Bleeding Kansas

by Judd Cole

  A moment later Bill cursed himself for failing to knock on wood—’Bama’s powerful Sharps blasted, the noise so explosive Bill felt it more than heard it.

  Silence from Josh’s position.

  Bill cast a nervous glance toward the sun. Had it shifted that much already, giving ’Bama a good line of sight?

  “C’mon, kid,” Bill urged under his breath when the silence stretched on. “You wouldn’t let him hit you that easy.”

  Moments later Hickok expelled a relieved breath when Josh opened fire again.

  Bill was dangerously close to one front corner of the soddy now. The wind gusted for a moment, bending the grass low out ahead of him, and Bill thought he might have glimpsed something up there. But the grass shifted back again before he could seize the image.

  Just a dirt mound, Hickok decided. But some instinct deeper in him than thought made him lie stone still, a Colt ready to hand.

  “Aww, this is sweet!” reported a man’s voice from the house. “Logan, this is sweet, pard! I got a bead on the shooter—and guess what? It’s that pup that trails Hickok. You hear me, Logan? He’s going under, bo.”

  “Shut your goddamn mouth,” Logan hissed, and Bill gave a violent start—the man was only a few feet in front of him in that tall grass!

  But Bill could not seize the opportunity, not if he wanted to save Josh. The kid had gotten careless, and now was only moments away from death. There was no question of ’Bama Jones missing at this range.

  Even as he stood up, Bill sent two quick rounds into the grass ahead of him, hearing Logan curse. Then the frontiersman spun toward the front door, hoping to drill ’Bama.

  Unfortunately, it was a bad angle. All Bill could glimpse was the muzzle of the Big Fifty. He had to settle for spraying his remaining four rounds into the doorway.

  Bill had the satisfaction of seeing the door fly shut. He had saved Josh that time. But the kid was on his own now—Bill had to save his own hide.

  As Bill dropped down into the grass again, Logan opened fire.

  Bullets whined past Bill, and despite the flaring pain in his wound he rolled hard and fast to get away. He got his left-side gun out of the holster while he rolled. He returned three rounds, but it was like trying to target shoot in dense fog.

  But this blind shooting had unnerved Logan. He was up and running toward the house. Bill rose to his knees to plug him, but the deft circus shooter fired over his shoulder with amazing accuracy. Bill was forced to cover down again.

  Now Bill was at a definite disadvantage. His enemies were sheltered inside with a good idea of his general location. Josh, no doubt running low on shells by now, had slowed his rate of fire. Hickok was essentially trapped on his own—any movement now to retreat would sign his death warrant.

  Knowing what was surely coming, Bill willed himself calm and quickly reloaded. Moments later, the world seemed to explode around him.

  ’Bama and Logan tossed a deadly hail of lead into his position from the side window. Rounds thumped into the ground inches from him and one even nicked his left boot sole.

  Bill dared not return fire until the men paused to reload. Then he hurled three shots through the window, rolling immediately to a new position under cover of his barrage.

  That maneuver left Bill safe for the moment. The two killers had lost his location in the waving grass. But there was nothing Bill could hope to do now that they were alerted to his presence out there. He had lost the crucial element of surprise.

  Josh had finally ceased firing, and Bill knew he must be out of ammo. Minutes ticked by, seeming like hours. Hickok was still debating his next play when Logan’s voice rang out from the house.

  “Hickok? You hear me?”

  But Bill knew better than to answer and reveal his position.

  “Hickok, lissenup! I got my gun on your little sweetheart’s head right now, you savvy? ’Bama is going to leave the house and go back toward the creek. You will not shoot him, you got that, big man? Try anything, and I’ll paper the walls with this whore’s brains!”

  Raising his head only a few inches, Bill watched in stomach-tightening frustration while ’Bama Jones scuttled outside and hustled back toward the creek. Then Bill heard hooves escaping to the west.

  “Hickok! You done real good, gunman, following my orders! Now lissenup again. I’m coming out next, and I’ll have the woman in front of me. Try anything cute, and I’ll plug the bitch. You got that, big man?”

  Bill rolled onto his uninjured side to ease the throbbing pain. He could feel blood trickling down his side where he’d torn the scab open again. He spat grass out of his mouth and thumbed back the hammer of his Peacemaker.

  “Yeah, I got it, Logan,” he whispered in the sawing grass. Then Hickok, calm and steady now, waited for the door to open.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Wild Bill heard the door ease open slowly. He kept his head low in the grass, knowing he couldn’t give a shooter like Ansel Logan even the slightest target.

  But Logan obviously had the same respect for Hickok. Bill could hear him giving terse orders to Kristen McCoy.

  “You don’t move one inch, sugar britches, without my say-so, got it? You make even a twitch, I’ll blow you to kingdom come.”

  Bill parted some grass just enough to glimpse them as they came around the corner of the house. Logan, who was short anyway, hunched even lower to keep the girl in front of him. He moved with exaggerated slowness and care, afraid to give Hickok even a moment’s target.

  “You’re doing real good, sweet love,” Logan encouraged her.

  “Go to hell, you pig,” she shot back. Raising her voice, she called; “Mister Hickok? I’m doing what this piece of garbage tells me to do because I’ve got a family to care for. But you have my blessing to shoot me if it means stopping this murderer.”

  Logan laughed at that. “’At’s real noble, darlin’. Real brave and pure. Sends shivers right up my spine. But ol’ Mister Hickok won’t shoot no woman. He’s a gallant man, you see. Got him a code of chivalry like them knights under King Arthur, see?”

  The couple moved slowly along the east side of the soddy now. Desperately, Bill stared through the grass and watched for the slightest opportunity. But Logan, of all people, knew about the vulnerabilities of the human body. Expertly, he kept Kristen in front of his vital spots at every moment.

  Bill calculated the possibilities quickly. Logan was giving him an occasional clear shot at a foot or ankle, now and then an arm or elbow.

  But a wound would not keep Logan from reflexively twitching his trigger, killing Kristen.

  He might kill her anyway, Bill thought. Even if he gets clear of me. But Hickok wouldn’t play God with that decision. Logan was right about one thing: Men could say what they liked about Bill Hickok, but he did indeed follow a code. And one key tenet of that code was always defend the defenseless.

  “Yeah, noble Hickok,” Logan taunted, still inching his way alongside the house to safety. “He don’t take his women; they surrender to him willingly. Ain’t that sweet and lovely?”

  Bill knew Logan was trying to taunt him into speaking so he could find a target. Logan was also mouthing off just to cover his own fear. Besides the scorn and hatred in his voice, Bill also detected a frightened man.

  If only, Bill told himself in frustration, Logan would just expose his head. How often had Ansel Logan reiterated his theme about a head shot being the only guaranteed one-bullet kill with a pistol?

  Now and then Wild Bill got a tantalizing glimpse as the top of Logan’s head bobbed into view for a moment. But the trick shooter took great pains to stay hunkered down behind Kristen.

  They were beyond the house now, moving inexorably closer to the creek and Logan’s waiting horse. Bill knew he was losing the opportunity. Another minute or so, and Logan would be at an impossible angle unless Hickok moved to a new position—which could well prove fatal.

  “Bill?” Kristen called out, surprising both men.

  “Shut your d
amn mouth!” Logan ordered tersely.

  “I want to say good-bye to Bill, you pig,” Kristen said hotly. “What are you going to do about it, kill me?”

  “I said shut your gob, bitch!”

  “Bill?” Kristen went on bravely. “I really fell for you in a big way, know that?”

  “Put a sock in it, whore!” Logan raged. “Nobody gives a damn about your sweet nothings.”

  But Bill felt elated blood humming in his veins, and he primed himself to make his move. Logan, in his nervousness, missed it. But Kristen had a perfect grasp of this situation—and she had just signaled to Bill to get ready to seize the opportunity.

  A few steps later, Kristen made her dangerous move.

  As she had just hinted, she abruptly fell—just went limp and dropped straight down, opening up a target for Wild Bill.

  Logan snarled with rage, but knew better than to worry about shooting the rebellious bitch now. He dove for cover himself—but in mid-leap, a slug from Wild Bill’s Peacemaker punched into his skull, and the former star of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show was dead before he hit the ground.

  Kristen, who had been strong for so long, now gave vent to tears of relief in Wild Bill’s arms. Bill assured her the kids were safe at the Kunkles. But his mind was really on ’Bama Jones and that rifle pit.

  Bill crossed his fingers, hoping his telegram got through to Fort Riley and that there’d be a delivery for him on the mail train tonight.

  ’Bama waited for six hours at the rendezvous point he and Logan had established along the Wyandott River. When his partner failed to show, the sniper reluctantly concluded the obvious: Hickok had managed to kill him.

  Without Ansel Logan as his bodyguard, ’Bama felt naked and exposed. But now this job was almost over. One more kill, and the KP would abandon this spur line. In that event, ’Bama stood to earn a huge bonus.

  It was worth the risk, he decided. Especially since the new rifle pit was in an excellent location to defend himself. ’Bama decided to drop one surveyor or worker, then simply hightail it into the southwest country. He could collect his bonus in Santa Fe, then follow the Rio Grande down into Old Mexico.

  He spent a fitful night in a cold camp beside the river, gnawing on jerked buffalo meat. Just past dawn, he hobbled his horse in a patch of blackjack near the rifle pit.

  Pockets of mist still hung out over the KP tracks. ’Bama made a careful study of the entire area. Nobody was at work yet, but it wouldn’t be long now. A typical workday out west still went from sunup to sundown. No sign of Hickok, either.

  ’Bama crouched at the edge of the pit and slid his Big Fifty out of its buckskin sheath. With loving care, he screwed the metal bipod onto an attachment below the flash suppressor. Then he checked his windage and elevation knobs, making sure they were set for the proper range.

  One last shot. One little tickle of the trigger. And then he could flee this area forever, a rich man for the rest of his days. Not that he was ready to give up sniping—’Bama had killed this way for so long that it had become a way of life with him, something more than just a job. He found meaning in it, too.

  ’Bama felt a queer sensation just before he jumped into the rifle pit—a sudden conviction that he shouldn’t jump in at all.

  He glanced inside, but nothing was wrong.

  “Goddamn you, Hickok,” he said out loud. “You’re giving me the fidgets.”

  ’Bama leaped inside, landed in the soft dirt, suddenly heard a faint fizzling sound that seemed vaguely familiar from his war days.

  And then he remembered: That fizzling noise was the detonator powder in a shrapnel-filled device known as the Adam’s Pressure Mine.

  “NO!”

  The big man made one desperate attempt to claw his way out of the pit. Instead, he was blown out—in a bloody spray of a detached leg and exposed intestines. Unlike Logan’s, his death was slower and more agonizing—and he had time to curse the carrion birds that began gathering for the feast.

  “Fire in the hole!” Wild Bill sang out triumphantly when ’Bama Jones came hurling out of the rifle pit.

  Bill handed the field glasses to Josh. The young reporter took one brief look at the bloody mess writhing beside the pit, then handed the glasses back to Bill.

  “Like Jane said about Wilson,” Josh remarked. “Looks like he’s past a poultice.”

  Bill nodded, slipping the glasses back into his saddle bag.

  “This spur line will go through after all,” Bill said. “But if that Adam’s Mine hadn’t come in last night, I woulda been forced to hide in that shallow pit. And pray God ’Bama didn’t spot me while he was coming in.”

  “Where to now?” Josh asked. “Back to Denver?”

  Bill nodded, slipping the glasses back into his saddle bag.

  “Might’s well ride,” he said. “We could book passage on the train. But it’s a straight shot west from here.”

  But Josh noticed Bill was gazing toward the northeast—the direction of Kristen McCoy’s place. And a little smile was tugging at his lips. Bill had not returned to the hotel after planting the mine last night. And Josh discreetly asked no questions.

  “But first,” Bill suggested, grabbing his saddle horn and stepping up and over, “why’n’t we ride past the McCoy place one last time, see how they’re doing?”

  However, the two men had just set out when a familiar buckboard abruptly appeared on a low ridge out ahead of them—as if to deliberately cut them off in that direction.

  Bill cussed, but without heat. He met Josh’s mirthful eyes. Bill suddenly laughed out loud and wheeled his horse around toward the west again.

  “God kiss me! Someday I’m going to shoot that damn woman,” Bill vowed. “But I confess that right now she still scares the living hell outta me. C’mon, Longfellow, case closed. Let’s dust our hocks toward Denver!”

  BLEEDING KANSAS

  WILD BILL 3

  By Judd Cole

  First Published by Leisure Books in 1999

  Copyright© 1999, 2014 by Judd Cole

  Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: December 2014

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader.

  Our cover features An Eye for Trouble, painted by Andy Thomas, and used by permission.

  Andy Thomas Artist, Carthage Missouri

  Andy is known for his action westerns and storytelling paintings and documenting historical events through history.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author.

  Westerns by Judd Cole

  Published by Piccadilly Publishing:

  The Wild Bill Series

  1: Dead Man’s Hand

  2: The Kinkaid County War

  3: Bleeding Kansas

  The Cheyenne Series

  1: Vision Quest

  2: Death Chant

  More about the Author

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