Blood Storm

by Bill Brooks

  She moved the towel, using a loose end to touch the damp strands of hair along her neck. He wanted to take it from her and drop it to the floor.

  “So, you’ll find whoever it was that Leo hired and get him to tell you the truth,” she said. The way she looked at him, Cole was willing to bet she knew exactly what he was thinking about the towel. “And then, when you do,” she said, stepping closer to him, “you’ll have enough evidence to see that he’s arrested.”

  “I’d like to think that’s how it will go.”

  “Yes,” she murmured, “that is how it will go.”

  She dropped the towel. She was still wet in places, places that soaked through Cole’s shirt when she kissed him.

  “Is this a good idea?” he asked.

  “Do you think it is?” she whispered.

  “Probably not . . .” His face was buried in the softness of her hair as she reached up and unpinned the combs and let her hair fall free.

  “We agreed, didn’t we . . . ?” she said softly.

  “Yeah.”

  Her mouth was wet, her skin dewy, soft, warm from the bath. He could taste the wine on her lips, her tongue as it searched his mouth. “I’m glad you’re here,” she whispered.

  Those fingers, the ones that were holding the glass a minute ago, circling the rim so delicately, were tracing over his chest now, down along his ribs as she reached her hands inside his shirt, undoing the buttons. His skin prickled from her touch. “You like being here, don’t you?” she said, the throaty whisper of her voice intoxicating him.

  “Yes, I like it.”

  Her teeth bit into his lip, then she kissed him again, only this time the kiss was wetter, fuller, more wanting. And so was he.

  The bath water was still warm when he slipped into it. Liddy insisted Cole enjoy the luxury while she had Jazzy Sue take his clothes and clean them.

  Liddy sat by the tub and washed his hair, back, and chest. She paused several times, kissed his jaw, his chin, his mouth in little light ways, while her hands slipped below the water to tantalize him. It seemed he couldn’t get enough of her.

  “I wired Ike,” he said, feeling the need to be completely honest with her, and maybe with himself.

  The caressing paused for a brief moment, then continued.

  “I asked him to finish up his business in Cheyenne and come here. That was before I found out more about Leo Loop.”

  “So now you won’t need him to come,” she said.

  “Maybe not. If I can get this cleared up before he leaves Cheyenne.”

  “You will . . . I’m sure of it, John Henry.”

  “I need to be honest with Ike,” he said. “If he comes to Deadwood, he might be expecting to renew old feelings with you, Liddy.”

  Again the hands stopped, but just briefly. “I doubt that he would still have an interest in me after all this time,” she said.

  “Either way, Liddy, I need to tell him.”

  “Do whatever you want, John Henry. Tell him whatever you must.”

  Her lips brushed his throat as he leaned his head back to look up at her. He reached up and brought her mouth around and kissed it.

  She seemed perfect in every way. And that’s why he couldn’t understand that one little part of him that was holding back, a feeling he couldn’t quite pin down. He wondered if maybe it was because he’d been too long without the right woman in his life, or spent too many nights with the wrong women. He even wondered if it had something to do with his late wife, his reason for not completely letting myself be swept up in Liddy. Whatever it was, it was something disturbing, subtle, like a knock at the door in the middle of the night. It was something he wished he hadn’t felt.

  They finished up the bath, and Jazzy Sue delivered Cole’s clothes, fresh and clean, smelling like they were full of wind and sun.

  They ate a nice lunch of oysters and cheese and drank glasses of red wine and spoke without speaking, talking with their eyes. The sun outside was giving way to more storm clouds. Jazzy Sue brought them coffee to go with a cobbler she’d baked.

  “They say the snow comes early to the Black Hills,” Liddy said as they watched the clouds gather over the gulch.

  “I ever mention I don’t care for winters?”

  She smiled. It was small innocuous talk, the sort of talk lovers engage in after they’ve made love, but not the sort of talk that people who are in love have. Maybe it was just Cole, his jaded history since Zee had died. Lots of women, lots of failed attempts at happiness, had left Cole lacking in the conversation department. He wasn’t sure that Liddy was any more comfortable than he was with the small talk.

  They were sitting there like that, watching the storm, sipping their coffee, when Jazzy Sue knocked at the door, then opened it and said: “Look who’s up and about.”

  Jazzy Sue had Rose with her. Rose looked wan but rested. Her eyes were still rimmed red, but she offered Cole a smile when she saw him.

  “I guess I slept like crazy,” she said.

  “Won’t you have some lunch?” Liddy offered.

  Rose looked first at Cole, then at Liddy, then back at Cole. Unless Cole was wrong, he thought he could see the fleeting disappointment in her eyes as she sat down between them.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The skies over Deadwood had turned almost black, the clouds bunching up like they were trapped. Then it began to snow. Cole excused himself from the company of Liddy and Rose. Jazzy Sue brought him his duster, most of the mud brushed out, and he put it on before going outside. He thought again about needing a heavier coat, now that the weather had turned bad.

  The wind kicked up and the snow swirled down in large flakes and some of the town’s citizens came out on the street to watch. Kate Elder and Doc Holliday were among the spectators. Kate was dressed in a long ash-gray coat with a black fur collar and black fur trim around the cuffs. She wore a small gray matching hat. She had an arm through Doc’s, looming over him. He seemed frail by comparison.

  “Oh, look, Doc! It’s snowing!” she said jubilantly as Cole came within earshot.

  “I can see that, Kate,” he said, his voice barely audible. He coughed and she supported him against the spasms.

  The way she looked at him during that moment was with the same wistful look of love a woman has for a child. She looked at Doc like he was her man-child. Doc’s face was ashen, with a bluish tinge to it, and his hands shook as he fought the coughing spell and Kate kept saying: “That’s all right, Doc, that’s all right, baby.”

  Cole didn’t know if they had seen him or not, and he didn’t much care. He felt sorry for Doc, but they weren’t friends, and they were never going to be friends. As he started across the street, he saw another old face from the past. It was like someone had called a convention in Deadwood for every gun hand, pistoleer, and shootist in the territories. It was a credit to the damnable advertisements Liddy had put in the territorial newspapers.

  Kip Caine rode a tall piebald mare. He drew back on the reins when he saw Cole.

  “John Henry,” he said, sitting there high up on that sixteen-hand horse.

  “Kip.”

  “You come too, huh?”

  “Not for the same reason.”

  “Not the money? Then why?”

  “As a personal favor for a friend. You know him, Ike Kelly.”

  “Yeah, I know Ike. How’s he play into this?”

  “It’s a long story, Kip, and it’s snowing, and I’d just soon get down the street to the mercantile and see if I can find me a warmer coat.”

  “I talked to that lady yesterday,” he said. “That Lydia Winslow. She’s a looker, damned if she ain’t.”

  “Yeah, well, Kip, like I said, I’d like to see about that coat, if you don’t mind.”

  Caine walked the tall piebald alongside Cole as he continued down the street. It was already beginning to turn muddy, that’s how heavy and fast the snow was falling.

  “Heard you killed King Fisher,” he said.

  “News
travels fast,” Cole said, without any interest in discussing the matter with a man that was cut from the same cloth.

  “Well, I don’t suppose the world’s going to mourn his loss,” Caine said in a joking manner.

  “I wouldn’t know,” Cole said, trying his best to keep the conversation between them at a minimum.

  “I guess it couldn’t be helped,” Caine said.

  “He brought it on himself.”

  “That’s what I heard. Tried to shoot you through a winda glass.” Kip’s laugh broke through the crust of his beard. “Son-of-a-bitch never did have much sense. Shoot at you through a winda glass!”

  Cole arrived at the mercantile only to find a sign hanging in the window: Having a Tooth Pulled, Come Back Tomorrow. Just my luck, Cole thought, to run into Kip Caine the same day the only man I could buy a coat from was having his tooth pulled.

  “Looks like you’re outta luck on that new coat,” Kip offered. “Cold as a sucker, ain’t it?”

  “Let me ask you something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What would it take to get you to leave town?”

  Caine stood in his stirrups, stretching his legs, scratching at his backside. “Carbuncles,” he said. “I get carbuncles rubbed on my ass from these long rides.” Cole waited for him to answer the question. Finally, after he’d stretched his legs enough, he said: “It’d take me getting that reward money that woman’s offerin’. I come all the way from Oglalla. You know how far a ride that is, Oglalla? Especially for a man that’s got carbuncles?”

  “How much would it take, Kip?”

  “Two thousand, that’s what she said.”

  “How about five hundred and you don’t have to do a thing but leave town? How would that be?”

  He sat down again in the saddle, the snow collecting on the shoulders of his capote, in his beard. “Well, now that’s a tempting offer,” he said. “But it still ain’t no two thousand, is it? It’s a dang’ long ways from two thousand.”

  “So is a bullet in the back of your skull,” Cole said.

  His eyes grew larger under his heavy lids. “You ain’t trying to scare me, are you?”

  “You know this business. You’re not the only gun in town wanting to collect that money.”

  Caine’s mouth curled up through the hair of his face. “I’ll take my chances, same as you,”

  “I’m here for a different reason, Kip, like I told you. I’m not here for the reward money.”

  “Yeah, and I don’t piss yellow, John Henry. Same as you.”

  “Suit yourself,” Cole told him. “Five hundred for leaving Deadwood isn’t the worst offer I ever heard of.”

  “See you around, John Henry,” he said, and turned the piebald’s head back toward the direction of the saloons and whorehouses.

  Kip’s presence in Deadwood was just one more complication, the way Cole saw it. But what else was new? He continued on to the livery. The old man was standing out front, staring at the storm. He had an old wood burner pulled out front, its door busted off, the flames cooking a pine log he’d been feeding it.

  “Hey, sonny,” he said. “Look at that damn’ snow, would ya?”

  “How much for that coat?”

  He looked at Cole, the watery eyes pulled back within the bony brow of his skull. “How much fer the coat?”

  “Yeah, the one you’re wearing.”

  He looked at it, back at Cole. “Hell, I wouldn’t take a hunner dollars fer it . . . can’t you see it’s snowing? It’ll be colder than a well digger’s nuts around here, now that the snow’s come.”

  “Tell you what,” Cole offered, “I’ll give you twenty-five for the coat, and, when I leave here in a few days, I’ll sell it back to you for five. How’ll that be?”

  The old man twisted his lips, thinking about it. “That for sure?” he said. “You leaving in a few days?”

  “For sure,” Cole said, and meant it.

  “Done!” he said.

  It was a lot of coat, heavy as hell, but it was warm. The main trouble for Cole was that it would take some doing to reach the self-cocker under all that curly hair. So, he took the pistol out and slipped it into the pocket of the coat.

  He left the old man counting his new money. He didn’t seem to mind that it was snowing and he was only in his shirt sleeves.

  Cole decided to go pay Irish Murphy another visit. He needed to find out who was doing Leo Loop’s killing for him.

  “Irish ain’t here,” the man behind the bar said, when Cole asked for him.

  “When will he be here?”

  The man was of slight build, nervous with a bad tic just below his right eye. His hair was long and straight and plastered down with rosewater. Cole could smell the cheap scent of the rosewater.

  “About never,” the man said. “That’s when Irish’ll be back. He left town this morning on the stage for Cheyenne.”

  The bartender’s manner was like that of a small, unpleasant dog.

  “He say anything?” Cole made one final attempt. “Irish . . . why he was leaving?”

  “Yeah, he said . . . ‘See you around, sucker.’ That’s what he said.”

  “Just like that? Irish ups and leaves his job?”

  “You think pouring drinks for miners and whores is some sort of a plum job?” he said, his arms crossed over his chest, “standing on your feet ten hours a day, cleaning up men’s puke ’cause they don’t know when to give it a rest? You think that’s a job a man would hate to leave?”

  Cole had grown a little tired of the man’s attitude; he was a man easy to dislike the instant you met him.

  The doors suddenly blew open to a gust of cold wind and swirling snow trailed by a lone figure who stood for a moment in the quadrant of pewter light. He paused long enough to let his eyes adjust; the carbine he carried rested in the crook of his arm. Then, when he saw Cole standing there at the bar, he crossed the room. He ordered a whiskey and drank it, then ordered a second before turning his attention to Cole.

  “That little gal on the stage, the one dressed in buckskins pretending to be a fellow,” Miguel Torres said. “She just blew out Johnny Logan’s lights. Thought you might want to know.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  By the time they arrived on the scene, a sizable crowd had gathered around the stricken form of Johnny Logan. He was lying there in the mud, stretched out on his back, his arms flung wide, the snow gathering darkly on his mustaches, glazing his eyelashes. His mouth was partly open, his eyes wide and staring at a sky he could no longer see. A neat dark hole trickled a ribbon of blood across his brow. His head was slightly tilted to the side, like he’d tried to duck away from the bullet.

  “How’d this happen?” Cole asked Torres, pulling him aside.

  “I was over there,” he said, indicating the front of the bagnio he’d been hanging around since the other night. “I was keeping an eye on things. I saw your man here coming down the street. I guess he was making his morning rounds. It was quiet, me and him were the only ones out here.”

  The part about Rose hadn’t made any sense to Cole the instant Torres had said it was she that’d killed Logan. “Then what?” he asked.

  “He got to this point here,” Torres indicated with a thrust of his jaw. “She come around the side of that building, just there. She said something to him, he said something back. I didn’t hear what they were saying, but Logan there seemed to get upset with her, raising his hands. That’s when she shot him. Once, in the head, like you see.”

  “Anyone else see what happened?” Cole asked.

  He shook his head. “Like I said, the streets were clean, except for the three of us.”

  “Then what,” Cole said, “after she shot him?”

  “She went that way.” Torres indicated the direction with a nod. Cole knew where she’d gone. “I saw you talking to her alone that night out on the trail. I saw how she looked at you the rest of the trip. I figured maybe you’d want to know about this first.”

&nbs
p; “Look, Torres, I know you’re a federal lawman, but I’m asking you to steer clear of this. At least give me a chance to talk with her, find out her side of the story.”

  He looked at Cole, those lawmen’s eyes questioning what was legal, what was duty. “You want me to let it go, pretend like I didn’t see anything, that it?”

  “For her,” Cole said. “Do it for her, not me.”

  He glanced at the crowed gathered around Logan’s body. Some of them were talking about revenge, about hanging whoever had done it.

  “I’ve got no interest in this damn’ hell hole,” Torres said without changing his expression. “Other than to find out what happened to Robertito, I don’t give a ’coon’s ass about what goes on here.”

  “Thanks,” Cole said. He turned to go.

  Torres said: “Here.”

  Cole looked.

  He had the Colt pistol in his hand. “She dropped this afterward,” he said.

  Cole took the gun and slipped it inside the pocket of the curly coat. Torres turned his attention to the crowd, walking over and pushing them aside.

  “Well, you men going to stand around gawking?” Cole could hear Torres chiding them as he headed toward Liddy’s. “Or is someone going to carry this poor son-of-a-bitch over to the undertaker’s?” He was a strange and unpredictable man, Deputy U.S. Marshal Miguel Torres. Cole could still hear him berating the gawkers as he made his way down the street: “He’s not a god-damn’ circus to be looked at! Pick up his arms and feet!”

  The same question kept running through his mind every step of the way: Why had Rose shot Johnny Logan? As far as Cole was aware, she didn’t even know the man. And even if she had, it made no sense, not Rose, not that shy, troubled creature.

  He knocked on the door. This time it was Liddy who answered, instead of Jazzy Sue.