by John Jakes
“You mean he doesn’t know how he got the name?”
With great solemnity, Jeremiah shook his head.
“Think of that,” the boy murmured. He drank the rest of his Kansas sheep dip. Most of it wound up on the front of his buckskin vest.
The piano and violin struck up “Just Before the Battle, Mother.” One of the barkeeps who had a face as innocent as a divinity student’s began to sing the lyric in a clear, lovely tenor. Men at the tables stopped their games. Several soon had tears in their eyes; Appomattox was not that far in the past.
The Texas boy evidently had no strong emotional memories of the war because he kept after his companion.
“The fellers back in camp are gonna be mighty interested to know that about the marshal. They’re gonna think it’s mighty exciting that I heard it from Mr. Jason Kane, too. That I sat right over yonder and bucked the tiger with Jason Kane. You’re pretty famous yourself, you know.”
He experienced a moment of complete happiness. “Why, thank you. Thank you kindly.”
“But I’d sure like to know one thing, Mr. Kane. That is, if you don’t mind?”
He smiled warmly. He knew what the question would be.
“Ask away.”
“Exactly how many men have you sent to the ground?”
No point explaining he’d killed one woman too; that did nothing for a man’s reputation. Jeremiah let his smile thin out a little, till it took on that faintly cruel cast. The Texas boy instinctively stepped away from him. Jeremiah didn’t lie.
“Fourteen, and I guarantee you, Ben—every one was a dishonorable person who deserved it.”
“Fourteen. Lord God!” Pop-eyed, the boy pumped Jeremiah’s hand. “Pleasure, Mr. Kane. Surely has been.”
“My sentiments, too,” Jeremiah returned, his eyes glowing with good humor. He touched the brim of his oversized hat. “Hope you find work to pay your way home to the valley of the Red.” He warmed himself a moment longer in the worshipful gaze of the Texas boy, who couldn’t have been more than seventeen or eighteen. At twenty-five, Jeremiah felt ancient by comparison.
When Ben staggered out, Jeremiah finished his gin, called for another and tossed it off with barely a pause. The bartender shuddered.
“Jesus, Jason. You keep drinking it that fast, it’ll kill you one of these days.”
No, it won’t. I know how I’m going to die.
Angered by the intrusion of the thought from God knew where, he slammed the empty glass down, making Hal start and blather an apology. Jeremiah’s temples hurt. Why did he have to keep remembering the prophecy? Why did Kola keep reaching out from the dead to spoil everything? He fought his fury and fear, leaned over the bar and gave Hal a magnanimous pat on the shoulder.
“Sorry. Not your fault. I was thinking about something else.”
And there’s never a day that I don’t think of it.
A friendly expression returned to his face, forced there. “Pour me another, if you please, and I’ll try to follow your advice.”
Relieved, the barkeep said, “On the house, Jason.”
The smile grew. “Why, thank you. Thank you kindly.”
iii
Drink in hand, he walked to the end of the bar, where the night manager, Lester Cross, was seated at a table eating steak and potatoes washed down with beer. If Cross had observed the little altercation, he said nothing. Jeremiah was a good source of revenue, and a dangerous man to anger. Cross knew that as well as Hal did.
Jeremiah greeted the older man, wrote out a chit showing his winnings and the Alamo’s percentage, initialed the chit and gave it to Cross along with the specified amount.
“Much obliged, Jason. By the way—before you showed up, there was a fellow in here asking about you.”
For an instant, panic made breathing difficult. “Somebody I know?”
“Doubt it. He wasn’t familiar with your name. He must have seen you on the street, because he came in and described you and asked who you were. Maybe he saw you hanging out with Wild Bill. Anyway”—Cross chuckled—“your fame’s spreading, my boy.”
But something nervous was ticking in Jeremiah’s mind, steadily worsening his mood.
“You positive you don’t know who he was, Lester?”
“No, sir, I never saw him before. He didn’t identify himself. He was young, though. And there was no doubt he was a Texas cowpoke—just like those boys.”
The manager pointed. He received glares from three summer visitors dining at the next table. He grinned in a crow-eating way Jeremiah found disgusting, then said, “Sorry, boys. Clean forgot that was a dirty word.”
Grudging smiles—one more glare—then the Texans went back to their food. The word that had riled them was cowpoke. The newest, greenest hands in a trail crew were the ones who drew the noxious assignment of working at the stockyards when their herd was shipped. The hands used long sticks to prod the reluctant longhorns and drive them from the pens to the freight cars. It was tiring, frustrating, dirty work. In the Texas lexicon a cowboy was someone to be respected, but a cowpoke was scum.
Jeremiah drew a fine cambric handkerchief from his sleeve. Touched it to his upper lip several times. The October evening seemed sultry all at once. Even though the Alamo’s three sets of double doors were folded open, the place was stifling hot.
“Did this Texas fellow want a game?”
“Don’t know, Jason. Like I said, all he asked was your name.” Cross forked fried potatoes into his mouth. The next words were muffled. “Hell, he didn’t look dangerous to me. Or even proddy.”
Jeremiah nodded again. “Probably wanted a game, then.” But he didn’t quite believe it. He’d better stay doubly alert for the remainder of the night.
“Finished for the evening?” Cross asked.
Jeremiah turned toward the ornate wall clock. “Hell no, it’s only a quarter past seven. I’ll try to rustle up at least one more game. First, though, I thought I’d squander some of my profits in the Addition. This morning Little Mattie brought in four new nymphs du prairie. One’s about eighteen, with yellow hair and a face that belongs in the soprano section of a Congregational choir.”
“Well, you better go get her,” Cross said, “because she’ll look sixty inside of a year. Give me a report on her, will you?”
“You’re married, Lester.”
“Why the hell you think I want a report?”
Jeremiah laughed and waved goodbye with his hat, being careful not to dislodge what was hidden in the inner band.
iv
He stepped out of the Alamo and studied the street in both directions. Thunder rumbled in the northwest. He sniffed the wind. A boomer coming. It would put an end to the unusual October warm spell.
He started along Texas Street. All at once he stumbled. A cowhand ambling by let out a snicker. Jeremiah glared as he righted himself. The cowhand hurried on without looking back, but Jeremiah realized the gin had affected him. Maybe Hal was right. Maybe he shouldn’t swill the stuff so fast.
He kept moving. The esplanade ran east to west, just north of the Kansas Pacific tracks. It swarmed with cowhands and townspeople on foot and on horseback. The early evening was noisy with laughter, music, the racket of galloping horses and racing hackneys that conveyed visitors to and from the whorehouse district—genial sounds of prosperity occasionally punctuated by the faraway bawl of the cause of it all, a longhorn in the herds bedded down south of the Smoky Hill River.
One noise missing from the hubbub was the crackle of firearms. Early on, the Abilene Council—of which Marshal Hickok was the reluctant sergeant-at-arms, responsible for rounding up equally reluctant members for meetings—had made it a crime for incoming Texans, or anyone, to carry a gun within the town limits. High spirits and fist fights could be tolerated. But a reputation for violence would send the drovers elsewhere.
Thus, as Jeremiah was hurrying along toward the Addition and letting himself relax a little—relax and think of the angelic face of the girl whose favors he
was going to buy—one thing for which he was totally unprepared was the unmistakable sound of a pistol cocking.
He was opposite the depot, on a lightless and deserted stretch of sidewalk in front of some shops that had already closed. He’d just passed the black mouth of an alley. Almost the moment the pistol cocked back in the alley, a voice spoke from the same place.
“You, Joseph Kingston. Stop right there.”
He leaned forward, shifting his weight in order to run.
“Better not, Kingston. I got a gun on you.”
He stopped, hit suddenly by the stunning power of that name from the past. The inside of his mouth instantly parched. He swallowed as he turned and peered into the alley. He could see absolutely nothing.
Who was hiding there? He suspected it was the stranger who’d asked about him. But how had the man tracked him? Waited for him to emerge from the Alamo and then run behind the buildings along the esplanade, parallel to the route he was taking? And how could anyone know Joseph Kingston? Perhaps it was all a mistake. A coincidence involving someone else of the same name.
Cold and angry, the voice said, “I finally found you, you damn murderer.”
There was no mistake. Jeremiah recognized the voice.
v
The young Texan stepped far enough, forward in the alley so that certain details were visible. A Colt’s Navy model in his right hand. Chaps and a sugar-loaf sombrero. Then he moved again, and weak light from the depot fell across his face. The features leaped at Jeremiah across a gulf of years.
I should have thought of him when Lester mentioned Texas. And I shouldn’t have let him go back in ’66.
The boy was older now, early twenties. Jeremiah gazed at him with a mixture of disgust and panic. Would Mr. Jason Kane be brought down by a wet-eared calf? Would that be the end of everything? God, that was impossible. Intolerable!
But he was trapped. And the youngster was nervous, if not downright afraid. Someone in that state, with a gun, was more dangerous than any professional.
The distant depot lantern gleamed on a trickle of sweat on the youngster’s neck. He shifted his position; the gleam vanished. The boy was in clear violation of the gun ordinance. Probably he’d kept the revolver concealed under his leather vest. Bear River Tom Smith, the murdered marshal whom Wild Bill had replaced, had been scrupulous about policing the ordinance, even to the point of conducting spot searches of new arrivals. Hickok was more tolerant. He only cracked down when concealed weapons were displayed or, occasionally, used. Jeremiah silently damned his friend for helping to get him into this tight place.
“The first time I seen you was this morning,” the Texan said in an unsteady voice, “having breakfast at the Drover’s Cottage.”
Jeremiah didn’t speak.
“This is the third year I’ve come up to Kansas with a herd. I signed on mostly to find you. Never really figured I would.”
I never figured you would either.
“Look here,” Jeremiah said. “It’s a warm evening. Would you object if I took off my hat?”
The boy thought about it. “All right. But do it slow.”
Jeremiah removed the hat and wiped his right sleeve across his forehead. The streak of white hair showed above his left brow; he no longer colored it.
“I’m not the man you want. My name is—”
“Jason Kane. So they told me at the Alamo.”
“That’s right, Jason Kane.”
“You’re famous. We even heard of you down in Texas. I never figured you’d be this easy to take.”
You’re dead for saying that. He barely kept the rage out of his voice.
“You’re changing the subject, boy. I don’t know anything about this Joseph Kingston you’re—”
“Hell you don’t,” the boy interrupted. “I’ll never forget you murdering my uncle, you and that dirty Indian you was traveling with. You almost killed me, too.” The cocked Navy shook as the boy leveled it at the front of Jeremiah’s waistcoat. “You should have.”
A sigh carried the sound of confession. “You’re right.” He began to fan himself with his hat. “Years haven’t changed you much. Your name’s Tom, I recall.”
“Timothy. Timothy Stirling of Fort Worth.”
“Oh, that’s right. Your uncle was from Fort Worth, too, the dishonorable son of a bitch.”
“You shut up about—”
“Bullshit,” Jeremiah said quietly. “You were in on it. You know what he did. He lost his beeves and tried to steal my buffla so the season wouldn’t be a total loss for him. Your uncle got no more than he deserved. But I suppose that won’t be of help to me now, will it?”
“N-no,”
“You’ll go to prison.” Jeremiah kept fanning himself in a slow, lazy way. Off across the prairie, lightning flickered and thunder drummed. The boy was momentarily distracted. Jeremiah cast a surreptitious glance into the crown of the hat. The piece in the sweated inner band violated the Abilene gun ordinance too.
Three rowdy horsemen yelled as they galloped past the depot. Drunk, probably. One fell out of his saddle and landed on his tailbone, laughing wildly. His friends rode on without him. No one paid the slightest attention to Jeremiah on the dark sidewalk, nor could a casual observer have seen the young Texan in the alley.
The thunder rumbled away to silence. Jeremiah’s palms itched. Could he reach the hideout gun with his left hand? And use it effectively? Only if he were steady.
To further unsettle the boy, he went on. “Yes, sir, prison for sure. ’Course Marshal Hickok might not permit your case to go to court. He might try you and pass sentence and carry it out himself, if you catch my drift. He’s hell on anybody who discharges firearms in this town, let alone kills someone.”
He was dismayed at the steadiness of the reply. “That don’t matter, Kingston—Kane—whatever it is. Nothing matters except my uncle.”
Another sigh. “I’m beginning to see that. You a single fellow, Timothy?”
“No, I got hitched up last winter.”
“It’s too soon for youngsters, I suppose.”
“There’s one on the way.”
“Then you should reconsider what you’re—”
“No.”
“All right, all right, don’t bust a cinch.” Jeremiah did his best to sound as if he were the nervous one. “Do you mind if I put my hat back on before you do what you’re going to do?”
Timothy tried to shrug in a casual way. “Go ahead. Slow, like before—”
All the better. He drew the open side of the crown in front of his face. He jerked his left hand up to the hat and jumped a yard to the right. Timothy Stirling swore and shot, but only once. A fundamental mistake.
Jeremiah was breathing fast as he tore the four-barrel derringer out of the inner band of the hat deliberately bought too large. He jerked the hat down. A horse bellowed and fell near the tracks, pinked by Timothy’s wild bullet.
Lightning flashed. Timothy saw Jeremiah’s strange smile and lost his nerve. He dropped his Colt and dashed down the alley. For an instant Jeremiah gazed at the youngster’s back. No one shot a man in the back. And he didn’t have to shoot the Texan at all.
Never figured you’d be this easy.
Thunder rolled. “Timothy!”
The shout brought the boy’s head around even as he ran. If Timothy wasn’t exactly facing him, neither did he have his back completely turned. Jeremiah instinctively observed Hickok’s dictum that concentrated and continuous firepower usually brought a man out on top. He used all four shots to blow the running puncher against the wall of the bakery shop forming one side of the alley.
Blood sprayed from a wound in Timothy’s neck and ran from another in his left forearm. The two shots in the left side of his vest would be the ones to kill him, Jeremiah thought as he trembled with a feeling close to ecstasy.
By the time Timothy fell down and rattled his last, Jeremiah was surrounded by a crowd of men. Mostly angry Texans who recognized one of their own lying dead. His
only hope was that none of Timothy’s trail crew was present or close by. He faced the growing crowd of cowhands, Mexican vaqueras and saloon hangers-on. They didn’t know his hideout gun was empty.
“It was a private quarrel. I’ll accommodate anyone who wants to pick another.”
Eyes darted from the derringer to his belligerent face. There were some threatening remarks, but no trouble before the marshal arrived, his usual resplendent and well-armed self.
Jeremiah had never met another man in the West who gave more attention to personal cleanliness and grooming. Hickok kept his drooping mustaches trimmed and his golden-brown, shoulder-length hair combed at all times. He was thirty-four, six feet two and slim, with the light gray-blue eyes legend said accompanied a killer’s temperament.
Tonight, as usual, he was fastidiously dressed: an immaculate Prince Albert coat, Irish linen shirt and French calf boots worth at least seventy-five dollars. He was always courteous—even now as he quietly ordered the crowd to disperse, except for two swampers from the Alamo. They were to remove the corpse to the undertaking parlor.
Hickok carried the same equipment he always carried to enforce the peace in Abilene: two .44 Colts strapped to his hips, a Bowie knife visible under his Prince Albert, a sawed-off shotgun in the crook of his elbow—plus, no doubt, the pair of .41 derringers he usually concealed somewhere on his person. He was a terrible walking arsenal. Many of the visiting Texans hated him for that, and for his service in the Yankee army.
He bent to examine the body that now stunk of its own released waste. That was the one thing Jeremiah loathed about death. The dirtiness.
“You killed him, uh?” Hickok murmured.
“Had to, Jim. He was waiting for me when I walked by. He was going to finish me if I didn’t get him first. He shot once—” A gesture toward the stricken horse lying in the esplanade. Its sobered owner was gazing at the animal with tears on his face. “Hit that pony.”