Sipping Whiskey in a Shallow Grave (29 page)

“There is a seat at the faro table, sir,” Billy mentioned, and held the door open wide.

Contagions were something that deeply concerned Prescott Sloan. He was a man of inordinate cleanliness. He washed regularly and wore only freshly laundered clothes. If the man coughing up spittle on his neck had not been Doc Holliday, Sloan would have boiled right over. But confrontation was not the wise course to take with Holliday — a person of mannered eloquence, southern mystique, and missing scruples. Even if the man
was
on death's doorstep.

Cordially, Sloan led the way in. Three ornately carved tables were spaced around the room and were filled with well-dressed men playing high-stakes poker. At the far wall was a green oval faro table, where a banker passed out chips — and cards with a Bengal tiger imprinted on them.

“Poker here, faro over there,” Sloan explained. “Drinks are complimentary, of course.”

“Rye. Just bring the damn bottle.”

All the men stopped chatting and turned to take note. It was no mystery who had just walked in. Holliday had been in Leadville off and on for the past eight years.

“Thought you went to Glenwood last month,” a man from a poker table said, in brisk German tones. His name was George Fryer.

Doc adjusted his lapels and sat down across from him.

“It
is
widely held,” he agreed. “For the sake of perspicuity: I did, I was, and I shall likely return there again. Deal me in.”

The other men around the table tensed up. They all recognized him. After all, Leadville had been a kind of second home for Holliday.

“Rumor puts you in Arizona as of late,” Fryer said, unhappily. George Fryer had kept his eye on Holliday the moment he walked in the room.

“Rumors attribute me to many odd places, Mr. Fryer,” Doc replied. “For the best, I suppose.”

Sloan watched over the conversation curiously. He was sure he spotted Holliday himself, in Ward just a few months back. But he wasn't sure. Holliday was a dying breed, both literally and figuratively.

 “My cousin said he sold you a ticket to Glenwood Springs in May,” JJ Brown added. “Swore you boarded the train and ever'thing.”

“Well,” Doc noted slowly in his Georgian drawl, “Miracle cures are surely fancy. Yet if there is some truth to the sulfurous springs and their reputed regenerative properties…why should I not lend fate its opportunity?”

“Surprised you ain't been shot dead yet,” George Fryer muttered.

“Fact of the matter is I anticipate gunfire outwitting consumption in regards to my own demise.”

The German stared down at the cards in his hand. His complexion was getting dark. Suddenly he slapped his cards down on the table.

“Constable Kelly was a friend of mine!”

JJ Brown, who happened to be sitting right next to George Fryer, held his breath.

“Don't try it on, George,” Doc patronized. “Been over now for quite some time. Besides, if you'll recollect, I did him the courtesy of asking prior if he was armed.”

Billy Barrister and Prescott Sloan were standing near the table, and both felt it was a poor choice of location although neither moved.

“Prior to shooting him dead,” Doc added cheerfully.

George Fryer went silent but sat very still. JJ Brown looked up and froze. The room became very quiet. Sloan felt a cold flutter in his gut. This is how it happens, he thought. Someone is going to die. Right here in front of me. Hell, I just opened this place a week ago.

Doc's face relaxed, and he chuckled softly. He carefully laid his cards down so he could cough into his kerchief again. George Fryer watched him closely. His complexion was still dark, but given Holliday's patterns of dispute, decided to pick up his cards again.

Billy Barrister quietly eased back over to the door and took up his position. Sloan watched him go and shook his head. The kid could hardly help watching these tables. Once the evening wound down, he would be sure to cuss that kid for not opening the door when he knocked. Maybe a slap or two. He walked over to the door to let Billy know what was coming.

But the sound of Doc Holliday coughing on his cards made him cringe again. The man was a lunger, rife with disease. Even syphilis, it was said. And here he was…coughing all over Sloan's poker table.

“Billy, after Mr. Holliday leaves get a wet rag and wipe down his seat,” Sloan whispered on his way out. “And the table. And the cards.”

 

Chapter 14

 

The treetops were hidden in the cool mist. Casey hung his hat on a damp limb and surveyed his work. He was pleased with how the cabin was coming together. The walls were made of rough-hewn logs, and he was taking the time to plane them down so they fit together perfectly.

“Stand, Mule.”

The mule stood. He liked the mule. He named her Mule when he bought her, and Julianna chided him almost every day for his lack of creativity. But Mule stood patiently in her harness. She knew her name. Or more likely, she recognized the command to stand.

A thick hemp rope stretched up from Mule's harness to a big pulley. Casey had built a tall tripod out of lodgepole pine. He could move it where ever he needed. This made lifting the wall logs into place a whole lot easier. Casey was doing the work by himself — although he did have a few friends on the hill who helped out, now and then. But they were all miners with their own claims to work. He didn't want to impose if he could raise the home by himself.

The mist made visibility pretty difficult. Wherever he turned, he could only see a few hundred feet before the trees were swallowed up in the gray. He could easily hear the creek and voices carried. The rattle of river stones and silt being sifted in the placers was just background noise he no longer noticed. But on misty afternoons like this, all the sounds seemed louder than usual.

Hopper was lying in a pile of pine needles. Julianna also chided Casey about naming Hopper, Hopper.
The dog has a bad leg
, he told her.
He hops. Get it? Yes, I get it, Casey
, she would reply dryly
. Just doesn't seem like a lot of thought went into it. Well it did,
Casey would say. This conversation usually happened a couple times a week — ever since they said their “I do's” earlier in the summer.

Julianna's father, the Commodore, had kept Hopper down in Gold Hill while Casey and Julianna began their married life up in Leadville. It turned out the old man grew fairly fond of the dog. When they went back for a visit, he wept openly when it came time to go. He did not weep over Julianna or his new son-in-law. But he wept when they took the dog.

All around the city, the hills had long since been picked over for timber. For miles, it was nothing but tree stumps and mining claims. There were mounds of yellow tailings everywhere, and the creeks looked rusty from being worked so much. When he and Julianna first made the decision to move to Leadville, Casey decided he wanted to buy land well outside of town — where there were still trees. Plus, the air and water were clean out here. He wanted to be far from the big smelters and the big plumes of smoke they churned out.

It was his lunch break. He ate bread, an apple, yellow cheese, and some tasty salted pork. Julianna made sure he had good feed everyday, which was nice…especially after years on the trail. Some cooks did well, others did poorly. Like Emmanuel and his 3-day beans and boil-burnt coffee.

After a few minutes of resting in the cool mist, the chill crept in. Casey could not sit around too long on a day like this. He tended to overheat when he worked hard and preferred to be too cold than too hot, but at this elevation on a cool misty day, overheating was not a concern.

He got up from the stump he was sitting on and took the apple core to Mule. As soon as it was under her nose, she grabbed it.

“Watch my thumb,” Casey warned her. Her main fault was that she had a tendency to mistake thumbs for carrots.

It did not take long to tie the haul rope around another big log. After he set this one in place, there were only a couple more left in the woodpile. Casey would need to bring down several more trees. That was certainly a process. He would have to fell one first, use a hatchet to chop off all the branches, then go back and saw off the stubs so the trunk was as even as possible. He would plane the bark off and finally Mule could drag it to the woodpile.

“Step up.”

The slack came out, and Mule felt the weight catch the harness. With a powerful slow step, the animal surged forward and the log went up in the air.

“Ho, Mule.”

Casey wiggled on his work gloves. He pushed hard to swing the big trunk around. It always took some jimmying to get it into place, but Casey knew exactly what to do.

It felt good to be working for himself now. For years, Casey had been riding for other people's brands. He never minded hard work, or working for other men. It was all part of life. He grinned as he thought about it. All those outfits he worked for, all those cows he branded. Sure was a heap of cowhide.

It was a wonder — life and living. He always imagined he would be cowboying for as long as he could sit a horse. Granted, it was not a very lucrative job. And a day's work could get fairly repetitive, mundane even, which was often the case. How many times had he been desperate enough for something to read, that he poured over old newspapers glued to the walls of a line shack? Or the label on a soup can — and read it again, many times over. But he never questioned it and never would. The life of a cowpuncher had been the right thing. He loved every minute of it. Even when he was bored out of his skull. He hoped he would have similar feelings about homesteading. He wasn't sure what he would do yet for income. Maybe open up a farrier shop. Shoe some horses. Julianna already had a job in town, which was a help while he built their home.

“Back,” he told Mule. “Back.”

She dutifully stepped backwards, and the log eased down into place. The tripod creaked under the weight.

Casey thought about all the places he had been: Beaver Creek; the stockyards of Denver and Cheyenne; the Iliff Ranch; Julesburg; Pueblo and Fort Bent; Hugo. He spent the better part of ten years cowboying on the plains of Colorado. One time, when he was maybe twenty years old, Casey rode a horse all the way out to Dodge City, Kansas. He heard so many stories about that town he just
had
to see it. But the railroads had left Dodge City so far behind it was just a husk of what it used to be. Most people seemed to sit around the saloons and yarn, and point to portraits on the wall. But times had changed for that old town. And times had changed for Casey.

He walked down to the creek to refill his canteen.

This far out from Leadville the creek was still clear and clean. The water around town was spoiled for drinking by the mining claims. Not this one. He knew there were a couple placer claims down the creek a half mile or so, but there was nothing upstream yet — which was half the reason he bought this particular parcel.

Casey took a quick sip. Boy, it was cold! It made his head hurt. All around him, the mist was still thick and gray. A stone's throw away, the creek seemed to just trickle right into nothingness…and disappear.

Sometimes Casey felt that life was like a creek. Or a river. A river he expected to cross and keep going. But it seemed the river had carried him away instead. He had not expected to be carried away by a river; he expected to make it across. And on to the other side. But one day he got shot off a horse. He could still see Ira's hat whipping off and the man's head-matter cough up in the
air. Ira's eyes had been open, he remembered that. Open, trusting — like a kid. And Edwin
was
just a kid. Casey didn't remember even hearing gunfire. He just saw Ira's head flop back, and Edwin got knocked out of the saddle, his arms whipping like a rag doll. The poor kid rolled off his horse's croup and dropped into the herd. Casey remembered that, he remembered seeing the boy jostle and bump between the black cows, and then the black cows closed in around him like waves of the sea.
 

Casey looked over at Hopper. The dog was quietly studying the trees in case there might be a squirrel. His ears were pricked up. Casey smiled. It was good to have that dog back. And it was good not to be riding for a brand anymore — for the dog's sake too. He was definitely slowing down.
I guess if you only have three good legs, you're bound to slow down sooner than later
, Casey thought. And he was not a pup anymore, anyway.

 

Chapter 15

 

Julianna was in town watching the mist roll in over the rooftops. She could not see Mount Massive, which on a regular day dominated the western landscape. The people outside on the street walked past the window with hats pulled low, collars up, and scarves around their necks. The horses' and burros' breath was coming out in white puffs. Despite the weather, Leadville was still as busy as it always was — night or day, whether there was sunshine or blowing snow.

Being the new bookkeeper for the Tabor Opera House had been a wonderful find. The owners, Horace and Elizabeth Tabor, seemed like gracious people and welcomed her on board with surprising warmth — especially for being so effluent and cultured in a fast-paced town. They both had nicknames. Horace was
Haw
and Elizabeth was
Baby Doe
. Of course, Julianna started out calling them Mr. and Mrs., but some days Elizabeth would
insist
on being called Baby Doe.

The theatre scene in Leadville was lively. Julianna met a good deal of famous thespians in just a short time on the payroll. The frequent performances seemed to draw in big crowds.

Julianna found it curious that there were no actual operas scheduled at the Opera House. Filling the books were vaudeville acts, minstrels and dances, community and political meetings, theatrical performances by travelling troupes and local actors…but not a single opera.