Aces & Eights

by Loren D. Estleman

  He had no idea how long he stood there after he finished speaking, but silence still lay heavy in the room as he turned and retraced his steps to the prosecution table. The spell remained unbroken as General John Quincy Adams Crandall rose and hooked his fat thumbs inside his vest pockets. He didn’t approach the jury.

  “I ask you, gentlemen,” he said slowly, “to picture a twelve-year-old boy returning home from an adolescent fishing expedition with his dying little brother cradled in his arms, the blood from his broken head leaking over the older boy’s hands and staining his clothes. Now I ask you to picture that same boy growing up in the shadow of his brother’s life unavenged, forced to read and hear accounts of the unpunished felon’s escapades described in terms of unabashed veneration. Finally, I ask you to picture that boy a man now, arriving in Deadwood to find his brother’s murderer established in a position of respectability, going about his business as he has time and again since his long-forgotten crime. Forgotten, that is, by all but one.

  “A financial failure? Undoubtedly true, but what measure of a man is his station? Jesus was a carpenter. A moral failure? That has not been established, but who are we to judge the effect upon a man of a horror witnessed in his childhood?

  “But let us return to Deadwood, and place ourselves once again in the position of this man who is no longer a boy. What would you do?” His eyes sought those of a ruddy-complexioned juror in the second row, who was built like a teamster. “Disgrace your brother’s memory by allowing this profane abomination to continue? Mortgage your conscience for fear of retribution?

  “Or would you take action?” His hands slapped the table top in thunderous punctuation, startling the room’s occupants with its violence. “Would you breathe a prayer in your brother’s memory, seize a weapon, and remove the object of your hatred and shame from the face of the earth as you would lance a festering boil? I ask you to answer that question with your hearts and decide whether Jack McCall is innocent of the charge of first-degree murder on the grounds of justifiable homicide.”

  It was a brief summation, and everyone, including Judge Blair, was surprised by its abrupt conclusion. But Blair recovered quickly and asked Scout if he wished to rebut. The prosecutor declined.

  “There being no objections,” the judge continued, “I shall now present the jury with its charges.”

  Chapter 21

  Scout was having trouble getting a fire going in the grate. He stabbed viciously at the stubborn embers with the poker, receiving only a smudged coat sleeve for his efforts. At length he gave up with a curse, dropped the instrument clanging to the flagged hearth, and threw himself heavily into the leather armchair. Bartholomew, who had been filling his snuff box from a humidor atop his desk, set it down and lent his talents to the task. In five minutes the logs were enveloped in rosy yellow flame.

  “You shouldn’t let it get to you, Julian,” he said, warming his backside. “Sometimes I think you put too much of yourself into a case.”

  The prosecutor glared at him. “When did you ever know me not to?”

  “It’s a complicated case. You’ve got to expect the jury to take its time deliberating.”

  “Three hours ought to be enough to decide anything. They retired at seven. It’s now ten after ten. I’ll bet they’re playing cards.”

  “We’ve done everything we can do. It’s out of our hands.”

  “That’s what bothers me.” He glowered at the fire. “I don’t know about this democracy of ours, Tessie. We don’t appoint a judge unless we’re absolutely certain that his education and experience are suitable for the job. A lawyer can’t plead a case until he’s passed a rigorous bar examination. Expert witnesses have to be proven as such before their testimony is admitted. Then we turn around and hand the most important decision in the case to a dozen amateurs. Why the hell do we do that, Tessie?”

  “You should know the answer to that better than anyone. You’ve faced professional juries.”

  Scout thought back to his army days, and the grim tribunal in dress uniforms before whom he had pleaded the case for the 12th New Hampshire. “I’d forgotten,” he said, and fell silent. After a while he looked at his partner. “Did we do everything we could have, Tessie? I can’t tell anymore.”

  “Short of manufacturing evidence and pressuring our witnesses into committing perjury, we covered every square inch of ground open to us. Would you have done more?” There was reproach in his tone.

  “You know that’s not what I meant. I have these same doubts at the end of every case. It’s like going away on vacation and not being able to enjoy yourself because you can’t remember if you locked the front door.” He scooped his abandoned pipe out of the ashtray on the arm of the chair. It was cold.

  “All right, suppose we’ve lost. So what? It’s not the end of the world; certainly it’s not the end of yours.”

  “What do you mean?” Having his worst fear expressed shocked the prosecutor.

  Bartholomew made an impatient noise. “Lincoln dropped more than one important case,” he explained, exasperated.

  “Who remembers? The point is you’re famous. Everyone who reads newspapers knows your name. They’re the ones who mark ballots, not dead, half-blind gunmen or their widows.”

  Scout stared at him. For the first time he failed to see his friend staring back. The face he saw—eager, half-illumined by the flames—left him with an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach. “My God,” he said in his awe. “Do you really think that’s what I care about? Climbing into office up a hangman’s rope?”

  “Don’t act like you’re horrified.” Bartholomew’s expression reminded him of General Crandall’s sharklike smile. “Every worthwhile job that exists has been obtained over someone’s dead body, either literally or figuratively. You’re too good an attorney to go on scraping up someone else’s leavings. I told you at the beginning this case can make you.”

  “And I said I like it fine right where I am. If you want to use this case to put someone in office, run for it yourself. I don’t want any part of it.”

  “You’re tired. Why don’t you go see Grace?” The senior lawyer’s tone was smoothly solicitous. Scout found it suggestive, even lewd.

  “I did,” he snapped. “She said I was too keyed up and to come see her after the verdict is announced.”

  “You’d better marry her. She’s smarter than both of us.”

  “I intend to.”

  Maliciously, Scout savored his partner’s astonishment. Bartholomew had been speaking sarcastically; the prosecutor had not. “I guess I forgot to tell you,” he said, casually lighting his pipe. “I proposed this afternoon. She accepted.”

  The other had opened his mouth to protest when someone knocked at the door. It was the bailiff.

  “Sir, the jury is back.”

  At the door Scout paused. “I don’t want you to think it wasn’t a good partnership, Tessie.”

  “Gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?”

  Blair’s question had a singsong quality, as of a phrase so often repeated that it no longer held any meaning.

  “We have, Your Honor.”

  The foreman, John Treadway, was a slight, clerkish-looking man who displayed none of the outward signs of authority usually to be found in one elected by his fellow jurors to speak for the body. He wore tinted spectacles and held a scrap of paper in his folded hands.

  “The defendant will rise.”

  McCall came up slowly, his chains rattling. His expression was stony. Crandall and Gannon rose too, flanking him. The gaunt attorney had been writing up to that moment, convincing his partner that his copious notes had nothing to do with the affair at hand.

  The bailiff collected the paper from the foreman and walked it over to the judge, who unfolded it, adjusted his spectacles to peer at the contents, and handed it back with a nod. It was returned to Treadway.

  “We the jury find the defendant guilty as charged.”

  For the second time since the tri
al had opened there was a general sigh, in the courtroom, as of Destiny placing the final period at the end of the legend. It swelled to a roar. The last of the newspapermen made a beeline for the hallway. Scout closed his eyes for an instant, exhausted suddenly, then swung his attention to McCall. The defendant had paled but his expression hadn’t changed. The prosecutor thought: This is how he must have looked as he was squeezing the trigger. Crandall’s face was angry red, but he didn’t appear surprised. Gannon looked bored.

  “Your Honor,” announced Crandall, raising his voice above the disturbance, “the defense wishes to go on record in opposition to this verdict.”

  “Such will be noted.” This time Blair waited until conditions were right to quell the noise with his gavel. When he had attained a modicum of peace:

  “The defendant is hereby returned to the custody of the United States Marshal to await sentencing in this court on January third.”

  Bartholomew whispered, “No suspense there. There’s only one sentence for murder in the first degree.”

  Scout wasn’t listening. As the judge was speaking, he had glimpsed movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to see a tall, well-built man carrying a worn coat and hat making his way to the aisle. As he stepped into the clear, Lorenzo Hickok looked at the prosecutor, nodded, and strode away in the direction of the double doors. His shoulders were squared. The prosecutor wondered if they would remain that way once he had passed beyond sight.

  “This court is adjourned,” rapped Judge Blair.

  Chapter 22

  “Dear Mr. McCall,” the letter began.

  The Yankton Daily Press and Dakotanian would be pleased and honored to publish posthumously your true account of the slaying of Wild Bill, which you have so generously offered to write. As I am sure you are aware, this journal championed your cause throughout the period of your trial and appeal, and does not intend to surrender the fight until your good name is cleared. A representative will be present upon the execution grounds tomorrow morning to accept your manuscript.

  It was signed by the editor of the newspaper.

  The prisoner read the letter for the hundredth time, then crumpled it into a ball and tossed it into the far darkened corner of the cell. He squinted at his immature scrawl on the page resting on his knee and shifted his position on the edge of the cot to catch more of the failing light. Inmates had been denied lamps since one of them had burned to death in a desperate attempt to force the guards to open his door. McCall wondered if this was the cell in which the tragedy had occurred. That would account for the stench.

  He cursed at yet another clumsy phrase and tried to scratch it out with his worn stump of pencil, tearing the paper in the process and marking the dingily striped knee of his prison trousers. Writing wasn’t as easy as it looked. At length, when it was almost pitch dark, he finished and sank back against the clammy stone wall to rest.

  He thought of his brother Andy, and of the years since they had last seen each other, but it was all a jumble of saloons and brothels and temporary towns built of canvas and clapboard on muddy streets, blurred behind an alcoholic haze. He couldn’t pick out a single face except Hickok’s, and he couldn’t be sure if he remembered it personally or from one of the hundreds of red-gold rotogravures that had sprung up in the windows of photographers’ studios across the territory since Wild Bill’s death. Thinking about it made his head ache worse. It ached all the time now since he had been denied whiskey, but at least the shakes and chills of his first days without it were over.

  He must have slept, because for a long time he couldn’t remember thinking about anything, but when he opened his eyes the cell was still dark. A steam whistle blatted in the distance and was silent. After a while a growling of men’s voices reached him unintelligibly, carried across the surface of the James. There were other sounds from time to time, impossible to identify, lost as they were in the great hollow of night.

  Again he slept, or seemed to. He was in a saloon playing poker with men he knew, but he didn’t know what the game was and when he looked at his cards they were blank. He asked the dealer for three, but they, too, were blank. Then he saw movement reflected in a shot glass before him and recognized his own face beyond his right shoulder, above the muzzle of a revolver. He saw a tongue of flame and then an invisible fist struck him in the back of the head. He awoke screaming.

  But no guard appeared, and he decided that he had dreamed the scream as well as the shot. He was sweating and his clothes felt clammy against his skin. It was still dark. From down the corridor came a dry, racking cough. That would be Shidroe, the man who came on at ten. He wondered how long he had been on duty.

  He picked up the nightmare from the first blank hand of cards and willed it to change. This time he was in the position of the man with the revolver. He rolled back the hammer and was squeezing the trigger when the seated man turned his head and he recognized his brother’s profile, grown up. His finger moved spasmodically and the profile dissolved behind a red smear. Andy fell out of the chair sideways, to reveal Hickok rising across from him with one of his Navy Colts in hand. McCall screamed and fired again, but nothing happened and when he glanced down he saw that his revolver had changed into a pencil stub. Hickok’s Colt roared.

  He started awake with the taste of brass in his mouth. It was still dark. “God,” he said aloud, “I hope I never have another night like this.” Then he remembered.

  The next time he dreamed he was back in the courtroom, which was a welcome change. Everyone was who he was supposed to be, even the jury foreman, who was standing in the box. Again he heard the guilty verdict. Again he felt nothing; the despair would come later, after the shock wore off. But this time, instead of adjourning, the judge climbed down from the bench and, his robes rustling, stepped to the side door and pulled it open. Hickok strode in carrying both revolvers.

  Spotting McCall at the defense table, he turned half toward him and raised the Colt in his right hand to shoulder level, sighting down his outstretched arm. McCall tried to duck beneath the table but was stopped by an iron grip on each shoulder. He glanced right and left and was horrified to see that he was being held by General Crandall and Julian Scout. Desperately he sought an ally, but the only other person within reach was Orville Gannon, busy scribbling notes and paying no attention to what was going on around him. Hickok fired. McCall awoke choking on his own tongue. There was still no light in the cell.

  Like a nickel slug the nightmare kept returning. Sometimes he was the man doing the shooting, other times he was on the receiving end. In all of them he ended up getting killed. Then he would wake up and find his surroundings dark as ever. He wondered if he’d been hanged already and this was hell.

  When finally he jolted out of his last hallucination and found that the gray illumination of dawn had begun to bleed into the stygian night, he got down on his hands and knees and groped about the floor until he found the sheet upon which he had written his account of Hickok’s killing. Slowly he tore it into bits so tiny no one would ever be able to put them back together.

  From the Hankton Daily Press and Dakotaian, March 1, 1877 (evening edition):

  At half-past nine, everything being in readiness, the condemned man bade farewell to his fellow prisoners, and left his prison house for the last time. There were present at the time L. D. F. Poore, representing the New York Herald; Bryant, reporter for a New England journal; Dr. Wixson and the Taylor Bros. of the Dakota Herald; and Phil K. Faulk, representing the Press and Dakotaian … .

  Upon leaving the jail, Marshal Burdick, with Deputy Marshal Ash, occupied a light carriage and led the way. They were followed by a carriage containing McCall, with Rev. Father Daxacher and his assistant J. A. Curry, Deputy Marshal C. P. Edmunds, and ourself. The mournful train, bearing its living victim to the grave, was preceded and followed by a long line of vehicles of every description, with hundreds on horseback and on foot, all leading north, out through Broadway. Not a word was spoken during the ride of two mi
les to the school section north of the Catholic cemetery. McCall still continuing to bear up bravely, even after the gallows loomed in full view. At ten o’clock precisely the place of execution was reached.

  As soon as possible after reaching the place, the prisoner mounted the platform of the gallows, accompanied by Deputy Marshal Ash. Here he evinced the same firmness and nerve that have always characterized him since his arrest and trial. He placed himself in the center of the platform facing east and gazed out over the throng without exhibiting the least faltering; not even a quiver of the lip. U.S. Marshal Burdick, with Deputy Ash, Rev. Father Daxacher, and his assistant, Mr. Curry, were the only parties upon the platform.

  Immediately the limbs of the unfortunate culprit were pinioned, when he knelt with his spiritual counsel. Turning his face toward Heaven his lips were seen to move in prayer. Upon rising he kissed the crucifix and after the black cap had been placed over his face, the U.S. marshal placed the noose around his neck. He then said: “Wait one moment, Marshal, until I pray.”

  Marshal Burdick waited until he had uttered a prayer and then adjusted the noose, when he said, “Draw it tighter, Marshal.” All was now in readiness, and the assemblage of nearly one thousand persons seemed to hold their breath. At precisely fifteen minutes after ten o’clock the trap was sprung, and with the single choking expression, “Oh, God,” uttered while the drop fell, the body of Jack McCall was dangling between Heaven and Earth. The drop was four feet, and everything having been carefully arranged there was but a brief struggle with the King of Terrors.

  With a shudder, Grace Scout finished reading the front page account and laid the newspaper atop a convenient packing crate. The entrance hall was stacked high with them, stuffed full of books and dishes and clothing and items of sentimental value, all awaiting the movers who would transport them across town to the Scouts’ new home down the street from the courthouse. The newlywed wife was pulling on her gloves when Dora Hope came in, adjusting her wrap.