The Gentleman Outlaw and Me-Eli (6 page)

After pocketing the money, Calvin leaned against the wall, thinking hard, judging from the looks of the wrinkles in his forehead.

I held out my hand. "Don't I get some of that?"

Absentmindedly, Calvin dropped the marble and the button into my palm and went on thinking.

I took them, but I was far from satisfied. "I earned every cent of that money, Calvin, but I'll be happy to split it fifty-fifty."

He looked at me then. "As I said before, I'll take care of the financial end of our ventures, Eli."

I shoved my palm under his nose. "I want my share. And I want it now!"

"What a stubborn little rogue you are." Slowly he reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of change. Counting carefully, he gave me twenty cents.

"Go buy yourself some candy and a sarsaparilla and whatever else your little heart desires," he said
in a kindlier voice. "I have a bit more thinking to do."

Leaving Calvin to his thoughts and Caesar to his fleas, I ducked and dodged my way across the street and into a store.

I suppose twenty cents was a cheap bribe, but I have a powerful craving for sweets. Aunt Mabel was in the habit of giving Millicent, William, and Little Homer all the candy they wanted, but when it came to me, she said it might ruin my teeth. She wasn't about to pay to have a dentist pull them out. So I got to sit there and watch my three cousins slurp and sneer their way through peppermint sticks and licorice and jawbreakers as big as baseballs.

Now it was my turn. I bought a bottle of sarsaparilla and so much candy it filled two bags.

When I got back, Calvin was standing where I'd left him, still lost in thought, but Caesar had given up on his fleas and fallen asleep. I offered Calvin a swallow of sarsaparilla and a peppermint drop, but he shook his head. Since he didn't seem to be in a talkative mood, I squatted beside him and went to work on a long sticky string of red licorice.

In all my twelve years on this earth, I couldn't recall being happier. No beatings and scoldings. No chores. No Uncle Homer and Aunt Mabel. No Little Homer, Millicent, and William. All the candy my belly could hold.

Begging seemed a small price to pay for such freedom.

C
ALVIN AND I SPENT THE NEXT FEW DAYS
going from town to town, me begging and him collecting my earnings. I can't say I enjoyed it, but as I said, I'd done far worse things—cleaning the outhouse, for instance. It also helped to remind me that every penny in my hat was bringing me closer to finding Papa.

Along the way, I taught Caesar some new tricks. In addition to shaking hands, he could now beg, play dead, and dance on his hind legs when I played lively songs such as 'Yankee Doodle Went to Town" or "O, Susanna!" His antics boosted my earnings considerably.

By the time I'd increased our fortune to seventy dollars, I thought we had plenty to buy two tickets to Tinville, but Calvin was itching to try his luck at the gambling tables in Dodge City. His father had written a long letter describing the town as wide
open, lawless, and wild. You could get away with anything in the "Beautiful, Bibulous Babylon of the Plains," a nickname Calvin liked the sound of. He said it was a fine example of alliteration, whatever that meant.

Of course, Calvin's father said you had to observe certain niceties even in Dodge. You never shot an unarmed man, for instance. Never stole a horse unless you wanted to hang for it. Never insulted a lady. Or cheated a widow or an orphan. Other than that, you could pretty much do what you pleased and the devil take you.

As exciting as the town sounded, I hoped Calvin didn't intend to stay more than a couple of days. We'd already spent much too much time dillydallying across Kansas, I thought.

But when I asked Calvin how soon we'd be leaving for Tinville, he said, "Not until we can afford first-class tickets. I intend to arrive in style, Eli, so as to make an impression on Sheriff Yates. He must see I'm a man to be reckoned with."

The sound of my true name always made me uncomfortable, so I fell silent. Not that Calvin noticed. He was so busy talking about his grand entrance that he probably wouldn't have noticed if I'd fallen off the buggy.

"I'll step from the train, holding my head high," he went on. "I'll be wearing a fine black frock coat, made of the best wool and custom-tailored. Under
it, an embroidered vest and a lacy shirt with a diamond stickpin. I'll have diamonds on my fingers, too. Trousers cut just right. Shiny black boots."

I glanced at Calvin. He was wearing a shabby black jacket and baggy pants with a tear in the knee. His white shirt was frayed at the collar, and his boots were almost as scuffed as mine. He needed a shave and a haircut. At the moment, Calvin Featherbone was far from the dandy he hoped to become.

But Calvin wasn't the sort to let the truth get in the way of dreams. No, sir, not him. He kept right on spouting foolishness. "Someone in the crowd at the depot will notice me," he said. "He'll run to the sheriff and tell him a dangerous man has arrived in Tinville."

Though I'd said nothing, Calvin scowled at me as if he thought I doubted him. "My showdown with Sheriff Yates will make the gunfight at the O.K. Corral resemble a Sunday school picnic," he boasted.

Apparently satisfied he'd convinced me, Calvin urged Fancy to get a move on. Way far off, on the edge of the world, we could just make out a tiny huddle of buildings against the sky. It was Dodge City, Calvin assured me, the queen of the cow towns.

***

We reached the outskirts of Dodge just before sunset. To my surprise, it looked as peaceful and
ordinary as any other town. Houses and churches and schools, folks out strolling, pigs and chickens making themselves comfortable in the dust. Not a sign of a drunken cowboy or a herd of longhorns. No shooting either. Few saloons.

By the time we found the livery stable, Calvin was looking a bit down in the mouth.

The man who knew Miss Pearl was right pleased to see us—and the horse.

"Pearl wrote that you were coming," Mr. Sullivan said. "But I expected you sooner." He was a rough-looking fellow with a shaggy mustache and a bushy beard. I believe a scowl was his natural expression.

Calvin didn't offer Mr. Sullivan any excuses. What he wanted to know was why the town was so quiet. "I anticipated a lively scene," he said, frowning as if Mr. Sullivan were somehow to blame for the boarded-up saloons we'd passed on Front Street.

Mr. Sullivan laughed out loud. "Why, where in tarnation have you been? The cattle don't come here no more and neither do the cowboys. Without them, there wasn't no need for gamblers and saloonkeepers and dance-hall girls, so they packed up and followed the railroad west. In their place, we got teachers, preachers, lawyers, bankers, doctors, and storekeepers. You know what kind of folks men of that sort bring with them."

Here Mr. Sullivan spat in the dust at my feet. "Self-righteous folks," he said. "Churchgoing folks.
Teetotaling folks. Folks with wives and little children. Why, there's scarcely a gunshot to be heard on a Saturday night nowadays."

Calvin heaved a sigh and turned to leave, but Mr. Sullivan wasn't finished.

"What we got here now is civilization," he hollered after us. "It's spreading faster than smallpox. Pretty soon the whole West is going to be like Dodge City."

"More's the pity," Calvin muttered.

Dragging Caesar along with the help of a rope tied round his neck, I followed Calvin down a dusty side street, past deserted saloons and dance halls. There were burned-out places too, nothing left but charred timbers and ashes. No one seemed interested in giving anything to a poor orphan child and his consumptive brother. Even Caesar's most pitiful performance went unappreciated.

Although we didn't make a cent in Dodge, Calvin managed to lose more than half of our money to a pickpocket even more skillful than he was. It was lucky he'd had the foresight to put thirty dollars in his boot, or we'd have lost it all.

After eating a tough steak, more gristle than meat, we ended up in the Grand Imperial Hotel down by the railroad depot. A sign in the lobby said
NO MORE THAN FIVE TO A BED
, but fortunately for me, the crowds were long gone. The clerk gave us a room the size of an outhouse, but at least it had two beds and enough room for Caesar to curl up in a
corner. The sheets looked like they hadn't been changed in recent history, and soon after I lay down, little varmints commenced biting me.

I swear I would have slept better rolled up in my blankets on the hard ground, but I didn't complain. My wish had at long last been granted—the next day Calvin and I would be boarding the morning train to Colorado. After whispering good night to Caesar, I fell fast asleep, bedbugs and all.

A
T THE TRAIN DEPOT, CALVIN TRIED TO
persuade the ticket agent to let us ride free, but his sweet talk about us being poor orphans got him nowhere. The man had obviously heard every type of hard-luck story the mind can devise. We had to settle for a third-class carriage to Pueblo, Colorado, which was as far as we could go without spending all our money.

When the train came in two hours late, I rushed ahead of Calvin, dragging Caesar behind me, pushing and shoving through the crowd. It seemed everybody in town was aiming to wedge themselves into the passenger cars. In my haste, I almost knocked a lady down, earning a whack from her parasol that brought tears to my eyes.

Calvin and Caesar and I ended up in a car that resembled a long, narrow wooden box with an aisle down the middle and rows of hard seats on either
side. We squeezed ourselves into a place hardly big enough for anyone but a baby or very small child. Somehow I persuaded Caesar to lie down and stay out of sight.

Once we got settled, I thought we'd leave right away, but I swear we sat there sweltering for over an hour while they unloaded the baggage car and then reloaded it. Lord, the flies were something awful. A baby right behind me was screaming in my ear, and the man in front of me must have eaten too many beans for lunch. Between him, the cigar smoke, and the stink coming from the convenience room at the end of the car, I thought I'd never get out of Kansas with my nose intact.

When I started fussing, Calvin said, "If Roscoe hadn't stolen my money, we'd be traveling in a first-class Pullman car, sitting on soft velvet seats in the company of refined persons of quality."

He sounded right testy. Unlike me, the Gentleman Outlaw wasn't used to living like somebody's poor relation. I took the hint, though, and stopped complaining.

Around three o'clock, the train gave a tremendous lurch. The whistle blew and we were off. I was hoping a good cool wind would blow all the bad smells away, but instead, cinders and smoke blew inside and added to my discomfort. So far, train travel was not as grand as I'd expected.

The car got hotter and stuffier. The wheels went
clickety clickety click, clickety clickety clack.
We rocked back and forth, back and forth, like babies in a cradle. All round me, droning voices mimicked a chorus of insects on an August afternoon. My head bobbed up and down, and my eyelids sunk like they were weighted with lead sinkers.

I slept and woke, slept and woke.
Clickety clickety click, clickety clickety clack.
On we rode into a sunset as red as fire and just as hot. Stopping here, stopping there. Folks getting off, folks getting on. Babies crying, children fussing, men cursing, women whispering.

When it got dark, the conductor lit oil lamps that looked like they might come crashing down and set the car afire. A boy passed through selling things from a box—soap and towels, bed boards and pillows stuffed with straw, coffee, water, canned food and dried food. At the sight of it, my stomach lurched with hunger, but Calvin said we couldn't afford the prices the little cheat was asking.

Finally I fell into a deep sleep from which I woke at dawn. At long last, we were in Colorado. Sticking my head out the window, I got my first look at the Rockies way off in the distance, snow-topped against the blue sky. Coming from Kansas, I'd never seen their like before and could scarcely wait to get nearer and see how tall the mountains really were.

When we pulled into Pueblo, Calvin gave me a nudge. "Get moving, Eli," he said. "We don't want to go on to Denver."

With Caesar leading, I shoved my way off the train. Oh, but it felt good to stand on solid ground again.

"I'm so hungry," I said, eyeing the depot restaurant everyone was rushing into. "Can we afford a cup of coffee and a roll?"

"Wait till the people who are getting back on the train finish eating," Calvin said. "You'll be trampled to death if you go in there now."

It's good I took his advice, because you never saw such a combobulous commotion. Those passengers had twenty minutes to eat, and they were hollering orders and grabbing tables and stuffing food down their throats like someone was going to steal it if they didn't swallow it fast. I swear I saw a man grab a sandwich right out of a little tyke's hand and run out the door with it before anybody could catch him.

When the engineer blasted the whistle, the passengers came dashing out of the restaurant, choking down food as they ran, and piled into the cars. In no time at all, the train was under way, huffing and puffing north to Denver, showering Calvin, Caesar, and me with cinders.

When we ventured into the restaurant, we saw chairs on the floor, overturned tables, spilled food and drink everywhere. Cinders gritted under our feet; they covered the windowsills; they peppered the food, pies, and cakes as well as everything else, including my clothes and hair.

We picked the cleanest table we could find, and Caesar crept underneath as if he sensed it was the safest place.

When the waitress brought our food, half my coffee had slopped into my saucer. The rolls were hard as stone, but I found soaking them in the coffee softened them up. Made the coffee taste a mite better too.

While we ate, Calvin told me he'd come up with a new moneymaking scheme. Three-card monte, he called it. A surefire way to get rich fast.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said, too weary to put up with high-flown words and silly notions.