Power in the Blood (84 page)

There were rehashed accounts of the Grand Mogul’s collapse and the eventual discovery of a miner’s gnawed remains. The hunt for Slade had been extended to most of the western states and territories, and there was talk of extending it nationwide, given the munificence of Leo Brannan’s reward. There were many illustrations of Slade, each of them depicting, with variations, a brute of a fellow with wildly flying hair and beard and a deranged look about the eyes; in one of the city’s less literate journals the picture actually suggested the man had fangs of a wolflike nature projecting over his lower lip. The reports simply confirmed for Zoe the great distance that had opened between herself and Leo in recent months. She had been given no prior inkling of his plans to boost the search for what the newspapers called the Colorado Cannibal.

Omie found the coverage fascinating. “Will they find him, do you think, Mama?”

“I couldn’t say, and frankly, Omie, I would prefer not to be reminded of anything we have left behind us.”

“He looks like the wild man from Borneo.”

“And will probably be pickled and put on display if they capture him, like a freak of nature.”

“Can we go see him if they do?”

“Omie, please! Now turn to the back pages for the shipping lists.”

After considerable searching, they determined that the schooner
Acropolis
was scheduled to depart for England in two days’ time. Zoe asked if Omie was still determined to go by sail rather than steam. “Yes,” said Omie.

“Have you … seen that we will arrive safely?”

“No, Mama; I haven’t seen anything lately. I don’t know if I can anymore.”

“Well, no matter. I’m sure the
Acropolis
is a sturdy vessel. We’ll book our passage first thing tomorrow.”

“Will there be pirates when we cross the ocean?”

“No, there will not. I daresay there are more train robbers in the country nowadays than there are pirates in the whole world. The most we will lose on our crossing will be our supper. Steamships are far more stable, Omie. Won’t you change your mind?”

“I want to see the sails flapping. Can’t I?”

“Very well, but don’t lay the blame at my door if you become ill.”

“Can we see all the lights tonight? There are so many!”

Omie had spent much of the time since dusk at the window of their hotel room, amazed by the gas and electrical lighting of New York.

“After dinner, yes, we’ll take a stroll.”

Their walk around lower Manhattan was a delight. Zoe, as a girl in Schenectady, had never been near the big city, and its towering buildings were like something from a fairy tale, its bustling crowds like some eastern bazaar, and the brilliant lighting in the streets a scientific marvel. They paused outside a theater marquee studded with what appeared to be hundreds of lights, a frame of electric radiance around a sign declaring:
NOBLE BURGIN’S GREATEST THEATRICAL OFFERING—THE NATION’S MOST POWERFUL DRAMA—SEE IT HERE UNDER EXCLUSIVE PRESENTATION—“RED HELLIONS” OR “BROTHERS IN BLOOD”—A TRUE STORY OF OUR TIMES—YOU WILL BE SHOCKED OR YOUR MONEY WILL BE REFUNDED.

“Mama, I haven’t ever seen a play, have you?”

“No.”

“May we see this one? It must be ever so thrilling.”

“It sounds ghastly,” said Zoe, recalling reports of its debut in Denver, to scorching notices that did nothing but persuade the public to witness for themselves the outrageous bloodletting on stage that had so irked the critics. She bought two tickets anyway, and they went inside. Despite all the success
Red Hellions
had brought to himself and the Arcadian Players, especially since its transferal to New York, Noble Burgin was restless. The play had been penned almost a year ago, and his literary urges were again hounding him for release. As he applied makeup to his face for the evening performance, Noble could not help but wonder where he might possibly venture next, dramatically speaking. The very nature of the current success precluded any return to his former fare. He had established a bold precedent with his volatile mixture of mayhem and savagery, and was obliged to follow through, his current theatrical manager had advised, with another play of the same ilk. But where was the story to come from? The deadly redskins had been handed to Noble by way of the press, and his muse had seen instantly that it was the stuff of literary notoriety. His muse had not, however, seen fit to provide anything further, and Noble’s enjoyment of his newfound riches was diminished as a result. He knew this to be the proof that he was indeed a true artist, less concerned with profit than with authoring a drama to last down through the ages, as the best of the Greeks had done. Noble yearned to be placed alongside the geniuses of ancient times, but knew it was not possible until he wrote another masterpiece, the equal of
Red Hellions.

There had been comments concerning his portrayal of Augustus Chillington, the youth who had unwittingly released Panther Stalking and Kills With a Smile upon the southwest. The critics were unkind in their condemnation of a middle-aged man (Noble blanched at this) acting the role of someone thirty years his junior. Noble thought it outrageous that attention should be drawn to the extent of his waistline and the contour of his jaw, when Art was the thing being offered for consideration, not youthfulness. What callow actor of Augustus’s age could possibly handle the delicacy of emotion that Noble conveyed, as realization that his childhood companions had become deadly killers of white settlers brought Augustus to a feverish resolve, and he swore on bended knee over the family Bible to avenge every unmerciful killing. No, it was a job for an experienced thespian, not some smooth-cheeked newcomer, and Noble was not about to allow any wet-behind-the-ears usurper to steal his thunder away, even if Hortense and Marcie had both been henpecking him over the issue. “You are becoming a laughingstock,” his wife had said, and Marcie had been even more cruel. “When you rescue me from the burning stake,” she had said, referring to the climactic scene, wherein Augustus saved his bride-to-be from a fiery fate before dispatching the redskins with his pistol, “kindly do not squeeze me so hard against your belly, or the audience will not be able to see me. And your breath, Noble, has deteriorated of late.”

Noble was aware that Marcie, who in times gone by had permitted him various liberties about her comely person, no longer allowed such intimacy in shadowed corners and behind locked doors. She had made it known that she had eyes for Monty, the strapping stagehand who dreamed of becoming an actor himself someday, “The perfect type,” Marcie had hinted, “to play Augustus—beneath your masterly direction, Noble, of course.” The same suggestion had been made by Hortense, who saw Monty as a means of reclaiming her husband’s affections.

It was all becoming too much, Noble thought. He might consider surrendering the role, he admitted, if only he had some other project to occupy his attention. The writing of another play would fill this requirement admirably, but the necessary inspiration had not shone down upon him. He had tried many times to cudgel a suitable drama from his brain, but nothing came of it but a sense of frustration. Where was the story that would deliver him from his travails!

Noble’s mood suddenly brightened. He set down his paints and rushed to the door of his dressing room. “Johnny!” he called. “Johnny, my lad, where are you!” A boy of fifteen answered his call and came at a run. Johnny was the theater’s general factotum, its fetch-and-carry boy, and he was in awe of Noble Burgin. “Yessir, Mr. Burgin, sir?”

“Johnny, put wings upon your feet and bring to me without delay the evening editions.” He handed the boy ten cents. “You may keep the change if you return within five minutes. Now fly like the wind!”

“Yessir!”

Johnny returned, red of face and three cents wealthier, before Noble had time to apply a complete layer of makeup to his cheeks, an act he was obliged nowadays to perform in order to hide the lattice of burst capillaries there. “Thank you, my boy, and may the proscenium never descend upon your shapely head. Go now.”

Johnny vacated the dressing room, rubbing his pennies, and Noble set out the newspapers for his perusal while he worked at erasing thirty-years from his face. Very few of those years were painted away before he saw the story he had been searching for. It leapt at him from the pages as if set down in print for himself alone, the perfect vehicle for his talents and those of the Arcadians. A cannibal story! It was a breathtakingly daring concept, but he knew, as he scanned the gist of each paragraph, that only this monstrous event in distant Colorado (scene of Noble’s recent resurgence to fame—an omen, perhaps?) could overreach
Red Hellions
and bring even vaster audiences flocking to the marquee bearing his name.
The Man-eater! or Horror in a Gold Mine.
It was a stroke of genius to have summoned Johnny when he did! He would give the boy another dime tomorrow, just for bringing him the salvation he needed. Dame Fortune was smiling on Noble again, and he could think of no one more deserving.

He applied himself to preparations for the evening role, his mind humming with character and plot. He would play Slade himself, naturally, and no one would laugh at him, since the fellow’s age was stated in the newspapers to be around fifty. He hoped the real cannibal was not caught, since he was already shaping a scene wherein Slade confessed his crime to God at some forsaken place in the wilderness. Noble would have liked to play the role of God also, but since that was impossible, and because he wanted no other actor in the troupe to have a role the equal of his own, he would represent God as a burning bush or some such thing, an interesting challenge in stage effects. Virtually the entire play would take place beneath the earth, a daring idea in itself, and would be in the form of a grand soliloquy every bit as moving as Hamlet’s, and considerably longer, as Slade bemoaned his fate and debated with himself the morality of staying alive by feasting on the flesh of another man. It would be a play unlike any written or performed before. Noble would be hailed at last as one of the immortals, and rightly so. Then let Marcie comment on his belly, the little snip.

36

Being a drunk in Denver eventually became unacceptable to Nevis Dunnigan, so he rode a freight train to Glory Hole with every intention of becoming a drunk there. He owned no paints or brushes, these having been pawned along with his easel, so the move was accomplished with little inconvenience beyond his exposure to the elements en route. Nevis asked himself, as he rode beneath a boxcar, how it was that someone with as much talent as himself had become what he was, but no clear answer presented itself. He supposed it was fate, and found comfort in so romantically impervious a force. Because his failure as an artist was not his own fault, Nevis could continue drinking without substantial guilt or self-loathing. He liked to do nothing so much as he liked to drink, and since fate had been unkind to him, Nevis would treat himself to the thing he liked most, whenever and however he could get hold of it. The trip to Glory Hole was a two bottle ride, and he dropped from beneath the train in Leo Brannan’s marshaling yards partially deaf in both ears from the continual grinding of steel upon steel, and bone dry.

He had no firm recollection of why he had chosen Glory Hole, but since he was there, Nevis decided he would make the best of his choice, and discover where the watering holes were located. A town the size of Glory Hole must have plenty, he told himself, and Nevis was not wrong. He asked for and received several free drinks in saloons along Brannan Boulevard, enough to revive him after his ordeal by rail, and he found a meal of sorts in the trash bins behind several of the restaurants in between the saloons.

Life was good, he felt, and Nevis had no regrets over his decision to relocate himself. By late afternoon he was actively searching for a barrel or packing crate in which to curl himself for sleep. No appropriate receptacle being encountered by sundown, which came early in a town jammed in a cleft between towering valley walls, Nevis compromised by wedging his body into a narrow space between a brick wall at the rear of a large building, and the lesser structure of wood nestling alongside. It was a tight fit, even for a man as thin as Nevis, but he did manage to squeeze himself in and sit down on a box that lay there. Fate had denied him greatness as an artist, but fate did provide boxes on which to sit when no more comfortable bed could be found. Nevis was proud of the mellowing within himself, which allowed him to see the world in such good-natured philosophical terms. He was almost asleep when Nightsoil Smith found him.

“Hey there.”

Nevis opened his eyes. So little light remained in the sky that he could see nothing more than a bulky silhouette blocking the narrow space between buildings.

“Hey there,” the silhouette said again.

“Good evening to you,” Nevis responded.

“Need a place?”

“I do.”

“Haul yourself out of there and come on with me.”

Nevis trusted the cheeriness in the man’s voice; it had a boisterous edge that most likely came from alcohol, and Nevis knew from experience that drinkers were often a sharing breed. Sure enough, no sooner had he extricated himself from his hideaway than the fellow produced a bottle and offered it without a word. Nevis drank deeply, then thanked him.

“No charge,” said his new friend, and put out his hand. “Smith,” he said.

“Dunnigan.”

“I got a place that’s warm, even got a little woman inside of it.”

“You have all the elements of happiness, Smith.”

“That I do. Come on.”

Nevis followed him through a series of narrow alleyways to a shack built against the side of a stable. From the moment he had accepted the bottle from Smith, Nevis had been aware of an unpleasant odor clinging to the man, and as they drew near the shack, he learned the reason for it.

“See that wagon there?” said Smith, pointing through the stable’s open door. “That’s mine, every plank and nail. Got another’n behind it too.”

Nevis could see a large metal tank of some kind behind the driver’s seat.