by Judd Cole
Day or night didn’t determine the shifts now. Though there was still some threat from Comanches and Kiowas in this part of south Texas, it was far tamer than in the wide-open fifties and sixties. Hickok felt it was safe to show in daylight north of the border.
Wild Bill wouldn’t admit it, but Josh knew—Bill was calling rests based on discreet glances at Connie to see how she was holding up. As Josh and Connie showed increasing signs of exhaustion, Hickok seemed to rejuvenate as compensation.
He stood all watches now. Amazed, Josh recorded in his notes that Wild Bill hadn’t slept now—or complained about it—in over thirty hours. Josh and Connie would fall asleep almost immediately. When they woke, Bill had hot game on the spit, even if only a bit of gamy pheasant.
“Eat, children,” he joked once, “you’ll need your strength for school.”
Josh had noticed this before about Wild Bill. He was the first man to carp when his new suit got stained or he ran out of cheroots or Old Taylor. And it downright embarrassed Josh, the way Bill would primp in front of a mirror just like a vain woman!
But when conditions truly deteriorated, when men were losing their belief in survival, Hickok rose up as a natural leader. No inspiring speeches about God, duty, and country; just grim good humor and a straight-ahead determination to keep up the strut till the job was done.
They passed a giant dry lake that Bill said marked the Dimmit County line. So far Coyote was fulfilling Bill’s projected route—due east toward the Nueces River. Hickok still believed the half-breed meant to exchange the silver for banknotes in New Orleans.
By late morning, they were a good twenty miles past the Dimmit County line. The sand hills occasionally formed tall headlands with plenty of good hiding places above the trail. At such points, Bill usually found an alternate route even if they lost a little time.
But sometimes he couldn’t. Like now, Josh told himself, noticing that the three of them were riding into a dangerous stretch. Giant rock formations, detritus from some massive geological upheaval eons ago, formed impassable terrain on both sides of the narrow sand wash that served as trail.
Hickok, riding point, raised an arm to halt them. Josh rode up from the drag to join him and Connie.
“We can’t circle wide,” Bill told his companions, “without losing too much time.”
He looked again at the dangerous stretch, then at Connie.
“Please don’t send me back with Josh,” she pleaded with Hickok. “I know there’s danger, and I know you’re responsible for me. But you yourself said Josh is a good man to have along. Please, Bill? We’re so close to saving Anne, I can just feel it in my heart! I want to be there when we rescue her. Please?”
Bill grinned and shook his head. “Why should I be the first man who can resist you? All right.”
Connie grinned back. But Bill’s smile faded fast.
“Listen, you two. Coyote doesn’t care about killing you—it’s me he’s got to fret, and he knows it. That’s a damned shooting gallery we’re about to ride through, with us the moving targets. If Coyote drops me, Longfellow, you’ve got one assignment. Let me hear it.”
“Get Connie back to Arizona,” Josh replied.
Bill nodded. “At the first telegraph office you reach, you contact Pinkerton in Denver and give him all you know. He’ll take it from there.”
“In that case, what about Anne?” Connie protested.
Bill didn’t baby her. “If Coyote kills me,” he told her bluntly, “Anne’s as good as dead too. Believe me, you and Josh won’t stop him. The kid has his orders, and he’ll follow them, because he’s a good trooper.”
“Hear that?” Connie told Josh. “Even riding into possible death, you’re still ‘the kid.’ I wonder if Wild Bill Hickok ever kissed his mother?”
Bill scowled. One thing he hated, Josh knew from experience, was when folks pushed too far into his personal life.
“Hickok has kissed plenty of women,” Bill assured her. “And when I kiss them, they stay kissed. I’ve also taken a few over my knee, too, and warmed up their backsides good for them, taught them a little respect for their elders.”
She flushed and started to retort. But Bill cut her off.
“This ain’t another dress rehearsal, sweetheart. Save it for the stage, we’ve got to move out. Joshua!” he added, emphasizing the name for her benefit. “I want you to ride closer to Miss Pink Cheeks. If Coyote jumps us, make sure you get her covered down.”
For the next hour they rode on unmolested. Despite Bill’s conviction that trouble awaited them in the rock formations, Josh had almost concluded Hickok’s trail instincts were wrong this time.
Still, it was one of the eeriest stretches Josh had ever ridden since coming west. The ground beneath the horses’ hooves was mostly hardpan that threw off clopping echoes from the surrounding rock walls.
There was no sign of life—human, animal, or plant. Just the smooth pan of the narrowing wash, with sand drifting across it, and the massive, striated rock rising around them to heights of more than several hundred feet.
Then, abruptly, they rode through the last dogleg turn, and there it was: clear blue sky out ahead where the rock formations dwindled off to low sand hills again.
Home free, Josh told himself with a fluming sigh of relief. And halfway into that sigh, a rifle spoke its deadly piece from above them, shattering the tomblike quiet.
That first bullet impacted only inches from Fire-away’s front hooves, and the roan reared up, nickering. But Wild Bill didn’t fight his horse when it began crow-hopping—the animal was bullet-trained and now made Coyote earn his target.
Again, again, the carbine cracked with a shattering racket in that closed-in defile. The bullets, ricocheting from stone surface to stone surface, sent off a screaming whine that especially agitated the horses.
Nonetheless, Josh remembered his orders. He managed to seize the bridle of Connie’s horse and get it turned around with his.
Josh spurred his buckskin down their back trail, back through the safety of the bend. Bill’s orders had been to flee back toward Arizona if Hickok was killed. But last Josh saw of him, Wild Bill was still alive. So Josh reined in at the first good hiding place, a cleft in the rock wall made by water erosion.
“In there!” he ordered Connie. Josh whapped her horse on the rump hard, moving it into the narrow enclosure.
Josh heard more rifle shots, then the distinctive sound of Bill’s Peacemakers. But Hickok evidently hit nothing, because Josh could hear him racing back along the trail.
“This spot will do,” he said when he joined them. “For Connie. Kid, are you willing to provide me some cover? It won’t put you in the line of fire— exactly.”
Bill slid his Winchester from the boot and held it out. Josh took it. Bill also reached into a saddle bag, then handed Josh a box of shells.
“Well put you just partway into the bend,” Bill said. “So you can toss a shot up there now and then. Just aim for the rimrock, then adjust if you see his muzzle smoke. Which I doubt you will, knowing Coyote. I just want you to keep him interested so he stays where he’s at.”
“Where will you be?” Connie demanded.
“I think I can find a way through the rocks to the back, sneak up on him from behind him.”
Connie paled. “Sneak up on Coyote? Is that smart?”
Bill snorted, shaking his head while he hobbled his horse with the other two.
“Smart? Juliet, sneaking up on Coyote is about as stupid as a man can get. Downright suicidal, matter of fact.”
“Then why are you doing it?” she demanded.
Bill was already heading back through the bend, Josh on his heels carrying the Winchester.
“Because I’m out of cigars,” he said with dead seriousness. “And the sooner I kill Coyote, the quicker I light up.”
Wild Bill couldn’t swear this was the hardest climb he’d ever made. But he was damned if it didn’t rate high among the worst.
First he had positio
ned Josh behind an abutment of hard granite, maybe halfway into the bend. Bill hoped he was right in his calculation that Coyote couldn’t spot muzzle flash at his angle from above.
Now Josh was dutifully firing a round up topside every minute or so. And as Bill had calculated, the half-breed was returning an occasional shot based on ear-targeting. Coyote was hoping for a ricochet, for in that virtual world of stone below, each shot became many, many more before the bullet fragmented.
Josh was relatively safe from those ricochets, Bill figured, if the kid had enough horse sense to stay covered. Not so for Bill himself. Although Coyote couldn’t see him, Bill had to stay exposed while he desperately searched for some opening through the jumble of rocks.
Coyote fired, and a bullet whanged off rock, began its piercing whine as it bounced from surface to surface. Another, and this time Bill started when the slug threw rock dust in his face.
During all this Wild Bill scrambled among the rocks like a nervous monkey, seeking some opening. He spotted a place where two odd-shaped rocks left a small hole between them.
Bill had no idea if it would lead all the way through. But nothing better showed itself, and bullets were nipping at his sitter. Tossing his hat down, Bill wriggled into the opening.
The passage was narrow to begin with and got even tighter as Hickok progressed inch by inch on bleeding, scraped elbows and knees. At one point Bill had to fight down a welling sense of “cooped-in” panic— he was wedged tight, unable to go forward, unable to retreat.
Bill willed himself calm. Then he relaxed his muscles and expelled all the air in his chest. This left him just barely enough room to squeeze forward again— and up ahead, Bill saw blessed light.
But as he pushed through and looked upward, he realized he had a hard climb ahead of him.
But there! There was Anne, huddled up in the rim-rock. And though Hickok could spot only the back of Coyote’s gray flannel shirt, he saw that Anne was tied to his belt by a lead line around her waist.
At first Bill found some helpful hand and footholds. But these thinned out as he gained altitude. At times he was forced to haul himself up hand over hand, with virtually no footholds.
By the time Anne spotted Bill, his arms were trembling violently. So violently, he feared he might drop at any moment.
Bill winked to calm Anne, who he feared might give him away. As he strained to inch himself up to a little ledge behind her, he could hear good old Josh plinking away, keeping Coyote’s attention.
Now Bill was only inches from gaining the security of the ledge. But his tortured arms felt stretched to the point of tearing.
Bill closed his eyes and pictured a morning nine years earlier in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley. He had spied on Stonewall Jackson motivating his troops for a battle: Gentlemen, today you must exert yourselves!
Hickok gave it his best effort and gained the ledge behind Anne Jacobs. Two seconds after he was safe, the ledge collapsed under him.
God kiss me, Hickok thought even as he made a wild stab at the more solid rim that held Anne and the half-breed. His left arm snagged it, and Wild Bill hung at a precarious angle.
As rocks and gravel tumbled and slid down, Coyote whirled and discovered his enemy only a few feet away. For once those bone-button eyes registered some emotion, though Bill had no luxury to read it.
Then, emitting a little cry of triumph, Coyote quickly jacked a round into the chamber of the Spencer carbine.
Because he had needed both hands to climb, both of Bill’s Colts were still holstered. Despite his wildly dramatic enactments with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show, this gun battle now was unprecedented in Hickok’s memory.
Coyote brought his muzzle down to fire. Bill, dangling by one arm, legs flailing, still managed to somehow speed-draw and plug Coyote.
The impact knocked Coyote backward. But Bill cussed when he realized it had not been a fatal hit. Coyote, blood pumping from his right thigh, stepped sideways, and Bill had no line of fire from his restricted position.
Nor could he establish a better one, for he had absolutely no footholds—the slide had taken all of them with it. All he could do was hang here by one already exhausted arm, waiting to either get shot or fall to his death on the rocks below.
Coyote leaned out, grinned his lipless grin, and lowered his gun muzzle until it kissed a spot just behind Bill’s right ear.
“Say good-bye to your soul, Wild Bill,” Coyote called down. “The hole you put in me can be patched up.”
With a piercing scream to focus her strength and will, Anne pulled the knife from her bodice and drove it hard into Coyote’s back.
“You goddamned bitch!” Coyote snarled, blood bubbling from his lips. But his legs suddenly folded like empty sacks.
“Don’t let him fall!” Bill warned her. Not only would the falling body take Hickok with it, but Anne was still tied to her captor. All three of them would die.
With Bill shoving up from below and Anne tugging from above, they kept Coyote from dropping.
Bill was on his last reserve of strength. “Anne! Untie that rope from your arm and throw it down here. Leave it tied to Coyote! Then I want you to pile some rocks on his body, hear me? Hurry, Anne, I can’t hang on much longer!”
Anne scrambled to save her hero. When she had the body sufficiently weighted down to hold him, Bill pulled himself up.
“Permission to kiss a married woman,” Bill said, greeting the governor’s wife.
“Permission granted,” she assured Hickok, crystal dollops of tears welling from her eyes as she stepped into Bill’s arms.
Chapter Seventeen
The one-horse burg called Hondo, Texas, was located about forty miles west of San Antonio. It was a sleepy, insignificant crossroads hamlet where little disturbed the dusty twang of grasshopper wings. Nobody ever came to Hondo—they just occasionally passed through on their way someplace else.
Located one mile west of town was a huge earthquake fissure known as Thompson’s Chasm. Miles long and more than thirty feet wide, it plunged deeper than anyone had ever measured. Because the only good road in that neck of south Texas was bisected by the chasm, a narrow rope-suspension bridge had been built to cross it.
However, the bridge had been no great engineering feat even when it was new twenty years earlier. By now dry rot and termites had made it flimsy, if not quite unreliable.
Replacing it would have required more funds than the residents of Hondo—population seventeen— could earn by passing the hat. In lieu of replacement, one civic-minded local had scrawled two hand-lettered signs on boards and nailed one at each end of the thirty-foot bridge:
CAWSHUN, RYDERS!!! ONLEY
ONE HORSS AT A TYME ON
THIS BRIJ! LEED YER HORSS!
Butch Jeffries had carefully ascertained that Hickok’s party would be riding this way. And because he had killed successfully at Thompson’s Chasm before, Butch chose it as the best place to kill Connie Emmerick.
From where he stood now, atop a redrock butte a few hundred feet north of the bridge, it was a clear shot at a sharp downward angle. As he knew from experience, a rider was virtually helpless once gunfire erupted.
Not only would the bridge support only one horse and rider, it swayed and bounced dangerously if even that one horse tried to move too quickly. Which meant Butch would not be limited to one shot at Connie—and nobody could help her without collapsing that bridge.
As for any pursuit afterward, that was hindered. Sure, the rock-strewn grade between this butte and the road could be climbed. But it was a slow uphill climb, perhaps a forty-five-degree slope—and meantime, Butch would be opening up a good lead on a fresh horse. And nobody knew this country like he did.
No tangles with Hickok, thank you. Just a “shoot and scoot,” as Butch called such jobs.
Jeffries removed a Volcanic Arms repeating rifle from its buckskin sheath. He opened the loading gate and then took a handful of copper-jacketed slugs from a chamois pouch on his belt, th
umbing them into the weapon through a well above the trigger guard.
Twelve shots loaded into the spring-feed mechanism. But Butch didn’t plan to take that many shots, not with Hickok down there.
It wouldn’t matter. On that rickety bridge, a miss was as good as a hit. If Emmerick’s horse shied even a little, the swaying bridge would pitch her into that hungry maw below.
Suddenly, Butch remembered she was an actress.
“Break a leg, Miss Emmerick,” he said out loud, jacking a round into the chamber.
“The silver belongs to the Denver Mint,” Bill explained. “But there’ll be the standard recovery fee of a thousand dollars. That’s still better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.”
“Man alive! You bet it is,” Josh agreed, doing some quick arithmetic in his head. “You’d have to give Pinkerton two hundred full days’ work for that kind of money.”
“Only a hundred days,” Bill corrected him. “Half that recovery fee is yours, kid. You earned it, fair and square.”
“Mine?”
“So send it to your ma if you don’t want it. You earned it. You been here beside me eating dust and ducking bullets every mile of the way.”
“I have, haven’t I?” Josh agreed. “Heck, I’ll take it. It’s just—I ain’t never had five hundred dollars.”
Bill winked. “First time I get you near a deck of cards, you won’t have it.”
“Bill Hickok!” Connie scolded. “He’s still an innocent lad despite your influence! Joshua, do send your share to your mother. I do believe Bill would rob a poor box to finance his vices.”
Bill tipped his hat to her. “I’ve done that,” he confessed, deadpan. “I’m in Satan’s grip, no question.”
The four of them—Wild Bill, Josh, Connie and Anne—were on their way to the train station in San Antonio. That was far preferable to a long, hot horseback ride back to Yuma. Especially hauling a cache of silver bars.
For everyone except Wild Bill, this ride had become an almost festive occasion. Hickok, however, refused to relax his hair-trigger alertness. And Josh knew why. Bill still believed, based on those distant glints he’d spotted the day before, that a second source of danger plagued them.