by Judd Cole
Reissuing classic fiction from Yesterday and Today!
Even among the toughest hardcases in the West, Abilene, Kansas, was known as pure hell on earth, a wide-open wild town that was reined in only briefly—when Wild Bill Hickok was its sheriff. Ever since he rode out of Abilene, Wild Bill had never wanted to go back. But now he had to. A lot of people were dying fast there. The Kansas Pacific Railroad was laying track where somebody obviously didn’t want it, and bullets were flying thick and furious. The Pinkerton Agency needed their best operative to get to the bottom of it and that meant only one man—Wild Bill. But as hard as it was for Wild Bill to go back, he knew there was a bigger challenge ahead of him—staying alive once he got there.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Copyright
The Series
About the Author
About Piccadilly Publishing
Chapter One
“Raise you two bits, Wild Bill,” said a thin man wearing clergy black. His watery nose made him sniff a lot.
“Give as good as you get,” James Butler Hickok replied amiably.
He poked his cheroot between his teeth and flipped fifty cents into the pot. “See you, old son, and raise you another two bits.”
The dealer, nineteen-year-old Joshua Robinson, goggled at the pot heaped up on the green baize surface of the poker table. Almost twenty dollars and still growing!
“Better slow down, Pretty Bill,” warned a striking redhead wearing a low-cut dress with velvet-trimmed cuffs. She crowded Bill’s right elbow. “You’ve lost the last three hands; soon you won’t have two nickels left to rub together. You can’t take me to Paris if you’re broke!”
“You go right ahead and lose your money, Billy,” chimed in a swollen-bodiced blonde crowding his left elbow. “I’ve got savings, I’ll take you to Paris, you handsome lug.”
Josh felt a sting of jealousy. These gals were not your typical soiled doves who entertained cowboys in seedy cribs behind the saloon. These were respectable dime-a-dance girls.
In fact, Josh had struck a spark for the sweet little redhead less than an hour after he and Wild Bill rode into Miles City, Montana. Yet, respectable or not, she soon made it quite clear she’d gladly trade her favors for a night of unbridled lust with the hero of Wild Bill the Indian Slayer.
“Bill won’t need money in Paris, sweet love,” said another gambler at the table, a neat young hardware drummer in a high, brightly glazed paper collar. His straw sample case leaned against his leg. “He’s famous in France, too. So I’ll take this pot.”
He laid down an ace-high straight and scooped in his winnings.
“Famous men still have to pay their hotel bills,” Wild Bill carped good-naturedly. “Ante up, gents! I won’t leave this table until I’m a rich man or a pauper. Deal, kid, and cowards to the rear!”
Josh shuffled the cards, watching the redhead nibble Bill’s ear while the busty blonde topped off his pony glass with Old Taylor bourbon.
He never gets woman-hungry like the rest of us, Josh realized in another flush of resentment. That’s why the females flock to him like flies to syrup. It’s not just his fame—men who were indifferent to women got their pick of the feminine litter.
“Looks like we have company gents,” said the fourth player at the table, an Army officer with his tunic unbuttoned. He nodded toward the front of the building.
Word had quickly gotten noised about that Wild Bill Hickok was in town. By now the town loafers had congregated outside, gawking above the bat wings like chawbacons at a county fair.
“They all wanna touch you for luck, hon,” the blonde said to Hickok. “Everybody knows how often the Rebels captured you and sentenced you to death, you slippery devil.”
Josh saw one of her slim hands disappear under the table. “We all like to touch you,” she added.
“Careful there, dumpling,” Bill warned her. “You break it; you pay for it.”
“I told you I got savings,” she reminded him shamelessly. Josh flushed and glanced away, glad his mother didn’t realize the kind of women he had fallen among.
The Songbird Saloon was typical of dozens of watering holes Josh and Bill had frequented since Josh came west in search of a living American legend named Hickok. Tin lamp reflectors lined the walls. There were brass cuspidors scattered about, but the condition of the rough floor planks proved few ever hit them. A sign on the nearest wall warned: NO ROADHOUSE TALK ON SUNDAYS, GODDAMNIT!
It was early autumn, the nights up north were starting to get a snap to them and left a thin powdering of frost on the grass at sunup. A rusty stove sat on bricks and emitted a ruby flush from coals glowing in the firebox. In the corner nearest the stove huddled the local old-timers who had retired to the liars’ nook. They played checkers and nine men’s morris, ignoring the young bucks with open contempt.
“Sheep clouds making up,” Josh heard one of them remark. “We’ll have rain in twenty-four hours, I expect.”
The poker game went forward, coins clinking, cards slapping the table. Outside, a fierce wind polished the knolls bare and made the saloons joists groan in protest. Once again Josh felt it: that prickling of the nape, that tingle along his spine. Danger lurked very nearby; Josh could feel its presence like a hand on his shoulder.
The youth recalled riding into Miles City and Wild Bill’s comment. How this burg put him in mind of the mining camps in the Black Hills—places, Bill insisted, that surpassed even Tombstone, Arizona, for sheer violence.
Even now, despite clearly enjoying the game, Wild Bill displayed his habitual vigilance. He sat with his back to the wall, commanding a good view of the entire room. There was a filthy back-bar mirror, and Josh saw Bill using it to good advantage. Though his long gray duster hid them, two ivory-handled Colt Peacemakers were only inches from Hickok’s fabled hands.
The short-line stage rolled through town, tug chains rattling. Hearing it, Wild Bill looked at Josh and said quietly, “C. J.”
Josh nodded, put down the deck of cards, and walked outside to quickly check the streets. He watched a woman with a small child emerge from the stage and hustle into the town’s only hotel. A sudden wind gust made Josh shiver in his summer-weight suit. Soon enough, snow water would fill the ruts of these streets, glazing over with ice after sunset. Josh pictured all this soft mud after bitter-cold winds turned it hard as baked adobe.
A wedge of geese passed overhead, winging south. They made a racket like a pack of hounds. Josh shivered at the lonely sound, again thinking how close danger felt.
He returned to the table.
“All clear,” he told Bill, dealing out the next hand.
“Who in Sam Hill is C. J.?” the blonde demanded. “I thought this little clerk’s name was Joshua.”
Josh felt heat flooding his cheeks.
“I ain’t no damned clerk,” he protested. “I’m a newspaper writer. And for the New York Herald, the country’s greatest newspaper.”
The buxom femme snorted. “The ‘Noo Yawk Cats Tail’, you mean! Newspaper writer! Huh! Little old ladies of both sexes.”
Josh was steamed but continued to deal cards with a stoic face. A faint crease in Wild Bill’s forehead told Josh that his hero was laughing hard inside at him. Like an Indian at a treaty ceremony, Bi
ll had perfected the silent “abdomen laugh.”
“What brings you to Montana, Wild Bill?” remarked the Army officer, who was quite civil to all despite an indrawn, bitter look Josh had spotted often on career soldiers along the frontier.
“Oh, a mere trifle, Soldier Blue. I and Longfellow here had a little business with an extortion gang operating up near Lewistown,” Bill replied. “These were some rough, unshaven fellows with poor manners. Figured they could exact tribute from cattlemen.”
The skinny man in clerical black chuckled. “I’d wager those ‘rough, unshaven fellows’ have found a new line of work, anh?”
“The ones that can still shave,” Bill conceded amiably, “have taken a sudden interest in the Canadian Rockies. Good bass fishing up that way, I’m told.”
“Just like you done with the McCandles gang, right, Bill?” the blonde fawned.
Josh frowned petulantly when she added, taking her “facts” straight from the dime novels and shilling shockers, “Wild Bill wiped out ten members of the gang at Rock Creek, Nebraska.”
“Six with his guns,” chimed in the redhead, “and four with the bowie knife he always keeps tucked in his red sash.”
“What bowie knife?” Josh protested. “What red—”
“I’ll take two, kid,” Bill cut in. “And didn’t that Quaker mama of yours in Philly teach you never to talk over a lady? Shame, boy, shame!”
Josh slapped the cards down like he was smashing bugs. Man alive! In truth, Bill only killed two of the McCandles bunch and wounded a third. But Josh noticed how Wild Bill never made any effort whatsoever to deny the melodramatic claims of ink-slinging hacks. Bill didn’t lie himself; he just never corrected the record.
One of the wall lamps began to gutter. The barkeep cut a new wick from his long johns and soon had it fixed.
A conveyance rattled into town. Bill looked at Josh. “C. J.”
The youth dutifully rose, went outside to check on the new arrival, came back inside.
“All clear,” Josh reported as he resumed dealing. “Just a farmer in a manure wagon. I saw a messenger boy coming from the telegraph office.”
“Good,” Bill said. “Must be for me. ’Bout damn time Pinkerton wired us.”
“Who’s this C. J. you’re watching for?” the redhead demanded.
“Christ Jesus,” Bill said with a straight face. “He’s due back any day now.”
“Mr. Hickok,” said the young drummer as he sorted his cards, “I read the fascinating interview you gave to Harpers Weekly. I recall one line especially: ‘The West can be harsh, but most men mean no harm!’ Hear, hear!”
“An interesting and generous sentiment,” the officer added, “coming from a man who’s become the most sought-after target in the West.”
The bat wings slapped open. Josh and Wild Bill both glanced up in the dimness and spotted the official red livery of a Western Union boy. Hickok’s famous hair-trigger alertness relaxed a bit.
But say, Josh thought, peering closer. That’s not the same kid I just spotted! That’s—
Later, Josh realized how all of it happened as quick as a heartbeat. Even as Bill opened his mouth to reply to the officer, a blue-tinted Colt .44 appeared in the fist of the approaching figure, now about ten paces from the table.
“Well, God kiss me!” Wild Bill said in pure astonishment at being tricked. He used both arms to shove the two women out of harm’s way. That delay was fatal—the Colt was aimed dead at Hickok’s lights, and the gunman already taking up his trigger slack.
The detonation of gunpowder was deafening in that low-ceilinged room. One of the women screamed; the soldier dove to the floor. A second later, the only sound was the obscene, liquid slapping of blood spurting to the floor.
The blonde moaned once, then swooned into the drummer’s arms.
The redhead stared at Josh. He still held his pinfire revolver in his right fist, smoke curling from the muzzle. The gunman lay sprawled in his own blood. A foot twitched, and with no hesitation Wild Bill tossed a finishing shot into the downed man. Hickok feared possum players from his war days.
“The boy killed him!” marveled the redhead. “He saved Wild Bill Hickok’s bacon! Bill froze right up, and the kid—”
“Now ease off that ‘froze up’ crap,” Bill protested. “There were ladies in the line of fire, I had to—”
“Never talk over a lady,” Josh reminded the living legend. “Shame on you, Wild Bill, shame.”
“The kid—Joshua, I mean—drew that weapon so fast,” the redhead praised. She scootched her chair closer to his.
“And plugged the bastard dead center,” the soldier added after examining the body.
“I taught that kid how to shoot,” Hickok said defensively. “I gave him that gun! Hell, this little city slick didn’t even know factory ammo from hand crimped.”
“Well, he was an apt pupil,” said the drummer, beaming at Josh. “This lad’s a hero, Bill! Saved your life, for a surety!”
“Wasn’t for him,” the soldier agreed, “Bill’d be looking up to see daisies.”
“’Preciate it, kid,” Bill said in a flat tone.
The redhead began flirting with Josh. The youth saw something truly rare flicker in Hickok’s gunmetal eyes: jealousy!
“At least reach me that telegram, wouldja, kid?” Wild Bill groused. “I hope it’s orders from Pinkerton. I’m sick of this one-horse town.”
Josh grinned ear-to-ear as he pulled the yellow message form from the dead man’s grip. But he read the telegram before he handed it to Hickok.
Like a snowflake melting on a river, the grin disappeared from Josh’s face.
Chapter Two
“Well, I wanted orders from Pinkerton,” Hickok admitted after he and Josh returned to the hotel. “Now that I’ve got my damned orders, I’m half a mind to quit working for that old miser. Damn him to hell, anyway. Any town but that one.”
Josh watched Bill palm the wheel of one of his Colts, checking his loads. He had already thumbed home a cartridge to replace the one he spent at the Songbird.
The telegram sat atop a little escritoire beside Josh’s narrow, iron bedstead. The young reporter’s latest dispatch sat beside it, awaiting release over the newly formed wires of the Associated Press. Josh watched Bill idly run a finger over his neat blond mustache as he gazed at the telegraph, an odd glint in his eyes.
“Any damn place on earth but that one,” Bill repeated, sliding his Colt back into its hand-tooled holster. “Send me to Cochise County, Arizona, hell, I won’t whimper. Send me up to the Comstock, make me ride shotgun on a bullion coach in the ass end of west Texas, I’m your boy. But Abilene, Kansas? Old son, that’s too much hell for one sinner.”
Bill cursed softly and slid a cheroot from his vest, skinning back the wrapper. Footsteps sounded out in the carpeted hall, and Bill focused his attention out there until they passed.
As for Josh, he was nervously pacing the small room. He’d read once that cowboys on long roundups became restless inside buildings, and Josh felt that cooped-up restlessness himself now in his hotel room.
“Take it easy, kid,” Bill said absent-mindedly, as if he were speaking to calm a nerved-up horse. “It’s your first kill. You’ll be off your feed for a couple days, miss some sleep. It’ll pass. You done good, that jasper needed killing.”
Bill scratched a phosphor with his thumbnail and puffed the cigar to life. Despite his words just now, he still watched the kid from a sullen deadpan.
Still mad at me, Josh thought. He’s a prideful man, and I made him look bad in front of others. Josh was feeling less brash now that the reality of killing a man—even one as low as that murdering trash in the saloon—was setting in.
Besides, Josh realized, Wild Bill really did make a gallant choice in pushing those two sparkling doxies out of harm’s way rather than drawing his weapon.
But Hickok, never a man to hold a grudge, was seeing some humor in all of it, too. Now he cocked his head and watched Josh, a g
rudging little grin tugging at his thin lips.
“The cat sits by the gopher hole, right, Longfellow? Just bides his time. Waits for the perfect moment to pounce, anh?”
“Whad ya mean?”
“Never mind, you crafty little devil! That redhead will eat you alive and spit out your bones! We got us a tougher nut to crack, old son.”
Bill nodded toward the telegram. Josh picked it up and read it once again:
JAMIE: SNIPER TERRORIZING ABILENE. I CAN’T ORDER YOU BACK TO THAT HELLHOLE. BUT THIS REQUIRES MY BEST OP, AND THAT’S YOU. SITUATION URGENT. REPLY IMMEDIATELY. ALLAN
“You taking the job?” Josh demanded.
For a moment Hickok’s face got a tight-to-the-bone look on it, one Josh recognized well since coming west. Very few men out here ever saved money, including Bill Hickok. They lived high while they were solvent, sought work when their pockets were empty.
“Damnit, kid, I have to. I’m in a dirty corner, and poker won’t get me out of it. But why Abilene? Of all the little stage-stop hellholes in Kansas, why that one? I cleaned it up once already and damn near caught a load of lead whistlers for my trouble. I figure it’s somebody else’s turn to skin that grizzly.”
But something else was rankling in Bill’s craw, and Josh saw him stare at the telegram again.
“The sheriff,” Bill mused, unaware his cigar had gone cold, “says he found the real Western Union boy in an alley, conked on the cabeza. Now, ain’t that a mite queer?”
Josh replied slowly, thinking it out: “You mean … how the killer would know there was a telegram coming for you?”
Wild Bill nodded; his gunmetal eyes narrowed as he worked this trail out. “At first I figured it was just another try at collecting the open reward on my head.”
Bill meant the open bounty of ten thousand dollars that had been placed on him when he served as sheriff of Abilene. He had been forced to shoot a drunk, kill-crazy cowboy named Harlan Lofley. But Lofley’s old man was one of the richest cattlemen in Texas, and the doting old patriarch wanted his son’s killer planted.
