen or nineteen mules to rent by the day—handsome profits. I might find myself feeling obligated to pay you a salary besides room and board.”

“Would it be just the two of us going to Florence?” McLendon asked. “What about Apaches along the way?”

“Not to worry. We'll take the buckboard and trail along with the Florence stage. That should be sufficient to discourage the Indians.”

They set out the next morning, staying close enough to the stage to maintain contact and far enough behind to avoid choking on the dust kicked up by its mule team and wheels. Pugh was in a merry mood. He regaled McLendon with stories about his colorful life roaming the frontier. Pugh claimed he'd been in California for the big Sutter's Creek gold rush, and in Virginia City, Nevada, during the lush era of the Comstock Lode. What happened in those places was happening now in Glorious, he said. The first big strike, the rush of prospectors, then more strikes and more people flooding in.

“We'll soon be a destination for traveling actor troupes and circuses,” he predicted. “There'll be shops selling the latest fashions and treats like iced cream. Maybe even a racetrack, a baseball nine, and a bowling alley. Anything's possible now.”

The trip to Florence took most of the day. They rolled in just before dusk.

“There's the big city!” Pugh whooped.

Florence would not have comprised a good-size neighborhood back in St. Louis, but after his time stuck in Glorious, it still looked impressive to McLendon. Even the stage depot seemed sizable and sophisticated with its posters and ticket counter. Pugh steered the buckboard past the depot and down a real street with buildings lining each side.

“We'll stable the team and then get ourselves a hotel room,” Pugh said. “After that, it's time for fun. We'll purchase our mules in the morning, follow the stage out, and be home in Glorious in time for supper.”

They had a fine evening, dining on chili and enchiladas in a real restaurant. Then they enjoyed fancy mixed drinks in a Florence saloon that sold liquor other than the generic red-eye served at the Owaysis. The next morning they met with a livery owner. He and Pugh haggled in a chummy way, and Pugh purchased six mules for eighty-two dollars apiece. Each man loudly claimed that the other had robbed him blind. McLendon helped Pugh tether the mules to the back of the buckboard, and then they hurried to the depot just in time to connect with the stage departing for Florence.

“Mission accomplished, C.M.,” Pugh said. “Now let's get the hell home and start making money off these damnably expensive beasts.”

They rode for a while, never in silence, Bob Pugh being addicted to making nonstop conversation. He nattered on about the rising price of curry combs, wondered at length how Mary Somebody was faring in her search among territory whores for some worthy ones (Bob personally favored blue-eyed blondes), and predicted that soon Crazy George would have to start serving a finer brand of liquor in the Owaysis because a better class of customers would demand it. McLendon listened for a while, then became distracted by his own
thoughts. Pugh eventually noticed his lack of a polite response and demanded, “C.M., what exactly ails you? Why ain't you enjoying my stimulating conversation?”

“I'm disturbed by the Turner strike,” McLendon said. “You surely must have noticed that there's something bothersome about it.”

“What the hell do you mean? What could be bothersome about a hardworking man experiencing great good fortune?”

McLendon shifted on the buckboard bench so he could face Pugh directly. “It's possible, isn't it, to fake the presence of valuable ore and minerals?”

“You mean salt a fake claim?”

“Yes, that.”

Pugh spit over the side of the buckboard. “Now, you really believe Turner did that? He'd been bustin' ass prospecting for years. If he meant to do some salting, he surely would have done it sooner.”

“I don't suspect Turner.” McLendon wiped sweat from his forehead with his shirtsleeve. The sun was straight overhead in the cloudless sky. “If you think about the story he told us, he could have been set up himself. Lemmy Duke told Turner exactly where to look. He nagged at him until he did. Was that a coincidence?”

“It very well might have been. Besides, silver ain't like gold. You can salt a gold claim by tossing a few nuggets in a stream or inside a cave. The silver's underneath rock. You got to look for discoloration. How the fuck do you salt that? You can't.”

“But Turner found shiny horn silver, not discolored rock or float. Couldn't somebody have planted that horn silver there, forced it on the rock some way, maybe pounded it there with a hammer? Turner said the pattern of it looked like a shotgun blast. Maybe they loaded some bits of silver in a shotgun and fired it into the rock. Could they do that?”