The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion (26 page)

The returning fire, however, was heavy. Ed Kettleman yelled and fell off his horse. Breed's mount went down with a squeal of pain; the rider got his feet out of the stirrups in time to land running,
caught Ed's riderless horse, and swung a leg over without losing momentum or his grip on his revolver. A bullet split the air next to Brixton's right ear with a crack.

“
Where in hell's the Mexicans?
” he shouted.

Just then he broke through the smoke into the open—and hauled back on the reins hard enough to throw it onto its haunches had not that splendid animal the instinct and experience to adjust to the abrupt change. As it was, it reared and clawed the air, twisting for balance and nearly unseating its rider. Mysterious Bob, reacting even faster, spun his sorrel into a wide circle to slow it down and take himself out of the main path.

The rest saw the danger too late. Charlie Kettleman, Tom Riddle, and Breed were still charging hard when the big side door on the strongcar finished sliding open. When the sun struck the brass-bound barrels of the Gatling gun mounted inside, they tried to change course, but the chattering lead found them all and flung Ace-in-the-Hole in every direction like so many bloody cards.

It's not for nothing that professional thespians are so often referred to as players. When the trunks were brought up from the basement of the variety theater and the Prairie Rose dove inside to retrieve costumes and properties they hadn't laid eyes on in months, they laughed and jostled one another like children opening a chest filled with toys.

Major Davies, who was as fast as any of them once he got his bulk into motion, clawed out Falstaff ‘s sword belt and doublet (these had served as well for
Twelfth Night
's Sir Toby Belch, and would in fact suffice for all of the Bard's older gentlemen of gravity and healthy appetite, except perhaps the Romans), and
had them fastened in place while Cornelius was still looking for Dr. Caius among the jumble and April and Lizzie were each tugging at a sleeve of the same ornate frock. Johnny, aloof to the scavenger hunt, waited until the congestion had cleared, then stepped forward and claimed his prize: a fencing foil with an elegantly rounded guard, fashioned from tin but painted to resemble gold.

Holding it at shoulder level, he peered down its length, frowned, exerted pressure with both hands to straighten a bend in the blade, then went into fighting stance and described a swift figure eight with the blunted point. At the swish, Cornelius looked up from the bit of lint he was removing from the plumed crown of the French physician's hat. He read the eager expression on Johnny's face, then shrugged, clapped the hat onto his head, and drew another foil from the same trunk compartment. They squared off.

Two minutes later, Cornelius stood pinned against a stack of leaning canvas flats with his foil lying on the floor six feet away and the button tip of Johnny's weapon pressing against his throat. The cast, distracted from their bright scraps of cloth, applauded.

The loser swallowed against the pressure. “Where did you learn that?”

“In Paris; where else? From the finest swordsman in France; who else? Also the one with the least pleasant personality. Which says a great deal when one is speaking of the French.” Johnny withdrew his foil, described a bright whizzing pattern in the air, and slung the blade into an imaginary scabbard on his hip. It seemed to have left a thin blue phosphorescence in its wake.

Cornelius enjoyed once again the unobstructed motion of his Adam's apple. “You realize there is no swordplay in
Merry Wives
.”

“I thought I might persuade you to write some in. I need the practice, and I don't think dear Will would object.”

“With whom will you fight?”

“With you, of course. We represent two sides of a love triangle, do we not?”

The other hesitated. Of course Johnny was speaking of their characters in the play. “I won't be able to offer you much contest. All the fencing masters in Hot Springs left their hardware at home.”

“You'll have lessons from the finest swordsman in Wichita. We'll work them into rehearsals.”

“But, who will, er—”

Johnny smiled. “You'll make love to the fair Anne in Act Three, Scene Four. I'd thought of sending forth the Major after the clothes-basket business, but he's on probation for Salt Lake City. You've filled out, Corny; my costume will fit you this time without padding. Just wear your hat low and mind your moustaches are stuck on tight. Where is the revolver?”

Cornelius got the bundle from the chair where he'd hung his street coat, unwound the cloth, and handed him the Forehand & Wadsworth that Lizzie had found on the ground after she was assaulted outside Salt Lake City.

“I forgot we'd lost the Colt,” Johnny said. “I hope we didn't make a poor trade. What did you do with the cartridges?”

“I took them out to clean it. Do you want it loaded?”

“God, no. Why change our luck now? April can tell you what kind of sharpshooter I am. I just wanted to make sure you didn't leave the shells lying around for the chambermaid to find.”

“I threw them out the window into the alley.”

“You aren't usually so foolish, Corny.” April, who'd won the tug-of-war with Lizzie, held the frock against the front of her person, looking at herself in a dusty cheval glass with a crack down its center. “What if someone stumbles upon them?”

“This is Wichita, dear,” Johnny reminded her. “The duellists don't allow each other much time to reload. There is bound to be spillage.”

“I should take out my bicycle once or twice before Saturday,” said Lizzie, fingering a loose paste diamond on a tiara. “I haven't ridden all year.”

“That won't be necessary. I've made other arrangements to recover the money.”

April looked up. “Without consulting us?”

“The details would only distract you. Our blocking needs work.” Johnny tossed up the revolver, caught its trigger guard on the end of his foil, and extended it toward Cornelius. “Put away this fowling piece, good sir, and take up your weapon from the ground. This is an affair between gentlemen.”

Cornelius returned the Forehand & Wadsworth to its cloth and bent to retrieve his foil. As he did so, a projectile the size and shape of a percussion ball grazed the back of his neck and struck the wall backstage with a sharp
ping
.

“Oh, damn!” said the Major. “I've popped a button off my doublet.”

The best of it was Tom Riddle had found a cure for his euphoria. The worst of it was he was dying.

He'd been struck, he reckoned, three times by the Gatling. The hunk of meat he'd lost from his left upper arm could be patched up, and he'd done that after a fashion by tearing off his sleeve and knotting it in place with his teeth as he rode away. The broken collarbone was more serious, but the bullet had passed straight through, and Mysterious Bob, who knew a thing or two about
stopping up wounds from the fighting in Missouri, had stuffed more rags into the holes that would keep Tom from bleeding out until he could get to a doctor. But there was nothing anyone could do about the slug in his belly. That was the payoff.

It hurt plenty bad, but not as much as he'd always heard. Mostly he was cold. The fire they'd built in the kitchen hearth belonging to the first farmhouse they'd come to couldn't reach as far as his insides, and that was the source of the chill. He lay on his back on the plank table where the farmer and his wife took their meals with his legs dangling off the end, staring up at a squirrel hole in the ceiling and trying not to move. He didn't know what Bob and Black Jack had done with the couple. Shot them, he supposed, or gagged and hog-tied them and put them in the barn.

Something gurgled. Tom didn't turn his head to see what it was. Brixton had probably found a jug. He and Bob stood guard at the windows near the opposite end of the house facing the road, in case the troopers came trailing them. It was a long open building, with no interior walls to divide it up into separate rooms. So far as Tom knew, they three were what was left of Ace-in-the-Hole.

“They knew we was coming,” Brixton said. “You sure you took care of that greaser general?”

“I took care of him.”

“Maybe it was his men. They never came out of them trees.”

“They stood to profit better if the job came off. Somebody got the drop on them.”

“Well, it sure wasn't Breed or Charlie or Tom, there; he's gone as the Confederacy. What about Ed?”

“Ed got it first. If he wasn't dead when he hit the ground, he was by the time we finished riding over him on the way out.”

“It was that woman.”

There was a little silence. Tom wasn't sure they'd heard him; it had come out in a croak.

“What woman's that, Tom?” Brixton's voice was so close it made him jerk. A fresh wave of cold swept through him, followed by a pain like a toothache in the pit of his belly. Sweat pricked his forehead like fire ants. He gathered up spit to take out the croak.

“That Prairie Rose woman. The tall one Charlie jumped in Salt Lake. I seen her that time in Denver and again in Wichita just before we rode out. At the train station it was. I was as close to her as I am to you.”

He saw Brixton's face then, looking down at him from up near the ceiling, and knew he'd miscalculated the distance between them. Black Jack seemed to be peeping through the squirrel hole. The hole was too small and his face too far away to see what was on it. But then Black Jack always looked sore.

“You seen her at the station?”

“She was with a fat jasper, probably the one stuck up the freight office. I didn't say nothing, ‘cause you got a mad on against that there Prairie Rose, and we had us a train to rob. I was fixing to tell you about it after.”

He breathed in and out a couple of times. He never thought talking would ever take so much out of him. That was one thing he'd always been able to do, even when he was stuck underground and drawing in a peck of dirt with every breath. “I reckon she must of saw me too, though I didn't think she'd know me,” he said.

“You reckon?” Something squeaked; metal against leather, or maybe the squirrel was back.

“She must of went to the law for the bounty, and they told the
army, and the army figured out the rest,” Tom said. “That's how I see it. Thing is—”

“Shut up, Tom.” The muzzle of Brixton's big American was as big as the squirrel hole. It swallowed Tom up.

The Wichita Variety Theater provided only a single dressing room for its visiting artists, but it was large enough to accommodate a company larger than the Prairie Rose, with a cheerful buffalo-plaid blanket suspended from a rope tied across the middle for the modesty of the female players. Tim Saunders had added a second entrance for the ladies and planned to construct a permanent partition by next season. Cornelius, who shared space with Johnny and Major Davies, entered that side without knocking and found the head of the company filling two crystal glasses from a stout black bottle, using the top of an upright trunk for a table. The Major plucked one up and sniffed at the contents. Sir John Falstaff's cotton burnsides still adhered to his scarlet face, and nineteenth-century galluses held up Johnny's puffed Elizabethan pantaloons, the straps resting on shoulders clad in a white linen undervest.

The newcomer bore the Saturday editions of both the
City Eagle
and the
Beacon
, containing excellent reviews of the Friday-night
opening; but as he was sure the others had seen neither, he drew the obvious conclusion.

“I take it things went smoothly at the bank.”

For answer, Johnny tilted the neck of the bottle in the direction of the oilcloth sack slumped heavily on the chair of the dressing table; it was the twin of the one that had been taken from Lizzie in Utah, along with the money the Major had robbed from the Overland office there. Johnny filled a third glass and held it out.

“You brought it
here
? What if there's a search?” Cornelius took the offering and swallowed half. His face flushed as from fever.

“Easy, old man; that port slumbered a quarter-century below ground before I woke it up and carried it across the sea. It's a bit touchy. As for the sack, I told you I'd made other arrangements.”

“What sort of—”

“Goodness, what's the fight about? I should have thought you lads had spent all your energies playing at swords.” April emerged from behind the blanket, brushing her hair. She wore a green silk dressing gown with matching slippers and her face glistened with residue from the cream she used to remove her makeup. Without paint and powder she looked as fresh as a child.

“Corny thinks we're about to be pinched. I say, this is capital stuff.” The Major took another drink.

Lizzie emerged in a faded-pink terry robe, veteran of a dozen tours, took the glass from his hand, and helped herself to a healthy sip. “Evie, this is far too rich for you. You'll be down with gout before dark.”

Johnny poured another and handed it to April. “I was just explaining that a new season calls for a new system. Especially since it's our last. As of today, the Prairie Rose Repertory Company has taken its final curtain call.”

Eyebrows shot up all around. Cornelius was first to find his voice. “Did we do so well, then?”

“I hadn't time to count, of course, but I've gotten to be a fair judge of weight since we opened in St. Louis. It seems an excellent year for the United States beef industry. We should clearly sixty thousand after expenses.”

The members of the company began chattering all at once. April threw her arms around Johnny's neck, spilling port down his back. He disengaged himself and called for quiet. “Come, come. The reviews can't be
that
good; drowning out the cowboys will only lead to suspicion.”

Cornelius said, “It's a bit late for caution, isn't it? We haven't even begun packing, and that blasted sack's a prison sentence for us all.”