The Sunset Trail

From Dallas Mr. Holiday travelled into the Panhandle. Perhaps his broken health made him irritable, or possibly he was over-sensitive. Whatever the argument, when a rude spirit, a rider for the Frying Pan ranch, whom he met in Tascosa, spoke of Mr. Holiday as one who ought to have been clerking in a store, he promptly hived him with a bullet through his heart. This was when Mr. Willingham flourished as Sheriff for the Panhandle; but as that officer was over towards Goodnight’s at the time, no fault should attach to him. Panhandle sentiment, as had that of Dallas, justified Mr. Holiday; his critic had his guns on when he perished, and that is, or should be, sufficient wherever justice holds the scales.

From the Panhandle Mr. Holiday migrated to Denver. No one packs a gun in Denver, at least no gun big enough to win the respect of Mr. Holiday. Yielding to the jealousy of Denver touching pistols, our dying one from Georgia put his irons aside. He felt lonesome without them, a feeling that grew into disgust when a rough, having advantage of his weak condition, heaped contumely on his head, Mr. Holiday sighed as he drew a knife—it was carried somewhere between his shoulders—and altered the appearance of the insolent one to such a degree that he was as a stranger to his friends.

It was six months later when Mr. Holiday next claimed attention by listlessly emptying his pistol into the head of a gentleman who had laid unlawful claim to a stack of his chips. They were reposing, coppered, in what faro gamesters term the Big Square.

This homicide, which occurred in Las Vegas, also found popular endorsement. The illicit action of departed had placed him beyond the pale. There is no love in the West for rash or wicked ones who illegally covet their neighbour’s chips. The episode bore somewhat upon Mr. Holiday, however, who had an imagination edged by books. He was heard to mourn a trifle.

“I don’t see what’s the matter with my luck,” said Mr. Holiday, as he arranged with an undertaker on the Plaza for the obsequies. Mr. Holiday was too well bred to leave a burden upon the community, and even his enemies admitted that he never failed to make a proper clean-up and always buried his dead. “I don’t see what’s the matter with my luck,” repeated Mr. Holiday, “but it looks as though I had more of this sort of thing sawed off on me than any invalid in the Territory.”

“That’s what!” replied the undertaker, sympathetically. His sympathy in no wise dimmed the brilliancy of his bill, which document did him proud.

Following that Las Vegas difference, Mr. Holiday withdrew to Tombstone. It is best for a gentleman, when he has filled a grave with one other than himself, to seek new theatres of effort. In Tombstone, foremost in the social and business swirl of the camp, Mr. Holiday became acquainted with the brothers Earp. Said brothers, being respectively Virgil, Wyatt and Morgan, were all splendid shots and sterling folk of standing, character and force. The brothers Earp and Mr. Holiday became friends at sight. It was as though a fourth had been born into the Earp family.

The East, supercilious and white of shirt, should avoid a narrow view of Western men and manners. The East should not measure up the West by Eastern standards. While the West pays its faithful interest, and does not borrow more than one-fifth of the security, the East should rest content. The one is a banker, the other a warrior; one employs interest, the other uses a gun; both kill.

Virgil Earp was marshal of Tombstone. It was a post not wanting in vicissitudes, and Virgil Earp’s arm had been crippled and made as naught by a shotgun in the hands of an illwisher. But it was his left arm; his right, with the hand that appertained, was all that one might ask. What more should a Western marshal require than a perfect pistol hand and eye to match?

Wyatt and Morgan Earp were in the service of the Express Company. They went often as guards—“riding shotgun,” it was called—when the stage bore unusual treasure.

Over in the San Simon Valley lived a covey of cattle people, with Curly Bill at its head. The cow business is a lazy trade. It leaves plenty of idle time in the hands of ones who follow it. Those of the San Simon were by nature bubbling springs of industry. Since the cattle trade did not employ their whole energy, they oft repaired to a nearby trail and stopped the Tombstone stage.

There came an occasion when Curly Bill could not go with the expedition, and that was unfortunate. He was obliged to entrust the enterprise to subordinates, who bungled the affair. They shot the stage driver when they should have shot a wheeler. The reins fell from the driver’s dead hands; the fear-maddened team ran away and carried one hundred thousand dollars in gold from beneath the larcenous palms of the hold-ups. In their wrath the road agents sent a volley after the rocking, reeling, disappearing coach. It snuffed out a tourist who was riding outside.

Four days went by, and a quartette of the San Simon people, being the McLowrie brothers, Frank and John, and the Clanton brothers, Billy and Ike, came into Tombstone to spy out how much was known or guessed of those desperately poor workmen who had so let the stage job fall through. The investigators discovered that more was known than stood best for their health. They lost no time in deciding to ride back to the San Simon.

Virgil Earp had made a different plan. The San Simon, as a region, would not suffer in its respectability were it never again to see a Clanton or a McLowrie. With a purpose to detain the San Simon delegation, Virgil Earp assembled his kinsmen, Wyatt and Morgan. To be polite, Virgil invited Mr. Holiday, then but a week in Tombstone, to have his smoky part in the coming war. He might act with the Earp household in that proposed round-up of the road agents.

Virgil Earp did this in a spirit of politeness. It is Western manners when you have a fight to make—one that is commodious and in which there is room for their honourable accommodation—to invite your friends. This you may do to a point that brings your party even with the enemy. You must not, however, overtop the foe in numbers. That would be the worst of form, and fix you as coarse and low and ignorant in every refined mind. With only a trio of the Earps, there existed in the pending engagement a reputable vacancy, and Virgil asked Mr. Holiday to fill it. Mr. Holiday accepted. To decline such a courtesy would want a precedent and destroy one’s good repute. Such action on Mr. Holiday’s part would have shocked the Tombstone taste, which is as silken as a spaniel’s ear.

The brothers Earp and Mr. Holiday met the San Simon outfit as the latter, mounted for the long ride, came spurring forth of the corral. There was no time frittered in speech. The San Simon contingent jumped from their saddles, each using his horse as a breastwork. The brothers Earp and Mr. Holiday had no horses to cover them. A horse makes a good breastwork, but a bad gun-rest.

The gods fought on the side of the law, the stage company, the brothers Earp, and Mr. Holiday. There was a rattle of six-shooters. Two McLowries and one Clanton fell with bullets where their thoughts should be. The smoke lifted, and there stood Ike Clanton begging his life.

“Run for it, then, you coyote!” cried Wyatt Earp, and the suppliant heaved himself into the saddle and sped with the flying wind.

“That was a mistake, Wyatt,” quoth Mr. Holiday; “you should have collected his hair.” Mr. Holiday was far of sight; before a week went by events arose to justify his comment.

After the battle the brothers Earp and Mr. Holiday repaired to the nearest saloon and refreshed themselves. Then the stage company’s surgeon came and stopped up the bullet holes, whereof the four owned seven among them. Tombstone meanwhile issued forth in a body and joyfully planted the dead.

Six days later, having advantage of the darkness, Ike Clanton, with Mr. Spence, Mr. Stillwell, and one Florentine, a Mexican, crept to the rear window of the Eureka saloon, and shot dead Morgan Earp, engaged at seven-up.

Virgil and Wyatt placed the body of the dead Morgan in a coffin and, with Mr. Holiday to be of the mourners, carried it to Colton. At Colton the body would take the train for California, the home of the Earps. Virgil would go as company for the dead.

Wyatt Earp and Mr. Holiday rode as far as Tucson. They would have gone to California with the dead Morgan, but they did not have the time. It was now their duty to get the scalps of the San Simon four who had worked the destruction of Morgan. Also, to save their reputations and secure their prey, they must move at once before the trail grew cold.

Fortune and luck were theirs. As the train, bearing the dead Morgan, drew into Tucson, the hawk-like gray eyes of Mr. Holiday showed him Messrs. Stillwell and Clanton on the station platform. He pointed out the red-hand ones to Wyatt Earp.

The two swung from the train.

The quarry separated, Mr. Clanton running craftily in and out among the crowd, while Mr. Stillwell, with an utter dearth of war-wisdom, fled along the lonely track. Wyatt and Mr. Holiday pursued Mr. Stillwell, and brought him to bay near the water tank. Filling him full of lead, they returned, and rapped on the car-window to attract the attention of Virgil.

“One!” cried Wyatt, holding up a finger.

Virgil looked up; the funeral sadness of his face for a moment gave way to a smile. He nodded, and then the train pulled out.

That night Wyatt Earp and Mr. Holiday turned Tucson upside down hunting for the evanscent Mr. Clanton. He had fled and left no sign.

“I must sleep, Wyatt,” said Mr. Holiday, at last.

One is not to forget that Mr. Holiday was an invalid, with days not only numbered, but few. His fatigue was excusable. That he was wearied to a standstill his yellow moustache, a-tremble with the nervous twitching of his lip, made proof.

Speaking of Mr. Holiday’s moustache—the colour of corn: Is it not the thing strange how those gentlemen of guns and perils should have been every one of the gray-eyed strain? Or was it that the desperate drop in the veins of each came from some old forgotten viking ancestor of that yellow-haired, battle-axe breed which once foraged and fought along the coasts of Northern Europe?

Mr. Holiday was vastly repaired by a long night’s sleep. The morning found Mr. Holiday and Wyatt Earp in the saddle, their belts heavy with cartridges, war-bags bulging with provant. They rode out of Tucson, and their desperate campaign of revenge commenced. They invaded the San Simon and blotted out the Mexican Florentine. This was slight work, like the killing of a jack-rabbit. There should be braver game in the San Simon.

The San Simon ranks, however, were growing thin. Mr. Spence, fear-winged, had fled into Mexico. The surviving Mr. Clanton had made good his flight begun that Tucson evening, and was never traced.

Curly Bill, the San Simon chief, owned a better courage, and Wyatt Earp and Mr. Holiday found him at the Whetstone Springs. There was a battle royal; Wyatt Earp and Mr. Holiday on the one side, with Curly Bill and a couple of his adherents on the other. Curly Bill was rubbed out, while Wyatt Earp, shaving eternity, had the cantle of his saddle torn away with a double handful of buckshot. The two adherents of Curly Bill, while somewhat shattered, escaped.

“With Pete Spence in Mexico,” said Wyatt Earp to Mr. Holiday, as he changed his shattered saddle for the saddle of Curly Bill, “and Ike Clanton nowhere to be found, I take it we might as well quit and call it a day.”

“There’s nothing else,” said Mr. Holiday.

Mr. Holiday and Wyatt Earp rode back to Tombstone. They were in their rooms when a word of warning reached them. That recent blazing work in Tucson and in the San Simon had invoked the invidious admiration of a Sheriff who was lusting for fame. He was even then below with a posse brought from afar, equipped of warrants and weapons and ready to apprehend them.

“What do you say, Doc?” asked Wyatt Earp.

“For myself,” said Mr. Holiday, smothering a cough, “I think I shall shoot my way out. Considering the state of my lungs, it would endanger my health to be locked up.”

They sent down quiet word, and had their horses saddled and brought around. Then Mr. Holiday and Wyatt Earp walked into the centre of that aspiring posse. There was a giving way; no one stretched his hand to stay their going. Only the ambitious Sheriff spoke.

“Mr. Earp,” said he, sweetly, “I want to see you.”

“My friend,” said Wyatt Earp, turning on the other a glance of warning, “you may see me once too often.”

Mr. Holiday and Wyatt Earp, at a road-gait, took the trail for Tucson. In the blistering heat and whiteness of the summer dust, they disappeared; that was the last of their story in Tombstone. They didn’t see Tucson; at a fork in the trail they halted.

“Well, adios, Doc,” said Wyatt Earp, extending his hand. “Write me in ’Frisco how the world goes with you.”

“I will,” returned Mr. Holiday. “I shall try Colorado. I must consider my health, and I prefer the climate there. Adios!”

It was a year later when the Arizona Sheriff, who stood aside that Tombstone day, broke into California Gulch, and the wisdom of Mr. Masterson became for Mr. Holiday a shield of thickness.

“Your papers,” observed the Governor to him of Arizona, “are in proper form, and set clearly forth the death of one Stillwell at the hands of Mr. Holiday. But Mr. Holiday is under charges here for robbery on the highway. You cannot expect me to cheat justice of its due in Colorado, in order to send you a man whom you should never have let escape. The requisition must be refused.”

Mr. Holiday lived on in California Gulch, sheltered by the charge of the Off Wheeler. It protected him to the end, which was not far away. When his sands were running low, Mr. Masterson was by his couch.

“You must have used up a ton of lead, Doc,” observed Mr. Masterson one afternoon, being in a mood of fine philosophy; “and, considering your years in the West, it beats the marvellous. It would look as though you simply shot your way out of one battle into another. How did you come to do it?”

“It used to worry me,” gasped Mr. Holiday, “to think that I must die, and, to take my mind off my troubles, I mixed up with everything that came along. It was the only way in which I could forget myself.”

California Gulch was present at the funeral. They buried Mr. Holiday beneath a clump of cedars high up on the mountain side, and Red Jack draped the Four Flush bar in mourning.

“We’re going to miss him,” he remarked, with a lugubrious sigh, to Mr. Masterson, when, after the services, the latter came in for his evening drink. “We’ll shorely miss him from our midst! An’ when I think on his c’reer, sort o’ run over it hittin’ the lofty places, I’m here to observe that he was the vividest invalid, an’ the busiest, with which I ever crossed up. He certainly was an in-dee-fat-ig-a-ble sick man; an’ that goes!”

CHAPTER XV—HOW MR. HICKOK WENT INTO CHEYENNE

Mr. Masterson had sent for him, and within two days after his arrival Mr. Hickok was established in the best society of Cheyenne. This, when one reflects upon the particular exclusiveness of Cheyenne’s first circles, should talk loudly in Mr. Hickok’s favor. It was something of which any gentleman might be proud. Not a saloon denied him credit; that hotel which he honoured with his custom was as his home; his word was good for a dozen stacks of blues at any faro table in the camp. And this, mind you, in days when Cheyenne’s confidence came forward slowly, and the Cheyenne hand was not outstretched to every paltry individual who got off the stage.

Two weeks prior to these exaltations, Mr. Hickok, then of Kansas City, might have been seen walking in that part of Main Street known as Battle Row. For one of his optimism, Mr. Hickok’s mood showed blue and dull. One could tell this by the brooding eye, and the droop which invested his moustache with a mournfulness not properly its own. Moreover, there was further evidence to prove the low spirits of Mr. Hickok. His hair, long as the hair of a woman, which in lighter moments fell in a blond cataract about his broad shoulders, was knotted away beneath his hat.

The world does not praise long hair in the case of any man. But Mr. Hickok had much in his defence. He had let his hair grow long in years when the transaction of his business hopes and fears gave him much to do with Indians. The American savage possesses theories that yield neither to evidence nor argument. He believes that every paleface who cuts short his hair does so in craven denial of a scalp to what enemy may rise victorious over him. Such cowards he contemns. On the guileless other hand, he holds that the long-haired man is a warrior bold, flaunting defiance with every toss of his mane. That long-haired one may rob and cheat and swindle and cuff and kick your savage; the latter will neither murmur nor lift hand against him. For is not he who robs and cheats and swindles and cuffs and kicks a chief? And is not his flowing hair a franchise so to do? There lurks a dividend in hair for any who traffics with your savage. Wherefore, in an hour of aboriginal commerce Mr. Hickok encouraged a hirsute luxuriance in the name of trade. Later, he continued it for the sake of habit and old days.

What should it be to prey upon the sensibilities of Mr. Hickok? Kansas City was in that hour a town of mud and dust and hill and hollow that quenched all happiness and drove the male inhabitants to drink. Was it that to bear him down? No; if it were environment, Mr. Hickok would have made his escape to regions where the sun was shining.

Not to run the trail too far, Mr. Hickok was ruminating the loss of his final dollar, which had fled across a faro layout in the Marble Hall. As he strolled dejectedly in Battle Row, he couldn’t have told where his next week’s board was coming from, not counting his next week’s drinks. It was the dismal present, promising a dismal future, which exhaled those mists to take the curl from Mr. Hickok’s moustache and teach his hair to hide beneath his hat. Short-haired men may be penniless and still command respect; a long-haired man without a dollar is a creature laughed at.

Having nothing to engage him but his gloom, Mr. Hickok glanced upward and across the street where, over the fourth-story windows, an Odd-Fellows sign was bolted. The sign was painted black upon white. That “O” which stood as the initial of “Odd,” showed wood colour inside the black.

It was years before when, to please a bevy of tender tourists, and by permission of Mr. Speers, then Chief of Police, Mr. Hickok emptied his six-shooters into the centre of that “O.” It was a finished piece of shooting; the tourists told of it about their clubs when safe in the East again. The “O,” where the original white had been splintered into wood colour by those dozen bullets it had stopped, showed plain as print. Mr. Hickok sighed as he considered his handiwork.

Mr. Hickok did not sigh because of any former accuracy with pistols; but he recalled how on that fine occasion, in contrast to present bankruptcy, he harboured fourteen hundred dollars in his clothes. He had beaten the bank at Old Number Three, and was rich and gay in consequence.

“I think I shoot better when I’ve got a roll.”

Thus murmured Mr. Hickok, as he meditated upon the strangeness of things. Mr. Hickok might have extended his surmise. A man does all things better when he has a roll.

The currents of life had been flowing swiftly for Mr. Hickok. Two years before he was marshal of Hays, and had shot his way into the popular confidence. In an evil hour a trio of soldiers came over from the Fort, led by one Lanigan, and took drunken umbrage at Mr. Hickok’s hair. This rudeness touched Mr. Hickok tenderly, and in checking it he snuffed out those three as gallery Frenchmen snuff candles at ten paces. Since there arose carpers to say that Mr. Hickok went too far in these homicides, he laid down his trust and journeyed to Abilene.

Mr. Hickok was welcomed with spread arms by Abilene. Its marshal had just been gathered home through the efforts of a cowboy with a genius for firearms. Abilene offered the vacant place to Mr. Hickok, and to encourage acceptance, showed him where it hanged the cowboy. Mr. Hickok accepted, drew on the public fisc for the price of five hundred rounds of ammunition, and entered upon his responsibilities.

Mr. Hickok reigned as marshal eight months, and kept Abilene like a church. Then he put a bullet through Mr. Coit, whose pleasure it had been to go upon tri-weekly sprees and leave everything all over the works. Again, as on that day in Hays, there came narrowists to fling reproach upon Mr. Hickok. They said the affair might have been sufficiently managed by wrecking a six-shooter upon Mr. Coit’s head; the dead gentleman had yielded to such treatment on former occasions. As it was, the intemperate haste of Mr. Hickok had eliminated one who spent money with both hands. The taking off of Mr. Coit might conduce to Abilene’s peace; it was none the less a blow to Abilene’s prosperity. Mr. Hickok, made heartsore by mean strictures, and weary with complaints which found sordid footing in a lust for gain, gave up his marshalship of Abilene, as he had given up the post in Hays, and wandered east in search of whiter fortune.

About the time he shook the Abilene dust from his moccasins, there came to Mr. Hickok’s hand a proposal from Mr. Cody to join him in the production of a drama. It was to be a drama descriptive of an Arcadian West—one wherein stages were robbed, maidens rescued, Indians put to death. Mr. Hickok in real life had long been familiar with every fraction of the stage business; the lines he could learn in a night. Mr. Cody was confident that Mr. Hickok would take instant part in that drama without rehearsal. If Mr. Hickok accepted, the financial side was to be coloured to meet his taste. His social life, so Mr. Cody explained, should be one of splendour and Eastern luxury.

Mr. Hickok, pausing only to break himself at faro-bank, took up the proffer of Mr. Cody. He journeyed to New York, and found that thorough-going scout sojourning at the Brevoort House.

“Where’s your trunk?” asked Mr. Cody.

“Haven’t any,” returned Mr. Hickok, whose trunk had been left to keep a boarding-house in countenance. “But I’ve brought my guns.” This last, hopefully.

“That’s right,” observed Mr. Cody, whom nothing was ever known to daunt. “While a gentleman may be without a change of linen, he should never let his wardrobe sink so low as to leave him without a change of guns.”

Mr. Hickok was not a permanency in the theatres. His was a serious nature, and there were many matters behind the footlights to irk the soul of him. For one stifling outrage he was allowed nothing lethal wherewith to feed his six-shooters. Blanks by the hundreds he might have; but no bullets.

Now this, in a blind sort of way, told upon Mr. Hickok as something irreligious. A Colt’s-45 was not a joke; its mechanism had not been connived in any spirit of facetiousness. It was hardware for life and death; it owned a mission, and to make of it a bauble and a tinsel thing smote upon Mr. Hickok like sacrilege.

And then, to shoot over the heads of folk shook one’s faith. It was as though one mocked the heavens! In good truth, Mr. Hickok never did this last. It was his wont to empty his weapons, right and left, at the shrinking legs of Indian-seeming supers. The practice was not lacking in elements of certain excellence. The powder burned the supers, and brought yells which were genuine from those adjuncts of the theatre. In that way was the public gratified, and the integrity of the stage upheld.

But the supers objected, and refused to go on with Mr. Hickok. They might love the drama, but not to that extent. It was the rock on which they split. Mr. Hickok would not aim high, and the burned ones would take no part in the presentation unless he did. The situation became strained. As a finale, after bitter words had been spoken, Mr. Hickok quit the mimic world and returned to a life that, while it numbered its drawbacks, might make the boast that it was real. It was then he came to Kansas City, there to experience ebbing, flowing nights at farobank, with that final ebb adverted to, which left him dollar-stranded as described.

This chronicle deserted Mr. Hickok in Battle Row, thinking on the strangeness of things. Having sufficiently surveyed his bullet work of another day, as set forth by the Odd Fellows’ emblem, Mr. Hickok was about to resume his walk when a telegraph boy rushed up. His rush over, the urchin gazed upon Mr. Hickok with the utmost satisfaction for the space of thirty seconds. Then he took a message from his book.

“Be you Mr. Hickok?”

“Yes, my child,” replied Mr. Hickok blandly.

“Mr. Wild Bill Hickok?” Mr. Hickok frowned; he distasted the ferocious prefix.

It had been granted Mr. Hickok by romanticists with a bent to be fantastic, and was a step in titles the more strange, perhaps, since Mr. Hickok was not baptised “William,” but “James.” But “Wild Bill” they made it, and “Wild Bill” it remained; albeit in submission to Mr. Hickok’s wishes—he once made them plain by shooting a glass of whiskey from the hand of one who had called him “Wild Bill,” to that gentleman’s disturbance and a loss to him of one drink—he was never so named except behind his back. When folk referred to him, they called him “Wild Bill”; when they addressed him they did so as “Mr. Hickok.” Now, when the world and Mr. Hickok understood each other on this touchy point, every sign of friction ceased. The compromise won ready adoption, and everybody was satisfied since everybody went not without his partial way.

Mr. Hickok tore open the message, while the boy admired him to the hilts. The message was a long one, by which Mr. Hickok deduced it to be important. Mr. Hickok was not over-quick with written English; he had been called in the theatres a “slow study.” To expedite affairs he went at once to the signature. This was intelligent enough. As a rule, one could give you every word of any eight-page letter he receives by merely glancing at the signature. That rule will prove particularly true when the signature is a lady’s. However, this time the rule failed.

Mr. Hickok, while he knew the name, was driven to wade through the communication before he could come by even a glint of its purport. This he did slowly and painfully, feeling his way from word to word as though fording a strange and turbid stream. At last, when he made it out, Mr. Hickok’s face came brightly forth of the shadows like the sun from behind a cloud. Evidently the news was good. Mr. Hickok glanced again at the name. It was the name of Mr. Masterson, whose life he had once saved.

Lest you gather unjustly some red and violent picture of Mr. Hickok, as one to whom the slaughter of his kind was as the air he breathed, it should be shown that he had saved many lives. The record of this truth would gratify Mr. Hickok were he here to read, for he often remembered it in his conversation.

“If I’ve took life,” Mr. Hickok would remark, “I’ve frequent saved life. Likewise, I’ve saved a heap more than I’ve took. A count of noses would show that the world’s ahead by me. Foot up the figgers, an’ you’ll see I’ve got lives comin’ to me right now.”

What Mr. Masterson said was this: He had staked out a claim in the Deadwood district; the assay showed it full of yellow promise. Mr. Hickok was to be a part owner; likewise, he must meet Mr. Masterson in Cheyenne. Incidentally, the latter had notified the American National to cash Mr. Hickok’s draft for two hundred dollars, so that poverty, should such have him in its coils—which it did—might not deter him from proceeding to Cheyenne.

Nothing could have better dovetailed with the broken destinies of Mr. Hickok. Within thirty minutes he had drawn for those two hundred dollars. In forty he had sent three messages. The first was to Mr. Masterson, promising an appearance in Cheyenne. The others were of grimmer purpose, and went respectively to Abilene and Hays. These latter were meant to clear the honour of Mr. Hickok.

When Mr. Hickok went into the drama there broke out in Hays and Abilene a hubbub of cheap comment. There were folk of bilious fancy and unguarded lip who went saying that Mr. Hickok had fled to the footlights for safety. He had made enemies, as one who goes shooting up and down is prone to do; certain clots and coteries of these made Hays and Abilene their home camps. It was because he feared these foes, and shrunk from the consequences of their feuds, that he called himself an actor, and went shouting and charging and shooting blank cartridges at imitation Indians throughout an anæmic East! Such childish employment kept Mr. Hickok beyond the range of his enemies, that was the reason of it; and the reason was the reason of a dog. Thus spake Mr. Hickok’s detractors; and none arose to deny, because Mr. Hickok’s honour was his honour, and the West does business by the aphorism, “Let every man kill his own snakes.”

Mr. Hickok had not gone in ignorance of these slanders; he had heard them when as far away from Abilene and Hays as Boston Common. Now he would refute them; he would give all who desired it an opportunity to burn condemnatory powder in his case. He would pass through Hays and Abilene on his slow way to Cheyenne. These hamlets should be notified. Those who objected to Mr. Hickok’s past in any of its incidents might come down to the train and set forth their displeasure with their pistols. With this fair thought, Mr. Hickok addressed respectively and as follows the editors of Abilene and Hays:

“I shall go through your prairie dog village Tuesday. I wear my hair long as usual.” This last to intimate a scalp unconquered.

The press is a great and peccant engine; and who has public interest more at heart than your editor? Those of Abilene and Hays posted with all diligence the message of Mr. Hickok on their bulletin boards, adding thereunto the hour of the Hickok train, and then made preparations to give fullest details of the casualties.

Mr. Hickok cleaned and oiled his guns. He looked forward carelessly to Hays and Abilene. Experience had taught him that the odds were that not a warlike soul would interrupt his progress. Humanity talks fifty times where once it shoots, and Mr. Hickok was not ignorant of the race in its verbal ferocities. Indeed, being a philosopher, he explained them.

“A man,” observed Mr. Hickok, “nacherally does a heap more shootin’ with his mouth than with his gun. An’ for two reasons, to wit:” Here Mr. Hickok would raise an impressive trigger finger. “He’s a shorer, quicker shot with his mouth; and it costs less for ammunition. A gent can load and fire his mouth off fifty times with a ten-cent drink of licker, while cartridges, fifty in a box, are a dollar and four bits a box.”

Still, some vigorous person, whether at Abilene or Hays, might appear in the path of Mr. Hickok on battle bent. Wherefore, as aforesaid, he oiled and loaded fully his Colt’s-45s.

“Because,” said Mr. Hickok, “I wouldn’t want to be caught four-flushin’ if some gent did call my bluff.”

It will seem strange that Mr. Hickok stood willing thus to invite hostilities. The wonder of it might be explained. Mr. Hickok was, like most folk who put in their lives upon the dreary, outstretched deserts of the West, a fatalist. He would live his days; until his time he was safe from halter, knife and gun. Mr. Hickok had all unconsciously become a fashion of white Cheyenne, and based existence on a fearlessness that never wavered, plus an indifference that never cared. He was what he was; he would be what he would be. Men were merest arrows in the air, shot by some sightless archery of nature, one to have a higher and one a lower flight, and each to come clattering back to earth and bury itself in the grave. That was the religious thought of Mr. Hickok, or rather Mr. Hickok’s religious instinct, for he never shaped it to an idea nor piled it up in words.

There were scores to greet Mr. Hickok at Hays and Abilene, but none in hostile guise. While the train paused, Mr. Hickok came down from the platform and stood with his back against the car. There he received his friends and searched the throng for enemies. He was careful, but invincible, and his hair floated bravely as for a challenge.

As the bell rang Mr. Hickok backed smilingly but watchfully aboard. He had no notion of exposing himself, and there might be someone about with the required military talent to manage an attack in flank. But the peace of those visits passed unbroken, and Mr. Hickok’s honour was repaired. Mr. Hickok was not above a sedate joy concerning his healed honour, for, though he might not own a creed, he had a pride.

Now that Hays and Abilene had gone astern with the things that had been, Mr. Hickok sat himself down to a contemplation of Cheyenne. This would be his earliest visit. Nor had he in days gone by made the acquaintance of any one who wrote Cheyenne as his home. Mr. Hickok decided on a modest entrance.

“Which if thar’s one thing that’s always made me tired,” observed Mr. Hickok, as he talked the subject over with himself, “it’s a party jumpin’ into camp as though he owned the yearth an’ had come to fence it.”

Mr. Hickok planned an unobtrusive descent upon Cheyenne. He would appear without announcement. He would let Cheyenne uncover his merits one by one and learn his identity only when events should point the day and way. He would claim no privileges beyond the privileges of common men.

Such was the amiable programme of Mr. Hickok, and he arrayed himself to be in harmony therewith. The yellow mane that had flaunted at Hays and Abilene was imprisoned, as in Kansas City, beneath a small-rimmed soft felt hat, to the end that it enkindle rage in no man. Because the brightness of the sun on the parched pampas hurt his eyes, worn as they were with much scanning of midnight decks, Mr. Hickok donned dark goggles. His coat was black and long—to cover his armament—and almost of pulpit cut. To put a closing touch on a whole that spoke of lamb’s-wool peace, Mr. Hickok, limping with a shade of rheumatism, the harvest of many nights on rain-soaked prairies, carried a cane. This latter was a resplendent creature, having been the butt end of a rosewood billiard cue, and was as heavy as a Sioux war club. Thus appeared Mr. Hickok when he made his Cheyenne début; and those who observed him halting up the street held him for some wandering evangelist, present with a purpose to hold services in the first hurdy-gurdy he caught off his foolish guard.

Mr. Masterson was not in Cheyenne when Mr. Hickok arrived. There was word waiting that he had gone to Deadwood, and would not return for a week. Mr. Hickok, upon receiving this news, resolved for recreation.

It was ten of the evening clock, and Mr. Hickok decided to creep about on his billiard-cue, and take a friendly view of Cheyenne. It was well to go abroad, with what decent speed he might, and acquire a high regard for Cheyenne people; it would be a best method of teaching them to entertain a high regard for him.

“But no trouble!” ruminated Mr. Hickok, with a shake of the head. He was, according to his custom, advising with himself. “No trouble! Thar’s nothin’ in it! Besides, the pitcher that goes often to the well gets busted at last,” and Mr. Hickok sighed sagaciously. Then, as one who registers a good resolve: “The next sport who gets a rise out o’ me will have to back me into a corner an’ prove concloosive that he’s out to kill. Then, of course, I’ll be obleeged to take my usual measures.”

Such were the cogitations of Mr. Hickok, and all on the side of law and order, when he turned into the Gold Room.

“What’ll you have, Sport?” asked the barkeeper.

“Licker,” said Mr. Hickok.

The barkeeper tossed up glass and bottle in a manner of scorn. He had called Mr. Hickok “Sport,” not for compliment, but derision, and because Mr. Hickok looked like an agriculturist who had gone astray.

“Got a potato ranch some’ers?” remarked the barkeeper, and his tones were the tones of sarcasm. “Or mebby is it hay?”

Mr. Hickok made no reply as he paid the double price which the astute bar man charged him. He knew he was derided and he knew he was robbed; but full of peace he bore it in wordless humility. Musingly, he recalled a gallant past.

“Now if that barkeep,” he reflected, “knowed who I was, he’d simply hit three or four high places and be miles away.”

Mr. Hickok inched towards a faro game which was hungering for victims. The faro game was at the far end of the Gold Room. Over and above a handful of silver, Mr. Hickok had two 50-dollar bills, the remaining moiety of those two hundred sent him by Mr. Masterson. Mr. Hickok was a born speculator; in a moment he had been caught in the coils of the game.

While he had but the even hundred dollars, Mr. Hickok was no one to prolong an agony. He bet the half on the “high card.” The turn came, “nine-trey;” Mr. Hickok’s fifty were swept into the bank. Mr. Hickok wagered the other fifty on the “high card.” The turn came, “deuce-eight.”

The dealer counted down twenty-five dollars.

“How’s that?” asked Mr. Hickok.

“The limit’s twenty-five,” spake the dealer gruffly, and the gruff lookout hoarsely echoed: “Limit’s twenty-five!”

“But you took fifty when I lost.”

“Fifty goes if you lose!” retorted the dealer, insolently, and the hoarse lookout with echoing insolence repeated: “It goes if you lose!”

Then did Mr. Hickok rejoice because of a provident rheumatism that furnished him his billiard-cue. “Biff! bang!”

Mr. Hickok tapped the dealer and then the lookout. They fell from their perches like apples when one shakes November’s bough. Having thus cleared a path for the feet of justice, Mr. Hickok reached across to the bankroll and helped himself to a bundle of money, which, to quote the scandalised barkeeper who beheld the rapine from afar, was, “big enough to choke a cow.” These riches Mr. Hickok pocketed in the name of right.

Having repaired his money wrongs, as that portion of the Cheyenne public then and there present fell upon him, Mr. Hickok resumed his billiard-cue and went to work. Mr. Hickok did heroic deeds. He mowed a swath through the press! A dozen heads suffered! He fought his way to the wall!

“Now everybody fill his hand!” shouted Mr. Hickok, pulling his 8-inch six-shooters.

Mr. Hickok’s goggles had fallen to the floor; his loosened locks were flying like a war banner. Altogether, when thus backed against the wall, and behind a brace of Mr. Colt’s best pistols, flowing hair, and eyes gray-fire, Mr. Hickok made a striking figure—one to live long in Cheyenne memory! The public stood at gaze. Then some wise man yelled:

“It’s Wild Bill!”

There was no dispute as to Mr. Hickok’s identity. The public instantly conceded it, and began going through doors and windows in blocks of five.

Mr. Hickok, deserted, limped slowly towards the door. As he passed the bar, its once supercilious custodian, raised his head above its moist levels, and asked in meekness:

“Mr. Hickok, will you have a drink? It’s on the house.”

It was the next afternoon; the Cheyenne marshal, accompanied by Mr. Bowlby, proprietor of the Gold Room, paid a courtly visit to Mr. Hickok.

The marshal was aggrieved.

“You ought not to come ambuscadin’ into camp that a-way,” he remonstrated, speaking of Mr. Hickok’s bashful entrance into town. “It might have got a passel of Cheyenne people killed. It wan’t right, Mr. Hickok. Only it’s you, I’d say it sort o’ bordered on the treacherous.”

“It ain’t that I’m askin’ it back, Mr. Hickok,” observed Mr. Bowlby, diffidently, “but I want to check up my game. Sech bein’ my motive, would you-all mind informin’ me kindly how big a wad you got outen that drawer?”

“Which I shore couldn’t say,” returned Mr. Hickok, languidly. “I ain’t counted it none as yet.” Then, in a way of friendly generosity: “Mr. Bowlby, I don’t reckon how I oughter keep all that money; it’s too much. I’d feel easier if you’d let me split it with you.”

“No ’bjections in the least,” replied Mr. Bowlby, politely.

“Which I should say as much!” exclaimed the marshal, in enthusiastic admiration of Mr. Hickok’s liberality. “Thar’s an offer that’s good enough for a dog! An’ now, gents,” concluded the marshal, linking one arm into that of Mr. Hickok, and with Mr. Bowlby on the other; “let’s go down to the Gold Room an’ licker.”

CHAPTER XVI—THE LAST VISIT TO DODGE

There was a County Seat war between the towns of Cimarron and Ingalls, and it was in the final phases of that involvement the historian first hears of Mr. Masterson’s brother Jim. Those differences between Cimarron and Ingalls carried interesting features. Not a least of these was the death of Mr. Prather at Mr. Tighlman’s positive hands. The latter exact personage was a citizen of Dodge. Being, however, one who resented narrowisms and to whom any “pent up Utica” was as the thing unbearable, Mr. Tighlman permitted himself an interest in that Gray County contention and, since Cimarron was the natural-born enemy of Dodge, sympathized with Ingalls.

This sentiment on Mr. Tighlman’s part did not meet with the approbation of Mr. Prather, who was a partisan of Cimarron, and when the former appeared at the special election called to settle the question, Mr. Prather—to employ a childish phrase—fell into a profound pout. Mr. Tighlman’s attendance meant nothing beyond a desire to humour his curiosity and flatter that interest which possessed him in favour of an Ingalls success. Mr. Prather, however, in his jealousy for Cimarron, construed it differently and pulled his gun.

Being alert and sensitive, and having had his nerves sharpened by perilous experiences, Mr. Tighlman was instantly aware of this hostile demonstration. As corollary, his own gun left its scabbard coincident with that of Mr. Prather, the result being a weakening of the Cimarron cause by the loss of one. There was no criticism of Mr. Tighlman; for the best belief of folk ascribed a first wrong step to the vanished Mr. Prather. The common feeling was summed up by an onlooker who spoke without prejudice. He said:

“Prather reached for his six-shooter, an’ Billy”—meaning Mr. Tighlman—“beat him to it. That’s all thar was to the fuss.”

The county records were in Cimarron, which had been de facto the County Seat. Ingalls came forth of the election victor, and many held that the taking off of Mr. Prather in its moral effect had much to do with bringing the triumph about. It may have been this thought that suggested to Ingalls the enlistment of Mr. Tighlman’s services when, following the election and in defiance of that ballot decision then and there obtained, Cimarron scoffed at every mention of surrendering the records. Those marks of county authority were the property of Ingalls. What cared Cimarron for that? Cimarron snapped thumb and finger beneath the Ingalls nose! It scorned the election and contemned the result! If Ingalls wanted those records, Cimarron, furbishing up its firearms, would admire to see it get them.

Florence in the fourteenth century retained the military genius of Sir John Hawkwood to its standards and set him to lead its armies in the field. Sir John, as rental for his valour, was given a princely salary while he lived and a marble tomb when he died, which latter monument is still extant, a Florentine exhibit when tourists turn that way. Impressed by the Italian example, Ingalls upon being met by the belligerent obstinacy of Cimarron retained Mr. Tighlman. Would he get those records? Mr. Tighlman would.

Mr. Tighlman possessed a capacity for strategy. He went after the records on Sunday. He argued that, Sunday being a day of rest, the male inhabitants of Cimarron would one and all be in the saloons. Mr. Tighlman deduced rightly on that point, and his rapine of the records was only discovered by chance. A Cimarronian, journeying from one barroom to another, observed him as he threw the last volume into the waggon and sounded an alarm.

Within two minutes thereafter, Mr. Tighlman was shot at five hundred times. And yet he got away and took the records with him. His only injury was received when, a shot having killed a dog at his very feet, he fell over the dog and broke his leg. For all that, he dragged himself aboard the waggon and escaped.

Mr. Tighlman covered his retreat with a shotgun. As a bloodless method of engaging the local faculties, he opened right and left with buckshot on the large front windows that fenced the street. There was a prodigious breaking of glass, and the clatter thereof carried Cimarron almost to a stampede. As showing the blind hurry of the inhabitants, Mr. Tighlman said that he saw one gentleman miss his footing and fall, and before he could even think of getting up eight of his fellow townsmen fell on top of him. It was through such stirring scenes that Mr. Tighlman made his exit, and Jim gained mention because he drove the waggon. The foregoing has nothing at all to do with what follows, and is thrown in only because it may serve as an introduction to Jim.

At what might be called the true beginning of this sketch, Mr. Masterson was located in Tucson, nursing an interest in mines. He had been absent from Dodge divers years. In the interim he had made but a single trip to Dodge, and that a flying one. His brother Jim was temporarily in Camp Supply at the time, two hundred miles to the south, and he missed him. This, however, did not disturb Mr. Masterson, who was in Dodge for the commercial restoration of Mr. Short.

During those years of Mr. Masterson’s absence, the hungry tooth of time had left its marks. Mr. Kelly was dead, Mr. Tighlman was in New Mexico, Mr. Trask had drifted to Montana, Cimarron Bill was in Utah, while Mr. Wright was in Topeka, a member of the Legislature. Of those who had been close to Mr. Masterson only Mr. Short remained.

The others—who if not enemies were but unfriends—had had better luck. Mr. Peacock still ran the Dance Hall, while Mr. Webster kept the Alamo as in days of yore, and maintained under the leadership of Mr. Updegraffe a numerous following.

Even in the time of Mr. Masterson there had been soreness between Mr. Webster and Mr. Short. The Long Branch was garnering a harvest beyond any that lent itself to the reaping hook of the Alamo, and this did not sit easily with Mr. Webster. To be sure, Mr. Short’s success in its causes was easily understood. His deal boxes, like Cæsar’s wife, were above reproach. Folk were never quite sure about the Alamo’s. Also the radical temper of Mr. Short despised a limit. One might pile his stake as tall as he pleased, Mr. Short would turn for it. In the words of an admirer:

“He’d let you play ’em higher’n a cat’s back!” This was not the liberal case with Mr. Webster, who failed of the monetary courage of Mr. Short.

In the carelessness of local politics Mr. Webster became Mayor of Dodge, and he at once took advantage of his power and his elevation to exile Mr. Short. With the latter out of town, the Alamo would fatten and the Long Branch fade.

Being exiled, Mr. Short, following a usual course, hunted up Mr. Masterson, and told his wrongs. Ever and always Mr. Short’s friend, the latter began a roundup of the clan. The old Scotch Chiefs burned a cross and sent it about; Mr. Masterson sent messages and burned the wires.

From East and West and North and South, the loyal tribesmen dropped grimly into Dodge. There was Cimarron Bill and Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday and Ben Thompson and Henry Brown and Charlie Bassett and Shotgun Collins and Shoot-your-eye-out Jack and many another stark fighting man. When these had assembled, Mr. Masterson and Mr. Short appeared, and the former took command.

There was no trouble; Mr. Webster turned the colour of ashes, and Mr. Short resumed his place in trade. Mr. Webster did not like Mr. Masterson any better for this work, although the latter, in adjusting affairs, stretched a point and went excessively out of his way to keep Mr. Webster from being killed. Mr. Masterson said he wasn’t worth it. Mr. Short said he was; but yielded the point in compliment to Mr. Masterson.

When Mr. Short had been restored to the commercial niche that of right was his, Mr. Masterson shook the dust of Dodge from his moccasins, as he imagined for the final time. Nor was he sorry. His friends were gone; and the Dodge he had known and loved and defended had passed away.

In the wake of Mr. Masterson’s departure, Mr. Webster saw, in the hard, gray glance of Mr. Short, that which alarmed his blood. Being wise in a way, he nodded prudently to one who, upon the hint, proffered a romantic figure, and bought out Mr. Short. The latter went to Texas, while Mr. Webster again began to sleep o’ night. With the going of Mr. Short, Jim, for any on whom he might rely, was left alone in Dodge.

That was the situation when one Tucson evening in the Oriental, Mr. Masterson was handed a telegram. He had been hearing evil news all day about his mines, and thinking this a further bad installment tore open the envelope with only a listless interest. What he read stiffened him. The message said: