Chapter 1
Near Cheyenne, June 1876
The camp was just starting to stir when Charlie Utter was woken from his sleep by the sound of a horse being saddled. He peered through the wispy smoke of the campfire to see what was happening.
"Bill?" He ground his palm into each eye. "Are we movin' already?"
"No, still early," James 'Wild Bill' Hickok replied stiffly, pulling firmly on his gelding's girth strap.
Charlie pulled himself into a sitting position against a fallen log where he and Hickok had made camp for the night. They kept apart from the rest of the wagon train, his friend keen to avoid the stares and incessant talk of their fellow travelers. It wasn't every day they got to meet a man of Wild Bill Hickok's reputation, but Bill had no appetite for celebrity of late.
"You really gonna do this?" Charlie asked, hoping a night's sleep had changed Bill's mind.
"Yep."
"In case you ain't noticed, Bill, Sweetwater ain't exactly on the way to Deadwood," stated Charlie with ill-disguised exasperation.
"Don't come then," his friend replied, not pausing in his preparations. "I don't need no keeper."
It was barely dawn, the temperature was already rising and the day was promising to be clear. Perfect traveling weather. The wagon train had left Cheyenne at the beginning of the week and was heading for Fort Laramie before their ultimate destination of Deadwood, the new gold mining town where fortunes were being made. But instead of continuing their journey north, Charlie was faced with the news that his friend and business partner was already altering their plans to head to the Black Hills.
Hickok was headstrong, he knew, but this irrational announcement the previous evening still surprised Charlie. He had put it down to one too many pulls on the whiskey jug, and decided Bill's fanciful talk of going to Sweetwater where he once lived was just that – talk.
"I thought you wanted to go make a grubstake," grumbled Charlie, sore over the sudden change.
"I do. And I will."
"But you got to go pay a visit to some old friends first?"
"That's right," said Hickok. "I ain't seen 'em in over five years."
It wasn't often he spoke of his days in the Pony Express, but Charlie knew him well enough to know he had friends from back then who were like kin.
Well, kin he never wrote or visited.
"So why now? Why not go after we're finished in Deadwood?" Charlie argued.
"I'm goin' now. You go on to Fort Laramie if you want to, I ain't stoppin' you."
Charlie pushed himself up from the ground with a grunt. He hoped his words might have more effect if he faced his friend. "But the wagon train's all set, Bill… We've barely been travelin' for two days and now you want to head west?"
Hickok ignored him as he fixed his saddle bags in place. Without further discussion he pulled himself into the saddle.
"Dern it, Bill, don't you even want some breakfast first?"
"I'll be along in a few weeks," he said, before kicking his horse.
"Dern it, Bill," muttered Charlie again as he watched him ride away. He hadn't given him time to pack even if he had wanted to go with him.
Charlie kicked at the log in irritation.
Jimmy felt he could breathe again when he was clear of the camp. The two days on the trail felt like two weeks, and his headaches did not leave him from sunup to sundown. Whiskey offered some reprieve, but he knew it was the constant attention and the stench of misguided optimism among the travelers that made it unbearable. He wanted to be free of them.
Jimmy didn't know why he felt the need to go to Sweetwater. It would make more sense to head straight to Deadwood as he and Charlie had planned. Certainly, he'd avoided the town ever since his last visit. But he often thought of his friends, his family, and wondered how they were fairing. He half-expected to receive a letter from Lou telling him all their news. But no letter came. He rarely stayed long enough in any one place to receive it, if it was ever written. Jimmy guessed it hadn't been, not after how he'd left things last time.
He tried to avoid thinking of Melanie Brooks. He told himself he'd done the right thing by leaving her behind. She'd had a notion that they could make a life together, though she was married to the town banker. He sometimes imagined what it would have been like if he'd kept his word and taken her with him. She would be his companion, maybe even his wife. But as the years wore on and he found himself moving from town to town and job to job (when he bothered finding real work), he knew he'd done what was best. For her, as well as for himself.
His only hesitation in visiting Sweetwater was the thought of seeing her again. Maybe she had moved on. Maybe their brief time together meant little to her and she would barely remember him. Maybe she would be as beautiful as she was seven years ago and he would feel that pain all over again.
Whatever the outcome, Jimmy resigned himself to finding out. He was starting a new chapter of his life, but first it was time to revisit the past.