In Denver they don’t make him undress.
The meeting is in the bigger bar downstairs at the Windsor, the one with the silver dollars inlaid every few feet in the floor and walls. Masterson perched on a stool pulled away from the bar counter as the pencil artist sits and stands and squats to draw his face from different vantage points, Niles Manigault obligingly skittering out of the eyeline whenever it changes, the fat man blocking most all the daylight from the open doorway.
“He knows the deal?” asks Masterson, flicking his eyes briefly at Hod.
“He fought Choynski,” says Niles. “Held his own.”
“The three great virtues of a prizefighter,” says Masterson, lifting his chin a bit to catch the light angling in from Larimer Street, “are Talent, Heart, and Obedience. In my book the last of these is the greatest.”
“He’s a sharp lad,” says Niles. “Once the deal, whatever it is, has been agreed upon—”
“Twelve rounds,” says the fat man, slowly circling Hod, poking his bicep once with his cane. “Reddy needs time to sell beer, and if the Kid and Mongone are fighting straight—”
“For eight rounds they’re fighting so that both stay on their feet,” interrupts Masterson, “and then they can knock each other’s brains out.”
“You’ve placed some wagers.”
“Move, Otto,” says Masterson, holding his pose and wiggling a finger sideways. “You’re throwing a shadow.”
The fat man snorts in annoyance but moves to the side a few feet. He wears a bright checked suit and a red vest. “If you’d just have a photograph taken like a normal man—”
“It lacks the human dimension,” says Masterson. His face is fleshier than Hod has imagined, his eyes sharper. In their boyhood games he always insisted on being Masterson, his brother Zeb left with a choice of badmen to represent. “It lacks the soul. These likenesses, which will appear in—what’s this one to be called?”
“Bat Masterson, Plague of the Kansas Outlaw,” answers the crouching artist, eyes fixed on his sketchpad.
“These likenesses convey the spirit of the man, his sense of vitality. A photograph freezes time, character becomes a mask, motion a blur—”
“What about the moving pictures?”
“Overrated.”
Hod catches the eye of Niles Manigault, who discretely motions for him to sit back at the bar. He wonders what they do to keep men like himself, desperate men, from prying the silver dollars out of the woodwork.
“They could have used one of those cameras in San Francisco when your friend Earp handed the fight to Sharkey—”
“The man fouled—”
“Fitz had him all but knocked out.”
“On a punch delivered when the Tom’s knees were on the canvas.”
“A film wouldn’t have lied—”
“Were you there?”
The fat man pushes the skimmer back on his head. “No. But if there had been a camera—”
“I was there. It was the correct decision.”
The artist clears his throat. “Do you think,” he asks softly, “you could assume a gunfighting stance?”
“About to draw or piece in hand?”
“Either one would suit me.”
The Hero of Adobe Walls stands and pulls a short-barreled Colt from inside his jacket. The fat man takes a step backward.
“That isn’t loaded, is it?”
“What fucking use under God’s blue firmament would it do me to carry an unloaded firearm?”
Hod looks down to the end of the bar. A large man has folded his arms on the counter and is dozing upon them. Tabor had the hotel built during the first gush of silver from his holes, had supervised the details in both of the bars. This is a drinking man’s dream of heaven—inlaid panels of ebony and oak, cherrywood on the bartop, enamel spittoons with Chinese designs, gleaming brass and silver metalwork and a dozen cut-glass chandeliers hanging overhead. A bartender in sleeve garters is polishing glasses, feigning indifference to the negotiations.
“They wanted to make a moving picture of the border fight,” says Mas-terson, crouching slightly and pointing the iron held at his hip toward an imaginary foe. “I’m down in El Paso with Tom O’Rourke, sitting on the ten thousand cash prize, when the Rangers run the lot of us—fighters, managers, promoters, fans—out on a rail. So Roy Bean down in Langtry says he can handle it and he builds a little bridge out to a sandbar in the middle of the Pecos. ‘It’s not Texas and it’s not Mexico,’ he says, ‘and is subject only to the laws of Nature.’ The fellow with the camera had paid a bundle to Stuart for the right to photograph, and when Fitzsimmons’s people demand a percentage of his profits, he turns them down cold. As it was, Ruby Robert put Maher away with one of his corkscrew punches in less than a minute of the first round.”
“A disappointing afternoon,” ventures Niles.
“Not for Judge Bean, who had the liquor concession. He sold out his stock to the sporting crowd, then issued an ordinance that not a drop could be consumed in Langtry. It was a memorable train ride.” Masterson turns and points the gun barrel at the fat man. “What’s this I hear of the ‘Otto Floto Circus’?”
The fat man shrugs, embarrassed. “One of Harry’s ideas. The newspaper would promote it.”
“And you could donate one of your old opera capes,” says Masterson, turning away, “to use as a tent.”
The fat man grips his cane with both hands. “If you weren’t armed, Mas-terson—”
“Gentlemen,” interrupts Niles. “We agreed that this would be civil. Have we settled on a referee?”
“It’s Reddy’s hall,” says Otto Floto. “He wants to run the bout.”
“No objection,” says Masterson. He sits back on the stool, looking at the pistol held in his lap. “There was a different filmist in Carson City,” he says. “This one had a special tower built by the ring, with a slot cut out for all three of his cameras, and he made sure to throw some money at both Fitz and Corbett before the battle.”
“Ensuring a prolonged contest,” ventures Niles.
“I was there,” says the fat man.
“As was I.” Masterson’s glare is like a bullet. “Earp and I providing security in case a riot ensued—”
“Like the one Earp started in San Francisco.”
Masterson idly twirls the pistol on his finger. Niles takes a few cautious steps to the side. “Photographed every bloody minute of it. Jim knocking the starch out of Fitz, but the bald-headed little bastard hanging in, and his wife there by the corner—I wouldn’t like to meet her in a prize ring, either—‘Hit him in the slats, Bob!’ she hollers. ‘Hit him in the slats!’ and out he staggers in the fourteenth and does just that, square on the mark, and Jim is done for the day.”
“The film is a sensation,” says Niles. “They set up a special projecting machine called a Veriscope, and—”
“I’ve seen it,” says the gunfighter flatly.
“And your impression?”
“Greatly inferior to my own remembered impressions of the bout,” says Masterson. “Smaller than life.”
“The man has made a fortune.”
“That I do not deny. At the presentation I attended more than half of the spectators were females, and I do not mean those of the lowest stripe. Something is afoot here that I mislike.” He stands and looks at Hod again, then at the sleeping man beyond him. “Do you know what they showed before they put the fight up on the wall? Professor Welton’s Boxing Cats! The noble art, turned into a raree show.” He turns to Floto.
“Your man,” he says, pointing to the sleeper at the bar, “Chief Rain-in-the-Face—”
“He’ll be fine for twelve if I tell him.”
Niles interrupts. “The Blonger brothers specified ten.”
“The Blongers can lick my kiester,” says Masterson. “Do you think he’d put the warpaint on?”
Otto Floto makes a face. “We tried that once. It got on the gloves, in the fighters’ eyes—”
“A headdress perhaps? When he comes in the ring—”
“I think Harry has one at the paper.”
“Little prick probably puts it on when nobody’s looking. And your boy here—”
“Brackenridge,” Hod calls out.
“A name that is neither here nor there,” says Masterson. “Something Irish—”
“I’m not Irish.”
“And Fireman Jim Flynn is a Dago, what of it?”
“He fought before under Young McGinty,” Niles blurts.
Niles promised Hod before that it wouldn’t be McGinty, just in case the warrant has traveled from Alaska, but now only puts a finger to his lips to warn him off.
“Young McGinty versus Chief—?”
“Strong Bear,” says the fat man.
“It’s a match. We advertise a prize of five hundred dollars, and out of that the fighters share—”
“Excuse me,” says Niles, holding up a hand. “If we’re talking business—”
He holds a fiver out to Hod. Masterson and Otto Floto and Niles and even the artist all stare at him as if he shouldn’t be there. Hod takes the five and steps to the back of the room.
“That’s to feed yourself,” calls Niles jovially. “Not for an excursion to Holliday Street.”
He gives the sleeping man a nudge as he passes on the way out the back door. “Lunchtime, buddy.”
They are out on 18th before Hod realizes that the man is Big Ten.
“If you don’t mind,” says the Indian, eyeing the five, “I haven’t eaten in days.”
They find a place two blocks up serving steak and eggs and settle in.
“The fat gink,” says Big Ten, “is some kind of newspaper writer who also promotes shows. I pulled his coat for a handout over by the Opera House and he pitched this boxing idea.”
“Jail in Leadville?”
“One week, they got tired of feeding me. Took me to the freight yard, told me to catch the first thing smoking.”
The Indian doesn’t look any thinner. Fighting him will be like punching a tree stump.
“You know what you’re doing in the ring?”
“Hell no.”
“What they paying you?”
Big Ten shrugs. “The fat man got me a flop for the night,” he says. “Then it’s twenty for showing up and then the sky’s the limit, he says, depending on how I handle myself. What about yours?”
“I think he owes Masterson a lot of money, so this is mostly on the cuff,” says Hod. “But if I catch him before he can reach a faro table I might see a few dollars.”
Big Ten sighs as the food arrives and they dig in.
“There was a sign over that bar,” says Big Ten. “Said it was against the law to serve an Indian—less he’s been cooked first.”
“The whole deal sounds like lots of lumps for short money.” Hod stares out the window at the characters circulating on 18th. “I’d recommend taking a powder, only these people always got an in with the law. If they catch us—”
“If you promise not to hit too hard,” says the Indian, “I promise not to fall down too quick.”
They linger over their coffee, just thinking, and are on their way back to the Windsor in a light drizzle when a tramp steps up on the sidewalk to block their way.
“You fellas spare some change?”
The man is swaying a little as he stands, skin and bones, hair wet and wild, looking slightly through rather than at them like fellas will do when they put the touch on you. Big Ten gives him a nickel and a penny.
“That’s it, buddy,” says the Indian. “Now we’re as busted as you.”
“That’s white of you,” says the tramp, who Hod recognizes from Butte, a mucker on the day gang with a Polish name longer than an ore train. The man staggers around them, almost falling off the curb.
“Always does the heart good,” says Big Ten, “to see somebody worse off than you are.”
On the next block they see the recruits.
There are three of them, two normal sized and one half-pint kid, standing at stiff attention in the middle of the sidewalk in front of the Elite Saloon.
“Our sergeant said he needs to kill his thirst,” says the kid, who the others call the Runt. “Or maybe he just gone in to wound it. One way or the other, we got to stand here at attention till he comes out.”
“We’re volunteers,” says one of the normal-sized ones.
“Sure you are,” says Big Ten. “I can’t see how anybody’d pay you to stand out in the rain.”
“In the Army,” says the Runt. “Off to battle the Spaniards.”
“You don’t say.”
The Runt closes his eyes, then opens them and begins to spout.
Oh it’s Tommy this, and it’s Tommy that
and it’s “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Savior of his Country”
when the guns begin to shoot!
The biggest one looks embarrassed. “He does that. Right out of the blue.”
“We come up from Pueblo and he latched on to us,” says the middle one. “But they took us anyway.”
The sergeant comes out from the saloon then, a long man with a long moustache drooping off his face. He glares at his volunteers. “Have you been talking to these civilians?”
“They were asking about enlistment, sir,” says the Runt, eyes forward, chin tucked in, his scrawny body held rigid. “And I was explaining the opportunity.”
The sergeant turns to look Hod and Big Ten over. “I’ve got one deserted already and one lost to the clap shack,” he says. “You boys ready to take the trip?”
The Polish miner wasn’t a drinker, Hod remembers, just a steady, hard-working fella trying to keep grits on his table. He looked like hell, a ghost of a man out there alone in the rain. This is not Hod’s war, the plight of the oppressed Cuban a subject he has barely considered. But it had felt right, that one moment, marching with the Skaguay Guards, and there will be three squares a day and a chance to see the palm trees and it won’t be Soapy Smith or anyone like him running the deal. Hod, light in the pocket and blackballed from the mines, exchanges a look with the big Indian, who he can tell is also considering the offer.
“Where to?” asks Big Ten.
“Five blocks over to the Armory,” says the sergeant, “and then on to Glory.”