The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion (19 page)

THE RUSKIN DRAMATIC ARTS AGENCY

Peter Ruskin,
Esq
.

Representing Artists

Specialising in

All Acts of Elocution,

Spiritual Uplift,

Poetical Recitation,

Melodrama,

Tragedy and Farce

No fees charged except for services rendered

Single rates for husband-and-wife acts

Inquire at

504B Washington Street

(Across from the Bella Union)

He was particularly pleased with the European spelling of “specialising,” which he thought would appeal to the tastes of his intended target, and the bit about husband-and-wife teams sharing a single rate. The list of specialties had been selected with that same purpose in mind. Originally, he'd included acrobatic acts, but the parade of tumblers, high-wire artists, and human pyramids that had tramped through his office the first week had wearied him and he'd had the line removed. In any case, Mme. Elizabeth Mort-Davies, who his research told him had been no mean physical performer in her younger days, was past the age where limbs and sinew began to rebel at anything more ambitious than a short sprint (or a bicycle ride), and Major Evelyn Davies was too fat. The stream of applicants slowed to a trickle, and Peter Ruskin,
Esq
. (a real name from among his father's contemporaries,
which happened to contain his own initials), turned them all down with professional brusqueness while possessing his soul in patience.

With one exception: He promised himself that if he heard “O, Captain! My Captain!” one more time, he'd strike
Poetical Recitation
from the list.

Saturday nights, he bought drinks for the bartenders in all four major houses of pleasure and left stacks of his business cards, with instructions as to the kind of husband-and-wife act he sought, promising a finder's fee for every one he booked. He refrained from asking for the Davieses by name. No agent in the show business did that, as the whole point of the enterprise was to discover obscure talent and exploit it. Bartenders were suspicious by nature, and the history of vigilante activity in Barbary kept the proprietor of every den of dissipation on his guard; one false step, and Allan Pinkerton would never know what had become of his most reliable man in Chicago.

On his way back to his room each evening, he stopped to purchase an armload of local newspapers, and sat up on his cornshuck mattress scanning the reviews and theatrical advertisements in the
Bulletin, Call, Chronicle
, and
Star
for some sign that the Davieses were playing locally. The fact that their names did not appear failed to deter him, as he thought it possible they sometimes worked pseudonymously, either to obfuscate their identities or in response to an old thespial superstition about changing one's luck with one's billing. He circled promising acts in pencil, turned out his lamp at ten o'clock in obedience to his landlord's curfew, and spent part of the next day visiting matinees, but so far had not spotted a performing couple who matched the descriptions he'd memorized.

At the end of these three weeks, his emotions were tangled. Pinkerton was impatient and a skinflint, and could not be expected
to subsidize his subordinate's experiment in theater indefinitely. At the same time, the old man had caught the best-selling author's bug, and could not fail to grasp the entertainment potential in the apprehension of a company of actors who supplemented their box-office receipts with armed robbery. He might be contented with a looser grip on the reins this one time. The newspaper trail—Rittenhouse's answer to the great Chisholm—led solidly toward a Davies appearance in San Francisco, the pleasure capital of the American frontier. On the other hand, stage players were not often creatures of logic, and the Major and the Madame might have detoured into the interior after Eureka, for no other reason than that their train had struck and killed a white heifer, souring their luck. Artists were far less predictable than the common run of road agent. That was how John Vermillion's troupe had survived this long without having to flee a single posse.

There was also the possibility that he had waited too long to set his trap. He'd never questioned his assumption that the company would reconvene, and he did not do so now. He'd based his timetable on the conventional theatrical season, which began during the first frost of autumn and ended before the hammering heat of summer turned auditoriums into ovens, but upon reflection there was no defensible reason to expect this particular association to behave according to convention. Perhaps
The Diplomat Deposes
had returned to its trunk and its champions were even then steaming east to meet the others for a brand-new season of stirring oratory, thrilling swordplay, and thievery on the grand scale.

Such were the doubts and ruminations that befell the man who staked himself out as a goat in lion country.

There was one more: the likelihood, if his quarry did not surface soon, that Peter Ruskin would be forced to sign one of the
acts that passed through his office. Agents, while discriminating, had to live, and if word got around that the representative was refusing to represent anyone, he stood the risk of discovery, or what passed for it in lieu of evidence to the contrary. There was no more certain route to a death sentence on the part of the shadowy hordes than to be exposed as a “crusher” working undercover for established law and order, no matter who was the object. Merely to be suspected invited tarring and feathering at the least. Ritten-house made up his mind to offer his services to the next glimmer of talent that crossed his threshold.

Fortunately—for he was far less confident of his abilities as a booker of exhibitions than as a detective—that glimmer happened to belong to a middle-aged woman of preposterous height and her companion, who was as fat as a rolled armadillo and dressed like the Prince of Wales. He had made contact with the Prairie Rose at last.

The fogs of San Francisco harbor vanish, burned off as by a magnesium flash by a Panavision shot directly into the sun, with its chain of reflective circles: Welcome to the Chihuahua desert, where it's always 105 in the shade, and the nearest shade is in El Paso. The state bird is dead. Even the gila monsters have migrated north to the relative comfort of Caliente Infierno, which translates roughly as Hot as Hell.

But heat is of small consequence in the little village of San Diablo, where a fiesta is always in progress. Careering down from the Sierra Madres, we hear first the drunken tinny blatting of trumpets and the out-of-synch crash of tambourines, then swerve around a pie-faced peasant in a tattered sombrero fancy-stitching his way down the broad main street with a bottle in one hand, and pause
with a pleasant sigh to regard the girl dancing barefoot on a plane table in the middle of the square. She is all flying black ringlets, bare brown shoulders, whirling skirts, slender feet, and the regulation dagger strapped by a garter to one thigh, to the accompaniment of guttural cheers from the guitar players and that climbing, tongue-fluttering squeal ending in a high-pitched cackle that no
Norteamericano
can imitate. In six years, the girl will resemble the gourd-shaped women in weeds grinding corn in stoneware bowls on the front porch of the mayor's hacienda nearby, slit-eyed, contagiously vilipendent, but just now she is a welcome sight after all those rocks and cactus. Her name is Fiona, but it may as well be Dolores, Conchita, Rosario, or Mirabelle. There is one in every community of its size in old Mexico; but one only.

Our pause is regrettably brief, as we are not here to take in the local fauna. From there we move on to a small pavilion constructed of four cypress trunks supporting a roof of woven fronds topped with black Spanish moss. Beneath its screen, Jack Brixton, Tom Riddle, Mysterious Bob Craidlaw, Breed, and the Kettlemans sit on cane chairs in a semicircle facing a man who is fat even by the standards of a generation that would elect Grover Cleveland to the presidency; the yards of white cotton in his simple shirt and trousers alone would furnish dust covers for a parlor full of furniture, and his hips are stuck fast between the arms of his fan-backed chair. Bandoliers of large-caliber shells cross his ringed torso. With one hand he fans his huge streaming moustachioed face while the other cups a convenient breast belonging to the fat seÑorita seated astraddle his enormous left thigh. His name is Matagordo.

Mexico's blood-flecked history has not been kind to Matagordo; even his first name has been lost. He was a general in the revolutionary army of Benito Juarez, which he joined after the government
of Maximilian refused to promote him beyond the rank of lieutenant colonel. Had he accepted a peacetime post in Mexico City and helped to oversee the return of the country to its citizens, his fame might have survived that of his successors, Francisco Villa and Emiliano Zapata, but he chose instead to return to rural banditry. In June 1875, he'd settled into semiretirement in San Diablo, where the mayor was his creature, and Ace-in-the-Hole his guest.

“My friends, your stubborn sobriety pains me. In this pueblo, we nurse our children with tequila and wean them from their virginity after Communion. We produce bastards the way other pueblos produce apricots; therefore we depend upon visiting seed to prevent our women from bearing idiots.
Por favor
, help yourself to our hospitality. Business without pleasure violates our charter.” His English was impeccable, if somewhat prosy, as he'd learned it from crumpled pages torn from American dime novels used as packing material for the weapons he ordered from New Mexico and Texas. Owing to the fragmented nature of his reading, he thought Buffalo Bill was a figure of mythology, part animal and part man.

“There'll be time later,” Brixton said. “Will you loan us the men we need?”

This brought a grunt from Charlie Kettleman, who'd risen to comply with Matagordo's appeal. He slumped back into his chair and crossed his arms. The general's
señorita
wore no underthings, and the occasional glimpse he received when she shifted her weight on the fat man's thigh made him restless. Since his encounter with Dr. Ruddock's dictionary in Table Rock, the only time his brains weren't snarled with medical Latin was when he was in a woman's arms. Brother Ed gave his knee a sympathetic pat.

Their host fanned himself, looking troubled. “You have not yet confided the purpose of your appeal. A train, yes; but you do not say
which
train, nor why you cannot manage to rob it with your own fearsome band. I must know the risks.”

“What's it to you?” Breed cut in. “No horse could carry you across the Rio Grande.”

“I would not ask it to, as I am kind to animals and small children. However, my men trust me not to send them into danger I would not myself face. There is also the matter of an enterprise I have planned in Hermosillo at the end of summer, which will be quite impossible if they do not return to me in the condition in which they left.”

Brixton said, “It's a military operation, right up their alley. That's all I'll say if you don't give me your word it don't go beyond this here tent.”

“You have it, as a gentleman and a soldier of fortune.”

“That and a squirt of mercury'd cure a dose of clap.”

The general aimed a scowl at Charlie Kettleman, saw where his gaze was fixed, and put on his sombrero to free his hand to adjust the fat girl's skirt. “The details, please, Señor Brixton. I won't ask again, and you may put aside any thought you have about trading me for my men. A dozen guns are trained upon you at this moment.”

“Only a dozen?” But Brixton's face was gray beneath the sunburn.

“I took El Paso del Norte with less. All of those are present.”

Brixton shrugged. “Custer and Terry's fixing to give the injuns what-for in the High Plains next year. Army train's on its way to Fort Abraham Lincoln with the payroll for the whole campaign.
Fort Dodge is the first stop, up in Kansas; we'll hit it on its way there. Right around seventy thousand in greenbacks and double eagles, and under armed guard from the caboose to the cowcatcher.”

Matagordo fondled the girl's breast, meditating. “What is your source?”

“I got friends. Just because they turned coat and swore to the Stars and Stripes don't mean it stuck.”

“Seventy thousand?”

“Maybe more, maybe less. That's seven thousand to you, and you don't need to get up out of that there chair to earn it.”

“He couldn't if it was ten,” Tom Riddle said. “I knew a man fat as you died in a Pullman outside Sacramento. He was so stiff they couldn't get him out the door. They cut a hole through the roof and pulled him up with ropes and pulleys. You ought to go for a walk once in a while.”

Brixton said, “Shut up, Tom. What about them men, General? That there dozen ought to do it.”

Matagordo summoned over a little barefoot boy, possibly an illegitimate grandson, and spoke to him in rapid Spanish. The boy sprinted away. “In San Diablo, we seal all our transactions with tequila.” The host looked at Tom. “We shall see which of us can walk at the end of the day.”

The celebration stretched into three, at the close of which even Charlie Kettleman was content. It was time to go. Breed, who insisted it was his white half that couldn't tolerate liquor, slumped over his horse's neck, Tom was too drunk to prattle, and Ed dismounted often to vomit on the way out of town. Bob showed no effect, but then no one knew how much or how little he had drunk. They all avoided conversation with Brixton, who was exactly three
times as mean when hung over as when he hadn't had a drop. The twelve men Matagordo had lent them for reinforcement, each a traveling arsenal with bandoliers, two Colt revolvers, and a Mexican carbine, were still drinking, and singing all the old songs of the glorious revolution at once. They had no idea where they were headed or what they were expected to do when they got there, but they loved and venerated Matagordo, and were sorry only that
El Tigre del
Norte had grown too fat in his retirement to accompany them. There wasn't a full set of natural teeth in the entire band, but they had enough gold in their mouths to charter a train to Kansas instead of riding their gaunt, grass-fed mongrel mounts.