The Sunset Trail Part 34

"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 sh.o.r.ely 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 l.u.s.t 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 s.p.a.ce 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 t.i.tles 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 gla.s.s 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.