The American Gun Mystery (Death At the Rodeo)

18: Death Rides Again

Byron has said somewhere that history “with all her volumes vast hath but one page.” It is a more polite way of saying that history has a habit of repeating herself. Perhaps the ancients had something of this in mind when they created the Muse of history in the form of a woman.

It occurred to Mr. Ellery Queen on that Saturday night as he and the Inspector sat in the self-same box with the self-same people — excepting one — watching much the same performance, that history is not only a repetitious jade, but a malicious one to boot. One expects, knowing the universality of human nature, that the records of human achievement in succeeding eras shall exhibit more or less of the same character. What one does not expect, however, is plaster-of-Paris fidelity.

And that, it seems, was precisely what history was about on the evening of the reopening of Wild Bill Grant’s Rodeo... a little improvement upon the usual performance.

The fact that the scene was the same was an important contributing circumstance; the Colosseum was jammed with a curious, unruly crowd. The fact that, with the exception of Kit Horne, the occupants of the Mars box were the same who had occupied it a month before, aided the illusion not a little. The fact that Major Kirby stood with his crew on a platform erected in exactly the same spot as before, and made exactly the same preparations, was surely not untoward, though worthy of remark. The fact that the same whooping, charging horsemen and horsewomen amused the audience of thousands before the grand announcement was merely a matter of routine, as was Curly’s exhibition of marksmanship with the catapult and the little glass balls. The fact that the troupe disappeared, and that Wild Bill Grant galloped in and, taking up a central position in the arena, discharged his revolver in the air for attention and bellowed an announcement — this began to color the atmosphere and work on strained nerves.

But the great fact was that there was no warning, no slightest sign of what was to happen. And here again history repeated herself.

The police themselves contributed to the tragedy of complete duplication. The arms which had been confiscated after the murder of Buck Horne had perforce been returned. The very same revolvers therefore were in the hands of the very same supernumeraries when the play began its second performance. Only Buck Horne’s twin ivory-handled .45’s had not come back to the scene, for these had been turned over to Kit Horne on her insistent demand and packed away in her trunk at the Barclay. And, of course, Ted Lyons’s automatic was absent, as was Ted Lyons; the journalistic gentleman’s reputation for ubiquitousness had for once destroyed itself. The police and Wild Bill Grant saw to that.

The feeling was strongest in the Mars box. Tony Mars was even more nervous than he had been a month before, and he chewed his cold cigar even more savagely. Mara Gay was as sparkling, as brilliant, as quicksilverish as ever; her eyes were pinpoints; and again she whispered to the bulky athlete at her side, now champion heavyweight of the world. And it seemed strange that Julian Hunter should sit in the same seat at the rear of the box, alone, sardonic, watching his wife and Tommy Black... quite as if he had never been punched into insensibility by those punishing fists, or had never accused his wife of unfaithfulness with the brute who sat whispering to her before his cupped eyes.

And there it was! Grant’s signal shot, the wide swing of the eastern gate by the old special and — not Buck Horne this time, but One-Arm Woody, the rodeo veteran, charged out on a dappled horse... even at that distance exultantly triumphant. Followed by Curly Grant and Kit Horne — riding Rawhide, that tragic Pegasus — and the rest of the thundering herd. And there was the Roman roar of the crowd as the riders swept around the tanbark track to the accompaniment of blaring music and sharp gun-fire reports of horses’ hooves. And then they halted on the south side of the oval, Woody only a few yards from the Mars box, the others in twos on restless mounts strung out behind, toward the far western turn. Wild Bill’s second announcement! There was the faintly derisive shout of Woody, sitting his horse like a mutilated warrior, and the last sharp signal from Grant’s long-barreled revolver. Then Woody’s sinewy right arm dipped, came up with a weapon, shot toward the roof, dipped down again to his holster as in salute... and the seething ripple of sinuous motion through forty-one riders — Woody and the forty at his back, many feet behind. And Woody’s horse leaped forward as he shouted the long-drawn out Yoooooow! of the wide range, and an instant later the cavalcade shot forward in furious motion.

Woody galloped round the eastern turn of the oval, going like the wind.

The troupe flashed up to the tanbark below the Mars box.

The cameras ground.

The crowd clamored.

The Queens sat silent in the grip of a terrifying premonition. There was no reason for it, and yet the best reason in the world. It was unexpected, and yet it was inevitable.

To the utter and devastating stupefaction of the twenty thousand people in the bowl, flesh turned to stone, hearts suspended, eyes staring like marbles... in the midst of the answering crash of the volley from, the raised revolvers of the troupe as they thundered past the Mars box, Woody — directly across the arena — jerked convulsively, crumpled in his saddle, and tumbled like a sawdust man to the tanbark to be ground under the horses’ hooves on almost precisely the spot where Buck Horne had fallen dead a month before!