by Judd Cole
Bill grinned. “That’s nothing. I knew a fat-ass Sioux called All Behind Him.”
Again all three men laughed, as friendly as barracks mates. But Hickok was fooled by none of it. Hell, only hours earlier these “affable” men had murdered Earl Beckman.
Besides, there was still the problem of Merrill Labun. He shared a nearby table with several other security men. Though he still favored his wounded side, he was recovering fully from the wound.
In theory, Bill realized, Labun was his subordinate now. And so far he had played his part willingly—too willingly, it seemed to Bill. Deferential to the point of servility. But Hickok didn’t trust it.
He recalled something Deke told him a few days ago: I have Earl’s desk searched. Labun must be the secret dirt worker. He answered directly to Deke Stratton only—Bill was sure of that.
Finally Hickok was right where he wanted to be: At the center of the swindle at Harney’s Hellhole. The big question now was, how the hell would he get out of it alive?
Chapter Twelve
“But why’d you have to trust Cassie with a note?” Josh argued as their rented buggy rolled out of Deadwood at a brisk clip.
“Simple,” Bill assured him, shaking the reins to keep the gray gelding at a trot. “Because Deke Stratton trusts her, too. Thinks she’s as loyal as a lapdog. It’s one of his few blind spots—he under rates Cassie’s independence.
“Maybe,” Josh suggested, “you just overrate her loyalty to you.”
“You writers created that monster, kid, not me. Used your slick way with words to build me up into a living legend. Now, when I draw on that legend, you complain? I’d wager none of you will shed a tear when your damned ‘gunfighter mystique’ gets me shot in the back by trophy hunters.”
Josh felt heat flood his face. Hickok’s mildly spoken indictment was “spot on,” as Pinkerton liked to say. I’m the hypocrite here, Josh thought, not Bill.
However, Hickok allowed no man who sided him on the trail any luxury to fret for long.
“Even with the top up,” he explained, “we ain’t safe. I ain’t had much time yet to study the work assignments Beckman gave his men. But I did see he’s got two outriders posted from sunset to sunrise. All they do is scout the fringes of town. You watch the right side of the trail close.”
Bill wore both Colts and his shell belt under an old hopsack work coat. The scattergun lay on the floorboards under both men’s legs.
Josh followed orders and watched close. But Wild Bill’s remark about Beckman’s work assignments had intrigued the reporter.
“Do you know which men are actually the Regulators?”
“No list by that name,” Bill admitted. “Here, take these.”
Hickok handed the reins to Josh while he shucked the wrapper off a cheroot, then fought the wind for a light. When he had his cigar puffing just right, Bill took the reins back.
“No actual list,” he repeated. “But there’s about a dozen men, Labun included, who are on a list for ‘special duty’ pay. And maybe it’s just coincidence, but several of the men, I’ve noticed, have heavy Southern accents.”
“Coincidence my sweet aunt. It makes perfect sense. Beckman was a hold-out rebel, refused to surrender the Southern cause. So what makes more sense, to him, than to draw his Regulators from the ranks of Southern night riders? The same men who are trying to bring down Reconstruction and the Negroes.”
“Now you’re whistling, kid. That’s about how I see it, too. And that’s why we’ve got to get word to Coyote Boy and his people. Pressure’s on the bosses at Harney’s Hellhole.”
“Pressure? You mean it’s time for them to put up or shut up, right? They’ve cried ‘Indian’ so long that now they have to take action against them?”
“The way you say, Longfellow. Their big idea is to arrest Coyote Boy and try him for theft and murder in the white man’s court. Make an example of him to the others. Way I see it? They mean to stop their illegal operation now. Or maybe alter it. So this’ll make it look like they caught their man.”
“Man alive, Bill! That’s got to be it! No Indian yet has ever been acquitted in a white court. They’ll hang Coyote Boy.”
“Naw,” Bill said confidently. “Won’t get that far. We’re going to help Coyote Boy turn the tables on ’em.”
Bill hushed the lad’s eager questions by raising a hand. Hickok reined in the gray and they sat there in the silvery moonlight bathing the old stage road.
“Heard a puma,” he finally said. “But it’s just a kill cry, not a warning. Gee up!”
They rolled forward again as Josh began a rapid-fire string of questions.
“You know how I hate saying things twice,” Bill cut him off. “Just listen when I palaver with Coyote Boy, and you’ll get all the answers you need. Right now, shut your gob and stay alert. It ain’t just Regulators who might plug us—the Sioux keep night guards out, too.”
~*~
Except when at war, most Plains Indians were notoriously late sleepers. Unlike white man’s villages, where residents went to sleep soon after sunset, Indian summer camps stayed lively well into the night. Thus, many of the Copper Mountain Sioux were still awake when the camp dogs began a furious racket of barking and growling.
Bill fought to control the horse as the skinny, mean-tempered curs began nipping at its legs. He drove into camp slowly, aiming for the huge fire at the center of the camp clearing. He had to swerve around huge wooden racks set up for smoking fish.
“Coyote Boy!” Hickok called out as he wrapped the reins around the brake handle. “We come with open hands to share news with you.”
The sub chief stood out in his bone breastplate. He lowered his rifle when he recognized the visitors.
“Ice Shaman! Come and smoke the common pipe with us.”
Bill sighed stoically. He knew the strict Indian custom when in camp, and Bill disliked the smoking ritual. Indians these days smoked foul tobacco, having abandoned their own kinnikinnick.
So first all three men—Bill, Josh, and Coyote Boy—smoked to the four directions while discussing trivial matters. Josh did a good job of not choking on the strong Mexican tobacco; later, however, he would vomit on the trip back to town.
Only when Coyote Boy finally set the pipe down on the ground could Bill turn to urgent topics.
Quickly he explained that the miners were planning a raid on the camp. But the chief’s angry face turned sly when he learned that Hickok himself was to lead the raid.
“When?” Coyote Boy demanded.
“Soon. When the Dog Star is bright in the north sky, bright as the Pole Star.”
The Lakota leader nodded, understanding the attack would come in about five sleeps.
“Since the murder of he who is gone,” he said, avoiding McNulty’s name after dark because a spirit might answer his name, “we have been punished by the Indian Bureau back East. No meat, no coffee, no new blankets for the short white days that will soon be upon us. Some of the younger bucks, as you can see, are preparing for war.”
The visitors could indeed see signs of this. Most of the males in their fighting prime had cast off their white men’s garments. Now they wore clouts, elk skin moccasins, and beaded leather shirts. A few of the warriors were busy making arrow shafts from dead pine and hardening the points in fire.
Bill spotted a few stolen Army mules with the U.S. brand on their hips.
“Those will be slaughtered and eaten,” Coyote Boy explained, “to replace the beef and pork the hair-faces have taken from us.”
“Only fair,” Hickok conceded. “What isn’t fair is the mismatch in weapons. The Regulators have repeating rifles. Your arrows are indeed deadly. But they are difficult to make, very time-consuming—look how few you have. What, perhaps five or six for each warrior? Coyote Boy, you know these white dogs will easily carry two hundred rounds each man.”
Coyote Boy admitted this, listening intently.
“You have some rifles,” Hickok went on, “but only a few. A
nd like your German piece, most of them are old percussion weapons. Do you have powder and lead, bullet molds?”
Coyote Boy shook his head. “We try, but the treaty is strict and we are forced to trade with white-eyes thieves. The powder we do have is old and undependable.”
“I figured as much,” Hickok assured the warrior. “So I’m taking care of that problem. When the Regulators attack, your men will be able to match their fire sticks with your own.”
Josh listened intently while Bill explained his new plan. As security chief, he could come and go more freely. In the next couple of days, Bill would ride to the telegraph office at Lead. Pinkerton would be instructed to ship a crate of fifteen new Winchester ’72s, as well as fifty .44 shells per rifle.
“Your typical white skin soldier,” Bill remarked, “would scoff at going into battle with only fifty rounds. But a Lakota warrior is a bullet hoarder.”
Coyote Boy grinned and nodded. “If possible, we will kill a few of these Regulators with rocks. They do not deserve bullets.”
“One way or the other, they need killing,” Bill agreed heartily. “Take their hair, too. That will unnerve the survivors, for these are cowards, not men. The ones who survive this raid will not be free long—I mean to lock them up.”
~*~
They were ten minutes from the outskirts of Deadwood when a rifle blast spooked the gray. The slug ripped through the canvas top of the buggy, so close to Bill’s ear he heard a hornet-buzzing sound.
“Halt!” a male voice commanded from less than twenty yards away. “Keep going and we’ll kill your horse—for starters.”
“Haw!” Bill sang out, drawing tight rein and engaging the wheel brake.
Tangled blackberry bushes and small willow trees crowded the road. They heard someone approaching from both sides. Two shadowy figures emerged into the road, rifles at the ready.
“Toss out your weapons,” one of them commanded in a rough voice. “Try any parlor tricks, you’ll be walking with your ancestors.”
“I can’t give you my gun, sir,” Bill said in a mild, almost bookish voice. “But you’re most welcome to a couple of the bullets.”
Josh flinched hard when Hickok, gun hand hidden under his hopsack coat, fired just twice: One bullet for each man. Two clean head shots. Hickok swore by a brain shot, the only “guaranteed kill” with one bullet. Even a slug to the heart was not always fatal.
The buggy rocked as Bill hopped down and examined each man’s face close in the cheese-colored moonlight.
“Both security men for the mine,” he called up to Josh. “Though no badges on them now. Looks like I just killed Earl’s outriders, kid. We best high tail it out of here.”
“Deke won’t like this,” Josh fretted as Bill grabbed the whip from its socket and laid a few licks across the gelding’s rump.
Josh’s remark reminded Hickok of the three Pinkerton men murdered by these cutthroats. Bill had known two of them, even served in the war with one. All three left widows and orphans.
“Too damn bad what Stratton don’t like,” Bill replied. “He won’t like it, but he’ll have to eat it. And that murdering, thieving son of a bitch will eat plenty more before J. B. Hickok is done dishing it out.”
~*~
“Boys,” Deke Stratton said, “maybe we’ve all been too damn reckless lately, me more than anyone. I was slow to understand how fast things are changing out here. Hell, the West is closing down quick. The very progress that made us rich will now lock us up for our troubles.”
Deke, Keith Morgan, and Merrill Labun shared Deke’s office. He had called this emergency meeting—minus Ben Lofley at the other men’s insistence. Deke wanted to discuss last night’s killings of Pete Helzer and Dick Skeels out on the old stage road to Lead.
“Changing too fast,” Stratton went on. Dark pouches of exhaustion smudged the skin under his eyes. The others had never heard him ramble on like this, and they didn’t like it. “They’re stringing this new devil wire all over the open ranges now.”
“Boss,” Labun said impatiently.
“And Christ, boys! Just last week, hanh? I read in Leslie’s Weekly how this new Lightning Train just made it from New York City to San Francisco in three and a half days. Oh yes, we’ve all been too damned shortsighted.”
“Deke,” Morgan cut in sharply, “this ain’t no time for philosophy. It wasn’t us being reckless that laid out Petey and Dick. It was two clean shots to the head.”
“Damn straight,” Labun said. “And I’d sure’s hell like to know where Ben Lofley was when them slugs was fired.”
“Always harping on Lofley,” Deke snapped. “What proof have you got against him?”
“What proof have you got for him?” Keith answered in Labun’s place.
“One thing against him,” Labun suggested, “is how he seems pretty tight with that new clerk, Charlie Mumford.”
“That’s right,” Morgan took it up, nodding his big, balding head. “Didn’t those two hire on at the same time?”
“How would I know?” Deke snapped. “More or less the same time, I’d guess.”
“What I still don’t get,” Labun complained, “is why Lofley got the security chief’s job ’steada me? He’s prac’ly a stranger.”
Deke sighed deeply, then closed his eyes to massage the eyeballs with his thumbs.
“Merrill,” he said quietly, “we’ve gone round and round on this before. You’ve got a more important job as my personal security man. I need you poking around behind the scenes.”
“Well sure, but I could do both them jobs,” Labun protested.
“As I recall,” Deke pointed out, losing patience now, “Brennan O’Riley whipped your butt last year. And Lofley whipped his. Now shut your damn mouth, you whining female. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
Deke scooted his chair back and stood up, pacing in front of the huge map behind his desk. “Lofley will lead the raid on the Sioux in just a few days. He has orders to arrest—or at least kill— Coyote Boy. Technically, of course, the raid’s illegal. Only federals can mount force against a reservation. But with no lawman there to witness it, there’ll be no charges.”
“But ain’t this a stupid move?” Labun demanded. “Who do we blame the next heist on?”
“We don’t blame it on anyone,” Deke explained. “Because there won’t be another heist. If and when the plan starts up again, we modify the scam somehow. Leave the Indians out of it.”
Labun, still pouting, said nothing. But Keith Morgan approved Stratton’s words with a hearty nod.
“Deke’s making horse sense now,” he said. “We can still get rich, but well have to be more ... whatchacallit, discreet. What’s worrying me still is all this wondering if maybe we’re too late? Pinkerton gave an interview to the newspapers. He swears to prosecute whoever killed his men.”
“Yes,” Deke said quietly, “I saw that, too. At any rate, the killer he means would be Merrill here.”
Labun flushed beet red. “Yeah, and who gave the order?”
Deke ended the confrontation with a careless wave.
“Never mind,” he told both men, nodding toward the map. It showed every shaft, tunnel, and stope in Harney’s Hellhole.
“As our last resort,” Deke reminded the others, “we’ve still got the Inner Sanctum. An entire stope, the size of a big ballroom, that everyone believes to be permanently closed off. Remember, boys, it’s well stocked for any emergency. We can hide there up to thirty days, even more, then just sneak off at will.”
Deke turned from the map to look at Morgan. “Keith? How long would it take you to activate those charges? They’re all in place now.”
The mine captain heaved himself out of his chair and moved close to the map.
“Hell, I can have galvanic plungers hooked up in about twenty minutes,” he boasted. “The nitro charges are planted here at the bottom of the lift shaft; here in the middle of the first tunnel; and here in the chamber itself. Only the escape shaft isn’t mined.”
“How much control do we have over the charges?”
“They’re set up with a series lead,” Morgan replied. “They can be detonated behind us, one by one, as we escape. Or the whole caboodle at once.”
“Yeah, well, all that’s just peachy,” Labun cut in. “If we live long enough to get down there. I still think you made a mistake, boss, in killing Earl to trust Ben Lofley.”
“Maybe so,” Deke admitted calmly. “If so, the mistake can be corrected. The first solid sign I see that Lofley is a plant, I’ll kill him myself.”
Chapter Thirteen
Merrill Labun spurred his horse up beside Wild Bill’s.
“Be a good idea to send out flankers, wouldn’t it?” Labun suggested. “Copper Mountain’s only a few miles farther now. If they’ve found out we’re coming, could be they’ll attack our flanks.”
“Usually flankers are good battle strategy at night,” Bill conceded. “If it was going to be a real fight, I mean, against white men trained in battle tactics.”
“I take your drift. Hell, you’re right, chief. This’ll be more like shootin’ fish in a barrel than riding into battle.”
Labun dropped back into formation. Replacements had quickly been named for the two outriders killed recently. Twelve men, counting Labun, formed a column of files behind their leader. They wore dark clothing and most had tied bandannas across their faces. Their rifles were already out of the saddle boots, butt plates resting on each man’s thigh.
Bill knew he dare not ride his strawberry roan. That horse had been with him for two years now, and had become part of the Wild Bill sensation created by Josh and other writers. Hickok was already in danger of being recognized. Since Joshua obviously couldn’t come along this time, Bill had volunteered his line back dun for the campaign.
By now, Hickok hoped, the Sioux should be ready to host a lively reception. Bill had sent Josh to Lead last Saturday afternoon to pick up the rifles and ammo. The kid had delivered the crates on his way back to Deadwood.
Bill also hoped that, by now, every warrior had fired a few rounds in his new Winchester repeater, both to set battle sights and learn the workings of the superb Winchester ’72—a weapon Bill rated right up there with a Studebaker wagon when it came to superior workmanship.