“Oh, Lord,” Ringo sighed. “Why’d you go and ruin a good gun?”
“Fanning is for fools,” Freddie said. “You should just take aim- ”
“I ain’t such a good shot as you two,” Brocius said. He puffed his cigar. “My talents are more organizational and political. I figure if I got to jerk my gun, I’ll just fan it and make up for aim with volume.”
“You’d better hope you never have to shoot it,” Freddie said.
“If we win the election,” Brocius said cheerfully. “I probably won’t.”
Even the drinking water must be carried to us on wagons, Freddie wrote in his notebook a few hours later. The alkali desert is unforgiving and unsuitable for anything but the lizards and vultures who were here before us. Even the Indians avoided this country. The ranchers cannot keep enough cattle on this wretched land to make a profit-thus they are dependent on the rustlers and smugglers for their livelihood. The population came because of greed or ambition, and if the silver ever runs out, Tombstone will fly away with the dust.
So why, when I perceive these Cowboys in their huge sombreros, their gaudy kerchiefs and doeskin trousers, do I see instead the old Romans in their ringing bronze?
From such as these did Romulus spring! For who was Romulus? A tyrant, a bandit, a man who harbored runaways and stole the cattle-and the daughters-of his neighbors. Yet he was noble, yet a hero, yet he spawned a great Empire. History trembles before his memory.
And now the Romans have come again! Riding into Tombstone with their rifles in the scabbards!
All the old Roman virtues I see among them. They are frank, truthful, loyal, and above all healthy. They hold the lives of men-their own included-in contempt. Nothing is more refreshing and wholesome than this lack of pity, this disdain for the so-called civilized virtues. They are from the American South, of course, that defeated country now sunk in ruin and oppression. They are too young to have fought in the Civil War, but not so young they did not see its horrors. This exposure to life’s cruelties, when they were still at a tender age, must have hardened them against pieties and hypocrisies of the world. Not for them the mad egotism of the ascetic, the persistent morbidity-the sickness — of the civilized man. These heroes abandoned their defeated country and came West-West, where the new Rome will be born!
If only they can be brought to treasure their virtues as I do. But they treat themselves as carelessly as they treat everything. They possess all virtues but one: the will to power. They have it in themselves to dominate, to rule-not through these petty maneuverings at the polls with which Brocius is so unwisely intoxicated, but through themselves, their desires, their guns… They can create an empire here, and must, if their virtues are to survive. It is not enough to avoid the law, avoid civilization-they must wish to destroy the inverted virtues that oppose them.
Who shall win? Tottering, hypnotized, sunken Civilization, or this new Rome? Ridiculous, when we consider numbers, when we consider mere guns and iron. Yet what was Romulus? A bandit, crouched on his Palatine Hill. Yet nothing could stand in his way. His will was greater than that of the whole rotten world.
And-as these classical allusions now seem irresistible-what are we to make of the appearance of Helen of Troy? Who better to signal the end of an empire? Familiar with Goethe’s superior work, I forgot that Helen does not speak in Marlowe’s Faustus. She simply parades along and inspires poetry. But when she looked at our good German metaphysician, that eye of hers spoke mischief that had nothing to do with verse-and the actor knew it, for he stammered. Such a sexual being as this Helen was not envisioned by the good British Marlowe, whom we are led to believe did not with women.
I do not see such a girl cleaving to Behan for long-his blood is too thin for the likes of her.
And when she tires of him-beware, Behan! Beware, Faustus! Beware, Troy!
Freddie met Sheriff Behan’s girl at the victory party following the election. Brocius’s election strategy had borne fruit, of a sort-but Johnny Behan was rotten fruit, Freddie thought, and would fall to the ground ere long.
The Occidental Saloon was filled with celebration and a hundred drunken Cowboys. Even Wyatt Earp turned up, glooming in his black coat and drooping mustaches, still secure in the illusion that Behan would hire him as a deputy; but at the sight of the company his face wrinkled as if he’d just bit on a lemon, and he did not stay long.
Amid all this roistering inebriation, Freddie saw Behan’s girl perched on the long bar, surrounded by a crowd of men and kicking her heels in the air in a white froth of petticoats. Freddie was surprised-he had rarely in his life met a woman who would enter a saloon, let alone behave so freely in one, and among a crowd of rowdy drunks. Behan-a natty Irishman in a derby-stood nearby and accepted congratulations and bumper after bumper of the finest French champagne.
Freddie offered Behan his perfunctory congratulations, then shouldered his way to the bar where he saw John Ringo crouched protectively around a half-empty bottle of whiskey. “I have drunk deep of the Pierian,” Ringo said, “and drunk disgustingly. Will you join me?”
“No,” said Freddie, and ordered soda water. The noise of the room battered at his nerves. He would not stay long-he would go to another saloon, perhaps, and find a game of cards.
Ringo’s melancholy eyes roamed the room. “Freddie, you do not look overjoyed,” he said.
Freddie looked at his drink. “Men selling their freedom to become citizens, ” he snarled. “And they call it a victory.” He looked toward Behan, felt his lips curl. “Victory makes stupid,” he said. “I learned that in Germany, in 1870.”
“Why so gloomy, boys?” cried a woman’s voice in a surprising New York accent. “Don’t you know it’s a party?” Behan’s girl leaned toward them, half-lying across the polished mahogany bar. She was younger than Freddie had expected-not yet twenty, he thought.
Ringo brightened a little-he liked the ladies. “Have you met German Freddie, Josie?” he said. “Freddie here doesn’t like elections.”
Josie laughed and waved her glass of champagne. “I don’t know that we had a real election, Freddie,” she called. “Think of it as being more like a great big felony.”
Cowboy voices roared with laughter. Freddie found himself smiling behind his bushy mustache. Ringo, suddenly merry, grabbed Freddie’s arm and hauled him toward Josie.
“Freddie here used to be a Professor of Philosophy back in Germany,” Ringo said. “He was told to come West for his health.” Ringo looked at Freddie in a kind of amazement. “Can you picture that?”
Freddie-who had come West to die-said merely, “Philology. Switzerland,” and sipped his soda water.
“You should have him tell you about how we’re all Supermen,” Ringo said.
Freddie stiffened. “You are not Supermen,” he said.
“ You’re the Superman, then,” Ringo said, swaying. The drunken raillery smoothed the sad lines of his eyes.
“I am the Superman’s prophet,” Freddie said with careful dignity. “And the Superman will be among your children, I think-he will come from America.”
“I suppose I’d better get busy and have some children, then,” Ringo said.
Josie watched this byplay with interest. Her hair was raven black, Freddie saw, and worn long, streaming down her shoulders. Her nose was proudly arched. Her eyes were large and brown and heavy-lidded-the heavy lids gave her a sultry look. She leaned toward Freddie.
“Tell me some philology,” she said.
He looked up at her. “You are the first American I have met who knows the word.”
“I know a lot of words.” With a laugh she pressed his wrist-it was all Freddie could do not to jump a foot at the unexpected touch. Instead he looked at her sternly.