The Kid stayed for the next few weeks with Doc, Charlie, and their women in the Indian hospital. And it was there that one of Maxwell’s vaqueros handed him an envelope addressed to “Wm. H. ‘Kid’ Bonney.” Inside was a formal invitation from “The Maxwells” requesting the pleasure of the Kid’s presence at a six o’clock Christmas dinner. Seemed they’d heard of his exploits.
His friends jeered to hide their envy and joked about the faux pas he’d commit. “They’s richer than clabbered cream!” Charlie said. “They’s etiquette. Whereas you eat your food like a bachelor, right from the fryin pan!”
Doc counseled, “The Maxwells are highfalutin. You’d best spiff up in your fancy duds.”
So the Kid opened the trunk of his finer things that Doc had hauled to Fort Sumner and he dressed in a white collared shirt and wide, planetary tie, a formal suit coat of blue velvet, gray slacks with cuffs he jerked down over his shined Wellington boots to make them look like shoes, and a charcoal gray derby hat cocked rakishly on hair dressed with Rowlands’ macassar oil.
The Kid felt like a fish out of water as he walked through the gate of the white picket fence and onto the wide porch that shaded the first floor on three sides of the house. Chatter and laughter eddied through the front door, and he wanted to flee, but he rapped the brass knocker and soon a rail-thin man six and a half feet tall was there in a footman’s formal livery. “William Bonney,” the Kid said.
“Uh-huh,” said the footman. Walking down the hallway, he said, “In the parlor.”
The Kid saw on his left an ornate bedroom that seemed all leather and sienna brown, and across from it was a far more feminine bedroom, in which everything from the sculpted headboard to the chiffonier to the frilly pillows was white. And then there was the lilac wallpaper of a parlor overfurnished with Victorian love seats and armchairs and ten elegantly dressed people holding flutes of champagne. A stocky man who seemed about thirty was in a Prince of Wales tailcoat and was losing his hair but for an upswept central tuft. Seeing past his interlocutor, he noticed the Kid and with excitement announced, “There he is, our wild card, Billy Bonney!”
The guests turned to the Kid, and his hand was shaken by Pedro Menard Maxwell, who said, “Call me Pete,” and tugged him through introductions to Ana Maria de la Luz Beaubien Maxwell, his fifty-year-old mother, his sister Emilia and her husband, Manuel Abreu, who oversaw the sheep operation, and Emilia’s little sister Odila. Captain Alexander Chase of the Army was in his formal dress blues with full regalia and tilted down to introduce his sitting wife, Virginia, who seemed afraid of Billy and slanted into the officer’s hip like a child seeking an apron. Also shy was Sofia Maxwell, now married to a disdainful Telesfor Jaramillo, who lifted his nose at the Kid and whose slicked, oiled, ebony hair shone in the candlelight. And lastly their “wild card” made the acquaintance of the fourteen-year-old, Paulita, a gorgeous girl half French and one-quarter each Spanish and Irish. She had freshly shampooed raven black hair piled in a fashionable pompadour and the deep-roasted, coffee brown eyes that Mexicans called cafés. Candlelight glittered in them. “So pleased to meet you, Mr. Bonney,” she said. Her cheeks dimpled cutely when she smiled.
“We all are!” Pete Maxwell exclaimed and faked a shiver of horror as he said, “The fiend who revels in bloodshed! The child suckled on vice!”
“Pedro!” his mother said.
“Oh, he knows I’m joshing him. It’s all direct from those idiotic newspaper stories.”
The Kid tried the knife of a smile and then was nudged, finding Saval also in a footman’s livery and holding out a flute of champagne. “No thank you,” the Kid said.
“No quiere nada?” You want nothing?
“Water.”
Saval sighed and headed to the kitchen.
Paulita seemed aflutter and was warily smiling at the Kid. He returned the flattery.
The very tall and dour footman announced that dinner was served, and they all crossed into a grand dining room of Sheraton furniture, an ironed lace tablecloth, and dishware and cutlery of pure silver along with chalices of fourteen-carat gold for the wine, the great wealth of it gleaming under a huge French chandelier.
Don Manuel Abreu whispered, “Remove your pistol.”
“I’m not carrying.”
Don Manuel gave him a tickled look like he’d just made a pretty good joke, Ho ho. And then it was he who gave the holiday toast, “Feliz Navidad!”
A Navajo cook named Deluvina delivered a lamb shank, a large turkey, and a goose on silver platters, and Pete nodded to the tall liveryman as he said, “We have Pat to thank for the fowl. Went hunting for me this morning.” He asked his mother to “return thanks,” and when she’d blessed the food and cooks in Spanish, he called out, “Like Lucien would say, ‘Y’all be careful now or you’re gonna fleshen up.’?”
Saval the footman poured water into the Kid’s chalice with a hint of rebuke, and furtive conversations about some of the clan Billy couldn’t have met flittered in shorthand among the dinner guests. The Kid realized he was invited just to entertain the revelers with wild tales of derring-do, but doing that would make his life seem unserious, so he chose silence and avoidance. But Paulita kept shyly focused on him and asked, “Are you still in school?”
He shook his head. “I just look young for my age. Are you?”
“Uh-huh. In Trinidad, Colorado. St. Mary’s Convent School.”
“What’s your favorite class?”
She thought for a few seconds and answered, “English or history. I like to read.”
She had a squinty right eye that he found fetching. “Me too,” he said.
“Have you read Little Women?”
“Afraid not.”
“I like it ever so much.”