Return of Little Big Man (23 page)

“As long as you want,” Lulu says. After some years of harlotry she still could of passed for eighteen if she washed off the paint and put on the clothes of decent girls. She was hugging my arm to the shoulder. “Me ’n’ Belle couldn’t stop cryin’ when we heard you was kilt by them goddam Indians.”

“I wasn’t killed, as you can plainly see, Lulu. I wasn’t even hurt.”

“I hope you got some of them,” said she, real bitter.

“I guess I ain’t made it clear,” I says. But to do so, I would of had to explain about the school, and at the moment that was still too touchy a subject for me. “Just you forget about Indians, dearie,” I says. “I didn’t have anything to do with them. I was just away on personal business. Uh, St. Louis.”

Lulu pouted. “You might of sent a postcard. You know how I like to get cards.”

“I’m sorry, Lu.”

“It don’t matter what’s writ on them,” says she. “I can’t read anyhow.”

“I’ll remember next time. Now I think I’ll eat a bite and then get drunk.”

Lulu squeezed my arm again and says, real affectionate, “You might go over the barber’s and take a bath sooner or later.”

It shook me to hear that, considering the hygiene of some of them who shared her bed however speedily. “Yes, ma’am, and thanks again for the loan.” I didn’t want to keep her too long from her job, whoring being paid for as piecework.

“Oh, Jack, you know who’s back in Dodge? Bat.”

“I’m real glad to hear that,” I says. “Now I’m heading for that bath.” Which I done, after throwing down a couple fingers of whiskey, first I had had in months, for the Major never tolerated any strong drink on the school premises even for the male staff, lest the students get hold of it, and for once he was sure right. And after that first one I had a few more on an empty stomach and by time I headed across the tracks I was feeling pretty good, else I would never of so readily accepted Bat Masterson’s invite to come along with him to Ogallala, up in Nebraska, to rescue one Billy Thompson from jail.

But let me catch up. Before even getting to the barber’s, who should I meet up with on Front Street but Bat himself, looking the same spiffy gent as always, though he hadn’t carried that gold-headed cane in ages, having recovered from his leg wound.

“Well sir, Bat,” says I, “I’m proud to see you again. I been away myself, and—”

Bat cut this short. I don’t think he knowed where I had been nor cared, nor did he want to talk about Leadville, where last I heard he went to gamble, nor about why he was back, having left after he run for re-election as Ford County sheriff and got beat. Bat was not all that popular in Dodge. The respectable people, like them at the church Dora Hand went to, didn’t like his friendship with lowlifes, chief amongst them the Thompson brothers, Ben and Billy. And what he now proposes to me, there on the street in front of Dog Kelley’s Alhambra saloon, is I come along with him to Ogallala and help Billy Thompson escape from the jail where he had been put as a result of one of his many scrapes and was wounded and under arrest and in danger of being lynched by the local friends of a man he had shot.

Had I been cold sober I would not of entertained the proposal, as much as I owed Bat Masterson, for Billy Thompson was one of them Texans nobody except their blood relatives could stomach. Bat himself disliked Billy, putting up with him only because of Ben, who he liked, the way he tolerated Doc Holliday as a friend of Wyatt Earp’s. Friendship meant a lot to Bat, and I can’t knock that principle in view of how I myself had profited from it, but it can be inconvenient, that’s for sure.

Ben Thompson had lived a life as eventful as any but mine, having been an officer in the Confederate cavalry, then served as a major in the forces of Maximilian, the French emperor of Mexico who was actually an Austrian—don’t ask me to explain that. When Max was overthrown and put to death, Ben come back to the U.S.A., where he gambled in various places and co-owned a saloon in Abilene named the Bull’s Head, but the sign outside depicted not a horned head but rather an enormous bull’s pizzle, and finding it indecent, none other than Wild Bill Hickok, then the marshal, made them change it. Ben never took on Wild Bill, not even when the latter killed his partner, but he was a real dangerous man who fought a lot, and him and his brother Billy had a shoot-out with some enemies in Ellsworth that resulted in the death of the sheriff, but they got off.

Ben was another example of that type that was sometimes on one side of the law but occasionally on the other. Bat believed him the best with a gun who ever held one. You can judge the quality of Ben Thompson’s nerves by his principle of gunfighting: he always got the other fellow to fire first. He said the man was likely, through hurry, to miss, and firing second, Ben could claim self-defense.

But why would Bat Masterson be such a good friend to Ben Thompson at a personal cost? The best reason in the world then and now: he saved his life. Ben come to his aid in that fight where Bat lay wounded, down in Sweetwater, Texas, and would likely of been murdered by his adversary’s friends.

Now though I was fairly drunk and on account of my own friendship with Bat would of honored any request by him even when sober, I did ask why Ben Thompson himself wasn’t going to Ogallala to rescue his brother?

The answer was that Ben himself was banned for life from that part of Nebraska. I never found out what he done there, but the Thompsons generally meant trouble wherever they turned up. What Billy done was him and a man named Tucker shot it out in a saloon called the Cowboy’s Rest, over the affections of a harlot named Big Alice. Billy blew off Tucker’s left thumb and three other fingers, Tucker falling behind the bar, but when Billy turned to stagger out, Tucker come up with a sawed-off shotgun and give him both barrels in the back, but because his aim wasn’t the best, owing to his one hand being essentially a bloody stump, only part of the buckshot found its mark, which meant the bad news, for much of the world, was that Billy would keep his worthless hide on for a while longer, though he was, in sickbed at his hotel, under arrest by the local sheriff, who as a friend of Tucker’s was expected to look the other way so Billy could be lynched.

En route to Nebraska I begun to worry about the reception we’d get there as a delegation in support of a man as unpopular in Ogallala as a Thompson, but when I finally bucked up my courage to run the danger of Bat’s thinking me yellow and allowed as how the odds might be against us, Bat again demonstrated the kind of mental command that kept him ahead of the game.

“Jack,” says he, “the only problem is if Ben has the money they’ll ask.”

“Come again?”

“If they were in a hurry to kill Billy,” says he, “they would have done it long since. They’ll only stretch his neck as a last resort, if Ben can’t come up with enough to buy them off.”

There was Bat for you. I should of known he wouldn’t ask me along if he expected gunplay. What he wanted was somebody friendly to drink with while on this job. Since I lacked his capacity to tolerate alcohol I was under the influence most of the time and don’t have no clear memory of when we went to Tucker’s home, except that the “thumbless one,” as Bat called him when talking to me, had a big bandage around what remained of his left hand but wasn’t mad at Bat or me and seemed in the mood to deal.

When he was ready to name a figure, he beckoned Bat close with the hand that worked, and mumbled a figure I couldn’t hear.

After which Bat nodded and thanked him and said he’d telegraph Ben and get back, but we was hardly out Tucker’s door when Bat says, “Ben doesn’t have that kind of money. We’re going to have to get Billy out for free.”

My peace of mind departed when I thought the lead might fly after all, but once again I underestimated Bat’s powers of invention. He waited till the night everybody in town including the sheriff, who served as fiddler, attended a dance at the schoolhouse, with the exception of the deputy guarding Billy Thompson’s hotel room, and while I waited on the floor below, Bat stood several rounds of drinks for the deputy, a young fellow come not long before from the East who hadn’t yet had time to grow a hollow leg like Bat’s. Also, what passed for a whiskey sour in Ogallala was used as paint remover elsewhere. Not to mention the possible contribution of that useful Irishman, Michael Finn.

Anyway, the deputy eventually hit the floor and stayed, at which Bat whistled down, and I come up and helped him lift Billy out of bed and carry him, Billy cursing in pain at each jolt, across to the railroad depot, where a train stopped not long after to take on water, Bat having timed it perfect, and we got our load into a coach without attracting any attention in town on account of the dance and not much on an almost empty train.

Having got Billy settled, slumped in a seat of his own and sucking on the bottle Bat provided him with, we set ourselves down, and I mentions the job we was going to have to get Thompson back to Dodge, considering there wasn’t no direct rail line yet between here and there. We had had to come by a combination of trains and stages.

Bat passes me the second bottle he had the foresight to bring and says with a smile, “I have made an arrangement with Bill Cody, who’s home right now in North Platte. We’ll be there in an hour.”

“Buffalo Bill Cody?”

“One and the same,” Bat says.

“Why would he help us?”

“I asked him to,” Bat says between swallows. “By telegraph.”

“To help in the escape of a man under a criminal charge?”

Bat pointed the business end of the whiskey bottle like it was a gun. “Bill Cody loves excitement,” he says. “And at the moment, living there with the little woman, I’m taking for granted he will be bored.”

No matter how often I seen Bat being right, I was sceptical as usual. For one thing, by time the train reached North Platte, the hour was near two A.M. on a real dark night, and we got off, toting Billy, who seemed twice as heavy as before and even more disagreeable, at a place none of us knowed our way around even if we could of seen anything but the lighted saloon across from the depot. Which is where Bat heads us.

So we carry Billy in through the swinging doors and deposit him in the nearest chair, and by golly there’s Buffalo Bill at the bar, not only awake this late but with a full head of steam, surrounded by a crowd of cowboys listening to his spiel. He raises his glass to us and we go and shake his hand. Cody was a handsome fellow, best-looking man I ever seen, over six foot tall, muscular and fit, with that shoulder-length hair and mustache and goatee which started light brown and over the years would turn snow-white. The brim of his big hat was swept up over one ear, and his jacket of white buckskin was decorated with extensive beadwork along with three times the normal amount of fringe. His shiny soft calfskin boots run all the way to mid-thigh. There wasn’t a single weapon hanging from his big-buckled belt. Never being a gun-fighter, Cody seldom wore a pistol except in his shows. Most everywhere he went he acquired admirers much like them here, for he could tell a story so well you would listen to his version of some event as more interesting than the experience you had had yourself at the same place and time. Imagine what Buffalo Bill could of made of being the sole white survivor of the Little Bighorn fight or one of the handful to witness the murder of Wild Bill Hickok.

“Colonel Masterson,” is how Cody greeted Bat. “Your reputation precedes you, sir.” To me he says, “Sir, you have me at a disadvantage.” When I told him my name he lifted his glass and said to us both, “Won’t you join me and my friends in a sip of tanglefoot? Name your poison: whiskey, brandy, or Old Tom Cat gin. Meanwhile, let’s start on level ground.” At that he drains what he is holding and calls to the bartender to take orders from all around.

Billy Thompson, though half passed out from his ordeal and the bottle he drank on the train, yells in his usual foul language he wants another one too.

Cody frowns and says to Bat, “Colonel, would you please inform that gent that cursing is out of order on Dave Perry’s premises, at least while I am present.”

So Bat does as asked and then returns, by which time the new drinks was waiting on the bar top, where Cody shooed away some of the others so me and Bat could belly up next to him.

Cody begun, “I was just telling these gentlemen of the unexpected availability of ice during the summer in the eastern part of our glorious country, making it possible on the hottest days to enjoy cold beverages. It is cut from lakes in winter and the blocks are stored under sod or sawdust, a method of preservation so efficient, I was told by my dear friend Mr. Augustus Hamlin, the eminent financier at whose luxurious home in New York City I have frequently dined, ‘Cody,’ said he, ‘would you believe that only about ten percent thawing has occurred by the following summer?’” Having emptied his glass again, he skittered it across the shining bar top to Dave and says to us he had to see a man about a horse, and goes, in a mostly sturdy stride, to the back. It took me a minute to realize he went to pee.

“See what I mean?” Bat says. “He couldn’t be friendlier.”

“All he’s done so far is talk,” says I. “He ain’t said anything about helping us get back to Dodge. And what’s this about you being a colonel?”

“A title of respect,” says Bat. “Just be patient.”

But when Cody returned he resumed the subject of ice. “I’m sure you gents will back me up on this, though the inexperienced may cast doubt, but you will recall if you cross North Platte at Richard’s Bridge and proceed past the Red Buttes to the Sweet Water, past the Devil’s Gate, to the Cold Springs, if you dig three feet down in the earth you will find ice at any time of the year.”

“Is that right, Bill?” asks the nearest cowboy.

Cody solemnly closed his eyes and opened them quick. “On the hottest day of the summer.”

He finally got off ice and onto his adventures fighting Indians, the first example of which he claimed he killed when he was eleven. He was right good at storytelling, so good he never made the mistake so many B.S. artists do in having themselves win at every turn. Of course he always won in the long run, else he wouldn’t of been here buying round after round. It was enjoyable, to tell the truth, and I decided why should I worry whether Billy Thompson ever got back to Dodge: it weren’t my responsibility.