She flashed him a radiant smile. “So Hoki the Bear Boy really is the result of a frontier wife’s unfortunate encounter in the woods of Montana?”
McLintock holstered his pistols, tipped his hat to the crowd, and steered her roughly out of the way.
“Hoki was born with hair covering every inch of his body,” he rasped. The toothsome smile was still firmly in place, but there was a hard glint to his eyes. “His parents abandoned him, they were ashamed. The Shoshone, the Crow, the Blackfeet, the Sioux, they all thought he was cursed, so what was I supposed to do? Let him starve?”
He jabbed his finger at the long queue waiting to see the poor creature billed as Half-Human, Half-Grizzly, All Tame.
At the gate, a girl with a snub nose and bold brown eyes was engaged in what seemed to be an argument with Ned Fenton. It culminated with the manager tipping his derby hat back in anger and pointing, in no uncertain terms, for her to leave.
“Hoki could have joined a freak show,” McLintock was saying, “where he’d have been one of numerous exhibits, but with us, Miss Tate, he is a star. A celebrity. He can call the shots on who can stroke him or not, and he makes money, Miss Tate. An awful lot of money, and if that’s not true to the part, perhaps you might tell me what is.”
With a quick “Pardon me, sir” to the man at the front of the adjacent queue, he pulled her into a different booth, where, for yet another sixpence, you could hear, in the survivor’s very own words, the Spine-Chilling Tale of the Man Who Was Scalped by Indians... and Lived!
“I believe you’ve already met Idaho Joe,” he said smoothly.
The thickset man with the broken nose was no longer wearing that terrible Homburg. Without it, though, one could be forgiven for thinking that a piece of lumpy, bumpy, shiny red leather had been hammered onto his skull with nails, and Jessica couldn’t help it: She recoiled. Worse, because he was still gripping her arm, McLintock was aware of her flinching.
“Sorry to disrupt you, Joe.” He waved a hand in apology. “Just showing the new lady around.
“People suffer,” he growled, once they were outside. “They suffer the most terrible tragedies and misfortunes, but the point is, they survive. They survive and then, for their sins, they endure — and in my view, it’s better to make capital out of tragedy than let them turn to catgut whisky or rotgut gin, so don’t you ever patronise me again, Jessica Tate. I will not stand by and have my team mocked. Not one of them, do you understand?”
With a flourish he removed his Stetson and performed a deep bow.
“Rehearsals for tomorrow’s show start at eight A.M. sharp. It sure is a pleasure to have you aboard.”
Jessica was right about the caravan. It did offer all the luxuries of home. Her home, as it transpired. Being the only female in the company, she had been afforded its privacy and comfort, and indeed the mattress proved every bit as deep as it appeared. The cotton sheets were crisp and cool, the pillow had been stuffed with the softest duck down, and the embroidered counterpane was also clean and scented. For all that, there was no chance of sleep. Beneath the little lattice window, staring up at the stars, thoughts and emotions tumbled like dice.
She refused to dwell on what had gone before, and why she’d joined the show. And she dared not even contemplate the future. The only thought that occupied her mind was that, six years ago, she had exchanged one life for another, in the hope that the dawn of the new century would bring peace, contentment, and some sense of belonging. Instead, it brought on a nightmare—
Outside, the horses in the compound snickered. An owl hooted from an oak tree on the Common.
She tossed and turned, trapped in fear, and pain, and loneliness...
Was it loneliness that prevented women from staying with the troupe? The isolation of being one female amid the camaraderie of so many men? Perhaps it was the old “gypsies, tramps, and thieves” stigma that drove them away? Certainly the—
Jessica jerked bolt upright in the bed. Dear God. In every one of those newspapers, from Chicago to New Orleans, hadn’t there been reports of women murdered? She swung her feet onto the floor and lit the lamp. With so many props and costumes cluttering the space, she could not recall exactly which of the trunks or packing cases the porcelain doll had been wrapped in. But after an extensive search, one thing was clear.
Between dashing off to catch her cue and returning with her carpetbag, someone had been inside this gypsy caravan.
And removed every single newspaper account.
“When you said you wanted a Cherokee squaw, a pioneer wife, and that you were still short of an Annie Oakley-style sure-shot, Mr. McLintock, you might have mentioned that you expected one woman to play all three.”
“I might, indeed,” he replied smoothly. The sun was sinking, casting long shadows over the Common. “But with a performance looming and a vacancy to fill, my only priority lay in not letting people down. My apologies, Miss Tate, for not making myself plain, and if you are unhappy about dressing up as a Cherokee, I will be happy to stand in for the role myself.”
If he imagined candour and smarm would take the wind out of her sails, he was wrong.
“It is not the clothes I object to, Mr. McLintock.” Even though, beneath the beaded deerskin tunic, headband, and false braids, Jessica’s own mirror didn’t recognise her. “It is the fact, sir, that, to my mind, Raven Feather looks remarkably like Grey Wolf, the Blind Cherokee Seer who was divining futures for sixpence a shot just two short hours ago.”
“Like poets and minstrels of antiquity, Miss Tate, consider it more a figure of speech. A euphemism for men of wisdom, who fasten their gaze upon inward enlightenment, and whose visions make them blind to the everyday world.”
The way it rolled off his tongue suggested he’d been taken to task more than once on this matter.
“Then I can only pray he is not blind to the board I am strapped to.”
As a change to the programme, it was decided that, between the riverboat gambler and the log-cabin finale, Raven Feather would hurl hunting knives as close as possible to a human target, who would be tied, arms outstretched, to a wooden frame. Which, as it happened, would also have its edges doused with kerosene and set alight.
“Has Raven Feather ever missed?”
Out in the arena, the band was wishing it was in Dixie, while the gambler flipped his deck.
“Just show teeth, Miss Tate.” The man who was just about to expose the card-sharp drew his pistols and twirled them in a now-familiar gesture. “It doesn’t matter how hard you screw your eyes up, the audience can’t see them in the dark.” He clucked his tongue. “But they sure can see a broad smile from the grandstand.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” she hissed, as he holstered his weapons and strode off towards the eager crowd. “Has the old man ever missed?”
Brodie stopped, turned on his heel, and grinned. The sort of grin, she decided, that could be seen, not just from the grandstand, but from the other side of London. “Honestly, Miss Tate. Why do you think I had that board painted red?”
The next few days passed uneventfully enough, if you can call flaming lassos, stagecoach attacks, and Cheyenne on the warpath uneventful. But it’s surprising how quickly you get used to seeing men with raw, red patches on their heads instead of hair, or men with hair all over their bodies and no bare patches whatsoever. And how accustomed you grow to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” competing with “Amazing Grace,” “Sweet Rosie O’Grady” and the throb of Cherokee drums. More than anything, though, what impressed Jessica was the professionalism of the group. To get arrows landing exactly where you want them when two palaminos are bumping your target lickety-split over sawdust isn’t easy. If the Sioux archers weren’t making or mending arrows, they were firing them in practice, just as the Mexican riders and the vaqueros tirelessly rehearsed their stunts against the clock, while McLintock and the gun-fighter/gambler practised timing to a fault.