Wilde West Read Free

clove-scented smoke, Oscar paused for a moment, as much to savor the reaction of the crowd as to determine his own.
    Pleased. Yes, he was pleased. The huge saloon was packed, a gratifying turnout, every table surrounded by a clutch of cowboys and miners and shopkeepers and giddy gaudy women, all of the men wearing hats and all of them (and some of the women, it seemed) sporting identical handlebar mustaches, like walruses. And at the moment, all of them, men and women both, were gaping at Oscar.
    His clothes tonight were subdued, somewhat. No cape, no knee britches. He wore pale yellow patent leather boots, lime green twill trousers, a white silk shirt with a flowing Byronic collar loosely secured by a broad silk cravat whose yellow exactly matched the boots, and the three-quarter-length velveteen dinner jacket he had ordered shortly after he arrived in New York City. He had specified that the jacket be the shade of a lake beneath moonlight; but, as he admitted (although only to himself), its hue more closely resembled the dull gray of a field mouse’s rump. Still, it was beautifully cut; and if perfection were in fact an impossible destination, then we must learn to enjoy the achievements which present themselves along the way.
    In the boutonniere at the jacket’s left lapel was a small red rose. This flower struck a bit of a false note—roses being after all rather vulgar—but Henry had told him that just now there were no lilies to be had in all of Denver. The entire town was lilyless. The undertakers had cornered the market, said Henry. A recent rash of hangings and gunfights. Although perhaps not in that order.
    Really, the florists should have been better prepared. Hangings were reportedly a commonplace. And gunfights were evidently the local equivalent of cricket. Certainly, from what Oscar had heard, the earnestness of the players and the zeal of the audience were much the same. But cricket, of course, was far more deadly.
    Oscar smiled. Not half bad. He must remember that.
    He glanced around. The audience, his no longer, had returned to its cards and bottles and conversation. Time to move along.
    He saw the Countess and O’Conner sitting with von Hesse at a small round table on the far side of the room. He took a puff of the cigarette and ambled across the hardwood floor, sauntering around the tables, carefully picking his way over the tawny drifts of sawdust and the occasional dark suspicious stain on the oak planking. (Not all the saloon’s patrons understood the purpose of a spittoon, or had any interest in learning it.) Behind him he trailed a most satisfactory wake of murmurs and mutters.
    O’Conner raised a glass of whiskey in salute as Oscar approached. Wearing his inevitable rumpled brown suit, an item which would have sent a shudder of horror rippling down Bond Street, the newspaperman sat slouched in one chair with his feet propped upon the rung of another, his left side and left elbow braced against the table. “Hail, O Poet,” he said, and leered. He was drunk, but he had been drunk since joining the lecture tour in San Francisco, over four weeks before; and probably for twenty or thirty years before that. Every day, slowly but relentlessly, he consumed at least a quart of bourbon whiskey. Amazingly, his hands never faltered; he never lost his lucidity, never slurred his words. Perhaps he became bumbling and incomprehensible only when sober. Unlikely that anyone would ever know.
    Oscar nodded to him. “O’Conner.” It never hurt to be pleasant to a representative of the press. Particularly when the representative was covering this lecture tour for the New York Sun (circulation 220,000).
    â€œWhere’s your protégé?” asked O’Conner.
    â€œYoung Ruddick, you mean?” said Oscar. “I’ve no idea.”
    â€œOscair,” breathed the Countess in her voice of smoke and honey, “how adorable you look tonight. I admire very