This Old Bill

by Loren D. Estleman

  The ladies shrieked as the brute bore down on them. There was a frenzied creaking of springs as the men piled to the ground and reached up to help down the women, their petticoats fluttering like white flags. Will led the buffalo with his sights to within fifty yards of the wagons before dumping it. The echo of his last shot broke against the distant hills.

  The score was Cody 69; Comstock 46.

  The spectators applauded when the contestants shook hands. Comstock then left Will to have his back slapped and his shoulders pummeled by the men from Fort Hays and rejoined the subdued crowd from Fort Wallace. A cloth sack containing twenty-five twenty-dollar gold pieces was eventually delivered to the victor, and Comstock corrected people who called him Buffalo Bill within his hearing until the day a Cheyenne bullet entered his back and burst his heart at the age of twenty-six.

  The track foreman on the Kansas Pacific graveyard shift was a smiling Irishman with great shoulders and a shaggy blond mop that he swore was growing curly on the company's unchanging fare of hump steaks and buffalo jerky. He confided to his men that he sometimes found himself gazing at cows with indecent intent and maintained that his stool burned with a blue flame like prairie chips. Interrupted in the course of a new variation on this same theme by a cry from a fellow gandy, he lowered his hammer and squinted against the rising sun. Pasted on its face was the purple outline of a tall man driving a wagon mounded over with a tarpaulin-covered load. Flies swarmed over it.

  "Well," sighed the foreman, "here comes this old Bill with more fucking buffalo."

  Chapter Four

  Razor flakes lanced out of a low iron sky, pecking hats and pricking unprotected skin. Savage gusts tore at brims tied down with scarves and seized and shook coattails in their teeth. The horses moved through mounting blue drifts in lunges, resting in between, their sides bellying and emptying like sails, their breath damp white tissue shredded by the gale. There was no horizon, just a dizzy swirl of white and gray, like spit in a puddle.

  General E. A. Carr—fur-hatted, icicles in his beard—spotted a lone horseman, his mount standing perpendicular to the trail ahead, buried to its chest in snow. Then the wind changed directions again, obliterating the shadowy vision. The general circled wide to place his back to the wind and drew rein, tugging down the bandanna he had tied over his nose.

  "Anything?" he shouted. Snow flew into his mouth.

  "I think so." The other rider was visible once again. His hat was secured over his ears bonnet-fashion by a scarf, and his eyebrows and goatee were stiff and white, tacking thirty years onto his appearance. Dark brown hair hung unfettered almost to the middle of his back. "We found an old camp and followed the trail up the west bank of the Cimarron."

  "Penrose?"

  "I have hopes. I left the others behind to mark the spot." "How's the going for wagons?"

  "There isn't any. But you'll find the way easier up the east bank."

  Carr nodded absently. "What's the chances General Penrose and his men are still alive?"

  "Hickok's his chief of scouts. As chances go, that's as good as you'll find."

  "Very well, lead the way."

  Will touched his hat and gathered up his reins.

  The relief train, made up of ambulances, pack mules with bundles like camels' humps, and seventy-five wagons drawn by six-mule teams, leaned into the thickening weather. The men of the 5th Cavalry rode with their chins tucked into their throats and their eyes nailed to the ground, faces muffled against frostbite as they steered their mounts—mostly mules again—along the line of rapidly filling depressions left in the snow by their youthful guide and the riders in between. The temperature huddled around thirty below.

  The command "Halt!" bounced back through the ranks like a scrap of litter blown along the ground. Leather creaked and bit chains jingled.

  Will doubled back on his trail to find General Carr glowering from the back of his big gray down the forty-degree slope that knifed from the Raton tableland to the snow-covered frozen hollow of the Cimarron River.

  "You didn't say anything about this," Carr remarked.

  "Figured you'd find out for yourself when the time came."

  "We'll never get the wagons down in one piece."

  "Just get your cavalry down, General. Let me worry about the wagons."

  The riders picked their way down one by one, leaning back on the reins, the mules sliding and balking, legs stiff, their brays torn by the wind.

  "They don't make wagons with wings," a driver told Will, watching the last of the mules crossing the ice at the base of the slope. "And that's the only way they're going to get from here to there."

  Will said, "Down's the easiest direction there is. Run down, slide down or fall down—just get down. There's four companies of the 10th eating mule on the other side of that river, and we're going to get these supplies to them before they turn cannibal."

  "You don't know nothing about wagons and mules."

  "Only everything there is to know. You, there! Bring that mess wagon up front."

  The team was coaxed to the edge of the decline. Will called for chains and crawled underneath the wagon. When all four wheels were locked tight, he rolled out and got up and dusted off and took the driver's place.

  "Watch careful." He slipped the whip from its socket and uncurled it with a bang over the team's backs.

  They started down, the frozen wheels grinding on the hard-pack foundation under the thick wet surface. The mules tried to balk, but the wagon crowded their heels and the reports of the whip shattered their determination. Their breath drifted back and enveloped Will's face like warm wet wool. He screwed up his face against the slicing wind, feeling the regular drivers' eyes hot between his shoulder blades. His shirt was soaked through despite the cold.

  The wagon wrenched sideways whenever a wheel found an irregularity, panicking the team. But Will kept a firm grip on the reins and continued the cursing litany that was like a lullaby to the veterans in the lead. Their calm spread to the others. Near the bottom Will took up breathing again, realizing only at that moment that he had stopped.

  That was when everything broke loose.

  The wagon had been pressuring the animals all the way down, but as the descent steepened, the leaders gave up straining against it and broke into a gallop. Will hauled back on the traces, standing with his feet braced against the board. He could as well have tried to slow down the wind. The wagon jounced and chattered and rocked from side to side wildly, its wheels lifting so high off the ground that when they slammed back down only his grasp on the reins and the forward pull of the mules prevented him from tumbling off. Pots, skillets, tin plates, utensils clattered around in back. They hit the river hard enough to crack the ice and skidded across, the terrified team clawing for traction on the slick surface, bounced up over the opposite bank, the wagon hanging in the air for a sickening eternity before coming down with a bang, and bolted across a field of snow toward Carr's camp.

  A pair of troopers carrying a heavy tree limb for firewood across the wagon's path looked, let go of their burden, and dived in two directions. The mules leaped over the limb, the wagon slammed over it, and Will choked up on the reins and strained back with everything he had, shouting "Whoa!" at the top of his lungs. The mules slowed, braying, and the wagon dragged to a racketing halt, sluing around sideways, smoke pluming from the wheels. It tilted for a precarious moment, then righted itself with a crash. A broken chain link clanked and was silent.

  The driver breathed some air. He unwound the reins from his burned and swollen hands, took his feet out of the floorboards, and bounded to the ground in the midst of a crowd of troopers. Among them was one of the foragers he had forced to vacate his path. "Where'd you come from?" demanded the trooper. The front of his uniform was covered with snow.

  "Straight down."

  All the essential wagons were in camp within the hour.

  The shortcut whittled days off the rescue party's schedule. The weather cleared as if to show its approva
l, and from the river onward Penrose's trail was obvious, marked by the remains of old campfires and dead mules butchered almost to the bones. Strips of hide had been torn from the carcasses to patch the stranded soldiers' boots. One morning Will was riding near the rear of the train, joshing the driver who had doubted his knowledge of wagons and mules, when a trooper cantered back with a summons from General Carr. The scout found the commander on foot, conversing with a trio of Negro soldiers whose uniforms hung on their emaciated frames. Their eyes were like hard-boiled eggs.

  "These men are with Penrose," Carr told Will. His expression was grim.

  "They's terrible bad off, suh," reported one of the three, squinting at Will in a way that said he was almost blind from the snow. Dark blood caked his face from frostbitten cracks. "They ain't but a few mules and horses left un-et, and they was a-chawing at each other's manes and tails when we left to fetch help."

  He was out of breath. His companions were in even worse condition, leaning on each other with chilblains on their cheeks and their hands and feet wrapped in filthy rags. Carr ordered them taken to the rear for food, rest, and medical attention. As they were leaving, supported by members of the 5th, the general turned to Will.

  "It's a week's trip anyway for a train this size," he told the scout. "Cut out two companies and fifty mules and load them with emergency supplies. We'll be along later."

  The snow blazed under the dead white sun like a bullet scar. Will advised his cavalry escort to keep their eyes down and refrain from staring at it directly for more than a few seconds at a time. After three days he spotted smoke, and by dusk his party came upon their first member of Penrose's command, a slat-sided mare wandering loose, with glassy eyes and a bloody stump of tail. A few hundred yards beyond that crouched a rag-clad figure with 'a hat pulled low over a tiny blue buffalo-chip fire, massaging red and peeling hands in the meager warmth. When Will was almost on top of him, he turned up a stubbled face with a ragged moustache, sunken eyes, and a sour look. The horseman grinned suddenly.

  "What you doing, Wild Bill?"

  "Well," drawled the other, "when they got hot enough I was fixing to eat my fingers. But yours are fatter."

  Will found a warmer welcome in the main camp.

  Hickok, thawed out and healthy, his spare waistline swelling to fill out fresh winter buckskins made soft as butter by a squaw's strong teeth, lay quiet on his stomach, only his eyes moving, quartering the snowy banks angling down to the sluggish gray waters of the Canadian River. After five minutes he picked up his hat, swiveled around, and slithered back down his side of the ridge like some great tan lizard. When he was well below the crest he got up, swatting snow off his front with the hat, and strode the rest of the way down to where Will waited, holding the horses.

  "Let's head downriver," said Hickok.

  Twice more he made the journey to the top of the ridge. Each time they remounted and worked their way south. On his third trip, Hickok placed his thumb and little finger in his mouth and whistled. His partner left the horses to forage for grass under the snow and joined him, sinking down on all fours as he neared the top.

  "There." Hickok pointed.

  Sunlight struck blinding sparks off the snow. Will lowered his eyelids until the lashes formed a gray screen, through which he eventually picked out a line of irregular shapes moving like a troop of ants along the riverbank.

  "How you want to do her?" asked his companion.

  "That's up to you. I never robbed a wagon train before."

  "When you're with the Army, it's called commandeering."

  They waited in silence as the wagons drew near. When the lead team was below them, Hickok sent Will down for the horses, dragged up his rifle by the barrel, and fired a shot over the mules' heads. One of them brayed and tried to rear but was defeated by the harness. The driver hauled back on the reins. Men scrambled out of the wagons, waving rifles and shouting in Spanish.

  "Who's in charge?" Hickok's bellow caromed between the banks, losing shape as it bounded downriver.

  The driver of the lead wagon, a tubby Mexican with a curling black moustache and a bearskin hat and coat, waited until the echoes ceased before answering.

  "No hablo inglés!"

  "Buffalo shit." Hickok spanged a bullet off the wagon rib directly over the driver's head.

  "I am in charge, señor!" he shouted, ducking.

  "What's your cargo?"

  "Broadcloth and gingham. Dress material for the officers' wives at Fort Lyon."

  This time he aimed more carefully and snatched off the driver's hat.

  "Cerveza, señor! Beer. For the Colonel Evans and his cavalry from New Mexico Territory."

  "That's what I heard too." The gunman dug his poke out from under his skins and held up a gold coin, turning it so that it caught the light. "I'm commandeering those there emergency rations in the name of the U.S. Army and General E. A. Carr."

  The Mexican squinted at the flashing bit of metal. His round Basque face split into a slow grin in which there was nearly as much gold as in Hickok's hand. "Put away your weapons, muchachos," he told his crew. "They will only get in the way of the talking."

  Two hours later the scouts accompanied the wagons into camp on horseback, flicked quirts at the troopers who tried to clamber aboard, and after much pushing and many threats succeeded in forging the thirsty manhood into a grumbling line with their tin cups in hand.

  "Penny a cup; keep it lively." As each coin clanked into the bucket he had standing next to the first upended barrel, Hickok filled a cup from the tap, returned it to its owner, and reached for the next.

  "Hey, there's ice in this beer," one trooper complained.

  Will said, "What'd you expect, eggs?" and plucking a red-hot picket pin from among the several he had in the campfire, plunked it hissing into the man's cup.

  Some of the men were on their third trip through the line when General Carr appeared with a lieutenant in his early twenties.

  "There they are, sir," reported the lieutenant. "That train was meant for Colonel Evans."

  Several soldiers melted out of the line. Others, more determined, moved up to take their place.

  Carr faced Will. "Cody, are those the wagons Evans is expecting?"

  "We heard something on that order, General, but being as the report came from Mexicans we didn't credit it." The scout's eyes shone from the taste he and Hickok had shared along the road to camp.

  The lieutenant snorted. "He's trying to weasel out of it, sir. He's a liar as well as a thief. Hickok too."

  "Your time's coming, little brass buttons," said the gunman.

  "There is no doubt in my mind as to the ownership of those wagons." Carr hooked his thumbs in his belt, patting his middle with his fingers. His glare swept the culprits and the men holding their empty cups and landed on the young officer at his side. "Lieutenant, have them unloaded and see that they're delivered to Colonel Evans. Go with them and report back to me when they reach their destination."

  "Sir—" he began, astonished.

  "Dismissed, Lieutenant."

  He closed his mouth and snapped off a smart salute. When it was returned, he spun on his heel and left, trailing whoops and whistles from the enlisted men in line.

  "I seem to have left my tent without change," Carr said. "I seldom request credit. However—"

  Beaming, Will took a full cup from Hickok and handed it to the commander. "It's on the house, General."

  The long bitter winter ended in wrath. Reports reverberated in the mountains as shelves of ice and snow as large as houses cracked apart and tumbled end over end in slow motion, splintering trees and trappers' shacks like twigs and melting into shrieking torrents that sucked roots and bushes loose from the banks and swept the legs from under helpless animals, their carcasses battered and bloody by the time they reached the foothills and drifted in slow circles into a roof-high plain of water dotted with uprooted trees and blasted muskrat huts. Flies laid their eggs in the jellied hides, and magpies and buff
alo birds tore at their eyes. Death and rebirth and the frank glare of morning exposing the crimes of the long night.

  Other truths floated in on the thaw. Black Kettle, mighty chief of the Cheyennes, was dead, awakened by the whirl and crash of the "Garry Owen" and killed with his young squaw while fleeing Custer's attack on the Washita in the predawn November gray—killed, some claimed, by a single thrust of Wild Bill Hickok' s bowie knife in hand-to-hand combat. But at the moment Black Kettle's body was floating downstream, the scout was eating mule among his stranded fellows in General Penrose's 10th Cavalry, waiting for Will Cody and the 5th and thawing his gunslinger's hands over a tiny fire. When the fight was over, Custer had the village burned and the captured Indian ponies shot. There were hundreds of them and the reports continued late into the night. The Cheyennes, who had a name for everything, called it the time of the Red Moon.

  Will saw in the last year of the decade at Fort Lyon, where he had returned with the 5th. The blizzards of January blew themselves out into the false spring of February while he was riding dispatch between Carr and General Sheridan in the field. Just in from his latest errand, he awoke in fat sunlight pouring in through the window of the scouts' barracks to a babble of voices outside. From reflex he grabbed Lucretia Borgia first and tugged on his winter moccasins on the way to the door. He was wearing only buckskin pants and his gray flannel underwear.

  Blue uniforms crowded the gate. At first, he thought it was just the wood detail returning from its morning forage. There was too much excitement for that, however, and he stepped out for a closer look.

  "Who is it?" someone asked.

  "Hell," someone else responded, "don't you know Wild Bill?"

  "He dead?"

  "He don't look none too alive."

  The scout bulled his way through to the center. There were complaints and curses, then someone whispered his name and silence fell. A pair of troopers were supporting Hickok between them, his flaccid arms across their shoulders. His chin was sunk on his chest and his buckskins were filthy, as if he'd been crawling through dirt and manure. Dark blood slicked his left leg from thigh to boot. His face was slug-colored.