by Bill Brooks
“What do you want, Lilly, and who’s he?”
“He’s a friend of William’s.”
The woman looked up and down the street. “Get in here quick.”
They entered. Everything a body needed to subsist on the prairies was in that tent, including a wood stove, pallet, table, chairs, washtub, old animal pelts spread upon the flooring, clothes, piles of newspapers yellowed from age, and a large steamer trunk.
“What you want here, mister?”
“I’m looking for the kid. He needs to clear out of town before Jeff Carr nabs him.”
The woman looked at Lilly. Lilly shrugged, uncertain.
“How do I know you ain’t one of Carr’s men come to trick me?”
“I’m a friend of the kid’s mother—Kathleen.”
The woman closed her eye. There was naught but the sound of the wind smacking the sides of the tent. The woman began to chant unintelligibly. Teddy looked at the girl.
“She’s a spiritualist…”
The woman continued to chant, then stopped and stood silent, her good eye yet closed.
“Madam Moustache?” Lilly said.
Finally she opened the eye, looked at them, especially Teddy.
“Okay,” she said, then called, “William, come out.”
The steamer trunk opened and out stepped the kid.
He came and stood next to Lilly and put his arm around her. They hardly seemed more than a pair of children freshly in love and too innocent for all the trouble that surrounded them.
“I guess you believe me now,” he said.
“I believe your mother is ready to sneak you out of the territory.”
“Did the bastard die?”
“No, but he’s pretty well ruined on conversation.”
The kid smiled.
“It’s not funny,” Teddy said. “Shooting someone never is.”
“He should have thought of that before he picked a fight with me.”
“Can you keep him hid until I come back for him?” Teddy said. “Might be a day or two yet before his mother is prepared to leave.”
“Yes,” Madam Moustache said. “His name is written in the stars, it will fall from men’s lips years from now. He is a flame that burns quickly.”
“You stay out of sight,” Teddy said to William. “Jeff Carr or one of his men pick you up, there’s nothing anyone can do for you.”
“I’m not afraid of Jeff Carr.”
“You should be.”
Teddy made his way back across town to the boardinghouse. He found her in her room with a bloodstained handkerchief she’d been coughing into.
“I found him,” he said.
“Good,” she said. “I’ll be ready to leave Cheyenne by tomorrow.”
He turned to go.
“I am sorry we won’t get to go horse riding together,” she said.
“I am too.”
He walked down to the telegraph office and wired George Bangs:
INCIDENT LAST NIGHT INVOLVING H. ATTEMPT ON HIM WAS UNSUCCESSFUL. THREAT REAL, HOWEVER. I EXPECT MORE, WILL KEEP YOU INFORMED. T. BLUE.
The snow had stopped, but the sky was full of fat-bellied dark clouds shuffled by a hard wind out of the north. Teddy walked over to Jeff Carr’s office and found the sheriff seated behind his desk.
“There’s something you should know,” Teddy said.
Carr leveled his gaze on Teddy.
“Someone’s out to take Bill Hickok’s life.”
“Why should this concern you?” Carr asked.
“It doesn’t really. But since you don’t care for trouble in your town, I thought you should know.”
“I’ll ask you again, what are you doing in Cheyenne?”
“Just passing through.”
“Somehow, I doubt it.”
“You want dead men on the streets of your town, Sheriff, that’s up to you.”
Teddy walked out and almost into the arms of Charley Utter.
“I was just going to go in and tell Carr somebody’s trying to kill Billy.”
“I’ve already told him.”
“What’d he say?”
“He wanted to know what my reason was for being in town.”
“He’s a class A son of a bitch,” Charley said. “Let me take you over to the Gold Room and buy you a cocktail, old son.”
“It’s a little early for me.”
“A little known fact,” Charley said, “is that the average life span for a man on these prairies is forty years. I’m thirty-eight, means I got two years yet to live, maybe less, maybe a few more. Either way, I ain’t going to waste it on formalities, and you shouldn’t either.”
“Okay, but just one.”
Charley smiled so broadly Teddy could see his back teeth.
Chapter 14
Paris Bass arrived in Abilene on such a blustery day that men’s hats tumbled down its dusty streets like pie plates. His own was tied neatly on by the blue silk scarf he’d discreetly taken from the woman who loved Phil Coe; he’d already forgotten her name, but not the incident that allowed him access to her wardrobe. And when he thought about the woman who loved Phil Coe, which he did more often than he thought he might, he always recalled her thin pale limbs and the lovely smell of her freshly washed hair.
He saw a saloon—The Alamo—and reined in there and dismounted; his ass felt beat half to death from the long ride. There were several customers clutched at the bar, drinking and talking, spitting and smoking cigars.
He stepped up and ordered a whiskey—“Old Bandit,” he said, and the barkeep poured him two fingers of the rye into a clean glass. He threw it back and it felt like he’d swallowed a hot brand, but that’s the way he liked it, and he ordered another.
The barkeep looked at him, the dark hat and dark clothes, and said, “You the new preacher?”
Paris Bass smiled slow when he smiled.
“Just passing through, friend. Do you serve victuals?”
“Free lunch,” the barkeep said, tossing a nod down toward the far end of the bar, where there were plates of luncheon meats, sliced bread, pickled beets, and a jar of hard-boiled eggs.
Paris Bass threw back the second rye and rubbed the bristle of his cheeks.
“Grateful,” he said, sauntered down to the end of the bar and made himself a sandwich, then took it to a table and ate as he read his Bible.
I have seen all things in my days of vanity. There is a just man who perishes in his righteousness. There is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his wickedness.
He smiled, thinking about himself and men like Bill Hickok. Which of the two of them was wicked and which was righteous? Well, surely God would sort through them all when their hour came—Paris Bass only sent them to their heavenly home, he did not pass judgment.
Six-Toed Pete sauntered in. His hair stood like scattered straw atop his head. The bartender asked, “Where’s your hat, Pete?”
“Halfway to Oklyhomer by now, the way that damn wind is blowing.”
Pete ordered a glass of Mexican Mustang and nursed it like it was a sick relative, all the while looking around. His gaze settled on the new man.
“Who’s that?” he asked the barkeep.
“The new preacher, I think.”
“What’s he doing in a shithole like this if he’s a preacher?”
“Hey, how’d you like me to thump you over the head with my hickory club?”
“Oh, you know I don’t mean nothing by it. Just that preachers don’t usually do their drinking in public.”
“Why don’t you go ask him.”
“I think by gar I will.”
Six-Toed Pete carried his glass with its contents over to where the stranger sat and introduced himself.
“Jake says you’re the new preacher.”
Paris Bass looked up from his Bible. “An honest mistake, I suppose.”
“You talk fancy.”
“I assure you I am not.”
“I never could understand why this town needs another church or school. I
t’s gone plum to hell since the old days when the cowboys came up from Texas and created a stir. Back then we had ten piano players, twenty saloons, eight whorehouses, and four dope dens. Now we ain’t got hardly shit but this place and the Bull’s Head, and those ladies of the Righteous League is trying to close them down. It ain’t nothing against you personal, but what the hell do we need another preacher for?”
“As I understand it, there were also dead men lying about on the streets every morning. ‘A dead man for breakfast.’ Isn’t that what they used to say?”
“Oh hell, we had some troubles, but old Wild Bill put ’em to rest—toes up if they wasn’t careful.”
“Could I buy you another of those?” Paris Bass said, nodding at the glass in Six-Toed Pete’s fist.
“You surely as hell could.”
Paris Bass allowed as how Pete should sit there at the table with him, and Pete sat gladly and nursed the second drink much in the same manner he had the first, his lips nibbling at the firewater like a mouse’s nibbling at cheese in a trap.
“Tell me,” Paris Bass said, “do you know where Mr. Hickok went to after he left here?”
“No. There’s been one or two reports he was killed, but Bill wrote the newspapers denying it. Don’t guess a dead man could write newspapers, do you?”
“No, I don’t suppose he could.”
“You the only preacher I ever saw drink in public.”
“I am in the world, but I am not of the world.”
“Huh?”
“It’s a quote, sir, from the good book,” Paris Bass said, patting the Bible.
“I never got into it much myself. What little I read never did make no sense.”
“Why do they call you Six-Toed? Do you actually have six toes, Pete?”
“On my left foot, wanna see?”
“No. I’ll take your word for it.”
“Was married once to a woman who didn’t have any—got ’em froze off in the winter of ’seventy-two. Between us, we had eleven.” Pete’s laughter sounded like busting glass.
“Could you tell me one other thing?”
“Sure.”
“You mentioned something earlier about the dens of inequity that once existed here. Are there still any?”
“You mean whorehouses?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”
“Just Squirrel Tooth Alice’s place. She used to be old Wild Bill’s gal.”
“How charming.”
Paris Bass got Pete to give him directions to Alice’s. She answered the door wearing a black silk kimono, and he could see right away that she would be pleasing to him. They negotiated a price, and Paris Bass climbed out of his clothes and Alice out of her kimono and any jake walking down the street could have heard the iron bed rattling against the walls.
Afterward she said, “I never met a preacher who could do what you just did.”
“And you probably never will.”
They lay there in the bed a while, listening to the wind sing along the eaves.
“I understand that you were Wild Bill’s paramour,” Paris Bass said.
“Why, yes. Until they fired him as marshal.”
“Why did they fire him?”
She remembered that night so clearly. It was the last time she ever tasted Bill’s lips. It made her blue to think of it now.
“He shot some men,” she said.
“That was part of his job, wasn’t it?”
“One of the fellers he shot was his own deputy…”
“And the other?”
“Phil Goddamn Coe. I seen it all.”
“I’d love to hear the story.”
“I ain’t in the story-telling business, or the free business either. And just because you’re a preacher don’t mean you get no discounts.”
“Of course, here’s five dollars more.”
Later, as he tugged on his boots, tucked in his shirt, shucked into his jacket, he said, “Does he ever write you?”
“I get a letter now and then.”
“May I see the last one he sent?”
“No. It’s very personal what me and Bill got. Ain’t for just anybody’s eyes.”
“I see,” Paris Bass said, reaching into one of his inner pockets and producing a small silver pistol with mother-of-pearl grips that he pressed to Alice’s wrinkled brow. “Well, I insist.”
“Since you put it that way…”
The letter’s envelope was postmarked Cheyenne, WT, and dated the month before. He placed the letter in his pocket, much to Alice’s chagrin; she’d been hoping to someday sell the letter to, say, a newspaperman or the like; such types were always paying for memorabilia of men like Wild Bill.
“Say,” she protested. “I’d like that back.”
The Preacher cut his gaze toward her and said, “Of course you realize that a true gentleman would never shoot a lady. But then, I’m not such a gentleman, and you’re hardly a lady.”
He cut his gaze in her direction. His eyes were without hint of mercy.
“Well, love, it has proven interesting, and now I must go and find your Mr. Wild Bill and shoot him dead. But just in case you have it in your heart to save him—”
Alice would tell the others later that she didn’t remember the shooting.
“I can’t even recall the sound or what it felt like or nothing.”
Of course, she was questioned as to why a preacher would pay for the services of a whore, then shoot her. But Alice sure wasn’t telling the true reason, for fear he might get word his bullet had missed the vital part of her skull—gotten lost, as it did, in the tangle of her thick tresses piled atop her head—and did very little actual damage. It scared her so bad her hair turned white overnight, and she suspended business for several days. And when she finally did take her first cowboy to her room, she shook so terribly it scared him into thinking she was having a mad fit. A few days after this, Alice thought she heard the voice of God talking to her, telling her to leave Texas and go warn Bill.
“Is that what you want?” she said. “For me to go warn Bill?”
But the voice of God as she heard it began sounding a lot like the wind, and she couldn’t be certain it wasn’t the wind all along and not her nearly shot brains playing mean tricks on her. Either way, she knew that she and Kansas were quits.
Six-Toed Pete had watched Paris Bass ride out of town on a big stud horse before he knew that the Preacher had shot Alice, and he said to a cohort, “There goes a mighty mysterious feller.”
“He looks like a preacher,” the cohort said.
“I thought he was too.”
A week later, Six-Toed Pete and his companion watched Alice board the flier, and they continued to watch until the train and all its cars became lost on the wide prairies.
“I reckon that experience with the Preacher ruined her,” Pete said.
“I reckon it did too.”
“There goes the best whore this town has ever seen.”
“Goddamn that preacher.”
“Goddamn him all to hell.”
Chapter 15
Charley shook Bill by the boots until his eyes popped open.
“You back among the living?”
Bill sat up and looked around, blinked twice and said, “Did I kill someone?”
“That’s a crazy enough question, but no, you did not.”
“I was dreaming I was surrounded by a posse of drunken cowboys. They had their pistols pulled and aimed at me. I was about to go down fighting…”
“You remember anything about last night?”
Bill’s eyes were rimmed red and leaking tears, and he swiped at them and said, “Not too much.”
“Somebody tried to shoot out your lights.”
Bill shook his head. “I don’t recall nobody shooting at me.”
“That feller I know, the one I introduced—Teddy Blue. He might have took the feller out for you.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He’s a good pard is all I c
an say.”
“I’m beholden to him then.”
Charley looked up at the sky—it was part blue and part gray and didn’t seem like it could make up its mind which it was going to stay.
“I’m thinking of heading out for a little while,” Charley said.
“Where to?”
“I ain’t a hundred percent sure, but I’m thinking of making a run down to Denver to see my wife.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“I’ll be back in time to go up to Deadwood with you.”
Bill looked glum. He’d gotten used to Charley being there, Charley staking him to card games, Charley buying him cocktails, Charley making sure his clothes got taken to the laundry and picked up again. Charley was like having a wife, only not half as much trouble.
“You want me to go with you?”
“No, best you stay here and keep an eye on our camp. But I was thinking that while I was gone, maybe it would be all right with you to have that Teddy Blue as your pard. How would you feel about that?”
Bill crawled out of the tent, stood with some degree of difficulty and said, “I’ve got to piss,” and walked off toward the trees where men did their business, since the only public outhouses were several blocks away into town. The big pines seemed to have walked right up to the edge of the town and stopped. They made good places for a man to stand behind to do his business.
Charley waited until Bill returned, then the two of them walked into town for breakfast and a chance for Charley to take his morning bath.
Bill was a fastidious person himself, but he didn’t bathe every morning the way Charley did, and so he sat upon an old chair in the back of the barbershop while Charley did his bathing and pared away at his fingernails with a pocketknife.
“How long you say you think you’ll be gone?” Bill asked.
“Two, maybe three weeks.”
“Weather might break before then. Everybody might beat us up to the hills and stake the best claims.”
“You ain’t seriously contemplating digging into the earth, are you?” Charley said, his head a crown of soapy lather.
“No, but we oughter stake a claim or two and hire somebody to work it.”