by Judd Cole
This prospect was so hilarious (Josh’s prim-and-proper Quaker mother receiving a missive from the most notorious gunfighter in the West!) that Josh laughed outright, and so did Bill. But seconds later, another explosion of cracking gunfire over the next ridge sobered their faces.
Chapter Seventeen
Much later that day, when it was finally over, Josh would describe the showdown in a wire story that became as widely read throughout America as the Holy Bible or Leslie’s Weekly.
Josh had delivered the “summons” from Wild Bill without alerting Elmer or Nell, both of whom were evidently still asleep when Josh arrived just past sunup at the Rocking K. He pushed the note for Johnny into the sleepy maid’s hand, telling her to deliver it immediately. Then the nervous reporter hightailed it for the rendezvous point mentioned in Bill’s note: the deserted line shack on the north boundary of Elmer’s land.
It was a good spot, Josh realized now as he tied his horse out of harm’s way behind the shack, next to Bill’s roan. A big, level clearing in front of the shack was surrounded by a buffer of thick ponderosa pine—no one back at the main yard would even hear the shots.
Not that such discretion mattered much now. For only a mile north of here, a pitched battle had begun just past dawn. The rover force of marauding cowboys had finally discovered the high-ground fort thrown up by the hoe-men. A hammering racket of gunshots split what should have been a peaceful morning stillness.
“The farmers will hold,” Bill said with quiet confidence. He stood out in the center of the big clearing. But with his usual caution, he had placed his back to the bole of a tree that had escaped cutting. Now he stood facing the only approach to the line shack, enjoying the day’s first cheroot. Bill’s fathomless eyes watched drifting pockets of morning mist.
Josh searched Bill’s face for signs of fear but found nothing, not a damn thing at all. The truth be told, he would write only a few hours from now, Bill Hickok does indeed kill in cold blood. But it’s not the cold blood of a criminal without honor—it’s the utter indifference of an eagle destroying its prey from instinct.
“The farmers will hold,” Bill repeated, flicking off a gray pellet of ash from his cigar. “They whipped a damn tough army of Mexican regulars in ’47 and they were the best soldiers on both sides in the Great War. They’ll hang on like ticks.”
“Listen! Somebody’s coming!” Josh said suddenly.
Bill nodded, carefully butting his half-smoked cheroot and slipping it back into the pocket of his leather vest.
“That’ll be Johnny Kinkaid,” he said. “Get inside the shack, kid. You can see your big story from the doorway.”
Josh, who had learned from Bill to give as good as he got, shot back: “What if Kinkaid kills you, Bill? Don’tcha want to scratch out a will, at least tell me where to send your belongings?”
Bill’s strong white teeth flashed in a grin. “They say a man is usually killed by what he loves most. So I figure I’ll die at a poker table someday. But kid? You best hope I ain’t plugged today. ’Cause if I am? That means Calamity Jane will have only you to comfort her.”
Josh felt his face draining white. Seeing this, Bill laughed so hard he made himself cough. “Now scram, Longfellow! Here comes our man.”
Josh was safe inside the shack by the time Johnny entered the big clearing. He spotted Hickok waiting and drew rein, swinging deftly down from the saddle. Kinkaid moved his dun out of the line of fire and ground-hitched him. So far, he’d said nothing to Hickok. It was Wild Bill who spoke first.
“Morning, Johnny,” he called out. “Tell me something, wouldja? How come you been so afraid to meet me? The whole time I’ve been in these parts, you’ve taken pains to avoid me. Even now you won’t meet my eye. You afraid to kill a man you know?”
“I’ll be looking right at you in just a few shakes,” Johnny promised.
Josh watched the handsome young tough swagger out toward the center of the clearing, his face twisted with insolence. The Smith & Wesson pistol tied low in its hand-tooled holster seemed huge—even longer and heavier than Bill’s Peacemakers. Even from the shack, Josh could see that Johnny had filed the notch off his hammer so it wouldn’t snag coming out of the holster.
“Hell,” Bill said amiably, “I killed one of my own best friends once, deliberately. Also shot my favorite deputy, though that one was a sloppy accident. Got me fired.”
Josh knew both claims were straight. When Bill found out a fellow Union scout was actually a Rebel, he gunned him down without mercy or debate. The deputy incident was more embarrassing—Bill got his targets mixed up in a heated, confused gun battle.
“The hell I care, Hickok?” Johnny retorted. “Quit flapping your gums, dandy man, and make your play.”
“Yep,” Bill said, pushing away from the tree, “I’d just as soon know who I’m killing. But that’s me, I guess. Now, of course, a fellow who was really a coward at heart might feel different.”
“Whack the cork, Hickok, goddamn you to hell! I said just make your play!”
“Yep, a man who shoots targets all the livelong day,” Bill went on, “can shape himself into a damn good marksman. But you know what, Johnny? He can’t make himself into a killer that way. You, Kinkaid, are a target shooter, not a gunfighter.”
By now Johnny was red-faced with rage. But Josh read something else in those twisted features: The man was scared. His left hand trembled so violently, he had to grip his thigh to steady it. Lord God, Josh thought, I bet Custer’s smug face looked like that a minute before he went under.
“Goddamn you, Hickok! I said draw!”
“Yes indeed,” Bill continued to goad. “I had my suspicions about you. The mountain men called it buck ager. Sort of a womanish weakness that washes over some men when it comes time to kill.”
That last barb struck deep and evoked a snarl of rage from the conceited Johnny. His gun hand moved so quick that Josh would have missed even the blur of it if he had blinked. But incredibly, Bill’s Colt barked first—two rapid shots back to back. And for the first—and only—time in his life during a showdown, Wild Bill Hickok aimed to maim, not kill.
Later, when his turbulent emotions calmed, Josh figured it all out. Bill did it for Nell and Elmer. With ruthless precision, Hickok deliberately destroyed Johnny’s gun hand for life. Two bullets shattered the delicate and intricate hand and finger bones beyond healing. Kinkaid would be lucky to ever hold a coffee mug again with that hand, let alone master a gun.
Johnny’s gun had flown from his hand. Josh expected him to try picking it up and firing it with his left hand. But Kinkaid, wracked by intense pain, was already going into shock. He simply sat upon the ground like a half-wit, staring at his mangled, bleeding hand from glazed eyes like glass orbs. He looked so pathetic and lost that Josh couldn’t even hate him, though he knew he should.
Quickly, the two companions wrapped the wounded hand in a bandanna and lifted a now docile Kinkaid into the saddle. Bill whacked the horse’s rump, and by habit it began trotting back to its stall at the ranch.
“Let’s go see about the rest of your story, kid,” Bill said, retrieving his own horse. “They’re still busting caps at Fort Farmer.”
But Bill’s prediction proved right as rain.
The cowboy aggressors had shown much enthusiasm for a fight when it was just noise and bravado. Once a few of them were blown out of their saddles, however, the rest lost their fighting fettle.
By the time Josh and Wild Bill reached the high-ground fortress of sod and stones, the cattlemen had fled—leaving Danny Ford, Mace Ludlow, and a third corpse behind on the slope.
Late that afternoon, back in the hotel now, some more welcome news reached Wild Bill and Josh. Jarvis Blackford’s horse had evidently gone lame on the road to Torrington. Thus handicapped, he had the misfortune of crossing paths with those Sioux renegades who jumped the rez. His remains were found buried up to the neck on the open prairie. The eyelids had been sliced clean off so the sun would slowly dry up the
eyeballs while ants bit at them.
“Musta been a mite unpleasant,” was Bill’s only comment when he heard about it. And Josh used that very line to end his remarkable dispatch.
With Blackford thus removed, the scheme to steal Turk’s Creek just dried up like milkweeds in the sun. The farmers ended up striking a lucrative deal with the Burlington for water rights.
His job done, Wild Bill Hickok again harked to the lure of Denver’s many faro games and roulette wheels. But Josh soon realized Bill had one last bit of unfinished business—or rather, pleasure. Her name was Nell Kinkaid.
However, as a frustrated Wild Bill would explain later, their pleasurable interlude turned into a disaster.
Nell had invited Wild Bill to the county fair in Evansville. Bill had somehow made a quiet arrangement with a hotel clerk there—not only was this town twenty miles from Progress City, but its residents were gone anyway, visiting the nearby fair. Bill had no trouble whatsoever slipping a veiled Nell Kinkaid into the room for a day’s pleasure.
But he had foolishly underrated Calamity Jane’s vigilance. Bill had just gotten Nell between satin sheets when the bed collapsed with a resounding crash. Even worse, a huge and harmless—but extremely ugly—gopher snake slithered over Nell and Bill’s naked flesh as it escaped from the bed where Jane had planted it earlier. To cap all that, Bill reported morosely, Jane shot the window out and screamed at the top of her lungs, “Cowards to the rear!”
Needless to report, Bill’s amorous ambitions were soundly thwarted yet again. The incident left him in such a foul mood, he didn’t even confess any of this until he and Josh were halfway back to Denver. But the humor of it finally caught up with Bill. Both men stopped in the middle of the trail and laughed until tears streamed from their eyes.
“That woman is so ugly,” Bill said when he could speak again, “you could throw her in a lake and skim ugly for a month. But she does keep life interesting, kid, I’ll give her that. C’mon, Longfellow, let’s make tracks. There’s two steak dinners in Denver, with all the trimmings, and damned if they ain’t got our names on ’em.”
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If you have enjoyed this others in the series are:
Dead Man’s Hand
