by Mari Sandoz
Even the youngest trail hand had to push his horse forward after that and get out to back up George Cluck, who was standing firm against the bearded ring of outlaws. He wouldn't give them even one damned lumpy-jawed critter, if he had one. "I got sixteen fighters as good as ever crossed the Red," he told them; "boys raised on the rattlesnakes, wildcats, and cactus of Williamson County. If anybody's honin' for a fight, let him get his prayin' done—"
The outlaws looked off over the fine herds strung out along the foothills, spreading a little now to feed. Then they looked around the cowboys, the least of them grim-faced, their hands all on their guns, ready, and behind them the hack with the small children and the woman fondling the hammer of her shotgun with her thumb.
The leader motioned with his bristled chin toward the foothills, and turned to follow his departing gang.
By the time the Cluck and Snyder herds reached the Abilene region their story had been spread around a couple of days, so there were friendly and curious looks for the woman and presents for the barefoot children when they walked along the dusty streets of the cow town. But a drummer for a dress-goods house was angered, particularly at his seventh slug of Old Crow. "What a risk some men will take for a little money!"
"'Tain't money. It's for the cows," a man beside him at the bar corrected. "That Mrs. Cluck, I hear say, don't want to let a single head go. Like to keep 'em all, if they could, and so she comes along."
The range country of Texas had no banks, and packing large sums of money drew outlaws and Indians upon the returning trail drivers, and sometimes outlaws dobbed up to look like Indians. One year M. L. Dalton brought back $16,000 from the sale of a small herd in New Mexico, the next year $22,000, and then $6,000, in gold, which he buried with the rest somewhere on the ranch, it seemed, to be dug up as needed. In 1869 he started home from Kansas with $11,500 and two new wagons loaded with ranch provisions and a couple trunks of finery and geegaws for his wife and daughters. Near his ranch in Palo Pinto County he and two of his men were killed and scalped, scalped very inexpertly, some said. The attackers took the teams, wagons, and supplies, but threw away some worthless stuff, including an old shoe. In it was the money, in greenbacks—found along the trail and saved for his widow. But she couldn't bear to stay at the ranch any more, even with good help. She sold out to Jim Loving, feeling his sympathy for her because his father had died from the Indian wound he received over in the Pecos country.
Abilene had about the only real money loose in the region east of the buffalo country, and so the cow town drew a great deal of noise and lawlessness, much of it only roistering cowboys—several hundred, maybe a thousand of them trying to spend their trail pay all the same night. The gamblers were there, the bad men and various kinds of outlaws who had fled to the frontier for their own reasons, and were drawn by the smell of money or of violence even sweeter to some noses. The tracks at Abilene divided the town, with the churches, the courthouse, newspaper office, and many ordinary citizens on one side. On the south was Texas Abilene, the Lone Star district, with the stock pens, the hangouts for the trailers: saloons, dance halls, and the dance-hall girls with the scattering of shacks of the Loners at the bottoms, the Arkansaw Kittys, Weepin' Sadies, and Mex Maria. Here the Texans didn't fight the Mexicans—the greasers—but joined forces with them against the damnyankees. It was the old sectional split, with the blood of the war still very red, particularly here with many from prewar Bloody Kansas. Many Johnny Rebs had their best yells ready now that the shooting seemed over.
"If them shorthorns, them Come-Latelies had fit like this on either side, the war'd been over in six weeks," a soured old freighter said scornfully and out loud. He went around town unarmed but trailed his bull whip over his shoulder, letting the popper drag far behind him as a sort of dare to anybody spoiling for a little trouble. But although his tongue was mean as a thorn in a felt boot, nobody ever stepped on an inch of his popper, not high-heeled boot or cowhide work shoe.
Each year the cattle to Kansas and the Abilene region doubled, with 150,000 head in 1869, of which over 2,000 cars were shipped East. In 1870 the drives to Kansas totaled around 300,000 head, with the railroads suddenly in a fine rate war east of the Mississippi. There were rumors that whole trainloads of cattle were hauled from Chicago to New York for nothing, with perhaps even a little present for the shipper, so important had the business suddenly become. Good stock brought good prices and many "through" or fresh-driven Texas herds brought around $30 to $40 a head, with $50 to $60 for herds wintered north of the tick regions. The season had been a dry one, the grass rich and seedy, the cattle sleek and fat.
Before spring everybody predicted that 1871 would be the greatest year of the cattle trails, even with the growing unemployment in the East and the curtailment in meat purchases. The news of a boom in Abilene drew not only many new buyers to jam the drover hotels but swarms of hangers-on thick as buffalo gnats around the ears of a city dude come West. Not all the gamblers and gunmen drawn to the town were from the East. Ben and Billy Thompson came up from the southwest where they were known as two of the best gunmen in the region. Ben reached Abilene first. He was twenty-seven, above the average intelligence, with steady nerves and a cool eye along a gun. It was said he never shot for the love of killing, as so many here did, but threw his gun down as calmly on a man as on a rabbit or flying tin can. Born in Nova Scotia, the Thompsons grew out of boyhood down in Austin, surrounded by the patriots who had fought for Texas freedom and by many killers, including such men as the Olives and the other outlaw gangs able to stand up to them.
Ben Thompson had been a printer on an Austin paper, but gambling drew him. He was of medium height, with blue eyes, swarthy but fastidious as most gamblers were, and made friends everywhere. He started the killing early, the first apparently a Frenchman over a girl down in New Orleans. His reputation grew until he became the bad man of his Rebel regiment. Since then he served two years for shooting a man, Abilene heard, which seemed extreme for Texas, when the Olives and their kind killed people by the handful.
Released some months ago, Ben was drawn to Abilene because he was about broke, and, like hundreds of others, he hoped to pick up a little loose money bawling for its mammy. He found it. He had barely cooled his saddle when he made $2,600 at one sitting in a card game.
Billy Thompson came up with a trail herd soon after his brother. He was twenty-three, taller than Ben, slender, attractive, and friendly, but always in one scrape or another, usually with Ben handy to help him out.
In spite of his first-day luck, Ben had the gambler's weather eye that made him uneasy about the summer here. But since Billy had come up he decided to stay awhile and before the $2,600 was cut into his old friend Phil Coe hit town. Phil was a gambler but an unusual one. He was a big, loose-built man, over six foot four, with a full brown beard and generally unarmed. Not even the war got him into the habit of carrying a gun, although he had drifted from one frontier town to another ever since. This fit into Abilene's ordinance against gun packing. That this was often not enforced didn't trouble Coe, even though he carried several thousand dollars in his money belt. He put this in with Ben Thompson's gambling stake and together they opened the Bull's Head Saloon, well equipped, the faro bank the best that money could buy, and welcomed their fellow Texans.
The boom in cattle plodding northward started very early this year. All through May the Abilene prairie for fifty miles each way was spotted with trail herds cropping the grass to bald roots. From an imposing hilltop one sweep of the eye might take in 30,000 or even 50,000 cattle. The Slaughters, Reynolds, Driskills, Richard King, Shang Pierce, Print Olive—all the Texans seemed to be there except those pushing up the Goodnight-Loving Trail or cutting through to stations west of Abilene or heading on North.
Gradually there was a spread of news that the great herds around Abilene were not all waiting for cars, as many tried to believe, but for buyers, particularly after the first trainloads hit the market and sold badly, some not at all, a
nd were once more held in not-too-hopeful or welcoming feed lots in the Illinois region by the western owners. Many herds lacking buyers in Kansas were pushed north the 300 miles to the Nebraska cow towns on speculation, hoping for government greenbacks if there was no chance of gold coins counted out on a horse blanket at the trail campfire. Many were held up around the Republican River or beyond Schuyler and Lincoln without too much hope.
Certain that Abilene would be overrun with too much loose money, the town council had hired Wild Bill Hickok as marshal for the season. He was just back from the doctor at Topeka about his eyes and glad to take the job. By the end of the first week Bill was one of the town marvels, with his golden curls flowing over his shoulders, his waistcoat embroidered in a twining of roses, his black cape lined in silken color. Many who knew him realized he was a determined enemy of the southerners, the Johnny Rebs, but his hatred seemed particularly for the Texans, jealous, it was said, of their flamboyance, the native dash of so many of them.
From the day the Bull's Head opened over on Texas Street, it was a bonanza, the trail drivers drawn to it like ants to a trickle of sorghum dropped in the sand. The Yankee saloonkeepers and dance-hall owners looked with pursed mouths toward this new place taking away so much of their trade, so much of the southern trade, about the only men with money to throw around.
There were rumors of several plans to drive out the Bull's Head. The easiest was to take Coe's liquor license away, but he stayed right on as gambler in the place, and the doors fanned as steadily as ever. Some suggested that shooting would be the best, and cause enough excitement to grow a prairie fire of thirst. Of course that meant going against Ben Thompson's gun, but Marshal Hickok had been hired for just such emergencies. Somehow he let the matter drag, perhaps really softening, as some said, or had never been what writers like Nichols tried to make him. Still, with the trade largely Texas, the situation couldn't be handled like an attack on a wolf den with spade or giant powder. A passable face had to be put on the elimination of the saloon, particularly with the town full of armed Texans, and, as the Abilene Chronicle said, more cutthroats and desperados in town than in any other its size on the continent. But the saloonkeepers were impatient. They couldn't wait, not with business already melting away, the cowboys of the herds still held nearby sticking around their camps, without pay until the cattle were sold.
Several opportunities for reasonable dispute arose or were made. Some claimed that Hickok had accused Coe of running crooked games and while there was no gun fight, with Coe unarmed as usual, there were threats of death to both sides and Hickok took to walking down the middle of the street out of easy range from alley lurkers. Others said that Wild Bill got a cut to help pay for his finery from crooks fleecing the cowboys. Some sentimental newcomers liked to think that Hickok's feud with Phil Coe could be over a woman.
Then there was a disagreement that promised to amount to something. It was over a picture a traveling artist slapped across the front of the Bull's Head. The picture was of an object familiar to everyone around any cow town—the full and imposing figure of a big red bull. Before the artist got more than the outlines sketched in, the eyeballers pushing up around his scaffold began to laugh a little, and to nudge each other, with a few roaring out loud. Laughing made dry throats, and the swinging doors below the scaffold fanned up more thirst.
As the crowds grew around this favorite water hole of the Texans, the dandy, slim-fingered Wild Bill Hickok came strolling along in the street, out beyond the horses stomping flies at the hitch racks. He had a sawed-off shotgun across his arm but he went on past. Apparently he saw an opportunity to carry out the main task assigned to him—the closing of such competition as the Bull's Head, and with the law-and-order element doing the job. The news of the picture was spread around among the proper people. They came to look up at the painting and denounce it as shocking, as too realistic and suggestive—degrading and immoral, in fact, an insult to the virtuous women of the town and a bad influence on the children. The picture was not only recognizably a gentleman cow standing in plain sight along a public street, but of a gentleman cow of entirely unnatural proportions.
"Mebby you ain't never seen one a them old Texas herd bulls," a slow-spoken, earnest young cowboy tried to argue reasonably.
The next news to spread around the camps was that a delegation of good people had called on the proprietors of the Bull's Head, going inside, of course, but making it clear they had not come to buy. "No, no!" the leader protested to an invitation to have a friendly one all around on the house. "We have come, sir," he started firmly, "come to demand that you remove the offensive picture of the—of the ah-h-h—" stalling before all the derisive, sunburnt faces around him.
One of his delegation filled in the words, speaking primly. "—remove the vulgar picture of the ox."
"Ox!" one of the cowboys roared, the rest taking up the hooting, the laughing that sent the delegation hurrying out and up the street. "Ox, they calls it, and them complainin'!"
Later it got around that a bucket of paint had been bought by the anti-bull faction, by men whose own buildings showed no interest in paint, not even good Yankee bluecoat blue. Wild Bill and the rival saloonkeepers tried to save their good crusade, now that it was beginning to work. But when the men came with the paint bucket and a ladder they found armed guards protecting the picture, and business picking up at the Bull's Head, even though the rest of the town was almost empty, with the herds going on past, or to be held for next year down along the Arkansas or far out in Indian and buffalo country somewhere, perhaps several herds thrown together for protection, the men thrusting dugouts into some bank and holing up for the winter.
But around the Bull's Head sparks flew as from a railroad engine on a windy night. Gunplay seemed inevitable, perhaps a battle to the finish on the dusty street called Texas. At the urging of Coe the bull was painted over, but the picture got only one coat, thinned down with linseed oil, and the offending outlines of the bull left shockingly visible to any of the tender-minded coming down that way.
It was plain to everybody by now that there was much more to this fight than the amateurish picture of a red bull. Some said that half-a-dozen Texas cattlemen were involved, including Shanghai Pierce. Old Shang had always been a wild man but since his wife and baby son died he was more than ever the lone and angry wolf, riding the range with his Winchester slung to the saddle, brooking no interference. After the vigilante lynching of the Lunns and All Jaw Smith he jumped bail in Texas and spent his fury loafing around Kansas City. There he heard about the growing North-South troubles at Abilene, where his herds were headed, and that John Wesley Hardin's outfit had been attacked by the Osages on the Kansas border. It seemed an Indian had demanded a steer for the herd's passage and, when refused, shot the steer down. Young Wes killed the Indian on the spot and left his body tied to the beef carcass. It would make a lot of trouble for the herds of Pierce and everybody else coming through now, but the boy bad man wasn't the one to care about that.
It was told around that Wes Hardin, already a fugitive from justice for cold-blooded murder, showed off up at Abilene by taking the guns away from Marshal Hickok. Then there was the story that Pierce, Driskill, and Ben Thompson had squared it with Wild Bill to let Hardin shoot his way through Kansas as he had through Texas—a special favor to young Wes, to keep him quiet about their part in the mob that strung up the mavericking Lunns.
"Yeh, they want the maverickin' stopped now, seein's they got their start in cows made," some accused.
Anyway, Old Shang Pierce wiped the Kansas City sweat from inside his brown hat that matched his uncowmanlike brown suit and got his valise packed for Abilene. "I got to check on all this talk with my own flapping ears," he said.
Down on Texas Street he was told that when Hardin came to town Ben Thompson and his gambler, Phil Coe, were still making money in the Bull's Head although the rest of Abilene was like a winter prairie-dog town. Apparently Wild Bill was more anxious than ever to driv
e them out, and hoped to set young Wes against them, get him to do the shooting. Perhaps Thompson and Coe tried the same trick of insinuations and talebearing to get Hardin to kill the marshal. Anyway, John Wesley Hardin ignored both sides until Wild Bill pronounced him a dangerous man with that brace of illegal pistols swinging at his slender hips, and tried to disarm him. That was when the marshal found himself looking down the two barrels and compelled to drop his arms while the Texans standing around let out a Rebel yell.
But young Wes knew better than to push his luck too far. He hit for the open country, doing a little killing on the way out, some said, but apparently the dead man was only a Mex, a southerner, and demanded no action from the law.
Now, however, Marshal Hickok had to get the owners of the Bull's Head out of town or eat dirt before all the cow country, particularly after he had been letting his young admirers brag around that their Wild Bill had killed forty-three men since the day, ten years ago, when he shot down McCanles up in Nebraska. Thompson went to visit his wife, who had apparently been hurt by a runaway in Kansas City, and left Coe to manage the place. With Ben gone and not many Texans around, Hickok finally shot Phil Coe— over a girl, some tried to say. Others told other stories. One was that Coe had joined some straggling Texans in a last night of roistering around the saloons and dance halls before they started home next morning. One of them fired a shot at a dog that ran out of the dark and tried to bite them as they turned toward the Alamo. For once Phil Coe was carrying a pistol and Hickok saw his chance. He ran around to the back door and confronted the Texans in the bright light of the Alamo's open front doors, demanding "Who fired that shot?"