The Case of the Petrified Man (19 page)

I carefully watched the feet of the men at Jace’s table to find out who was confident and who was bluffing. If someone had dancing feet or their toes pointed upwards, I gave a
light jingle of my tin begging cup and then put it down with the handle turned towards the man with the Happy Feet.

If someone hooked their feet around their chair legs, or drew them back under the chair, that meant they might be bluffing. In that case I gave the cup a jingle & aimed the handle, but kept it in my hand.

Everything was going well at Jace’s table. The men were drinking & betting & everybody won a hand or two, though Jace always won more. The cigar smoke and late hour was making me drowsy. Once or twice I nodded off & had to pinch myself hard to stay awake.

Then something happened.

At Jace’s table there was about $400 in the pot: a lot of money, even for Jace. The other three men had folded and this game had come down to Farner Peel and Jace.

Absalom Smith was dealing. Peel and Jace both asked for one card. When they got their cards, Jace remained very still, as usual, but Peel frowned & stroked his mustache & sat back in his chair. I was expecting him to fold, but instead his chest swelled a little as he took a deep breath & pushed three gold coins forward & said, “Sixty dollars.”

Immediately after this statement, I saw Peel hook his ankles tightly around his chair legs. He was also sitting as still as a statue & holding his breath. From these clews, I reckoned he was bluffing. I let Jace know by giving my cup a soft jingle & keeping it in my hand, with the handle pointed towards Peel.

I know Jace saw my handle pointing accusingly at Peel, but he did not act on this information by matching or even
raising Peel’s bet. Instead, he said, “I fold,” and put his hand face down on the table.

“Flicker! Flicker!” muttered Absalom Smith, taking a drink. “Yellowhammer.”

Langford Farner Peel stood up so suddenly that his chair fell back with a crash. He held his arms away from his body and we could all see the flaps of his holsters were open.

Everyone in the saloon fell instantly silent.

“Don’t shoot me!” slurred Absalom Smith, holding up both his hands. “I meant it for Jace…not for you.”

But Farner Peel was not looking at him. Or at Jace.

“You two,” said Peel. “Over by the door. Have you come for me?”

All heads turned towards the door, including mine.

Two men stood in the doorway, each held open one of the slatted wooden doors. After a heartbeat, they stepped inside, their spurs jangling, and let the doors swing closed behind them.

“No,” said Boz in his whiny voice. “We ain’t come for you.”

“We come for him!” said Extra Dub in his raspy voice.

Then they both turned towards me, their guns already in their hands.

I DID NOT NEED
to look for flaring nostrils to know to move quick.

Five shots rang out in quick succession as I flung myself to the right.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

I picked up the full spittoon, hurled it at the desperados, then dived left beneath the shelter of the faro table.

The flying spittoon made Boz recoil against Extra Dub & they both went down into a puddle of slimy tobacco-tinted spit.

Bang! Bang!

Their pistols discharged harmlessly into the
ceiling. One ball hit the chandelier & glass sprinkled down. Women were screaming & men were cursing & some more shots rang out from other parts of the saloon.

Bang! Bang!

From my vantage point under the faro table I saw Farner Peel standing there with two smoking Navy Colts. He was not even breathing hard.

Boz, on the other hand, was writhing and whimpering on the floor. The two black eyes I had given him were swollen so much I wondered he could see out of them. He was slick with tobacco juice and blood.

“Dub!” he whimpered. “Dub, where are you? I is shot!”

“Your friend has departed,” said Farner Peel in his English accent. “Look behind you and you will see the doors still swinging behind him.”

Boz peered up at Farner Peel. “Why did you shoot me?” he whined. “I warn’t doing you no harm.”

Peel shook his head. “I detest cowards and bullies,” he said in his soft voice. “Rise up and get out of this town. If I see you again, I will put a ball between those two black eyes of yours.”

Boz started to struggle to his feet & as he did so he caught sight of me crouching under the faro table.

“You damned puppy!” he hissed. “This is all your fault. I’m gonna get you and cut your throat!”

Bang!

Farner Peel had fired another shot up into the ceiling. It brought down a satisfying shower of dust & plaster.

“I will count to ten,” said Peel.

He had barely got to six when the saloon doors were swinging and the space Boz had occupied was empty.

I breathed a sigh of relief and crawled out and dusted off the sawdust.

There was a round of applause from some of the patrons, but Mr. Leeky did not seem happy.

“Sir,” he said to Langford Farner Peel, “please do not take offence at what I am about to say. But there was a shooting affray here last week and I only just finished having the ceiling replastered.”

“You want me to leave and never come back?” said Peel with a half smile & a raised eyebrow.

“If you don’t mind, sir.” Mr. Jasper Leeky gave Peel a little bow. I noticed his hands were shaking.

“Very well.” Peel picked up his slouch hat and put it on his head and slowly walked towards the exit.

As he passed by me, I said, “Thank you, Mr. Peel.”

He gave that strange half smile again and touched his finger to his hat.

Then he, too, went out the swinging doors.

“You! Indian boy!” said Mr. Jasper Leeky. I looked up to see that he was addressing me.

His arm pointed towards the door. “You go, too!” he said. “You bring heap bad medicine.”

I gave Jace a sidelong look, but he was flicking a piece of lint from his coat.

I knew he would understand my leaving so abruptly.

I gave Mr. Jasper Leeky a curt nod & bent to pick up my begging cup & went out after the three gunmen.

I glanced around to make sure none of them were lying in wait for me. They appeared to be gone.

Nevertheless, I kept to the shadows as I made my way home through the lively streets.

I reckon it was nearly 2:30 a.m. when I climbed back up my ladder & tumbled in through my half-open window.

I took off my hat & put down my begging cup & I knelt beside my camp bed to say my prayers but my mind was spinning like a top with all the things that had happened since the morning:

I had received a ghoulish parcel containing a Stone Baby with the letters
R.I.P.
on its belly. I had witnessed a shooting affray & helped the Doc perform a delicate medical operation. I had been swung at & knocked down & nearly kissed. I had met the new Preacher & interviewed four ladies in their corsets. I had seen my first Minstrel Singers & some Dancing Firegirls & also some real Firemen in action. I had got my first Genuine Client, then lost her, then found her & then nearly lost her again to flames. I had nearly got set on fire and/or lynched. Jace had taught me some more useful things about people and I had seen Stonewall blub like a baby. And just now I had stopped two desperados from shooting me by flinging a nearly-full spittoon at them.

I thought, “Yes, this is a good place to learn about the ways of men and the wickedness thereof.”

Little did I imagine what the next day held in store for me.

I WAS WOKEN
on the morning of Friday October 3 by an insistent knocking on the front door of my office.

I unrolled myself from my begging blanket & sat up. My left arm was throbbing from my gunshot wound & from where about three people had gripped me hard the day before. My ear ached from where Ludwig Hamm had struck me. My ankle was still sore from jumping from one balcony to another last week. And now my heart was banging from being wrenched from sleep by urgent knocking.

I felt tired & low, but as I stood up, the sight of that 100-mile view of far-off deserts & mountains & the sun gilding Sugar Loaf Mountain revived my spirits a little. Through the soles of my moccasins, I could feel the steady thump of a thousand Quartz Mills pounding ore into silver-filled dust. That thudding came right up through the stilts on which my back room was propped. It was like the mountain’s heartbeat.

I had fallen asleep still dressed in my moccasins & buckskin trowsers & faded red flannel shirt & wrapped in my Paiute begging blanket. My hair is still real short from where Ma Evangeline shaved it against nits, so I did not have to comb it or do anything else to get ready except put on my dark blue coat with the brass buttons.

When I came out of my bedroom I could see the shape of a figure in my door window. As I got closer, I saw it was Mr. Sam Clemens. He was looking back across the street towards the Shamrock Saloon. When he heard the key in my lock he turned & smiled down at me & took the pipe from his mouth.

“No flowers grow here, and no green thing gladdens the eye,” he drawled, pointing with his pipe, “but saloons spring up like weeds. That one seems to have appeared overnight. Did you hear about Murphy who was shot yesterday? They say he might live! I reckon this rarified atmosphere carries healing to gunshot wounds.”

I said, “What do you want?”

“You know, P.K.,” he said, strolling into my office, “now that you have set up as a Private Eye, you might consider adopting a more formal way of greeting your clients. ‘How may I help
you?’ or ‘What is troubling you?’ are both preferable to a blunt ‘What do you want?’”

“How may I help you?” I asked, stifling a yawn with my hand.

“Oh, I am sorry,” he said, puffing on his evil-smelling pipe. “Did I wake you? Were you up till all hours at some saloon last night?” He chuckled & then stopped when I nodded.

“Yes,” I replied. “I was over at the Virginia City Saloon until about two a.m. Two desperados came gunning for me but I distracted them with a spittoon long enough for Farner Peel to draw his piece & scare them out of town.”

“Dang it, Pinky,” he drawled. “You have the Devil’s Luck. You always seem to be in the right place at the right time.” He clasped his hands behind him & rocked back on his heels & gazed up at the sky-window & puffed. “What I would have given to live by myself and frequent saloons until two a.m. when I was your age,” he said. “What a life.”

“It is no Feather Bed,” said I. “Being a Detective is harder than I thought it would be.”

Sam Clemens removed the pipe from his mouth and scowled at it. “Dan De Quille got wind of that Shooting last night. He has already conducted interviews and written it up,” he said. “Dan found Boz nearly bleeding to death and turned him in and got the two hundred dollar reward.”

“He turned Boz in?” I said. “So I don’t have to worry about him?”

“I reckon not.”

“What about Extra Dub?”

Sam Clemens shrugged. “Some witnesses saw him tearing away towards Carson City at a prodigious rate,” he said. “His horse was shedding foam-flakes like a ship in a typhoon.”

“That is good news,” I said.

I sat behind my desk and he sat in my Client’s chair before me.

I poured myself a cup of cold coffee.

“You going to share that with me?” he drawled.

“I only have one cup,” I said, taking a sip. “Besides, it is cold and black.”

“Like your heart,” he muttered. Then he sat forward and said, “P.K., I have a problem. I got my job at the Territorial Enterprise by writing the occasional witty Letter to the Editor. But now they want me to fill two columns every single day. And by God, that ain’t easy, especially as Dan gets first choice on all the Shootings and really exciting things. At the moment, my notebook is barren. Bereft of ideas. Blank as a desert.”

I nodded, to show I was listening.

He tipped his chair back and continued, “After the gun duel between Patrick Murphy and Farner Peel that was snatched from me, I happened upon a beautiful fistfight down on C Street. But as nobody was killed or mortally wounded, my paper will not publish the details. Then my hopes soared when I heard the fire bell yesterday evening. I rushed across the street to the Flora Temple Livery Stable but by the time I got there the fire was almost out. Those Firemen are so doggone rapid that they prevented any loss of
man or beast. It seems fistfights and fires without deaths are of no consequence to anybody.” He puffed his pipe & said, “I do pine for murder.”