by Bill Brooks
The kid sat slumped on the floor of the coach. A ribbon of blood trailed down from under his hat and over his smooth face, staining the front of his shirt. One of the bandit’s shots had pierced the coach, and struck the kid somewhere in the head just above the hairline. The gambler, who had not left his seat, said: “I think that boy is as dead as a rose in winter.”
The Mexican came around and with Cole they carried the kid out of the coach and laid him upon the ground. Cole had taken hold of the upper half of the kid, and, when he did, he felt something that surprised him—the kid had small but very firm breasts. The scene of the previous night between the stationmaster and the kid coming out of the coach flashed through Cole’s mind. The bullet had plowed a deep crease across her scalp but left the kid’s brain’s intact—bloody but not fatal. Cole wiped her face with a linen hanky provided by the woman and wrapped the kid’s head in a piece of the extra shirt he’d carried in his saddlebags.
“He’ll live,” Cole said, figuring it wasn’t up to him to give away her secret. She obviously had her reasons for posing as a man. They put her back in the coach, and then took tally of the work upon the bandits. Two were dead. The one Cole had shot would be joining them soon, judging by the way the blood was frothing from his lips. Cole had seen enough men shot through the lungs to know he wasn’t going to make it.
The Mexican knelt by the dying man and said in good English: “What is your name and who are these others?”
The man looked into his face and uttered: “Why the hell should I tell a damn’ greaser anything?”
The Mexican reached over and took a Colt Army Model revolver from the man’s outstretched hand and stuck it in inside his waistband. Cole guessed he figured the dying man wasn’t going to need it any more.
“Well, you are dying, señor. And two of your friends are already dead, and the other one is carrying one of my bullets. It seems you have had an off day. Do you believe in God and Jesus Christ?”
The man’s eyes filled with a mixture of contempt and confusion.
“Do you?” the Mexican repeated.
“Hell, no!”
“Then I feel sorry for you, amigo, for in a short time you will have to answer to Him. Maybe He will forgive you. I won’t.” Then the Mexican stood and walked back to the coach.
The woman asked if we would bury the dead men. The driver said he’d send someone back at the next stop.
She asked about the one who wasn’t dead yet.
“We’ll leave him a canteen of water,” Cole said. “That is about all we can do for him. He won’t live long enough to drink it all.” He saw the way her eyes glistened with the tears forming in them. The terror had left her little girl mute and clinging to her skirts. Sudden violence has a way of blowing out the flames of innocence and leaving the soul a darker place. Yet such violence on the frontier was a common event, like a wildfire or a killing snowstorm or a cyclone. There wasn’t much you could do about it when it happened. The mother would have to try somehow to explain it to the little girl once she understood it herself.
They lifted the kid back inside the coach, still unconscious. She didn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. With her hair cut short and her slender frame hidden under the buckskins, it was easy to see how she could pass for a boy. Cole wondered, if when she awoke, she would regret her decision.
The gambler volunteered to ride on top of the coach so that the kid had more room to stretch out. The Mexican started to climb in.
“Tell me something,” Cole said.
He turned, looked at Cole with those dark expressionless eyes.
“Deputy United States Marshal Miguel Torres,” he said. “I’m on my way to Deadwood on private business.” When he saw the next question form itself in Cole’s gaze, he said: “I thought maybe you were trouble from the way you were armed. This country’s full of blood-letters. I thought maybe you could have been one of them. I’m a cautious man.” Then he stepped into the coach.
The ride to Deadwood was proving to be full of surprises. Cole had started out thinking he was only going to be shaken to death over the next couple of hundred miles. Instinct and experience should have warned him that nothing is ever as simple as it first seems. Going to find a killer would be no exception.
Chapter Five
For the next three days, the routine changed little, except the dust and the heat seemed to chase them all day and everyone in the coach was smelling gamy because of the lack of facilities. The jolts and jars of the trip were enough to fray the nerves of a padre. The kid had regained her senses by late the same evening that she’d been wounded, but she said her head felt like it had been split open by a maul.
“You’re lucky,” the gambler had told her. “An inch lower and you’d have had a third eye to see out of.” He wasn’t much on sympathy or kindness, qualities unknown to his profession.
Deputy U.S. Marshal Torres continued to keep to himself, forgoing conversation or the company of the others. The woman, who had said her name was Suzanne Smith and that her child’s name was Tess, made several attempts to engage Marshal Torres in conversation. He expressed little interest in her efforts. She was more than a little grateful to him for helping to save her and the child from, as she had stated in a whisper, “abuse of an unspeakable nature” at the hands of the men who’d held up the stage.
“What is your name, sir?” she asked Cole, after several failed attempts with the deputy as the coach rocked along a smooth stretch of the Belle Fourche—the first decent piece of road they’d encountered since leaving Cheyenne.
“John Henry Cole.”
She seemed to roll the name over in her mind, as though testing the sound of it. Her dress showed white salt stains of sweat, and strands of her dark hair had come loose from under the feathered hat she wore. Dust smudged her cheeks. Cole had to feel for her; she looked like a woman that was accustomed to regular bathing and toiletry—uncommon luxuries on the frontier. The trip must have been harder on her than on anyone except for the child, who seemed each day to lose a little more of her energy and tolerance for the rough, hot ride. Finally she said: “Cole. That is a good strong name. Is it Irish?”
“No, ma’am. Mostly English . . . at least my elders were.”
She smiled softly.
“I apologize for the error.”
“No need,” he assured her. “If the truth were told, there’s probably some Irish mixed in as well.”
“Well, anyway, Mister Cole, I want you to know how terribly grateful I am that you and Mister Torres fought off those men. There is no telling what might have occurred had they been successful in their attempt to rob us.” Her eyes lowered, diverting away from the obvious thoughts she was tendering about the bandits. Cole wanted to say that there was little chance that the hold-up men would have taken advantage of her. He wanted to say that those poor bastards were just after the money, but he couldn’t be sure that was all they were after. The little girl, Tess, rested her head on her mother’s lap, her eyes half closed in that dreamy state of exhaustion and boredom that comes from a whole lot of doing nothing. “It’s none of my business,” Cole said, “but Deadwood seems like a hard place to take a child.”
Her hand stroked the little girl’s head, her long fingers pale against the child’s raven hair. “My man is there.”
She didn’t say husband. She said man. Cole wasn’t sure if the way she said it was intentional. He saw no wedding band on her finger. She seemed too fragile, like an expensive vase, to be going to a place like Deadwood, even if it was to meet a man. But he’d known women to be fools when it came to love. Then again, love often made fools of everyone. He thought briefly of Del Río and Juanita Delgado. He smiled at her and said: “Well, I’m sure he is anxious to see you both again.”
She didn’t return the smile. He let the topic die in the air between them.
The last night on the road, they stayed at a way station twenty miles outside Deadwood. The Black Hills surrounded them, their slopes dark with the p
onderosa pine that grew forty and fifty feet high; the sun cast their long shadows over the road. And when the sun set, the hills claimed their name, their blackness growing deep and complete.
Cole took his usual leave from the confinement of the station house and stepped out into a black night that was whitewashed end to end with stars. A cock-eyed quarter moon rested just above the spiny tops of the trees. The air was cold enough for him to see his breath and it made his heart beat just a stroke faster. He saw the Mexican lawman squatted at one corner of the log house, his blanket draped across his shoulders, the carbine resting across his knees. He walked over, knowing he was uninvited and held out his tobacco and cigarettes.
“Smoke?”
He took a short, sharp breath inward and let it out through his nose. “You don’t look to me like a gambler,” he said. “And you’re sure not a miner.” It was then that Cole could smell the whiskey coming off him. “I figure you for a pistolero . . . a hired hand of someone.”
“I’m just offering you a smoke, Deputy,” Cole said, wondering why he had bothered making the effort.
“You were cool under fire when those men tried to take the stage. You hit your man with both shots. I couldn’t place more than two fingers between the marks. What’s your game?”
“Nothing,” Cole said. “Forgive me for disturbing your rest.” He started to turn to find a quiet spot to smoke his shuck.
“Sure, I’ll share your makings,” Torres said. “I’ve tried to give up the habit, but I can’t seem to find a good enough reason.”
Cole extended the tobacco pouch and papers again and this time he took them, rolled himself a cigarette in neat fashion, and handed back the makings. He pulled a match out of his jacket pocket and struck it against the buckle of his belt. The flame danced white, then blue, in a flash of light, and, when he snapped it out, Cole eyes had to readjust.
“I’m a cautious man, Cole. I have to be in my business. It’s caution or the boneyard for men like me. Don’t take it personal that I’m trying to get a tag on you. I just need to know who I’m keeping company with.”
He had a drawl to his voice that Cole had often heard down along the border and wondered what he was doing this far north. The tip of the cigarette glowed red against his dark features. He had a thin silky mustache, black, untrimmed. The mustache, along with those Apache cheek bones, added menace to his countenance. The smell of liquor on him just made him seem a bit more dangerous. “I’m not any of those things you mentioned,” Cole told him. “I’m just a fellow doing a favor for an old friend.” Lawman or not, Cole felt it necessary to keep his business private.
The lawman pulled something out from beneath the blanket, held it forth. Cole saw then it was a bottle. “Drink?” he said.
“What is it?”
He snorted. “It’s commonly referred to as Mexican Mustang Liniment. It’s better than most doctors you could get in this country. They claim it cures everything, including nightmares and carbuncles. It steadies the hand and steels the nerve, or so it is widely advertised.”
It was cheap alcohol that burned the tongue and throat and sent a fire down into the belly, but it warded off the chill air. After taking a swig, Cole handed it back to him.
He tipped the bottle to his mouth and took a long, hard swallow, then wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “Night is a fascinating time,” he said.
“It can be.”
“Night is when the thief comes. The Bible says that death will come to us like a thief in the night. There is more to night than just the darkness. There is the darkness of men’s souls.” As he spoke, his voice was sinking in tone. “The darkness of the night attracts the darkness in a man’s soul. Like attracts like. Night is the time of evil, is the time when the innocent sleep and the guilty do their dirty business. Predator and prey.”
“You don’t talk like a border marshal,” Cole said.
Again he snorted, drew on the cigarette, blew it out through his nose. “I was educated back East at a school for Apache kids. I had four years of college and wearing shoes and neckties and white shirts and acting like a white man to prepare me for this,” he said, waving the bottle in one hand, the moon’s light reflecting off the brown glass. “Only thing was, I wasn’t a white man and I wasn’t an Apache, either, although I had a little of both running through my veins. Even got some German blood. Don’t ask me how or when all those folks got together with my Mexican side, but they did. I learned to speak Latin in that school and can still speak it some, although I find little need for it in my line of work.” He paused, drew in a breath of the smoke, put the bottle to his mouth, and took another swallow. “I also have the failing of talking too much when I have been drinking.” If he was drunk, he held his liquor well. “I am the first Mexican Indian white man hired as a United States Deputy Marshal as far as I know. I guess they don’t get many of my type applying for the job.”
“I didn’t mean to pry,” Cole said.
He waved the hand holding the bottle, then offered it to again to Cole. When Cole declined a second drink, he had at it some more, his teeth flashing white in the dim light. He finished its contents in one long swallow, then dropped it to the ground where it clinked off a rock. “I like what I do, Cole. I’m good at it. I’ve got more education than most white men I know, but it doesn’t mean spit. As far as most are concerned, I’m just a damn’ mestizo . . . a man of color, less valuable than a mule. But wearing this badge changes some of that.” He pulled back the lapel of his corduroy coat and touched a small nickel badge pinned to his shirt. “This,” he said, “helps keep things even.”
He stubbed out his cigarette, and Cole finished his. The blackness closed in on them again. The door of the hotel opened and closed again on a pair of dry hinges. Cole turned his attention to the sound. It was the girl in buckskins. She walked to the corrals where the horses stood, sleeping head to rump, and rested her forearms on the top rail. She looked small and shadowy in the night light. Miguel Torres had fallen silent, his breathing deep. The Mexican Mustang Liniment had done its work.
Cole walked over to where the girl was. She heard his approach and turned, startled.
“You don’t have to be afraid,” Cole said. “I was just having myself a smoke. How’s the head feeling?”
She seemed to shrink in his presence and he wondered if it was a mistake to have approached her in such a manner. “You ain’t going to hurt me, are you?” she asked.
“No. I just came out to have a smoke, like I said.”
She touched the side of her face with her right hand as though it were hurting. Cole wasn’t quite sure what to say to her. “It’s none of my business,” he said, “but this country is a hard place at best. I can help you get back to Cheyenne or Denver or wherever it is you are from, if it’s a matter of money.”
She looked at him, the moon’s light touching her face, her head slightly tilted, the dry stain of blood dark against her buckskin shirt. “I need to get to Deadwood,” she said.
“I can’t imagine why.”
She had the nervousness of a deer about to run off. “It’s a personal matter,” she said.
“It’s not worth having to do what you’ve had to do to make it this far,” he said. Her features grew stiff; he saw her swallow hard.
“What would you know about anything?” she asked.
“I know you are not a boy,” he said. “And I saw you and the stationmaster the other night. I didn’t want to see it, but I did. You’re too young to have to prostitute yourself. Let me buy you passage back to your home.”
Her shoulders slumped noticeably. Cole thought she might fall down. He took a step toward her, and she took a step backward. “Don’t touch me!”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“I didn’t prostitute myself,” she said, her words fluttering out like wounded birds struggling for flight.
“It’s none of my business,” Cole said. “Life is hard enough for most of us as it is. I wasn’t trying to judge you.
I just wanted to help.”
“I was out looking at the horses,” she said. “He came out, took hold of me, told me not to fight him. I begged him . . .” The words caught in her throat, and she turned her face away from him.
“You don’t have to explain,” he said.
“No! I do. I have to explain to someone!”
“OK.”
“He forced me into the coach. He knew. Somehow, he knew that I was a female.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Men like that . . .”
“No. He said he knew I was pretending to be a boy, but that he could see right off that I wasn’t. He said that his old woman couldn’t pleasure him any more, but that I could. He was too strong. He hurt me. He hurt me in ways I can’t tell you . . .”
Cole reached out and put his arms around her. She trembled like the frightened child she was. “You don’t have to explain any more,” he said. Her crying was something soft, muted, like the wind stirring in the tops of trees. Only the sound came from a deep and broken place, a place that might never be mended again.
“I can’t go back,” she said. “Not yet, anyway.”
“Then you’ll need to protect yourself,” he said.
“I don’t know how.”
“I’ll show you.”
“You won’t tell anyone about me?”
“No. It’s your secret. But remember, if Gauss could see through your disguise, so will other men like him. Keep a caution, always. Don’t trust anyone.”
She stepped away from Cole, looked at him with those innocent, hurting eyes, and said: “Not even you?”
“I think you already know the answer to that. I don’t think you’ll have to worry about Deputy Torres, either.”