The Overlords & the Wild Ones

by Matt Braun

  “We are not traveling to New York, my dear. To paraphrase Robert Burns, the best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry.”

  “Yes, but Lou felt almost certain he could arrange a booking in Dodge City. It’s not as though we’re out of work.”

  “Dodge City!” Fontaine scoffed. “Gordon seemed quite chary with information about the place. Other than to say it is somewhere—somewhere—in western Kansas.”

  Chester grinned. “Dad, you were talking about a grand adventure when we came out here. This way, we get to see a little more of the West.”

  “And it’s only for the winter,” Lillian added. “Lou promised an engagement in Wichita in the spring.”

  Fontaine considered a moment. “I’ve no wish to see more of the West. But your point is well taken.” He paused, nodding sagely. “Any engagement is better than no engagement a’tall.”

  Lou Gordon appeared from backstage. Over the course of their month in Abilene, he had become a friend, particularly where Lillian was concerned. He felt she was destined for big things on the variety stage. He extended a telegram to Fontaine.

  “Got a wire from Frank Murphy just before the show. He’s agreed to book you for the winter.”

  “Has he indeed?”

  Fontaine scanned the telegram. His eyes narrowed. “Two hundred dollars a month! I refuse to work for a pauper’s wages.”

  “Lodging and meals are included,” Gordon pointed out. “Besides, Alistair, it’s not like you’ve got a better offer.”

  “Papa, please,” Lillian interceded. “Do we really have a choice?”

  “I appear to be outnumbered,” Fontaine said. “Very well, Lou, we will accept Mr. Murphy’s parsimonious offer. How are we to accomplish this pilgrimage?”

  Gordon quickly explained that railroad tracks had not yet been laid into western Kansas. He went on to say that he’d arranged for them to accompany a caravan of freight wagons bound for Dodge City. He felt sure they could make an excellent deal for a buggy and team at the livery stable. With the loss of the cattle trade, everything in Abilene was for sale at bargain prices.

  “A buggy!” Fontaine parroted. “Good Lord, I’d given it no thought until now. We’ll be sleeping on the ground.”

  “Afraid so,” Gordon acknowledged. “You’ll be cooking your own meals, too. The hardware store can supply you with camp gear.”

  “Is there no end to it?” Fontaine said in a wounded voice. “We are to travel like … Mongols.”

  Chester laughed. “No adventure as grand as an expedition. Nostradamus has nothing on you, Dad.”

  “I hardly predicted a sojourn into the wilderness.”

  “How marvelous!” Lillian clapped her hands with excitement. “We’ll have such fun.”

  Fontaine arched an eyebrow. He thought perhaps her mother had missed something in her training. There was, after all, a certain limit to hardship.

  Overland travel was hardly his idea of fun.

  Hickok checked his pocket watch. He rose from behind his desk in the jailhouse and went out the door. He walked toward the theater.

  All evening he’d been expecting trouble. As he passed the Lone Star Saloon, he glanced through the plate glass window. Phil Coe and several cowhands were standing at the bar, swilling whiskey. He wondered if Coe would at last find courage in a bottle.

  Their mutual antagonism went back over the summer. Coe was a tinhorn gambler who preyed on guileless cowhands by duping them with friendship and liquor. Hickok, sometime in early July, put out the word that Coe was a cardsharp, the worst kind of cheat. He gulled fellow Texans in crooked games.

  The charge brought no immediate confrontation. Hickok heard through the grapevine that Coe had threatened his life, but he suspected the gambler had no stomach for a fight. Coe retaliated instead by charming a saloon girl widely considered to be Hickok’s woman and stealing away her affections. The animosity between the men deepened even more.

  Word on the street was that the last of the Texans planned to depart town tomorrow. Coe, whose home was in Austin, would likely join them on the long trek down the Chisholm Trail. Without cowhands for him to fleece, there was nothing to hold Coe in Abilene any longer. So it made sense to Hickok that trouble, if it came at all, would come tonight. Coe, to all appearances, was fueling his courage with alcohol.

  Hickok turned into the alley beside the Comique. He intended to see Lillian safely back to the hotel, just as he’d done every night since she arrived in Abilene. He planned to apply for the job of marshal in Wichita, and he thought that might have some bearing on their future. Lou Gordon was opening a variety theater there, and Hickok assumed the Fontaines would tag along. He would arrange to talk with her about it in the next day or so. Tonight, given the slightest pretext, he would attend to Phil Coe.

  The stage door opened as he moved into the alleyway. Lillian stepped outside, accompanied by her father and brother. He greeted Fontaine and Chester as she waited for him by the door. Her features were animated.

  “Aren’t you the tardy one,” she said with a teasing lilt. “You missed my last performance.”

  “Not by choice,” Hickok begged off. “Had some business that needed tendin’.”

  “Wait till you hear our news!”

  Lillian was eager to tell him about their plans. She fantasized that he would join them on the trip, perhaps become the marshal of Dodge City. She wasn’t sure she loved him, for she still had no idea of what love was supposed to feel like. But she was attracted to him, and she knew the feeling was mutual, and she thought there was a good man beneath the rough exterior. A trip west together would make it even more of an adventure.

  “What news is that?” Hickok asked.

  “Well, we just found out tonight we’re going—”

  A gunshot sounded from the street. Then, in rapid succession, two more shots bracketed through the still night. Hickok was moving even as the echoes died away.

  “Stay here!” he ordered. “Don’t go out on the street.”

  “Where are you—”

  “Just stay put!”

  Hickok rushed off into the darkness. He moved to the far end of the alley, turning the corner of the building across from the Comique. Headed north, he walked quickly to the rear of the third building and entered the back door of the Alamo Saloon. He hurried through the saloon, startled customers frozen in place as he drew both pistols. He stepped through the front door onto the boardwalk.

  Phil Coe stood in the middle of the street. A dead dog lay on the ground at his feet, the earth puddled with blood. He had a bottle in one hand and a gun in the other, bantering in a loud voice with four Texans who were gathered around. He idly waved the bottle at the dog.

  “Boys, there lies one tough scutter. Never thought it’d take me three shots to kill a dog.”

  “Hell, it didn’t,” one of the cowhands cackled. “You done missed him twice.”

  “What’s going on here, Coe?”

  The men turned at the sound of Hickok’s voice. He was framed in a shaft of light from the door, the pistols held loosely at his sides. Coe separated from the Texans, a tall man with handsome features, his mouth quirked in a tight smile. He gestured with the bottle.

  “No harm done, Marshal,” he said. “Just shot myself a dog, that’s all.”

  “Drop your gun,” Hickok told him. “You’re under arrest.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “Discharging firearms within the town limits.”

  “Bullshit!” Coe flared. “You’re not arresting me for shootin’ a goddamn dog.”

  “I won’t tell you again—drop it.”

  Coe raised his pistol and fired. The slug plucked the sleeve of Hickok’s coat and thunked into the saloon door. He extended his right arm at shoulder level and the Colt spat a sheet of flame. Coe staggered backward, firing another round that shattered the Alamo’s window. Hickok shot him again.

  A crimson starburst spread over the breast of Coe’s jacket. His legs tangled in a nervel
ess dance, and he slumped to the ground, eyes fixed on the starry sky. Footsteps clattered on the boardwalk as a man bulled through a crowd of onlookers, gun in hand, and hurried forward. Hickok caught movement from the corner of his eye, the glint of metal in silvery moonlight. He whirled, reflexes strung tight, and fired.

  The man faltered, clutching at his chest, and tumbled off the boardwalk into the street. One of the onlookers, a railroad worker, eased from the crowd and peered down at the body. His face went taut and he turned to Hickok with an accusing stare. “It’s Mike Williams!” he shouted. “You’ve killed your own deputy.”

  A look of disbelief clouded Hickok’s features. He walked to the body and knelt down, pistols dangling from his hands. His hard visage seemed to crack, and he bowed his head, shoulders slumped. The onlookers stared at him in stony silence.

  The Fontaines watched from the alleyway. They had witnessed the gunfight, then the senseless death of a man rushing to help his friend. Fontaine was reminded of a Greek tragedy, played out on the dusty street of a cowtown, and Chester seemed struck dumb. Lillian had a hand pressed to her mouth in horror.

  Fontaine took her arm. She glanced one last time at Hickok as her father led her away. Chester followed along, still mute, and they angled across the street to the Drover’s Cottage. The desk clerk was standing in the door, drawn by the gunshots, on the verge of questioning them. He moved aside as they entered the lobby, reduced to silence by the expression on their faces. They mounted the stairs to their rooms.

  Some while later, changed into her nightgown, Lillian crawled in bed. She felt numb with shock, her insides gone cold, and she pulled the covers to her chin. She had never seen a man killed, much less two in a matter of seconds, and the image of it kept flashing through her mind. The spectacle of it, random violence and death, was suddenly too much to bear. She closed her eyes to the terror.

  A thought came to her in a moment of revelation. She could never love a man who so readily dealt in killing. The fantasy she had concocted was born of girlish dreams, silly notions about honor and knights of the plains. She saw now that it was all foolish whimsy.

  Tomorrow, she would say goodbye to Wild Bill Hickok.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE CARAVAN stretched nearly a mile along the river. The broad, rushing waters of the Arkansas tumbled over a rocky streambed that curved southwestward across the plains. A fiery sun tilted lower toward the distant horizon.

  Lillian was seated between her father and Chester. She wore a linsey-woolsey dress with a fitted mantle coat that fell below her knees. The men were attired in whipcord trousers, plaid mackinaws, and wide-brimmed slouch hats. They looked like reluctant city folk cast in the role of pioneers.

  Their buckboard, purchased in Abilene, was a stout four-wheeled vehicle designed for overland travel. The rig was drawn by a team of horses, one sorrel and one dun, plodding along as though hitched to a plow. The storage bed behind the seat was loaded with camp gear, food crates, and their steamer trunks. The goods were lashed securely and covered with a tarpaulin.

  “Ah, for the outdoor life,” Fontaine said in a sardonic tone. “My backsides feel as though I have been flailed with cane rods.”

  Chester, who was driving the buckboard, chuckled aloud. “Dad, you have to look on the bright side. We’re almost there.”

  “How would you know that?”

  “One of the teamsters told me this morning.”

  “Well then, we have it from an unimpeachable source.”

  “Honestly!” Lillian said with a perky smile. “Why do you complain so, Papa? I’ve never seen anything so wonderful in my life.” She suddenly stopped, pointing at the sky. “There, look!”

  A hawk floated past on smothered wings. Beyond, distant on the rolling plains, a small herd of buffalo grazed placidly beneath wads of puffy clouds. The hawk caught an updraft, soaring higher into the sun. Lillian watched it fade away against a lucent sky.

  “Oooo,” she said softly, her eyes round with wonder. “I think it’s all so … so magnificent.”

  “Do you really?” Chester said all too casually. “I’ll wager you don’t think so when you have to do your business. You sure look mortified, then.”

  “You’re such a ninny, Chester. I sometimes wonder you’re my brother.”

  Her indignation hardly covered her embarrassment. There were fifty-three wagons in the caravan and more than a hundred men, including teamsters, laborers, and scouts. The upshot, when she needed to relieve herself, was scant privacy and a desperate search for bushes along the river. She absolutely dreaded the urge to pee.

  Yet, apart from the matter of privacy, she was content with their journey. Fifteen days ago, south of Abilene, they had joined the freight caravan on the Santa Fe Trail. The muleskinners were a rough lot, unaccustomed to having a woman in their company, and at first standoffish. But Josh Ingram, the wagon master, welcomed them into the caravan. He worked for a trading firm headquartered in Independence, Missouri.

  The Santa Fe Trail, pioneered in 1821, was a major trading route with the far southwest. The trail began in Independence, crossing the Missouri line, and meandered a hundred-fifty miles across Kansas to the great northern bend of the Arkansas. The trail then followed the serpentine course of the river for another hundred-twenty miles to Fort Dodge and the nearby civilian outpost, Dodge City. From there, the trail wound southwest for some five hundred miles before terminating in Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico Territory. Hundreds of wagons made the yearly trek over a vast wilderness where no railroads yet existed.

  Lillian was fascinated by the grand scheme of the venture. One aspect in particular, the Conestoga wagons, attracted her immediate attention. Over the campfire their first night with the caravan, Josh Ingram explained that the wagons dated back to the early eighteenth century. Developed in the Conestoga River Valley of Pennsylvania, the wagons bore the distinctive touch of Dutch craftsmen. The design, still much the same after a hundred and fifty years, had moved westward with the expansion of the frontier.

  The wagon bed, as Ingram later showed her, was almost four feet wide, bowed downward like the hull of a ship. Overall, the wagon was sixteen feet in length, with immense wheels bound by tire irons for navigating rough terrain. The wagon box was fitted with oval wooden bows covered by sturdy canvas, which resulted in the nickname prairie schooner. Drawn by a six-hitch of mules, the wagons regularly carried up to 4,000 pounds in freight. The trade goods ran the gamut from needles and thread to axes and shovels and household furniture.

  Late every afternoon, on Ingram’s signal, the wagons were drawn into a four-sided defensive square. So far west, there was the constant threat of Indian attack and the imperative to protect the crew as well as the livestock. There were army posts scattered about Kansas, and west of Fort Dodge, where warlike tribes roamed at will, cavalry patrols accompanied the caravan. But an experienced wagon master looked to the defense of his own outfit, and before sundown the livestock was grazed and watered. Then everyone, man and beast, settled down for the night within the improvised stockade.

  The Fontaines made their own small campfire every evening. They could have eaten with the crew, for the caravan employed a full-time cook. But the food was only passable, and Lillian, anxious to experience life on the trial, had taught herself to cook over open coals. The company scouts, who killed a couple of buffalo every day to provision the men, always gave Lillian the choice cuts from the hump meat. Chester took care of the horses, and Fontaine, adverse to menial chores of any nature, humbled himself to collect firewood along the river. He then treated himself to a dram from his stock of Irish whiskey.

  By sundown, Lillian had the cooking under way. She worked over a shallow pit, ringed with rocks and aglow with coals scooped from the fire. Her battery of cast-iron cookware turned out stews and steaks and sourdough biscuits and an occasional cobbler made from dried fruit. Fontaine, who had appointed himself armorer, displayed a surprising aptitude for the care and cleaning of weapons. In Abilene, t
he hardware store owner had convinced him that no sane man went unarmed on the plains, and he’d bought two Henry .44 lever-action repeaters. His evening ritual included wiping trail dust from the rifles.

  “Fate has many twists,” he said, posing with a rifle as he looked around at the camp enclosed by wagons. “I am reminded of a passage from King Lear.”

  Lillian glanced up from a skillet of sizzling steaks. She knew he was performing and she was his audience. “Which passage is that, Papa?”

  “ ‘When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.’ ”

  “You believe our journey is foolhardy?”

  “We shall discover that by the by,” Fontaine said, playing the oracle. “Some harbinger tells me that our lives will never again be the same.”

  “Evenin’, folks.”

  Josh Ingram stepped into the circle of firelight. He was a large man with weathered features and a soup-strainer mustache. He nodded soberly to Fontaine.

  “Figgered I’d best let you know. Our scouts cut Injun sign just before we camped. Wouldn’t hurt to be on guard tonight.”

  Fontaine frowned. “Are we in danger of attack?”

  “Never know,” Ingram said. “Cheyenne and Kiowa get pretty thick out this way. They’re partial to the trade goods we haul.”

  “Would they attack a caravan with so many men?”

  “They have before and they doubtless will again. Don’t mean to alarm you overly much. Just wanted you to know.”

  “We very much appreciate your concern.”

  Ingram touched his hat, a shy smile directed at Lillian. “Ma’am.”

  When he walked off, Fontaine stood for a moment with the rifle cradled over his arm. At length, he turned to Lillian and Chester. “I daresay we are in for a long night.”

  Chester took the other Henry repeater from the buckboard. He levered a shell into the chamber and lowered the hammer. “Wish we had practiced more with these rifles. I’d hate to miss when it counts.”

  “As the commander at Bunker Hill told his men, wait until you see the whites of their eyes. What worked on British Red Coats applies equally well to redskins.”