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  When the Danford Gang terrorized Arizona, no one—not the U.S. Marshals or the Army—could bring them in. It took Wild Bill Hickok to do that. Only Wild Bill was able to put them in the Yuma Territorial Prison, where they belonged.

  But prison couldn’t hold them. The venomous gang escaped and took the Governor’s wife and her sister as hostages. So it was up to Wild Bill to track them down and do the impossible—capture the Danford Gang a second time. Only this time, the gang’s ruthless leader, Fargo Danford, had a burning need for revenge against the one man who put him and the gang in prison in the first place, a need as hot as the scorching Sonora sun … and as deadly as the desert trap he had set for Bill.

  BLEEDING KANSAS

  WILD BILL 3

  By Judd Cole

  First Published by Leisure Books in 2000

  Copyright© 2000, 2015 by Judd Cole

  First Smashwords Edition: March 2015

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  Our cover features With a Shot from the Sharps, painted by Andy Thomas, and used by permission.

  Andy Thomas Artist, Carthage Missouri

  Andy is known for his action westerns and storytelling paintings and documenting historical events through history.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author.

  Chapter One

  “Don’t I wish that killing Hickok could be our first play? Lorenzo, I’d give my share of the swag for the pleasure of sending him under. Hadn’t been for Hickok, us two’d be living like kings right now. But planting that pretty son of a bitch will just have to wait a bit.”

  Fargo Danford fell silent, his murky, mud-colored eyes watching the nearest guard. Sweat poured out of the greasy tangle of Danford’s hair. But the blazing desert sun and air evaporated it almost immediately.

  “Christ, I can’t even spit,” complained Lorenzo Hanchon. “Lookit that bastard McQuady, boss—rubbing it in.”

  A big, soft-bellied guard, one of four men assigned to watch this work detail, deliberately made a big show of enjoying a cool drink of water.

  Holding his sawed-off shotgun prominently in one hand, McQuady used the other to raise a goatskin water bag to his lips. Not the foul, alkali-tainted water rationed out to inmates, either. This was clean, cool, deep-table water from a spring well beyond the nearby Colorado River.

  All twenty of the inmates watched in bitter envy as McQuady spat out the first mouthful. Then he drank deeply, letting water run off his chin into the burning sand.

  “A free man,” he called out, taunting the prisoners, “can have him a cool drink any damn time he fancies. You stupid birds, however, belong to me now! My little slaves!”

  Danford watched him with an emotionless face, dusty and beard-smudged. Those murky eyes narrowed with homicidal hatred. Of the guards who were about to die hard deaths here today, Danford figured this pig McQuady deserved the hardest.

  Danford grabbed hold of an eighty-pound rock from the man behind him. Grunting through clenched teeth, he passed it on to Lorenzo. They had been assigned to shore up one of the massive stone bulwarks supporting the Territorial Prison at Yuma.

  All around them, as far as the eye could see, the arid brown folds of the Yuma Desert stretched on unbroken, ending in a shimmering heat haze on the far horizon. The summer air felt brittle with warmth that seemed to radiate from a giant furnace.

  Lorenzo’s kid brother, Willard, worked in the group nearest to Danford and Lorenzo. In that second group was also the fourth surviving member of Danford’s gang, a taciturn half-breed named Coyote.

  Willard, quickly checking the whereabouts of the guards, took a chance and edged closer to his brother and Fargo Danford. Like those of many of his fellow convicts, Willard’s feet were wrapped in burlap and his pants were out at the knees. The glaring sunlight showed beggar-lice leaping from many scalps.

  “You sure they’ll be there?” Willard demanded in a low tone.

  Danford gave a curt nod. “Damn, you’re gettin’ worse than your brother, playin’ the female. Settle down—I already said they’ll be there.”

  Danford glanced farther up the steep stone slope. A flat slab of black shale lay maybe ten yards above them now.

  He was indeed confident that four good-quality killing knives were hidden under that stone. Most of these prison guards were nothing but criminals themselves. They all knew that the Danford gang had robbed a bullion coach carrying silver bars bound for the U.S. Mint at Denver. Although Wild Bill Hickok eventually killed three of them and collared the rest, the silver had never been recovered. It was rumored to be buried somewhere in Mexico, most likely northern Sonora State.

  So Danford had struck a “gentleman’s agreement” with one of the greedier guards, who had licked his boots here at Yuma. Four good knives for one thirty-pound bar of silver, payable in the near future if escape succeeded.

  Willard returned to his work gang, but not before McQuady saw Danford talking to him. McQuady’s long whip cracked like green wood snapping, and fire sliced deep into Danford’s burly back.

  “Get back to work, cockroach, or I’ll step on you even harder!” McQuady roared. He’d turned doubly mean from the day that Danford refused to strike terms with him.

  “There’ll be no lolly-gaggers on my watch!” he added importantly proud he was sergeant of the guard.

  Even before the fiery pain in his back subsided, a faint shadow of smile touched Danford’s lips.

  “McQuady is all mine,” he told Lorenzo through clenched teeth.

  Coyote, who had the sharp hearing of his namesake, heard this. He looked over at his boss and flashed his lipless grin.

  Fargo Danford was the natural leader in any group of hard, immoral men—the one man who could always concentrate their efforts toward evil. But even he shuddered inwardly at the nameless depravity in Coyote’s flat eyes. When those eyes looked at any man for more than a few seconds, they were generally measuring him for a grave.

  For the laborers, the morning advanced with torturous slowness. The workers tried to hug a narrowing ring of shade around the base of Prison Hill. Prisoners at Yuma were not issued headgear because the open desert could not be crossed without hats. One more reason, among several good ones, why very few men ever attempted to escape from Yuma.

  Piles of bleached bones marked the open graves of the few who had tried. The relentless and unforgiving desert was considered the most effective guard of all.

  At midday the men were allowed to rest briefly, each receiving a dipper of foul water and a hard biscuit. When the break was over, Danford’s group was sent higher up the rock-strewn slope.

  Lorenzo deliberately blocked the view of his leader while Danford quickly slid the shale aside.

  “Struck a lode!” he whispered joyously.

  Four simple but well-balanced metal knives lay under the stone. Dags, Danford noted with satisfaction—compact but deadly, with curved hilts to keep the killing hand from sliding forward. And sharp, narrow blades meant to reach and puncture internal organs, sever major arteries.

  He hastily flipped one back to Lorenzo and put the others inside his shirt.

  “McQuady is mine,” he repeated in a voice that reached his gang but not the guards.

  Once again h
eaving stones into place, Danford added, “Willard, I’ll give you and Coyote your blades real soon now. Lorenzo? You’re going to take Hobson down. Willard will do Mosley. Coyote kills Whittier.”

  Danford’s bloodshot eyes cut to McQuady before he added, “Wait for my command, boys. And don’t forget. After you sink the blade in deep, give it what they call the Spanish twist.”

  “Kid,” said J. B. Hickok as he and newspaperman Joshua Robinson emerged from the red-granite courthouse on Denver’s bustling Silver Street, “didn’t I warn you months ago that the Wild West is more boring than wild? We brought that jasper in without a whimper. Hell, he even asked for my autograph. Used to be, they’d cuss me a little.”

  “They sure cussed you up in Kinkaid County, Wyoming,” Josh reminded him. “Shot at you plenty, too. And how ‘bout that sniper mess you cleaned up in Abilene?”

  Bill paused on the wide steps and slid a thin Mexican cigar from his vest. He glanced into the sky. “Past three, by the sun.”

  Then Bill looked at Josh and finally replied, “The thing of it is, I don’t think about the roughest scrapes.” Bill tried to keep a match lit in the wind. “I mean, you look at it logically, and hell, I’m already dead.”

  Bill gave up the idea of smoking in that wind. He sent a careful glance all around them. Then he led Josh down to the newly paved sidewalk. Bill preferred boards, for they sent warnings to an observant man.

  “I’m in a good mood,” Wild Bill confided. “So don’t spoil it. Pinkerton’s got nothing but routine jobs lined up for us. A water-rights battle up in Weld County, some two-bit rustler camp in western Kansas. Piddling stuff, just like I requested.”

  Most of the time while he spoke, Bill kept his head tilted forward, taking advantage of the shadow cast by his broad-brimmed black hat. Somewhat fastidious about his appearance, Hickok wore a long duster to protect his suit. It also covered a heavy shell belt and a pair of ivory-grip Colt Peacemakers.

  “I know you and your beloved New York Herald thrive on derring-do,” Bill went on, heading west toward the huge Emporium and Denver’s new hotel district. “But I’ve got my belly full of ‘terrific sensations.’ Right now all I want are clean sheets, a bottle of Old Taylor, a dark bar, and a fair woman.”

  Wild Bill steered Josh through a shouting confusion of vendors at the corner, then onto Copper Street.

  “Pinkerton,” he said with a satisfied grin, “doesn’t even expect us until day after tomorrow. Even better, he doesn’t have any idea in hell that I usually take a room at the Crystal Palace when I’m in Denver. That’s two whole days to relax, play poker, and eat like by-God white men.”

  Bill’s good mood drove him to slap Josh heartily between his narrow shoulders, almost making the youth stumble.

  “Who knows, Longfellow? Quite a few new saloons in town. Maybe you’ll be able to impress a hurdy-gurdy gal with that paper collar and your store-bought vocabulary. Some of ‘em climb all over a bookish chap.”

  “I ain’t bookish,” Josh protested. “Just smart.”

  They were sheltered from the wind now by the high buildings. Bill poked the cigar between his teeth again and produced a match.

  He was about to light it with his thumbnail when, abruptly, a pistol shot startled everyone in the street.

  Josh gaped when the match flared to life without Bill’s help.

  “God kiss me!” Hickok almost moaned the words, for he realized immediately who fired the bullet that just missed his face by inches.

  “Bill Hickok, you purty specimen of man-flesh!” roared a drunk, disheveled, stout, and homely young woman wearing an immaculate Stetson. “God dawg, but you’re tonic to a horny gal’s eyes!”

  “Jane’s found us again,” Josh said. “And she’s drunk as a monkey.”

  “The way you say,” Bill agreed. His gunmetal eyes were already searching for an escape alley. “And she’s planted herself square in front of the Crystal Palace. She’s a damned curse, but that woman is sharper than a Navajo tracker.”

  Jane finished another bottle of “medicinal” Doyle’s Hop Bitters, the popular curative she supposedly sold from her buckboard wagon. In fact, she consumed three bottles for every one she retailed.

  “Bill!” she yelled in a voice like gravel rattling in a sluice gate. “The hell you doin’, hangin’ round with all these soft-handed town bastards? Honey, let’s scalp a few of these perfumed clerks!”

  But Denver was not the wide-open, anything-goes town it had once been. Jane’s illegal gunfire had alerted the city roundsmen. Even now, Josh saw several constables with a lockup wagon round the corner behind Calamity Jane.

  “C’mon, kid,” Bill said, ducking into a service alley that led to the rear of the hotel. “They’ll arrest her, all right, but it’ll get ugly. As for me ...”

  Bill grinned again, his good mood undaunted by this brief sighting of his chief female nemesis.

  “I meant what I said. We got two whole days before Pinkerton gives us our next set of marching orders. Jane’ll be locked up at least seventy-two hours. Ain’t nobody or nothing on God’s green earth going to spoil our big time.”

  Chapter Two

  During the long afternoon work shift, Fargo Danford managed to sneak knives to Willard Hanchon and Coyote without being spotted. Now the gang had only to wait for the best opportunity.

  It came near the end of the grueling work shift. By then McQuady and the other three guards were tired and bored, their senses dulled by the unrelenting sun and heat. Too, they were distracted by thoughts of hot food and soft beds.

  “Lissenup, birds!” McQuady barked. “Muster for roll call! Time to stick you roaches back in your holes!”

  The guards, Danford realized triumphantly, had made the fatal mistake of clustering up close together, sharing some jokes. He sent the high sign to his men, then waited until each had lined up with his assigned target.

  Danford gave one curt nod, and all four struck like adders.

  It took no more than three seconds to close the gap. McQuady didn’t even get his scattergun up before Danford’s blade plunged between his fourth and fifth ribs, straight into the heart.

  “I just cut you to trap bait, big man,” Danford taunted the guard in his last living moment. “Now go burn in hell!”

  McQuady’s knees folded like empty cloth, and he fell in a lifeless heap, heels scratching the desert sand a few times.

  The rest of the convicts were too stunned to react.

  McQuady and his men disarmed the dead men, taking their Colt side arms and stiff-flap holsters as well as their shotguns and spare shells. Each man also took any clothes and boots that fit.

  “Stay close to the hill,” Danford warned his men. “You leave the shadow, they can spot you from the wall. Gradual on that,” he added, grabbing the water away from Lorenzo. “We’ll be needing it.”

  Danford looked at the other prisoners. “Rest of you, do what you want to! I got no dicker with any of you. But nobody goes with us!”

  “No offense, Fargo,” said a big redhead named Slappy Grabowitz. “But nobody wants to go.”

  “Hell, Fargo,” said another voice. “That desert is just hell turned inside out. Nobody’s whipped it yet. Leastways, not without horses or mules.”

  Danford said nothing to that. It was gospel truth, but his gang would soon have horses, too. That was part of the deal he had made.

  About thirty very hard miles from there, a remote way station served the Tucson-Yuma stage line. Only a weekly mail coach made the desolate run, occasionally bringing a passenger or two. Four good saddle mounts and a pack animal should be waiting for Danford’s gang in a shaded barranca near the station.

  “Let’s move out,” Danford told his men. All four were also wearing the guards’ hats. “They’ll likely spot us while we’re still in rifle range, so don’t move in a straight line and make aiming easy for them. Run like your ass is on fire until you’re outta range. Coyote! The hell you doing?”

  Coyote said nothing, only fl
ashing his lipless grin. He squatted beside McQuady and tore the dead man’s trousers open.

  “I promised this son of a bitch something,” Coyote finally replied.

  “Hell!”

  Danford averted his eyes while the half-breed castrated the corpse.

  Coyote stood up, wiping his knife off on his trousers. “That’s for the trackers coming after us,” he explained in his flat, toneless voice. “Gives ‘em a little incentive not to hurry.”

  A young Army officer in a dusty tunic opened the stagecoach door and swung down the step.

  “Welcome to Joshua Tree Station, ladies,” the escort said smartly. “Last stop in the Yuma Desert. There’s food and drink ready inside. We’ll be in Yuma before nightfall. Watch your step, ladies.”

  The first woman he handed down was Anne Jacobs, wife of Arizona’s territorial governor, John C. Jacobs. Anne was a stately, mature beauty of thirty-five, still quite striking and slim-waisted. Obviously, though, she was tired and heat-wilted from the arduous trip.

  The second woman to step down was Anne’s even more famous sister, Constance Emmerick, fourteen years younger and still unmarried. She wore a straw hat trimmed with a blue ribbon and an ostrich feather.

  “My stars!” she exclaimed, looking at the low adobe-brick station with its crude brick homo out front for baking. “I hoped there might be plumbing arrangements here, Lieutenant!”

  “Uhh—sorry, ma’am. Very few city-style amenities, I’m afraid.”

  He nodded apologetically toward a rickety jakes behind the station.

  “We don’t usually get Shakespearean actresses on this route. If you—ahh—visit the facilities, ma’am, be careful of scorpions and such. I’ll run in first and scare off any snakes.”

  Connie paled noticeably. That made her bold dark eyes look even bolder. “Scare off any—? Is there plumbing in Yuma?”

  The officer wasn’t sure exactly what Constance meant by “plumbing,” but he was too embarrassed to ask.

  “Not so’s you’d notice, ma’am. But there’s fewer scorpions and snakes there.”