A Bloodsmoor Romance (103 page)

Next we observe Mr. Fox boarding the brand-new Pullman coach of the Kansas Pacific, attired in dandyish costume, his hair now fashionably shorn, and his voice effortlessly low-pitched, tho' possessing a singularly agreeable modulation, in sharp contrast to the plebeian twang and drawl o'erheard on all sides: Mr. Fox with several items of handsome leatherbound luggage, and fine-tooled calfskin boots, and the poker player's squint of disingenuous friendliness; and the effrontery required, to introduce himself to strangers, in the diner, and in the smoking car
for gentlemen only,
and even in the solemn corridors of the Pullman coach.

He disembarks in Wichita; many months later, accompanied by another gentleman, he somewhat hurriedly boards the Union Pacific, with but a single item of luggage, to disembark in—was it Abilene, or Newton, or Hays City, or Dodge City?—where, as his partner freely promised, there was a great deal of money to be made, not only in poker, but in investments of various sorts, pertaining to the great cattle market, and to the appetite of the “cattle kings,” for litigation against one another.

Alone, and again hurriedly, Mr. Fox, some months later, boards another coach of the Union Pacific, a wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his forehead, and his manner lithe and unobtrusive; he would push forward some thousands of miles, to the promis'd Elysium San Francisco, but, alas, his ticket can take him no farther than Grand Junction, Colorado: and it is a ticket obliging him to travel, not in the elegant
Pullman coach,
but in the common
chair car.

In muddy Grand Junction Philippe Fox surprises us, by allowing himself to be seen, in public, in his shirt sleeves, as a somewhat abash'd clerk in Kearny's Dry Goods Store: then surprises us still further, by his rapid ascent to managerial status in that selfsame establishment (this position allowing him to wear daily a gray broadcloth suit, and to sport a black four-in-hand tie, and even, at selected times, a carnation in his lapel): then surprises us even further, by an abrupt alteration of fortune, which has him a mere “hand” on the great Pitzer ranch, attired in the rudest workclothes, a scant twelve-month later!

Next we glimpse Mr. Fox, or a slender, dark-complexion'd man very closely resembling him, on horseback, in the convivial company of two unshaven, feral-faced, yet, it is to be supposed, trustworthy comrades, headed westward across scrub country—into an uncharted vast region ceded to us by Mexico, in 1848, and not to be admitted to the Union, until 1896, that wilderness now called
Utah:
where, in the cattle market towns of Trickham, and Welcome, he emerges as a “Philadelphia attorney of good family,” and a “specialist in railroad law.”

Thus Utah: and then south and west to Las Vegas, a booming cattle town: and to Kingman, Arizona: and to the famous South Spring Ranch in Roswell, New Mexico (a kingdom stretching from horizon to horizon, owned by the great John Chisum, then in his late fifties, and rapidly aging). Mr. Fox is by turns a freelance journalist, writing for the Las Vegas
Herald
and the San Francisco
Chronicle;
an itinerate gambler, at poker and monte and horse-racing; again, a shopkeeper; an accountant; an attorney specializing in “cattle trade law.” For Mr. Chisum, a millionaire greatly troubled in his mind, as a consequence of unspeakable losses in the Lincoln County War, Mr. Fox is an invaluable solace, proffering his services as a legal advisor, a secretary, and a confidant, assuring the rancher that posterity will sift through the evidence, to determine that
his side
possessed all the moral right: and that the cruel saga of “McSween” and “Murphy” and “Tunstall” and “Pat Garrett” and “Billy the Kid” and “John Chisum” himself will one day be perfectly understood; and the personages justly
condemned,
or
acquitted,
by history.

Of the numerous participants in the bloody dispute, known locally as the “Lincoln County War,” only Pat Garrett, the lawman, and Mr. Chisum himself still lived: the colorful Billy the Kid having been shot to death, in nearby Fort Sumner, some years before, at a very young age. “It is a pity, Mr. Fox,” old John Chisum solemnly observed, “that you come too late in our narrative, to be acquainted with my boy: for, I am sure, the two of you would have warmly taken to each other.
My boy
I call Billy, tho' of course he was no offspring of my own, save in temperament. Alas, that you have come too late!” To which heartfelt exclamation the discreet “man of law” made no clear rejoinder, save a vague murmur of assent; tho' I do not believe I o'erstep authorial propriety, in stating that Fox was not so entirely lost to all vestiges of good breeding, as to have wished, however fancifully, to “rub elbows”—as the saying goes—with such riffraff as “Billy the Kid”!

 

SOMETIME LATER, AFTER
Chisum's death, Philippe Fox appears one day in Silver City, riding a high-shouldered chestnut mare: he gets himself hired as a schoolmaster, until the schoolhouse is burned down. Hired by Mr. Plummer of the Bosque Grande Ranch, several hundred miles to the south, he is again a legal advisor and confidant and something of a bodyguard (his prowess with a six-gun and rifle having improved considerably). There are disagreements; or the Bosque Grande goes bankrupt, as a consequence of falling beef prices; or Philippe Fox too earnestly obeys Mr. Plummer's irascible will, and there are unfortunate casualties amongst the rancher's enemies, and, a sheriff and several deputies hoping to serve a warrant on Mr. Fox, he betakes himself away in the night, across the arid scrubland, and disappears: his horse's hooves, in the dust, visible for some miles and then lifting!—“into thin air,” as his pursuers exclaim.

Yet, not long afterward, in the comfortable smokers' lounge of a coach on the Union Pacific, en route to Tucson, Philippe Fox, zestful, smooth-skinned, and conspicuously “well-bred,” makes the felicitous acquaintance of both the U.S. Deputy for Southeastern Arizona, Reb Kingston, and his close friend Senator Hank Willis: Mr. Willis even at that late date—1888, 1889—enjoying a relatively healthsome reputation, despite his burgeoning wealth, and questionable methods, for dealing with political enemies, and Papago Indians, and luckless homesteaders “squatting” on his grazing land.

Thus, the years; and the hundreds, and thousands, of miles; and if Philippe Fox ever allows his restive mind to drift eastward, to the Bloodsmoor of old, it is only because his imagination has been spurred by an account, lurid in its particulars, of the first successful execution by means of the remarkable new invention, the electric chair (“the brainchild of the Pennsylvania genius John Quincy Zinn”); or by a much-battered copy of
The Christian House & Home,
by Miss Edwina Kidde­master, found in the smoldering rubble of a sodhouse, unwisely erected on Mr. Willis's vast property—or on the open grazing lands, the “free lands,” contiguous to that property; or by the lightsome spectacle of children shrieking as they play hide-and-seek . . . evoking a memory of four little girls playing together, or five little girls, or, at times, six, when the ringleted and shining-eyed Delphine Martineau was brought to the Octagonal House for an afternoon, to play Puss-in-the-Corner, or whist, or checkers, or casino. And what a little demon Delphine had been, at these games! Not even the quick-witted Malvinia could keep pace with her, save by cheating; and poor Constance Philippa lost every round, her fingers suddenly numb, and clumsy, and her face burning with mortification.

Four hearts in one I do behold,
Mr. Fox hummed to himself, as he rode his new-purchased gelding along the main street of Tombstone, “They in each other do infold,” he murmured aloud, scarce knowing what he sang, or why, or why it caused his tight fist of a heart to lurch with sudden pain, “I cut them out on such a night/And send them to my heart's delight./I choose you, D., for my Valentine,/I choose you out from all the rest,/The reason is,
I LIKE YOU BEST.
”

 

AND TO THE
San Pedro Valley, and the Rock Bluff Mining & Milling Company, and an ill-considered partnership with “China” Bowdrie, and much confusion pertaining to bank loans, and forged signatures, and bankruptcy procedures; and a kerosene blaze at the Wheel of Fortune Hotel; and several dead men (including “China” Bowdrie); and another alacritous nocturnal flight, this time across the desert toward Naco, over the border—but this time less successful, as Philippe Fox, known locally as “The Fox,” is apprehended a few miles west of Bisbee, and hauled back to Tombstone to be hanged.

Yet emerging, not long afterward, in a straw hat trimmed in red, and a coyote-skin vest, and leather boots with hand-tooled silver spurs: the most handsome, and the most “cultivated,” of all the U.S. deputy marshals, or their assistants, in the Southwest. Mr. Fox is thus observed at Governor Willis's mansion, dancing with his eldest daughter; and at Governor Willis's great ranch, Casa Grande; dining in the Cattleman's Club, of Phoenix, with the good-hearted, but oft hot-tempered, Reb Kingston; playing poker in Mesa; horseracing in San Luis; leading a posse of some thirty newly deputized “assistants” against strikers at the Painted Rock Mining & Milling Company, which Mr. Willis happens to own.

Kingston is murdered, in a “gambling paradise” in Ajo; Willis is assassinated, whilst dining in his plush-lined private car, on the Union Pacific, en route to the coast; Fox disappears, with $40 cash, and six ounces of gold dust, and his second-best pistol, and the clothes on his back. Even his panic subsides, and refines itself to a cool dull dim ache, and that ache to a rhythm, private as his pulsing blood:
A fox went out on a starlight night, And he pray'd to the moon to give him some light, For he'd many miles to go that night, Before he could reach his den O!

 

A MAIDEN LADY
of advanced years, I count myself necessarily ignorant of the particulars of masculine biology—as, indeed, I am unapologetically ignorant of the particulars of the biology pertaining to my own sex: and to the corporeal life in general. Thus, I shall refrain from commenting, as to whether the gross alterations in Philippe Fox's physical being were a result of relentless masculine
attire,
including close-fitting trousers; masculine
activity
of divers sorts; or rough-hew'd masculine
companionship,
over a period of many years; or, it may be, an unwholesome amalgam of all. Nor can I comment as to whether this obsence transformation, undergone involuntarily, yet not unwillingly, by Mr. Fox (that is, the former Constance Philippa Zinn), was naught but a normal phenomenon, of the sort that might, and does, commonly occur, should any young woman be so brash as to behave, over a protracted period of time, in like wise: or whether there was, from the very first, something
especial
about the Zinn's eldest daughter—not unlike that repugnant manifestation of The Beast, in the otherwise lovely Malvinia. (Should the latter hold, I suppose the Fox case might be of interest to medical science; as cases of Siamese twins, virgin birth, hermaphrodites, giants, midgets, dwarfs, “snake-scalèd” personages, and other sad prodigies of nature, are of interest. Yet, lacking the original
Constance Philippa,
it would not seem to me that
Philippe Fox,
in himself, could be fruitfully examined: for he is but a man: that is, a member of the masculine gender, complete in all physiological requirements as to genitalia, tho' very lightly bearded, and possessing little or no chest hair.)

It is possible that excessive alcoholic imbibing of beer, ale, gin, tequila (a vile Mexican spirit), and whisky, in morbid conjunction with the above (tight-fitting trousers, including leather leggings; high-heeled boots; horseback riding in all weathers; card playing; tobacco; spicy foods of a Mexican and Spanish taint; profanity; hasty and rough toilettes; and the camaraderie of the unlettered), and stimulated throughout by a
coarse, uncivil,
and
primitive frame of mind,
might have been sufficient to cause the hideous transformation, with no blame cast upon inheritance, or congenital disposition. Constance Philippa herself, in her disguise as a man, naturally had no apprehension of what might happen; it should be remembered that, like any “outlaw” (for such the unhappy woman became, with the very act of placing her dressmaker's dummy in the sacred marital bed), she was far more concerned with the present, and with living by her wits, than with any clear sense of what lay before her, or behind. Indeed, this very preoccupation with the
present moment,
and with
action,
so characteristic of our Western frontier, lies so close to masculine habitude of behavior, as to be, perhaps, one and the same inclination!—hence, any thoughtless young woman who subscribes to this habitude, is in danger of being transform'd, late or early, into a
man.

As early as Wichita, it might have been noted that Philippe Fox's voice was becoming more naturally guttural; by the time he reached Grand Junction, his eyebrows, always heavy, dark, and brooding, had become more prominent still; drifting into the Utah territory, on horseback, in the company of two desperadoes (later discovered to be wanted for murder, in Hays City), he had acquired considerable musculature, particularly in shoulders, upper arms, thighs, and calves. During the months he spent at the South Spring Ranch, it may have been the case that the practic'd eye of old John Chisum “smelled a rat,” as it were—this being the result of Mr. Fox's initial dislike of chewing tobacco: but, if so, no taunts or accusations were ever made. “Your Mr. Fox is a true gentleman,” little Sallie Chisum told her uncle, sighing mightily. “Ah, would there were more like him!” Whereupon the grizzled cattleman observed, with a droll twinkle of his eye: “Why, my dear, would you wish the world
depopulated,
in a single generation?” Yet, as I have said, there were no taunts, or accusations, nor even ribald hints, pertaining to Mr. Fox's virility, or lack thereof.