This Old Bill

by Loren D. Estleman

  "Come on, come on, you sot!" demanded the player across from him, a thin, red-eyed man in a travel-stained black suit and string tie. "That's five to you. In or out?"

  The drunk belched and reached down to scratch himself. "Got t'see somethin' firs'."

  "You can't even see your cards, rummy."

  A Navy Colt appeared quick as thought in the other's right hand, the hammer rolling back with a noise like knuckles cracking. "Let's start with the ones up your left sleeve."

  His speech was unslurred now and he was sitting up straight.

  The red-eyed man hesitated, jerked his own gun hand, stopped, jerked it again, then lowered it to the table. He considered death's single empty eye.

  The other two players at the table watched in brittle silence. The man with the gun caught the eye of the gambler to his right, who grasped the red-eyed man's left arm and shook the ace of hearts and the ace of clubs out of the sleeve.

  "Leave everything on the table and skedaddle," said the bogus drunk.

  Red-eye rose awkwardly. "I got to have a stake to get out of town on."

  "Don't lean on your luck."

  "Who the hell are you?"

  "James Butler Hickok." He spaced out the names.

  The blood slid out of the cheater's face. "You're Wild Bill Hickok?"

  "I been called that. I been called worse, but not by anybody you'll meet."

  The other stood unmoving for a long time. Then he turned and stumbled toward the batwing doors, colliding with a big man in sweat-stiffened clothes who was just coming in. Gasping, he glanced up at the newcomer's face and slid around him with a muttered comment about the town being full of long-haired killers.

  The man gazed around the humming saloon and spotted the man playing poker with his back to the wall and a revolver in his hand. "Jim," he roared, "can't I turn my back on you for a few years that you don't cut the bear loose?"

  The expression on Hickok's carved-idol face went slowly from wariness to recognition. The ends of his moustache turned up suddenly. "Will, you little rascal, you went and growed up!" He took the Navy off cock with a flourish and thrust it into his belt in the old butt-forward position. To his table companions: "Split the tinhorn's checks three ways and go try the faro wheel."

  When the hand crushing and backslapping were done, Hickok called for a fresh bottle, and he and Will sat down. The gunman counted his checks into stacks according to color with his left hand, leaving his right free as always.

  "You heard Slade's dead."

  "Can't say I'm surprised." Will drank. "Who pulled the trigger?"

  "No one. After Holladay fired him he went up to Virginia City and got hisself lynched for disorderly conduct."

  "Hell, I'd known they could string you up for that, I'd of gone into church work years ago."

  But Hickok wasn't laughing. "Goddamn civilization's ruining everything, Will. Everyplace I go there's people there ahead of me making rules. They been pouring out here like piss out of a boot ever since the war got over. It's how come I left Illinois, and I got to go farther and farther West to get clear of it."

  "You left Illinois on account of that mule skinner you near drowned in the Illinois and Michigan Canal. This is me you're talking to, Wild Bill."

  "It's Jim, damn it. That's another thing about these carpetbaggers—they can't even get a man's name right."

  The younger man grinned. "Anyway, you don't appear to be suffering."

  "It's how come I took up scouting for the Army. This way I get to see what a place is like before the women and Bibletooters get a chance to hang curtains on it."

  They worked on the bottle for a while, inflating the details of past experiences shared. Drinkers came in and went out, pausing to look at the two long-haired frontiersmen making guns out of their forefingers and hammering the table for punctuation.

  "What they got you doing these days?" Hickok asked finally, uncorking a second vessel.

  "Grading track for the Kansas Pacific."

  "How is it?"

  "I've ate grass and it beats that. How's scouting?"

  "Sometimes you eat lots worse than grass. But it pays better than the railroad and you're your own boss nine days out of ten."

  "They hiring?"

  "They got more jobs at Fort Hays than men to fill them." The gunman paused. "I got to say though, it ain't work for a married man. I heard you got roped."

  "That make any difference with who gets picked?"

  "Not where I was around to see."

  "All right then," said Will.

  Hickok grinned slowly, his only gradual act, and refilled their glasses.

  First light bled cold steel-blue into the deep black over Fort Hays, limning a man on a gray mule, their breath curling in the glacial air. On the porch of the commanding officer's quarters stood a tall, bony man in a Confederate officer's hat and a buckskin shirt over cavalry trousers with a stripe, copper-colored hair curling to the nape of his neck, and a great tragic moustache of a somewhat lighter hue the size and shape of an inverted horseshoe covering most of the lower half of his face. His blue-gray eyes were set deep under bushy brows that tilted downward sadly from a large, slightly hooking nose. His gaze slid icily over the mounted man and came to rest on the uniformed officer who shared the porch.

  "Captain, I left orders to have a guide ready on the best mount to be had at this post. My regiment is waiting for me at Fort Lamed and I haven't time to dilly-dally along the road with a mule. Get him a horse, and a good one."

  His voice was pitched high, the words bitten off with an audible snap and almost stuttered.

  "This is the best horse at the post, sir," the mounted man insisted. "I assure you he—"

  "That isn't a horse at all."

  The captain said, "General, the horses are all run out from chasing hostiles. Mules are all we have. Cody swears by this one and I trust his judgment in matters of this nature."

  "Backwoods Aristotles and plodding mules. The material they expect me to win wars with. Very well, if that's the best you have, let's get started." He clomped down the wooden steps, jerking on his gauntleted gloves.

  Will touched two fingers to his hat brim. "General Custer," he greeted, referring to the lieutenant colonel's wartime rank, as was the polite custom.

  A small group of officers and enlisted men and their guide strung out against a bright steel sky. Tents of sand stretched to the horizon, the grains sliding and sucking under the mounts' bicycling hoofs. The horses' sides heaved, slick with lather. Will's mule flared its nostrils and breathed normally. Custer, riding a little in front, turned his head as if to note the sun's position, but Will suspected that he was watching the mule and rider out of the corner of his eye. When the commander faced front, his guide put spurs to the mule. It snorted and lunged ahead.

  "Whoa, there! Easy, old fellow. We got us a ways to go."

  A bright steel sky and a small group of officers and enlisted men and their guide strung out against it. More sand. The horses' eyes rolled over white and their breath came in chugs. The mule was in front now, moving along at a swift walk. Spurs when Custer wasn't looking, the surge forward, more soothing, words. The commander raked his own mount's flanks and drew abreast.

  "That's more horse than mule."

  "He's no good till he finds his second wind," Will remarked.

  They rode tandem for several hundred yards without saying anything.

  "What sort of tactician is this Chief Black Kettle?" Custer asked finally.

  Will said, "It's his stomping ground."

  "I've known many a field commander to lose simply because he considered that the only advantage he needed. The victories that decided the war all took place below the Mason-Dixon line."

  "Beg pardon, General, but Black Kettle is no regular officer and the Cheyennes aren't proper soldiers. They've lived and fought here for centuries and their rules aren't the same. When the chief makes a decision, for instance, the braves have to get together and vote on it before it can be
carried out, and if the vote goes against it, they do something else. They don't follow orders blindly like men in uniform."

  "That's a very poor system in an exercise where moments count."

  "Maybe so, but that way you can't count on one man's mistake acting in your favor."

  A few miles farther on they stopped to let Custer's escort catch up. The General's thoroughbred bellied and blew. Will patted the gray mule's neck and leaned the bit tight as if to keep the animal from bolting.

  "I am told that the Cheyennes are excellent horsemen and that the time to attack them is in spring, when there is no snow to impede maneuvers and before the weather gets too hot," Custer announced. "Do you agree with that?"

  "No, sir, I'd choose winter."

  "Why winter?"

  "They're used to fighting in warm weather. In winter they rest. If you want to surprise them, pick a time when there's a lot of snow on the ground. They hold it their best protection."

  "My sentiments exactly. But the scouts I spoke with in St. Louis advised me against it."

  "St. Louis scouts don't like cold weather."

  "And you do."

  "Given my druthers I'd take warm. But I work when I'm paid to."

  "Cody, you're a breath of fresh air, even if you do ride a mouse-colored mule."

  The others dragged in astride their foaming mounts. "Move out," rapped Custer, kneeing his forward.

  The party approached a shadowy line in the sand hills that was the Pawnee Fork Creek, the mule pacing itself, Custer half trotting to keep up. They drew rein to wait again for the officers and orderlies.

  "Lamed's about fifteen miles downstream," Will explained, pointing. "All you have to do is follow the creek, General. I'll carry any dispatches you might have on ahead and wait for you there."

  "You're having sport with me for what I said about your mule earlier." The commander turned to an officer who had just joined them, straddling a wheezing and fistulous chestnut. "Captain, you will bring the escort in. I'm going on ahead with Cody."

  First light at Fort Lamed and a man on a gray mule throwing a long shadow with a sharp edge. Custer glowered at him from the porch of the commanding officer's quarters in uniform, thumbs hooked inside his belt.

  "I'm not in good humor this morning," he announced. "My horse died during the night."

  "I'm sorry he got into fast company, General." Custer said nothing.

  "If you have any messages for Fort Hays, me and my mouse-colored mule will just be plodding back now."

  The commander grunted. "Well, hereafter I will have nothing to say against a mule."

  Coming dusk on the Great Plains. Thick black smoke from the burning wagons stained the violet sky. Drumming hoofs and the rattle of repeaters against the more stately thud and crack of Army Springfields and the hissing of arrows. Mounted warriors in red and black paint flashed past Will's position swinging bows and lances, a few carrying Winchesters, some in feathers and breastplates made from the bones of small animals but most nearly naked. The sharp ululant cries with which they had launched the attack had abated to preoccupied yelps. Will withdrew farther under the ambulance to reload the converted Springfield .50-caliber breechloader he called Lucretia Borgia while Sergeant Monroe of the 10th Cavalry, a Negro regiment, occupied the savages with bullets from his own rifle and side arm. Spent powder had darkened the sergeant's cinnamon features. When he spoke, his teeth cut a white gash in his face.

  "Wish to hell Gen'ral Custer would show up," he said. "We's running out of niggers."

  "Quit wishing and keep shooting."

  A Sioux bullet pierced the canvas sheet of the grub wagon next to the ambulance and clanged against a skillet.

  "Bet you wishes you was back home, Mistuh Cody."

  Will crawled forward on his elbows and took aim at the glistening brown back of a brave leaning a mustang around the circled wagons. "I am home, Sergeant." He shot the Indian.

  Chapter Three

  Ellsworth, Kansas

  Gloved and hatted against the drifting cinders, holding little Arta tightly to her bosom, she stepped directly from the train onto bare earth—there was no platform—and looked for her husband among the bearded faces sprinkled between the unpainted and weatherworn buildings that stood at arm's length from one another on two sides of a rutted street as broad as a pasture. At first she saw only strangers and gaps of empty sky that made her sick at heart. Then he was there, striding out from a cluster of train watchers, bigger than she remembered, six feet of buckskin and leather and dust and sweat, the shock of his presence like a sudden gust of hot wind. He started to throw his long arms around her, but she shrank back, clutching the blanket-wrapped baby. Hurt flickered in his eyes; then they dropped to the reason and grew warm and soft and shining with wonder. His lips parted, a little boy's lips after all.

  "Is that—?"

  "Why don't you hold your daughter, William?"

  He accepted the bundle as if it contained fine crystal. While Louisa watched anxiously, it stirred and a little red face stared into Will's mahogany one with its beard gone fair in the sun, and a black hole opened and it bawled like a sheep.

  "I'd holler too, I woke up to a face like that," one of the watchers called out. The crowd broke into guffaws and the baby cried louder.

  Will returned the bundle awkwardly. "She's wet."

  "She's a beauty, Will!" someone said.

  "Yeah, she don't look like you a-tall," commented another. More laughter. Will joined in. Still laughing, he swept his little family into a carriage, behind which waited three wagons piled high with furniture and a band of armed men on horseback with hard, sunburned faces, and climbed in beside his wife.

  "So many guns." As they lurched into motion, Louisa adjusted the baby's blanket to keep the sun out of her eyes.

  "The hunting is good hereabouts," replied Will, shifting the reins.

  After they had traveled almost a mile, Will said, "I'm a millionaire, Lulu, or almost."

  "You said in your letter you had a quarter of a million dollars."

  "Well, not yet, exactly. But I'm worth that much on paper. This fellow Rose that I'm partners with has a grading contract with the Kansas Pacific. We're laying out a city on the west bank of Big Creek and reserving corner lots for ourselves. I figure if we sell them for two fifty each, we'll be sitting on two hundred and fifty thousand easy." He grinned. "You'll not fall out of love with me when I'm a rich man, Mama?"

  "I'm the mother of your daughter, William. That won't change if you've a quarter million or just a quarter."

  His heart soared.

  At night the heavens sat on the prairie. The crickets' stoic serenade paused at the sound of footsteps, so that as he walked, Will towed silence like a shadow. He approached his sentries noisily, crunching his heels on last year's brittle grass and whistling to keep the jumpier ones from blowing out his brains in panic when he addressed them. The exchange was always the same; repetition had scaled it down to essentials.

  "Anything?"

  "Nothing, Cap'n."

  "Well, keep your eyes and ears open. You know how fast these bastards hit."

  The same words would be spoken all down the ragged line of deputized settlers that defined the camp's perimeters. On his way between guard posts Will paused often to listen to the occasional cries of night birds, cocking his ears for an echo. The voices of birds carried none. There were no echoes, and after completing his rounds he rejoined his wife in the bed they shared in one of the wagons of furniture. Little Arta slept quietly in the cradle her father had made.

  "That's the third time you've got up tonight," said Louisa when he had drawn the covers over both of them, having removed only his boots and shirt. "Is anything wrong?"

  "Just restless, Mama. I can't wait to show you our town."

  "Will, are we in danger from Indians?"

  "Of course not. The cavalry has them under control. Sleep now. We'll be traveling all day tomorrow and most of the next."

  She wanted to cont
inue the conversation, but her husband's even breathing told her he was already asleep. She stared up at the darkness inside the wagon sheet and listened to the rise and fall of her daughter's tiny lungs and heard the crunching footsteps of the guard patrols outside.

  The infant town of Rome occupied a level spot high above Big Creek a mile from Fort Hays. Clapboard stores and a hotel rose clean and white from a sea of tents and bare lots drawn with stakes, between which men drove wagons and pushed wheelbarrows stacked with planks along the grassy streets. Hammers clattered and saws wheezed. A haze of sawdust blurred the sun. Indoors, the prostitutes slept, their establishments having closed for the day along with the saloons and gambling houses in honor of the co-founder and his wife and child.

  Louisa stared dubiously at the hotel as their things were being carried inside a small house across the street. Will laughed.

  "That's someone else's worry, Mama. We're in real estate."

  The settlers, many of whom were waiting for their own wives and families, tipped their hats and pitched in to help empty the wagons. The deference they showed one of Rome's first respectable women charmed Louisa, who took it as proof of her husband's high local standing. The couple dined on simple fare at the hotel and returned by nightfall to find the house in order, Arta's cradle awaiting the baby beside the bed where her mother could reach out and rock it without getting up. As they were preparing to retire, a chorus of shots rattled outside the bedroom window.

  A brief pause, and then another ragged volley. The prairie warped the reports and hurled them back with a growl.

  "What is that?" Louisa scooped Arta up out of a sound sleep. The baby cried.

  Will was peeling off his suspenders. "Just a serenade. It means they approve of you."

  "Are they firing blank cartridges?"