Wilde West (31 page)

“So you never went to the ticket office?”

“Not till this morning. Receipts were down, huh? A hundred and seventy-five tickets. That sound about right to you?”

Oscar waved an indifferent hand. “Somewhere thereabouts.” He would have said a hundred and seventy-seven, but perhaps last night's distress had affected his reckoning.

“Yeah, well,” said Vail, “I got a telegram today from Tabor's manager in Leadville. Tomorrow night is sold out already.”

Oscar nodded, distracted. He must buy her something. A gift.

Vail frowned. “Hey. You should be happy. Four hundred tickets, that's eight hundred bucks.”

“Hmm? Yes, of course. Delighted. You know, I think I'll trot over to the station and see if Henry's gotten the luggage safely on board.”

Another frown. “The train doesn't leave for another three hours.” The frown became a scowl. “Shit. She
is
coming, am I right?”

“I really don't understand why you're so prejudiced against the woman. At bottom, you know, she's rather shy and retiring.”

At bottom:
lovely phrase.

“Shy like a cobra,” said Vail.

Oscar laughed. “Ah, Vail, you're too much the trusting soul. You really should acquire a little cynicism. It would go so well with your necktie.”

Vail glanced down, frowning, at his checkered bow tie.

“Now,” said Oscar, “you'll see to the others? The Countess and the rest? Make sure they get to the station? Oh, and give me one hundred dollars, would you?”

Vail squinted at him. “What for?”

“For cigarettes.”

“Aw, come on, Oscar. Be fair. I'm the business manager. I got to ask questions like that.”

“But I'm the business,” Oscar smiled. “And I needn't answer them. One hundred dollars, if you please.”

Vail reached into his jacket pocket, slid out his billfold, counted out the money. He handed it to Oscar. “You keep spending money like this and you're not gonna have any left when we finish the tour.”

“But I shall have some lovely memories.”

“Memories and a nickel will get you a ride on the streetcar.”

Oscar smiled. “A gentleman,” he said, “never rides the streetcar.”

A ring was out of the question; he didn't know what size she wore, and he refused to turn their time together into farce by presenting her with one that didn't fit. “What do you have,” he asked, “in the way of lockets?”

Behind the counter, the short, elderly German proprietor looked Oscar up and down from over the rims of his spectacles. Oscar wore this morning his dark purple velvet coat and a pale green shirt wrapped at the neck with a rakishly fluffed paisley foulard, and he thought that on balance he looked smashing. The jeweler said, “Dis vould be for yourself?”

“For a young woman,” Oscar said in German.

In English, evidently unimpressed by Oscar's fluid German: “Sister, cousin, friend, sveetheart?”

“The latter.” How very annoying: he was blushing.

“Sveetheart,” said the jeweler.

Oscar cleared his throat. “Yes.”

“So a sveetheart, she gets a heart.”

Oscar frowned. “Haven't you anything else?”

The jeweler shrugged. “You vant to give her, vot, a liver? A kidney, maybe?”

“Ah.” Oscar smiled. “A comic jeweler. Extraordinary. Are there many of you here in Denver?”

“The other vun, he died. Vot's de matter mit a heart?”

“It's fairly … ordinary, don't you think?”

“It's nice, is vot I tink. A heart is nice. A kidney, not so nice.”

“What I want is something unique, something extravagant.”

“You vant a Fabergé egg.”

“Something like, yes. What do you have along the lines of a Fabergé egg?”

“Hearts.”

“Yes. Of course. Let's have a look at these hearts.”

“Hearts ve got.” The jeweler bent forward, slid open a panel at the rear of the counter, and brought up a tray. He set it atop the counter. “All sizes.”

Oscar studied the lockets. He said, “None of them speak to me.”

The jeweler shrugged. “You vant it to talk, ve can't do business.”

“What's that over there?”

“Vot?”

“Behind you there, on the shelf.”

“Dis? Dis is a brooch. Nice, a very nice piece, but a locket it's not.”

“May I see it?”

He handed the brooch to Oscar. “Dot's Indian. The Zuni tribe. From Arizona. A very nice piece. Vun of a kind.”

“Expensive, in other words.”

“Dot I could let you haff for eighty-five dollars.”

“These Zunis of yours. Do they by any chance
own
Arizona?”

“Look at dot inlay vork. A lot of craft goes into making a piece like dot.”

“Into selling it, as well.”

The jeweler shrugged. “Ve could go back to hearts.”

“Do you have something attractive to present it in?”

“I got a box.”

“Metal? Lined with velvet?”

“Cardboard. Lined with cardboard.”

“The jeweler who died. It was a natural death?”

“Something he ate, I heard.”

“Not a bullet, then?”

“Who vould eat a bullet?”

“Indeed. Do you have a box in, say, violet?”

“In white, I got vun.”

“Fine. Done.”

“You vant ribbon, I got ribbon. Red.”

Oscar smiled. “A ribbon then, by all means.”

Although the train to Manitou Springs and Leadville wouldn't be leaving for another hour and a half, the platform was crowded with people. There were cowboys in long canvas dusters, miners in canvas capes, businessmen in suits and topcoats, entire families in homespun and gingham. Children, giddy with candy and anticipation, scampered up and down the steps, scurried along the planking, dipped and disappeared behind adult legs. Vendors hawked popcorn and roasted peanuts. The sunlight slanting below the wooden canopy was thin but clear, and the air seemed festive, expectant, pulsing with possibilities.

How thoughtful it was of the universe, once again, to mirror Oscar's mood.

He strolled down the platform. People were drifting in and out of the carriages, smiling and laughing, chattering at each other through cheeks plump with peanuts.

Oscar saw that the carriages were smaller—lower and shorter and more narrow—than those with which he was familiar. But they were exquisitely built and beautifully painted, the bodies a rich emerald green, the trim around the windows a bright cheerful crimson. If any vehicles could ferry pilgrims to the promised land in comfort and style, these could. A pity that poor Moses hadn't been able to hire a railroad train.

He found Henry at the baggage carriage, being harangued by a fat man in an ill-fitting pair of gray overalls beneath an opened gray wool coat.

Oscar asked Henry, “What seems to be the trouble?”

Henry's expression was, as always, noncommittal, but his face was a bit drawn today and his dark skin glistened with a thin sheen of perspiration. Perhaps he had picked up a chill yesterday, when the two of them had plunged through the torrent.

“It's your coat, Mistuh Oscar,” Henry said. “The gennaman says it got to go inside the trunk.”

“Sorry, friend,” said the fat man, who seemed neither particularly sorry nor particularly friendly. His face was closed and knobby, like a fist. “I already tole the nigger here. All items of clothing gotta go inside the luggage. That's the rules.”

“But the coat is still damp,” Oscar explained. “It got soaked yesterday. If it's packed away, it'll become horribly wrinkled.”

“Tough luck, but that's the rules.”

Oscar turned to Henry. “Well, then, bring it along to the carriage.”

“Uh-uh,” said the man. “No good. No coat rack in the carriages.”

Oscar told him, “We'll lay it over one of the seats.”

“Only paying passengers allowed in the seats.” The man was clearly beginning to warm to the exchange. Each refusal was an additional token of his power and further proof of his skill at debate.

“Mr. Tabor has arranged an entire first-class carriage for us.”

“How many people?”

“Six.”

“Tough luck. Only six seats in the first-class carriages. It goes in the trunk.” He had the bad grace then to grin.

Oscar turned to Henry, reached into his pocket, pulled out his remaining money, and handed it to the valet. “Go to the ticket office, would you, Henry, and buy a seat for my coat. No, buy two of them. It needs room to air.”

“Hey,” said the fat man. “You can't do that.”

“Why ever not?”

“Because …” He groped for a reason. “Because you
can't.
”

“My good man,” Oscar said. “I can understand that here in this carriage you are the master of all you survey. Quite clearly you are the Ozymandias of Baggage. But I fail to see how you can prevent me from purchasing a seat for any article of clothing I choose to. Clothes make the man, as I'm sure you'll agree, and in this case, so long as the seat is paid for, they also make the passenger.”

“Second-class seat's gonna cost you five bucks apiece.”

“No coat of mine,” said Oscar, “travels second class.” He turned to Henry and nodded. “Thank you, Henry.”

“Yes suh, Mistuh Oscar.”

Oscar turned back to the man. “One day,” he said, “when your own coat travels by train, I hope you'll find it within yourself to provide it a proper seat.”

“You crazy? I'm not gonna send my coat on no train trip.”

Oscar studied the man's threadbare coat for a moment. Looked up from it. Smiled. “But you really should, you know.”

“Huh?”

“This has been a most edifying conversation, one that I'm sure we'll both recall with enormous pleasure. But I must run along now.
Au revoir.
”

The man stared at him in befuddlement, a condition he had doubtless experienced before, and Oscar turned away.

At the rear of the train, as promised, he found Tabor's private carriage. He was able to deduce that it was Tabor's carriage because on the door, set midway down its length, in raised wooden capital lettering, painted gold, were the words
H. A. W. TABOR,
and below that,
PRIVATE CARRIAGE.

While the other passenger carriages had been attractive and colorful, fine examples of American workmanship (which could sometimes be quite surprisingly good), Tabor's looked as if it had been put together by a demented Swiss clockmaker. Every square inch of it was overlaid in elaborate, almost maniacal, wood carving: moldings and gingerbread filigrees. Obviously, too, whoever was guilty of its construction had intended that it resemble his own deranged notion of an Alpine chalet, for its windows were provided with exterior shutters and its shingled roof was steeply sloped (presumably to prevent the snow from settling atop it while the train was traveling at speed). Taken in its entirety, the carriage achieved a level of bad taste that was very nearly sublime.

Oscar knocked on the door, half expecting it to be opened by an enormous mechanical cuckoo bird. He was greeted instead by Tabor's liveried butler, who told him haughtily, in his amusing nasal twang, that Mr. Tabor and Mrs. Doe had not yet arrived.

Oscar thanked him, turned, and was about to walk back to the front of the train when, just at the edge of his vision, he thought he saw a towering figure in a fur coat. He looked, suddenly alarmed; but no one was there.

No shambling black bear, at any rate. Only a pair of cowboys slouched near the corner of the building, each with a booted foot notched back against the wall, each rolling a cigarette with one hand and effortless skill.

But that big furry shape, that (perhaps imaginary?) lumbering form—could it have been the brutal giant from Shantytown? Buff?

No, Biff.
Buff
was what the man hunted. Buffalo, according to the old man.

Had he followed Oscar here? Seeking revenge? Hadn't Doctor Holliday suggested that he might?