Regulator, chapter 12
Charlie's got a plan, and the Katy and Jessamine find a bar
Charlie’s on the trail of a gang that’s split up, leaving Katy and Jessamine to their own, dubious devices.
by Frank A. Spring
They’d gone upstairs to see Clara Laurent. Guerra obviously had a subscription to her service - indeed he handed Laurent a few notes on the spot by way of bringing his account current - and they settled down as one of Laurent’s young staff served them her version of tea.
“Mixed news,” said Laurent. “Most of what I’ve heard back tells us nothing we don’t know, or nothing at all. Months-old reports on locations, that kind of thing. I’m sorry for that. We did get one new item.”
They waited expectantly.
“A friend of mine in Spearville, Kansas, said Salt Lick and the O’Connell brothers used to come by her place a lot, and at least once River Tom and Arkansas Bill were with them. It’s been a while since they’ve been back but they always had the same young woman with them.”
“Teenager?” asked Charlie.
“Or young enough to pass for it, sounds like,” Laurent said. “Round-faced, pretty.”
“One of the girls in the bank.”
“Could be,” Laurent nodded. “My friend in Kansas recognized her because she could sing, really sing. Which made sense because she’d once been the star attraction at a little place in Pawnee, Oklahoma.”
Angus Thorn was coming out of his chair. “No…”
Laurent grinned and nodded. “It’s Violet Roann.”
“The Violet of Cimarron? These idiots are outlawing all over Oklahoma with the Violet of Fucking Cimarron?” And to Charlie’s unspeakable astonishment, Thorn burst into gales of laughter.
“Well, yeah,” said Laurent. “You ever heard of a gang of bad men riding out without at least one saloon chanteuse among them? That’s just courting disaster.”
Charlie and Guerra shared a look while Thorn and Laurent whooped and giggled. When their transports subsided a little, Charlie took it upon himself to resume the search for clarity.
“Would one of you mind…?”
Clara recovered first. “Pawnee is on the Cimarron River, not too far from Tulsa. I don’t know how she started but apparently young Violet was a good enough singer - and probably more importantly, pretty enough - to draw men from several counties to whatever saloon had her. You used to see the odd handbill for her - ‘Come See the Violet of Cimarron - Voice and Face of an Angel, Flower of the Prairie’, and so on. Not a household name, of course, but pretty well known, and good business. I thought of making an offer on her myself. Then she dropped off the map a year or two ago. Haven’t heard of her since.”
“Must have taken up with one of the gang,” said Thorn. “My money’d be on Davy O’Connell.”
Guerra grunted in satisfaction.
“Salt Lick Johnston and the O’Connells took a stage coach in Union County a couple years ago,” he said, in answer to Charlie’s questioning look. “Peaceful, by their standards, only killed one man pero he was cousin to the Roths, and they’re friends to the Governor. I can’t chase them by myself for too long por que if I’m away,” he smiled, “pues, sin mí, los malos start getting cocky.”
“When the O’Connells popped up in this I sent him a cable,” said Thorn to Charlie. “Thought he could be helpful.”
Charlie made a mental note to have a chat with Thorn later about who exactly he thought was running this investigation, but Thorn was probably right and anyway trying to undo that decision now would almost certainly kill the operation stone dead.
“Alright,” he said. “Where does that leave us?”
Whatever remained of Thorn’s earlier merriment died out.
“The Roann brothers,” he said as Laurent gave a sympathetic groan. “Passel of hard men. Butchers, mainly
“Actual butchers,” he said, responding to the shock on Guerra and Charlie’s faces. “Out of Pawnee but they have a few smaller operations in some nearby towns. Sell a lot of meat, when they’re not dabbling in outlawing or taking bounties, whichever way the wind’s blowing.” He and Charlie exchanged a significant look. “Only question is how we approach them.”
“Anyway but straight, it sounds like,” said Guerra.
Charlie nodded. “I have an idea.”
**
“This,” said Katy Laughlin, “is going to get worse before it gets better.”
And she was right.
The morning had started pleasantly enough. As was their custom, the gang had split up after the Plainview job; Salt Lick and Randall O’Connell had gone off to wherever it was they went when they wanted to spend their money or hide it or roll around in it or however they got their jollies. It was a bit unusual - Salt Lick and the O’Connell brothers tended to stick together, probably, in Katy’s view, because the O’Connells were the only men who could stand Salt Lick and he was the only man they’d acknowledge might be as dangerous as they were. But the brothers had had some harsh words - not uncommon for them - and Davy had decreed he was god damned if he wanted to see Randall’s face again for at least a month, and Randall had agreed likewise, and off he’d gone, leaving Davy, which of course meant Violet, too.
Violet was already involved with Davy when Jessamine and Katy met her. In retrospect Katy had not been at all sure what they’d do after they put some distance between themselves and the town where Jessamine had killed that sandy-haired prick; she’d rather dully assumed they’d just find another town and find similar work to what they’d been doing. But when Jessamine suggested that they should pose in the next town as desperate sisters seeking their father by way of picking up some temporary pity-work and a chance to case the town for easy pickings, Katy agreed at once, and they found they were quite good at the scheme.
Katy, at her full height, her features solemn, her dark hair long and straight, positively radiated plausibility and responsibility; her opening “we’re terribly sorry to bother you” was so alarmingly earnest that the first time Jessamine heard it she almost laughed out loud. Jessamine, for her part, could do pitiable better than a puppy, making herself somehow even smaller and gazing up with big, plaintiff eyes. People who should have and indeed did know better fell for it, dealing directly with the brave big sister while the younger one did silently as she was bidden, the poor traumatized little thing.
They never took anything without planning the moment in advance, accepting a few missed opportunities along the way as the cost of doing business. When the time came to actually pocket the loot - almost always cash, as they avoided all but the most easily transported and easily sold items - they had two rules for escape:
Jessamine should always be able to hide.
Katy should always be able to ride.
This meant a prearranged hiding place for Jessamine, and Katy’s palomino saddled and as close to the scene of the crime as possible. If things went sideways, Jessamine could disappear while Katy, with her superior horse and skill in the saddle, could lead the chase away before outrunning them entirely. As luck and good planning would have it, they had only had to put this plan into practice once, and the only hitch in it had been that Katy had so quickly outpaced her pursuers that she had to stop and wait for the small posse to catch up so Jessamine, lying in a prepared nest in the crawlspace beneath a house, would have time to slip away under cover of night.
It was not much of a living, but it was better than a shove in the eye with a dry stick, and they had a neat little pile of cash when they approached a saloon called The Antlers in a small river town in northeast Oklahoma. They were both undecided about how they wanted to play this; whatever else it might have been, their scheme was exhausting, and they badly wanted a few days to lie around and pay someone else to bring them food. By unspoken agreement they would size The Antlers up, and if it seemed the kind of place that would not serve them in the way they wanted, they’d run their game on it. If, on the other hand, it appeared the sort of joint where a couple of teenaged girls could enjoy some whiskey in their own company without the management getting too upset if some handsy dipshit got stabbed, well then so much the better. The first words out of Katy’s mouth would tell Jessamine which tune they were playing.
They walked slowly through the front doors, maintaining the contained, modest air with which they began the con; Katy took in the animated poker game, the obvious fistfight about to break out between two drinkers at the end of the bar, and the barmaid shoving a paralytically drunk man out of his attempt to hug her and onto the floor, where he lay apparently already asleep, and walked up to the bar.
“Brandy if you’ve got it, whiskey if you don’t,” Katy said.
“See your money?” said the barman.
Jessamine put down a modest coin.
“For the bottle,” she said, and then put down another coin that made the barman stare, “and for some peace and quiet.”
The barman looked thoughtful for a moment and considered his options for disposing of two unaccompanied teenaged girls with money. He could throw them out; a lot of drinking establishments didn’t allow women unless they had a snug, and while he had no particular policy on the matter he could always invent one. He could have them carried away and robbed, and try and turn them out; if that failed, he could either run them off or kill them outright. But he didn’t care for that idea; a defect in his character prevented him from admitting to himself that he was slightly afraid of the smaller one, of what she might do if he tried to lay a hand on her or have someone else do it, but afraid he was, and he rationalized the feeling by dismissing the whole scheme as more trouble than it was worth.
And besides, they’d rode up on their own horses, covered in the dust of travel, and strolled in bold as you please; they’d obviously come some distance, this wasn’t the first den of dubious repute they’d visited, logically and mathematically it was impossible that he was the first man to ponder doing them harm, and yet there they were, bodies and purses intact and expecting him to bring them brandy. He did not understand how this could be and his general policy in life was not to fuck with things he didn’t understand, especially when they were offering him money for practically nothing.
“Take that table,” he said. “We’ll keep em off you.”
The “we” in this case was a dog the size of a small bear, which the barman positioned right in front of their table and which made a noise like the bass notes of a pipe organ the first couple of times that one drunk or another took it in his head to approach them, after which the dog, his point made, settled in for a titanic nap.
This amiable arrangement was in the second evening of Jessamine and Katy gleefully pissing away their hard-stolen funds when Violet Roann sang to a packed crowd at The Antlers. Accompanied by a guitarist, who well understood that his primary role aside from keeping chords was to make sure he didn’t obstruct anyone’s view of Violet, she gave the crowd the benefit of Hard Times Come Again No More and Red River Valley and others of that ilk, making cheers rise on the evil and on the good, and sending tears on the conscious and on the unconscious.
“The folks at that table would like to stand you a drink,” said the barman as Violet climbed down off the box of canned fruit she had been using as a stage and into the arms of Davy O’Connell. O’Connell turned to the barman with fire in his eyes and for a moment it wasn’t clear whether his wrath would first strike down the saloonkeeper or whoever was trying to woo Violet but the barman held his nerve and said “it’s that one” and indicated Jessamine and Katy, who were still on their feet, if a bit unsteadily so, and clapping vigorously, to the visible consternation of the massive dog at their feet.
Youth and practice are the keys to good stamina, and while Jessamine, Katy, and Violet lacked the latter they certainly had the former, and Davy O’Connell had both, with the result that in the late hours of the night, when much of The Antlers’ clientele had retired or chosen to repose in place, the four of them were still carousing at their table with vigor and dedication. It is in such moments, as upstairs grayer heads nestle in pillows and downstairs the also-rans snore gently and sprout the first delicate saplings that will grow into mighty and majestic hangovers, that things impossible seem not only possible but wise and even imperative.
Katy and Jessamine had been regaling the young couple with tales of their exploits. Early in the conversation Davy had referred to robbing a man with such breathtaking casualness that it seemed ludicrous to pretend they’d been doing anything other than what they had for the last few months, and Violet seemed delighted. Katy had just finished the only one where they’d had to run when Violet’s eyes lit up.
“Davy,” she said dreamily, entranced by her idea. “Davy, you should introduce them to River Tom. They’d be real helpful.”
“No, honey,” Davy said. “What’d we do with a couple of girls? And anyway,” he added hastily, sensing that he had perhaps misread the room with that remark, “that’d be Salt Lick’s call, not River Tom’s.”
“Well, whoever,” said Violet gently, “they’d be helpful. I think they’d be real helpful! Don’t you think, girls?” She appealed to them, and they nodded obediently. Violet turned to Davy with the kind of smile that leaves even the most determined resistance in rubble. “Come on, Davy, don’t you think?”
Davy O’Connell may have been young and prone to fits of murderous rage, but he was smart enough to know when he was licked, and so it was more for honor’s sake than anything that he asked “well, what can y’all do?”
Katy and Jessamine were silent for a moment, then Jessamine spoke up. “She can ride. I mean, really, really ride. Better than any man I’ve seen. And people respond to her. Open up to her, like.”
Davy nodded, he hoped sagely. “And what can she do?” pointing to Jessamine, looking at Katy.
“She can kill you.”
Silence at the table, the wheezing of the big dog. And they all laughed, long and hugely, even Davy, who looked Jessamine over and muttered, “well, maybe she could” before waving to the barman for another bottle.
Subscribe to The Experiment to keep up with future chapters of Regulator. Check out Frank Spring’s previous contributions to The Experiment which include “Neither Gone Nor Forgotten,” “Oh, DaveBro,” and “In Praise of Gold Leaf.” For legal reasons, I want to make clear that Frank Spring owns the rights to Regulator, free and clear. Follow him on Twitter at @frankspring.
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