Armstrong Read online

We rode to the livery stables to get our horses settled.

  “Looks like you rode these critters pretty hard.”

  “They’re sturdy mounts. Indians made us ride faster.”

  “That they shorley do. How long will you be stayin’, mister?”

  “Oh, I reckon maybe a week.”

  “Them’s cavalry mounts, ain’t they?”

  “Used to be a soldier myself. Bought ’em on my way out.”

  “I see. You got bills of sale for ’em?”

  “Used to, but they’re long gone. Been trappin’ in the hills; got no use for paper. Still wear my gauntlets, though, and my cavalry boots—kinda grew attached to those.”

  “Fair enough. All righty, then. You just sign the ledger. Payment’s half in advance; half when you collect your horses.”

  I wasn’t about to sign the ledger “Colonel Custer,” and I suddenly realized that I hadn’t a penny to my name. But as you know, in a crisis I’m a quick thinker.

  “Name’s Armstrong,” I said, flourishing that signature on the paper. “And I’m a little short of money right now. Trapping ain’t what it used to be. But I tell you what. I’ve got two bearskin rugs on that horse there. You can take ’em both as payment in full.”

  “Well, there now, I reckon that’s a fair shake. Thank ye kindly, Mr. Armstrong.”

  “How do I find the hotel?”

  “That’d be the Applejack Hotel, right over there. And if you and the Misses are looking for some entrytainment, there’s a show in town.”

  “Wonderful. I do love a good show.”

  “We’ve got a fancy stage with a curtain and all at the saloon. Sallie Saint-Jean’s Showgirls and Follies, they call it. Some trick shootin’ too, they say. If you want to wet your whistle and get a quick peek, saloon’s right over there—the Branch Creek Saloon, best in town, just across the street. Assumin’ the Misses don’t mind.”

  “No, I’m sure she doesn’t.”

  Scout smiled like the white woman she was but stayed as quiet as an Indian.

  As we walked out of the stables, she grasped my arm—the one with your name on it. “General, how are we going to pay for the hotel?” She gripped my arm harder. “I’d forgotten about hotels, clean sheets, real food, dresses—we’re free, General Custer, we’re free!”

  “And we’re broke,” I added. “And from now on call me Armstrong; and yes, I’ll call you Rachel; and truth be told, I’m a colonel, thanks to that ape Grant—a dead colonel as far as the world knows.”

  “But you were a general . . .”

  “Yes, and will be again, if there’s any justice in this world. In the meantime, I’ll make us some money. Before I took the vow, I knew something about taverns and games of chance.” I espied a general store. “Now you go on over there and make a mental list of all the things you’d like to buy, and I’ll be around in a little while.”

  She did as she was bidden, practically skipping down the street—she was more girlish and white by the minute—and I set my boots on the floorboards of the saloon. No shortage of men at tables. I saw the quiet, curtained stage to my right. Normally, as you know, I drink milk, but I figured I wouldn’t find that here. “Sarsaparilla,” I told the bartender.

  “Sarsaparilla?”

  “Or plain branch water if you don’t have it.”

  “Naw, I got the sarsaparilla.”

  I turned around, leaned against the bar, and said, “I’ve been up in the hills for months. Looking for a game. Anyone oblige me?”

  “Well, surely, mister,” rang from several tables. I winked at the bartender. “I’ll be back with your shekels in a few minutes.” I tipped my fingers to my brow in acknowledgement to all and settled at a table where the men looked most well-to-do.

  “Don’t have any pocket change, but if you’ll stake me, have some furs tucked away at the livery stable. They should be worth a tidy sum.”

  “Reckon we can get you started. Where you from?”

  “Oh, been traveling for so long, it’s almost hard to recollect. Ohio, originally, but been out West for quite a spell. Was in the cavalry for a while; trappin’ now mostly.”

  “Did you hear that, boys?” said a rough-looking customer from another table. “Cavalry— down to the boots and drinkin’ sarsaparilla, don’t it figure—and on credit. How’s men like that supposed to protect us from them Indians? They couldn’t protect themselves from a doe-eyed mule.”

  I looked this ruffian square in the face. He was at a table full of bravos like himself: big, rangy cowboys whose idea of a good time was a drink and a fight. I knew their type.

  “You hear what happened at the Rosebud, soldier boy? Some idiot general named Crook got bushwhacked by the Indians. Then that feller Custer led a bunch of sarsaparilla sissies like you smack into the Sioux and got massacred. When you get your boots, don’t they teach you how to fight, or do you just wear ’em to ride away?”

  I stood up. “If you weren’t such an ignorant excuse for a human being, I’d try to teach you something.”

  “You think so, soldier boy?” He stood. “You really think so?”

  “You take off that holster and I’m sure of it. I don’t need a gun.”

  “You reckon not, eh? Well, maybe I can oblige you with that.” He unstrapped his gun belt and dropped it on the table. Then he reached into his boot, drew a knife, and flung it into the table like an Indian challenge. “And look at that. Even takin’ off my blade. Fair’s fair, right, soldier boy? They teach you how to fight fair, don’t they?”

  I brought up my fists. “You’ll soon find out.”

  “Yes, you surely will.”

  He closed on me like a tornado, but I parried and blocked his blows with forearm, elbow, and palm before pivoting so that I hit him flush on the jaw, full force, and sent him sprawling into hastily deserted chairs behind him.

  “Why you . . .” I saw him reach beneath his vest and pull out a peashooter, but before he could draw a bead on me, I was at the table where he’d dropped his holster. I heard the pop of his little gun, and, as I was still alive, yanked out his revolver and fired back.

  He wouldn’t be shooting again.

  “He’s dead!” the cowboys shouted. Then their eyes pivoted to me. “Get him!”

  I was out the saloon doors and cutting down side streets, figuring a straight line meant a dead Custer. I beat my way around to an alley behind the hotel and into a camp of big, garish wagons—theatrical wagons, each with four walls, a roof, and a door. I flung open the door on one, slammed it behind me, and leapt into the arms of a woman seated just inside. She had flaming red hair and a welcoming smile, and I instinctively felt to see that my Indian medicine bag with salt and a toothbrush was still tied around my neck.

  “Well, make yourself at home, why don’t you?”

  “Excuse me, ma’am, but I’m an innocent man running for his life.”

  “Well, aren’t you unique? I’ve never met an innocent man. Go in there, honey,” she motioned to three full-length closets behind her, partially hidden by an oriental partition. “You’ll find plenty of disguises. And you can trust me to distract them.”

  It was only then I noticed that she was dressed in the manner of a certain type of woman of the theater: garters and stockings, the highest of heels, and an outfit that looked more like a colorful corset than a proper dress.

  “Thank you, kindly, ma’am—and please pardon the intrusion.”

  “No trouble at all. But you better get going.” I bolted into a closet, cast off my cavalry boots (not easy in that confined space), slipped out of my buckskins, and grabbed what felt like the largest and least feminine thing I could find—something like a robe.

  I heard shouting outside and then boots on the floorboards.

  “Pardon us, ma’am, we’re looking for a desperate killer. Have you seen a tall man: cavalry boots, big blond moustache, short-cut blond hair, wearin’ buckskin?”

  “Oh, honey, did you hear that?”

  I couldn’t believe it!
She was calling to me! I tried to make my voice as high-pitched as possible, “Oh, no, dear; I saw no one at all.”

  “That’s a funny soundin’ voice.”

  “He’s just a Chinaman,” she said reassuringly. “Part of our act. A trick shooter. I’m sure he can protect me in the meantime. Toodle-de-doo.”

  I’ll be darned if they didn’t leave.

  “You can come out now,” she said. “And perhaps you can tell me your name.”

  “Armstrong,” says I, and as I stepped from the wardrobe I could see that I was indeed dressed in what I took for the robes of a Chinaman.

  “Seems a pity,” she said, “but the moustache will have to go, and we’ll have to bootblack your hair.”

  “What?”

  “I reckon you know how to handle a gun. Our Chinese trick shooter was lynched a few towns ago. He wasn’t much good anyway.”

  “I can’t be a Chinaman.”

  “Better than being a dead man. I can arrange that too, if you’d like.”

  “Who in heaven’s name would mistake me for a Chinaman?”

  “You leave that to me.”

  “I guess I have to.”

  “I’m guessin’ so. You’ll find bootblack in the first wardrobe in the left-hand corner. And there’ll be a shavin’ kit in the third wardrobe in the right-hand corner. You get started; then I’ll help.”

  In the course of thirty minutes I had my head blackened, my face shaved and powdered, my eyes framed with mascara into some semblance of a Chinaman’s, my feet encased in silk slippers, and my manly form draped in a red Chinese robe with black dragons roaring across it. I must say, I cut a figure—as I saw in a full-length mirror that was affixed inside one of the closet doors, and as you can see in the tintype provided by Beauregard.

  My first performance, it turned out, would be that very night; and the tintype was made that very day, to promote it. Miss Sallie Saint-Jean—for that was the name of my protectress—instructed me in the essentials of my routine, which seemed simple enough—mostly popping balloons held out by the showgirls. Easy shots that weren’t likely to impress hardened men from Montana, I thought. But I could always come up with a few new tricks. My old Ree scout, Bloody Knife—likely dead now and mutilated by the Sioux—always joshed me about my marksmanship, and while I grant you I’m no Wild Bill Hickok, I’m no near-sighted Chinaman either. When it comes to shooting, I can handle my own.

  My colleagues were a dozen dancing girls (the main attraction) and a small Chinese contingent: five acrobats, a strong man, a magician, and me, a trick shooter. A San Francisco shipping baron had apparently seen these Chinamen performing in a camp, hired them on the spot, and backed them in a series of shows until he lost interest. When the flame-haired Miss Saint-Jean rediscovered them, they were on hard times and willing to work for pennies. We Chinamen were the interval acts between the ladies’ cancans and were also charged with guard duty if the cowboys got rowdy.

  My delightful female assistant, Bernadette, walked me through my role, though we had precious little time to rehearse before taking the stage. Behind the curtain we could hear the audience assembling, the raucous cries for whiskey and beer, the scraping of chair legs on the plank floor, the cries of “where’s the entrytainment?” and “bring on them girls!” I felt a pang that no one said, “We want the Chinaman trick shooter!”

  But my time on stage would come soon enough, and I vowed I would make my mark. My hands were shaking as they had never done on the battlefield. This was the theatre, after all; this was the stage; this was a chance to do my part to lift the souls of these wiry, dirty, tobacco-stained cowboys to those heights reachable only in a dramatic performance. Granted, my role was not Shakespearean, or anything remotely like it, but in my red and black dragon robes, with my hair dyed, my face powdered, and my eyes highlighted and slanted with mascara; with my long-barreled revolver, my assistant in her dancing costume and tights, and my target balloons arrayed before me; I felt as though I was performing in a sort of drama these men could understand, a test of skill as dramatic, in its own way, as a soliloquy. I was playing a role—and intended to play it to the hilt.

  The curtain opened. Catcalls and whistles greeted my assistant, and Miss Saint-Jean stepped to center stage to introduce us. “Gentlemen and ladies, I introduce Bernadette LaBelle”—storms of foot-stomping and applause—“and the world famous Chinese marksman and master trick shooter, Li Wing Yu, or, as we call him, Master Wing.”

  “I’ll wing him one,” guffawed some drunken cowboy, and I suspected I knew why the last Master Wing had had a short life.

  But I also knew what to do. I blew a hole in the ceiling. “Excuse me, honorable cow farmers.” That got them riled up and paying attention. I nodded to Bernadette, who plucked two inflated balloons from sacks she had full of them and held them at arm’s length in front of a foot-thick target board, about as high and wide as a coffin. The bullets were of low caliber, much lower than our cavalry revolvers, and the wood was supposed to absorb them. I spun the revolvers in my hand and in one catlike motion fell to a knee and popped the balloons: Bang! Bang!

  Behind me there was another coffin slab of wood with feathers stuck on it. I swiftly pivoted and blasted off two of them. I reloaded and did that sequence twice. But I knew what the cowboys really wanted. I had Bernadette take two balloons in either hand and cartwheel down the stage, never stopping, and every time she came upright I fired and popped a balloon. That got them hollering, and I figured it was best to quit while I was ahead. But then through all the commotion I heard a woman’s voice cry out, “Get your hands off me!”

  “You cain’t be so particular; ain’t you part Injun squaw?”

  “You tell us where that buckskin dude is,” said another, “or you’ll get worse than Jasper.”

  I looked past the footlights into the crowd and saw Scalp-Not-My-Woman sitting at a table of ruffians. I decided to extend my act.

  I fired at the ceiling again. “Humble cow farmers, my next trick requires the assistance of several gentlemen and a lady. You men there—and you, young lady—I humbly pray that you might join me on the stage.”

  “What the heck for?” said one. “I came here for entrytainment—not to be the entrytainment.”

  “You couldn’t entertain a flea off a dog’s backside,” said another.

  “It will be a test of your skill and mine,” I said. “And there’s a prize.”

  “Skill? You mean with pistoleros? Chinaman, you wouldn’t stand a chance. What’s the prize?”

  “A bag of gold—straight from the Black Hills.” I patted my robes where a pocket should have been.

  “Well, hell’s bells. I’m willin’, if y’all are,” said one.

  “You ain’t goin’ to get that prize from me.”

  “And you, Miss? Will you join my humble display?”

  “I will not.”

  “Perhaps these men,” I motioned to our audience, “will encourage you.”

  The encouragement took two forms—cheers and whistles and boot-stomping from the crowd, and meaningful hard looks, with hands drifting to holsters, from her harassers. Rachel got the idea and sidled her way up the steps to the stage with the ruffians as an escort.

  “For this trick I will ask our lovely assistants to hand each man two balloons, which he will hold with his arms upright. I will take two as well. At a count of three—given by our two most gracious assistants—we will release the balloons and each man will attempt to shoot as many as possible. Accept humble challenge?”

  “Why sure, but you got two revolvers there.”

  “But only one humble servant; it is you four men against me: four guns to two.”

  “All righty, I’m ready,” said one.

  “About that prize, mister . . .” said another.

  I nodded meaningfully.

  “Okay,” said bright-eyed Bernadette.

  “Gentlemen,” I said, “I will raise the odds. I will put my life in the bargain. You can shoot at the balloons
—or you can shoot at me, as I will be shooting at you.”

  They looked suspicious and perplexed as I motioned to Bernadette and she chanted, “One . . . two . . . THREE!”

  I let go of the balloons and dropped to one knee, as I had done on my previous trick shot, and waited for them to draw, as honor demanded. They squinted at me in confusion, or maybe partial recognition, their hands lunging for their sidearms, but I was faster, and with both guns blazing I blasted the blackguards to heaven, or, more likely, hell—taking the first two before they could fire a shot, and the last two in quick succession even as they fired at me and missed, their bullets blasting holes the size of wine corks in the floor of the stage. I emptied my revolvers, taking no chances.

  “Oh! So sorry,” I said.

  The audience was stunned, but I knew they wouldn’t be for long.

  “Quick! Come with me!” I grabbed Scalp-Not-My-Woman’s wrist and ran backstage and out of the saloon and into one of the wagons. I already had a plan. I shoved her into a costume closet, threw my robe and slippers in another, and scrubbed my face in the washbasin. I could hear shouts and chaos outside, but when in battle—and that’s what this was—one’s mind has to stay cool and focused. I knew what I had to do—hat, breeches, boots, shirt, star, a mighty handy costume that I knew was in here.

  “Don’t move; don’t make a sound,” I said to Scalp-Not-My-Woman, hidden in her closet. Then I bounded out of the wagon. “He’s not here,” I shouted. “Blast him!”

  I joined in the chase. Someone noted the glittering tin on my chest. “You a marshal?”

  “Yes, been tracking this varmint for weeks. He’s killed more men than . . . Well, let’s leave it at that. You men keep looking for him. I’m going back to search the saloon.”

  I passed through the swinging doors and saw that the Chinamen were onstage trying to hold back the hostile mob, while Miss Saint-Jean was shouting the cowboys into silence.

  “Now listen here,” she said. “That man was an imposter. He was not our Chinaman—and I don’t know where our Chinaman is; he may be dead for all I know; and that impersonator was as much a risk to my girls and our Chinamen as anyone. So, simmer on down. He picked these men on sight—there was bad blood somewhere.”