Aces & Eights

by Loren D. Estleman

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Epigraph

  Prologue - SALOON NO. 10

  BOOK ONE - THE PROSECUTION

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  BOOK TWO - THE DEFENSE

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  BOOK THREE - THE VERDICT

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue - DEAD MAN’S RAFFLE

  By LOREN D. ESTLEMAN FROM TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES

  Praise for Journey of the Dead

  POSTSCRIPT

  Copyright Page

  To a friend named Huckleberry

  Those who see thee in thy full blown pride,

  Know little of affections crushed within

  And wrongs which frenzy thee.

  —Taulford

  Prologue

  SALOON NO. 10

  His name is James Butler Hickok, but he has been called Wild Bill for so many years that he no longer answers to anything else. Six foot two in his custom-made boots, he wears a thigh-length Prince Albert coat that accentuates his broad shoulders and narrow waist, black broadcloth trousers, a lowcrowned black hat with a sweeping brim, and his most famous possessions, twin Navy Colts riding inside a red sash about his middle with their ivory handles turned forward and the loading gates left open to prevent their sliding out the bottom. His face, seamed now and growing flaccid about the jowls, is handsome in a rough masculine way, receding of chin and hooked of nose, dominated by restless gray eyes and set off by drooping moustaches and blond hair brushed behind his ears and tumbling in ringlets to his shoulders. The face is more famous than President Ulysses S. Grant’s, for it has been reproduced in rotogravure in every civilized country on earth. Certainly, as he enters the Deadwood saloon known as No. 10, approaching with feline grace the center table where four men are seated playing draw poker, there is not a customer in the room who doesn’t recognize him. He is thirty-nine years old, and he has approximately forty-five minutes to live.

  At the table, which is universally regarded as Hickok’s headquarters since he and his friends appointed themselves peace officers of this canvas-and-clapboard town of prospectors, gamblers and prostitutes, are Carl Mann, part owner of the saloon, Charles Rich, Con Stapleton, and Captain William Rodney Massey, a Missouri steamboat pilot. After passing time with bartender Harry Young, the newcomer greets the others and, laying aside the sawed-off shotgun he has recently taken to carrying, accepts the only vacant chair, which stands facing the bar with its back to the rear entrance.

  “How about changing places, Charley?” he asks Rich in his mild baritone. “I always like to watch who comes in.”

  Rich, in the act of drawing two cards, grins around his crooked stogie. “You’re getting superstitious in your old age,” he suggests good-naturedly. “Just like a crib girl.”

  Hickok colors, but retains his seat. Fortunately for the other player he is in a charitable mood. He once killed a man for calling him Duck Bill in reference to his protruding upper lip.

  A professional gambler with whom law enforcement is merely a diversion, the unofficial marshal concentrates on his game, ignoring the conversation that continues in fits and starts between plays. It centers around George Armstrong Custer, who was killed along with his entire command at the Little Big Horn six weeks ago in Montana. Asked for his opinion of the disaster, he makes no reply, instead requesting one card from dealer Carl Mann. Custer and Hickok had been quite close during the latter’s scouting days, but that ended when Wild Bill locked up Custer’s brother Tom in Hays City on a charge of drunk and disorderly and dealt with two soldiers the offender sent later to retaliate, shooting one and stabbing the other.

  The afternoon trade at No. 10 is steady, and no one—including Hickok, determined to break an early losing run—pays much attention to the arrival shortly after 3:00 P.M. of a big man in shabby dress, whose whiskey-flushed face and small, sandy moustaches, together with a broken nose and one crossed eye, make him appear far older than his twenty-seven years. Wild Bill, who is accustomed to attracting admirers, either doesn’t notice or ignores the presence of a man from whom he won a substantial sum in yesterday’s game. It would not mean much to him in any case, as Jack “Buffalo Curly” McCall is a familiar figure locally, a moocher of drinks and lunches who justifies his existence by swamping out this very saloon part-time.

  Casually at first, but with increasing deliberation the newcomer works his way toward the back door. A few feet short of it he stops and turns, coming up behind Hickok. For some minutes he remains motionless as though watching the game. Suddenly his right hand, which has been inside his coat pocket all this time, is exposed wrapped around the butt of a .45 caliber revolver, the muzzle within three feet of Hickok’s head.

  Wild Bill and Captain Massey are arguing mildly over the former’s habit of sneaking looks at his opponents’ discards, referred to as “deadwood.” It is a running dispute. The others study their hands in stoic silence, awaiting the expected truce. No one sees the gun.

  Later accounts will maintain that in the moment before discharge, McCall cried, “Take that, damn you!” But he is not that stupid and his victim is not that slow to react. The only warning anyone receives is a deafening crash.

  Immediately upon penetration, the bullet, traveling at the rate of 810 feet per second, tears through the left and right cerebral hemispheres at a thirty-degree angle downward and to the right, severing simultaneously the centers of thought, action and sensation, bypassing the cerebellum and exiting through the right cheek. From there, its momentum retarded by the mass through which it has passed and by flattening, it traverses thirty inches of open air, enters Captain Massey’s forearm resting upon the table, and lodges in the tangle of ligaments and muscles at his elbow. The damage to Massey’s arm is not serious, and he will carry the projectile to the grave.

  Time seems to freeze as Wild Bill Hickok sits suspended between worlds, staring at the cards in his hand as if he has been dealt one more ace than there is in the deck. Then the wire is broken and he falls backward, tipping over his chair and crashing to the floor. Proponents of his legend will say that in the instant of death his amazing reflexes took over and he actually jerked one of his revolvers from its holster before collapsing. But Hickok wears no holster and his reflexes are as dead as he is.

  Transfixed by his success, McCall hovers over the crumpled form longer than judgment dictates. By this time a crowd has begun to gather. He backs stumbling toward the rear door, brandishing his revolver and muttering, “Come on, you sons of bitches.” Spotting gold-dust weigher George M. Shingle rising from the table where he has been turning the yellow metal into checks for gambling, McCall snaps th
e trigger at him, then at aproned Harry Young, who has abandoned his post behind the bar to block the killer’s retreat. There are no reports; the rest of McCall’s cartridges are duds. But Young hesitates, and for the time being the killer makes good his escape.

  The news spreads like fever throughout Deadwood. In minutes the saloon and the street in front are jammed with the morbidly curious, which in a frontier town includes everyone ambulatory and within earshot. By nightfall many of the miners not now on the scene will have drifted in from their claims to confirm what they will have been told, and the town will be lit up like Saturday night. By that time the opportunists will be at work, hawking locks of hair said to be Hickok’s and leaden bits, each advertised as “the one what done it.” Later, men with cameras will come to record the scene of the shooting, and still later, men with ink and foolscap to distort the details. By the time the story reaches back East, Jack McCall will have become the ungrateful wretch who killed Wild Bill after the latter staked him five dollars following yesterday’s card loss, the number of the saloon will have changed unaccountably, and a score of gullible journalists will be displaying watch fobs and tie tacks made from various items of Hickokiana to even more gullible audiences.

  But for now, No. 10 is knee-deep in reality. Most noticeable is the odor, an evil mixture of the normal barroom smells of beer and coal oil and sawdust and sweat, and of spent black powder and perfume—not the scent commonly associated with strike-town prostitutes but Hickok’s own, worked into his curls along with his daily oil, a vanity peculiar to French monarchs and frontier dandies. In death, it seems stronger.

  The legend, however, has one more strand to weave.

  Bartender Young struggles to hold back the crowd while saloon owners Carl Mann and Jerry Lewis lift the corpse onto a pair of tables shoved together for the purpose. As they spread a colorful Indian blanket over it, Mann spots young J. Johnson, one of McCall’s fellow swampers, pushing in for a closer look.

  “Hey, boy, you want to make a dollar?”

  “Yes, sir!” responds the youth, after a quick glance around to make sure he is the one adressed. “What do you want me to do?”

  “There’s a broom and a bucket of water behind the bar. Get busy and clean up this mess.”

  The checks have been removed from the table—the other players are neither rich nor foolish—but aside from the dead man’s removal everything else is as it was when the shot was fired. Johnson moves the table to one side and discovers a jumble of cards scattered over the floor. From them he selects five that are more bunched together than the others, forming a hand. The Ace of Clubs, the Ace of Diamonds with a heel mark on it, two black Eights, and the Queen of Hearts soiled with a spot of blood. Recognizing their historic value, he secretes the cards in a pocket and will keep them until the day they are stolen from him at a drinking party. James Butler Hickok has died owing the saloon fifty dollars in checks on a mediocre hand of poker.

  BOOK ONE

  THE PROSECUTION

  If you have to shoot a man, shoot him in the guts near the navel. You may not make a fatal shot, but he will get a shock that will paralyze his brain and arm so much that the fight is all over.

  —James Butler Hickok, 1871

  Chapter 1

  “General John Quincy Adams Crandall,” read the lean man slouched in the stuffed leather armchair, that day’s edition of the Yankton Daily Press and Dakotaian spread in sixteen gray columns in front of his face. “What’s he general of?”

  “No one seems to know. But they tell me he turns all sorts of colors if you fail to address him by that title.” The speaker, a tweed-suited Southerner with a pouched face and an unruly shock of red hair shot with gray, blew a cloud from his snuff box and inhaled it, all of it. Not a grain floated to the polished wood floor of the austere office the two shared.

  “Didn’t we have any privates in that war?”

  “Speak for yourself, Bluebelly,” grinned the man in tweeds.

  The narrow, high-ceiling room smelled of tobacco and old dry leather, the former from a charred ebony-and-amber pipe clenched between the lean man’s teeth as far as the joint, the latter from the cracked and thumb-blurred bindings of fat law books squeezed pitilessly onto shelves covering the wall adjacent to the window. Paperwork had overflowed onto the seats of two rolltop desks, leaving only the armchair, in which the pair took turns sitting. Beyond the arched window, ferries could be seen plying the broad brown flatness of the James River beneath motionless black mushrooms of smoke.

  “Listen to this.” An inveterate train rider, the man with the newspaper folded it expertly into a compact, easily read rectangle two inches wide. He was in his early forties, but already his wavy, dark brown hair was anchored in white side whiskers to the angles of his jaw. His gold-rimmed reading glasses did nothing to soften the Lincolnesque planes of his features. “‘Asked what form McCall’s defense would take, General Crandall replied: “It is not my client who is going on trial, but the U.S. Constitution itself, which guarantees the citizen’s right not to be tried more than once for the same offense. I shall leave the text of my oration up to the members of the First Continental Congress”.’ Is he really planning to take that line?”

  “I doubt it,” said the Southerner. “But you can bet he’ll give it a whirl. The General’s not one to conserve ammunition. What does it say about us?”

  The man handed him the newspaper. He unfolded it and read:

  Heading the prosecution will be Julian Scout, that same Captain Scout who so successfully defended those members of the 12th New Hampshire charged with desertion in the face of the enemy at Cold Harbor during the late war. Neither he nor his assistant—one T. S. E. Bartholomew, a private practitioner and highly vocal Confederate sympathizer throughout the unpleasantness—could be reached for comment at press time, but other sources indicate a struggle in the offing, as sympathy for the defendant runs high locally.

  “Some hatchet job,” observed Scout, grinding his teeth on the pipe stem. “I’m a champion of cowards and you’re Johnny Reb. Just how vocal were you ‘throughout the unpleasantness,’ Tessie?”

  “I ran for state representative in Minnesota against an abolitionist.” Bartholomew flipped the newspaper into the fireplace. Although there was a November chill in the room, no flames burned in the grate; the chimney did not draw well.

  “How far do you think Crandall will get with that double-jeopardy plea?”

  “That depends on Judge Blair. He’s had plenty of time to digest that stuff we gave him on Deadwood’s being an outlaw town. All Crandall’s got is the Constitution, and you and I both know how well that stands up in a modern court of law.”

  For weeks, controversy had been raging in the press over the legality of a second trial for the accused murderer of James Butler Hickok. Jack McCall had been tried and acquitted by a miners’ court in Deadwood the day after the slaying. After fleeing to Laramie, Wyoming, to escape the wrath of Hickok’s friends, he had made the mistake of bragging of his deed while drinking in a saloon and was promptly arrested by a deputy U.S. marshal who had been among his audience. The prosecution maintained that the first trial had taken place in a region where constituted law did not prevail and was thus illegal.

  “Crandall must know he doesn’t have a leg to stand on,” suggested Scout.

  “Of course. But it’s in his client’s interest to delay as long as possible. Count on him dragging out every statute in the book. Then, when Blair’s reached the end of his tether, he’ll plead either self-defense or justifiable homicide and hope he grabs at it.”

  “I hope it’s self-defense. I’ve witnesses to prove McCall shot Hickok from behind without warning.”

  “To which Crandall will respond with as many to prove that it was a wise move. Never lose sight of the fact that the victim was a skilled assassin. We’ll be on firmer ground if he opts for justifiable, but even then everything will swing on Hickok’s character.”

  Scout’s pipe had gone out. He struck
a fresh match. “This looked like such a simple case,” he growled, between puffs. “You’d think a corpse with a bullet hole in the back of its head was evidence enough to convict anyone, with or without eyewitnesses. And we’re loaded with them.”

  Bartholomew laughed shortly. “Now you’re talking like an eastern lawyer. It’s not so simple out here where legends are made.”

  “I wish you’d reconsider and plead this one. You’re twice the orator I am.”

  “In a Yankee court? With my drawl? I’d do more damage than good. Don’t sell yourself short, Julian. This case can make you.”

  “I’m not so sure I want to be made. I like the view from where I’m sitting.”

  “You can see a lot farther from the judge’s bench.” Bartholomew was looking at him. He had small, bright eyes that sometimes took on a wicked glitter, as now.

  Scout made no reply. He got the tobacco going and shook out the match. “What about the conspiracy angle?”

  In his first trial, McCall had blamed Hickok’s killing of his brother for his decision to slay the famed gunman. Although subsequent investigation failed to uphold this claim, the revenge angle (and, some asserted, two hundred ounces of gold dust smuggled into the jury room) had led to the defendant’s release. But McCall’s aborted attempt to escape from the Yankton jail earlier that month had seriously damaged his case the second time around, and he had elected to turn state’s evidence by identifying one John Varnes as the man who had paid him to kill Hickok.

  Bartholomew shook his head abruptly, frowning. The expression heightened his resemblance to a bulldog. “You’d just be muddying the waters. Varnes has disappeared without a trace and McCall has changed his mind again. It’s the prosecution’s job to simplify, not complicate. Leave that to the defense. There’ll be time enough to bring up the thirty pieces of silver when McCall repeats that story about Hickok killing his brother with a hoe.”