We glide down Pike’s Peak, bluer than the ocean beneath its white coronet, into a hurdy-gurdy metropolis of macadam and brick, teeming with surreys, streetcars, beer wagons, top hats, and spinning parasols, “O Susannah!” fiddling on the soundtrack, white letters with square serifs on the scrim: DENVER. Crowding in for a tight shot of the scripted legend on a sign, swinging crazily from chains attached to a porch roof trimmed in gingerbread, we remove our hats, pat down our hair, and prepare to enter the Wood Palace. We step back a moment to allow a burly party in shirtsleeves and handlebars to hurl a drunken saddle tramp out through the swinging doors, then join the customers inside.
The main room, two stories high and hung with a chandelier that doubles as a trapeze, features green baize gaming tables, a mahogany bar as long as the Mayflower and more cunningly carved, a stage, and a high ballustraded hallway with stairs cantilevering up to it; nymphs and satyrs randy about in oil on canvas at the top, bordered by bronze cherubim. All the tables are in use and none of the six bartenders is idle. The usual chubby quartette gallops in sparkling leotards onstage; if we strain our ears, we may detect the anachronistic notes of a can-can. This is an entertainment after all, and not a historical tale.
We’re just in time to see that high railing collapse and a pair of battlers fall ten feet to the table beneath, demolishing it and interrupting a lively game of faro. Once again the burly fellow goes to work.
We suspect, of course, that all this is staging. The Wood Palace’s real business is conducted behind the numbered doors lining that second-story hallway. From one of them, if our fortune continues (and this is the same as catching a glimpse of Victoria passing through the Buckingham gate in her coach), Nell Dugan may make an appearance before the last drunk is swept out.
Late in life, when the laws of time and nature had packed off with those physical charms that had made her a doubtful subject for serious journalism, Nell told a reporter from the Post that she’d come to America at fourteen with just a dollar and forty cents in her pocket. Matronly vanity gave her license to pare six years off her age, and social discretion to leave out mention of the letter of introduction she’d sewn inside the lining of her shabby coat, addressed by the mayor of Limerick to Michael McFee, president and principal stockholder of the Denver Topical Mining Company.
It was an arrangement of convenience for all three parties. The mayor’s wife had become suspicious to the point of certainty, and Nell had placed in safekeeping a number of letters of an indiscreet character written to her in his hand. McFee, a confederate of the mayor’s before emigrating ten years before, lived like Vanderbilt so far as the scale of life in the Colorado Territory could support, and desired both a mistress and a taste of the companionship of old Erin; Nell chafed at the restraints placed upon her by a puritanical father and a farmer husband who stank perennially of sod. “It was like going to bed in me own grave,” she told the reporter, who recorded the remark in his notes but forebore to publish it. The mayor stood her passage to New York, McFee her train fare to Denver, where the question of her accommodations pivoted upon the impression she made. It was a gamble; but like any good gambler, she was well aware of the odds, and that they were in her favor. A photograph made at the time the article appeared in the Post suggests, beneath the folds of fat of a prosperous middle age, something of the stake she brought to the table at twenty. Forty years of good Irish whisky, half-dollar cheroots, and carnal calisthentics may thicken the waist and coarsen the skin, but can neither alter the impudent tilt of the nose nor dim the devil in the eye.
McFee was a gambler as well, and knew a good hand when it was dealt. He set Nell up as titular owner of a former boardinghouse on Holladay Street that had been converted first into a hotel for prospectors weary of canvas and thrice-boiled coffee, then into a saloon, and finally into a “melodeon”; a designation made popular by San Francisco, promising all the entertainments of a debauched civilization adrift in the wilderness. Opium could be consumed there, as well as liquor in the original bottles, women who did not smell like bacon fat and their last customer, keno and cards, and music by the best third-rate orchestras west of the Gaiety in Kansas City. It was a profitable enterprise, reducing the strain on McFee’s pocketbook, and ran smoothly enough on its own to place Nell’s charms at his disposal whenever his business affairs got the better of his nervous system. Seen in this light, his situation makes it difficult to look upon his untimely death as a tragedy.
“The Wood Palace” was a misnomer with a legitimate pedigree. Built of brick to comply with the new city ordinance requiring all new construction to be of sturdy, noncombustible material, it occupied the site of its original namesake, which had been swept away by a flood in 1864, rebuilt, and consumed by fire in 1870. It was one of the city’s more enduring institutions, respected for its tradition of survival, if not for the nature of its business.
The Panic of ‘73—brought on by greed fueled by the economic boom following the Union victory in 1865—brought thousands of investors from private Pullmans down to shank’s mare, without a penny for a streetcar, while the speculators who had precipitated it found themselves forced to order champagne of a less fashionable vintage. It was in this climate that Michael McFee paused to confer with his attorney before the offices of the Denver Times, which had libeled him, and interrupted his consultation to greet a pedestrian who recognized him from the most recent stockholders meeting at the Denver Topical Mining Company. Following an exchange of pleasantries, the stockholder produced a pistol and shot him twice in the stomach. McFee died six weeks later, raving for ice water and oysters; his assailant, who turned out to be a former clerk fired by McFee’s company, took a short drop through a trapdoor and broke his neck.
Nell was saddened, but alert. Through a lawyer, she purchased the Wood Palace outright from McFee’s estate, and continued as she had, only now with full access to the profits, which she reinvested in the business, securing its reputation as the finest establishment of its kind on Holladay, a wide-open street in a wide-open town.
Among the improvements she added was a suite of rooms in the basement, accessible only by a trapdoor hidden beneath a heavy Persian rug in the back parlor, where tenants were accommodated in absolute secrecy, at rates that rivaled those of the Astor House in Manhattan. Although none of the legendary Astor luxuries was in evidence, highwaymen could rest there in relative comfort while heavily armed men combed caves and barns the countryside over looking for them. Nell did not keep a guest book, but had she done so, the signatures of the outlaw luminaries who had taken advantage of her hospitality would have crowned the collection of any autograph hunter of sinister bent.
As a result of her double income, Nell Dugan was the wealthiest unattached woman in Denver. Her dresses were cut to her petite frame from organdy of a quality that came dear after the collapse of the cotton industry in the defeated South—deep purple was her color of choice at night, lavender during the day—and she wore peacock feathers in her thick auburn hair, her best feature, for public appearances at her establishment. She kept her creamy skin pale beneath a vast collection of parasols, and her carriage-and-pair were the envy of Denver’s newly rich. She made it a point to take them out often, and to drop as much as a thousand dollars on a dubious hand at poker, her only addiction, by way of inspiring confidence in her clandestine guests; a woman of such conspicuous means was far less likely to turn them in for the reward than the storied prostitute with a heart of gold. It was a reality of frontier economics that internal organs assayed out at considerably less than twelve dollars per Troy ounce.
While the spring runoff was floating miners’ tents on the eastern face of the Rockies, the entire Ace-in-the-Hole Gang stayed dry snoring and playing poker (for stakes much lower than Nell’s notorious “thousand-burners”) in the hidden rooms beneath the Wood Palace. The money Charlie Kettleman had reclaimed from Mme. Mort-Davies made the stop affordable, and the fuss the gang had created in Salt Lake City made it imperative. The Pinkertons had never stopped looking for them in response to the robbery of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, and the wire Philip Rittenhouse had sent Allan Pinkerton after reading of the Overland fiasco in the Deseret News had announced their recent whereabouts to the national press. That very day, agents of the Denver branch had searched the upper and lower stories and the basement storage rooms on the other side of four feet of solid masonry.
“You should of put a round in her.” Black Jack Brixton threw in his cards.
Charlie raked in the pot. “What’s the point? We got the money.”
“It would of put her fat friend in some other line of work. Next time we open an empty safe I’ll shut you up in it.”
“That’s my job,” Ed Kettleman said. “He ain’t your brother.”
“If he was I’d dig up my mother and punch her in the mouth.”
Tom Riddle listened to the conversation with a hand cupping one ear. “You told me your mother’s alive.”
“I’d shoot her and bury her first.”
Charlie said, “I never busted a cap on a woman or a child.”
“You never busted a cap on a bottle of Old Gideon,” Ed said. “You couldn’t hit a three-hundred-pound Chinaman with a scattergun.”
“Amateurs got to be discouraged,” said Brixton. “You kill a man’s woman, it takes the fight right out of him.”
Ed shuffled the deck. “You ought at least to put the boots to her before you let her go, or brung her back for the rest of us. I do like to shinny up a tall woman.”
“She had a face like Tom’s bay mare.”
“What’s that? It was dark, weren’t it?”
Breed said, “We going to jabber or play cards?” He was down a hundred and fifty.
“That bay mare’s a good ride,” said Tom, who’d only half heard what Ed said. “I ate the best horse I ever had in California. One time—”
“Jacks or better.” Ed dealt. “You know, there’s a mint right here in town. I don’t reckon them James-Youngers ever bought into a pot that big.”
Brixton said, “That’s because the federals got the whole army guarding it. This bunch can’t even stick up Mormons.”
“We got the money,” Charlie reiterated.
“I don’t appreciate being made to look the fool. You should of at least found out who the fat man was that got there first. We could of rendered him down and ate him with onions.”
“I ate an injun once,” Tom said. “He might’ve been a half-breed, meaning no offense to the breed present. California, it was. We’d been out prospecting—”
“Shut up, Tom,” said the others in unison.
Ed said, “You could leave out California and make your stories shorter. Everything you done was in California before you joined up with us. What made you leave in the first place?”
A chorus of oaths followed this injudicious query. A hail of red chips bounced off Ed’s slack-jawed face.
“There’s a story behind that,” Tom said. “It was up around Eureka; coldest place I ever been. Don’t let no one ever tell you California don’t get—”
“Why not the mint?”
Even Tom fell silent, waiting for Mysterious Bob’s next remark. Bob, who disliked poker for the conversation required, sat on one end of a brocaded settee, most of whose springs were at odds with one another, lubricating an unidentifiable component of his Winchester with an oily rag. All the other parts were spread out on the cushions.
“I been fighting the army a dozen years, same as you,” Brixton said. “They don’t beat.”
“New gold, that’s all they care about.” Bob traded the odd-shaped part for the barrel and peered inside. “I always wondered how those boys got paid, the workers and soldiers and such. You reckon they just scoop it out of the bin?”
Charlie said, “That’d make too much sense. The government don’t work that way. They send it out from Washington, same as at Fort Lincoln.”
“How do you know how the government works?” Ed asked. “You voted for Greeley.”
Bob ignored Ed. “How you reckon they send it?”
“How’s anybody send anything?” Charlie’s face changed. “Holy Christ.”
Breed looked up, frozen in the act of stealing a card from Tom’s deadwood. “Goddamn.”
“By train,” said Brixton, who’d forgotten whose bet it was.
Bob began swabbing the inside of the barrel. He’d used up his conversation for the week.
We who are privileged to sources not available to historians and the makers of legend can enjoy the frisson of knowing that while the Ace-in-the-Hole Gang was planning what scholars argue might have been the most spectacular train robbery in American history, two-fifths of the Prairie Rose Repertory Company were enjoying the more celebrated diversions on the second story of the Wood Palace, two floors above their heads. Johnny Vermillion, looking more Byronic than usual with his shirt unbuttoned halfway down his smooth, hairless chest, greeted Cornelius Ragland from the depths of a tufted velvet chair in the sitting room of his temporary suite over a glass of Napoleon from Nell Dugan’s cellar, which had recently been swept clear of Pinkertons. “Congratulations,” he said. “I was afraid you’d succumbed.”
Cornelius blushed and filled a glass from the decanter. “Only to conversation, which is quite as expensive as the other. Not that I’m consumptive; just weak. My father was a butterfly and my mother a wisp of smoke.”
“You ought to write that down.”
“It seems to me I did. Do you know I’ve submitted poetry and stories to every periodical in North America without a single acceptance? That requires talent.” He slumped onto a divan with part of the Bayeaux Tapestry wrought in the maple frame. “You’re the only man on God’s fertile earth who hasn’t tried to convince me I was born to be a secretary.”
“You’re a born thief. It’s a natural mistake.”
“I’m serious, Johnny. You’re the first person in my life to look at me and not through me. If you told me to assassinate the Czar of Russia, all I’d ask is what method you preferred.”
“A bomb, naturally. The only socially acceptable way of destroying an emperor is to blow him to smithereens. I often wonder where the Smithereens may be. In the Scottish Highlands, I suspect.”
“You’re drunk, Johnny. I’ve never seen you this way.”
“You should have known me in Chicago.”
The hall door opened and Major Davies tottered in. He wore his morning coat and his necktie was in disarray. Without preamble he plunked himself down beside Cornelius.
“You’re as red as a radish,” Johnny observed. “I thought you were back at the hotel with Lizzie.”
“She’s gone shopping with April. I left a note that I was going for a walk.”
Cornelius said, “She’ll see through that. You haven’t walked more than ten feet from one chair to another since you joined the troupe.”
“What you young single fellows don’t understand is the stability of a seasoned marriage. She’ll forgive me. Is that sherry?”
“Brandy. Pour him one, will you, Corny? I haven’t any smelling salts.”
The Major accepted a glass and drained it. “Mother’s milk. I have a grand constitution, never fear. I shall be ready to rejoin the battle in thirty minutes.”
“I only have this room for another fifteen. At this rate you’ll be impoverished in a week.”
“I doubt that. Lizzie keeps the books. Have you seen today’s Post?” The Major patted his pockets, withdrew a fold of newsprint, and sailed it into Johnny’s lap.
He unfolded it. It was torn from the front page and contained an account of that day’s Pinkerton raid on the Wood Palace. A paragraph described the Ace-in-the-Hole Gang’s reign of terror in Salt Lake City. Johnny finished reading and held it out for Cornelius to take. “I’d wondered what those fellows were about. I confess it gave me pause until I realized they had no interest in me or Corny.”
Cornelius returned the scrap to the Major. “Lizzie had a near thing. Brixton’s men are rough customers.”
“Next time, one of you can ride the bicycle, or April. She’s more accustomed to carrying a firearm than my dear Lizzie.”
“We’ll discuss it,” Johnny said. “At least we can rest assured Black Jack and his gang aren’t here.”
Brixton dreamed he was back at Lone Jack, facing the entire Yankee cavalry with two empty pistols and no cartridges on his belt. He awoke with a yell and staggered out of his room to find Breed and the Kettlemans playing three-handed stud and Bob putting his carbine back together. “Where’s Tom?”
Breed said, “He went upstairs for a drink. He said that badger hole in California ruined him for tight places.”
“Why in hell didn’t nobody stop him?”
“It’s just so damn peaceful with him gone,” Charlie said.
“Go fetch him. Anyone recognizes him, we’ll ride our next train in irons.”
“Deal me out.” Charlie threw in his hand and rose.
“Don’t you get recognized,” Brixton called after him.
Charlie found Tom leaning against the wall just inside the batwing doors to the street, smoking a cigar. “Jack says come back. He got up on the wrong side.”
“He went to bed on the wrong side. Let me finish my smoke first.”
“Me, too, then. Nell’s scared we’ll set the place on fire we light up down there.” Charlie got out his makings and rolled a cigarette. “What’s the fight about?”
On the boardwalk in front of the building, a tall woman in a flat straw hat and a big bustle stood with her back to them, waggling a finger in Clyde Canebreak’s big polished black face. Clyde, in his bright red Zouave tunic, greeted customers at the door and threw out undesirables, often two at a time.
“The old lady says her husband’s inside, wants to talk to him. Clyde ain’t having any.”
“She ought to be happy he’s still got lead in his pencil.”
“I reckon she likes to have him do all his scribbling at home.”
Clyde laid one of his coal-scuttle hands on the woman’s shoulder and turned her gently aside from the door, toward the carriage she had waiting. Charlie recognized the gold device of the Coronet Hotel on the door.
He saw her face then. The match he’d lit stung his hand. He cried out and dropped it.
She started at the noise and looked his way. The blood slid from her face in a sheet.