Defending Cody Read online

  And across the moon he thought he saw a herd of buffalo racing and it caused his throat to go dry. He downed the liquor in one gulp and, when he looked again, the boys had gone and he wondered where. Then he could hear the thunderous applause as he brought the whole shebang (he’d call it A Scout’s Farewell) East again to a roaring success.

  The whiskey and memories of how it used to be caught fire in him and he went inside and up the stairs and awakened Louisa, much to her dismay, saying, “I’m feeling like a man again, like my old self. I’m feeling glorious and unfettered, like I got wings I could fly all the way to that old moon with.”

  She was, of course, aghast at such wild behavior and started to tell him so.

  But she would not be able to deter the famous Buffalo Bill Cody from pursuing his destiny, or the woman who was still his wife and whom he still loved a little and desired much in that fateful moment.

  “I’m going to put together a new stage show and take it East,” he said, slipping out of his nightshirt.

  She saw before her a lean naked man with pieces of moonlight glinting in his eyes. It was a vision she’d seen often enough before, but he still looked a lot like a stranger to her in many ways.

  “Oh, Holy Jesus,” she said when she saw he was aroused.

  “Move over,” he said.

  “I’ll sleep in the girls’ room,” she said.

  “Not tonight, Lulu,” he said.

  And later when she asked when he’d be leaving again, he replied simply: “Shortly enough, not to worry. I won’t be in your hair too very much longer. I’ve just got to raise a little capital, is all.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “Same as I done it before—I’ll head up a hunting party for some swells. I’ve still got good contacts back East. I’ll wire Ned to put out the word.”

  “Ned Buntline, that old reprobate?”

  “I’ve known worse.”

  “Well, I sure haven’t.”

  “Oh, Lulu, don’t distress me so. In a little while you won’t have me underfoot; you’ll have the house and the girls to yourself. Why, I’m practically doing you a favor.”

  She hadn’t the resolve to tell him what was in her heart.

  And he hadn’t the heart to tell her what was in his.

  And neither contemplated there could be murder in their future.

  Chapter 1

  The door ringer sounded like loose change in a cowboy’s pocket and when Teddy Blue opened the front door of his mother’s house, George Bangs stood there under a rain-spotted bowler.

  “Come in before you drown,” Teddy said and George stepped into the foyer and shucked off his overcoat and hung it on the hall tree and did the same with his hat.

  “I guess you didn’t come just to drink a whiskey with me,” Teddy said, remembering how the detective was a teetotaler.

  “No, sir, I didn’t. I’ve some news for you on your brother’s death, and this…” George handed him a letter. It was postmarked: Las Vegas, N. M. territory.

  “What about my brother?” Teddy said, leading Bangs into the large living room, where flames licked away at several chunks of oak in the fireplace.

  George went and stood before the fire and warmed his hands.

  “As I told you before, we’ve located the man who killed your brother. In fact, he confessed to the killing,” George said.

  Teddy was pouring himself two fingers of bourbon into a crystal tumbler. His father had good tastes in liquor, his mother in glassware.

  “Go on with it, George…”

  Teddy felt the liquor burn in a pleasant way before it caught fire in his chest, then settled down to a nice warmth.

  “The man’s name is Carnahan, Ludlow Carnahan.”

  “He in jail now?”

  “No, Teddy. He’s dead now.”

  “What am I missing here, George?”

  “The man gave a deathbed confession.”

  “How’d you learn of it?” Teddy poured two more fingers of bourbon.

  “Allan still has his sources inside the police department.”

  “Pretty convenient, don’t you think?”

  “What is, Teddy?”

  “That the man they’re blaming Horace’s murder on is himself now dead. Who was this man, exactly? What more do you know about him?”

  “I’m still looking into,” Bangs said. “But as I promised you before, we’ll put all of our resources behind it. You’re one of us, Teddy.”

  “I’m not a Pinkerton, George. Hell, you know I didn’t do a good job with that Hickok situation.”

  “You did fine with it. You saved his life twice. It was his decision to go it alone up into that country and get himself killed. We can’t save people from themselves.”

  “I need to find out more about this Carnahan,” Teddy said, swallowing the last of the bourbon. “I need to know why this man shot Horace and who he was. I need to know everything about him so my brother can rest in peace. He stole a lot from my family, George.”

  “I know he did. We’ll have all the answers soon enough, trust me.”

  Teddy watched the cold rain sliding down the windows and reflected on just how he’d come to this point in his still young life. Three years earlier he’d been a student in law school, if not a very enthusiastic one. He’d had a family—a brother and father, as well as a mother. But now his brother was dead from assassination, and his father was dead as well—from grief. His family had been shattered by this Carnahan that George had just spoken of. An unknown assassin with unknown reasons.

  George Bangs, right-hand assistant to Allan Pinkerton, a soft-spoken but persuasive man, had recruited Teddy into becoming an operative in return for a promise to apply every last resource of the Pinkertons to find Horace’s killer. His first assignment had been to protect Wild Bill Hickok. And just like that he’d gone from a rather naïve law student to guarding the West’s most famed shootist. It seemed too impossible to be considered mere fate, but what else could he call it? He wondered, standing there looking at the rain, how much more his life would yet change, knew that if George had any say in the matter, it might change mightily and in ways he never counted on.

  “They say that work is the best thing a man can do to keep his mind off his troubles,” George Bangs said.

  “I don’t know, George. Everything seems so unfinished, as far as Horace’s death is concerned.”

  “We could use a man down in Missouri,” George said. “Governor wants us to send some operatives down there to help him catch this bank robber and his gang—Jesse James. They are raising quite a bit of hell down there.”

  “Bank robber? That’s unique,” Teddy said.

  “It’s a wonder nobody’s thought of it before,” the detective said. “But this fellow has practically turned bank robbing into a specialty. His gang has been robbing banks all over Missouri and some of the surrounding states as well. You interested?”

  It was then that Teddy remembered the telegram Bangs had given him, the one from his old friend, John Sears. He’d slipped it in his pocket when the detective mentioned the situation with his brother’s killer. He took it out now and turned so that the muted light from the window would fall upon the page.

  To the attention of Teddy Blue, Pinkertons, Chicago…Well, old son, I’m up against it hard now. Am here in the calaboose in this hell-forsaken place waiting to go on trial and sure to a hanging if they find me guilty. I got word through the grapevine you’d hired on with the Pinkertons and I figured was there any way to reach you it’d be through them. I’m hoping I’m right and I ain’t dead by time this reaches you, if it ever does. It’s a lot of story to go into and my pencil is about wore down to the nub. Best save it all for when you get out here, if you get out here. You’re about the only friend I got that’s still yet alive that I know of. The rest has been scattered to the wind, them that ain’t under the sod. You know how cowboys are when it comes to staying in one place too long. I understand if you can’t help, but I’d su
re appreciate it if you could. And if you hear they hung me, well, I’ll leave word with the hanging people to send you the news.

  Yr. Pard, John Sears, Esq.

  Teddy felt something hard ripple down through him. John Sears had been like family to him, had befriended him when he first quit law school and drifted west and hired on with a cow outfit in Texas. John had taught him the ways of being a cowboy, to rope and shoot and fight when he needed to. Had taught him to drink and cuss and know the pleasures of women in the cow-towns. John seemed to him as much a brother in some ways, as did Horace. He quickly read the letter again, saw that it was dated two weeks earlier. John could already be dead. But there was every chance he might still be alive and if he was…

  “I’ve got to catch a train,” Teddy said.

  “Where to?”

  Teddy handed George the letter while he rushed upstairs to pack a valise. George followed, folded the letter after he read it.

  “Maybe I can help.”

  “How so?”

  “I can send a wire ahead saying that we’re sending an operative, that your friend is one of ours, something, anything just to prevent them hanging him if they haven’t already.”

  “Why would you do that, George? I know you’re too damn honest and a straight shooter to do something that could possibly jeopardize your position.”

  “Because whether you accept it or not, you’re still one of us, Teddy. You’re still a Pinkerton in my book.”

  “But old John isn’t one of yours…”

  “Doesn’t matter. He’s your friend.”

  “Okay, if that’s what it takes, okay. I’d appreciate it and I know old John would, as well.”

  “Then maybe when you’ve finished up your business out there, you’ll go to Missouri?”

  “Nobody would ever mistake you for rube, would they, George?”

  “I’d hope not. Send me a telegram when you get there, let me know what I can do.” They shook hands. George was a good man.

  Teddy was on the evening flier, a bottle of whiskey in his pocket, a valise with a change of clothes, the Birdseye Colt strapped under his coat in a shoulder holster and a head full of worries.

  He had wanted desperately to learn more about Horace’s killer before leaving Chicago, but point in fact, his staying in Chicago and what he might learn would not bring Horace back. He trusted George to follow through; George understood the importance. John Sears, on the other hand, might yet be saved. You just didn’t turn your back on your friends, especially ones who were like blood.

  He watched the city lights shrink into the darkness as the train pulled out of the station. He reached into his pocket for the bottle and his fingers touched the badge and he brought it forth. The tips of his fingers rubbed over the raised lettering: PINKERTON NATIONAL DETECTIVE AGENT. The brass felt cold and smooth like the barrel of a revolver, like a bullet, like the skin of a dead man. Maybe it would prove to be the key to John’s jail cell, or maybe it would prove to be only a worthless piece of metal, a target for some drunken shootist, as it almost had been before.

  He slipped the badge back into his pocket and took out the bottle of whiskey. He drank to the steady rhythm and rocking of the car.

  He closed his eyes and thought of John sitting in some lonesome jail, possibly waiting for the morning they’d come and put a rope around his neck and drop him from a tree limb, foregoing the need to do anything as elaborate as building a gallows.

  He thought too about Kathleen Bonney, the woman he’d met in Cheyenne and fallen in love with and the illness that had her in its grip. He thought that once he got things settled with John he would ride down to Silver City and pay her a visit. He wondered how she was making out—whether her consumption had gotten worse.

  The train rocked along and he drank and after a time sleep took him, and when it did, time or whiskey didn’t matter there in the darkness under his hat.

  Chapter 2

  Billy wired and told ’em all to come quick.

  Big hunt, plenty of swells, easy pickings. You boys need new boots, pistolas, whiskey?

  White Eye Anderson got a wire, so did Yankee Judd.

  They came in from the gold fields, their knees wet from kneeling in the cold creeks and saw the telegrams as a divine intervention.

  “Anything has to be easier than panning gold,” White Eye said. “Burying Wild Bill was easier.”

  “I never buried nobody,” Yankee said, “so I couldn’t say if burying fellers is easier or not.”

  “Trust me, it is.”

  So they packed their gear and hopped the Deadwood–Cheyenne stage, then the train from Cheyenne to Denver, and from there they rode the Union Pacific east to North Platte, where Billy was waiting for them in a fresh snow.

  “Glad to see you boys are still alive and have not met your death up in that desperate gulch like Wild Bill met his,” Billy said.

  “I helped bury him,” White Eye said. “He was the prettiest corpse I ever seen.”

  “Fine, fine,” Billy said. “We oughter get out of this snow or we’ll freeze and become corpses ourselves.”

  Billy put them up in one of the hotels that had a bar and iron beds.

  “Got Buck Taylor coming too, and Ned Buntline’s rounding up the swells—they’ll be here in a week or less.”

  “Who you getting to do the cooking?” Yankee said. “I’m particular about my grub.”

  “Thought I’d ask Jane.”

  “Calamity, or Jane Nebraska?”

  “Jane Nebraska,” Billy said.

  “Whew, that is good news then,” White Eye said.

  “Last I heard of Calamity, she was screwing miners for drinks,” Yankee said. “A good woman gone bad…” Yankee looked forlorn, for he’d once been in love with Calamity Jane when they both first came to the West, having met in Kansas. Early on in their courtship he considered proposing marriage to her. A life on the prairies with kids, a soddy maybe, a few head of cattle seemed a pleasing idea to him. Then Jane disappeared one day and did not return for three months and when she did return and Yankee asked her where’d she been, expressed his concern she’d been scalped by Indians or worse, Jane laughed in that horsey way of hers and said she was just a free-spirit woman set on this earth to enjoy life’s pleasures. Yankee did not think he could marry such a woman and he went north and left Jane to frequent the saloons of Dodge, where she eventually met and fell in love with Wild Bill, who would ignore her at every opportunity.

  “I’ll need you boys to purchase what is on this list,” Billy said, handing them a piece of paper he’d scribbled down needed supplies on. “Buck will find the horseflesh we need once he gets here. There ain’t a more knowledgeable man in all the country when it comes to horseflesh.”

  White Eye looked over the list: tents, Sibley stoves, canned goods, blankets, sugar, coffee, bacon, cartridges of various calibers, knives, pots, pans, and several cases of champagne.

  “We’ll need to rent a few wagons, as well,” Billy added. “Just use my name wherever you go and tell ’em to put it on my credit.”

  Then he was off again.

  Yankee and White Eye saw him riding up the street from their hotel window, riding through the still-falling snow that was as deep as his horse’s knees.

  “Look at him,” Yankee said. “He looks like he’s riding out to kill Indians.”

  “Billy sure likes to strut his stuff,” White Eye said.

  “Let’s go find us an eatery,” Yankee said. “I could stand some regular grub, couldn’t you?”

  “I could eat the ears off a donkey,” White Eye said, and off they went to a café just up the street where they ate large plates of potatoes and beef and washed it down with beer while they waited for their slices of vinegar pie to arrive. They ate the pie with gusto and kept washing everything down with beer until the snow stopped.

  Billy rode through the snow on his high-stepping horse, Buckskin Joe. Rode all the way to the cabin on Stinking Creek where Jane Nebraska lived with her
crazy father. Silas Nebraska hadn’t always been crazy. He had been an army surgeon during the war, had cut off shattered arms and legs of screaming boys and seen every kind of deprivation that lead and steel could do to the human body. And after four years of seeing and dealing with such, he went from a sane, thoughtful, introspective man to one that was plum crazy. The shot of war had shot his mind along with the bodies of those young lads who adorned his surgeon’s table.

  He moved from a fine Virginian colonial home to a run-down cabin in the toolies of Nebraska and changed his name from Silas Fox to Silas Nebraska because he didn’t want anyone to know who he was or what he had been. He married a widow ten years his senior, who bore him a daughter and promptly died. Silas named the infant Jane. He didn’t know why he named her that, other than Jane sounded like a simple name, one he could remember easily. He took up cattle breeding, but his cattle all froze the first hard winter. Then he took up farming, but a plague of grasshoppers wiped him out. All this made him a little crazier than he already was. He felt akin to Job, like God had personally picked him out to test him. But old God might have saved his strength, the way Silas saw it—for he’d pretty much given up on the goodness of God a long time ago.

  Recognizing her father’s difficulties early on, including his shortcomings as a provider, Jane learned to hunt squirrels and beavers and prairie chickens at quite a young age. As she grew older, she got good enough to track antelope and deer. She learned to cook by dint of necessity and the help of a kindly neighbor woman, who ended up getting lost one winter and who was not found until spring, curled up by a big rock less than two hundred yards from her back door; this event was just one more sign to Silas that kindness and goodness earned you no points in God’s book.

  Wild Bill had introduced Jane and her crazy father to Billy a few years previous when the two men were putting together their first hunting party for the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia.

  “I was attacked by a bear and mauled bad,” Wild Bill had related to Cody. “I stumbled across their cabin on the Stinking Creek and the old man sewed me up good and sang songs backwards and read books upside down. I didn’t care he was crazy, he was a good medico who probably saved my life.”