I never had so many free drinks, cigars, and chips out of noodle pots thrown at me in twenty minutes in my life. I had plugged a poor loon and I was the hero of the town. Even the two writers for the Enterprise were all over me, and they decided I was the greatest gun fighter in the West, because I didn’t even have to kill my man. I just winged him, and they said that was a novelty, and refreshing. To me, they looked like a pair of crazy newspaper men that would do anything to make people laugh. Anyway, that’s how it came out in the paper, and overnight I was an important man in Virginia City.
“So you were going to save the Confederacy and help the boys in gray and now you’re a goddam paid gunman in a Nevada gambling sink all dressed in black velvet like a Mexican cowboy with yellow curls over your collar and in love with a whore that’s not worth the powder it would take to blow her to hell.”
You lie awake enough, you talk to yourself.
10
ALL THAT TIME I HAD heard plenty about Brewer, and seen her with him, though after what she had said I would have put my eyes out before I’d have let her catch me looking, so when they came down the street I generally ducked around the corner. She drove a pair of black ponies to a small buggy, and the ponies had silver buckles on their harness, and the whole town knew he had given them to her. So one day, when I pulled the bell at 17, and a strange woman answered and said Biloxi had moved to the new house being built on A Street, I knew without being told what was up. When I went up there painters were still working on the shutters, and furniture was piled all over the big high portico with pillars on it that ran clear up to the second floor. Biloxi opened the door and took me in her arms and kissed me and called me her pauvre petit and took me inside.
There was a wide hall running from the front door to a winding staircase, and big rooms with high windows in them on each side. In one room there was nothing but the grand piano from D Street, and Renny in front of it, playing. Until then he never noticed me that I recall now, but when he saw me he jumped up and shook hands and began to rave about the room. He said the acoustics were so wonderful you couldn’t believe it, and he was never going to put any more furniture in it, except shelves for the music and a bench running around for people to sit on. Sofas, rugs, and pillows, he said, were out. He could hardly wait for Haines, and pretty soon Haines showed up, and sang some grand opera. Then Biloxi made him sing her some songs in French, and rang for Mattiny to put out drinks. Then she brought me to a room across the hall, where anyway a sofa had been put in and you could sit. “Ah Roger, it is ze happiest day of my life! George is soch wonderful man!”
“Brewer?”
“Morina’s fiance.”
“Oh, they’re going to be married?”
“Yes at last. And soch beautiful thing he has done for me. This house, all summer he build, as surprise for me. And now today, he move me in—pouf, like that, after breakfast.”
“Why?”
“He love Morina. He is like brozzer to me.”
“Hell of a friendly brother. And a hell of a place.”
“Twenty rooms, Roger, big rooms.”
“Where are the girls?”
“Girls? Roger! I have no girls here!”
“No business here?”
“Business, fini!”
“His idea?”
“He want his little Biloxi to have easy.”
“Makes a little more sense that way.”
“But Roger, he is rich!”
“He certainly must be proud.”
I asked when the wedding was to be, and she said in a couple of weeks, as soon as Morina got back from San Francisco, where she was going tonight to buy clothes. She began rattling the ice in her glass and looking at the little watch she had pinned to her dress. She had spilled her news and had her cry, and wanted me to go. Me, I wasn’t quite ready.
It was late afternoon when I heard horses, slipping and sliding, climbing Union Street. It was the ponies, and behind them a hack, and Morina waited for the hackman to hitch before she came inside. The buggy was too small for trunks, so the idea seemed to be he would take them to Overland, while Biloxi drove her down. The stage left at six, so there was quite a lot of running around, and for a few minutes she didn’t take any notice of me. Then all of a sudden she came into the room, closed the door, lit a cigarrillo, and sat down beside me. While she was upstairs she had changed into the same little traveling dress she had worn when I first saw her, with the same little bonnet. She took two or three inhales before she said anything, and during that time she didn’t look at me. Then: “Did Biloxi tell you about me, Roger?”
“She said you were getting married.”
“I want you to wish me well.”
“I will on one condition.”
“What’s that, Roger?”
“That you tell me, in some way that I respect, why you’re marrying this man instead of me, when I’ve asked you a hundred times, and I ask you one more time right here and now.”
“I can’t throw away a chance like this.”
“Like what?”
“Why, Roger, George is a millionaire.”
“Is money all you think about?”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“They don’t do to get it what you do to get it. You’ve sold yourself for it, you’ve made a public spectacle of yourself for it, you’ve led a life of shame for it, not because you had to, because I’d have taken you off D Street any time, but because that money and that life was what you wanted. And now you’re marrying this man, not because you love him, but because he’s got a mine over there that’s making him so much money he can’t count it. I don’t call that being a wife. I call it being the highest-priced whore in the state of Nevada, and I’ll see you in hell before I wish you well at it.”
“Something might happen to you for that.”
“Nothing will.”
“Don’t be too sure.”
“There’s nothing I’d like better than to drill you through your dirty little heart, and I could do it right now, so if anything starts happening around here you know who it’s going to happen to.”
“How do you know whether I love him?”
“Because you love me.”
“Not that way.”
“There’s only one way.”
“Anyway, he loves me, I know that.”
“How?”
“Look what he’s given me.”
“When they buy you, that proves love?”
“What other way can a man show how much he thinks of you, if he don’t give you things? What have you ever given me?”
“Don’t you know why they pay to have you?”
“Because they want me.”
“So you can’t have them.”
“That don’t mean anything I can understand.”
“It means that after it’s over they can walk out and you’ve got no claim on them or right to say any part of them was ever yours or even the right to speak to them on the street. No, I never gave you anything, but myself, and that’s why I’m up here right now—”
Tears began running down her face, and she beat on the sofa with her fists. “It’s not true, what you’re saying! When a man gives you something, it proves how popular you are! It didn’t have to be me. It could have been any girl on the street. But instead of them, he finds me attractive, and the way he shows it, he gives me a present. And when it’s a nice present, a big present, it’s a wonderful compliment!”
I guess she said more, but all I remember is the way her eyes shone through the tears, and the way it hit me in the stomach, to find out at last why she was what she was. To her it was living. It was like being a queen, of a tiny, miserable, rotten little kingdom maybe, but with a crown on her head just the same.
That night came news of Chickamauga, and I don’t know which felt worse, me or the town. Because if it was the biggest thing for the South since Chancellorsville, there was nothing I had done to make me feel I had a part of it. And if the town was Union, there
were plenty by now that were beginning to wonder if they’d ever get their war won, which of course they won’t. There wasn’t much whooping in the saloons that night, especially in the Esperanza, where the high-class trade took a thing like that a lot more to heart than a place with nothing but a bunch of bums at the bar. They stood around by twos and threes, talking it over, and not very loud. All you could hear was Bragg, Bragg, and Bragg. One day before, he’d been the funniest object on earth. They’d made jokes about his name, his looks, and his rows with his generals. Now they mumbled about him like he was a cross between Napoleon Bonaparte and a she grizzly, and nothing could stop him.
So out back, where I’d gone for some air, a little more mumbling didn’t mean anything, at first. It was on the other side of the fence, a few feet from where I was leaning against the building, looking at the stars, and I just figured it was a few more lads that had found out that hoping to win a war was not quite the same as winning it. But then all of a sudden I woke up. This had nothing to do with war. It was about a little party that was to start in a few minutes, and the guest of honor was to be me. There seemed to be four of them, but the only name I caught was Hoke. I didn’t know at that time that he was Big Hoke Irving, known from Texas to Canada as one of the worst bad men in the West. He laid it out for them three times. At nine o’clock they were to drift in one at a time and he’d take position near the door. One of the others was to go to the bar, order a drink, and at Hoke’s handkerchief signal begin to shoot. I was the first target, and after I dropped, he was to shoot at lights, bottles, and anything that would make a noise and scare the crowd. Hoke was to holler at them and shoot at anything that made trouble, but mainly huddle them and get them on the floor. When he gave the word, the other two were to go down the line with a gunny sack one of them had under his coat, and grab everything in sight, one holding the sack, the other scooping money. But the main thing, he said, was do it fast and do it rough. If they did it right, they’d be in, out, and away less than five minutes after they started.
I held my breath, and when they moved off I raised on tiptoe to look, but next door was a vacant lot with no lights or anything, and all I could see was shadows. I went inside to warn Rocco and tell him what I thought we should do, which was to get deputies and get them quick. But when I started over to him, where he was talking to some officers near my chair, I stopped. Because coming into the place, with Red Caskie, the fellow that did his errands, his brother Raymond, that had charge of all chemical operations at his mine, and three or four hombres from his office, was Brewer. My head began to pound. I went over to my chair and sat down, but instead of saying something to Rocco I looked at the clock. It was twenty minutes to nine.
Once you saw him, the idea that Brewer could love anybody, unless it was himself, was nothing more or less than funny. He was good-looking enough, in a heavy kind of way, and always had a grin and wave of the hand for whoever came along, but just the same he wasn’t romantic. He wasn’t as tall as I am, but he was at least six feet, with a big barrel chest and a rolling walk they said he got from being a lumberman, up in Wisconsin. Anyway, making all the money he had came from all the stuff he knew about timber. Up to a few months ago almost anybody that could timber a mine so it wouldn’t cave in and kill everybody down there could get rich in Virginia City, and he was thick with Deidesheimer, who taught them how to make squaresets, so right at the start he had a big advantage. Then he brought his brothers in, who were in some college back east, and sent them to work for a bank, and after they learned all they could about processes and finances, they came back with him again. Then Will went to San Francisco, to deal with the mint and the silver-buyers, and Raymond took charge of the mill. But when it came to George, it affected him the way it would affect any dumb lumberman from the north woods that made about ten times as much money as he ever thought he would have. He got this idea that only the best was good enough for him, whether it was food, drink, or cigars, and if you ask me, the main thing he saw in Morina was that she could pile on more clothes, diamonds, and ribbons than any other woman in town, so of course that made her the best, and the way he figured things out, the perfect wife.
He began rapping on the bar with his cane, and ordered up champagne for everybody in the house. Jake had a grin all over his face, and began yelling at Ike and Davey to fill the ice tub, to open cases, to get out the extra glasses in the closet. But when he got out a bottle and held it for Brewer, it wasn’t good enough. Brewer smashed it down on a beer tap, and told him to get some real champagne, and me, I don’t know one champagne from another, but a funny look come over Jake’s face. I can’t prove it, but I’d bet the champagne Brewer paid for that night wasn’t as good as the champagne he slopped on the floor.
Rocco was all grin too, and motioned all dealers and croupiers to close down their games. So the whole mob, except me, crowded to the bar. Caskie came over. “What’s the matter, Rog, don’t you feel sociable?”
“I’m supposed to stay sober.”
“George, he wants you.”
“Tell him thanks, but tonight I’m off it.”
“Listen, there’s not many hombres in this town that’s too goddam busy to step over to the bar when George Brewer wants to buy them a drink.”
“I’m on duty.”
“Listen, Rog, that’s what he’s in here for.”
“To get me drunk?”
“He knows about you.”
“What’s he know?”
“About you and Morina.”
“He don’t know much, if that’s all.”
“And about Hale too. He knows all about that, and he’s liked you ever since. He thinks it was pretty damn nice, the way you treated that hombre, and he wants to buy you a drink.”
“Well, that’s different.”
“That sounds more like it.”
“Tell him soon as I finish my nine o’clock round, I’ll be over, but I’d rather he started the others off first, so if we want to talk, we can do it quiet and not have a lot of whooping and hollering going on account he’s put out free drinks.”
“He’ll like you for that, Rog.”
I wasn’t taking his drink, but if he came in there to buy me one and I turned it down, he might plunk down his money and walk out. That wouldn’t do for what I had in mind.
At seven of, the first bottle came out of the ice, where Ike had been twirling it and feeling if it was cold enough. Jake cut the wire, the cork hit the ceiling, and foam spilled out. Glasses were lined up on the bar for ten feet now, dozens and dozens of them, and Jake began filling them. Davey cut another wire, another cork popped, and Jake took the second bottle. Eighteen or twenty glasses were ready, and Brewer picked up one. “To the Union, one and indivisible forever!”
“’Ray!”
They began to yell and drink. But they crowded around him too, and for me that was bad. I got my high chair and took it to Rocco. “Maybe, tonight at least, we could find a place for Mr. Brewer to sit.”
Rocco ran over with it and Brewer raised his glass to me like he was some kind of duke and I bowed back as elegant as I could. Then he climbed up on it and hooked his heels over the foot rest. He was a head and a half above the crowd. As Jake refilled his glass a slim man in a red shirt, with two guns on his hips, came in. He blinked when he saw the celebration, but Rocco went over, handed him a glass, and said all drinks were on Mr. Brewer, so drink his health. Brewer raised his glass at him, and he nodded with a quick, pale grin and took a sip. Then he drifted over to the edge of the crowd. He was facing Brewer, but his eyes began running over the room. When he saw me, he shifted his glass from his right hand to his left. I took a stroll down the room, past the croupiers counting money, and as I moved he turned. When I stopped at the dollar table and gave the wheel a spin, he was between me and Brewer, about six feet from me and the same distance from the chair, with the three of us right in line. The clock said one minute of.
Two men came in wearing guns, one of them with his coat buttoned
tight. They had a hangdog look to them, and Rocco, instead of handing them a drink, came over to me. “Roger—”
“I’m watching every move they make.”
“All right, boy.”
“And stay away from Red Shirt.”
“Him too?”
“I think so.”
At nine a big man came in, with a red beard and both hands in his coat pockets. He took a quick look at the room, spotted first the two that had just come in, then Red Shirt over near the bar. Then he whipped a red handkerchief out of one pocket. Red Shirt reached for his gun, the one on his left hip with reversed stock, and got it out. But I drew with the handkerchief too, and before he could shoot I plugged him, through the head. And while he was falling I shot again, for the place where his head had been, and Brewer pitched over. After that it was like one of those lantern slides, where the boy chases the butterfly to the end of the pier, then falls in to the fishes, but it takes six pictures to show what happened in one second. I threw myself backward over the roulette table and rolled, and when I hit the floor I had three tables between me and the men near the door. The big man was already shooting for me, and I shot at him once and missed. I had to get closer, and ran on my knees and one hand up toward the front, and he was doing the same on the other side of the tables, to get me. He raised up and I shot again and he dropped. I turned toward the other two. I only had two shots left and I couldn’t waste anything. But they were legging it for the door. I got one of them in the back as he started through the door. The other one I got outside, as he was jumping on his horse. It went galloping down the street with him hanging to one stirrup.