Gun Law (A Wild Bill Western Book 8)

by Judd Cole

  “Hope it don’t turn into a gully-washer,” Hickok fretted, slanting his hat so the water ran off better. “If mud clumps to those wheels, we’ll have to stop and scrape ’em. ’Course, that’s better than what always happened to me out in New Mex Territory. Out there, the wood got so consarned dry and was always shrinking the wheels. Then they pop right out of the iron rims.”

  But the rainstorm blew off to the north, over the main body of the Black Hills, and a warm September sun reappeared in a sky of deep, bottomless blue.

  A few miles before Schofield Station the terrain began to change again, more trees appearing. Bill reined in the team, a frown firming his features.

  “’S’matter?” Jimmy demanded, bringing his rifle up to the low port, ready.

  “Sit tight, boys,” Wild Bill called down to the soldiers. “I’m just playing it safe against snipers.”

  Wild Bill nodded at a thick stand of willows and scrub oaks crowding the trail on Jimmy’s side. He let the horses set their own slow pace.

  “Now, that ain’t the best ambush point,” he told Joshua and Jimmy. “I’d stay farther back if I was a sharpshooter looking for quick kills at low risk. But for that very reason, we best respect it. Evidently, Brennan’s bunch ain’t one to do the obvious thing. Joshua.”

  “What?”

  “Quit scribbling in that pad and crawl back over the boot. Watch them two horses, especially the sorrel. While you’re at it, break out your shooter. Let me know if their ears prick. Jimmy, get flat and watch them trees.”

  Bill shucked out a Peacemaker in his right hand, holding the reins loosely in his left. But the coach eased by without incident.

  “Don’t forget, Jimmy,” Bill said as he whipped the team up to a trot. “I need your eyes on the horizons. Mine fade on me at them distances.”

  They rolled into the next way station, where the stock tender was waiting to unhitch the team so they could drink from the stone trough in the yard. He also gave them a quick rubdown with old grain sacks—this team would not be changed until they stopped for the night at the next station.

  The soldiers climbed out and headed for the jakes out back.

  “Take care of our saddle band,” Wild Bill told Joshua. “The stock tender’s got his hands full with the team. And while you’re out here, keep a weather eye out for trouble. Keep that coach in sight.”

  There was a water casket outside the door of the station house. Wild Bill lifted the top off and let it dangle by its rope tether while he dipped out a drink.

  “—this is outrageous!” complained a familiar female voice from inside. “What authority does the driver have to put a passenger off his coach? I did nothing wrong! All I did was remind him to watch his language in front of ladies.”

  Bill’s eyes met Jimmy’s, and both men grinned.

  “A bad penny always turns up,” Bill quipped. “Looks like Donaldson finally took mercy on the rest of his passengers.”

  “Lord, ain’t she the mother of the Devil?” Jimmy said. “I don’t know if I got the stones to go in there, Bill.”

  “Buck up, old son. Whatever don’t kill you can only leave you stronger.”

  Both men stepped inside and swept off their hats. Charlene Durant ignored them, for she had cornered the agent, a paunchy, middle-aged man who looked almost terrified, to give him a ration of her ire. Today she wore a blue cotton skirt with a crisp white shirtwaist, her chestnut hair in two thick, shining plaits.

  “My father will be fully apprised of this outrage,” she fumed. “I had no idea the West was populated by two-legged beasts!”

  This station was equipped with a short plank bar and a small selection of liquor on two wall shelves behind it. The bartender doubled as the cook. He had flattened out a pan of dough and was cutting biscuit rounds with a tin cup. The two new arrivals bellied up to the bar, placing their elbows carefully to avoid the beer spills.

  “Name your pizen, gents.”

  “Two bourbons with a beer posse,” Wild Bill said, flipping a silver dollar onto the bar. “Bar could use a quick wipe, too.”

  “Sorry, fellows,” he said, drying it with a dirty apron.

  “Stand by for the blast,” Jimmy muttered. “Here comes our hellcat, and her claws are out.”

  “Mr. Hickok,” she said, “are you driving that stage outside?”

  Her imperious assumption that she had a right to demand this made Bill grin at her.

  “Well, now, Miss Durant, I can’t hardly drive it inside, now can I?”

  The bar dog and Jimmy both sniggered while Charlene Durant flushed red as seep clay.

  “Mr. Hickok,” she tried again, her tone less demanding, “will you please help me get out of this flea pit? I was left behind simply because I asked the driver to stop cussing so much—and so profanely.”

  “If it ain’t profane, then what use is cussing? Anyhow, we’re filled up, ma’am.”

  “Filled—?” She glanced around the nearly empty station. All she saw were the two men at the bar and the preacher and the salesman, who had just come inside. She glanced out the windows and saw empty yard. “But then, where are the rest of your passengers?”

  Wild Bill picked up his shot glass between thumb and forefinger and saw his own eye looking back at him in the golden reflection. He tossed back the bourbon, then used his neckerchief to fastidiously wipe off his mustache.

  “What I mean, Miss Durant, is that our coach can’t take on any more passengers.”

  “But why?”

  Bill quaffed half of his beer and again wiped his mustache. “You sure ask a lot of questions. Well, for starters, because you slapped my face back at Martin’s Creek. I’ve been told that it’s quite handsome. I’m protective of it, and if you were a man I could have hit you. It’s easy to hit somebody you know won’t hit you back.”

  “Well, go ahead and hit back.”

  His eyes narrowed. “That option’s open.”

  “Your handsome face! You insufferable egotist.”

  Bill pushed away from the bar and picked up his hat, slapping the dust out of it. “That’s another reason why we’re full up. I don’t like your tart mouth, m’heart. Your tongue’s been soaking in brine.”

  She was getting more desperate as the men prepared to leave.

  “Please, Mr. Hickok? Please don’t leave me stranded here? I’m ... I’m sorry I insulted you. And ... hit you.”

  “And ain’t it a handsome face?”

  She frowned, but relented. “It’s quite handsome, and you know it. I’ve seen few that are finer.”

  He, too, frowned. “But you’re saying you’ve seen finer?”

  “Mr. Hickok, please! May I ride with you?”

  Bill blew his cheeks out, then gave a fluttering sigh. “Flattery works with us egotists. Yeah, you can ride along. But only on one condition.”

  His tone made her pale slightly. “A ... condition? What might that be?”

  Bill looked at Jimmy, and they both laughed.

  “Not what you’re thinking, city girl. I want you to promise that, at the first sign of any trouble, you’ll get down onto the floor of the coach and stay there.”

  “Then—you’re expecting trouble?”

  “As you prove, it tends to find me, yes. All funning aside, it could get very dangerous. You’re sure you can’t wait here a day?”

  She cast a woebegone glance around the dingy station. “Yes, I’m absolutely certain. And yes, I will do as you request—I appreciate your taking me along.”

  She spoke quite graciously, and Bill had to admire her charm. He slanted a glance at John Saville. “How ’bout you, Reverend Peabody? Any objection if this young lady rides with you and Mr. Lawton?”

  “All God’s children are welcome, Mr. Hickok.”

  “Amen, brother.” Bill’s eyes traveled the length of her shapely figure. “That’s mighty Christian of you, Rev. Maybe you can even teach her a little humility, too.”

  “Why, you can just—” She caught herself just in time.
“I’ll get my valise,” she said archly, turning away with the grace of a ballerina on her pointes.

  “You sure this is wise, Bill?” Jimmy asked as they headed back outside.

  “The last ‘wise’ thing I did, Jimmy, was fold on aces and eights against a full house. Hell, I warned the little spitfire. If she gets herself shot up, it ain’t our funeral.”

  The coach waited out in the yard, the team hitched again. The stock tender was greasing the axles.

  “The country changes up ahead,” Bill warned Jimmy. “Ridges and rock nests. Keep your eyes peeled. Now we start earning our pay.”

  Chapter Seven

  “A stage driver,” Wild Bill told Jimmy and Joshua, “earns just enough to keep the wolf from the door. Yet, it’s one of the most dangerous jobs in the West. Low pay, high risk—just like being a lawman in a cow town. He-yah!” he shouted, cracking his blacksnake to coax the team up a long incline.

  A late-afternoon sun was losing its warmth and casting long, slanting shadows over the denuded hills surrounding them. This area had been stripped of trees to provide timber supports for the mining industry.

  Even though Wild Bill’s eyes no longer picked up details at long distance, he could still easily read the terrain. And he didn’t like what he was reading now.

  “Jimmy?”

  “Yo!”

  “My old scouting bones tell me that low ridge off to our left is trouble. Is it within rifle range, you think?”

  The sharpshooter nodded. “Easy. ’Bout five, six hundred yards, Bill.”

  “That’s beyond most men’s effective range. But not trained snipers.”

  “I could make it easy,” Jimmy affirmed. “Almost twice that, even, if I had my old Big Fifty.”

  “Kid,” Bill called up to Josh, “flatten down again. And hold on. We’ll be putting on some speed.”

  Jimmy prepared by checking his rear sight and raising it a little to adjust for windage at that distance.

  “If they start plinking at us,” Hickok told him, “I won’t be useful for making out any muzzle flash or smoke. Try to locate it, Jimmy. Now, hang on.”

  Bill turned his head to the left and shouted below: “We’re picking up the pace for a stretch, folks! Keep away from the windows, especially on the driver’s side.”

  This team had now been in the traces since morning. But they were well-grained and watered, and the pace had not been too grueling. Experience told Bill they still had plenty of bottom. He laid to the whip, relying on the noise to chuck them up to a strong run.

  “Gee up! He-yah! Hee-YA!!!”

  Joshua, facedown behind the top seat, held on to the running rails for dear life. He was surprised at finding out just how fast a stagecoach could get rolling, and what an infernal racket it made at top speed. The jangle and clatter of traces and tug chains, the thunder of iron-shod hooves, the splitting crack of the whip as well as Bill’s full-throated shouts—it all made talking impossible, not that he had anything to say. Not with this huge lump of fear in his throat.

  There was also the powerful rocking and swaying of the braced coach—he had the eerie sensation that he was adrift on a raft in a storm-tossed sea.

  They were perhaps halfway past the low ridge when Joshua decided that, once again, Wild Bill was playing it too safe—just as he had done earlier at the stand of willows. Maybe Bill was getting more edgy because—

  Thwap!

  An entire corner of the box, only inches from Wild Bill’s left thigh, literally exploded in shards and splinters of burning wood. One splinter flew back and pierced Joshua’s right cheek.

  Thwap!

  More shards and splinters sprayed Wild Bill and Joshua. But there was no sound of gunfire. God Almighty, the journalist thought as he fought down a welling of panic. Was somebody firing small artillery shells?

  Then Josh spotted an arrow buried in the box. At the same time, the first sounds of a rifle firing reached Josh’s ears. He looked up quickly and thought he glimpsed a brief spark of muzzle fire.

  Evidently Jimmy had spotted it too. The fearless shotgun rider, ignoring his own risk, went up into a dangerously exposed kneeling-offhand position. He began levering and firing, levering and firing, keeping it hot for the gunners on the ridge.

  Warm brass casings glinted in the sunlight as they were ejected, clattering and rolling all around Josh’s head. Apparently Jimmy’s shots were having some effect—no more bullets or those god-awful arrows were striking the coach. But Wild Bill was again taking no chances—not until the ridge faded behind them did he slow his merciless whipping of the team.

  “I think we’re out of their trap,” he told the others as he reined in the exhausted team behind a protective knoll.

  “All right down below?” he called over his shoulder.

  “We’re all fine,” Saville’s voice replied. “Although Miss Durant looks a bit peaked.”

  Wild Bill was already calm enough to grin at that.

  “Damn, Bill, you called it like a gang boss,” Jimmy admired, already thumbing reloads into his repeater. “If you hadn’t whipped the team up, all three of us might be looking up to see daisies.”

  Bill glanced back at Josh. “Christ! You hit, kid?”

  Josh felt the blood running down his cheek. But the wound wasn’t deep. “Nah. Just a splinter.”

  “Wash it with calomel,” Bill suggested. “There’s some in my bedroll.”

  But Josh wanted answers. “What in Sam Hill were those first shots, Bill? Look! They blew fist-sized chunks out of the wood. It’s still smoldering.”

  “Exploding arrows,” Bill replied tersely. “I’ll explain later, Longfellow. Right now I got to go calling.”

  Hickok was peeling off his duster as he spoke. Josh watched him quickly buckle on his spurs of fancy Mexican silver. He tossed his gloves and the reins to Jimmy, laid the whip on the box.

  “After I ride out, keep the coach rolling at a walk until the team’s done blowing. Then hold ’em at an easy trot again. We need to make the next way station before it gets too dark. I’ll meet you on ahead.”

  Wild Bill looked at Joshua. “Your nerves look steady. Wash that cut out, then c’mon down on the box and take Jimmy’s long gun. You’ll ride the hot seat until I get back.”

  Joshua’s reporter instincts made him eager to fire off more questions. But Wild Bill had already leaped down off the box and moved behind the coach.

  “Toss down one of the saddles and bridles,” he called up. “Don’t hit me with the damn thing.”

  While Joshua unlashed one of the narrow-cantled cowboy saddles, Wild Bill untied the sorrel from behind the coach. The sorrel had taken to Bill instantly back at Martin’s Creek Station, and now it bumped its nose against his chest in greeting.

  Hickok efficiently and quickly rigged the animal and cinched the girth, then checked the latigos. The stirrups needed adjusting for his legs, but they’d have to do.

  This saddle had no scabbard, so he secured his Winchester with the cantle straps. He stepped up into leather, reined the sorrel around toward the ridge, and tickled its flank with a spur. The gelding responded instantly, quickly reaching a strong gallop.

  Wild Bill knew he couldn’t risk directly approaching the ridge—his eyes wouldn’t allow it. But he had spotted a series of low draws and dry washes that should provide cover in case the ambushers were still on the ridge. He reined the sorrel down to an easy lope and entered the first draw.

  A few times the ground leveled, exposing him briefly, and Bill borrowed a defensive riding posture he’d learned from fighting Sioux and Cheyennes. He slid off to the right side of the horse, gripping it high around the neck with its body between him and the ridge.

  Only about ten minutes after he’d ridden out, Hickok rounded the end of a rocky spur and spotted them: two riders retreating at an unhurried pace, obviously not expecting trouble.

  “My eyes are weak,” he told the sorrel as he swung down, landing cat-footed, “but we’ll give ’em a little kiss so th
ey know we’re thinking of ’em.”

  He ground-hitched his mount, then quickly untied his rifle. Bill knew he couldn’t assure hits on the men, and he usually tried to avoid shooting horses. But Leland and the U.S. government had requested gun law. And as those exploding arrows proved, Gil Brennan’s hardcases played rough and dirty. It was important to get on their nerves early and answer blow for blow.

  He dropped into a prone position among a scattering of boulders and laid a bead on one of the horses. The brass butt-plate of his Winchester kicked against his shoulder, kicked again, and both horses went down. Bill’s lightly oiled mechanism snicked flawlessly as brass casings rattled against the rocks, the sharp cracks of the ’73 echoing out across the open terrain in a series of rapidly diminishing chuff sounds.

  The surprised dry-gulchers were more interested in taking cover than in firing back. But Wild Bill’s vision was at the limit of its dependable range now—a fact that frustrated him greatly despite his legendary aplomb.

  “A couple years ago,” he almost apologized to the sorrel, “I could have wiped both those snakes out of the saddle instead of punishing their horses. I ain’t bragging this mission—it’s damned humiliating is what it is. I’ve about had my belly full of Gil Brennan and his Bowery thugs. Let’s vamoose, boy.”

  Chapter Eight

  Charlene Durant rued the day she had ever agreed to join her father at Fort Bridger. And she especially regretted her decision to come west by stagecoach. After four years of boarding school in Chicago, the prospect had seemed like a wonderful adventure.

  Instead, it had become one long nightmare. Worse than a nightmare, actually, because it didn’t end when she opened her eyes. She had expected to find a rustic but romantic civilization out here; instead, there were nothing but boorish, vulgar men and coarse women with leathery skin.

  The sun had set long ago, but generous moon-wash illuminated the interior of the Concord coach. She watched as the toupee salesman, Alfred Lawton, once again slid the slim silver flask out of his inside jacket pocket. He had been drinking for the past two hours, and now he looked at her with a suggestive leer.