The Fall of Abilene

by Johnny D. Boggs

  My brother turned. His eyes flashed pure hatred. “You Yankee-loving …”

  “Put it down.”

  “You’d shoot your own brother?”

  There was no need to answer. Sam knew the answer, and his thumb slowly eased down the hammer before he lowered the Winchester beside the iron rail.

  “You’re the lowest bastard there is,” Sam told me.

  The barrel of Mike’s old revolver waved. “Keep your hands high,” I snapped. “So the marshal doesn’t cut you in half.”

  “Like he did that dumb-ass deputy,” Sam said.

  “You son of a bitch.” I charged, and when I swung the .44, I felt and heard the crunch as the barrel sent my brother rolling over the gravel, away from the train.

  “Get up, you piece of shit,” I ordered as I saw his eyelids flutter.

  Slowly, Sam sat up, shaking his bleeding head, his hat blowing away down the K. P. tracks. I hurled the pistol well past the depot. “Get up, damn you.”

  Rage blinded me. I forgot all about Hickok, about Corbin, and Sam’s fellow assassins, about the train, the tracks, the crowd on the depot.

  A grin slowly returned to Sam’s face as he pushed himself to his feet. “You’ve had this coming a long time, Noah,” Sam said.

  He thought it would be easy, having whipped my hide since I had been old enough to have my arse pummeled by my big brother. But he was wrong. Sam had been loafing all fall, ever since he had drawn his time from Mr. Carroll. He had been drinking heavily, too, for he reeked of rotgut and sweat. These past months had found me chopping wood, carrying pots of beans for prisoners, wrestling hogs, and I had grown at least an inch and a half, maybe more, since leaving Goliad that spring.

  More importantly, I was in the right.

  At least, that’s what I told myself. That’s what I believed on that morning that I left Sam Houston Benton bleeding and broken and balled up like a sleeping baby outside the Junction City depot. You couldn’t recognize his face when a heavyset porter, obeying Hickok’s instructions, pulled me off the man who had been my brother.

  I almost sent a haymaker into the Negro porter’s jaw, but I caught a glimpse of Hickok watching, his eyes unreadable from the depot’s edge. My tongue wet my lips. I blinked as I saw Sam’s three companions, now unarmed, surrounded by Junction City peace officers. I started for Sam, stopped, spun around, grabbed my brother’s carbine, and busted it against the caboose’s iron railings. The stock splintered across the ties and rails. The rest I flung toward the brush where I’d thrown Mike’s Dean & Adams.

  “Conductor,” Hickok said, “you have a schedule to keep. These men will be staying in Junction City.”

  “Yes, sir, Marshal,” the gray-headed, bespectacled man said.

  “We paid for our tickets,” the stoutest of the gunmen said.

  “Shut up,” Hickok told them. “I saw you get aboard in Abilene. You show up in Abilene, any of you, ever again or even come into my peripheral vision anywhere, I’ll kill you.”

  “We left our damned horses in Abilene,” another said.

  “Tough luck.” Hickok waved the shotgun and nodded at the oldest of the Junction City lawmen. “Harry, just hold them till the train’s gone. Then do with them as you desire.”

  “My pleasure,” the lawman said. “And what about that one?” He nodded at my broken brother. “He’ll need a sawbones.”

  “Send the bill to me.” My voice sounded tired.

  “You heard him.” Hickok turned to me. “Get aboard,” he said to me.

  I found my hat that had come off during the fight, saw the cuts on my knuckles that were starting to sting. I don’t remember getting back on the train, don’t remember anything until Hickok and Corbin settled into their seats opposite me. With a lurch, the train jerked forward and slowly began to crawl away from Junction City, from Sam Houston Benton. Though I tried to focus on the passing scenery, I saw absolutely nothing.

  * * * * *

  Newspapers reported various versions of the incident but omitted any role I had played. Hickok, I imagine, had something to do with that. Sam wore a beard then, so I doubt if Hickok had recognized him from their incident in Abilene. We made it to Topeka, collected the reward—Hickok split it with me—and returned to Abilene late that night without incident.

  Hickok never brought up what happened at Junction City. I never forgot it. Maybe I saved Hickok’s life. Perhaps I prevented Sam from being hanged as a murderer, but I didn’t thrash my brother because he meant to murder a lawman. That brawl, one-sided as it turned out to be, had little to do with Hickok. It was for Mike Williams. Deep inside me, I blamed my brother for Mike’s death. Yet after all these years, I’ve told myself that I was in the right. While all the while, I’ve known that I was dead wrong.

  * * * * *

  The weather warmed, bringing a false spring to Dickinson County. More emigrants made camp at Chapman’s Creek. Brick masons found themselves unseasonably busy, and a sour-faced man came into the city jail and handed a parchment to Hickok.

  “Just so you know, we’re sending this out at the first of the year.” He left without another word.

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  Hickok tossed the parchment in the trash bin and almost smiled at me. “You’ve never seen T. C. Henry?”

  “The fellow who runs the Land Office?”

  Hickok nodded.

  “I’ve just seen foreigners and farmers coming in and out of the office.”

  “Henry used to be mayor, and he’s finally talked the council into letting the Texans know that Abilene’s off limits to the cattle trade.”

  I retrieved the parchment and started reading it when Hickok rose.

  “The time was coming,” he told me. “Before long, the state legislature would have drawn that embargo line. Cut this part of the state off to Texas herds because of Spanish fever. Well, it shouldn’t be long now.”

  “What do you mean?” But I knew.

  He found the whiskey in his drawer.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  On December 13, Mayor Joseph McCoy came into the jail. Hickok was already cleaning out his desk.

  “Well,” McCoy said, “the bastards have finally done it.”

  “What took them so long?” Hickok found a derringer, checked the loads, and dropped it into the open grip on his desk.

  The mayor answered with a muffled curse. Seeing the bottle on the desk, he took a cup off the counter and filled it with three fingers. “They did thank you for your services.”

  “Got a new marshal?” Hickok folded a handkerchief and slipped it in his coat pocket.

  “Jim Gauthie.”

  I didn’t recognize the name.

  McCoy snorted. “At fifty a month.”

  Hickok’s smile lasted a short while. “A bargain.”

  The mayor grabbed another cup, sent bourbon splashing, and slid that cup toward Hickok, who stopped packing. Seeing me, McCoy tossed me the bottle, which I barely managed to catch while dropping the mop I had been using in the cells.

  “To law and order.” McCoy raised his glass in toast, and we all took a drink.

  Hickok held his cup up. “To new trails.”

  We drank again.

  They watched me. I wiped the bottle nervously, thought, and tentatively raised the bottle. “To Mike?”

  It came out as a question.

  Nodding, Hickok lifted his cup. “No better man ever walked these streets.”

  We drank one last time.

  * * * * *

  Nobody but me saw Wild Bill Hickok off on the evening train. It was the eastbound. I don’t know if he meant to live up to his promise and visit Mike’s widow. I do know that he didn’t pin on a badge in Newton. That he never wore a badge again. That he never took another man’s life.

  On that bitterly cold night, he started
to hold out his hand to shake, thought better, and pulled out his purse from his coat pocket.

  “How much money you got?”

  “I’ve been paid. The reward for Corbin. A full month’s salary. You gave me your horse already, and …”

  He handed me a double eagle, then a half eagle. I took both. Not that I liked doing it, but telling Hickok no took gumption I lacked that night.

  “It’s a long way down to Texas,” he said. “You going home?”

  My head bobbed. I knew I was lying. So did Hickok. I had no home. No family. Not anymore.

  “And you?”

  “See the elephant,” he said. “Or Cody. You’ve heard of Buffalo Bill, haven’t you?”

  “Everybody’s heard of him. And you.”

  Hickok’s smile appeared genuine. “He wasn’t much older than you when I first met him. Turned out all right. You do the same.”

  We shook, just briefly, and he boarded the K. P.

  I never saw him again.

  The whistle blew, the wheels screeched, the engine bellowed, and I walked down the streets of Abilene toward the livery and Hickok’s … my … gelding. I found my way to the Devil’s Addition, most of the buildings torn down for firewood, plowed under, or packed up and hauled down the line west, to wherever the Texans might bring their beef in 1872. But other buildings had gone up in their places, a livery, a feed store, another lumberyard—like there were any trees around here to support the lumberyard by the depot—another Land Office, a dealer in farm implements, and even a nursery that promised to have fruit trees for sale come spring.

  Yet, to my surprise, one of the old businesses remained open. Farmers, some who spoke English and others who grunted in one syllable, packed A. V. Thompson’s Ball Alley, which stood next to what had been a saloon but now was an apothecary. Mr. A. V. was there, and he grinned when he saw me. Janice, the pretty girl who helped out, was working, too. And the farmers? They hooted, drank from jugs, laughed, and bowled. It wasn’t as noisy as it had been when John Wesley Hardin and I had wandered in, but it still could damage one’s eardrums.

  A burly man, sporting arms like railroad ties and a beard that stretched to the middle of his ribcage, threw a stoneware jug to another and pointed at me. He yelled something. Trying to smile, I just shrugged, uncomprehending.

  “He want know if this you play,” said a wiry farmer in a rough brogue, but one I could make out.

  “Yeah.” I glanced at Janice, who lowered her head quickly to hide her smile. “A little.”

  The wiry man spoke to the big cuss in words I didn’t understand. The giant said something else.

  “Gamble?” the younger, thinner one translated.

  I felt the coins in my pocket. “Maybe,” I said with another shrug. “Just to make it interesting.”

  Epilogue

  Hickok’s horse, and my path, led me out of Abilene that winter, to Park City and the Little Arkansas Saloon, where the owner of that bucket of blood agreed to let me apprentice. He taught me more fundamentals of poker, of twenty-one, of faro. He taught me how to cheat, too, but warned me never to do it—though he rarely didn’t do it—saying one should learn how to cheat just so they’ll know when they’re being cheated.

  I was good at it. Gambling. Not cheating, except when I had to.

  The following summer, I plied my trade in Newton, where I found Mr. A. V. and Janice running their ball alley eight doors down from where I ran an honest faro layout. After a buffalo runner with a bad temper killed Mr. A. V., Janice and I tried to run a tenpin outfit in Nauchville, Ellsworth’s anything-goes district, the next season, but cowhands took exception at the noise and shot the place full of holes. I was in the town proper, running an honest game, when it happened. We buried Janice the next morning.

  After that, I never bowled.

  Denver came next. South to Trinidad. North to Cheyenne. I was in Dodge City in 1876 when word reached us that Wild Bill Hickok had been shot dead by a squat assassin named Jack McCall in Deadwood, Dakota Territory. McCall put a bullet in the back of Hickok’s head while Hickok was playing cards. A miner’s court called the murder self-defense and set McCall free. Federal authorities thought differently, and McCall was tried, convicted, and hanged in Yankton some time later.

  What else can I tell you? Ogallala … Leadville … Mesilla … Lordsburg … Tucson … San Diego … Prescott … Albuquerque … Contention City … Fort Davis … Tascosa. I’ve lost track of other towns, most layouts, the best winning streaks, the worst months spent riding the grub line.

  I, Noah Benton, Counting Boy, the Abilene Kid, Abilene—or whatever name I gave at that particular time—won more than I lost. Or did I?

  Two decades, pushing three. No wife. No family. I rarely even think of or wonder what happened to a brother I once had. As a sixteen-year-old fool, I thought I would find a great adventure in Abilene, the mecca of Kansas cattle towns. Sometimes it felt that way. And other times …

  The Fall of Abilene.

  That trial in Childress, Texas, a few years back. My luck was so poor, I was staying in a Young Men’s Christian Association flea trap. But I was winning at poker in the Caprock Saloon when a Texas cowboy took exception at my run of luck, and I put four bullets in his stomach. He died in as much agony as Phil Coe had. The jury acquitted me on self-defense, a fair and true verdict. But then there was that fool in Billings. I had filled my stomach with liquor, so what happened remains fogged over. A whore was involved, but she ran into the alley screaming. I’m pretty sure I killed that drunken idiot but did not remain in Montana to learn for certain. Which brings me to …

  Four months ago, my luck so soured, I had been forced to pour whiskey and beer for any dumb bastard who ventured into the Acme Saloon in El Paso. John Wesley Hardin walked in. Paroled out of Huntsville after decades behind the Walls, where he had studied law, Hardin had hung his shingle in El Paso. I’d seen him around but never this close. Dice had become a way to supplement my wages, and I was rolling with a grocer when Hardin strode in.

  We did not recognize one another. To be honest, if someone had not pointed him out when I arrived in El Paso, I would not have known him from Phil Coe. Years of hard living ages men—whether in prison or running a faro layout in buckets of blood across the frontier.

  “Give me your dice,” Hardin told me, and one did not argue with John Wesley Hardin.

  Around thirty minutes before midnight, still hotter than hell in West Texas, another hard-rock son of a bitch entered the Acme.

  I saw John Selman; Hardin never did.

  “Brown,” Hardin told the grocer, “you’ve got four sixes to beat.” Fat chance Brown had at winning; the chance of collecting from Hardin was even slimmer.

  Selman walked close, drew a revolver, and put a bullet into the back of Hardin’s head. The .45-caliber slug exited through Hardin’s left eyelid, slammed into the frame of the back-bar’s mirror, and bounced onto the floor behind me.

  My ears rang. Hardin had dropped to the floor in a pool of blood. Selman thumbed back the Colt’s hammer and shot again. And again. And a fourth time.

  “Son of a bitch,” my fellow bartender said, drawing a beer at the time, when the echoes and gasps died down. He bent to pick up the flattened lead slug. “Lookie here.” I’ve heard he put the slug in a glass bottle stuffed with cotton and showed it off to interested visitors to the Acme.

  When we went to Hardin’s room, I found a stack of papers on his bedside table. While the marshal and a lawyer searched the room, I sat on the bed.

  “You knew that bastard?” the lawman asked.

  “Years ago,” I said.

  “Friend of his?” the attorney said.

  My head shook. “I’ve only had one friend in my whole life.”

  “More’n me,” the lawyer said.

  “Because you’re a lawyer,” the marshal said, and they laughed.
/>   I had not been joking.

  “What the hell’s that?” the lawman asked.

  I read the title: The Life Of John Wesley Hardin As Written By Himself.

  “Who’d want to read that garbage?” the lawman said, but the lawyer hurried over, and I headed for the door.

  “Where are you going?” the deputy asked.

  “Nowhere,” I said.

  “Good. There’ll be an inquest, probably a damned trial. You saw the whole thing. You’ll have to testify.”

  That night, I rode the train east.

  * * * * *

  Which brings me home. Twenty-four years later. Goliad, Texas. Oh, I’m not on the farm. Hell, the way this place has grown, I couldn’t even find it. In the months I’ve been here, working at a tannery and tutoring kids—boys, mostly, on the finer points of arithmetic—I have heard no one even mention the name Benton. Which isn’t the name I’m using.

  I started writing this on the train.

  Not that anyone will ever read it. Not that anyone will ever want to. Not that anyone would even believe it.

  Michael W. Williams was the best friend I ever had. The only friend I ever had. Once, I thought Wes Hardin was a friend. And maybe James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok looked after me, but I’m not sure he was a true friend. My brother? Let’s not bring that up. Eustace McDougal? God, I’d forgotten all about him until I started filling these pages.

  Mike Williams once told me: “The whole United States and her territories, the whole world even, would be a hell of a lot better place to live if nobody carried a gun.”

  My guns I’ve left some six hundred and fifty miles west, along with my decks of cards, my faro layout, and my dice back on the bar of El Paso’s Acme Saloon.

  Mike also told me: “ … we might just be witnessing the fall of Abilene.”

  The Fall of Abilene.

  Back in 1871, I thought Mike meant that I would see the fall of a cattle town. Yet maybe Mike meant to warn me about the fall of a boy who was trying to travel that strange road to manhood, someone who could have been much kinder, much more honest, much better than the heel Noah Benton, alias Counting Boy, alias the Abilene Kid, alias Abilene, turned out to be.