Bleeding Kansas

by Judd Cole

  Unfortunately, she noticed her secret admirers before they could nudge their horses a few discreet steps back. She gave a little yelp and dropped beneath the protective screen of water.

  “You again!” she hollered, shaking a fist at Wild Bill. “Always pushing in where you have no business, ain’t you? And now turned into a sick, sneaking spy.”

  Her cornflower-blue eyes accused both men. Josh could almost whiff her anger.

  “Now, darlin’, calm down,” Bill said soothingly. “We aren’t spying; we just want to ask you some—”

  “Mister, I know spying when I see it. I didn’t just fall off the turnip wagon!”

  “No,” Bill agreed. “It was a Studebaker, as I recall.”

  “Damn you! Just who are you anyway?”

  “The name is Hickok, missy. Jim Hickok of Troy Grove, Illinois.”

  A vagrant breeze chose that moment to tug Wild Bill’s long gray duster aside. This exposed the pearl handle of a Peacemaker. Kristen stared at it.

  “Hickok? As in . . . Wild Bill Hickok?”

  Josh watched Bill nod. Here it comes, Josh thought, feeling a stab of jealousy. All women are alike when it comes to famous men. Now she’ll be all over him like cheap perfume.

  “You,” Kristen told Bill in a cool, level tone, “are just a cold-blooded killer. My father, may he rest in peace, told me all about you and men like you. Vain, heartless murderers who think you’re little tin gods above the law.”

  Bill just sat there like unwanted furniture. “Opinions vary,” he told her calmly.

  But Josh could detect a tone of rising anger in his voice. Wild Bill would let anyone call him a killer because it was true. Kristen, however, had just called him a murderer—a word only a woman would dare use to his face.

  “It’s a judgment,” she retorted, “not an opinion. My father was the wisest man I ever knew. You know what else he said about you?”

  “You mean, about my good looks?”

  “Yes, no doubt you think so. Well, you are nice to look at, Mister Hickok, though I prefer a man’s hair to be shorter than my own.”

  “Kid,” Bill said, “was that a compliment?”

  “I’ve heard better,” Josh replied.

  “What my father said about you,” Kristen forged on, ignoring both of them, “is that you are America’s epitaph, Hickok! So either get off my property, or go ahead and kill me. Because you’ll have to kill me before you rape me, gunslinger!”

  Bill’s complete failure to elicit any information from Kristen McCoy left the Pinkerton op no other choice. His only slim hope now was that deserted shack on the outskirts of Abilene.

  By now, Bill told Josh, everybody in town knew Hickok was back. So Josh rode back first, and Bill waited until after sundown. He turned Fire-away into the livery corral, then quickly rubbed him down and pitched in some hay. Bill returned to the hotel room through the window.

  “I know how these assassination jobs work,” Bill told Josh as the two men slipped through the shadowed backlots of town. “That’s why nobody’s managed to plant me yet, knock on wood. But the timing is always tricky, kid.”

  It was an unusually mild night for autumn, clearly moonlit, the air warm and soft as the breath of a young girl. The two men closed in on the shack, sticking to the shadow cast by the big livery barn across Texas Street.

  Bill pointed at the weather-rawed shack, easy to make out in silvery moonlight. It had one window, minus glass, one door, and a tin chimney with a conical cap.

  “It’s a natural death trap, kid,” Wild Bill said. “And I want you to go on inside.”

  Josh gawped in the moonlight. “Me?”

  “Sure. Ain’t you the terror of Miles City?”

  Bill’s white teeth gleamed like foxfire for a moment, and Josh knew he was grinning in the dark. Bill took off Josh’s hat, put it on his own head, and plopped his own on the kid’s head.

  “That’s the gait, Longfellow! You’re the meat that lures the tiger. Look, here’s the way of it. The bad fellas, whoever the hell they are, have been watching the shack. They’re watching it now, I’ll warrant, and they know it’s empty. So they have to see ‘me’ go inside. You’re almost exactly my size. Here, take my duster, too.”

  Josh felt belly flies stirring when he walked boldly out into the moonlit street, then slipped into the shack. Mice skittered into the corners as the crooked plank door scraped on the dirt floor.

  Bill had already warned him how the attack would most likely go. Since there were no rear exits, the attackers would simply burn any occupants out, cutting them down with bullets as they escaped perforce through door or window. Bill had ordered Josh to stay put, no matter what, until he gave the hail.

  Time ticked by slow, and Josh heard only the monotonous crackle of insects and the hissing murmur of wind. Heat lightning began to flash. At one point, maybe around two in the morning, thunder suddenly cracked, and a soft rain sizzled on the roof of the shack. It stopped after a few minutes.

  Josh didn’t doze, but he went into a daze like men who are saddle sleepy. Then, perhaps an hour after the rain stopped, all hell broke loose.

  Josh’s eyelids had grown heavy from boredom. A burning lantern flew through the open window frame and crashed against the back wall so abruptly that he gasped like a scared maiden. In three heartbeats, the old tinderbox shack whooshed into flames.

  Josh’s first instinct was to bolt to safety. But he fought down that lethal mistake, remembering Bill’s order.

  The paralyzing fear passed. The reporter had his pinfire revolver in hand as he edged up to the window and peeked outside.

  The scene, through gathering smoke, was bedlam. Josh saw three or four figures on horseback, rifles glinting in the moonlight, waiting in the street for Hickok to emerge from the burning shack. In the crackling flames, their horses crow-hopped in panic, showing the whites of their eyes.

  And there! There was the man Josh came west to write about. Wild Bill, moving up on the riders cat-footed from the inky fathoms of shadow behind them. Highbrows scoffed at dime novels, Josh knew, yet only look—there was the cover painting for one right there, and it was real as death and taxes.

  “Toss down your guns or die now!” Wild Bill commanded with unmistakable authority. Josh knew he hoped to interrogate a live prisoner.

  But fate dealt Bill the wrong hand. Two of the riders immediately reined around and escaped in opposite directions while, simultaneously two more unleashed a hail of lead at Wild Bill. Before Josh could even knock the thong off the hammer of his pinfire, Bill blew both gunsels out of their saddles.

  “Aww, damn!” Josh heard Bill curse, even as the reporter bolted, coughing hard, from the burning shack.

  Wild Bill made sure the riders weren’t doubling back. Then he squatted on his ankles and studied the dead men in the spectral moonlight. Josh could smell the powerful stink of their heavy Mexican tobacco, stronger even than cigar stink.

  “Prob’ly don’t matter anyhow, kid,” Bill said, sounding like he’d been punched hard but not quite dropped. “I don’t know either one of them. But look how greasy their clothes are. Smell that Mex tobacco? Hell, even Indians scorn that crap. And look how their boots are tied with burlap. I’d wager these boys are no connection to our sniper and our pistol expert. Just local chawbacons out for the reward on my hide.”

  “The hell’s going on?” somebody shouted, and more voices bubbled in the distance. Josh saw swinging lanterns approaching like fireflies.

  Bill stood up and thumbed two reloads into his cylinder. He swore again, but without anger. Josh noticed that Hickok was one to rile cool, never losing his temper.

  “What do we do now, Longfellow? Sit and play the harp? Well, let’s fade. These two ain’t our mess; let somebody else clean it up.”

  Chapter Seven

  It wasn’t Wild Bill Hickok’s way to push when a thing wouldn’t move. So when he failed to draw out the two killers in Abilene, he decided on a bold new strategy.

  “Kid
,” he told Josh on the day after the shootout at the shack, “obviously we can’t stay our killer’s hand. So we’re going to follow his bullet back to the gun.”

  Josh, busy at the desk blotting a sheet of writing with sand, translated Bill’s sentence in his mind. Then he paled slightly and said, “What you mean is—we have to get deliberately shot at, right?”

  “A man has to go outside to check the weather, am I right? So we have to take jobs with the Kansas-Pacific—we do that, and we’ve got the keys to the mint.”

  “Or the morgue,” Josh muttered.

  Bill cast a regretful glance into the mirror, admiring his blond curls and carefully trimmed mustache.

  “They’ll have to go,” he carped. “We can’t know who’s crooked and who’s straight. So we’ll take summer names and hire on as two common, bag-line bums out of work.”

  Bill wrote out a short message for Pinkerton, then converted it into alphanumeric code. “Send this to Allan,” he told Josh. “We’ll have him hire us on with the KP so we get added to the local work-crew roster.”

  Thus, only one day later, two new laborers rode the work train out of Abilene, bound for the spur line being built by the Kansas-Pacific. Wild Bill had hired on as Liam O’Brien, a common navvy on the grading crew. Josh, who had obviously never handled a shovel or spike maul in his young life, was made water boy at Chinaman’s wages— half the hourly wage of white workers.

  As luck would have it, the hard-cussing English foreman took an instant dislike to both new arrivals. He was a big, barrel-chested, florid-faced Cockney named Wilson, a barracks-room bully with slack jowls and trouble-seeking eyes.

  Wild Bill had been assigned to follow the mule teams pulling the iron-bladed graders. His job was to shovel gravel and dirt fill into uneven spots along the newly graded track bed. Such workers were required to move fast, avoid conversations, and take no smoke breaks until authorized by Wilson.

  Now and then, Wilson pushed up close to Wild Bill and berated him soundly.

  “O’Brien, you worthless Irish sot! You aren’t digging potatoes back in Cork County paddy! Wield that shovel like you own a pair, you bloody mick!”

  Nor did Josh fare any better. His slender shoulders bent precariously under the sagging weight of a wooden yoke, a pail of water dangling from each end. In town, the cowboys had scorned Josh’s ready-to-wear boots; out here, the working-man scorned his pale skin and uncallused hands, his educated speech. Wilson promptly dubbed him “Little Miss Pink Cheeks.”

  Near the end of their first work day, Josh was blistered and bone weary. He could tell that Bill was no better off. Hickok faced more danger in one month than most men faced all their lives. But he was not conditioned to hard, supervised labor.

  “Hey, Pinky!” a burly laborer bellowed at Josh. “I’m spitting cotton! Hustle up with that damn water, you laggard.”

  “Worthless little weak sister,” Wild Bill added, and Josh scowled at him.

  When he found a moment, Josh stopped beside Bill.

  “No sniper attacks today,” Josh said. “Man alive! I’d almost rather get shot than haul this water rig another day.”

  Bill was smooth shaven, his hair so closely cropped it was dark. He wore baggy coveralls and a pillow-tick work cap. He removed the cap and whipped the dust from it. His eyes, closed to slits against the sun, studied the endless plains.

  “Buck up, Longfellow. Our shooters will tip their hand sooner or later. I’ll lay you two to one they hit us today or tomorrow. There’s a surveying crew right out in front of us, tempting them.”

  Bill’s eyes were tracking something just north of the work site. Josh followed his gaze and recognized it immediately—a bone wagon. They dotted the buffalo ranges now that the new fertilizer plants paid five dollars a ton for buffalo bones. The men who collected them were mostly filthy scavengers who worked for whiskey money.

  “Only two men in that crew,” Bill muttered as if making pointless dinner talk. “There’s usually three or four.”

  “O’Brien!” Wilson’s bullhorn voice rasped. “Pinky! Who told you two girls to slack off? The day’s still a pup, you blokes get back to work.”

  Bill ran a dry tongue over chapped lips. He picked up his shovel. “Well, kid, back to the salt mines.”

  But Josh watched him send his gaze out toward the bone wagon one more time before Bill bent to resume his labor.

  “There’s no dang hurry on the next surveyor,” ’Bama Jones insisted. “Better safe than sorry. I’ve killed three in the last four weeks. What I’m wondering, where the hell is Hickok?”

  “Why don’t you wonder where past years go?” Ansel Logan shot back. “It’d be just as sensible. Never mind exactly where Hickok is, porky. You’re some pumpkins with a Big Fifty, all right. But you’re also hawg stupid.”

  “The hell’s bitin’ on you today?”

  “Never mind me. One thing’s for damn sure: Hickok left his calling card in Abilene a couple days ago. Drilled Jeb Johnson and Dill Stover right through their lights. Course, I kilt six at one go, all soldiers.”

  ’Bama only grunted at this. He and Logan shared the board seat of a big farmer’s wagon pulled by oxen. ’Bama wore a huge slouch hat and was fifty pounds heavier now than during the war, when he’d hardly ever eaten a square meal.

  Each time the big conveyance lurched, old buffalo bones scraped and clattered behind them. So far this had proved an excellent dodge—bone scavengers, like any parasites on the frontier, went virtually ignored while wandering at will. As for locating bones: The herds always followed ancient migration trails, as regular as the equinox. Since hunters followed them, bones were literally easy pickings.

  “Look at them wage hustlers,” Ansel said with contempt.

  He kept the reins in his right hand and used his left to point toward the railroad work crew on their left flank.

  “Taking guff all day for a buck and a half,” Logan said. A smile twisted his lips, and he added, “Plus all the danger from us. Honest labor don’t pay, ’Bama. No sir!”

  “I don’t like the way that one navvy is staring at us,” ’Bama complained. “Damn my hide if he don’t look familiar.”

  “So let the two-bit wage slave stare. I got better things to think on than a damn shit-heel working-man. Like that little gal we seen the day I planted them soljers.”

  “Set it to music, bo!” ’Bama complained. “She’s all you been talking about. Christ, are you apron tied?”

  “Ain’t her apron I’m wantin’ to take off her, you ignut cracker. Damn but she was silky satin, all right. I got my eyes peeled for that little piece.”

  “Well you best keep ’em peeled for Hickok,” ’Bama suggested. “I’ll take care of the surveyors. You just keep Hickok off us, that’s all I ask. He’s close, Logan, damn close by us, and that’s pure dee fact. What he done in Abilene the other night was just chicken fixens.”

  For the next two days it rained in biblical torrents on the Great Plains.

  Gray, driving sheets of rain pounded the flats and swelled the rivers and creeks. Grading railbeds was out of the question, so the workers remained at the end-of-track tent city. Bill and Josh played long games of poker, using a nail keg for a table.

  “Kid,” Bill remarked as the rain began to slacken on the second day, “work won’t start up for at least a day so the mud can dry out. I want you to ride into Ellsworth.”

  Ellsworth was the next cowtown west of Abilene, perhaps three hours ride from there. By now Josh had the cooped-up fever and welcomed the assignment.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “You’re going to send another telegram to Pinkerton,” Bill explained. “I just remembered something. Western Union just installed a big new storage drum in Denver. It holds all telegrams sent between this region’s stations. Leaves a back-up copy punched out in perforations. Pinkerton has access to it.”

  “I get it,” Josh said, pulling on his damp boots. “Pinkerton can check all the messages that originate from Abilene.”


  Bill nodded. He had opened a saddlebag to remove his Colts and clean them.

  “That telegraph clerk might be in touch with a superior. Somebody representing the Santa Fe Railroad. We need to find a link, get some names.”

  So Josh dutifully cut his horse out from the camp corral and carried out his mission without mishap. It was still squalling when he left. But by the time he returned, just before nightfall, the sky had cleared.

  “Good work,” Bill told him, breaking out the poker deck. “Good weather means our sniper will soon be back. And I miss clean sheets. But, you know, Longfellow? I confess I feel safer out here than in Abilene.”

  Bill filled a tin cup with Old Taylor and fired up a cheroot. “Matter fact, kid, wasn’t for that damn blowhard Wilson, I might keep this job awhile. Blisters kill a man lots slower than bullets.

  “Five card draw,” Bill added, “one-eyed jacks wild. Yessir, this life could be worse. We could—”

  “Aww, hell!” Josh cut him off. He rose and stepped to the open fly of their two-man tent. “It’s C. J., Bill! Jeez, she’s found us! She musta spotted me coming back from Ellsworth.”

  Bill chuckled as he dealt out cards. “Kid, you got to learn when to give a joke a rest. It was funny the first time you pulled it.”

  But in the silence following his remark, both men heard it: a raucous, drunken female voice singing.

  Buffalo Gal, won’t you come out tonight, come out tonight, come out tonight. . . .

  “God kiss me!”

  Josh watched Bill scramble to blow out the kerosene lantern.

  A six-shooter sounded, and Calamity Jane roared out, “Bill Hickok, you purty hunk o’ man-flesh, I’m a-comin’ to climb all over you, boy!”

  “Get jobs with the railroad,” Josh said scornfully, quoting Bill. “We do that, and we got the keys to the mint.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Bill moaned in the darkened tent. “She’s drunker than the lords of creation. Keep her the hell away from me, kid!”