reckon so. I didn’t hang around to see.”
“You mean you jist rode off without lendin’ a hand?”
“One more wouldn’t have made any difference,” Buck said quietly, knowing what was coming.
“Then I reckon that makes you a coward, don’t it?” the cardplayer said, standing up.
Buck slowly placed the shot glass of bear piss back on the rough bar. He eyeballed the man. Two guns worn low and tied down. The leather hammer thongs off. “Either that or careful.”
“You know what I think, Slick? I think it makes you yellow.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what I think,” Buck said. “I think you don’t know your bunghole from your mouth.”
The man flushed in the dim light of the trading post. His dirty hands hovered over his guns. “I think I’ll jist kill you for that.”
“Bet or fold,” Buck said.
The man’s hands dipped down. Buck’s right-hand .44 roared. The gunhand was dead before he hit the floor, the slug taking him in the center of the chest, exploding his heart.
“I never even seen the draw,” the bartender said, his voice hushed and awe-filled.
“Any of you other boys want to ante up in this game?” Buck asked.
None did.
The dead man broke wind as escaping gas left his cooling body.
“He were my partner,” a man still seated at the table said. “But he were in the wrong this time. I lay claim to his pockets.”
“Suits me,” Buck said. No one had even seen him holster his .44. “He have a name?”
“Big Jack. From up Montana way. Never spoke no last name. Who you be?”
“Buck West. I been trackin’ that damned Smoke Jensen for the better part of six months.”
Big Jack’s partner visibly relaxed. “Us, too. I would ask if you wanted some company, but you look like you ride alone.”
“That’s right.”
“Name’s Jerry. This here’s Carl and Paul. Don’t reckon you’d give us a hand diggin’ the hole for Jack?”
“I don’t reckon so.”
“Cain’t much blame you.”
“Bury him out back,” the bartender said. “Deep. If he smells any worser dead than alive I’ll have to move my place of business.”
3
The men watched as Buck rode away, ramrod straight in the saddle. Jerry said, “That young feller is faster than greased lightning.”
“Faster than Jesse, I betcha!”
“Ain’t no faster than Wild Bill, though,” Paul said.
Jerry spat on the ground. “Wild Bill ain’t crap!”
“You don’t say!” Carl turned on his friend. “I suppose you gonna tell us Wild Bill didn’t clean up Abilene?”
“He sure as hell didn’t. I know. I were there. Me and Phil Coe. I seen Wild Bill shoot him with a pair of derringers after Phil done put his gun away. Then he turned around and shot the marshal, Mike Williams. Wild Bill better not ever try to brace that there Buck West. Buck’s a bad one, boys. Cold-eyed as a snake.”
It would be almost exactly two and one half years later, on the afternoon of August 2, 1876, in Deadwood, South Dakota, when a cross-eyed, busted-nose wino named Jack McCall would blow out Hickok’s brains as he studied his poker hand of Aces and Eights. Wild Bill would be thirty-nine years old.
“I think Potter ought to know about this here Buck West,” Jerry said. “Think I’ll take me a ride later on. Let Buck get good and gone.”
“We’ll tag along.”
Late that afternoon a stranger rode up to the trading post and walked inside. He cradled a Henry repeating rifle in the crook of his left arm. “I seen the fresh grave out back,” he said to the barkeep. “Friend of yourn?”
“Hell, no! Don’t git me to lyin’.”
“Man ought to have a marker on his grave, don’t you think?”
“I’ll git around to it one of these days. Maybe. Big Jack was all they called him.”
“Better than nothin’. I don’t reckon he died of natural causes?”
“Not likely. You gonna talk all day or buy a drink of whiskey?”
The buckskin-dressed old man tossed some change on the wide rough board that passed for a counter. “That buy a jug?”
“And then some. No, sir. That Big Jack fancied hisself a gunhand, I guess.” He placed a dirty cup and a clay jug of rotgut on the counter. “But he done run up on a ringtailed-tooter this day. Feller by the name of Buck West. You heard of him?”
“Seems I have, somewheres. Bounty hunter, I think. But he’s a bad man to mess with.”
“Tell me! Why, he drew so fast a feller couldn’t even see the blur! Big Jack’s hand could just touch the butt of his .36 when the lead hit him in the center of the chest. Dead ’fore he hit the ground.”
The old man smiled. “That fast, hey?”
“Lord have mercy, yes!” He eyeballed the old man. “Ain’t I seen you afore? You a mountain man, ain’t you? Ain’t so many of you old boys left.”
“Not me, podner. I’m retared from the east. Come out here to pass my golden years amid the peace and tranquility of the High Lonesome.”
The bartender, no spring chicken himself, narrowed his eyes and said, “And you jist as full of shit now as you was forty year ago, you old goat!”
The old man laughed. “Wal, you jist keep that information inside that head of yourn and off your tongue. You do that and I won’t tell nobody I know where Rowdy Jake Kelly was retared to. You still got money on your head, Rowdy.”
“Man, I heard you got kilt! Shot all to hell and gone over to Needle Mountains.”
“Part of it’s true. I got all dressed up in my finest buckskins, rode an old nag up into the hills, and laid me down to die. Lordy, but I was hurtin’ some. Longer I laid there the madder I got. I finally got up, said to hell with this, and rode off. Found me one of my Injun kids—or grandkids, I ain’t real sure which—and she took care of me. You keep hush about this, now, you hear?”
“I never saw you afore this day,” Rowdy Jake Kelly said.
The old man nodded, picked up his jug of whiskey, and rode off.
Buck
