Mr. St. John Read online

  “Why should you be sorry?”

  “I could of said no over the telephone and saved your train fare. I haven’t sat a horse in over two years. Besides, I got too many rings around my trunk for all that fool stuff. I gave it up years ago when I went into business.”

  “Businesses. Plural. You had three. They all failed.”

  “Hell’s bells.” St. John burped. “Just how far up does your information go?”

  The Pinkerton smiled for the first time. “November 6, 1906.”

  “What are you offering, Mr. Crawlings?”

  “That’s Rawlings.” He spelled it. “In addition to the railroad’s five thousand I’m empowered to offer you another five thousand from the governor for Buckner and a thousand dollars for each of his accomplices. There are at least four. On top of that, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency will pay wages of up to a hundred fifty per week to every man in your posse up to ten, plus six cents a mile. We will also take care of any reasonable expenses.”

  “You really want him, don’t you?” The former candidate was watching him at eye level now, Rawlings having stooped forward with his hands on his knees. Then the detective straightened.

  “It’s a new century,” he explained. “It’s the intention of the governor and my employers to show that there’s no longer any place in the West for this kind of banditry. May I have your answer now, or would you prefer to sleep on it?”

  St. John stared toward a pile of discarded placards tacked to sticks for carrying, each bearing his picture. “Thing like that could run into real money if it goes longer than a couple of weeks.”

  “We’re prepared to take that chance.”

  The older man considered.

  “Tell you what, son,” he said. “I’ll do her for twenty thousand. Flat fee, and I’ll pay the wages.”

  “I don’t have bargaining power.”

  “Then get on the horn to your boss. Twenty thousand, success guaranteed. If Buckner’s still loose six weeks after I start, you don’t owe me a whorehouse token.”

  “It’s interesting.” Rawlings felt a slight stirring of distaste now that the other was calling him son. “You realize that you stand to make far more if the chase drags on.”

  “Son, I don’t stand to make a cent. I owe seventeen thousand for my campaign, and if I don’t pay up by the end of the year I’m out on my ass. I’m too old to start over again with just a saddle.”

  “I’ll call Cheyenne tomorrow. I feel certain something can be arranged.” He paused. “One thing. I’m going along on the manhunt.”

  He was expecting an argument, but St. John merely nodded. “How’s your eye? Can you shoot?”

  “I was Laramie County champion last year.”

  “Ever kill a man?”

  “Once, down in Las Guásimas.”

  “Like it?”

  “Some did. I wasn’t among them. Is that a mark against me?”

  The old lawman started to wet his throat again, then stopped. He squinted at Rawlings. “You don’t favor me, do you?”

  “Let’s say I don’t favor what you stand for,” said the other. “If there’s no room out West for the likes of Race Buckner, there’s hardly room for you. Your methods are out of fashion.”

  “You think that, how come you’re here?”

  “Two reasons. My employers don’t agree with me, and I have bills to pay like everyone else.”

  St. John grunted. It might have been a chuckle, but he was too far gone in drink for the Pinkerton to tell. “Well, campfire talk will be lively, and that’s a fact.” He shook the last drops out of the steel container onto his tongue. “I never met a man liked killing I cared to ride with. But caring to and having to don’t sprout from the same twig. If I can reach him, you’ll be meeting a man who pure-dee loves it. There’ll be two others, not counting him. I do the picking. Objections?”

  “None.” Outside the ballroom a hail clock chimed the hour. “I understand you’re registered in Suite 101. We’ll meet there this morning at ten and go over the details, if that’s all right. By then I should have spoken with my superiors.” Rawlings hesitated. “Do you, er, require assistance with the stairs?”

  St. John made himself comfortable, detaching his collar the rest of the way and flinging it to the floor. It scrabbled across the glossy surface like a startled crab.

  “Won’t need stairs. I rented this room for the night and I aim to get my money’s worth. You might pass me two or three of those champagne bottles, though. And ask one of the maids to dust me off around nine.”

  Chapter Three

  Cowboys and Indians

  “What the hell is that?” George American Horse was seated on a canvas stool before the mirror in his tent, smearing war paint on his round, pockmarked face when a Negro grip came in carrying a long feathered something that at first glance resembled a prostitute’s boa. The Indian was a compact five-five with powerful shoulders wormy with thick white scars and long black hair parted in the middle and drawn into twin braids that hung to his naked chest. He wore moccasins and a breechclout with one in-authentic feature, a broad leather belt cinched at the waist to hold in his thickening stomach. His shoulders glistened in the Florida heat. He stared at the gaudy construction.

  “It suppose to be a warbonnet,” said the grip, grinning nervously as he laid it across George’s footlocker. “Mr. Tom, he say you’s to wear it in the battle today.”

  George stood and picked up the item. It was a sturdy piece of work, made of bleached eagle feathers tipped black and sewn into soft chamois leather studded with red and blue beads. Strips of ermine hung down on either side of the headpiece and the train was long enough to brush the ground when worn. He dropped it back onto the footlocker.

  “No Indian ever wore anything like that,” he protested.

  “Mr. Tom, he say—”

  “Tell Comanche Tom that if he really was present at Quanah Parker’s surrender as he claims, he’d know that Comanches don’t wear warbonnets. Not that kind, anyway. I went along with him on this duel to the death that never took place between him and Parker, but I’m damned if I’ll parade around in front of all those people trapped like a New Orleans whore. Tell him that.”

  “He done said you’d talk like that. He say to tell you you’s fired iffen you doesn’t wear it.” The Negro braced himself for the cloudburst. He was a Pennsylvania native who had never seen an Indian before he joined the extravaganza and was terrified of this blooded Crow. But George’s reply was quiet.

  “Anything else?”

  Here she comes, thought the grip. “Yessir. Mr. Tom, he say you’s taking a mite long losing lately. It look like he having too tough a time of it, he say. When he gives you that there flip, you’s supposed to stay cotched.”

  The Indian flushed under his brown skin and war paint, but before he could cut loose, the Negro was gone, brushing past Wild Bill Edwards, who was entering through the flap. George laughed in spite of himself and tried on the headdress. “How do I look?”

  “Like a soiled dove I humped once in Waco,” said Edwards. Tall and worn for his comparative youth, the sharpshooter was outfitted in black from Stetson to two-inch boot heels, with silver embroidery on his shirtfront and rhinestones winking on his gun belt. Twin pearl-handled Colts rode high on his narrow hips. He was also wearing rimless spectacles, which always came off before he stepped out under the lights of the main tent.

  Smiling bitterly, the Crow took off the bonnet and slung it over the folding dressing table. “I think the Great Scout’s finally getting senile.”

  “I heard all about it. Why don’t you throw a headlock on him next time you’re out there and toss him on his fat ass? Maybe it’ll jar his brains back into working order.”

  “Why don’t you shoot his toupee off instead of lighting his cigar?”

  “Good question. Anyway, you got more right. Tom pays you less than any of us because you’re an Indian and he says you’d just spend it all on whiskey and end up scalping som
ebody. For that you get to go out there day after day in one town after another and lose to him when anyone with half an eye can see he’s no match for you. It can’t be easy making him look good.”

  “I need this job, Bill. There’s not a lot of call these days for unemployed redskins. Or half-blind train robbers, comes to that.” His voice dropped on the last part. No one on the circuit but George knew Edwards’ real name and former occupation. The terms of his parole barred him from exhibition.

  The sharpshooter watched “Quanah Parker” apply the finishing touches to his fierce makeup with a tobacco-stained forefinger. “The scourge of the M, K & T and Hanging Judge Parker’s best Indian tracker. Who’d of thought we’d end up making faces for the rubes in a traveling show a step and a half ahead of the sheriff, and three months past the end of the season to boot?”

  “That’s not Tom’s fault,” said George, scowling into the mirror to gauge the effect. “Breaking even’s a dream with The Great Train Robbery playing two miles down the road in Seminole. Between the moving pictures and the rodeos these things are burning out fast. I hear even Cody’s added a freak show to take up the slack.”

  “Cody is a freak show.” Edwards rubbed his eyes under the glasses.

  The Indian caught the movement in the mirror. “Hurt?”

  “Just a little blurring. It’ll clear up by show time.”

  “Stop around after your act and I’ll put tea on them.”

  “Hell of a note, me having to load my guns with sand to keep from missing them glass balls, just because Tom won’t let me wear the cheaters. The only time I get to do any real shooting is when they take the lights off me so I can put ‘em on and fire up his stogie. Maybe that’s why I don’t foul up out there no matter how mad I get at him. Too proud.”

  “Great gunfighters don’t wear spectacles.”

  “Comanches don’t wear warbonnets either. You going to?”

  George grimaced, for real this time. His face looked like a death’s-head now, ghastly white with black circles around the eyes and crimson streaks on his cheeks and forehead. “Even bloodthirsty savages have to eat.”

  The band was warming up in the main tent. George could feel the brump-brump of the tubas through his moccasins. Edwards reached for the flap.

  “Tom was a lot easier to work for before he took up with that little trick rider from Montana,” he said. “She’s two months younger than his oldest daughter. Hell, she ain’t much bigger than his hand.”

  “I hear she’s a hell of a lot better, though.”

  Edwards laughed. George’s wit was sharpest when provoked. “Well, break a leg. And remember to roll when you take that spill from your horse this time. Saves wear and tear on the shoulder.” He bent to duck through the opening, then straightened, leaving the flap open. “I clean forgot. This came for you a little while ago. I caught the kid peeking through a hole in the Arabian harem’s tent.” He held out a Western Union envelope.

  “Open it and read it, will you, Bill? I’ve got this crap all over my hands.”

  The sharpshooter tore into it and snorted. “I’ll be damned, it’s from Ike St. John!”

  The trick riders were just finishing their act as George entered the main tent leading his paint and stood between the half-empty bleachers waiting for his eyes to grow accustomed to the electric light. Hopping down from her milk-white Arabian, Comanche Tom’s little blonde from Red Lodge curtsied before the small but enthusiastic crowd and swept up a tiny hand in a gauntleted glove to indicate her fellow performers, including a retired gaucho from South America and a family of circus players on hiatus from Ringling Brothers. Then the music changed and they led the horses out to make room for the cowboy clown. Stable hands waited beyond the circle of light to relieve them of the reins.

  “George,” greeted the girl sweetly as she approached him, and the Indian knew he was in trouble, “you speak Spanish, don’t you?”

  “A little.” He tried to sound nonchalant, but in truth the nearness of this fleshy twenty-year-old in her brief white costume with fringe brought the blood rushing to his face. For once he was grateful for the heavy war paint.

  “Would you please explain to this peppergut”—still speaking sweetly—“that the next time he puts his hands on my bottom I’m going to geld him right out there in front of everyone?”

  The Crow had to suppress a smile, not so much because the man in question, decked out in tights and flat black hat with balls dangling from the brim, was glancing with curious black eyes from one face to the other, but because she was patting his arm affectionately as she said it. When George translated—“desune sus cojones”—the gaucho stiffened, paled slightly under his dark complexion, and, evidently reading confirmation in the girl’s complacent smile, disengaged himself and exited.

  She pecked the Crow’s cheek, or rather the air nearby, and declared, “You’re a good Indian, George. I don’t care what Tom says.”

  “Someone taking my name in vain?”

  George turned toward the owner of the rich, stage-trained baritone striding in through the entrance. Thomas Jefferson Clay was six-three and running to fat in a costume made from bleached doeskin with fringes as long as a man’s arm, a belt containing his paunch with an ornate buckle fashioned after the Indian head on the penny. Hennaed locks swept from under his white Stetson behind his ears to his collar, fighting the forward pull of a hooking nose and forked goatee brushed and dyed to perfection. The cold blue eyes beloved of dime-novel illustrators up North were faded now but still commanding, though his jowls were anything but heroic. He had learned to hold his head so that the light bleached out the shadows underneath.

  The bantering nature of his opening line was destroyed by its deadpan delivery; Comanche Tom’s sense of humor was no greater than his munificence. Throwing her arms around his neck, the girl from Montana stood on tiptoe to kiss him. He pushed her away gently.

  “Not now,” he said. “Get ready for the stagecoach robbery. Today I’m putting it on right after the battle instead of the Parade of Nations.”

  She sighed something about loving great men and trotted out, trailing that faint scent of horse and girl that never failed to stir the Indian.

  Instead of leaving to take his position on the other side of the tent as George expected, Comanche Tom remained standing next to him, watching the clown attempting to untangle himself from his lasso to the audience’s delight. “What happened to the Parade of Nations?” George asked finally.

  “King Edward’s drunk again.” The famous voice was gruff. “You can’t do a Parade of Nations with England falling off his horse all the time. Where’s the warbonnet?”

  Since it was obvious he was holding it in one hand, the Crow almost didn’t answer. Then he remembered the Great Scout’s almost nonexistent powers of observation and held it up.

  “Put it on, for chrissake! I didn’t fork over sixty bucks to have you dragging the feathers in the dust and horseshit.”

  Reluctantly, George tugged on the headpiece. The train tickled his naked back. His paint wickered and shied from the bizarre vision, but he kept a tight hand on the bit chain.

  “That’s better,” said the showman. “The nigger tell you what I want out there?”

  “He said I wasn’t losing quick enough.” George paused. “Listen, Tom—

  “No, you listen. ” Turning, Tom jabbed a gloved forefinger at the Indian. “Don’t think I don’t know what you say about me behind my back just because you were rooting rumrunners out of the Osage Hills while I was treading the boards on the East Coast. It’s not you these people pay to see. I’m the only indispensable member of this troupe. Mission-school Indians I can get by the trainload, so stay down when I throw you the first time or I’ll fire you and fix it so you never work in another show in this country.”

  The other swallowed his bile. “I’m trying to tell you about this wire I—”

  “Save it. Right now you’re going to get up on that horse I paid for and give
my fans their money’s worth.” He spun on his heel and left the way he had come.

  “Be glad to,” replied George, but by that time he was talking to himself.

  “Ladeeeeeez and gentlemen,” bellowed the announcer.

  The crowd was tense with anticipation. At the close of the cowboy clown’s act a drum roll had started, accompanied by the dousing of all the lights save one, shining straight down on the bald head of the stout Irishman, a magnificently mustachioed specimen in full-dress jacket and puttees stuffed into the tops of knee-high black boots. After his greeting he paused—six seconds, no more, no less—while the roll continued. Then:

  “Shortly before dawn on June 27, 1874, seven hundred Comanche braves laid siege to the trading post at Adobe Walls, Texas. They were led by Quanah Parker, half-breed son of Chief Peta Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker, his kidnapped bride. For three days the battle raged, until Quanah challenged the beleaguered whites to send forth a warrior upon whose scalp would rest the fate of everyone present. That warrior proved to be a nineteen-year-old scout named Thomas Clay.

  “Ladeeeeeez and gentlemen, I give you Comanche Tom!” He gestured grandly with his silk hat into the pitch blackness. The drum roll ended on a crash of cymbals and a spotlight burst upon the Great Scout in all his frontier finery, seated astride a fat palomino arrayed in glittering gold between the bleachers on the far side of the tent. The glorious sight tore a collective gasp from the audience, then wild applause and cheering as Tom swept off his big Stetson in the classic pose.

  The drum started up again, and the announcer directed the spectators’ attention opposite. “And in this corner”—mild tittering at the phrase borrowed from the ring “Quanah Parker, last hereditary chief of the great Comanche Nation!”

  The sudden bright light startled the paint, which squealed and tried to rear as it had many times before. This time George let it. The tableau of the great painted chief in feathers straddling a pawing, whinnying steed was rewarded with thunderous clapping and stamping of feet, louder even than Tom’s reception. But barely loud enough, thought the Indian smugly, to cover the sound of the old scout’s gnashing teeth. That stunt alone was good for instant unemployment.