The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion (22 page)

“I figure Jack to bury his part and go on sticking up banks and trains and shooting folks till they put a slug in him or string him up. I don't figure he got into this for the money as much as raising the devil. Breed, he'll just keep getting worse and worse till they elect him governor of hell. I don't calculate Old Scratch will put up much of a contest.”

“What about Mysterious Bob?”

“Shit, I know better how that locomotive up front thinks than I do Bob. I seen him reading a book once written in Greek.”

“How'd you know it was Greek?”

“I asked him what that book was he was reading. He said it was Greek.”

“You believe him?”

“I don't see why not. It was just about the longest conversation we had since I knew him.”

“What was the book about?”

“I didn't ask. I figured why push my luck. Anyway, the print looked like a mess of squashed bugs.”

“Huh.”

Ed nodded. “That about sums up Bob.”

“When's the next stop?”

“About an hour. I asked the porter. We change to the Kansas Pacific in Wichita.”

Johnny Vermillion had smoked a cigar on a balcony overlooking the Champs Elysées, with the gas lamps glowing saffron at twilight and stately coaches rumbling along the broad avenue with the Arc
de Triomphe at their backs; drunk fifty-year-old port on a barge gliding down the Thames past Big Ben, the Albert, and the Houses of Parliament; wagered the last of his father's allowance on a single hand of poker in the bridal suite of the Palmer House, hung with cloth-of-gold and decorated further with Chicago's most beautiful ladies of the evening clad in nothing but their beauty patches; attended a reception for Lillie Langtry at the Academy of Music in New York City, where she'd sung selections from
Faust
; yet none of these places had granted him so fine a view as the window of his room in the Occidental Hotel in Wichita, Kansas, looking out on Douglas Avenue and the homely two stories of the Longhorn Bank.

He knew its history, as he was a serious student of his profession who learned all his lines as well as those of the other members of his cast, and was moreover a quick study. Open only two years, and christened strategically to attract both the cattle barons of Texas and the meatpacking moguls from Chicago, the institution advertised more than a million in assets, and at the height of the season (which it was approaching) stored as much as fifty thousand in its vault; in gold and silver, since neither the unlettered ranchers nor the swollen-bellied businessmen who had survived the Panic of '73 trusted securities or greenbacks. He wondered just how much that came to in pounds and ounces, and whether he might have to make arrangements involving some form of transportation other than Lizzie's bicycle.

He knew the bank's present as well, or as much of it as five days of casual observation could provide. At half-past nine every weekday the guard, middle-aged and limping slightly in a tight blue uniform and forage cap from which all the military insignia had been removed, arrived and let himself in the front door with a key
attached to a ring the size of a duck's egg; he wore what appeared to be a big Navy revolver in a scabbard on his left hip. (“Left-handed,” the observer noted.) The manager, a comfortable-looking fat man in a clawhammer coat, appeared fifteen minutes later, followed in close order by three cashiers, young men dressed respectably but more simply—a diplomatic decision, no doubt. Almost invariably, customers were waiting when the CLOSED sign on the door was reversed and the door opened to the public. The routine never varied more than a minute either way, and traffic coming and going was steady until nearly closing, when it increased noticeably as the hands crept around the clock toward four.

Johnny pondered briefly the wisdom of liberating the earlybird customers of their parcels, but rejected that plan on the theory that they would contain no more than one day's receipts on the part of Wichita's other businesses, or possibly documents of no value to the Prairie Rose. It would be like leaving a laden banquet table with only crumbs from the floor. In addition, he had developed a keen interest in the fat manager.

The spring roundups and brandings were over. The drives had begun. Very soon, thirsty cowboys would descend upon Wichita at the heads and flanks of thousands of bawling beeves. The street would become a river of swaying horns and twitching tails, and the Longhorn vault would fill with Eastern money to buy them and the profits from the saloons and bawdy houses, stuffed to bursting with the drovers' wages. Johnny threw up the sash and breathed in the stench of herds past; that which offended April's delicate nostrils smelled to him like early retirement, and after only two seasons in the theater.

Then something happened that caused the image of money on the hoof and gold in his pockets to evaporate.

It started as a shudder, as of a thunderhead forming far out on the plain, or coal sliding down a chute on Michigan Boulevard. Then the sound separated into a rhythmic tramping. It was too regular for cattle, and too measured for hoofbeats. Then the first column of infantry rounded the corner from Second Street onto Douglas: blouses buttoned, caps tilted forward, a Springfield rifle on every shoulder. A master sergeant marched alongside them, chevrons blazing, bellowing cadence. Pedestrians and loafers gathered on the corner to watch them pass, merchants stood in the doorways of their shops, hands in their pockets. Two minutes passed, and half a hundred soldiers, before Johnny realized that his own heart was thumping in rhythm with their booted feet. A great deal more time seemed to have gone by before the end of the column passed beyond his view. A dog trotted behind, pausing to sniff for promising jetsam, then lost interest and scampered down the alley next to the bank to lift a leg next to a rain barrel. The pedestrians resumed walking, the loafers loafing. The merchants retreated behind their counters.

“Shut the window, Johnny. Isn't it bad enough the whole town smells like a stockyard, without the reek getting into the linens?”

He slid down the sash and turned from the window. He hadn't heard April entering. She wore one of the plainer outfits she'd bought in Paris, a blue cotton suit with gray suede patches on the shoulders and a hat of the same blue material. The inevitable parasol hung from one wrist by a thong.

“Knocking is a sound idea here in the provinces,” he said. “You forget we're no longer Mr. and Mrs. McNear.”

“Not at present. Anyway, I'm an actress. My morals are already in question. You must know everything there is to know about that bank from the outside by now. Isn't it time you paid a visit in person?”

“That time may have eluded us. Did you not encounter the Grand Army of the Republic on your way back to the hotel?”

“I've been back for an hour. I saw them through the cafe window: Boys. I doubt the entire company would offer a razor much challenge.” She unpinned her hat and gave her hair a push.

“It's closer to a regiment. Do you suppose Corny or the Davieses got careless and tipped their mitts?”

“Don't talk like a Spitalfields ruffian. You never got closer to the East End then Waterloo Station. The army doesn't care what we're about. How conceited you are!”

“Who have you been lunching with, Phil Sheridan?”

“I had tea downstairs with the mayor. The dear old fellow manages DeMoose's Saloon, where I suspect he learns more from gossip than he does in his official capacity. The troops are here to reinforce an express coming through tomorrow. They're departing for the territories and some sort of campaign.”

“Indian fight?”

“Oh, I suppose. We're not at war with anyone else, are we? It's so hard to keep up.”

“I wonder if there's anything valuable aboard.”

“Now, don't go off chasing butterflies. The mayor says the Longhorn does more business in Kansas than Wells, Fargo. He was trying to impress me, poor dear. He's a stockholder.”

“Well,
I'm
impressed. Why have I been wasting time standing at this window with you in my arsenal?”

“Why, indeed?” She smiled. “Oh, Johnny, we're such a good team. Can't you see we must seal the partnership?”

But he was facing the window again, and the path of the infantry. “Still, a train would be a refreshing change of pace.”

“Don't just stand around like a bunch of Denver whores. Get your goddamn horses before the train pulls out.”

Tom Riddle, who'd paused on the busy platform with Ed and Charlie Kettleman waiting for the crowd to thin out, watched Jack Brixton's retreating back, headed toward the livestock car where they'd loaded their mounts in Texas. “Who the hell stepped on his tail?”

“Jack don't sit still good,” Ed said. “It puts him off his general sociability.”

Charlie muttered something that may or may not have been a medical term.

Brixton and Mysterious Bob had their horses off the car when the three got there. The Mexicans they'd borrowed from Matagordo, looking more rumpled than usual after their trip in the freight car, stood in a knot waiting their turn. They conversed in volleys of bastard Spanish broken by high-pitched cackles and kept passing
around the same hand-rolled cigarette. Tom wondered if tobacco was so hard to come by down there. Breed had some trouble with his gelding, but a swipe alongside its head with the bridle crossed its eyes and brought it into line. The bridle in place, it fixed a baleful brown eye on its master as it came down the ramp. It had never really come to terms with its surgery.

Nobody at the station seemed to pay much attention to this strange new band that had come to town. Cowboys black and white had gathered to see who was arriving and departing, harlots dressed in all the bright colors of tonics and restoratives in a barbershop patrolled the yard scouting up business, drummers in tight waistcoats and dandies in piped lapels bustled about swinging their sample cases and sticks. A tame Indian in a plug hat and a dirty blanket wandered around asking strangers for tobacco until the station agent came out from behind his window and sent him on his way with a kick in the seat. Tom guessed the man would have his hands full of derelict savages in a year or so; for a Yankee, Custer could fight.

While Ace-in-the-Hole was leading its horses off the right-of-way, the train blew its whistle and backed onto a siding to make way for another coming in from the West under a distant plume of smoke. Half the Mexican mounts, runty and earth-colored and scrawny as coyotes, had no saddles, just blankets, and hackamores instead of proper bits and bridles. They all looked like biters to Tom, who had not failed to note that most of the men who led them had pronounced limps. He bet they'd each left a piece of a haunch somewhere in the Chihuahua desert. They were the sorriest-looking bunch of road agents he'd ever seen: sallow-skinned, underweight, and bowlegged, dressed as beggars with holes in their sombreros you could pitch a jackrabbit through without touching
the sides. It was no wonder the
federales
hadn't been able to run them to ground in ten years of trying; they'd galloped right past them, looking for guerrillas.

He had to ask himself how they spent the gold they'd stolen in the past. He doubted cute little Fiona could handle them all, and none of the other women he'd seen in San Diablo seemed to be worth it.

While he was pondering, a hesitation in his bay mare's gait distracted him. He knelt to examine a hoof and discovered the shoe missing. Ed agreed to take the reins, and Tom went back to see if he could find it on the cinderbed. He carried a hammer and a sack of nails in a saddlepouch for such emergencies, but spare shoes added too much weight. Black Jack would call him sixteen kinds of a son of a bitch if he had to go into town to find a farrier.

He was about to give up the search when he spotted one iron leg sticking out from under the railroad platform. Bending to pick it up, he found his eyes on a level with a slim ankle in a black patentleather pump. Tom was a connoisseur of ankles. He steered away from thick ones, no matter how pretty the face or narrow the waist that went with it; they always meant a coarse temper, and if you forgot yourself and put the band on, a fat middle age. It was as if God had provided them with a foundation firm enough to build on later.

From there, his gaze went up a tall frame, past a bosom that reminded him of a prairie hen, to a disappointingly mannish profile, just before its owner turned away to instruct a porter who approached pushing a big trunk stood up on end on a handcart. Tom stood, forgetting the horseshoe. He'd recognized the face.

He watched her step inside the station on the arm of a fat old goat in cinderproof clothing, wearing yellow gaiters and carrying a stick with a gold knob the size of a cue ball. She didn't seem to
have seen Tom, but if she had he was pretty sure she wouldn't place him. During their one encounter in Denver, she'd been more interested in Charlie Kettleman, who'd knocked her off her bicycle just outside Salt Lake City and stolen back the money she and her companions had stolen from the Overland office there.

Philip Rittenhouse, who seldom missed anything, did not notice the reaction of the man who rose suddenly from a crouch off the edge of the platform just as Major and Mme. Mort-Davies were leaving it; nor did he connect the wizened features with the spare description that appeared on circulars offering a reward for his capture or death, although he'd read it often. He did note in passing that the fellow was an experienced horseman, more comfortable in the saddle than on the ground, and was gratified, when at length the man turned toward the open prairie, to see him turn back and stoop to pick up a horseshoe lying loose beside the track. A drifter, from his clothes and sunburn, but not a cowboy. One of those tramps he'd seen so often during his two visits to the frontier, living on odd jobs and handouts and whatever he could steal.

Such was the train of his thoughts, and had he been able to follow it down its track he might have come very close to the truth—indeed he would have, if Ace-in-the-Hole were his responsibility and all his instincts pointed in that direction. But his concern was the Davieses and the man they had come all the way from San Francisco to meet, and whom he had crossed the country three times to see in the flesh. Tugging down his soft hat to conceal his bald head, and flipping up the collar of his duster to dissemble his reptilian features, Pinkerton's man in Wichita turned away from the worst gang in the West and toward the Prairie Rose.