Gun Law (A Wild Bill Western Book 8)

by Judd Cole

  “Right as rain.”

  “All right, then. That’s what we’re going to do. This fight ain’t going to be pretty, Leland. This here tonight is just the opening volley. Now, here’s what I want you to do...”

  Chapter Five

  The next morning a shocking sight greeted the waking passengers at Martin’s Creek Station: Race Landrieu’s body hung from the limbs of a massive white oak beside the pole corral. A sign had been pinned to his shirt: GIL BRENNAN’S FAVORITE BOY.

  Wild Bill, Joshua, Jimmy Davis, and Leland Langford sat down to breakfast before the rest had risen.

  Joshua, still taken aback at the sight out in the yard, aimed a questioning glance at his hero. Wild Bill Hickok had always been a hard man when the situation required it, and he was not afraid to put the noose before the gavel. After all, it was he who had coined the phrase “shoot first and ask questions later.” But this display outside was blatant vigilantism pure and simple.

  “How long will the body hang there?” Josh asked.

  Hickok, busy enjoying Thelma’s delicious grits, didn’t even look up from his plate. “That’s Leland’s call. Personally, I’d leave it up until the stink gets too raw. Brennan’s minions will see it, and word will spread.”

  “It’ll stay up there at least all day today,” Leland said. “Around here, news travels faster than spit through a trumpet. I agree with Bill. It seems cruel, maybe, but I know Gil Brennan. If you mean to whip him and his bunch, rearguard actions won’t get it done. Let them see what they’re up against.”

  “What time are we scheduled to pull out?” Bill asked Leland, sopping a biscuit in gravy.

  “Late morning, J. B. One Denver coach will roll out at eight a.m. We’ll be hitching your stage up inside the barn. Both soldiers will report to you there.”

  Wild Bill nodded. “Speaking of the soldiers,” he said to Joshua, “you keep an eye on ’em last night?”

  Josh nodded. “They didn’t do anything that looked suspicious to me. The one disguised as a preacher is good. He sure sounds like a genuine man of God.”

  Wild Bill snorted at that one. “Even the devil can cite Scripture. Keep watching them.”

  By now the others were up and filing inside to eat. Thelma was still serving up plates of eggs, ham, and grits when the haughty beauty who had insulted her cooking yesterday stormed into the room, her eyes flashing fire.

  “You!” she exclaimed, marching right up to Bill’s chair. “Are you responsible for that barbarism outside?”

  Bill took her in with an amused glance. Her gentle, pleasing brow seemed wildly at odds with angry eyes like molten metal.

  “Well now, miss,” he replied calmly, “I’d say the dead man was responsible for it. A man tries to blow me into little bits, I tend to resent it—I’m funny that way.”

  “So it was you?”

  “That ordered him put on display? Guilty as charged, and unrepentant.”

  “You ... this ... Surely to God you can’t be serious, Mr. Hickok? This isn’t Christian!”

  “That dog won’t hunt. What you mean is it ain’t New Testament. But it’s Old Testament. And last I heard, both are still part of the Bible.”

  Now that her first shock had passed, a visible storm of anger rose inside her. She turned to the man she thought was a preacher, who had just filed in with the rest.

  “Tell him, Reverend Peabody. Tell him he’s wrong.”

  Sergeant Saville, too, looked shaken. But he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Charlene. Mr. Hickok may not be a theologian, but he is correct. Remember, too, there’s no U.S. marshal out here, so the area is essentially required to resort to vigilante law.”

  “’Preciate that, Rev,” Bill told him.

  Frustrated but not daunted, Charlene stood her ground. “My father will hear of this, Mr. Hickok.”

  “And just who might your sire be?”

  “General Stanley Durant, commanding officer of Fort Bridger down near Denver. I’ve come out to live with him, and I will report this ... this barbaric act!”

  A grin divided Hickok’s handsome face. He looked at Leland. “Can you believe this little spitfire came out of the loins of Old Sobersides? Maybe there was a sergeant hiding in the woodpile?”

  Red splotches of anger leaped into her cheeks. She slapped Bill hard, a stinging blow that made Joshua wince.

  “Strong arm, too,” Bill added as her hand print glowed red on his face, and the rest laughed at his clowning. “Even with your nose out of joint, Miss Durant, you’re a looker.”

  More laughter bubbled through the room, and she stormed toward the door, her bustled skirts swishing.

  “I’ll be waiting in the coach, Mr. Donaldson,” she informed her driver, biting off the words in anger. “I sorely regret not waiting for space on a train. I’d rather starve than be in the same room with that beast.”

  But she couldn’t resist one last barb. She turned from the doorway to stare at Wild Bill with those forget-me-not eyes.

  “The famous Wild Bill Hickok,” she said scornfully. “He walks with kings but never loses the common touch. As in common criminal.”

  “She’s headstrong, that one,” Bill told Leland after she stormed off. “I’m glad she ain’t my problem. I’d rather take my chances with a sore-tailed bear than a firebrand like that.”

  ~*~

  Charlene Durant’s coach rolled out at 8 a.m., so crowded that even the top seat was occupied. With Bill and Jimmy keeping watch in the yard, Winchesters ready, Leland and his stock tender transferred the gold bars from the safe inside the station house to the strongbox inside the coach.

  “This is one of the new Wells Fargo strongboxes, with a combination lock instead of a key,” Leland explained. “Last heist, the strongbox was opened with a key. Brennan must have copied Overland’s before I fired him.”

  Wild Bill nodded. “Sure, nothing to it. You just press the key into soap or wax to get the impression. Hell, if you’ve got a lead ladle, there’s your copy.”

  Bill leaned back out of the Concord coach and looked at Josh.

  “Run get the soldiers and send them here to see me,” he told the youth. After Josh had left the big sod barn, Bill looked at Jimmy.

  “From here on out,” he told his shotgun rider, “don’t let either one of those soldiers behind you unless I’ve got you backed. For aught I know, they’re both honest men. But neither one of us gets careless, hear?”

  “Hell, Bill, you’re preaching to the choir. I don’t even trust you.”

  Hickok laughed. “That’s why I looked you up, Jimmy.”

  John Saville and Dan Appling stepped inside from the bright sunlight, squinting in the dimness.

  “Howdy, boys,” Bill greeted them. He transferred his Winchester to his left hand and shook both their hands. “I’m J. B. Hickok. My friend here is Jimmy Davis. He’ll be roosting on the hot seat. He fought his way into Secessia with the 107th, chased Bobby Lee himself out of his bathtub. I take it General Durant has fully briefed you?”

  “Yessir,” Sergeant Saville replied. “Only, I’m starting to warm up to this preacher disguise. I may turn the other cheek when the lead starts flying.”

  All four men laughed. Hell, he seems all right, Bill thought. But Rabbit-Face there has trouble meeting my eye. Still, that doesn’t prove anything. Maybe he feared the Evil Eye.

  “You boys carrying the Smith and Wesson Cavalry issue?”

  Saville nodded. “With fifty rounds each in our pokes.”

  “But none of them fancy bandoliers like Jimmy’s got,” Appling tossed in.

  “I want you boys on opposite sides of the coach at all times. But remember, you’re vulnerable to snipers if you sit too far forward, in front of the windows.”

  “Best to keep the dust shades down at least partway,” Leland suggested.

  “We won’t try to outrun the trouble,” Bill warned them, “except snipers. If we’re jumped, we’re taking it by the horns. That means I halt the coach immediately and you two div
e out if you can. You know how to tuck and roll under fire—cover down as soon as you can, then find your targets. Shoot to kill.”

  “Only way we know how,” Saville affirmed.

  “You’re pulling out in about one hour,” Leland informed them. “Thelma’s got lunch ready now. Eat hearty—it’s your last good meal on this line. From now on, it’s bean soup and corn-bread. We’ve had trouble keeping cooks at the other way stations. Cattle outfits steal them from us at double our wages.”

  “Friend, we’re grateful for God’s bounty,” Saville said piously, playing Reverend Peabody to the hilt. Again they all laughed.

  “What do you think, J. B.?” Leland demanded as soon as the soldiers left the barn.

  “Well, I thought Saville pushed it one time too many with mocking his disguise. But if I was gambling on odds, I’d wager they’re straight-arrow,” he replied. “Still, I like Jimmy’s attitude—don’t trust anybody.”

  “Go up to the station and eat,” Leland told them. “I’ll hitch the team to the traces. Pick your two cavvy horses out of the corral. I recommend that sorrel with the white boots and the lineback dun. They’ve both got good bottom and they’re bullet-wise. I’ll lash saddles and bridles behind the top seat.”

  Bill nodded. Halfway across the yard, he paused to stare at the dead man swaying in the breeze. Bluebottle flies covered Race Landrieu’s face like a moving black mask.

  “From what Leland says,” Jimmy observed beside him, “that won’t scare Gil Brennan. It’ll just put more fight into him.”

  “Brennan doesn’t do the dirty work,” Bill reminded him. “It’ll scare somebody.”

  “You know,” Jimmy confessed as they resumed walking. “After what we seen in the war? That doesn’t even turn my stomach. Hell, I’m hungry as four men.”

  “I know.” Bill grinned again. “Like I said, Jimmy—that’s why I looked you up. I got a hunch we’re going to need strong stomachs before this is over. Now let’s go eat.”

  Chapter Six

  Rick Collins’s blunt, pockmarked face wrinkled like a rubber mask when he frowned. He watched Sandy Urbanski carefully use strong sinew thread to tie a small rawhide pouch to a flaked-flint arrow point.

  “The hell you doing?” he demanded.

  Sandy’s hard-bitten eyes never once looked up from his task. He sat at a crude plank table, working in the light of an old skunk-oil lamp. His chair was an empty nail keg. Flattened bean cans had been used to patch the decrepit walls of the old prospector’s shack where the two men stayed when working a job for Gil Brennan.

  “It’s a little trick I learnt from a Yaqui down in Sonora,” Sandy muttered in reply. “It’s called an explosive arrow. There!”

  Sandy grinned when he had the pouch tied down just right.

  “Mr. God Almighty Hickok thought he was pretty smart when he strung Race up like a side of beef,” Sandy told his partner. “Figured we’d take one look and run like a river when the snow melts. But Hickok figured it wrong.”

  Sandy set the explosive arrow beside four others he’d already finished. He started in on number six.

  “Each pouch,” he explained, “is filt with nitro-laced blasting powder. There’s also a percussion cap, stuck between the powder and one edge of the arrow point. The point strikes the target hard, the impact detonates the cap, the cap explodes the powder.”

  “Don’cha have to get too close to make them caps go off?”

  “Shoo, not with my crossbow,” Sandy assured him. “It’s got twice the throwin’ power of any Comanche osage bow I ever did see, tell you that. And I seen Yaquis hurl ’em seven, eight hunnert yards at Mexican lancers. Scared the Jesus out of ’em, too. The arrows what missed men started fires in the caissons and supply wagons. And I seen one even exploded a powder limber. Blew half a squad to hell on the spot.”

  Sandy speared his fingers through his thick dark hair, pushing the bulk of it back to clear his vision for the task. “But it’s what they do to a man that sets you back on your heels. I seen it, Rick, oh man I seen it. A crossbow makes the point hit so hard, the cap don’t even need to strike bone. The point makes just its usual-size hole going in. But by the time it explodes and comes out?”

  Sandy looked up, making a pulpit pause to build the drama.

  “Yeah, what then?” Collins demanded.

  “Why, mister, it makes a hole big as a green apple. Hell, even if you hit an arm or a leg, your target will die quick from shock or blood loss. And if you hit the head, why, that’s a sockdollager. Blows one side off like a melon under a train wheel.”

  Sandy laughed at the thought of it. In the lamplight the knife scar under his left eye seemed to shine like a wet white worm.

  “Wild Bill Hickok won’t be so prettified with half his face missing. But we’ll be needing the other half to claim that reward in Texas.”

  “But you know Brennan has got this other plan, the one where—”

  “Brennan ain’t so permanent, if you take my drift? ’Sides, we ain’t ignoring his fancy-dan diversion plan. This here plan of mine is just an extra try, is all. Gil ain’t partic’lar whose plan it is, long as we get the swag.”

  “I guess that’s so. When we gonna jump ’em?”

  “Late this afternoon,” Sandy replied. “I got it figured. They’ll pull into Schofield Station around three o’clock. About five miles out of Schofield, the trail winds a whole bunch to avoid landslide slopes. That’ll slow ’em down. Then we’ll—”

  Sandy hesitated when he heard his blood bay gelding whinny softly outside.

  “It’s just a raccoon that got too close,” Collins explained, glancing out the open door.

  Sandy believed him. But he waited at least ten seconds anyway, knowing the horse would whinny again if there was man trouble. It stayed quiet, and he resumed his explanation.

  “We’ll take up good positions on Bodmer’s Ridge. I’ll use my crossbow on Hickok, you’ll air out the darky and the kid with my Yellow Boy. Hell, even if one or both of us misses, which ain’t too likely, they’ll be rattled bad. Them soldiers might be able to hang out a window and pop ’em at close range. They practiced it a little before Hickok got out here.”

  Rick frowned at that. “Yeah, well, then they might try to lay claim to the reward on Hickok,” he complained.

  “Much like a castrated bull, you just don’t get it, do you? These soldiers is still in the Army, remember? Might be hard to explain to a court-martial board why they’re traipsing off to Texas with Bill Hickok’s severed head in a sack.”

  Sandy brandished one of the arrows. “And why do you think I’m making these cannon-ball arrows? One of these little pups hits him, there won’t be no discussion over who done it.”

  Reward money wasn’t really Sandy’s chief consideration. After all, his share of the previous gold heists had already made him a rich man, even after Brennan had to split it so many ways. But money was gone once you spent it; fame, in contrast, belonged to a man even after death. And the man who sent the “unkillable” Wild Bill Hickok to his grave was assured a spot in history. A tarnished spot, to be sure, but a spot nonetheless.

  “There,” Sandy announced as he finished rigging the sixth explosive arrow. “Here, Ricky, take these real careful-like and slant ’em against the wall.”

  Collins had no trouble with the arrows. But he clumsily knocked against the brass-framed Winchester Yellow Boy that was propped up against the nearest wall. It slid fast and hit the rammed-earth floor, its stock banging hard.

  “Christ! Take care, you soft-brained fool! I still ain’t fixed that worn sear. That rifle’s hair-trigger until I fix it. You’ll have to handle it easy.”

  Sandy had retained one of the arrows, cocking his crossbow and loading the arrow to make sure it still fit the aiming groove.

  “Snug as a virgin on her wedding night,” he pronounced, his voice smug with satisfaction. “Let’s grab leather, Ricky. I want plenty of time to take up a good position. It ain’t every day a man gets a crack at a
‘living legend’.”

  ~*~

  Just past forenoon Wild Bill kicked off the brake, cracked his blacksnake over the team, and the journey southwest to Denver was under way.

  The first stretch of trail, between Martin’s Creek and Schofield Station in Wyoming, was easy to defend against. Slightly rolling prairie stretched out on both sides, grassy but treeless, providing little opportunity for dry-gulchers. But Wild Bill had already warned everyone to maintain maximum vigilance every foot of the way.

  They remained especially wary when they met any traffic coming from the opposite direction. But they passed only one lone horseman, a sodbuster on a big gray dray horse, and a hardware drummer driving a light van wagon. Both men called out cheery greetings.

  “Cover those doors,” Bill ordered Jimmy, meaning the double rear doors of the van. Jimmy thumbed his rifle to full cock as the van rolled past them, slewing around on the box until the vehicle had rattled out of sight. Then he eased the hammer back down to half cock.

  “You want me to search the jackrabbits and prairie dogs, too?” Joshua joked from the top seat behind them, where he rode like a swaying sailor in the crow’s nest.

  “Kid,” Bill replied, “when you’ve been jumped as much as I have, you start looking behind the clouds, even. I’d rather be called a nervous Nellie than ‘the dearly departed.’”

  Jimmy laid his Winchester across his thighs and took out the makings. Bending against the breeze, he shaped himself a smoke.

  “Bill’s right,” he said as he licked the paper and quirled the ends. “Very few men die when they expect to. Death ain’t one for making appointments.”

  “Speaking of which,” Hickok told Joshua, “I want you glancing often down both sides of the coach—you take my drift?”

  The reporter nodded. Bill didn’t want any guns showing from inside. The soldiers had not made him suspicious; he just refused to assume anything.

  Perhaps twenty miles out of Martin’s Creek Station a cloudburst opened up overhead. Josh dug out their oilcloth rain slickers.