by Judd Cole
Josh stared, his jaw dropping open. “But what—?”
Bill cursed and fetched Josh a hard kick to the hip even as Hickok tumbled. The moment Josh hit the floor, sheer bedlam was unleashed upon them.
The window glass exploded inward as a hammering racket of gunfire—rifle and pistol—shattered the calm night. Shards of glass sprayed a frightened Josh, and plaster dust spouted in white geysers as bullets pockmarked the wall behind them.
The lantern exploded, instantly starting a small fire; the porcelain wash bowl shattered; Bill’s pillow coughed feathers as slugs ripped into it. Crawling below the hail of lead, Josh managed to smother the flames with a corner of blanket.
The volley lasted perhaps ten seconds. But it seemed an eternity to the two trapped men.
Finally, there was silence again except for the sound of frightened voices out in the hallway.
“You okay, kid?” Bill called out.
“I think so,” Josh stammered. “Thanks to you, Wild Bill. How ’bout you?”
“Broke my damn scab open,” Bill carped. “Wound’s bleeding fresh. But no new holes, thank God.”
Cautiously, both men sat up.
“How’d you know?” Josh demanded. “You hear something outside?”
Bill stared at his cards, now scattered on the floor face up among broken glass. Somebody pounded on the door.
“Everything all right in there?” a nervous male voice demanded.
“Believe it or not, kid,” Bill replied, “a curse can also be a blessing.”
“That’s too far north for me,” Josh said, his face puzzled. “Whad’you mean?”
Again somebody thumped on the door. But Bill just stared again at the aces and eights scattered on the floor. Then he looked Josh straight in the eyes.
“I mean,” Bill replied, “that Calamity Jane just saved our bacon again.”
Chapter Fifteen
It was dawn, and a love struck Calamity Jane was as drunk as a poisoned coyote.
She heaved a tragic sigh, and it turned into a ghostly wraith in the cold morning air of early autumn.
Jane was too drunk to feel the cold, despite the fact that she wore only a threadbare pair of men’s sailcloth trousers and a thin broadcloth shirt. She had lost her peg boots sometime during the night, as she wandered the prairie chanting Sioux war songs.
Once, her caterwauling had stampeded some cattle. But the night guards had recognized her and informed her she was too famous to shoot. Now empty Doyle’s bottles littered the ground at her feet.
“Bill Hickok,” she declared out loud, staring at her treasured portrait of the famous rogue. “You’re as purty as a prince, and twice the man Sitting Bull ever was! But God shoot me straight to Hades if you ain’t the cussedest man a gal could be fool’ nuff to love!”
Jane meant to heave another sigh; instead, a whopping belch ripped from her, and the team almost spooked, thinking a bear was upon them.
Jane had a good campsite, picked according to her usual requirements: access to water, graze for the team, shelter from the wind, and good vision in all directions. Abilene, like most towns out west, had written a special public-nuisance ordinance forbidding Jane’s presence within town limits after dark.
Towns, Jane figured, were just like Bill Hickok: They couldn’t handle a real woman.
“To hell with all them pus-guts in town!” Jane informed the surrounding brake of dwarf oaks. “And all them blondes with the bouncy little titties, damn you, Wild Bill!”
Jane felt her head nodding. She decided to crawl in the back of her wagon and grab some shut-eye. It had been too quiet for days now. But last night, Jane had heard a dog howl while she was peeing—any fool could tell you that sign always meant trouble on the morrow. Trouble for Bill, which also meant trouble for her.
Except, she reminded herself sleepily, the morrow was here. Tomorrow was now today.
Jane went through the trees to the open meadow beyond. She moved the bays to new grass and tethered them long again. She turned to return to camp. That’s when she spotted something just past the middle distance.
Jane narrowed her eyes and looked until she was sure of what she saw: two men digging what appeared to be a rifle pit. She couldn’t make out the men clearly. But she knew that long headland beyond them marked the edge of the Kansas-Pacific’s new spur-line project.
For a moment, Jane recalled the killing she witnessed in the work camp.
“You dry-gulching sons of bitches,” the sleepy woman said almost gently.
Despite her exhaustion, Calamity Jane dug some charred wood out of her campfire and sketched a crude map on a scrap of flockboard she found in her wagon. She used a heavy X to mark the rifle pit.
Jane wanted sleep worse than they wanted ice water in hell. But her pretty Bill was in danger, and every instinct in her made that a priority like breathing.
Instead of going to bed, Jane untethered one of the bays and let it drink from a nearby rill. Then, riding bareback and hanging on with her knees, she headed into Abilene to give Bill her map.
Kristen was dropping dumplings into a pot of simmering beans when she heard footsteps out front of the soddy.
“Cameron!” she scolded without turning around. “I want you and your sisters to wash up before you come in! I set a bucket and a lump of soap near the door.”
“’Preciate that, sis. ’Preciate it all to hell.”
It was a man’s voice that answered. The shock of hearing it made Kristen gasp even before she turned around, fear icing her blood.
“Its gonna be good between me and you,” promised the snake-eyed bully with a chewed twig in his mouth. “Oh, you’ll scream out and claw my back. Girl, I’ll make you see God before I climb off you! Hell, I might hafta go at it three, four times before I even lose my—”
“Shut your filthy whoremonger mouth!” ’Bama roared out. He was indifferent to the woman and would kill her in an eye blink, but carnal matters disturbed him, for he had a strict religious upbringing.
Ansel laughed, still staring at the terrified woman.
“You’ll have to forgive ol’ ’Bama here,” he said. “See, his ma always made him sleep with his hands outside the blankets.”
’Bama flushed a deep pink, and Logan laughed even harder.
“You said my name, you stupid bastard,” ’Bama complained. “Right in front of her.”
“It don’t matter, porky. She ain’t gonna repeat it, if you take my drift.”
’Bama nodded at that. “But push the rut need outta your thoughts for now,” he snapped. “You can take care of that filth later if you gotta. Right now, you fool, we got to hide our horses, then find them damn kids ’fore they run for help.”
Cameron was leading his little sisters, Sarah and Emily, up from the creek where they had been playing pirate games all morning. Abruptly, he spotted two horses in front of the house.
The next moment he remembered who the big sorrel belonged to—that mean man who wanted to hurt his sister.
The same man Cameron had beaned with a rock.
“Cripes,” the savvy little seven-year-old said. “He’ll either kill or cowhide me.”
Cameron pushed his sisters down until the tall prairie grass hid them.
“Kristen’s in trouble,” he told them solemnly. “Bad trouble, the worstest kind. But if we go back to the house, we can’t help her. We got to stick together, y’unnerstan’? Just like Pa told us before he went to live in heaven with Ma. You hear me?”
Both little towhead girls were blinking back tears. But their brother’s strong-jutting chin made them feel braver. They both nodded.
“All right,” Cameron said. “Don’t matter if you’re girls cuz you’re both McCoys. Tough, just like Kristen.”
The youth sent another worried glance toward the low soddy.
“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” he resumed. “It’s only two miles to the Kunkles’ farm if we go back and follow the creek. But you’ll both have to run fast and keep up
with bubby, y’unnerstan’?”
“Will those men hurt Kristen?” Sarah wailed.
“Shh! Maybe not if we hurry up.”
“But Mr. Kunkle is an old man like Grandpa Jim,” Emily protested.
“Don’t you worry,” Cameron assured her. “Kristen’s got a friend in town who’s lots younger than Mr. Kunkle. He’ll know what to do. I’ll borrow a horse from the Kunkles and go get him. Now c’mon, you two, or the bad men will catch us!”
“Jane was drunk as a skunk when she made it,” Wild Bill told Josh, studying the crude map she’d delivered earlier. “But I scouted that area earlier on the day Logan shot me. I can find the spot, all right.”
Bill looked at Josh, his eyes thoughtful.
“Kid, you talked to the work foreman this morning?”
Josh nodded. “Work resumes tomorrow morning.”
“That might give us enough time,” Bill mused.
“Time for what?”
But instead of answering that question, Bill asked another. “Can you handle another ride to Ellsworth? I don’t trust the telegraph here in Abilene.”
Josh shrugged. “The ride’s boring, but it’s easy. There’s a good road for the short-line stage. Is it another telegram for Pinkerton?”
“It’s a telegram, but not for Pinkerton.”
Wincing only slightly at the pain in his wound, Bill crossed to the highboy and picked up a stub of pencil and a sheet of hotel stationery.
“This one’s going to Fort Riley. I know the officer in charge of the quartermaster stores. There’s an evening mail train comes into Abilene every night from the fort. We might be in time for a delivery.”
“A delivery of what?” Josh demanded.
“You’ll see soon enough,” Bill promised him. “Just make sure you don’t waste any time. That telegram will have to reach the fort by noon, or we’ll miss the mail train.”
A sudden thumping on the door startled both men. Instantly, each of Bill’s fists was curled around a Colt.
“Hey, mister?” shouted a child’s desperate voice. “Mister, are you in there? Them two bad men got my sister! Please help her!”
Chapter Sixteen
After he got Cameron McCoy’s story, Bill sent the kid back to the Kunkle place.
“Real quick, go search out an honest cowboy who wants to make ten bucks,” Bill instructed Josh, handing him a half-eagle gold piece and the telegram message. “Send him to Ellsworth in your place. I’ll be requiring your services this morning.”
While Josh took care of this task, Bill went to the livery and retrieved their horses. Moving a bit slower than usual, he rigged both horses and led them back to the hotel.
Bill observed that the reward notices had been torn down. Josh said locals had done it. Word was out that Wild Bill was here to stop the railroad assassins. Not everyone in this town was lawless—now Bill’s enemies had to work more secretly.
Josh was waiting for him in the room.
“How can just the two of us do anything?” the reporter demanded. “That house sits wide open. It’s the same problem we had before. How do you close in on shooters as good as those two? We need a posse, Bill.”
“Don’t matter what we need, kid. All that counts is what we got—just me and you. The sheriff of this rat hole is still down in Newton on ‘court business’. The deputy he left is a bank robber I sent to prison three years ago. As for a posse— how in Sam Hill do I keep one of ’em from back-shooting me for the reward?”
Bill tossed his Winchester repeater onto the bed. “You’re going to be our posse, Longfellow. Ever used one of these?”
Josh shook his head.
“Don’t matter,” Bill assured him. “I don’t use it much, either, since my stagecoach days. But that’s the rifle that won the West. You won’t really need to hit anything. You just need to shoot it plenty—bust caps like a full-bore fool, I’m saying. Round after round until the barrel glows. Here, take this money and hustle over to the gun-shop. Pick up two one hundred-count boxes of .44 shells.”
“But what—”
“Look, kid, it ain’t no time for a newspaper interview! The McCoy girl might be dead already—or worse. Just get those damn shells, wouldja? I’ll tell you more while we get closer to the house.”
Keeping a long, low hill between them and the drab soddy, Bill and Josh rode in as close as they dared. It was midmorning by now, and the position of the sun, Bill explained to Josh, was critical.
“We’re going to take a page from ’Bama’s own book,” Hickok said. “You’ll be shooting out of the sun, which’ll make it hard for ’Bama to draw a bead.”
Both men had knelt in the thigh-high grass just below the crest of the low hill. The soddy was perhaps a thousand yards away.
“Set up ammo stations about ten yards apart,” Bill instructed the nervous reporter. “Divvy up the shells into equal piles so they’ll be all ready to load. Stay low and stay in motion, that’s the main mile.”
Bill gripped the kid’s skinny arm and squeezed it hard to emphasize this last point.
“The moment you finish snapping off a few fast rounds from one station, hustle your butt to another. You stay in one spot too long, I guarantee: ’Bama Jones will swat you off this earth like a fly.”
“I’ll do it just like you say,” Josh promised. “But I can’t hit anything much from here.”
“Yes, you can, you can pepper the front of the house so they think a posse is out here. The point is just to keep them distracted while I come up through the grass behind the house. If you see a human shape inside, don’t shoot at it—might be the girl.”
Josh nodded. As usual, he was scared but also determined to do his part no matter what. Bill admired that trait in a man—the same dogged determination that had finally allowed northern clerks and farmers to win the war against the South’s superior marksmen and horsemen.
“Just remember,” Bill repeated, “stay low and keep moving.”
Josh swallowed the fear lump in his throat.
“I will,” he promised. “But you got the hard part, as usual. God almighty, Wild Bill! Don’t let that Ansel Logan get the drop on you. He ain’t no man—he’s a killing machine.”
Bill managed a nervy little grin. “I thank you for that word of encouragement. But that same appellation has been applied to me, also.”
Josh flushed. He had forgotten calling Bill a “killing machine” once himself.
Bill said, “Give me about a twenty minute lead, hear? Then I want you to raise holy hell with that Winchester.”
“We’ve looked all over the damn county,” ’Bama complained as the two men returned to the soddy. “T’hell with them kids! By now they’ve gone for help. We got no choice but to clear out.”
Logan banged open the split-slab door and stared at Kristen. She was tied up to a chair beside a low bed with a shuck mattress.
“But first,” Ansel said, the tip of his tongue brushing his weather-cracked lips, “I got me a little business with sweet britches here. Why’n’t you take a little walk, ’Bama?”
“Your brain gone soft? Didn’t you hear me? Them brats foxed us; we got to git!”
“I said take a walk, you blue-nosed cracker! I got time for a quick poke. Either you light out, or you’re gonna learn something useful, porky.”
Before ’Bama could finish cursing, a quick whump sound in the sod wall out front was followed by the sharp crack of a rifle.
Several more shots, a brief pause, then another rifleman opened up on another section of the house.
Both men had crouched down at the initial burst of firing.
“Sounds like at least two men,” ’Bama said.
“At least three,” Logan corrected him a few moments later. A gunner had opened fire from a third position.
One of the rounds penetrated the sod and whanged off the cook stove, making ’Bama do a little jupe step.
“Christ!” he said, his voice higher from anxiety. “Somebody got up a posse!”
> But Logan didn’t seem so convinced.
“Sounds that way don’t it?” he said.
He cocked his head, listening as the shooting started again from the first position.
“Just answer me this,” Logan said, stealing over near the door and peeking cautiously outside. “How’s come we never hear the firing from more than one position at once?”
’Bama relaxed a bit when Logan’s point sank home.
“Maybe,” ’Bama replied, “on account it’s a trick, that’s how’s come. What you’d call a diversion.”
Looking more confident now, ’Bama picked up his Big Fifty from the table. “Think maybe I’ll see if I can drop crosshairs on this ‘posse.’”
Logan nodded, drawing his big Smith & Wesson. He dropped low.
“Kick this door shut quick behind me after I’m gone,” he told his companion. “I’m taking a look outside.”
Many people had expressed shock and disbelief when George “Iron Butt” Custer led his regiment to slaughter. But Wild Bill Hickok had not been at all surprised.
Hickok knew firsthand that Custer was the kind of man who went puny just before any combat engagement. Bill once observed Custer under pressure during the Civil War—as Jeb Stuart’s cavalry attacked Custer’s Michigan Wolverines, Custer had begun nervously repeating the same commands over and over until Bill told him to shut up. Bill figured that’s why Custer always charged—it was the simplest, least complicated thing to do and required little thinking.
In sharp contrast, Wild Bill had been blessed with the lifelong ability to calmly separate himself from any situation—to be both participant and observer in the same moment. This trait kept him calm and rational when fear incapacitated other men.
Nonetheless, fear licked at his belly now as he moved through the tall grass about fifty yards north of the soddy. This was the toughest case Hickok had ever taken on for Pinkerton, and these two adversaries were unmatched in the black art of killing.
He moved forward mostly on his elbows and knees, trying to time his movements with the wind, so swaying grass wouldn’t give him away. Bill wasn’t too nervous, though, to appreciate the kid’s shooting—Josh was following his instructions to the letter. And so far, nobody was shooting back from the soddy.