We coached to the Laclede Hotel, at Fifth and Chestnut, and had crayfish for breakfast. That afternoon, in gorgeous weather, we demolished the Unions at a park crammed to capacity.
“Clockwork fielding and steam-powered batting” was how the local Democrat described our play, and that about said it. We pulled off three double plays. George, Waterman, and Brainard each had eight hits.
Stockings 70, Unions 9.
That night at the Olympia Theater we saw an interminable farce called Chiron and Chloe in the Back Room. I left at intermission, anxious to get back to the hotel to write to Cait. Posting the letter early in the morning, I realized it wouldn’t reach her for days. So I also sent a telegram: “Samuel loves Caitlin.”
We played the Empires on the same grounds. The crowd held considerably more women than the previous day’s. Word must have gotten out. The Stockings were young, suntanned, muscular, famous, well paid, and wore sexy uniforms. What else did it take?
Allison’s hands were sore again, and he allowed a number of passed balls. The Empires fielded fairly well and their pitcher wasn’t bad, holding us to thirty-one runs on an equal number of hits. In the field we made eight muffs, but the outcome was never in doubt. Our record stood at 45—0. We would next play in San Francisco.
After totaling the score-book columns, I worked up my first dispatch lead for the Enquirer. “St. Louis fans turned out in brilliant weather to witness an exhibition of less-than-flawless baseball as the Red Stockings coasted to a 31—14 win over the hometown Empires.” Mundane but serviceable, I thought.
Millar didn’t. When I asked him to critique it, he immediately crossed out “fans”—as yet fan or crank or rooter had not appeared; no single identifying term for a sports fanatic existed. He made “baseball” two words. Then he tossed away the whole thing and wrote, “The match this afternoon on the St. Louis grounds, captured by our stalwart lads with thirty-one runs to the Missourians’ fourteen, was viewed by a fair audience, there being probably two thousand people present, including many ladies.”
Hopelessly cumbersome. “Why do you make a point of women?” I asked.
“So as to elevate the sport,” he said, the pedant in his glory. “You do want that, don’t you, Fowler?”
“Oh, more than life itself.”
Again that night we went to the theater, this time as guests of Edwin Adams, the famed actor, who performed the title role of Narcisse the Vagrant: The Great Tragedy in Five Parts. To me the acting, with its posturing and overblown sentiment, was hard to take seriously. Hurley would have enjoyed it, I thought, and wondered how he was doing; he must feel wretched every time he heard of us.
A telegram arrived for me at the hotel.
SAMUEL STOP TERRIBLY ALARMED STOP FEARGHUS RETURNED STOP RAGING SAYING MCDERMOTT PURSUE STOP BE MOST WATCHFUL STOP YOUR CAIT
My mind flooded with anxious thoughts. Had Cait taken risks to warn me? Had O’Donovan discovered I’d withdrawn the money from the bank? He must think I was running away. I stared at the yellow paper. Raging saying McDermott pursue. . . . So they’d be coming after me again. Would they try for me in San Francisco? Or set a trap earlier, along the train route? These two days in St. Louis gave them that much time to gain on me. Shit.
I touched the words Your Cait with my fingertips. Then I went up and loaded the derringer. Restlessly I walked out in the dark streets. The air was warm and velvety. When I reached the river I aimed at a spot in the water, looked around briefly—nobody was in view—and squeezed the trigger. There was a brittle pop! Concentric circles rippled the black water.
Chapter 24
We razzed Mac hard as we pulled out of town on the Northern Missouri line. The big kid looked sheepish. He and Allison had sneaked out to a beer hall the previous night. Mac had made advances on one of the Pretty Waiter Girls—the generic sisters of dance-hall women, with their plump arms, short boots, and skirts displaying a few prurient inches of pale tights and flesh—and promptly landed in a fight and then in jail. Harry had had to vouch for him. Fortunately the St. Louis cops were ball fans.
The passing countryside began to take on a different look: more grazing land, with fewer farmhouses and haystacks; rolling hills with clouds piled high behind; tree rows stretching in dark lines across paler land; wildflowers—golds and purples and blues—along the embankments, their smells, with those of grasses and nettles, drifting to us at the country stations where we stopped for water and coal.
Sweasy conducted a seminar on Indians in our car, recounting a succession of lurid stories: A Swedish settlement on the Saline River had been overrun only two months ago by marauding Sioux. A soldier had taken the scalp of a live Indian prisoner after witnessing the same done to a white settler. A copper-skinned killer named Red Cloud, who stood taller than Gould, was even now roaming the plains with two thousand bloodthirsty painted horsemen.
“Truly, Sweaze?” said Andy. “I mean, out where we’re goin’?”
“Listen to this.” Sweasy opened a copy of the St. Louis Republican. “‘We have received particulars of the Indian massacre: The tongues and hearts were cut out of the dead bodies; the calves of their legs were slit down and tied under their shoes; pieces of flesh were cut from their back; pieces of telegraph wire were stuck into the bodies; the ears were cut off and heads scalped. The Indians boiled the hearts of their victims for medicine.’”
He looked grimly pleased at the shock it produced.
“Where’s the damn army?” said Gould.
“‘Companies A and D of the Seventh Cavalry, under Colonels Weir and Custer,’” Sweasy read, “‘are to be sent after the depredators.’”
“Seems they’re a mite late,” Waterman said. “Answer what Andy asked, Sweaze—these things happening close by or ain’t they?”
“Just down in Kansas,”
