by Bill Brooks
“How much does he weigh?”
“He’s as big as a dang horse,” William blurted.
“Hush your mouth, son.”
“About two hundred,” Carr said.
Pierce looked at the kid, saw a boy not five and a half feet tall, maybe all of 120 pounds soaking wet, and not even the hint of peach fuzz on his cheeks yet.
“Not guilty,” the judge said. “Next case.”
The courtroom characters stirred like flies on a manure pile that had been bothered by something invisible, then settled down again to hear the case of a woman who stabbed her husband with a paring knife.
Outside the courtroom Teddy watched the warm exchange between mother and son, then went over and said, “This is for you, Kathleen,” and handed her the envelope that contained the thousand dollars. “To give you a start down in that country where you’re going.”
She tried to push it back into his hand. “You’ve helped enough,” she said.
“It’s something I want to do, Kathleen. Take it.”
William stood silent between them.
“You have a place in New Mexico picked out?”
She said, “Silver City.”
“I got an old friend who went down in that country. Who knows, maybe I’ll see you down there sometime.”
“William, will you go to the boardinghouse and start packing your things?” Kathleen said to her son.
“We leaving now?”
“Yes.”
“I need to say good-bye to somebody first.”
“Then go ahead.”
He started to turn, then stopped, turned back around and stuck out his hand for Teddy to shake. “I guess I was wrong about you.”
“Get to know a person before you judge them,” Teddy said, shaking the small hand. “It might just save you a lot of heartache down the line.”
“It ain’t easy trusting nobody.”
“That’s not always a bad trait.”
The kid smiled. His front teeth were like those of a squirrel’s.
“I’ll remember,” he said, and Teddy watched him head off to the Gold Room, no doubt to say good-bye to Lilly.
“Why did you do this?” Kathleen said, holding the envelope.
“Can it be enough to simply say I care about you and what’s there will make me worry less about you when you’re gone out of my sight?”
“You know I’d ask you to come with us if I thought it was the right thing, don’t you?”
“Yes, I know.”
“You could write me.”
“I will.”
“I will worry about you too,” she said.
“I’ll be fine, Kathleen.”
She touched his face, and he wanted her fingertips to stay there forever.
“You could help me pack,” she said.
“It would be my sad pleasure.”
As they turned to start to the boardinghouse, Teddy saw Jeff Carr on the courthouse steps. His demeanor was that of an unhappy man. It won’t be long before he makes his move to run Hickok and me out of town, he thought. Looking at the sky and feeling the warm Chinook winds, Teddy reasoned that maybe the move would be more voluntary than forced. He hoped so; he had no desire to be in another shooting contest.
Bill sat out front of the post office reading the letter he’d gotten that day from Agnes:
Sweetest James,
I’ve missed you so terribly. I pray that you change your mind about staying in that country and return to me soon. Or at the very least, that you send for me. I worry about you and cannot sleep well for worrying. I know there are jackals in that country who would prey upon you at the first opportunity. It gives me nightmares when I do sleep. I’m selling the circus in order that we may have a stake. I should have all the money soon. For what good is a circus if I’ve no one to run it, and what good is a husband if I cannot be with him? Has your eyesight gotten better or worse? If worse, please, please consider returning to me soon. I would dread receiving bad news about you—it would destroy me. You do not know how great a woman’s love is for her husband or you would not have gone off without me. I find no pleasure in your absence and none in my current existence. Please write me every day if you can and vow your love for me so that I will know that I’m not being foolish and that ours is not a one-way love.
With the greatest affection,
Yr. Darling wife, Agnes
Bill read the letter three times, having to pause often to wipe tears—not of sorrow but of affliction—from his eyes. He told himself several times how much he loved her, but something seemed lacking. Why, he asked himself, if he loved her so much, had he left her after just two weeks of marriage to go West again? It wasn’t a question he had any good answer for.
This got him thinking about all the other women he’d known and loved and wasn’t with, and he wondered about that too. Women were creatures he admired and felt great desire for, but ones he knew very little about. They had minds as mysterious as those of antelope. It was hard enough for him just being Wild Bill. It seemed to demand overly much of him to figure out women too.
He was thinking about such things when he saw Charley coming out of the glass doors of the Gold Room.
Charley strutted like a peacock, the fringes of his jacket arms swaying with every strut. He had the brim of his hat pinned back to the crown and he looked a bit clownish, especially with that long-barreled Buntline Special pistol slapping against his hip.
Charley came over to where Bill was sitting, noticed the piece of lavender paper on which Agnes had written the letter clutched in Bill’s pretty hand.
“From your wife?”
“Yes,” Bill said. “It’s a sad one too.”
Charley felt that little niggling guilt creep into him as he wondered if Agnes had spilled the beans to Bill about Teddy Blue being a Pinkerton man, and worse, about him being in cahoots on the secret.
“What’d she say?”
“Said she misses me. Wants me to come to Cincinnati.”
“You thinking you might go?”
“No. I might as well be dead as to be living in Cincinnati. I’d never be no good back in that country.”
Bill almost constantly seemed to wear a sad face, Charley thought, and he felt mighty sad for him.
“Hey, guess what?” Charley said.
“What?”
“Harry Young’s got himself a new crib girl. I just paid her a visit, and by gar I think I’m about half in love.”
“Thought you were half in love with that sprite, Lilly?”
“Oh, it’s all over between us. She’s in love with another.”
“You’re the most romantic feller I ever met,” Bill said. “Who’s the new gal?”
“Her name is Alice—”
“Jesus,” Bill said.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Charley saw Bill looking suddenly more sad-faced.
The kid was smart enough to know you just didn’t barge in on a crib girl unannounced, not even one you were in love with and who was in love with you. Lilly might well be busy entertaining another feller; he didn’t want to see such a thing, and so he stood outside the curtain listening. When he didn’t hear anything, he called to her.
“Lilly?”
She eased the curtain back. “You get set free, or did you break out?” she said.
“Got set free, self-defense.”
She pulled him inside the crib. “Best we don’t get seen together,” she said.
He saw an open valise on the bed, some clothes stuffed into it.
“You going somewhere?”
“Hell yes. I got to get gone, Billy.” She called him Billy instead of William, something he liked about her.
“Why?” he said.
“Jeff Carr come up and told me to get out of town or he’d run me out, which is the same thing, the way I see it. I think he told Harry Young to fire me too. I think they already got a new girl to take my place. Only she ain’t no girl, young and pretty as
me, but a older gal calls herself Squirrel Alice.”
She could see the mad go up into his eyes and said, “Don’t. It ain’t worth no more trouble from old Carr. I got an aunt back in Indiana I am going to go stay with for a while. I’ll be all right.”
“I got to get gone too,” he said. “Ma’s taking me to New Mexico. Doctors say she needs to breathe the air down there.”
“Well, you better get started then.”
“Lilly…”
“What?”
“You know you’ve been my first true love, and it sure enough makes me sad we never done anything. I was sorta hoping…”
“You ain’t never had yourself a girl, is that it?”
“No, I never have. But now that I shot a man, I guess I’m old enough to, don’t you?”
“Well, Billy, I’m officially out of the whore business. I done told Harry I’d quit and leave out of her on the noon flier.”
“It wasn’t no whore I was hoping to do it with my first time, Lil.”
She stopped her fidgeting and taking things from the trunk and putting them into the valise.
“I think that’s about the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me,” she said.
“I was hoping it was.”
“Well, shuck them clothes off if you think you can get done what you need getting done in ten minutes. The flier leaves out of here in fifteen.”
“I was wanting it to be more romantic than this, wasn’t you?” Billy said when they finished and were getting dressed again.
“I was wanting to be wearing a wedding dress my first time, hon. We all got dreams just waiting to be broken.”
She kissed him quick and rushed out. He tried following her but had a hard time keeping up wearing just one boot and carrying the other he hadn’t had time to put on. The last he saw of his sweet Lilly was the hem of her skirts disappearing into the train car. He felt happily sad.
Teddy tied the strap on the trunk and the two of them stood in the long shaft of midday light that had found its way into Kathleen’s room. The empty bed seemed lonely without them in it, and he thought of what it would have been like waking up next to her every morning.
She caught a coughing spell and he held her until she stopped trembling. She looked at him with a wan smile.
“I wish we had more time.”
“I do too,” he said.
He kissed her, and she lay her head against his chest.
“Maybe someday you’ll come to New Mexico and tell me who you really are,” she said.
“You know who I am.”
“I know your name and I know you’ve a kindness in you most men don’t. But beyond that I know practically nothing about you.”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“It is for now, or if we never see each other again. It won’t be if we do.”
“Then we’ll just have to have a long, long conversation when I get down that way.”
“Yes, we will.”
They heard the front door open.
“Kiss me before my son comes in,” she said.
And he did.
Chapter 24
The bullet whistled through the twilight and struck Charley’s horse in the skull.
Charley and Bill were walking around the camp discussing the impending trip to Deadwood when they heard the shot. Both turned in time to see Charley’s horse shudder then topple over.
Bill eased away from the firelight and so did Charley. They pulled their revolvers, but as Charley was quick to comment, “You can’t see shit with all this dark coming on and I ain’t sure what I should shoot at and what I shouldn’t.”
Bill said, “I think it come from up in them trees where I usually go make water.”
Charley looked, but he couldn’t tell if the shot came from the trees or not. Several others in the encampment came running and paused to look at Charley’s dead horse.
“What happened?” came the collective question.
Charley said, “I wouldn’t stand in that firelight unless you all want to end up like my cayuse.” They quickly retreated back to their own tents and wagons.
Bill tried to peer into the gloaming but he could barely see as far as Charley’s defunct horse, which the darkness was quickly swallowing.
They waited a long time, it seemed. They waited until the fire burned itself down to just glowing embers that breathed and sighed and breathed then winked out at last.
“I don’t think we should stay around this place much longer, do you?” Charley said.
“It could be whoever it was weren’t out to get me,” Bill said. “They might have been out to get you, or your horse maybe.”
Charley still had that bad feeling in him from talking to the stranger on the train.
“I don’t know why anybody would want to shoot me or my horse, Bill.”
Charley looked over to where the horse, Abe Lincoln, had been standing and now was fallen and stiff-legged and unmoving.
“You and me both know it wasn’t nobody out to shoot Abe.”
“I know it,” Bill said.
“I’ll bet it’s that goddamn Ned Loyal,” Charley said.
“It could be. It was his pard that Teddy Blue shot the other night.”
“I’d put my money on it being him, wouldn’t you?”
“The question is, wouldn’t Ned be taking potshots at Teddy Blue instead of us?”
“I don’t know,” Charley said. “Figuring out the mind of assassins is about the same as it is figuring the mind of women.”
“I can’t argue with you there. Either way, we better go find Blue and warn him.”
Then a figure moved near their camp, and Bill came around with a Navy in his hand while Charley was waving his long-barreled Colt and Teddy said, “It’s just me, boys.”
“Step on in,” Bill said without lowering his revolver.
Teddy came close enough that they could both see it wasn’t an assassin and lowered their pistols.
“I was on my way over here and heard a shot. What happened?”
“Somebody shot Charley’s horse,” Bill said.
“Yes, and it is a sorry son of a bitch who would shoot an innocent horse,” Charley said, feeling true grief.
“The general consensus is it was Ned Loyal,” Bill said. “Took a potshot at us, missed and hit old Abe Lincoln instead.”
“You want to go see if we can find him?” Teddy asked.
“Nothing can be done this night,” Bill said. “Only an Indian can track a man in the dark, and neither one of us is Indians, unless you are.”
“I think we all ought to go into town together and get us a drink to steady our nerves and hoist one in honor of poor old Abe,” Charley said, hoping to veil his concern for Bill’s safety by suggesting they stick together. But Bill would have none of it.
“I don’t need no bodyguards,” Bill said. “Let the son of a bitch who wants to kill me fill his hand and come on.”
“Ain’t nobody going to kill you face-to-face, Bill,” Charley said. “Ain’t nobody’s got that sort of nerve.”
“He’s right,” Teddy added. “They’ll try and assassinate you.”
“Like that old horse, yonder.”
“Yes, just like that old horse, yonder.”
“I feel about like Abe Lincoln,” Bill said. “Plugged and down for the count. Charley, next horse you get you oughter name him after somebody with more luck. I think it was unlucky you named your horse what you did.”
“I say hurrah to that,” said Charley. “My tongue is dry, ain’t you boys about ready for a cocktail?”
“What about your horse?” Teddy said. “You just going to leave him there?”
“I’ll get some fellers to drag him out a ways from the camp in the morning—it’s a sad thing, but even the buzzards need a free meal now and again.”
“Let’s walk into that damn prairie dog town and see does anybody have the nerve to buck Wild Bill,” Bill said, and tugged at his lapels and fixed his pistols just so ins
ide his sash, making his way through the multitude of campfires and tents and wagons and onlookers with Teddy flanking him on one side and Charley on the other.
The Preacher knew that from that far away and with the light poor as it was, it would practically be impossible to hit his target. He felt bad about killing the horse, but not terribly so; it would at least send Wild Bill a message, if nothing else—a small price to pay for striking a bit of fear into a man whose name he’d already written in his Book of the Dead. There would be more opportunities to fill in the details; of that he was sure. And into the dark he faded, prepared to strike another time. But at that moment he was in sore need of more genteel pursuits.
Madam Moustache said, “Death is upon you.”
Ned Loyal said, “When and where?”
“This I cannot say.”
“You’re a fortune-teller, ain’t you?”
“I communicate with the spirits.”
“You able to get in touch with my old pard Hank Rain?”
“It is possible.”
“Ask him does he require revenge?”
She opened one eye, saw the rather ravenous-looking man sitting across from her, his gaze intent on her in the way a wolf would look at a sheep. He hadn’t shaved in many days and probably hadn’t bathed since Christmas—if then. But oddly enough, he wore the fanciest boots she’d ever seen on a man—hand-tooled with big white stars on them.
“Go on, ask him.”
She muttered a few incantations, then said, “He says you need not bother to revenge his death, that what he did, he did on his own account and that’s just the risk he ran and it was a lucky shot that got him and nothing more.”
“Good. Ask him what he did with the plans for that bank in Laramie.”
Again she peered at him, hoping against hope that her little false conversation with the late friend would put an end to any further violence by men of his—and no doubt his defunct partner’s—ilk. But what she saw was a man with fevered, wretched eyes, and it troubled her more than just a little. She went into her routine again.
“He says he knows of no plans.”
“Goddamn, you sure it’s him you’re palavering with, that this just ain’t some damn fast game you’re running on me?”