The journalists quickly discovered, as Kenton would say sometime later, that Squire Deverell “had more bile packed in his gullet than you could render out of a wagonload of bad livers.” What was worse, he was eager to share it.
Kenton and Gunnison sat in their benefactor’s parlor, sketching and recording Deverell as he alternated between describing his trek to fortune and expounding upon his many hatreds. Currell had been right; it was obvious Deverell assumed the journalists owed him inclusion in the Illustrated American in return for their free lodging.
Deverell had come from Denver two years before and opened a clothing and dry goods store in Leadville, he said. From that base he had begun grubstaking miners. His gambles had paid off to the point that he sold his store and now spent all his time in mine speculation. His earnings, he admitted, were not enough to put him among Colorado’s elite yet, but were at least sufficient to bring him a well-off status and an impressive house.
At the moment he was pacing back and forth before that house’s most extravagant feature: a fireplace big enough to spit-roast a bison in. Deverell was a fascinating figure to his visitors, though in an unpleasant way. He had a head as round as a cannonball, slick-bald on the top but fringed around the ears with unruly white hair. The back of his neck was covered with a pale thin fuzz that caught light like spider silk when he turned at certain angles; Kenton was doing his best to capture that phemonenon on his sketch pad. He wore a black silk house robe over maroon trousers and a shirt of vomitous yellow-green. If the combination was unnerving, it was eye-catching.
As Kenton sketched, Gunnison took notes of Deverell’s diatribes. Nothing the man had to say was worthy of the pages of the Illustrated American, but they felt obliged to humor him with an interview. By the time he found out no story would result, they would be long gone from Leadville.
Deverell hated everyone, from Swedes to Chinamen to Irishmen to Negroes to Jews to Catholics to lawyers. On two points he tempered his bigotry a little; he acknowledged that Irishmen had developed two of his most productive claims and lawyers had helped him retain them through a complicated legal dispute. Beyond that, he had nothing good to say about anyone.
Deverell turned to a large wall map upon which local mining claims had been faithfully penciled in, ones he held an interest in being outlined in blue. Abundant erasures on the map showed that the man followed the flux of changing mining claims in the compulsive way others follow every development in the stock market or at the betting track.
“Look at it, gentlemen—a maze of overlapping claims. A puzzle thrown out of a box with all the pieces landing atop each other. Paradise for lawyers and hell for the rest. I despise lawyers. I’d rather marry my daughter to a one-legged Chinaman as to trust a nickel and the time of day to a lawyer. Don’t you agree, Mr. Kenton?”
“Not having a daughter, I don’t feel qualified to hold an opinion,” Kenton said with a smile.
Deverell looked irritated. “I don’t have a daughter either, sir. It was just a figure of speech to make a point. What I was trying to get across was—”
He cut off as into the room came his remarkably pleasant little wife, her smile etched across a thin face scrimshawed with wrinkles. She bustled in with far more tea and cookies than the journalists’ recent flapjack breakfast could let them comfortably consume. Kenton figured her for one of those good women God sometimes gave to rotten men to sweeten them a little, like sugar in bitter coffee.
Kenton praised the cookies and made her blush so that the wrinkles stood out like the lines on her husband’s map. After she returned to the kitchen, Deverell looked sadly after her, leaned forward, and whispered: “Don’t let the wrinkles make you think Mary’s old. Those are the result of a patent face cream sold to her by a drummer who swore it would make her skin like a baby’s. I sued him for all he was worth, which was too little in any case, and didn’t even get a cent of that. Lawyers again.”
Something bumped a window to their left, and a figure ascended diagonally outside it on a staircase that ran up the outside of the house past the window. It was George Currell. He glanced in and touched his hat in greeting, a somber expression on his face. Kenton nodded back. In a moment they heard footsteps bumping around above.
“I didn’t notice a third floor from the outside,” Kenton said, for they were on the second level.
“There isn’t a complete floor, just some rooms on one end. Mark Straker, Mary’s nephew, lives there.” Deverell said the word “nephew” as if he were mouthing a green persimmon.
“How did he come to live with you?” Kenton was glad to have a chance to shift the subject away from Deverell’s menu of prejudices.
“His mother was Mary’s sister; she died of fever. His father was killed at Gettysburg. Mary and I raised him—Mary absolutely adores him.” He paused. “I wish I could feel the same toward him. Mark turned out…harsh. I have never understood why.”
Kenton could have ventured a likely guess, but prudence made him keep his mouth shut.
Deverell, who for a second had dropped his pompous front to reveal a more human aspect, said nothing for several moments, looking out the window. As he did so, Currell descended again, accompanied by a young man whose handsome features were marred only by unusually dark rings beneath his eyes, marking him as a habitual reveler. Clearly this was Mark Straker. Straker was slipping on a coat as he descended the stairs; beneath it he wore a Remington pistol, high and butt forward.
Kenton rose. “Mr. Deverell, I’m afraid we have to leave you for now. Deadlines and other work to do, you know. Thank you so much for all you’ve done for us.”
Deverell looked displeased to see his audience about to bolt for freedom so soon. “Mr. Kenton, I hoped to hear from you about your California tour of seventy-five.”
Kenton felt a slight stab of embarrassment, as he always did when that subject was brought up in front of Gunnison. Deverell was referring to a celebrated series of stories and drawings Kenton had done four years before in a tour of the West Coast. Kenton, always prone to find trouble, had been even more so in those days before he had begun cutting back on his drinking. The California tour, though a brilliant journalistic success, had brought the Illustrated American a spate of bills deriving from various saloon brawls and the like. One bill was for $578 for damage to a saloon devastated by Kenton in a brawl he couldn’t even remember.
The “unfortunate incident on the western coast,” as J. B. Gunnison, publisher of the Illustrated American and father of Alex, had come to call the California tour, was what had resulted in the assignment of Alex Gunnison as Kenton’s apprentice.
Kenton made a habit of complaining about having been assigned a watchdog. In the beginning, the complaints had been sincere, but gradually he had grown fond of his young partner. The gripes had lost their sincerity, though Kenton still carried them on for the sake of banter and habit. Kenton had a deep affection for Gunnison, though he sometimes wondered if the young fellow would ever open his eyes wide enough to become the prime chronicler he could be.
To Deverell Kenton said, “I’d love to tell you about the California tour, but duty calls, and we need to sketch while the light is best.”
“You’re going to put what I’ve said in your paper, I hope?”
“I have a specific place in mind for everything you’ve given us.”
He glanced at Gunnison, who grinned covertly back at him. Gunnison knew what the comment meant, but Deverell took it as a yes and looked happy. He suggested that Kenton and Gunnison rejoin him for dinner before their Leadville visit was through, and Kenton managed politely to evade a full acceptance.
They gave their good-byes. Mrs. Deverell reappeared, and Kenton kissed her narrow hand, pleasing her. The Deverells followed the journalists onto their porch and stood beaming after them until they were half a block away.
Kenton allowed himself a shudder. “Alex, I had to get out of there. That man has more hatreds than teeth.”
“I noticed. At least his wife was nice.”
“Too wrinkled. Never trust an overly wrinkled woman, Alex. I never met one yet who wouldn’t put a knife in your back first chance.”
“Sounds like Deverell’s not the only one carrying around irrational prejudices.”
Kenton protested, launching into a defense of his declaration. As he talked, Currell and Straker came riding out of an alley that led back to a well-hidden stable, apparently Deverell’s. Currell nodded another greeting at the journalists, still with that troubled expression. Straker, though, was smiling. He looked at the journalists with open interest and gave a salutatory touch to the brim of his hat as he passed.