by Judd Cole
“Then I believe I’ll wait, thank you.”
Anne smiled at her timid sister while the officer hustled on ahead to open the door for them. Both women moved a bit stiffly toward the station. Their bodies were aching and sore from the jolting coach. Even leather thoroughbraces hardly smoothed the rugged old Federal Road, once known as the Gila River Trace.
“I know this must all seem quite a shock after Boston,” Anne comforted the younger woman. “I realized that when I went back this time, honey. This is all so primitive and rude, isn’t it? But I can assure you, dear, Jim Paxton’s ranch is the most civilized place in this territory. Indoor plumbing, an icehouse, even a hydro spa.”
Connie took heart. “You know, Jim told me he’s even added a small theater off the library wing so we can present dramas. I won’t have to give up my acting!”
“Give it up! Nonsense, Jim swears he’ll do nothing to hide such a light as yours! And do you know? The black-marble fireplace mantels were all imported from Italy!”
Anne nattered on, trying to reassure her worried sister. Connie Emmerick’s stunning interpretations of Juliet and Desdemona and Lady Macbeth had earned her international acclaim. But like her older sister, she was an ambitious woman who respected Commerce as well as Art. She had to, for she required a vast fortune to fulfill her aesthetic goals.
Thus, she had come to remote Arizona in what amounted to an arranged marriage. Arizona cattle baron Jim Paxton was Governor Jacobs’s best friend and rumored to be the wealthiest man between the Rio and the Tetons. He was also an adoring follower of Connie’s art, having seen her act in several acclaimed productions.
The two women paused at the open door of the hovel. A bright ristra, a string of dried red peppers, hung beside the door. Flat corn tortillas baked in the homo nearby. Somebody within was complaining in rapid Spanish.
“I like new things,” Connie admitted. “But by degrees! This is all so foreign and queer. I feel as if we’ve ended up on the moon by mistake.”
She glanced to her right just in time to watch a yellow-gray coyote slink off through a dry wash, grinning at some sly secret she didn’t know.
Despite the wilting heat, the young actress’s cheeks still glowed like Roman Beauties.
“It’s all so … still and boring,” Connie added. “I suppose those nature lovers and that crowd enjoy it. But it lacks any culture or … excitement.”
“Boring? Careful,” Anne warned her. “We who live here prefer to call it the ‘sleepy Southwest.’ But don’t be deceived by first impressions, dear. Sometimes it can be far more exciting than one might wish.”
Connie cast one last, despairing glance around the desolate landscape. The only sound, in that moment, was the dusty twang of grasshoppers. At least, she supposed they were grasshoppers. God only knew, out here.
“If you say so, big sister,” she said doubtfully. “But so far, I don’t feel much like a bride. More like a little girl who wants to go back home.”
The four of them pressed on toward the east with a grim sense of purpose, knowing trackers would not be far behind them.
Their stolen hats protected their skulls. But treacherous desert dust devils pelted them with maddening frequency, driving irritating sand under their eyelids and swelling them shut.
“‘Em damn horses better be there,” Lorenzo Hanchon kept repeating.
“Look, they’ll be there,” Danford assured him confidently. “You bawl too damn much.”
“Bawl, my ass! We’ll never clear this desert without we got horses.”
“All your damn female talk,” Coyote said in his eerie monotone, “won’t make horses be where they ain’t.”
Lorenzo scowled but said nothing to this. He and his brother Willard wouldn’t admit it to Danford, but both of them feared and disliked Coyote. He was a strange one who spent so much time alone he didn’t think like other men—nor act like them. Trouble was, Danford clearly favored Coyote.
“Don’t matter nohow,” Danford announced triumphantly. “Look out past that low mesa, gents! There’s our horses!”
“Hot damn!” Willard tossed a handful of sand at his brother. “Satisfied now, calamity howler?”
“Just hold on,” Danford said when he and his men reached the edge of the jagged ravine where the horses stood grazing.
From here, Joshua Tree Station was clearly visible about a hundred yards farther on. Danford pointed at the waiting coach. The driver was busy unhitching the team so they could drink from a stone trough around to one side of the low building.
“Now, see, I didn’t expect no coach,” Danford said slowly, thinking more than conversing.
“So what?” Lorenzo retorted. He was already busy getting first pick of the horses. “It’s a way station, ain’t it?”
“That’s just a mail sack up topside,” Willard added. “From the mail-sorting deal they got at Fort Huachuca. We ain’t made nothing from stealing mail, remember? You open a hunnert envelopes for maybe ten dollars cash money, it’s—”
“I ain’t interested in the mail, you stupid fool.” Danford nodded as a young officer stepped outside of the building to tend to his own horse. “That means it’s carrying something besides mail. He ain’t in transit—he’s an escort.”
Lorenzo frowned, still not impressed. “What I say, we just grab leather and hightail it into Old Mex.”
“Slow down! We’ll dust hocks for Mex, all right,” Danford assured him. “But first we check out that coach.”
“We got what we need!” Lorenzo protested. “This ain’t none of our funerals.”
“It’ll be yours,” Danford assured him, “you don’t quit talking against me all the time. Coyote!”
“Yo!”
“You and Willard ain’t no whiners! You two close in behind that line of sand dunes over there. Me ‘n’ Lorenzo the Mouth will come up the other way behind that line of palo duro.”
Danford broke open his scattergun and checked the chambers.
“Coyote and Willie, you two get a tight bead on that driver. When you hear me plug the soldier, you do the same for the driver. Then hustle your butts ‘round back and cover the door. We don’t know who’s inside.”
The approach went off without a hitch. By the time Danford stepped out from behind the line of scrawny palo duro trees, he was within thirty feet of the soldier, .44 at the ready.
The officer had just loosed the bridle and dropped the bit on his big cavalry sorrel. He was leading it toward the corner of the adobe station when he abruptly spotted two scruffy, hard-looking men out of the corner of his eye.
Danford fired twice before the young soldier even cleared his holster. The first bullet only chipped his collarbone. But the second caught him dead center and slammed him against the hovel. A second later, Coyote’s shotgun roared and the drivers face melted in a hurtling wall of buckshot.
Lorenzo was indeed a complainer, but he always did his share of the dangerous work. A woman inside screamed when he came bustling through the front door, side arm blazing to clear a hole.
“It’s all clear!” he shouted a moment later to the rest outside. “Willard, you son of a bitch!” he added. “I want shares on that loot!”
True, even then Willard was going through the dead driver’s pockets. But Fargo Danford had found something much more interesting inside.
Two fine-looking, well-dressed women huddled together at one end of a long plank table. A stooped old Mexican woman, wearing a dark rebozo around her head, still stood beside the table, clay water jar in hand. An old man, probably her husband, stood near a smoking pot on the stove, ladle in hand.
“Well goddamn well,” Danford said slowly, still studying the two Anglo women. This was woman-scarce country. And these two ... he thought. Lookit all that velvet. And what it hid was no doubt velvet, too.
“Ain’t you two something?” he said in a low, husky voice. But it was loud and mean again when he added: “Senora! Knock up some grub, pronto! Comida, you savvy!”
�
��Si, senor. Momentito.”
Willard came stomping in, Coyote right behind him.
“Well, kiss my ass!” Willard exclaimed, seeing the women. “I want shares, too!”
“Gentlemen,” Anne Jacobs said bravely, “we are both expected soon in Yuma by two very powerful men. I am not making threats, only warning you. Any harm to us will cost you dearly.”
Coyote gave a quick, sharp bark of laughter at this.
“She’s a high-toned bitch, ain’t she?” Lorenzo said. “But I like the younger one. Think I’ll top ‘em both, make one watch the other get it.”
“Don’t touch me!” Connie protested, shying back from Coyote’s probing hand.
“Brash as a rented mule, ain’t she?” Lorenzo said. A second later, both women gasped in shock when Lorenzo slapped Connie hard enough to make her eyes water.
Coyote giggled like a child in school.
“Both you bitches,” Lorenzo said, “your tongues’re swinging way too loose. Got it? Best tighten ‘em up ‘fore I cut ‘em out and cure ‘em.”
“Just hold your water, boys,” Danford cut in.
He stared hard at the younger woman. “I’ll be hog-tied and earmarked if I ain’t seen that little gal’s pretty face somewheres. What’s your name, cupcake?”
One corner of Connie’s lower lip was already swollen. “Miss Constance Emmerick,” she replied with some difficulty. “Of Boston.”
“Well, kiss my ass!” Willard stared at his leader.
“It’s an actress, boss! Jim Paxton’s mail-order whore. I’ve heard the prison screws talking about it.”
Danford nodded. His eyes shifted to the older woman.
“If these two lookers ain’t sisters,” he said, “I’ll eat this flap hat. Which means thissen must be Anne Jacobs, am I right, sugar?”
“The governor’s woman?” Willard said, and Coyote began laughing so hard he had to sit down.
“That’s right,” Danford said. “No more hitting them, boys. Them ain’t faces to mess up.”
He looked at the Mexicans. “Snap it up with that grub, ah? De prisa, damnit!”
Danford turned to Coyote. “Climb up on the coach and keep watch. I’ll run you out some grub when it’s ready. We got to clear out ‘fore them trackers get here.”
“What about them?” Lorenzo demanded, staring at the frightened sisters. “We at least gonna take ‘em out back and have a little fun before we leave?”
Danford shook his head. “You see here, that’s why I run this gang. On account you’re so damn thick-skull stupid, Lorenzo. We’re taking our fun with us. You think John Jacobs and Jim Paxton will risk their women’s lives lightly—or cheap? Boys, them two bitches are the keys to the mint! They’re going with us.”
Chapter Three
As events worked out, Wild Bill’s two-day “big time” in Denver was abruptly lopped in half—and it was the best half that Bill lost.
Hickok’s first priority wasn’t a woman but a good poker game. Josh trailed him from saloon to saloon, dealing the hands and enjoying the free lunch set out to entice drinkers.
Wild Bill was kind to the sporting girls. But as always, he paid no serious attention to gals plying carnal wares. Josh knew he had more refined tastes in women.
And toward the end of that first day, Bill met a lass more to his liking.
Her name was Marie Marchand, a singer at the Silver Street Music Hall. Bill sent Josh packing while he and Miss Marchand enjoyed a good dinner and a play.
Josh returned to the hotel early in the evening and stopped by Bill’s room. He could tell from Hickok’s little self-satisfied smile that he had another rendezvous planned later with the French singer.
The suite included a fancy velvet bell pull for summoning porters. Bill tugged on it, and scant moments later a boy in pompous hotel livery appeared in the doorway.
“Give these a coat of polish, wouldja, fellow?” Bill said, handing the kid his boots and a fifty-cent piece.
“You bet, Wild Bill! But you can keep the money if I could have a bullet instead?”
Bill grinned at the youth’s eager foolishness. His shell belt hung from one of the bedposts. Bill thumbed a cartridge out and gave it to the porter. A round from his belt was considered the best talisman on the frontier.
Bill was in a good mood, and Josh saw one reason why—there were already two empty Old Taylor bottles on the highboy, and Bill was working through number three.
Wild Bill saw Josh eyeing the bottles.
“Kid, no need to frown like Carrie Nation. When it comes to drinking good whiskey, it’s better to pass out hard than to hedge. I got two whole entire goddamn undivided days that Al Pinkerton can’t ruin for me, damn his slave-driving bones back to Dundee anyway! And Calamity Jane is locked down tight. Son, Bill Hickok has gone to the only heaven he knows.”
Bill fell silent while he topped off his glass. A sash window overlooking the street was wide open. Both men heard it simultaneously, the distinctive patter of a newsboy below:
“Exter! Exter! Read all about it! Ter-rif-ic sensation! Danford gang escapes from Yuma, kidnaps actress Connie Emmerick! Read all about it, folks, ter-rif-ic sensation!”
“Jees!” Josh stared hard at Bill, who stood frozen with his glass halfway to his lips. “The Danford gang, Bill! Man alive, you sent them to prison.”
Hickok slowly set his glass down without drinking.
“The Danford gang,” he said almost reverently. “Now, there’s a sweet outfit. I woulda killed every one of those chuckleheads, saved the people of Arizona Territory the cost of feeding the murdering scuts.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“They didn’t know my gun was empty when I jumped them, that’s why. Marched ‘em forty miles to jail with an empty shooter.”
The memory made Hickok smile, strong white teeth flashing under his neat mustache. But the smile disappeared in an instant.
“Anyhow,” he told Josh, “it ain’t our picnic now, kid.”
“Sure,” Josh agreed. “Somebody else’s headache.”
Three urgent raps on the door suddenly hinted otherwise.
“Jamie! Jamie lad, are you in there?”
Bill recognized Allan Pinkerton’s sonorous brogue and began quietly cursing while Josh let the man in.
“How’d you know about this place?” Hickok demanded by way of greeting.
Pinkerton was middle-aged, carried a prosperous paunch, and wore one of the new two-piece suits of the professional class.
“Jamie, this is my city. I’m a detective, after all.”
“You’re a damned piker! I want more money. And more time off, damnit! Kid, tell him all about the riots back east to get this new ten-hour workday.”
Pinkerton assumed the face of a wooden Indian, as he always did at requests for money.
“Dinna fash yourself, lad. I’ll talk to my accountant.”
Bill scowled and polished off the bourbon in his glass. “You said that last time. Allan, I have needs.”
Josh watched Pinkerton cast an ironic glance around the plush suite. A bottle of champagne protruded from a wicker bucket filled with ice. Empty Old Taylor bottles dotted the place. Bill’s new forty-dollar evening jacket was draped over a chair. And earlier, a hopeful lass at the music hall had tossed a pair of frilly “step-ins” to Bill. Pinkerton stared at the lacy garment, which Bill had tucked into his right holster.
“I see that you have needs, Jamie,” Pinkerton finally replied. “You’re a top hand, Hickok, but this high life will soften you. You were quite spartan when I knew you during the war. Lived off the land, all that.”
Bill stared at his boss’s paunch and soft white hands.
“You and the kid here, Allan, couple of temperance ladies. Never mind that hogwash. It’s this Danford business brought you here, am I right?”
“Yes, and—”
“Forget it,” Bill said, shaking his head violently. “I’ve already skinned that grizz. Somebody else’s turn.”
&nb
sp; “Yes, but—”
“No,” Bill said again. “Forget it. You gave me your word, Allan—just some workaday cases for a while, tracking down rustler camps and such.”
“I know that, Jamie, but—”
“Stick your ‘buts’ back in your pocket! That’s the jurisdiction of U.S. marshals,” Bill insisted. “Or the Army out of Fort Huachuca. Not private ops.”
“The normal jurisdiction has been rescinded by order of Governor Jacobs.” Pinkerton had finally succeeded at shoehorning a complete sentence between Bill’s objections.
Now it was Josh who spoke up.
“Why?” he demanded, beating Hickok to it. The reporter had learned that Bill’s misery was a journalist’s windfall.
“Because,” the Scotsman replied, “he doesn’t trust them. He only trusts the man who collared the Danford gang once before. John Jacobs dotes on his wife, and she deserves his devotion. I’ve met Anne Jacobs. She’s a credit to womanhood.”
“I’m sure she’s a saint,” Bill replied sarcastically. “Allan, I’ve got plans for tonight—all night, if you take my drift? Plans for tomorrow, too.”
Pinkerton, however, was a crafty handler of men. Now he looked over at Josh. But his words were intended for Hickok’s ears.
“Tragedy, really. Two fine women in terrible jeopardy. Constance Emmerick may be the best female Shakespearean thespian currently treading the boards.”
“She is the best,” Bill chimed in reluctantly. “A real bitch offstage, though. I saw her perform at the National Theater in San Francisco. I took roses to her dressing room.”
“What happened?” Josh demanded.
Bill scowled at him. “I guess somebody put them in water. I wouldn’t know—she had some big brick out-house named Olaf deposit me on my face in the alley out back.”
“She’s an artiste,” Pinkerton coaxed, knowing that intrigued Bill. “Being bitches is what they do. Besides, I hear she’s nice to men who bore her. Sounds like you might have interested her, Jamie.”
Josh watched Bill’s scowl become a thoughtful frown as he considered this possibility. In fact, Josh knew Bill would accept the case. He seldom refused a job. Like many men out west, Bill lived for today and never saved for “retirement.” Bill belonged to that vast class of men who either worked or died.