Last Stage to El Paso, page 12
“Of course you can dance here,” Grotte said, beaming. “Two hundred a performance with three performances a week guaranteed and two percent of the box office.”
“You’re very generous, Mr. Grotte,” Erica said.
“I can be even more generous. Do you want to talk about it?”
“Certainly. I’ll listen to your proposition.”
“I keep an office here. We’ll chat over a bottle of champagne.”
“Mr. Grotte, what about Rosie Lee, Mr. Stefano, and Mr. Rice?” Erica said.
“Who?”
Weathers said, “Mr. Stefano is a knife thrower and Mr. Rice is a juggler. Miss Lee is a songstress, and she’s got a reasonably good voice.”
The Great Stefano and Dean Rice stood and the knife thrower said, “I’ll work for a hundred a performance.”
“Me, too,” Rice said.
“This is a theater, not a damned circus,” Grotte said. “Good day, gentlemen.”
Rice looked up at Erica, his arms extended in a pleading gesture, but the woman shook her head. “Sorry,” she said, and walked offstage.
“What about me?” Rosie Lee said. She looked pretty in a pale blue day dress with a small bustle.
“Mr. Weathers says you have a good voice,” Grotte said. “What do you sing?”
“Anything you want me to sing, Mr. Grotte.”
“Can you sing, ‘Always Take Mother’s Advice’ and ‘I’m a Farmer’s Daughter’?”
“Yes, I sing them often,” Rosie said.
“Fifty dollars a performance,” Grotte said. “Mr. Weathers will sign you on.” He looked Rosie up and down and then added, “You’re a plain little thing, so when you’re onstage show more bubbies and ankle, get the menfolk involved.”
* * *
Spent, Erica Hall and Vincenzu Grotte lay together, naked on the narrow bed in the room adjoining the man’s office. Drowsily, Erica said, “When is my first performance?”
“Rehearsal at eleven tomorrow morning, your first performance tomorrow night,” Grotte said. “Short notice, I know, but I want you onstage. You’ll be a sensation.”
“I’m so grateful that you hired me, Vincenzu.”
“Your talents as a dancer made me hire you.”
“Nothing else?”
“Yes, for your dance, and for what we just enjoyed.”
“Three times,” Erica said.
“I wasn’t counting.”
“Will you protect me, Vincenzu?”
“From what?”
“A man who wants to kill me. He attacked me and I put one of his eyes out with a curling iron. It happened in Fort Worth and he vowed to take both of my eyes and blind me.”
“What’s this man’s name and where is he?”
“He’s probably here in Houston. He goes by the name Luke Powell, but his real name is Luciano Tiodoro.”
“Ah, siciliano.”
“Yes. He has powerful friends in New Orleans.”
“So do I. Don’t worry your pretty little head, I’ll take care of Mr. Tiodoro.”
Grotte sat up, bunched a pillow behind him, and took a moment to light a cigar. He then put his arm around Erica’s shoulders and yanked her closer to him, using more brute strength than was required.
“Now, tell me about the heroin,” he said.
Despite the rough handling, Erica smiled. “I’m so glad you asked, Vincenzu.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
At Buttons Muldoon’s insistence he and Red Ryan left the restaurant and made their way back to the stage depot.
“There’s always a chance the army sergeant changed his mind,” Buttons said.
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Red said. “He seemed like a pretty determined feller to me.”
“What about Luke Powell and them?” Buttons said.
“What about him?”
“He was mighty sore when he left the restaurant.”
“Maybe because he knew you were going to eat his omelet.”
“This is serious, Red. As far as I could tell, Powell’s a finger looking for a trigger.”
“How the hell would we know where Erica Hall was shacked up?” Red said. “He’s barking up the wrong tree.”
“Next time he’ll go to the gun.”
“Look around you, Buttons, what do you see? Buildings so tall geese crash into their upper stories. Streetcars, some electric. Fashionable folks strolling the sidewalks, not boardwalks. Constables in blue with helmets and truncheons in their hands, children playing in the streets, no wild saloons, but there are bars and restaurants and there are railroads, steamboats, and I heard men in the restaurant talking about steam-driven horseless carriages coming soon . . . you catch my drift?”
“No, I don’t,” Buttons said, genuinely confused.
“Houston is a civilized city,” Red said. “Men like Powell won’t go to the gun because they don’t fit in here. This ain’t Tombstone.”
Buttons shook his head. “All that stuff won’t stop a badman like Luke Powell. Red, we’re headed for a gunfight. I feel it in my bones. And do you know what’s to blame? I’ll tell you what’s to blame . . . a cursed stagecoach called the Gray Ghost.”
“Buttons, there’s nothing cursed about the stage,” Red said. “It’s just your imagination working overtime.”
“It’s not my imagination,” Buttons said. “Mark my words, we’re headed for trouble.”
In that, as future, hell-firing events would prove, Buttons was right and Red Ryan wrong.
* * *
A couple of days later a blatantly inaccurate account of the first of those events appeared in the Houston Age Semiweekly newspaper, preceded by a cascade of headlines. . .
THE FESTIVE REVOLVER IS ONCE
AGAIN HEARD IN OUR FAIR CITY
Two men hurled into eternity
in the space of a moment
A pair of desperadoes in custody
If guilty they’ll hang,
vows City Marshal Alexander Erichson
Have the wild ways returned to Houston?
A couple of poorly executed ink drawings showed two scowling, tough-looking characters above a caption that read, “The accused pair are well known to Texas law enforcement. At left is Patrick Muldoon, an Irish teamster, his face revealing all the ignorance and brutality of his race. The other, known as Redheaded Ryan, is also an Irish teamster, a man with a fiery disposition said to be a deadly gunman. According to the Age’s sources Ryan and Muldoon are both heavy drinkers and quarrelsome under the influence of tornado juice.”
* * *
Then came an abbreviated account of the “Gunfight at Abbot’s Station.”
As far as the Age can piece it together, it seems that Muldoon and Ryan got into it with two others over the affections of a fallen woman, known to the participants as “the whore Ernestine Doll.” According to one eyewitness, liveryman Tom Scriver, all four were drinking from jugs of busthead and the argument soon escalated into
THREATS OF VIOLENCE
Scriver opines that one of the soon-to-be dead men, whose identity remains unknown as we go to press, called out to Ryan, “She’s mine and you’ll not have her, so be damned to ye fer a scoundrel.” And proceeded to draw his
DEADLY REVOLVER
That man, whoever he was, and Ryan exchanged shots and then Muldoon joined in the merry fray and discharged a ball at the second man, identity also unknown, and then the
FIRING BECAME GENERAL
The Age is saddened to report that ere the smoke cleared two dead men, shot to pieces, lay stretched out in the dirt
WELTERING IN THEIR BLOOD
It is reported by other witnesses who wish to remain anonymous that Ryan and Muldoon laughed at the dreadful execution they had wrought and Ryan was heard to utter, “And so perish all who would try to steal my woman.”
The Age is disgusted that this kind of gun violence still raises its Gorgon’s head in our beloved city and we urge the authorities to prosecute Ryan and Muldoon to the fullest extent of the law and after a fair trial frog-march them to the gallows.
The reality of the gunfight at the stage station was very different from the Houston Age Semiweekly’s garbled and invented version. The newspaper was interested in selling copies, not truth.
* * *
It was not yet noon when Red Ryan and Buttons Muldoon returned to the stage station. The day was already hot and even as fall approached, Houston was covered by its seemingly endless summer sky. Away from the downtown traffic and bustling crowds, the air smelled of horses, but fresh and clean, holding a promise that all was well in the Bayou City.
Luke Powell was not there, but Whitey Quinn and Bill Cline sat on a bench in front of the station cabin. Both had retrieved their guns. Whitey had a pint of whiskey in hand that he corked when he saw Buttons and Red. He got to his feet, adjusted the hang of his revolver, and stepped in front of Red, an aggressive, tinhorn act, designed to intimidate.
“You’re still alive,” Whitey said. “I figgered Luke would’ve shot you by now.”
“When you see him,” Red said, “tell him he left the restaurant in such an all-fired hurry he forgot to eat his eggs.”
Whitey didn’t like that. He didn’t like it one bit.
“If you’re saying you put the crawl on Luke, you’re a liar,” Whitey said.
Red refused to be baited. “I said he didn’t eat his omelet. Mr. Muldoon here ate it for him.”
“You’re a funny man, ain’t you?”
Red smiled. “Powell called me that. Buttons, was that before or after I called him a tinhorn crook?”
“I can’t quite recollect, but I’m sure it was after,” Buttons said.
“Do you know who you’re talking to, shotgun man?” Whitey said.
“Can’t say as I do.”
“Name’s Whitey Quinn. Does that name mean anything to you?”
“No, I can’t say that it does.”
“Where I come from when men hear my name, they walk wide around me and call me sir.”
“Mighty small town, huh?” Red said.
Whitey slowly shook his head back and forth, like a metronome. His eyes were flat, dull as charcoal. “Ooh . . .” he said, “I’m sooo looking forward to putting a bullet in your brisket and listening to you howl.” He turned and yelled to the young cavalry troopers at the gray stage. They looked like half-grown boys in dirty shirt blue. “You two, get over here.”
The soldiers were tough farm boys with sand enough, but they’d heard of Texas drawfighters and had every reason to believe this aggressive little man with a gun on his hip could be one of them. They were also bored and ready for any distraction.
Whitey took a half-dollar coin from his pocket and handed it to one of the youngsters. “You and your pardner go buy some stick candy,” he said. “Come back when the shooting stops.”
The trooper was hesitant, but Red said, “Lose yourself for a while, soldier. We won’t try to drive the stage away, I promise.”
The kid thought that through for a while and looked from Red to Whitey and knew something bad was brewing, something he wanted no part of. “Well . . . I guess it will be all right,” he said.
“It will be just fine,” Buttons said. “Go. There’s no point in you getting involved in gun business that ain’t any of your making.”
“Listen to the man. Now, git,” Whitey said.
After the troopers walked from the depot into the street, Whitey grinned at Red and said, “Answer me one question, rube. It might save your life.”
“Or yours,” Red said.
“Funny man,” Whitey said. “Always with the good jokes.”
“What’s your question?” Red said.
“Where is Erica Hall?”
“I have no idea.”
“You’re a damned liar.”
“Maybe. But you called it and I answered your question. Now what?”
Whitey took a step back, his gun hand clawed over the butt of his Colt.
“Now you go fer the iron tucked into your pants and I kill you,” Whitey said. “I seen you draw and kill a man in Paddy O’Hara’s saloon in San Angelo, and mister, you weren’t much. Now say something funny about that.”
“You got a big mouth, Whitey,” Red said. “All wind and piss.”
Again, Whitey Quinn’s unbelieving, slow shake of his head.
His hand dropped to his gun.
Whitey was mighty fast on the draw and shoot. A whole passel of hard-eyed men of experience had told him that. Hell, hadn’t he killed Elijah Riggs, the feared Yuma drawfighter? But did Whitey’s brother shootists know that Riggs was lying in a stinking tent in Deadwood, fevered from smallpox, when the teenaged Whitey stepped inside and put five bullets into him for no other reason than to gain a reputation? Probably not.
By contrast, despite what later historians say, no one ever pegged Red Ryan as a fast gun. He was a messenger, a shotgun man, and was never considered a ranker among the frontier’s gunfighting elite.
Imagine then, Whitey Quinn’s surprise when a .45 bullet, with terrifying impact, crashed into his chest . . . and before the lights dimmed, his own gun hardly clear of the leather, he saw Red Ryan standing there staring at him, smoke trickling from the muzzle of his revolver. One shot. That’s all it took. And Whitey carried that awful realization with him into eternity.
Bill Cline would go to the knife if he could. The moment Whitey fell, Cline had a split second of hesitation . . . use a knife or reach for his gun and throw down on Red Ryan? That moment of hesitation was the only edge Buttons Muldoon needed. He reached under his coat, grabbed the Remington from the waistband at the small of his back, and cut loose. Buttons hurried the shot, low and to the right. A hit. But not a killing shot. The bullet struck the top of Cline’s femur and staggered him. Cline, fixated on Red, steadied, ignored Buttons, and triggered a shot. The bullet tugged at Red’s sleeve as he returned fire. And in that moment Cline knew with terrible certainty that he’d signed his own death warrant in lead. That conviction was confirmed when two bullets slammed into his chest and the cartwheeling earth rushed up to meet him. Cline had time to shriek his wrath and fear before the silence of death took him and stifled his tongue forever.
Ere the gun smoke cleared, the police arrived. For a while that was the current belief in Houston after the gunfight. But in fact fifteen minutes passed before the law arrived, four blue-clad constables and a new paddy wagon that had seen little use, summoned by both the young cavalry troopers and the distant hammering of gunfire.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The police sergeant was a tall, well-built man in his early forties with a magnificent set of muttonchop whiskers and a stern expression. He had a Colt revolver in his right hand and a nightstick swung from a leather loop on his left wrist. His eyes moved from the dead men and to Red Ryan and Buttons Muldoon. He didn’t seem very pleased to see them.
“Give me your names and then tell me what happened here,” the copper said.
“I’m Patrick Muldoon. I’m a driver for the Abe Patterson and Son Stage and Express Company. The one in the plug hat is Red Ryan, my messenger. It’s a clear-cut case of self-defense, Sergeant.”
“Says you.”
“They drew down on us and we defended ourselves.”
“Says you.”
“Of course says me. Who else would say it? Damn it, man, it was self-defense.”
“Wise men in more exalted positions than mine will decide that,” the policeman said. “Now, what happened?”
“I just told you what happened, you blockhead.”
“Calling an officer of the law rude names will do nothing to help your case,” the sergeant said.
Two of the lawmen disarmed Red and Buttons, and Buttons, his cheekbones flushed, said, “Is that strictly necessary?”
“If you murdered those two men, then yes, it’s strictly necessary,” the sergeant said. “Now, for the last time, what happened?”
Red described the fight, omitting any reference to Erica Hall, and then said, “The smaller one’s name is Whitey Quinn. I don’t know the other one, but they both ride with Luke Powell.”
“Who’s he?” the sergeant said.
“You’ve never heard of him?”
“No. That’s why I’m asking you.”
“I’m sure you’ve got wanted dodgers on Powell and his boys, including these two,” Red said.
“I’m sure we don’t,” the sergeant said. “So, Mr. Ryan, you freely admit that you are the one who killed those two men.”
“Yes, I admit it. To save my life and the life of Mr. Muldoon.”
“Tell that to the judge and jury,” the sergeant said. He nodded to the constables. “All right, boys, put the manacles on him.”
“Where are you taking him?” Buttons protested, his angry face now brick red. “And may I remind you that, like me, Mr. Ryan is an employee of the Abe Patterson and Son Stage and Express Company and a gentleman of some standing in the San Angelo community. He’s not to be handled in this way.”
“I’m taking him to Caroline Street,” the sergeant said.
“And what’s on Caroline Street?”
“Police headquarters and some nice, comfortable cells.”
“The shootings were in self-defense, Red told you that,” Buttons said. “And I fired a shot, too, you know. Now, unhand him.”
“That’s not my decision to make,” the sergeant said. “Don’t worry, if he’s found not guilty, he’ll be freed.”
“And if he’s found guilty?”
“Then we’ll hang him.”
That was the straw that broke Buttons Muldoon’s patience. “Then you’re taking him nowhere and Abe Patterson will be informed of this. Take those manacles off him, instanter!”
