This Old Bill

by Loren D. Estleman

  He chuckled. "Certainly not. Nobody carries blank cartridges in his pistol. The whole town is armed."

  "Why, in heaven's name?"

  "To keep law and order."

  "Don't you have policemen like in St. Louis?"

  "A St. Louis policeman wouldn't last long in a town like Rome."

  The baby was quiet now. She returned her to the cradle, tucked the blanket around her, then stepped out of her skirt and spent a few minutes folding it carefully before fitting it into its hanger. "I don't think I'm going to like your city, William."

  He swept an arm behind her while she was hanging up the skirt and pulled her to him. Skirt and hanger dropped in a heap to the floor of the wardrobe. Smiling down at her: "But you like me."

  "I love you."

  "You'll learn to love Rome as well."

  While they were kissing, his hand slid down from the small of her back to her rump. She squirmed and placed a hand against his chest.

  "No, William. I'm exhausted from the trip."

  "I have just the thing to relax you."

  The baby started crying again.

  Rose was a slender extrovert six inches shorter than Will, with lively eyes and hands and silver whiskers that after three days glinted like metal shavings on his sunburned cheeks, although he was only a few years older than his partner. He collected Will in the morning and together the pair walked all over Rome, building factories and opera houses and a mayor's mansion on the only lot in town where the sun shone the same length of time on the backyard in the afternoon as on the front in the morning, lined the main street with shops whose red-and-white-striped awnings turned the boardwalk into a shady grove, and laid pipe from the creek so that no one would be bothered with pumps and wells. Thirsty from so much head work, they stopped off at a saloon before parting company at the hotel, in which Rose owned a half interest with his foreman. Will then returned home, where Louisa informed him he had a visitor.

  He didn't recognize the man who strode across his parlor and seized his hand in both of his.

  "Mr. Cody? My name is Webb. Seeing you in person, I'm beginning to understand the stories I've been hearing about you since I left Chicago."

  A good-looking Easterner, Webb had straight teeth behind a sandy moustache and wore his sturdy frontier clothes as if they had been made to order. Will was cautious. "What can I do for you, Mr. Webb?"

  "They said you were direct. I itch to kill buffaloes and I'm told none is more expert upon the subject than you. I thought perhaps—"

  Will let out his breath. "Say no more, Mr. Webb. How soon can you be mounted?"

  The bull he selected was old and half blind, one eye clouded, its gray beard worn almost to the chin from decades spent dragging the ground. From an enormous chest and shoulders under a close clustering mass of dusty curls, its frame tapered back to a narrow, muscular rump, above which a short tail like a twist of rope raised its shaggy pompon, signaling rage. The beast still rolled in its own urine, although cows had stopped responding to the strong male stench long ago and it drew only flies whose bites left bleeding sores where its hair had fallen away in patches. Its clumsy lope was deceptive. Puffs of yellow dust erupted from under its drumming hoofs and hot air burst from its nostrils. If the thick scars crisscrossing its walnut hide were any indication, it had killed many times.

  Mounted on his best buffalo horse Brigham, Will stayed abreast of the lone bull, out of range of the sharp rear hoofs and veering farther away whenever it brought its great head and curving horns hooking sideways at the thing coming up on its blind side. The horse made these maneuvers even as they occurred to the man. For two hundred yards the pursuit continued in this fashion, until they were well clear of the rest of the small herd of old-timers. Then Will brought up Lucretia Borgia from her perch across the throat of his saddle, took aim while steering with his knees, and fired.

  Dust exploded from the beast's side. It wheeled suddenly in the direction of the shot, forcing the horse left quickly to avoid collision, ran twenty more yards, and then its legs folded and it went down head first, plowing a furrow with its great shovel-shaped snout for ten feet before shuddering to a stop. Its lungs filled slowly and emptied with a mighty grunt. Then they were still.

  Clouds of dust drifted past and settled with an audible sifting noise.

  "Splendid!" Webb put spurs to his dun and joined the marksman. His eyes were as bright and his face was as flushed as if he'd been the one who had chased and killed the bull. "You make it look easy."

  "Anything's easy after you've done it a thousand times for the railroad, Mr. Webb. And the horse does most of the work."

  "You're much too modest. Would you do me the honor of accepting my dinner invitation in town?"

  "I can't do that."

  Webb's politician's smile faded.

  "In Rome," said the frontiersman, "I buy."

  The hotel restaurant was clean and quiet. Finishing his meal, Webb placed his utensils on the empty plate with a slight clatter. "Excellent. I never knew buffalo meat was so good."

  "A lot of folks prefer it," Will replied over his wine. "It's always tender coming off the hump and the fat won't make you sick like with beef. Also, it's practically the only meat they serve here outside of sage hen, so they know how to fix it."

  "When my colleagues learned I was coming West, they warned me I'd lose my scalp. So far the only Indian I've seen rented me the horse I'm using at the livery."

  "They generally behave themselves this close to the fort."

  The Easterner refilled his companion's glass and his own from the carafe on the table. "I'm quite impressed with what I've seen of Rome. It's an excellent site."

  "We like it."

  "I'm told you had a great deal to do with selecting the location and supervised construction."

  "My parents were pioneers. I reckon some of it rubbed off."

  Webb swirled the red liquid, watching it cloud and clear. "I'll give you one-eighth of this town site," he said.

  Will paused with his glass halfway to his lips, then raised it the rest of the way and sipped. Smiling, he set it down. "I haven't time to discuss such matters, Mr. Webb. Dessert? They make a fine dried apple pie here."

  The other shook his head, watching his host curiously. Later Will told Louisa laughingly about the man who had offered him one eighth of his own town.

  At dawn he left to fulfill some more of his contract to furnish buffalo meat for the Kansas Pacific track gangs and was gone three days. Returning, sweaty, sunburned, smelling of innards, he walked Brigham to the top of the ridge above Rome and reined in, blinking against the late afternoon sunlight. More than half the town was gone.

  Pieces of discarded lumber lying in empty lots were all that remained of some buildings. Others were being dismantled by the same men who had erected them, the boards piled into wagons and wheelbarrows pointed east. The blank spaces looked like missing teeth.

  Will's house stood alone on what had been a crowded street when he left. He found Rose, his eyes less lively now, whittling with his back against a porch post. The earth at his feet was covered with coiled shavings. Louisa came out just as Will was stepping down into the yard. He took one look at the furious expression on her face and turned to Rose.

  "What happened?"

  "You wrote me you were worth two hundred and fifty thousand dollars," Louisa said.

  "Later, Mama."

  His partner peeled off an eight-inch curl. "That fellow Webb you had dinner with is in charge of building the division site for the Kansas Pacific," he explained without looking up. "Soon as you left to go hunting, he invited everyone over to see Hays City."

  "There's no such place."

  "There is now."

  "He started selling lots on the spot and loaned government wagons to the folks that bought them, to cart everything over in. That's some of them there." He pointed with his knife at the vehicles into which Will's former neighbors were stacking beams and doors.

  "Can he do that?
"

  "Appears he did."

  "William, what about that two hundred and fifty thousand dollars?"

  He looked around. Almost everything was gone now. Only his house and a few stone foundations were left. "You're standing in it," he said, "or what's left of it." He drew a deep breath and grinned at Rose. "How does it feel to drop from a millionaire to a pauper in just three days?"

  "It's quite a fall. I haven't got over it yet. I'd get drunk, but they took the saloons too."

  "You should have accepted Mr. Webb's offer," Louisa told Will.

  "I agree. But you don't put spurs to a horse after the race is lost. Anyway, I'm only twenty-one. I believe I have time to make it."

  Rose flipped what was left of his stick into the debris at his feet and folded the knife. "Well, I still have a grading contract with the KP. You want a job?"

  "I'm getting five hundred a month from the Goddard brothers in Ellsworth to feed the railroad workers. Being a tycoon, I was thinking of quitting. But the job's starting to smell better."

  "If you need a place to put your family, I hear the folks in Hays City are friendly." His grin came and went quickly.

  "I reckon it's as good as any till I can get them on the train back to St. Louis."

  They shook hands. And laughed.

  Louisa said, "You should have accepted Mr. Webb's offer."

  "Will Cody?"

  The man addressing him was a few years older than Will, lean, with a mane of dark hair cut square across the back of his neck like an Apache's, a drooping moustache, and pale blue eyes that contrasted sharply with his sunburned skin. He wore a buckskin shirt over denims faded to the same buff color, and the hand with which he grasped Will's was powerful and callused between thumb and forefinger like his own where the reins rubbed. He was riding a buckskin mare and carried a Henry rifle in a saddle scabbard.

  "You have the advantage," Will said.

  "Billy Comstock. Folks call me Buffalo Bill."

  "I've been called that a time or two myself. You're chief of scouts over at Fort Wallace."

  "I'm also the finest buffalo runner west of the Platte."

  "Perhaps so. When I'm east of it."

  They grinned at each other tightly, like two young bulls pawing the ground. Will was astride Brigham. Nearby, his skinners were at work hooking wagons to the hides of the buffaloes he had shot that morning, preparing to drag the hides off the pink and gray carcasses. The prairie air was thick with buzzing flies. Will felt the crew watching out of the corners of their eyes.

  "They tell me you been making a fair job of it shooting meat for the KP," Comstock remarked.

  "Coming up on two thousand so far this season. I hear you're not one to grow grass under your feet either."

  "I done my share. You use that needle gun all the time?"

  Will patted Lucretia, resting across his thighs. "Wouldn't change for gold."

  "You'd do better with a repeater."

  "Not for caliber. Anyway, I'm not interested in doing better. I'm the best there is now."

  "I got officers backing me with five hundred dollars says you're not."

  "That straight?"

  "It'd take a bigger whopper than that to bring me out here."

  "Well then," said Will.

  The arrangements were made through Fort Hays. It called for a special train from St. Louis, which on a bright steel day in late spring disgorged a cargo of gentlemen and their ladies into an empty stretch of plain twenty miles from Sheridan, the women raising their skirts clear of the dust and chips. Parasols blossomed pink and white as they made their way to the horses and wagons waiting to take them to the hunting grounds. Will rode out from a group of officers and dismounted to embrace Louisa, who had come out from Hays City with Arta. This time he made care not to crush the tiny bundle.

  "I don't know why you invited me, William," Louisa said. "You know I don't approve of slaughtering dumb brutes for sport."

  "The meat won't go to waste, Mama. Those wagons are set to deliver it to the gandies and steel-wallopers as soon as the contest is finished. And five hundred dollars is five hundred dollars. I'd be a month earning it the regular way."

  "You aren't doing this for money and you know it."

  He ground-hitched Brigham and helped her into the seat of a buckboard with a fresh-faced lieutenant in the driver's seat who touched his hat to his passenger before reaching down to untie the team's reins. Two couples Louisa had ridden out with from St. Louis were already seated in back.

  As the excursion was about to get under way, a little man in a stovepipe hat and cutaway climbed onto the back of a wagon and addressed the spectators in an astonishingly sonorous voice. The contestants were just swinging into leather. When his name was called, Will stood in his stirrups and swept off his hat to an ovation from the visitors and a raucous cheer from the Fort Hays delegation. Louisa uncovered Arta' s face and held her up so that she could tell her when she was old enough to understand that she saw her father on that day, ignoring the admiring comments she overheard from women charmed by her husband's physique and the chestnut lock that fell over one eye when he removed his hat. Comstock, seated on his buckskin with one leg resting on the pommel of his saddle, merely waved when introduced. The officers and enlisted men from Fort Wallace shouted encouragement. A lone catcall rose from among Will's supporters.

  "Messrs. Cody and Comstock will hunt for eight hours, at the end of which the man who has shot the largest number of buffaloes will be declared the winner," announced the little man in his big voice. "A referee will follow each man on horseback to count the carcasses. Once we have reached the hunting ground, spectators will please remain where directed until the shooting has begun, after which they may move up for a closer look."

  The announcer abandoned the wagon box for a seat next to the driver, and the vehicles started rolling, accompanied by a cavalry escort from the two interested forts.

  Scouts who had been tracking the migratory herds for days awaited the party at its destination, rolling terrain from where dark clumps of the curly-haired beasts were just visible grazing several hundred yards to the west. When the wagons stopped, the little man caught the attention of the two principals and produced a watch from a vest pocket. He kept his voice down to avoid spooking the buffaloes.

  "It is now eight o'clock. You have until four. Good luck, gentlemen."

  The hunters took off at a gallop. Their hoof beats started the prey moving, lumbering at first, then picking up speed in that ragged lope that shook the ground, heads sunk between their shoulders, humps moving up and down like living hills. At the horseman's approach the herd separated. Comstock took the bunch that went left. Will let his reins go slack, giving the little roan its head, and without hesitation Brigham peeled right, aiming for the leaders. By this time Comstock's Henry was cracking and stragglers were dropping at the rear of the bunch he was after. Will waited until he was almost abreast of the cow in front of his half before raising his heavy Springfield. Cows took the lead in times of stress. The butt pushed his shoulder an instant ahead of the roar. The bullet knocked dust off the beast's side just behind the left shoulder. It grunted loudly and heeled over.

  The animal galloping behind stumbled on the fallen cow with a startled bellow, then caught its balance and crowded left, starting a chain reaction among the leaders. Will reloaded, aimed, dropped another. The rest turned hard left. Brigham stayed parallel with the herd while his master poked new cartridges into the breech and fired three more times, nudging the beasts ever left. He had them moving in a tight circle now.

  The more rapid reports of his opponent's repeater grew faint as his herd drew him farther away in a straight line littered with carcasses.

  At the end of the first round, which lasted as long as there were buffaloes to be shot, Will had killed thirty-eight, the shaggy hulks describing a circle four hundred feet in diameter. As the skinners and butchers set to work, he trotted back toward the wagons and found glasses and a number of tall green bo
ttles waiting for him in the bed of a buckboard. He stepped down to allow a soldier to water Brigham from a bucket and picked up one of the bottles, examining the label. It was in French.

  "Wine?"

  "Champagne, Mr. Cody," explained a young trooper with freckles. "Compliments of the St. Louis excursionists."

  Will peeled off the gold foil, whooped when the cork shot out of the bottle on a jet of white foam, filled a glass with sparkling liquid, raised it in the direction of his well-dressed benefactors, and emptied it in a draft. Smacking his lips: "Well, it sure beats water for killing a man's thirst." He topped off the glass a second time. "What's Comstock' s score?" he asked the youngster.

  "Not in yet, sir. He's still shooting."

  "You mean he's still chasing them."

  The chief of scouts at Fort Wallace reappeared ten minutes later, walking his weary buckskin along a trail paved with meat for three miles.

  "Twenty-three!" called out the referee riding behind him. Will's backers from Fort Hays cheered.

  They went out twice more. The first time, the herd found them as they were sipping champagne and made a lively outing, as it consisted almost entirely of fleet cows and calves. Will made a poor job of his seventeenth kill, piercing a mother cow's stomach so that her entrails spilled out and she tripped over them. Bellowing, she struggled to rise. He drew a careful bead and shot her through the heart. She fell with a wheeze, shuddered, and sighed.

  Silence, and then loud bawling from the half-grown calf Will had forgotten about standing over its fallen mother. He reloaded and blew its brains out. That put him four ahead for the round.

  The afternoon was wearing down when they encountered a third bunch three miles from the last slaughter. Leaving behind his saddle and bridle—much to the delight and feigned alarm of the ladies (and a look of exaggerated tolerance from Louisa)—Will rode in windward of the buffaloes and destroyed thirteen as fast as he could feed fresh rounds into Lucretia's chamber. He sighted in on number fourteen, hesitated, then lowered the rifle and kneed the roan around the young bull's right shoulder. The buffalo snorted, feinted with its horns, and swung left. Will stayed with it, pressing closer. Again it corrected course. He had the beast heading straight at the spectators' wagons now.