The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion (10 page)

He went to the Overland office first. That was the test. If the manager had happened to look out the window and could place him, he'd have to cut his losses and run. He tethered his horse in
front and went inside, resting a hand on the Forehand & Wadsworth in his coat pocket.

“If you've come to rob me, you'll have to take a seat. I haven't had the chance to go to the bank.”

Charlie hesitated. Then he saw the beaten look on the face of the man behind the counter, no recognition there, and knew he'd made a feeble joke. Charlie took his hand out of his pocket and drew the door shut behind him.

“I heard you had a run of bad luck. I just came to ask when the stage leaves for Ogden.”

The glum-faced manager exhaled. Clearly, he was relieved to respond to a normal query from an ordinary customer.

“We canceled that route two years ago. You can take the Denver and Rio Grande straight through.”

“Oh. It's been three since I was here last. My name's Cuthbert. Denver Mining Supplies.” He stuck out a hand.

“Oberlin.” The manager took it listlessly. “You rode here clear from Denver?”

Charlie was ready for that one. His horse could be seen through the window and there wasn't much he could do about the alkali dust on his clothes. “I rented a mount at the livery. I like to go out riding after sitting on a train.”

“I didn't know Ike Gunther had horseflesh like that.”

“I reckon I got all the luck intended for you.” He moved on quickly. “I wonder you don't quit.”

“I gave notice today. I'm only staying on to break in the new man, whoever he is. He better be Wild Bill. This country's gone to the devil.”

“That's what I hear. Two gangs in one day.”

“Well, the second was gang enough. The first time it was just one man.”

Charlie whistled. “He must've been eight feet tall.”

“He was as long as he had that big gun, as far as I'm concerned. Without it he was shorter than you, and twice as wide.”

“Fat man, you say? He can't have got far on horseback.”

“He doesn't have to since the railroad. Hop on in Denver or someplace, stop off in Salt Lake City, say, ‘Stick 'em up,' then hop back on and ride all the way to San Francisco. Why spend money on board and feed when fares are so cheap? You're in the wrong business, Mr. Cuthbert. Mining's on its way out. Robbery's the coming thing, and you don't need riding lessons.”

“ ‘Stick 'em up,' that's what he said? I thought folks only talked like that in the dime novels.”

“Well, he never did. ‘Hand over the swag,' that's what he said.”

Charlie laughed. He was that surprised.

Oberlin's face darkened. “That's what he said. Like a pirate in a play.”

From there, Charlie went to a barbershop and then a bathhouse, where he gave the boy a quarter to brush some of the Utah Territory off his clothes while he soaked the brine out of his skin, but all he overheard from the other customers were stories about the robbery of the Deseret Hotel and the shooting spree that had followed the unsuccessful raid on the freight office. Over a plate of fried chicken in a restaurant he heard a man had lost a finger and a dog its life, but he'd known that already. He learned Mormons were no better cooks than anyone else. That was all there was to get from the locals.

When he came out onto the boardwalk, picking pinfeathers
from between his teeth, dusk had slid in. He wondered if he should ride back in the dark or take a room. Night riding was the worst part of being a desperado, but he couldn't be sure if Oberlin wouldn't check his story about hiring his horse from the livery and alert the town; lynch mobs scared him worse than Texas Rangers and mad Indians. He'd just about decided to mount up and leave when someone came down the street pedaling a bicycle.

Bicycles interested him. Back in Fort Worth, he and Ed had seen an advertisement in a catalogue and had discussed stealing a shipment somewhere and selling them to Comanches, but had abandoned the idea because Indians were suspicious of the wheel. He still thought there was profit in it, if robbery got too various and there was a way to do it without the stigma of legitimate commerce.

Instinctively, he dropped his toothpick and backed into the shadows as the rider passed. In the light coming through the window from the restaurant, it was a tall fellow in a cloth cap, heavy sweater, tan britches, and boots that laced to his knees. Charlie figured he was a telegraph messenger.

Charlie was about to turn away toward where he'd left his horse when the rider lifted his feet off the pedals and coasted to a stop next to the boardwalk. He alighted in front of a dry goods store, shut up and dark. There was no one there to accept a telegram.

The fellow got off, and something about the way he stood looking up and down the street moved Charlie to take another step back into the dark doorway behind him. He watched as the rider leaned his bicycle against the hitching rail and bend down over the watering trough in front of the dry goods. He turned his head left and right again, then tugged up one sleeve of his sweater, stuck a hand inside the water, groped around, and pulled out something heavy. Water ran off it in a sheet, splashing back into the trough. Oilcloth glistened.

Charlie couldn't believe his luck.

As the rider slapped the bundle into the wicker basket attached to his handlebars, Charlie stepped that way, taking the revolver out of his pocket.

His luck didn't hold. The restaurant door opened and someone came out, bumping into him from behind. “Beg pardon, brother.”

He stuck the revolver back into its pocket. Startled by the sudden activity, the rider threw a leg over the seat, pushed off from the hitching rail, and began pedaling like mad. Charlie pushed the clumsy fool from the restaurant out of his way and took off in the other direction, sprinting toward where his horse was tethered.

“Gentile!” The man from the restaurant stalked off down the boardwalk.

The bicyclist was nowhere in sight when Charlie came back that way aboard his mount, but he held it to a canter. The salt flats threw back moonlight like a fresh fall of snow, and that single tire track made a dark line down the center of the road leading west of town, running parallel to the railroad tracks. He had the thing put together now; the man he was after wouldn't turn aside from that route.

Outside the city limits, he broke into a gallop. The bicyclist came into view, a vertical mark with reflected light from the great lake bouncing down from a sheet of cloud, bright as Abilene on Saturday night. Charlie drew the Forehand & Wadsworth and fired a shot high. It rang clearly in the dry air.

The bicycle wobbled. The driver twisted in his seat, then turned back forward, bent over the handlebars, and made the pedals whir. Clearly, this was not the fat fellow who'd held up the freight office, but Charlie wasn't confused. He didn't believe in lone bandits; there was always a silent partner somewhere, and
usually several. He let the man gain a few yards, then smacked his reins across his horse's withers, took aim, and squeezed the trigger again. He didn't expect to hit the man, and he didn't, but the bullet must have struck close enough to remind him that a bicycle can't outrun a good horse. The rider went another ten feet at top speed, then slowed to a stop and got off. He let the bicycle flop over and stood on the side of the road with his hands raised.

Charlie was hauling back on the reins when one of the hands swung down. Something gleamed, but he didn't waste time trying to bring his own weapon around. He let go of it and launched himself out of the saddle. A hot wind smacked his ribs. His momentum snatched the man off his feet, they struck ground with a
woof
, and rolled over and over. It wasn't until Charlie had the man's gun arm pinned to the earth and his body trapped beneath his own weight that he realized he'd been wrestling with a woman.

“It
looks
like snow,” April said, “but it isn't. Still, I'm cold. Explain that.” She'd drawn on Katrina's shawl from
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
and paced the hardpack floor of the miner's shack hugging herself, and incidentally stealing glances at her fetching image in the window's single unbroken pane. Beyond it stretched the white flats, ending in an abrupt line where salt met black sky.

Major Davies took a pinch of snuff. “Self-mesmerization. Your brain tells your heart it's salt, but your heart is unconvinced. It's a condition of womanhood.” He blocked a powerful sneeze and swept away tears with a handkerchief bearing someone else's initials.

“The other explanation is we're in a desert.” Cornelius Ragland sat at the warped table, filling sheets of foolscap by coal-oil light
and pausing to dip his pen. “It's a scientific fact that the grains are too loose to hold the day's heat. The result is the same whether it's sand or salt.”

“Rubbish. If that were the case, I'd cool my soup by shaking salt into it rather than blowing on it. I am a man, ruled by my brain and not my heart. Therefore I'm not cold.”

“You're fat,” said April. “You ought to be hibernating. Look at Corny, shivering like a leaf. Does that make him a woman?”

“He's consumptive. When he isn't burning up with fever he's freezing.”

“Actually, I'm neither. This is rather a stirring scene and I've let it get the better of me.” He sat back, removed his spectacles, and wiped them on his sleeve.

April bent over the page before him. “What is it this time? Not Dickens, I hope. Except for old hags and insufferable little girls, all his women are simpletons. Lizzie's Miss Havisham blew my Estella clear off the stage.”

“This one is an original story, based upon the tragedy of Joan of Arc.”

She gasped. “Oh, Corny! I take back everything I've ever said about your acting. Will I get to bob my hair and wear a breastplate?”

“That will be up to Johnny. However, if we simulate the flames properly while you're burning at the stake, you'll have cover and time enough to slip out and hold up the Denver Mint.”

As if he'd heard his cue, Johnny came in from outside and rubbed his hands above the chimney of the lamp. “Cold out there. You'd think it was snow and not salt.”

“Rubbish!” The Major took snuff.

“Oh, Johnny, I'm going to play St. Joan!”

“Good God, Corny. Why not write about the Virgin Mary and make the challenge impossible?” He caught April's wrist in midswing. “No, dear. Smite the English.”

The Major blew his nose. “What news?”

“Not a sign. She ought to be back by now.” Johnny took off his coat, black broadcloth with three capes and a red silk lining. He'd seen a photograph of Irving wearing one like it and had had it made to his measure in St. Louis. He looked dashing in it, and with his long flaxen hair and moustaches a bit like a buccaneer.

April said, “You don't suppose she's been arrested.”

“We always knew that was a possibility. Hers is the riskiest part of our plan.”

“Your plan, not mine. A posse could be on its way here at this moment.” She touched her throat.

“What of it?” asked the Major. “There's nothing here to incriminate us.”

Cornelius laid down his pen. “She has the money. That's incrimination enough.”

“Only for her.”

Everyone looked at the Major, who shrugged. “She would say the same thing, if our situations were reversed. That's the solid foundation upon which our relationship rests.”

“Are you two even married?” Johnny asked.

“We exchanged the necessary vows. However, I have my doubts about the minister. He played Horatio for five weeks in Philadelphia.”

“We're sitting hens if she peaches,” said April, “or even if she does not. Someone is bound to recognize her, and the rest will follow. I've said all along we should include horses in our arrangements.”

“I haven't been aboard a horse since Harrow.”

Johnny said, “The Major's right, dear. He's too fat to ride, and Corny's too delicate. The more players we leave behind, the greater our chances of conviction and imprisonment. Even if you and I make the train, the authorities will just wire ahead. We'll be arrested at the next stop. It's our word against Lizzie's if it's just her, and something else if it's two against three.”

April sighed. “A fine honorable lot of thieves we are.”

Johnny laughed. “There's no honor anywhere. I've seen the other side.” He unshipped his watch. “We'll give her half an hour, then start searching. Perhaps she fell and broke her leg.”

Cornelius picked up his pen and dipped it. “Let us hold on to that hope.”

Thirty minutes of silence followed, interrupted only by April's pacing and the scratching of Cornelius' pen. Johnny looked at his watch for the twentieth time, then snapped shut the face with finality. “Right.” He threw on his coat.

The door opened then and Mme. Mort-Davies came in, pushing her bicycle. The front wheel was bent and her sweater was torn. The Major struggled to his feet. Johnny lifted the lamp, casting light on Lizzie's face. One eye was swollen almost shut and blood crusted her chin.

Johnny took the bicycle while April and the Major helped her into the Major's chair. Cornelius reached inside the picnic basket and gave Johnny the bottle of brandy they'd been saving to celebrate. Lizzie winced when she opened her lips to receive the bottle; the lower one split open afresh and trickled more blood onto her chin. She took two more sips, and between them reported what had happened on the road outside Salt Lake City.

“He got all of it?” demanded Johnny.

“He didn't offer to divide it. Search me if you like.”

“Don't take offense. If you stole from us, you wouldn't stop at one day's profits. What about the Colt?”

She tugged up her sweater, pulled a small revolver from under the belt of her trousers, and gave it to him. “He took it, but I found that after he left; he lost it when he jumped off his horse. I'm afraid it wasn't much of a trade.”