Edwardian London was gripped.
The crowd whistled and cheered as wheels and hooves kicked up the sawdust, the horses’ manes streaming behind them. Inside the coach, paying handsomely for the privilege, two barristers and their wives, one field marshal, and an earl waved enthusiastically through the unglazed windows.
What they hadn’t bargained for, of course, was being scalped.
With bloodcurdling cries, eight Sioux in full war bonnets galloped into the arena and chased after the coach. The barristers’ wives screamed. So did their husbands. Arrows flew through the air, twanging into the woodwork, as the vehicle tried to outmanoeuvre them. Abandoning arrows in favour of spears adorned with genuine scalps, the war party closed in, snarling under their face paint. McLintock raised his rifle and fired. An Indian fell; he reloaded, took aim. Another attacker dead on the ground! To whoops of encouragement, he dropped a third, a fourth, then a fifth, but the braves came on undeterred. Then McLintock’s rifle unaccountably jammed. A gasp of horror filled the arena. People tilted to the edge of their seats.
Sensing victory, a bare-chested warrior broke into a gallop, aiming to take Brodie himself. As he raised his throwing spear, McLintock whipped his pistol out of its holster. Six down, two to go! But before he could reach his backup rifle, the braves had leapt onto each side of the coach. McLintock sprang out of his seat and hauled one onto the luggage rack, but even as they grappled, the other was wrestling open the door. The Sioux on the roof knocked McLintock’s pistol out of his hand. It landed with a thunk in the dust.
“Pa-ha-ska!”
With a triumphant yell, he grabbed Brodie’s long hair, and, heedless of the screams that filled the arena, was on the verge of taking his scalp when McLintock drew his Bowie knife and struck a fatal blow to his heart. As he rolled away, he realized the last brave had his tomahawk raised and was about to cut down the earl. Grabbing the Sioux’s wrist, he scrabbled for the palm-pistol he kept in his boot. With that shot, the stagecoach was saved.
“Bravo!”
“Hurrah!”
“Encore!”
Jessica watched the Indians pick themselves off the ground, brush off the sawdust, and take a bow to thunderous applause. A thrilling end to a thrilling show, she thought, as the audience gave McLintock a rip-roaring standing ovation. She watched the low sweep of his Stetson. The theatrical bow that brought his frontiersman hair tumbling round his shoulders. Outside, the band launched into a robust rendition of “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” The smell of cockles, jellied eels, and beer drifted through the turnstiles, as the stall-holders geared up for brisk trade.
“Hey, Brodie!” A tall, heavyset individual with a broken nose and a battered, ill-fitting homburg called out to his boss. “Lady here’s lookin’ to hook up with the show, but I told her you don’t hire no schoolmarms.”
“I fear I did not make myself plain, sir.” Backstage, surrounded by the greasepaint and the warpaint, the sequins, feathers, and the buckskin chaps, her English accent and formal attire came over prissy and stiff. “I am not a schoolmistress.”
Was it her voice, her appearance, or the fact that he’d heard his name called that stopped McLintock in midstride? Whatever the reason, she found her cheeks reddening as dark eyes assessed the golden curls bunched under her hat, past the grey and white pinstriped blouse buttoned tight to the neck, to continue on down to where the shine on her boots peeped out from under her narrow-waisted black skirt. For a sweeping gaze, it seemed to spend a long time on the carpetbag at her feet.
“What kind of work might you be looking for, Miss—?”
He spoke in a low, Texan drawl that also seemed to linger for an unnecessarily long time.
“Tate. Jessica Tate.” She squared her shoulders in an effort to shrug off his penetrating stare. “What kind of work are you offering, Mr. McLintock?”
“I told her, Brodie.” The man with the broken nose sniggered. “Unless she’s got some understandin’ of calf ropin’, stunt ridin’, or lasso work, there ain’t no place in this show for a woman.”
“Well, now, that’s not strictly true, Joe.” When he crossed his arms over his chest, the muscles strained the supple leather of his jacket. “I need a Cherokee squaw, a pioneer wife, and I’m still short of an Annie Oakley — style sure-shot.”
“My handwriting is neat, I am sharp with figures, I can type and keep records and operate a copying machine,” she said levelly. “Indeed, I am particularly proficient with the mimeograph stencil.”
“Impressive qualifications, if I may say so. Very impressive indeed.” McLintock tipped the brim of his Stetson to prove it. “Thing is, I have a manager, Ned Fenton, who attends most admirably to those matters. As a matter of fact, we have recently acquired a new Yawman and Erbe roller copier to chum out the flyers you have doubtless seen nailed to what seems like every tree trunk in London.” He spread his hands. “It is just unfortunate, as far as my current requirements are concerned, that Mr. Fenton does not feel qualified to pass himself off as a Cherokee squaw.”
Jessica had seen Mr. Fenton at the entrance gate. In Norfolk jacket and derby hat, he had the air of a butcher about him. He struck her as the type who would slurp his soup. From the corner of her eye, she was aware of the crowds disgorging into the temptation of the food stalls and the even more profitable sideshows.
“I do not feel qualified to pass for a Cherokee squaw, either, Mr. McLintock, and I have never picked up a rifle in my life.” She swallowed. “But I am certain I will make an admirable pioneer wife.”
She’d passed the settlers’ cabin as she crossed Wimbledon Common, where one team of workmen was erecting the tiers of a grandstand, while another built up mounds of earth to make hillocks. Whatever reenactment they were planning, she did not feel the role would be unduly taxing.
“I’m sure you will, Miss Tate, I’m sure you will.” He shook her gloved hand in both of his. “Welcome aboard Brodie McLintock’s Wild West Extravaganza, the show that brings the frontier to life, puts the wild into West, and where the dead drop twice a day but always get up.”
In that, however, McLintock was wrong.
Very wrong.
Buffalo Bill wasn’t the first to introduce the Wild West to city slickers, but he was the first to popularize it, touting everyone from Sitting Bull to Wild Bill Hickok, via Geronimo, Annie Oakley, and Calamity Jane, who boasted that she never went to bed sober or with a dime in her pocket. Staging these spectaculars proved an enormous outlay, but this was nothing compared to the takings he was raking in. Adding horseback performances from gauchos, Arabs, Mongols, and Turks, Buffalo Bill took his show to England, for the late queen’s Jubilee, before going on to tour Europe for four years, eventually returning home richer than Croesus.
Given the profit margins, the idea was quick to catch on, breeding fierce competition in its wake. As a result, Wild West shows became more circuslike with every passing year, so that, by the turn of the century, the name of the game was sensationalism with a capital S. Not one to be left standing, McLintock’s evening performances were no simple repeat of the matinee. True, the Mexicans still kicked off the proceedings with some impressive stunt riding, wearing even more impressive costumes studded with rhinestones. But, as the sun set, and naphtha flares were lit one by one round the compound, there were new thrills to exploit. Like the Cheyenne war dance beneath the totem pole, made even more sinister in the flickering flames. Or the vaqueros, handsome in black jackets slashed with scarlet, twirling flaming lassos as they galloped. Whilst not forgetting Brodie’s own display of skilclass="underline" splitting playing cards with his bullets.