The Kincaid County War

by Judd Cole

  “Well, God kiss me!” he exclaimed.

  Immediately, cold sweat broke out on Bill’s temples. Calamity Jane sat on his bed, bold as Geronimo, patiently plaiting a bridle out of rawhide and horsehair. And Bill could tell from her lascivious leer that she was drunk as a fiddler’s bitch.

  “Bill Hickok, you hunk of virility! Honey bunch, I swear you’re the purtiest man ’tween the Brazos and the Snake! Let Jane have a little sugar, you purdy lug!”

  Jane began circling the room like a puma on the prowl, Bill fleeing ahead of her. Jane’s clumsy hobnailed boots left gray clumps of mud all over the rose-patterned carpet.

  “How—how’d you know my room?” Bill asked her, stalling.

  “Wal, I knew Wild Bill would never be stupid enough to stay in the room listed for him in the register. So I just sniffed for your cigar smoke—ain’t many men who smoke them Cuba stinkers you like. Picked the lock with a horseshoe nail. Give us a little sugar, handsome!”

  Bill barely managed to avoid her grasp. He ducked around one end of the bed. He knew he had to shake her before she got up a head of steam. Rumor had it Jane could wear out a mining camp full of men when she was in her cups.

  “Now, Jane,” he said in the soothing tone one uses with a dangerous horse, for Bill knew how quickly Calamity Jane could become offended. Once that happened, lead tended to fly. And with the exception of young Annie Oakley, no woman in America was a deadlier shot than Calamity Jane. “I have to leave right quick on business with the sheriff.”

  “You can run, Bill Hickok, but you can’t hide— not from our shared destiny!” Jane held out her hand, pointing to a deep, dirty crease. “It’s all right there, Bill. It’s called the love line. See how deep and long mine is?”

  Bill, backing away the entire time, almost tripped over a needlework stool. “Why, Jane. It—it looks like a rope scar to me.”

  “That line ain’t the half of it,” Jane insisted, pulling a sheet of dog-eared paper from her hip pocket and unfolding it. It was a diagram of a human head, covered with black dots.

  “Ain’t it the berries, Bill? I’ve had my skull read by a bumpologist,” Jane declared, meaning a phrenologist. In 1872, phrenology—the “science” of interpreting personality from the shape of one’s skull— was all the rage. “He told me my love bump is special, the onliest of its kind. He told me only a very rare man can complete my romantic being. So there. It’s been proved by them as knows! Me and you is destined to get hitched up, Bill. No sense fighting it.”

  By now Bill felt trapped like a badger in a barrel.

  “It’s downright flattering, Jane,” he told her. “A comely lass like yourself. Why, if I wasn’t a natural-born bachelor of the saddle, I’d be parking my boots under your bed.”

  “You can run, Bill Hickok,” she repeated. “But you can’t hide forever.”

  By now Bill had circled the bed at least a dozen times. Desperate situations, he reminded himself, called for desperate remedies. One abruptly occurred to him.

  “Jane, I’ve got to go see Sheriff Waldo right now. But you recall Joshua Robinson, don’tcha? He’s the young fellow was with me in Denver. Josh is in the room at the end of the hall. In it right now.”

  Jane’s glassy eyes brightened at this intelligence. “He’s only a drumstick of a boy, ain’t he? But dogs! He’s cute as a bug’s ear.”

  “He was telling me,” Bill said, “what a good-looking woman you are.”

  “He was?” Jane wasn’t too drunk to be suspicious.

  “Jane, would I lie to you? The lad told me, ‘That Calamity Jane—a fellow could become a man with a woman like that to show him the ropes his first time.’”

  “His first—Bill, do you mean that cute little parcel of man flesh ain’t never had his clock wound?”

  Bill nodded solemnly. “Each horse bucks to its own pattern, but he hasn’t got a pattern yet. He’s willing, God knows. But the right woman has yet to come along.”

  “That poor kid,” Jane said, finally veering toward the door. “His ministering angel has come to earth.”

  “Hosanna on high!” Bill declared piously.

  But before Jane, listing drunkenly, exited the room, she turned to Bill again. Now her homely face was dead serious.

  “You keep an eye on your back trail, Bill Hickok, you hear me? There’s a line shack north of here where a few jaspers have been meeting on the sly. And I’d bet a purty them ain’t prayer meetings. More likely, they’re figuring out a way to plant Bill Hickok.”

  Sheriff Carl Waldo was a likable, unequivocally fat man in his late thirties. Fine, sandy hair and a boyish face topped a massive body that would surely, Josh figured, sway a pony’s back.

  “Yessir, boys. Jesse Chisholm’s dead now,” the portly lawman reminisced. “But I was with him when he first pushed his cattle trail north to the first railheads. Gents, the West was wide open then. Big as a man’s biggest dreams! Men ate beef off the hoof and didn’t pay one red cent in taxes on it.”

  Bill nodded. “I pushed up Chisholm’s trail myself as an Army scout, protecting herds bound for government reservations. Never had the pleasure of meeting Jesse. But I did visit his grave on that lonely hill in Geary, Oklahoma. I’ll never forget the epitaph: ‘No one left his home cold or hungry.’”

  “That was Jesse,” Waldo agreed reverently. “The ‘man who fed America,’ the newspapers called him. But ol’ Jesse always took care to feed individuals, too. How you think I got this way?”

  His visitors laughed. Then Bill got down to business, explaining that Pinkerton had sent him to Progress City to get to the bottom of the current “county war.”

  “There was more trouble last night,” Sheriff Waldo informed the two men. “On both sides. Dave Hansen came in this morning, said he was jumped last night while he was plowing fire guards. Had a big ol’ rope burn on his neck, too. ’Bout the same time that happened, somebody poisoned another bunch of Elmer Kinkaid’s cattle.”

  The sheriff’s office was hardly more than a closet with yellowing reward dodgers plastered to the walls. A drunk Indian was snoring in the tiny cell at the back. Through the room’s single, fly-specked window, Josh could see ragged white parcels of cloud sliding across a sky the pure blue color of a gas flame.

  But Josh was hardly in a mood to give a tinker’s damn about the fine day. Less than an hour earlier, he had been forced to dive through the window of his hotel room, Calamity Jane cooing at his heels.

  Bill asked Waldo, “Did Hansen say he recognized any of his attackers?”

  The sheriff frowned. “Well, he said one of ’em was Barry Tate, ramrod of the Rocking K. But Dave’s word alone don’t amount to a hill of beans, Bill. You was a star-man, you know that.”

  Josh watched Bill nod, mulling all this. Josh’s impression was that Waldo was not a bad man so much as a dumb one. And though he was pro-cattle, like most western sheriffs, he didn’t appear to be on their secret payroll. Bill called such men jackleg lawmen— they were decent enough, but completely untrained for their job.

  Bill looked at Josh. “Could just be happen-chance, kid. But Dave Hansen was roughed up while we were playing poker with Blackford last night. That’s when the cows were killed, too.”

  “That’s been the way of it all along,” Sheriff Waldo complained. “When one side hits, seems like the other does, too. A man tries to put handles on it, tries to parcel out the victims from the criminals. But it all runs together like juices on a Sunday plate. I admit I’m plumb bumfoozled.”

  As Bill had expected, Waldo was no help. But Hickok thanked him for his time and promised to keep in touch.

  “Where to next?” Josh demanded when they were outside again. “Christ knows the hotel ain’t safe. Jane could still be waiting for us. Us, thanks to you, traitor.”

  “Now, kid,” Bill said. “I wasn’t looking for a sidekick, you begged to ride with me. And you agreed to bear my burden when you threw in with me. ’Member?”

  “Sure, but I was talking about hards
hips. About danger. About ducking bullets and fists. Not about...” Josh shivered. “Not about her.”

  Bill grinned, poked a cheroot into his teeth, and struck a match with his thumbnail to light it. Then he headed for the east edge of town, pulling Josh with him.

  “Whatever doesn’t kill you, Longfellow, can only make you stronger. C’mon.”

  “Where we going?”

  “To the land office. And when I give you the word, I want you to keep watch out front, wouldja?”

  “I guess. But why?”

  “’Cause I don’t want anybody walking in on me, that’s why. Now put a stopper on your gob and keep your eyes peeled for trouble.”

  “Yessir, Wild Bill,” fawned Sam Watson, the land office clerk. “It’s a real honor to have a visitor of your reputation. Touch you for luck, Bill?”

  Josh knew Bill was hiding his irritation at this request. The story had grown, all through the American West, how Bill Hickok had escaped death far too often to be a mere mortal. Thus, many believed that simply touching him could bring good luck. Trouble was, it gave Bill a queasy feeling every time someone did—it forcefully reminded him he was long past due for the grave.

  “My pleasure,” Bill lied, reaching over the counter and giving the timid little clerk a hearty grip.

  “Was there anything I could do for you, Bill?”

  “Matter of fact, there is.”

  Bill nodded toward the long shelves behind Watson, loaded with dusty files. “’Pears to me that you keep one of the most reliable sources of information in the county.”

  Josh watched Sam nervously toy with his green eyeshade. “Information, Bill?”

  “Sure. You know who settled where, when. How much they originally paid for land versus the amount they sold it for. How much the land was improved, that type of thing.”

  “Well ... that’s so, Bill, that’s so. Now, of course, them records’re all official. They belong to the government, and by law no one can examine them.”

  “Why, of course,” Bill agreed, pushing away from the counter. And when he did, Josh saw a shiny new five-dollar gold piece sitting there. “The only way a man might see those records would be behind your back. Say, if you stepped out to visit the jakes.”

  Josh watched the clerk stare at the shiner, licking his lips lightly.

  “Actually,” Watson said, “I ate some spoiled fruit yesterday, and now I’ve got the durned trots. Would you gents excuse me while I duck out back?”

  Watson palmed the gold piece and headed outside.

  “Get out front!” Bill snapped at Josh. “Sing out if anybody comes.”

  The door lock was flimsy. The moment Josh was outside, Bill tilted a chair under the doorknob. Then he vaulted the counter and made free with Watson’s “government property.”

  The records of claim and transfer were neat and current. Only a brief examination was needed for Bill to grasp the larger pattern of settlement in Kinkaid County. In the first years, right after the Civil War, most filings went to homesteaders. But as time passed, the pattern shifted: far more sections were transferred to cattlemen.

  But more interesting: Elmer Kinkaid’s name appeared on none of the later claims. Instead, Barry Tate and Johnny Kinkaid were concentrating on acquiring one section along Turk’s Creek—a section thick with homesteaders. Obviously the water rights were the issue. But oddly—Turk’s Creek was not a convenient water source for the Rocking K. Given its location, even irrigation ditches would not make it a practical source. So why this concentrated effort to acquire that tract of land?

  “Wild Bill?” came Watson’s timid voice from out back. “Am I through out here?”

  “C’mon in, Sam,” Bill called, vaulting the counter again. “You didn’t see a thing, chappie.”

  “No, sir, I never do!”

  Bill set the chair back, let himself out, then headed back toward the hotel with Josh in tow.

  “What’d you find out, Bill?” Josh demanded.

  “That the world is not honest,” Bill said, deliberately frustrating Josh. “Now we got to find out if Jane has cleared out yet.”

  She had, Jed Rault informed the two relieved guests. Both men headed back toward Bill’s room.

  “Here’s the way of it, kid,” Bill said as he fished out his key and turned it in the lock. “According to the land records, government ground that once sold for a buck twenty-five an acre is now selling for thirty dollars an acre. Yet it’s sitting unused. Why?”

  Josh watched Bill ease open the door, quickly check the room, then step inside. Josh moved in right behind him.

  “Jane must’ve come in the window,” Bill remarked, and Josh saw the lace curtains blowing inward. Bill normally kept that window shut and covered. He was crossing the room to close it now when, quick as a finger snap, something flew through the window and thunked hard on the floor, rolling under the bed.

  Josh glimpsed sparks spraying, heard a hissing, spitting noise, and his stomach turned to ice when he realized the object was a stick of lit dynamite!

  Chapter Eight

  “Man alive!” Josh exclaimed, even as he turned to dive back out into the hallway.

  But in his panic Josh miscalculated. His left shoulder whumped hard into the doorjamb. Josh promptly ricocheted back into the room. And when he did, he bowled over Wild Bill, who was trying to escape right behind him.

  Both men landed in the middle of the floor in a confused heap of limbs. The dynamite, meantime, still spitting and fizzing, rolled on out from under the bed and stopped only inches from Bill’s outstretched hand.

  “Oh, hell,” Josh heard him say calmly, as if he’d messed up knotting his tie. A moment later, Bill gripped the stick and hurled it back out the window.

  The resulting explosion in the street rocked the hotel and sent dirt slapping into the room.

  “I just saved Pinkerton one hell of a bill,” Hickok boasted as he cautiously edged up to the window and looked outside.

  “See anybody?” Josh demanded when he could speak again.

  “Plenty of surprised faces,” Bill told him. “But none of them looks guilty.”

  An ashen-faced Jed Rault appeared in the doorway. “You gents still in one piece?”

  “Still sassy, Jed,” Bill told the desk clerk. “And you got a new water hole out front. Any chance we can move me into a new room later?”

  “You bet, Wild Bill. Good God Almighty!”

  “That tears it,” Bill announced after Rault had returned to the hotel lobby. “The war kettle is on the fire, kid. It wasn’t reward seekers who tossed that dynamite. Bounty hunters would likely choose a cleaner way to kill me so they could prove the identity of the body.”

  “So it’s likely one side or the other in the county war,” Josh concluded. “But which one?”

  Bill skinned the wrapper off a cheroot, rolling that question around in his mind. “That’s one nut we ain’t cracked yet. There’s more evidence pointing to the cattle faction. But evidence ain’t proof. And even if it is the cattlemen, it don’t seem likely they’d all be in the mix. We need to sort the grain out from the chaff. C’mon, kid.”

  “Where we going, Wild Bill?”

  “Another visit with Elmer Kinkaid. But first we stop at the Western Union office. I think it’s high time we start asking some questions about Mr. Jarvis Blackford—if that’s his real name. I got a hunch it’s what we call a ‘summer name’ in the West.”

  “So who is he?”

  “Jesus, kid, am I a soothsayer? But I know damn good and well he’s not deliberately losing at cards because he despises money. And how come the busiest times for night riders come when I’m playing cards with him?”

  Bill locked his door again.

  “Yeah, but Bill,” Josh protested, “if Blackford—”

  Bill, lost in speculation, raised one impatient hand. “Kid, say little and miss nothing,” he snapped. “You yap way too goddamn much. It gives me a headache.”

  Before the two friends recruited their
horses at the livery stable and rode out to the Rocking K spread, they stopped by the telegraph office. Bill knew that Allan Pinkerton was a living catalogue of the rich and famous in America—especially the movers and shakers in the rapidly expanding railroad business. Bill wired Pinkerton a meticulous description of the man called Jarvis Blackford.

  The day was sunny, bright, and windy, the cold wave of the night before long gone. The meadows were bright with blue columbine and white Queen Anne’s lace. Purple sage carpeted the open flats where grass grew scant.

  “Bill?” Josh said when they had ridden perhaps halfway. “Those two hard tails you killed at the hotel—did you see in the paper this morning there’s going to be an auction to sell their horses?”

  “’Course I did, kid. That’s the custom in the West when a town is forced to bury a man. You sell his horse to cover expenses. That’s one reason I quit being a lawman. I got sick of holding all those damned sheriff’s sales.”

  The two horsebackers topped a long ridge and could see the beautiful Haystack Valley opening out below them. Josh saw Bill stare intently, and he followed his gaze: the frontiersman was watching the diamond stack of a locomotive in the distance, barreling along at a breakneck speed of thirty-five miles per hour on the Northwest Line, sparks flying from the hot stack.

  “The sun travels west,” Bill muttered thoughtfully. “And so does the railroad.”

  But before Josh could press Bill on this cryptic utterance, the older man squeezed his roan with his knees and the big gelding leaped forward. They covered the rest of the distance to the Rocking K at a lope.

  The scene at the Kinkaid spread was much as they’d found it last time. A wrangler was breaking a horse to leather in a pen near the house, its head covered with burlap to slow its bucking. Behind the house, several disgruntled cowboys had been forced to trade lariats for posthole diggers, making holes for a new fence.

  “How’s by you, Wild Bill?” Elmer greeted his famous visitor after the maid showed the men in. “I reckon you know by now I had a bunch more beeves poisoned?”

  Bill nodded to the wheelchair-bound old man. “And maybe you know that some local waddies roughed up Dave Hansen?”