This Old Bill Read online

  THIS OLD BILL

  By Loren D. Estleman

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Copyright 2012 / Loren D. Estleman

  Copy-edited by: Darren Pulsford

  Cover design By: David Dodd

  Cover image in the public domain per:

  {{PD-US}} – published in the US before 1923 and public domain in the US.

  LICENSE NOTES

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  Meet the Author

  Photo and biographical profile by Deborah Morgan

  Since the appearance of his first novel in 1976, Loren D. Estleman has written nearly 70 books and hundreds of short stories and articles. Among those books: Writing the Popular Novel, from Writer's Digest Books; the second in a new series featuring Estleman's Los Angeles film detective, Valentino (Alone, featuring Greta Garbo, December 2009); Burning Midnight (the 22nd Amos Walker novel, June 2012); Roy & Lillie: A Love Story (between a reprobate Old West judge and a celebrated British beauty, August 2010); The Confessions of Al Capone (his largest project to date, October 2012); and a novel about hanging judge Isaac Parker, The Branch and the Scaffold (April 2009). There are several short stories in the hopper, and proposals for future novels in both the mystery and historical western genres. He recently finished writing the 23rd installment in the Amos Walker P.I. series, and is currently working on another standalone novel.

  Estleman has received fan letters from such notables as John D. MacDonald, The Amazing Kreskin, Mel Tormé, and Steve Forbes. He has acquired a loyal cult readership across the United States and in Europe, and his work has appeared in 23 languages.

  An authority on both criminal history and the American West, Estleman has been called the most critically acclaimed author of his generation. He has been nominated for the National Book Award, and the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award.

  He has received twenty national writing awards: the Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement from Western Writers of America, The Barry Award from Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, four Shamuses from the Private Eye Writers of America, five Spurs from the Western Writers of America, two American Mystery Awards from Mystery Scene Magazine, Outstanding Western Writer, 1985, from Popular Fiction Monthly, two Stirrup Awards for outstanding articles in the Western Writers of America magazine, The Roundup, and three Western Heritage Awards from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. In 1987, the Michigan Foundation of the Arts presented him with its award for literature. In 1997, the Michigan Library Association named him the recipient of the Michigan Author's Award. In 2007, Nicotine Kiss was named a Notable Book by the Library of Michigan.

  In 1993, Estleman was Guest of Honor at the Southwest Mystery Convention in Austin, Texas. He was Honored Guest at Eyecon '99 (Private Eye Writers of America Convention), held in St. Louis in July of that year. In June 2001, he was Guest of Honor (the first American chosen) at the Bloody Words Convention in Toronto, Canada.

  He has been a judge for many literary honors, including the prestigious Hopwood Award given by the University of Michigan. He has written book reviews for many newspapers, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, and in 1988 he covered the filming of Lonesome Dove for TV Guide.

  He's worked hard to get where he is, beginning in the unheated upstairs of the 1867 Michigan farmhouse where he was raised. His fondest childhood memory is that of curling up in his robe with a mug of hot chocolate in front of the television to enjoy such grand western series as Maverick and Gunsmoke.

  When he was fifteen years old, he sent out his first short story for publication. Over the next eight years, he collected 160 rejections. He attributes his tenacity to ego, and he's earned that, too. He and his brown-bag lunch commuted to Eastern Michigan University to cut expenses after his father was disabled and his mother went to work to support the family.

  Estleman often says he's not a fast writer. He is, however, consistent, spending an average of six hours a day at his typewriter. He polishes as he goes, consuming a prodigious amount of cheap typing paper; a process he refers to as "writing for the wastebasket."

  His favorite writers — and those who have inspired his work — include Jack London, Edgar Allan Poe, W. Somerset Maugham, Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Chandler, and Edith Wharton.

  A sought-after speaker and a veteran journalist of police-beat news, Estleman graduated from Eastern Michigan University in 1974 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature and Journalism. On April 27, 2002, EMU presented him with an honorary doctorate in letters. He left the job market in 1980 to write full time. He lives in Michigan.

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  Western Novels:

  Mister St. John

  Sudden Country

  This Old Bill

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  The Bandit & Others – The Best Western Stories of Loren D. Estleman

  Evil Grows & Other Thrilling Tales

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  To Ray, who knows damn well why.

  "I am sorry to have to lie so outrageously in this yarn. My hero has killed more Indians on one war trail than I have killed in all my life. But I understand this is what is expected of border tales. If you think the revolver and Bowie knife are used too freely, you may cut out a fatal shot or stab wherever you think wise."

  —William F. Cody to his editors, 1875

  PORTSMOUTH, VIRGINIA

  November 11, 1916

  The old man is dying. There is death in his eyes, and under the glare of the electric bulb behind the curtains there is bare skull beneath his mottled skin. In his blue flannel shirt and yellow kerchief and buckskin pants and high black boots he looks like a wax figure wearing the wrong head. The famous mane and moustache and spray of whiskers are as dry and white as feathers on a hen's carcass. His glove gauntlets flap on his emaciated wrists. A broad belt with a square buckle cinches his loose belly and there is about him the stench of corruption, certain and sweet.

  Johnny Baker, his own long locks graying now, too old to be called Johnny, escorts the old man to his horse, McKinley, not touching him but close at his elbow, although he has never collapsed on the way in. The tent smells of chewed earth and mildew and the thick warm stink of fresh manure. On the other side of the curtains applause swells and recedes under the buzz of brass, the tubas farting and making the ground tingle. McKinley flicks his tail at a late moth and looks bored. More applause, and then the band hurls itself into "The Girl I Left Behind Me."

  "We're late, Colonel," says Johnny.

  The old man nods and places his Stetson on his white head, looking a little less fragile after he has adjusted it in the old rakish tilt. "I'm afraid."

  He retains the milk-smooth baritone of his youth, but it is sour around the edges and too loud for normal conversation. It has rung across too many tents, reverberated from the back rows of too many theaters and auditoriums. Long whistling pauses between words.

  "Not you, Colonel. You're not afraid of anything."

  "It's not doing it that scares me, understand. It's doing it out there in front of all those people in the arena. The Indians believe that
when a man's time comes he must be alone or his soul will wander forever between heaven and earth."

  "The trail hasn't been beaten that can lose you."

  The old man looks at him with the death in his eyes and closes them, lifting one foot.

  With Johnny's help he hooks the boot in the stirrup and is boosted grunting into the saddle. Once there he sinks his chin onto his chest and shuts his eyes a second time against the flaming pain in his crotch. His breathing is audible across the enclosure, where a pair of roustabouts prepare to work the curtains. In shadow he waits.

  "Ready, Colonel!"

  The music swells and the curtains glide open, spilling in blinding light from the spot mounted over the grandstand. Raising his chin he rides out into the lighted arena and sweeps his big hat from his head while the cheers wash over him.

  A pinwheel of color and light and noise and movement, Johnny throwing the blue glass balls into the air, the old man's special smooth-bore Winchester cracking and spraying sand at the flashing targets, the reports thudding dully against his thickened eardrums. The balls pop obligingly, and soon the earth is coated with fine twinkling powder. Pewter-colored fog fills the arena.

  The last ball. Johnny hesitates with his arm poised, his eyes on the Colonel. The old man hoists the rifle and drops his head a fraction of an inch. The ball is launched. It climbs toward the lights, slows, hangs at the top of its arc before the descent. The old man cups the globe lovingly like a woman's breast in the Winchester's iron notch, draws a deep breath and releases half of it. The light strikes the ball and he squeezes the trigger. The glass bursts. Fragments of iridescence shower down.

  Cheering, new music, the grand parade of performers around the arena—bronc riders, bulldoggers, and clowns—the old man in the lead, and then the wait alone under the sterile spot while the band subsides and the white horse dips its great head and shakes its mane and the cheering crests and breaks and retreats into coughs and silence.

  "This farewell visit will be my last hail and farewell to you all. . .

  The round tones curl in the tent corners like the last traces of blue smoke. The tightness in his throat and his harsh breathing die at ground level. Flecks of sweat glitter like diamond dust at his hairline, but his thick brow shadows the death in his eyes.

  Thirty years ago you gave me my first welcome. I am grateful for your loyal devotion to me. During that time many of my friends among you and many of those with me have been long since gathered to the great, unknown arena of another life. There are only a few of us left. When I went away from here each year before, I merely said good night; this time it will mean good-bye. To my little friends in the gallery, and the grown-ups who used to sit there, I thank you once again. God bless you all. Good-bye."

  Silence while he turns his horse. The jingle of the raiments is a dry rattle in the center of the emptiness. Then, as at the flip of a switch, cheering.

  The beast voice is a strong wind at his back as he approaches the curtains. After a lifetime the heat of the spotlight swings away from him and cold darkness overtakes horse and rider. His inner spring unwinding in a rush, the old man slides off the saddle into Johnny Baker's waiting arms.

  "I didn't do it, Johnny."

  "I knew you wouldn't, Colonel."

  On the way out of the tent the old man's long frame leans on his friend's smaller one. In the arena the band whirls and crashes as the spectators shuffle toward the exits. The two roustabouts watch the pair's retreating backs.

  "How many times you figure the old fart's made that speech now?" murmurs one.

  His companion splatters the ground with brown tobacco juice. "I was in the audience first time he give it in 1910."

  BOOK ONE

  1854-1872

  THE PRAIRIE BLOSSOM

  "a dissolute and reckless life."

  —William F. Cody, 1879

  Chapter One

  Big Isaac Cody, whiskered like a border raider, with the build of a canal-boat puller and the eyes of a boy on his first visit to a Leavenworth whorehouse, rested a homed hand on his eight-year-old son's shoulder and watched Kansas bleed.

  "If I had my way I'd hang every goddamned abolitionist!" Editor Stringfellow shook a bony fist at God and the rafters of the Salt Creek Trading Post. His graying hair and beard were parted in the center and his eyes were white all around the irises. "And everyone born north of the Mason-Dixon line is a goddamned abolitionist!"

  The smelly crowd of homesteaders buzzed approval. An animal shriek rose from among the standees near the door, raising the down on the backs of unprepared necks. It was one of the first rebel yells that had been heard in the territory.

  Scents of ground coffee and unwashed humanity mingled in the room's closeness, odors a boy could carry with him to the end of his life.

  "I was born north of the line," Cody muttered.

  "Who said that?" Stringfellow's mad eyes raked the faces gathered below him.

  "This'n here!" shouted a voice behind the elder Cody.

  Hands shoved him. Young Will clung to his father's coat. The editor glared. "Do you hold me a liar?"

  "I call no man liar in the presence of strangers." Cody thrust out his jaw.

  "What views have you on the subject of slavery in Kansas'?"

  "If you'll climb down off that box I'll tell you."

  "Let's hear how he stands!" someone cried.

  Stringfellow stepped down and Cody took his place on the speaker's box. He was taller than his predecessor and carried considerably more meat, two facts that commanded silence while his dark eyes brooded over the assemblage. His speech started low and climbed slowly to the assured volume Will had heard so many times at table.

  "I was one of the pioneers of the state of Iowa," he said. "I aided its settlement and helped organize it as a state. I voted it should be a white state, that Negroes, free or slave, should never be allowed to locate within its limits."

  Angry murmurs. Will moved closer to the box and his father, who ignored them.

  "I say to you now, and I say it boldly, that I propose to exert whatever power I possess to make Kansas the same kind of state."

  "You black abolitionist!"

  "And I shall always oppose the further extension of slavery— off that box or I'll put you off!"

  "Let me finish—"

  Grunts and movement, a man (Will later learned his name was Dunne) scrambling onto the box with something in his hand, young Will fighting to reach him and getting trampled, his father swaying to keep his balance, not paying attention to the man, the quick, bright flash of the bowie knife, the gasp and the blood, red as boiled jam. His father toppling into the cursing, roiling crowd. Hot tears on Will's face, he kicking and flailing his small fists. A familiar face and voice, a neighbor's arm around his sagging father, the struggle toward the door and out into the sweet air. Tumbling into a waiting wagon, no time for doctoring or even gentle handling. A snap of the reins and the jouncing, teeth-rattling ride across country to the neighbor's cabin and hasty dressing for the deep tear in Isaac Cody's side, then the ferry trip across the Missouri under cover of darkness to Will's uncle's house.

  "You all right, Pa?" the boy asked as they were helping the wounded man inside.

  "Oh, Will, I've gone and killed us all."

  The peaceful days tore like flesh and muscle before a blade, but only sour green pus poured out. Salt Creek, Leavenworth, Kickapoo, and Atchison voted pro-slavery; Lawrence, against. Border roughs towing Negro slaves rode in from Missouri to trade votes against the Free Staters for gold. Sharps rifles rode ferries in long crates stenciled "BOOKS," and a new term, "Beecher's Bibles," was born. Every other man carried one. Musket flares spiked the night and the dawn came up through blue clouds. Blazing memories for a boy, extending over three years but compacted by time and distance into a single long night: the pro-slavery election of 1854 and the righteous fervor on the victors' faces; the terror-filled eyes of an abolitionist preacher staring from a coat of tar and feathers over the t
ail end of a switched mule; the pitched battle at Hickory Point, slavers versus Free Staters, spent powder stinking like rotten eggs, bodies floating downriver; the chest-pounding terror of riding to warn his father of a fresh plot, shouts of recognition behind him, lead cracking past his ears; houses torched; stables burning, the pork-like smell of cooked horseflesh. Once Isaac donned a bonnet and shawl to escape the armed mob encircling their home. Will watched his father shuffling along like an old woman and decided that he had lost respect for him, though he made no outward show of it because of his father's temper and the handiness of his belt. But of course a boy's attitude toward a man he had seen wearing a bonnet could never be the same, even if he did have to remind himself of that fact now and again. And the last memory, of sunlight lying flat and amber on the floor of Isaac's bedroom that last time, Will's father succumbing at last to exhaustion and a three-year-old knife attack.

  "You're the man now, Will. You'll grow to hate me for that soon enough."

  The boy, eleven now, opened his mouth but could make no protest. His throat felt as if he'd swallowed a fist. He didn't know why, having seen his father in woman's clothes, he should feel this way. Isaac's bloodless hand lay gray and unmoving on the white counterpane. He clearly wanted Will to hold it, but the boy kept his own hands at his sides. The man's eyes were sunken in his face. They glistened and grew soft as the death came into them.

  "Your mother is convinced you'll be President someday. I hold lower goals for you. Not that you're unworthy, but a boy growing up in times like these will have to devote most of his energy to the business of survival. You're not to tell her that."