Kindle Edition
Amazon
Amazon
Category:
Western
Publisher: Outlaws Publishing
ISBN-10: B07YPVK742
Type: Fiction
Pages: 286
Copyright: Oct. 3, 2019
Price: $0.99 (eBook)
Calamity Jane creates a gunfighter to revenge the murder of Wild Bill Hickok.
A probing look at the character of Calamity Jane and the impulses that drove her, a clawing inferiority complex and a compulsive need for attention and fame.
This is also a story of Deadwood, a lawless town on land stolen from the Indians and built on gambling and gold. It’s a story of the murder of Wild Bill Hickok in Nuttal & Mann’s Saloon Number 10, a story of what happens to a person when fame overtakes a life, and the colossal exaggerations required to build such fame.
Based on historical research.
Excerpt
Chapter Two
Almost half the town of Deadwood 2,000 people in all attended Wild Bill’s funeral hosted by Colorado Charlie Utter, Bill’s loyal friend.
The crowd wound their way up the hill at Ingelside Cemetery following the men carrying Hickok’s casket in a somber line, silent.
Wild Bill had lain in a coffin richly ornamented with silver inlay mountings and covered with a black cloth. He looked serene in repose his arms folded over his chest and his shoulder-length straw-colored hair parted in the middle, flowing over his broad shoulders. Hickok’s Springfield .50 caliber rifle was placed at his side.
Bill had an enigmatic smile on his face. Either he was glad to be done with a life he knew was going nowhere or he was amused by the respectful reverence shown by some of his cronies, one of them Calamity Jane.
Jane wore her best dress, a black afternoon dress of American silk with pleats that flowed down below her shoes and behind her in a train like a wedding gown, which she lifted up to keep it from touching the dust. She had on her head a matching bonnet of velvet topped with a feather and tied at the chin with a velvet strap.
Townspeople might have recognized her, but didn’t. Most of them had never seen her dressed as a woman.
Calamity looked on as Utter and his brother Steve assisted by Arapahoe Joe and three other men lowered Hickok’s coffin into a hole against the stump of a dead tree onto which the words had been carved, ‘A brave man, the victim of an assassin, J.B. Hickok Wild Bill aged 48 years (he was really 39), murdered by Jack McCall, August 2, 1876’.
Jane, her head bowed listened to the clergyman a recently arrived Irishman named O’Donnell read the words “God, take him unto thee.”
“Let me in that hearing.”
“Now Calamity, remember you’re a lady.”
The miners had brought Jack McCall to the McDaniels and Langrishe Theater. There he would be tried for murder.
Calamity had seen him around before, a stumpy, stooped little cross-eyed man with a pug nose and reddened eye pupils glassy from drink who looked ape-like in countenance, a skulking, loitering, whining wretch, an inebriate.
Jane didn’t hold his drinking against him, just his being a yellow-belly.
“Jane you’re not allowed into the courtroom heeled with guns. Turn ‘em over.”
“I’ll be a butter-cup if I do, let me in!” Calamity bellowed.
“Not until you give up your guns.”
“Who do you think you are?” Calamity shouted.
“I’m the sergeant at arms of this here court.” Goat Herd Ed Cronkwell, named for the animals he fondly kept east of town piously blocked Jane from the door.
“Get out of my way!”
“Do you want me to call for the marshal?”
“There ain’t no marshal in Deadwood.” Calamity snarled.
“Yeah? Well, I’ll call the Vigilance Committee,” Cronkwell said.
“That bunch of bummers, they only met one time, and that was to vote themselves twenty tin-pans of beer with the money they stole from the Christian orphan’s fund.”
“They promised to pay it back.”
“Step aside.”
“Calamity, Calamity,” Cronkwell pleaded. “Don’t cause me no trouble. Please. Nobody inside is heeled. They gave me this job it don’t look good if a woman...”
“If a mere woman buffaloes ya?’” Calamity Jane nodded. “I ain’t no mere woman. Okay if they don’t have theirs, I don’t need mine. I can face ‘em any which way they choose. I don’t need my guns, my stare’ll do it. Here.”
She unbuckled her twin Colt Army Single Action .45 pistols and shoved them at Cronkwell, who took them and placed them in a box behind him with other stored guns.
Cronkwell drew a deep breath and looked relieved. “Thanks Calamity. I’ll make it up to you. I’ll buy you a bottle of redeye (whiskey).”
Jane entered the room. The theater run by Jack Langrishe was packed with people all of them men.
“Calamity!” A roar went up from the crowd at the sight of Jane. “Mrs. Hickok,” someone yelled.
Jane took a theatrical bow. She was the only woman in the hall.
In addition to theater seats chairs had been brought from the nearby Bella Union Saloon and placed haphazardly around the room giving it a rowdy ramshackle feel. A soap box placed on its side would serve as a bench podium for the judge.
A chair was procured for Jane to sit. She felt a surge of pride. No other woman in town would have been accorded such an honor.
The crowd was noisy, unruly, happy as though enjoying themselves, perhaps suspecting they were witnessing history, or possibly the ending of an era.
“Order! Order!” called W.L. Kuykendall, the pro tempore or temporary, make-believe unauthorized judge in the case. He banged down on the upended soap box a gavel, in reality a wooden meat tenderizer hammer, attempting to settle the crowd. “Quiet! Let’s have order. Let the proceeding begin.”
The men joking pushing nudging each other and making cat-calls presently settled down.
“We’re here this morning to decide the case of the recently deceased William Hickok,” Kuykendall announced.
“He wasn’t recently deceased, he was murdered!” Jane yelled.
The crowd erupted in cheers and laughter.
“Quiet! I said quiet.” Kuykendall banged down his gavel five times. He waited for the crowd to lapse back into attention. “May we proceed?”
Silence descended.
“Thank you,” Kuykendall said. “Now it is my duty to inform you that I agreed to officiate at this event in my capacity as a veteran of the Civil War, and as there is no legal jurisdiction in this territory, this court is purely a self-constituted court. Nevertheless, in the discharge of my duties I will be governed by justice and ratification for the outcome of my acts.”
The crowd applauded.
“Bring the prisoner forward.”
Armed men brought in Jack McCall alias Bill Sutherland and seated him on the stage to the right of Kuykendall. McCall’s crossed eyes darted nervously back and forth scanning the crowd. Then head down he gazed at the wood floor.
“Call your first witness,” Kuykendall said.
Colonel George Maym a prominent attorney in the Montana Territory serving here as a lawyer for the prosecution said, “Your honor, we call to the stand Charles Rich.”
Rich, a teenager and poker player had dealt the hand of cards to Wild Bill at the Number 10 Saloon when he was fatally shot. He approached the bench nervously and stood before Kuykendall (no chair had been provided for witnesses).
“Were you in the Mann saloon on the afternoon of August 2?” May asked.
“I was,” Rich answered.
“Tell us what happened.”
Rich shuffled his feet and shrugged. “I was dealing cards with Mr. Mann and Captain Massie, a riverboat captain. Wild Bill came in. He wanted to play. He asked for my seat so he could have his back to the wall, but we all kidded him that he had no reason to worry, that he was among friends. He took an empty seat opposite me.”
“Go on.”
“We were playing cards; I heard a shot, and someone yell… ‘take that!’ Wild Bill fell to the side off his chair without saying a word.”
“Is the man who fired the shot in the room?”
“He is.”
“Would you point him out?”
Rich pointed to McCall.
“You’re excused.”
Rich turned and reentered the audience.
“The prosecution calls Sam Young.”
The young the bartender at the Number 10 approached.
“Your name is Sam Young?” May asked.
Young nodded. “Everybody calls me Harry.”
“What did you see on the afternoon of August 2?”
“Well sir, there was a poker game in progress with Mann and Massie like Mr. Rich said and Wild Bill came in to the saloon. He asked me for $15 worth of checks so he could play and then he took a seat with the others. I brought his checks and I returned to the bar. I was cleaning up and talking with a customer when I heard a pistol shot and someone yell. “Take that!’”
“Was Mr. McCall holding the gun?”
“Yes.”
“Had you ever heard Mr. McCall make any threats against Mr. Hickok?”
“No sir, I thought they were friends. I know Wild Bill had played cards with him (McCall) the night before and he (McCall) was cleaned out and Wild Bill told him to not play anymore until he could cover his debts, but then offered to buy him breakfast.”
“Thank you, you’re excused.”
Carl Mann the proprietor of the Number 10 appeared next and told much the same story. There was apparently no motive for McCall to kill Wild Bill.
Joseph Miller, a retired attorney and Deadwood city councilman rose to serve as defense attorney for McCall. He called as his first witness, P.H. Smith. Smith identified himself as employee of McCall’s.
Calamity noticed that among the miners gathered in the audience were a number of deadbeat reprobate gamblers. Friends of John Varnes and Tim Brady, they were part of that group ‘across the creek’ Wild Bill had said were out to get him because they were afraid he would be made marshal and shut down their crooked games. Varnes and Brady were nowhere in the crowd. They had evidently fled the possibility of becoming implicated in a trial that might reveal damming evidence.
“What was it that Mr. McCall had you doing?” Miller asked.
“Oh just things,” Smith said, nervously looking around the room as though unsure.
“Yeah, scratching his nose!” Jane yelled.
The crowd erupted in laughter.
“Order, order!” Kuykendall called.
“How long have you worked for Mr. McCall?” Miller asked.
“Four months,” Smith said.
“Would you testify to Mr. McCall’s character?”
“Yes, I always considered him a man of good character.”
“He’s a character, he just don’t have any!” Jane yelled.
The crowd erupted in laughter.
“Who said that?” Kuykendall called.
No one pointed at Calamity.
Kuykendall scanned the room, which went silent.
“Were you acquainted with Wild Bill?” Miller asked.
Smith nodded. “I knew him in Cheyenne. He had a bad reputation. He was known to be a terror in every place he had lived in.”
H.H. Pickens was called next. He said he had known McCall and had no reason to doubt his decency.
“I knew him (McCall) to be a peaceable, quiet man,” Pickens said. “Wild Bill was known as a violent man.”
“That’s a lie!” Jane stood and yelled.
The crowd erupted in laughter and cat calls.
“Order, order!” Kuykendall yelled slamming his meat tenderizer gavel. He pointed the gavel at Calamity. “You, if you can’t control yourself, I will have you exited from these proceedings. Do you understand?”
Jane sat down.
“You tell ‘em Calamity!” someone yelled.
Kuykendall waited for the hall to grow silent.
“You were saying,” Miller said.
“Bill’s reputation was very bad,” Pickens said. “He was known as quick to use his gun and never failed to get his man.”
Pickens was dismissed and Ira Ford came forward. He said Wild Bill had a fearsome reputation.
“I knew Mr. McCall for about a year,” Ford said. “He was no different than most of the boys in town, he would go on a spree (drinking) once in a while, but Wild Bill could shoot quicker than any man and he had grey eyes that could stare right through you.”
“Was it your opinion that Wild Bill didn’t mind resorting to violence?”
“I can’t say that, but I will say that any man would know he was faster shooting than any man in the west and a deadly shot.”
“Wild Bill didn’t kill nobody that didn’t need it!” Jane yelled.
The crowd exploded in jeers and cheers.
“Order, order!” Kuykendall pounded his gavel. He waited for the tumult to die off. “Miss Canary,” he said solemnly. “One more outburst and I will have the stewards escort you from the hall. If you can’t keep your passions in check….”
“She and Bill had the passion,” someone yelled.
The crowd revolved in laughter.
“Order, order!” Kuykendall waited, staring at the audience. The noise faded. “I will give you one more chance. Let’s proceed.”
Jacob Teed was called. He said McCall came from a good family back in Kentucky. “Mr. McCall had never had a reason to commit an act of violence,” he said.
“Why do you think Mr. McCall killed Wild Bill?” Miller asked.
“Wild Bill killed his brother in Abilene, Kansas,” Teed said.
“I object!” yelled May. “I asked the witness about it before and he said he’d never even seen Mr. McCall before.”
“Overruled,” Kuykendall called.
“The defense calls Mr. McCall.”
Jack McCall rose from his seat on the stage and faced Kuykendall and the bench. His eyes darted back and forth nervously scanning members of the audience. He seemed to be reassured and adopted a pose of bravado. He had a double chin partially hidden by a stiff goatee.
“State your name for the record,” Kuykendall said.
“Jack McCall.”
Calamity stiffened in her seat staring at McCall to gain his measure.
“What was the nature of your trouble with Mr. Hickok?” Miller asked.
McCall had his right hand stuffed inside his rough wool shirt. He threw his head back in a theatrical pose as though confident. He spoke in a harsh and shrill voice. “Gentleman,” he said. “I have few words to say. Wild Bill killed my brother in Kansas and so I killed him. Wild Bill threatened to kill me if I ever crossed his path. I’m not sorry for what I did, I’d do it again.”
Calamity yelled rising from her seat. “You’d gun your own mother if you thought you could make fifty dollars off it.”
The crowd erupted. “Shut up,” J.J. Bumps yelled.
“Make me!” Jane yelled at Bumps.
“Please sit down,” L.D. Brokow pleaded.
“If I had a piece, I’d drill you through your ugly chin!” Calamity yelled at McCall.
Men stood off their chairs and wrestled with each other. Jane was pushed. There was bedlam.
“Order!” Kuykendall called to no effect.
“Get her out of here.”
“Get your hands off me!”
“Ow! She hit me.”
“Strike a woman. Here take that.” J.F. Cooper punched Alex Travis. K.F. Towle grabbed John E. Thompson in a headlock. Men wrestled each other on the floor. L.A. Judd was choking Edward Burke.
Kuykendall banged his gavel.
Calamity Jane was thrown out of the trial into the street.
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