by Bill Brooks
The bullet from Hank Rain’s Peacemaker exploded the window glass of the telegrapher’s office and the glass fell like a pail full of diamonds.
Jeff Carr was pushing through the crowd now, his throat still trying to swallow a chunk of beef tough as boot leather, so he couldn’t even call a warning.
Teddy could see the look in Hank Rain’s face when he missed, could see he didn’t believe it, could see the anger coming on him again, but he didn’t wait for Hank to thumb the hammer back a second time.
A calm passed through him, and with true aim, the bullet found its mark and shattered Hank’s skull with such force that it blew his hat off. He dropped to the ground like he’d been held by strings that some invisible hand had just snipped.
“Dead as hell,” old John Sears would have said.
There was a full moment when nobody moved. Then Jeff Carr managed to swallow down the chunk of meat just as he stepped into the kill zone. His hard stare went from the now defunct Hank Rain to the aimed pistol of Teddy Blue.
“Well?” said Jeff Carr.
Teddy lowered his piece. “You saw it,” he said.
“Yeah, I saw it.”
Carr looked around, saw heads nod in ascent that it was a shooting of self-defense.
Carr bent for a closer look at the grievous head wound, then straightened and called to some men to carry the corpse over to the undertaker’s. He approached Teddy like he had to walk over eggs to get to his side of the street.
“That was a hell of a shot,” he said when he got close enough to speak in a normal tone of voice. “Or lucky.”
“Maybe some of both,” Teddy said.
“So I was right about you, you’re not a miner or nothing but another damn shootist, only why ain’t I ever heard of you?”
Teddy tried hard not to let it show—the nerves that were screaming inside him.
“I’m not a shootist,” he said to Carr. “I’m just a man doing my time, same as everyone else.”
“Shit, I don’t believe that for a fucking minute. What was the trouble between you two?”
“He’s the one tried to take Wild Bill out. I stopped him twice, I guess the third time wasn’t any charm, at least for him.”
“Why would you risk your life for Wild Bill or anybody else?”
“Because nobody deserves to get potshot.”
“Well then I guess I had you all wrong. I guess you ain’t no shootist at all—you’re the Good Samaritan come straight out of the Bible. Get the fuck out of my town!”
“When I’m ready, I will leave your prairie dog town, Mr. Carr.” Teddy remembered Bill’s similar comments in several newspapers. He challenged one and all who would try and kill him, no matter where they might lay in wait.
“We’ll see about that,” Carr said, then turned and strode off, still mad about his dinner being interrupted and the fact the Chinese population would be all in a fury about Hank Rain cutting off some chink’s pigtail—probably that of the head chink when he’d gone to the dope den looking for Bill. Well, if the goddamn chink wanted his pigtail back, there it was, floating in a pool of Hank Rain’s blood.
A few men came up to Teddy, slapped him on the back and insisted on buying him drinks, the ones who had derogatory remarks about the character and personage of the late shootist.
Teddy shoved his way past them. He wanted nothing to do with the celebration of killing a man.
Chapter 18
Bill awoke with his eyes aching him fiercely. It took several minutes of swiping at them and patting them with the silk handkerchief Agnes had given him before he was able to see clearly.
“Take this as a reminder of my love for you,” she had said. The handkerchief had their initials embroidered on it—JBH and ALH—inside a little heart.
He dabbed at his eyes until the handkerchief was damp through and through then tucked it into the pocket there over his heart.
He remembered Charley saying as how the mercantile had gotten in tinted glasses a feller could wear to lessen the effects of the sun and other bright light, and he thought he’d dress and walk over there and get himself a pair. He’d seen some dandies back in New York wearing them that time him and Billy Cody and Texas Jack were playing at stage acting. They thought them silly, but now he was ready to try about anything if it made his eyes hurt less.
It wasn’t even the pain so much that troubled him as it was how his eyes blurred, causing him to feel most vulnerable. Sometimes he couldn’t see beyond ten feet. All an assassin would have to do would be just stand beyond his line of vision and it would be all over for him.
He dressed in his usual finery—white shirt, brocade waistcoat, checkered trousers, soft calfskin boots. Around his waist he wrapped the red sash Squirrel Tooth Alice had given him when they lived together in Abilene for a time. She said it came out of a Denver bordello—the first one she ever worked in when she was just seventeen. He wrapped it twice around his waist then tucked in his Navy revolvers. His frock coat could stand a good cleaning, he noticed when he went to put it on. And the cuffs were beginning to fray. He combed out his hair as best he could with his fingers then smoothed his moustaches. He looked like a banker with guns.
Wild Bill saw that the small red-haired woman took notice of him when he passed by the kitchen. He touched the brim of his pancake hat, said, “Mornin’,” then walked out into the brisk but sunny air of Cheyenne and started up toward the mercantile with tinted glasses in mind.
He had not gone a block when he saw Jeff Carr standing out front of his office, leaning on a post and looking for all the world like a mad old bull. He felt disinclined to acknowledge Carr and so remained silent as he continued up the street.
“Hickok!”
Bill felt that old feeling he got when somebody wanted something of him he wasn’t prepared to give. Thing was, Jeff Carr stood at the very outer edge of his vision, so he looked fuzzy and indistinct.
“What is it, Sheriff?”
“There is a corpse cooling on a block of ice right this minute on account of you.”
“I’ve no idey what you’re talking about, nor do I much give a damn.”
“Hank Rain is now defunct. Some feller killed him a bit ago because of you.”
“Hank Rain, huh? Well, that’s no great loss to anyone unless you was counting on him voting for you in the next election. Who was it killed him?”
“Your new pard, Blue. Least the word I get is he’s your new pard since Charley Utter cleared out. Take my advice and clear out too, and take Blue with you, or you both might be the next ones cooling on a block of ice.”
Bill knew if he were going to shoot the man, he’d have to get closer. Carr must have sensed it too because he took two backward steps as Bill took one forward.
“I don’t clear out of no place I don’t want to clear out of, and I don’t run from a man, badge or no badge. You want to arrest me or shoot me or otherwise get to fighting, then get to it if you got the nerve.”
Jeff Carr held up a hand. “I’ve got no legal right to arrest you…unless of course I prove you’ve no visible means of supporting yourself. Then I’ll arrest you for vagrancy.”
“I’m about sick to death of threats. Do what you feel you must goddamn you, or get gone from my sight.”
Jeff Carr’s confidence that he could manhandle Wild Bill faltered, and in that moment both men knew it.
“When I do come to arrest you, Hickok. I won’t be alone.”
“Bring your sister, for all I care. But between now and that time, stay clear of me.”
Bill knew he offered a tempting target when he turned his back on Carr, and he knew the sheriff could have easily raised his double-barrel and blown him into hell. But Bill was good at reading the intentions of men and knew what Carr was probably thinking: what if he missed, or didn’t get a clean kill? It was the self-doubt that did many men in. They could be faster and better shots than their adversaries, but the self-doubt would get them killed every time.
Jeff Carr had
in his years thought a lot about what it was like to die, and he didn’t care much for the feeling it gave him. He’d seen plenty of men die like Hank Rain had earlier. It was the suddenness of it that caused something cold and metallic to ripple through his blood. He wasn’t sure he was ready to die, or that he would ever be ready, unlike men of Wild Bill’s caliber, who didn’t seem to give death a moment’s thought. So instead of taking the risk, he simply watched Hickok stride down the street with such bravado that it seemed even the mud wouldn’t stick to his boots.
Teddy rented a horse and rode it hard out onto the prairies until he came to a stream where the water tumbled cold out of some distant mountains and he could look back and barely see the town where he had killed his first man. He reined in and let the horse drink. The sun seemed shattered in the water where it rippled over rocks, and he thought that if he scooped up handfuls of it and drank, he’d be drinking part of the sun and it might warm him inside. But when he tried, his hands shook so badly he barely got a thimbleful to his mouth. His nerves felt as shattered as the sunlight. If whatever it was coming on him now had come on him back there in the streets, he would have been the one dead and not Hank Rain.
He thought about his brother Horace and that night he was killed, how he was alone except for the ones who killed him there in some run-down brothel where the light was dim and the air was scented with sin. He wondered what thoughts raced through Horace’s mind in those last fatal seconds, or if he had time to think at all.
He thought about Kathleen Bonney and how she would die still a young woman and there would be no saving her. Death seemed lately to be in the mood to pick the youngest flowers of the field, and now it had picked Hank Rain too. Teddy guessed Hank to be hardly older than himself—twenty-five, maybe—but a young man given an old soul, one that was now departed to that place where souls young and old alike resided for eternity.
Resting as he did upon his heels, he saw a small herd of antelope some distance out cropping the sage, lifting their heads—alert, ready to spring away from danger. They grazed and switched their tails. Then something spooked them and they fled as a group, zigzagging across the plains until they were less than dots on the horizon.
He felt as though he should be spooked and run too. But a man isn’t an antelope. He can’t run from his obligations, and he can’t run from himself. And so he mounted again and rode the horse at a gentle trot back to Cheyenne, more prepared now for everything than he had been two hours previous.
Bill was there in front of the Gold Room’s double glass doors, a single tall man leaning against the wall watching everything that passed down the street.
Teddy reined in, rested his forearms atop the saddle horn.
“You have a good night’s sleep?”
Bill was wearing tinted glasses, and Teddy couldn’t tell if Bill was looking at him or everything but.
“Passable,” Bill said.
“You waiting on somebody?”
“No one in particular.”
“Well, I better get this horse back to the livery.”
“Come around see me after you do.”
“Where will I find you?”
“Here or there,” Bill said.
Teddy nodded and reined his horse around toward the livery, wondering if Bill had gotten the word yet about the shooting.
Bill saw that Alice had spread several freshly washed pieces of her undergarments on the sides of the tent to dry in the sun. She stood brushing her long hair when he walked up. Bill took a bucket and overturned it, using it for a seat as he watched her. She smiled at him, and he remembered how much he had once cared for her. Finally she stopped brushing her hair and stood there looking at him.
“You’ll have to go, Alice.”
“Why, Bill?”
“It’s just not right your being here. I am a married man.”
“I don’t mind you’re married. She ain’t here, but I am. She don’t have to know nothing. You need a woman, Bill. You’ve always needed the company of a woman.”
“That was in them old days, Alice. It’s a tempting offer that nine times out of ten I’da took. But I’m a new man now and I’ve made a vow to Agnes and that’s it for me. Having you around would just prove more temptation than I could withstand.”
She leaned forward and took his hands.
“I always admired your hands, Bill. You’ve always had such pretty hands.”
He pulled them free because he knew it was like holding hands with the Devil, in a way. He was not by nature a religious man, but he knew enough to know that the Bible talked about the many forms in which Satan would take to tempt a man. So maybe it was Alice and maybe it wasn’t really her. He didn’t want to make no bargains with the Devil.
She saw then in his face how sad he looked, how old he’d become since Abilene and since that night he shot Phil Coe and Mike Williams. She wanted to kiss his sore eyes and beg him to take mercy on her and let her stay in the tent with him, even if it wasn’t to be a permanent arrangement.
“I so miss the old days, Bill, what we had, you and me. I’d give anything for just one more time in the saddle with you.”
“I wished it was different,” Bill said. “It ain’t. The next flier leaves this afternoon, I’d appreciate your being on it.”
“I’m busted, Bill. I’ll have to stay around and work for a time to buy a ticket.”
“I’m busted too, or I’d give you the money for a train ticket.”
Seemed like the last hope she had fled from her at hearing those words. Tears brimmed her eyes.
“Go see Harry Young at the Gold Room,” Bill said. “He’s always happy to take on a new working girl.”
“You’d see me working cribs before you’d lend a hand to help me out?”
“That’s what you do, Alice. We all must make our way through this old world with the talents God gave us.” Bill patted his pistols and looked at Alice’s wide hips. “I’m good with these, you’re good with those…”
Alice knew then that what she and Bill had had ended that night in Abilene and that all that was left of the two of them was what she’d been keeping alive in her mind these several years. Their love was as dead as Phil Coe and Mike Williams and all the other men Bill had killed. It was like he’d just killed their love with his words like bullets.
“Fine,” she said with the last ounce of false dignity she had left to her. “If I have to work cribs until I can get back to Abilene or someplace decent, then I’ll work cribs, and don’t you come around begging me to return to you, Bill Hickok, because such is just not in the cards anymore. The only reason I came to see you in the first place was because I heard you was sick and going blind and thought I’d take pity on you. But what good is all my pity in the eyes of a man who’d see me work cribs instead of lending a hand?”
Alice could be confusing when she got heated up, but Bill felt too worn-out by everything to care. Let her have her false dignity.
“Tell Harry I sent you,” Bill said. “My word’s gold with him.”
Bill sat and wrote a letter to Agnes until his eyes wouldn’t let him finish.
Dearest Darling,
The weather here will soon break, I think. My rheumatism tells me so—it is not near so bad as it has been. Charley has left out for a fast trip to Denver to see his wife. If you were nearer, I would leave out too to visit you as well, but as it is I expect the road to Deadwood to be open soon and will advance on without him. I know you must be worried about me, but don’t fret my pet. It will be an uncommon day when anyone but you can corral yr. William…
Some of Bill’s tears leaked onto the paper, and it was his last sheet and he didn’t even have pocket change to buy more, so he stopped writing, hoping he could finish the letter later when his eyes eased up.
Lacking anything better to do and not feeling like a nap, he walked into town thinking he’d get Harry Young to stake him to another poker game. Then too, he had to talk to that young rascal Teddy Blue and get the details on
how it came to pass that he shot out Hank Rain’s lights.
The business with Alice and the trouble with his eyes left him feeling glum. Maybe what he ought to do is go see the chink first; he couldn’t swear to it, but it seemed when he smoked the opium pipe his eyes got better for a time.
Well, it could wait, he reckoned, until after he spoke to Teddy Blue about the shooting and how much of it had to do over him. Bill was starting to feel like he was a place where at evening the light starts to leave and the darkness moves in. What with Charley gone, Alice angry at him, his eyes so bad he couldn’t finish a letter to Agnes, his troubles pissing and his pockets empty, life was starting to feel like a cruel joke. It didn’t seem like he’d ever fallen on such hard times. And just the thought of Jeff Carr trying to arrest him as a vagrant—well, it sure wasn’t the same as it was when they used to call him Prince of the Pistoleers.
He half wished Cody would come to town just so they could drink together and talk about all those good times they had, and talk about New York and the waterfalls at Niagara and all those other swell places they’d been to, even though the acting itself had been an embarrassment.
And as though the gods had been listening and granted him a final wish, when he reached the Gold Room, there amid a crowd holding court was none other than Buffalo Bill himself. Tall and handsome and decked out in new buckskin britches and entertaining the rubes like they were his own children.
Seeing Cody was akin to seeing the past brought back one more time, and it took the edge off an otherwise miserable day.
Chapter 19
Nearly two months had expired since Paris Bass had left El Paso and the woman who loved Phil Coe. He wondered often while he felt so obligated to finish the job she’d hired him for. But underneath all the weariness and temptation to do otherwise, he knew the true reason he felt such obligation. It was a reason that had nothing to do with honor, but one that had everything to do with vanity. He would add the name of the famous pistolero to his book of the dead, and then he would go and find the woman and tell her and she would feel the need for him greater than she felt it for other men, greater than she’d felt it for Phil Coe. He felt longings he’d not felt before.