“You surprise me, Miss Tate. I thought you were already well into your role.” In the darkness, she could see his teeth bared in a grin. “Though I confess, I am curious as to how long you will remain with us.”
“I’m sure you are, Mr. McLintock.” Her own smile was no less dazzling. “I heard how ladies don’t stay long with this show.”
The grin dropped. “It’s time to take your place on the stage.”
Most of the lights had been extinguished, until only a handful hissed away in the corners. Silence had descended on the darkness, as the audience wondered what was about to unfold. Then a lantern appeared at the window of the settlers’ cabin. Inside, they could see the settlers’ son doing his sums at the table. Mother was rocking a babe in her arms. Two smaller children could be seen stretching and yawning as Mother settled them down for the night.
From one of the mounds, a coyote howled. From another mound came the bleet of a deer.
A burst of strategic lights revealed swarms of Indians snaking over the mounds on their bellies, making animal calls. Mother and son looked up, just as an arrow thudded through the window into the boy’s homework book. “Children! Hide!” cried the pioneer wife. “We are surrounded!”
The boy lifted the lantern, illuminating not only the interior of the cabin but... oh no! An Indian on the roof, about to shoot down the chimney!
“We are done for,” cried the wife. “Help! Help! We are done for!”
Suddenly, gunshots rang out and the attacker on the roof fell forward, clutching his throat. In galloped a rider astride a black mustang, picking off Indians with every shot of his rifle. Arrows hissed through the air, twanging into the walls of the cabin, while the pioneer wife clutched her child to her breast. One by one, the attackers dropped, until — praise the Lord — not one Indian was left alive on the ground.
“Husband! You saved us!” cried the brave settler’s wife. “My hero, you saved us all!”
At which point, every lamp was relit, bathing the arena in light and glory and thunderous applause.
As a script, Jessica thought, taking her bow, it left a lot to be desired. For entertainment, it was second to none.
So why didn’t women stay long with this show?
Of course, there was more to Wild West shows than dramatic reenactments. One of the biggest attractions was the sideshows. No reputable company would even consider touring without a selection of freaks and oddities to pull in the crowds. Worse, any that didn’t include the mummified remains of at least one Wild West outlaw were derided as second-rate outfits.
“His name was Ernie McGillycuddy,” a Texan voice drawled in Jessica’s ear as she hovered outside the red-and-white-striped booth where, for sixpence, you could view the mummy from just two feet away. “Twenty-eight years old when he died. Shot in the back playing poker in Kansas.”
“You are not making capital out of a murder victim, Mr. McLintock!”
Taking her elbow, stoutly encased in frontierswoman cotton, he swept her past an eager queue of bowler hats and bustles, of little girls with ringlets and widows in stiff black bombazine.
“You tell me, Miss Tate.”
He ushered her inside, where the dessicated corpse had been propped upright in a pinewood coffin. Like the price of admission, space at the sideshows was also at a premium.
“As a bandit,” he said, “Ernie had a talent for being spectacularly inept, holding up two trains that had already offloaded their payrolls, a coach that was carrying nothing but letters, and a bank that had been robbed only four days before.”
He broke off to sign a couple of programmes. Needless to say, he did that with a flourish, as well.
“In every instance, your ‘victim’ killed and maimed without conscience. Three guards, one driver, and two bank clerks died on the spot, all of them married with children. Two more succumbed to their wounds a week or so later, both of them writhing in agony to the end, I might add.”
“Cor.” A small boy, his eyes bigger than saucers, leaned over the rope to poke McGillycuddy’s gaunt face.
“Shouldn’t do that if I were you, son.” McLintock’s voice carried beyond the boy. Beyond the confines of the booth, for that matter. “Thing is, for most of these outlaws, there was never anyone willing to foot the funeral bill. And without relatives claiming the body, the law said they couldn’t be buried.”
“Cor!” The boy’s eyes popped out on stalks, and he wasn’t the only one hanging on every word.
“That meant the undertakers were obliged to embalm them, so they’d prop them up in the corner, sometimes in the window even, hoping that someone, someday, might recognise these desperados and take them off their hands.”
“But they didn’t?”
“No, son, they didn’t. Sometimes, though, children like you would wheel them up and down the streets in their go-karts, because, see?” McLintock hooked one leg over the rope and lifted the body out of the coffin. “Lighter than balsa wood.”
The crowd goggled as he waved the outlaw in the air like a doll, and Jessica could almost hear sixpenny pieces being dug out of pockets and purses. Even those who hadn’t previously been interested were fighting for a place in the queue.
“But the reason you can’t touch him, son, is that the morticians used arsenic in the embalming.” With a swirl of fringed buckskins, McLintock set Ernie back in his coffin. “Can’t have McGillycuddy adding any more to his death toll, can we? And that’s the thing, folks. A lot of these Wild West shows charge you to see mummies dug up from Chile or Peru, that aren’t real outlaws at all. But not Brodie McLintock. No, siree. Everything you see here is genuine, and though this is the only mummy we have, you’ll find wax models of Billy the Kid and Jesse James inside a real-life Texan jail in the tent on the right as you exit.”
If McGillycuddy’s criminal career was marked by mediocrity, his role as an exhibit more than compensated. Silver was chinking at a rate that would have turned the outlaw pea-green with envy. And not a dead bank clerk in sight.
Outside, the crowds swarmed like brightly coloured bees in the torchlight. Feathered hats mingled with straw boaters and cloth caps, which in turn rubbed shoulders with Prince of Wales checks and crisp governess starch, while children pulled at their mothers’ skirts in excitement, regardless of whether their little legs were encased in delicate white stockings or itchy woollen socks. Providing you could find the price of admission, such shows cut a swathe right through the class structure. What they did not do, it would seem, was deter pickpockets. Jessica watched the metal spike of a police constable’s helmet weaving through the throng, its sunburst badge glinting in the lamplight.
“Everything you see here is genuine?” she echoed softly to McLintock. “How enlightening.” She pulled the brim of her poke bonnet low over her eyes, to protect them from the glare of the flames. “I could have sworn your One and Only Baby Yeti in Captivity was an orang-outang with its fur clipped. How much I have to learn about the Himalayas.”
When the showman laughed, all eyes turned upon him, and was it surprising? White Stetson, long hair, swirling moustache, goatee beard? Jessica imagined many a staunch matron would go to bed tonight with one of his fliers under her pillow.
“I confess you have me there,” McLintock said, twirling his pistols to the delight of the crowd. Up close, she could see that the polished walnut grips were intricately carved and inset with either ivory or mother-of-pearl, she couldn’t tell which. “Hand on heart, though, Miss Tate,” he said in a voice that only she could hear, “where I can, I remain true to the part.”