Little Big Man

by Thomas Berger

  This incident later went down in history, I understand—without any mention of my part—but standing there at the time, I was not impressed. I was intent on finding out about Custer, and the flowing hair of this specimen made me think he was another of the same ilk.

  So when he had exhausted them five shots, I says impatiently: “Well, Hickok, if you can spare the time, I’ll have a word with you.”

  He throws the fresh gun from his left hand into the right, while at the same time and in the same fashion transferring the emptied revolver from his right hand to his left. This maneuver was called the border shift, and constituted a neat-looking trick as both pistols traveled through the air for a second.

  Following which Hickok fired five more shots at that sign, and then the whole bunch walked on across the square to see how good he did. One of them at the back of the crowd comes over to me and says: “I reckon you must know Wild Bill purty well, to bother him at a time like this.”

  “Don’t know him a-tall,” says I, “and don’t know as I want to. What makes him so important?”

  This fellow says: “You never heard how he took care of the McCanles gang ten year ago at the Rock Crick stage station down in Jefferson County? There was six of them, I believe, and they come for Wild Bill, and he took three with his pistols, two with his bowie, and just beat the other to death with a gunstock.”

  I immediately reduced that by half in my mind, for I had been on the frontier from the age of ten on and knew a thing as to how fights are conducted. When you run into a story of more than three against one and one winning, then you have heard a lie. I found out later I was right in this case: Wild Bill killed only McCanles and two of his partners, and all from ambush.

  “Yes sir,” this fellow goes on, who belonged to the same type as Custer’s striker, “that is what he done. And over in Hays City when he was marshal he had a run-in with Tom Custer, the General’s brother, who he locked up when drunk and disorderly, and Tom come back with two soldiers to put a head on him, and Wild Bill knifed one and shot the other.”

  Now this interested me, so I asked how he got Custer’s brother, with knife or gun.

  “It was the soldiers he killed, not Tom.”

  That figured.

  Hickok and the others now returned from looking at the saloon sign, and this suck-up who had been talking to me, he asked what happened and another man says: “He put all ten inside the hole of the O, by God!” And everybody was whistling and gasping at the wonder of it—well, not exactly everybody, for there was other scouts and gun-handlers around, people like Jack Gallagher, Billy Dixon, Old Man Keeler, and more who was well known in them days, and they looked thoughtful so as not to display jealousy. As elsewhere in life, there are specialists on one hand, and the audience on the other.

  I steps up to Wild Bill again and says: “If you can spare the time—”

  He is feeling good what with his performance and the adulation rising from it, and I guess it might have irritated him that I should be totally occupied with my own matters, and he says quite negligent to one of them men at his elbow: “Run him off.”

  So that fellow comes towards me with a contemptuous look on his ugly, hairy face, and he is right large, but then he stops abruptly. For my S & W .44 is on a dead line to where his belly sagged over his belt.

  “Pull in your horns,” Hickok tells him with a guffaw. “That little bastard has got the drop on you.… Come on,” he says to me, “put aside your popgun and I’ll buy you a drink.”

  So Wild Bill and me went over to the saloon and passed under the sign where he had put ten shots in the hole of the O at a hundred yards, and I glanced up at it and saw he sure enough had. Inside, we got us our whiskies and then he found the farthermost corner from the door and put his chair in the angle of it and pulled his frock coat back on either side to expose the handles of the pistols stuck into his waistband, and all the while we was there he was eying every individual who came and went without it making any difference in his attention to our talk, except once when the bartender dropped a glass, at which Hickok automatically responded like a cat, coming half out of the chair.

  So that was where he told me about Custer’s going East and all, and the stuff I related earlier.

  “Why did you want to know about the General?” he asked, but of course I never told him of my true interest but some lie about hiring on as a scout, and then to cover up whatever emotion I might have showed, I says: “I understand you had some trouble with his brother Tom.”

  “Well,” he says, “that is all over.”

  Now this is a good example of a point I want to make. Wild Bill Hickok was never himself a braggart. He didn’t have to be. Others did it for him. When I say he was responsible for a ton of crap, I don’t mean he ever spoke a word in his own behalf. He never said he put a head on Tom Custer, nor wiped out the McCanles gang, nor would he ever mention them ten shots inside the O. But others would be doing it incessantly, and blowing up the statistics and lengthening the yardage and diminishing the target. Until about thirty year ago, I was still meeting people who claimed to have been on Market Square that day when Wild Bill put ten shots one on top of another into the point of an i at two hundred yards.

  It was just after this that the bartender dropped the glass and Hickok come out of his chair, hands ready at his gun butts.

  When he sat back again, I says: “What are you so nervous about?”

  “Getting killed,” says he, as simply as that, and takes a sip of his red-eye. And then he looks at me, a little amusement crinkling his blue eyes, and says: “Maybe you figure to do it.”

  That just made me laugh, and I says: “It was you who asked me to have a drink.”

  “Look,” says he, “tell me straight, was it Tom Custer who sent you here? For as far as it goes with me, that is over and done with. But if he wants to start it up again, he ought not to send a fellow around carrying a S & W American in a tight calfskin holster. I tell you that for your own good, friend.”

  I was insulted, being proud of that new piece of mine, and I also took it hard that I would be considered as working for anybody named Custer.

  “Look yourself, Hickok,” I says. “I ain’t no man’s flunky. If I got any killing to do, it’ll be for myself and no other. If you want to fight, we’ll drop the guns and I’ll take you on bare-knuckle though you be big as a horse.”

  “Settle down,” he says. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Let me buy you another.” He called the bartender, but that individual had gone into a storeroom in back and couldn’t hear him, so Wild Bill asks me would I mind fetching the bottle?

  Still sore, I says: “Are you lame?”

  He answers apologetically: “I don’t want to get shot in the back.” Hastening to add: “I don’t mean by you. I believe you, friend. But I don’t know about these others.”

  Meaning the ten or twelve harmless persons who shared the saloon with us at the moment. It wasn’t crowded, being the middle of the afternoon. There was a table of four, playing cards; another couple or three men was down towards the lower right of the bar. And I recall a person dead drunk at a table in the middle of the place. His head and shoulders was flat limp on the tabletop in a pool of spilled whiskey, sort of like a piece of harness dropped in some standing rainwater.

  So I felt a contempt for this Wild Bill, thinking he was either batty or yellow if he couldn’t walk across a peaceful room. Then it occurred to me that he might be putting on an act for my benefit. Maybe he was waiting for me to turn my back on him so he could drill me.

  This is a good example of the suspiciousness which warps the minds of gunfighters. I had fell into it right quick, just being in Wild Bill’s proximity. You feel like your whole body is one live nerve. At that moment one of them cardplayers, having just won a pot, let out a holler of triumph, and both Hickok and myself come out of our chairs, going for our iron—and he had been right about that tight calfskin holster of mine, which fitted the piece like a glove: the faste
r you pulled at it, the more it gripped the revolver.

  I says: “Now you got me doing it.”

  “I never,” says Hickok, “have held by a holster.” Now that he seen my deficiency I reckon he finally did trust me. “Always carry my weapons in the waist. You have to get a tailor to make a real smooth band there, no excess stitching nor suspender buttons, and of course your vest ought to be cut so its points don’t interfere. And,” he goes on, “see how I had my coat designed so it swings away on the sides.”

  “The only thing,” I says, “is I wonder that sometimes when walking, your guns just don’t slip on through and run down your trouser legs.”

  “Ah,” says he, “you open the loading gate and catch it onto your pants-tops.”

  He was warning up to me through this technical talk, a man generally being fascinated by his own specialty and the tools for it. Bill proceeded to lecture me on the merits of the various means of toting a pistol: silk sash, shoulder holster, hideout rig inside the vest, derringer harness along the underside of the arm, back pockets lined with leather, and so on. He even claimed to know a fellow who carried a small pistol in his crotch, and when cornered he would request to take a leak before dying, open his fly, and fire. The trouble was onetime he got overhasty and shot off his male parts.

  I learned an awful lot that afternoon. I had thought I was pretty handy with a gun before reaching K.C., but I was awful raw alongside of Wild Bill Hickok. Of course, I could see he was a fanatic. You had to be, to get so absorbed in talk of holsters and cartridge loads and barrel length and filing down the sear to make a hairtrigger and the technique of tying back the trigger and earing the hammer to fire, etc., etc. He had forgot about that drink and even his suspicions and commenced to call me “partner” and “hoss,” rather than that sinister “friend.”

  I got tired after a bit and reminded him we was going to wet our whistles again, and started up, but he says: “Sit down, old hoss, I’ll get them.” And makes for the bar, despite the fact that the saloonkeeper had sometime since returned from the storeroom and could have fetched the bottle over.

  One thing that amused me: Wild Bill carried that silk hat of his with him rather than leave it behind. I figured this was the last bit of suspicion he held towards me, that maybe I would swipe that article. Or maybe it was just that he didn’t want to forget and sit upon it when he come back.

  Now he had got within six feet of the bar and was already in the process of giving his order, when that drunk I have mentioned at the middle table suddenly reared up, revealing a pistol at the end of the arm that had been crumpled under him, thrusts it purposefully in the direction of Hickok’s tall, broad back, and pulls the trigger. I would estimate the range as fifteen feet. Now this was quick. I mean if you had sneezed you would never have knowed anything happened, for in the next instant the “drunk” was sprawled once again in exactly the same position he had just emerged from, the difference being that blood was leaking out of a small hole between his eyes, adding to that pool of liquor.

  He had fired all right, only his bullet went into the ceiling, for in the time between his rearing up and pulling the trigger, Wild Bill had seen him in the mirror back of the bar, turned, flipped his silk hat into the left hand, revealing the pistol he had carried under it in his right, and killed the man. Then he put the hat upon his head, went over, and inspected the corpse. The other fellows gathered around, and shortly in come Marshal Tom Speers, and Speers says: “Know him, Bill?”

  “No,” says Hickok, expelling the empty cartridge and replacing it with a new load. Then he shrugs, gets that bottle from the bar, and joins me again.

  Somebody says: “That’s Strawhan’s brother.”

  Now I was some agitated by this event, being no stranger to violence but not having looked for it here. I gulped the drink Hickok poured me with his calm hand, and coughed, and says: “The name mean anything to you?”

  He shrugs again, sips his whiskey, and his eyes is heavy as though he is going to fall asleep. Finally he answers: “I recall a man of that name in Hays.”

  “Have trouble with him?”

  “I killed him,” he says. “Now then, about that S & W you carry. It is a handsome weapon, but the shells have a bad habit of erupting and jamming the chambers. I’d lay the piece aside and get me something else: a Colt’s, with the Thuer conversion.…”

  Meanwhile, Speers had got two fellows to drag the body out and he says to Wild Bill: “Drop by the station later when you have a minute.”

  I reckon the marshal had to make a report. Hickok gives him a little wave of the hand—the left one, of course. I should have known something was up when I seen him carrying that hat in his right, which he reserved absolutely for his gun. Pointing, gesturing, scratching, going for money—think of everything you do with your right hand: he did none of these, but kept it totally free at all times. The one exception was shaking hands, in which case he barely touched your fingers before whipping his back.

  Not that afternoon, but later on I asked Wild Bill if he had really suspected that apparent drunk or if he always crossed a room gun in hand.

  “I did, indeed,” he answered. “I suspect any man whose gun hand is out of sight, be he even dead. I am wrong ninety-nine times out of a hundred; but I am right once in that same space, which pays me for my trouble.”

  Hickok was a marvelous observer of anything which pertained to killing. He noticed now how I had been shaken by the incident, though otherwise I don’t think he would have recognized me if I had gone off to the outhouse and come back. He was like an Indian in his single-mindedness. For example, he never reacted at all to the quality of the whiskey we was drinking, which was fairly rotten. And later I come to realize that he had talked about General and Mrs. Custer in that apparently interested way only because he suspected me of being out to get him and playing for time. Actually he did not care anything about them or anybody else as persons.

  But he could be considerate, if it fell within the area of his obsession. So now he says to me: “It is always harder on a man to watch trouble than to be in it. Best thing for you to do now is go get yourself a woman. Come on, I’ll show you the best place in town.”

  He had to stop first at a restaurant and eat a big steak, because he said it was funny, but trouble give him an appetite, but other than for those two references, I never heard Wild Bill mention the shooting of Strawhan’s brother, though in the street and at the restaurant, various individuals who had heard about it congratulated him and others got out of his path in a marked way.

  This place he took me to was a dancehall, though by the time we got there it was early evening, for he ate that steak slow and with great relish and afterwards had some pie, and it took so long that I come back to normal, for after all, killing was no novelty to me. So I had some baked ham, for the steak looked mighty tough. The ham was no better, I might add, and I complained to the management, but Hickok seemed to find the grub just perfect.

  Then we went to the dancehall, and as I say it was early, with us being the first customers and the girls come straggling out of a door at the back, yawning and stretching for I figure they had just got up after sleeping the day. At the entrance there was a sign reading: PLEASE CHECK YOUR FIREARMS, and when we walked past it, a big man in a striped shirt come out and states: “Sorry, fellows, that means what it says.”

  Wild Bill just looks at him with his clear blue eyes and says in his quiet voice: “Is Dolly around?”

  “You’ll have to check them weapons,” says the other. And then, I guess because he allowed Wild Bill was an imposing-looking fellow, he explains: “They’ll be all right with me. You see, I put one of these here tags on each piece and write on it who it belongs to.” He goes into his vest pocket undoubtedly to get that tag and pencil, and knowing Wild Bill’s principles, I thought oh my God, there goes another one!

  However, just at that moment, a big woman appears from the office. In her forties, heavy-set with a great high bosom, to show the grand
divide of which her red satin dress, embroidered with black beading, had been cut low. She had a wealth of black hair piled upon her head and a faint mustache of the same color.

  She cries “Billy!” in her bass voice, comes over and hugs Hickok, pushing the breastwork into his waistcoat and planting a fiery kiss on his cheek. Then she tells the bouncer: “Mr. Hickok has the privilege.”

  “Hickok!” says he and his face goes to pieces and he makes himself scarce. Which shows you how a reputation worked. That man was a bouncer by trade and done a good job: I later seen him beat up three rough and drunken buffalo hunters with only the help of a middle-sized club. But soon as he heard that magic name, he was beat so far as facing the individual who owned it.

  “Who’s your cute little short-armed pal?” the woman asks Bill, and he gets my name for the first time and tells her.

  Then Dolly grabs me, smothering my face in her spongy cleavage, and damn if she don’t slide her hands around onto my posteriors and grind and bump her treelike thighs against me. I don’t say it wasn’t somewhat interesting, for she was quite a bit of woman, though it was also rather disquieting as if an aunt got fresh with you, and in addition I had my pride to think of, so I pushed her off.

  “Ooo,” says she, making a coy thing of her heavy lips, “he’s a spunky little fox, ain’t he now?”

  Hickok says, laughing: “You got a nice girl for him? He’s nervous, you see.” So she calls the women over, and they was a good deal better-grade than you could find on west of there until you got to San Francisco. One or two was right pretty, even, and all was fairly clean-looking and showed no old knife-scars or bad pock-marks. Dolly run a first-rate place, I’ll say that for her.

  I looked them over, and some made lewd remarks to me while others acted standoffish and even cold, for as a group they had to appeal to all tastes, but the one I chose wasn’t either forward nor snotty. She was kind of sad and wistful-looking, in figure short and slight, with dull reddish-brown hair that appeared to have been set to curl but come out rather wispy. Some faint freckles showed in the tender skin underneath her eyes. She wore a red dress that exposed her shoulders and her legs to the knee, and the heels of her slippers was run over so she stood slightly bowlegged.