Dolph Reynolds’s hands had bunched the cows, then quickly cut them out by parcels for the official count. Now the deal was sealed. It was up to “Wild Bill’s Blue-Bloused Waddies”—as one newspaper wag had already dubbed the soldiers— to push them north out of Texas.
Josh could tell from Hickok’s bemused face that he still didn’t quite believe he was in charge of this dog-and-pony show. True enough, Wild Bill had long observed cowboys at their craft, even in the days before they became familiar cultural heroes. But he had never actually done any cow hazing himself. And if at all possible, he meant to continue not doing it.
Insofar as he could, he meant to supervise only. Like most of these confused soldiers, he possessed no roping skills. But he was in charge and had to hide his ignorance. Besides, Wild Bill knew that, mainly, a cowboy simply needed endurance—the endurance of a doorknob. The rest could be learned.
Although, he admitted, a little luck would be nice too. Especially at the many river crossings. More cowboys died drowning in these rivers than from all other causes. The same would no doubt hold true for soldiers, too, so long as they were doing a cowboy’s job. An amazing number of frontier men never learned to swim.
“Start riding a slow, easy circle around the herd to hold them,” Bill instructed Abel Langford, the tall corporal with the eye patch. “Keep them bunched tight. But hold your mount to a walk, and don’t shout or make any sudden noise. And do not let Jane get close on that ugly water tank of hers.”
By now Bill had daubed witch hazel into his cuts and scrapes. Mart called all the men into a tight circle for Hickok’s final instructions.
“Boys, from here on out we’re officially a trail drive. You’ll have to listen close to me and Mart, and learn quick, because I’ll guarantee you we don’t have much room for mistakes. Never mind how small this herd might seem. We ain’t trained drovers, so it’ll seem plenty big to us.”
Bill’s eyes stayed in motion as he spoke, missing nothing. The next attempt on his life could come in an instant.
“Nights are especially dangerous on a cattle drive, because that’s when the cows are most likely to spook and stampede. So night discipline must be strictly enforced, Mart, including punishments if you need ’em. Every swinging dick, no matter what your job, has to avoid any sudden or loud noise. After dark, I’ve known of a horse’s sneeze scattering a herd to hell and gone.”
Corporal Langford passed, walking his big seventeen-hand sorrel, keeping the herd bunched as ordered. Bill nodded in his direction.
“What Abel’s doing right now is called close-herding or guarding the herd. It’s to be done whenever the herd is bedded down for the night. Two riders all night long, slow and easy, one clockwise, one counterclockwise. And while you’re riding, you sing to the beeves.”
“Sing to ’em?” one of the men piped up. “Sergeant Jones, that’s your line! That man sings all night long anyhow, Wild Bill. Knows all them spiritual songs.”
“That’s the ticket,” Bill agreed. “Slow, easy, soothing tunes like ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.’ None of this ‘Jim Crack Corn’ or ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ to stir up the cattle. Night riders remember—you’re not only the first line of defense if something spooks the herd, you’re camp security, too. Treat this like any other military guard duty.”
Just then, Calamity Jane’s camel, Ignatius, loosed a raucous bray that made donkeys sound like crooners. Luckily, Josh noticed, they were staying far enough back to avoid spooking cattle or horses.
“As for actually moving the herd,” Bill resumed.
“The more they’re allowed to spread out and scatter, the more likely they are to sull on you, to start fighting. Especially crossing through good graze. So we’ll want to keep them tight-bunched, with the lead bulls always front and center.”
He paused so his next point would be underscored.
“The key to close-herding is good swing men, or flank riders. A cow naturally breaks from the main gather by charging right or left, not by slowing down. So the best riders, with the quickest, most agile horses, are needed on the flanks whenever the herd is moving.”
Wild Bill paused, wondering if he should mention river crossings yet. But their first ford wasn’t until they hit the Colorado River, still days to the north. Best to wait, he decided—they had enough to learn as it was.
“One last thing for now,” Bill wrapped it, “is what to do if the herd breaks and stampedes. Once they start running, there ain’t no brakes on ’em. So there’s only one way to regain control: We have to throw ’em into a mill.”
Hickok traced circles in the air with his right index finger. “We turn ’em in a circle and then just let ’em run it out.”
Joshua, who had at least read about cattle drives, knew that Wild Bill hadn’t even touched on such constant dangers as rattlesnakes, flash floods, and dehydration in the water-scarce areas. Cattle were also susceptible to “the scours,” a form of dysentery that could cost them half their weight.
Instead of mentioning all that, he simply said, “That’s it for now. Mart, make the job assignments, and then we’re moving out. I’ll be riding out ahead to take up the point. We get back to your camp near San Antone, we’ll bed down the herd, then have our new cook shake us up some eatin’s.”
However, another problem cropped up—a homely problem wearing a John B. Stetson and toting a Smith & Wesson with a twelve-inch barrel. Nobody had seen Jane sneaking up on them. She’d left Ignatius behind on a tether.
A few of the men sniggered at the lecherous glance she aimed at Joshua. “Bill tells me you’re ridin’ drag, you cute little son-of-a-buck,” she told the blushing youth. “You can dip your wick anytime you want—I’ll be close by.”
Hickok didn’t escape in time either.
“Wild Bill!” she roared out. “Dadgarnit, I just saved your handsome hide. Don’t I at least get to have a snort with the famous man?”
She held high a bottle of Doyle’s Hop Bitters, “the invalid’s friend and hope.” The popular patent medicine was worthless as a curative, but got you so drunk you didn’t care anyway.
Bill knew he was trapped by his own good range manners. He couldn’t refuse to drink with Jane after what she’d done. But this woman was death-to-the-devil once she pulled a cork.
“I’m watching my drinking now, Bill,” she assured him when she saw the wary glint in his eyes. “I’ve taken a page from Buffalo Bill Cody’s book. That gentleman has limited himself to one glass of bourbon a day, and he sticks to his limit.”
Every man present—except Bill and Josh, who knew her too well—burst into appreciative laughter when Jane reached into the saddle pannier draped over her shoulder and produced a one-quart glass!
“You men!” Mart shouted, fighting to keep a straight face himself. “You heard Wild Bill’s orders. Stop gawking like chawbacons and move that herd!”
“The best way to take down a gun slick like Hickok,” Harding Ott said, “is not by challenging his strengths. It’s best to get at him by way of his weaknesses. And for J. B. Hickok, that means poker and beautiful women. You, Fel, are a combination of both.”
Felicity “Fel” Parker acknowledged the compliment with a gracious bowing of her head. She was a chestnut-haired beauty with smoke-colored eyes and a come-hither smile.
“Isn’t this a rather grandiose scheme you’re hatching?” Fel challenged him. “I mean, it’s one thing to bully some Indians into moving so you can use their land.”
“Bully? That’s hard, Fel,” he protested. “I have a lease, sworn and signed by their tribal representative.”
Fel’s grin revealed pretty little teeth like polished pearls. “Harding, an X made by your paid lackey may get challenged in court.”
“In court?” Ott laughed, amused at his former partners naiveté concerning Indians. “Darling, not one case tried in a white man’s court has gone the red man’s way. It’s like trying to prosecute a white man for lynching a black in the South.”
Fel said nothing to this, demurely fanning her face with a palmetto fan. Ott had taken her to his office in Ogallala, which was far more prosperous looking than his hovel outside of town—which he only kept to hide Woman Dress from his wealthy clients. His “falderol house,” as Olney Lucas called it.
“Wild Bill Hickok,” Fel said a moment later, “does not share in the red man’s current bad luck. In fact, common men and royalty all touch him for luck. That man escaped from the Confederate Army three times, once only minutes before he was to be executed. You see, Harding, that’s what is so grandiose of you. Thinking you, of all men, can kill him.”
“Oh, I probably can’t,” he conceded. “But you can.”
“So what if I could? Why should I? Even if I could get away with it, why would I want to? I believe in live and let live. The man is so handsome, women leave convents to chase him. And I’m told he’s an extraordinarily . . . spirited lover. What would be my incentive to kill a robust stallion like him?”
Ott knew Felicity well, and had expected all of this. He countered her objections immediately.
“How about twenty-five thousand dollars?” he asked her. “Is that incentive enough?”
“My goodness! That figure does give the heart a jupe,” she admitted.
It was a staggering sum when Fel considered how the average Jack supported a family on about three hundred-fifty dollars yearly.
“You could invest it,” Ott tantalized her, “and live comfortably in Paris on the interest alone. Never have to work another shill game.”
Fel gave all this careful consideration. Upon receiving Ott’s urgent telegram, she had boarded the next eastbound train from Cheyenne. It was a straight hop to Ogallala, little more than a half-day’s trip.
Only an offer from her former partner could have enticed her to leave Cheyenne right now. Fel ran that town’s only “pleasure emporium for cowboys,” a lucrative business. But the winds of change were blowing.
“Maybe your telegram was well-timed,” Fel finally replied. “Right now I’m taking in more gold cartwheels than the local Wells Fargo. But a group of blue-nosed temperance biddies are getting up a drive to run me out—you know, cleansing Babylon of the whore and all that.”
Ott’s lips creased in a mirthless smile. “Ahh yes, the Outraged Citizens. Remember Albany?”
Oh Lord, did she! Remembered it with a little shudder as she recalled the close call. Back east, she and Harding had specialized in the “cuckold” con. Felicity would use her looks and polished charm to seduce wealthy married men into “compromising positions,” literally, and then blackmail them when her “outraged spouse” caught them in flagrante delicto.
But they played their game one time too often, and were exposed in New York, where they were chased out of Albany by a tar-and-feather mob.
Fel shook off this unpleasant reverie and raised her eyes toward an artist’s representation mounted on the wall behind Ott’s desk.
“So that’s your dream city, huh?” she asked him.
The idyllic projection was labeled “Commerce Bluffs.” It showed a thriving mercantile city hugging the bank of the South Platte, surrounded by fields of wheat.
“It’s not my dream,” he corrected her. “In fact, I seriously doubt the city will ever materialize. But as long as my foreign investors believe it will, the money keeps rolling in.”
“Let me guess,” Fel took over. “Right now those investors are balking because they aren’t sure the Indians will move well south of the river?”
He looked impressed. “Exactly. You’ve put the ax right on the helve.”
Ott turned around in his chair to look at the handsome sketch of Commerce Bluffs. “If those Indians stay put, all of my big plans are mental vapors. And with a beef herd arriving, they will stay put.”
“Therefore, you want me to kill Wild Bill Hickok?”
Ott nodded. But he didn’t bother to tell her that she was only insurance against a failure by the Lucas boys. And he had faith in their dark talents at killing. Even now they were racing south to intercept the herd. If Olney and Jip came through for him, Fel was just out of luck.
“Have you worked it out?” she pressed. “How my trail will cross his, and all the details?”
“From soup to nuts,” he assured her. “Hickok won’t suspect a thing.”
“Well, why not do it?” she finally consented. “The money is fine, and Hickok is quite alluring. This could be my most enjoyable piece of work yet.”
A cautionary note took over Ott’s tone. “You must be careful not to find him too ‘alluring.’ If you foolishly fall in love with him, you’ll regret it. The only woman he’s faithful to is the queen in a poker deck.”
Fel laughed, a charming, feminine laugh just dripping charm and grace. “Fall in love with him. So what if I do? Does the female spider hesitate to kill her mate once she’s had her use of him?”
Fel’s slim white hand produced a little alligator jewel case from the folds of her ostrich-feather boa. Ott smiled in satisfaction when she snapped the case open and he saw the .38-caliber derringer made by Brasher of London—the famous “muff gun” for ladies, tiny yet deadly at point-blank range.
“Harding, it’s not the money that motivates me,” she assured him. “It’s the amount. For twenty-five thousand dollars, I’d shoot Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates. Now tell me more about this foolproof scheme of yours.”