by Simon Hawke
“Oh, well, that was just a little joke of mine,” said Masterson, with a smile. “Frank called him ‘this here Montana kid’ and I just sort of stuck it on him. His real name’s Scott Nelson.”
“Neilson. I think he said,” said Virgil.
“Nelson, Neilson, I never heard of either one of ’em, “said Wyatt. “But that kid’s a gunfighter, that’s for certain. Jack and Slim were sure as hell no greenhorns when it came to shootin’. And he got ’em both right through the heart.”
“The Kid also saved my life.” said Masterson_ “And Frank’s. He could have simply stood there and stayed well out of it. He didn’t have to chance it.”
“Only he did chance it,” Wyatt said. “And the result was that he killed two men in a fair fight. By tomorrow, everyone in Tombstone will be talkin’ about the Montana Kid. And by next week, they’ll be sayin’ that he killed three men. And then four. And then half a dozen. Before long, we’ll have a man in town who’s got himself a reputation as a killer.”
“Isn’t that how you got yours, Wyatt?” Masterson said, with’ a smile.
“Maybe, only I’m wearing a badge.
“Perhaps you should pin one on the Kid,” said Masterson.
“A shootist like that would be handy to have on your side. Especially since Ike Clanton’s already got Sheriff Johnny Behan on his.”
“I don’t need any help against the likes of Ike Clanton,” Wyatt said, drawing on his cigar. Unlike the others. he didn’t drink.
“Maybe not now.” Masterson replied, “but Johnny Behan’s had it in for you ever since you took his girl. He’s close to Clanton and so are his deputies. You’ve got a lot of badges in this town, only not all of them seem to be on the same side. That could develop into a sticky situation.”
“You sayin’ the Kid could side with Clanton and his bunch?”
“Oh. I doubt that very much,” Masterson replied. “Not after he dropped two of them.”
Wyatt grunted. “I can’t say I think much of the men you choose to gamble with, Bat
Masterson shrugged slightly. “I didn’t know them you know I haven’t been in Tombstone that long. Wyatt. I had no idea they were part of Clanton’s bunch. And their money was as good as anybody else’s.”
“You take much of it?”
Masterson smiled and, with a deft motion, produced a card from up his sleeve. It was an ace of spades. “What do you think?”
1
“The Montana Kid, you say?”
The man who was speaking was a striking individual. He was wearing an elegant dark suit with a red brocade vest and an expensive watch and chain. He had a large diamond on his finger, as well as in his stickpin. But it was not his attire that was the most striking thing about him. It was his size and his appearance. He was a large, powerfully built man, incredibly muscular, with arms and a chest that strained the fabric of his clothes. People stared at him with awe when he walked down the street. His thick hair was jet black and curly, giving him a romantic, Byronic aspect, and his handsome features were marred by a knife scar that ran down the side of his face from below his left eye to the corner of his mouth. His voice was deep and resonant and his mouth was cruel, but his eyes were his most striking feature. They were a bright, lambent green, with a gaze so intense it was unsettling.
The pretty young saloon girl standing before him had a hard time meeting his gaze. Not just because of the force of his personality, but because he was her creator.
“It was what the others called him,” she said. “I don’t know what his real name is. If he gave it, I didn’t hear.”
“And you say his speed with a gun was almost superhuman?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it.” she replied. “I’ve seen Wyatt Earp’s draw and even he isn’t that fast. He fired off two shots in a fraction of a second, without even aiming, and he hit both men in the heart.”
“Interesting.” said Nikolai Drakov, with a smile.
“You think he’s one of them? The agents from the future?”
“There was a young man whose path I once crossed in London.” Drakov said. “He was part of the support team working with Delaney, Cross and Steiger. And he was unusually skillful with lead projectile firearms.”
“What was his name?” the girl asked. “What did he look like?”
“We never actually met face to face,” Drakov replied. “But his name was Neilson. Scott Neilson.”
The girl shook her head. “I don’t know.” she said. “He looks very young. Just a boy, perhaps sixteen or seventeen-”
— Appearances could be deceptive if he’s from the future,” Drakov said. “With the antiagathic drugs, he could be anywhere from sixteen or seventeen to twenty-five or thirty. What else can you tell me about him?”
“He has light blond hair. He wears it long, like a plainsman. But he has the look of a gunfighter. Dark suit, vest, green calico shin, black Stetson…”
“How does he wear his gun?”
“In a cross draw holster on his left side.”
“A Colt?”
“Yes, nickel-plated, with a short barrel.”
Good for a fast draw. What about jewelry? Was he wearing any jewelry.? A bracelet of some sort, perhaps?”
“Yes. Yes, he did have a bracelet. I saw it briefly. It was one of those silver Indian bracelets, with a large turquoise stone.”
“Like these?” asked Drakov, opening a drawer in the end table. There were three matching Indian bracelets inside it. He took one out and held it up so she could set it.
“Yes. exactly like that,” she said.
Drakov smiled. “You didn’t hear what he and the others, the Earps and Masterson, spoke about?”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry. They were all sitting together at a table and I didn’t want to seem as if I was trying to eavesdrop. And it was noisy in the saloon and-”
“That’s all right,” said Drakov. “You’ve done well, Jennifer. I want you to cultivate his acquaintance. It would be perfectly logical for you to do so. You saw what happened, you’re fascinated by him, you want to get to know him. Find out his real name. Find out anything you can. But try not to arouse his suspicion. Be friendly and curious, but not too curious. Don’t push it.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
“Yes, I’m sure you will. Did you find out where he was staying?”
“In the Grand Hotel.”
Drakov nodded “Keep an eye on him. I want to know everything he does.” He smiled. “Things are starting to get interesting. The players are almost all assembled.”
He toyed with the Indian bracelet and opened the hinged cover, revealing the chronocircuitry controls of the warp disc.
“We will move slowly, and with great care.” he said. ‘I will not underestimate them this time. It should prove to be an interesting little drama. Imagine, the Network, the S.O.G., the Temporal Underground and the T.I.A., all gathered in one place, at one strategic time. It will be like playing chess against a roomful of opponents, simultaneously. Only they’ll be playing against each other, little realizing that I control the board.”
He snapped shut the cover on the warp disc.
“And so the game begins,” he said, softly.
The one-horse rig Masterson had rented pulled up in front of the cabin in the Tombstone Hills. It looked abandoned. It was a small, primitive adobe structure with a dirt floor, similar to many dwellings in the area. It couldn’t really be called a house. Building lumber had to be hauled in from the Huachucuas and the only local wood was mesquite, of which a quantity had been chopped and piled up outside the cabin. It gave off a pleasant aroma when burned. The Observers had a well dug and there was a makeshift shed about twenty feet away, with a crude corral beside it.
“Well, this is it,” said Masterson, as he reigned in.
Neilson looked at the place. There was something rather sad about it. It would have been cramped quarters for three men, but this was how a lot of people lived in this time, in this
part of the country. They came out from the Eastern cities or from farms and ranches in the Midwest, or from cities on the coast like San Francisco, chasing the dream of making a rich strike. A few of them, like Ed Schieffelin, got lucky. Most didn’t. But still, they kept on coming.
This was how it all started. Neilson thought. One man came out to this barren desert territory, populated only by Apaches, scorpions and lizards, struck silver and, as word got out, the boom began. Tombstone grew up on Goose flats, at first nothing but tents and adobe cabins and a few buildings made of lumber that had to be brought in, then saloons and fancy hotels, the railroad coming in to Benson, stage lines connecting the town to nearby points. Arizona was still a Wild territory, its raucous towns peopled by miners and gamblers and cowboys coming through with their herds, “hurrahing” the town with their six-shooters after months on the trail and blowing all their money on cheap whiskey, dance hall girls and at the faro tables. The Wild West as it really was, a brief, colorful period of American history, one that shaped the nation’s character for years to come.
The men that achieved fame in this period seemed bigger than life. They were men like Wild Bill Hickok, with his brace of Navy Colts tucked butt forward into his belt, and Buffalo Bill Cody, the scout and buffalo hunter who would do more than perhaps any other man to give birth to the legend of the frontier with his traveling Wild West Show. Men like Clay Allison, the rowdy gunfighter and rancher who would contribute the word “shootist” to the language and who once, for lack of anything better to do, hurrahed a town by riding through it stark naked. Men like John Wesley Hardin, one of the fastest guns who ever lived, an outlaw who eventually became a lawyer, and Billy the Kid, whom legend was to paint as a misunderstood, romantic young hero but who was, in fact, a mean spirited psychotic. And here in Tombstone were men such as John Henry “Doc” Holliday, the frail, tubercular dentist from Georgia who, as Bat Masterson would write, was “… a weakling who could not have whipped a 15-year-old boy in a go-as-you please fist fight, and no one knew this better than himself, and the knowledge of this fact was perhaps why he was ready to resort to a weapon of some kind whenever he got himself into difficulty.” And his skill with those weapons made him feared throughout the West.
Then there was Masterson himself, the gambler and lawman, who shot his six-guns from a crossed wrist position and had been credited with killing thirty-seven men, and Wyatt Earp and his brothers, who within a few short months would stride into frontier legend in their famous shoot-out with the Clantons. Yet, for all those larger-than-life, colorful figures, the real men who had built the West were men who lived like this, in small shacks and adobe dwellings, scratching a livelihood out of the dirt and aging quickly in the merciless desert sun.
The blow dust got into their lungs, their faces became lined and wrinkled prematurely, their backs worn from constant toil. They were, frequently, men who walked on both sides of the law, ranchers or miners by day, rustlers and stage robbers by night. Even Wyatt Earp was once accused of horse stealing and, in later years, he would be accused of being a stagecoach robber and a murderer, as well. In the Wild West of legend, the good guys wore white hats and the bad guys wore black. In the real Wild West, things were very seldom seen in black or white.
“Not much to look at, is it?” said Masterson, interrupting his thoughts. “A sight different from the kind of country that you’re used to in Montana Territory.
“Yes, it is,” said Neilson. “I was thinking that it seems like a very lonely place to die.”
They got down out of the rig and brushed the dust from their clothes. Masterson had changed into a pair of faded jeans and boots, a pale brown cotton shirt, a red kerchief and a well-worn, sweat-stained, light brown Stetson hat. He wore two six-shooters on his hips, nickel-plated Colt Single Action Army. 45s with four-and-three-quarter-inch barrels and gutta-percha, or hard rubber, grips. He had them made specially for him by the Colt factory in Hartford, Connecticut, with slightly taller front sight blades, a bit thicker than usual, and hair triggers. In the rig, he also had a Winchester carbine.
“Dying’s always lonely.” he said, “no matter where you do it.”
Neilson nodded. “Only it’s the man who’s left alive who thinks about it, not the dead.”
“You’ve been thinking about those two men you killed yesterday,” said Masterson.
Neilson nodded.
“First time?” asked Masterson. “Not that it’s any of my business.”
“No. it wasn’t the first time.” Scott replied. “I’ve killed before. Not because I wanted to, because I had to. But it doesn’t get any easier. I guess you’d know about that, though.”
Masterson nodded, solemnly. “No, it sure doesn’t. But don’t go thinking I’m some sort of expert on the subject. Oh. I know my reputation, and I haven’t done much to disabuse folks of it, but to tell the truth, it’s mostly hogwash. They say I’ve killed thirty-seven men. That’s nonsense. When I’m asked about it, I never say yes and I never say no. I just always say I don’t count Indians or Mexicans. I’ve been a lawman and I’m now a gambler and in occupations such as those, it can be useful to have people think you’re a killer.”
“Doesn’t that also invite trouble, though?” asked Scott.
“Sometimes,” Masterson replied, “but it prevents trouble more often than not. Those penny-dreadful writers back East have got people believing that if you’ve got a reputation as a gunfighter, reckless young blades from miles around come looking for you, anxious to make a reputation for themselves by taking you on. But that’s nothing like the truth. You’ll find that out. Most people would think real long and real hard before tangling with someone who’s known to have killed thirty-seven men. As a result of my so-called deadly reputation, there’ve been times when I’ve simply been able to stare down trouble. Wyatt, too. I’ve seen some pretty tough hombres hack down at just a look from Wyatt because it’s known he’s deadly with a gun. Of course, that doesn’t always work, as you saw yesterday. The truth is, not counting any Indians I might’ve shot at the Battle of Adobe Walls, I’ve only killed one man. That’s why I’ve got this here limp.”
“What happened?” Scott asked.
“His name was Corporal Melvin King, a soldier who liked the wild life and fancied himself a good man with a six-gun. He used to like riding with the cowboys and hurrahing towns and such. It happened in Sweetwater. We both liked the same girl, only she had a preference for me. I was spending some time alone with her in a saloon one night and King heard we were together. He’d had a few drinks and he was fixed for trouble. He busted in on us and jerked his pistol. Molly tried to get between us just as his pistol went off. The bullet went right through her and smashed into my hip. I managed to get my pistol out and shoot King as I fell, but it was no help to Molly. They both died. And me, after I healed up, I had to walk around with a cane for quite a spell. That’s where the story started that I got the name Bat from batting people over the head with it.” He chuckled. “Amazing how these things get around.”
“Where did you get the name Bat?” asked Neilson.
“It’s short for Bartholomew, which is my real name. I never cared for it, so I use William Barclay. I like the sound of it better. But most folks know me as Bat Masterson, just like they’ll probably know you as the Montana Kid from now on. I guess you have me to blame for that.”
Neilson grinned. “I don’t mind. I kind of like it.”
“You may not always feel that way,” said Masterson. “Having a reputation as a gunfighter is a sword that cuts both ways. It gets you plenty of respect, but not the kind you’d like. The way Wyatt reacted was the way any lawman would react on hearing of a gunfighter come to town. You represent a threat. Potential trouble. And it didn’t help any to have Frank say you were faster than Wyatt. That sort of thing puts a man on his guard right away.”
They entered the adobe house and Neilson started looking around. He didn’t expect to find much. Observers were always careful to leave no
sign that would indicate they were anything but what their covers made them appear to be. Even if someone hadn’t already torn the place apart, he would have found nothing from the future here. But that wasn’t what he was looking for.
“Well, it’s like I told the marshal,” he said, “I don’t want any trouble.”
“You stay around here, you’ll find it sure enough,” Masterson replied. “By now, the Clantons will have heard about how you gunned down those two. Now, Wyatt. Virgil and Morg know them a sight better than I do, but from what I’ve heard about that bunch, you’d do best to steer clear of them. Ike Clanton I’ve met. He’s not so much. A blowhard, mostly. His brother Billy seems a lot more likable, offhand, but I hear he’s quite good with a six-gun and he’ll back up his brother. Then there’s the McLaurys, Frank and Tom. Both gunmen. And Frank’s said to be dangerous. Billy Claiborne runs with them, but I wouldn’t put him in the same class as Frank and Torn. And then there’s Curly Bill and Johnny Ringo.”
“I’ve heard of them,” said Scott.
“That’s not surprising.” Masterson replied. “Curly Bill Brocius has killed his share of men. And Ringo has a big reputation as a gunfighter. There’s a good number of others, cattle rustlers and stage robbers, not a good apple in the bunch, but of them all. I’d worry about those two the most.”
And you think I have something to worry about?” asked Scott.
“If you stick around, you do.” Masterson replied. “I don’t want to seem ungrateful or unfriendly. Kid, but if I were you, I’d waste little time in moving on. You’re young, yet. Got your whole life ahead of you. You can be anything you want to be. But if you decide you’re going to be a gunfighter, then you’ve closed off a lot of options. You can find some town that needs a good man with a six-gun to wear a badge. A saloonkeeper who’ll cut you in for a small share of the business to hang around and make sure there isn’t any trouble. Or you can hunt bounty. There’s some money to be made from that. But it’s not what I’d call an easy life. Or a very good one. Often, it’s a short life. too.
