The Floor of Heaven by Howard Blum Read Free Book Online

never return. Let them come looking. He knew places in the hills where nobody, not even the marines, would find him.
    But as his basic training came to an end and his plans to become a fugitive took firmer shape in his mind, he learned something that overrode all his previous misgivings. In fact, what he discovered immediately convinced him that he had made the correct, even a providential, decision by enlisting. He was filled with a sudden but deep and irrepressible joy. His platoon, he was informed, was to set sail for Alaska.
    FOUR
    f George Carmack sailed north to Alaska for adventure, Charlie Siringo had only to walk down Main Street and into the parlor of the Leland Hotel to find himself in a momentous, life-altering experience. Posters had been appearing around Caldwell for days heralding the arrival of a celebrated phrenologist. A man of scientific distinction! A disciple of the famous Fowler! A public demonstration! All were invited! Your true character revealed through an analysis of the lumps, bumps, and configurations on your head!
    Normally, Charlie had no truck with this kind of shenanigans. It struck him as the worst manner of tomfoolery, nothing but, as he put it, “wind and graft.” Despite all the fancy talk, phrenology, he was certain, was simply one more sly game, and a phrenologist just another bunco man trying to exploit the gullibility of rubes. (Of course, this mild, good-spirited comparison would be knocked for a vengeful loop once Charlie crossed paths with Soapy Smith and his life was on the line; but that encounter was still down the road.)
    Yet on this afternoon Charlie, without so much as even a grumble, found himself heading into the spacious parlor of the Leland Hotel. He was still downright skeptical, but two strong reasons had persuaded him that he might as well see what the celebrated visitor to his town was up to.
    First, there was his downhearted mood. Charlie was at a crossroads: A merchant’s sedentary routine, he’d come to realize, was the wrong fit for his heart. Charlie missed his previous life—his, as he was proud of boasting, “fifteen years on the hurricane deck of a Spanish pony.” And yet a cowboy’s rough-and-tumble existence sure wasn’t suitable for a man with the responsibilities of a wife and young daughter. Each new day behind a counter selling oysters and cigars in bustling Caldwell brought him further proof that the West he’d known was rapidly disappearing. He felt a vast unhappiness over what had been taken from him; and, churning this painful loss, he had a desperate feeling that he would be unable to find his way in a changing, unfamiliar world. It wasn’t that he was expecting a phrenologist to provide the answer that would show him a path through his predicament. Rather, Charlie was looking for something, anything, to fill at least an anxious hour or two, and maybe in the process ease for a short spell the turmoil he was going through.
    The other compelling reason was a lot simpler: Mamie had her heart set on watching the performance. And no matter how low his mood had sunk, Charlie was still head over heels for his child bride. If Mamie wanted to go, he’d take her on his arm.
    So with Mamie by his side, Charlie found two seats in the rows of chairs that had been arranged in the hotel parlor. In the center of the room a single wooden chair had been placed like a throne, only there was no sign of the phrenologist. But just when the crowd—and it seemed to Charlie as if all of Caldwell had turned out—was getting restless, the great man made his entrance.
    He had taken only a few steps into the room, his cane tapping as he made his tentative way, before Charlie realized he was blind. Charlie was taken by surprise; and this was, he told himself, one more reason not to have much confidence in what lay ahead. But as the fine-looking old man began to address the crowd in his ringing, confident voice, Charlie decided that it really didn’t matter much