Boy on a Pony

                               by Robert Kail

                            Copyright © l997 by Robert Kail

 This book is a western murder mystery, but also a gentle and slow-paced

 novel of atmosphere, touching the transition from the bad old 'wild-west'

 days to the conservative  mid-west we know. Although Wild Bill Hickok

 is mentioned in the first line and the pardoned outlaw Frank James has

 a cameo appearance in the next chapter, more typical are such characters

 as the Scandihoovian 'Perfesser' who teaches school, the grizzled and

 crack-brained Civil War veteran, the desiccated old Indians, a sadistic

 tough of an old Sheriff, a young, modern Sheriff who wants to go into

 politics, a giggly Swedish maid, and the one Negro family.

 

           Book Preview Chapter

                Rapid City, South Dakota  1896

"Daddy, did you ever talk with Wild Bill Hickok?"

                Judge Karl Hoffer restrained his mare. She was trying to crowd his

        son's pony off the dusty narrow road that wound between fields of ripe

        September wheat.

                "Never. Not that I can recall."

                "You'd remember that, wouldn't you? He was the best shot in all the

        Dakotas, weren't he? 'The Terror of the Desperadoes.' "

                 "Where did you hear all that nonsense?" The Judge looked over at the

        delicate features of his nine-year-old. Frederick's eyes were shaded

        against the morning light by a tweed cap from which his long wheat-blonde

        hair escaped in back. The boy was just itching to gallop some more.

                "Who's been talking about Wild Bill Hickok? Does the Professor teach

        you these things?"

                "My dime novels. I got another Ned Buntline book up to Carver's store.

        Bill Hickok was the fastest shooter in Deadwood, he says. He traveled

        with Buffalo Bill. Didn't you never see him in Deadwood during the Gold

        Rush?"

                "I saw him. He was a sick old man living in a tent."

          "He wasn't so old. Not as old as you are, was he?"

        Karl Hoffer saw a stir in the low wheat at the crest of the hill that

overlooked the dustry farm road. He remained impassive, yet he watched

carefully.

        "He was younger than I am now, but he had runny eyes and funny blue

glasses, and he walked with a cane made out of a pool cue."

        "Did you ever see Calamity Jane?"

        As they went around the final bend and came into sight of the river,

Hoffer saw the four Indians, now mounted and stock still, montionless and

watching.

        "We didn't waste time in saloons, son. We just sold our flour and beans

and left town. Tip your hat, Frederick."

          The Judge and his son raised their hats in the gesture of respect most

Indians now understood. The braves didn't move.

        "Are they Comanches?" the boy whispered.

        "Teton Sioux."

        "I bet you could outshoot them if they attacked. Why don't you have

your rifle?"

         "They are ... our brothers, Frederick."

         "The only good Injun is a dead Injun."

         "Is that another Ned Buntline dictum?"

         "Everybody knows that. I bet Sheriff Hess has shot hundred of

Injuns."

         "Our brothers, Frederick. Always remember that. My father and I

broke bread with them."

           They rode past the last of the wheat fields and into sight of the ranch.

"There's Grampa!" the boy yelled, taking off his hat to wave. "Can I go?

Can I go, Daddy? HELLO GRANDPA!" he yelled in an ear-splitting treble.

          Hoffer reined in and squinted his eyes to see the distant figure beside

the corral. "Tcha," he smiled, leaning over to pat the boy's shoulder. "All

right. I'll see you in a few days. You be nice to Grandma!"

          "Goodbye, Daddy!" The boy kicked his pony in the ribs and galloped

off, fanning the fat pony's flanks with is hat, his blonde hair streamed

out behind him. "Yippee," he shouted. "Here comes Wild Bill Hickok. All

you varmints vamoose."

                      Judge Hoffer watched him galloping off across the buffalo grass as

        his ancestors had for centuries. The boy was a natural-born horseman.

        Hoffer sighed with relief and turned to trot sedately back toward Rapid

        City, posting with the erect grace he had learned at Heidelberg... before

        becoming a lawyer, a Judge ... before going to school in Germany... before

        the Civil War that made him an orphan. The wonderful hunting trips he had

        taken with his father back in the days when South Dakota was still a

        territory... the hundreds of Sioux lodges, and the way the dogs would snap

        at their ponies' hooves when they returned with a white-tailed deer.  He

        remembered the beds of soft buffalo hides, and the iron-tipped lances of

        the warriors.

                    A smart black carriage drawn by matched bays came around a bend in

        the road. "Mornin', ladies." He raised his hat to two of Miss Flossie's

        'nieces,' all decked out in calico.

                "Mornin', Judge," they chorused.

                 Obviously they were heading out to their claim shacks by the river.

        Everyone, it seemed, had a quarter-section of land outside of town where

        they had to spend five days each month in order to validate their claims as

        homesteaders. As often as not these claims were later sold to the highest

        bidder, but every new citizen in the young community had tried to establish

        a claim since statehood five years before. And there were so many of them.

        Rapid City already had almost five thousand residents. Too many.

                      Hoffer turned off the road to ride down to the river valley. His friend

        the schoolmaster was an amateur prospector who had made a potentially

        important find--clay. Karl remembered the first day he heard about it.

                 "That funny clay up in Butte County."

                 "Up by Hesses place."

                 “It is a good absorbing agent, that clay," Professor Podell had said in

        his Norwegian accent.

                "I may write to the petroleum companies."

                "What does clay have to do with swamp oil?"

                                        "They absorb water with it when they make kerosene and benzine."

                        "You should form a company and sell it to them."

                        "Maybe when I retire. But it is big business. You would have to have

                a railhead and ship it by the ton, by the car load."

                        "The Rockefeller brothers might be interested in that."

                        "I thought they were mine owners. In Colorado."

                     "They also have a coal-oil refinery back East. In Pennsylvania."

                 "Is that right?"

                 Through Morgan and Company, Karl had made discreet inquiries, and

        he had hired an engineer to come out and make a discreet survey to estimate

        how much a mining operation would cost. Although he had been a railroad

        lawyer for many years, and had done very well with his railway stocks, the

        rail wars between Morgan and Harriman, not to speak of the 'Panic of 93'

        on Wall Street, made him think of reinvesting his small competence. And

        Podell had already bought up mineral rights on a number of the claims in

        the Belle Fourche river valley. There was more area Karl wanted to see for

        himself.

                 A fusillade of shots exploded from a draw that led down to the river.

        It was that section of the Belle Fourche that Judge Hoffer seldom saw -- a

        barren waste of sand and clay. The gunfire was so fast that it sounded like

        a Gatling gun. Hoffer meant to turn and ride back to town, but his curiosity

        overcame him in the ensuing silence. Dismounting, he took off his highly

        visible white hat and led his horse to the top of the hill.

                 It was Sheriff Hess, standing by a tarpaper claim shack, cardboard

        boxes of ammunition at his feet. A row of bottles sat on a rock above a sea

        of broken glass. No one else was in sight .

                The Sheriff, motionless, laughed -- and then suddenly drew his two

        Navy colts from their holsters and began firing. Ten shots echoed from the

        hillocks, and glass shattered. The Sheriff dropped his pistols and drew two

        Derringers from his waistcoat to fire four more slugs at the elusive bottles.

        A jagged piece of lead whistled past Judge Hoffer's head, and he backed

        away below the rise as the Sheriff pulled a Bowie knife from his boot with

        an action as fast as a striking rattler. The Sheriff's low chuckle rose from the

        draw, together with the smoke of the black powder. For a man of sixty-odd,

        he had a fast hand and a good eye.

                 Hoffer had never heard such rapid gunfire. He decided to lead his

        horse away rather than to startle the heavily armed Sheriff with an

        unexpected greeting.

 

                      When he got back to town, he was walking his horse. The old sod

        barn behind his house was cool and dark. Judge Hoffer took off the saddle

        and blanket and wiped the mare down with a sponge from the rusty bucket

        beside her stall. He made sure there were oats for her, and then washed

        up at the pump in the yard and went into his house through the kitchen.

                  "Yo' luncheon is ready, Judge."

                  "Thank you, Mona." He stamped his feet to shake some of the dust

        off the elastic-sided boots he affected, and went through the kitchen patting

        the kinky hair of Eddie Jefferson, who was seated at the kitchen table with

        his brother. Mona, her boys, and their father were the only black family in

        Rapid City. They lived there with the Judge and his son and the Swedish

        housemaid -- much to the consternation of those confederate veterans who

        made up a minority of the population.

                  The Jeffersons had worked for Edwin Booth in New York and on his

        theatrical tourneys in America and Europe unti Judge Hoffer had brought

        them west and set Jefferson up as the sub rosa  owner of the restaurant

        concession in the Bismarck House hotel. Jefferson was not only a man of

        culture, familiar with Shakespeare and Congreve from childhood on, but he

        was a man of the world. He also happened to be the best gourmet chef west

        of Chicago.

                 Hoffer hung his Panama hat on the stuffed head of a huge elk his father

        had once shot in the Rockies. His desk, chair, elk and all, had come up the

        river on the steamer from St.. Louis when he had been made the Judge of

        Pennington County. His party had told him that if he gave up his full-time

        practice as a railroad lawyer and consented to reside in the jurisdiction, he

        could count on a circuit court judgeship after a few years. They had little

        realized that he was more than happy to move out to the town near his

        fiancee's home, a town he had plotted and planned, the focus of the railways

        that were coming down from Minnesota and up from the Union Pacific line.

        It was no exile to a savage land for Karl Hoffer, Dr. Phil. Juris., University

        of Heidelberg, of the St. Louis firm of Dietrich, Brown and Hoffer,

        Attorneys at Law.

                 It was no exile, but a return to the land of the Sioux.

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