The Last Shootist (15 page)

“Thanks for puttin' me up for a few days, Mister Rhodes. The grub was good and the company, too, but my tailbone may never be the same.”

The short wrangler laughed. “You're young, you'll recover. Anything you learned about hangin' onto a horse will be useful if you keep travelin' around this rough country. Trains and stagecoaches are fine between the bigger towns, but only horses will get you out to where the real beauty of the Southwest lies.”

“I'll own more horses someday. Are you going to keep writing for that journal in Los Angeles?”

“Sure.” The broncbuster nodded between bites of his cheesy enchilada. “But I'm thinking about a bigge' canvas than short stories and essays. May try writing a novel. Like to see my name in a library. Somebody needs to record the adventures of these notorious outlaws I keep running into up at my horse ranch. I get to know 'em and earn thei' trust, they sometimes tell me about thei' families and the scrapes they've been in. Thei' true stories are priceless, Gillom, and as this country gets tamed, you're gonna see fewe' and fewe' of these wild bandits still on the prowl. Civilization and better law enforcement will tie 'em up. Bill Doolin, for instance, was known as the King of the Oklahoma Outlaws. A rough, tough hombre, unforgettable. Same with those bad Graham bothers. Maybe I'll immortalize 'em in prose, as well as on thei' wanted posters.”

“I'd sure buy
that
book, Gene.” Gillom nodded. “I was never too partial to fiction, but I remember one poem we read in English class. Let's see.…

When all the world is young, lad,

And all the trees are green;

And every goose a swan, lad

And every lass a queen;

Then hey for boot and horse, lad,

And round the world away;

Young blood must have its course, lad,

And every dog his day.

“Charles Kingsley, I know it!” Gene Rhodes crowed. “Too bad you didn't finish you' education, Gillom. Mighta made a good teache'.”

“No, I'm ready for some real life learnin'.”

Gillom treated his host to dinner and together they strolled over to the train depot smoking small Mexican cigarillos, the teenager coughing. His passenger train south was a three-hour ride to the end of the Santa Fe's line, supposed to get to Deming by midnight. The ticket clerk showed them on a wall map how the kid would have a layover till morning to catch the next Southern Pacific express out of El Paso on to Lordsburg and over Stein's Pass with a long chug into Arizona Territory and Benson. They shook hands a last time in the small depot.

“Can't thank you enough, sir.”

“I wish you luck, son, buckets of luck. You' problem will come when anyone learns you were involved in Books's big shoot-out and those are his special guns. Someone will want to test you, see if you are as good as that famous shootist was. And if you pass that first test and kill again, you' a marked man the rest of you' limited days.”

Gillom Rogers clapped the shorter man on the back. “Now, Eugene. Long as I stay within the law, my future can't be that grim.”

“Someone will hea', someone will see you practicing, and hence will come the challenge. You're a feisty kid, Gillom, loads of sand, but you'll want to demonstrate you' prowess. And then … young blood will have its course, lad.…”

As unpredictable as the wind, Eugene Manlove Rhodes spun round and walked out of the train station. Gillom just stood there, watching the bowlegged cowboy amble away.

“And every
dog
his day, Gene!”

But the horse wrangler never turned back to wave goodbye.

 

Nineteen

 

Since he'd never ridden a railroad before, Gillom knew he wouldn't be sleeping much, so he purchased a second-class ticket for five dollars, which didn't include a sleeping berth. He watched as a few folks got on the passenger train after this every-other-night express pulled into Engle about 9:00
P.M.
More families got off in that little station after their shopping excursions to Albuquerque, mothers carrying sacks of new clothes and dads boxes of foodstuffs, their kids clutching new toys. One gent carried a new saddle over his shoulder as Gillom brushed past him looking for an empty seat in the day coach, after he'd passed his saddlebags and warbag to a baggage man on the platform.

Gillom pushed past an overweight man dozing on the aisle and took a seat next to the window. Electric lights in the cars were on during its half hour stop in Engle. He could see cattle waiting to be shipped out of pens across the tracks. Gillom was settling into the comfortable upholstery when the whistle suddenly shrilled, the train cars jerked, and couplings clanked, and the steam engine began its hard pull forward.

The fat man next to him was already snoring, so Gillom restlessly got up. The parlor car was half-filled with cattlemen and traveling salesmen, drinking at the stand-up bar or sitting in plush chairs smoking or reading a selection of newspapers or books from racks above the cushioned wall seats. Women weren't allowed to drink liquor with the men to discourage the many traveling prostitutes, and he'd already been warned by a conductor who looked at his ticket that he wouldn't be served, either. Gillom paused to have his boots blackened again by a white kid who also served as the train's butcher boy, selling lollipops, fruit, and cigars to the passengers. The boy wanted fifty cents for his snappy shine, which Gillom thought high and thus declined to tip, earning a scowl. He watched one woman shuffling cards with a few boisterous men at a poker table, but she didn't appear to be drinking anything stronger than iced tea. He spotted a writing table nearby and commandeered it, using the free pens, ink, and paper to dash off a brief note to his mother.

Gillom then walked the Persian carpeting through a concertina-pleated vestibule between cars, to spare travelers discomfort from wind or rain. He peeked into the dining room, where white-jacketed Negro waiters were tidying up while several tables of diners lingered over their coffee and pie. Gillom wasn't hungry, so after getting an evil eye from the uniformed black porter in the next sleeper car to the rear, he trudged back to his second-class car. There he crammed beside the snoring fat man and rested his cheek against the cool glass of the window. Squinting, Gillom could just make out the ghostly shapes of occasional cows as they ran away from the scary fire-breathing snake as it roared down dark rails under a silvery moon.

*   *   *

Deming, New Mexico, sat at the conjunction of two major railroads, so all the passengers had to disembark from the Santa Fe after midnight and fend for themselves until picking up the Southern Pacific headed west out of El Paso the next morning, or early next evening when another SP train arrived from the West Coast headed on to the main city of West Texas. Gillom reaffirmed this from a conductor after they arrived in Deming and he learned his options for the night. Passengers served themselves according to their needs—families hiring a carriage to drive them and their luggage into the railroad crossroad for some fitful sleep at a small hotel. Single men, after seeing their bags into safe storage at the depot, might walk into town for a nightcap at one of Deming's tough saloons. This wasn't the most prudent course, for in the early 1900s this was a brawling railroad town so lawless that outlaws rounded up in Arizona were often booted into the next territory with a one-way ticket to Deming.

So he'd been warned. Gillom picked up his saddlebags and wandered off to an outside corner of the depot building, as far away as he could get from the few people milling about inside the station, uncertain what to do with themselves till dawn. The teenager had had enough excitement this very long day, and he nodded off under a starry sky, a bag of unshelled peanuts in one hand and a bottle of fizzwater in the other.

*   *   *

Come morning and after depositing his gear in the baggage room and purchasing another six-dollar ticket to Benson, Gillom strolled into the dusty burg to wolf down breakfast at the Beehive Café. He mailed his letter to his mother in the little post office inside Deming's only mercantile, which opened at 8:00
A.M.
His westbound wasn't due in until after ten, so he dawdled down the town's small main street of shops and saloons and took a gander at its real business—an extensive rail yard composed of an engine roundhouse and train repair shops and freight car sidings shared by two of America's mightiest railroads, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, and the Southern Pacific.

Gillom had heard fuel oil was starting to replace coal burners on some Western railroads, but those sleeker, cleaner engines hadn't arrived on the Sunset Route yet. He marveled at the size of the Mogul locomotives being worked on by mechanics. Then a distant whistle keened and the youth hustled back to the depot to reclaim his bags as the big ten-wheeler chuffed into town spraying cinders and smoke.

Gillom watched better-dressed passengers debark for a morning constitutional around the platform before resuming their journey. He was transfixed by one pretty blonde brushing her linen duster off with gloved hands after she removed it to shake soot off her wardrobe. The teenager snapped out of his daze to get his saddlebags to a porter and clamber aboard the Southern Express himself. They were rolling westward not long afterward.

*   *   *

Gillom awoke from exhausted sleep after noon, oblivious to the comings and goings of others in their second-class car. What should have been a fast, uneventful trip on the bumpy roadbed wasn't, for this Southern train was no express, but a milk run, requiring a stop at every way station between El Paso and Tucson. As they screeched into yet another small depot, he complained to a man reading a newspaper next to him.

“We're stopping again?”

“Southern Pacific has the only twice-weekly train running across the bottom of this country, kid, so they milk their business for all it's worth. Even making less than thirty miles an hour, it's still faster than a bumpy stagecoach. No Indian attacks, either.”

Gillom nodded. His mouth was dry from sleeping wide open, catching flies, as his mother used to say, so he roused to stretch numbed legs. This train was much more crowded on its main run than the mixed passenger and freight train he'd ridden in from Engle, and the bar car was its hub. Gillom bought more soda water to wash from his mouth leftover salt from the peanuts. One nattily dressed gent seated alone at a small table against the wall caught Gillom's eye and beckoned him over, gesturing to the one empty chair left in the parlor car.

“Sit down, young man. Take a load off.”

Gillom did as bid.

“Nice brace of pistols. Where's a young gun hand like you headed?”

“Bisbee. Hear that's a fast town.”

“It
is
indeed. To do
what
there, may I ask?”

Gillom admired the middle-aged man's fancy clothing, his ruffled white shirt under his black silk vest which displayed hand-painted red and pink roses on its wide lapels.

“Oh, somethin' to do with protection—bank guard, stage shotgun, mine security, eventually maybe law enforcement.”

The stranger nodded. “All that copper mining in Bisbee, precious metal shipments, ought to be lots of protection jobs for an aggressive young fella like you. Dangerous work, though.”

Gillom just smiled.

“So you're a risk taker. Betting your life on your nerve and quickness, your steady hand under fire.” The man reached inside a pocket of the black broadcloth coat he'd draped over the back of his chair and withdrew a deck of cards, which he fanned in one hand, then bent back and riffed rapidly into the palm of his other. Gillom saw the heavy gold rings he sported on either hand.

“Care for a little pasteboards? To pass the long hours till you reach your mining mecca.”

“I'm no gambler.”

“Ahh. Ever tried three-card monte? It's simple and fast. The
right
game for a lad with sharp eyes like yours.” The flashy stranger flipped over the top card to show him the ace of hearts, which he laid onto the table faceup. The next two were the king of spades and the queen of clubs, which also went onto the bare table. The dealer slid the rest of his railroad bible back into his coat pocket, then turned the three cards over again, facedown.

“Remember where that ace of hearts was? Keep your eye on her now.” The man began moving the three face cards around beneath his big hands. He stopped and spread his hands wide. “Where is that red ace, sir?”

Gillom aimed an index finger at the card on his left. With a broad smile the gent flipped over the ace of hearts. It was easy.

“Excellent. Okay, let's make it interesting. Five dollars?”

After a pause, Gillom nodded. The ace was turned back over again and the three cards began their little dance. This time Rogers watched the ace end up on the right.

The gambler nodded. “Your eyes are quicker than my hand, young sir. Ten dollars?”

“After you pay me my five.”

“But of course. You're a careful manager of your money, sir. I respect that in one so young.” Pulling out a leather change purse from a back pocket, he removed a five-dollar bill and handed it over. Again, the cards were circled, then reversed. Now the ace was in the middle, which the youth pointed to. The gambler shook his head at the correct call, made a production of pulling several Mexican five-dollar coins from his change purse to roll across the hardwood. “Give me a chance at twenty?”

But Gillom shook his head no.

“Oh, c'mon. Surely you're enough of a sport to allow me a chance at winning my money back?”

Another young man stepped up to the table now, who'd been watching this pasteboard manipulation keenly from a distance.

“I'll go you for that twenty, mister.”