by Judd Cole
“I’m not going down there to kill them—this time,” Bill assured him. “But first of all, we have to prove they are down there. And I’ve got to reconnoiter the situation. Until we know where those charges are and disarm them, nobody’ll have a snowball’s chance.”
Hickok went to the tool crib and requisitioned several coils of brand-new hemp rope. But when they lowered it into the shaft, only about seventy feet were needed to reach bottom.
Bill secured one end of the rope through a knot hole in the wooden cover with a strong double half-hitch knot.
“You stand on this to give it extra weight,” Bill told him. “Plus you’ll feel signals easy. When I reach bottom, I’ll tug on the rope hard so you’ll know. I shouldn’t be too long. This trip is just a reconnoiter.”
Josh wasn’t too reassured. Bill had a way of deceiving himself with words—the look on his face said “showdown,” to Josh.
Josh said, “What if... I mean, what do I do if you don’t come up?”
Bill flashed his toothy grin. “You’re a famous man of words, ain’tcha? Deliver a fine eulogy at my funeral.”
~*~
The climb down was easier than Bill expected. But he quickly realized that was by design: the collaborators had dug plenty of footholds into the side. Bill was able to get down without keeping much of his weight on his arms. Unfortunately, very little overhead light penetrated to the bottom. Nor could Hickok risk bringing a light down here.
Bill gave the rope a few tugs so Josh would know he reached bottom. He scratched a phosphor to life and immediately spotted it: a nitro pack set to blow this shaft. Bill recognized the standard government-issue two-pound block of partially stabilized nitro in a yellow, wax like base.
It was a mere few seconds’ work to disarm the bomb by ripping the blasting cap and detonator wire off it. However, Bill knew volatile nitro still posed a danger—a sharp concussion, for example, could detonate it. So he took a few minutes to cover it good in a nest of rocks.
That explosive, Bill realized, had been wired in a series—other charges were also connected to this leadwire.
He listened for a long time, but heard nothing except his heart pounding in his ears. Wild Bill carefully groped his way down the dim shaft into the even darker main tunnel. The stope, he remembered from the map, lay about thirty yards dead ahead. A lit match now might easily be spotted. It was reasonable to expect guards at some point. So Bill inched his way forward in total darkness, hands following the detonation wire.
At one point, Bill thought he heard a scraping noise somewhere behind him. He dropped, whirled, had a .44 leveled almost in a heartbeat. But he almost laughed out loud at the useless vigilance—Christ, he couldn’t see two feet beyond his nose anyway!
Still, the feeling persisted that someone was on his back-trail. Only the sudden discovery of the second nitro pack took Bill’s mind off the possibility he was being followed.
Good spot for the second explosion—must be about halfway to the stope, Bill figured. This could seal the tunnel and perhaps kill anyone in it.
Again, working in darkness black as new tar, Bill slid the blasting cap out of its well and tore loose the wire, disarming the bomb. This one, too, he secured in a solid nest of rocks.
Should be only one more, he told himself. And that will probably be in the stope itself.
All right, so why not retreat now? The kid was right—the odds were insane. And Hickok was definitely scared. Hell, the inside of his mouth felt like cotton. This, he realized now, was the true “hellhole” around here.
But stopping now felt wrong somehow in a way he couldn’t shape with words. Like a wolverine unleashed, he wanted only to close for the kill. To the gambler in Hickok, it just made sense to keep going while he was on a roll. So he did.
By now his eyes had adjusted better to the inky depths. Though he could still make out little that was right around him, Bill now detected faint light ahead, coming, no doubt, from the open stope.
He continued carefully forward, both guns drawn and cocked. Again, when he stopped to listen, Bill thought he heard breathing noises behind him.
“Joshua?” he asked the darkness in a whisper. But the empty silence mocked him.
Pulse throbbing in his ears, Bill resumed his forward motion. Gradually he drew closer to the illuminated stope. When still about ten yards from the opening, Bill finally spotted proof his guess was right: Deke Stratton, dressed in range clothes instead of his usual suit.
He was pacing back and forth in the middle of the lantern-lit stope. Bill saw what he was reading and realized they must be sending a man up into town. It was a copy of the Rapid City Register, Catching up on the latest news about his mystery disappearance, Bill surmised.
From this angle Bill could spot none of the others. But he heard their voices now and then. Deke was wearing a sidearm, and Bill assumed the rest were armed and ready, too.
I can’t get the drop on all of them, Bill decided. Especially with no chance to spot my targets first.
He decided, with reluctance, to go back topside and figure his next play. But he also decided to move just a little farther forward to see if he could spot the final explosive charge.
Wild Bill’s only mistake was underestimating Boomer Morgan’s ingenuity. Bill didn’t feel the very slight pressure of the tripwire until it was too late. With a popping foosh sound, the fulminate of mercury charge—the same type used by photographers for illumination—exploded, bathing the tunnel in intense white light.
Morgan had rigged the illumination charge to last longer than a photo flash. Its brilliant light revealed the lethal trap waiting for Bill: four men armed with rifles waited in the darkness, two on each side of the entrance to the stope.
In less time than a heartbeat, Bill saw it clear: even he could not plug all four. Not when they were ready and aiming at him. Then, in that same millisecond of wordless realization, Bill felt a shock of recognition. Calamity Jane stood on his left, siding him with her big Smith & Wesson already out.
She spat out the gunfighter’s lingo curt and clear: “You plug noon to six, Bill!”
Hickok understood instantly that he was to kill the men on the right; Jane would target the left. The intense burst of gunfire made a hammering, echoing racket in that underground chamber. In two seconds it was history. All four men lay dead or dying, not one of them getting off a round in the face of these two superb shootists.
Moments after the four guards were killed, the fulminate burned out. Bill and Jane, blinded now, were left in the dark with their vision ruined.
They could only function in light. So Bill made a split-second decision and dove through the entrance of the stope. He tucked and rolled as a withering hail of gunfire greeted him. Merrill Labun and the remaining Regulators kept him pinned down while Deke and Keith Morgan ran toward a rope ladder on the far side.
Their escape hatch, Bill realized even as bullets whanged around his head. Jane dove in behind him and lay prone on the floor beside him.
“You fool, Bill!” she yelled at him even as she dropped a Regulator. “You’re bound and goldang determined to die in Deadwood, ain’tcher?”
Bad as things were, they quickly turned desperate. Jane’s six-shooter clicked, empty, and Bill was down to his last three rounds in one gun. He cast a desperate eye around the chamber and spotted it, right in the center: a canvas nitro pack.
“Pull back!” he shouted to Jane. “Fire in the hole!”
Bill scooted quickly back himself. But he stopped just past the opening. With rock dust flying in his eyes from enemy fire, Bill sent a quick snap-shot into the nitro pack.
He wasn’t ready for it. The resulting explosion left his skull ringing for several minutes. Rock shards pelted him and Jane, opening tiny cuts all over their faces. But when the dust finally cleared, 13-C had finally become a “closed stope”—and a funeral vault for Stratton and his criminal cohorts.
“You okay, Jane?” Bill called out.
“Damn y
ou, I’ll live! But if you don’t fight shy of Deadwood, Bill Hickok, it’s going to kill both of us.”
“Lady, I owe you,” Hickok said, instantly regretting that he said it.
“You shorely do, good-lookin’,” Jane agreed as she climbed out of the bomb rubble. “You shorely do.”
~*~
Wild Bill Hickok took Jane’s advice and got the hell out of Deadwood in a hurry. In fact, he and Joshua sneaked out of town that very night like two thieves in the dark.
But it wasn’t bullets Bill most feared. Jane had gone on one of her wild benders, getting so drunk she shot out every window in town like a cowboy at end of drive. And once she had a skinful of rot-gut whiskey, her horniness was legendary. So Hickok, the most feared man in America, lit out for Denver with his tail tucked between his legs.
At the end of their first day on the trail, the two companions made a meat camp beside the huge reservoir between Gilette and Sundance, Wyoming. The rugged Black Hills lay behind them now, dark humps on the fading horizon. Nothing but the wide-open expanse of Thunder Basin lay before them now.
“It’s good you missed Jane,” Josh commented as the two men cooked fresh trout in a fire pit. “But too bad you missed Cassie.”
Bill nodded, smiling in the fire-reddened shadows. The faro dealer had slipped out of town herself, realizing that Stratton’s downfall changed things—her wagon was no longer hitched to a star. But Josh didn’t realize she’d sent one final perfumed note to Bill:
Dear Mr. Hickok,
Obviously you won’t be needing that deposition from me after all. I’m rich enough to go back overseas to live. But first I’d like to visit Denver for awhile. Look me up at the Crystal Palace Hotel—if you’re interested. We’ll have more than fifteen minutes next time. I promise.
C.S.J.
“You think the Sioux at Copper Mountain will be cleared now?” Josh asked.
Bill shrugged one shoulder. “Pinkerton knows some of the head hounds in politics. I’d wager he can at least get their full rations restored. I’m guessing they’ll come out all right this time. But the red man’s days are numbered, just like the buffalo’s—one will go down with the other. And the gunfighters with ’em,” Bill added in a burst of candor that made him scowl.
“By now,” Josh teased, “Jane must know you’re gone. She’ll be hot on your trail before long.”
Bill felt a shiver move down his spine. But he also couldn’t deny that, once again, she’d pulled his bacon out of the fire.
“That woman’s ugly as proud flesh,” Bill said, “and stinks like a bear’s den. But I’m beholden to
her, kid, like it or no. I truly am.”
“Yeah, well, I talked to your landlady Elsie,” Josh said slyly. “She brought up her notion that Wild Bill Hickok is secretly a gal-boy. Now, seems to me Calamity Jane is a boy-gal. So maybe Jane’s right, after all?”
“Right about what?”
“Maybe you do complete her being?”
Bill’s scowl etched itself deeper as he rolled into his blankets. “Know what, kid? Your mouth runs like a whippoorwill’s ass. G’night, damn you.”
Bill was tumbling over the threshold of sleep when Josh’s voice jarred him awake.
“Bill?”
“What, damn it?”
“You may be scared stiff of Calamity Jane. But you’re the bravest man I’ve ever known. It ain’t just us writers, Wild Bill. You really are a legend.”
Bill yawned and took one final look at the brilliant, star-spangled sky.
“I am, ain’t I?” he said, accepting the flattery with no effort at all.
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