by Judd Cole
Chapter Eight
Jane’s six-shooter barked again. Already, Josh could see half the work camp turning out to see what all the ruckus was about.
“Let’s pull a cork, boys!” Jane roared out in her voice that could fill a canyon. “Dang garn it, Wild Bill Hickok is here someplace. And by grab, I mean to sniff that critter out!”
“She’s horny as a Texas steer,” Bill said low, hiding behind the tent flap. “And drunk. I’d rather face down a she-grizz with cubs.”
“Let’s have us a fandango!” Calamity Jane bellowed, halting her buckboard right outside Josh and Bill’s tent. “C’mon, you railroad chuckle-heads! This gal’s lookin’ for some men!”
Josh watched his foreman, Wilson, come blustering up to Jane.
“You’re a woman?” Wilson demanded. He stood hip cocked before the buckboard, his face hard as granite in the day’s dying light. “Christ, you look like you been rode hard and put away wet, you ugly hell hag.”
“Whew! Ain’t he in a pet!” Jane exclaimed. “Shoo! Don’t come a-puffin’ and a-blowin’ at me, you ignorant British shit heap!”
Josh looked at the big knife tucked into Jane’s left peg boot.
“Pitch it to hell, you ugly witch,” Wilson shot back, wagging a stubby finger at her. “This is property of the Kansas-Pacific Railroad. Now clear out before I take a blacksnake whip to your leather hide.”
Josh heard Bill chuckle beside him. “Big mistake, boss,” Hickok said.
Jane’s wind-cracked lips parted in a howl of scorn. “Why, you double-poxed hound! I’ll learn you some manners, you half-faced limey groat!”
Jane fired once, twice, and both ends of Wilson’s walrus mustache disappeared. Her third shot snapped his belt and dropped his trousers around his ankles.
“Blimey!” Wilson stood there in his sagging long johns, too frightened to move.
Jane trembled with mirth. “All holler and no heart, eh, Jeebs? Turn around, you tea-sipping lout, and I’ll blow your goldang trapdoor open!”
By now Wilson was trying to flee. But his trousers twisted around his ankles, and he sprawled in the mud. Wilson was hated by every man in camp, so his predicament evoked paroxysms of mirth.
“Say, boys!” Jane yelled. “I’ll betcha Mister Union Jack here has got him a little-bitty tally-whacker. Let’s take a peek at it.”
Jane raised her .44, pretending she was about to shoot his long johns off.
“No,” Wilson begged. “Christ sakes, no!”
By now everyone, Bill and Josh included, was convulsed with mirth. An eye blink later, with no warning, Wilson’s head exploded in a spray of blood and bone shards.
It wasn’t until some seconds later that the sound of the long-distance rifle shot reached camp.
“Suffering Moses!” cried Calamity Jane, suddenly shocked sober.
Now Josh understood—Bill had meant it literally when he said he was going to “follow the bullet back to the gun.”
Gouts of blood were still spuming from Wilson’s head as Bill, ignoring the threat of Jane, hurried outside.
Calamity Jane, still thunderstruck, didn’t appear to recognize Bill in that grainy twilight— not in work clothes and with his hair and mustache clipped off.
“Don’t move him yet!” Bill commanded.
Everyone was still too stunned to worry about why the new laborer was suddenly taking charge. Josh stepped outside, too.
“Where’s Wild Bill?” Jane demanded, recognizing him.
“Out scouting,” Josh lied.
“Wilson was standing with his right side facing south,” Bill told Josh in a quiet voice. “The bullet went in just above the right ear. The exit wound is below the left eye. That means the bullet’s trajectory wasn’t straight—the shooter fired from a spot slightly southwest of here.”
Jane could hear none of this. “Looks like he’s beyond a poultice, boys,” she told the two men.
Bill stood up and turned to face southwest. Impressed, Josh watched the savvy frontiersman “sight a line” to the ambush point, just as a surveyor might.
“I found it,” Bill told Josh confidently. “There’s just enough light in the sky to make it out—see?”
Josh stared, hardly able to make out anything beyond the middle distances. But he thought he saw it, too—a slight rise topped by a few scrub trees.
Calamity Jane squinted at the worker who called himself Liam O’Brien. Feeling her curious eyes on him, Bill gave Josh the high sign and they went back to their tent.
“It’s ’Bama,” Bill said urgently. “Kid, that knoll is at least fifteen hundred yards out. Nobody could manage a shot at that distance, in this light, but him. Bet you a dollar to a doughnut hole he’s got a scope, too.”
While he said all this, Bill was buckling his shell belt and guns on.
“You’re going out there now?” Josh asked. “With full dark coming on?”
“Full moon tonight,” Bill replied, palming his cylinders to check the action. “Plus, this ground is soft from the rain lately. Sign will be easy to read.”
“Oh, God, no!” Josh pleaded, peeking through the tent flap. “Jane’s coming to our tent!”
“She’s all yours, kid,” Wild Bill said, pulling up the rear of the tent to escape. “Give her a big, sloppy kiss for me!”
“Bill, no, wait up! Take me with you!”
“Sorry, Longfellow,” Bill said, already scuttling under the tent. “Every man to his duty! Buck up, trooper!”
“You got the easy part!”
“Hell, I know that,” Bill called back. “All they can do is kill me.”
Bill had no desire to traipse all over hell, in the dark, searching for two top-notch killers. Mainly, he wanted to confirm a nagging suspicion.
Although Fire-away wanted to run out the kinks, Bill kept him reined in to a slow trot. There were too many gopher holes hereabouts that could easily snap a running horse’s leg.
It was a long uphill grade to that knoll: Bill could feel Fire-away’s shoulder muscles straining. He stopped several times to cool the gelding before the crest—the night wind had turned cold, and too much sweat would chill any horse.
Bill crossed a creek on a shallow gravel ford, then rode through a patch of stubby palo duro. He tried to clear his mind of the clutter of thoughts, tried instead to focus intensely on the here and now.
Nonetheless, he couldn’t help feeling his own vulnerability in this generous moonwash. Bill’s skin pimpled with fear. Imagination’s loom wove bloody images; over and over, Bill’s inside eye saw Wilson’s head exploding like a melon. Out west, a man had wheeling distance, all right. But that very vastness could also seal a bloody fate.
Bill had great faith in his horse. He was a swift dodger, an adept twister, and of good bottom to endure. Bill often bragged that Fire-away could turn on a two-bit piece and give back fifteen cents in change. But no horse could duck a bullet that was already in flight.
Fire-away kept wanting to cut grass. So Bill stopped briefly and fed the horse a few handfuls of corn from his saddle pockets. But eventually he reached the crest of the knoll, covered by scrubby dwarf willows.
It was easy to put together the clear sign. He could see precisely where the two men waited, also where the sniper had planted his bipod in the dirt. A pair of human tracks led back to waiting horses.
They had then ridden off to the northwest. Bill followed the trail for about an hour and finally found what he was looking for: the place where the two killers had tied their horses to the back of a wagon and continued on.
For a long moment Bill sat in the chilly wind, recalling those “bone scavengers” he had witnessed earlier. The wind rose to a shrieking howl, blasting Bill’s face with hard-driven grit.
“The bastards rode right past us earlier,” Bill told Fire-away. “Bold as a big man’s ass.”
Bill resisted the urge to keep going. This was no country for sneaking up on a man. Especially two gunmen as good as these killers were.
“We’ll pick up their trail tomorrow,” Bill promised Fire-away.
He reined his horse around and started back toward the work camp.
Chapter Nine
Kristen McCoy breathed in deeply of the morning air, rejoicing in the fine weather. The world today reminded her of a newly emerged butterfly, shimmering and fragile and beautiful in the sun.
“Git up!” she called to her handsome new pair of bay horses, flicking the reins across their rumps.
Kristen’s big wagon was back on the road again thanks to her nearest neighbors, Hiram and Dottie Kunkle. The Kunkles were a kindly, elderly couple who had lost three of their six children to smallpox. They had insisted on selling Kristen the team, on credit, until she could make a going concern of her new homestead.
The only way to do that, Kristen realized, was to grow and sell more fruit-tree seedlings. Lord, how this vast new country needed apple, peach, and cherry trees! To that end, she was visiting area farmers. So far, they had shown great enthusiasm for her pa’s dream of starting fruit orchards here in Kansas.
Then, for a moment, thinking of Wild Bill Hickok, Kristen felt a little stab of guilt. After all, he had kindly given her forty dollars which was currently feeding her family. Perhaps she had been too quick to condemn him?
“Cameron!” Kristen snapped at the same perverse little imp who had twice challenged Hickok. “Don’t be hitting your sisters!”
“I ain’t hittin’ ’em,” the towhead sassed back. “They just keep running into my fist.”
“Just cause papa never whaled you a good one,” Kristen warned her little brother, “don’t mean I won’t.”
“Whale a cat’s tail,” the little hellion sneered. “I’m a man, ain’t no girl gunna make me cry.”
“Why, you little brat! I’ll tan your britches for you right now!”
But even as Kristen reined back and pushed forward on the hand brake, she noticed a hen pheasant suddenly whir up from a little stand of juniper just ahead—as if startled.
Maybe a fox spooked it, she thought. However, a moment later, a man astride a big sorrel moved out into the middle of the rutted lane.
The brakes squealed in protest when the big wagon lurched to a halt. The man sat in his saddle, picking his teeth with a twig. The smile he flashed at her failed to include his cold, detached eyes.
“Yes?” Kristen demanded. “What is it, sir?”
“It’s you,” Ansel Logan replied. “I mean, sugar, you are one fine-lookin’ woman.”
Something furtive and animal in his manner frightened Kristen. But it was not the McCoy way to surrender to fear.
“I shall always treasure that compliment in the locket of my heart,” Kristen said scornfully. “Now please stand aside.”
Kristen snapped the reins, but Logan quickly reached down and caught hold of the harness.
“Hot damn, sugar,” he said. “Why’n’t you try bein’ nice to me? Did somebody steal your rattle when you was a baby?”
Kristen realized it was going to get ugly. She felt her knees go watery with fear.
“I don’t know you,” she informed the stranger with icy hauteur. “And I was not raised to tolerate strangers who get too familiar.”
“Sweetheart, you got a voice like waltzing violins, know that? Damn fine titties, too.”
Blood rushed into Kristen’s face. Ansel saw the pulse suddenly throbbing in the arch of her slim throat. He wanted to kiss that throb—for starters.
By now Kristen’s nostrils quivered with indignation. “You filthy hyena,” she said with chilling contempt.
Ansel took in her thick, wheat-colored hair, her fine alabaster skin. Kristen felt a lump lodge in her throat when he threw the twig away and slid the pistol from his hand-tooled holster.
“Are you going to shoot us, big man?” she demanded. “An unarmed woman and three kids?”
“Naw. No shooting, sugar. I’m damned if I’ll damage quality goods like you unless I hafta.”
Kristen shrank back on the seat when Logan inserted the cold, hard muzzle of his six-shooter into the top of her dress. One quick downward tug, and he had exposed her thin chemise. Two plum-colored circles dinted the fine fabric where her heavy nipples pressed against it.
“Mighty fine titties,” Logan said, having trouble with his breathing now. “Just climb in the back there, hon, and lay down. We’re gonna make us some fine whoopee.”
Logan was too distracted to care that little Cameron had vaulted over the side into the lane and picked up a rock.
“You’ll have to kill me,” Kristen assured him.
“That’s your choice, sugar britches. Long as it’s still warm for me,” Logan replied, thumbing back the hammer of his Colt.
Cameron threw the rock with all his young might. It smacked Logan in the right temple. He loosed a grunt of pain, his eyes suddenly losing their focus.
The blow didn’t knock him out, but managed to stun him.
“Get in the wagon!” Kristen ordered her brother, acting quickly. She pushed at Logan with all her strength, knocking him out of his saddle and down beside the lane.
“G’wan!” Kristen shouted, standing up on the high seat and fetching the sorrel a good kick in the shoulder. It reared back once, then took off to the east.
“Gee up!” Kristen shouted at her own team, grabbing the whip from its socket to lash the horses. She felt her heart pounding in her throat.
“You stinking son of a bitch!” Cameron shouted back toward the man. This time, a grateful Kristen didn’t swat her gutsy little brother for cussing.
Like all survivors on the frontier, Wild Bill Hickok had a sixth sense attuned to catastrophe. Sometimes, however, danger crept up on a man unexpectedly.
After the murder of Wilson, several frightened workmen had drawn their pay and quit. The Kansas-Pacific was already seriously short-handed thanks to the sniper; they had no choice but to suspend work temporarily until they could hire on new workers.
Hickok, disgusted with himself at his lack of progress in this case, had no good choice but to return to Abilene for the time being.
With his altered appearance, and grimy work clothes, Bill felt safe visiting the Alamo Saloon for a real poker game. On their first night back in town, he led Josh toward the four baize-top tables at the rear of the saloon, reserved for serious card players.
Before long, Bill was invited to play by a middle-aged gent named Gladstone. He was a harmless, good-natured fellow with a crest of frizzled gray hair and the booming, hollow brashness of a drummer. But before long, the three men were joined by another player who immediately set Josh’s nerves on edge. He had a Latin look, Josh thought—pig Latin.
He introduced himself as Jay Hobert of Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Josh disliked him from the get go. Hobert had a lipless smile and a small, shrewd head like a wet rodent. His nose humped in the middle from an old break. As Josh described him later in an article for the New York Herald: “He had the sullen, withdrawn contempt of men destined to die on sawdust-covered floors.”
At first, however, things went smoothly enough. Josh, too broke to afford the one-dollar ante, served as dealer. The men stuck mostly to five-card draw. Hobert stayed quiet, but Josh noticed he was slugging back shots of rye whiskey like it was sarsaparilla.
It soon became clear that Bill was riding a streak tonight. He took four hands out of five, the coins rapidly stacking up in front of him.
“Damn, O’Brien,” Hobert remarked as Bill scooped in yet another pot. “For a man dressed in filthy working togs, you sure’s hell know your way around a poker deck.”
Despite the dark hint here, Bill maintained his usual Olympian detachment.
“Luck of the draw,” he replied politely. But Josh could tell that Bill’s glacial calmness cankered at Hobert.
Trying to head off trouble, Gladstone said heartily, “Well, Mr. Hobert. What brings you to Abilene, sir? Cattle business?”
Hobert knocked back another slug of coffin varnish.
“The boun
ty-huntin’ business, friend,” he replied. “Scuttlebutt has it that Bill Hickok is in these parts. That dandy bastard is worth ten thousand dollars dead, and I mean to help him get his life over quick.”
Josh felt a moment of paralyzing stupefaction. Bill, however, flashed a little grin.
“Wake up,” Bill chided Josh. “Deal the hand, kid.”
Hobert had been waiting for a chance. Now he seized it.
“Why’n’t you leave the kid alone?” he demanded belligerently. “Pick on somebody that’s got his growth.”
Bill shrugged it off, knowing Hobert was talking through whiskey fumes. But when Hickok took the next two hands, Hobert suddenly slammed his whiskey bottle to the table so hard that it knocked over Bill’s neat stacks of coins.
“You damn popinjay!” Hobert exploded. He tried to look tough by breathing through his teeth. “You’re markin’ ’em damn cards with your cigar ashes!”
No hint this time. Hobert spoke loudly enough for everyone else to hear him. The Alamo suddenly went ominously still and quiet except for chairs scraping backward as men cleared a hole for whatever was surely coming.
“I’m not looking for any trouble,” Bill told the blowhard quietly.
Hobert’s lipless mouth was set like a trap. “Course you ain’t, card cheat. You ain’t got the stones for it, you yellow-bellied, white-livered, milk-kneed sonofabitch!”
“You flap your mouth too much,” Bill said evenly.
“Mister, I ain’t one for skating around the edges. So I’ll just put it to you plain: I don’t like your goddamn face.”
“That works out real handy, then,” Bill said. “Because it’s not for sale.”
Almost everyone in the saloon laughed at this retort except Hobert. Bill had once told Josh that danger showed in the lower half of a man’s face, and that was the part Hickok watched now.
Hobert made a big production out of scraping back his chair and standing up. “That’s enough damn palaver, O’Brien. You oughtn’t to’ve pushed it. Now make your play.”
“With what?” Bill replied. “I’m not armed.”