Beginner's Luck (9 page)

“Then come on in, and I'll show you the latest advances in the modern pistol, plus I have a fine collection
of Sharps buffalo guns, and you know that there's fortunes in buffalo skins just north of here.” He ushered Duane into the store, and inclined him toward a case full of guns with shiny grips of wood and ivory, carved in designs of horses, eagles, sunbursts, and the lone star insignia of the great state of Texas. “What you say yer name was, cowboy?”

“Braddock.”

“I'm Cal Saunders. Braddock? Seems I heard that name before. Your family in the storekeeper business?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Seen the new Remingtons?” He reached into the case and pulled out an unadorned six-shooter with bright metal barrel and plain wooden grips. “Some say that the Colt is the best gun made, but for my money, I'll take a Remington any day. You see that strap of metal on top? It makes it strong, whereas the Colt is held together by two little wedges at the bottom. The Remington is a much finer weapon, and I think you'll like the balance.”

Saunders held out the Remington, and Duane took it in his fist. A pleasurable sensation passed up his arm, and he felt as if he'd become, for a second, a man in a black mustache.

“How does it feel?”

Duane raised the Remington, closed one eye, and lined up the V of the rear sight with the nub in front.

“What does it cost?”

“Fifteen dollars.”

“And a holster?”

“Depends on which one you pick. I got all kinds.”

Guns seemed a complicated science, and Duane
decided not to buy until he learned more. “Haven't made up my mind,” he said. “Maybe I'll come back later.”

“I can take a deposit, and hold the gun for you. These Remington's go like hotcakes after a shooting, like the one we had last night. You see it?”

Duane nodded, as he placed the gun on the counter.

“Braddock? Seems I know that name.”

Duane leaned against the counter, scratched his cheek casually, and drawled, “There was an outlaw named Braddock once, but he was no relation of mine. Ever heard of him?”

The gunsmith wrinkled his brow. “Was he from Missouri?”

“Don't recall,” Duane replied. “Got shot by a sheriff, I believe.”

“Ain't that what happens to all of ‘em?”

Duane waited, hoping for more information, but the merchant held up the Remington instead. “I'll give you the gun and a plain leather holster for eighteen dollars, and you'll never get a better deal than that. What do you say?”

Duane wanted to ask more questions about the outlaw named Braddock, but didn't want to appear obvious. “I'm not ready yet,” Duane replied. “See you later.”

“Anytime,” the gunsmith said, a twinkle in his eye.

Duane walked out of the store, feeling strangely exhilarated. He'd liked the weight of the gun in his hand—solid chunk of machined metal. I wonder if anybody in town gives shooting lessons?

His eyes fell on a sign hanging over the sidewalk a few doors down:

LONGHORN SALOON

Maybe I should go in and strike up a conversation with a cowboy. Possibly I can hire somebody to give me riding lessons, he speculated. He elbowed through the swinging doors, stepped out of the light, and surveyed the scene before him, which was not much different from the crowd last night, except for fewer patrons. Above the bar, harem girls cavorted in their gigantic tub, waited on by Negro eunuchs in turbans. Duane found a space at the bar, placed his foot on the rail, and opened his mouth, but didn't know what to say to the bartender a few feet away. I can't drink whiskey, Duane cogitated, because whiskey will kill me, but they'll laugh if I order sarsaparilla. If I'm going to be a cowboy, I'd better start living like one.

“What's yer pleasure?” asked the bartender impatiently. He wore a dirty white apron and a black patch over one eye.

“Whiskey,” Duane replied.

The bartender plucked a small glass from beneath the bar, dropped it before Duane, and filled it half full of murky brown fluid. Duane reached into his pocket, and flipped the twenty-dollar double eagle at the bartender, who bit the coin, to make sure it was real.

Duane pocketed his change, and carried his glass of whiskey to an empty table against the wall. He sat, pushed his hat back on his head, and gazed into the glass of iridescent fluid. The voice of Brother Paolo came to him from the monastery in the clouds.
Whiskey is the one thing, outside of women, that can utterly destroy a man.

But Brother Paolo was far away, and the Longhorn Saloon wasn't the monastery in the clouds. I'm going to be a cowboy, and I don't care if it kills me. He grabbed the glass, raised it to his lips, drained half of it away, and swallowed fast. Mellow at first, just like last time, it became the Chicago Fire in a matter of seconds. His eyes bulged; he coughed, and his hat fell off. It hung down his back, suspended from his throat by the black leather neck strap.

A few tables away, a group of gamblers snickered. “Somebody ought to teach that boy how to drink.”

Duane covered his mouth with his hand, as he hacked uncontrollably.

A few blocks away, Edgar Petigru sat in his office, studying his ledgers. His saloons were making piles of money, but real-estate sales had been almost nonexistent for the past few months. People didn't want to invest in Titusville until it was confirmed that the railroad would come through.

Edgar had heard many tales of Texas towns that started strong, and then withered away as army posts moved, mines petered out, or the railroad chose another direction for its rails. Guess right, you could be rich as Joe McCoy in Abilene, but you could lose your shirt and even your life if you bet on the wrong town. How can I convince the Union Pacific to build a trunk line to Titusville? he asked himself.

There was a knock on the door. “Who is it?”

The door opened, and Jed appeared. “I seen a man
leavin' Miss Vanessa's house shortly before noon today. Whoever he was, he stayed all night.”

Petigru stared at him. “Does he have a name?”

“Nobody's never see'd him before. He looked like a cowboy, but din't have no boots.”

“He was barefoot?”

“Looked that way.”

Petigru leaned back in his chair. “Probably a beggar, and he slept beneath the front porch.”

“I see'd ‘im leave by the back door. He was young . . .” Jed tossed the last word out casually, but it struck Petigru like a flying chunk of iron.

“I'm sure there's an innocent explanation,” Petigru said. “See what you can find out about him, and let me know if he shows up there again.”

“I'm a little short of money . . .”

Petigru tossed him a coin. “Keep your eyes open, and your mouth shut.”

Duane sat at the table against the far wall of the Longhorn Saloon, studying denizens around him. Alcohol dispersed through the tissues of his body, and he felt mildly to moderately happy. The saloon was the strangest place he'd seen. Now that he examined his fellow Texans close up, he saw a variety of discreet little scenes.

The gamblers were as devout and concentrated as the abbot on a High Holy Day. If these men turned their energies in the direction of God, what a force for good they could be in the world, he reflected. Some games were for mere pennies, played by shifty-eyed, sorrowful cowboys, while coins were
piled high on other tables, where fancy ruffled shirts bumped the stakes higher. Duane's sharp eyes caught one of the dudes dealing a card off the bottom of the deck.

At another table, a group of bleary-eyed cowboys mumbled to each other, dragging coins around the table, and trying to read their cards. They appeared in a stupor, or like mechanical men, their brains pickled by whiskey.

Several tables were beds for men who'd already passed out, and it wasn't even three o'clock in the afternoon. Duane heard political discussions, a lecture on the merits of a horse named Tony, a paean of praise to the sexual stamina of a whore named Sally, and a detailed account of a recent noteworthy barroom brawl in Santa Fe.

Meanwhile, a few tables away, a fiftyish man in a suit, with gray mustache and goatee, read a book through wire-rimmed eyeglasses, while steadily sipping a glass of whiskey. He looked out of place, like a scholar or professor, but he was a part of the saloon's eclectic ambiance, too.

“Don't I know you?”

The voice startled Duane, and he turned toward a familiar lantern-jawed face beneath a wide-brimmed cowboy hat. It was Lester Boggs, the cowboy from the stagecoach trip, peering intensely at Duane.

“You were supposed to buy me a steak last night,” Duane said, “but you never showed up.”

Boggs sat on the chair opposite Duane, and looked him over carefully. “Where'd you steal the clothes?”

“A friend of mine bought them for me.”

Boggs fingered the material of Duane's shirt. “Not
bad at all. You look like you're doin' all right fer yerself. Who's yer friend?”

Duane didn't want to describe his night with Vanessa Fontaine, so he replied: “How come you didn't show up at the Crystal Palace Saloon?”

Boggs spat disgustedly into the nearest cuspidor, missed by three inches, applying another horrendous stain to an already disgusting floor. “Had me a run of bad luck,” he confessed. “I went a-lookin' fer that galoot what owed me ten dollars, but when I found ‘im, he denied that he owed me anything. Well, one thing led to another—and to make a long story short, I spent the night in jail. You got any money?”

“Damn right,” Duane replied proudly. “I'll buy you a steak.”

Boggs slapped him on the shoulder, and Duane nearly fell off his chair. “I always knowed you was a good boy,” Boggs said. “When I was in that stagecoach, I kept a-lookin' at you and a-sayin' to myself: that young feller's a-gonna be somethin' some day. Where'd you steal the money?”

“My friend lent it to me. I'm going to become a cowboy, as soon as I learn to ride a horse. Do you think you could teach me?”

“I was born on a goddamn horse. Ain't nawthin' to it. But first, let's git them goddamned grits.”

They headed toward the chop counter, and Duane felt like a lord of the sagebrush in his new clothes, with his authentic cowboy friend. At the counter, Boggs held up two fingers, and the Negro cook flipped two enormous steaks onto tin plates, smothered them with potatoes fried in beef fat, and ladled on the gravy. Duane paid, and then Boggs led him to the bar. Two
mugs of beer were poured. Duane dropped the necessary coins in the bartender's palm, and they returned to their table beneath a moth-eaten Commanche blanket nailed to the wall.

Boggs didn't say a word, as he wolfed down the food. He'd eaten one stale biscuit in jail, and had dreamed about a steak dinner with fried potatoes. He looked at Duane, and thought that the kid appeared somehow bigger and older than he remembered. Boggs cleaned every morsel off his plate, and then gnawed the bone like a dog.

The Carrington Arms was the largest and most luxurious hotel in Titusville, but it looked like a three-story shack to Edgar Petigru, as he crossed the street in late afternoon. There were no coppers directing traffic, and he was nearly run down by two drunken cowboys racing each other through the main street of town.

Petrigru reached the far sidewalk with a splatter of mud on his pants. Titusville was a long step down for the sophisticated New Yorker, but it offered solid opportunities for rapid capital expansion. Someday I'll go back to New York, and thumb my nose at old Cornelius Vanderbilt. Edgar imagined himself riding up Broadway in an open carriage, waving to the throngs like the Prince of Wales during the latter's visit to the great metropolis in 1860.

Petigru entered the lobby, full of men talking horses, women, and business. Some of the men looked like bummers, but could own thousands of head of cattle on a vast almost unimaginable range. He made his way to the dining room, where Titusville's leading citizens
gathered at the end of each day. Whiskey prices were the highest in town, to guarantee the overall auspicious tone of the room, which was laughable to a man who'd been a member of the Union Club on Fifth Avenue. He remembered a line attributed to Julius Caesar:

I'd rather be first in a small Iberian village than second in Rome.

Two unlit crystal chandeliers were suspended from the ceiling, as light radiated through tall windows overlooking Main Street. Above the fireplace hung a huge oil painting of a herd of cattle galloping through a thunderstorm. Portly Mayor Lonsdale noticed Edgar's approach, and muttered to the others. The town's leading citizens laughed heartily, as they turned toward Edgar Petigru.

Are they making fun of me again? he wondered, as he drew closer. Banker Holcomb, whose girth nearly matched his height, pulled out a chair. “Have a seat, Ed.”

Edgar sat on the proffered chair, then removed his mauve calfskin gloves. A bow-tied waiter approached from Petigru's left. “The same?”

Petigru nodded, and the waiter launched himself toward the bar. Councilman Finney, a short, red-haired man, grinned like a monkey on the far side of the table. “Yer one cool son of a bitch, Petigru—I've got to say that fer you.”

“In what way?”

Finney looked at Judge Jenks, another citizen who appeared never to've missed a meal, and both giggled
like little girls. Petigru creased his forehead. “What's going on, gentleman? I'm afraid I don't get it.”

Finney leaned toward him and said confidentially: “If my woman spent the night with a certain young stranger, I would've shot him by now, but there you are, orderin' the usual whiskey like nothin' happened. You Yankees are like ice, and maybe that's why you won the war.”

Edgar, like most members of New York's high society, was expert at hiding his true feelings, but it took all his willpower to keep himself placid before such provocation. People gossiped in New York, but no one would dare say such a thing to another man's face. Maybe I should remain silent, and let it pass, he thought.