Centennial (112 page)

“It’s like the fellow said with the megaphone.” He started to give details, but stopped. “You’ll hear it tonight. I deliver an inspirational message. What I say isn’t all true. The fellow wrote it for me, but mostly it’s true.”

He told them of England and especially Germany, where they were crazy for Indians and the west. “The emperor himself wanted to know how I shot so well with my right arm.”

“How do you?” Jim asked. “It’s wood, ain’t it?”

“It’s a secret,” Canby said. “Took me four years to get it right. I tell you, you tell the next circus, then anyone can do it.”

“I wouldn’t tell,” Jim promised. “It’s a secret.”

“Tell me one thing,” Skimmerhorn said. “When you hold the gun in your wooden arm, you do the shooting, don’t you? There’s not somebody else firing at the balls?”

Canby looked at his old companion in dismay. “You think I’d let someone shoot for me?” He smiled grimly. “I suppose you doubt my left hand, too?”

A hawk flew by, one of those splendid birds that nested near the buttes, and Canby dropped his reins over the saddle horn and whipped out his revolver with his left hand, but Jim moved over and pushed the gun down.

“Don’t shoot it,” and the four men watched the hawk as it wheeled and dived like a guide leading them across the prairie. The old bond of fellowship that had existed on the long ride north reasserted itself, and Canby asked Calendar, “How’d a cattleman ever come to herdin’ sheep?” and Calendar replied, “I like workin’ alone.”

They rode up the slope leading to the buttes, and at the top of the rise, looked down on a hundred and fifty white-faced Herefords, all of a size, all grazing in the summer sun, the red bodies blending with the brown grass, and Canby could see that Jim was mighty proud.

“They sure look better than the longhorns we herded,” he said, and they dismounted at the buttes, where Canby gave an exhibition of shooting rattlesnakes left-handed. Then they headed homeward along the Platte, where Jim showed Canby the marshes in which the avocet hid, and the Texan said he’d never seen such a bird and did Jim want one to stuff. He took out his gun, but Jim said, “No, let him go. He’s huntin’ worms.”

“I won’t be seein’ you tonight,” Calendar said. “I been away two days already.” He shook hands with Canby, awkwardly reaching out first his right hand, then his left. Obviously he wanted to say more but could not find the right words, and he rode silently eastward toward his sheep.

When he was gone, Jim rode beside Canby and said hesitantly, “Somethin’s been botherin’ me ... ever since that day we started across the Llano Estacado.”

“It’s been botherin’ me, too,” Canby said.

“You mean the ten dollars I owe you?”

“For the Army Colt’s. I never forget a gun.”

“Well, I have the money for you. I’ve always kept it to one side,” and from a deep pocket he handed Canby a ten-dollar bill.

The Texan studied it carefully: “There was days back there when I wondered if I’d ever have ten dollars of my own,” and he tucked the bill into his wallet.

So the long day ended, and Jim and Skimmerhorn were asleep in the Railway Arms at two in the morning when they heard wild screaming in the street below and saw the glare of flames and heard Sheriff Dumire shouting, “Get down here, everybody! The circus train’s on fire!”

When Jim reached the train there was little he or anyone else could do. The second sleeping car had caught fire, and with no one awake to sound the alarm, the rushing of the wind had whipped the blaze into an inferno.

“Anybody in that car?” Jim shouted.

“There’s people in back, fightin’ to get out,” one of the circus men yelled.

He and Jim tried to approach the flaming car but were unable to breast the fire that leaped from the forward windows. The circus man, exhibiting a bravery that confounded the watchers, dashed into the flaming space between the end of the burning car and the car that followed. Working frantically, he managed to uncouple them. Then he signaled the engineer, and when the engine moved slowly forward, the rear cars were left behind, out of danger.

As soon as the engineer halted the train, the circus man leaped among the flames and uncoupled the other end of the doomed car. This time, when the engineer pulled forward, the first sleeping car was also out of danger.

The fatal car was isolated, and for one terrible moment Jim and Sheriff Dumire saw at one of the windows, like a dim moon behind the glass, the fat and tortured face of Meurice. For a brief moment it hung there, then fell backward into the flames. When he disappeared, another frenzied face took his place momentarily.

“Canby’s in there!” Jim screamed, and he broke away from the crowd and grabbed a coat and threw it about his face and fought his way to the rear door. With strength he had never shown before he burst the door open and rushed in among the smoke and flames. Courageous townsmen followed, hauling out four unconscious men, but Canby was not among them.

The fire now raged the length of the car, throwing pillars of twisting light, and Sheriff Dumire, assisted by two deputies, dragged Jim to safety, his eyebrows burned off and his hair smoking.

The tragedy had a profound effect on Centennial. Of the fourteen dead, twelve, including Mule Canby, were buried in the town cemetery, for no families could be located. Reverend Holly, from the Union Church, volunteered his services for the burials, then convened a special prayer meeting at which he extolled the spirit of the entertainers who toured small towns: “With their tricks and sly games these nameless people, despite the difficulties of their life, brought levity to us. They amazed us with their daring skill, and we will not soon forget how a man with no right arm trained himself to shoot so accurately. In the age of Jesus and Paul, circuses like the one we saw wandered through the Roman Empire bringing diversion to the people. We thank these dead for having entertained us. It is proper that they rest with us.”

His words reminded the citizens of Centennial of the harsh existence these wanderers had known, and they were therefore in a mood to receive with special affection the Maude and Mervin Wendell Theatrical Troupe and Thespian Exhibition when it arrived in late July.
(
See Map 1
1
– The Entertainers 1889
)

From the moment Mervin Wendell appeared at the door of the train from Omaha, he was recognized as an actor, and probably an important one. He stood on the upper step with his left arm held behind his back, his right folded across his chest. His legs were spread in a wide stance, and his right shoulder was conspicuously higher than his left. A broad felt hat covered dark hair which showed in ringlets beside his ears, and his gaze was imperial, with a touch of adventure and glowing spirits, as if to proclaim, “A new town! A new opportunity.”

The effect of his grand arrival was somewhat tarnished by a red-faced conductor who thrust a bag into his hand with the warning, “Don’t you ever try that again.”

Mervin made no attempt either to hide or to explain the conductor’s behavior. Instead, he descended the steps majestically, then extended his right hand upward to lead a very beautiful lady in her early forties down the steps, saying as he did so, “Come, my dear. I see our hotel just over there.”

Maude Wendell graciously accepted her husband’s courtesy, then directed her attention to the interior of the train, from which appeared their son, a child with golden hair kept long, and a most fair complexion. Since they would be doing scenes from Shakespeare, it was necessary that he be able to play girls’ parts as well as boys’.

When the three were on the platform, with two battered suitcases, Mervin Wendell turned to a stoutish man and woman who had descended from a different car and were now looking after large cases containing the troupe’s costumes. “Watch sharply, Murphy,” Wendell said, as if the man and his wife required help in identifying the cases.

Going to where the trainmen had unloaded the boxes, Wendell kicked each imperiously, advising Murphy, “Take them to the theater.” Having said this, he turned his back on his assistant, only to find himself facing Sheriff Dumire, whom he had known unfavorably in Kansas.

“Good evening, Mr. Wendell,” Dumire said with studied propriety.

“Ah!” Wendell cried, as if delighted to meet an old friend. “Sheriff Dumire! Accept from me a pass to tomorrow’s entertainment,” and from his pocket he produced an ornately embellished card, entitling the bearer to pass free into one performance of the Maude and Mervin Wendell Theatrical Troupe and Thespian Exhibition.

The Wendells proposed to offer their talents to the citizens of Centennial in two resplendent evenings: the first, a group of eleven scenes from Shakespeare, edited somewhat to fit the talents of the troupe; the second, a gala evening of olios, recitations, solos and imitations. Philip Wendell would recite “The Faithful Drummer Boy of the Rappahannock,” and dressed as a girl, would give the moving “The Blind Girl Addresses Her Harp.”

Maude Wendell would be seen in a series of declamations chosen from her greatest theatrical triumphs here and in Europe, specifically, “Portia’s Address to the Court” from Shakespeare’s
Merchant of Venice
; “Farewell of the Parthian Mother to Her Son about to Fight Wild Beasts in the Roman Colosseum”; and “Selections from ‘Mazeppa’ by Lord Byron.”

The two highlights of the evening, however, were reserved for Mervin Wendell. At the end of the first half “Mr. Wendell, standing alone on the stage and accompanied by no one, will imitate a Union Pacific freight train leaving Centennial and delivering its cargo at Denver. You will hear the slipping of the drivers, the snorting of the locomotive going through a tunnel, the whistle, the application of brakes and the safe arrival, after which the entire company will pose in a moving tableau showing the dead members of the Cartright Circus entering heaven.”

The closing of the second half promised to be even better, for then “Mervin Wendell, accompanied by his son Philip on the triple drum, will represent the Battle of Fredericksburg, with the pickets firing, the attack of the northern troops, the rattle of southern musketry, the roar of cannon from both sides, the bursting shells, and with the participation of the entire company, bugle calls and the triumphant charge to victory.”

The entire company consisted of the three Wendells, the two Murphys and a young man of angelic beauty named Chisholm, who looked as if a zephyr would blow him away.

“I’ve seen Chisholm before,” Sheriff Dumire warned his deputies. “Keep him away from cowboys, and especially sheepherders.”

It wasn’t that Axel Dumire scorned the arts. He appreciated Shakespeare and intended seeing the first night’s performance, on the sensible grounds that not even Mervin Wendell could damage the Bard, much. “He’s very good as the gravedigger addressing Yorick,” Dumire admitted, “but watch him. I don’t think he has a penny, and whenever he finds himself in that condition he’ll try anything.”

Discreet inquiries at the Railway Arms revealed that the proprietor had wanted the troupe to pay in full in advance, and that Wendell had proposed compromising the bill, paying half when they registered, and half when receipts from the two engagements, as he called them, were in. The hotel man said he would be at the box office the first night and collect the balance, a procedure he had found advisable in such circumstances. Mr. Wendell acceded gracefully to this proposal, saying, “I cannot imagine a more just policy.”

On the first night the crowd was not large, the average citizen of Centennial being less enthusiastic about Shakespeare than Sheriff Dumire. At fifty and seventy-five cents admission, the take for that evening was just enough to cover the hotel manager’s lien, but Wendell was far from downcast. “A splendid performance,” he assured his troupe.

On the second night the hall was packed and the handclapping enthusiastic, to which the three Wendells responded magnificently. “Really,” Wendell cried exultantly between acts, “I’ve rarely played before a more enthusiastic audience. Wasn’t it superb, Maude?”

Mrs. Wendell was now forty-two, and for the past nine years had been moving from one small town to another, from one medium-sized city like Omaha or Salt Lake to the next, keeping her fragile family intact, nodding when Mervin, two years her junior, glowed with enthusiasm over trivial triumphs, and wondering what they might try next. Once they had been leading actor and actress for the good companies—Langrishe’s in Denver, for example—and for a brief time had enjoyed rural triumphs in the Black Hills of Dakota, where they were hailed as the first couple of the American stage. But in recent years they had barely stayed alive; a dozen times their trunks had been impounded, and now the sheriff had handed her, as the responsible member of the troupe, the latest telegram:

SHERIFF

CENTENNIAL COLORADO

ATTACH FOR NUMEROUS UNPAID BILLS ALL EQUIPMENT BELONGING MAUDE AND MERVIN WENDELL TROUPE PLAYING YOUR CITY

SHERIFF ED BANCROFT

GRAND RIVER NEBRASKA

“This ends the tour,” she told her husband as she showed him the telegram.

“How tactless!” he cried in feigned moral protest. “To present this in the middle of a performance.”

“Mervin,” she said with great control, “face up to it. They have us backed against the wall.”

“Darling,” he whispered, trying to reassure her. When he spoke this word he meant it in its real sense, for Maude Wendell was his life. In those rare moments when he looked at himself as he really was, he was forced to admit that he had always been a man of limited talent. Oh, he could imitate trains as well as Major Hendershot and he was rather good at bird calls. But when he tried to act Shakespeare or Dion Boucicault, he was barely acceptable. He had never had the brilliant quality of young Chisholm or Mike Murphy’s robust sense of comedy.