by Judd Cole
“Well, that just goddamn makes me cry,” Elmer said sarcastically. “Why would cattlemen do that to a cow killer, I wonder?”
Josh had discreetly been looking for the beautiful Nell Kinkaid. So far, however, he saw no sign of her.
“Hansen denies killing any beeves,” Bill pointed out.
“Simon Peter denied Christ, too, Bill! You believe him!”
Wild Bill laughed at that one. The old patriarch had a mind like a steel trap despite his bent and broken body.
“Elmer,” Bill said bluntly, “tell me, why are Barry Tate and your boy Johnny filing on so many homestead claims? Buying them outright, buying up relinquishments, even using soldier’s widows to acquire clear titles?”
Elmer, taken by surprise by all this, twisted a finger into his soup-strainer mustache. “The hell you talking about, Hickok?”
Bill candidly confessed that he had illegally examined the records at the land office in Progress City.
He told Elmer how Barry and Johnny were clearly trying to acquire complete ownership of a key stretch of Turk’s Creek—currently settled by homesteading farmers.
“You sure on all this?” Elmer demanded.
“Sure as we’re sitting here, Elmer.”
“I don’t understand it,” Elmer said wonderingly. “God strike me down if I do! What Barry does is his beeswax. I ’magine the man is somehow putting by against the future. But Johnny? Hell, he’s already in line to inherit thousands of acres when I pass away. And Turk’s Creek? Why, hell. It’s good water, but useless to the Rocking K. It’s way out past the hard-table fringe.”
Elmer fell silent abruptly, as if he’d been slugged. Josh watched him wipe sweat off his forehead with the back of his wrist. Clearly this revelation had struck the old-timer like a bolt out of the blue.
“I’m not trying to build a pimple into a peak,” Bill assured the rancher. “And I know who’s paying my salary. But so far, Elmer, it looks to me like your side is more sinning than sinned against. Even despite all your dead cattle.”
Josh could tell that this news about Johnny was starting to really sink in deep. The first flush of surprise had passed, and anger rushed in to take its place. For a moment, Elmer was so furious his facial bones seemed to stand out and his eyes to sink in.
Josh rose from his chair in alarm when the old man’s breathing suddenly became ragged. Bill was even quicker.
“Where’s the liquor cabinet, Elmer?” he demanded, even as he opened the top button of the old man’s shirt.
“Room at end. . . end of hallway,” Elmer managed.
“Watch him,” Bill ordered Josh.
Hickok hit the long hallway at a run. But there were two doors at the end, one on either side. Bill flung open the door on the right, then sucked in a hissing breath of surprise.
Warm steam billowed into his face, and a pleasant odor like lilacs and honeysuckle. Nell Kinkaid, naked as Eve in Paradise, was just then rising from a claw-footed washtub. Bill glimpsed high, firm breasts with huge strawberry-colored nipples, a pert little bottom taut and smooth as polished wood.
At the very first sound of the door, Nell flinched like a startled doe. Then she just stood there boldly matching Wild Bill’s stare, her dark eyes flashing.
“Is this an accident, sir?” she finally demanded, still making no effort to cover her nakedness. She stood as still as a hound on point.
“It is, Nell,” Bill replied, his temples throbbing with stirred-up blood. “But I refuse to apologize, because I don’t regret it.”
“I don’t want you to,” she assured him. “Or I’d have covered up by now.” Nell finally did hold a towel in front of her. “Au revoir,” she told him playfully, blowing Bill a kiss. “Think about this, Mr. Hickok.”
“Oh, it’ll lead my thoughts,” Bill assured her, regretfully backing out of the room. The other door led to Elmer’s den. By the time Bill returned with a bottle of rye and a jolt glass, Elmer looked half alive again.
“Didn’t mean to go puny on you, boys,” Elmer assured his visitors after he’d tossed back a shot. “That son of mine would drive a saint to poteen. But I love him. He’s the only boy I got, you know. I love him, but I know there’s a hole in him somewhere.”
Josh knew Bill had more questions for the elder Kinkaid, but the rancher was in no shape for more rough handling right then. Bill asked for directions to the north-boundary line shack, then the visitors left.
They were trotting out of the main yard when a six-gun suddenly barked several rapid shots. This was followed by an explosion of whistles and cheers.
Josh and Wild Bill slued around in their saddles to glance back. An arrogant-looking, handsome young man with wavy brown hair sat on the top rail of a corral, thumbing reloads into a six-gun. A cowboy rode past him at breakneck speed on a fast little coyote dun. The puncher was twirling a knotted rope as quickly as he could while riding full-bore.
Josh knew that could only be Johnny Kinkaid sitting on the corral rail. Kinkaid fired six rapid shots, and each time he did, one more knot flew off the rope. More cheers rose from the hands witnessing this. Josh could tell that Bill, too, was impressed.
“Colonel Cody would pay good money to get him in his Wild West show,” Bill observed thoughtfully.
They rode a few more paces. Then Bill met Josh’s eye again. He tilted his head back toward the corral. “Respect that gun, kid, if not Kinkaid himself. We don’t take care, he’ll have both of us walking with our ancestors.”
Chapter Nine
“You’re still harping about avoiding a confrontation?” Johnny Kinkaid demanded. “Even after what Hickok did to the Labun brothers?”
Johnny, Barry Tate, and Jarvis Blackford had again met in the deserted line shack to coordinate their strategy like battlefield generals. Blackford knocked the dottle out of his pipe, speaking with his usual, imperturbable calm.
“Johnny, I consider your old man one of the smartest stags on the range. And you’ve inherited the full ration of his brains. But you’ve got to rein in that hot streak in you, son. The cat sits by the gopher hole, he doesn’t rush in.”
“’Sides,” Barry chipped in, “what Hickok done to the Labuns ain’t our mix, Johnny. They was looking to cash in, and he shot them in self-defense.”
“My point exactly,” Blackford agreed. “Johnny, you say Wild Bill’s been out to your place twice now. That’s good. If he was turning on the cattlemen, he’d more likely keep his distance.”
“Unless,” Johnny pointed out, “he’s only coming around on account he’s bird-dogging my sister Nell.”
At this suggestion, Barry scowled while Jarvis smiled with pleasant surprise.
“All the better,” Jarvis insisted. “Puts him in the family, so to speak. Is he after her?”
“’Pears so. Nell ain’t one to go giddy over a pair of pants. But she’s caught a spark for Hickok. Came back from town yesterday with a stack of dime novels about him. At dinner every night, her mouth runs six ways to Sunday about how ‘fascinating’ the man is.”
Johnny’s goading eyes cut to Barry. “Top of all that, she give ol’ Barry here the go-by last night when he invited her to the county fair in Evansville next week. After going with him the past three years. Ain’t that the straight, Barry?”
The foreman clamped his teeth around his first retort. He clenched his jaw so tight, the muscles bunched. Barry had already publicly filed his claim to Nell Kinkaid. That made any man who moved in on him a claim jumper. Trouble was, Hickok wasn’t just any man.
“Well, the main point,” Jarvis reminded the other two, “is that nobody in power can find flies on us, Hickok included. The man is definitely suspicious of me, but that’s his job. He made a few cagey remarks during our last card game, but he was fishing, is all.”
“I don’t give a hang what he’s doing,” Johnny protested, his face twisted with insolence. “It just ain’t smart to leave a man as dangerous as Hickok free to nose around at will. That bastard could turn on us quicker tha
n an Indian steals a horse. Don’t forget that newspaper brat—he could noise our plan all over the damned country.”
“He’d have to know what we’re really up to,” Blackford pointed out. “And nobody can know that, not yet. The Burlington is just now moving the first surveying and grading crews in. There aren’t a dozen men who know about this new spur line yet, and they’re all closemouthed railroad barons.”
“It’s a mistake to trust Hickok,” Johnny insisted stubbornly. “That bastard will see we get the hind teat. You know how much money I got tied up in this plan?”
“Who said anything about trusting him?” Jarvis retorted. “For that matter, did I ever say we should let Hickok live? I only said we must be careful how we kill him.”
This teasing hint tantalized both of his companions. They watched Blackford serenely puff on his fancy pipe, enjoying his moment of suspense.
“Well?” Johnny demanded. “We got to play three guesses? How you mean to kill Hickok?”
“As you both know, I’m in the hotel with him and that young ink-slinger. Hickok likes to play coy and switch rooms. But there’s a Chinese kid that runs the bathhouse behind the hotel. He also cleans the rooms every day and knows where Hickok really is. I’ve got the kid on our payroll. That’s how I knew which room your men should dynamite.”
“Fat lot of good it did.”
“Patience, Johnny, patience. Hickok’s clover is deep, but the man is mortal. We’ll come up with a plan, and we will sink that arrogant son of a bitch. Just stay the course for now. All three of us are going to get rich. So rich we’ll need lawyers just to tote up how much we have. And the famous Wild Bill Hickok will soon be feeding worms.”
Josh watched Wild Bill carefully spread out his duster before he flopped on his belly to drink from a little runoff stream. Bill spat out the first mouthful, then drank deeply. Josh imitated him.
It was late in the forenoon on the day after their latest visit to Elmer Kinkaid. The two men were riding up into the high-ground summer pastures where the north-line shack was located. Wild Bill knew Calamity Jane was a drunkard, and even a mite touched. But she had uncanny frontier survival instincts. If she mentioned that shack to him, then it was worth the trouble of checking it out.
The sun was bright, the air cool, and the country hereabouts bursting with the wild beauty following the annual snowmelt. The riders ascended through meadows where sunflowers grew shoulder high, and blue-wing teals darted about like spring-drunk butterflies.
Josh had tried firing questions at Bill ever since they rode out of Progress City after breakfast, but Wild Bill was full of his own thoughts, either ignoring the kid altogether or snapping at him to “put a sock in it, wouldja?” At no time did Hickok relax his habitual vigilance. The fathomless eyes were everywhere, missed nothing.
Halfway up a long slope, the riders encountered another bunch of poisoned cattle. Josh counted twenty bulls, cows, and dehorned yearlings.
“This time it’s the Circle B brand,” Bill announced after shooing flies away with his hat to read the brand. “According to the map Pinkerton gave us, that’s the spread just west of Elmer’s.”
Josh watched Bill step into the stirrup, then swing up and over. He kicked his roan forward.
“Speaking of Pinkerton,” Josh said, pressuring with his knees to start the grullo behind Bill. “Any reply yet to your telegram about Jarvis Blackford?”
“Haven’t had time to check yet,” Bill replied. “I meant to go this morning, but I had to change hotel rooms when one opened up. We’ll stop at the telegraph office after we stash our horses. Hallo, Longfellow! There’s our line shack. Cover down. Ride behind the trees from here.”
Both men entered a stand of box-elder trees and moved to within thirty feet of the weather-beaten shack.
“Looks deserted,” Bill said. “But let’s tie up here and sneak in. And don’t forget—I think Jane has cleared out of this area, but I’m not sure of that.”
This reminder made Josh’s scalp crawl. Like Bill, he had learned there was a limit to the dangers a man could actually shoot.
They ground-hitched their mounts and moved in closer, leapfrogging from tree to tree. A thin, nearly transparent hide had been stretched tight over the shack’s only window. But it was torn in one corner. Bill sneaked close, looked inside, then called out to Josh, “No one’s home, kid. C’mon.”
The packed dirt in front of the shack was plastered with horseshoe prints. So many that Josh couldn’t make sense of them.
Bill, however, squatted and quietly studied the ground for several minutes.
“Three riders have been meeting here,” Wild Bill finally announced. “They’ve met several times, a few days between each meeting. Two are cattlemen and ride cow ponies. See that flat forge-mark? Cow ponies wear a rounder, flatter shoe for quick turns and twists. The third man is riding a big, heavy horse, at least seventeen hands, wearing high-crowned shoes. The kind they forge in big cities and put on boarded horses.”
Josh was thoroughly impressed by all this. Wild Bill had “read” the ground the way Josh used to read Homer! Hickok might hate to get his clothes dirty, but there wasn’t a better scout or tracker in the West, Josh reminded himself.
“Which means,” the New York Herald reporter translated, “two locals meeting with an outsider.”
Bill nodded and moved inside the shack. It didn’t take long to look around the cramped hovel.
“All those dead matches,” Bill said, pointing to a scattering on the floor. “But no butts. And the matches all burned more than halfway.”
“Pipe smoker,” Josh supplied. “Jarvis Blackford!”
Again Bill nodded. “Doesn’t tell us much, does it? But then again, it’s nice to know. I think we best visit the Western Union office, Longfellow. Mr. Jarvis Blackford may be a much better gambler than we realize.”
But before the two riders made it back to Progress City, trouble crossed their trail yet again.
Wild Bill and Josh were still about two miles north of town, approaching from behind a long ridge to minimize target opportunities for any snipers. They crested the ridge, then Bill suddenly reined in.
“Hold it, kid. Look down in the valley.”
Josh did. It didn’t take long to assemble the picture. A farmer wearing a floppy-brimmed hat was tied to a tree. His mule lay dead in the traces, still hitched to the plow. Several cowhands were busy tearing down the barbed-wire fence around a huge section of plowed ground.
Now and then, as the two men cautiously rode closer, Josh heard a cracking snap—a cowhand was laying into the prisoner with a whip that had a wicked leather lash.
“This dog and pony show is over,” Bill said quietly. A second later, a pearl-grip Peacemaker was in his right fist. Bill fired once, and the lash flew off the whip.
All heads snapped around to see who the new arrivals were. One of the cowhands started to raise his Winchester. Bill’s Colt barked again, and Josh heard the cowboy let out a bleat of alarm as the rifle fell to the ground.
“He shot off my damn trigger finger!” the cowboy exclaimed.
Josh, too, had drawn his pinfire revolver. But no one paid any attention to him. They knew damn well who the blond-haired, steel-eyed hombre with the fancy shooters must be. Now that they had ridden closer, Josh recognized the bushy red burnsides on the man holding the ruined whip: Barry Tate. So those cowboys ruining the fence must be Rocking K hands.
Tate dropped the whip and stood with his hands balled on his hips. “The hell you doing poking in here, Hickok?” he demanded as if he had a right to know.
Josh saw Bill’s gaze shift to the beleaguered farmer. He slumped forward against his ropes, shoulders hunched as if to ward off wind. He was an older man, perhaps nearing fifty, his face raw from soap and wind.
“Cut him loose,” Bill told Tate with quiet authority.
Tate watched the two mounted men from his shifty, horse trader’s eyes. “He’s a rustler, Hickok!”
“Sure he is,�
� Bill replied. “And I’m the Apostle Paul. Nothing ruins truth like stretching it, Tate. You cattlemen yell ‘rustler,’ then sweep the ranges clear of all hoe-men. I said cut him loose.”
At this, Tate made an impatient noise in his throat. “Nerve up, damnit, alla yous!” he hollered at his men. “There’s only two of them!”
Barry’s arithmetic was accurate. But one of those two was Wild Bill Hickok. Nobody, including Tate, went for a weapon. One of the waddies hustled to untie the farmer.
“What’s your name, friend?” Bill asked the grateful old man.
“Peatross. Lonnie Peatross.”
“If anything else happens to Mr. Peatross here,” Bill shouted so all could hear, “Wild Bill Hickok will personally settle the score. Mr. Peatross, what’d you pay for that mule?”
“Forty dollars, Wild Bill.”
“Pass the hat, boys!” Hickok shouted to the Rocking K hands. “Either you give this man forty dollars, or I shoot every one of your horses!”
“Now just a goddamn minute here, Hickok,” Tate blustered. “We don’t hafta—”
“Shut your fish trap, Tate, and keep it shut. I’ll make the medicine around here, and you’ll take it.”
Bill glanced up at the westering sun. “Work quick, boys! You can have that fence back up by sundown.”
A shocked silence followed this incredible order. The hands all stared at Barry. Barry, in turn, stared at the sun reflecting off Bill’s pearl grips.
“Get to work!” Tate finally shouted. But Josh had never seen such hatred in a man’s eyes.
“You’re in deep soup, Hickok,” he said before he turned away.
“Think so?” Josh watched Bill slide a cheroot from his vest and shuck off the wrapper. “Know what, Tate? I think I’ll steal your woman from you and humiliate you in front of all your men. Then I think I’ll kill you to end your misery.”
Bill had said all this in a low, pleasant voice. Tate whirled back around, so enraged his eyes protruded like wet marbles. Bill wagged one of his Colts.
