Cold Steel and Hot Lead [How the West Was Done 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (2 page)

Of course Derrick wanted to know more. He had never realized how fascinating the performing life could be! But the crowd surrounding him was roaring, now that Montreal Jed had selected a very pert young blonde woman from the crowd. She blushed, looked at the ground, and kicked snow as she stood next to Jed.

He bellowed, “And where do you hail from, Kittie?”

She said something very tiny, and Jed repeated, “Memphis! Dear denizens of Laramie, I will now proceed to send Memphis Kittie into the otherworldly realm to converse with her dearly departed relatives! Memphis Kittie, give me one of your
glove
s. The spiritual vibrations of the glove will lead you back into the present time and place.” He waved his wand over the girl. “Laramie City, eighteen sixty-nine!”

“Clownville is more like it!” a roostered fellow drawled. Another woman slapped him quiet.

Apparently being a showman was a very good way to impress the ladies. Derrick recalled some marionettes he’d had as a child. He’d had a privileged upbringing, nothing rough-and-tumble like these circus people. But they certainly had more stories to tell.

Montreal Jed was whispering some things to Memphis Kittie now. Derrick’s new companion said, “See? He’s telling her to hide in the compartment. He’s giving her key words that he’ll say that’ll tell her when to hide and when to come out of hiding again.” He shrugged. “It’s all very basic and stupid. I lost interest in this stuff a while ago.”

Montreal Jed sat Memphis Kittie on a bench inside the spirit cabinet, which proclaimed that viewers would obtain “Wisdom, Advice, and Insight…from the Departed.” A few musical instruments were in the compartments that flanked Kittie, and Derrick suspected that a couple of midgets who stood nearby would sneak in there and play them.

“Watch closely but comment little!” roared Montreal Jed, brandishing his glittery wand as he latched the cabinet door shut. He prowled his icy stage like a venomous spider, flapping his cape every which way. “Roam, Memphis Kittie, roam! Venture back to the land of your ancestors, where your grandmother will impart words of wisdom handed down from centuries of old!”

“Yeah!” bawled a heckler. “Hand her down a jam recipe, more like it!”

Derrick could see the spirit cabinet jiggling as Kittie tried to secret herself in the compartment. The midgets could no longer be seen, and a ukulele and tambourine played from within the furniture.

Derrick turned to his new friend and offered a handshake. “Derrick Spiro. Territorial legislator for Wyoming.”

“Rudy Dunraven.” His eyes sparkled, and dimples appeared when he smiled. “You’ve got my vote, whatever it is you’re going on the stump for.”

Derrick couldn’t feel Rudy’s hand through all the layers of gloves, but his handshake was firm and confident. “I authored a measure advocating the women’s vote, actually,” he said loudly. Being a politician, he knew that this was a good way to get women to fawn over him. He’d never met a woman who
didn’t
want the vote, and his measure’s popularity had stood him in good stead with the ladies. It was a fortunate thing. His wife’s death two years earlier had turned him against romance, but lately he’d been feeling he might be ready for it again. “I’m heading to Cheyenne to drum up support for it, but I guess that’ll have to wait a couple days until the snow melts.”

“Could be worse,” Rudy opined. “Look at all this entertainment you’ve got. These buskers will keep you amused. I heard there’s an opera company aboard that train, too. We’ve got Oddfellows and Elks halls in town where they could perform.”

“Yes, I was chatting with some of those opera singers. They must not be as hale and hearty as these showmen, for they’re still huddled in the first-class car. Oh, my,” he said, when Montreal Jed made enormous flourishes over the cabinet and moved to open the doors. The ukulele made a dying, smashed sound inside the cabinet, and the tambourine fell to the ground as the midgets scrambled to exit their compartments.

“Behold!” cried Jed, displaying the empty cabinet where Kittie had been sitting. “She has gone to converse with her ancestors in the misty realm where spirits flit about, playing harps in bliss!”

Rudy scoffed. “Harps? Oh, my ass. Believe you me, Derrick. I’ve been to that misty realm. And it doesn’t involve harps.”

As Jed shut the cabinet to perform some more hocus pocus over it, Derrick asked Rudy, “How do you know? I mean, when have you been to the misty realm?”

Rudy answered as though it were the most ordinary thing on earth. “I nearly died once. My fever was so high my companions told me I had stopped breathing for several minutes. I know it sounds cracked, but I was up there floating in the stars.” Derrick believed him. He had had a few bizarre, inexplicable things happen to him in his time, too. “This guy, now? He’s just a mystery-monger who pounds hidden ukuleles. He’s just doing the usual patter of the punch man. See, he just used the word ‘materialize.’ That’s Kittie’s cue to open the partition and get back into her seat.”

But when Montreal Jed made a flourish at the cabinet with his wand and the musical midgets scrambled again to open the doors, a stupefying thing happened.
Kittie wasn’t there
.

Montreal Jed’s grin threatened to split his face in two as he proudly displayed the empty cabinet behind his back. “And now, dear Laramie citizens, delivered to you directly from the hallowed—
What?
” he snapped at the midget who was gesticulating at the empty cabinet.

The fine citizens of Laramie were shouting things like, “Where’d she go, Sideshow Jeremy?” and “Did she get stuck in the afterlife?”

When Montreal Jed turned around and his puppetlike grin fell from his face, Derrick couldn’t help but break out into laughter. “She missed her cue?” he asked Rudy.

“Must have,” said Rudy. But he was thoughtful and stroked the stubble on his chin. “Once, a spectator died in someone’s hidden compartment. The same thing happened—she failed to materialize.” He chuckled a little now, too. “She only materialized later in a coffin.”

Montreal Jed was bellowing, “No reason to panic! Memphis Kittie just went on a detour to another plane of existence! This sometimes happens, and they return even more enlightened than ever!” He raced around to the back of the cabinet to check on something, and the cabinet rocked as he shook it.

Derrick couldn’t hear what Jed was saying to the ostensible Memphis Kittie, though, as the audience was becoming increasingly unruly.

One fellow snarled, “Hey! Kittie is my fiancée! What’d you do with her?”

Others were accusing Jed of being a kidnapper, rapist, or flimflam man—Derrick wasn’t sure which was worse. Mounting anxiety was plainly evident on Jed’s face as he held his hands out to the crowd as though to fend them off and backed slowly up to his empty cabinet.

“All will be revealed!” Jed shrieked in a high feminine voice.

The midgets were looking everywhere now. One stuck his head inside a nearby tent that was being erected, and the other actually looked underneath a railcar.

When Montreal Jed made as if he wanted to hide inside his own cabinet, Rudy elbowed Derrick. “A fellow showman always helps out his brothers,” he said meaningfully, before sprinting off to the stage.

Derrick followed, shoving aside roostered rowdies, some of who were already storming the stage. Rudy reached Montreal Jed first, just as the gangly fellow was cramming himself into the secret compartment and shutting the door. Loafing, husky men looking for any excuse for a brawl were trying to get to Montreal Jed first, but Rudy gripped Jed’s bicep and said, “I, the true Dunraven, will never fail you.”

This slogan seemed to make sense to Jed, for he willingly came, minus his top hat, which had been knocked off in the rumpus. In order to beat back the crowd, Derrick had to paste a few of them in the kisser. It was a satisfying feeling, his knuckles connecting with their ugly misshapen mugs. Derrick hadn’t been in a brawl in a while, but he was extremely hearty and athletic. It reminded him of the old college days, fighting for the honor of the vanished Memphis Kittie.

“Come on!” Rudy yelled as he dragged Montreal Jed across the train tracks toward the town.

Derrick was busily walloping some guy into the middle of next week, tossing him into a sign advertising “José the Mexican Juggler.” A midget flew through the air as though catapulted from a nearby seesaw. Another fellow came at Derrick, and he dispatched him into a little puppet stage, where he got all tangled up in the marionette’s strings.

A beefy buffalo lifted Derrick into the air and rattled him about. About twenty yards off, Rudy paused in his retreat. A concerned look flashed across his handsome face. Derrick was heartened that this comparative stranger gave a rat’s ass that this bruiser was pitching into him. Maybe it was part of the showman’s creed, what Rudy was saying about helping out brothers. For a moment it even looked as though Rudy planned on starting back across the tracks to assist Derrick.

But Derrick used a handy old pugilist’s move to wallop the buffalo in the vitals. Once he had dropped Derrick and was doubled over in pain, it was easy enough to knee him in the jaw and send him sprawling.

Soon Derrick was vaulting across the tracks, too, all devil-may-care in attitude.

“Come on!” Rudy said again, waving an encouraging arm. “This train isn’t going anywhere for a while. Let’s let the heat die down.”

Derrick could not have agreed more.

Everyone draped themselves over furniture in Rudy’s room at the Union Pacific Hotel, panting. Derrick Spiro, territorial legislator, panted the least of all three men, Rudy noted. Montreal Jed was the most overcome of all. Red-faced, he could barely breathe with the exertion of having dashed across the tracks. But the panic of running from an angry crowd might have done him in, too.

In fact, Derrick barely looked as though he’d just tussled with at least four beefy railroad tracklayers as he looked curiously around Rudy’s room. This gave Rudy a chance to eye him more closely as he roused himself to open a whiskey bottle. Unruffled aside from his thick, warm brown hair that stood out at all angles, Derrick sat erect. Though he wore a double-breasted waistcoat and a wide striped necktie that covered half his chest, Rudy could tell he was a very athletic, muscular fellow. Maybe he had worked with his hands before becoming a politician. He had the most expressive, gentle brown eyes, and his full, lush mouth quirked ironically as he eyed Rudy’s own spirit cabinet.

“Remington Rudy?” Derrick queried, gesturing at the lettering painted on the cabinet.

“He is the true Dunraven!” Montreal Jed wheezed. “He will never fail us! I caught your act in Pawnee and was quite impressed. You shot that apple off that poor woman’s head with proficiency and gusto. But I thought you only did trick shooting and roping. What are you doing with a spirit cabinet?”

Rudy slung his greatcoat over his mattress and lined up three cups on the table. “I’m thinking of incorporating it into a new act. I’m getting too old to be riding bareback, shooting fake Indians from under the horse’s flanks.”

Montreal Jed dragged himself up the chair back with effort, but his face was perky with interest. Now that he had lost his velvet mask, Rudy could see he had an amazingly round head. In fact, everything about Montreal Jed was round. Perfectly round eyes, circular skull, even his lips were plumped like a cherub’s. He could have billed himself as “The Human Lollipop.”

“What is your new act?”

Rudy handed Jed his whiskey, but the odd man declined. Derrick, however, accepted with the professional demeanor of a barrister. “I can’t rightly tell you now, can I, Jed? Or you might cabbage it. Let’s just say it incorporates that cabinet but with none of the flimflam artistry you try and pull off.”

“Jeremiah Franklin is my real name,” said Jeremiah. “Although I did used to put on a very high-caliber punch show in Montreal.”

“A punch show?” Derrick asked.

“Yes,” said Rudy. “Punch and Judy. Little people.”

“Midgets?”

“Marionettes,” said Jeremiah. “That’s my real love. Puppets. I am a master at the age-old secrets of the little people. I crafted all my own in the tradition handed down by my grandfathers. But it doesn’t get the same attention that the flash of the spirit cabinet does.”

“Yes,” sighed Derrick, exhaling his whiskey as though it sustained life. “Maybe you can tell us. What do you think happened to Memphis Kittie? I wouldn’t want to think I nearly got killed by some roughnecks for nothing.”

Derrick smiled at Rudy then, displaying gleaming, finely enameled teeth. A warm surge raced through Rudy’s body, and he knew he was already taken by this man. He had set his sights on this luscious, intelligent legislator when he’d first viewed him in the audience by the tracks. Rudy knew he could be a very ruthless aggressor when it came to sex. As a wandering showman, he didn’t much care if he was rejected, because the times he succeeded were well worth it. He’d had many a memorable time coupling in exotic back alleys with able-bodied roustabouts and sword swallowers with healthy throat muscles.

Contortionists or cattlemen, it was all the same to Rudy. He knew that he liked men who were tall, dark, and mysterious, just like this delicious politician. He even sometimes enjoyed it when he had to do a bit of convincing. It was the most savory task, fondling a resistant man, seeing his eyes go soft and melt. When he finally relaxed into it and threw his arms around Rudy, it was the most delectable conquest ever. And Rudy had a feeling this Derrick Spiro would be the most resistant of all.