The Overlords & the Wild Ones

by Matt Braun

  Wanton boys, like the gods, still killed for sport.

  CHAPTER 4

  A BRILLIANT sun stood fixed at its zenith. The weather was moderate for late September, with cottony clouds drifting westward against an azure sky. The bawling of cows was constant from the stockyards near the railroad siding.

  Hickok arrived at the hotel shortly before one o’clock. Lillian was waiting in the lobby, wearing a corded cotton dress with delicate stripes worked into the fabric. She carried a parasol and wore a chambray bonnet that accentuated her features. She gave him a fetching smile as he tipped his hat.

  “I see you’re punctual, as always.”

  “Never keep a lady waiting,” Hickok said smoothly. “All ready to see the sights?”

  “Oh, yes, I’m so looking forward to it.”

  Outside, on the boardwalk, she took his arm. They drew stares from passersby as they walked south along Texas Street. After a fortnight at the Comique, Lillian was the talk of the town. The Abilene Courier referred to her as a “chanteuse,” and beguiled cowhands flocked to her performances. The theater was sold out every night.

  The town was no less interested in her curious relationship with Hickok. He was a womanizer of some renown, having carried on liaisons with several ladies since arriving in Abilene. Even more, at thirty-four, he was fifteen years Lillian’s senior, and the difference was the source of considerable gossip. Yet, for all anyone could tell, it was a benign relationship. Hickok appeared the perfect gentleman.

  Lillian was attracted to him in the way a moth flirts with flame. She knew he was dangerous, having been informed by her father that he had killed at least a dozen men, not including Indians. He was a former army scout and deputy U.S. marshal and lionized by the press as the West’s foremost “shootist.” The term was peculiar to the frontier, reserved for those considered to be mankillers of some distinction. Other men crossed him at their own peril.

  For all that, Lillian found him to be considerate and thoughtful, gentle in a roughhewn sort of way. Her father at first forbade her to see Hickok, and she deflected his protests with kittenish artifice. She was intrigued as well by Hickok’s reputation as a womanizer, for she had never known a lothario, apart from Shakespeare’s plays. One of the chorus girls at the Comique told her Hickok had lost his most recent lady friend to a Texas gambler named Phil Coe. Lillian thought, perhaps, the loss accounted for his courtly manner. He was, she sensed, a lonely man.

  Every night, Hickok escorted her from the theater back to the Drover’s Cottage. There, assured she was safe, he left her in the lobby and went about his duties as marshal. On three occasions, before the evening show at the Comique, he had invited her to dinner at the restaurant in the hotel. Today, leaving his deputy, Mike Williams, to police Abilene, he had invited her for an afternoon ride in the country. They had never been alone together or far from her father’s sight, and she somehow relished the experience. She felt breathlessly close to the flame.

  The owner of the livery stable was a paunchy man, bald as a bullet. He greeted Hickok with a nervous grin and led them to the rig, hired for the afternoon. Hickok assisted her into the buggy, which was drawn by a coal black mare with ginger in her step. He had a good hand with horses, lightly popping the reins, urging the mare along at a brisk clip. They drove east from town, on a wagon trace skirting the Smoky Hill and the Kansas Pacific tracks. Dappled sunlight filtered through tall cottonwoods bordering the river.

  On the southeast corner of the town limits, they passed what was derisively known as the Devil’s Addition. Abilene, with hordes of randy cowhands roaming the streets, attracted prostitutes in large numbers. The decent women of the community, offended by the revelry, demanded that the mayor close down the bordellos. Joseph McCoy, ever the pragmatist and fearful of inciting the Texans, banished the soiled doves instead to an isolated red-light district. The cowhands simply had to walk a little farther to slake their lust.

  Lillian stared straight ahead as they drove past the brothels. She was no innocent, even though she had managed to retain her virginity despite the advances of handsome and persuasive admirers on the variety circuit. She knew men consorted with prostitutes and that the world’s oldest profession could be traced to biblical times. Sometimes, wakeful in the dark of night, she tried to imagine what services the girls provided to their clientele. She often wished she could be a fly on the wall, just for a moment. She thought she might learn wicked and exotic secrets.

  One secret she already knew. Her mother had taught her that the way to a man’s heart was through his vanity. Men loved nothing quite so much as talking about themselves and their feats, imagined or otherwise. A woman who was a good listener and expressed interest captivated men by the sound of their own voices. Lillian had found what seemed an eternal axiom to be no less true with Wild Bill Hickok. She turned to him now.

  “I’ve been wondering,” she said with an engaging smile. “Why do people call you Wild Bill?”

  “Well,” Hickok said, clearly pleased by her interest. “One time durin’ the war I had to fight off a passel of Rebs and swim a river to make my escape. The Federal boys watchin’ from the other side was plumb amazed. They up and dubbed me Wild Bill.”

  “What a marvelous story!”

  “Yeah, ceptin’ my name’s not Bill. It’s James.”

  “James?” Lillian said, looking properly confused. “Why didn’t they call you Wild Jim?”

  “Never rightly knew,” Hickok said. “The name stuck and I’ve been tagged with it ever since. Finally got wore out tryin’ to set folks straight.”

  “I think James is a fine name.”

  “So’d my ma and pa.”

  Lillian urged him on. “So you were with the Union army?”

  “Worked mostly as a scout behind enemy lines. The Rebs would’ve shot me for a spy if I’d ever got caught.”

  “How exciting!”

  Hickok brought the buggy to a halt. They were stopped on a low bluff, overlooking the river and the prairie. The grasslands stretched endlessly in the distance, broken only by the churned earth of the Chisholm Trail. A herd of longhorns, choused along by cowhands, plodded north toward Abilene.

  “How beautiful!” she said. “I wish I were a painter.”

  “You’re mighty pretty yourself.” Hickok casually placed his arm on top of the seat behind her. “Somebody ought to paint you.”

  Lillian felt his fingers brush her shoulder. She thought she might allow him to kiss her, and then, just as quickly, she changed her mind. She knew he wouldn’t be satisfied with a kiss.

  “I’m simply fascinated by your work,” she said, shifting slightly in the seat. “Do you enjoy being a peace officer?”

  The question distracted Hickok. She seemed genuinely interested, and young as she was, she was probably impressionable. Talking about himself might lead to more than a kiss.

  “Guess every man’s got his callin’,” he said with a tinge of bravado. “Turns out I’m good at enforcin’ the law.”

  “Yes, but everyone out here carries a gun. Aren’t you sometimes afraid … just a little?”

  Hickok explained the code of the West. There were no rules that governed conduct in a shootout, except the rule of fairness: A man could not fire on an unarmed opponent or open fire without warning. Apart from that, every man looked for an edge, some slight advantage. The idea was to survive with honor intact.

  “Not likely I’ll ever be beat,” he bragged. “Don’t you see, I’ve already got the edge over other men. I’m Wild Bill.”

  Lillian at first thought he was joking. But then she realized he was serious, deadly serious. She wished her mother were there, for how they would have laughed. Wild Bill Hickok proved the point.

  No man, given an attentive female, could resist tooting his own horn.

  The spotlight bathed Lillian in an umber glow. She stood poised at center stage, the light caressing her features, the audience still. The house was again sold out, and every cowhand in the theater star
ed at her with a look of moony adoration. The orchestra glided into The Rose of Killarney as her voice filled the hall.

  There’s a spot in old Ireland still dear to my heart

  Thousands of miles ’cross the sea tho I’m forced to part

  I’ve a place now in the land of the free

  Tho the home there I shall never forget

  It brings a tear for thoughts I so regret

  When I bid goodbye to the rose of Killarney

  Her eyes roved over the audience. At the rear of the hall, she saw Hickok in his usual post by the door. Even in the midst of the song, she wondered if he regretted the loss of a kiss, having talked about himself all the way back to town. When she finished the last stanza, the crowd whooped and shouted, their hands pounding in applause. The spotlight followed her as she bowed her way offstage.

  Fontaine came on next with a piece from The Merchant of Venice. The audience slumped into their seats, murmuring their displeasure, as though Shakespeare were an unwelcome guest at an otherwise festive occasion. Then, suddenly, the door at the rear of the hall burst open with a resounding whack. A cowboy, mounted on a sorrel gelding, ducked low through the door and rode down the center aisle. He caterwauled a loud, screeching Rebel yell.

  Hickok was only a step behind. He levered himself over the horse’s rump with one hand, grabbed a fistful of shirt with the other, and yanked the cowboy out of the saddle. The Texan hit the floor on his back, and as he scrambled to his feet, Hickok thumped him across the head with a pistol. The impact of metal on bone sounded with a mushy splat, and a welter of blood geysered out from the cowboy’s scalp. He dropped into the arms of a man seated directly beside the aisle.

  The horse reared at the railing of the orchestra pit. Terrified, the members of the orchestra dived in every direction, scattering horns and violins. By now thoroughly spooked, the gelding whirled around, wall eyed with fright, and started up the aisle. Hickok stepped aside, whacking him across the rump, and the horse bolted out of the theater. As he went through the door, the Texans in the audience erupted from their seats, angered that Hickok had spoiled the fun. All the more, they were outraged by his treatment of the cowboy.

  “You sorry sonovabitch!” someone yelled. “You got yours comin’ now!”

  A knot of cowhands jammed into the aisle. Hickok backed to the orchestra pit, pulling his other Colt. He leveled the pistols on the crowd.

  “Stop right there!” he ordered. “I’ll drill the first man that comes any closer.”

  “You cain’t get us all!” one of the cowhands in the front rank shouted. “C’mon, boys, let’s rush the Yankee bastard.”

  A shotgun boomed from the rear of the theater. The Texans turned and saw Hickok’s deputy, Mike Williams, standing in the doorway. Plaster rained down from a hole in the ceiling, and he swung the double-barrel scattergun in a wide arc, covering the crowd. Hickok rapped out a command.

  “Everybody back in your seats!” he barked. “Any more nonsense and I’ll march the whole bunch of you off to jail.”

  “Yore jail ain’t that big, Hickok!”

  “Who wants to try me and find out?”

  No one seemed inclined to accept the offer. Order was restored within minutes, and the Texans, still muttering, slowly resumed their seats. Hickok walked up the aisle, both pistols trained on the audience, and stopped at the door. Mike Williams, who was a beefy man with a thatch of red hair, gave him a peg-toothed grin. They stood watching as the crowd settled down.

  The Fontaines went directly into a melodrama titled A Dastardly Deed. When the play was over, Lillian came back onstage alone, for her nightly encore was by now part of the show. In an effort to further dampen the cowhands’ temper, she sang their favorite song, Dixie. She sang it not as a stirring marching ballad but rather as a plaintive melody. Her voice was pitched low and sad, almost mournful.

  I wish I was in the land of cotton

  Old times there are not forgotten

  Look away! Look away! Look away, Dixieland!

  The Texans, unrepentant Confederates to a man, trooped out of the theater in weepy silence. They jammed into saloons along the street, drinking maudlin toasts to the Bonnie Blue Flag and blessing the gracious sentiment of Lilly Fontaine. Some of them, after a few snorts of popskull, wandered off to the Devil’s Addition. There they found solace in the arms of whores.

  Hickok escorted Lillian, as well as Fontaine and Chester, back to the hotel. He bid them a solemn good night, his features grave, and rejoined Mike Williams on the street. His manner was that of a man off to do battle, and the Fontaines fully expected to hear gunshots before the night was done. They went to their rooms wondering if the Texans would leave well enough alone.

  Later, lying awake in the dark, Lillian was reminded of Abilene’s former marshal. One of the chorus girls had related the gory end of Hickok’s predecessor, Tom Smith. By all accounts a respected peace officer, Smith had gone to arrest a homesteader, Andrew McConnell, on a murder warrant. McConnell waylaid the marshal, grievously wounding him with a Winchester rifle. As Smith lay helpless, McConnell hefted an ax and chopped off his head. Abilene gave the slain lawman a stately funeral.

  Lillian shuddered at the image. Still, the grisly death of Tom Smith helped her to better understand Hickok. Tonight’s incident at the theater was part and parcel of what he’d tried to explain on their buggy ride that afternoon.

  Wild Bill Hickok lived by a code ancient even in olden times: Do unto them before they do unto you.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE EVENING of October 5 was brisk and clear. A full moon washed the town in spectral light and stars dotted the sky like diamond dust. Texas Street was all but deserted.

  A last contingent of cowhands wandered from saloon to saloon. Earlier that day the final herd of longhorns had been loaded at the stockyards and shipped east by train. The trailing season was officially over, for the onset of winter was only weeks away. Two months, perhaps less, would see the plains adrift with snow.

  The mood was glum at the Comique. Abilene, the first of the western cowtowns, was sounding the death knell. The railroad had laid track a hundred miles south to Wichita, a burgeoning center of commerce located on the Arkansas River. By next spring, when the herds came north on the Chisholm Trail, Wichita would be the nearest railhead. Abilene would be a ghost town.

  Lou Gordon planned to move his operation to Wichita. With the coming of spring, he would reopen the Comique on the banks of the Arkansas and welcome the Texans with yet another variety show. He had offered the Fontaines headliner billing, for Lillian was now a star attraction with a loyal following. But that left the problem of where they would spend the winter and how they would subsist in the months ahead. So far, he’d uncovered only one likely alternative.

  Alistair Fontaine was deeply troubled. Though he usually managed a cheery facade, he was all but despondent over their bleak turn of fortune. Upon traveling West, he had anticipated a bravura engagement in Abilene and a triumphant return to New York. Yet his booking agent, despite solid notices in the Abilene Courier, had been unable to secure a spot for them on the Eastern variety circuit. A hit show in Kansas kindled little enthusiasm among impresarios on Broadway.

  Fontaine saw it as a descent into obscurity. To climb so high and fall so far had about it the bitter taste of ignominy. He’d begun life as John Hagerty, an Irish ragamuffin from the Hell’s Kitchen district of New York. Brash and ambitious, he fled poverty by working his way up in the theater, from stagehand to actor. Almost twenty-five years ago, he had adopted the stage name Alistair Fontaine, lending himself an air of culture and refinement. Then, seemingly graced, he had married Estell.

  Yet now, after thirty years in the theater, he was reduced to a vagabond. The descent began with Estell’s untimely death and the realization that he was, at best, a modest Shakespearian. In Abilene came the discovery that his daughter, though a lesser talent than her mother, nonetheless brought that indefinable magic to the stage. But he hadn’t foreseen
the vagaries of a celebrated return to New York or the growth of the railroad and the abrupt demise of Abilene. He wasn’t prepared to winter in some primitive outpost called Dodge City.

  The crowd for tonight’s show was sparse. There were fewer than a hundred cowhands still in Abilene and perhaps half that number in the audience. The melodrama finished only moments ago, Fontaine and Chester stood in the wings, watching Lillian perform her encore. For their last night in Abilene, she had selected as her final number a poignant ballad titled The Wayfarer. She thought it would appeal to the Texans on their long journey home, south along the Chisholm Trail. Her voice gave the lyrics a sorrowful quality.

  The sun is in the west,

  The stars are on the sea,

  Each kindly hand I’ve pres’t,

  And now, farewell to thee.

  The cup of parting done,

  ’Tis the darkest I can sip.

  I have pledg’d them ev’ry one

  With my heart and with my lip.

  But I came to thee the last,

  That together we might throw

  One look upon the past

  In sadness ere I go

  On the final note, the cowhands gave her a rousing ovation. They rose, calling out her name, waving good-bye with their broad-brimmed hats. She smiled wistfully, waving in return as the curtain closed, throwing them a kiss at the last moment. Her eyes were misty as she moved into the wings, where Fontaine and Chester waited. She swiped at a tear.

  “Oh, just look at me,” she said with a catch in her throat. “Crying over a bunch of cowboys.”

  “Well, it’s closing night,” Chester consoled her. “You’re entitled to a few tears.”

  “I feel like crying myself,” Fontaine grumped. “We’ve certainly nothing to celebrate.”

  “Papa!” Lillian scolded gently. “I’m surprised at you. What’s wrong?”