by Ben Bridges
But there was still work to do — and I knew I could not hope to get on with own life until it was completed.
About a month later I rode into Fort Wray and went to see Simon Black at his suite above the offices of the Fort Wray Advocate. He greeted me as effusively as ever and cheerfully paid me for all my efforts in trying to catch Kidd and put a stop to his rustling operation. In return I gave him three sealed envelopes. I knew I would not be seeing Lem, Saul or Henry again, and I wanted to make sure they knew just how much I had valued their companionship and assistance during our time together.
Black scanned the names on each of the envelopes and then nodded his balding head. ‘Never fear, Mr. Colter,’ he said. ‘I will make sure these letters are delivered.’
We chatted for a while, and then I rose and we shook hands one final time and I left his office.
Downstairs, I paused for a moment on the boardwalk. It was early in the year 1878. Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year were behind us, and the weather was slowly turning a gentler face towards us after the hardships of a savage winter.
I glanced to my right. I was curious about Kidd, and figured that I could probably satisfy that curiosity at the Advocate. Before I had taken more than a couple of steps, however, I was suddenly arrested by the sound of someone calling my name.
‘Colter! Ash Colter!’
That voice. It made something twist in my stomach, and when I turned it was slowly, and with some trepidation.
Ruth Buckhalter was hurrying across the street towards me. I supposed she must have been in town on a rare shopping trip. She was wearing a heavy coat and a small, neat bonnet. Her smooth face was pale with the cold, and framed by lustrous dark blonde hair. Again I told myself that I had never knowingly entertained any romantic notions about her. And yet now, as I watched her hurry along the damp boardwalk with her full, ankle-length skirt bustling and shushing around her, I felt something else stir inside me — desire. I knew then that I wanted her, that I really, truly and in the purest way possible, wanted her.
She came to a halt and looked up into my face.
She could not entirely hide her surprise at my appearance, for though I was no longer ill, I had stayed gaunt and pale.
I touched the brim of my hat cautiously and dipped my head. ‘Miss Buckhalter,’ I said by way of greeting. Then, remembering the invitation she had extended towards me all those months before, I amended it. ‘Ruth.’ And I smiled.
Her right hand blurred around and she slapped me across the face. It took me completely by surprise and snapped my head to one side. A few of the people hurrying this way or that along the boardwalk broke stride to look at us, then hurried on.
‘That,’ she said in a low voice hoarsened by anger, ‘is for what you did to Bob Bancroft.’ She shook her head, and the expression on her beautiful face was one of disgust. ‘Yes, yes, I heard all about what happened. How could you have done it, Colter? How could you have sent him into that … that den of thieves?’ Tears came into her eyes and she shook her head some more. ‘It was your job, not his. It should have been you they killed, not him.’
I said not a word. It wouldn’t have done any good to try and explain the way of it to her. So I just stood there and took it, and if she decided she wanted to hit me again, I would let her take another swing, if it made her feel any better.
She didn’t though. She just said, ‘It should have been you,’ again, then turned on her heel and hurried away, one hand up to her face and a sob breaking in her throat.
I tried to push her from my mind, although I am bound to say that it wasn’t easy. But I still had work to do.
I went into the Advocate office and asked to look through whatever clippings they had on John Kidd. The clerk looked at me curiously. Perhaps he knew me by sight or reputation. Perhaps he’d seen what had just happened out on the street.
Whichever, he finally nodded and showed me to a spare desk, and then went away to fetch a fairly bulky folder.
I opened it and started reading. It soon proved to be a very sorry story.
Kidd and the remaining members of his gang had agreed to each go their separate ways. But before they could do that, they needed money. So they set about trying to steal some.
On December 12, they had tried to rob a train.
They had piled ties on some tracks just outside St Paul, Nebraska, and stopped the twelve o’clock eastbound. Then they blasted open the mail car and ordered the startled young messenger to open the safe.
The messenger refused.
Kidd jabbed his pistol into the young man’s face and told him he’d better do as he was told, or else.
Still the messenger refused.
There was some talk of shooting him in the legs unless he cooperated. To their complete surprise, however, the feisty messenger told them to go ahead and do their worst.
That was when a truly remarkable thing happened.
Kidd pushed his men down to the far end of the car. He spoke earnestly for thirty seconds. There was some argument from Preacher Sweet and Jim Middleton, who were all for killing the messenger and blowing the safe with dynamite. But when Kidd finally came back down to the young man, it was merely to offer him that famous, easy smile and compliment him on his courage.
Then, even more remarkably, the outlaws climbed down from the train, went back up the tracks, removed the ties and allowed the train to go on its way.
They had better luck up in Dakota Territory, where they stole eight thousand dollars from the paymaster in a gold-mining camp along the Big Sioux River. But in their rush to out-run the hastily-convened posse that soon came after them, Dutch Arnie Bakke dropped a bag of silver and reduced their take by two thousand five hundred dollars.
After that, things went from bad to worse.
The way it read, Kidd and his gang had been chased right across the country, for Pinkerton’s had increased the rewards by five hundred dollars per man and, in Kidd’s case, by an extra two and a half thousand.
There was no doubt about it. For Kidd and his men, the writing was on the wall. With so much money on offer, every man with a pistol would be keeping his eyes peeled and looking to make his fortune. From now on, it was only a matter of time.
I was right.
The remainder of the clippings were a catalogue of disaster for the outlaws. Killin’ Jim Middleton was caught and killed when he tried to cash a stolen Adams Express note in Madison, Minnesota.
Tiburcio Mendez was arrested at a gaming house in Topeka, Kansas. Dutch Arnie Bakke came down with appendicitis in Wichita and was recognized by the doctor who came to treat him. After the operation, he woke up to find himself handcuffed to his bed, and under armed guard. And finally, Preacher Sweet was cornered after a failed bank robbery in Perryton, down in the Texas Panhandle, and shot dead.
That just left Kidd.
Kidd.
As I closed the folder, I wondered what his and Ella’s life had become. One endless pursuit, more than likely. I wondered what it must be like to be hounded, hunted, chased, stalked, tracked so relentlessly, and concluded that it must be a nightmare.
Again I felt the outline of the ten thousand dollar bill in my pocket. If that was what Kidd’s life had become, then my own course of action was clear. I had to find him and end it, once and for all.
I must kill John Kidd, and end the endless pursuit forever.
Chapter Nine
I sent a confidential wire to Allan Pinkerton, the founder and general superintendent of Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency, in care of his head office in Chicago, expressing my desire to help in the apprehension or elimination of John Kidd. I made much of my previous experience in law-enforcement as well as my association with Jack Page, and said that I had learned much about Kidd during our recent skirmishes in Colorado and Kansas that might prove instrumental in finally bringing him to justice.
For the first time in my life, I was glad I had the reputation I did, for now I felt that it might work for me, and open doo
rs that would otherwise remain firmly shut.
Three days later a boy fetched a return wire to my hotel room. Eagerly I tore it open and scanned the contents. It was from Pinkerton himself. He said he had heard of me, and would be happy to discuss the matter of John Kidd at much greater length in person. Therefore, would I hasten to Chicago as quickly as possible.
It was a hellish distance to request a man to travel — some seven hundred and fifty miles. But I did not think he would have asked me if he did not want me to be a part of Kidd’s eventual downfall.
I will not delay you with details of the long and often tedious train journey across Kansas and Iowa to Illinois. Suffice it to say that, just over a week later, I arrived at bustling 5th Avenue and was shown up to the offices of the great man.
I was shocked when I saw him, for though I knew he was a sick man, I was not prepared for the extent of his illness. He was not yet sixty, but looking at him now, I would have put him closer to eighty. He had suffered a ‘shock’, or stroke, nearly a decade earlier, and it had left him partially crippled and unable to speak with any great clarity. Yet still he worked half-days at the office, overseeing all the affairs of his great concern.
He bade me enter and take a seat across the desk from him. He asked me to tell him all that I knew of Kidd, and seemed impressed with my reply.
His son Robert was there with him, and he did much of his father’s talking for him. He confided that their employers in the matter, the highly influential American Bankers Association, as well as Adams Express, were baying for Kidd’s blood.
They wanted his head on a plate, and Pinkerton’s was honor-bound to give it to them.
‘All our sources now indicate that Kidd fled down to New Orleans,’ he went on, standing by the large window and looking down at the concrete metropolis below. ‘He bought passage for himself and a woman named Ella Morris aboard a steamer and sailed south. Now, after much painstaking investigation, we believe we have finally located him down in Colonia, where he is in the process of establishing a beef-exporting business under the name of Childs.’
I frowned. ‘Colonia? Where’s that, down in Mexico?’
‘Just outside Buenos Aires,’ Robert replied. ‘That’s in Argentina.’
Argentina! Geography had never been my strong point, but even I knew that Argentina was thousands of miles away. Kidd was unreachable there. He had managed to out-distance his pursuers after all.
But I was wrong about that.
‘We are planning to send a delegation down there to bring him back to stand trial in the United States,’ Robert said, coming back over to resume his seat to one side of the big desk. ‘We have no reason to suspect that the Argentinean authorities will refuse the extradition. But if Kidd himself puts up a fight, our orders are equally clear — he’s got to pay for his crimes, one way or the other. It makes no difference to us.’
‘How big a delegation are you proposing to send?’ I enquired.
‘We haven’t decided yet. Ever since that business with McParland and the Mollie Maguires some years ago, my father has preferred not to assign too many operatives to any one case, and I’m inclined to agree with him. Too many men and Kidd might be forewarned.’
Reaching a swift, impulsive decision, I drew in a deep breath and said, ‘I’ll go down there and bring him back for you.’
Old Allan stirred in his chair and fixed his watery but still sharp eyes upon me. ‘Alone?’ he slurred.
‘I think that’s best,’ I replied.
He thought about it for a moment. After a while he glanced at his son. Robert nodded and said, ‘Mr. Colter, we were hoping you would volunteer for the task. We are, of course very familiar with your enviable reputation, and are of the opinion that if any man can do it — you can.’
Thus it was settled.
It took me two months and four thousand miles to reach my destination. First of all I travelled by rail to Pascagoula, Mississippi, and caught a tramp steamer south across the Gulf of Mexico and on into the Caribbean. We docked in Columbia and I hired a little peasant with a face the same color and texture as a walnut to take me down through the steamy jungles to Buenaventura. There I bought passage on another steamer that regularly plied the coastlines of Ecuador, Peru and Chile.
The captain packed more and more men, women, children, chickens, goats, pigs and dogs aboard at every port of call. I marveled at the fact that the boat did not sink beneath our combined weight. But the Pacific was as calm as its name suggested, and I had plenty of time to think, and question the wisdom of my undertaking.
It was a relief when we finally chugged into the crowded dock at Valparaiso sometime in the middle of April, for I knew that most of the journey was behind me at last. A railway service of sorts connected the noisy, bustling city with Buenos Aires, some seven hundred-odd miles to the east, and I squeezed myself aboard the first clanking, rocking train out.
We travelled through vast tracts of lush, damp jungle. On five separate occasions the train broke down and the passengers — easily more than a thousand of us — had to climb down and kill time until the engine could be patched up or replaced. I sweated pints in the humid air. Everything I ate seemed to disagree with me. But in due course I crossed Argentina from one side to the other and finally, finally, I reached Buenos Aires.
The city was situated on the westernmost shore of a broad muddy estuary known as the Rio de la Plata. On the day I arrived, the humid weather knocked me back on my heels. Never before had I seen such a metropolis. It was a tightly-packed jumble of fine stone town-houses and mean, cramped little shacks and tenements. Everywhere I looked there were people of all nationalities, as well as a goodly proportion of dark-skinned mestizos.
According to the information Robert Pinkerton had given me, Kidd’s ranch lay some fifty miles to the north. Eager to get this business over and done with, I rented a horse and mule at a stable on the Avenida Paseo Colon, bought some supplies and set off later that same afternoon.
The countryside was largely featureless, mostly flat, grassy plains. Patches of marshland nestled in shallow swells. The odd scattering of thorn thickets and guebachos did their best to break the monotony, as did the smoky blue bulks of the distant sierras, but to my mind it was a vast, lonely and frankly bleak land.
I camped that evening in the shade of some palm savannas and cooked a meal. By my reckoning, I would reach Kidd’s place early on the morrow. Just the thought of it was enough to make my pulses beat faster, my throat tighten and dry up, my stomach clench.
I slept in fits and starts that night, and when I woke up a little before dawn the following morning, there was a heavy sense of dread inside me. Unable to face food, I washed, boiled and drank some coffee, then broke camp, saddled up and rode on north.
About two hours later, with the sun a massive crimson ball edging slowly up over the eastern horizon, I saw the first of Kidd’s cattle, big, heavy-set creatures scattered right across the pampas, chewing lazily on the rich grass as they watched me through disinterested eyes and twitched their ears occasionally to shoo away the flies.
The sun lifted higher and the day started to break. Sweat slid down my flushed face and dampened my shirt at the armpits and the small of the back.
Half an hour later, the ranch itself came into sight.
I slowed the rented horse and studied the place.
In the faintly orange light of early morning it looked quiet, just a couple of low frame buildings and sheds, a few carefully-planted shade trees and a corral in which horses were already rolling and frolicking.
According to the information Robert Pinkerton had managed to gather, Kidd employed three vaqueros. I dismounted whilst still two or three hundred yards out, and waited until I saw them leave the ranch to begin the day’s work. Then I mounted up again and clucked my horse and mule into movement.
Chickens were clucking and strutting before the house when I rode in. Smoke was rising from the stone chimney in little gray streamers, a sign that breakfast
was being cooked. A man was washing up in the trough out front of the house. He was stripped to the waist, leaning forward and dunking his head into the cold water. He had his back to me, and so was not aware of my approach.
I walked the horse into the yard and reined down twenty feet away from him. He dunked his head again, then brought it back up. Water streamed off him like molten silver, and I watched his shoulders heave as he gulped for air.
I watched him for a moment longer, not trusting myself to speak immediately. Finally I swallowed hard, licked my lips and called down, ‘Kidd.’
His shoulders stiffened, and the tracery of muscles beneath his berry-brown skin suddenly bunched. He did not make any other move, though; just stood there with his back to me, trying to place my voice, waiting to see what happened next.
What happened next was that I told him to turn around, which he did, slowly.
He had not changed, save to fill out a little. Life out here had evidently been good for him, I thought. I looked into his face. It was tight with suspicion and surprise and dismay. Water was still streaming down it from beneath his glistening flaxen hair.
At last he opened his mouth and said, ‘My God. Colter.’
I could imagine what kind of a shock it must have been for him, but he bore it well. He was unarmed, so I chanced a brief look away from him, and concentrated my attention on the rest of the place. It was much bigger and better-kept than the ranch down along the Saline.
When he spoke again, I returned my gaze to him. ‘I … I suppose I can guess what’s brought you all this way,’ he said carefully.
I nodded. ‘The Pinkertons tracked you down, John. They know you’re here. They know all about this beef-exporting business you’re trying to set up. They sent me to fetch you back to stand trial.’
His lip curled.
‘You must have known someone would come for you sooner or later,’ I said.
