9
The day after Charles said yes to Wooden Foot Jackson's proposition, the trader took the piebald to a veterinarian. Leaving Boy with the horse doctor, he and Charles set off for the city. To avoid soldiers from Jefferson Barracks who might recognize Charles, they circled around and rode in from the west. The border collie ran along behind them.
Early Creole settlers had nicknamed the place Pain Court — Short of Bread — because so little of its commerce had anything to do with agriculture; it was then the fur-trade center.
Times had changed. On the road bordered by sycamores and lindens, milkweed and climbing bittersweet, they passed farm wagons piled with apples or sacks of grain. They rode around two farmers driving pigs that filled the air with squealing and a characteristic stink.
Presently, rooftops appeared down the road and, above them, a hovering gray cloud. "Don't breathe too much in St. Lou," Wooden Foot advised. "They's buildin' more foundries and tanneries and flour mills and sheet-lead works than I can rightly keep track of. I guess 'Mericans don't care if they choke to death on fact'ry smoke so long as they go out rich."
The day was bright and nippy. Charles felt good. The effects of the beating were wearing off, and the gypsy robe kept him warm. His first impression of Wooden Foot had been right; the trader was a man to like and trust. Maybe his spirits would lighten in the weeks ahead, even if he did have to ride all the way to the Indian Territory to make it happen.
They rode toward the busy heart of town, passing old Creole homes of stone, frontier cabins of hand-hewn logs, and newer, half-timbered houses with Dutch doors built by members of the large German population. Around one hundred fifty thousand people lived in St. Louis, Wooden Foot said.
Reaching Third Street, they could already hear the wagon traffic and shouting stevedores on the mile-and-a-half-long levee ahead of them. A riverboat's whistle blew as Wooden Foot handed Charles a roll of notes.
"I'll stock up on trade goods while you buy some winter clothes. Also a knife. Also a rifle that satisfies you, and plenty of ammunition. Don't go scant or cheap. They ain't no general stores out where we're goin', and you'd be pretty unhappy to have a dozen hoppin'-mad Cheyennes on your neck and no more cartridges in your pouch 'cause you saved a penny. Oh" — he grinned —"buy some of them cigars you fancy. Man needs a little civilized pleasure on the plains. The winter nights are mighty long."
He waved, turned left at the corner in front of an oxcart, and disappeared.
Ten minutes later, Charles walked out of a tobacco shop on Olive Street with three wooden boxes under his arm. He slipped them in an old saddlebag Wooden Foot had given him.
He'd kept one cigar out to smoke. As he lit it, he noticed an Army officer striding along the walk on the other side of the street. He didn't know the officer's name, but he recognized his face from Jefferson Barracks. He held absolutely still. The match burned down, scorching his fingers.
The officer went around the corner without seeing him.
Charles exhaled, flicked the dead match away, and rubbed his stinging fingers on his leg. He relit the cigar as a wagon pulled up at the Olive Street side of a large two-story building on the corner. A second-floor signboard mounted to be readable from both streets said TRUMP’S ST. LOUIS PLAYHOUSE in showy red letters.
The wagon carried a load of unpainted boards. The teamster, a pot-gut with the front brim of his black hat pinned up, tied the rein to a hitching post and smacked the hip of the old dray horse as he got down — an unnecessary unkindness that made Charles frown. The teamster looked grumpy, but that was no excuse.
The man entered a door marked STAGE. He shouted something, then came out and began pulling boards from the wagon. He looked like he hated the work, and the world.
A black cat strolled out of the theater and approached the dray horse. The horse began to whinny and sidestep. The cat arched its back and hissed. The horse reared, whinnying wildly and lunging toward the street, almost causing a collision with a green-and-white hotel omnibus bringing passengers and luggage from the levee. One of the passengers leaned out to swat the wagon horse away. The horse reared again.
As the omnibus rattled on, the teamster dropped three boards on the walk and slapped the horse's hind quarter with his black hat. "Goddamn miserable nag." He hit again, and again.
Charles's face changed as he watched. The horse tried to nip his tormentor. The teamster reached under the seat and came up with a quirt. He laid it on the old plug's neck, withers, haunch.
Charles dashed around his mount's head and into the street, jumping to avoid being run down by a horseman. The teamster kept striking with the quirt. "Teach you to bite me, you fucking jughead."
A gentleman passing with a lady objected to the language. The teamster whirled and threatened him with the bloodied quirt. The man hurried the woman away.
The feeble prancing of the old horse amused the teamster. He struck the animal again.
"Hit him once more and I'll put one between your eyes."
The teamster glanced up to see Charles on the sidewalk, both hands extended in front of him, clasping the Army Colt. Charles's cheeks were deep red. The sight of the quirt marks enraged him. His heart beat at great speed, roaring in his ears. He drew the hammer back.
"He's my horse, for Christ's sake," the teamster protested.
"He's a dumb animal. Take your misery out on a human being."
To Charles's left, in the theater doorway, a woman said, "What is all this about?" Charles mistakenly looked at her, and the teamster laid the quirt across his shoulder.
Charles staggered back. The teamster knocked the Colt from his hand. Something exploded in Charles's head.
He tore the upraised quirt away from the teamster and flung it. Then he jumped the man and bore him down to the wooden walk. His right arm pistoned back and forth. Someone from a gathering crowd grabbed his shoulders. "Get up. Stop it."
Charles kept pounding.
"Get up! You're killing him."
Two men succeeded in pulling him away. The red haze cleared from his mind, and he saw the pulped, dripping face of the teamster, who lay on his back. One of the men from the crowd said to the teamster, "You better unload and get out of here."
Charles tossed the teamster a blue bandanna from his back pocket. The man batted it away and called Charles a filthy name. Charles flexed his aching right hand as the teamster struggled up and began to pull boards from the wagon, watching Charles from an eye already showing a purple bruise.
"Pretty severe punishment for horsewhipping," one of the onlookers said to Charles.
"The man jumped me." He stared until the onlooker muttered something and turned away.
To someone inside the theater, the woman said, "Arthur, please come help unload the lumber." Charles turned to her, completely unprepared for what he saw: a woman perhaps twenty years old, a picture-pretty thing, slim but well formed, with blue eyes and blond hair so pale it had silver glints. Her dress was a plain yellow lawn, dusty in places. She held the black cat in her arms.
"That stray cat spooked the horse. That's what started everything." Charles remembered his manners and dragged off his old straw hat.
"Prosperity isn't a stray. She belongs to the theater." The young woman indicated the signboard on the building. "I'm Mrs. Parker."
"Charles Main, ma'am. Believe me, I don't always blow up like that, though it does happen if I catch somebody mistreating a horse."