Iron Ties Part 24

Sat.u.r.day evening, Doc was late to the game. Inez wondered whether one of his patients had taken a turn for the worse and half expected to see him arrive, brow furrowed, mouth downturned. But when he finally limped in, he was beaming and flouris.h.i.+ng a copy of The Independent. "Masterful article, my dear Elliston. Now the town knows that The Citizen is on his way, as promised. General Grant in Leadville. 'Twill be a visit to remember."

"Well, Grant's going to have to walk from the Boulevard," said Jed. "Snow's not having any luck clearing owners.h.i.+p t.i.tles to those lots north of town. I understand the grading and track-laying crews have come to a dead halt."

Doc harrumphed.

Inez tensed.

"Snow's doing all he can," said Doc. "A sorry state, when a few can hold the city and railway hostage. Not a good showing for our guests."

"That means more decorations," Inez cut in, seeing Jed bristle. "Mr. Evan, have you any more bunting?" The only piece left in the saloon was still hanging over the buffalo, the rest having disappeared long ago, along with the dried and brittle pine boughs.

Evan sucked in his upper lip. Inez could almost see him mentally scanning his inventory. "I did order extra, Mrs. Stannert, knowing that Grant's visit was a possibility. A gamble, but I believe it's paying off now. I'll save some for you. I'll bet anything in red, white, and blue will be worth its weight in silver over the next couple of weeks."

"How long will Grant be staying?" Cooper asked.

"About five days." Doc headed for the sideboard. "We've got a full plate for him. Events and tours from morning to the wee hours. And Mrs. Grant as well. A sterling company is arriving with him. Governor Routt, Governor Hunt, Governor Smith of Wisconsin, General Palmer, and others. The Union Veteran a.s.sociation will be handling the hospitality. And as I have some small voice in organizing the schedule...well, Mrs. Stannert, I can't promise, but I will do my best to see that you have the opportunity to meet the Great Man yourself."

"Me?" Inez nearly dropped her cards.

"Don't forget your local press, Doc," Jed interjected.

"Of course not, of course not." Doc brought over a brandy for himself and set a second in front of Inez. "For our lovely hostess." He raised his own gla.s.s to the table. "To General Ulysses S. Grant, commander in chief of the Union army during the war and former president of these United States."

Inez hoisted her snifter with the rest. Her goblet and Doc's met, ringing with crystal clarity.

"Seen the good reverend of late, Mrs. Stannert?" Doc settled in his chair.

She pursed her lips and made to study her hand intently. "I believe he's out of town."

"So soon?" Doc appeared to catch himself, then looked around at the table. "Well, since you're deep into this hand already, I'll just wait until the next."

Soooo, does Doc know something about this mysterious trip? I'll need to find a time to pull him aside and ask him a few questions.

It was good that the saloon was doing well of late and didn't require Inez's winning that night to pay the bills. Her mood turned blacker and blacker and her attention wandered, with the expected results that she lost more than she made in the house rake.

"I'm afraid we must end for tonight, gentlemen," she remarked at one thirty. "And, I have good news for you. In one week, well before General Grant's scheduled arrival, our room upstairs should be ready for us."

"Excellent." Evan peered at her over the top of his gla.s.ses. "It's been a long time coming, for you and Abe."

"And I do hope that, those of you who are not otherwise engaged, might drop in tomorrow-or should I say later today-and see the Fairplays. They'll be doing something special from Henry the Fifth at three in the afternoon, a sort of salute to the military man I gather, to honor Grant's impending visit. You can come and spend a little of that money you all won from me tonight."

"I'll be here, without a doubt." Doc ran a hand over his hair. "a.s.suming, of course, there's no sudden crisis that demands my attention."

Sunday afternoon, Inez paused from her bartending duties to wipe the perspiration from her forehead and look around. If she didn't know better, she would have said that the Silver Queen was the only saloon open that day, for it seemed that a goodly percentage of the male population of Leadville was crammed into the large room.

Mindful of last week's successes with the Fairplays, Abe and Sol had banged together rough benches and a makes.h.i.+ft stage that could be brought into position between the kitchen pa.s.sdoor and the piano. "Y'know," Abe had said, jingling a handful of nails in one hand. "We might think about doin' this sort of thing on a regular basis. When the upstairs opens, we could knock out the wall of your gamin' room down here and put up a stage. Get the acts comin' through town. Musicians and such."

Inez held up a hand. "Whoa, Abe. You're going too fast for me. Let's get through July and see how things stand."

Still, looking around, she had to admit that Abe had a point. On the days that the Fairplays performed, the crowds came early, waiting impatiently for them to open at noon, and lingered afterward. They drank and ate more. And, there was the dollar a head charged at the door for the performance, which, even when split with the Fairplays, made a tidy sum indeed.

"Ma'am, ma'am." A small voice at the end of the bar caught Inez's attention. Maude Fairplay's maid was standing by the bottom of the stairs, looking frightened, but determined.

A couple of the drinkers nearby looked at her askance.

"A Chinee in Leadville," muttered one. "Thought we ran 'em all out of town last year."

"Gentlemen, you are talking about Mrs. Fairplay's private maid," said Inez haughtily, sweeping around to place a protective arm around the tiny woman's shoulders. "I'll thank you to be civil."

The maid whispered, "The missus, she has need of a...." She blushed. "Lacing, if you please. Broken. No extras."

Inez turned to Abe and shouted to be heard above the noise, "I'll be back shortly." She headed upstairs with the maid.

Maude was in the dressing room, staring at her reflection in the mirror, high tragedy written on her features.

She swung around, holding her black-satin-trimmed corset up to her torso, giving an excellent view of the swell of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "Thank you for coming to our aid. The extra laces are somewhere, who knows where, and I will never fit into my dress without some tight lacing."

Inez flung open her wardrobe, pulled out a drawer and hunted through extra shoelaces, a spare b.u.t.tonhook, various ribbons, and lace cuffs.

She heard Maude's gasp and turned around to see her staring into the wardrobe. Inez followed her gaze and realized she was staring at Mark's clothes, all hung neatly. Waiting.

"You kept his clothes," she said faintly.

Inez reached out and touched the silver-and-gold threaded waistcoat, his favorite. "I suppose, in the back of my mind, I keep expecting him to return. But it's been a long time now, and I no longer know if I really want him." She froze, realizing what she'd just said, and looked back at Maude.

Maude's face was frozen as well. "So. He's not dead."

Inez, cursing herself for the slip of the tongue, closed the wardrobe doors firmly, and handed the lace to the maid. "He may as well be. He walked out, more than a year ago, and I've not heard a thing from him since. Left me and our son to fend for ourselves."

Maude looked as if she might faint. "You mean, he may be out there, somewhere? That might explain...." She stopped.

The maid laced the slender cord and began pulling it tight.

"Explain what?" Inez felt an uneasy dread.

"I...hesitate...to say," gasped Maude. Her waist contracted, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s plumped up above the frilly edging topping the corset as her maid jerked and pulled. "Oh...Mrs. Stannert...I don't...wish...to fuel any hopes...or fears...on your part, but...."

"Tell me!" Inez gripped the handle of the wardrobe, willing Maude to spit it out.

"It...was...Central City. Two...months ago? C.A. thinks...I...was having an...attack of the...vapors. A bit of female...hysteria."

The maid tied the cord and backed away to the trunk.

Maude took a shallow breath, then a slightly deeper one. "I need to be able to breathe, if I'm to project my voice." She stopped, seeing Inez's expression.

"All I can tell you is, I'd only seen him once that time in Dodge, several years ago. But there, in Central City, in the first row, was a man who...well, I thought...although he was thinner in the face than I remembered. I nearly fainted dead away on the stage. But I'm a professional, and I'm proud to say I carried on and no one knew. Except for C.A. He sensed something was wrong. We talked about it later."

"Central City." Inez stared at the sunburst carved on the wardrobe panel, its lines burning into her mind as if she gazed on the actual sun itself. "Less than two days' journey from Leadville."

She wrenched open the door of the wardrobe and began yanking Mark's clothes off the hangers, pitching them with venomous energy into the corner of the room.

"Mrs. Stannert!" Maude rushed forward and grasped her arm. "Please. Don't listen to a silly woman's babbling. One face, among so many. The focus of the stage, my imagination-"

"Oh, you're not the first to report a possible sighting." Inez ceased her flinging and stared stonily at the heap of trousers and fancy dress s.h.i.+rts, piled higgledy-piggledy in the shadows.

"Please, talk to C.A. I'm sorry to have said anything at all. C.A. and I, we talk about everything, there are no secrets between us." Her face softened from despair to a sad smile. "He knows about all my...peccadillos. My weaknesses. He will tell you, it was no doubt a phantom of my imagination."

Inez closed the closet door firmly and said, "You need to finish getting ready. The audience will be getting restless, and when men get restless in a bar, it means nothing but trouble."

And trouble is what my life seems to breed these days. Nothing but.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN.

Inez stood by Abe, elbows on the bar, as C.A. Fairplay strode onto the makes.h.i.+ft stage in Elizabethan hose and garter, his barrel-chested torso covered in clanking armor. He looked every inch a king with his iron-gray hair styled and his mustache waxed to a fare-thee-well. He turned his face up to the second-floor landing and intoned "Fair Katharine, and most fair!/Will you vouchsafe to teach a soldier terms/Such as will enter at a lady's ear,/And plead his love-suit to her gentle heart?"

Maude, who had made her entrance from the office above, paused at the railing, looked down with queenly majesty, and said in a halting French accent, "Your majesty shall mock at me; I cannot speak your England."

There was no resisting the magic that flowed between the two, the pa.s.sion that lifted C.A.'s speech from memorized words to an outpouring of the heart.

Hardly a rustle was heard from the audience from beginning to end. Maude turned to the audience for her final words as Queen Katharine: "G.o.d, the best maker of all marriages,/Combine your hearts in one, your realms in one! As man and wife, being two, are one in love,/ So be there 'twixt your kingdoms such a spousal/That never may ill office or fell jealousy-"

Jealousy.

"Which troubles oft the bed of blessed marriage,/Thrust in between the paction of these kingdoms,/To make divorce of their incorporate league-"

Divorce.

"That English may as French, French Englishman,/Receive each other. G.o.d speak this Amen!"

The audience broke into wild applause.

"d.a.m.n, they're good," said Abe, applauding with the rest. "They oughta do somethin' like that for Grant."

Inez grunted.

Abe's gaze s.h.i.+fted from the Fairplays to her. "Somethin' wrong?"

"Later," she said and began clapping as well.

There was a general stir throughout the audience as C.A. and Maude took their bows. Inez looked about, counting off those she knew by name or by sight. Everyone from her Sat.u.r.day night poker game was there. Chet Donnelly was also present, clapping and hollering louder than the rest, keeping company with a group of like men. With hair bleached white by the sun, faces burned leather-brown, and clothes that needed a good dunk in the river, they all looked as if they'd just hauled in from the Ten Mile District. They made a studied contrast sitting shoulder to shoulder with an a.s.sembly of company miners, all in their sober Sunday best, faces pale from spending daylight hours underground.

Cl.u.s.tered just inside the Harrison Avenue door, Preston, Reuben, and the professor stood with men who, she guessed, were part of the rail construction crew. Standing a bit separate from them, the railroad section boss, Delaney, leaned against the wall by the door, looking drunk and sour. Michael O'Malley blocked the door, making sure that those who didn't pay the cover charge waited outside until the show was over. She caught her breath, sighting Weston Croy, partially blocked by Michael's shoulder, craning his neck to see inside.

Standing just inside the State Street door, similarly guarded by Sol with his baseball bat near at hand, she spotted Hollis and- "Jack!" she said in surprise.

One-Eyed Jack had his hat in his hands and was staring about in puzzlement, as if he'd wandered in for a drink and found himself in the opera house instead. Jack's gaze traveled over the audience to the men by the Harrison Avenue door. He suddenly stiffened and stepped back, trodding on Sol's toes.

C.A. was saying, "Now, Mrs. Fairplay will entertain suggestions for songs from the audience, performed by herself and this fine young man at the piano."

Doc cupped his hands around his mouth and called out, "A song to celebrate the impending visit of General Ulysses S. Grant, eighteenth president of these great United States, to this wonderful city of Leadville on July twentieth."

Maude frowned a little and looked a question at C.A. He nodded, so she conferred with Taps. Taps sounded a chord and they swung into "The Girl I Left Behind Me."

She finished and someone else yelled, "How about another song?"

"A good ol' Union tramping song!" yelled another. There was a general murmur of approbation under which Inez thought she detected a rumble of disapproval. Maude bent her head to Taps to deliberate.

Inez felt Abe s.h.i.+ft next to her, uneasy.

Maude turned to the audience. Taps did a toe-tapping intro and Maude began to sing: "Yes, we'll rally round the flag, boys,/We'll rally once again,/Sounding out the battle cry of Freedom."

Most of the crowd joined in.

Inez and Abe locked eyes.

"We need to call a halt to this," she said in a low voice.

He nodded.

The song ended to thunderous applause and cheering.

Before Inez could announce that the act was over and invite those outside to enter, Delaney, who was standing by the stairs, took two quick steps to the piano.

His gun pointed at the piano player's head.

"You know the Southron version, piano man?" he inquired with a drunken slur.

Taps shook his head, hands frozen on the keyboard.

Delaney set the muzzle against his temple. "It's easy. Just play it again. Mrs. Fairplay, d'you know the words?" Maude's hands were up at her throat. Looking like she was ready to faint, she shook her head.

"Then I'll sing it! Play, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Taps began playing haltingly. Delaney sang, "Our flag is proudly floating/On the land and on the main,/Shout, shout the battle cry of Freedom!"

A dangerous growl mounted throughout the room. Much to Inez's horror, other voices scattered around the room began to chime in, gaining strength at the chorus: "Our Dixie forever!/She's never at a loss!/Down with the eagle/And up with the cross!"