by Bill Brooks
“We love you, Papa,” they said in unison.
“I love you too, ladies. Papa will always love you.”
And when he rose and went and put on his heavy mackinaw coat and his large beaver sombrero, they clung to him, not wanting him to go away and leave them again.
“Mama says you’re always gone and have itchy feet and never will settle down,” Arta pleaded.
“You pay no attention to your mama,” Billy said, looking back toward the stairs that led up to the bedroom. “Now let me go, ladies, I’ve important matters to attend to in town. And when I return, I’ll bring you each a surprise.”
They stood in the door and watched him go out across the yard to the barn, and the air was cold enough they could see their breaths and see his too.
Louisa came up behind them and told them to shut the door. “Honestly,” she said in a disturbed way. “You girls act as though you were born in a barn.” They all giggled and said, “Yes’m,” and ran off.
Louisa watched through the window as her forever-restless husband came out of the barn astride his big white horse and turned its head toward town. She still felt a little tired from last night’s adventure. She smiled in spite of everything and went and ate an underdone biscuit and washed it down with some of the paltry-tasting coffee.
“I come to get my skull read,” Billy said to Bartlebee Bone.
“Well, sit right in that chair and I’ll read it.”
“You ain’t going to ask me why I want it read?”
“No, that’s your business. Now, take off that big Mexican hat or I won’t be able to read very much.”
Billy took his sombrero off and hung it on a hat tree in the corner and climbed up into the barber’s chair that had once been a tool of Bartlebee Bone’s former profession.
“Nice chair,” Billy said, settling in.
“I cut Clay Allison’s hair in that very chair,” Bartlebee said, taking a pair of calipers out of a drawer.
“The gunfighter?”
“You could call him that, most just called him a homicidal maniac that would shoot a sleeping man as quick as he would one that was awake. Saw him ride into Mobeetie once buck-naked on the back of a lop-eared mule. Damnedest man I ever met.”
“Did you ever read his skull?”
“Just once when I was cutting his hair, only he didn’t know I was reading it—it was while I was still perfecting the art and needed the practice.”
“What’d you come to conclude?”
“That he was crazy as a crab in a whore’s nightgown.”
“This before or after he rode in naked on a mule?”
“Before.”
“Well, I can tell you with all certainty, I’d never ride into any town in this whole country without my clothes on, not even for all the tea in Chiny.”
“Please hold still, if you don’t mind,” Bartlebee said as he began to take measurements with the calipers.
“The points on them things is a bit sharp,” Billy said.
“Hold still.”
Billy held as still as he could manage while Bartlebee Bone read his skull, jotting down things in a small book as he went, pressing his fingertips here and there all over Billy’s scalp. Finally he finished.
“What’s the verdict?” Billy said.
“Well, according to my calculations you have a great propensity for wanting to be liked and liking others. You’re somewhat more prone to combativeness than the average man, and you are given over to grand ideas but shy away from domesticity. You fear little, hope for much.”
“What’s all that mean in general terms?”
“That you are a dreamer.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s the gist of it. I mean, I’ll complete my findings in greater detail and provide you with a thorough charting, but in a nutshell, that is the stuff you are made of, Mr. Cody.”
“I was sort of hoping for a look into the future.”
“I don’t do futures. You want futures you’d best go see Dora Hand, the palm reader.”
“Palm reader? Why, I thought old Dora was a prostitute over to the Yellow Dog?”
“Not anymore. She’s given up that particular profession and has taken up the art of palm reading.”
“Where’s she set up shop?”
“Keeps an apartment above the drugstore.”
“Above the drugstore, huh?”
“My charge is three dollars.”
“Sorta steep for what little I learned.”
“Dora charges less for reading palms, I’m sure.”
Billy dug the money out of his pocket and handed it to the phrenologist and went out almost forgetting his hat. He turned back and plunked it on his head and his head didn’t feel any different having been read by Bartlebee than it did that morning when he got up and combed his hair.
Billy thought he’d better stop by the hotel and check on Yankee Judd and White Eye Anderson to see how they were making out with getting the supplies for the hunting party. Then he would stop by the telegrapher’s and see if there was any new word from Ned Buntline as to the exact date of the hunting party’s arrival. He hoped too that Buck Taylor would show up soon, as well as Jane Nebraska. Well, he wasn’t so sure about Jane Nebraska. A woman so lust-starved as Jane might prove his undoing.
Snow was starting to melt under the warm sun and here and there dripped from overhangs into barrels, and where it melted in the streets it turned them muddy.
Billy met up with Yankee Judd and White Eye coming out of the hotel.
“How you boys making out on that list?”
“Got near everything but the stoves,” White Eye said.
“We’ll need stoves,” Billy said. “This time of year the prairies get mighty cold at night.”
“Hardware man said they was a load due in any day from Omaha,” Yankee said.
“Everything else in order?”
“Just about,” White Eye said.
“Good, good. You ain’t seen nothing of Buck, have you?”
“No, sir, we sure ain’t. But Jane rolled in just about an hour ago and gave us a list of foodstuffs she’d need. You want us to get what’s on her list, charge it to you?”
“Yes. Where’s she staying?”
The men shrugged. “Don’t know and she didn’t say, but she had a peculiar look in her eyes.”
“Well, I aim to get on down the street,” Billy said. “If she asks after me, tell her you ain’t seen me yet today and that I’ll meet up with her later on.”
“Where you headed?” White Eye said.
“Down this street here,” Billy said, not wanting to say where he was going.
White Eye and Yankee Judd just stood there without saying anything, each curious as to Billy’s secretiveness. Billy went on down the street to Dora Hand’s apartment up above the drugstore, climbed the stairs to a landing, and knocked on her door.
Billy hadn’t seen Dora in perhaps a year, the last time Wild Bill stopped in on his way up to Cheyenne—him and Colorado Charley Utter. Dora was working at the Yellow Dog at the time and though Billy never hired her services, he did buy her a drink or three back in those days. She had a reputation as one of the best prostitutes in North Platte and mostly cowboys who paid for her time went away more than a little happy.
“Why, heavens, look what the cats drug in.”
“Dora,” Billy said, removing his sombrero. “You mind I come in?”
“Just to let you know, I ain’t in the whore business no more, Bill. I found peace with the Lord. And you ought to be half ashamed, a married man like yourself.”
“I didn’t come here for no whore business,” Billy said. “I come to get my palm read. Bartlebee Bone said you was a palm reader now and could foretell futures. That’s why I come. I’m perfectly happy with my Lulu, as far as that other is concerned. I, much like yourself, have given up the whore business…”
Dora allowed Billy in to her apartment, ducking behind a dressing screen to put on something a l
ittle less revealing than the pink kimono she was wearing. Once reemerged she sat down at a small table and told Billy to do so likewise and he sat across from her and extended his right hand for her to read.
She took hold of it and traced lines with her forefinger, muttering as she went, seeing things he could only imagine.
“What is it exactly about the future you want to know?” she asked.
“I am most interested in how long I got to live,” he said.
She traced a line in his palm that went from thumb to forefinger.
“Hmmm…” she said.
“What is it, Dora?”
“Can’t say with certainty, but you could be in some terrible danger, Bill.”
He remembered yesterday, the bullet that almost smashed his melon.
Dora traced another line that ran partway across his palm but was broken in half, intersected by another line.
“This is not good,” she said.
“Plain lingo,” he said.
“Could be you ain’t going to last very long.”
“How long?”
“Hard to say, but there is danger everywhere I look. Let me see your other hand.”
He showed it to her. She sighed.
“I’d say you need to put your affairs in order,” she said.
“That’s it, then?”
“Well, there is a chance you could live to be a very old man…see this line here, it’s your life line and it shows longevity. I just don’t know.”
“What if you were me, what would you do?”
“I’d hide out for a while, someplace safe.”
“I can’t,” he said.
“You oughter.”
“Somebody took a potshot at me yesterday,” he said.
“I ain’t surprised.”
“Hell’s bells.”
“I’m God-fearing now, Billy, I’d appreciate you not swearing.”
“Then I know what I got to do.”
“It’s fifty cents per hand, Bill, the reading is.”
Billy gave her a dollar, then left and went to the telegraph office and sent a wire to Pinkerton’s Detective Agency in Chicago—the same ones that had sent a man to protect Wild Bill. What was good enough for Wild Bill sure as hell was good enough for him. Just to see him through until the hunt was finished and he was headed east again with his new combination. What was that fellow’s name he’d met up in Cheyenne? It come to him just as he opened the door to the telegraph office:
Teddy Blue.
That’s the man he wanted.
Chapter 7
Mysterious Dave Mather had not planned to murder Buffalo Billy Cody. It just worked out that way. Mysterious Dave had mental problems. It was in the late autumn that he first tried to kill Buffalo Bill across three hundred yards of freshly fallen snow. Mysterious Dave did not know that it was Buffalo Bill he tried to kill, nor would he have much cared.
Mysterious Dave’s mental problems began when he was a boy and drank standing ditch water one hot summer’s day and ended up with a brain fever that ruined his thinking. Before drinking the ditch water and getting brain fever, Dave was a simple charming boy who enjoyed all the usual pleasures of youth. It was only after the brain fever that he acquired the nickname of “Mysterious Dave” and began to engage in bizarre behavior. Dave would often forget where he was or where he’d been or what he was about to do right in the middle of doing it. And when he got old enough, he just got on an old plow horse one day and rode off and was never seen or heard from again by any member of his family.
Mysterious Dave had his good days and he had his bad days. He was never sure what sort of day he was going to have when he got up in the morning. And sometimes by the time he went to bed at night, he wasn’t sure what sort of day he’d just had.
Mysterious Dave tended to forget a lot and he couldn’t quite remember such things as when he had left Denver or Dodge City or Arkansas or Texas or any of the places he had ever been, or why he had left such places, or why he had been there in the first place.
Sometimes bits and pieces of memory would come to him at the oddest times. These bits and pieces were like little tintypes flashing in his brain: images of himself wearing a deputy marshal’s badge, or of him stealing horses, or shooting somebody in the face. Once he had an image of himself on his knees, tossing dice on a blanket with a group of Negro soldiers. And another time he saw himself frolicking in a water tank with several naked whores whose bosoms bobbed in the water.
But such memories would disappear almost as quickly and unexpectedly as they appeared, and he’d be left wondering if any of those things actually happened or if they were just dreams he’d had.
So it came to pass that on that particular fine October day, Mysterious Dave saw a man riding a high-stepping horse through the snow. Dave, resting as he was upon a ridge in a stand of willows, withdrew his Henry repeating rifle, having decided on the spur of the moment to empty, what looked to Dave even at such a distance, a mighty fancy silver-studded saddle.
He took careful aim.
But then the rider stopped and got off his horse beside a stringy black creek. Dave saw this as a sign of good fortune; it was much easier to shoot a man who was standing still than one who was moving. Dave took more careful aim but the feller walked about stamping his feet, adjusting the cinch strap on his saddle, and wouldn’t hardly stand still for a second.
Stand still, you son of a bitch.
Dave was a bundle of pure impatience, a jittery sort. His finger squeezed the trigger without his complete will.
The shot from the Henry sounded like a tree limb cracking under the weight of ice—a loud unpleasant sound that shattered the tranquil air. But there was too much working against Dave that late afternoon: wind had come up from the south, and shooting downhill instead of level, and the last bit of afternoon sun glancing off the snow causing his eyes to water.
The feller went down, all right, and Dave was congratulating himself on such a wonderful shot when the feller suddenly got back up. After a few long moments, the feller mounted up again and rode off in haste.
Dave was disappointed, of course. He’d put his mind on possessing that fancy saddle and the high-stepping horse, and whatever else of worth the feller might possess, including the big sombrero the feller wore. Dave often robbed the folks he made corpses of, though he hardly remembered doing such. Most corpses had on them a small amount of cash, a pocket watch, generally a knife and a pistol, as well as boots and hats that were often much better than those Dave wore.
Mysterious Dave determined he’d track the feller and eventually shoot him and acquire his possessions. Once he had his heart set on something it was hard for him to think otherwise.
He mounted his own horse and went riding down the ridge at a leisurely pace, staying far enough behind his quarry to not be seen. Mysterious Dave’s instincts were always good, even if his mind was not. Dave’s instincts were as good as a badger’s.
Soon enough, the sun fell beyond the horizon and the sky turned a black silver and before he knew it, Dave could see the dog star and the moon and a lot of other stars in the sky, as well. And way up ahead of him, he could see the shadow of a horse and rider crossing the field of snow just like in a dream he’d had a few nights earlier. Dave figured sooner or later the feller ahead of him would stop and make camp, and when he did Dave would sneak up and shoot him in his sleep. It was always easier to shoot a sleeping feller than it was one awake.
But the feller didn’t stop and pretty soon Dave could see the lights of a town in the distance. By now, Dave was having trouble remembering why he was following the feller. He remembered something about a fancy saddle, but the rest eluded him. And by the time he dismounted in front of WALLACE & TEAGUE’S BILLIARDS & SPORTSMAN’S CLUB his feet were numb with cold and his mind adrift. The light inside the window looked inviting and he went in and straight to the long oak bar, where several customers stood swallowing liquor and conversing with one another.
“Why
, I’ll have a beer,” Dave says to the bartender, a jolly feller in a white apron and paper collar. “Say, where is this place, anyhow?”
The bartender looked at Dave curiously as he poured the beer, then swiped the head off it with a wooden paddle.
“Ten cents,” the bartender says. “Why, this is North Platte, bub.”
Dave took his beer over by the potbelly stove glowing red as a cherry and had some other fellers sitting around it, some playing whist, and some watching some other fellers playing billiards at the tables.
“Why, this is a damn fine place to be on a cold night,” says he to the fellers.
Collectively, they see a stranger among their midst.
“It ain’t so bad,” says one.
“Oh, it ain’t, huh…”
Some shook their heads.
Dave drags a chair up close to the stove and sets his feet near it and watches the whist players and the billiard players. A fragment of a memory flashes through his thoughts: two fellers playing billiards; one suddenly stabs the other through the heart and kills him dead. Some of the dead feller’s blood splatters up on the green felt of the billiard table. The stabbing feller looks a lot like Dave hisself, but he can’t be sure.
Then he remembers the big hat the feller riding a fancy horse was wearing and says to the other fellers at large: “You boys know a feller what wears a big beaver hat and rides a high-stepping horse at has a silver-studded saddle from around these parts?”
Wary, one of them says, “Oh, you must mean Colonel Cody, what about him?”
“Colonel Cody, huh?”
“Buffalo Bill,” the feller says.
One of the fellers playing cards slaps a card down hard on the table and whoops like an Indian, causing Mysterious Dave to jump to his frozen feet and pull one of his pistols: a Colt Peacemaker with worn walnut grips and most the bluing rubbed off.
“What!”
The other fellers pause what they are doing and stare at Dave, who stares back.
“Nothing, mister,” the card slapper says. “I was just topping old Joe’s hand.”
Dave looks at ’em hard. Then looks down at the pistol in his hand. He isn’t sure why he is holding it.