DENVER CITY, 1876
THE FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS WAS FINDING HIMSELF A JOB THAT DIDN’T demand credentials or references, but would pay enough for room and board and other living expenses. When he’d been in similar circumstances in Galveston, he’d taken a job pulling teeth in the back room of a barber shop. But there were more pleasant ways to make a dollar in a busy city like Denver, especially for a man who was clever with cards. And Tom McKey, Faro dealer, was born.
He took a position dealing in the gambling hall of Charlie Foster, located above Babb’s Variety House on Blake Street, then found a room to rent above Long John’s Saloon just down the road. Babb’s was one of Denver’s finer sporting establishments, competing for customers with Big Ed Chase’s famous Palace Theater, and both places boasted stage performances and dance halls along with fine dining restaurants. But mostly they were casinos, built for the entertainment of the Denver gambling community.
As the last stop on the trail to the Rocky Mountains, Denver had become a wealthy town even before the gold and silver rush began. Pioneers crossing the Great Plains stopped there to buy supplies and catch a breath before heading into the thin air of the mountains, traveling on toward their distant promised lands. But some weary travelers decided that the supply town at the confluence of Cherry Creek and the Platte River was promised land enough, and stayed to turn Denver into the Queen City of the Plains.
Tom McKey wasn’t sure it deserved such an accolade. Compared to Atlanta or St. Louis, Denver looked pretty rough around the edges still. Its two-storied brick buildings faced board sidewalks and dirt streets, and Cherry Creek regularly flooded over with snowmelt from the mountains, washing out the footbridges and sweeping sewage into town. Along the banks of the creek, where Larimer Street crossed the temperamental waters, a hanging tree still dangled a rope noose, ready to be used again. But while Denver wasn’t quite as polished as it pretended to be, it did have its charms—the chiefest being the busiest gambling district west of Texas where a man who needed to lay low could lose himself amongst all the other sports. Like Tom McKey, who made his $10 a day dealing cards at Babb’s Variety House and did his best to stay out of trouble—and for the most part, he did.
He wrote to Mattie from his room above Long John’s Saloon, sitting at the lop-legged desk and doing his best to put into words the confusion of the past year while leaving out whatever he thought would offend her. For how could he put into words all that had happened in his life? So finally, he settled on telling her the best parts of the truth: that he’d been diagnosed with consumption, but was feeling so much better that he was sure the doctor had been wrong; that he’d been traveling in the west looking for a better climate than Texas offered; that he was living in Denver for the foreseeable future and enjoying the mountain scenery; that he was using his uncle’s name for privacy sake and that she should write to him in care of Tom McKey; that he loved her and always would and hungered for the chance to see her again. And with any luck, he’d never have to tell her the rest.
That was the Centennial Summer when the whole country commemorated the one-hundredth birthday of the American nation. In Philadelphia, there was a grand exhibition in Fairmount Park and a reopening of the renovated Independence Hall. In Washington, New York City, and San Francisco, there were parades and fireworks. Even the former Rebel states observed that historic July 4th, in their own fashion, by hoisting the Stars and Stripes alongside the Confederate battle flag.
Denver had double reason for celebration as the Colorado Territory had just voted to ratify a new constitution making it the 38th American state. But although President Ulysses S. Grant had yet to approve the document, with Colorado’s Republican leanings and Grant’s need for Republican votes in the upcoming Presidential election, there was little doubt that he would welcome the new state into the Union. So Denver celebrated both the Centennial Fourth of July and Colorado’s impending statehood with the biggest parade the territory had ever seen.
Tom McKey wasn’t one to miss such a revel, and he joined in the crush of the cheering crowd as the parade made its noisy way along the wide dirt streets of Denver. The parade featured the usual assortment of marching bands, flag-waving politicians, bunting-covered carriages, and volunteer fire companies showing off their shiny pumper cars, with the highlight being the horse-drawn “Centennial State” float, a haphazardly connected train of wagons carrying thirty-eight ladies dressed in costumes representing the thirty-eight states of the Union. The float seemed as unstable as the Union itself had been just before the War, ready to pull apart at any moment and send ladies and horses careening across 16th Street—though the danger only made the crowd press closer for a better look.
Tom saw the accident coming before it happened: the lead horse frightened by a blast of water from a pumper car, the startled rider yanking the horse to a sudden halt, the second wagon following too close behind and turning into the crowd to avoid running over the horse, the screaming onlookers stumbling backward to keep from being crushed by the wagon wheels, and the golden-haired girl who slipped and fell and would have been trampled by the crowd if Tom hadn’t seen and reached a fast hand to pull her to safety. It was just a reflex, reaching out to grab ahold of her the way he did, the whole thing happening too fast to even allow him the pleasure of having performed a gentlemanly act of heroism. But she looked up at him like he was a hero anyway, her thanks coming in gasps as she tried to catch her breath.
“Oh Sir! You saved me!” But as he helped to steady her on her feet, she winced and gasped again.
“Are you injured?” he asked quickly, his voice rising to be heard above the crowd and his eyes glancing over her for any sign of violence. She was a pretty thing, with a tumble of golden curls and a frock entirely too fancy for daytime attire, though her costume seemed somehow appropriate for the Centennial parade.
“It’s my ankle,” she replied. “I think I’ve turned it.” And with immodesty surely born of pain, she lifted her ruffled petticoats to peer at the troublesome ankle laced into scuffed leather boots.
“We’ll have to take off the boot to see if it’s broken,” he said, and was surprised when she lifted her skirt even higher. He hadn’t really meant that he would be the one removing the boot, but as she seemed to expect it of him, he obliged.
“There’s no break in the bones,” he said, gingerly pressing his fingers against her stockinged ankle. “Likely just a strain. You’ll have to stay off it for a few days while it heals. Where’s your escort? Have you a ride home?”
“No,” she replied, looking puzzled, then quickly pulled her skirts back down again as though suddenly remembering her modesty. “I always walk.”
“Well, you won’t be walkin’ anywhere today, so I reckon I’ll have to get you there myself.”
“You’re going to take me home?” she asked in surprise.
“I couldn’t very well consider myself a gentleman if I left a lady in her hour of need,” he said reasonably. And though he’d been thinking more of his own pride than of her trouble, he was touched by her response.
“Then you are a gentleman, truly,” she said in a voice barely audible above the din of the crowd, “and I thank you for calling me a lady.”
He had no time to wonder about her words as he led her limping through the press of the crowd. But after they’d gotten away from the cheering throng and he asked directions to her home, her words came back to haunt him.
“It’s not far,” she said, “just a few blocks from here, down Holladay Street.”
“Holladay Street?” he asked in surprise, though it wasn’t the familiar name that caught him. Denver did indeed have a street that shared his surname, though misspelled, in honor of old Ben Holladay, the founder of the overland mail. His surprise came from the nature of the Holladay Street neighborhood. It was just one street over from Blake Street where he lived and worked, and right in the middle of the saloon district.
“But that’s just gamblin’ halls and such,” he commented, “and no real houses. Perhaps you’ve gotten yourself all turned around, what with the fall and all.”
“Oh, I know where I am,” she replied, “but it’s all right if you don’t want to walk me there. I’ll understand.”
And all at once, a picture came together in his mind: the gaudy dressed girl, the ankle too easily shown, the surprise at being called a lady. . .
His face must have betrayed his thoughts, for before he could say what he was thinking, she said it for him.
“I’m just a working girl. I don’t expect a gentleman like yourself to bother about the likes of me.”
He shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. For though Denver was full of fallen angels, as it was full of the sporting men who gave them employment, this girl was nothing like the prostitutes he’d known in Fort Griffin. In spite of her gaudy dress, there was something almost innocent about her, something that was somehow familiar and endearing.
“I thought you knew right off,” she said. “Most men know right off . . .”
“Of course, I knew,” he said, lying to put her at ease. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve an escort home. It’s that twisted ankle that concerns me, not your choice of a profession.”
And when she put her hand on his arm, accepting the help, he almost believed the words himself.
Her home turned out to be a parlor house, and one of the nicer brothels in the saloon district that clustered around Holladay and Nineteenth Streets. She’d come to be living there after being thrown out of her own home, she said, sharing a story that was probably all too common.
She’d once been as virtuous as any other Victorian girl, until her father died and her mother remarried and the new stepfather felt he had a right to take liberties with her. She was horrified at first and shamed as things continued, but altogether too frightened to do anything to stop the situation. Then one afternoon her mother found her with the stepfather, and put her out into the street. Her protestations that it was all his doing and none of her own fell on deaf ears. The stepfather called her a scheming strumpet who had planned the seduction to discredit him in the eyes of his beloved and worthy wife, and her mother chose to believe the lie. So all at once, the girl found herself homeless and moneyless with no training to become anything other than what she was.
She was fortunate to have found herself a position in that Denver parlor house, as there she had the security of a house mother who made sure she was dressed and fed as long as her customers paid up. The streets were full of girls who didn’t fare so well. There were hurdy-gurdy dancers who wore short skirts and showed themselves off in the saloons, street-walkers who enticed men out of passing carriages, whores in dingy shacks called “cribs,” and billboard girls who sat holding advertising signs and doing business from the stools they sat upon. Parlor house prostitutes didn’t have to lower themselves to such baseness to make a living, only open their well-appointed bedrooms to men who paid them good money for what some girls had to do for free. That was the way the girl looked at it, anyhow, considering her present circumstances better than the horror of being regularly molested by her mother’s husband.
After hearing her sad story, Tom couldn’t quite bring himself to accept the offer she made him in repayment of his kindness. She’d called him a gentleman and he felt compelled to behave as one, though he was sorely tempted not to be. Why not accept such an offer and take an available girl when there was no hope for a future with the one he loved? Mattie would never be able to give him such pleasure, and neither would Kate. . .
It was the unbidden memory of Kate Fisher that made him take a hasty leave of the golden-haired parlor house girl and head for the first saloon he could find. Thinking of Kate in St. Louis, where he was surrounded by memories, was understandable. But thinking of her now, and in the same thought with Mattie, seemed like a sacrilege. It was Mattie he loved and Mattie he’d vowed to remember always and, in his own fashion, he was trying to be faithful to her, but having Kate Fisher’s memory insinuate itself into his mind made him feel more unfaithful than sleeping with a whole host of fallen angels.
It took a tumbler of whiskey to wash away the uneasy memory of Kate Fisher, but by the time he’d headed back to his little room above Long John’s Saloon, he could hardly remember what had made him so distressed in the first place. Kate had been nothing but a diversion to him, and was less than nothing to him now. Mattie was his love and always would be, and he felt a sudden need to write to her again, filling three pages with stories about the Union Pacific Railroad, the rampaging Sioux, and the Centennial excitement in Denver. And by the time he’d signed his name and dried the wet ink with a dusting of sand, he almost believed himself that his life was nothing but a pleasant travelogue.
Almost. There was still a weight on his soul that wouldn’t let go, a weight of watching two men die at his hand and knowing that he could never go back to being the man that he had once been. He wasn’t a gentleman anymore, at least not the kind of gentleman that Mattie had known. He was Tom McKey, Faro dealer, and he couldn’t think of any good reason not to take the parlor house girl up on her tempting offer. It was convenient that she lived just one street over from Long John’s Saloon, so he wouldn’t have to wait long for the pleasure.
There was a newsboy at the corner of Holladay and 16th Streets, like there was at every major intersection in town, hawking the Rocky Mountain News. But unlike most days when the newsies had to scramble to sell off their load of freshly printed papers, the lad on Holladay Street was scrambling to keep from being knocked down by a crowd of men fighting to get a copy of the paper. The headlines he hollered out explained the frenzy:
“Satanic Sioux! General Custer’s command slaughtered like sheep! Seventeen commissioned officers and Custer family killed! The battle field a slaughter pen in which lie three-hundred and fifty boys in blue!”
The paper was filled with the rest of the story and Tom McKey could imagine it all as he read those first reports out of the Black Hills. Custer was already a hero before he died and became a legend immediately after. But he was less than one month dead when another hero fell and entered into Western legend right behind him, making that Centennial Summer a summer of legends—and the papers were full of the stories.
Wild Bill Hickok was a different sort of hero than George Armstrong Custer—a gambler, gunfighter, and sometime lawman who was known for his flashy cross-draw and flashier clothes. But even Custer, for whom Hickok had once been a scout, recognized Wild Bill’s finer qualities, calling him, “One of the most perfect examples of physical manhood I ever saw . . . entirely free from bluster and bravado . . . his skill with rifle and pistol unerring.” Skillful as Hickok was, however, he couldn’t see behind his back, which was how the cowardly Jack McCall was able to shoot him to death at a card table in Deadwood, South Dakota.
Wild Bill had gone to the gold-gulch of Deadwood to do a little prospecting and a lot of card-playing, as he was doing on an August night at the Number Ten Saloon. The poker game had been going on for hours already and Bill was about to play the winning hand when a shot from a Colt’s revolver shattered the smoky air. The bullet hit Wild Bill in the back of the head and he toppled over backwards before he could put down that winning hand—a pair of aces and a pair of eights that quickly became known as “The Deadman’s Hand.”
The ignoble death of Wild Bill Hickok might have inspired Tom McKey to keep his own pistol loaded and ready to pull, but he was wary of getting himself into trouble as Denver had a gun ordinance and thirteen overzealous policemen who liked to enforce the law. So he left his pistol packed away in his traveling case and kept the Hell-Bitch with him for protection instead, slid neatly down into the leather shoulder holster he’d had made for himself in Galveston.
And if what Mattie wrote was true, in the letter he received in answer to his own, the real danger wasn’t in Denver anyhow—but all the way back in Georgia.
Mattie must have written to him as soon as she received his own letter, as hers was dated just a week later, though he didn’t get the letter for another month after that. The trouble was, he hadn’t gotten used to his alias yet, and didn’t notice the name T.S. McKey listed in the Advertised Letters column of the newspaper. It was the parlor house girl who pointed it out to him when he brought the paper along with him one hot summer afternoon.
“Why, that’s you, Tom,” she said with something like surprise. “What’s the ‘S’ stand for?”
“Sylvester,” he replied, figuring he might as well give his uncle’s middle name since he was already using the rest of it. And as long as he was using all of that, he might as well add to the charade by giving a place of residence as well. “Thomas Sylvester McKey, late of Valdosta, Georgia.”
“Valdosta. That sounds lovely,” she said, as she helped him out of his jacket and herself out of a ribbon-tied chemise. “What does it mean?”
“Nothin’, really. It’s a play on the name of the Governor’s plantation: Val d’Aosta. Which was named after a castle in Italy, so I hear. I reckon namin’ the town after the Governor’s place was meant to curry his favor. But all Valdosta seems to favor is bugs. Summers are mighty humid and natty there, not like here. Used to be, the air felt so close you couldn’t catch a breath in August.”
“I’m glad you like it here,” she said, smiling. “I like having you here.”
She certainly seemed to, the way she welcomed him whenever he felt like stopping by and only charged him half her usual fee. She would have given her time for free, she said, if her house mother would have allowed it. But she was a working girl and had to show a profit for her favors, and Tom didn’t mind paying the price. Besides, not paying her would have made the visits seem like something more than he was willing to make them—and she was, after all, just a prostitute. And knowing there was a letter waiting for him, most likely a letter from Mattie, reminded him that he was only in the parlor house for a little pleasure, and nothing beyond that.
The letter made him forget the golden-haired girl, or anything else, with the news it brought from Atlanta. For behind Mattie’s affectionate words was a warning he hadn’t expected. Though he had tried to hide the killing in Fort Griffin from her, she’d heard all about it already—from a Pinkerton’s Detective who came calling at the Hollidays’ home in Atlanta.
We didn’t believe him, of course, Mattie wrote in her delicate and feminine hand, heart-felt words still believing the best of him.
Who could believe such a story? For though I have sometimes chastised you for being reckless and quick-tempered, I know, dear cousin, that you would never do such a thing as the man from Pinkerton’s has accused you of. So, knowing that he was mistaken in his charges against you, charges which I do not have the heart to here repeat, I felt it no wrong in keeping from him that which he came seeking, which was a photograph of you. Of course, I have one, the daguerreotype you had made in Philadelphia, and which I cherish as a memento of you.
So thinking it then the best thing to do, I lied straight out when he asked if we had any such possession, and told him we had nothing to help him. He seemed disatisfied to hear the news, as the Detectives Agency has been commissioned by the Army to aid in finding you, and without a proper portrait of you they cannot accomplish much. Mother was fearful of displeasing the man, after what we have heard of that company’s dealings in Missouri, and would have shown the portrait to him herself, if Lucy hadn’t shushed her. I have never seen my sister Lucy shush Mother before, so you can imagine the family’s astonishment—and my own grateful feelings for having such a loyal and clever sister.
It has been a blessing to have my family here with me. I say here and by that I mean Atlanta, as Mother has let our house in Jonesboro and moved with my sisters and Jim Bob here to be near Uncle John and his family. Her circumstances have been very difficult, as you might imagine, since her widowhood, being left with a large and helpless family and no means of support for her household. Uncle John has been kind, as always, in helping to provide for us here, taking a house for us just down the road from his own home. We are happy here, as much as can be without our dear father to provide for his loving children and wife. Mother still grieves, though she tries to hide it from the children.
She cannot hide it from me, as I have a heavy heart of my own, worrying over you every day. How I long to have you back home again, safe from these awful charges which I cannot bring myself to believe! I will not believe them, unless you tell me in your own hand that they are true.
Please write soon, and tell me that all is well with you. Until then, my prayers are with you always, as my love is always, dear John Henry.
He read the letter over twice to make sure he had understood her properly, then tried to settle his shaken thoughts. The Army had followed him after all, at least far enough to know that he wasn’t in Texas anymore, and had trailed him all the way to his relatives in Georgia. But thankfully, no one but Mattie knew of his whereabouts, and she would never tell them that he was far off in Colorado. He was safe for awhile in his life as a Denver Faro dealer, though it wasn’t only his own safety that concerned him, but that of Mattie and her family.
They had reason to be fearful of the Pinkerton Agency, as Mattie’s mother was surely well aware. The detectives had caused a national outcry earlier that year trailing the outlaw Jesse James and his gang, hounding them day and night and putting an armed guard around the home of Jesse’s mother. Jesse wasn’t there, but his young half-brother was, and when the Pinkertons threw a bomb into the house, it was the brother who died and the mother who lost an arm in the explosion. It was an unfortunate accident, the Agency said, but worth the cost if the outlaw was captured in the end.
They hadn’t caught the James gang yet, but with their dogged determination and their motto We Never Sleep, they would probably catch them soon enough. And what if the Pinkertons went after John Henry like they’d gone after Jesse James? What if they went back to Mattie’s home, waiting for his return that she was always hoping for, and made some awful mischief there? What if it were Mattie who ended up paying the price for his misdeeds the way Jesse James’ family had paid for his? The thought that his own actions might cause her any harm left him shaking and sick at heart.
The solution was obvious: leave his alias and his Colorado safety behind and go back to Texas where the Army could have their shot at him. Then the Pinkertons would have no wanted man to trail nor any reason to molest his relatives back in Georgia. The solution was obvious—but he couldn’t bring himself to consider it. Going back to Texas now, if the Army were still looking for him, would likely mean hanging for that unintentioned killing of the Buffalo Soldier. If he’d meant to kill the man, he might have been willing to take the consequences of his actions. But it had been nothing more than a drunken mistake, and he wasn’t ready to throw his life away for that. The best he could do was to ease Mattie’s concerns by writing and telling her what she wanted to hear—that the Army was wrong in their charges against him and that soon enough the Pinkertons would realize as much and give up their search. As for easing his own concerns, he’d send a letter back to Fort Griffin asking Shaughnessey to find out what he could about the Army’s plans and to let him know when things settled down some there. And in the meantime, he’d have to keep on pretending to be Tom McKey, with nothing but Faro and parlor girls on his mind.
The world of a Denver sporting man covered only a few city blocks, encompassed by the winding bed of Cherry Creek to the west and 16th Street to the east, by Curtis Street to the south and the tracks of the Union Pacific Railroad to the north. Most of the saloons and brothels, the gaming halls and varieties theaters lay within those confines, making the sporting district a little world of its own. Unless a gambling man had important business elsewhere, he could spend all his days and nights on Wynkoop or Wazee, Blake Street or Holladay Street, Larimer, Lawrence, or Arapahoe and never venture out into the more proper neighborhoods of the city.
The unofficial boundary line between sporting district and city proper was the brick bastion of the Inter-Ocean Hotel occupying half a block at 16th and Blake Street. The Inter-Ocean had claim to be the swankiest hotel west of the Mississippi with its only competition being its sister hotel, the Inter-Ocean in Cheyenne, since both boasted gentlemen’s saloons, billiard parlors, basement barbershops, and annexes that housed bathrooms with real indoor plumbing just a short walk from the guest rooms. But what really set the Inter-Ocean apart from any other hotel in the West was that its millionaire owner, Mr. Barney Ford, had started out life as a slave—a story that all of Denver couldn’t help rumoring about.
He’d been born on a Virginia plantation in 1822, but as soon as he went to work in the tobacco fields, Barney knew he was meant for better things. Past the fields and up where the smell of manure on the tobacco didn’t foul the night air, Barney’s white master lived in easy elegance in a sprawling manor house on a hill. Barney spent his days pulling tobacco and gazing up at that house, and promised himself that someday he would have a house even grander than his master had. But other than running away, there was little hope for him to ever break free of his slavery. So young Barney determined that as soon as the chance came, he would run for his life and become a free man.
The chance was slow in coming, though. Barney’s master sold him down south to a Georgia hog-farmer, an ignorant man who hardly knew how to manage his own affairs, much less care for his Negro slaves. The one thing the master did do well was to beat his slaves whenever he’d been drinking too much mountain whiskey. But he wasn’t a discriminatory man; he beat his own wife about as hard as he beat his slaves, and his children only a little less.
Then one year when the hog business was going slow, the farmer hired Barney out to a gold camp in the north Georgia mountains, and Barney got his first case of gold fever. Men were getting rich just by filling tin pans full of gold-laden water from the cold mountain streams. It didn’t seem to take any talent to get that gold—just patience and a little luck. Barney had patience, he figured; living in slavery had taught him that. And as for luck, he figured he could get a little of that, too.
But first he had to get his freedom, and in Barney’s mind that meant getting out of Georgia. So when the hog-farmer hired out some of his Negroes to a man who ran a riverboat on the Mississippi River, Barney made sure he was one of the ones who went. They said the Mississippi was a wide watery road that led from the slave states in the South to the free states in the North, and Barney was headed for freedom. When the riverboat dropped anchor at Quincey, Illinois, he jumped ship and made for the Underground Railroad and didn’t stop running until he got to Chicago.
He was twenty-six years old when he started life as a free man, but he felt like he was just being born. For the first time in his life, he could decide for himself what he wanted to do and who he wanted to be. He had no surname—slaves didn’t need one, being property instead of people—so his first task was to choose a name for himself. Near the house where he was staying in Chicago was the Baldwin Locomotive Company which had just unveiled its newest engine, the Lancelot Ford. Barney didn’t much care for the name Lancelot, but he liked the sound of the name Ford, and he liked the idea of naming himself after something that was going places, like that locomotive engine, so the slave boy named Barney became a man named Mr. Barney L. Ford.
The next thing he needed was an education, so he taught himself to read and write, and devoured every book he could find. He had a naturally quick mind and a hunger to learn everything all at once, and by the time the California Gold Rush started, Barney Ford was better educated than most of the white men he knew. So with the gold-fever still in his blood and that dream of a big house on a hill still in his heart, he headed west.
But going west wasn’t easy for a runaway slave in those dangerous years before the War. The trail led across Southern territory where he could be arrested and returned to his master, or hung. So he took the long way around, from Chicago to New York City, then by ship to Central America and the Nicaragua crossing. Nicaragua was a free republic and would give passage through the jungles—for a price. Barney paid the price, most of the little money he had, then took sick in the jungle and couldn’t go any farther. But he was patient, and once he recovered his strength, he opened a little tourist hotel in Nicaragua City and started saving his money for another try at the California Gold Rush. He might have even made it if Nicaragua hadn’t rescinded its anti-slave laws and forced him to flee for freedom once more.
He took passage back to Chicago and went to work for the Underground Railroad helping other slaves to freedom and making friends with abolitionist politicians. The North was full of men who wanted to show their moral fiber by being friendly with a former slave, and had Barney stayed there, he might have become one of the leading black men in the abolition movement like the fiery young Frederick Douglass.
But Barney still had gold-fever in his blood, and when the Colorado Gold Rush started in 1859, he headed west again. This time, he made it to the gold fields and did some prospecting in the diggings around Central City. Rumor had it he even found a promising strike, until he learned from an armed party of white miners that territorial law didn’t allow a colored man to file a mine claim. It was bad luck, all right, but Barney didn’t plan to give up so easily.
There were other ways to make money in a gold rush. Denver was in its first boom and almost every kind of business was turning an easy profit. Barney started out by opening a barbershop, then took the money he made from that to open a restaurant, and when the restaurant proved a success, he turned his money around again and opened a big hotel. And Barney Ford, the runaway slave, finally had a house as big as his master’s on that Virginia tobacco plantation. It was some years later that he built the first of his Inter-Ocean Hotels, when he was a wealthy man with influential friends, but it was that first hotel in gold rush Denver that was the fulfillment of his dreams.
A success like that would never have happened in Georgia, Tom McKey knew. But Colorado wasn’t like the South, tied up with traditions so old that no one even remembered how they’d started. Colorado was brand new and full of opportunity and so empty of people still that the local paper quoted an eastern editor as saying, “Colorado consists of Denver, the Kansas Pacific Railway, and scenery.”
Tom didn’t know much about the scenery himself, having never ventured up into the wall of mountains that rose to the west, peak after peak disappearing into a blue distance, but he’d heard tell of it. There were gorges up there that could swallow a wagon train whole, and forests where a man could get lost and never be heard from again. There were also gold mining towns where a man might find a fortune if he didn’t mind working for it. But Tom was content for the time being to make his money more easily, dealing the cards and betting on the games in his off-hours, profiting from the gold-dust dreams of others.
It was during one of those after-hours card games, while he was playing poker in the gentleman’s saloon at the Inter-Ocean Hotel, that Tom first met the famous Mr. Barney Ford. The Inter-Ocean’s saloon was a cut above the usual gaming rooms, with linen tablecloths and waiters serving drinks that came from the restaurant upstairs and a clientele that was expected to act accordingly. Playing cards there made Tom feel something like a gentleman again in spite of his present circumstances. But Bud Ryan, a local gambler who happened into the Inter-Ocean that same afternoon, evidently didn’t know the rules of polite society. He complained, in a voice loud enough that all the other gentlemen there could hear and words that would offend everyone, that the tablecloth was getting in the way of his cards, that the waiter was excessively slow in bringing his drinks, that the banker was slighting him on his chips—complaints which demanded an answer from the hotel staff.
The answer came in the person of Mr. Barney Ford, himself, who suggested that Ryan might be happier playing cards elsewhere.
“The Cricket Club has a card room without tablecloths, I understand, and the Lucky Break doesn’t even employ waiters. You can stand up to the bar with your fellows imbibing cheap whiskey until your boorish insides rot.”
His words were meant to be sarcasm, but seemed almost pleasant instead, coming as they were from the mellifluous voice of Mr. Ford. It was a voice that took Tom by surprise, considering the source. The slave boys he’d known, growing up in Georgia, spoke in an accent all their own: part Africa, part Appalachia, but always recognizably colored. “Nigra talk,” his father had called it, and proof that the black man could never be the cultural equal of his white masters.
But Barney Ford’s words slid off his tongue like warmed honey, rich and resonant. His carefully modulated baritone sounded something like Shakespeare and Schubert put together, poetry and music all mixed up, and if Tom hadn’t been looking right at Barney’s black face and nappy gray-streaked hair, he would have sworn the man was white. Except that he had never heard a white man who sounded so elegantly cultured— completely disproving his father’s provincial beliefs.
Bud Ryan seemed less impressed. He scowled and threw out an ugly epithet, then made the mistake of reaching into his pocket for a pistol to make his point, for in a moment he was set upon by an irate throng of hotel guests and sporting men, all scrambling to grab his handgun away. All except for Tom McKey, who found himself suddenly standing in front of Barney Ford and brandishing the Hell-Bitch like a shield, as though the beveled blade could stop a bullet in mid-air. From across the room, Bud Ryan glared at him.
It was the first time Tom had ever defended a colored man, and for the life of him he couldn’t imagine what had brought him to it. But Barney Ford accepted his uncharacteristic gesture with a half-bow.
“I am in your debt, Sir,” he said, “but you can go ahead and put that weapon away. I doubt our gambling friend will be causing any more trouble with half the Denver sporting community holding him back.”
Tom sheathed the knife, feeling suddenly foolish for his needless show of bravado.
“No debt at all, Mr. Ford,” he said with a shrug, “just hate to have my card game interrupted, that’s all . . .”
A look of something like amusement passed over Barney Ford’s dark face, then he waved a hand toward the crowd that surrounded Bud Ryan.
“Put him out please, gentlemen. This hotel will not abide riffraff.”
And as bidden, the sports gathered Bud Ryan and hustled him out of the saloon, while Barney Ford watched with untroubled eyes as though there were nothing unusual at all about a colored man giving orders to white men and having them quickly obey.
Barney Ford believed in paying his debts, as he had paid in full the first loan advanced him for his first restaurant in Denver—$9,000 repaid with interest before it was due. So John Henry shouldn’t have been surprised that Barney Ford made a point of paying back what he considered a debt on his life to the man who had stepped between him and a gunman’s aim. But it was the way the debt was repaid which confounded John Henry. For somehow finding out where he worked, Barney Ford had a long box delivered to Babb’s Variety House, and inside it a fancy gold-headed cane and a note that said only, For doing a gentlemanly job. B.L. Ford. And John Henry wasn’t sure who was more the gentleman—himself, or the former slave. One thing he did know: Emmanuel Kahn, back in Dallas, would have been pleased to see him carrying that cane and looking downright fashionable.
He wrote to Mattie about Barney Ford, hoping that she would understand something of his own amazement. Mattie was a forward-thinker, for a proper Southern girl, but she had surely never seen a colored millionaire nor a black man who could command such instant respect. She wrote back that she would like to meet a man like Mr. Barney Ford someday, and that his rise to prominence only underscored the importance of education, for if a run-away slave could turn his life to such profitable use, what things might a white man accomplish? Their Uncle John, she pointed out, had been the first man in the Holliday family to attain a college education, and he was not only well-off but had set an example of accomplishment for his sons—and his favorite nephew, as John Henry had proven by his own professional education.
It was her mention of his education that ruined the rest of the letter for him, reminding him that he was living a life below both his own station and her expectations. As far as Mattie knew, he was still just touring around the countryside, enjoying a little adventure before returning to Texas and his dental practice there. Sooner or later he’d have to go back, or explain to her why he couldn’t go. But until he knew that the Army had given up its search for him, he didn’t dare, though at least the Pinker-tons seemed to have lost interest in him, as Mattie said they hadn’t yet returned to Forrest Avenue.
The Pinkertons had trouble enough elsewhere, that fall, in the James boys’ retribution for the murder of their half-brother. While the ex-Confederate outlaws had always before confined their train robbery and bank hold-ups to Northern businesses operating in Southern territory, their new exploit took them north of the Mason-Dixon Line where they planned to rob a bank full of hard-earned Yankee cash. Mr. Allan Pinker-ton was, after all, a Yankee supported by Yankee money, and a strike at a bank in his own country would leave a message that the James Gang was not to be trifled with—and would bring them a tidy $200,000 as well, retribution and reward all rolled together.
But they were mistaken in thinking that the mild-mannered Swedes of Northfield, Minnesota would stand aside meekly as outlaws stole the town’s hard-earned savings. While Jesse and the boys tried to get the unwilling bank teller to open the safe, the townsfolk gathered in the streets bringing whatever weapons they could find: handguns, shotguns, canes, meat-cleavers. And when one of the outlaws took a shot at the uncooperative teller, the people of Northfield went into bloody action.
Frank James caught a slug in the leg. Charley Pitts took a bullet in the ankle before a blast from a Remington shattered his shoulder. Cole Younger took a shoulder hit too, and Bob Younger was shot in the thigh and the wrist. Their brother Jim got half his upper jaw torn away. Bill Chadwell got both eyes shot out, and Clell Miller had his face blown off. Only Jesse James, himself, was left uninjured, and he led what remained of his gang on a ragged run from town and the posse that would surely be following.
Gruesome as it was, the story of the street fight seemed somehow consoling to Tom McKey as he read the gory details afterwards in the Rocky Mountain News. For if he wasn’t the man Mattie thought he was, at least he wasn’t an outlaw like Jesse James and his gang, robbing banks and waylaying trains and killing innocent bystanders for the greed of gold. He was, for the time being, just a gentleman gambler with an unlucky streak of trivial arrests and a temper that occasionally got the better of him—and the unintentioned deaths of two black men still weighing heavy on his soul.
The snows began the first of November, coming on all at once in an early-season blizzard that left the dirt streets of Denver a mess of ice and mud. Tom had seen snowy weather before, having passed two frozen winters in Philadelphia, but Denver snow was different, the flakes as big as shiny silver half-dollars, the air so dry he could hardly draw a breath. Mountain air, folks called it, and said it was bracing, but for Tom the air was too dry, leaving him with red chapped skin and burning lungs. His only recourse was staying as well-lubricated as possible, downing more than his usual daily dose of whiskey while he watched the snow pile up.
With the sudden change of climate, the streets emptied and the saloons and gambling houses filled up with sporting men coming in from the cold and making it hard to find an empty seat at a gaming table. Of course, every gambler wanted the same seat at each table: back to the wall, facing the door. No one wanted to repeat Wild Bill’s deadly mistake in having his back to the door when an enemy came along. But for Tom McKey, having his back to the door would have been better—especially when the quarrelsome Bud Ryan showed up again.
It happened on the Saturday after Thanksgiving in a Holladay Street saloon where Tom had stopped to play on his way to the parlor house. The place was crowded, but somehow he found that choice back-to-the-wall seat at a table facing the door. It was cold there, with the wind blowing snow into the saloon every time the door opened, which probably explained why the seat was free. But Tom turned his coat collar up and drank a tumbler of whiskey down and let the heat of it warm him as he joined into the poker game, quickly losing himself in the play of the cards. There was nothing like a gambling game to make a man forget everything else—even the importance of being wary in a crowded saloon.
So Bud Ryan saw him first as he came in from the cold after being thrown out of another saloon up the street. Ryan had already drunk his share of liquor, by the smell of him, and was already in a wrath when he spotted the man who had stepped between him and Barney Ford and seemed glad to have an opportunity to make amends, striding straight to Tom’s poker table.
“Damned if this day ain’t turnin’ out all right after all!” Bud said with a snarl of a smile, leaning over the other players and putting his hand to his hip. He had his pistol back, Tom could see, and was playing toward it with eager fingers.
There was a sudden clamor around the table as the other players pushed their chairs back, scrambling to be away from the coming fight. But Tom had nowhere to run, his own chair already flush against the cold wall of the saloon, his heart gone as suddenly cold as the brick. Bud Ryan’s hand inched closer to the pistol as he leaned forward, his whiskey breath hot and angry.
Tom’s heart stopped, but his body reflexed in self-defense, his hand sliding into his coat and the Hell-Bitch slicing out and up into flesh and bone. The knife flayed open neck and cheek and brow, one gaping red wound that tore across Bud Ryan’s face and nearly took out his eye as well. The gambler caught at his pistol then let it go, his hand slapping at his face as though he’d been mosquito-bit, before he realized that blood was pouring out of him. He gasped then started squealing like a butchered pig, all the fight gone out of him. The rest of the saloon had gone as quiet as a graveyard, all eyes on the man with the monster knife in his hand.
Tom started shaking in mingled horror and relief, then dropped the bloodied Hell-Bitch onto the table. There was no reason to run, and nowhere to go if he did. Everyone in the saloon had seen him knife Bud Ryan, and soon enough the Denver City police would arrive to arrest him. His only consolation was the hope that Ryan would be arrested as well for provoking the incident in the first place. Then another, more interesting thought swept into his mind. His Uncle Tom had been right when he’d first introduced John Henry to the Hell-Bitch in his boyhood days back in Valdosta. You didn’t throw a knife that big, you cut with it, cross-draw from the shoulder holster, slicing up the enemy like slaughtering a hog. The Hell-Bitch had, after all, started out as a meat cleaver on his grandfather’s cotton plantation, where the children used to sit in the shade of a dogwood tree and drink sweet curdled syllabub.
The memory made John Henry smile.
Justice Whittemore called the case of the Holladay Street incident into court the Tuesday following Thanksgiving, but Tom never made an appearance. Tom McKey was back in Valdosta where he belonged, living his honest and upstanding life while the man who had stolen his name made bail and took the first train out of Denver. For whatever else John Henry Holliday was, he wasn’t so low as to sully his Uncle’s good name with an undeserved jail sentence for assault with a deadly weapon. His Uncle Tom was still a gentleman, after all, and deserved better than that.