Short Stories & Tall Tales
Town without Color
Tom Sheehan
It began gray and ended gray and ran without color for 100 years, this town of Pilgrim’s Plight. Oh, the grass was green some of the time running up to its edges, and green half the year behind it in the Rockies’ tree line hefting up the hillsides to white caps, and now and then the sun caught a swirl of dust and tossed a cloud of rainbow hues for a few seconds, but mostly it was road-dragged gray, burnt gray, somber gray. Pilgrim’s Plight couldn’t be any sadder, not for a town expected to grow, even though its name said, “Not this place, not here.”
Leading citizen Stonehill, the banker, for example, talked the slow pitched tone of most of its citizens. And if someone didn’t carry the tone off the same way at first, like a newcomer to town, they soon caught up to it; it fit all, this gray, toneless indifference in manner, in voice, in deflection. Humor, when it came, often went unrecognized for what it was. Rowdy and uproarious it had to be to get going, to be what it was or was supposed to be.
Down at the capital one wag was heard to say, when the discussion turned to Pilgrim’s Plight, “They ought to change the name of that town. It’s the only place I know of in the entire region where the shadows get a head start on their own, the whole place so drab all the time.”
All that went on until Carnie O’Melia breezed into town, the gray tone persisting. Newcomer Carnie, in her red hair, voluptuous shape, fiery eyes, loud singing voice, an innate ability to say the right thing at the right time, always in front of witnesses, came into Pilgrim’s Plight like a like a single wave from the sea hitting a land so dry it was about to crack open.
The need for Carnie could not be any sharper. Into the lone saloon in town she came, popping through the door, fiery-eyed, beautiful, colorful, a scene changer with the first breath taken.
“I’m buying this place,” she said to Tolliver Cutlass, original founder and owner of The Cutlass Saloon. The threat continued, “And if you don’t sell it to me, I’ll open another one across the street and run you dry. Other than that, you can sell at a profit and move on to someplace else, some place they’ll have you as their own. But not in this town. This is going to be my town.”
Her beauty said it, her vibrancy said it, her empowered womanhood said it.
Cutlass, as the word went, tumbled easily, fell for her, sold out kit and caboodle, and was cut loose by the lady when he tried to romance her. He didn’t have a chance. She had him on the next stage out of town. Wellborn Springs was 50 miles down the road.
Where Pilgrim’s Plight was somber before, it absolutely began to bustle and bubble with activity … and all of it emanated from or circled around the saloon with a new name: Carnie’s Castle. A new piano, an upright beauty, arrived in a matter of weeks, along with a piano player, a revolutionary guitar player who could stand the saloon on its ear every night, and a fiddler who, as he said, “Brung all the good Tennessee mountain stuff with me.” All of them were proficient with instruments, behind the bar, and with a deck of cards. They all looked alike too, though they had different names. That was enough to get whispers going about “a family operation.”
But Carnie was Carnie, as the saying went.
To further establish herself and the institution of the Castle, Carnie hung a sign that read: “Card cheaters caught here will be shot, kilt or hung, at their choice. The same goes for those who bruise or hurt any ladies on the premises, dog kickers, cattle rustlers, horse stealers. This is hung by me and the sheriff, as law.”
According to many of the citizens of Pilgrim’s Plight, when the irrepressible Wild Bill Donovan came into town it looked like the irresistible force was about to meet the immoveable object, or some such equation about the species. Donovan had driven four different herds to the railhead upriver and three times had bypassed Pilgrim’s Plight in each direction. But heading back home after the fourth trip, he heard about the new redheaded firepot in the town he had avoided.
Talking the trip over with his foreman and remuda wrangler, Donovan said, “If nobody’s got any clues about the lady they call Carnie, I aim to take a peek on the way back, see what the hullabaloo and commotion is all about. We haven’t seen much that’s too untamable on our drives, have we?” The self-depositing punctuation was a live comment, a question of order. “Closest one was that firecracker down in Devil’s Call, pure deviltry in women, and most unforgettable. Those bank robbers sure messed up the prospects in that town. I heard she hasn’t walked more than ten steps in her recovery.”
The foreman said, “We did Devil’s Call a great big favor that time, Boss. Didn’t take us long to corral them buzzards. They got what they plumb deserved after they hurt that poor woman.”
“It was exciting for a while, wasn’t it?” Donovan kicked back. “Wonder what this new redhead in Pilgrim’s Plight will be like.”
The remuda boss, Harry Schmidt, expectant glee pouring out of him, slapped his hands together and said, “We’ll see. We’ll see.” He wanted to race his horse all the way into town.
Donovan, his star never too bright to begin with for such a strong man, came right back. “Think we’ll have any of that ‘danger tu’ you’re always talking about? Or is it ‘danger two?’” He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders as if he was saying, “Yeh, I know I’m a dummy, but I’m still the boss.”
“Hey, boss, it’s ‘déjà vu,’ a kind of French word loaded up with classy stuff. That’s as far as I can take it.”
Donovan said, “Well, Sir Harry, no matter what you call it, if we have some of that stuff again, we better be on our toes.” Any time Donovan called his remuda chief ‘Sir Harry’ it was an acknowledgment of the man’s smarts, though the man could not compare with Donovan’s ability to command men, know grass and cattle’s temperament and water’s best route, or follow trails to completion.
As it turned out a while later, it was ‘déjà vu’, and danger two as well, when they rode into Pilgrim’s Plight in the heat of the afternoon, a bank robbery in process, shouting all around, shooting inside the bank, horses lined up out front with all the reins in the hands of a gun-wielding cohort who was staring down two ladies on the boardwalk in front of the bank and the general store next door to the financial center of Pilgrim’s Plight. One of the women was Carnie O’Melia, whom the gun wielder did not know but figured he should have, for she was such a good looker, hair like a fiery sunset, eyes of a hidden mountain tarn, and her hands making a statement on her hips like she was saying, “Okay, Buster, you got yours coming to you.”
The plans of that venture by the robbers did not come off as envisioned, as Donovan, seeing the whole scene like he had seen it before, “that danger vu or danger two,” spurred his horse with two grand jabs of his spurs and ran him headlong into the robber’s herded horses, his screams at the top of his voice, two six guns flashing in the sunlight of the afternoon, and his vibrancy and vitality bursting like a dam on the River Styx let loose.
The horses, in high fright, scattered, throwing dust into the air, the ‘outsider’ dropped his pistol, his horse reared in sudden panic, and two men, coming out of the bank with a woman as a hostage, were shot by Donovan where they stood in the doorway of the bank. One townie said, “It was like pin the tail on the donkey at a kid’s party, old Wild Bill was so fast and so accurate.”
Carnie O’Melia, passion personified, melted at the sight of this burly, heroic, handsome, quick-as-lightning gunsmith still sitting his horse like he had been delivered off some mountain of the gods high in an unknown part of the Rockies.
When, in the midst of the commotion, Pilgrim’s Plight alive with noise, Carnie, ever the actress, the mood player, played the fainthearted part and dropped to her knees, Donovan picked her up in his arms like she was a doll, and carried her across the street to the hotel.
Sir Harry and Yancy the foreman, sitting at a back table in the saloon, wondering, didn’t see Donovan for a little more than two hours.
When he did show, it was also in the saloon, and Carnie, more vibrant than ever, auspiciously breathless, was on his arm.
Donovan yelled out to the barkeep, “Set them up for the whole place. We are now here celebrating the marriage of Carnie O’Melia to Wild Bill Donovan up at the hotel just an hour ago, by the minister of the church, and where none of you got invited to that event, you’re all invited now, for a two-day bash in honor of my bride.”
He kissed Carnie again and all the hopes that had built up in Pilgrim’s Plight since her arrival hung right on the edge.
Another small speech followed the celebration announcement, as if to clarify all intentions.
“We’re going to summer here and winter in Texas, at our ranch,” Donovan said, after Sir Harry had told him the folks of Pilgrim’s Plight, once gray as an old newspaper, were worried that Carnie would leave the place and never return, leaving it to recede into the shadows from whence it had come.
The new couple had no idea they were starting the planned vacation trend, common with many folks today, here today, there tomorrow.
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