by Judd Cole
Tate descended to the first floor and quickly ascertained that room seven was at the back of the hotel. He returned to the lobby, avoiding the night clerk, and stepped outside into the cool darkness of the spring night. Moments later, hope worked into his face.
The window of room number seven opened onto a service alley behind the hotel!
Tate’s horse was hitched to the tie rail in front of the hotel. He moved it around into the alley and hobbled it foreleg to rear, ready to escape in moments. Barry took up a good position behind a stack of wooden packing crates close to Hickok’s window.
Barry jacked a round into the chamber. One good shot, he told himself. Win, lose, or draw. And then he’d be gone before the echo from his rifle fell silent.
“Hickok’s a dead ’un,” Barry vowed in the silver-white moonlight.
“Playing poker is the only time to count on luck,” Wild Bill boasted to his young companion as they strolled the long hallway, returning to their rooms after the card game. “Luck is a lady, Longfellow, and the ladies like me, you know that.”
Josh couldn’t help grinning at this rare side of Bill. He was not, by nature, a boastful man. But tonight he was a little tipsy, and his winnings had made him a bit smug.
“Never count on luck,” Bill reiterated as he licked his thumb and counted the banknotes in his fist. “Luck is a fickle whore.”
The narrow hallway was lighted by gas lights in tin wall sconces. Shadows glided like ghostly predators. Behind one of the doors, Josh heard a man snoring with a racket like a boar hog.
Josh stopped in front of his door, but Bill clapped a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve got a bottle in my room, kid. Let’s have a nightcap and plan our strategy.”
When Bill reached room seven, he sobered up considerably. Josh watched him first examine the floor near the door carefully. Then Bill listened with his ear on the door for what seemed like a full minute.
“Safe as sassafras,” he finally announced, straightening up and keying the lock.
Bill swung open the door and struck a match on the jamb. He lit a gas lamp on the wall and turned up the flame, pushing shadows back into the corners of the room.
“Damn,” Josh heard Bill mutter when he accidentally dropped his winnings.
At the very moment Bill bent down to retrieve his money off the floor, all hell broke loose.
The glass in the sash window shattered inward, and a fist-size chunk of plaster exploded from the wall just about where Bill’s head had been a split second earlier. And last, though so close it all came as one racket, came the sharp crack of a rifle.
A moment later, even as the drumbeat of hooves faded outside, Bill came sheepishly to his feet— sheepishly, Josh realized, because the man who “never counted on luck” had just been saved by that “fickle whore.”
Bill’s sheepishness turned to surprise when he realized his guns were both still holstered, while Josh had his out and cocked.
“Well, Longfellow,” Bill remarked, fastidiously dusting off the knees of his trousers, “looks like you took a page from my book. Instead of a nightcap, think I’ll settle for a slice of humble pie.”
Josh crossed to the shattered window and carefully looked out into the grainy darkness. He could see nothing but shadows and shapes, all inanimate.
“He’s long gone,” Bill remarked, poking a cheroot between his teeth. “Tomorrow we’ll cut sign on that horse that just left. I’d wager the trail will lead straight to the Rocking K.”
Josh, still facing the window, was about to reply when a vague alarm suddenly tingled the nape of his neck: He whiffed the smell of grain alcohol, rancid body odor, and old bear grease, all combined in one stench.
“Dogs! My men are both alive, praise Jesus!”
Josh spun around on his heel. Wild Bill had become Timid Bill. His eyes those of a panicked doe, Hickok had backed up against the nearest wall. Calamity Jane, a huge, grape-purple bruise swelling one eye shut, stepped into the room and closed the door with her foot.
Jane grinned lecherously, her eyes cutting from one “sweet hunk of manhood” to the other.
“Howdy, boys,” she announced. “Can a gal get a drink around here? How ’bout it?”
Chapter Twelve
Fortunately for Hickok, the night clerk found him an empty room after Jane passed out drunk on the floor of number seven, losing consciousness in the middle of screeching a Sioux battle song.
But unfortunately for Hickok, he had to sneak back into room seven early the next morning, at the risk of waking Calamity Jane.
“Give me your pocketknife,” Bill whispered to Josh as they tiptoed around the pile where Jane lay sleeping, still fully clothed. “And be quiet.”
Josh watched Bill and realized he wasn’t tiptoeing—he was walking on his heels from old habit as a scout working behind enemy lines. Bill crossed to the place where the rifle slug, fired last night, had thwacked into the wall. Bill dug into the hole with Josh’s knife and soon extracted a flattened slug.
They returned to the safety of the hallway.
“It’s either a .44 or a .50 caliber,” Bill said when they were safely returned to the hallway. “It was made in a bullet mold, not by a factory press. But it’s hard to know the caliber exactly once the slug’s been knocked out of shape. It’s like what you get when you put a nickel on the railroad track—hard to tell it from a dime once it’s been flattened.”
Bill dropped the slug into his shirt pocket. “C’mon, kid. We’ll get some chuck in our bellies, then cut sign on our trigger-happy visitor.”
Very little traffic had passed through the alley since the shooting incident the night before. Even city-slicker Josh, who according to Bill “couldn’t locate your own ass at high noon in a hall of mirrors,” could read the clear signs. One man had waited among the empty packing crates, then fled on horseback through the alley.
Also as Bill had predicted, the ambusher’s trail led straight toward Elmer Kinkaid’s Rocking K spread. Along the way they encountered a third rider, likewise bearing toward the Rocking K: homesteader Dave Hansen, his big, moon face choleric with rage. The butt plate of his long Henry rifle rested on his right thigh.
“Dave, you ’pear to be loaded for bear,” Wild Bill said in greeting.
“Bears I’ll abide, by grab! I’m loaded for goddamned, yellow-bellied, back-shooting cow nurses!”
“I take it you’re heading for the Rocking K?”
“Yah, shoor! Dirty sons of bitches, I’ll—”
“Simmer down, Swede,” Bill urged him. “They’ll cut you to trap bait! Now, what the hell happened?”
“You got a minute, Bill? It’s not far to my place. I show you what the bastards done last night.”
Bill nodded. They jogged left off the stage trail and reached Hansen’s quarter-section in fifteen minutes.
“Look,” Hansen told them, his voice tight with feeling. Unable to look himself, he pointed toward a little fenced-off pasture behind his sod dugout.
Josh followed his finger and could see nothing to shock the eye. Only a magnificent sixteen-hand stallion, a bay with impressive muscle conformation and powerful haunches.
“Only thing I own that’s worth a plugged nickel,” Hansen said.
“Fine-looking stud animal,” Bill approved. “He’ll sire you a fine line of horseflesh.”
At Bill’s remark, Hansen winced as if he’d been slugged.
“Yah,” Hansen said bitterly. “Move in closer, gents, and take a good look at him.”
Josh and Bill did. Abruptly Bill sucked in a hissing breath. “God kiss me,” he muttered. “Look, kid.”
Bill pointed, and Josh suddenly curled his toes at the sight. The magnificent stallion had been “gun castrated”—deliberately shot so he would lose little blood but could never sire again.
“Last night,” Josh muttered to Bill. “While we played cards—or while we arm-wrestled with Jane.”
“You’ll whip her next time,” Bill consoled his friend before he turne
d back to Hansen.
“See how it is?” Hansen demanded. “I had a horse get caught in bobwire before. Legs sliced so bad I had to shoot it. But this—just cold and deliberate-like.”
“You see who did it?”
“Nuh-uh. But the tracks lead to Elmer Kinkaid’s spread.”
Hansen picked up a rock and flung it hard, so angry he had to do something. When he spoke, his voice was balanced between rage and despair. “What are us homesteaders supposed to do, Wild Bill? Back east, why hell! The damned manufactories is takin’ the trade from skilled workers. My papa was a master shoemaker, and he taught me his trade. But I can’t cut leather half so cheap as the ’factories. Don’t matter, I reckon. Looks like I’ll be pulling stakes, going back east to work in a factory or a meat plant with the rest of the wage slaves.”
“You got better leather in you than that,” Bill told the despondent man. “Hansen, you’re tough as a grizz! It was sodbusters like you won the Civil War while all those ‘hunters and adventurers’ from the West deserted after their first battle. You ain’t been run out yet. If I told you the worst is over for you, wouldja stay—and fight, if it comes to that?”
Hansen studied the dapper gunslinger. “If you say so, yah shoor.”
“Well, I do say so. It’s a long lane that has no turning, my friend. Things around here will soon come to a head, you got my word on it. That’s my specialty—stirring up the mud.”
Bill swung up and over, reining his horse around. “C’mon, kid. Let’s dust our hocks toward Elmer’s place.”
It was Nell Kinkaid who answered their knock, looking pretty and feminine in a navy blue dress with velvet-trimmed cuffs.
“Why, Mr. Hickok,” she said with mock surprise. “I didn’t expect you to actually knock!”
Bill grinned, realizing she was alluding to his untimely interruption, last visit, of her bath.
“It’s good to see you again, Nell. Even if I do see less this time.”
Josh watched Nell’s polished-apple cheeks blush even deeper. “I hope you were pleased with what you saw,” she said softly as both men removed their hats and stepped inside.
“The demonstration was appealing,” Bill assured her. “Now I’d like to sample the wares.”
Nell’s dark eyes flashed indignation at this boldness. But before she could retort, Elmer Kinkaid wheeled his chair into the room and greeted both men. Josh saw the walnut gun stock in his lap. By now it was stained and sealed with linseed oil, a handsome piece of work.
“Well, boys! What’s the good word?”
“Attempted murder,” Bill replied, taking the flattened rifle slug out of his pocket. “Somebody tried to kill me last night, which isn’t exactly a remarkable event for me. But I followed the shooter’s back trail to the Rocking K.”
Elmer’s deep-seamed face frowned. He took the slug and examined it. “Here you go again, Wild Bill. The cattlemen hired you to get the homesteaders off our backs. So here you are, pointing the finger at the cowmen again.”
“I just cut wood,” Bill replied stubbornly, “and let the chips fall where they may.”
Elmer twisted a finger into his shaggy white mustache, mulling this.
“Well, damnit,” the old patriarch told the world in general. Then he expelled a long, burning sigh. “I trust you, Bill. You sure the trail led here?”
“Sure as cats fighting,” Bill said. “Is Barry Tate around?”
Nell had been listening to all this in attentive silence. Now Josh saw her and Elmer both start at this question.
“Barry’s rounding up yearling calves near Cheyenne Valley,” Elmer said. “Won’t be back all day.”
“How ’bout your son, Johnny?”
Josh expected the old man to boil over at the question. Instead, he only gazed stoically out the window into the middle distance, his eyes thoughtful. He’s been thinking about things since our last visit, Josh realized.
“Johnny’s gone, too,” Elmer finally replied, his tone speculative. “Matter of fact, he rode out just about the time you two were riding in.”
“Almost as if,” Nell put in, “he doesn’t want to meet you for some reason.”
Bill nodded. Nell’s remark was innocent enough.
But it made sense to Josh. Johnny Kinkaid was some pumpkins with a gun. If a proud man like that planned on killing another man, he’d hardly want to shake his hand and exchange pleasantries with him.
“Elmer,” Bill said, “would Barry take his long gun with him to work cattle?”
Elmer shook his hoary head. “Naw. No cowboy would unless there was rustlers or Injuns afoot. A long gun gets in the way when you dally rope. You take just your short gun to kill snakes ’n’ such.”
“That’s what I figured. Will you come out to the bunkhouse with me? I want to look at Barry’s rifle.”
Old man Kinkaid, Josh could tell, was damned unhappy about the turn this trail was taking. But the cattle baron was a genuine “God fearer,” as they were called on the frontier: men who seldom went to church, but read their Scriptures and read them well. Bill called them “Christian soldiers who cuss.”
Elmer nodded. “Let’s get it done, then.”
Elmer used a special wooden ramp to roll down off the porch. Then Josh pushed his chair across the hoof-packed main yard toward a split-slab bunkhouse behind the breaking corral. The bunkhouse was deserted except for a few night-riding cattle guards, all snoring like threshers. The place had a grim masculine smell of sweat, leather, tobacco, and horse liniment.
As the ramrod, Barry had a separate room at the head of the bunkhouse.
“That’s Barry’s long gun,” Elmer said, pointing to a weapon in a buckskin sheath, balanced on a pair of wall pegs. “Sharps .50. I bought it for him myself to reward the man for five years of steady service to the Rocking K. He’s a top hand with cattle.”
Bill lifted down the rifle, unsheathed it, and removed a bullet from the fourteen-shot ammo well. Josh watched him pull the lead slug from the cartridge with his teeth.
“Made in a mold,” Bill noted, comparing the fresh slug with the spent one, holding both in his palm. Josh could tell they were the same general type of slug.
“It’s not proof,” Wild Bill conceded. “But it could well have come from this same rifle. There’s almost a dozen different types of slug that rifle could take. And this kind, with the dimpled tip, ain’t common.”
Elmer, Josh noticed, had fallen into a gloomy depression. “This ain’t no proof, Hickok,” he snapped.
“I just said that, Elmer.”
“So what’s your next play?”
Bill looked at Josh. “Me and the Philadelphia Kid here are going to take a ride over to Turk’s Creek.”
“The hell for? Bill, that’s good water, all right. But it’s no use to me or any other rancher in this territory. Since you’ve obviously got your bead sighted on the cattlemen, why poke through those diggings?”
“Elmer, my bead ain’t sighted nowhere. I’m plinking at targets of opportunity.”
Elmer grinned at that one, though begrudgingly. “Whatever pops up, uh?”
Bill grinned back. “Straight words, old-timer. One trail led me out here. Another trail—a paper trail at the land office—leads to Turk’s Creek.”
Josh had been waiting for Bill to ask the old settler about Hansen’s mutilated stallion. But Hickok evidently believed Elmer already had enough to stew on. “Let’s grab leather, kid,” Bill told Josh quietly. They left Elmer alone in the bunkhouse, his gray features a mask of worry and troubled reflection.
“The old man’s taking it hard,” Wild Bill remarked as the two riders were circling Dave Hansen’s farm. “But he’s got me over a barrel on one point. I can’t see any link between Turk’s Creek and this so-called county war. Near as I can see, there’s no reason for cattlemen to care if farmers like Hansen run mother ditches off a creek nobody else can use.”
“And if it’s the Burlington wants it,” Josh threw in, thinking of Jarvis Blackford,
“what for? Boiler water, maybe. Except there’s plenty of other creeks around here. We’ve crossed dozens in the last few days.”
“That’s the way of it, kid,” Bill agreed, his sun-slitted eyes scanning the terrain. “Poser, ain’t it?”
Josh studied the map Pinkerton gave them, holding it pressed against his saddle horn. Bill had no deadline for solving his case, but Josh had an impatient editor in New York City who was clamoring for more Wild Bill stories.
They were crossing a low rise, still three miles northwest of Turk’s Creek, when the hawk-eyed Hickok cut into his thoughts.
“Speaking of the Burlington, glom what’s up ahead, Longfellow.”
Josh had to look for a long time before he spotted it: a low pile of rocks with a short stake, lettered and numbered, protruding from it.
“Railroad marker,” Bill explained.
Now Josh could see a long line of the survey stakes snaking out across the low, grassy hills. “They’re going away from Turk’s Creek,” Josh pointed out.
Bill nodded. Despite the coincidence of having just mentioned the railroad, he didn’t seem particularly surprised by this discovery—nor should he, Josh realized. The West was currently rife with various railroad-construction projects. The transcontinental railroad had linked up at Promontory, Utah, only a few years earlier. And that was only one line—a half-dozen more were now establishing their own east-west links.
Nonetheless, Bill said, “Let’s follow the stakes awhile. Turk’s Creek ain’t going nowhere soon.”
Before long a work crew edged into view. Josh saw they were clearing out a stretch of gnarled cottonwood trees. The trees had already been felled. Now workers were drilling holes under the stumps with posthole augers, planting powder charges.
Well ahead of the work crew, a surveyor was measuring ground with a Gunter’s chain. Closer to the first work crew, grader operators swore at their mules as they scraped the highest ground lower and pushed the fill into the hollows.
