Russian Bill revelled luxuriously in his reputation as a bad man. He hinted darkly of a long career of outlawry and of having killed four men and, in ostensible corroboration of a tragic record, he exhibited four notches carved with a penknife, as neatly as you please, on the handle of one of the two big six-shooters that dangled from his belt. He scowled ominously, carried himself like a swashbuckler, and tossed off his whisky with a flourish. Also he played a good hand at poker, and his game at faro was not to be sneezed at. Certainly, Russian Bill had all the earmarks of a dime-novel hero.
Buckskin Frank Leslie and Doc Holliday looked him over as he passed on Allen Street.
“There goes Russian Bill,” remarked the doctor. “Famous outlaw and desperado.”
“Russian Bill?” repeated Leslie musingly. “I don’t seem to place him.”
“Nobody else can,” replied Holliday. “But he’s bad. He admits it.”
Leslie studied the tall figure, the fleckless cowboy accoutrements, the polished guns, the bright yellow holsters, the golden curls shaking over the broad shoulders.
“The gent’s got pretty hair,” said Buckskin Frank with the air of delivering a verdict.
Russian Bill, it must be admitted, was extraordinary for an outlaw. He displayed an amazing familiarity—for an outlaw—with history, literature, and science. Tombstone saloons were not haunts of the intelligentsia, and it would have been possible for a man with even a smattering of book-learning to acquire a reputation as a sage. But Russian Bill spoke with authority on many recondite subjects, and though his unlettered hearers at times hardly knew what he was talking about, it was generally assumed in Tombstone that his scholarly attainments were genuine.
Evidently of foreign birth, his English was almost without a trace of accent, and he was reputed to speak three other languages equally well. Sometimes, when mellow with liquor, he recited poetry. “This is from Keats,” he would say. Or “That is from Shelley.” The saloon hangers-on wondered where Keats tended bar and for what brand Shelley punched cows, but they were impressed. And in discussing such commonplace topics as the double-out system at bank or the advantage of drawing one card to three of a kind at poker, Russian Bill was just as likely as not to drop in a phrase of Latin or a Greek quotation. He seemed to have difficulty in holding back his erudition.
Then, Russian Bill’s manners were distinguished. He did his best to conceal this scandalous fact, but it stood out as plain as the nose on his face. If he failed to catch some remark, he would say “Pardon me,” instead of “What the hell was that you said?” And he had a way of saying “Thank you very much,” and “Very kind of you,” which sounded queer out here on the desert. And when he invited a fellow to take a glass of tanglefoot, he would not blurt out, “Line up and nominate your pizen,” in the usual outlaw way, but would say with a courtly bow, “Do me the courtesy, my good friend, to have a little drink with me.” These absentminded lapses did his reputation in Tombstone no good. Try as hard as he might, he seemed unable to convince anybody that he was rough and tough. A subtle something about him set him apart even in a Tombstone saloon and marked him unmistakably as a gentleman to the manner born.
Naturally, Russian Bill fell under grave suspicion. Tombstone was not used to outlaws that talked like scholars and observed the punctilios of polite society. Moreover, the spick-and-span newness of Russian Bill’s cowboy makeup caused remark. It smacked of the mail-order house and looked too new to be true. Tombstone puzzled for quite a while over Russian Bill. When it came to outlaws, the town was pretty hard to fool. It made an honest effort to accept Russian Bill for the bold, bad man he represented himself to be, but at last the conclusion was forced upon it that this Russian Bill was only a make-believe outlaw and all his quaint stories were only so much blood-and-thunder claptrap.
The truth was, Russian Bill was dramatizing himself in a little play of his own creation. He was a natural actor who, having missed the footlights, had made the world his stage. His life was a drama that he lived before the critical eyes of an invisible audience. It was not vanity, but the artist in him, that made him strut and pose. Every move, every smile, every frown, was a detail of his art. The role of outlaw had appealed to him as romantically fitting in this wonderful Arizona stage-setting of lonely deserts and mountains. If he enjoyed playing outlaw, where was the harm? It was a satisfying character part. There was good drama in it. It gave him an opportunity for some fine heroics and theatrical effects. But if in this picturesque role of outlaw he should ever meet death standing at a turn in the road, what then? This was a question that did not concern him. As an artist at make-believe, why should he worry about death? Death was reality. There was no art in death.
The Bird Cage Theatre was crowded. The evening’s entertainment was of that excellence Tombstone was wont to expect in this home of refined vaudeville. In one of the upper boxes sat Russian Bill in the midst of a bevy of red-light beauties, and waiters were busy hustling bottles of champagne from the downstairs bar. When the Tombstone Nightingale tripped from the wings and stood smiling behind the footlights, the audience greeted this ever-popular queen of song with vociferous cheering and waving beer mugs. The orchestra struck up something soft and plaintive, and the beautiful cantatrice launched into a soulful aria. Her rich soprano was trembling on a top note when a rough, drunken voice roared from the end box directly above the stage.
“Rotten. Who ever told you you could sing?”
The Tombstone Nightingale cut short her melody. Indignation blazed
