The Fourth Western Novel

by H. H. Knibbs

  Before he fully realized what was happening, Marshal Hickok was stripped bare. In the full glory of his nudity, deprived even of his fancy bead-trimmed moccasins, Hickok was swept along amid the hooting cowboys, half-carried, half-walking gingerly on the splinters of the board sidewalk. The men marched Hickok to a clothing store, and the ceremony was completed by outfitting him from head to foot with a brand new set of garments, the finest money could buy in Abilene. They left him, smiling, and went on about their noisy celebration.

  But Hickok, with more vanity than most gunmen, took this gesture of friendliness as a form of humiliation. He said nothing. The last of the group departed, and he watched them as they trooped into one saloon for a farewell drink and then out again and into the next. It was all good, clean fun. There was no violation of the law, nor a breach of the rule about firing guns this side of the deadline. Then he heard a pistol shot, and saw Phil Coe stepping back from the street, replacing his revolver. Phil stopped in front of the Alamo Saloon, while the rest of the group hustled along on their festive rounds.

  Hickok crossed the street and walked swiftly between two wooden buildings, then along the rear of the block to the back entrance of the Alamo Saloon. He strolled to the bar and ordered a drink. From where he stood he could see the sidewalk outside through the glass panels of the swinging doors. In a few moments all the others had departed, and Phil Coe was standing out there by himself, his back to the saloon.

  Quickly, Wild Bill strode toward the front of the saloon, pushed opened the swinging doors, and confronted Phil Coe. Phil smiled at him pleasantly, but Hickok was grim.

  “What was the shooting about?” Hickok asked.

  Phil said a vicious dog had appeared and was snapping at the group. Hence the firing of the pistol in the street, in violation of one of the laws that had been successfully enforced. As they talked, the noise of a disturbance up the street reached them.

  Bud Cotton, who was watching the two men, said that Phil Coe turned in the direction of the noise. As he did, Hickok pulled two Derringers from his coat pockets and fired at Coe’s chest and abdomen.

  The shooting brought other cowboys running in the direction of the Alamo Saloon. By the time they got there, Hickok had drawn his ivory-handled six-shooter, and was backing toward the saloon’s swinging doors, firing as he eased away.

  From a saloon across the street, a man emerged with drawn revolver, dashing toward Hickok and Coe. Wild Bill turned on him and dropped him with a single shot as the man reached the middle of the street. He was Deputy Marshal Mike Williams, who had been going to help Hickok.

  The approaching cowboys saw Phil Coe sinking slowly to the sidewalk. A dribble of blood oozed from his mouth, and he drew his pistol.

  “Hickok, you’re a dirty dog,” Bud Cotton heard him say. “You shot me when I wasn’t looking, and I hope to God that they get you the same way.”

  Coe fired at the swinging doors, but there was no aim in the shooting. His wrist dropped as he fired, and the kick of the weapon jolted the pistol loose from his fingers. The pistol clunked against the wooden plank. The bullet bored a slanting groove in the wall.

  Cussing cowboys with calloused hands tenderly lifted the limp form of Phil Coe, and carried him to his cottage. It was located a short distance from the schoolhouse, south and west of the railroad. The three R’s got little attention when the news spread that Phil was gravely wounded. In great pain, the big Texan fought for his life, but the struggle was too uneven and after several days, Phil Coe died.

  The Bull’s Head doors were closed for the first time since that day in June when Ben Thompson and Phil Coe had first opened them. There was rejoicing among the competitors. Those among them who were also city officials lost no time in making sure that the doors were sealed for good. Creditors were advised to hurry their claims, and this made it possible to put legal padlocks on the door.

  Two days later, Bud Cotton headed south from Abilene driving a buckboard. The body of Phil Coe was lashed to the floor. It had been wrapped in sheets and rolled in a blanket and then covered with a tarpaulin of canvas, tightly bound.

  The improvised hearse churned through slushy ruts. The rains had been worse than usual. All about him, Bud saw great herds of cattle mired in the mud. Prices had been dropping. Many owners were holding their stock through the winter.

  In the Kansas City hospital, Ben Thompson got word of the killing of Phil Coe. The rage that swept over him melted against his temporary impotence for fighting. Friends said he cried like a baby.

  If ever in his life he was aware of an urge for revenge, it was at that moment. But days and weeks of recovery were still ahead before he could be up and about and handling a pistol. And if he did not do something immediately, the chances were that the incident would be closed.

  For Ben Thompson was neither a vengeful man, nor a spiteful one. He disliked feuds, and he would not carry a grudge; not even for an injury that touched him as deeply as did the loss of Phil Coe. If he had been in Abilene it is likely that he would have shot it out with Wild Bill Hickok. For that would have been part of the same fight, and the immediate reaction to that particular “fuss.” That was the way: each fight had to be carried through on its own terms, by its own causes, and with it a solution or termination of whatever difficulties had brought it about.

  Ben’s thorough contempt for Hickok was deepened by acute animosity. But it was many months before Ben Thompson got back to check on his business in Abilene. By that time the town had reached a momentous decision. The law-abiding citizens had found that the rule of vice and corruption was too great a price to pay for the prosperity of the cattle trade. They sent out word that they wanted no more herds. They would cast their lot with the scorned “hoe men,” the farmers who were bringing wealth out of the ground.

  Wichita, Ellsworth, Newton, Coffeyville could have the cattle money if they wanted. Abilene was through. And so was Ben Thompson as far as Abilene was concerned. Even if he had been able to salvage The Bull’s Head, the lush profits of the boom town would be missing.

  Along with other fancy trimmings of the boom days, Wild Bill Hickok was also missing. He had gone to Deadwood, and was eventually killed there as he played in a game of poker, shot from behind by Broken Nose Jack McCall. His Abilene experience with Ben Thompson remained an unsolved equation. The two top-dog gunfighters there had survived the cattle boom, but which was fastest and surest on the draw remained an unanswered question.

  Less uncertain was the fact that Ben found himself flat broke. He was still hurting physically and financially from the Kansas City mishap. The events in Abilene added up to a last straw. He saw his dreams of respectable success go glimmering. Still, he was not giving up. He had landed on his feet too often before, and was far from the point of desperation. But Ben Thompson was a sick man, in body and soul, when he went back to Austin to recover.

  CHAPTER 32

  Ben Thompson hit The Trail again in 1872. For the next six years, each cattle marketing season found him somewhere in Kansas, Missouri, or Nebraska. Now and then he made a foray to Kansas City, to Colorado, or to Deadwood, the booming mining camp in Dakota. During that time his name became a legend throughout the mushrooming West. He was known as a quiet, sweet-talking man, not to be pushed around. Law men and outlaws avoided clashing with him. Ben reciprocated. His pistol had a spell of comparative rest, except for an Indian-hunting expedition, once the echoes of the bloody summer of ’73 in Ellsworth had subsided. In those years, he saved Bat Masterson’s life, and twice rescued his brother Billy from punishment for the slaying of Sheriff Chauncey B. Whitney.

  Ben was in and out of every trail town during those six years of nationwide panic, his main efforts directed at recouping his shattered fortunes. The arrival of the Thompson floating faro game was a sure sign that a new boom town was in the making. Each town that sprang up as the tracks inched westward and south of Abilene was wilder than the one
before. Eventually the pools of wickedness in each overflowed and found a common destination: the Mecca of Sin—Dodge City—for several rip-roaring years the greatest cattle market in the world.

  The Dodge City country, which spread for miles in every direction, was the roughest, toughest, drinkingest, whoringest, murderingest area in all creation. Blood feuds, gang warfare, and personal vengeance were carried from one town to the next. A desperado in one might turn up as a sheriff or marshal in the next, his office a license for wanton killing. The duly-appointed law man would be minus his star in another instant and heading up a band of outlaws.

  The tough hombres of Texas who came up with the herds met men as wild and violent as themselves—buffalo hunters, mule-skinners, section hands, bull-whackers, uncurried humans of every description: drifters and grifters, fugitives, assassins, gun smugglers, whisky-runners, gamblers with Derringers clipped inside their sleeves, hopheads, con men—the dregs and sweepings of a hundred cities and hamlets, from America, Europe, Asia, and Africa; fortune-hunters, soldiers on payday binges, ex-soldiers, hoodlums hired as property guards, all the backwash of efforts of peaceful settlement and the not-so-peaceful over-running of the last hunting grounds allotted to the vanquished Indian tribes under the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867.

  The end of the cattle boom in Abilene brought an exodus of the sporting world, seeking lush pastures for their special kinds of grazing. The prostitutes and the gamblers, the saloon men and the hurdy-gurdy entertainers toured the cattle-trail country. They were drawn to payrolls like horn-flies to a herd. They traveled by railroad cars when possible, or by stagecoach. Some moved about in their own Conestoga wagons, loaded down with personnel and props. These came to be known as “Hell on Wheels,” and they ground ruts in the mud and dust of Wichita and Newton, Ellsworth, Caldwell, Hunnewell, Ellis, Hays City, Ogallala, Sidney, Trail City, Kit Carson, Fort Lyons, Julesburg, Cheyenne…and as the cattle trade waned, in the mine camps of Leadville, Deadwood, and Tombstone…

  Ben Thompson followed the westward course of The Trail, which for many a cowboy became the road to hell. Ben had stood up against Wild Bill Hickok in Abilene, and that in itself was a passport against aggression in most places. In 1871, Ben had seen the Santa Fe line pushing from Emporia to a point, sixty-five miles south of Abilene, that became Newton, for a few bloody months the end of the trail, and then in 1872 the branch line to Wichita, twenty-six miles south of Newton. The Trail bent westward about fifty miles south of Wichita at the Indian Territory line and then crossed into Kansas at Caldwell, and pushed on up to Ellsworth.

  In 1873, Ellsworth, a wide place in the road sixty-six miles west of Abilene, took the play. Meanwhile, the rails stitched their civilizing seam as far as Dodge City, another eighty-five miles toward the setting sun. Ellsworth, the little village on the Smoky Hill River, might have merited only passing mention in the annals of the cow-towns, although some two hundred thousand head of cattle grazed on the thickly-grassed plains that year. But the combination of the Kansas hair-trigger atmosphere and the Thompson guns set off a series of killings, armed clashes, Vigilante raids, and mob violence assuring Ellsworth immortality in the lore of western gunfighters.

  Summer was but a few weeks away and the sun had begun to broil the dusty Ellsworth plaza when Ben Thompson arrived, planning to open a saloon. He walked around the square and counted twenty-six saloons in the U-shaped area that fronted on the railroad. Besides, there were five or six general merchandise stores, several hotels and various other commercial establishments, and beyond them sod-and frame-dwelling houses. Across the square, along the tracks, were cow pens, corrals, and shipping chutes, and farther out, in the river bottoms, the district known as Nauchville, with its round-the-clock saloons, gambling shacks, dance halls, and brothels.

  Almost exactly opposite the little railroad station were Jerome Beebe’s general store and Joseph Brennan’s saloon. Down the line, in between saloons, a man adding his horse to the row of animals and wagons at the hitching rails might have taken note of the Whitney and Kendall furniture store, the Drovers’ Cottage Hotel, as well as the Grand Central Hotel, where Ben Thompson stayed—and next door to it, the office of the Ellsworth Reporter.

  With a fair-sized stock of cash on hand, Ben Thompson was able to turn a few pretty fast dollars buying and selling cattle. In between business deals, he bucked the faro tiger, and it was not long before the cattle business gave way to a faro layout at Ben’s Grand Central headquarters. Money was plentiful in and around Ellsworth that summer, despite the fact that many herd owners were holding their stock for better prices. The panic which had struck the East first was flushing capital westward, seeking enhancement in fresh fields. Jerome Beebe’s store sales doubled over those of the previous year.

  Billy Thompson rode herd up The Trail later, and joined Ben at the Grand Central. They teamed up again for their gambling enterprises. Tall, dark and handsome Neil Cain also came up from Austin, and with him big and blond Cad Pierce. Both were gambling men of note.

  Bill was drinking more than usual that summer. Once he was arrested by policeman Ed Hogue and fined twenty-five dollars by Judge Vincent S. Osborne, who held court in a room over Larkin’s Dry Goods Store. A second time, policeman John (Happy Jack) Morco took him into custody and charged him with disturbing the peace, carrying a deadly weapon, and assault upon Officer Morco. In each case, he was fined ten dollars plus fifteen dollars in costs, but pleaded guilty only to “being drunk and carrying a six-shooter.”

  Ben indulged in at least one binge during the early summer of 1873. As usual, he was by himself on the occasion, after having enjoyed what was known as the social cup with some friends. He fired his gun two or three times at non-human targets, there being no real hell in his neck during this merry-making. The police did not arrest Ben. He appeared voluntarily at Judge Osborne’s court next morning, filed a complaint of disturbing the peace against Ben Thompson, pleaded guilty, and paid the customary fine.

  All in all, the Thompsons’ sojourn in Ellsworth might have been comparatively peaceful, if it had not been for the slaying of Sheriff Chauncey B. Whitney on August 15.

  CHAPTER 33

  A merciless sun beat down on Ellsworth that August day of 1873, from an unclouded cobalt sky. It was picnic weather, and Sheriff Chauncey B. Whitney had planned an outing with his family at Howard’s Grove, a few miles out of town. In making his final checks, he learned that Billy Thompson was on another drunk. Sheriff Whitney told his wife to go ahead on the picnic. He might join her later. But right now he would have to stay in town.

  Sheriff Whitney felt he would be needed in case of trouble because the police force was smaller. The summer had been so quiet that the city council decided fewer officers could handle the job. Ed Hogue was made a deputy sheriff. J. W. (Brocky Jack) Norton was city marshal. John (Long Jack) DeLong, Happy Jack Morco and John (High Low Jack) Branham served as patrolmen under Norton.

  Some of the cow country’s noted gamblers were gathered in Brennan’s saloon that day. The stakes were big. Neil Cain was dealing a game of monte. Cad Pierce, bucking the play, wanted to bet higher than the bank’s total. Ben and Billy Thompson were looking on, but not playing. Cain called to Ben, told him Cad wanted to play bigger stakes. Ben said he would find someone to take the overbets.

  Ben spoke to John Sterling, a man known for his recklessness at gambling. Sterling had been drinking steadily at the bar for some time. He was more than willing to take the overbets, playing with the dealer, which meant playing with a decided advantage. Sterling was so pleased with the opportunity that he volunteered to give Ben half of his winnings “for letting me in.” Sterling sat in the game for a couple of hours, and after taking well over a thousand dollars from Pierce, picked up and left.

  Later that day, about mid-afternoon, Ben Thompson met Sterling, now defiantly drunk, at Nick Lentz’ saloon, and reminded him of his promise to split the winnings. Sterling, full of gaming triu
mph and an abundance of redeye, told Ben abusively that he would not split the winnings. He saw, too, that Ben was unarmed at the time, and as the argument grew hotter, Sterling slapped Ben. Thompson started after Sterling, but was held back by friends, and at the same moment, Happy Jack Morco drew his pistol.

  “Better get that drunk out of the way,” Ben said to Happy Jack. Sterling and the policeman left, and Ben went back to Brennan’s. Ben was talking to Cad Pierce and Billy Thompson in a back room, when Sterling and Happy Jack appeared in front. Sterling, carrying a shotgun, yelled:

  “Get your guns, you damn Texas sons-of-bitches, and fight!”

  Sterling and Happy Jack did not wait for a reply, but moved along in front of other saloons, issuing the same invitation.

  Ben tried to borrow some weapons from the men in Brennan’s, but under the circumstances each felt he might need his pistol, checked temporarily with the bartender. Ben Thompson walked swiftly to Jake New’s saloon, where his weapons were kept. Ben got his .45 Colt six-shooter and a repeating Henry rifle. Meanwhile, Billy had picked up Ben’s double-barreled shotgun, a breech-loading piece of fine English make which Cad Pierce had given Ben as a gift.

  Ben and Billy met again in front of Brennan’s saloon. Ben noticed that the shotgun was fully cocked, and that Billy was waving it about dangerously. As they prepared to re-enter the saloon, one of the barrels was discharged. Fortunately, the gun happened to be pointing down at the time. The charge struck the plank walk close to Seth Mabry, a good friend of the Thompsons, who was talking there with Captain Eugene Millett, another Texan.

  Ben grabbed the shotgun, and was about to remove the shells, when he heard a shout:

  “Look out, Ben, those fellows are after you!”

  The shotgun report had sent Sterling and Morco for cover into the nearest saloon, but they had popped right out again. The town was alarmed. Texans and “natives” went for their arms.