by Judd Cole
“I’ve scouted for a few construction crews,” Bill told Josh. “It’s always the same process. First the line is sighted through by a survey team. Then come the tree sweepers, the graders, the roadbed crew, the track layers. This project just got started—there’s no ties or rails stacked up yet.”
Bill spotted the gang boss, a big, florid-faced Irishman in twill coveralls who introduced himself as Big Sandy O’Hara. At first he scowled at the new arrivals, too busy to deal with gawkers.
But Wild Bill Hickok was a bona fide railroad legend by now, having protected dozens of track crews in hostile Indian country. The moment Big Sandy learned Bill’s identity, he broke out a bottle of Old Taylor—Wild Bill’s brand had become the brand of America’s railmen.
“We’re punching a spur line south to Laramie,” Big Sandy explained. “It’ll save the area cattlemen a world of time and money and trouble. Now they won’t have to drive cattle to the Laramie railhead.”
As the two riders were moving on again, Big Sandy called out to Josh, “Hey, kid? Need a job?”
The gang boss pointed to the surveyor. “Tommy needs a man to hold the sticks for him. Boring, but it pays good.”
Josh waved his no thanks, and the two men covered the stretch to Turk’s Creek in silence, each alone with his thoughts. As Bill had predicted, there was little to see once they arrived.
Turk’s Creek was actually a small river. Nothing distinguished it except the fact that it was exceptionally clear and sandy-bottomed.
“Looks a lot like the Niobrara in the Nebraska panhandle country,” Wild Bill remarked thoughtfully, studying the crystal-clear water while their horses tanked up. But soon buffalo gnats swarmed their faces, and the two men began their ride back to Progress City.
“Bill, what’s going on around here?” Josh demanded at one point, interrupting a long silence.
Instead of brushing the question off as he usually did, Wild Bill actually drew rein and sat his saddle for a full minute, pondering it.
“Kid, do you recall how I told you to scout? How you actually look at open terrain?”
Josh nodded. “You said—you said a man has to avoid sending his eye out to seize one image. Instead, he has to let all the images come up to his eye. Then he can pick out the ones that matter.”
Bill nodded, pleased with his young friend’s memory for survival details. “That’s good, kid. You nailed it solid. Now see, I think we’ve already looked at the answer to your question, y’unnerstan’?”
Josh felt his scalp tingle at the depth of Bill’s insight.
“Sure,” the youth replied. “The answer’s been here all along. Now all we got to do is pick it out.”
“That’s it.” Bill whistled at his roan, kicking him forward again. “And try to stay alive until we can do it.”
Chapter Thirteen
Quite reluctantly, Wild Bill moved out of the relative comfort of the Medicine Bow Hotel early the next morning. Grumbling about the primitive amenities, Hickok set up residence in a deserted soddy north of Progress City.
Bill made this decision, he informed Josh, after he’d made a trip to the rickety jakes and bathhouse out behind the hotel. Something about the way that skinny Chinese kid with the carbuncle on his neck watched him, Bill explained, made him uneasy— there was guilt in that look.
Naturally Josh insisted on going with Bill. Hickok reminded the kid he came west to report the news, not be a part of it. But Josh said it was too late for that. Besides, he added, Wild Bill was the news, and didn’t Josh have to go where the story went? Josh finally settled things in his favor by reminding Bill he’d have a good cook along. Hickok would perform any mundane tasks he had to, but if he could exploit others to do them, all the better.
“By the way, kid,” Bill remarked dryly while the two companions finished a simple but plentiful supper of beans and bacon, “I read the latest dispatch you filed by telegraph. I oughta take a switch to your young ass!”
Josh, busy scouring out his mess kit with sand in front of the soddy, grinned wickedly. He had predicted the pithy lead to his story, about the latest attempt on Bill’s life, would ruffle Hickok’s feathers.
“‘Wild Bill Hickok has a new love,’” Bill quoted sarcastically. “‘And her name is Lady Luck.’ That’s a pile of crap!”
“Then what else saved you?” Josh demanded. “If you hadn’t bent over to pick up your winnings, you’d’ve caught a bullet between the eyes.”
“Kid,” Hickok fumed, “this is why I like Ned Buntline. He would’ve claimed I deliberately dropped that money, woulda turned it into a clever trick, see?”
“Lied, right?”
“Ahh ... what’s the difference? You girls who scribble for publication don’t know your ass from your elbow anyhow! Just like in all those dime novels you’ve got in your saddlebags: The bad guy is always safe once he races across the border into Mexico. What a crock! You been to Mex? That country is so lawless, any man with boots or a horse is shot on sight.”
Bill fell silent, and Josh heard the wind rippling through the rolling sea of buffalo grass surrounding them. The deserted sod house—legacy of a homesteader who pulled up stakes—was built against a low hill and offered an excellent view of the territory in all directions. The two men had fixed and eaten their supper outside—inside, the soddy was musty with the dank stink of roots growing down from the ceiling.
Nearby, Bill’s roan and Josh’s little blue were chomping grass on long tethers. It had been broad daylight when Josh dug the fire pit. But now, even as he watched, the sun didn’t really set—it just suddenly seemed to collapse, and abruptly it was night.
“What’s the plan now, Bill?” Josh asked.
“Nothing mail-order, that’s for sure. Just old-fashioned nose-to-the-wind stuff. Since everything seems to happen at night around here lately, I figure we should become night riders, too. So tonight we patrol. Wear dark clothes, and make sure you strap on your short iron before we ride out.”
“Patrol where?”
Bill shrugged, spilling the dregs of his coffee into the grass. “Where else? We ain’t in China, kid! The farms, the ranches, just patrolling the country hereabouts. A man can’t conquer the world from his front yard.”
They set out soon afterward. Moonlight was generous on the open flats and visibility was good. But under the trees it was darker than the inside of a boot. The land they rode through was mostly gullies, bottom woods, and grass, with the occasional timbered side hills, runoff seams carved into them.
As the moon inched toward its zenith, the two men held their well-rested animals to a steady trot, both to conserve their strength and to minimize noise. Now and then Josh heard an owl hoot or the far-off, eerie roar of a puma’s kill cry. But so far, the Wyoming night seemed peaceful enough.
“Quiet, ain’t it?” Josh remarked at one point.
“Sure is,” Bill replied. “And so is a fish on ice, if you take my meaning?”
Josh took it, all right. Wild Bill had his own way of making a point. Josh forced his mind to quit daydreaming and rested his right palm on the butt of his pistol.
“We got serious troubles now,” Johnny Kinkaid said urgently. “Mack and Stoney were hazing strays east of my old man’s land yesterday. They saw Hickok jawing with the Burlington work crew. Won’t be long now, he’ll twig our game. I knew that son of a bitch was a fast draw. Nobody warned me he’s got a full brainpan, too.”
With Hickok somewhere out there on the prowl, the three conspirators had met in Blackford’s hotel room instead of the deserted line shack.
“Actually,” Blackford remarked conversationally, tamping tobacco into his pipe, “you won’t hear of any true marksmen who are stupid. Wyatt Earp, John Wesley Hardin, Bat Masterson—superior reflexes must be controlled by a superior intellect, or—”
“Who gives a damn?” Barry Tate snapped impatiently. “You’re always talking like a book. We don’t need a damn schoolmaster.”
“Now, now,” Jarvis goaded. “It wasn’t my talk
ing like a book that ruined your point-blank shot at Hickok, was it?”
Barry’s face twitched, but he said nothing. Jarvis looked at Johnny.
“As far as Hickok talking to the work crew—remember, Johnny, these rail-gang workers don’t know anything, yet, about the problem with the hard water in Kinkaid County. Hickok can’t have any good reason to link that construction with us.”
All three men fervently hoped so, anyway. Despite the fact that Kinkaid County was crisscrossed by creeks, streams, and rivers, much of it was some of the most mineral-rich water in the West. So “hard” with minerals, in fact, that one government agriculturalist quipped it was “solid water.” This hard water was fine for most purposes, but the railroads had only recently realized that mineral-rich water quickly reduced the capacity of cast-iron boilers by gumming the steam vents with semisolid mineral deposits.
Thus, the Burlington’s current spur-line project hinged on one important condition: Since Kinkaid County was the optimal location for an important water-storage station, the water rights to Turk’s Creek—the only “soft” water in that area—and much of the surrounding land must be sold to the railroad. Most of the land titles to that area were already in Johnny and Barry’s names—Dave Hansen and a couple of other homesteaders were the last holdouts. And they would never sell cheap, which meant driving them out—and creating a reason to do so.
“Keeping it dark from Hickok,” Blackford added, “is fairly easy so long as Hickok doesn’t suspect who’s really killing the cows around here. Remember, the feeder ditch hasn’t yet been dug to Turk’s Creek. It’s so far away, no one connects the creek to the Burlington project.”
“Has their money offer been firmed up?” Johnny demanded.
Blackford nodded. “Firm as granite. Gentlemen, we’re looking at the figure of a hundred thousand dollars.”
This revelation forced a respectful silence. That meant more than thirty-three thousand dollars apiece—at a time when a top hand on a ranch made only three hundred and sixty dollars per year. For Johnny, that meant he could pay his poker debts and still be twenty thousand to the good.
“But we’re also,” Blackford cautioned, “looking at the growing problem of Wild Bill Hickok.”
Johnny and Barry exchanged a glance. Johnny flashed his insolent grin and pulled a perfumed sheet of folded stationery from his shirt pocket.
“Me and Barry have been working on that problem,” Johnny said. “And we’ve got a good plan. We can use my sister Nell as bait to set Hickok up for the trap. You know how Hickok can’t say no to a pert woman? Well, I had Dottie McGratten, that soldier’s widow, write this note out and sign Nell’s name. She splashed toilet water all over it, too. It’ll put Hickok in rut quick. I’m told he’s left the hotel, but he’s still picking up messages there.”
Blackford unfolded the note. It was written in blue ink, an ornate feminine hand:
Dear Wild Bill,
We never get a chance to be alone at my home. Are you as unhappy about this fact as I am? If so, why not meet me day after tomorrow, around noon, where the stage road intersects with the Old Evansville Pike two miles west of town.
Nell Kinkaid
Blackford grinned and looked at both men, admiration clear in his eyes. “That’ll fetch him, all right. It’s red meat to a starving hound! But how do you guarantee your sister will be where the note says? Surely she’s not in cahoots with you?”
Johnny snorted at the very idea. “Nell? Shoo! If she ever broke a law, she’d wear ashes and sackcloth for a year, the Little Miss Goody. See, the deal is, Nell really will be passing that spot around noon— she’s got an appointment with Holly Nearhood, the seamstress, to pick up a dress Holly altered for her. And Nell will be on time. I heard her whine to my pa how tight Holly’s schedule always is.”
“Hickok’s no fool,” Tate threw in. “The letter will get him all het up, all right. But he’ll be suspicious, that’s his nature. He won’t show himself until he’s sure Nell is alone and not being followed. Then he’ll ride down to meet her. And it’s all open right there at that intersection—a man who takes up a good position an hour or so earlier will get one clean shot.”
“It won’t be me,” Johnny said before Jarvis could ask. “I’ll go along. And if something goes bad, I’ll kill Hickok if I can be face-to-face. But I want Barry to plug him. That miss in town was a fluke. Barry is only so-so with his short gun. But with a rifle, he can drop a man at two hundred yards every shot.”
“And we’ve already scouted out that spot,” Barry said. “I can easily hide within fifty yards.”
Blackford looked at each man in turn. “It’s a good plan. Johnny, didn’t I tell you good shootists are clever? But don’t forget. Your sister will be a witness.”
“To what?” Johnny demanded. “Hickok dying, is all. Barry won’t have to show. And if I show, it’ll only be for a fair gunfight. I want her to see that.”
Jarvis tapped the dottle out of his pipe, looking well satisfied. “Gents, I’ve raised my final objection. Good luck. Next time we meet, here’s hoping we can drink to Wild Bill Hickok’s memory.”
Josh and Wild Bill had been riding in the darkness for hours. Long enough for Bill to go through two entire cheroots, and he was one to savor a slow cigar. So far the night seemed uneventful. By now Josh felt cold slicing at his neck, and he turned up his collar.
“Let’s see what you’re learning, kid,” Bill said as they stopped to spell their horses in a big clearing carved out by lightning. “What time is it?”
Both of them owned watches. But Josh left his in his pocket and glanced up at the fat ball of moon. Bill had taught him to tell approximate time by it: It was pure white early at night, and turned more golden as the night advanced.
“Heading up toward four a.m.,” Josh guessed. “Maybe a little past.”
Bill thumbed back the cover of his watch. “Kid, you must be a descendant of Daniel Boone! It’s four-fifteen.”
Josh felt a tight bubble of pride. Bill only had to show or tell him a thing once, and it was his for life. But then again, there was an awful lot a man had to learn. Even the quickest study could easily die before he learned enough.
“Let’s take one last look at Hansen’s place,” Bill decided. “Then we’ll turn in for a few hours.”
They picked up the course of Turk’s Creek and followed it toward Hansen’s farm. Bill kept them on low ground as much as possible to avoid the skyline.
Just below the crest of a low ridge overlooking Hansen’s place, Wild Bill suddenly halted. Josh reined in, too.
“S’matter?” Josh hissed.
“Look at the treeline left of Dave’s place. Watch it from the side of your eye.”
Josh did. Soon he thought he could make out a shadowy human form hidden there.
“C’mon,” Bill whispered, quickly dismounting and hobbling his roan.
Josh followed Bill’s example, walking on his heels to minimize ground contact. He also drew his pinfire revolver when he saw Bill slide one of his Peacemakers out of its holster.
When they were within fifteen feet of the hidden intruder, Bill thumbed back the hammer. Its click sounded ominous in the quiet night air.
“There’s two guns aimed at you, mister,” Bill called out. “Back out of there slow, slow as molasses in January. Then drop your weapon before you turn around. Do it just like I told you. One mistake, and tonight you’ll cross the Great Divide.”
“Christ, mister, don’t shoot!” pleaded a familiar voice. Josh heard an ungodly rattling and thrashing and shaking of bushes, as if a longhorn were caught there. A huge man backed out and dropped his Winchester to the ground. He turned around. Josh recognized Sheriff Waldo, a typhoid tinge to his skin in the ghostly moonlight.
“My apologies, Sheriff,” Bill said, holstering his gun. He looked at the spyglass Waldo still held in his left hand. “Doing some nighttime work, eh?”
“Ahh, tryin’ to do what I can, Bill. You boys coming to see me, that put
a little fire under me. I been sittin’ on my fat ass too long now, Bill. Hell, look what you done as sheriff in Hays City and Abilene.”
Josh could tell from the self-loathing in Waldo’s tone that the man was suffering from guilt.
“I did all right,” Bill agreed. “But I was paid a hundred and fifty dollars a month to get it done.”
Sheriff Waldo snorted. “Well, I don’t draw near that kind of pay. But it’s still high time I earned what I do get. Bill, you seen all them wanted dodgers in my office? You know what I do with ’em?”
Bill laughed. “Sure I do. I was a star-man, too, and did the same thing. You use ’em for kindling in the winter, don’tcha?”
Waldo laughed right back. “Even you?”
“Hell, every sheriff does. Well, seen any signs of trouble tonight, Sheriff?”
“It’s been quiet as a country grave. How ’bout you?”
“The same, old son, the same. Makes me nervous. Well, keep up the good work.”
“I plan to,” Sheriff Waldo assured them. “Can’t every man be a Bill Hickok, but I can do better than I been doing. And by God, I will.”
Josh watched Bill reach out and give the big man a hearty handshake. “Any man who does his best can rest easy. Good luck to you, Sheriff. Let’s keep in touch on what we find.”
“You bet, Wild Bill!”
The two friends left the newly reformed Sheriff Waldo at his hidden observation post. Not once did Josh suspect that, next time they laid eyes on Waldo, he’d be stone-cold dead.
Chapter Fourteen
Early on the second day after discovering Sheriff Waldo on night patrol, Wild Bill and Josh rode into Progress City to run some errands.
Josh needed to telegraph his latest offering to his editor at the Herald, and Bill needed to check for messages at the hotel as well as pick up some smokes and a bottle of Old Taylor. “A man can cut a new wick out of his long Johns,” Bill assured Josh. “But there’s no substitute for Colonel Taylor.”
As always, Hickok’s eyes missed little as the two riders trotted into town from the direction of the rolling hills to the west.
