The Laughingstock

There is Nothing quite so quaint as a recently outmoded way of dressing. So, now, there was some nudging and whispering among the newspapermen who frequented McSorley's in New York City when the old gentleman came in with something between a limp and a swagger, got up in a sky-blue jacket and waistcoat and dark blue trousers, a "polo" collar starched hard, cut so low as to expose the whole of his wiry brown throat and with a gap for a black satin necktie knotted as thick as your wrist and ornamented with a horseshoe brooch, and a hard round hat of the kind that used to be advertised as "Sportsman's Dove-Gray Curl-Brim Special." There was a zinnia in his buttonhole, and he carried a great Malacca-root stick which, by the way it swung, was evidently loaded with lead under its silver knob. And then, his posture, his manner, even what remained of his melancholy, gentlemanly good looks, did not belong after the turn of the century.

A journalist from Boston, whiling away a democratic hour at McSorley's, interrupted some discussion of Woodrow Wilson's chances in the coming election to remark, "The last man I saw dressed like that was the renowned John L. Sullivan. Who is that gentleman?"

"Well, the chief pays old W.B. to be a sports reporter," said a morose copy editor in a candy-striped pink shirt. "He is, therefore, to be regarded as such."

A haggard young man wearing pince-nez, a three-inch collar and an expression curiously compounded of a desire to please and a readiness to wound – the kind of a man who sniggers before trying to make a weak joke strong by putting it into verbal italics – said, "I come from Philly and my name's Billy Bell, so the boys call me Liberty Bell 'cause I'm always ready with a crack – he-he! – get it? I'm new on the New York Telegraph but I'm here to tell you that old W.B. has one hell of a lot to learn about fighting. I've just spent a thirsty hour rewriting his immortal account of the Hod Kelly—Willie Meany fight" – he took out several sheets of closely written manuscript – "here's the original; it deserves to be framed. Listen!" – and he read aloud:

"... In or about the second minute of the ninth round of this encounter Hod Kelly aimed a savage blow with his left hand at Meany's chin which, ricocheting off his cheekbone, the latter having lowered his head, struck about half an inch over Meany's right eye, inflicting a flesh wound about three inches long and a quarter of an inch deep, which bled copiously..."

There was some laughter, and even the polite Bostonian smiled and said, "Well, perhaps it does read a little like a doctor's testimony in an assault case, in some rural court."

"Oh, it goes on like that for just about a hundred and sixty sticks – ten columns!" said Billy Bell. "I wonder what would happen if we sent him out to cover a murder?"

The copy editor said, "I have heard him describing a twenty-hour poker game, hand by hand and raise by raise."

"Well," said a political reporter, fanning himself with a stiff straw hat, "just don't catch his eye – or he'll be over like a shot with a yarn like a fisherman's arm."

At the other end of the bar, sipping a mug of ale and watching them through the tobacco smoke, the old man was saying to himself, The boys are in fine spirits tonight. They haven't seen me yet. I must get my ideas in order; I always manage to make them laugh at the wrong things. And they are sure to want me to tell them a story ... Still, he felt a little uneasy in the presence of all these quick-talking, knowledgeable young men: he suspected irony in their notes of admiration, and mockery in their all-too-ready laughter. This time, point by point, he determined to arrange and coordinate his narrative. So, carefully making a pattern of rings on the bar with the foot of his glass, the old man linked incident to (continued on page 127) Laughingstoch (continued from page 83) incident in his memory.

As we might say nowadays, he was writing himself a script.

• • •

Tonight's gory spectacle, gentlemen (he would say, with a wink), reminds me of an occasion when the gutters of Dodge City ran red ankle-deep in 1881.

I was playing poker in the Imperial Corcovado Hotel, too engrossed to be disturbed by the New Mexico mosquitoes that came in through the chinks in the boards of which that respectable establishment was constructed, when a boy came in with a telegram from my brother Jim in Dodge City, saying: Peacock and updegraff gunning for me can you stand by your affectionate brother James.

Gentlemen, to stay in the game I had drawn three cards to a king and a queen, and had picked up three more queens! There must have been two hundred dollars in the pot, but I threw in my hand, ran out of the saloon, and up to the bridal suite, so called: a room with two beds which I was sharing with old man Henderson. My mind was in a whirl – I knew that, in leaving the card table so abruptly, I was leaving something of my reputation behind me, for my chief opponent there was the redoubtable "Aces" Flattery and, I being a few dollars ahead of the game, my denigrators would undoubtedly whisper that I had lost my nerve. It was indeed, for a while, bruited about New Mexico that I had sent this telegram to myself, and the story snowballed, as such stories will.

That this was a base lie goes without saying. I had lost one brother in Dodge, our beloved Edward – and his death almost broke our hearts, for that sweet boy was worth the rest of us put together. And was it, now, to be Jim? Conditionally – that he be hurt over my dead body!

I changed into a fresh suit of clothes, and tossed some clean shirts into a little bag – for as you may have observed, I am a man who takes a certain pride in his personal appearance – buckled on only one pistol for portability, and caught the train by my fingertips.

(Here, perhaps, some brief account of the thoughts that passed through my mind?)

Well then, gentlemen; having cooled off, or rather simmered down, resigning myself to the fact that I had to sit still and be carried to Kansas as quick as steam would take me, I became aware of a certain Physical discomfort. How to define it? It was not painful, as if I had put my right foot into my left boot. It was not galling, as if I had put my trousers on back to front. It was a species of tingling and chafing at my right hip.

I looked, instinctively, to my pistol: yes, gentlemen, there was my pistol – yet, it was not my pistol! It was a Colt .45 calibre revolver, double nickel-plated, with grips of the finest gutta-percha, such as had been made to order for me only a couple of years before. But my pistols were specifically manufactured with a very high front sight – from which any child might deduce that I had a bad habit of shooting too low at long range – whereas this pistol was equipped with a low front sight!

In my perturbation, after having changed my clothes, and in my anxiety to catch the train, I had taken up one of Henderson's .45s instead of one of my own – all because the old fool endeavored slavishly to imitate me in everything.

But the error was past praying for, now. For all I knew, I argued, it might be a lucky omen. I hoped it might be: for, if Peacock was a ruthless scoundrel, Al Updegraff was a slimy, slippery one; and when I was not by, my brother James, though worth a dozen average men, had a tendency to indecision. Which, gentlemen, on the frontier was tantamount to suicide.

Well, after what seemed to be an eternity, we puffed into Dodge about noon on Saturday, and who should be waiting there by the station but the notorious Peacock and the infamous Updegraff themselves! So I hailed them, crying, "Hey there! The favor of a word with you, gentlemen, if you can spare a moment" – or words to that effect. Whereupon, Peacock turned green and Updegraff became the color of mottled soap; for they had believed me to be several states away.

They ran for the cover of the calaboose, drawing their pistols. There are some decriers of my reputation who blame me for leaping to cover: I can only say that any man who will stand in the open to present himself as a target for hidden desperadoes deserves exactly what he is likely to get. The West was not won by cheap heroics!

I, gentlemen, jumped for the dead ground of the siding – and fell behind it, just as a bullet cracked past my ear like a mule skinner's whip. Then I returned their fire.

Now you may have observed, gentlemen, that I favor my left leg (where the sergeant shot me) and so, having discovered that I had a tendency to shoot where I inclined, to the left, I had corrected myself by long practice in automatically aiming a trifle to the right. As any master of his weapon will confirm, a pistol, constantly used, though an inanimate object like a pen, an armchair, or a boot, somehow partakes of the character of its user. And I had forgotten, in the thrill of the instant of the draw, that I had old man Henderson's pistol in my hand.

And old man Henderson had his sights filed down because he had the habit of shooting high left, "at ten o'clock" as the target-shooters say. As a consequence, my first two bullets went wide.

A third, I am informed, went through a window of Mr. Hoover's liquor store where it plucked from the hands of the gentleman who was reading it, a copy of The Globe, exactly perforating the o in the title of that journal, and breaking a five-gallon jug of white mule. A fourth and a fifth went, respectively, into McCarty's drugstore and the Long Branch saloon.

But for my sixth, and last, shot I gripped my right wrist firmly in my left hand, took careful aim and shot Updegraff through the lung. Being now out of ammunition, I ceased fire; submitted myself to the authorities and was fined eight dollars and costs – not so much for cutting down the despicable Updegraff, as they politely explained, as for unlawfully discharging a pistol upon the streets of the city.

("Why, then," one of those cute young 'uns is sure to say, pulling me up, "either this Mr. Updegraf was a most extraordinary full-blooded man, or that was a remarkably small city of yours, if one bullet in his lung made it run red ankle-deep?" Yes, but before the boys get the laugh on me this time, I get in first with the laugh against myself!)

Wait a bit, gentlemen, wait a bit! My fine I paid, and my legal costs to boot. But when I left the courthouse, my character unstained, old Doctor McCarty accosted me, and said, "Son, you have put quite a bit of business my way in your time, what with sutures, extractions of morsels of lead of various calibres, and certain fractures both simple and compound. There are no hard feelings in this man's town. But I would take it kindly of you if you would replace my fine blown-glass bottle."

"How's that again, Doctor?" I asked.

"A bottle, of twenty-gallon capacity, filled with nothing but water colored deep red with logwood, which I always displayed for the look of the thing. One of your balls, sir, shattered a dozen of Trubshaw's Kidney Mixture, and smashed that bottle. Not a passer-by but went home with his boots seemingly full of blood – my fine floor ruined – my bottle, all the way from Chicago, shivered. And what are you going to do about it?"

"How much?" I asked.

"Why," said he, "we'll skip the Kidney Mixture which, truth to tell, consisted in nothing much more than a drop of oil of juniper in a kind of tincture of water. But that bottle was priceless."

"In that case," I said, "there's no use putting a price upon it. But here' twenty dollars for your floor."

"We'll have a drink on that," he said; and so we went into the saloon next door.

There, Chalk Beeson met me with a long face. He was pale and lame in one leg. When he saw me he said, "Come, now; you were always the gentleman. Pay up, pay up, sir, for the damage you have done!"

"Give it a name, Chalk," said I, "and if so be I've hurt you, I'll pay."

He said, "See here. Your ball went through my window."

I said, "One pane of glass. Proceed."

"It passed through – " he produced a mess of broken crockery with the dust of years upon it, gentlemen. Including – heaven be my judge – a teapot!

"So?" I said.

"I was injured in the hips," said he.

Then an old gentleman named Chick Madison piped up, "Chalk, you lie! When the shooting started, you tried to climb into your own iron safe, and it was only when I and Bull Corcoran pulled you out that you got grazed about the britches!"

"I plastered him," said Doc McCarty. "What Chick says is true."

"Well then," I said, throwing down some silver, "here's a dollar for the window, and a dollar for the plaster, and a couple of dollars for drinks for the good of the house. Be satisfied, Chalk, be satisfied!" He was silent for as long as it took to pour the drinks.

Then he said, "Yes, but what about my statue?"

"Statue? What statue?"

"The statue I paid fifteen dollars for, in Kansas City," said Chalk Beeson. He pointed, then, to a plaster replica of the Venus de Milo.

"Well then, what about your statue?" I asked.

"Why," he said, "she's mutilated, and I can swear she had both her arms before that there shooting started."

I said, "The trouble with you is, your classical education was neglected – that lady was born without arms." But, having been invited to leave town without delay, I saw no sense in dispute. With much learned argument, Doc McCarty assessed the value of Venus' arms at four dollars and fifty cents. I paid; and, collecting my dear brother Jim, went away to Trinidad, Colorado, where I conducted a polite card salon, specializing in Spanish monte.

And so, gentlemen, it would not surprise me if, among the other things they say about me, my enemies let it go down in history that I shot a lady!

• • •

Ready, now, with dignity to make a laughingstock of himself, the old gentleman in blue expanded his ample chest, took hold of his cane and, whistling some flat, forlorn tune about the streets of Laredo, started down the bar. He went very slowly, because he wanted to appear casual.

He was relishing in advance the cries of "Well, look who's here!" that must inevitably greet him.

The morose man growled, "Oh, say it ain't so, Joe! Here it comes."

"What, as a matter of curiosity, do the initials W.B. stand for?" asked the newspaperman from Boston. Everyone answered at once.

One said, "Woolly Bully," and another said, "Wonderiferous Blowhard." A third suggested, "Western Bragger," while the rewrite-man from Philadelphia muttered "Wichita Blatherskite – no? The man worked out of Dodge City? Why then, what about Wayfaring Buffalo?" Yet another joker said, with simulated wonder, "We know J.P. stands for Pulitzer, we know J.G.B. means Gordon Bennett, we know W.R.H. signifies Hearst, and G.B.S., Bernard Shaw – how come we don't know W.B.?" This raised a laugh, as such jokes will at two in the morning at McSorley's.

"Hello there, boys!" cried the old gentleman. "I am rejoiced to see you so happy. A strange face among us tonight, I see."

The morose man said, with a sigh of resignation, "Oh, all right; this is Mr. Henry Scudder, of The Boston Transcript. Mr. Scudder, allow me to present one of Gotham's more harmless and picturesque characters – William Barclay 'Bat' Masterson, of Dodge City, Kansas."

Exchanging glances, the boys closed in for the killing.