The Six Messiahs

York—lose a little weight first, cut back on the drinking—producer, director, and star of Bendigo Rymer's once-in-a- lifetime production of the Bard's immortal Hamlet!

Bendigo had spent every spare moment of his twenty years in theatrical exile restructuring and simplifying Hamlet's convoluted text to play to his strengths—more swordplay, a sunnier relationship with Ophelia, less morbid introspection—and finally his apotheosis was within reach. How many hundreds of times had he rehearsed the scene in his mind: opening night; Booth seated front row center, reduced to a sobbing puddle by the magnificent soaring humanity of his performance, falling to his knees and begging Bendigo's forgiveness for his rank, vicious stupidity, right in front of a crowd that always included all the important critics....

His reverie was broken by the sound of Eileen's happy laughter: the old man laughing, too.

What could those two possibly have to laugh about? Bendigo fumed and snuck a healthy pull from his flask. Something humiliating about her interest in the old man. It was enough to make him want to sleep with Eileen, if it had ever actually happened, all over again.

When Buckskin Frank and his posse arrived in Phoenix by special train that afternoon, he was pleasantly surprised to find this crime scene had been roped off and left largely intact: The guard's neck was broken—snapped like a twig; worse than a hanging—and a set of footprints he found behind the bales matched the tracks he'd spotted leaving the Yuma yards: a flat print, no heel, like the slippers he'd seen coolies wear. Furthermore, a guard who'd fired the shot at the killer had managed a clear look at him and yes, the man was indisputably a Chinaman, which was as specific as the guard could get. That qualified as good news.

The bad news was that Frank wouldn't be able to trail whoever the hell they were after down into Sonora, shake this bunch of greenhorns, carve out a little grubstake for himself, and settle into a slow decline of pan mining and tequila sipping while leisurely shopping around for the best bordello south of the border: That defined the honest limit of Frank McQuethy's remaining life ambitions.

Frank lit a cigarette, stood tall, and strolled down the tracks away from the swarm of lawmen and volunteers: Whenever he tried to look like he was thinking hard, they cut him a wide berth. With his high hat and boots, he towered above the crowd; that yellow buckskin gleamed in the sunlight; his handlebar moustache advertised brawny, unselfish heroism. He was dimly aware of a gaggle of women watching from the passenger platform, giggling and chattering like barnyard hens; apparently they'd recognized his jacket: A story had already appeared in the local paper about Frank's newsworthy release and involvement in the manhunt.

Women: There was the bedrock of his mountain in life. Try as he might, Frank had never completely grasped the nature of his indestructible appeal to the fairer sex: What did they see when they looked at him? He didn't have a clue what it was, but he knew it wasn't him. Did it have something to do with his having killed a woman in front of a crowd—poor Molly; the best of him had died right along with her—and getting his name in the papers that made the rest of them swarm around like flies?

Most of the women who tried to visit him in prison couldn't hear enough about the who, how, and why of every human life he'd ended; some sort of sick electric thrill ran through them. He failed to find any sense in that and none in them: Like any man of principle, all he wanted to do was forget about the people he'd killed. Maybe their interest was another side effect of all those dime novels over the years with his stupid picture on the cover that in hindsight he hadn't done enough to discourage. Hell, he'd even tried writing a few himself; the guards had a pile of 'em back at the prison they used to hawk to the tourists. Buckskin Frank: Geronimo's Nightmare. I Rode with Wyatt: Tombstone's Invisible Man. Half a dozen others. Big sellers, every one.

He had to face facts; through some fault of his own, fame had destroyed his privacy and it made Frank's brain ache like a rotten tooth. Five years in prison had brought him a peace uninterrupted by a woman's ceaseless demands that he behave like some crazy idea she had in her head—obedient, mild-mannered, devoted to her every mood: in other words one hundred percent back-asswards from his actual personality. This tranquil stretch had led Frank to conclude that the main reason a woman wanted a man around in the first place was so she could bombard him with the arsenal of dumb questions ricocheting around in her head:

Did he like this dress? Didn't she look too fat in it? What about this new shade of rouge? Did he like his steak red or pink? Could he believe how much they wanted for a yard of calico at the dry goods store? Did he want to hold hands and sit swinging on a glider in the moonlight? Well, no. He liked a poke in the hay well enough, but beyond that he couldn't figure out why they expected so much from him. He didn't know any of the answers to their questions: As far as he was concerned, all these choices having to do with daily existence were equally weighted and to fuss and bother like it was life-or-death about what to eat for breakfast or wear to the square dance squeezed the juice right out of living. Molly was the only woman who'd ever figured that out about him, and look what happened to her.

Husbands were men who brought home the bacon, never drank before dark, and always woke up in the same bed they started the night in. Before they got down to doing the deed for the first time, he had always meant to stop and ask one of these hungry gals flat out: Did he honestly look like husband material to them? And if the. answer was yes, he would reach for his hat because that was a conclusion that could only be made by a lunatic. What Frank wanted, what he thought any man who'd lived life as he had wanted—more than fame, more than fortune—was to be left alone.

Frank felt pathetic: Here he stood scarcely twenty-four hours out of the calaboose and already feeling sentimental about it The trustees used to smuggle in a whore for him once a month or so—there'd been no shortage of soiled doves lining up for the assignment. To his astonishment, he had discovered that, with Molly gone, this turned out to be all the feminine companionship he required.

Wait, thought Frank, and the clouds parted: Who was to say he couldn't work out the same arrangement now that he was nearly free again? Was he doomed to keep hitching his fate to some sage hen's apron strings the minute she salted her tail for him? No. He felt joy bubble up inside him like springwater. That was it: He would blaze a new trail for himself. No more box canyons. No more cow bunnies putting their brand on him.

As he ground out his cigarette, the tubby stationmaster came running up with the schedule of trains that had left Phoenix that morning: two freights, two passenger, one local mail run. Why they had let any train out of the yard under these circumstances was beyond Frank, but he'd long ago given up any hope he'd be put in charge of running the world. A small crowd of anxious volunteers gathered around him waiting for his response.

'You wire ahead to the next stop on all of these trains?' asked Frank.

The stationmaster screwed his face into a ball; he'd read a couple of Buckskin Frank books and felt plainly intimidated. 'You think we should?'

'Well. Yes.'

'But, but we searched through all the trains before we let them go.'

'So?'

The station master grinned like he had a painfully full bladder, took the schedule back from Frank, and headed back to the terminal.

I'll give him ten before he breaks into a trot, thought Frank, watching the man go. It took eight.

Frank sighed heavily and scanned the crowd; nearly a month had passed since his last conjugal visit at the hoosegow. He wondered idly how complicated it would be to get his wick dipped before the manhunt moved on. He rolled another cigarette and walked away from the gawkers like he was searching for clues and they left him alone again.

Thirty paces later he found a puddle of blood in the dirt. He dipped in his finger: dry. At least two hours old. A trail of gouts led away and ended at an empty set of tracks; the stationmaster would know which train had been sitting on these rails.

'Mr. McQuethy?'

He turned: a group of five women, the ones he'd seen watching him from the platform, standing ten yards away. He tipped his hat.

'Ladies.'

The one who'd spoken stepped forward; a big-boned strawberry blonde. Best looking one in the bunch, which said less than he might have hoped for. 'If you'll forgive the intrusion: We read about your release in the paper this morning.'

'Uh-huh.'

The woman blushed. 'And we, well, I guess we're just about your biggest fans here in Phoenix; we've read all your books and followed your career with a great deal of interest.'