by Bill Brooks
He still had love all over his mind when Mysterious Dave shot him.
Chapter 34
The shot rolled like thunder and Teddy Blue sat bolt upright, the pain in his shoulder like someone had hit him with a sledge.
He grabbed the Birdseye on the way out of the tent. Others were scrambling out as well and he saw Yankee scurrying out of Jane’s tent, Yankee with a mouthful of words he never got out before a second shot rang down and knocked him flat against the tent, caving it in as he fell.
Teddy saw the flame of the rifle there on the rise up above the notch he and John had used to stand watch and he couldn’t make any sense of it, John shooting down into the camp. Then he saw John come out of his tent, hat jammed down on his head, galluses hanging, gun in hand.
“What the hell’s going on up there, John?”
“I sent White Eye up to stand watch. What the hell’s he done, gone mad?”
Jane was screaming from inside the tent Yankee had collapsed on.
“Well, I don’t know, but shoot the son of a bitch,” Teddy said, and fired toward the notch where he’d seen the rifle spit fire. John fired too, and when Billy emerged, he opened fire up at the ridge, saying as he did, “He must have got into the whiskey bad to have gone crazy!”
Bullets punched holes in the tents and kicked up spits of snow around their feet and some shot into the fires, sending sparks flying.
“Stay clear of the firelight,” Teddy shouted. “Don’t let him get a good look at you.”
Teddy was already running for the ridge, sticking close into the shadows, and John was running too. They kept their distance from each other, knowing that the shooter wouldn’t be able to concentrate on both of them at once.
Behind them they could hear the distinct crack of the Krag and knew that Rudolph Banks had joined the fight.
“I hope that son of a bitch doesn’t shoot one of us in the back,” John yelled.
Teddy said, “He’s up higher than that notch, John,” indicating the shooter on the hill.
They held their fire as they climbed, not wanting to give away their location to the shooter. They could see the burst of fire from his rifle every time he fired into the camp and they could hear bullets ricocheting off the rocks and below they could hear the rush of the river swollen with snow runoff.
Then they came to the notch and they found White Eye lying there, slumped over on his side, his breathing like the sound of coffee percolating, and John turned him over and when he did, White Eye groaned and said, “Goddamn, but don’t shoot me again.”
“It’s us,” John said. “Teddy and me.”
White Eye squinted up through the pain.
“Why’d you fellers shoot me?”
“We didn’t,” Teddy said.
“Oh. I thought you did.”
John said, “Why the hell would we shoot you?”
“I don’t know. I thought maybe you was Yankee and shot me over Jane or something crazy. It hurts like somebody’s stuck a hot iron up in me.”
“Just lay still,” Teddy said.
Teddy saw a movement against the skyline when he looked up and said to John, “Keep him busy, I’m going to swing around and come up behind.”
“I can’t hardly see nothing to shoot at,” John said.
Teddy pointed. “Just up in there,” he said. Then John saw the shadow of a man and the flame spit of his rifle when he fired again and began to lay in some shots of his own, keeping himself low to the ground as Teddy skirted the hill.
“You shot in a bad place?” John said to White Eye in between shots.
“I don’t know of any good place to get shot in, do you?”
“No, sir, I sure don’t.”
“Then I’m shot in a bad place.”
John fired, said, “Bad don’t mean fatal, just so you know.”
“I guess if it was fatal, we wouldn’t be holding this conversation, would we?”
“No, sir, we sure as hell wouldn’t.”
John fired again.
Teddy came ’round and started up along the south spine of the hill, came close enough to hear the ejected shells of the shooter’s rifle clinking off the rocks. He saw the shadow kneeling on one knee firing, levering, firing.
He worked his way in close, the rattlesnake in him coiling. Stealthy he eased up to within a few yards of the man. He could hear the shooter snorting, talking to himself.
“Why, you sons a bitches. I’m gonna get that big old hat and that high-stepping horse and ever thing else you got and them others got and—”
“Hey,” Teddy said.
And when the fellow turned his head to see who spoke, Teddy shot him. The muzzle flash from the Colt lit the man’s features for the mere second of a heartbeat, enough so Teddy could see the look on the man’s face: that surprised look a man will get when he realizes what’s happened and knows it’s way too late to do anything about it.
The man fell back, the rifle dropping onto the snow-covered rocks, clattering as it slid down the hill.
Teddy eased up on him, his pistol cocked and aimed, knowing sometimes a man isn’t as dead as he should be. Teddy still felt coiled, ready to strike again.
The man breathed hard through his nose, a soft wet sound that bubbled up from his throat.
“Who are you, mister?”
The man blinked as Teddy struck a match and held it close to the man’s face.
“I said, who are you?”
“What the hell is it to you who I am?”
“Nothing,” Teddy said. “Unless you want me to send notice to your next of kin that you’ve been killed. Of course, it’s no skin off my teeth if you die out here and nobody knows…”
The hard features of Mysterious Dave grew soft as he thought about the only creature he ever had any true feelings for.
“They is somebody I’d like you to get word to…”
“Who?”
“Send word to Dora Hand that her loving Dave Mather has been killed by a no-good son of a bitch assassin…”
“Consider it done.”
“Thank you kindly, you dirty son of a bitch.”
Dave’s grin leaked blood as Teddy’s match burned down and he snapped it out, letting the blackness of night become a shroud for Mysterious Dave.
“Buffalo Bill, Buffalo Bill, Buffalo Bil…” were Dave’s last uttered words. He died with Billy’s name still trying to escape his lips. In that final moment he saw himself riding off into a lot of light upon Billy’s high-stepper. Goddamn, but it felt about right…
Teddy shouted down to the others it was over and the gunfire stopped and later Bill came up the hill, carrying a lantern, and looked at the man very close.
“You know him?” Teddy asked.
“Never seen him before in my life.”
“He kept repeating your name. I’m guessing he’s the same one that tried to take you down before.”
“Well, it’s a mystery to me who this feller is.”
“Sometimes it doesn’t take much reason for someone to want to kill you,” Teddy said. “Maybe he just wanted the reputation of killing Buffalo Bill.”
“Probably about like that feller that shot Wild Bill. It’s the price fellers like us pay for fame,” Billy said. “I almost wish half the time I wasn’t nothing but a cattle breeder.”
“How’s White Eye?”
“John says he might live, but if he does he’ll be a lot slower than he used to be.” Billy held the lamp away from the death mask.
“You did good here, son,” Billy said.
“He’s only the second man I ever killed.”
“Let’s hope for your sake and mine he’s the last on this trip.”
Teddy looked at the face of the dead man once more before they started back down to camp.
“You think we should bury him?”
Billy shook his head, said, “The ground’s froze hard as rock, we’d have to wait until spring to bury him. And we ain’t got enough horses even to drag him back to North Pla
tte—not that I’d favor doing that anyway.”
“What do you suggest we do with him?”
“Well, we could let the critters have him, but that’d seem un-Christian, even for fellers like us and him.”
Billy looked down the hill and they could see here and there in the rising moon’s light the white riffles of the Dismal River.
“We could take time to gather rocks and bury him like we did Buck,” Billy said.
“To hell with that,” Teddy said.
“Yeah, to hell with that,” Billy said.
“Sailors bury their dead at sea,” Teddy said.
“It ain’t hardly the sea, the Dismal River ain’t,” Billy said.
“There must be a reason it was named that in the first place.”
“I reckon there was.”
The ceremony was brief and without fanfare. Nobody knew the dead man, nor did they have a great deal of empathy for someone who tried to massacre them in their beds. Most especially White Eye and Yankee Judd, who was shot through the hip. Jane nursed them both while the little ceremony was held.
Billy said as they prepared the final act, “Anyone wish to say a prayer or something over this poor soul?”
John spoke up and said, “It’s too goddamn cold to stand out here,” then looked down at the corpse and said: “Good-bye. That prayer enough for everyone?” No one said it wasn’t.
And so it was that Mysterious Dave came to find himself once more in the Dismal River. This time he’d ride it to its end. The one-eared horse watched its rider float out of sight. Then something unknown spooked it and it ran off into the night—probably with wolves prowling in its head.
Chapter 35
They arrived in North Platte, wounded and not the same as they were when they left. Rudolph Banks and the two women went directly to the hotel. After delivering the body of Edgar Rivers to the mortuary, Billy and Teddy stopped at Doc Tillison’s for the care and treatment of White Eye and Yankee Judd. It was Doc who told them about the murder of Henry Egg.
“It must have been the same feller we sent floating down the River Styx that killed old Henry,” Billy said. “That mysterious feller…What’d you say his name was?”
“Dave Mather,” Teddy said.
“Looks like he shot the shit out of you boys,” Doc said, looking over the wounds of White Eye and Yankee.
“He didn’t do any of us any good,” White Eye said. “I’m leaking like a rusty bucket.”
“My dancing days are over,” Yankee said, holding the silk bandanna Jane used to plug the hole in his hip with.
“Well, good God, but let’s hope the killing is over too,” Doc said. “We gone almost three months without a shooting or a stabbing and now it’s like an epidemic has befell us. Must be the bad weather is bringing out the worst in folks.”
Billy said, “Patch these boys up and send me the bill,” then he shook hands with White Eye and Yankee and said he’d check in on them later.
“What about you, young feller?” Doc said looking at Teddy, the binding holding his shoulder in place.
“I’ll come back later when you’ve finished these two; I’m not bleeding out.”
“It was a hell of a hunt,” White Eye said, then coughed up blood. “I hope it wasn’t my last.”
Yankee lay quiet, Jane holding his hand. White Eye could see where love had gone.
Billy and Teddy left out of Doc’s office and walked over to Tobe Cicero’s Funeral Parlor. Tobe had the corpse of Edgar Rivers laid out on a metal table for embalming, a sheet pulled up under his chin.
“Need to fix him good for the trip back to New York,” Billy said.
“I know it,” Tobe said. “I got a zinc-lined coffin I’ll pack him in with ice, seal it good and tight.”
Billy started to say something, but then turned and went outside again and Teddy could see Billy was stricken by the sight of the dead man.
“He had life by the horns,” Billy said, “didn’t he? But tell me what good it done him?”
“Let me buy you a drink over at the tavern,” Teddy said.
“Hell, I won’t fight you on that offer.”
They walked over and stood there at the bar and drank a whiskey, then drank a second one.
“What now, Colonel?”
“My plans haven’t changed any. I’ll collect my fee from Banks and put together a Wild West combination to take on tour back East. I’d like you to join me, old son.”
“I’m no actor.”
“My guess is you wasn’t a mankiller either before you did it the first time.”
“Big difference.”
“I know it is. Hell, you think I like making a fool of myself?”
“Then why do you do it?”
“Because the ways men like me used to have for making a living are just about all gone now. They ain’t no more buffalo to shoot, no more Pony Expresses to ride, no more real wars against the Indians to fight. I ain’t like old Wild Bill was, someone with a knack for being a hired gun—no offense, Mr. Blue.”
“None taken.”
“Being famous is about all I got to play on, the only thing left I can make any real money at.”
“Well, sir, a man has to do what needs doing if he’s got a family like yours to think about.”
“Speaking of which, I want you and John to come out to the house and have a home-cooked meal and drink a little of my whiskey as a way of showing my appreciation before you go.”
“You firing me?”
“I am, unless you want to hire on for the combination and come East with me. I think the threat to my person is over with now that mysterious feller is riding the wet trail, don’t you?”
Teddy looked around the room. Men sat playing poker and dominoes and smoking and talking cordially to one another.
“I suppose it is, for now at least.”
“Speaking of John, where you reckon he got off to?”
“He’s his own man,” Teddy said. “Hard telling.”
“Well, let’s have another snort or two. It ain’t hardly suppertime yet.”
And when they finished their drinking Billy walked with Teddy back over to Doc Tillison’s and sat watching curiously as Doc cleaned and dressed Teddy’s wounds where the bear had raked him, then bound up his shoulder proper, Doc saying, “You’ll have to wear that holster rig some other way for now.”
“I hope I won’t be needing to wear it all for a while.”
“Just in case,” Billy said, taking the Birdseye Colt out of the holster and slipping it into Teddy’s coat pocket. “You might need to shoot a snake or something.”
“Snake’s go to ground when it gets cold like this,” Doc said.
Billy winked and said, “Hell, they’s all kinds of snakes, Doc.”
They mounted their horses and rode over to the hotel and Billy went inside and left a note for John with the desk clerk telling him to come out to the house for supper, then he and Teddy rode on out together.
Two hounds lay in the yard, both shot dead.
“What the hell…” Billy said.
Then the front door opened and Louisa stepped out and stepping out with her was a dark-skinned young man holding a pistol on her. He looked at them and said, “Which one of you is Buffalo Bill?”
Bill didn’t hesitate and said, “That would by God be me, and kindly taking your son of a bitching hands off my wife.”
The boy glared at him.
“Get off that horse, Mr. Buffalo Bill. I’ve come to kill you.”
“He’s not Buffalo Bill,” Teddy said, “I am.”
The boy looked from one to the other. He said to the woman, “Which one is he?”
Louisa had not suffered the celebrity of being the wife of Buffalo Bill without learning how to protect him along the way.
“I forget,” she said.
Teddy and Billy dismounted and stood away from their horses and each other so the boy would have difficulty concentrating on both at once.
“Well,” Bob said,
“I guess I’m just going to shoot you both, then.”
“Before you go to taking lives, why is it you want to shoot us, son?” Billy said.
Teddy knew if the Colonel could keep the kid talking, they might stand a chance.
“Revenge,” Bob said. “You ever heard of it, mister?”
“Revenge on who and for what reason?” Teddy said.
“Whichever one of you is Cody, the Indian Slayer, is the one who killed my father, Yellow Hand.”
Billy said, “Shit, I always knew that accident was going to come back to haunt me someday.”
The boy swung his pistol at Billy, knowing now which one of the two men was Cody.
“My wife has nothing to do with this,” Billy said. “Let her go. You’ve got the drop on us.”
Bob said, “Vengeance comes at a dear price.”
“Not that dear,” Billy said. “Old Yellow Hand was too good a warrior to go about killing women. You’re no sort of kin to him if you take up the practice now.”
Teddy could see a certain doubt creep into the boy’s eyes.
“Go on, then,” Bob said to Louisa, shoving her aside as he fired at Billy. The bullet snatched Billy’s big sombrero and sent it flying.
Bob had a look of surprise and disappointment that his bullet missed the mark. Billy was trying to draw his own piece, a big Navy Colt, from his belt as Bob re-cocked his pistol.
Teddy’s bullet took him through the collarbone and flung him back along the porch. Billy’s shot went wild and knocked the head off the brass cock atop the weathervane. Teddy rushed up onto the porch, even as Bob struggled to regain his feet.
“Stay down,” Teddy said.
Bob looked at him.
“Stay down, goddamn it!”
“White men,” Bob said, and aimed his pistol and fired.
Billy heard two reports simultaneously.
He saw the boy on the porch slump back and lay still, Teddy standing almost directly over him, both enveloped in a cloud of blue smoke. Billy held his breath, waiting for Teddy to fall dead.
