he had gradually accumulated the others about him.
Hugo was the first. That was back when the professor had been peddling his elixir and other wares on a circuit running through high plains towns and settlements between Cheyenne and Denver. He had come upon the gentle, feeble-minded young giant cleaning spittoons and gutters at a nameless saloon in the middle of nowhere, working for so-called room and board that consisted of being allowed to sleep in a drafty old woodshed out behind the main building and getting thrown table scraps twice a day, like a dog on a chain. In addition to this neglect, the poor wretch—whose brains had been fried to irreversible damage by an adolescent fever—was subject to daily taunts and frequent physical abuse by the saloon owner, his hag of a wife, and numerous regular customers of the establishment. When Hanratty’s wagon rolled away from that vile place, Hugo was riding on the seat beside him. The old peddler didn’t have much to share, but what he had was a lot more than Hugo was used to getting and it came with a friendly smile and nurturing words in place of further abuse.
Molly was next. Hanratty and Hugo happened across her on a street corner on the edge of Cheyenne’s red light district—an instantly heart-wrenching sight to see, this skinny, dirty, ragged, club-footed little nine-year-old holding out a battered tin cup and begging passer-bys for spare coins. They learned that her prostitute of a mother would send her out to the corner each morning, as soon as she returned from putting in her own hours on the street. There Molly would remain until her mother fetched her back home in the evening, where she was fed a supper of corn bread and molasses (occasionally accompanied by an overcooked sausage link or a glass of half-sour milk) and then left alone in their hovel of an apartment while the mother went out to once more ply her trade through the night. The cycle would repeat the next day. The mother’s earnings were sparse due to her foul temperament and hardened looks so much of the time it was only the money from Molly’s cup that carried them through. Even still, when Hanratty offered the woman fifty dollars to take the girl away from the squalid life they were leading, the money was seized with only minor hesitation and the mother’s parting words regarding her daughter were, “Be good to get the hungry-mouthed little cripple off my hands.”
Last came McMahon. The medicine wagon rolled into the town of Bitterroot one morning just in time to see the struggle that was taking place as three deputies from the town marshal’s office were trying to arrest a man for vagrancy. The deputies were all stalwart fellows armed with billy clubs while the target of their attention was weaponless. Reining up his wagon to watch, Professor Hanratty was quick to marvel at the vagrant’s rapidly flying fists and the accuracy with which his punches landed. Having trained in the art of pugilism during his privileged youth, before the corrupt practices and eventual suicide of his father destroyed the family fortune, Hanratty immediately saw the potential for an added element to his traveling medicine show. Therefore, after the billy clubs inevitably took their toll and the vagrant was thrown behind bars, Hanratty came forward with a proposition: He would go the man’s bail and pay any related fines if the fellow would agree to join the professor’s show and travel with them for a minimum of one year. The prisoner, who called himself McMahon, extended a battered right hand through the jail bars and they shook on it.
Not long after that Hanratty added a second wagon and the necessary equipment for a boxing ring to his show, and they began working the mining camp circuit. The first year had long since come and gone with never a mention of McMahon taking leave after his obligation was fulfilled.
While his embrace of these misfits and cast-offs, these lost souls, stemmed primarily from genuine compassion on Hanratty’s part, there nevertheless was a practical side to him that recognized they also needed to contribute something to the overall good of the group. And since the main thing sustaining all of them was the sale of Hanratty’s Astonishing Elixir, it followed that each would have to play some role in the medicine show presentations that drew the paying customers.
Having demonstrated early on a natural way with animals, Hugo immediately took over the duties of lead teamster and the general care and feeding of the wagon mules (contrary-minded but necessary beasts that Hanratty had been fighting a running battle with for years). At Hugo’s gentle coaxing, the animals responded with only rare instances of the stubbornness they had so regularly exhibited for the professor. By virtue of his size and raw strength, Hugo also handled most of the heavier chores—lugging barrels of ingredients, loading/unloading cases of bottled elixir, setting up and striking the boxing ring, etc.—associated to putting on a show.
Additionally, Hanratty called upon this same physical power to utilize Hugo in a brief segment of the show itself. Explaining to the audiences (in the exaggerated, fictionalized way that made up most of his spiel) how he had first found Hugo riddled by the remnants of a devastating fever, the professor would go on to claim that it was the administration of his amazing elixir that had nursed Hugo not only back to full health but to the mighty physical specimen who now stood before them. Alas, Hanratty would add sadly and dramatically, the effects of the fever on the young man’s obviously stunted mental capacities could not be reversed as successfully. After all, even his vaunted elixir had its limits. But still, he would insist, the physical results could not be denied—and at this point he would call upon Hugo to perform some pre-arranged but quite legitimate feats of strength that included bending iron bars and lifting one end of a loaded ore cart.
Nobody seemed to remember exactly how Molly had assumed the roll of banker/ accountant, but she did and did a superb job at it. Everything was always balanced to the penny, a budget was set and adhered to, funds were available and promptly paid out when needed, and a tidy savings stash (especially after McMahon joined up and started drawing bigger paydays for the troupe) was accumulating. In addition to that, Molly also did most of the traditional female chores for the troupe. Laundry, mending, cleaning, doing dishes...everything but cooking. No matter how hard she tried to learn and how hard the professor tried to teach her, disastrous would be a charitable way of describing her results.
As far as Molly’s performance part of the show, Hanratty once again took an obvious flaw, in this case her clubbed foot, and spun it into an exaggerated tale of how afflicted the poor girl’s entire body might have become had he not found her in time to administer copious amounts of his amazing elixir. A portion of each show’s earnings, he would be sure to mention, went into a savings fund intended to one day pay for an operation that would correct the impaired foot. And then he would call Molly onto the stage where she would proceed, accompanied by the professor’s banjo strumming, to do a simple little dance routine that demonstrated her high-spiritedness yet at the same time also showed the restrictions placed upon her by the foot as it was. After that, she would close the show with a liltingly beautiful rendition of Greensleeves, Hanratty this time accompanying on a violin. By the time she was done there unfailingly were hardened miners in the audience with a tear on their rough cheeks and they would be the first in line to buy a bottle or two of elixir, accompanied by the admonishment: “Be sure a share of this goes toward little Molly’s operation.”
Hanratty was not exempt from feeling pangs of guilt over exploiting the maladies of both Hugo and Molly in this manner. But, strictly from a practical standpoint he told himself, a person had to do whatever it took to survive and prosper on this rugged slice of the frontier. Each of his wards understood this, too, and neither had any qualms about what they were called upon to do because each also understood that their lots in life were immeasurably improved since taking up with the professor. Furthermore, the plan to one day have enough money to get Molly’s foot operated on wasn’t mere sales hype—it was a very real goal of everybody in the troupe, even though Molly (who secretly longed for that day more deeply than anyone) always insisted she was fine the way she was and didn’t rate any special treatment over the others.
When McMahon joined the troupe, the paydays from their performances and thereby the chances for getting Molly’s foot corrected increased significantly. Hanratty had always wanted to add something to his show, something special, something to give it an edge over the dozens of other snake oil-sellers prowling the region. At one point he’d tried to use Hugo in a wrestling-challenge format, offering fifty dollars
