Dead Man's Hand Page 12

  This stretch was where the ambush would come—Bill was sure of it. Just as those sand hills were the haven of cattle rustlers with running irons, they would also accommodate a dry-gulcher like Landry.

  Patiently, Bill urged the old gray onward, his eyes constantly scanning the terrain. The thongs were off his hammers, and each cocked Colt held six beans in the wheel. Now, the readiness was all. . . .

  One thing that had helped save Bill’s life for years now was all the uncertainty as to his real whereabouts. Rumors about his supposed locations were always thicker than toads after a hard rain. But that advantage was gone now— Landry knew where to find him.

  Something rustled to his left, and Bill had a Peacemaker to hand in an eye blink. But it was only a badger crawling into its hole.

  Wild Bill was still holstering his Colt after this false alarm when a stinging, smashing blow across his face suddenly blinded him.

  But it was much more than a hard blow. Even as Bill sucked in a hissing breath at the pain, he was literally tugged off the gray. He smashed into the sand hard on his right shoulder.

  Only now, as more swift, hot lashes of pain stripped the skin from him, did Bill understand that a whip had pulled him to the ground.

  Hickok had tasted his share of whip lashings. But this was no typical cowhiding. Even as Bill groped for his right-hand Colt, the assailant expertly used the knotted popper of the whip to flick the weapon out of his holster. Bill’s .44 spun fifteen feet away into the sand.

  He rolled onto his right hip, drew his left-hand gun, and felt it too lashed from his hand.

  “A fish always looks bigger underwater, Hickok!” Landry’s voice taunted him. “You ain’t so damn big now, are you, fancy man?”

  Landry had to say all this between heaving breaths, because he was so vigorously thrashing his victim. Again and again his blacksnake whip whistled and cracked. Each time, the knotted leather ripped Bill’s skin open, exposing strips of raw, stinging flesh.

  “I’m a rich toff now, Hickok! It ain’t just the pleasure of snuffing out your candle, you perfumed lapdog! I’m takin’ your head down to Texas and cashing in! Chew on that, lover boy!”

  By now, Bill’s shirt and rawhide vest were tattered, blood-soaked streamers. Each blow sent more blood spattering to the sand; Bill’s last coherent thought was that he would bleed to death if he couldn’t stop this lethal madman now.

  “The big man!” Landry taunted. “‘Touch you for luck, Wild Bill?’ Shit! I’ll ‘touch’ you, you pretty little prissy. I’ll—”

  Wild Bill had faced death too many times to take it lying down. As the next stinging whiplash landed on him, Bill suddenly went on the offensive. Despite the hot flaring of pain in his limbs, he grabbed hold of the popper and tugged it with every ounce of will and muscle left in him.

  Big Bat, his grip on the whip secure, had not expected such a move. He made the mistake of not letting go in time. He lost his footing, stumbled forward hard, crashed heavily into the sand. And before the big, clumsy man could move, the lighter and more athletic Bill was on him with the ferocity of a wolverine.

  Hickok’s lacerated body was not up to a wrestling match. Nor could Bill hope, in his present condition, to outslug this brick outhouse of a man. In a smooth “dally-roping” move that would have made a Texas cowhand proud, Bill wrapped the popper of the whip around Landry’s neck and started squeezing.

  The big man fought death hard. Bill, every nerve ending in his body feeling raw and exposed, rode him like a bucking bronc, refusing to let up.

  “Next stop is hell,” Bill goaded the gunsel.

  “And it’s going to be a long layover!”

  Landry’s pig eyes bulged like wet, white marbles; his face went from red to purple to black. Finally, just when Bill feared he could apply his stranglehold no longer, Landry gave up the ghost. He slumped dead into the sand. His heels scratched twice, and it was over.

  Bill started to rise, groaned, stumbled back onto his knees.

  “Jesus, I could use a drink,” he informed the landscape.

  Then the sand hills started spinning out of control, and a badly bleeding Bill Hickok passed out on top of the murdering butcher he had just killed.

  “Just a little bit more,” Elena Vargas told Bill soothingly. “Be brave. This will sting a little.”

  Wild Bill, bare to the waist, lay on his stomach across a bench in one of the passenger coaches. Josh watched Elena carefully apply Calomel lotion to the last of his lacerations; she had just spent a painstaking two hours cleaning the sand from them.

  “All that sand saved your life,” she told Bill. “It stopped the bleeding until clotting took over. You’ll still need a doctor, though, when we get to Cheyenne. Some of these cuts are deep.”

  “That won’t be long,” Josh said. “The rescue party from Fort Robinson has been spotted to our south.”

  Among the passengers crowded around Bill was the fox-faced Randolph Bodmer. He had hovered close ever since Josh and a few other men had brought Bill back.

  Bill caught Josh’s eye and gave him a little half-wink, reminding him of the story they’d prepared.

  “Too bad about Professor Vogel,” Bill said. “But the way Indians kill a white man, there’s no point going back for the body. It won’t be pretty.”

  Bodmer’s eyes caught sparks at this welcome news about Vogel, his chief competitor. Now Josh gut-hooked their fish by adding:

  “The refrigeration compressor is all right, though. If the buckboard hadn’t busted an axle, we’d’ve brought it back. It’s safe for now. We left it in a little bottom beside the trail.”

  “We’ll get it later,” Bill agreed. Josh couldn’t help a little sting of jealousy at the way Bill was obviously enjoying Elena’s gentle hands on his body. And despite his pain, the frontiersman grinned when Bodmer slipped out of the car— never to be seen by white men again, as it turned out. Josh knew the greedy bastard had taken the bait. But all he would find waiting for him along that trail were Sioux warriors.

  “What will they do to him?” Josh asked Bill later when they were alone.

  “They’ll bury him up to his neck in an anthill,” Bill replied calmly. “Then soak his head with honey. Takes those ants hours to kill you, and the screams don’t stop.”

  As much as he hated Bodmer, Josh turned green at the prospect.

  “Don’t worry,” Bill added. “He could get lucky. Lots of times, a bear comes along first and rips your head off quick for the honey.”

  In the end, ironically, it was the public’s hunger for Wild Bill stories that ensured rapid, widespread acceptance of “unnatural ice” in America.

  The New York Herald headline over Josh’s front-page story electrified the young country: WILD BILL AND ECCENTRIC INVENTOR SAVE SIOUX NATION!!! Various versions of Josh’s story, often “colored up” a bit, even appeared in England and all throughout Europe, where novels about Hickok had already been translated into eleven languages so far. Even among the haughty French, le Bill was all the rage.

  As for Vogel’s financial backers, their gamble paid off in spades. Thanks to the publicity generated about Wild Bill and the Ice Train, hospital orders alone for the new refrigeration compressor gave the new Omaha factory a two-year backlog of work.

  Concerning the now missing Bodmer, Josh realized it was actually merciful for the businessman that he was killed before he had to see his fortunes lost. As his legal fiancée, Elena inherited Bodmer’s remaining wealth. Even after his ice business went bankrupt, enough cash would remain to ensure that Elena lived comfortably for the rest of her life. Josh figured she had earned it.

  The one person Josh had forgotten about, in all this excitement, was Calamity Jane. But not long after the Ice Train limped into Cheyenne for repairs, Jane proved she hadn’t forgotten about Wild Bill.

  Bill, Josh, and the professor had taken a suite of rooms in Cheyenne’s Grand Teton Hotel.

  Elena had a room at the end of their hallway. This layover was expected to
last about a week while Bill recuperated and further repairs were made to the Ice Train before it resumed its tour.

  On their third day in Cheyenne, Bill roused himself from bed, bathed, shaved, and donned his best suit.

  “You’re going to visit Elena,” Josh said, making it more of an accusation than a question.

  Bill was about to reply when a voice like gravel shifting called out from the hallway outside: “Yoo-hoo! Bill? Wild Bill? I know you’re in here somewhere, darlin’!”

  Josh watched his mentor turn green as old brass.

  “Wild Bill? I got your flowers in Kansas City, Bill. You do know the way straight to a gal’s heart, you charmer! And that young buck you sent to deliver ’em was purty enough to eat!”

  Bill was on the verge of panic, his eyes those of a trapped deer. Jane’s voice was getting closer.

  “Bill? That poam you wrote on the card was purty, too! You romantic devil!”

  Bill’s eyes looked murder at Josh. “What poem, you little shit? I told you just to sign my name.”

  Josh flushed. “It wasn’t anything romantic,” he insisted. “Just a line from Shakespeare I threw in to make it sound a little fancier.”

  “What line?”

  “Just the line ‘Let us not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.’ Nothing romantic, Bill, honest!”

  By now Bill was livid. “Kid, you’re telling me you used the word ‘marriage'? You used that word to her and signed my name?”

  Josh backed away. Bill looked so murderous in that moment.

  “Yoo-hoo! Bill? I’ll find you, honey bunch! You can run, but you can’t hide forever!”

  By now, Calamity Jane was almost at their door.

  “Kid,” Bill said desperately, ‘‘you got me into this one. Now you better get me out of it, or that Quaker ma of yours will be wearing funeral black.”

  The doorknob rattled. Bill flew into the room where Vogel was sleeping and shut the door. Josh screwed up his courage and opened the door to face the grinning, indomitable Calamity Jane.

  “Jane,” he greeted her in a weak voice. “Wild Bill isn’t here right now. But—but could I buy you a drink?”

  Jane’s homely face lit up like a sparkler. “Would a cow lick Lot’s wife? C’mon, you purty little critter. A lonely gal needs a little comfort, and you’ll do just fine!”

  Even as she tugged him eagerly into the hallway, the doomed Josh could have sworn he heard Bill chuckle behind him.

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