Dead Man's Hand Page 4

  Chapter Six

  Albert Vogel’s backers had spared no expense in preparing a grand train for this special tour to promote the production of “artificial ice.”

  Two huge steam engines and a coal tender were followed by several fancy new Pullman cars to serve the wealthy. A string of third-class coaches would hold the less affluent passengers, for this was to be a democratic event. At Vogel’s insistence, an extra caboose had been converted to house him and his refrigeration compressor. It had also been gaily festooned with floral garlands and red-white-and-blue bunting. On a bright banner bold letters proclaimed: ICE IS CIVILIZATION!

  “Vogel’s backers,” Bill explained to Josh as they approached the crowded boarding platform, “are building a factory in Omaha right now to make more of these refriga-jiggers. The whole point of this dog and pony show is to drum up interest, and maybe a few orders.”

  Josh could hardly contain his excitement. “You know what that means? I’ll be a sort of science reporter, too!”

  “Christ, why not?” Bill said sarcastically as he cast an eye around in search of Pinkerton and Vogel. “Hell, you’re a fully seasoned nineteen years of age. Been to grammar school too, I’d wager.”

  “High school, too,” Josh added proudly, missing the sarcasm.

  “Good God, strike a light! Call this boy Sir Oracle.”

  A train eased into town along the westbound spur, hissing to a steaming stop when the engineer vented his boilers. Josh watched as some of America’s new “hobos”—impoverished and disillusioned Civil War veterans, mostly forgotten by their nation—leaped down from a boxcar. Bill headed them off and slipped each of the destitute men some tobacco and four bits for a bath and a meal.

  “But, Bill,” Josh said when the hobos had left. “That one was wearing Rebel gray.”

  “He’s a veteran,” Bill replied. “It’s the battles and the blood that bind veterans, not the color of the tunic. Pound for pound, Johnny Reb was the best American soldier yet. Unless you count the Sioux.”

  A fancy fringed surrey pulled up, and Josh got his first glimpse of the lovely Elena since their brief encounter at the Commerce Hotel. Bodmer sat beside his pretty trophy with a look of possessive pride on his face. Neither of them had yet spotted Bill.

  “Tilting hoops, gents!” a masculine voice in the crowd called out as Bodmer helped Elena down from the surrey—exposing a glimpse of snowy white calf when her whalebone crinoline tilted. This riveted male attention: Ladies’ fashions, in the 1870s, boldly bared women’s breasts yet modestly hid their legs. So most men were “leg starved” and lusted to see a bit of bare female limb just like this.

  “Jamie lad!”

  Josh spotted a distinguished older man in gray Burnsides and the new matching suit of the professional class. He was leading a frail but alert, even older gentleman across the platform toward them. Bill quickly introduced Pinkerton and Professor Vogel. The professor still seemed indifferent to the gun-toting Hickok, but he took an instant liking to Josh, despite his ridiculous “Western garb.” He was especially happy to learn Josh was a journalist.

  Pinkerton nodded toward the two hardcases following Bodmer and Elena, weighted down with suitcases and valises.

  “The ticket agent got friendly after I slipped him a gold eagle. Those two plug-uglies are listed in the passenger manifest as Bodmer’s ‘domestic servants.’”

  Bill snorted. “Un-huh. Oysters can walk upstairs, too, can’t they? That white ‘servant’ has got a .44 double-action Colt tied low on his thigh. That ’breed’s not only got himself a long-barreled Walker Colt, but I can see from here he’s filed off the sight so it won’t snag coming out of the holster. And you see that rifle sheath he’s carrying? That’s a Big Fifty Sharps. If those two are servants, Satan is their master.”

  Pinkerton nodded. “I liked your policy when you were the law in Abilene,” he told Bill. “They stacked their guns when they entered town, collected them when they left. The railroads are afraid to prohibit weapons on their western routes, citing possible Indian attacks. I took that into consideration when I planned security for Professor Vogel’s tour.”

  Bill was listening, but Josh saw his eyes taking in Elena. She purchased a sack of fresh fruit from a vendor, then selected a few penny-dreadful novels for reading during the journey.

  “Comely lass,” Pinkerton remarked.

  “Hmm. The professor’s machine loaded on board?” Bill asked, still watching Elena.

  Pinkerton nodded. “Last night. And the caboose is double locked. That’s where you’ll be staying, by the way.”

  A vendor approached, and Josh set his carpetbag down to purchase a few roast-beef sandwiches wrapped in cheesecloth. Behind him, there was a racket and clatter of a conveyance braking to a halt. Josh heard Bill curse.

  “Yoo-hoo! Wild Bill!”

  Josh spun around and spotted Calamity Jane waving her Stetson at Bill from behind the dash of a rattletrap buckboard. Sideboards and a tarpaper roof had been added, forming a crude sleeping shelter. Bottles clinked from inside the shelter. Whitewash letters on the sideboards advertised DOYLE’S HOP BITTERS, “THE INVALID’S FRIEND AND HOPE.”

  Doyle’s was one of the most popular patent medicines in the West. As a curative it was worthless, but its heavy dose of alcohol left the patients too drunk to notice.

  “Howdy, Bill!” Jane sang out, blushing like a schoolgirl. “I heard you was in town.”

  “Well, God kiss me!” Bill muttered. He had been unable to duck. Now Josh watched him bite the bullet—he doffed his black, broad-brimmed hat and said politely, “Jane. How are you?”

  “Oh, fine, Bill, fine. A little lonely, is all. A gal could use some company. You know how the nights can be. By the bye, Wild Bill—did you receive my letters and poems?”

  Wild Bill had faced the drawn gun of Baylis without flinching; now, however, Josh saw a little bead of sweat eke out from Bill’s curly blond hairline.

  “Jane, you know how it is. Sometimes mail is slow to catch up to a fellow out here.”

  By now, Josh saw, Calamity Jane’s gravel-pitted voice had alerted everyone to the presence of Wild Bill Hickok. Bodmer, realizing Hickok was boarding the tour train, turned so red that Josh could almost whiff his rage.

  Elena, in stark contrast, seemed quite amused by Hickok’s awkward situation. But it was the “servant” Josh watched closest—the white man with the tie-down gun.

  At first, before Jane’s arrival, he had looked around constantly, like a man on the dodge. But now his speculative eyes never once left Wild Bill. The man set down his load and pulled out a sack of Bull Durham from his shirt pocket. Still watching Bill, he crimped a paper, shook some tobacco into it, and built himself a cigarette.

  The other one, the hard-eyed half-breed, just smiled a sick little lopsided smile.

  They know all about the reward, Josh thought. And they mean to collect it.

  By now Bill had somehow managed to shake Calamity Jane. Josh saw Pinkerton grinning, Bill scowling.

  “‘Poams’?” Pinkerton repeated, aping Jane’s rude pronunciation. “You sly dog, Jamie. Is this a secret courtship?”

  “Don’t presume on your white hairs, Al. I’ve hit old men, too. Damnitall to hell, anyway! Somehow she’s caught wind I’m with the tour. She didn’t wander down here just by happen-chance.”

  Josh said, “Will she buy a ticket?”

  Here Bill perked up a bit. “She can’t, kid. She’s banned from every railroad in the country. She gets drunk and shoots up the Pullman cars trying to start fights. No, she’ll just follow along by the wagon roads. We’ll be laying over plenty, traveling slow to demonstrate Professor Vogel’s machine at the one-horse towns. She’ll have plenty of time to be a thorn in my side.”

  “Your fault, Jamie,” Pinkerton insisted. “You’re too damned gallant to the woman.”

  “Gallant, my sweet aunt! The critter scares hell out of me. She’s been to a palm reader in Old El Paso. That fool convinced her there’s thi
s, ahh, ‘shared destiny’ between her and me. Goddamn that palm reader! There’s one I wish I had shot in cold blood, that ignorant bastard!”

  A conductor in a tall shako hat hopped down onto the platform. “All aboard the Ice Train!” he called out to the milling passengers. “All aboard, please! Watch your step, ladies!”

  Josh’s eyes flicked again to the gunsel who had just built himself a smoke. Now the man’s eyes cut from Bill to meet Josh’s gaze, surprising the youth. The gunman struck a sulfur match on a front tooth and lit his cigarette.

  Then his right hand went for his gun.

  But before Josh could even cry out, the thug’s gun hand came up empty. He pointed his index finger at Josh like a gun muzzle, cocked his thumb like a hammer, then laughed as the boy’s face flushed red.

  Chapter Seven

  “You’re not still angry at me over our little tiff yesterday, are you?” Randolph Bodmer inquired of his fiancée.

  Elena’s dark, almond-shaped eyes looked away from her romance novel to coolly appraise Bodmer. “‘Our little tiff? Isn’t that a bit of an understatement? Have you forgotten you called me a whore?”

  Bodmer, already in a foul mood after spotting Hickok a few hours earlier, cursed.

  “Damn, honey! You hold a grudge until it hollers mama, don’t you? I spoke in a moment of anger, for Christ’s sake!”

  “Yes, and for Christ’s sake you will repent that moment for the rest of your life! No man calls me that horrid thing! I am a Vargas! My forebears advised Ferdinand and Isabella during Spain’s Golden Age! Miguel de Cervantes himself wrote his great Don Quixote at our family villa in Seville. I am not some low fishwife you may abuse with coarse language, then coax into your vile bed.”

  Bodmer’s lips formed a grim, straight, angry line. The couple rocked and swayed gently in one of George Pullman’s elegant new railcars, which had gone into service only two years earlier. Carpeted floors and plush drapes kept much of the dust and noise out. Gas lamps with crystal-clear globes were mounted in elegant brass sconces shaped like figures from ancient myth. Bodmer’s private car even included a parlor organ for sing-alongs.

  Outside, if one cared to lift the window shades and watch, the South Platte River valley gave way to rolling brown plains, an endless, treeless expanse of ground and sky.

  “I’ve just about had a bellyful,” Bodmer finally told Elena, “of your high-hatting ways! I don’t really care if you’re descended from Jesus Christ, and I don’t set any stock in your weak-kneed religion. Add the great Vargas name to a nickel, and you’ll have five cents, missy. Your old man is dead now, and this isn’t Spain. I’m the only real friend you have. You best think real careful how things stand, hear me?”

  “Or what, big man? You’ll have one of your scurvy-ridden toughs kill me?”

  But Bodmer was too angry now to continue the altercation without fists.

  “There are worse things than death,” he hinted darkly just before he stomped out of the car in search of Big Bat and the Dog Man. “And if I catch you so much as looking at Bill Hickok, you’ll find out exactly what I mean!”

  Bodmer kept a wary eye out for Hickok while he located his two toadies in the final third-class coach. No plush carpets, liquor closets, or private sleeping compartments here. Some of the passengers had purchased boards and cheap straw cushions back in Denver, and stretched them between the hard wooden benches. The air felt hot as molten glass and smelled of rancid sweat and grimy clothing.

  “Welcome to the ash pit of hell,” a disgruntled Big Bat Landry said, greeting his employer. “Sure you could spare the cost of our tickets?”

  “Take the cob out of your ass,” Bodmer snapped. He removed his hat to whack at flies with it. “I’ve got some good news. I’m rescinding my order about Hickok. Go ahead and kill the son of a bitch, and cash in on the reward with my blessing.”

  Dog Man, who was idly cleaning his fingernails with a match, flashed his bent-wire grin. “We intended to, boss, order or no. See, your pay can’t touch ten thousand dollars.”

  “No. But I’ll tell you fellows what. On top of what that rich Texan is offering, I’ll toss in five thousand extra. I want Hickok cold as a wagon wheel! Speaking of Hickok, you two seen him lately?”

  Both men shook their heads. “He’s with Vogel somewhere,” Landry said. “Either in the Pullman in front of yours, or in the extra caboose with the machine.”

  “Everywhere that old foreign fart goes,” Dog Man tossed in, “Hickok shadows him. That skinny kid, too. The one dressed like a Cincinnati sissy, always scribbling down things.”

  Bodmer nodded, his sharp fox face concentrated in thought. “Don’t make a play against Vogel too quick. The guests on this train include the lieutenant governor of Missouri and a first cousin of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Besides, Vogel’s backers are powerful men, too, and they’ll raise six sorts of hell if it’s done obviously.”

  “Lot of ways to die out west,” Big Bat said.

  “True, my friend, but I’m making a finer point than that. I’m saying it will go to law if there’s any proof carelessly left behind. You aren’t back shooting some greasy drifter at an end-of-track hovel. So let’s just keep an eye on him at first, see how the wind sets. It must be done right, or we’ll all dance on air.”

  While this conversation took place, an old man in frayed farming clothes, seated on the bench about ten or twelve feet away, out of earshot, was smoking cheap, foul-smelling Mexican tobacco in a corncob pipe.

  “Christ, that stinks,” Bodmer carped. He raised his voice: “Say, codger! Take that scent bag outside, it’s bringing tears to my eyes!”

  “Ain’t none of my funeral,” the old man retorted, turning his back on the trio.

  Bodmer let it go. But Landry seemed to take it personally. He reached down and opened his poke, pulling out a tightly coiled “blacksnake” whip ending in a knotted popper. Big Bat gave a fancy shake like a Mexican dally-roper; the whip, like a living tentacle, instantly uncoiled itself. Bodmer watched, fascinated, as the West’s greatest whip master deftly and effortlessly flipped his wrist. The knotted popper whistled through the air, caught the pipe, and ripped it from the old codger’s toothless mouth.

  “Good eye,” Dog Man admired while the old-timer sputtered his indignant protest.

  “That’s a grand total of fifteen thousand dollars,” Bodmer continued. “And if you look at it logically, boys, you need to kill Hickok first. With him sent under, Vogel will be a duck on a fence.”

  “Ice,” Professor Albert Vogel explained enthusiastically while Josh scrawled notes, “iss za poor man’s jewelry! In Paris during August, a bag of stale snow commands za price of a bottle of fine vine! Ja! But ice iss more pure zan snow, vich absorb za impurities . . .”

  Vogel nattered on happily while Josh and Bill watched Hilda—Vogel’s pet name for his remarkable refrigeration compressor—spew out more than enough glittering chunks of ice to supply the train’s needs. Each Pullman had an ice closet, and Hilda had also supplied the kitchen, dining, and bar cars.

  “Hilda’s design iss sempiternal. Zat means she vill not quit, once za pipes are sealed and za suction created ...”

  Josh hung in there, while Bill seemed more interested in the caboose’s security than in Vogel’s enthusiastic spiel. The car was cramped, with the machine taking up nearly a third of the space. But the car was still fixed up fairly comfortably, with several bunks, a mirror and washstand, even a small woodstove with a tin-pipe chimney. It would be vulnerable from both doors, and clearly Bill did not like that.

  Josh watched Bill glance overhead, his face thoughtful. Then Wild Bill checked the lock on the front door of the caboose and headed out onto the rear platform. Josh followed him out. They left the door open so Vogel was in clear view.

  It was early afternoon, and Josh estimated they were about eighty miles east of Denver. And fairly flying along at twenty to twenty-five miles per hour.

  Bill, keeping his back to the wind, slid a cheroot from his shir
t pocket and bit off one square tip. He struck a match with his thumb, fighting the wind for a light and winning. He puffed the cigar to life. Then Bill handed Josh a quarter-eagle.

  “I’m hoping to get up a poker game later, kid. Stop by the bar car when you get a chance, wouldja, pick me up a bottle of Old Taylor.”

  Josh nodded, pocketing the money. He still could not believe that he was actually standing beside Bill Hickok, watching his hero smoke and gaze out across the plains with those weathered, cold blue eyes that had seen several lifetimes of adventure already.

  “Prime cattle country here,” Bill said, nodding toward a vast herd visible on their left. “When I first came out here, after the war, you saw nothing but a few Longhorns that had strayed north from the Texas Brasada country. Now look—all these new Shorthorns and Herefords. Better meat that sells higher.”

  Bill glanced back inside, where Vogel was tinkering with Hilda’s coolant mixture. “But it’s all about to change,” Bill added. “I hear some gent named Glidden has just patented a new fence line. Calls it barbwire. The big open ranges are about to get busted up into front and back yards.”

  “My editor,” Josh said, “says history is about to turn the page on us.”

  Bill nodded. “I’d say he struck a lode.”

  Josh watched Bill grab hold of the iron ladder that led to the roof. He swung up onto the first rung.

  “Where you going?” Josh demanded.

  “Ease off, Longfellow, I’m starting to feel close-herded. I’m just taking a little peek topside. Keep an eye on Professor Freeze.”

  Blond curls rippling in the wind, Bill hauled himself to the top of the caboose. The moment his head cleared the top, he came eye-to-eye with a bearded, frowning giant.

  “Why . . . it’s Yellowstone!” Bill exclaimed.

  “Cap’n Bill? Why, it is you!” roared out “Yellowstone Jack” McQuady as he reached one giant paw out to grab Bill’s extended hand. “By the Lord Harry! So we meet again, sir! But not in no damned weevil-infested reb prison camp this time, eh?”

  “I never thought we’d get out of Andersonville alive,” Bill said.