Men and some women sat in stiff-backed wooden chairs or stood leaning on the counters and were prevented from slouching against the glass cases by J. D. Allan, Proprietor. Captain Kidd did not stand searching the faces of the crowd but he saw them nonetheless at the edge of his vision. He laid out his newspapers and the AP wire sheets. He saw how they divided themselves, one group from another, and stared at each other with looks like warning flares. They sat and leaned and smoked, hatless among the articles of mechanical manufacture sent from far places. There were boots and shoes and suspenders and hair dye and buttons and ironstone plates from England. Kerosene lamps with green shades hung swaying from overhead chains and in the distance thunder came toward them with threatening rumbles. The storm was coming from far beyond the hundredth meridian.
He began as always with his greetings to the establishment of the town and a brief comment on the roads. People always liked to hear about the condition of the roads from travelers. The Captain said the roads along the Red were all good, he did not know about the Little Wichita, he had crossed it more than a week ago but it might be up again. The Brazos ferry was not operating; washed away perhaps, but the landings on both sides were good. The road from the Brazos to here was in good condition. He paused and with one veined hand flattened his papers, waiting to hear if anyone would mention an altercation there involving firearms, but that was not what was on the minds of several of his listeners.
A hatless man stood up and cried, When Davis gets done there’ll be a paved road to the house of ever damn one of his cronies in the legislature!
The Captain’s head came up.
Silence!!
He had a very strong voice for a man his age, and he was over six feet tall and imposing in his crow-black clothes and his angry dark eyes, his brilliant moon-silver hair. His reading glasses flashed with gold rims as he stared around at his audience. The long narrow room smelled of trouble. He said, Sir, the people here assembled did not pay good money to come and sit here and listen to your complaints. I would suspect they have heard them before.
Laughter.
Captain Kidd cleared his throat, pressed back his glasses, and brought out the Inquirer to read of Lemon Hill. He slid out pages of the Tribune and its news of railroads, reading steadily, reading like a broom-making machine and sweeping all before him except for a man who called out,
Why don’t you read from the Houston Tri-Weekly Union, sir?
Another man rose to his feet. Because that’s a damned Davis paper, and they are every one of them damned unreconstructed thieves!
They are Republicans! Loyal to the Union to a man!
Another man yelled, And so what then? They have become indoctrinated by professional agitators!
Gentlemen! Captain Kidd shouted.
A grudging silence and the three men standing sat down slowly and glared at one another.
He did not have very long. He read quickly, flipping newsprint, read of far places and frozen climes, of reports of revolution in Chile, trying to bring them distant magic that was not only marvelous but true. He read of riots in the Punjab re: census taking, female privacy; all the spilling images of a rumored world weighted with railroads and modernity coming up against ancient tribal hatreds.
The tulip—he read quickly—long under guard in Turkey for years—bulbs confiscated from diplomatic pouches—now superseded in value by the Angora goat from the region of Ankara—Pashas object—Angoras smuggled aboard the Highland Star . . .
Davis will shut down the Dallas Courier under the Printing Bill! a little blond man screamed. Two hundred thousand dollars of tax money to hand out to radical newspapers!
Two men got to their feet and came face-to-face shouting about the turncoat Hamilton and the corrupt Davis, others tried to separate them but they were intent on doing each other damage and the people separating them, each with a bottom lip stuck out and bent backward trying to avoid blows, became involved in the passions expressed. Women seized their skirts in both hands and got out of the building and several picked up their husbands’ or fathers’ or brothers’ handguns from the bench outside and carried them away. The U.S. Army sergeant listened for a moment to the shouts about military rule and Austin corruption and the Printing Bill and stayed where he was.
Finally it came to fists and chairs and the rainstorm came merrily on as one of the glass cases splintered. The coin can was turned over and men trod on the money. The hanging kerosene lanterns swung back and forth and people trampled the chairs down and shook the walls. One man broke a good Wedgwood commemorative plate over another’s head. A short man pulled off his belt and began laying about him with the buckle. At the end, the two major combatants, who were the owner of the hotel and the schoolteacher, a young man with spiky, ill-cut hair and pale cheeks inflamed with acne but a determined fighter, struck and twisted themselves out of the door and into the street.
All the rest followed.
CAPTAIN KIDD REMAINED for a few moments at the lectern. He put his chin on his fist and surveyed the wreckage. Then he folded his newspapers and put them in the portfolio and let out a long breath. It was much better up on the Red River, he decided, where all you really had to deal with was the Comanche, the Kiowa, and sometimes the U.S. Army.
And up there in North Texas, of course, was Mrs. Gannet.
He walked through the overturned chairs and saw all the silver coins flung about on the floorboards, glinting like eyes. It was humiliating but he would have to grovel on his hands and knees and pick them all up. He would not have done it had it not been for Johanna. He would have said, You blustering loudmouthed jackasses can have them and he would have walked away.
The Army sergeant at the door was gone. Fat raindrops spattered out on the dirt street. Men were out there still shouting at one another with the intermittent voices of peacemakers crying Listen, listen now . . . The Captain knelt down and began collecting the coins.
Here, sir, you shouldn’t have to do that.
It was the man with the short black beard who had stopped him on the road.
No, I shouldn’t, said Captain Kidd. But here I am doing it.
The man drew up an unbroken chair for him and indicated it with a sweep of the hand. The Captain sat down gratefully, his hip joints aflame, and the man began to pick up all the coins himself.
My name is John Calley, the man said. He poured coins back into the can out of his large, callused hand. He said, We should not have taken your money this morning on the road. I am regretting it.
The Captain nodded and pressed his fingertips against his eyes. He said, You have fallen in with bad company.
That would be my cousins and my brother.
Still.
Well, yes.
Captain Kidd thought about the apparent ages of the man’s companions, cousins and brother, and said, They were in the war.
So was I.
Ah, said Kidd. You were young.
No sir, I was seventeen.
That’s young.
The Captain had forgotten he himself had seen his sixteenth birthday at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, firing at the Red Sticks with a rifled Kentucky long bore. He watched the coins drop into the paint can, one after another.
He said, You should abandon your wayward relatives and decline their illegal activities.
No telling what’s illegal these days. John Calley stepped forward to the shelves of suspenders and the collar buttons on cards. He was now dressed in pressed dark trousers and a cutaway, a snowy white shirt with a high collar and a cravat. It was all somewhat frayed but clean. His dark beard was shorter, neatly trimmed. He wore good boots, the Captain saw, with a pair of arm-and-hand spurs. Calley peered at the shelf and said, Well, be damned, there’s one up here. He picked the ten-cent piece up in his thick fingers, delicately. Then he said, Of course I should. But things change week to week. He poured the money out of his fist into the can. The legal situation is very unstable. Land titles, everything.
The Captain realized that John Calley had come in his best clothes to show the Captain that he was not, indeed, a filthy ignorant brigand but a man gently reared. A serious man. That he wanted the Captain’s respect.
The Captain cleaned his glasses slowly on his handkerchief. You are not thinking of reading law, are you? he said.
Oh God no! John Calley stood holding the paint can. I am looking for honest work.
That’s an improvement, then, from when I first came upon you.