A short gray man with white mustache and goatee shuffled in, not vouchsafing any speech at all. He brought them glasses and motioned Bill to a quiet corner of the room, where at the hour they found themselves quite alone.
“Well, Mr. McMasters,” said Bill, “I am glad to see you in Abilene, and I wish you were going to live here. It’s not just the healthiest place for a peace officer. It maybe won’t be any healthier if the Texas herds ever do begin to come in.”
“I know of one on the way,” said McMasters. “It will be in now almost any day.”
Hickok nodded.
“They used to drive up the Neosho in towards Sedalia, a few years ago. Those toughs in there used the trail men mighty rough. Dougherty, Ellison, Hunter, McMasters, Lockhart—they were all good men that tried to drive in there from Texas. It would have paid St. Louis to have sent her whole police force down there and cleaned up that gang of cattle bandits. They’ve just headed off all the Texas cattle that came up that way.”
“Yes, I know about that pretty well,” assented Dan McMasters. “You say McMasters. Calvin McMasters was my father. They killed him. He was a friend of Colonel Burleson Lockhart. They killed Lockhart too. I’ve been in there since, once or twice, on business of my own. That gang were very largely friends of Dave Tutt.”
Their eyes met silently. Dave Tutt was a man whom Wild Bill Hickok killed in a street duel on the public square of Springfield, Missouri, in the presence of his friends, all of whom had threatened to kill Hickok on sight.
“Well, those people couldn’t seem to make a living any way except by robbing folks,” said the border man after a while. “The real brains of that outfit was a fellow called Rudabaugh—Sim Rudabaogh. I heard that he went South; to Austin, I think.”
“Yes, he got some sort of Northern political pull back of him I don’t just know how. He has given us a fine example of organized Reconstruction politics. He has put on foot the biggest plan of wholesale cow stealing and land stealing and general highway robbery that ever was started even in Texas.”
“Using his old trade, eh? Working large?”