Wister was here because he planned to write the definitive biography, The Western Adventures of Cade McCall, His Story, As told to Owen Wister.
“Are you ready to get to work?” Wister asked.
“Yes.”
“So, where do we start?"
Cade was silent for a long moment. "We start from a very dark place."
1
Cade McCall was sitting at a poker table—what bar it was he didn’t know and he didn’t care. Hell, he didn’t even know what town he was in, but it didn’t matter. For the last year he had tried to put behind him all that he knew and a bottle of whiskey had been the best helper. Lifting his empty glass, he turned to the girl who was hovering around the table.
“Another one,” Cade said slurring his words. “Get me another one.”
“Honey, don’t you want to slow down a bit?” the attractive woman asked as she patted Cade’s shoulder. “You’re way ahead of everybody else.”
Cade laughed. “I think you got that wrong.” He tapped the chips in front of him that indicated he had been having a run of bad luck.
“Dammit, Lola, get the man a drink,” one of the men at the table said. “And get your hands off this skunk. If you’re gonna be sharin’ my bed, I don’t want his stink to rub off on you.”
Lola glared at the man as she turned toward the bar.
“What’s it gonna be, McCall? Are you in or out?”
Cade studied his hand.
“The bet on the table is a hundred and fifty,” the man said.
What had started as a regular card game had progressed rapidly into a high-dollar game, the increased cost of playing sustained by Luke Slater, who was literally buying the pots by his excessive bets. Now only Cade and Slater were still in the game.
Cade was holding an ace-over full house, and he was certain it was a winner.
“Get me something to write on,” Cade called to the bartender.
When Lola returned with the drink, she had a pen, an ink bottle and a slip of paper.
Downing the drink in one gulp, Cade picked up the pen, dipped it in the ink, and wrote something on the paper.
“I’ll see your bet and raise it a hundred,” Cade said as he shoved the paper into the middle of the table.
Slater started to rake in the pot. “Game’s over McCall.”
Cade grabbed Slater’s hand. “Look at the paper.” He held up his cards. “I’ve got a winning hand here and . . .”
That was as far as he got before there was the sound of a gunshot in his ear, and the cards he was holding flew out of his hand.
“You son of a bitch!” Cade shouted as he turned to punch the man behind him who had pulled the trigger.
When Cade McCall awoke the next morning, he was aware of two things. His left eye was swollen shut, and he was in jail.
Groaning, he put his hand to the swollen eye, then because it was sensitive to the touch, he jerked it back, quickly.
“Hurts, don’t it?” someone said, with a little chuckle.
“Where am I?” Cade asked.
“You’re in the cooler, that’s where you’re at.”
“I know I’m jail.”
Cade’s cell mate laughed again. “How long you been drunk?”
“About a year, I guess.”
“Well, sir, you’re in Caldwell. That’s Kansas,” he added, “in case you don’t even know what state you’re in.”
“Did I kill somebody?”
“You might have. It happens pretty regular around here. All’s I know is you was fit to be tied when they dragged you in here. Why, the constable had to give you a whack on your head to get you settled down.”
Cade sat up, and felt a lump on the back of his head. When he did he experienced a sudden dizziness that caused a wave of nausea.
“If you’re ‘bout to throw up, use the piss pot,” the other prisoner said.
Cade grabbed the pot, and the smell of urine brought on instant regurgitation. He threw up in the pot, then set it down.
“That whiskey don’t taste near as good comin’ out as it did goin’ in, do it?”
Cade glared at the man as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
The door that separated the cells from the rest of the jail house opened, and someone came in.
“Well, good, I’m glad you’re alive,” the constable said. “Me and Slim here were thinkin’ you’d be out all day.”
“Slim?”
“That would be me. Slim Cooley.” The man in the cell offered Cade his hand. “Glad to meet you. I didn’t get your name.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Cade said.
“Oh, my. He’s a bad one,” the constable said. “Too good for the likes of Caldwell.”
Cade cocked his eyebrow as he looked toward the constable.
“You could tell me why I’m here.”
“Ask Dusty Coleman. You got into a fight and pretty much tore the Pig Lot apart.”
“The pig lot? I know I was playing cards and that I got into a tussle but how did I tear up a pig lot?”
“You really have been drunk for a year, ain’t ya? The Pig Lot’s a saloon,” Slim said.
“Oh.” Cade put his hands to his head and looked down.
“I don’t suppose you want anything to eat,” the constable said, “but when you want somethin’, you just tell me. Slim here can tell you, I make a mighty fine pot of beans and a good corn pone.”
“When can I get out of here?” Cade asked.
“That all depends. Dusty said you owe him about three hundred dollars, and from what I found in your pockets, I’d say you’ll be here about six months.”
“Six months?”
The constable nodded his head. “It ain’t so bad, but then if you don’t behave, we can send you to Wellington. Now, over there, they don’t much cotton to your kind.”
“You said I was in a fight. I don’t think Slim’s the one I was fighting with, but I don’t see anybody else in jail. Why is it I’m the one who has to pay?”
“Oh, there was enough damage to go around. But the Slaters ponied up the money to pay their part.”
“The Slaters?”
“Yeah. Dusty said you was in a game with Luke Slater, and you didn’t like the way it was goin’ so you took after his brother. Now, them Slater boys stick together. When you fight one of ‘em, you fight all three.”
“I see,” Cade said.
“Now do you want some beans?” the constable asked.
“I’d like to send a telegram.”
“How you gonna do that, when I know you ain’t got two nickels to rub together?”
“I’ll send it collect,” Cade said.
“Wake up.”
Luke Slater groaned.
“Wake up,” the woman said as she applied a damp cloth to the man’s swollen lip.
“I’m awake, I’m awake,” Luke said.
Opening his eyes, he saw Lola Fontaine sitting on the side of the bed.
“You’re dressed.”
“That’s what people do when it’s after noon,” Lola said continuing to wipe his face.
“Did I give you a good time?”
“If you call cleaning up after a fight a good time, then yes, I had an extra good time. You owe me, and you owe me a lot.”
“If we didn’t do anything, then I don’t owe you anything.”
“It’s the Pig Lot,” Lola said. “Dusty sent Leonard to Wichita this morning for lumber, but it’ll take at least a month before the saloon’s back to the way it was.”
Slater tried to laugh, but his lip was too sore to allow it.
“You’re a good woman, Lola. Who knows, I might want to marry you, some day.”
“No, Luke, I don’t think so. I’m not going to marry anyone who knows I was a whore. When I get enough money put aside, I’m heading east. I’ll find me some decent man, tell him I’m a widow, and settle down and raise a houseful of kids.”
“I don’t believe it. Where on earth could you find a bet
ter life than this?”
“Humph. You don’t really know me, Luke Slater. Any one of us would give an eye tooth to be the wife of some farmer or storekeeper or whatever job he had. We don’t whore because we want to.”
“But you like it,” Luke said as he got out of bed and padded across the room where his hat lay on the chest of drawers. He put his hat on, then turned toward Lola.
“Now, don’t go anywhere. I’ll be back.” He started toward the door, and Lola laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Don’t you think you might want to wear more than just your hat?”
Luke looked down at himself. “Oh, I reckon I better.”
When Luke came down the stairs, he felt his jaw as he surveyed the Pig Lot. Lola was right. It would take a while before the saloon was fixed up. He had to wonder how one man could have done that much damage. As far as he could remember, no one had taken McCall’s side while the fight was going on. As for him, he knew his brothers had whipped the man in a fair fight—that is if you called three against one a fair fight.
When he got out on the street, he saw his brother, Mack, leaning against the hitching rail, two horses standing at the ready.
“Where’s Weasel?” Luke asked.
“He’s down at the dugout,” Mack said pulling out his watch. “I was gonna give you another ten minutes and then I was gonna come drag you out of that whore’s bed.”
“Well, now, you should have done that. I would have shared.”
“Let’s get out of here. We’ve spent too much time in Sumner County already. We can’t keep those horses down below the bluff forever.”
“That’s why we’ve got the Nations. An Indian will take any horse he can get, and be happy.”
“True, but we’ve got to get them there first. Let’s hope Sheriff Ross isn’t out looking for old O’Bannon’s horses.”
“Is that all we’ve got?” Luke asked. “We didn’t get more’n a half dozen from that old man.”
“No, stupid. That’s not all we have, but Weasel can’t hide thirty horses all by himself.”
Of the three brothers, Luke was the oldest, and Weasel was the youngest. Despite the fact that Mack was in the middle, he had assumed the leadership role, and neither Luke nor Weasel challenged him.
2
The constable entered the room and unlocked the door to the cell where Cade had been incarcerated for six days.
“Let’s go.”
Slim Cooley rose to his feet, a wide smile on his face. “This ain’t been too bad. I’ll miss your cookin’.”
“It ain’t you, Slim. It this here other’n.”
“I thought you said I’d be here six months,” Cade said rising from his bunk.
“That fella you sent the telegram to must’ve thought you were worth the money. He paid the damages, so I don’t have no reason to hold you no longer. Why, if I had to keep ever cowboy who started a fight, I’d have to have a jail bigger’n the hotel.”
When Cade followed the constable into the front of the jail house, he saw Jeter Willis leaning against one of the two desks. He had his arms folded across his chest, and the expression on his face was one of disapproval.
Cade nodded his head toward Jeter, as the constable handed him his gun and holster.
“Do me a favor, will you McCall?” the constable asked. “If you’re going to bust up another saloon, would you consider doing it somewhere else?”
“Where’s my hat?” Cade asked.
“It didn’t come with ya when you was brought in the other night. If I was a bettin’ man, I’d say it’s half way to Wichita on some drover’s head if it was any good.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Cade said as he headed for the door.
“I should have left you there,” Jeter said when the two men were out on the street.
“Please, Jeter, no lecture. There’s nothing you can say to me that I haven’t already said to myself.”
“I took a room at the hotel,” Jeter said. “We’ll start back first thing tomorrow morning. In the meantime, you need a bath and a haircut.”
“Yeah,” Cade said. “I’m so ripe I can smell myself.”
It was a much cleaner and better smelling Cade McCall who walked into the Palace Café for dinner that evening. Though the swelling had gone down, there was still some discoloration around Cade’s left eye as he took his seat across the table from Jeter.
“You want to tell me about it?” Jeter asked, after they ordered their meal.
“Tell you about what?”
“About what in the hell gave you the idea that you could take on three men without getting your ass whipped.”
“To be honest, Jeter, I was too drunk to even remember the fight. But I can’t believe that I was drunk enough to try and take on three men.”
“They’re brothers,” Jeter said. “And from what I’ve been able to find out, they’re regular hellions. When I paid for the damages, the barkeep told me you’d come closer to whipping the Slaters than anyone else has, and that he and several others were hoping that you would.” Jeter chuckled. “Apparently you left the three of them pretty bruised up.”
Cade smiled as he fingered the cut under his eye. “I’m glad it wasn’t all one-sided.”
“When are you goin’ to come home ‘n quit this nonsense, Cade?”
“Humph. Where would that be? Tennessee? Galveston? Just where is home?”
“You know where home is. Home is where your daughter is.”
Cade’s face hardened. “I don’t have a daughter.”
“Oh? I want you to look into the eyes of that little girl and tell her she’s not your daughter.”
“I don’t have a daughter,” Cade repeated.
“I don’t know what’s happened to you, Cade. You aren’t the Cade I used to know, and I’d like for that Cade to come back.”
“The Cade that you knew is no more.”
“If I really thought that was true, I would’ve left you in jail.”
“That’s what you should have done,” Cade said in a remorseful, self-condemning voice.
That night, Cade lay in bed in the hotel room staring up into the darkness. He hadn’t had a drink for six days and without the alcohol induced fog, he was forced to face the memories that he couldn’t make go away. He listened to the loud snores coming from Jeter, thinking how many times he had heard those sonorous tones before.
It had been two and a half years ago when Cade and Jeter brought up a herd of cattle from Southeast Texas to Abilene, Kansas. He had to smile when he thought about the excitement they had felt when the McCall and Willis Cattle Company got the contract from Linus Puckett to take charge of a combined herd.
And then there was the chuck wagon. At the last moment, the cook they had hired was thrown in jail, and Arabella DuPree, the woman he loved, volunteered to come along on the drive as the cook.
Cade had protested, saying a cattle drive was no place for a woman, but Arabella had persisted. In the end, she convinced him that she and her friend, Magnolia, would be the best cooks any cattle drive would ever have. Finally, he succumbed to her reasoning, but insisted that she could only come with them if she came as his wife.
Arabella had been right. No cattle drive had ever eaten food quite like that prepared for the McCall and Willis Company, and thinking back upon those few months Cade knew it had been the happiest time of his life. But then because of one disastrous error in judgement on his part, all that had changed. As the herd was coming through Wichita, Cade sent the chuck wagon on ahead without any escort. When he caught up with the wagon, it looked as if there had been a terrible accident, but Arabella and Magnolia were nowhere to be found. And then he knew. The lead mule had been shot in the head. Arabella and Magnolia had been kidnapped.
He searched for his wife for an entire year, first on his own, and then as a civilian scout assigned to the Eleventh Cavalry at Fort Dodge. It was during the time he was a scout that he discovered the women had not been taken by Ind
ians as he had believed, but were taken by Amon Kilgore, a man who had been a competing trail boss from Texas. When he learned that Kilgore and his partner were buffalo hunters, he became a driver for a freight wagon traveling between Fort Dodge and Camp Supply knowing that someday he would run across someone who knew where the bastards were. He vowed he would find them and kill them.
He pressed his search, following false leads, running up blind trails, frustrated by failure after failure. In all that time, he never abandoned the hunt and never gave up hope, because he was obsessed with finding his wife. Then the search ended suddenly, and unexpectedly, when he stopped for provisions at Dunnigan’s Goods on the Bent Canyon Road.
That was when he saw Magnolia, nursing a child.
And he found Arabella.
Mr. Dunnigan led Cade to a room in the back of the store where he saw his wife lying in a pool of blood. He heard the cry of a baby, as Mrs. Dunnigan began to swaddle a child. At first Cade was filled with pride at the thought of becoming a father, but that pride soon changed to anger. What had his wife endured at the hands of Amon Kilgore?
Distraught by the knowledge that Arabella had been violated, he swore he would love her so much that she would forget anything that had happened to her. He knelt by her bed, and she turned toward him, her hand reaching out to touch his face. She rubbed her fingers over his lips.
“Cade, promise me you’ll take care of her.”
“We will. We’ll do it together.”
“I won’t be here. You’ll have to . . . .”
Those were the last words he had heard from his dying wife.
Shortly thereafter, Jeter married Maggie, and announced that he was going to open a saloon in Dodge City.
Cade became Jeter’s silent partner, putting up half the money needed to build the saloon, but he had other things on his mind. He was determined to find the two men and bring them to justice . . . not in a court of law, but in his own, private court of justice.
The Western Adventures of Cade McCall Box Set Page 42