CHAPTER ONE
In my awkward ungainly way, I run toward the saloon. I imagine the very worst: Eileen without an eye. Eileen’s brains leaking out like giblets from a cracked gravy boat. Eileen wounded DOWN THERE. I only know that my dearest best friend was shot and has called for me. My Inner Spinster wags a finger and warns of serious trouble. Then she kicks a portion of my optic nerve, causing my right eye to flicker. I have trouble focusing and tumble over a horse trough. Brushing myself off, I run along a dusty street to the scene of the gunplay.
A crowd mills around the entrance of R.I. Perryman’s Sporting Palace. Half the Wolf Tongue men seem to be present. They talk and spit tobacco, occasionally striking the ground. Only grudgingly do they allow an ugly clown woman such as myself to pass through their ranks. On the rough wooden planks near the batwing doors, I see a blood-soaked Eileen. She sits up against the wall; her robin’s egg dress is splattered a ghastly red. My heart leaps into my throat and stays there, beating against my tongue and causing my teeth to vibrate.
“Took your time,” Eileen tells me. I blush and look down as she scribbles furiously on a notepad. Tearing off a sheet of paper, she hands it to a young boy. “Run this over to the Gazette. Tell the editor it’s the shooting at Perryman’s Faro table.” As the boy scampers off, I marvel at Eileen’s sand. She is adventurous, and attractive. I am a lowly dishwasher, awkward as a three-legged sheep.
In Perryman’s huge, bullet-holed window, I take stock of my overlarge hazel eyes and unruly dark hair that seems determined to vex me at every turn. I roll my big eyes, exasperated by my own plainness. I bite my lip. I murmur inane things of no weight. I make a soft honking noise like a Canadian goose.
“Stop honking this instant,” says Eileen.
“Jeez, sorry,” I whisper.
A .45 round has creased Eileen’s forehead, leaving a streak of blood like the war paint of a Cheyenne Dog Soldier. More seriously, she has been shot clean through the right breast. But far from simpering in pain, as I would have done, Eileen is angry and frustrated.
“Anna, you must conduct my interview tomorrow.”
“But I know nothing of the newspaper game.”
“Physically, I am a shambles, not fit to interview a peddler, let alone a railroad titan. All my questions are written down. You have only to ask them. With your wholesome beauty and charm, you will shine like the seat of a tramp’s slacks.”
My beauty? But I was ugly as sin in an outhouse.
“Please,” says Eileen. “Do not deny me. This interview was difficult to obtain. Why a secretive railroad baron should respond to my request while denying others is, perhaps, a mystery you will solve tomorrow.”
Heavy breathing on my neck causes me to blush. I know who hovers behind me. Fresh-faced, ambitious, Harney Calhoun is a few years younger then I. His feigned attentions to me are both disturbing and annoying in that order.
“Hey, Anna. Hot night in town. Oh, and the stage out of Millipede got held up. Just came over the wire. Wanna go for ice cream?”
Eileen looks up sharply at Harney, “Tell me of this new mayhem.”
On the porch beyond Eileen, one-armed Doc Monker steps over several corpses and kneels besides a wounded cowboy. Using modern Civil War medical techniques, he employs an iron probe to dig out a bullet from the man’s intestines. The cowboy’s screams, plus the promiscuous amount of blood, effectively quell my appetite for sweets.
“You know, Harney,” I murmur, “there are injured people requiring attention.”
Harney looks irritated. He is tall with an Adam’s apple so pronounced it appears to be a young head living in his throat. “I’m not saying we’d have to eat here. We could sit inside the shop.”
I roll my eyes. Eileen rolls her eyes. Even the gut-shot cowboy rolls his eyes.
Harney peers down at Eileen as if suddenly aware of her state.
“Hey, Eileen, you’re bosom-shot, or am I off the mark?”
“You’re like a prairie hawk, Harney. You miss nothing. How many robbers?” She holds her pencil poised over the blood-dotted notebook.
I break in quickly, “Please, Eileen. I’m not a reporter with your nerve and skill. I wash dishes at the boarding house. My hands are thick with pork chop grease.”
“You will clean them by tomorrow, I presume?” says Eileen, face fixed on Harney. “What property was taken?”
Doc Monker, the gut-shot cowboy and several onlookers glance toward Harney, who beams at being the center of attention. “I was done keying a message to Blind Man Falls when it came over the wire from Millipede. The Marshal there said Romegas held up the stage, sure as jack beans. Romegas stole thirty-four dollars in silver and a fella’s new pearl gray bowler hat. He left behind his old hat. I guess it was used up some.”
There is so much going on. My inner spinster presses her hands over her ears and says, ‘Aye yi yi yi yiiiii.’
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| Art: Rhoydon Shishido |
“Took a man’s hat. That ain’t right,” moans the drover.
Someone in the crowd says, “That Mexican’s a mean bastard if you cross him.”
“Clever in his way,” says Doc Monker, cleaning his probe by wiping it on his dusty slacks. “For financial reasons, he hates killing anyone in a robbery. Then he can’t rob them again at a later time.”
My heart remains in my mouth, making it difficult to speak. I bite my lip. “Eileen, I can’t do your interview. Please don’t insist.”
“Anna, you must go and I will not accept ‘no.’ Do you realize this interview could establish me as a reporter of the first water? Why, it might even propel me all the way to Hay City and an editorial position on the Intelligencer.”
“Hay City, huh?” says Harney, as if asked his opinion. “Aiming mighty high, aren’t we? I’ll be there some day myself. This telegraphing game is only temporary. I’ve a hankering to go into the photographic impression trade. I got an old camera to practice with. ’Course, once I’m established, I’ll be looking for a wife.”
Harney glances longingly in my direction. I know he cannot mean me. I am 21 and unplucked due to my blunt, almost beast-like features. This must be mockery of some low sort. He continues, “We could have ice cream tomorrow. What do you say, Anna?”
To Eileen I blurt, “Where is the interview?”
“Switchback Junction.”
My Inner Spinster shrieks and runs around in terror. It makes concentration very difficult.
Turning to Harney, I say, “On the ’morrow, I’m doing newspaper work for Eileen. In addition, I may be having a womanly disorder. Modesty prevents me from saying more.”
“I guess that’s private woman stuff. But I’m holding a marker on that ice cream.”
I blush and smile weakly. Harney departs for the Gazette with Eileen’s notes on the stage robbery. Alone now, except for the gut-shot drover, Doc Monker, and a crowd of onlookers, I face Eileen and whisper, “Switchback Junction? Why not the Gates of Hades? The weekly stage has already left and the way is perilous with road agents and hostile Indians.”
A drop of blood rolls down Eileen’s nose. Her eyes cross, following its descent. “I’ve rented a wagon and secured the services of a driver. As you approach Switchback Junction, heavily armed men employed by the railroad will ride out to escort you safely to the interview.”
“Mighty chancy,” says the gut-shot drover. “Indians catch ya, you’ll take a week dying.”
“Mind your own affairs, cow poke,” snaps Eileen.
“Laundry ain’t a secret if you hang it outside.”
“Man has a point,” says Doc Monker, kneeling over Eileen. “Here, Miss Harrison. Bite this block of oak.”
Eileen locks eyes with me. “Be in front of the boarding house at seven o’clock in the morning. Wear a good dress, a sturdy bonnet and a duster. Anna, this is so wonderful of you. You’ll do splendidly.”
I murmur in panic, but Eileen no longer listens. As Doc Monker spits on his probe for luck, Eileen bites into the wood block as if it were a moist cake. Soon her heels drum a merry tattoo against the planks.
Double cow pies.
And that is how I come to interview Lash Grey.
Part II, Part III, Part IV
