Dead Man's Hand Page 3

  It was all quite simple, really, as Bodmer saw things. Vogel had already refused to sell the rights to a patent application for his invention. Bodmer’s offer had been generous—very generous. But that soft-brained fool Vogel had refused. Muttering all that malarkey about the “social welfare” being better than profits. Now, Bodmer figured, the normal options were all used up.

  “All this,” he told his visitors, nodding at the bustling scene below in the street, “hangs by a thread. It might last, and it might not. I’ve seen boomtowns turn into ghost towns fast. By 1868, Star City, Nevada, was only seven years old— and had only one family left, that of my business representative. A man who means to get on in new country must move quickly and decisively.”

  Big Bat drained the whiskey, smacked his lips, and dropped the empty bottle, letting it thunk harmlessly on the thick carpet.

  “Boss,” he said. “No offense to you personal. But I need all your philosophy like a boar hog needs tits! I’m here on account I’m light in the pocket and need paying work. Same with the Dog Man. You pay four dollars a day, and chumley, that beats hell out of thirty a month and grub for nursing beeves.”

  Big Bat paused to belch, then added: “’Sides all that, they’s a hemp committee back in Texas, and the rope waitin’ on me has got thirteen coils in it. So you just tell us who needs killing, and we’ll plant ’em, no questions asked.”

  Chapter Four

  Bill forgot about the cold after Pinkerton opened the second door and they stepped inside the innermost storage chamber of the icehouse.

  A small, thin, flat-chested old man with a wild tangle of fine white hair stood beside a . . . clumsy metal box, Bill decided. Or more like a metal cabinet on four squat legs. The old man ignored the new arrivals. He muttered incessantly to himself as he tinkered with a set of equations in a handheld ledger.

  But what truly dropped Bill’s jaw in astonishment were all the glittering chunks of ice spewing out of a chute on one side of the cabinet. Chunks of various shapes and sizes, tumbling out like lumps of coal in a hydraulic flush. Not constantly, but in sudden spurts after gurgling, sucking pauses. Two Chinese laborers wearing sack coats and thick mittens packed the ice into wooden barrels. Several dozen full barrels stood nearby.

  Now and then the cabinet, or whatever the hell it was, emitted a sputtering, belching noise and shivered on its legs. But chunks of ice continued to spew out regularly enough to keep the industrious workers busy packing it.

  “Jamie lad,” Pinkerton announced with his usual air of melodrama, “meet Professor Albert Vogel of Lubeck, Prussia. Meet also the magnum opus of his long career as an inventor: the refrigeration compressor.”

  Ice continued to bump and slither down the chute, mesmerizing Bill.

  “As you can see, the professor’s new compressor would easily fit into a train car,” Pinkerton added. “Which it soon will. Yet it can produce . . . how much ice daily, Professor Vogel?”

  “Nine to ten zousand pounds,” the old man scolded, as if Pinkerton were a lazy student who had forgotten a key formula.

  Bill blinked, staring at the old gent. “You misspoke, right, Professor? You don’t mean five tons of ice? In one day?”

  Vogel bristled, offended at being challenged by uneducated louts who toted guns. “Five tons, ja! In one day!”

  “That’s impossible,” Bill said.

  “Ach, not ven you have za inductive logic and za experiments! To be precise, it is suction.”

  As if in support of its creator, the cabinet shuddered and emitted a sucking noise like swirling eddies on a flooding river.

  “Za main item required is suction,” Vogel repeated. “Get you a wacuum started, and—mirabile dictu!—you have za refrigeration. Zen I had only to fill za outer pipes viz hydrogen and ammonia before sealing zem tight.”

  “A wacuum,” Pinkerton chipped in helpfully, “is a vacuum.”

  “Thanks,” Bill said dryly. “I never could have figured that one out without a real detective.”

  But watching all that clear, glittering ice tumble out like big sparkling gems put a dent in Bill’s cynicism.

  Pinkerton said, “I was bragging about how the death rate is way down this year at the fever pest house. Those barrels are why. Professor Vogel has been working night and day, without pay, to manufacture ice. I’m paying the workers myself. We’re providing plenty of ice to artificially cool not only the worst-case fever victims, but the air in the sickrooms, too. And it’s working, Bill! Some patients are even breaking their fever without any delirium or severe pain.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Bill said, admiration clear in his tone. “It’s amazing, all right. But scientific wonders ain’t my usual bailiwick, Al. What’s my mix in all this?”

  “Jamie, you spend too much time at frontier outposts. You can’t truly appreciate the, ahh, controversies swirling back in the cities. But right now, artificial cooling, especially of people or the air in hospitals, is viewed with great disfavor in much of America. Puritan pressure and religious disapproval have hampered its development.”

  “Ja, za schleps!” Vogel cut in, spraying beads of saliva in his indignation. “A brave young doctor here in za States, he has modestly suggested ice be tried in just a few hospital rooms, merely for za test. He vass decried as Satan himself!”

  “That’s why,” Pinkerton went on, “Professor Vogel’s backers, who include some in the Tidewater Elite, have proposed this promotional train tour. It’s the best way to popularize both the ice machine and the larger issue of refrigeration and—and—what do you call it, Professor?”

  “Air-condizioning,” Vogel supplied. “Zee artificial cooling of za air.”

  “The railroad is perfect,” Pinkerton said, “since the public is still very excited by trains and anything to do with them. It’s only been three years since Promontory.”

  Bill nodded. Pinkerton meant Promontory, Utah, where east had finally met west to complete America’s greatest achievement to date— the transcontinental railroad.

  “You still,” Bill reminded Pinkerton, “haven’t explained how I figure in.”

  “Ever heard of a man named Randolph Bodmer?”

  Bill shook his head, still watching ice tumble out of the compressor.

  “Bodmer has made his fortune down south in the harvesting, carriage, and storage of natural ice hauled from up north. But Bodmer knows about Professor Vogel’s machine, and he also knows that ice machines will drive him—Bodmer—out of business quicker than a finger snap. So now Bodmer is champing at the bit to move from ‘God’s ice’ to ‘unnatural ice,’ as its opponents call it.”

  “Ja,” Vogel cut in. “But ziss Bodmer, he is za greedy profiteer. I vant ice for humanity first!”

  “Bodmer,” Pinkerton told Bill, “has already approached the professor with a generous offer for the patent rights to the refrigeration compressor.”

  “I can take it from there,” Bill said. “Since it’s a familiar story, especially out west. This Bodmer gent is not one to be dissuaded by a simple no. So you want me as a bodyguard for the professor during his tour.”

  “A bodyguard and a machine guard,” Pinker-ton said. “The job pays five dollars a day, Jamie, and all living expenses are covered by the professor’s backers.”

  “The pay’s not bad,” Bill conceded. “But I can do better gambling. And enjoy myself a helluva lot more. I don’t like trains. Besides, playing nursemaid isn’t my usual line of work, Al, you know that.”

  “As to enjoyment,” Pinkerton said slyly, pulling a photograph out from the inner pocket of his tweed coat, “this tour is not your usual cattle run. It’s being advertised as a luxury extravaganza, and the wealthy and famous are flocking to it. Bodmer himself has booked an entire Pullman for this tour. And he’s bringing his fiancée along. A sweet young Spanish tidbit named Elena Vargas.”

  Bill took a cursory glance at the photo, then quickly snatched it from Pinkerton’s hands to stare in surprised disbelief. He recognized the couple from
the incident the day before at the Commerce Hotel. Bodmer’s insolent eyes stared out, announcing to all the world that the fine-boned beauty on his arm was his property, bought and paid for.

  Wild Bill grinned. He looked up and smiled at the professor, too, suddenly in a fine mood.

  “The terms are just fine, Allan,” he announced. “It will be a great honor to serve as one of Pinkerton’s operatives.”

  Pinkerton shook his head. “You usually do the right thing, Jamie. But Lord knows, you do require your little . . . incentives. But do not foolishly underestimate the dangers here. Nursemaid? Pah, it will not be beer and skittles, laddiebuck! Bodmer is a resourceful man, and generally gets what he wants.”

  “Then one of us is going to have to gangway,” Bill said, his eyes again cutting to Elena’s mother-of-pearl skin. “Because I generally get what I want, too.”

  Chapter Five

  “The toughest towns in the West?”

  Bill repeated the question while he cleaned his Colts in the ruddy light of the new gas lamps in Josh’s hotel room.

  “Kid, a man definitely wants to fight shy of all of Johnson County, Wyoming. There’s one bloody range war heating up between cattlemen and rustlers. I’ve also been out to the town of Tombstone in Cochise County, Arizona Territory. Every morning, you’ll find a body or two in the streets.”

  Joshua Robinson watched Bill open the loading gate on one of his custom-order Colts and inspect the cylinders for damage.

  “But among cowtowns,” Bill went on, “Abilene was the first and still the toughest.”

  Josh sat at a little escritoire across the room from Bill, dipping a nib into a little pot of ink and blotting his sheets of writing with sand. He was putting the finishing touches on the first official dispatch he would file, first thing tomorrow morning from the Western Union office, as the far-west correspondent for the New York Herald.

  It was a vivid description of Wild Bill Hickok’s killing of Baylis. “A dispatch about a dispatching,” as Bill had quipped. But Josh was swelling with pride, because he knew that most major newspapers in America would also pick up his story—a group of publishers had recently formed the Associated Press for the sharing of telegraphic dispatches.

  “Got something for you here, kid,” Bill said, quietly interrupting Josh’s editing.

  The youth looked up to see that Bill had crossed the room, carrying a worn leather saddlebag. He removed an ornately detailed handgun, swung the wheel out to make sure it was empty, then handed it to Josh.

  “I’ve been carrying this since the war. Won it in a poker game from a Cavalry officer who claims he used it to wound Jeb Stuart himself. I believe the fellow, too. He’s a Methodist minister.”

  “It’s old,” Josh said, not meaning it to sound like a criticism. The revolver was beautiful and even included a foldaway knife blade under the barrel. “Thanks, Wild Bill!” he added.

  “It’s French,” Bill explained. “An old, but very well-maintained, LeFaucheux six-shot pinfire revolver. It’s got one serious drawback. It takes pinfire cartridges, which go off too easy when you bump the weapon. That means no cartridge under the hammer until it’s God-sure you mean to bust caps. Damnit, don’t do that, kid!”

  Bill snatched the weapon back from Josh after the youth cocked and fired it. “Never dry-fire any weapon, you simple shit! You could damage the firing pin.”

  Bill set the gun on a highboy near the window. “Right now I doubt if you could hit a bull in the butt with a banjo. So leave it out of sight until we can give you a few lessons with it. And don’t say anything to that Quaker mother of yours. But do learn the workings of it. Get the feel of the gun’s mechanism so you can break it down and assemble it in the dark. But no more dry firing, hear?”

  “Yessir!”

  Before he returned to his own guns, spread out on the end of the chenille bedspread, Bill glanced down to see what Josh was writing.

  “What is this bunk, kid?” he demanded. “‘Wild Bill Hickok has plenty of acquaintances, but few friends—’”

  “Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” Josh demanded.

  “So what if it is? Some law against that?”

  “Why . . .’course not, Wild Bill. But I mention it because most people have friends, is all, and I—”

  “‘Most people’ are less than one solid man, at least on the frontier. You scribblers worry too much about ‘the public’. I just—

  “Never mind, write whatever the hell you want to. I just chop wood, kid, and let the chips fall where they may.”

  Josh watched Bill return to his weapons. The youth wanted to pump Bill some more about this “promotional tour” that would begin the next morning. Josh had already read the itinerary Pinkerton had given Bill. From Denver, the first leg would be due east along the Kansas-Pacific Railroad to Kansas City, with stops at two Kansas towns where Wild Bill had worn a star: Hays City and Abilene. From Kansas City it was a short jog north to Omaha, then west again by Union-Pacific and Central-Pacific Railroads. The final terminus was San Francisco, with stops to include Ogallala, Nebraska; Cheyenne. Wyoming; and Salt Lake City, Utah.

  But Josh had been trying Bill’s patience all day long with questions. Now Bill would have to be coaxed out by increments.

  “Wild Bill?”

  “Yeah?” Bill ran a bore brush through one of his Peacemakers, frowning at an elusive dust speck.

  “There might be certain hotel employees who like to meet with riffraff in the alley out back. And maybe money exchanges hands.”

  Bill glanced up. Josh shrugged, feigning innocence. “’Course, I’m just a wet-behind-the-ears kid. Just like us greenhorns to assume someone has been selling your room number to reward-seeking scum.”

  Bill flashed a quick, sly grin. “I said you were green, not blind or stupid. But I’m still a step ahead of you, Longfellow. Why do you think we’re passing time in your room—because I like the cathouse stink of your lilac hair tonic?”

  Josh felt heat flood his face. “Ma packed that for me. Made me promise to use it. So I’m going double portions on it to get shut of it.”

  Bill’s room was just overhead. Josh heard muffled sounds through the ceiling. He watched Bill check his watch.

  “About five minutes,” he predicted.

  “Till what?” Josh demanded.

  “Wait a spell, you’ll see.”

  “I walked all over town today buying some new duds,” Josh said. “Man alive, Bill! There’s Help Wanted signs everywhere. But lots of ’em say orphans and bachelors preferred.’”

  Bill nodded, squinting in concentration as he placed a tiny drop of gun oil on the pivot screw. “A man can get rich out here in a hurry. But law hasn’t yet caught up with commerce.”

  Bill glanced overhead as he said this last, checking his watch again.

  Josh said, “What are you—?”

  He never finished the question. A sudden, boom-cracking explosion rocked the building, knocking a Frederic Remington painting off the wall. A smile creased Bill’s face as plaster dust settled and confused shouts filled the corridor outside.

  “What in Sam Hill?” Josh said.

  “C’mon, kid.” Bill headed toward the door. “I’ll show you why those signs call for bachelors and orphans.”

  Upstairs, Josh saw that a crowd had gathered around the door of Bill’s room—or, more precisely, around the smoking hole where the door had been dynamited out of its frame. The interior of the room was a smoking shambles.

  “I left the door unlocked and humped the covers up,” Bill explained. “So it looked like somebody was sleeping.”

  “So that’s why you moved your gear to my room,” Josh said.

  Bill nodded. “Now you see how it is, kid. You still want to go along on this tour with Wild Bill Hickok?”

  Josh never hesitated. “Yessir! I didn’t come out here to wash bricks.”

  “It’s your funeral,” Bill said. “Make out your will tonight, and write a letter to your ma. She sounds like a good wo
man. Make sure you tell her one last time how much you love her.”

  The next morning, just past sunup, Bill woke to an amazing sight: Young Joshua had transformed himself into a “frontier dude.”

  Or so the proudly beaming kid obviously thought. He was decked out in brand-spanking-new dyed buckskin trousers, a frilled rodeo shirt, a bright-red bandanna, stitched-calfskin boots, and gaudy, star-roweled spurs of Mexican silver.

  Bill laughed so hard he rolled out of the bed and crashed to the floor, blankets sliding with him.

  “If it ain’t the Philadelphia Kid!” he sputtered between howls of mirth. “Tadpole, you’re either a mail-order cowboy or a circus clown!”

  Josh scowled. “Wha’d’you mean?”

  “Christ! You own a horse?”

  “No, but—”

  “Can you even ride a horse?”

  “Well, not so good yet, but—”

  “Then what the hell you need with spurs? Kid, forget the dime novels. Sweat and glamour don’t mix.”

  Bill pointed at the boots. “You’re so green you wasted good money on farmer’s boots without high heels. If you knew sic ’em about riding, you’d know that you need good heels to hold your feet in the stirrups. You are familiar with that word, ‘stirrups’?”

  Josh was bright red by now. Still roweling him mercilessly, Bill quickly dressed. Then he took the humbled kid with him to the local livery barn where Bill had been boarding his horse, a pretty little strawberry roan named Fire-away.

  “I want him grained every day and rubbed down good each night,” Bill instructed the hostler, tipping him a half-eagle gold piece. To Josh he added:

  “Don’t forget. On the frontier, no better word can be spoken of a man than that he’s careful of his horses. You ever do get a horse, go light with them spurs. Now, c’mon, Philadelphia Kid! Let’s head to the train station and put our Montgomery-Ward cowboy on display!”