Aces & Eights
Page 10
He allowed himself a faint smile. There was no warmth in it. “You aren’t the only one with convenient friends. The deputy marshal guarding Scout owes me a favor. He was outside Cody’s hotel room when they went over his testimony.”
“He didn’t hear what they said?”
“I didn’t ask and he didn’t say. Those are grounds for disbarment in every state and territory in the Union. But the odds are they’ll put him on the stand in the morning.”
“I suppose that’s what we get for waiving our right to interview all character witnesses before the trial. Well, there’s plenty of stuff here on Cody and Hickok.” He thumbed through the material. “I don’t suppose you’ve talked McCall out of testifying.”
“I tried. He’s dead set on it, to the point of firing us if we refuse to let him.”
“We’ll just have to make the best of it,” said Crandall.
“How’s our witness?”
“Cheerful. Are you sure you want to put him on? McCall’s bad enough, but I shudder to think what Scout will do with this one’s past.”
“Let me worry about that.”
“I never worry.”
I believe it, thought the other. Aloud he said, “You mentioned that Scout’s still being guarded. There haven’t been any more threats on his life?”
“Only if his lady friend’s mother is to be believed. She claims she saw someone watching the house last night.”
“Son of a bitch!” Crandall smote the stack of documents with a pudgy palm. A gray cloud billowed out around it. The guard came clattering down the corridor at the report. Gannon explained and he withdrew reluctantly.
“Forget about it,” said Gannon. “The jury’s sequestered. There’s no way the news can reach them.”
“It’s not the jury that worries me. It’s Blair.” The General had calmed somewhat, though his face was still cherry-red. “If he gets wind of it, he could say the threats were affecting Scout’s judgment and declare a mistrial.”
“So what? It would buy time.”
“I’m not interested in that kind of time. Scout wouldn’t be assigned to a second trial and I’d be facing someone besides Bartholomew. I don’t want to win that way.”
“I don’t think your client would agree.”
Crandall displayed his eyeteeth. “Nobility fits you like a tent. The only reason you agreed to go partners with me on this one was to reacquaint yourself with courtroom tactics.”
Gannon stood. The guard had returned, his watch clutched significantly in one hand. “Remind me not to work with you again.”
His partner remained seated. His expression was grim again. “Hire me a Pinkerton. I want the one who’s been making those threats put out of the way. I don’t care how it’s done.”
“You’ve got it,” said Gannon, and left, unaware of the half-dozen pairs of ears that had been listening and the one pair of lips that would repeat the conversation outside the stone walls of the building.
Chapter 11
“State your full name and occupation, please.”
“William Frederick Cody, scout and lecturer.”
The flashpan of a camera Judge Blair had reluctantly allowed to be set up in the aisle erupted in a blinding, blue-white flame that drew a collective gasp from the gallery and a start from the bench, preserving for posterity the tableau of the great frontiersman being interrogated by Julian Scout. Cody was unaffected; with Hickok dead he bade fair toward becoming the most photographed man of the nineteenth century. Today Buffalo Bill was turned out modestly but well in a black Prince Albert and striped trousers tucked into the high tops of boots that shone blue. Bartholomew, seated at the prosecution table, had cursed when the people’s star witness unbuttoned his coat to sit and exhibited the gaudiest belt buckle the attorney had ever seen, fashioned from silver with a diamond-studded buffalo head in the center, the entire thing the size of a hotel ashtray. But he had to smile when Cody caught his eye and favored him with a very solemn wink. He was a hard man to stay mad at.
“You are the same William Frederick Cody who defeated the Cheyenne chief Yellow Hand at Rawhide Creek in eastern Wyoming Territory last July?”
“Objection,” said Crandall at the defense table, looking little the worse for his night in jail. “Irrelevant.”
“Your Honor, I am merely seeking to establish the witness’ credibility by bringing his heroic career to light,” Scout protested.
“I think we are all familiar with the details of Mr. Cody’s estimable life on the prairie, counselor. Sustained.”
The witness inclined his head cordially in response to Blair’s compliment. Scout continued.
“When did you meet James Butler Hickok?”
“The year was 1861,” said Cody. “I was living with my mother and five sisters near Leavenworth, Kansas. My father had died four years before, and at fifteen I was the sole support of my family. Jim—that was the name by which Hickok was known at that time—came to Leavenworth that year as an army wagon boss out of Sedalia, Missouri. I hired on as his assistant.”
“How would you describe the association?”
“Amiable,” said Cody, and laughed. It was infectious. Bartholomew felt the spectators warming to him. “Jim had with him a fast-running horse from the mountains that he thought could beat anything on four legs. Well, I have always been a good rider, and in those days I was a good deal smaller than I am now. While sharing a flask over the campfire one night he proposed a partnership. He was to enter the horse in the St. Louis races with me riding. We would bet every cent we had, including the horse.” He paused, lost in the memory.
“And?” Scout prompted.
He laughed again. “Well, the long and the short of it is we came out of that race minus the horse and everything we owned in the world—dead busted in the largest city we had ever been in. It seems the horse was not as swift on the flats as it had been in the mountains.”
Laughter rippled through the gallery. Amused himself, Blair let it go.
Scout smiled in appreciation of the humor. “What did Hickok do then?”
“He did something that was characteristic of his generous nature. He borrowed money to buy me a steamboat ticket back home.”
“But that was not the last you saw of each other.”
“By no means.” Cody sat back, folding his rather small hands across his stomach in the attitude he seemed to love best, that of storyteller. “Shortly after my return to Leavenworth I joined up with the 7th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry as scout with the rank of private. In the fall of 1864 I donned civilian clothes and rode ahead along the Little Blue River near Independence, Missouri, to gather information concerning the disposition of Rebel troops. Stopping to water my horse at a farmhouse, I was invited to step inside for a bite, where I discovered a man in the garb of a Confederate officer seated at a table.
“Now, I had succeeded in putting past the locals my pose as a drifter, but the sight of a professional soldier—the enemy, as it were, in all his array—caused me no little apprehension. I was grateful for my side arm, and was prepared to make use of it should my story fail to convince, when he turned about in his seat, studied me for a moment, and said, ‘You little rascal, what are you doing in those secessionist clothes?’ It was Jim Hickok, disguised as a Rebel to perform much the same function as I was myself.”
This time the judge was obliged to quell the mirth with his gavel. As it died, Crandall raised a hand, smiling.
“I must confess, Your Honor, that while I find Colonel Cody’s anecdotes amusing, I fail to see how they bear upon the case at hand.”
“You don’t?” The judge looked surprised. “Mr. Scout’s line of questioning seems fairly straightforward to me. However, we’ll let him explain. Mr. Scout?”
The prosecutor nodded. “Your Honor, a friendship is an intricate thing, developed over a long period of time and built of numerous incidents that seem meaningless when they occur but that in the aggregate are of importance to the whole. The state intends to
establish the credibility of the witness’ character references by exploring the depths of his relationship with the deceased.”
“Well put, counselor, though you might have been more succinct. Objection overruled.”
“Exception,” said Crandall. “I didn’t understand one word Mr. Scout said.”
Bellowing laughter rocked the courtroom. Blair banged his gavel for two minutes until it subsided. The vein appeared on his forehead.
“May I remind you people,” he said gravely, “that a man is on trial here for his life.”
The announcement had a sobering effect upon the spectators. But for miscellaneous coughs and scuffles it was quiet in the room. Scout broke the spell.
“To your knowledge, Colonel Cody, how did James Butler Hickok acquire the nickname ‘Wild Bill’?”
The frontiersman looked grave. Blair’s admonition had had its effect upon him as well. “As I understand it, it was given him during a fracas in Independence shortly after we parted company the first time. There was a riot in a saloon, and he came to the bartender’s aid. When the mob was preparing to rush the establishment, Jim fired two shots over their heads and said, ‘If you folks don’t clear the street I’ll shoot the next man that moves toward me.’ The gang broke up. Later that night, a woman spotted him at a vigilance committee meeting and shouted, ‘Good for you, Wild Bill!’ Something to that effect. The name stuck.”
This was pure hearsay, and Blair looked to the defense table to see if Crandall was going to raise an objection. But the General seemed intent on perforating a typewritten sheet of paper with his pencil. The holes formed the outline of a shapely female form.
“Tell us about the next time you and Hickok met,” prodded the prosecutor.
“The war had been over for more than a year. I was married by then, had acquired and sold a hotel in Salt Creek Valley, Kansas, and returned to the freedom of the plains. We were reunited in Junction City, where Jim—Wild Bill, now—was working for the army as a civilian scout out of Fort Riley. He was an impressive figure in those days, I can tell you—over six feet, lean as a puma, fine-featured, long of lock and swaggering of stride in buckskin leggings and red shirt and broad-brimmed hat, with two pistols in his belt and a rifle in his hand. Recruits and officers alike wrote home about him. Once again he rescued me from unemployment by getting me assigned as one of his fellows. I spent the next year in that capacity, carrying dispatches and guiding expeditions through Indian territory. This was my first job as a civilian scout, and I can hardly say that it has not worked to my advantage.”
“Was it Hickok who nicknamed you Buffalo Bill?”
Cody chuckled. “No, and I wish I could say that it was bestowed upon me in gratitude for supplying Union Pacific track layers with buffalo meat. The fact of it is that it sprang from a ditty composed by a laborer who had grown heartily sick of the same fare day in and day out. It went something like this.” He cleared his throat and began singing, in an unexpectedly clear tenor:
“Buffalo Bill, Buffalo Bill,
Never missed and, never will;
Always aims and shoots to kill
And the company pays his buffalo bill.”
The story and scrap of doggerel was appreciated by the spectators, among whom there was a smattering of applause. Blair rapped his gavel sharply to remind them of his late rebuke.
“Did you save Hickok’s life on more than one occasion?” Scout queried.
“I was nothing more than an instrument,” corrected the witness modestly. “I was scouting with General Eugene A. Carr’s 5th Cavalry during the winter of 1868 in Colorado Territory when word reached us that Brigadier General William Penrose, with four companies of the 10th Cavalry and one of the 7th, was stranded by snowstorms on Palo Duro Creek on the border of Texas and the Nations. Wild Bill had been guiding them. We left Fort Lyon in December with a pack train of emergency supplies.
“It was a terrible winter. The temperature was thirty below and drifts were piled as high as fifteen feet. Scouting ahead with a small party, I came upon one of Penrose’s old camps and traced his trail along the Cimarron River while Carr followed along the opposite bank with the wagons. We were in the Raton foothills when Carr stopped, uncertain that he could get the wagons down a steep slope to the river. I crossed over and talked him into getting his cavalry down, then turned to the wagonmasters and told them to run down, slide down or fall down, as long as they got down. When still they hesitated, I fetched a mess wagon to the edge of the slope, had all four wheels locked in place with chains, and started down. The mules went along slowly and well until we got near the bottom, when they panicked and broke into a gallop, not stopping until we rattled smack dab into the middle of General Carr’s cavalry. The other wagons followed suit, and in half an hour we were all in camp.
“Shortly thereafter, still following Penrose’s trail, we came upon three half-dead troopers whose narrative of their outfit’s ordeal prompted Carr to order me ahead with two cavalry companies and a fifty-mule pack train of supplies. Thus equipped, I pulled into Penrose’s camp some days later, where I found my old friend Wild Bill hunkered over a small fire thawing out his shooting hand. I don’t believe that we were any too soon, for he and his comrades had begun to slaughter their horses for meat.”
A spellbinder of many years’ experience, Cody paused to let his listeners absorb what he had said before continuing. Wood crackling in the stove was the loudest sound in the room.
“I didn’t see Wild Bill again until early the following year, when he was brought into Fort Lyon three-quarters dead and bleeding copiously from an ugly wound in the thigh. I learned that he had fallen into a running fight with a band of Cheyennes while riding alone across the prairie and caught a lance high and deep. He was found about a mile from the fort by a firewood detail the next morning. When I saw him I took charge and rushed him to the surgeon. He recovered, but the wound ended his career as a scout. He was just thirty-one, one year older than I am now.”
“But that was not the end of your association.”
“There is one more episode to relate, though I must admit that it is not very heroic. In 1873 I allowed my friend Ned Buntline to talk me into appearing in his stage drama, Scouts of the Prairie, on its eastern tour. Wild Bill had by this time gained considerable fame, having been written about in Harper’s New Monthly and the Weekly Missouri Democrat, and featured in DeWitt’s Ten Cent Romances. I wired him from New York City to come join me.” He shook his head, smiling. “It was a disaster. He did not take to show business and demonstrated his dislike for it at every opportunity. I suppose it was because he was so accustomed to the real thing that he could not bring himself to take acting seriously. He left the show in Rochester and went back West. That was the last time I saw him, but for a brief meeting in Wyoming last July, shortly before he was murdered.”
“Objection!” barked Crandall.
“Sustained. The witness will confine his remarks to those things he knows as fact.”
Scout took advantage of the exchange to sneak a look at McCall. The defendant had ceased staring at the floor and was concentrating on the eagle atop the staff of the American flag behind Blair’s left shoulder. His expression was as sullen as ever. The prosecutor returned his attention to Cody.
“Did you consider Hickok a replacement for your father?”
The witness frowned, either deep in thought or wishing to appear so. He seemed never to forget his place at the center of things, particularly where the women in the courtroom were concerned. Scout had seen a dreamy look in more than one pair of feminine eyes as Cody was being sworn in, and had noted reciprocation on the part of the great frontiersman.
“I did not look upon him as such,” he said at length, “though there was nine years’ difference in our ages, and it might be said that his interest in me was paternal. No, our friendship was just that, a friendship. But I’ll never know another one as sweet.”
“How would you sum up your friend’s character?”
“When the Indian menace is settled, law and order established throughout the land, and men are free to lay aside their arms in favor of more constructive pursuits, Wild Bill will stand unique as a man long after the necessity for his existence is extinguished. While probably no other in western history had so many notches on his gun, it may be said that no other recorded them oftener in defending right. I am proud to have known him.”
Scout heard scribbling and lamented that when the witness’ words appeared in print they would sound false and self-serving. No one who had not been present when they were expressed could realize the depth of sincerity behind them. The prosecutor wished the trial were over this moment. But it wasn’t close; the end wasn’t even in sight. He turned away with a sigh.
“Your witness, General.”
Chapter 12
Advancing through a pool of silence, Crandall pulled up a few feet short of the witness box. Cody’s strength of will had been demonstrated and he evidently saw no advantage in violating the witness’ personal space. Scout reflected that his opponent seemed no more humble for having incurred the judge’s displeasure overnight. If anything, there was more bounce in his step than usual.
“First off, Colonel,” he said blandly, “allow me to express my appreciation on behalf of the rest of the country for your heroic efforts to render the West a safe place to raise a family. We are all aware—”
“Your Honor,” interrupted the prosecutor, “if this is a testimonial dinner, where is my serving?”
Blair fought back the laughter with his gavel. His expression was severe. “Objection sustained. In the future, Mr. Scout, the state will refrain from these childish attempts at whimsy.”
Crandall appeared unmoved by the digression. “Colonel, I take it from your mention of the horse-racing episode in St. Louis that the deceased was a gambling man. How did he react to his loss on this occasion?”