News of the World(18)
Captain Kidd! she cried. She smiled and came to stand with one hand on the Curative Waters wagon’s side to see the girl staring out of the red wool with eyes like a carp. She turned to the Captain with an interrogative look. As he explained he stood at the high back wheel with one arm on it, taller than Mrs. Gannet by a head. Even as he told his story he wondered that she ran the livery stable by herself. He was worn and stained with Red River sludge and he had to go about buying newspapers in what he stood up in. No help for it.
San Antonio! said Mrs. Gannet. God above. That is very far, Captain. And you’ll be alone on the roads. There’s news of more raids all through the country. She turned to the stableman to see what he was doing. The Captain knew that raids were how she had become a widow. A year ago they had found Mr. Gannet in several pieces along the Weatherford road and none of them had any clothes on them. She said, Wait for a convoy, will you not?
Yes, yes, he said. We’ll see. It will be all right. He saw her dubious expression. I’m armed, he said. A sidearm and a shotgun. And now I have to go find the latest newspapers and a hotel. May I leave her with you for a few hours? I don’t think she’ll run away and go flitting about Dallas. In Spanish Fort there was someplace to go. The river. Here, she’s deep inside enemy territory so to speak. He ran his blue-veined hand over a two-day growth of silver grizzle. I’m a mess, Mrs. Gannet.
She laughed and said for the Captain to go about his business, she could look after the girl. If he would care to change in the feed room she would send out his traveling clothes to Mrs. Carnahan and also she would ask Mrs. Carnahan if she had a secondhand dress to fit the girl and perhaps other necessary garments. The girl needed a change of clothing. He reached for his portfolio and looked down at her. Widowed, no more than forty-five. Painfully young. She had eyes of a leaf-colored hazel and a good smile.
I am very grateful, the Captain said. He lifted his hat to her, replaced it. I will settle up when we leave tomorrow.
He turned to Johanna and was surprised when her small hand appeared out of the jorongo and reached for his. She was very frightened and perhaps thought she was to be handed over to yet another stranger. He smiled and put his hand on her forehead, briefly, in lieu of patting her cheek, which was hidden behind the red wool.
It’s all right, he said. It’s all right.
He took out his hunting watch. Then he put it back. Johanna had no idea of time. It was pointless to tell her he would be back in an hour. So he just said,
Sit. Stay.
EIGHT
THE CAPTION CHANGED, left his traveling clothes with Mrs. Gannet, and went back out onto the street. He took his portfolio of newpapers under his arm and then engaged two rooms in a hotel on Stemmons Ferry Road; it was a balloon-frame building with thin walls and flowered grain sacks for curtains but he was as yet unsure how much money he would make from his reading. Baths were fifty cents, an outrageous price, but he paid it and sat for fifteen mnutes in the hot water and then shaved.
He found the proprietor of the Broadway Playhouse sitting in the Bluebonnet Saloon having an early drink and engaged the small theater for the night. He wrote it down and had the man sign it in case he got too drunk and forgot.
He went on down Trinity to Thurber’s News and Printing Establishment where he was greeted and seduced by the smell of ink and the noise of the press coming from the rear. It was a Chandler and Price hand-fed paten press, slowly chunking out page after page of announcements or advertising. All around were sticks of type and the bindery equipment, the perforating machine. A sign on the wall:
THIS IS A PRINTING OFFICE
CROSSROADS OF CIVILIZATION
Refuge of all the arts against the ravages of time
ARMOURY OF FEARLESS TRUTH
AGAINST WHISPERING RUMOR
INCESSANT TRUMPET OF TRADE
From this place words may fly abroad
NOT TO PERISH ON WAVES OF SOUND
NOT TO VARY WITH THE WRITER’S HAND
BUT FIXED IN TIME HAVING BEEN VERIFIED IN PROOF
Friend you stand on sacred ground
THIS IS A PRINTING OFFICE
The Captain took a deep breath to subdue the sudden bitter slash of envy and then felt more or less all right. Thurber greeted him and inquired after his health, his readings, his journeys, and the Indian threat from the north. Did he not find traveling onerous? The Captain fixed Thurber with his dark eyes and said no, he did not, and assured him that he, Jefferson Kyle Kidd, had not yet been forced to confine himself to a bath chair or an invalid’s bed and when he did he would notify Thurber with a postcard. Thank you, sir, for your concern.
The Captain stalked around the print shop and gazed at the layout tables and type cases. Thurber clasped his hands behind his back and rolled his eyes at his two printer’s devils. Then the Captain bought a sheet of letter paper and an envelope, and the latest editions of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Chicago Tribune, the London Times, the New-York Herald, and El Clarion, a Mexico City newspaper. He would sit at peace in the hotel room, under a proper roof, and find articles of interest in the English-language papers and then translate some articles from El Clarion.
Then he went down Trinity to the Dallas Weekly Courier offices, much refreshed from having snarled at Thurber, to sit with their Morse operator and take news from the AP wire. The fee was reasonable. The wire from Arkansas and points east was still operating. The Comanche and Kiowa had learned to cut the wire and then repair it with horsehair so that it would not transmit but no one could tell where it had been cut. They well knew Army orders came over the telegraph wires.