by Judd Cole
“Sandy, I’m not God in the universe. If Hickok has outsmarted us, is it wise to keep pushing a thing that won’t move?”
“You’re not God in ... You know what, Brennan? You’re so full of shit, your feet are sliding. You better spell it out plain for me. The hell you trying to say here?”
Brennan, too nervous to sit still, got up and stood looking into the fire. Hickok’s surprise visit this morning had been playing in his mind all day. At first he had only agreed to call off this job out of fear of Hickok. But the things Wild Bill said had been gnawing at him all day.
Don’t you know there’s prosecutors already out west, taking depositions and putting fellows like you in prison—or worse?
“Sandy,” he began in a reasonable tone, “there’s an old saying: The bucket went once too often to the well. You know, we only decided on this gold-robbing scheme because there’s damn little law in place out here right now. But that doesn’t mean we can operate at will. There’s rumors about federal prosecutors coming out here, taking depositions and—”
“Why, you mealy-mouthed coward,” Urbanski cut in. “Hickok was here, wasn’t he? He’s put snow in your boots and now you’re turning squaw on us?”
“Don’t talk to me like that in my own home,” Brennan warned, his voice going tight.
Something reckless and scared in that voice warned Urbanski. He stood up, turned Brennan around by one shoulder, and threw a quick uppercut at the point of his jaw. The blow staggered Brennan but didn’t knock him out. Clutching his boss by the front of his jacket, Urbanski searched his eyes.
“Well, cuss my coup,” he finally said. “You’re trying to screw up the courage to kill me, you white-livered little weak sister.”
He plunged his hand into Brennan’s breast pocket and found the two-shot derringer.
“You damn little poodle,” Urbanski snarled. “Thought you could whip a full-growed dog with this peashooter. Here, I’ll show you—”
Brennan gathered his strength to tear away, but Urbanski suddenly shot him with both barrels, low in the belly so the dying would be painful.
Because of the thick stone walls, the gunshots were not loud enough to disturb the men out in the bunkhouse. But the houseboy fled in terror, and those milling in the front yard came rushing inside. They found Urbanski in the library, smoking a cigar and grinning in triumph. Brennan lay sprawled in a pool of his own blood, making incoherent whimpering sounds.
Sandy looked round at each man: Rick Collins, Dobber Ulrick, A.J. Clayburn and Waco McKinney.
“I’m taking the reins from here, boys,” he announced. “Same terms as before: equal shares on the gold. And we quit pussyfootin’ around. We hit ’em as they pull out in the morning. You ready to ride?”
One by one they all nodded. Urbanski jerked a thumb toward the liquor cabinet. “Good. Help yourselves.”
Collins nodded toward the dying man. “What about him? You just leaving the body here?”
“We’ll take it with us, dump him someplace where the carrion birds will take care of him. Let’s hump it, boys. We got forty miles to cover before morning. I know a good spot where we can hit ’em right as they leave Beecher’s Station.”
“There’s one thing you ain’t saying, Urbanski,” Waco spoke up quick. “Ain’t you gonna tell us how Hickok is all yours, don’t nobody else kill him?”
“That’s it,” Dobber agreed. “It’s all you was saying ’fore we started this job.”
Sudden anger, barely controllable, made Urbanski’s face flush with blood. But he quickly remembered that Brennan’s fate could easily be turned on him, too. Dobber’s right hand hung beside his knee, ready to seize the throwing knife in his boot.
“All right, I’ll say it,” he told them all with no flinching. “Hickok’s more man than I gave him credit for. But are you fools telling me he made dead men drive that coach yesterday?”
All of them looked foolish and lowered their gazes.
“All right, then,” Sandy gloated. “He sent alla you running like a pack of scalded dogs. Now’s your chance to see if you got a set on you. I got three exploding arrows reserved for him, and I still mean to be the one who kills him.”
Sandy paused for a moment, distracted by the loud clogged-drain noise as Brennan gave up the ghost.
“But we’ve wasted enough time, boys, and it’s time to get this job over. Brennan was right on one thing. It’s lawing-up all over nowadays. Circuit judges, penny-a-mile arrest fees. Let’s get this gold and head south for a while—I know a good place near Vera Cruz. First, though, we settle Hickok’s hash, and I don’t care who gets it done. I don’t mind going shares on the reward, either. We can stop on our way to Old Mex, trade his head for that ten thousand dollars.”
~*~
Burl and Yancy drew the last stint of guard duty. About one hour before sunrise, Burl’s nervous, high-pitched voice raised the alarm from on top of the station:
“Riders comin’! Heading in from northeast of here!”
Charlene Durant, pleasantly exhausted, gave a little yawp of alarm when Wild Bill sat up in bed, almost causing her to slide naked onto the floor.
“Sorry,” Bill told her as he stepped quickly into his trousers, then buckled on his gunbelt. “Kid, you up?” he called out.
“Both of us are!” Jimmy’s voice replied from out front. “You’re the one ain’t at his post, Romeo!”
“Obviously everyone knows where you slept last night,” Charlene lamented.
Bill snorted. “I didn’t ‘sleep’ any more than you did.”
“That a complaint?”
Bill kissed her. “That was a brag. You better get dressed.”
Wild Bill joined the others in the dark chill of the yard. “How many, Burl?” he called up. “And how far?”
“I counted at least five, Bill, with a string of remounts. Could be more—they’re kicking up plenty of dust. Still a couple miles out, just crossing Timber Ridge.”
“If they’ve got remounts, then they’ve been to Brennan’s ranch,” Bill surmised. “They riding straight on us?”
“Un-uh. Bearing west.”
Jimmy, sitting on the water casket to favor his wounded leg, looked at Bill in the gathering light. “Sunrise attack?”
Hickok nodded. “I was looking for it, so I scouted the terrain yesterday before I rode to Brennan’s place. Just northwest of here is a series of natural-erosion cutbanks. That’s where they’re headed to take up positions. Josh?”
“Yeah?”
“Run out to the coach and dig out my field glasses, wouldja? And then saddle up the sorrel for me.”
Bill got a kerosene lantern from inside and set it on the water casket beside Jimmy. In the light he checked his loads.
“You gonna need my eyes for this?” Jimmy asked.
Wild Bill shook his head as he stuffed one pocket with extra center fire cartridges for his rifle. “You just go easy on that leg. I got it figured. Whether or not they’ve killed Brennan, the whole bunch of them are getting nervous. I planted one idea—prosecution in the courts. Now they’re fed up with the cat-and-mouse game, they want to put paid to it. But I’m going to spoil this attack before they can make it. Force them to hit us on open road. The more desperate they are to get it over with, the more they’ll lose their battle discipline.”
The sorrel was ready. Wild Bill tied his Winchester with the cantle straps, then swung up and over, reining the animal around to the north.
“The rest of you,” he called out, “take the best cover you can in case this is another trick. I don’t think they’ll attack the station again—they know we’re ready. Burl?”
“Yeah?”
“You all right?”
“Sure, I’m sober, Bill.”
“How ’bout Charlene? There an extra weapon for her?”
“I’ve got it already,” she informed them, stepping out into the yard. The old Henry rifle she carried was almost as long as she was.
“I loaded it for her and sh
owed her how to use it,” Burl explained.
“She might not hit anything,” Bill joked, “but since it’s a Henry at least she won’t need reloading for a week.”
~*~
By the time Hickok reached a long, low rise overlooking the cutbanks, a salmon-pink edge of sunlight showed in the east. Bill swung down, left the sorrel hobbled below the crest of the ridge, and carried his rifle and field glasses up to the crest, low-crawling the last thirty yards to cut his skyline.
He had called it right except for the timing. He had to work quickly if he wanted to strike before the lead rider was safe within the cut-banks.
Hickok levered a round into the chamber, then reached back and pulled off one of his boots. Lying as flat as he could, he used the boot to prop his muzzle just up off the ground.
Now came the tricky part, but Wild Bill had done it once before when temporary snow blindness ruined his vision one winter in Niobrara County, Nebraska. Colonel Cody had once told Bill that extraordinary shooters could feel a bullet’s trajectory without the assistance of normal aiming.
Bill focused the field glasses until he had the lead rider sharply imaged. It was Sandy Urbanski—he recognized him from Leland’s description of the knife scar.
“Damnitall anyway,” Hickok cursed when Urbanski made it to safety before he could shoot. But the second rider, a skinny, mean-looking cur wearing scarred-up cowboy chaps, was not so lucky. Bill’s first shot turned the rider in his saddle; the second knocked him off his horse.
Quickly, before the men behind him could scatter to the rear, Wild Bill focused in on another rider, a lanky man wearing the shapeless flop hat of a hillman. His first bullet wiped the man out of the saddle.
Two men down, and Hickok had accomplished his mission. The frightened men would not be able to stage for an attack right away. True, Urbanski had made it to the cutbanks, but he wouldn’t have the guts to attack on his own. More time lost as he regrouped his men and came up with another plan.
Wild Bill scuttled back down to his horse, thumbed reloads into his rifle, then tied it behind the saddle again. He slipped off the hobbles, then swung up and over, reining the sorrel back around toward what was left of Beecher’s Station.
It was a nice bit of sniping, Bill congratulated himself. And if no more men joined them, he had also cut the odds down in their favor. Either they’d call it off now, or there’d be one more attack—out on the open flats where retreat would not be an option.
Chapter Fifteen
“All set!” Yancy hollered from under the coach, crawling out with the grease pail in his hand. “The horses are tied secure and the axles and hubs greased.”
Wild Bill, atop the box with the reins in his gloved hands, nodded at the burly blacksmith. “’Preciate it, Yancy. It’s going to take Overland time to clear the stage road at Devil’s Slope. You boys hang on here. It’s high time this boil was lanced, and it soon will be.”
Jimmy, his wounded leg stretched out straight, occupied the box beside Wild Bill. Hickok had ordered Joshua to ride inside the coach with Charlene—an order he didn’t have to repeat. Lovesick little pup, Bill thought, although he also had to admit that he couldn’t blame the kid. As women went, Charlene Durant rated aces high. But again he felt the niggling certainty he knew her from somewhere.
Bill was about to crack the popper of his blacksnake when Burl, standing guard on the roof, called out:
“Rider coming from the east, Wild Bill! I think I recognize that buckskin he’s riding … Hell yes, it’s Lanny Johnson, an express rider from the Overland office in Rapid City. Best hold up a minute.”
The rider, his horse lathered from the pace, hailed Wild Bill with the usual, “Touch you for luck?” and handshake. He reached up from the saddle, just below Bill’s level, and handed him a folded yellow telegram.
“It’s from Allan Pinkerton in Denver,” Lanny explained. “Mr. Langford said to tell you he’s been in regular touch with him. Giving him details to check out.”
“So Leland knows about the rockslide?”
“I’ll say he knows! Stages are backing up there until a work gang clears it.”
Wild Bill nodded his thanks, then unfolded the brief message and read it. His brow was suddenly troubled although that passed quickly as he became more thoughtful. He folded the message and stuck it in the pocket of his canvas duster. “Thanks, Lanny.”
“Bad news?” Jimmy said beside him.
“Can’t see any way to call it good,” Bill replied. “And it might be damn bad.”
Jimmy shook his head. “You ever give a straight answer in your life, Bill?”
“No,” Bill declared straight, and both men laughed.
“What’s the telegram say?” Josh demanded, hanging out one of the windows.
“It says mind your own damn beeswax, junior,” Wild Bill called back. And before the kid could pester him some more, Hickok cracked his whip and shouted the team into motion.
“I figure Urbanski has had time to rabbit by now,” Bill advised Jimmy. “But watch careful when we draw near those cutbanks.”
“What, you think I’ll sleep if you don’t nag me, mother?” Jimmy shot back. “Lord, how could a fool this big be so famous?”
“Besides,” Bill added with a sly grin, “according to your dream, I’ll cop it in Deadwood over a poker table.”
“Bad luck to talk about it,” Jimmy dismissed him, losing his grin, which made Hickok laugh louder.
“Cow plop,” he teased his friend. “So what if your dream’s true, hanh? When you meet the man who’s going to live forever, please send me his name.”
“I’ll send you a cat’s tail if you don’t shut up.”
They kept up their verbal sparring even as they passed the cutbanks without incident. For perhaps twenty miles the coach covered mostly level terrain, once-lush grass now browning with the autumn frosts. Twice they spotted herd cattle in the distance, some Longhorn stock but most of them the newer Shorthorn and white-faced Hereford breeds.
“Dust puffs up ahead,” Jimmy remarked sometime around midmorning. “Way up ahead—seen ’em yet?”
Bill shook his head and took his field glasses off the board seat beside him. “Now I do. Hard to say how many men since they’ve got remounts sending up dust, too.”
“Might not even be them,” Jimmy suggested, though he didn’t sound convinced.
Thus distracted, both men had paid scant attention to an old abandoned manure wagon that sat rotting about two hundred yards off the trail to their right, in an old cornfield now stubbled with short, dry stalks. Bill had seen it and given it a cursory inspection. But with no horse in sight, nor any place to hide one, he didn’t rate the wagon as a serious threat. That was one of his few mistakes on this entire mission, he realized later in useless hindsight.
Not until Jimmy suddenly remarked, “Check out them cows at three o’clock, Bill. One of ’em’s a blood bay horse,” did Hickok abruptly reclassify the wagon as a threat. But even as he did, Sandy Urbanski rose on one knee, and Bill heard the powerful fwip of the crossbow releasing.
The explosive arrow drilled into the box on Jimmy’s side, and then glowing chunks of wood peppered Wild Bill and Jimmy like canister shot.
“Jerusalem!” Jimmy exclaimed, struggling to pivot so he could get off a shot. But his wounded leg was virtually useless for bending. Not only that, but his shirt was on fire in two places.
Bill swiped at Jimmy, pushing him down so he was a smaller target and to smother the flames. Dropping the reins, he pivoted half right on the board seat and opened fire on the wagon with his Winchester. The weapon kicked into his shoulder repeatedly, brass casings glinting in the sunlight as they sprayed out the ejector port.
“Chuck up the team!” he called to Jimmy. “Urbanski took a chance leaving his horse so far away. But he knows damn well we can’t get at him across that open ground.”
Jimmy spirited the team on while Wild Bill kept up his fire, forcing Urbanski to cover down close. But as t
he range lengthened and the angle went against Bill, Urbanski got in one last lick: Hickok heard a sickening thump, then a hideous death shriek from the sorrel horse tied at the back of the coach. Urbanski had managed to sink an exploding arrow deep in the horse’s right flank, killing it almost instantly.
The dragging weight slowed the coach, and Jimmy quickly reined in, heaving into the brake. With Jimmy covering, Joshua leaped quickly outside and freed the dead animal from the coach.
Not long after they started rolling southwest again, Joshua called up topside: “I see their game, Bill! Urbanski’s following us way back. The other two are up ahead. Classic pincers.”
“Pincers,” Wild Bill agreed. “They’re going to try a rolling squeeze. They haven’t got enough manpower to just rush us in the open. But they’re going to count on their speed and maneuverability. Plink away at us, then close in like wolves on a buff.”
“I’m going to work on Urbanski,” Jimmy vowed, hauling himself up onto the roof behind the box and flattening down. “If I can’t hit the son of a bitch, least I can keep him shy.”
“Joshua!” Bill called down. “I need you to poke your head out the left-side window now and then, give me a report what’s up ahead. Jimmy’s occupied to our back trail. But don’t leave your head hanging out in the wind, boy. Just poke it out, look, get it back inside. Charlene?”
“Yes, Bill?”
“Come forward off the seat, and get as low on the floor as you can. There’s going to be shooting behind—”
But even before Wild Bill could finish, a round punched through the back of the coach. Charlene shrieked, then quickly reported it was all right, just close.
“Too damn close,” Jimmy agreed, squeezing off a shot at Urbanski. “Maybe I can drop his horse.”
But Urbanski had plenty of experience running down conveyances, and he knew just how far he needed to drop back to thwart a good shooter on a wildly rocking coach. He had put his crossbow aside now in favor of a rifle, and the three-hundred-grain bullets found the coach with discouraging regularity.
As quickly as his rifle emptied, Jimmy reloaded from his bandolier. But he was forced to halt, after his third reload, when the rifle over-heated, due to rate of fire, and a casing hung up during ejection. Jimmy cleared it while Wild Bill heard another bullet go whiffing past his right ear.
