Kate smiled and said, “Mr. Cody, say no more. I understand your predicament and I’d be honored to have you spend the winter on my ranch. I have twelve guest rooms and I’m sure we can find one that suits you.”
“Kate, your generosity is boundless, but, alas, if it were only that simple,” Bill said. “No, dear lady, there is indeed a major complication.”
“Ah, you have someone else with you, a lady perhaps?”
“I have six hundred someone elses,” Bill said. “And almost twice that number of horses, buffalo, and other animals.”
“Six hundred people, Mr. Cody?” Kate looked shocked. “And animals? Buffalo?”
“Yes, ma’am. And cowboys, Indians, and sharpshooters. And my private train.”
“Private train, Mr. Cody?”
“Yes. That is why I’m asking you if I can use your railroad spur,” Bill said.
“My railroad spur, Mr. Cody?”
“Yes, dear lady, to offload my people, animals, supplies, wagons, and tents. With your gracious permission we would set up camp, and spend the winter far away from the northern tempests.”
It took a while for Kate to find the words, and then she said, “How . . . I mean, how much land would you need?”
“Not much, dear lady, just ten to fifteen acres, a small corner, the merest morsel of your range.”
“But, Mr. Cody, the Kerrigan ranch can’t feed that many people, to say nothing of the animals. Our winter graze is thin and our supply of hay limited. I do not wish to sound uncharitable, but . . .”
“Fear not, dear Kate. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West is self-sufficient. We have to be since we travel all over the country and around the world. We bring our own food, fodder for the stock, and even our own cooking stoves and firewood. All we need is said railroad spur and a small patch of ground amid your boundless acres.”
Bill sat back in his chair, flashed his most winning smile and said, “Now, being a businesswoman as well as a rancher, I’m sure the thought uppermost in your mind is remuneration. In short, how much will Mr. Cody pay me?”
In fact, payment was the last thing on Kate’s mind, filled as it was with visions of stampeding buffalo, wild Indians, and even wilder cowboys.
“Ah,” said Bill, “I see that good breeding makes you hesitate to name a figure that would be agreeable to both parties. Well, I will not beat about the bush, dear lady. Three things cannot be hidden, the sun, the moon, and the truth, and the truth is that you see before you a man in the most impecunious circumstances. The bank won’t let me draw breath and as a result I’m down to my last tail feather. In a nutshell, Bill is broke.”
“Mr. Cody, I’m so sorry to hear that,” Kate said.
“Do not despair, dear lady, I beseech you,” Bill said. “Come spring we leave on our European tour and I will soon recoup my finances. A letter from the British ambassador in Washington informs that Queen Victoria is eagerly awaiting our arrival. The lady is, Lord Barclay told me, all in a dither. As for the Kaiser, he is looking into providing buffalo sausage for his army, vittles that will be named after my humble self. The British say they’ll be called Bill’s Bangers, but I don’t set any store by that. The British and Germans are never on very good speaking terms.”
Kate glanced at the watch that hung around her neck from a silver chain and Buffalo Bill took the hint. “What I offer in remuneration, my dear Kate, is to provide a show on the day before our departure just for the Kerrigan ranch. There! What do you think of that? Is that not a handsome offer indeed?”
“A show, Mr. Cody?” Kate said.
“Indeed, madam. You will be the first to see, before even Queen Victoria or the Kaiser, such new spectacles as The First Scalp for Custer and Buffalo Bill Saves the Mexican Maiden. And you will meet our shining new star, the amazing lady sharpshooter Annie Oakley, The Texas Bluebonnet.”
To Bill, the fact that Annie was born in Ohio was neither here nor there. On tour she changed birthplaces as often as she changed her dress. His face now anxious, he said, “Well, dear lady, do we have an agreement? As my old friend Wild Bill Hickok, God rest him, was wont to say, shall we make this a happy day?”
Feeling more than a little overwhelmed, it took Kate a few moments before she replied. Hesitantly, she said, “Well, I suppose so, Mr. Cody, so long as your being here doesn’t interfere with the work of my ranch.”
Bill beamed. “Be assured, dear lady, that our presence here will hardly be noticed, even by your cows. My people will keep to themselves and I assure you that even the savages, those panthers of the plains who led the gallant Custer to his destruction, will remain in their teepees. In short, we’ll be as quiet as church mice.”
Kate rose to her feet. “Then it is settled. When do you wish to move onto a campground?”
“Today, dear lady. Instanter!” Bill said. “I have already taken the liberty of pulling my train onto the spur, but I told the engineer to keep up steam in the doleful event that you saw fit to turn me down.”
It seemed to Kate that Bill Cody’s powerful personality lacked neither charm nor confidence.
“I’ll have Frank Cobb, my segundo, help you choose a campsite, Mr. Cody,” Kate said. “He’s out on the range at the moment with my sons but I expect him to return shortly and I’ll have him meet you at the spur terminal.” Then, in a deliberate attempt to regain the initiative, “This winter I plan to expand my range west as far as the Rio Grande and south to the big bend of the Nueces. In the coming weeks you will see my riders coming and going, but please tell your people not to be alarmed. My men mean them no harm.”
“Ha! An expanding cattle empire indeed, Mrs. Kerrigan,” Bill said.
“And hard won, Mr. Cody, with many battles against man and nature still to be fought. Now, let me show you to the door. It has been indeed a pleasure talking to you. You must come again and I will bake a sponge cake to mark the occasion. My cake, with a cream and strawberry jam filling, is old Queen Vic’s favorite, you know.”
“And I will be sure to tell her that I ate a piece under this very roof,” Bill said. “I know the old lady will be very impressed.”
Once outside, Buffalo Bill Cody mounted a milk-white stallion with an ornate silver saddle. And being Bill, he made the horse rear as he waved his hat above his head before galloping away, sitting tall and straight in the saddle.
Kate watched him go and then whispered to herself, “You have the trappings of a gallant knight indeed, Mr. Cody, but something tells me that I’m not going to enjoy having you for a neighbor.”
As Bill Cody himself might have said, “Truer words were never spoke.”
CHAPTER 3
As Kate Kerrigan watched Buffalo Bill Cody leave and then closed the door of her mansion, an event was unfolding in the New Mexico Territory that would soon impact her life and place her in more danger than she’d ever known.
McLean was not a town, it wasn’t even a settlement, it consisted of a combination general store, eating house, saloon and flophouse, a blacksmith’s shop, and pole corral, all jammed into a narrow canyon among the western foothills of the Brokeoff Mountains. It was a lonely, remote place surrounded by scrub desert, the haunt of mule deer, javelina, wintering elk, and golden eagles.
Mclean made no claim to be other than what it was, a robbers’ roost in the wilderness, only occasionally visited by passing cowboys, prospectors, men on the scout, and travelers. If such a traveler had the time and inclination and could keep his nerve, the proprietor, a former bare-knuckle prizefighter by the name of Gold Lawson, would regale him with hair-raising tales of the eighteen men who’d met their end by gun, knife, or billy club in his establishment since he’d opened for business just five years before.
“And that’s not counting them as died from drinking too much rotgut,” Lawson would say to the trembling traveler. “Aye, and let it be said, from the pox as well.”
It was unfortunate then that because of prevailing winds and a furious rainstorm, an old man named Professor Lancelot Purdon a
nd his assistant, a much younger man called Josiah Mosely, had trouble with their hot air balloon and were forced to land just a few yards from the door of Lawson’s violent establishment.
What followed was cold-blooded murder . . . for no other reason than sheer meanness and the urge to kill another human being for amusement.
* * *
The out of control hydrogen balloon, its burner extinguished and envelope ripped, crashed onto the open ground in front of the general store, unceremoniously spilling the professor and Josiah Mosely into the mud.
Despite his eighty years, Professor Purdon was spry. Lashed by rain, he sprang to his feet and yelled, “Josiah! Secure the balloon.”
Mosely, eighteen years old that last summer, grabbed a trailing rope and battled to drag the now limp balloon into the shelter of some scrub pine.
“Don’t forget our bags, Josiah,” Purdon yelled above the dragon hiss of the downpour.
The professor was a small, bearded man with a mop of unruly white hair sticking out from under the black top hat he’d just rammed onto his head. He wore goggles, a threadbare broadcloth suit, and was half-mad. In 1845 he’d crossed the English Channel by balloon, there and back, and five years later had ventured a flight over the darkest jungles of darkest Africa. That adventure had not ended well. The fuel in the burner had exhausted itself while the tree canopy below him still stretched for miles in every direction, a green and leafy roof over a savage world. He was forced to land and as the professor told the story was promptly captured by natives (“The biggest damned savages I ever saw in my life”), that were inclined to cannibalism, their favorite dish a white man baked over an open flame in a crust of mud. “Rather like the meat in pastry dish we British call Beef Wellington,” Purdon would thoughtfully explain.
Fortunately, the professor was saved by a group of Dutch missionaries and being a man of considerable means, he later found a berth on an Italian tramp steamer bound for Portsmouth town. Like his flight, the voyage ended in disaster when a storm struck the ship and it sank a few miles north of the equator within telescope view of St. Paul Rock. After eighteen days in an open boat, the professor and seven companions, more dead than alive, were picked up by an American ship and taken to New York. Professor Purdon decided to remain in the United States, and during the Civil War he advised the U.S. Army on the use of observation balloons, often while under heavy enemy fire. This gallantry earned him a captain’s commission and a gold medal. After the war the lure of balloons remained and he became a rainmaker, firing colored rockets into the sky from the basket of his soaring airship, a hazardous occupation that drew the admiration of seventeen-year-old Josiah Mosely, then a lowly clerk in a Boston counting house. Impressed by the youth’s enthusiasm, the professor took Josiah on as an assistant. Mosely was a quick learner and things were going well . . . until the disaster that afternoon in the stormy skies over McLean.
Dene Brett stepped out of the store, took one look at the rain and decided to forego a trip to the outhouse. He unbuttoned and pissed over the side of the rickety porch that ran the length of the building.
Cannibals couldn’t kill Professor Lancelot Purdon, nor could tempest, shipwreck, cannon fire, or the odd balloon crash, but four outlaws, cowardly border trash who’d cut any man, woman, or child in half with a shotgun for fifty dollars, did.
* * *
The day the balloon dropped out of the sky, Marty Hawley, his cousin Dene Brett, Floris Lusk and Jesse Tobin had just come off a killing, a man named Hooper, shot in the back for the fifteen dollars in his wallet and his fancy brocade vest.
When the balloon hit the ground, spilling its two occupants, Brett’s eyes popped and he hurried inside. He stepped through the store into the saloon and yelled, “Hey, come see this. We got visitors.”
His three companions and a couple of slatternly doxies just one step removed from the hog farm rushed outside and gathered on the porch.
Well, lookee here,” Jesse Tobin, a small, narrow man with stone eyes, said. “Seems like Methuselah fell out of heaven and landed right here in hell.”
One of the women buttoned up Brett’s pants and then cut loose with a piercing, mocking laugh. “Hey pops, you got yourself a flying machine that don’t fly, huh?”
Professor Purdon found his silver-topped cane in the mud, brandished it and yelled, “You men, lend a hand there. My assistant needs help to tie down the balloon.”
But Josiah was already stepping toward him. “It’s secure, Professor,” he said. “The damage is not as bad as I thought.” The youngster was dripping wet. His thin hair plastered flat over his head and round, wire-rimmed glasses hung lopsided on his face.
Purdon waved an arm. “Then come along out of the rain, Josiah. I believe we can obtain lunch here and perhaps a place to lodge for the night.”
The old man stepped onto the porch, the end of his long life now just a few minutes away.
Jesse Tobin, who’d already killed a man for his vest, took a liking to Purdon’s cane, the ornate silver cap carved to look like a steer skull with rubies for eyes. “Hey pops, I’ll give you fifty cents for the cane,” he said.
“It’s not for sale,” the professor said. His eyes moved to Gold Lawson who wore a stained white apron. “I say my good man, can you provide me and my young assistant with a meal and a bed for the night?”
Before Lawson could answer, Tobin reached into pocket, produced a couple of coins, and said, “Here, pops, take the fifty cents. Now give me the damned cane.”
“I told you, sir,” Purdon said. “It’s not for sale at any price. This cane was a gift from Mr. John Chisum after I provided his range with a downpour and I will not part with it.”
“Then that makes me want it all the more,” Tobin said. He reached out to grab the cane’s ebony shaft. “Now give me the damned thing.”
“Indeed I will not,” the old man said. He raised the stick in a threatening manner and said, “Now mind your manners young man or by the lord Harry I’ll give you the heavy end of it.”
Tobin grinned, casually drew, and fired one shot into Purdon’s belly. As the oldster fell backward off the porch, Tobin fired again, this time a killing shot to the chest. Professor Lancelot Purdon was as dead as a stone when his body splashed into the deep, filthy mud.
* * *
“You all saw it,” Jesse Tobin said. He fought hard to keep the grin off his face. “The old man came at me with the cane. He could’ve bashed my brains out.”
“Damn right, Jesse,” the dull, brutish Floris Lusk said. “It was self-defense. The old coot was trying to kill you. Anybody could see he was crazy.”
“Fair fight, Jesse,” Gold Lawson said, wiping his hands on his apron. “We all saw it plain.”
Tobin turned his attention to Josiah Mosely who stood stiff as a board in the hammering rain, a carpetbag in each hand and a horrified expression on his mild young face.
“How about you, boy?” Tobin said. “How did you see it?”
Faced with four killers and a couple of women with Medusa eyes, Mosely swallowed hard and said, “It was an accident. The gun went off by itself. Twice.”
Tobin grinned and after a while said, “Yeah, boy, right enough. That’s what it was, an accident.” He looked around him. “Ain’t that so everybody? The gun went off by itself twice.”
This last was met with shouts of approval and one of the women laughed. Her name was Annabelle Lowe and Tobin turned and said to her, “Go get me the damned cane.”
“Jesse, it’s raining out there,” the woman said.
“I know it’s raining and I told you to get it. Now do as I say or I’ll give you the back of my hand.”
The woman pouted but stepped into the mud that immediately covered her high-heeled ankle boot. She bent over, grabbed the cane, and said, “Jesse, he’s got a watch and chain.”
“Then bring it here, stupid,” Tobin said.
The watch was a German silver hunter of no great value and Tobin shoved it in his pocket and then g
rabbed the cane from Annabelle. He pointed the stick at Josiah Mosely and said, “What you got in your poke, boy?”
The youth hefted the carpetbags to waist level. “These?”
“Yeah, those,” Tobin said.
“Clothing, a few books, and nothing else.”
“Bring them bags over here and let me take a look.”
Mosely timidly stepped onto the porch and Tobin grabbed the bags out of his hands. He opened them and rummaged through their contents. “Rags,” he said. “Here, what’s this?” He removed a bone-handled razor, a soap brush, and a silver-backed hairbrush. He tossed them to Lusk and said, “Here, Floris, make yourself presentable for the ladies.”
“That ain’t ever never gonna happen,” Annabelle said, a crack that earned her a smack in the face from Tobin. “When I want to hear sass from a whore I’ll ask for it,” he said.
Tobin stepped to the edge of the porch and threw the carpetbags into the mud, scattering their contents. “I need a drink,” he said. “We’ll go inside out of this damned rain.”
Tobin walked into the store and the others followed. The woman named Annabelle had a red welt on her cheek that was the same size as Jesse Tobin’s hand.
* * *
Josiah Mosely kneeled in the rain beside Lancelot Purdon’s lifeless body. The two .45 balls had torn great holes in the frail old man, but his face was tranquil in death, as though he’d just met up with an old enemy he’d been avoiding for years.
Gold Lawson stepped to the edge of the porch and stood behind the shifting curtain of the rain. “You can move that later, take it somewhere,” he said. “You can’t bury a dead man around here.”
Mosely looked up at him, rain running down his face like tears. “How come I can’t?”
“We got an inch of topsoil on top of bedrock,” Lawson said. “You need dynamite to blast a hole and I ain’t got none of that.”
“I can’t leave the professor here in the mud,” Mosely said.
Lawson shrugged. “Suit yourself, but you ain’t bringing a stiff into my place. I’ve had enough of them stinking up my spare room already.”
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