He came out of the Alamo saloon on Texas Street.
He had a frock coat and a low-crowned hat with a wide brim. His hair was long and corn-yellow in the sunlight, hanging down to his shoulders. He leaned up against the wall of the saloon and hooked his thumbs into the red sash that encircled his waist and Angel saw that he had two ivory-handled six-guns stuck into the sash, butts facing inwards towards each other. The man watched everything that moved on the street and the sidewalks from under his eyebrows. There was plenty to watch on Texas Street.
The sidewalks were crowded with people. Bunches of cowboys up from Texas with the herds careened in and out of the saloons, yelling and yipping, lurching drunkenly, catcalling to the whores parading up and down in their white—tasseled half boots and cheap finery. Wagons lurched up and down the street, their drivers cursing the mules. Children played here and there in the dust, or ran shouting, in and out and around the lumbering traffic. Horses stood hipshot outside the saloons: the Bull’s Head and the Alamo and the Longhorn. Angel caught a whiff of burning grease from a lunch wagon parked at the sidewalk near the Longhorn. Men stood in front of it or were hunkered down on the sidewalk, scooping food from tin plates, and oblivious of the murderous looks of businessmen who had to step around them on their way to the post office or the First National Bank of Kansas City. A piano player was belting out a tune in the Longhorn and now and then hoarse shouts erupted from the place. The man leaning against the wall of the Alamo saloon watched everything and remained motionless. Angel crossed the street towards him. He saw the pale blue eyes touch him and then move away, then come back again as he kept on coming. Without any haste, the tall man eased his back off the wall. His hands stayed hooked in the red sash. When Angel got within ten feet of him, the man spoke.
‘You want something? he said. His eyes were on the r gun at Angel’s side.
‘Like to ask you something, Mr. Hickok,’ Angel said.
‘Ask away,’ Hickok said.
‘I’m looking for some men who were here about six weeks ago. Seven men.’
‘Lot of men come through here, sonny,’ Hickok said. His voice had a nasal, Eastern drone.
‘Yessir, I know,’ Angel said. ‘I just figured, you being the Marshal, you might have run across them.’
‘Come on inside and you can buy me a drink,’ Hickok said. ‘Glad to help if I can.’
He stood courteously on one side to allow Frank Angel to precede him into the noisy saloon. The place was jumping. Men were two and three deep at the long bar, drinking as if someone had served notice of a forthcoming drought. Keno, chuckaluck, faro layouts were roaring. There were men everywhere playing cards. Girls circulated around the tables, stroking necks and touching thighs, smiling invitingly. The air was thick with tobacco smoke and smelled like a barn.
‘Over here,’ Hickok said.
There was a table in a blind corner of the room. It had three chairs around it: one in the angle of the two walls, the other two facing. Hickok sat in the angle of the walls, lifting his coat so that it fell away to the sides. The gun butts rapped the table.
‘My private table,’ he explained. He lifted a hand, and one of the girls nodded and came over.
‘Belle, bring us something to drink,’ he said.
‘Sure, Bill,’ the girl said, smiling widely. Her face was painted like a doll’s and she reeked of cheap perfume.
Hickok patted her buttocks and she winked and twitched her hips saucily. Her eyes were as empty as a hollow tree.
‘What’s your handle, son?’ Hickok asked.
‘Angel, sir,’ Angel replied. ‘Frank Angel.’
Hickok smiled. ‘You get teased much about it?’
‘Not since I got my full growth,’ the boy replied.
‘And you’re looking for some men,’ Hickok prompted, pouring two sizable drinks from the bottle the girl Belle brought, still simpering at the marshal.
‘Seven men,’ Angel told him. ‘I only got a rough description and some names. Cravetts was their leader. Thickset, very wide across the shoulders, black hair and starting a beard. A tow-haired one with a Southern accent named Monsher. A squint-eyed man called Milt, and another with red hair. One of the others was called Denny. Wore glasses. Two others. I don’t know anything about them except one of them had an Italian-sounding name.’
Hickok pursed his lips. ‘Riding together, you say?’
‘Far as I know.’
‘I don’t recall seeing them,’ Hickok said. Angel’s face fell, and the lawman smiled. ‘That don’t mean shucks, boy. If they didn’t make any trouble here, I’d have no reason to remember them at all.’
‘I know it,’ Angel said. ‘It was a long shot at the best.
Thanks anyway.’ He put a dollar on the table for the drinks and rose to go. Hickok rose too, and Angel noticed again that the slim hands were not too far away from the ivory-handled guns.
‘You got any idea where I could find a girl called Rosie, or Little Rosie?’ Angel asked.
Hickok laughed. ‘Son, there’s about a thousand girls in McCoy’s Addition,’ he smiled. ‘Any one o’ them could be called Rosie an’ probably is.’
Angel nodded. Then: ‘Could you — maybe, ask your — uh, friend?’
Hickok laughed again, and heads turned towards him.
Angel noticed that many of the faces were hostile.
Hickok was obviously not popular among the cowboy element. He’d read one or two things about Abilene in the newspapers which came infrequently his way on the Gibbons ranch and at the Fort. Hickok was said to be terrifyingly fast with his guns, and a born killer. Yet here he seemed the soul of courtesy, and apart from his florid style of dress, a gentleman.
‘Belle!’ Hickok called, and the girl came mincing over. ‘My young friend here is looking for a girl named Rosie.’
Belle eyed the younger man speculatively and let a pink tongue slide provocatively across her rouged lips, ‘Oh, come on, cowboy,’ she said, slipping an arm through Angel’s, ‘you’ll have a much better time with Belle, won’t he Bill?’
‘You’d eat him for breakfast,’ Hickok grinned. ‘Leave off, and answer the question.’
‘Rosie, Rosie, Rosie,’ Belle said. ‘Rosie Russell, mebbe? She works over to the Longhorn. There’s Rosie something-or—other has a place back up in the Addition. Hell, Bill, there’s mebbe half a dozen. Who can keep track of all of them? They come out here like flies.’
‘Looks like you’re going to have to do it the hard way, son,’ Hickok said, as the girl flounced off again.
‘Ploddin’ around an’ askin’.’ Angel nodded. ‘I guess so,’ he said.
‘You got much money, boy?’ Hickok asked abruptly.
‘No sir, not much,’ Frank Angel admitted. Hickok nodded. ‘Can you use that thing?’ he gestured with his chin towards Angel’s gun.
‘Uh … I … yes, I can shoot a bit.’
‘That means you can’t. Take it off.’
‘What?’ Frank Angel looked at the Marshal in surprise. ‘Take it off an’ give it to me,’ Hickok said.
Frank Angel was suddenly aware that the entire saloon had frozen, and everyone had stopped speaking simultaneously as Hickok gave the order. Chairs scraped nervously as men tried to edge out of line of possible fire behind Angel. Hickok just kept on looking at the younger man and Angel shrugged. He unbuckled the belt and holster and laid them on the table. Immediately the chatter and the noise began again, and Hickok smiled.
‘You go poking your nose around the Addition totin’ a gun, someone’s just liable to invite you to use it for the hell of it. You know how folks are about questions in
these parts.’
‘I know,’ Angel said, ‘I’m going to ask just the same.’
‘You take care, boy,’ Hickok said. ‘On’y go down there in the daytime.’
‘I’ll do that, Mr. Hickok,’ Angel said. ‘I guess you’re right about the gun.’
‘About guns I’m always right, son,’ Hickok said. ‘I’ll walk to the door with you.’ He went ahead of Angel and pushed the batwings wide, scanning the street carefully before he stepped out on to the sidewalk. Only then did Frank Angel realize he had shielded Hickok’s back the entire way with his own body. He shook his head. Why would a man want to stay in a job where he had to do that every day of his life?
Hickok saw the head-shake and smiled.
‘Plenty o’ men in this town who’d like to see me dead, boy,’ he said. ‘More who’d like to go back to Texas with a notch on their six-gun for Wild Bill. I take as few chances as I can, draw my hundred an’ fifty a month, an’ keep the town as quiet as possible.’
Angel gestured with his chin at the crowded, brawling, rowdy street. ‘That’s quiet?’ he asked.
‘You wait until Saturday night,’ Hickok said. He settled his back comfortably against the wooden wall of the saloon and tipped his hat slightly forward. ‘Pick up your hog leg before you leave town,’ he said, and that was the end of the interview. Angel saw he was dismissed from the gunfighter’s mind. Hickok’s eyes were already monitoring everything moving on the street once more.
He headed down Texas Street towards the Longhorn and went in. It was as crowded and noisy and smoky as the Alamo had been, and he had to literally force a way through the crowd packed at the bar to ask the bartender a question.
The bartender looked up and scanned the seething room with a practiced eye. ‘Over there with the big cowboy,’ he said. ‘Gal with the red dress on. Listen, wait … ’ he tried to restrain Angel but it was too late, and the bartender shrugged. He tapped one of the barflies on the shoulder and whispered something to him and the man nodded quickly and went out through the batwings fast as Angel crossed the room towards the table where the girl in the red dress was sitting. A tall, black-haired cowboy was pawing her clumsily and she was giggling. Angel pushed through until he was standing close to the table.
‘Excuse me,’ he said.
The cowboy looked up. He was drunk and his eyes were already smoky with sexual anticipation. ‘Piss off,’ he growled.
‘I just wanted to ask … ’
‘You heard!’ snapped the cowboy. ‘Get out o’ here.’
Angel ignored him. ‘Your name Rosie?’ he asked. ‘Rosie Russell?’
The girl looked up and simpered. ‘What if it is?’ she said.
‘Like to ask you a few questions,’ Angel said. ‘About some men … ’
The cowboy came up away from his chair in a lurching movement and leaned forward on the table. His was two or three inches taller than Angel’s almost six foot height, and his eyes were glowing now with a liquor-hazed rage.
‘Sonny, you want your ass broke ?’ he yelled.
‘No, sir,’ Angel said.
‘Then get the hell out o’ here afore I break it for you!’ growled the cowboy. The girl pouted. Everyone in the place was watching the exchange, ready for a fast dive out of range if trouble broke.
‘Aw, c’mon, honey,’ she said to the cowboy. ‘He ain’t doin’ no harm. He’s only a kid.’
‘You shut up an’ sit down here,’ the cowboy said. ‘An’ you do like I told you, boy!’
He pushed the girl into her chair, and she gasped, the breath jarred out of her by his roughness.
‘That’s awful rude of you,’ Angel said mildly. He took two smooth steps around the table and hit the cowboy solidly in the middle. The man looked at him with bulging eyes, the breath whooshing out of his lungs as he folded forward on the table. The chair went over backwards away from him and the girl screamed. Men pushed back away from the area as fast as they could, getting to their feet and yelling as the big cowboy got his breath and then with a roar of rage came over the table at the slim youngster in front of him. Angel let him come and then hit him, a short lifting hook made with the hand tipped backwards. The heel of his hand caught the cowboy right under the jaw and snapped his head back, mashing the snarling lips into a blood-sprayed mask. He went sideways across the table, tipping it over to the filthy, packed-dirt floor. A roar of animal rage escaped his broken mouth, and he started to come up from the floor.
Angel let him get up off his knees before he moved again and then he linked both his hands together and swung them from right to left, just as if he was holding an axe in them. It was an awful blow and it hit the cowboy on the side of his face where the jawbone hinges in front of the ear. Everyone in the place heard the bone go, and the cowboy screamed in agony, the side of his face suddenly slack and old. He went down squirming in the wreckage of the table and Angel stood watching him. Every trace of boyishness was gone from his stance and the eyes were empty and cold. No one moved for a moment, then Angel turned and spoke.
‘It’s over,’ he said. His chest was splattered with the cowboy’s blood.
‘No it ain’t, sonny!’ someone snarled.
Angel whirled around.
There was a Texas cowboy near the bar, his hand curled above the butt of a six-shooter nestling low on his right hip in a cutaway holster.
‘You got five seconds to say a prayer, pilgrim,’ the cowboy said, ‘And then I’m gonna shoot your balls off!’