Protecting Hickok

by Bill Brooks

  Sometimes he surprised her a lot more than she ever thought he was capable of. Mostly he was a taciturn man with a grim view on life, a view born out of his chosen profession as law keeper.

  “How’s the weather, warm enough, or should I take a shawl?”

  “Take a shawl,” he said, “you know how fast the weather changes in this country.”

  “Oui,” she said. He loved hearing her say things like that.

  He went out of the house and hitched up the chesty bay he called Bob to the hack and whistled while he was at it. His wife came out of the house carrying a bowl of the cobbler and a shawl draped loose over one arm, and he helped her up in the hack then snapped the reins over Bob’s haunches, setting the bay into a nice clip-clop walk.

  He wheeled in at the café for a basket of fried chicken and some fresh warm biscuits and a pail of cold beer. He had given some thought to what they’d do after they had their picnic, and was pleased with himself for having slipped an extra blanket in under the seat. It had been a long time since he and Molly had gone on that kind of a picnic, and he figured it was about time they did again.

  They rode along at a gentle but steady pace toward Crow River, where he knew of a little copse of cottonwood trees that would offer friendly shelter and just enough privacy that if they got around to it, they could put to use that extra blanket.

  “I do wish you’d consider taking up another profession,” Molly said.

  “Where’d that come from?”

  “I don’t know. I just worry sometimes that something terrible will happen to you. Pretty days cause me to worry, I guess.”

  “It ain’t yet and it ain’t going to,” he said reassuringly. “I’m a careful man, you know that.”

  “I know you are, Jeff.”

  He patted her hand as they rode along, and he was glad he’d met and took up residence with her instead of remaining a bachelor. That was no kind of life for a man.

  They came to where Crow River twisted down from the plateaus and squirmed through the stand of cottonwoods, and he pulled in there and climbed out of the wagon. Then holding the reins steady in one hand, he gave Molly a hand down with his other.

  “It is such a lovely day, I feel young again,” she said.

  Jeff ground-reined the horse to a place where it could crop the new grass sprouting up so fresh and green there along the river, while Molly spread one of the blankets along the ground and set the food and herself on it.

  They ate in quiet pleasure but Jeff felt his heart stirring more rapidly with every bite for thinking about being there alone with his wife. At one point he took her hand and kissed it, and she looked at him and saw that particular look he got in his eye at certain times.

  “Why Jeff Carr, did you bring me out here on the pretense of a picnic just so you could dally with me?”

  “I did,” he said.

  “Eat your chicken,” she said.

  He smiled, said, “Woman, you’ll be my consternation all the rest of my days.”

  Her laughter was like that of a songbird.

  He hardly ever knew such happiness, and swallowed hard to hold it in himself and keep it there.

  Perhaps it was the hand of God, or the lack thereof that caused her to move just when she did, to unknowingly put herself in harm’s way. Whatever it was, something slammed into her, knocking her suddenly forward, and she lay there twitching as though lightning struck before his stunned eyes.

  Jeff Carr gently turned her over and saw the bloody maw of flesh and torn dress, saw her mouth moving as though to tell him how terrible the pain, but nothing coming from her except little gurgling gasps.

  “Molly, Molly!”

  Then her eyes rolled heavenward, and with her cheeks yet warm from that pleasant sun, she stopped moving at all even as blood spilled from her onto his hands and stained his clothes.

  He drew her close to him as though to pin the death that was in her trying to flee, and in the fleeing leave her forever still. But too late, he realized when her cheeks began to cool against his own.

  Eventually he reclined her back onto the blanket, now soaked with more blood than he ever saw come from a human being so small as she, and stood shakily turning this way and that in every direction to see where the death had come from.

  Several hundred yards distant stood some boulders, the remnants of a forgotten flood in the history of time, and from these he determined the shot must have come.

  While in his agony, the wind shifted around to the north, herding before it a mass of dark restless clouds. He knelt beside his wife, bringing the shawl up over her shoulders, and said, “This place, you cannot trust it, Molly. For, didn’t I warn you that the weather changes every five minutes? I knew it was best you bring your shawl along.”

  He stood and went to the hack and took free the spare blanket and wrapped her in it, careful not to disturb her more than was necessary. And with the greatest effort, he lifted her, placed her inside the hack, and drew her over close to him, his free arm around her. Then he rode back to Cheyenne with haste and grief in him colder than the rain that began to fall from that unpredictable sky.

  He could not even think of revenge, or feel any emotion except the one that was eating him up as he whipped furiously the flanks of the startled horse.

  Paris Bass waited among the rocks—the rain pelting his hat. He pried with the knife tip to eject the jammed shell, his luck all bad now. He knew of such possibilities—how a man’s luck could turn on him suddenly. But until he shot the woman quite unexpectedly, he had never made such a miscalculation.

  She’d moved even as the shot rolled like small thunder across the span of what he judged a good four hundred yards—an inch or two, is all it was, but it made all the difference between life and death.

  He had not traveled all this way to kill a woman!

  He should not have strayed from the task at hand, he told himself. And yet temptation to exact an old revenge proved too much.

  The rain was cold, as cold as he’d ever known it to be.

  He pried with the knife blade to free the shell from the rifle’s breech. But it would not budge. And by the time he finally did free it, the target he’d sought was gone, fled with misfortune’s victim.

  And what truly had he hoped to prove by killing Jeff Carr—slayer of an old friend those many years ago? A friend who most likely deserved the death he got at the hands of the lawman in a border brawl. It was a stupid sense of justice, he realized now, and not at all the sort of thing a king of the old testament would do…

  “‘Vanity of vanities,’” the Preacher said aloud, “‘all is vanity. In the place of judgment, wickedness was there; And in the place of righteousness, Inequity was there…’”

  He felt raw inside. Raw and cast out like the dark angels of God’s heaven.

  The pain started just behind his left eye and radiated inward until it felt as though a hot poker was piercing his brain. Nothing but laudanum would do, and he scratched through his clothes for the bottle, but when he found it, there was barely a swallow, hardly enough to sustain him for more than an hour, maybe less.

  He drained what was there, flung the bottle against the rough rocks and saw it shatter into a hundred blue pieces, and tried tracing back the path that had led him to this moment. And the backward journey led his aching thoughts to the woman who had approached him on the streets of El Paso saying it was love that drove her to tempt him. The love of a bandit. Ha! he laughed most bitterly. She’d offered him money. Greed! But greed did not tempt him. She’d offered him her flesh. The Devil had known his weakness and had sent her to him. Temptress, seductress, harlot, whore. He knew now the snare that had been set.

  Too late, too late.

  For vanity would not let him simply ride away from this thing.

  And he would kill Wild Bill and anyone who tried to prevent it, and free himself from the Devil’s snare. And he would find the woman who loved Phil Coe and kill her as well.

  The pain grew sharp as
a cleaver’s edge that cleaved his brain in two.

  Chapter 26

  Bill was picking out Charley a horse among a corral full of them. Charley trusted Bill’s judgment when it came to flesh of any kind, horse or woman.

  “That paint yonder looks like a pretty good cayuse,” Bill said, pointing with his nose toward a little black and white mare.

  The livery man said, “You want me to throw a rope around her?”

  “Yes,” Charley said. “Bring her over so I can have a look at her teeth.”

  Teddy liked the looks of the horse as well.

  “You decided if you’re going with us to Deadwood or not?” Bill said.

  “I’m thinking I probably will.”

  “Better decide sooner rather than later. Charley and me get restless easy, and I’ve about had all of this prairie dog town I can stand.”

  “You still thinking of leaving today?”

  Bill looked up at the sky, saw the dark clouds moving in from the north and rubbed his hip.

  “Rheumatism tells me it’s going to rain, and Charley thinks we oughter put together a wagon train—lead them up there. Be good protection against Indians and bandits. Most likely go tomorrow or the next day, depending on the weather and how fast we can put a train together.”

  “Okay then, it will give me a chance to make up my mind.”

  Bill watched as the livery man tossed a rope over the neck of the paint and led her over so Charley could inspect her teeth.

  “You looking for cavities?” Bill said with a grin, knowing Charley didn’t know much more about a horse than it had four legs and a tail, but would not admit to his ignorance.

  Charley said, “They’re big and yeller and look all right to me, what do you think?”

  Bill ran his hand over the back and haunches of the animal, then down along its legs, lifting one hoof at a time then setting them back down again.

  “She’ll do.”

  Teddy excused himself while Charley dickered with the livery man over a price for the mare.

  “I’ll swing ’round to your camp in a bit, I’ve got a few things I need to do if I’m going.” He heard Charley tell Bill he thought he’d name his new horse George Custer, and Bill said, “That’s more like it. That son of a buck will become president some day and live a ripe old life.”

  Teddy went to the telegrapher’s and sent a telegram to George Bangs:

  H IS READY TO MOVE NORTH, DO I GO? INFORM IMMEDIATELY.

  He waited while the telegrapher sent the wire—waited nearly half an hour before a response came.

  STAY WITH SUBJECT UNTIL INFORMED OTHERWISE. G. BANGS.

  That settled, he would need some supplies and a horse for himself. He thought a good rifle would come in handy as well.

  He walked over to the mercantile, looked at the selection of long guns and eventually settled on a Henry rifle with brass fittings. He liked the feel and balance and he liked its looks too. He bought two boxes of cartridges, a slicker, beef jerky, a can of peaches, a canteen, and a set of saddlebags to put all but the rifle in.

  He wandered back over to the corral and bought the gelding he’d ridden the day he and Kathleen rode to the river.

  “I’ve got better horses,” the man said.

  “No, I want that one.”

  The horse cost him thirty dollars, the saddle forty. He was about as fixed as a man could be for a long ride into that country he knew nothing about except that it held men’s dreams of becoming rich the way doves held their desire for eternal happiness.

  He could think of a lot worse company to ride up to that country with than Wild Bill and Colorado Charley.

  He found them both back at camp, Charley going among the wagons signing up folks who wanted to go to Deadwood under the protection of one Wild Bill Hickok, and of course himself.

  He was finding plenty of takers, even at a charge of fifty dollars per wagon.

  Bill was writing a letter to Agnes using an upturned bucket for a table. He held his face close to the paper and Teddy pretended not to notice. Bill looked up when Teddy approached.

  “Just writing my wife news of our soon departure,” Bill said.

  “Don’t let me interrupt you.”

  Drops of rain big as silver dollars fell, and Bill folded the letter carefully and put it inside his coat. Glancing up, he said, “We’d have gotten soaked to our union drawers if we’d left today. Started out good, but look at her now.”

  The sky hung low over the land like the dark belly of a great beast, so low a man’s head would poke through it if he were riding a horse. He heard thunder rumbling off in the distance.

  “Where you from originally?” Bill said.

  “Chicago.”

  “Well now, ain’t that something. I’m from Illinois myself originally—Homer, you ever heard of it?”

  “I can’t say honestly that I have.”

  Bill smiled. “You’d not be the first that hadn’t. So small you can spit from one end of town to the other. My daddy’s a farmer, my brothers too. I was back there last when Cody and me was on stage tour. I guess it’d be that time you saw us in Chicago.” Bill looked wistful.

  “You miss it much, that country?” Teddy asked.

  “No, you?”

  “Not like I did when I first went off to Texas. But a year gone from there might just as well have been a lifetime for me.”

  “I know that. I couldn’t ever go back and live in that country. Don’t see how anybody who’s been out here anytime could.”

  “There’s something about all this that ruins you on places back East,” Teddy said.

  “Ruins you in a good way.”

  “You miss your wife?”

  Bill nodded. “I guess not as much as I should, but enough. What about you, you got one waiting for you?” “No.”

  Bill looked around. “Charley’s got one, and three daughters. Imagine living in a house full of females. I think it’s half of why he’s so restless.”

  The rain fell harder now, and Bill said, “I don’t feature sitting out here getting wet, do you? Let’s go into town and get a drink.”

  “What about Charley?”

  “He’ll follow along eventually.”

  So they went, two men in stride with one another, Teddy feeling somewhat Bill’s equal as men who had been ruined by the West and men who knew what it was to be unfettered by the rules. Men who knew that when it came to the law or self-preservation, they had to play the game in their own way or not play it at all.

  They went to Frenchy’s this time, Bill saying he preferred it over the Gold Room but not saying why the change. Teddy was unaware of Bill’s former consort, Squirrel Tooth Alice, and her employment now as a crib girl and Bill’s not wanting to be witness to her newfound work. Bill still had some affection down deep for her but could never allow himself to admit to it, or to admit the little flames of jealousy that singed the edges of his heart.

  There were still bloodstains on the floor from where Ned Loyal had fallen when Jeff Carr shot him near in half. Dark, like old barn paint. Frenchy had tried to scrub the stains away with a mop and hot soapy water, but to no avail. A man’s blood spilled in violence was a forever stain. So he had set a table over the spot, hoping folks wouldn’t notice so much. It wasn’t the sort of notoriety he craved.

  Bill sipped his cocktail, then said, “I used to get two bits each for shooting stray dogs in Abilene. It was added to my regular marshal’s pay of twenty-six dollars a week.”

  “Did you regret having to perform such work?” Teddy asked.

  “I do now, but not then.”

  Other men drifted in, shaking rain from them like wet dogs. Even the pewter light seemed listless and cold.

  “I reckon I’ll go over to the chink’s,” Bill said. “You’re welcome to come along.”

  “I’ll walk over with you,” Teddy said, “but I’ll forgo the opium pipe.”

  “It has a mysterious effect on you. Puts you in touch with the dead, among other things.”


  Teddy thought how unsettling it would be to see Horace again, even if it was in nothing more than a dope haze.

  They finished their cocktails and were crossing the street when Jeff Carr nearly run them over with his hack. Teddy snatched Bill by the elbow, and the wheels of the hack flung mud against the legs of their trousers.

  “What the hell!” Bill said, looking down at his muddy pants.

  “You didn’t see it, did you?” Teddy said.

  “See what?”

  “The woman that was with him.”

  Bill shook his head.

  “She was covered in blood.”

  Potts, the undertaker, was accustomed to seeing the dead. He’d learned his trade as an apprentice on the battlefields of Bull Run, Cold Harbor, Gettysburg, and other such hallowed ground whose earth was soaked through with the blood of men who looked the same but were different in their hearts.

  But rare was it a woman he’d had to tend whose wound was as grievous as that of the wife of Jeff Carr.

  Jeff had brought her, accompanied by Doc Carver.

  “Do the best for her you can,” Doc Carver whispered before leaving again.

  And Carr waited in the anteroom until Potts came and said, “You can view her now.”

  Potts always found women and children most difficult. They were frail and tender creatures, like spring flowers yet in their bloom. Last week it had been a young prostitute poisoned by her own hand. Pretty and fair, she seemed only to be sleeping, and Potts had kissed her before closing the lids.

  “She did not wear her hair like that,” Jeff Carr said, upon viewing the pale face.

  “If you have a tintype or a photograph, it might help. And…whatever dress you’d like her in, bring that along when you return.”

  “I won’t leave,” Carr said.

  “Then if you would, send someone for those things.”

  Jeff Carr couldn’t ever imagine leaving her.

  News of the killing spread through the town quick as fire. But Wild Bill did not hear of it until the next day when he went to piss out the last strains of the opium there among the trees. He wandered back into camp and Charley told him.