by Bill Brooks
“He ees oonly my cousin, Juan Enrique,” he remembered her saying. “We’ve not seen each odder in a verry long time.” He had lifted his glass and saluted them as they had spun to the music. He had been in love with her. What did it matter if she had missed her cousin? But a week later, Francisco would lie dead on the cobblestones of that same square, and Cole would be nursing a bullet wound to his right leg from Francisco’s gun. It was one of those things that happened when you were least expecting it, the sudden violence.
Francisco and Juanita were already dancing when he had arrived late from making his rounds. They had been drinking mescal, laughing, lost in each other’s gaze. Cole guessed that’s when he had realized that Juanita and Francisco were more than just cousins. How exactly it had flared up between them was still hazy. First there had been a little joking about this closeness of cousins, then a few more words that weren’t jokes. Then Francisco had done something he shouldn’t have done—he had spoken the truth about him and Juanita. Cole had had just enough tequila in him so that it had hurt, Francisco’s truth. Francisco had pushed him. He had called Francisco a name. Francisco had reached for his pistola. Cole had reached for his. It had been over in an instant. Juanita had cursed Cole, had cried as she knelt over Francisco, her tears falling onto his face. Some of Francisco’s relatives had come across the Río and had taken charge of his body and carried him home to his village in the back of a wagon. It was then that Cole began to hear the rumor that some of Francisco’s people were vowing to avenge his death. That was the same week he had received Ike’s letter asking him to come to Cheyenne and work as a detective for him. The timing had seemed right. He couldn’t find any reason to stay in Del Río.
He remembered limping down to Jess Benson’s saddle shop the same morning he’d gotten the letter and read it several times. He wanted to inform Jess personally that he was going to resign his position. Jess hadn’t acted surprised. “It’s just as well,” he had said. “Trouble finds you like thirsty men find liquor.”
Cole had thanked him anyway for having hired him and for his kindness.
“Where will you go, señor?” he had asked.
“Cheyenne,” Cole had told him.
“How is the weather up that way?”
“I hear the winters are cold,” Cole had said.
Jess had nodded his head as if that were all he needed to know about Cheyenne. A part of Cole had hoped he would try and talk him out of leaving, that he would make a promise that he and the others who lived in the dusty little town would stand behind him if Francisco’s relatives did come and try to avenge his death. Something like: No, Señor Cole, you don’t have to leave because of those grieving people of Francisco’s. We will protect you. We will fight for you.” But the only thing Jess had said when Cole had handed him his badge had been: “I have a brother-in-law who needs a job. I guess now I can give him yours.”
So Cole had packed everything he owned into his saddlebags, threw his $40 saddle on his $20 horse, and said adiós to Del Río. But before he had cleared the town’s limits, he had stopped by to see Juanita one last time. She was back working at The Conquistador Club when Cole had ridden up. It must have been a slow day because she wasn’t with a customer at the time.
“I’m leaving Del Río,” Cole had said.
“Do you expect me to cry, beeg you to stay?” she had asked sullenly.
“Why didn’t you tell me the truth about you and Francisco to begin with?” Cole had asked. “It might’ve saved us all some grief.”
“Because a woman has her beauty onnly soo long,” she had said.
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” he had asked.
“I wanted you both, because you both found me desirable, and I know someday I won’t bee beautiful any loonger and no man weell want me when that day coomes. Ees there soometing wrrong in wanting what you want?”
Cole had thought that a good question. Three weeks later he had arrived in Cheyenne.
Now, he was sitting in a tub with the water growing cold and the whiskey bottle he had showing empty. It was time to go nab a few hours’ rest before heading to Deadwood. He figured Deadwood couldn’t be any worse than a lot of other places he’d been.
Chapter Four
Morning came with the shuddering force of someone opening a trap door and dropping Cole through it. He had slept the sleep of the dead, and, when Sun Lee shook him awake, he had fully forgotten where he was. His hands instinctively searched for something with which to defend himself. The war had done that to him. The war had done a lot of things to a man.
The war could make a man so tired he would gladly fall asleep in a trench of rain water, caring not whether he drowned, for sleep became everything. It wasn’t just the exhaustion of the limbs that made a man so tired; it was the exhaustion of the mind as well. And when a man did fall asleep, it wasn’t really like sleep at all as much as it was a great falling into hell. That kind of sleep, that temporary death, carried with it the shock of reawakening, of being jolted back into the temporal world. And often, such an awakening was to the thunder of cannon and a thousand butternuts coming out of fog-enshrouded woods, their voices raised in a single yell that crawled down your spine and clawed at your groin. And you knew they were coming to kill everything in their way, including young Union boys in blue tunics who had taken to sleeping in rain-water graves.
“Mistah John Henly, you gotte get up now. You telley me to wake you up. It is Sun.”
His hands stopped searching and he swallowed against the thumping of his heart. The old Chinese grinned hugely at him, then left and returned with a tin cup of coffee that was hot enough to boil shirts in. He smelled like incense and his silk jacket whispered against itself when he handed him the coffee. “You leave this morning, Mistah John Henly?”
“Deadwood,” he said.
“Why so?” Sun was curious as a two-headed cat.
“Business,” he said.
“Ah,” Sun said, as though that explained everything. Then he grinned again and said: “You don’t look so good, Mistah John Henly.”
He got dressed, walked down to the livery, and got his saddle, and then walked over to the stage office. The air was fresh and clean, the sky crisp and blue. Far to the east he could see the fringe of the cloud blanket that had passed over the day before. He could smell autumn coming down from the aspens high up in the Medicine Bow Mountains.
A round-trip ticket was waiting for him, just as Ike Kelly had promised. The office contained two benches, a regulator clock with a brass pendulum, a calendar with a rendering of a young woman holding a can of Arbuckle’s coffee, and a single spittoon that needed emptying. A small cast-iron stove with nickel plating and some of the isinglass busted out heated the room against the morning chill. The place was so dry you could smell the dust.
Cole looked over his fellow passengers. A gambler stood by the window. He was wearing a claw-hammer coat and carried a leather kit under his arm that probably contained the tools of his trade. The weight of a small pistol bulked the inside breast pocket of his coat. Sitting on a bench was a frail young man in buckskins whose fine-boned features were drawn tightly as though he carried with him troubles or was expecting some. He wore a tan Boss-of-The-Plains Stetson that looked too much hat for him. Across from him, sitting on the other bench, was a woman and what was obviously her daughter, judging by the way they each had the same corn-silk hair and china blue eyes. He guessed the woman to be in her late twenties, the girl six or seven. The woman wore a small black velvet bonnet trimmed in scarlet, and so did the little girl. They both wore cloaks over their tie-back dresses. It was hard to imagine why a woman and her daughter would be going to the Black Hills, unless she had a husband there—or was in search of one. A dark-skinned man of solid, square build squatted on his heels in the corner. He looked to be part Mexican, with some other blood thrown into the mix. He carried a blanket roll and wore a wide-brimmed sombrero of dirty gray that shaded a good part of his features. H
e watched Cole from under that hat and Cole had the feeling that he was having some hard thoughts about his presence. He wore a corduroy jacket over a threadbare cotton shirt and faded Levi’s. His boots were scuffed and run-down at the corners of the heels. He seemed not to breathe.
Cole walked back outside, set down his Dunn Brothers saddle, and rested the Winchester rifle in the crook of his arm while waiting for the stage to come. He had taken the liberty to wear a linen duster as protection against the boil of dust the Concord would raise if the weather stayed dry. He was traveling light out of necessity. He carried only one extra shirt in his saddlebags along with spare ammunition, a Barlow knife, and clean socks. The duster would cut down on his need to change and still allow him a presentable appearance. He checked the time on his Ingersol: it was 6:50. He saw the driver, a man named Jake Goodlove, and his guard, a fellow named Gyp Taslow, leave the diner where they no doubt had eaten their breakfast. He watched as they shuffled across the street and down to the livery. Gyp Taslow carried a twin-barrel shotgun—the tool of his trade.
In twenty minutes, they brought the Concord up pulled by a four-horse team, all bay horses except the right lead, a thick-chested dun. In a half hour more, they were rolling out of Cheyenne on their way to the Black Hills and already were being bounced senseless. The road was a line of ruts and rocks. Cole had picked a seat next to the door. The woman with the blue-eyed child sat next to him, her daughter alongside her. Directly across from him sat the gambler, his eyes full of disinterest. Next to him sat the slender young man wearing buckskins. To his right sat the Mexican. Cole had gotten a closer look when he’d climbed aboard the stage. He had light gray eyes but the cheek bones of an Apache. He had been right about his mixed blood.
The sun chased them that day, and three times they stopped to change horses and twice to eat—except for the Mexican, who stayed to himself, whether too poor to afford the price of a meal or too disinclined, Cole couldn’t be certain. He did notice that he wore a thin silver bracelet around his wrist and always kept his blanket roll close by. Cole figured the blanket held a short-barreled gun, maybe a carbine. Something small bulged in one pocket of his jacket—most likely a pistol nearly the same size as the one the gambler carried. Cole opined he was trouble waiting to happen.
At the last stop of the day, the stationmaster, a big German named Gauss, came out to greet them. A large-boned, apple-cheeked woman accompanied him. Cole took her to be his wife. She said her name was Helga, and then she showed them where to place their things inside the log hut that doubled as a hotel. Afterward, she showed them where they’d take their supper—at a long table outside fashioned out of lodgepole pine. There were the benches on either side of it. The shadows from the trees crossed the yard. Cole noticed while they ate that the German kept staring over at the kid in buckskins while the wife talked nonstop about the privations of living so far away from civilization.
“Der savages are on da loose, ya know,” she said. “Dey could come any time and kill us all in our beds!”
Cole saw the way that took effect on the woman with the little girl, saw the way the little girl’s eyes filled with firelight and fear.
“Helga! Shut yer damn’ talk vid tellin’ of der Indians, eh!” Gauss ordered, his mouth full of half-chewed food that flew from his lips when he spoke.
Then, as though unaffected by her husband’s angry chastisement, Helga fell to talking about the dresses the woman and girl were wearing and about how she only had but a few flour dresses to wear herself, being so far out on the frontier and away from any of the towns. The whole while the German kept his stare on the kid.
The rain came hard that night again, a storm out of nowhere. The white flashes of lightning danced through the sleeping quarters, a long room divided by blankets strung over rope to provide the women with a modicum of privacy. The crash of thunder exploded overhead like cannon shot. Cole could hear the little girl crying because of the storm and knew her fear from a long time ago—the same fear he had heard when the thunder of real cannon and the rain of shrapnel had torn through the trees at Cold Harbor and other killing places. Fear comes to each in different ways. Cole wanted to draw back the blanket and tell the little girl that it was all right, that the storm wasn’t going to harm her. Then he heard her mother say: “It’s OK, Tessie, it’s just rain. It won’t hurt nothing. I won’t let it.” The little girl stopped sobbing and Cole wondered what fate awaited her in life, what other fearful things she might come to know.
Cole stepped outside and stood under the only overhang of the log structure and watched the silver wire of lightning dance through the sky. Like a photographer’s flash against the landscape, the brilliance of the storm caused the rain to look like falling dimes. He made himself a shuck and smoked it, felt the dampness crawl against his skin, and remembered a surgeon’s tent where he had lain face down on a table while pieces of Confederate lead were dug out of his back. A rain like the one that was falling now had snapped against the tent’s canvas and spilled under the edges, turning the ground into a soup of mud and blood that slathered the surgeon’s boots. He remembered thinking that it was his baptism into this world, or maybe the next.
He finished the shuck and ground it out under his heel. That was when he saw the stationmaster climb out of the stage, buckling his belt. His features were frozen under a sudden flash of lightning, making his big frame ghostly. Cole watched him head back toward the front of the hotel as he leaned into the shadows. Then the kid climbed out of the stage. He looked frail and thin, and he walked as if he was somehow wounded—his movements jerky, erratic in the popping light of the storm. Then the long darkness swallowed him, and, when the lightning flashed again, he was gone. It was something Cole wished he had not seen. He waited for a time until he thought everyone was settled back inside again, then returned to his bunk and grabbed what sleep was left to him. He tried hard not to think about the kid and the stationmaster.
The next morning, he saw the Mexican squatting by the water tank when he came out. The sky had cleared to a flawless blue and the hint of a warm wind blew out of the south, taking with it the heavy, sweet smell of the corrals. The Mexican looked at him without moving his head, his eyes shifting with Cole’s movements. Cole washed his hands and face at a pump, ran fingers through his hair, and replaced his hat.
He saw the gambler stepping out of the privy; the woman and little girl went in next. The kid stood by the corrals, one foot hitched on the lower rail, watching the horses as though he did not want to show his face to the rest of the travelers. The smell of fried bacon came from the main room of the station; its scent crawled down into Cole’s belly. He went to the kitchen and took a plate and filled it, then went back out and sat down at the long table. The kid stayed at the corral while the rest ate breakfast. Cole saw the German looking in the direction of the corrals several times. The German had close-cropped thick hair and a large forehead that rested atop a nose that was thick and flattened against his ruddy features. He had the sort of face you didn’t enjoy looking at. His heavily muscled forearms rested atop the table as he ate. Cole saw fresh scratches on them. He thought of what he’d seen the night before. Then he looked at the German’s wife. The secrets we keep, he thought.
In forty minutes, they were back to getting their bones rattled within the confinement of the Concord. The little girl whined, then slept with her head in her mother’s lap. The gambler looked annoyed. Dust climbed through the open windows and the canvas shades were unrolled to keep it to a minimum. They went along another half hour like that, then it happened.
Cole heard the driver say—“Whoa!”—to the team, and the stage lurched suddenly, then slammed to a stop so hard it threw the gambler and the kid halfway out of their seats. The Mexican had somehow braced himself. The little girl instinctively started to cry. Cole’s attention stayed on the Mexican. His face seemed to grow darker under that big hat and his eyes caught pinpoints of light enough to let Cole know he was watching Cole as well. Cole saw
then that he had dropped the blanket off the carbine; he had it aimed at the center of Cole’s belt buckle.
The woman coughed against the dust and the gambler’s gaze was full of anticipation as he and the kid struggled to regain their seats. The kid kept his eyes lowered. The little girl said—“Mama?”—and she hushed the child with a finger to her lips. Someone outside the stage said—“Get the hell out here!”—then a face appeared just below the window where Cole was sitting. The face had a red kerchief wrapped over it, and, when he jerked open the door, the Mexican shot him through the kerchief. Cole had no time to figure it out as he pushed the woman to the floor. She pulled the child down with her. The Mexican dived out one side of the coach; Cole dived out the other.
There were three men still sitting their horses as Cole tumbled out of the coach behind the bandit the Mexican had shot through the face. Confusion helps the disadvantaged in such instances and Cole came up, firing the Remington. He saw two of his shots kick up dust from the coat of a man sitting a paint horse. He threw up his hands and fell backward over his mount’s rump, and landed in a heap. The explosion of the guard’s shotgun roared overhead, and Cole saw the effects of his Greener as it snatched one of the riders out of his saddle and flung him to the dust. He rolled over and tried to sit up. The front of his shirt was ripped by a dozen blood spots the size of nickels. He said nothing; he just simply fell back and died.
The remaining bandit fired off several wild shots at the only thing he was sure to hit—the Concord. He was still firing wildly as he wheeled his horse around and raked its flanks with his heels. He was maybe fifty yards away when the Mexican stepped into the middle of the road, and, as calmly as if he were aiming at a prairie chicken, fired his carbine. The rider slumped forward, nearly lost his seat, but somehow managed to hold on. Before the Mexican could reload another shell into the breech of the carbine, the wounded rider was too far out of range. Then the woman inside the coach screamed.