ABILENE
IN THE front room of a raw board building, on which carpenters still
were laboring noisily, sat a tall man at a table, pleasantly humming a
tune to himself as he bent over his task.
In appearance he was a Viking; a very strong man, bulky, above six feet
in height, and yet lithe, easy, graceful, with perfect coördination of
physical faculties. His eye was very blue. His yellow hair was long,
like that of ancient warriors; so long that it fell in ripples on his
shoulders; and, as hair of any warrior should be, it was admirably kept.
The garb of this striking-looking man—one of the handsomest men that
ever crossed the Missouri in the days of the frontier, which is much to
say of males—was on the whole devoid of pretentiousness. His dark
clothing was ready-made, but his boots never were ready-made. He showed
the influence of the South, where a man may be slouchy in all things
save as to his feet. This man’s boots were of fine calf, closely cut to
cover a small foot. A pair of gloves lay on the table, the best of
buckskin. His hat, of the finest felt, was wide of brim and low of
crown—the hat of the upper range, distinct from the steeple-crown
Mexican sombrero.
Had the entire border been combed, a finer example of the better type of
border man could not at that time have been found than this one. In any
corner of the world his appearance would have called attention. Two or
three men sitting across from him against the wall in the hotel
office—for this building was no less than the Drovers’ Cottage of
Abilene, soon to be famous across the Western world—eyed him with
silent respect as he sat busy, humming his carefree melody. They very
well knew Wild Bill Hickok, whom rumor reported to be sought for as the
new town marshal of Abilene, first of the cow camps.
The famous marshal of Hays City—as he then was—now was engaged in the
daily task which he never neglected and never gave to hands other than
his own—that of cleaning his two heavy revolvers. No hand but his ever
had been allowed to touch one of these weapons, even in the slightest or
most friendly way. He himself never failed to examine them every
morning.
They were very long-barreled revolvers, and their owner’s artistic fancy
was indulged in them to the extent of ivory handles. The metal work was
dark. The front sight on each had been filed down low. That was just
before the day of fixed ammunition, and all revolvers still were
muzzle-loaders as to the cylinders. Under the barrel of each piece
worked a hinged ramrod, and the backs of the cylinders were indented and
tubed to permit admission of the percussion caps. They handled a large
round ball. Some of these, with the small flask of fine rifle powder,
lay on the table near at hand. With a short, well-polished round stick
of hickory, Mr. Hickok was now engaged in cleaning barrel and cylinder
so thoroughly that not a speck of dust remained. His boots and gloves
were clean; his shirt was clean; his face and hands were clean; and, be
sure, his guns were clean.
He finished his task at length, replaced each cylinder and pushed down
the pin on which it revolved. Then, with eyes narrowing and lips pursed,
he poured into each cylinder barrel an exact—very exact—charge of the
fine powder, gently jolting each charge home, and on top, with the
utmost care, seating the round ball and pushing it home with the hinged
ramrod. Each load was precisely like every other load. Then he capped
each nipple of the cylinder, held back each hammer and rolled the
cylinder with ear intent to see that the click of the lock came
absolutely even. After this he slipped the long weapons into the greased
holsters at his heavy belt. His coat tails unobtrusively covered the
equipment. He walked to the new washbasin at the new sink, cleansed and
wiped his hands on a towel not absolutely new; and so was ready for the
duties of the day, whatever these might be.
“Well, Bill, going to get somebody to-day?” one of the loafing skin
hunters against the wall guffawed, trying to be offhand, friendly and
humorous. The tall man looked at him steadily, his own face absolutely
emotionless, and made no reply at all. His dignity was that of a lion
among small animals. He was a man of few confidences and no
familiarities.
When Wild Bill Hickok stepped out into the street he saw coming across
the railroad track a stranger, a young man tall as himself, though not
so heavy of build. The newcomer was clad much like himself, in dark
clothing, with neat boots. His coat swung easily free, but to the
specialized eye of Wild Bill it covered something on either side.
Moreover, he presently noted that the young man wore his guns in an odd
way—the right-hand stock pointing back, the left-hand one pointing
forward. This peculiarity he had never seen in the equipment of any man,
cowman, gambler or professional bad man. He asked himself, if this man
should happen to be left-handed, or if he were a two-handed man, which
gun would be used first? That constituted, as Wild Bill admitted then
and there, a sort of mental problem which it might take the thousandth
of a second to decide.
There was no pretentiousness about the newcomer, more than there was
about Wild Bill Hickok. They both were simple, quiet men, low of voice,
pleasant of address. Two more typical killers did not then stand west of
the Missouri stream, although they were from widely separated countries.
The range, north and south, upper and lower, ran well-nigh two thousand
miles in its longer dimension, and covered wide variations in all types.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said the young man, advancing. “I know this is
Marshal Hickok. I am McMasters, sheriff of Gonzales County, down in
Texas.”
The blue-eyed man put out his hand readily.
“I know about you,” said he. “You are in the Rangers, too, down there.
That’s a good body of men. I reckon they need to be good.
“Well, it’s a lovely morning,” he continued. “I’ve not had a drink yet
this morning.”
They walked down the ragged street, if street it could be called,
passing over the railroad track, whose rails as yet hardly had been
burnished by any wheels; a track which ran but a few hours’ journey west
of Abilene at that time. There was a switch which would accommodate
perhaps twenty cars, some pens which would hold perhaps five hundred
head of cattle, some chutes which never yet had been used. Like all the
rest of Abilene, the yards presented an aspect of raw newness. The
residential portion of the city consisted largely of sod houses, dugouts
and canvas tents, although it did not lack unpainted pine in its more
ambitious structures. The broken expanse of high-fronted wooden
buildings along its single main street offered the appearance
conventional in the new railroad town of the frontier of the West. There
was a Golden Eagle Clothing Store; two or three offering general
merchandise. There was no drug store, but there were two barber shops
and the Twin Livery Barn. There was no church or school. But, as the
apostle of Abilene had said, there were many saloons and free
dance-halls, each in its way openly advertising its wares.
Toward the saloon of his choice—which also apparently offered
dance-hall accommodations at seasonable hours—Wild Bill bent his steps.
The interior still presented a certain dishabille. A sleepy negro was
sweeping out the corks. A barrel in a corner held empty bottles in
careless profusion. The chairs presented an order apparently not
preconcerted, and the legs of some were broken. There was no billiard
table in all Abilene, and mahogany was not yet known in any bar of
Abilene. None the less, here was a goodly plank, and back of it were
arranged shelves still holding bottles of liquid contents in spite of
the late obvious demand. The interior was not, to any imagination, howso
violent, a lovely thing to see in the ghastly light of day. The light
now was rather dim. Two or three kerosene lamps still were burning,
yellow and sickly, not devoid of fumes, which joined the other fumes.
“I usually come here for my liquor,” said Wild Bill, “because I know
Henry Doak has a barrel of real bourbon, besides what he sells. It ain’t
poison. I never go against the liquor game very hard myself.”
“It isn’t best,” said McMasters. “Still, the oldest man I ever knew told
me he’d lived so long because every morning before breakfast he took two
or three fingers of bourbon—when he could get it—and rubbed his chest
with a fresh corncob.”
“As good a way as any,” said Hickok. “A man never dies till his time
comes—and then he does.”
He was humming to himself as he searched for the bottle which suited
him.
“No three or four fingers for me,” said he. “Too much, especially if you
have got anything particular to do.”
A short gray man with white mustache and goatee shuffled in, not
vouchsafing any speech at all. He brought them glasses and motioned Bill
to a quiet corner of the room, where at the hour they found themselves
quite alone.
“Well, Mr. McMasters,” said Bill, “I am glad to see you in Abilene, and
I wish you were going to live here. It’s not just the healthiest place
for a peace officer. It maybe won’t be any healthier if the Texas herds
ever do begin to come in.”
“I know of one on the way,” said McMasters. “It will be in now almost
any day.”
Hickok nodded.
“They used to drive up the Neosho in towards Sedalia, a few years ago.
Those toughs in there used the trail men mighty rough. Dougherty,
Ellison, Hunter, McMasters, Lockhart—they were all good men that tried
to drive in there from Texas. It would have paid St. Louis to have sent
her whole police force down there and cleaned up that gang of cattle
bandits. They’ve just headed off all the Texas cattle that came up that
way.”
“Yes, I know about that pretty well,” assented Dan McMasters. “You say
McMasters. Calvin McMasters was my father. They killed him. He was a
friend of Colonel Burleson Lockhart. They killed Lockhart too. I’ve been
in there since, once or twice, on business of my own. That gang were
very largely friends of Dave Tutt.”
Their eyes met silently. Dave Tutt was a man whom Wild Bill Hickok
killed in a street duel on the public square of Springfield, Missouri,
in the presence of his friends, all of whom had threatened to kill
Hickok on sight.
“Well, those people couldn’t seem to make a living any way except by
robbing folks,” said the border man after a while. “The real brains of
that outfit was a fellow called Rudabaugh—Sim Rudabaogh. I heard that
he went South; to Austin, I think.”
“Yes, he got some sort of Northern political pull back of him I don’t
just know how. He has given us a fine example of organized
Reconstruction politics. He has put on foot the biggest plan of
wholesale cow stealing and land stealing and general highway robbery
that ever was started even in Texas.”
“Using his old trade, eh? Working large?”
“Yes. Just now he’s getting hold of all the land scrip the state ever
issued—you know Texas retained her own lands when she came in. His plan
is to get hold of about all of Texas north of the Buffalo gap, and then
to steal cows enough east of that to stock the whole Staked Plains.”
“That sounds like a pretty large order!” smiled Hickok.
“It is a large order. The man is crazy who would ever think of it. I
don’t doubt that Sim Rudabaugh is crazy—crazy with his own egotism and
his success in deeds that no sane man ever could have thought of doing.”
“Have you got any personal quarrel?” asked Hickok of him quietly.
“That word doesn’t cover it, sir! Mr. Hickok, I have said that Rudabaugh
killed my father and Colonel Lockhart. That is, I am practically sure of
it. My father was sheriff of Gonzales before they put me in. I could not
refuse. I knew I was elected to end the Rudabaugh gang.
“Quarrel? I can’t call it by so small a name. For every reason in the
world I have got to have that man dead or alive. And you’ll think I am
crazy myself,” he added, “when I tell you I want him alive. He is worth
much more to Texas alive than dead. The fact is, the whole peace of
Texas—and the whole end of the big steal in Texas—depends on my
bringing that man in, not dead but alive.”
Hickok looked at him in silence for a time.
“You have had to shoot sometimes.”
“Several times. I have made a good many arrests as sheriff in my county
and as a captain in the Rangers in other counties.”
Hickok shook his head. A light drinker, he pushed his glass aside not
much more than tasted.
“No good in making arrests. There is only one way with a man like
that—let him make his break.”
McMasters went on to explain the circumstances of Colonel Griswold’s
talk with Yellow Hand, below the Washita, giving the details of the
fight.
“We put a pretty stiff crimp into them there,” he said. “I don’t think
Rudabaugh has more than two of his best warriors with him—Baldy Collins
and Ben Estill. He got Estill at Caldwell. He’ll maybe pick up some more
recruits over toward the Missouri line. He’s been trailing our herd ever
since we started out, maybe a thousand miles and he’ll never quit if he
can help it. As I have explained to you, it has been all to his interest
to break up this herd. If word of its success got back to Texas this
season, that would end his dream of cheap land and cheap cows. All Texas
would be on its guard. You see why I want to arrest Rudabaugh. You will
see, too, I’ve got to have him alive if possible.”
“Then why do you want to see me? I’m not living in this town, though I
may later. Besides, my specialty is not taking people alive.” Wild
Bill’s forehead wrinkled in thought. “I don’t believe in arrests for
that kind of people.”
“I’m not so particular about any of those men being alive except
Rudabaugh,” replied McMasters. “I haven’t got any warrant for him, and
can’t get one, and couldn’t stop to prosecute him if I had. I couldn’t
prove that he killed any of the drovers of the old Shawnee Trail. I
don’t want to prove anything. I’ve got no warrant and no requisition
papers. All I want is to get my hands on him.
“But I can prove that he killed the two Indian women down near the
Arbuckle Mountains. There is no white jurisdiction down there, and in
Kansas it’s no crime to kill Indians. But there won’t be any habeas
corpus if he is ever brought before the court of the Comanches. That’s
the court I want! That’s what Griswold wants, and he wants that because
it means peace with the Comanches. Don’t you see? It means that they’ll
come in out of Texas and go on their reservation. That will open up
everything. There’ll be any number of cattle cross at Doan’s Store, and
even further west, as quick as the drovers know it is safe against the
Comanches, in further west than where this herd crossed the Red.
“So you see, Mr. Hickok, just why I want Sim Rudabaugh alive. That’s why
I came to Abilene. I heard you were here, and I thought maybe
Rudabaugh’d come here. If you don’t mean the law here, there’s going to
be no law in Abilene.”
Hickok sat for a time in silence.
“Well,” said he at length, “I suppose I am generally intended to keep
the peace. If I help you to get Rudabaugh in Kansas I am helping keep
the peace in Kansas. And if they want me for town marshal here maybe I’d
better give them a sample of the goods. Every town marshal in the world
ought to help a Texas Ranger.
“But listen, friend,” he continued; “when two men go into a business of
this kind each puts his life in the other man’s hands. Mostly I’d rather
risk my life in my own hands. Are you a married man?”
“No, sir.”
“Are you a good shot with a revolver?”
“Yes, sir.”
Hickok rose lazily, leaving the liquor in his glass.
“Let’s take a walk out of doors,” he said.
They stepped to the front of the saloon and stood looking up and down
the street. Some forty yards away a sign hung out over the walk: “Dance
Hall and Saloon.”
“I’ll take the right-hand O,” said Hickok quietly.
With the ease of great practice and native genius—and all the Army men
rated Hickok as the best shot with rifle or revolver that the West ever
saw—he raised one of his weapons to a high level and fired the six
shots of the single-action piece with unspeakable rapidity. He carefully
returned the gun to its place. He did not look at the sign. He knew!
“That’s fine work, sir,” said Dan McMasters with undisguised enthusiasm.
“Your reputation is deserved. Quite often I doubt a man’s reputation as
a shot until I see him shoot.”
“How about your own?” demanded Hickok. “I myself never shoot in public.
I don’t want anybody to know how I shoot.”
“Nor I. My reputation? I haven’t any this far north.”
“Well, there’s the left-hand O. Can you see the one I shot?”
“Perfectly,” smiled McMasters.
“You’ve a good eye. Can you hit it one time out of six?”
“I can hit it six times out of six, sir.”
“You think so?”
“I don’t think so—I know it.”
“Cut loose!” said Bill succinctly.
For an instant McMasters stood facing his mark, both hands poised above
his heavy guns after his invariable fashion, which had swiftly become a
tradition on the lower range. Hickok did not really see which gun he
chose, his own eye for the time being fixed on the signboard. But a gun
did rise in Dan McMasters’ right hand. And once more, with perfect
spacing, came six reports.
By this time a crowd had poured out in the streets. Men were at their
heels as the two walked close to the signboard. Wild Bill saw the six
bullets grouped close, splintering one into the other at times, not one
touching the outer rim of black.
His own eyes narrowed. He looked curiously, studiously, at the face of
the first man he had ever been obliged to credit with pistol work
approaching his own. The face had changed. It had not lost its
concentration. It was a mask, expressionless. Hickok studied the mask
for a moment. He saw in it his own face also. He put a hand on
McMasters’ shoulder.
The two turned down the street, Hickok flinging back his long yellow
hair in a gesture habitual with him.
“Take a good look at the work on them two signs, men,” said he,
accosting the curious followers. “You ain’t apt to see better. This man
and I are going to see peace and quiet in Abilene. He’s my friend and my
deputy.
“I didn’t think the man lived that could do it,” said he to McMasters as
they walked away together. “Your six are bunched as good as mine, and
your time is perfect. Come on down to the Cottage and let’s sit around
for a while.
“Hello, what’s that?” he added. A group of men was coming up at a fast
gait from the southern edge of the town. Among them was one, apparently
a leader, whose rapid discourse occasionally was broken by wild whoops.
“Who’s that?” laughed Hickok. “Some more wild men from down the trail?”
In effect, it was Mr. McCoyne, explaining to the citizens of Abilene
that beyond a peradventure he had met and traveled with an actual herd
of cattle, actually bound for Abilene. Moreover, the said herd was then
and there camped just below the Solomon, within easy reach of town.
This certainly was news of interest to McMasters as well as to Wild Bill
Hickok. McCoyne was too much excited to identify any one, did not
remember McMasters, whom he had not recently seen and never had known
well.
“Listen, men!” he shouted. “We’ve got to have a celebration. Get all the
Eastern men together. Go see if our new band is sober enough to play any
sort of tune. Get ’em down on the portico at the Drovers’ Cottage in an
hour or so. When I bring the herd into town, and we get right opposite
the Cottage, tell ’em to strike up. We’ve got to show these people what
a real live town is.
“Now, come on,” he resumed. “I own a interest in the Spread Eagle
Saloon”—it chanced to be the one whose sign had served for a target
just now, later a matter of much pride to the owner—“but I’m going to
change the name to Lone Star. Come on and have a drink with McCoyne,
president of the Abilene Stockyards!”
By magic, from their tents and dugouts, their sod huts and log hovels
and their residences of raw pine board, the men of Abilene
assembled—border men, skin hunters, loafers, gamblers, thieves,
citizens and aliens, merchants and cattle buyers; a throng sufficiently
motley for a total population of a very hundred. They crowded into the
saloon, formed an overflow meeting upon the outside; primitive men in a
primitive day.
Around this primitive scene stretched a wide and primitive world. The
blue sky, flecked with fleecy clouds, bent over an endless sea of
grasses growing to the very edge of Abilene. The flowers nodded and
beckoned in the gentle wind. Not a furrow of plow was there. These rude
men of Abilene were forerunners of an inland empire soon to come but not
yet over the horizon.
Hickok and McMasters did not go beyond the edge of the crowd. The former
seemed now, as so often he was, absorbed in the sheer beauty of the
prairies.
“It’s pretty,” said he, waving his hand. “I hate to think of its
changing.” A tinge of his occasional melancholy fell upon him. “Of
course, it will change and change fast,” said he. “Well, I was a part of
this.”
Without affectation, he spoke in the past tense. There never was a
killer who gave himself a long life.
Inside the saloon, mounted on a chair, McCoyne, president of the Abilene
Stockyards, was addressing the multitude.
“They’re a strange-looking people, them Texans,” he was saying. “They’ve
got no wagons; only some carts, each with two yoke of oxen. There ain’t
a whole pair of breeches in the outfit, nor a decent hat. Every morning
when a fellow wants a horse, where his rope lands, that’s his—and he
has to ride to stay with it. They can ride any horse in the world.
They’ve got a fighting chicken on top of one cart and they say they’ll
bet the herd on that rooster—and here us folks ain’t got a single one
in Abilene! They’ll bet anything you like they’ve got the fastest horses
in Kansas. They say they’ve got a man they’ll back in a shooting match
against anybody in the world.”
“They must mean Wild Bill,” said a voice.
“No, his name is McMasters—Dan McMasters. But he ain’t with them now.
Besides that, they got something else; you can’t guess. They’ve got a
woman!”
“Aw, go on!” A voice.
“Yes, they have. Young woman, too, and prettier’n any picture you ever
saw in a frame. She owns all the herd. She’s rich as she is pretty. Her
name’s Lockhart, Miss Lockhart from Caldwell, County, Texas, but not
Caldwell, Kansas, gentlemen. She owns the Del Sol ranch down there. They
raised this whole herd on that ranch; or anyhow that’s what they say.
Men, here’s to Miss Anastasie Lockhart, the finest girl in the world and
the first one up the Texas trail!”
Two men of the crowd who had been listening quietly stepped out at the
door, looking at one another but not speaking. They passed close at
hand; the future town marshal of Abilene and his deputy.
[Illustration: _A Paramount Picture._ _North of 36._
RUDABAUGH (NOAH BEERY) AND DAN McMASTERS (JACK HOLT).]