by Judd Cole
“Was he sure it’s Hickok?” ’Bama Jones demanded.
“Sure, he’s sure, porky,” Ansel Logan shot back. “Perry even told me where he’s staying.”
“Perry don’t know gee from haw.”
“So what? He’s also spineless. But he knows Hickok’s face, all right. My grandmother knows it, Christ sakes.”
“So it’s Hickok,” ’Bama conceded. “That don’t mean Perry ain’t been foxed. Hickok ain’t as stupid as you look.”
“Up yours,” Logan said, walking back to his hobbled horse. He took the brass field glasses out of his near-side saddlebag.
A burning yellow sun was stuck high in the sky as if pegged there. Logan studied the rolling plains that stretched out in every direction, broken here and there only by a stunted cottonwood. The two men had taken up a good position in a natural sink well west of Abilene.
“See anything?” ’Bama demanded. The muzzle of his Big Fifty lay balanced on its bipod, ready to speak its deadly piece.
“I’m sick a waiting. Hell, it’s been three hours.”
“Just hold your water. I’m telling you, somebody from the KP will show.”
Logan’s eyes prowled the terrain. Despite his advice to ’Bama, Logan, too, was damn sick and tired of this placid, punkin-butter monotony. Sure, the pay was good. But what good was money if a man couldn’t piss it away on a high, old time?
’Bama lay sprawled behind his rifle. With considerable effort and grunting, he rolled his huge bulk onto one elbow, larval face turned to watch Logan. He shaded his eyes from the sun.
“Hell, if you know where Hickok is holed up,” ’Bama said in his lazy, take-your-time drawl, “do you mean to brace him?”
“Would you brace Hickok?”
“Me? Sure. When the Yellow River runs clear. But I ain’t handy with a short iron like you are.”
“Handy? Son, I’m miles past handy,” Logan bragged, still watching the wide-open Kansas prairie through the glasses. “I’m death to the damn Devil, I am! But you see, the man who braces Hickok is a man secretly looking to die. And being ready to die is the weak half of being a man. The strong half is being able to kill so’s you don’t have to die. That’s the part I do best at.”
“So you say. So far, bo, I been doing all the blood work. But hey, gettin’ back to Hickok. You just mean to leave him be? I mean, goddamn, Logan! Hickok ain’t come to Abilene to buy beef. The man is here to kill us. You going to earn your pay or what?”
“S’matter, gettin’ snow in your boots? Settle down. We know where Golden Curls is staying, I told you. Hickok don’t know we got a man in Western Union. Why the hell would he?”
“Knowing stuff like this is why he ain’t dead, that’s why.”
“Every lucky streak has to end,” Logan insisted. “I already talked to some fellas in town. Gents that won’t be riding winter range, so they’ll be a little light in their pockets, you take my drift? They’d be happy as hogs in mud to go shares on that ten thousand dollar reward. So they’ll be paying Hickok a nighttime visit.”
’Bama said something else, but Logan missed it.
“How’s ’at?” he said absently, for he was unable to believe what he had just spotted. Logan quickly adjusted the focus knob on his glasses.
“Hell and furies,” he said a moment later. “It is a woman!”
And what a woman. A little skinny, but pretty as four aces, and she shaped up right peart, Logan decided. The blond was driving a big Studebaker wagon east toward Abilene. Three towheaded kids rode in the bed.
“A woman?” ’Bama repeated. “You sure?”
“Sure as shooting. Have a look.”
“She’s a woman, all right,” ’Bama agreed a moment later. “And damn easy on the eye.”
“This is mighty providential, ’Bama! I been needing me a women—a night woman, I mean.”
“Let it alone,” ’Bama protested. “There’s three pups with that bitch! Ain’t no real man ‘needs’ no woman nor nothing else.”
“Hell! You don’t know sic ’em about what men require. It’s been proved by them professors at them colleges in France and England, porky. Proved by them as knows! See, a man is just like a volcano. He’s got to have him a woman now and again, got to release the pressure inside him, or else he’ll explode.”
“Then get you a whore in town. Thissen’s got kids with her.”
Ansel gave a hard, tight-lipped smile straight as a seam. He started to tighten the girth on his saddle.
“So? Let ’em watch and learn. I ain’t gonna hurt them or the little gal. Just a quick poke, is all. That’s a man’s na’chral right, innit?”
Captain Jules Bledsoe, Fifth Cavalry Regiment, sat his saddle looking as solid as a meeting house. Five enlisted men were fanned out around him, their horses rigged light for fast travel.
“There’s two of them,” he finally announced, lowering his field glasses. “I only spotted them because they sky-lined themselves. Something’s caught their attention to the north, that’s why they’re being so careless about watching their rear. The moment one of them turns around, he’ll spot us.”
“Is it the snipers, sir?” asked a Negro corporal. Like the rest, he carried little more equipment than a rifle, ammo belts, and a bedroll strapped to his saddle.
“Has to be, Jimmy. The fat one’s got a Big Fifty with a scope and bipod.”
“Then they sure’s hell ain’t buff hunters,” said a leather-faced sergeant wearing an eye patch. “Let’s put at ’em, sir.”
“Knock the sand off your cartridges,” Bledsoe ordered, for the Spencer carbine was a good killing rifle, but its copper shells were prone to jam easily. “Hold wide intervals during movement to contact. If they spot us, take up an avoidance pattern. We already know that sniper could shoot the eyes out of a buzzard at a thousand yards.”
The men carried out these orders with an efficient, business-as-usual manner. Jules Bledsoe was a former Texas Ranger who had whipped even the fiercest Comanches into submission. All five of his men had been handpicked by Bledsoe, the fighting elite of the U.S. Army’s new quick-strike regiments. They had ridden out from Fort Riley with only one urgent order: Kill the sniper or snipers terrorizing the Kansas-Pacific Railroad.
“Move out!” Bledsoe ordered. “And get ready for a chase. Once they spot us, they’ll for sure rabbit. They won’t go toe-to-toe with six of us.”
“Logan!” ’Bama protested as the former circus shootist stepped up and over, reining his horse toward the north. “Let that woman go, damnit! It ain’t smart to show yourself.”
Logan waved him off. But before he could spur his horse, both men heard the sudden, hollow thudding of approaching hooves.
Logan slewed around in his saddle, then felt a cold fist squeeze his heart.
“Chee-rist!”
Six weathered, grim-faced soldiers were bearing down on him in a classic pincers trap!
’Bama’s Sharps was set up in the opposite direction. He had a dead aim, but Logan knew he was slow and clumsy—he’d never get that gun turned around in time to stop these blue-bloused avengers.
Even as the first carbine cracked, shooting a neat hole through his saddle fender, Logan went into action.
He leaped down, slapped his horse on the rump, then hit the ground rolling fast. Each time he rolled onto his back, he gave a little push, up and out of the deep grass, and tossed off a snap shot. And each time he fired, a soldier flew from his horse, face frozen in surprise.
Nor was any of the six shots a body hit. Each slug punched into the center of the forehead just below the soldier’s hat. From long experience with a short iron, Logan knew that only a shot to the brain guaranteed a one-bullet kill. The heart was hidden and tucked away, but the brain was always vulnerable to a crack shot.
“I’ll be goin’ to hell!” ’Bama shouted. “You plugged the whole caboodle!”
“Who’s doing the blood work now?” Ansel boasted, thumbing reloads into his cylinders.
“You blowed away six
soldiers!” ’Bama yelped. “Pow! Pow! Pow! Jee-zus!”
“Soldiers? Bosh! Buncha boys with their pants tucked into their boots,” Logan boasted.
“Buncha dead boys now, bo,” ’Bama chortled.
Logan cast a wistful glance at the blonde in the bouncing wagon, ideas popping in his mind like firecrackers.
“She can’t see our faces from here. I best not go closer to her right after this turkey shoot,” he decided reluctantly.
“Ah, she’ll keep until another time. Damn, Logan! How can a man shoot six targets that fast?”
“I draw just as fast as I shoot,” Logan assured him. “You still frettin about Wild Bill Hickok?”
Logan’s tone mocked those last three words.
“Partner,” ’Bama assured him, “after what I just seen? Hey, I ain’t worried about nothing.”
Chapter Six
The special courier sent from Denver by Allan Pinkerton arrived one day after Bill and Josh began their dangerous sojourn in Abilene.
Pinkerton’s letter confirmed what both friends already suspected. Bill was indeed caught in the middle of a bloody railroad war—though, of course, no railroad in America would publicly admit that fact.
The Kansas-Pacific, Pinkerton reported, was expanding its northern route through Kansas to include more cowtowns like Hays City; meantime, the equally powerful Santa Fe Railroad would soon begin a new southern route through Kansas. Their goal, Pinkerton noted, was to drive the cattle trade (namely the vast feedlots) south from Abilene to Dodge City.
“Whoever takes this hand,” Bill had commented with a grim face when he finished the letter, “will bust the bank. And the loser will be up Salt River without any profit for their investment.”
Bill added that this was far from your usual scrap over a few parcels of land. This was a war to the death to see who took title to the West.
“And we get to witness it firsthand,” Josh marveled. “Man alive, Bill! This is history happening! This’ll be the biggest story I ever filed. Bigger than Vogel’s ice machine, bigger than the Kinkaid County War even!”
“Get that glory light outta your eyes, kid,” Bill warned him. “Just cause you got the drop on a scum bucket in Miles City doesn’t mean you got divine protection. Could be, the only thing that gets filed will be our obituaries.”
Bill’s point was driven home forcefully by a newspaper account, one day later, of the bloody massacre of six soldiers west of Abilene. And Kristen McCoy was named as a witness, albeit a distant one.
“‘All six men,’” Josh read aloud from the Abilene Chronicle, “‘were killed by one man with a handgun, yet at rifle range. And each bullet was so precisely aimed, according to Doctor Levy, that all six struck their targets in virtually the same spot, the exact center of the forehead. According to Miss McCoy, who admits she was not close enough to describe the lone marksman, all six shots were fired in about four or five seconds—”
Josh looked at Bill. “Holy Hannah!”
He folded up the newspaper and crammed it back into his saddlebag. It was late morning, and the two friends had ridden out “to get the lay of the land,” as Bill put it. They rode out early, for by now Bill assumed word was out that Hickok was back in Abilene, looking for the grave he somehow missed last time.
“Damn, Longfellow,” Bill mused when Josh finished reading. “This trail’s taking enough turns to make a cow cross-eyed.”
“Whad’ya mean?”
Bill’s eyes stayed in constant scanning motion as he replied. Looking for movement, reflections, smoke, spooked animals.
“These killings are different than the others, that’s what I mean. We already knew we’re up against a mystery sniper with a sure-hit rifle. One who can shoot straight for a country mile. But what kind of marksman could drop a half-dozen top-notch soldiers as if they were green recruits. And do it with a pistol?”
“That would take a Bill Hickok,” Josh suggested quietly.
“Or a man good enough to kill him. Christ,” Bill said, “I knew Jules Bledsoe. I fought Comanches alongside him once when I was a driver for the Overland Stage Company. He taught me how to wing-shoot while changing locations. Jules was one of the best men on the frontier.”
Josh felt it just as surely as Bill did: the gut-tickling sense that, even now, they were in the crosshairs of an assassin’s weapon.
“Bill?” Josh decided now was the time for some answers. “Do you still think you know who the rifle sniper is, at least?”
Bill nodded. “That’s an affirmative. I know of only one man who can kill at the distances that’ve been reported. He goes by the moniker of ’Bama Jones. He was once the most celebrated and feared sniper in the Confederate States Army. Us Billy Yanks called him Boneyard Jones and Old Drop-a-lot.”
“He’s good, huh?” Josh pressed eagerly, already composing his next story.
“Good? Hell, no, you ink-slinging idiot! He’s as low-down dirty and mean as they come. Mister, I mean one kill-crazy son of a bitch! He’s credited with more than a thousand kills during the war.”
Josh goggled. “Straight goods, Bill?”
“My hand to God, kid! He could shadow an army on the march, stay so far back that nobody ever saw him. ’Bama could thin out an army better than dysentery. And guess what else?”
“What?”
“That deadeye killing machine could be laying a bead on your lights as we speak. Not to mention his pistol-packing pard, whoever the hell he is.”
A solitary bead of sweat trickled out from Josh’s hairline. Bill reined in, and Josh followed suit. For a long time Bill just sat there, his fathomless blue eyes again reading the level horizon.
“Tell you anything?” Josh asked.
“Looking for a man or two out here,” Bill said, “is like trying to find a sliver in an elephant’s ass.”
“What about your plan with the deserted shack in town?” Josh asked. “Still think somebody will attack it to get you?”
Bill nodded. “That telegraph clerk is bent. I’d guess somebody will strike as soon as tonight. I’ll be waiting.”
Bill skinned the paper back from a cheroot, scowling now.
“On top of two expert killers, we got Calamity Jane out here somewhere. We’re caught between a rock and a hard place, kid. At least a bullet is quick.”
“What do we do now?”
Bill scratched a phosphor to life with his thumbnail and lit the cigar. He pressured Fire-away into motion with his knees.
“We palaver with the McCoy girl, that’s what. She witnessed the rubout of the soldiers. The newspaper says she’s squatting on an abandoned quarter-section north of Abilene. We can find her easy.”
Bill kicked Fire-away from a trot to a canter.
“Yeah, well Kristen McCoy ain’t so fond of you,” Josh called out behind him, hurrying to catch up.
“Jesus, kid, that leaves me a broken man. Listen, you young fool, I’m looking for information, not a wife. Now quit flapping your lips and keep a weather eye out.”
Bill was right. In less than an hour of easy riding, he and Josh rode into sight of the abandoned soddy where the orphaned McCoy clan had taken up residence.
“Gotta be it,” Bill said. “There’s her wagon, and no team. She must have hired one to haul it here.”
“Won’t they throw her out?” Josh asked.
“Not if this section is a relinquishment,” Bill said, “which it appears to be. She can pay any back taxes and file a new claim.”
Bill grinned and pointed ahead. “Look! She’s already improving the place. Gone into business.”
Josh saw a crude sign made from scrap wood nailed to a cottonwood. Scrawled charcoal letters proclaimed FRUIT TREE SEEDLINGS FOR SALE!
The two men rode up slowly. The trio of tow-heads were playing with a jar of butterflies in front of the low, one-story dwelling. They stared with hostile eyes at the new arrivals.
“Morning, kids!” Bill called out cheerfully. “Your sister to home?”
“None a your damn beeswax, mister!”
The speaker was the same belligerent seven-year-old boy who called them yahoos a few days earlier.
“Mind if I look inside?”
“Hell yes, it ain’t your house!”
Bill let Fire-away prance backward a few steps. Hickok stared at the little trooper, who scowled right back, lower lip puffed out defiantly.
“You win, shorty,” Bill finally surrendered, trying to keep a straight face. “I know the better man when I meet him. C’mon, Josh. This mite’s just too tough for us.”
They started to wheel their horses around as if to leave. But the kid—tickled pink at this praise— suddenly relented.
“Hey, mister? Kristen went down to the creek. It’s back of the house.”
Bill touched the brim of his hat. “’Preciate it, shorty. You’re all man.”
“Damn straight, Jack!”
“That little son of trouble requires a cowhide across his sitter,” Bill grumbled as the two men trotted their horses around the soddy, “Nervy little half-pint. Brash, just like his big sis.”
Neither man spotted the weed-sheltered creek until they had practically ridden right into it. Josh caught a glimpse of a faded blue anchor-print dress—clean now—hanging from a chokecherry bush.
Lord God, Josh thought. But even as he realized their mistake, he spotted the naked woman in the middle of the creek.
Josh’s jaw dropped open in pure awe and astonishment. Even Wild Bill, whose eyes were far more accustomed to such sights, sat there greedily taking in this erotic vignette.
Kristen had raised both arms overhead to twist water from her wet blond ropes of hair. How, Josh marveled, could a gal so slim and fine-boned have such full and heavy breasts?
Beside him, Wild Bill swallowed audibly.
“Kid,” Bill said quietly, “nothing focuses the mind like a naked woman, huh?”
Josh studied her wet, mother-of-pearl skin and wordlessly agreed. He’d read an Eastern tale once where a Hindu wise man summed up all of human history: “They were born; they were wretched; they died.” But obviously that fellow, Josh told himself, never spotted Kristen McCoy bare-butt naked.
