Wilderness Double Edition 15, page 26
As if he were handling a live skunk, Zach reluctantly accepted the clothes but held them at arm’s length. “I’ve never worn any quite like these before.”
“They go on one sleeve at a time, like most.” Tyler gestured at a doorway. “Change in the bedroom. Give a yell if you need help.”
“Help getting dressed?” Zach laughed. That would be the day. He did as they requested, closing the door to ensure privacy. Removing his buckskins was like removing his own skin, and he stood for a few moments, stark naked, debating whether to put them back on. He had to remind himself that Milhouse and Tyler had his best interests at heart. They were as keen on finding Lou as he was. So he decided to go along with their wishes.
Zach’s father owned a suit, but Zach had seldom seen Nate wear it. There was that time a missionary visited their cabin, and that social the trappers put on for a pair of schoolteachers bound for the Oregon country. Usually, though, the suit gathered dust. And now that Zach had an opportunity to try one on for himself, he understood the reason.
The gambler’s gift included striped trousers, a double-breasted navy blue frock coat, a striped tartan vest, and a white shirt. Zach had no problem donning them, but the trousers were uncomfortably tight and itched, the white shirt had a stiff collar that chafed his skin whenever he twisted his neck, and the vest had the same pattern as the kilts he had seen Scotsmen wear at the annual rendezvous and which he’d always thought were so ridiculous. Not that he ever said so to any of the Scotsmen. Once a drunk trapper had made a few unkind remarks about men who wore dresses and been treated to a beating Zach never forgot.
Now Zach picked up a long silken tie—cravats, he believed they were called—and was completely stumped. Try as he might, he couldn’t tie it right. And he couldn’t see how anyone else could, either. It was harder than braiding hair.
Tyler and Milhouse were sipping brandy and chatting when Zach emerged. The old trapper, about to swallow, sputtered like a foundering whale, brandy shooting out his nostrils.
The gambler, as always, was more reserved. Grinning, he raised his long-stemmed glass in salute. “My compliments, young sir. Once we tuck your hair down the back of your jacket, no one will look at you twice.”
“What about this?” Zach showed them the crumpled cravat.
“Don’t let it vex you. I was sixteen before I learned how to tie one.” Tyler rose. “Secretly, I’ve long harbored the idea they were invented by a lunatic to drive the rest of us crazy.” His grin widened. “Cravats and corsets are the bane of a gentleman’s existence.”
Milhouse roared, although why, Zach couldn’t guess. He stood stiffly while the gambler affixed the cravat and then stepped back to appraise him.
“Half the men in St. Louis would give their pokes to look half as good as you do, son” was the man in black’s assessment.
Zach didn’t mind being called “son” this time, but being praised for his appearance made him vaguely uncomfortable. The truth be known, he had never given his looks much thought. Fussing over it always struck him as downright vain. A person was born the way they were. That was that.
“It will also help if you puff yourself up and act as if you have a lot of money,” George Milhouse suggested. “Then no one will care whether you’re a ’breed.”
Being reminded of the incident at the Gilded Lily aroused Zach’s anger. “I’m ready. What are we waiting for?”
“One final touch,” Tyler said. Going to a cabinet, he opened the glass door and removed an elaborate polished box, which he set on a table. Nestled on red velvet inside were a pair of exquisite pistols, a matched set of dueling flintlocks that cost more than all the guns in the King family combined. Tyler loaded one, then the other, reversed his grip on each, and offered them to Zach.
“I have my own, plus my rifle.”
“You can’t take that cannon of yours into the sort of establishments Ellery and his friends frequent.” Tyler pushed the pistols into Zach’s hands. “Trust me. Use these. They fire true. And when in Rome, remember?”
“This is St. Louis,” Zach said, confused.
“Never mind.”
The two grown men swapped chuckles. Zach shoved the flintlocks under his belt and stalked to the door. “Now can we go?”
Tyler’s light mood evaporated like dew under a blazing sun. “Yes, indeed. We’re off to rescue the fair damsel in distress.”
“And to core the brains of any sons of bitches who get in our road,” the old trapper added, standing.
“You’re staying here,” Tyler said.
“Like hell I am.”
“I don’t have clothes that will fit you,” the gambler said.
“So? I got into the Gilded Lily, didn’t I?”
“Only because you’re white. Where I’m taking young Zach, even that isn’t enough.” Tyler fished a bottle from a cupboard. “Make yourself to home. God willing, we’ll be back with the lady by morning.”
Zach was surprised when the feisty oldster sank back into the chair without further protest.
“Be that way. Just don’t blame me if your damn bottle is empty.”
Their first stop was at the Golden Bough. Zach had never seen so much brass and glass and gold gilt in all his born days. The doorman greeted them with a warm smile, ushering them indoors with a grand gesture.
“Mr. Tyler, sir! It’s been a while since you favored us with a visit.”
“Then I’m overdue, aren’t I?” Tyler suavely responded, flicking a bill that the doorman slid as neatly as could be under his coat.
“Always a treat to have you here, sir.”
The other employees of the gambling den were equally courteous. They welcomed the tall man in black as if he were visiting royalty, bending over backwards in their zeal to please him. Even other patrons, Zach noted, took special interest in Adam Tyler, pointing and whispering as he passed by.
“I had no idea you were so famous,” Zach said.
“Not fame, my friend. Notoriety.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Fame endures. George Washington will rightly be famous as long as our great country exists.” Tyler bestowed a smile on a charming female admirer. “Notoriety, on the other hand, is the fashion of the moment. It’s a two-edged sword. If circumstances work out right, as in the case of Jim Bowie, notoriety can result in lasting fame. But more often than not it leads to an early grave and paid mourners.”
Zach wasn’t sure he fully understood. But one thing he did know. Call it fame, call it notoriety, there were worse things than having beautiful women fawn over a man and others wait on him hand and foot.
The Golden Bough catered to the city’s wealthiest, to those who could afford to lose incredible sums of money and not bat an eye. Plush wine-red carpet cushioned every step. Gilded mirrors adorned the walls, and massive chandeliers glittered overhead. The dealers, floormen, bartenders were dressed in outfits that matched the color of the carpet.
Zach was just as dazzled by the exclusive clientele. Elegant women in shimmering gowns wore sparkling jewelry worth a fortune. Men in silk high hats and long coats sported gold fob watches, rings, and cravat pins, their hands as neatly manicured as those of the women, their mustaches waxed, their every hair perfect.
Scores of tables accommodated diverse gambling tastes. There were card games of every kind. There was roulette and dice and faro. Wreathed in cigar and cigarette smoke, players lost extravagant sums with a nonchalance that was as calculated a sham as their haughty airs.
Here and there, though, were men who were different, men cut from a different cloth, men who, like Adam Tyler, stood out from the rest by virtue of their bearing and their somber attire. They were wolves among sheep, professional gamblers, those who made a living at the trade, not merely dabbled in it for sport or amusement.
Tyler made for the back of the main room. Zach was close behind. Many gave him inquisitive stares, but no one had the audacity to challenge him. Maybe it was Tyler’s presence. Or maybe, Zach mused, it was just as Tyler had said: In his new clothes he fit right in.
A door ahead was flanked by a pair of brawny men in wine-red jackets. The older of the two dipped his chin in respect as the tall gambler approached.
“Mr. Tyler! Have you come to grace us with your play, sir? Your last game is still a frequent topic of discussion.”
“I’m here to see LeBeau,” the man in black answered. “I trust he’s here tonight?”
“And almost every night. Some might say it is his home away from home.”
Tyler smiled and strode through the gilded doorway. Then he did a strange thing, in Zach’s estimation. Tyler quickly stepped to the right, putting his back to the wall, and held his right arm at the same odd angle he had held it when confronted by the pair of rowdy rivermen in front of the Gilded Lily.
Zach’s eyebrows arched in a silent question.
“Enemies, son,” Tyler said so only Zach heard. “I have many. I must always be vigilant.”
At a large circular table covered in wine-red cloth sat five men dressed in the absolute best apparel riches could purchase. Four were of little interest to Zach, but the fifth man merited more than a random gaze. He was big, a human moon, so round in the center it was a wonder he could move his short arms across his chest and stomach. Twinkling blue eyes regarded the world at large with intelligence and humor, and they twinkled brighter when the man in black neared the table.
“Sacre mere! Can it be? Do my senses deceive me?”
“Hello, LeBeau,” Tyler said.
“Adam! Mon ami! Ou avez-vous ete?”
“I’ve been around.”
LeBeau beckoned. “Come here and give me a hug, you delightful bandit. To deprive us of your company for so long is a crime!”
Zach thought the overstuffed Frenchman was a simpleton, but Adam Tyler seemed to place great stock in him. Tyler walked over and let LeBeau pull him down for a peck on both cheeks. The other players had lowered their cards and did not act at all disturbed by the intrusion.
“To what do we owe this honor, Tyler?” asked a stiff-backed gentleman with gray temples. “Do you want to sit in?”
“Not tonight, Carson.” The man in black adjusted his right sleeve. “Ellery Quinton Worthington the Third. He and his two friends, Bellows and Payne.”
LeBeau was reaching for a glass of port. His pudgy fingers froze in midair and he glanced up sharply. “What about them, mon ami?”
“I’m looking for them.”
An electric ripple charged the room. LeBeau and Carson exchanged glances. Then the Frenchman said much too casually, “You jest, non? They deserve it, I grant you. But their fathers would make formidable enemies.”
Tyler pulled out a chair, reversed it, and sat with his arm draped across the chair back. “What’s one more, more or less, eh?”
LeBeau leaned toward his friend. Where the Frenchman’s belly pressed against the table, Zach saw no telltale folds of fat or flab. It dawned on him that LeBeau’s bulk was mainly muscle, and that the Frenchman might be a formidable adversary in his own right.
“I beg you to think this out, mon ami. Many times I have wanted to squash them like the bugs they are. But their families would put such a price on my head it would not be worth the fleeting pleasure.”
Adam Tyler said nothing.
“He’s right, you know,” Carson said. “In our profession we must choose our enemies carefully. Weigh the odds. And if the cost is more than the affront, let it go.”
“I can’t,” Tyler said.
“Why the hell not?” Carson asked. “What could they possibly have done? Insulted your honor? Even Ellery wouldn’t be that stupid.”
Everyone grinned except Tyler.
LeBeau shifted his attention to Zach, his forehead knitting. “What have we here? Have you brought us new blood, Adam?” LeBeau tapped his pudgy chin with his pudgy fingertips. “This young gentleman wouldn’t have anything to do with your newfound death wish, would he?”
Tyler’s continued silence bothered Zach. It was only making the others more curious. “Mr. Tyler has offered to help me,” he said.
LeBeau and Carson both nodded knowingly. “I thought as much,” the Frenchman declared. “I am Henri LeBeau, by the way, at your service, monsieur. Any friend of Adam’s is a friend of mine, non?” LeBeau coughed. “And in what capacity, might I inquire, has our mutual friend offered his help?”
Zach looked at Tyler to see if the man in black would mind if he explained, but Adam Tyler’s expression was impossible to read. “We believe Worthington and his friends have taken my fiancée.”
“Taken her?” LeBeau said. “You mean, they have had their way with her?”
The skin under Zach’s stiff collar grew hot. “They’d better not have,” he said, his throat constricted with emotion. “She’s never even been with—” Zach stopped. In his turmoil he had said more than he should have.
LeBeau’s saucer eyes widened. “A virgin? In St. Louis? Can such a miracle really be?”
Zach was becoming hotter. “We’re just in from the mountains—”
“So! Now all is clear.” LeBeau sighed and stared at Tyler. “Lost puppies and kittens again, non? When will you learn, mon ami? I do not deny the purity, but I question your judgment.” He paused, and when the man in black still wouldn’t comment, LeBeau looked right at Zach and said, “He’s digging his grave with this one.”
Chapter Nine
“What do you think, dearie?” Madame Bovary asked.
Louisa May Clark gazed at her reflection in the full-length mirror and fumed. They didn’t want to hear what she really thought, not as mad as she was. The three dandies had dragged her back to the Palace of Exquisite Finery and were now standing guard downstairs to prevent her from escaping a second time. Madame Bovary, bundled in a tent of a robe, with the willing help of winsome Venus, had been given the task of transforming Lou “from a caterpillar into a butterfly,” in Ellery’s words, or from a “dull duck into a radiant swan,” as Payne put it.
“You look lovely,” Venus complimented her. “I wish I could afford clothes as fine and pretty as those.”
Lou didn’t feel fine. She didn’t feel pretty. She felt abused, used, treated like the personal plaything of her abductors. The dress she now wore did little to soothe her. She’d as soon rip it off as shoot the whole bunch of them. “Sure took some doing, didn’t it?” Madame Bovary said. “Now, you know why I kept my robe on. Getting dressed can take forever.”
Lou gave a very unladylike snort. That had to be the understatement of the century. They had spent over two hours dressing her. Two hours! With Madame Bovary’s sweaty hands always pawing, poking, prodding. And with Venus clumsily trying to help but putting her hands where they would create the most confusion. The two older women had to do all the work because Lou refused to lift a finger. She balked at doing anything that Ellery, Payne, and Bellows wanted.
Madame Bovary didn’t have that luxury. Ellery had made it plain that unless he was immensely pleased with the results, there would be hell to pay. His exact words were. “You’ll find that rumors are spreading to the effect your clothes are outdated and overpriced, and no one with any sense would ever shop here.”
Bovary wasn’t intimidated. She set to work in earnest. First the women wrestled Lou out of her buckskins. Literally. Lou vigorously resisted until Madame Bovary sat on her. The two women then pried them off, and Madame Bovary, sniffing in disdain, tossed them into a corner.
“How revolting! What possessed you to wear animal hides when there are so many refined garments available?” Lou didn’t inform them she was fresh in from the wilds, or that in the mountains buckskins were preferred by most Indians and whites alike. Buckskin was durable. It resisted water, it insulated against cold and heat. Store-bought garments wouldn’t last a week in the wilderness.
Next, Madame Bovary measured Lou from neck to ankles, then waddled downstairs. On her return she brought an armful of clothes, which she set in a chair.
Lou had to submit to the indignity of a knee-length chemise and stockings held up by garters. Droopy drawers completed her underwear.
From the pile Madame Bovary took a corset and held it to Lou’s waist. “You need this, dearie, about as much as I need to gain ten pounds. What do you eat? Birdseed? You’re as thin as a rail.”
Lou was spared the corset, but not from having to wear four petticoats. Each in itself was heavy and felt cumbersome, but four weighed her down like an anchor. Every step was like wading through cold porridge.
“It’s not that bad,” Madame Bovary said when Lou complained. “Haven’t you ever worn petticoats before?”
Lou was too embarrassed to confess she hadn’t. Her mother wore plain ones, not the elaborately trimmed affairs Madame Bovary specialized in, made from pure white cotton and embroidered with lace and colored trim.
The dress came last, and finding the right one gave Madame Bovary no end of headaches. She tried on one after another, but none pleased her. One was too drab, another was too brown, another was proportioned all wrong, one bunched up at the bottom.
Eventually, perfection was achieved. Madame Bovary settled on a silk two-piece peach dress with elbow-length sleeves, black silk fringe, and black velvet trim. The lacy bodice was trimmed with small gold-gilt buttons. It had a narrow waist and flared wide at the hem, covering the new stiff shoes forced onto Lou’s feet.
“What do you think, dearie?” Madame Bovary repeated herself.
“The moment those bastards turn their backs, I’m ripping this monstrosity off,” Lou pledged.
“Lord in heaven, don’t!” Bovary said. “It will cost Ellery three hundred and sixty-two dollars.”
“All the more reason to rip it,” Lou argued.
“What do you have against being beautiful?” Madame Bovary asked. “Every woman has a duty to look the best she possibly can at all times. It’s why I opened my shop.” Venus was admiring her own reflection. “That, and the money.”
