The Fall of Abilene

by Johnny D. Boggs

  The man working the roulette wheel found his nerve and strode up to Hickok. “Marshal, you ain’t …”

  That’s as far as he got, for the stock of the scatter-gun crushed his lips, broke his jaw, and sent blood across the floor as he crumpled, groaning and retching on the floor.

  Adjusting the shotgun, Hickok aimed the barrels at the Texans.

  “You bastards deaf?” He blew apart another roulette wheel.

  The Texas cowboys rushed out of the saloon.

  The Old Fruit Saloon was next.

  Hickok handed me the twelve gauge, still cocked, and kicked the doors off its hinges as he entered the saloon with both Colts drawn. He shot out a light, training his right-hand pistol at a poker table and his left one at the bartender, who stopped instantly and forgot about the bung starter he had been reaching for.

  “Get the hell out of town,” Hickok said.

  “What the hell’s going on?” said one of the poker players.

  “Oh,” said another, laughing “the damnyankee, Texas-hating jackass shot the wrong person tonight.”

  The man’s laugh stopped when Hickok buffaloed him with a Navy’s barrel. “You think that’s funny?” Hickok asked the partner of the man now lying unconscious on the floor, blood pooling from the split across his nose.

  “No,” the Texan’s lips moved.

  “Then drag him out of here. Don’t tarry. I see either of you again, you’ll be buried together.” Hickok stormed outside.

  “I’ll be my mama’s bastard child,” Brocky Jack said. “What the hell’s got into him?”

  I jerked one of the doors off its hinges, stepped outside, and spotted Hickok’s shadow running gamblers out of another place on Texas Street. Although I joined him, I can’t tell you much about what else happened that night. It felt like I was sleepwalking as I followed Hickok, and Brocky Jack and Tom Carson followed me.

  * * * * *

  You’ll ask about my brother. Well, I never saw Sam that night, but he had been somewhere. On Cedar Street with those fifty or so cowboys? Perhaps. It was too dark to tell. In one of the saloons or gambling dens Hickok cleaned out? Maybe. I rarely took my eyes off Hickok. There’s also a chance that word of Hickok’s rampage reached Sam before Hickok made it as far as Walnut or Elm.

  Within an hour after Mike Williams had been killed and Phil Coe gutshot, you could not find a Texas cowboy, a whore, or a gambler east of Mud Creek.

  Chapter Thirty

  Every sixteen-year-old boy wants to ride a train. And taking your first trip alone would sound wonderful to most kids. Hickok walked me to the car, handed me my ticket, and told me: “Tell Mrs. Williams that I’ll visit her when my work here is done.” His head dropped. “Tell her …” His head shook, and he turned away.

  Before boarding, I made the mistake of looking down the train. They were loading Mike’s coffin in the baggage car.

  * * * * *

  Mrs. Williams showed me the Cabinet Saloon. Wasn’t a way around that, since they lived above it. Offered to draw a beer or pour me a whiskey, but I’m not sure I accepted or politely declined for my eyes locked on that billiard table in the corner. Mike’s body had laid atop one just like it, and the vision of Wild Bill Hickok bawling over the body of the friend he had accidentally shot and killed just kept repeating.

  On the day Phil Coe finally died an excruciating death in Abilene, Sunday, the eighth of October, 1871, I wore a black band over my coat sleeve, frigid air burning my lungs, as Michael W. Williams got quite the send-off in Kansas City.

  The McGee Hook and Ladder Company escorted his coffin to a Catholic church. Ma had always warned me to watch any Catholic, fearing they might try to convert me, but Father Donnelly shook my hand, thanked me for coming, and thanked me even more for being Mike’s staunch friend. I didn’t understand a lot of the praying and stuff, and I was warned by one of Mike’s bartenders not to take communion or I’d be struck dead and damned to perdition. He was joking, I think.

  After the services, mourners followed the riderless horse, the band, the hearse, the fire department, and family to the cemetery. After the last amen, I said farewell to the heartbroken nineteen-year-old widow, shook hands with the priest and Mrs. Williams’ aunt, and reminded them all that Mike died without suffering and that Wild Bill would pay his respects later and tell Mrs. Williams everything she needed to know.

  I never returned to Kansas City.

  At the Kansas Pacific depot, reporters circled me.

  “A brakeman told us that Wild Bill killed two members of his police force. Who was the other?”

  My head shook. “What are you talking about?”

  Before he could answer, another jabbed a pencil at my nose to ask: “Is it true that Wild Bill paid all expenses for the funeral, gave him that grand casket, did everything?”

  That I could answer. “Yeah.” I thought tears might come at last. “Yeah.”

  “Well,” said a third man, whose breath stank of rum and whose smirk left me hating his guts, “we have no doubt that poor Mike deeply regrets his inability to thank Wild Bill for his liberality.”

  I broke his nose before boarding the westbound train.

  * * * * *

  Hickok stood at the Abilene depot when I stepped off. He held a shotgun in his hands. Stunned, I stepped aside as he walked past me. Didn’t even recognize me. He had not shaved since I left with Mike’s remains. He stepped up to two leathery-looking men who had gotten aboard in Lawrence. The shotgun Hickok carried was the one he had used when he had emptied Texas Street that awful, blustery night, but the barrels had been sawed off—and they hadn’t been that long to begin with.

  The hammers clicked, the two men straightened and held their breath.

  “This isn’t your stop,” Hickok told them.

  One of them started to protest, but his pard put a hand on the man’s arm. “Gabe,” he whispered.

  They climbed back aboard and rode west. I never saw them again, either.

  * * * * *

  The jail felt like a furnace. The windows were closed tight, and the stove must have been loaded with wood, coal oil, charcoal, and anything else that would burn. Outside remained cold, though nowhere near as cold as it had been, but Hickok had turned his office into a hell.

  He laid the sawed-off on the desk and pulled off his coat, which he went to hang, but stopped, repeatedly poking his finger through a hole—like he was sleepwalking.

  “Marshal Hickok,” I whispered timidly.

  He stopped, sighed, and hung the jacket. “One of Coe’s bullets,” he said. “I wish to hell it had killed me.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I told him.

  He didn’t hear. “I wish to hell it had killed me.” He collapsed into his chair and buried his head in his hands once again.

  * * * * *

  The train brought more sodbusters, who gathered around Henry’s Land Office. The Chronicle reported the price of beans and wheat, not the price of cattle. The shipping yards remained empty. Joseph McCoy spent more time inside the Alamo Saloon. The Bull’s Head was gone, dismantled by its owners and hauled away to Newton. The Old Fruit Saloon had also vanished. A thunderstorm in mid-October washed it down Texas Street. Folks started saying that the Drovers Cottage would move to Ellsworth.

  The council informed Brocky Jack Norton and Tom Carson that their services were no longer needed. Mayor McCoy, the clerk, the councilmen, and Mr. Wilson of the Chronicle bought Hickok a gold watch, engraved with the likeness of the town marshal’s badge and a sentiment: J. B. Hickok, From His Friends, October 26, 1871.

  After they had gone, Hickok wound the watch, reset the time, reset it again, listened to it ticking before placing it on the desk.

  “Why didn’t they fire me when they fired Brocky Jack and Carson?” I asked.

  “Because you don’t get paid what they got paid,” he
said, without looking at me. “All the same, you’d best find yourself another line of work.”

  I nodded.

  He let out a mirthless laugh. “I should, too.”

  I said: “I heard you got asked to marshal in Newton.”

  “I heard that, too.” He fiddled with the watch again.

  “The fall of Abilene,” I said, and coughed out a dry laugh.

  “What’s that?”

  I shrugged. “It’s something … something somebody told me. With all the farmers coming in and everything else. This fellow said with all this change, we might be witnessing the fall of Abilene. As a cattle town, was his meaning.”

  Hickok lifted the watch.

  “Mike Williams was a right savvy fellow. Wasn’t he?”

  * * * * *

  The Kansas Pacific also brought the mail. Newspapers. Magazines. Wanted posters. And at least once a week, a letter or two, sometimes with a clipping from a Texas newspaper, sometimes with no note, just a story ripped out of a paper. While Mr. Wilson gave the shooting of Coe and Mike an impartial and accurate account in the Chronicle, Texas editors had their own versions of what had happened, amazing when you realize they had not been there. Phil Coe had been “murdered”—Wild Bill was “a notorious character,” a “desperado,” and one of those “bloodthirsty wretches” who belonged in the penitentiary or the gallows—lies like that.

  Always unsigned, the sloppily written notes warned Hickok that his days were numbered, that Phil Coe would be avenged, that Wild Bill Hickok was not fit to live.

  Hickok burned those in the stove, for it was cold.

  * * * * *

  We still went to the depot to see the train arrive, but Hickok no longer perfumed his hair, and he did not go to the station to entertain passengers, to show himself off as Wild Bill. He came with that sawed-off twelve gauge and closely studied each man who got off the train. Most were farmers, new settlers, and drummers who peddled farm implements, not whiskey or beer.

  One November day, however, a man got off the train, carrying a carpetbag. He wore a fedora and a plaid sack suit and stopped to help an elderly lady to the platform while the porter was occupied with a belligerent one-legged army veteran. Four people got off that train. Hickok appeared satisfied that none posed a threat, and I didn’t think anything about the newcomers until I opened the mail back in the office.

  “Marshal …”

  Hickok sat at the desk, rubbing his eyes. Before Mike’s death, Hickok had often complained how paperwork took the fun out of marshaling. With a sigh, he looked at me, and I slid the paper toward him. He glanced at the poster, went back to the receipt books, penciled in something, cursed, started to erase, and suddenly spun in his chair and picked up the poster. Once he lowered the placard, he fixed those eyes on me.

  “The gent in the pitiful suit?” he said.

  I nodded.

  He studied the likeness on the poster. “Bears some resemblance. And this …” He tapped the sum at the bottom. “Yes, this makes it worthwhile to make certain.”

  The sum was one hundred and seventy-five dollars, upon identification and delivery to the Shawnee County sheriff in Topeka.

  After pulling on his Mackinaw and hat, Hickok grabbed the shotgun and moved to the door.

  “Want me to come with you?” I asked.

  “No, damn you,” he snapped. “Check my ciphers. Don’t leave the jail.”

  The door slammed.

  When he returned, his mood had changed. He pressed the shotgun against Thaddeus Corbin’s back and guided him toward me. Still in his ugly sack suit, still carrying his grip, and still wearing the fedora, Corbin looked no worse than he had when he had disembarked the train, although his face had whitened considerably.

  “Leave the grip on the desk,” Hickok said, “and follow my deputy to your quarters. Get a good night’s sleep. We’re taking you back to Topeka on the first eastbound tomorrow.”

  My shoulders straightened. Wild Bill Hickok had called me a deputy. And he said we were taking the man who had embezzled a sizable fortune from a Land Office back to the state capital.

  The feeling did not last long. Once I locked Corbin in his cell, Hickok left to tell the mayor we had to deliver a prisoner, get expense money for the trip, and to deputize a beer-jerker at the Alamo to keep the peace—not hard these days—till we returned. I went through the other wanted posters, thinking I might recognize somebody else wanted by the law.

  I can’t quite recall how I felt. It wasn’t shock. Not numbness. Maybe I had even expected it. I don’t know. Too many years have gone by. The reward was only thirty dollars. The crime, bludgeoning two men; robbing them of two gold watches, cash and coin, and a bearable bond totaling a hundred and fifty dollars, and stealing a horse. The name wasn’t right either—Benton Houston—but the description matched my brother to a T.

  That poster burned inside the stove before Hickok returned.

  * * * * *

  For the second time in my life, I rode a train, but this time I boarded with excitement and not dread. Carrying the grips, I followed Hickok, his left wrist handcuffed to Corbin’s right, onto the first coach. Hickok stopped at the first seat, occupied by a pastor and his wife.

  “I hate to be a bother,” Hickok said, “but if you would allow us to sit here, we’d be much appreciative.” He used his free hand to pull back his coat, revealing the shining badge pinned on his vest. He held up his left, which brought up the prisoner’s right, to show the manacles.

  The woman gasped. The parson closed his Bible and stood. “By all means, Marshal,” he said.

  “Help them with their baggage,” Hickok told me, and as soon as they started moving down the aisle, I dropped our grips on the seat, took one bag from the lady, and let Hickok sit down. From his seat, he could see outside and the entire coach in front of him and keep his eye on the prisoner.

  After helping the preacher and his wife, I shoved our grips—the prisoner’s and one Hickok and I shared—above us and sat opposite Hickok and Corbin.

  Slowly the train pulled away from the depot, past the empty cattle pens, and groaned its way east.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  At the first stop, Hickok told Corbin: “Let’s go.”

  I blinked away confusion. “We’re not …”

  “You stay put.” Hickok rose, pulling Corbin up. His eyes held that coldness I had seen before. “Stay put,” he repeated, his smile barely showing under his mustache. “Just stretching my legs. Long way to Topeka.”

  I settled back into the hard, uncomfortable seat as Hickok led the embezzler onto the Junction City depot’s platform. During the entire ride to Kansas City and during the trip back to Abilene, I had never stretched my legs. This morning, we had been traveling for something like two hours. In a little more than two more hours, we’d be in Topeka.

  Hickok and Corbin disappeared among the crowd. I retrieved the newspaper the preacher had left. The conductor said something I didn’t catch. I leaned across the aisle and tried to see outside.

  “Out of the way, bub.”

  Two thick-mustached men in dusters and Texas hats glared at me. The dusters weren’t buttoned, revealing the buckles to their gun rigs.

  I moved out of their way and saw another man standing by the far door. He wore a tan jacket, and once the two gunmen strode past me, he pushed one tail of his jacket aside and stepped off the train.

  “Shit.” I leaned back, repeated the oath, louder this time, and pressed my hands against my thighs to keep them from shaking. Sick to my gut, I tried looking out the window across the aisle, but several old women, chatting about nothing no doubt, blocked my view. The train creaked and groaned, and folks talked in loud voices outside.

  When I looked out the other window, I saw the fourth man. He wore a linen duster and a black hat. He carried a Winchester carbine. Though I only saw his s
ide and back, I would have known him anywhere.

  Doubt and indecision paralyzed me. Sweat peppered my face suddenly, and I began shivering as though struck by high fever. A mule brayed. An omnibus plodded away from the K. P. tracks and depot.

  I knew what I had to do. Still shaking after I rose, I pulled out Mike’s Dean & Adams revolver from the grip.

  “My goodness,” said a woman.

  Outside, I saw Hickok standing on the platform, legs spread apart, Corbin still attached to his left wrist, the shotgun aimed at the first two Texans who had disembarked the train.

  “We paid our fare,” one of the men said. “You can’t keep us off this train.”

  “You’re hounding me,” Hickok said. “My business is in Topeka. You’re staying here. And if the bastard in that tan coat on my left doesn’t take that hand off the butt of his pistol, the two of you will be plastered from here to kingdom come before I kill him, too.”

  No relief swept through me. Hickok had seen three of the men, but Sam Houston Benton had a repeating rifle on the far side of the train, and my brother knew his way around a Winchester. The scene of him slicing John Wesley Hardin’s lariat as the gunman tried to bring a wounded wolf into our cattle camp kept flashing through my head.

  “You ain’t the law here, Yank,” said another.

  “Aren’t I?” challenged Hickok.

  The conductor, brakeman, porter, and another passenger slowly slid back a ways. Corbin started to collapse, but Hickok jerked him back up.

  That’s all I saw, but I knew Hickok spotted me before I jumped off the other side just in time to see my brother step behind the caboose.

  Gun in hand, the barrel pointed down, I broke into a run, spraying gravel as I dashed toward the end of the train. When I reached the caboose, I slowed to a fast walk, stopped, and rested against the red wood as I caught my breath before stepping around the corner and raising the revolver in both hands just as Sam eared back the Winchester’s hammer.

  “Put it down, Sam,” I said coldly.