“The book’s title is My Life on the Plains. Its author is George Armstrong Custer.” Relishing the visible effect of the exalted name upon the jury, the prosecutor reclaimed the slim volume from the judge and strode over to the defense table to show it to Crandall, who fluttered the pages perfunctorily and handed it back.
“I have no objections other than those already raised,” he said casually.
The judge glared at him. “Is that an objection, counselor?”
“No, Your Honor.”
“Don’t keep me guessing. The clerk will label it as evidence.”
“In case there is one in this room who is not familiar with the author’s name,” said Scout, when the book was returned, “he is that same Lieutenant Colonel Custer who lost his life heroically at the Little Big Horn massacre in June of this year, along with
every member of his command. This autobiographical account of his experiences as an Indian fighter appeared in a series of articles for Galaxy magazine in 1872 and was published in book form two years ago. This is what he wrote about James Butler Hickok, who served him as chief of scouts during the punitive expedition of 1867:
“‘Of his courage there could be no question; it had been brought to the test on too many occasions to admit of a doubt. His skill in the use of the rifle and pistol was unerring; while his deportment was exactly the opposite of what might be expected from a man of his surroundings. It was entirely free from all bluster or bravado. He seldom spoke of himself unless requested to do so. His conversation, strange to say, never bordered either on the vulgar or the blasphemous.’”
He inserted a marker and closed the book, milking the silence that greeted the brief reading; then, with elaborate courtesy, he stepped over to the defense table and presented it to Crandall. The General accepted it in kind, with a smile and a short bow of his head. Rising, he retained the smile.
“Let us hope that the author was a better judge of character than he was of Indians,” he commented quietly.
There was a loud guffaw from the rear of the room. Blair jerked upright behind the bench. “Bailiff, remove that man!” A blue vein Scout had not noticed previously throbbed on the judge’s right temple. “As for you, General, I warned you what to expect the next time you indulged in these confounded asides. You’re in contempt. You will remain where you are until the bailiff has disposed of your unmannerly counterpart in the back row, after which he will escort you to a cell where you will spend the night. Perhaps by morning you will have learned the importance of decorum in a court of law.”
The ruling was delivered over miscellaneous grunts and scuffles as the gallery offender, a bearded frontiersman in frayed buckskins, was hoisted to his feet by an arm twisted behind his back and marched out the double doors, all with a minimum of movement on the part of the older and smaller officer. He returned a few moments later for Crandall.
“Damn!” whispered Scout, as the General, looking properly cowed but with a glitter of triumph in his eyes, allowed the bailiff to take his arm.
“I will accept my punishment, Your Honor,” he said. “In the meantime I request a recess.”
“Granted. Court is adjourned until tomorrow morning at nine.”
“The bastard planned it!” His pipe unlighted and forgotten between his teeth, the prosecutor watched a ferry unloading below the office window without seeing it. “For once we caught him off guard, but he bought time as if he had it set aside just for him. What do you want to bet Gannon’s with him in his cell right now, planning their next move?”
“No bet,” said Bartholomew, ensconced in the leather armchair with My Life on the Plains open in his hands. He seemed more interested in the book than in their predicament.
“He plays Blair like a piano.”
“Don’t sell the judge short. He couldn’t very well go on warning Crandall without backing it up. Once the bench relinquishes its control, justice becomes bedlam.”
“Put it in Latin and carve it on a portal at Harvard. I’ve had enough of your wise old sayings for one triaL” Scout’s tone was bitter.
“Sorry.”
He turned from the window. “Don’t go hurt on me, Tessie. You know how I am when things aren’t going perfectly. But, damn it, we had him on the run! Blair
could have fined him or postponed his sentence until the trial was over.”
“He lost his temper. Judges have been known to do that on occasion, as have prosecuting attorneys.”
“I deserved that. I’m sorry for what I said in the courtroom. I was under pressure.”
“But you meant it when you said it.” Bartholomew closed the book and looked up at him. “Julian, if you think I’m pushing you too hard, I wish you’d tell me. It’s just that staying where you are would be a criminal waste of talent.”
“That’s where we differ. Grace likes me where I am.”
“I thought you didn’t want to bring her into it.”
“I don’t.” It came out more abruptly than Scout had intended. Rather than apologize again he decided to drop the topic. “What now?”
“Now, we eat lunch.” Bartholomew, who had been consulting his watch, laid aside Custer’s book and stood.
“Lunch? Now?”
“It is precisely noon, the usual hour. Let it go, Julian. Our case is set; the burden’s on their shoulders, not ours.”
“I can’t help wondering what they’re up to.”
“That’s healthy.” The older attorney took down his coat and tossed the other to his partner. “On our way out, ask your bodyguard where he wants to eat.”
After their meal, they repaired to Cody’s hotel, where they found the great scout in his room sitting down to an opulent spread surrounded by dazzling silver, a pale-faced waiter lifting the covers off the various dishes for the diner’s approval. As he rose to greet his visitors, Bartholomew noted with satisfaction that Cody had exchanged his outlandish frontier garb for a ruffled white shirt and black suit with frock coat. But the famous physique was well in evidence.
“Would you gentlemen care to join me?” he
asked, after introductions had been made and hands shaken. “As usual I’ve ordered considerably more than I require, a habit I fear will ruin me.” He patted his stomach and the faint beginnings of a paunch.
The attorneys declined, but accepted seats in a pair of red plush armchairs of a design Buffalo Bill referred to, with unexpected candor, as “whorehouse modern” while he loaded his plate with roast duck and swordfish and mashed potatoes with dark gravy and half a dozen vegetables Scout swore were out of season, and allowed the waiter to fill his glass with white wine. As the hotel employee was leaving, Cody glimpsed the deputy marshal stationed outside the door and asked about him.
“A formality,” Scout lied. “The government insists upon overprotecting the prosecution team whenever a celebrated case is being tried. It’s a waste of taxpayers’ money, but we have nothing to say about it.”
“Must be a new policy.” Cody chewed thoughtfully. “I’ll have to ask General Grant about it the next time I dine at the White House.”
Bartholomew changed the subject by explaining that they wished to go over Cody’s testimony, which they had decided would take place tomorrow morning in spite of the delay engineered by Crandall. The three spent the next half hour discussing Buffalo Bill’s relationship with Hickok while the host demolished the huge meal.
“Wild Bill wasn’t cut out for the stage,” he announced, refilling his glass for the third time. “I only saw him once more after he left the company in Rochester, when I was camped with the 5th Cavalry on Sage Creek in eastern Wyoming and he got off his train at a ranch nearby. We had a hand or two of poker, but he was on his way to the Black Hills and couldn’t tarry. That was in July. After he left we got word of Custer’s massacre and were ordered north to
join General Crook. It wasn’t until I got back East that someone told me Wild Bill had been killed a month after we parted.”
“What is your opinion of Hickok’s character?” asked Scout. Throughout the narrative he had been making notes in a pad drawn from his breast pocket.
Cody replaced the glass stopper atop the decanter of wine. His hand was steady. Bartholomew caught himself wondering how many glassfuls he could ingest before it wasn’t. The frontiersman looked grim.
“I would have trusted him with my life,” he said. “Did, in fact, upon more than one occasion.”
Smiling, the prosecutor flipped the pad shut. “That’s all we need, Colonel. Thank you.”
After they had sat politely through the story of the Rawhide Creek battle, which had by then assumed the proportions of a major action, the attorneys thanked their host again and left.
“We’ve got Crandall by the short hairs now,” Scout told Bartholomew, as the lanky deputy fell into step behind them.
“The trial’s not over yet,” cautioned his partner.
A matinee was playing at the theater that afternoon. Scout obtained tickets and sent a messenger to Grace’s home, armed with flowers and an apology for last night, to find out if she cared to accompany him. She did, and at two o’clock he came to collect her. Mrs. Hope was nowhere in sight, for which he was thankful. He asked about her.
“She’s locked in her room with her precious newspapers,” said Grace, with a gaiety that seemed forced. She had on a bright yellow dress and was tucking her hair beneath a matching bonnet, to the prosecutor’s mind a welcome contrast to the bleakness outside. “Have you seen today’s?” She handed him the Daily Press and Dakotaian. The lead column carried a fairly straightforward account of the trial’s first day,
but Scout’s eyes were drawn to an item near the bottom of the second column.
Correspondence received from a Mr. M. A. Connors, self-confessed confidant of Texas outlaw John Wesley Hardin, relates a “set-to” between Hardin and Wild Bill, whose killer is now undergoing trial in Yankton, in which the former, clad only in “longhandles” after dispatching a would-be assassin in Abilene where Wild Bill was marshal, was forced to depart through his hotel room window when the lawman was seen approaching. Reported Hardin to Connors: “Now, Wild Bill had befriended me, but I believed that if he found me in a defenseless condition, he would take no explanation, but would kill me to add to his reputation.” The desperado was out of ammunition at the time.
He returned the journal to Grace with a smile and a shake of his head. “They’re really on the defendant’s side in this one.” He helped her on with her wrap, a long one of maroon velvet that went with the rest of her outfit less alarmingly than he might have predicted.
“Doesn’t it anger you?” she asked.
“There’s no reason it should. The jury is sequestered; they won’t see a newspaper or talk to anyone not connected with the court until after the trial.”
“Well, it infuriates me. How can a responsible publication side with a murderer?”
“He isn’t a murderer until the law proves him one.”
“Oh, Julian, don’t you ever get upset about anything? Do you never lose your temper?” Patches of color showed through the powder on her cheeks.
Remembering the deputy waiting outside, he took her gently by the elbow and escorted her away from
the door. “Something’s bothering you besides the paper. What is it?”
Close up, her features were drawn. For the first time since he had known her, she looked like a woman over thirty. “It’s Mother. She’s getting worse.”
He started to say, “Worse than what?” but the agony in her expression stopped him. “Is she ill?”
“No. I mean, yes. But not in the way you think. It’s so hard to explain; I don’t understand it myself.”
He made her sit on the sofa and sank down beside her. The colored maid came in, but withdrew at a signal from him. “You’re going to have to start from the beginning, Grace,” he said. “My impression has always been that your mother is a very strong woman.”
“That’s what everyone thinks. It’s a pose.” She drew a deep breath and told him everything, of how it had been her mother who had found Edgar dead, of her bizarre behavior afterward, of her voracious interest in violence except when it came close to home, of her interview with the doctor and what he had said. The story took less time to tell than she would have believed possible.
“Now she’s taken a different turn,” Grace went on. “This morning at breakfast she announced that she had seen a strange man watching the house last night from across the street. I thought she might have spotted that deputy you had with you. I told her about him, though I knew she’d be furious with me for keeping it a secret. But the description she gave me didn’t sound anything like him.” A sudden thought flashed across her features. “Julian, you didn’t ask the marshal to post someone here, did you?”
“If I had, I would have told you.”
She closed her eyes. She looked drained. “Then it’s what I was afraid of. She’s having visions.”
“What did she say she saw?”
Something in his tone made Grace open her eyes. Julian looked tense. She hesitated. “She said she was watching the street from her window, with the light off. She was in the habit of doing that, she said. I hadn’t known that. She claimed she saw a movement in the shadow of a doorway, and then a few minutes later this man came out into the light of the street lamp, glanced up and down the street, then walked away heading west. Do you think she might really have seen something?”
He got up. His expression was unchanged. “I think we should speak with her.”