Blood Storm

by Bill Brooks

  “No, don’t let it.”

  “I didn’t tell you the other night, the first time I met you, that on my way home someone took a shot at me. I was thinking about you when it happened.”

  Her hand reached up and touched the side of his face, her fingers cool and graceful, lightly against his jaw. “Then you must leave Deadwood,” she said. “I can’t ask you to stay any longer. There will be others to help me, but not you.”

  “Others?”

  She nodded. “A man named Kip Caine stopped by at noon. He said he was answering the ad I’d placed in the Rocky Mountain News.”

  “Jesus, Liddy, another gun hand.”

  “He said he was a detective, a Pinkerton man.”

  “Christ!”

  “Just go, John Henry. Leave Deadwood. Tell Ike there was nothing you could do for me. Tell him I decided to leave and the matter resolved itself.”

  “Have you?”

  “No. I won’t be forced out. I won’t start my life over again, go on to the next mining camp and the next, until I turn myself into a crib whore just to survive.”

  “Christ, Liddy, you’re going to wind up dead if I can’t find out who it is killed those women!”

  “No, you don’t owe me that. You’ve risked your life enough.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. I want you to leave Deadwood as soon as possible.”

  “Makes no damned sense. I thought there was something more between us.”

  “Does it matter?” she asked.

  “It matters to me.”

  “But if you or I die because of it, what have we gained?”

  “How can I protect you, Liddy?”

  She shrugged, studied him, shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said, her hands cradling his face, her eyes brimming with tears.

  Cole thought about Winston Stevens and that tailored suit and $400 horse and all that grass he owned, and all the rest of it. He thought about the two of them together, riding, picnicking, in bed. It made him feel brutal and angry and helpless. He felt Liddy was right, everything had become entangled. He’d come here to help an old friend and instead had betrayed him with the woman he had once loved and maybe still did. And worst of all, he was still no closer to resolving the murders than the day he’d stepped off the stage. And his mind was full of this woman.

  “Do me a favor, Liddy. Take care of that kid in there. See she gets a stage ticket back to Cheyenne.”

  She looked at Cole, and for a minute he thought she was going to kiss him, to tell him not to go. But she didn’t.

  He stepped out into the cold wind that was sweeping down through the gulch. One day rainbows, the next storms. That was the way life seemed there in Deadwood, no matter how he looked at it—rainbows and storms. He wasn’t even sure where to begin. Then he saw what might be an answer, standing in the opening of an alley, cussing two cowboys a blue streak.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The cowboys were half drunk, and Calamity was completely so. They had pinioned her up against the wall of a harness shop just inside an alley. It was the supper hour and there was hardly anyone on the street except for Jane Canary and those two cowpokes.

  “God damn ya to hell, mister!” Jane was saying as they held her there.

  “Look here, gal,” one of the cowboys said back, as he struggled to hold her wrist and keep from getting kicked in the groin.

  “Look here yarself!” Calamity screeched.

  “We paid you five damn’ dollars for what you’re wearing under them buckskins. Five dollars and a whole lot of good liquor, now it’s time you paid up.”

  Jane was stomping at their feet with her heels and thrusting her legs out in kicks, and every time she cursed them spittle flew from her lips and sprayed their faces. John Henry Cole could tell they weren’t enjoying it much.

  “What kinda gal ya think I am?” Jane cried.

  “Hell, darling, we already know what kinda gal you are,” one of them said, trying to hold her and wipe some of Jane’s spit from his eyes. “It’s just a case of proving it, that’s all.”

  “Let her go,” Cole said.

  Their heads jerked around like he’d roped them. “Who the hell . . . ?”

  “A friend,” he said. “I’m a friend of this woman’s, and I hate to see her being abused.”

  Jane smiled hugely in that sloppy way a drunk will when she recognized him.

  “Jack!” she shouted. “Get these apes off me, will ya?”

  They were just boys, bare-cheeked, freshly shorn boys just off the range, with their new haircuts and big bandannas hanging from their necks. The haircuts made their ears stick out from under the brims of their Stetsons. Tricked by Jane, their big ears were red with anger. One was buck-toothed, and Cole would’ve been willing to bet, neither of them had ever had a woman before. Now they’d picked the wrong one to marry for an hour. “She’s got five dollars of ours, mister,” the buck-toothed one said. “Said she take us both on for five dollars cash.”

  “Yeah, and we bought her drinks all afternoon, too,” the other one said.

  “You gentlemen new in town?” Cole asked.

  “Got here today,” Buck-Tooth said.

  “Kansas, somewhere like that?” Cole asked.

  They traded glances.

  “How’d you know we was from Kansas?” Buck-Tooth’s friend said.

  “Just a guess.”

  “Well, that don’t change anything,” Buck-Tooth said, “just ’cause we’re from Kansas.”

  “Just that you’ve been bamboozled by the best,” Cole said.

  They blinked hard, like startled owls.

  “You gents know who you’re holding there?”

  “Damn’ flim-flam artist,” Buck-Tooth said.

  “That, gents, is Calamity Jane Canary. She can outdrink, outfight, outshoot, and probably outlove any man in the territory. You are both lucky you didn’t get what you paid for. And equally lucky all she got from you was five dollars.”

  They seemed uncertain. Jane was grinning like a weasel.

  “Jane, give these boys back their earnings,” Cole said, “and maybe they’ll turn you loose.”

  “Ain’t got but three damn’ dollars left, Jack!” she shrieked.

  “I’ll make up the difference, if that’s all right with you gents.”

  “Well, what about all the whiskey we bought and poured in her?” Buck-Tooth’s friend asked.

  “What about it? You want her to puke it up?”

  Still they seemed reluctant to let it go at something that simple.

  “Take your money and go over to the Number Ten,” Cole said. “Ask for Irish Murphy. Tell him to line you up with one of the regular girls, one that won’t cheat you or have her pimp knock you over the head. Tell him John Henry Cole sent you. You’ll both feel better for it come tomorrow morning.”

  “Wadda you say, Elbert?” Buck-Tooth asked his friend.

  “Sounds good to me.” Then, looking at Jane: “Probably beat this homely sot any day.”

  “Say! Watch yar god-damn’ mouths!” Jane cursed.

  “Go ahead, turn her loose,” Cole said. “Jane, give them the money.”

  She looked at Cole like he’d just announced her sister had died, but dug down into her greasy buckskins and produced three silver dollars. Cole gave the cowboys two more and watched them head off for Nutall and Mann’s.

  “Well, hell, Jack,” Jane blubbered. “I’d ’a’ whipped them boys’ butts, ya hadn’t come along and stopped me.”

  “Yeah, I know, Jane. That’s why I did it. I just couldn’t stand by and watch those two youngsters take a whipping.”

  She laughed, slapped her leg with her miner’s cap, and said: “Hot damn, let’s go have ourselves a drink. Whadda ya say?”

  “I need to ask you some questions.”

  “Honey Jack, ya can ask me any damn’ thing ya wanner, just buy me a round first. Wrasslin’ them boys has made me as dry as a dead man’s pecker. They was damn’ lucky
ya showed when ya did, or I’d ’a’ whupped ’em like puppies.”

  The Zenobia Saloon was just across the street.

  “How about over there?” Cole suggested.

  “Sure, sure,” she said, “any ol’ damn’ place ’at’s got a fresh bottle of ol’ John Barleycorn will do.” She tried hooking her arm in Cole’s, but he side-stepped her effort. She didn’t seem to notice.

  It was a big open room, the Zenobia. Full of blue smoke and noise. The usual kind of noise heard in a saloon: glasses clinking, rough talk, laughter, the sound of a piano being played by a professor. Jane slapped a few of the gents standing along the bar as they made their way to an empty table toward the rear. Some of the ones she slapped on the back turned and greeted her and tried to grab her, others tossed her angry looks.

  Cole ordered a bottle and one of the bartenders brought it over to their table along with two glasses that were still wet from the last washing. Cole didn’t think she needed anything more to drink, but it was plain she talked best when her tongue was being oiled. She eyed the operation while Cole poured them each a jigger’s worth of mash, then her hand snaked out, and snatched up one of the glasses. She downed it like she was desperate, then set the glass back down all in one swift, sure motion.

  “’Nother,” she said.

  “I need to talk to you, Jane.”

  “Sure, Jack, like I said, ’nother if ya damn’ please.”

  “Can’t talk if you’re passed out on me, Jane.”

  She licked her lips and spread her fingers atop the green felt of the table. The nails were dirty, the ends blunted. “Ya married, Jack?” Her voice went from high-pitched to nearly hoarse when she spoke slowly, which was seldom.

  “Let’s discuss other things,” Cole said, taking a sip of his drink.

  She took the bottle from his hand and poured a good portion of it into her glass. “Handsome racehorse like ya. I wouldn’t be ’tall surprised ya was married to two er three women. Har! Har!” Her laughter was harsh, unpleasant to the ear.

  “I’m not one of those fresh-faced cowboys,” Cole said.

  “Whadda ya mean, Jack?”

  “I mean, I’m not going to sit here all night buying you drinks and not get anything for it.”

  She grinned lasciviously. “What is it ya want there, Jack?”

  “You know what I’m referring to.”

  She offered him a sly, hesitant look. “Go ahead, ask me anything ya want, Jack.”

  Cole watched the knot of her throat slide up and down as she guzzled another glass of the liquor. It gave him time to take her in more carefully. She was larger than she first appeared. And when her hand reached out for the glass, he could see her forearm was knotted with muscle. But she was thin, too, sickly. “Back in the jail, when we were locked up, you mentioned something about how Jack McCall was put up to killing Wild Bill. . . .”

  She looked at Cole over the rim of her glass without removing it from her mouth, her eyes wide, staring. “I said that?” She lowered the glass an inch or two.

  “Yeah, that’s what you said, Jane. You were hung-over at the time, a little drunk, maybe, but that’s what you said.”

  “It’s true, god damn it!” she blurted suddenly, then looked around, then jerked her eyes back in Cole’s direction.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  She looked around again, squinted as though trying to see through the haze of the miners’ cigars. “Gotta be careful what ya say around this place,” she said, lowering her voice.

  “Why?”

  She looked at him dumbly. “’Cause, ya get heard by the wrong people, ya wind up dead like my darlin’ Billy.” She leaned forward across the table, nearly spilling the bottle. “Oh, Judas,” she said through a short, hard sob, “they killed him. And they’ll kill me, too, I don’t clear out soon.”

  “Who are they, Jane?”

  She blinked several times. “See, that’s the damn’ worst of it, Jack, ain’t nobody knows who they are.”

  “But somebody suspects something, don’t they, Jane?”

  She looked around again. “Names,” she said. “Lots of names get said around.”

  “Like which ones?”

  Her hands shook. She poured another glass, downed it, wiped some of the dribble from her chin with the heel of her hand. “All kinds of names.”

  “Come on, Jane.”

  “Why ya want to know for?” she said, suddenly sounding wary of him.

  “Just interested, that’s all.”

  She scoffed at that. “Not ya, Jack. Ya don’t seem like no kinda man that’d ask questions just to be askin’ ’em.”

  “I’m looking into it for a friend of mine,” he said. “He’s the one that’s curious.”

  Cole could see he was losing her to the whiskey again. Her gaze had grown suddenly unsteady and her lids drooped and her jaw became slack.

  “Jane!”

  Her eyelids snapped open. She looked at Cole. “What?”

  “Names. Tell me what names you’ve heard.”

  “God damn, Jack, I loved ol’ Bill. I surely did. He had his ways, god damn if he di’nt. Fussy about his appearance, fussy about his hands being clean, fussy about his guns. Fussiest man I ever knew. But god damn if I di’nt love him much as I ever loved any man.”

  “Then why not help me out here and give me the names you’ve heard?”

  “McCall,” she said. “He was in on it.”

  “Not McCall. Everyone knows he shot Bill. Give me some other names.”

  Her eyelids were drooping again and her head lolled to the side. “Loop,” she muttered.

  “Loop? Who is Loop?” Cole asked, shaking her by the arm.

  Her eyes came open part way, began to close. “I heard maybe Leo had some hand in it. . . .”

  Her hands slid off the table, dangled by her sides. Cole wasn’t going to get anything more from her.

  “Come on, Jane,” he said, lifting her under the arms. It didn’t take much effort, as thin as she was.

  He hustled her out the door and down the street to the Custer Hotel, a one-story flophouse catering mostly to miners. The desk clerk looked up when he saw them enter and laid his copy of DeWitt’s Ten Cent Romances face up on the counter. The cover featured a story about Wild Bill: Wild Bill, The Indian Slayer. He looked at Cole and he looked at Jane.

  “It’s not what you think,” Cole said.

  He grinned sheepishly.

  “She’ll need a room for the night,” Cole explained.

  “Two dollars if you bunk up together,” he said.

  “It’s just for her,” Cole told him flatly.

  “Dollar,” he said.

  Cole paid him, took the key, and dropped Jane on the bed in the room, then covered her with a blanket.

  “See she gets some breakfast in the morning,” he told the clerk on his way out.

  “You ain’t staying?”

  “Does it look like I am?”

  Maybe it was the long day or his own weariness, but when Cole stepped back outside again, the wind seemed cold and his duster too little protection against it. If he was going to stay in Deadwood, he’d need a better coat. He made a cigarette and smoked it on his way back to his own hotel room. The name Jane had given him rolled around in his mind. Leo Loop. Who the hell was Leo Loop?

  Chapter Eighteen

  A hard cold rain began to fall, the kind of rain that stings the flesh and seeps into the bone. Cole ducked in under a butcher shop overhang. Inside, a man was dressing out an antelope. He watched the loafers and the heelers duck doorways, trying to avoid the same cold rain. Then the rain changed to sleet and he could hear it pelting the windows up and down the walk. A man rode his horse at full gallop down the middle of the street, trying to get home.

  Cole rolled myself another shuck, hoping the rain would let up before he started for Liddy’s place. If anyone would know who Leo Loop was, he figured Liddy would. The smoke tasted good and the whiskey he’d had with Jane earlier had warmed his blood
just enough against the chill dampness. Then something drew his attention to the front of the Number Ten. He saw two men standing there in the low light of the doorway, talking. Normally he wouldn’t have paid them much attention. But then he saw who they were. Johnny Logan was one of them. He was wearing a yellow rubber slicker against the cold rain, saying something to the other man, his head tilting from side to side as he talked. Cole was too far away to catch any of their conversation, but Murphy was standing there, listening, his hands plunged into his pockets, no doubt because he was cold. He was standing there in just his shirt sleeves, and it made Cole wonder if Johnny had called him outside, out from behind the bar, for the express purpose of talking to him in private.

  Murphy started gesturing with his hands, as though he was explaining something to the lawman difficult to grasp. Then, stepping from the shadows, a third man joined them—Doc Holliday. Rain spilled off Johnny’s hat brim every time he tilted his head. He towered over Doc, but somehow Doc still seemed the more imposing. Johnny immediately turned his attention to Doc. Doc stood there listening, then said something to the lawman. Johnny cranked his head around, looked over his shoulder, turned back to Doc. And for a minute more, they stood there, Johnny still talking. Then all three went inside the Number Ten.

  The rain slackened and Cole flipped the shuck into a puddle and headed for Liddy’s. He got almost as far as the front gate, then stopped short. Tied up outside was Winston Stevens’s blooded stud horse. The feeling Cole got left him colder than the rain had. He could see a light on in the front parlor, between the split of the drapes. He saw another light on toward the back, where Jazzy Sue’s room was, the one where he’d taken Rose earlier. Liddy knew how Cole felt about the man. That she’d chosen to entertain him after what he’d told her left him angry. The truth was that he felt betrayed and was tempted to confront them.

  He waited for a time, thinking Stevens would emerge, but when he didn’t after several minutes, Cole gave it up and headed back to his hotel room. The rain started up again and he did his best to stick to the sidewalks and whatever cover he could find, ducking in a doorway here, another there. Between his anger and trying to stay dry, he failed to notice the shadows that moved on him.