The Grub-And-Stakers Pinch a Poke (11 page)

They even applauded the somewhat long-winded speech Jenson Thorbisher-FVeep insisted on making during the intermission, though it might have been better for the gym floor if they’d all put down their lemonade before they started to clap.

If the first act was a triumph, the second was what Joshua Burberry’s father the distinguished scientist would unhesitatingly have classified as a lalapalooza. The miners’ singing started the spectators whistling, the cancan girls set them stamping their feet, and the hoedown snatched them out into the aisles. Dittany had to play “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat” twice to get them back to their seats so the play could go on.

With so much audience participation, it wasn’t easy for her to keep an eye on the two potential saboteurs sitting next to the fire exit. Dittany had no faith whatever in Ormerod Burlson. Nobody from Lobelia Falls would have trusted him to guard a jam jar full of pollywogs, but of course an outlander like Carolus Bledsoe would have had no way of knowing. All Dittany could do was pin her hopes on Sammy and keep playing. She finished her sentimental medley, cutting it short because they’d already spent too much time on the hoedown, and swung into “The Maple Leaf Rag.”

The miner made his entrance. The audience applauded Joshua’s blizzard, but not for long. The suspense was building, the atmosphere growing tense enough to cut with a knife. People strained forward in their seats as the miner tilted his poke of dust on the bar and the lady known as Lou registered perplexed perturbation.

Dittany went to get her sarsaparilla, the miner took her seat, the tape began to play. It was all going like clockwork. The Architrave had the ThorbisherFreep collection sewn up tighter than a shrunk sock.

Now the miner was staggering to his feet. Dittany parked her sarsaparilla on the piano and stepped behind it to be out of the way.

By the dim red glow of the exit light she could see Sammy nudging Ormerod over to where Leander Hellespont and the ex-Mrs. Bledsoe were sitting. For the first time that day, she relaxed. It was all over but the shooting.

Now the miner was delivering his bitter taunt, drawing his .32

Colt. Dangerous Dan McGrew was hurling his cards to the floor, reaching for his .38 Smith & Wesson. Face to face the rivals stood, guns pointed straight at each other’s chest. For a second or two they held the pose while not one member of the audience either inhaled or exhaled. Then two shots tore the air apart and two men dropped.

It was a truly horrendous moment. The cartridges exploding together made far more noise than they had in the high-ceilinged old opera house. Stunned and deafened, few except Dittany could have noticed that at the moment of truth, Andy McNaster had dropped the muzzle of his gun and shot at the floor instead of at Carolus.

Now the lady known as Lou was clasping Carolus to her bosom. It was more a clutch than a clasp, actually. Dittany could hear Arethusa hiss, “Quit squirming, varlet,” as with perfect sangfroid she pinched the poke, flourished it around a bit so nobody could mistake what she was up to, and stowed it away among the ruffles in her decolletage.

The curtain closed. The applause went on. Under its cover, the actors scrambled to assemble for curtain calls. Tradition among the Traveling Thespians decreed that the entire cast must appear together so that nobody’s feelings would be hurt. It was a job packing them in and Carolus Bledsoe wasn’t making things any easier by remaining prone where Arethusa had dumped him.

“All right, Carolus,” said Osbert, who was shoving actors into place like toy soldiers, “the curtain’s closed. You can get up now.”

“The hell I can,” groaned Bledsoe. “That bastard shot me!”

“The hell I did!” Andy retorted in a kind of whispered roar. “I shot at the floor. And it was only a blank anyway.”

“The hell it was! You shot off my foot.”

“The hell I-oh, my God!”

The hole in the toe of Carolus Bledsoe’s boot offered no room for further argument.

“Curtain calls, Carolus,” Arethusa commanded. “You can bleed later.”

“Here.” Roger Munson had rushed onstage to kneel beside the wounded man with an ampule of ammonia and a flask of brandy.

“Sniff this. Drink this. I’ll get the stretcher ready offstage. The show must go on.”

And on it went. Carolus was helped into a straight chair center stage. Arethusa sat beside him, holding his hand to give him courage.

Ethel the faithful friend was brought to flop at his feet, hiding the bullet-torn boot and the blood that was beginning to ooze out of it. Andrew McNaster stood behind Arethusa and Desdemona Portley behind Carolus, ready to prop him up if he fainted. Bill Coskoff, with a bar rag at the ready, squeezed in back of Dessie, who wasn’t very tall. The rest of the cast clustered around as best they could without hiding anybody.

The curtain parted again. Dittany tripped in from the wings, handed Carolus back his feedbag with a pretty curtsey, and sat down on the stage floor beside Ethel. The applause went on and on.

The stagehands had to draw the curtain and open it again ten times in rapid succession. The cast could easily have taken ten more calls, but Carolus was beginning to look white around the beard. Osbert murmured, “Thanks, everybody. Go get dressed. Roger, take Carolus to the hospital, quick. I’ll try to keep the hordes away from backstage.”

He stepped out in front of the curtain and raised his hands for silence.

“That’s it, folks. Thank you all, you’ve been the greatest audience any company could ask for. We also want Mr. Portley to know how grateful we are to him for letting us take over the gym on such short notice, and to thank the Girl Guides and Mr. ThorbisherFreep and the scene painters and the stagehands and the wardrobe crew and if I’ve left anybody out it’s not because I don’t appreciate what you’ve done, it’s just that I’m too dadblanged beat to think straight. And now I’d like to ask you all for one more really important favor.

Would everybody here, with the single exception of Sergeant MacVicar, please not try to come backstage?”

There were a few indignant murmurs, but Osbert explained them away. “You all know why we couldn’t use the opera house as we’d planned. We couldn’t even get our scenery out. We’ve been breaking our backs ever since we got the word this morning so that we wouldn’t have to disappoint you of tonight’s performance and forfeit our chance to win the ThorbisherFreep collection for the Architrave Museum. So now it’s late and the whole gang back there’s plumb tuckered out. There’s not much room for them to change in even without a lot of extra people milling around. We also have to dismantle our set and lug all our stuff out of here tonight.

That bargain varnish the painter used on those pews over at the Presbyterian Church still hasn’t dried and doesn’t look as if it will, so the minister wants to hold services here tomorrow morning and I’m sure none of you want to stand in his way. Your folks will come out here as soon as they’re ready. If you’ll all cooperate by leaving through the main exit as quickly as possible, the Traveling Thespians will sponsor a full evening of reels and hoedowns as soon as Mr.

Portley will let us use the gym again.”

“Next Saturday night,” the principal called out, good sport that he was.

“You heard him, folks.” Osbert was hoarse now but still in there punching. “Everybody’s invited. A buck a head for the Senior Class Outing Fund and the lemonade’s on the house. So I guess that’s it for now. Good night and thanks for coming. See you next Saturday night, seven-thirty sharp, and wear your dancing shoes.”

The audience laughed and clapped, except for one cheeky young sprout in the back row of the bleachers. “Hey, how come Sergeant Mac Vicar gets to go backstage if the rest of us can’t?”

“They need him to arrest creeps like you if you don’t do like the director says,” yelled back the invaluable Sammy.

Osbert stayed out front shaking hands, accepting congratulations, and wondering what to do about Archie and Daniel. Jenson ThorbisherFreep and his daughter Wilhedra went around shaking hands, too, though some people wondered why. Pretty soon Desdemona Portley and some of the other Thespians came out from behind the curtains and helped to cope with the lingerers.

Not many of the audience were hanging around. The gym clock showed how late the show had run. Sounds of pounding emphasized that the wrecking crew was on the job. More cast members emerged, more patrons left. Somewhere along the line, Leander Hellespont and the ex-Mrs. Bledsoe trickled away unnoticed.

The exodus was proceeding as Osbert had hoped. Nobody out front could have caught on that the Monks’ new ranch wagon, with Roger Munson at the wheel and Carolus Bledsoe stretched out on Ethel’s blanket in the back, was speeding toward Scottsbeck Hospital.

None of them could see Sergeant Mac Vicar shaking his head over a splinter-edged hole in the stage or overhear the bizarre story he was getting from a badly shaken Andrew McNaster.

“I was supposed to fire straight at his chest,” Andy blurted. Then he shook.

“Yet you fired into the floor,” Sergeant MacVicar prompted.

“Why, Mr. McNaster?”

Andy was still wearing his villain suit, although it now had a red bandana at the throat. He untied the bandana and mopped his forehead with it, swallowed hard, and searched for the words he needed.

“Well, eh, I was the bad guy. You know that, I knew it all along.

But all of a sudden here I am with a shooting iron in my hand and it’s like what they call the moment of truth. It hits me all of a sudden what a lowdown ornery rotter I’ve been right straight through from the beginning of act one, scene one. I’ve ruined the feedbag man’s career. I’ve brought his wife and kiddie to the brink of starvation.

I’ve lured a chaste and noble woman way the heck and gone up here to the Yukon with false promises I never meant to keep.”

“Hence the falsity. Go on, Mr. McNaster.”

“So anyway, here’s his wife having to flaunt her shapely limbs in a black lace corset for rude men to leer at and make remarks. And here’s his kiddie sitting up late and knocking back the sarsaparilla, sullying her pink ears with a bunch of cheap talk from a class of customer no innocent maid of tender years ought to be hanging out with. And it’s me that drug ‘em here. You follow me so far?”

“Aye, Mr. McNaster, I’m with you every step.”

“Thanks, Sergeant. So now here comes this poor bugger out of the night that was fifty below, so beat and bedraggled they can’t even tell it’s him. He calls me a hound of hell and like I said it hits me right between the eyes, the bugger’s right. He’s going to shoot me and it’s no more than I deserve. But the hitch is, I’m supposed to shoot him back, which means leaving his grieving widow and her little chickabiddy alone and unprotected in this den of iniquity to which I in my wickedness and vainglory enticed them. You get my drift, Sergeant?”

“Aye.” Sergeant MacVicar was rubbing his jaw, his ice-blue eyes still fixed on the perspiring McNaster. “You found yourseP confronted by a moral dilemma.”

“That’s the situation in a nutshell, Sergeant. Some forgotten vestige of a nobler nature rises up and stays my hand. I’m standing there with my gun aimed at his gizzard and the stern voice of conscience is chewing me out. ‘Dan McGrew,” it’s saying, ‘you ruined that poor bugger’s life. You can’t shoot him now.’ But I’ve got to fire or louse up Osbert’s big scene, so what I did, see, I waited till Charlie pulled his trigger, then I quick dropped my hand and fired at the floor. Only I guess I didn’t drop it quite far enough. So that’s my story, Sergeant, and I can’t tell you any different.”

“Indeed, Mr. McNaster. And now will you kindly show me your license for yon ugly great firearm?”

“That’s not my gun! It belongs to Jenson Thorbisher-Preep. He just lent it for the play.”

“And how long have you had it in your possession?”

“I never had it in my possession. Ask anybody. Jenson brought the gun to rehearsal and took it away again afterward. I suppose he did the same thing tonight. All I know is, Roger put it on the prop table when he was getting the stuff ready, and handed it to me when I went on for the second act. Jenson couldn’t come backstage during the performance, see, because the other companies in the contest might think he was playing favorites.”

“Nae doot. During rehearsals did you shoot the gun at Mr. Bledsoe’s chest?”

“Sure, but that was different.”

“How, Mr. McNaster?”

“Well, see, at the rehearsal I knew I was rehearsing, if you get what I mean. I was just Andy McNaster making believe I was Dan McGrew. I knew that was a blank cartridge in the gun and Bledsoe wasn’t going to get hurt when I pulled the trigger, so it didn’t matter. But tonight”-Andy mopped his face again then shook his head as if to rattle his thoughts together-“I wasn’t me, I was Dan McGrew. What I’m trying to say is, I knew I was me but I was Dan and Dan was shooting a real bullet even if Andy only had a blank in the gun. I guess that sounds pretty crazy, eh.”

“Dinna fash yoursel’ about craziness, Mr. McNaster. It’s for you to talk and me to sort out what you say. What happened to the gun after you shot it off?”

“It dropped from my nerveless hand and I fell on top of it. Dan McGrew got killed, too, you have to remember. I stayed dead till the lady known as Lou finished pinching the stranger’s poke and I heard the curtain close and people start to clap. Then I got up and put the gun back in my holster and went to my place for curtain calls, like we practiced in rehearsal. I was me by then. My mind was functioning like a steel trap. Only I guess you think the trap could of stood some oiling, eh.”

“You didn’t notice you’d shot yon Bledsoe?”

“Nope.”

“None of us noticed,” Arethusa Monk put in. “I didn’t myself, forsooth, not even while I was pinching his poke.”

“Mr. Bledsoe said nothing to you?”

“No, but he thrashed around a bit. Meseemed the churl was simulating death throes to pad out his part, egad. I wrestled him into a seemly posture and hissed at him to lie still, little wotting he was actually writhing in pain. Then I felt him go limp. Perchance he swooned, but that didn’t occur to me at the time. I simply went through my business with the poke, then unbosomed myself of Carolus and got set for the curtain call, like Andrew.”