“Oh.” I tried to figure that out, but it wasn’t arithmetic. “His name’s not Bill?”
“You can call him Wild Bill,” Mike Williams told me. “But until your case is settled, were I in your boots, I’d call him sir.”
* * * * *
Hickok sat, leaning against the wall, his shining boots propped up on his desk, smoothing his mustache when Deputy Williams and I entered the office. His two Navy Colts lay on the top of his desk. He glowered at me as I stopped and let Williams close the door.
“Who’s this?” Hickok asked.
“The drunk I had to buffalo. Thought the Baptist church was a saloon. Remember?”
Hickok let his mustache alone and crossed his arms. “He didn’t die.”
“It was give or take,” Williams said.
Hickok whistled. “Slept all this time? Five days?”
“He wasn’t always sleeping. Vomiting. Pissing his pants. Shitting his britches. Screaming his damned head off.”
Hickok laughed, pulled his boots off the desk, and sat up straight. “You bucking for a raise, Mike? Figured out that tending jail in Abilene isn’t as glorious as tending bar in K.C.?” Then Hickok’s cold, hard eyes trained on me. “I know you,” he said softly.
Mike Williams poured himself a cup of coffee. He asked me if I wanted some, but my stomach remained far from steady. Holding the cup of black coffee, he began studying me a little more closely.
“Damn me as an Illinois son of a bitch,” Hickok declared suddenly. His fingers snapped, and he pointed. “Counting Boy. The Abilene Kid.” His head shook. “Hardin’s pard.” He folded his arms on the desktop. “I told you to stay clear of Hardin. You should’ve listened.”
Remembering the deputy’s advice, I said meekly: “Yes, sir.”
Williams stepped around and considered me, still holding the cup in his left hand while he snapped his fingers on his right. “Wait a minute.”
That’s when I remembered where I’d seen Mike Williams. He was the deputy who had taken charge right after Hardin’s little set-to in that café when Hardin had defended Pain and shot the Kansan.
“This kid … didn’t?” Hickok asked.
Williams shook his head and turned from me to his boss. “I think he was standing out front after that sharper got his face shot off at the Greek’s place.”
I tried to look as blank as the players sitting at the tables where Hardin and I had gambled.
“Where is Hardin?” Hickok demanded.
“Jim,” Williams said, “the kid’s been in jail since it happened.”
Not knowing what they were talking about, I looked from one to other.
“Were you with him?” Hickok asked, paying no attention to his deputy.
“Sir?”
“Were you with him, you snot-nosed runt?”
I lost my footing. Just standing upright, I lost my footing, and had to brace myself against a gun case. That sent Hickok reaching for one of the Colts on his desk, but he stopped when Williams grabbed my shoulder, and asked: “Are you all right?”
“I got dizzy,” I managed to say.
“Get the pissant a chair,” Hickok instructed Mike.
They made me drink coffee, which tasted awful, or maybe it was everything the coffee washed down that tasted so foul. I lowered the cup.
Something had happened after Hardin and I had separated that night. That night I’d met … Lavender. I remembered her now, but that was just about all I could recall.
“Well?” Hickok asked.
I sighed. “I think …” Most memories from that night would not return in any kind of clarity until days later. “We were … he left.” Suddenly, I could smell Lavender’s body. I felt her close to me. I smiled.
“What’s so damned funny, boy?” Hickok banged the butt of one of his Navies on a book like he was swinging a judge’s gavel. The book, I saw, was a translation of Homer.
“Oh.” I rubbed my temples, trying to put the vision of Lavender in the back of my mind, just not too far back. My head bobbed. “Yeah. But he and this guy he knew … they left.”
“What guy that he knew?” Hickok asked.
“Clements.”
“No,” Hickok snapped. “Hardin was going by the name Wesley Clements.”
I shook my head. “No. Not Wesley. This guy’s name was … Gip.”
Hickok nodded at Williams, who wrote the name on a piece of paper.
“And?”
I tried to think, ended up shrugging and sipping the last of the coffee. “I’m sorry, Marshal,” I said. “But that’s all I can really recall. Right now, anyway.”
“You sure about that?” Williams asked.
My head bobbed.
Hickok rose, and he came to the front of the desk, where he leaned, and stared me down. “You know I was fair to you, boy? Don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Hardin, too. More than fair.”
“Yes,” I said softly, “sir.”
“Do you know how your pard returned my generosity?”
My head shook slowly. “No, sir.”
“He shot some poor dumb bastard in the hotel where he was staying. Shot the bastard while he was asleep. Through the son-of-a-bitching wall. He killed a man, boy, because he was snoring. And then the yellow Texas bastard leaped out of the window, found a horse, and beat hell out of Abilene.” The Navy Colt came up in Hickok’s right hand. “That’s what I get for trying to play square with a murdering Texas …” He bit off the rest of his curse.
* * * * *
“He’ll calm down,” Mike Williams said as he led me to the privy. I was hauling two slop buckets to empty down at the two-seater. It was August, and August in Kansas felt like hell’s hottest hinges. Midday, the sun burned. The buckets appeared to be boiling over. I wanted to vomit, but somehow, I managed to get the contents emptied.
Dropping the buckets outside the door, I moved away from the stink, put my arms just above my knees, and tried to breathe.
“You got a job?” Williams asked.
“Yeah.”
“Whose herd? Maybe your boss can go your bail, pay your fine, get you back home. Where is home?”
“Near Goliad. South Texas.”
“I’m from Missouri.”
My head nodded. I wiped my lips and running nose. “You said that already.”
“Kansas City,” he added. He smiled. “Wife lives there.”
“My ma. My pa. They’re in Goliad.” I straightened, my heart sinking. “Maybe my brother. I don’t … know.”
“Who’s your boss?”
“Carroll.” I could breathe again. “Mr. Columbus Carroll.”
“Hell’s fire.” Williams shook his head.
“What?”
“It was in the Chronicle,” Williams said. “Columbus Carroll sold his herd … probably to get out of Kansas after Hardin’s latest murder. He took the train to Kansas City. Planned to catch a stagecoach and return to Texas.”
“But he owes …” I sputtered.
“You money?” Williams asked, rolling his eyes.
I still wasn’t thinking clearly, but, hell yes, Mr. Carroll owed me money for the cattle he had sold that belonged to my folks, though he’d get a percentage. I explained it to the deputy.
Williams smiled. “I’ve met Columbus Carroll,” he said. “From what I know of him, your folks will get their money. Now the question is … what are we going to do about you?”
Hickok
Chapter Twenty
We had checked all the liveries in town, but Star, the horse I had ridden into Abilene that last night on the town with Hardin, could not be found. So I thought maybe I had left the gelding in the Devil’s Addition.
Mike Williams laughed at that suggestion. “If you left a horse there almost a week ago, kid, the b
rand’s been changed and it has been sold four or five times since. Maybe it’s still in Kansas, but I’d bet on Nebraska or Wyoming Territory by now. Could be in Mexico.”
Still, he walked with me to the sordid part of town—as though Texas Street wasn’t.
This time of day, the Addition remained quiet. Only a few saloons had opened—if they ever closed—for business. But no music played. No laughter echoed. The only thing moving was the blowing dust. We stopped at a corral filled with a few scrawny horses. A man came out of a Sibley tent, cutting tobacco from a plug with his knife before sticking the chaw in his mouth.
“They’s all took for, Marshal,” the man said.
Williams nodded and whispered to me: “So he doesn’t need a bill of sale since none of the horses are his.” Raising his voice, Mike said: “This boy left his horse. Maybe you’ve seen it.” Williams had to nudge me.
“Brown gelding,” I told him. I tapped my head. “A star. Texas pony. Fourteen hands. Two white socks.”
“Puny.” The man spit.
“A good cow pony,” I said, bristling.
“Do you see a puny horse with a star in this corral?”
“No.”
“Then I’m gonna finish my siesta.” He returned inside his tent.
We walked to a dugout saloon, and I stopped, took off the baseball cap, and wiped sweat from my brow. “I don’t think I rode Star here.” I vaguely remembered walking with Lavender, arm in arm.
Williams let out a good-natured laugh. “Now you tell me.”
“There was a lady,” I said.
“Here?”
“I’d like to find her.”
He cursed softly and shook his head. “Yeah, I bet you would.” His head shook. “I need to get back to work. And I can’t leave you here by yourself because you’re still a prisoner, until your case comes up before the judge.”
But he took me back the next afternoon. And the following one. I wish he hadn’t.
* * * * *
“Marshal.” A woman wearing bloomers and a camisole—nothing else—grabbed Williams’ shoulder while I tried to place a ramshackle saloon that looked vaguely familiar.
“Hurry,” she said, and pulled him to the side of the picket-walled groggery with a hand-painted sign, splintered by bullets, impossible to read, but still hanging above the doorway by a nail.
“What?” Williams reached for his big revolver.
“I ain’t tryin’ to screw you or kill you.” Tears had carved ditches down the rouge that covered her face. “Please. It’s Grace.”
“Come on,” Williams said to me, drawing his revolver, and following the whore into an alley. I followed behind them.
The alley stank to high heaven, yet it, too, seemed somewhat familiar. As we moved past cribs, I saw a man sitting on an overturned barrel. He straightened at the sight of Mike Williams, or possibly the revolver, but once he figured out that the deputy wasn’t coming for him, he went back to filling his pipe bowl.
I stopped briefly, eyed him, and whispered: “Willie.”
More memories returned, and then I hurried after the whore and the deputy. She leaned against a flimsy building with a tin roof and pine-plank walls that couldn’t keep the warmth out. Her head was buried in her hands. Mike Williams pushed open the door, stepped back, and made the sign of the cross.
I looked over his shoulder and saw the body.
It wasn’t Lavender on a dirt floor littered with empty bottles, her head tilted to one side, face bruised and battered, spots of dried blood on her arms. Flies buzzed around the small, stinking room. She had dark hair, curly to the point of being frizzy, a crooked nose. Her lips were thin. I had seen lungers bigger than she was. She was dead. A small knife lay in a pool of blackening blood. I made out the ditches she had carved on both arms from her wrists halfway to her elbow.
“Grace,” the prostitute outside sobbed.
I looked at a table and read the label on a bottle: Elixir Mariani.
Lavender’s voice echoed in my head. The nectar of the gods …
I looked around the room, felt my knees begin to buckle as I saw a hat hanging on a nail above the bed. It was my hat, the one I had bought when Hardin and I outfitted ourselves with new duds after hitting Abilene.
It’s not Lavender, I tried to tell myself. It couldn’t be.
Returning my eyes to the corpse, I blinked back tears. She had been beautiful that night. At least, I thought she had been, even before I had taken some of her medicines. Never again would I see her as a beautiful princess. Now she was just a shriveled up corpse with slashed wrists, covered with flies and reeking of death.
I steeled myself, straightened up. Rage began to replace the torment.
“You son of a bitch!” I heard myself hiss, and pushed through the open doorway. I looked for some weapon, anything, but found only an empty bottle a few cribs over. This I picked up, muttering more profanity, and made a slow beeline for Willie, the bottle raised over my head.
“You bastard. You killed her. You murdered her,” I kept repeating.
Willie moved off the barrel, pitching his pipe into the dust. All I had seen that night was a shadow. Now, in the daylight, I could see him, a dark-skinned man with black eyes that were bloodshot and a salt-and-pepper mustache and beard. He looked sleepy and bored. He pushed back his hat.
“Bugger off,” he told me.
“I’ll send you to hell,” I said, then charged.
Willie mumbled: “What the hell?” Then, he leaped to his left, reaching his right hand behind his back.
A gunshot stopped Willie from pulling the trigger on the pistol he had drawn. I didn’t stop but swung the bottle. Willie easily sidestepped me, and I found myself rolling in the alley’s filth. Sitting up, I spit the foulness out of my mouth.
Willie’s hands were raised, but he still held the nickel-plated Smith & Wesson. “Deputy!” he called out. “You better stop this punk now. I’ll kill him if he tries anything. I got a right to defend myself.”
“Noah,” Mike Williams called out as he ran toward us, gun in hand. The prostitute in her underwear remained at Lavender’s crib, sobbing. A Negress stuck her head out another door and quickly slammed it shut.
I did not listen. I started to get up, bringing the bottle up again, but Williams had moved fast, and his boot caught my shoulder, sent the bottle flying to the dirt and driving me back to the ground. He moved his foot to the center of my chest, and pressed down just enough to stifle my breath. But his pistol was aimed at Willie.
“Let me up,” I begged. “He killed her. He killed Lavender.”
“Boy’s loco,” Willie said.
“Drop the revolver,” Williams said.
“I got a right to defend myself.”
“Drop it.”
He lowered the hammer, and the small gun fell beside Willie’s pipe.
“He killed her,” I said, trying to get the words out despite the pain in my ribs. The deputy’s boot pressed down harder.
“Shut up.” Williams did not look at me. “You know this Lavender?” he asked Willie.
Willie chuckled. “She was Daisy last night. Queen Victoria two weeks ago.”
“She’s dead today,” Williams said flatly.
Willie frowned. “Hell.” His shoulders sagged. “Honest?”
“He killed her,” I whispered.
“Deputy, I didn’t … I swear …”
“Shut up.”
Williams still refused to let me up. “Noah.” He kept his eyes and his revolver trained on Willie. “It’s a suicide, Noah. She took her own life. Listen to me. Just listen. It happens all the time. All the damned time. I’m sorry, but that’s a price girls like … Lavender …”
When Willie chuckled, Williams pulled the trigger.
Chapter Twenty-One
“You bastard.” Wi
lliams cocked the revolver while Willie remained on his knees, clamping his left hand over his ear. “You son-of-a-bitching pimp.”
“I’m … a … procurer,” Willie whined.
I hoped Williams had shot off Willie’s ear, but the bullet had just buzzed the top of the ear of that piece of filth.
“You’re the lowest form of humanity there is,” Williams said. “Take your damned hand away from your ear. I didn’t hit you.”
“Ruptured my eardrum …” Willie insisted.
“You listen to me. With both ears. You’re going to Junction City tonight. There’s a man there, John Gross. He sells coffins. You’re getting one for her, and you’re sending it here. You’re paying for it.”
“No cemetery’s gonna put a whore …”
“I’ll take care of that. Do you hear me?” The muzzle of the revolver was now pressed against Willie’s forehead. “I’ll get the undertaker and a preacher,” the deputy told Willie. “But you’re getting the coffin. And then you’re taking the train east. I don’t care where you stop, as long as it’s not Kansas City. And I don’t ever want to see your face again. Do you understand?”
Willie managed to move his head up and down once. Williams pulled the revolver back. “Maybe you think you’ll just ride right on past Junction City.”
“I wasn’t …” the pimp started to protest.
The revolver’s barrel jutted back to his face. “If I don’t see a coffin here on the next westbound, I’ll get a murder indictment against you.”
Willie looked up. “You got no right. I ain’t done …”
The barrel of the revolver slammed into Willie’s forehead. “You’re out of the Addition. You’re out of Abilene. You’re out of Dickinson County tonight, Willie. Because if you’re not, I’m coming for you. And I’ll bring Wild Bill with me if there’s not a coffin here in town inside of a week.”
* * * * *
It was really hot. Abilene planted the dead in a hurry during that time of summer.
I don’t know how Mike Williams arranged it, but there was a Baptist preacher at the funeral. Freedmen served as gravediggers. The preacher’s wife sang a hymn! But Mike Williams and I were the only ones attending Lavender’s funeral. The cemetery was behind the Baptist church, the same one where Mike Williams had found me crazed out of my mind on Lavender’s pilfered nectars.
The Fall of Abilene Page 13
