Thus murmured Mr. Hickok, as he meditated upon the strangeness of things. Mr. Hickok might have extended his surmise. A man does all things better when he has a roll.
The currents of life had been flowing swiftly for Mr. Hickok. Two years before he was marshal of Hays, and had shot his way into the popular confidence. In an evil hour a trio of soldiers came over from the Fort, led by one Lanigan, and took drunken umbrage at Mr. Hickok’s hair. This rudeness touched Mr. Hickok tenderly, and in checking it he snuffed out those three as gallery Frenchmen snuff candles at ten paces. Since there arose carpers to say that Mr. Hickok went too far in these homicides, he laid down his trust and journeyed to Abilene.
Mr. Hickok was welcomed with spread arms by Abilene. Its marshal had just been gathered home through the efforts of a cowboy with a genius for firearms. Abilene offered the vacant place to Mr. Hickok, and to encourage acceptance, showed him where it hanged the cowboy. Mr. Hickok accepted, drew on the public fisc for the price of five hundred rounds of ammunition, and entered upon his responsibilities.
Mr. Hickok reigned as marshal eight months, and kept Abilene like a church. Then he put a bullet through Mr. Coit, whose pleasure it had been to go upon tri-weekly sprees and leave everything all over the works. Again, as on that day in Hays, there came narrowists to fling reproach upon Mr. Hickok. They said the affair might have been sufficiently managed by wrecking a six-shooter upon Mr. Coit’s head; the dead gentleman had yielded to such treatment on former occasions. As it was, the intemperate haste of Mr. Hickok had eliminated one who spent money with both hands. The taking off of Mr. Coit might conduce to Abilene’s peace; it was none the less a blow to Abilene’s prosperity. Mr. Hickok, made heartsore by mean strictures, and weary with complaints which found sordid footing in a lust for gain, gave up his marshalship of Abilene, as he had given up the post in Hays, and wandered east in search of whiter fortune.
About the time he shook the Abilene dust from his moccasins, there came to Mr. Hickok’s hand a proposal from Mr. Cody to join him in the production of a drama. It was to be a drama descriptive of an Arcadian West—one wherein stages were robbed, maidens rescued, Indians put to death. Mr. Hickok in real life had long been familiar with every fraction of the stage business; the lines he could learn in a night. Mr. Cody was confident that Mr. Hickok would take instant part in that drama without rehearsal. If Mr. Hickok accepted, the financial side was to be coloured to meet his taste. His social life, so Mr. Cody explained, should be one of splendour and Eastern luxury.
Mr. Hickok, pausing only to break himself at faro-bank, took up the proffer of Mr. Cody. He journeyed to New York, and found that thorough-going scout sojourning at the Brevoort House.
“Where’s your trunk?” asked Mr. Cody.
“Haven’t any,” returned Mr. Hickok, whose trunk had been left to keep a boarding-house in countenance. “But I’ve brought my guns.” This last, hopefully.
“That’s right,” observed Mr. Cody, whom nothing was ever known to daunt. “While a gentleman may be without a change of linen, he should never let his wardrobe sink so low as to leave him without a change of guns.”
Mr. Hickok was not a permanency in the theatres. His was a serious nature, and there were many matters behind the footlights to irk the soul of him. For one stifling outrage he was allowed nothing lethal wherewith to feed his six-shooters. Blanks by the hundreds he might have; but no bullets.