He now explained at length the machinations of the trail pirates and the untimely end of them in the night battle on the Washita.
“He mostly plays a lone hand,” Nabours concluded. “He’s an officer in the Rangers. That’s putting law into Texas—the Rangers.”
“Well, we’ve only got one man to put law into Abilene. I’m going to hire Wild Bill Hickok for our town marshal. Wild Bill has got these bad people buffaloed. Counting in his work as a Union sharpshooter, under Curtis, in the Missouri country, he’d have to have a long gun stock to carry all his notches. It’s sure he’s killed somewhere between seventy-five and a hundred men. In 1860, when he was taking care of the stage stock over in east of Abilene, he was jumped by McCandless and his gang—ten men there were in all. You’ve heard of that fight? They were going to run off the stage stock for the Confederate Army. They tackled Bill in his shack, ten of them, and he was alone. He killed nine out of the ten by himself. Not so bad, eh? I don’t know as I ever knew Bill to serve a warrant or make an arrest. But I’ll bet one thing—if we get him for town marshal, Abilene will be first in graveyards, the same as she is first in everything else.”
“It shore looks like Dan McMasters has a pleasant time a-waiting for him,” commented Nabours. “But he’s usual able to take care of hisself.
“Now, I’ll have to cut out a beef for these yellow-bellied friends of ours,” he added. “We’ve picked up a shorthorn stray or so a couple of days ago, and put a Fishhook on him to keep him from catching cold. Like enough it was a Osage steer, anyhow, so I reckon I’ll let ’em have that one. Go cut it out, Len, when we come up with the herd.”
Osages and all, they rode along. Easily, lazily, as though he knew precisely where the animal was, Len Hersey found it, rode it out of the herd and drove it back close to the Indian group.
“Here’s your wohaw,” he said.
The Osage chieftain smiled amiably. A bow twanged. In five minutes the ribs of the beef were broiling on a prairie Osage fire. The dust of the great herd of spotted cattle was lessening to the north.
CHAPTER XXXVII
ABILENE
IN THE front room of a raw board building, on which carpenters still were laboring noisily, sat a tall man at a table, pleasantly humming a tune to himself as he bent over his task.