“It happened astonishingly fast,” Johnson noted.
One moment, angry shouts and curses; the next moment, chairs scraped back and men ducking away while the two principals snarled at each other, though they were just a few feet apart. They were both gamblers of the roughest sort. “Make your move, then,” one said, and as the other went for his pistol, the first drew his gun and shot him right in his abdomen. There was a great cloud of black powder and the shot man was thrown back across the room by the impact, his clothes burning from the close shooting. He bled heavily, moaned indecipherably, twitched for a minute, then lay quite dead. Some of the others hustled the shooter out. The town marshal was summoned, but by the time he arrived, most of the gamblers had returned to their tables, to the games that had been so recently interrupted.
It was a cold-blooded display, and the students—no doubt in shock—were relieved when they heard the sound of music from the theater next door. When several gamblers left the tables to see the show, they followed hurriedly along to see this next attraction.
And here, unexpectedly, William Johnson fell in love.
The Pride De Paree Theater was a two-story triangular affair with the stage at the wide end, tables on the floor, and balconies mounted high on the walls at both sides. Balcony seats were the most expensive and desirable, though they were farthest from the stage, and so they bought those.
The show, observed Johnson, consisted of “singing, dancing, and petticoat flouncing, the rudest sort of entertainment, but the assembled patrons greeted it with such enthusiastic cheers that their pleasure infected our more discriminating tastes.”
Soon enough they learned the value of balcony seats, for overhead were trapeze bars, on which swung comely young women in scanty costumes and mesh tights. As they arced back and forth, the men in the balconies reached out to tuck dollar bills into the folds of their costumes. The girls appeared to know many of the customers, and there was a deal of good-natured banter high in the air, the girls crying, “Watch them hands, Fred,” and “Mighty big cigar you got there, Clem,” and other endearments.
One student sniffed, “They are no better than prostitutes,” but the others enjoyed the spectacle, shouting and tucking dollar bills with the rest, and the girls, seeing new faces and distinctive Eastern clothes, maneuvered their swings to come close to their balcony again and again.
It was all good fun, and then the girls overhead changed to a new set, and the swinging began again, and one of them came close to their balcony. Laughing, Johnson reached for another dollar bill, and then his eyes met those of the new girl, and the raucous sound of the theater faded away, and time seemed to stop, and he was aware of nothing but the dark intensity of her gaze and the pounding of his own heart.
Her name was Lucienne—“It’s French,” she explained, wiping the light sheen of perspiration from her shoulders.
They were downstairs, sitting at one of the floor tables, where the girls were allowed to have a drink with customers between shows. The other students had gone back to the hotel, but Johnson stayed, hoping Lucienne would come out, and she had. She had sashayed right to his table. “Buy me a drink?”
“Anything you want,” Johnson said. She ordered whiskey, and he had one, too. And then he asked her name, and she told him.
“Lucienne,” he repeated. “Lucienne. A lovely name.”
“Lots of girls in Paris are named Lucienne,” she announced, still wiping the perspiration. “What’s yours?”
“William,” he said. “William Johnson.” Her skin glowed pink; her hair was jet-black, her eyes dark and dancing. He was entranced.
“You look a gent,” she said, smiling. She had a way of smiling with her mouth closed, not revealing her teeth. It made her seem mysterious and self-contained. “Where’re you from?”
“New Haven,” he said. “Well, I grew up in Philadelphia.”
“Back East? I thought you were different. I could tell from your clothes.”
He worried that this might not find favor with her, and suddenly didn’t know what to say.
“Do you have a sweetheart back East?” she asked innocently, helping the conversation along.
“I—” He stopped, then thought it best to tell her the truth. “I was awfully fond of a girl in Philadelphia a few years ago, but she didn’t feel the same way about me.” He looked into her eyes. “But that was—that was a long time ago.”
She looked down and smiled softly and he told himself that he must think of something to say.
“Where are you from?” he asked. “You don’t have a French accent.” Perhaps she had come from France as a child.
“I’m from St. Louis. Lucienne’s only my name de stage, see,” she said cheerfully. “Mr. Barlow—the manager—Mr. Barlow wants everyone in the show to have a French name, because the theater is the Pride de Paree Theater, see. He’s very nice, Mr. Barlow.”
“Have you been in Cheyenne long?”
“Oh no,” she said. “Before, I was in the theater in Virginia City, where we did proper plays by English writers and such, but that closed with the typhoid last winter. I was going home to see my mother, see, but I only had money to get here.”
She laughed, and he saw one of her front teeth was chipped. This little imperfection only made him love her more. She was obviously an independent young woman, making her own way in life.
“And you?” she asked. “You are going to the Black Hills? Looking for gold?”
He smiled. “No, I am with a group of scientists who are digging for fossils.” Her face clouded. “Fossils. Old bones,” he explained.
“Is there a good livelihood in that?”
“No, no. It’s for science,” he explained.
She placed a warm hand on his arm, and the touch electrified him. “I know you gold diggers have secrets,” she said. “I won’t tell.”
“Really, I am searching for fossils.”
She smiled again, content to drop the matter. “And how long are you in Cheyenne?”
“Alas, I am here for only one night. Tomorrow I leave to go farther west.”
This thought already filled him with a delicious pain, but she did not seem to care one way or another. In her straightforward way, she said, “I must do another show in an hour, and stay with the customers another hour after that, but then I am free.”
“I’ll wait,” he said. “I’ll wait all night if you wish it.”
She leaned over and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Until then.” And she swept away, across the crowded room, where other men awaited her company.
The rest of the evening passed as lightly as a dream. Johnson felt no fatigue, and he was happy to sit until she was finished with her performances. They met outside the theater. She had changed to a demure dress of dark cotton. She took his arm.
A man passed them on the sidewalk. In the darkness: “See you later, Lucy?”
“Not tonight, Ben,” she laughed. Johnson turned to glare at the man, but she explained, “It’s just my uncle. He looks after me. Where are you staying?”