by Bill Brooks
“Up on that hill, with them other dead people,” she replied. “I didn’t go up there until later. One, two weeks, maybe. The grass was already beginning to grow again. I didn’t even know if it was the right place.”
“I’m sorry this had to happen to you.”
She shook her head as though still not able to accept it. “I thought we was going to leave this place,” she said, “Bobby and me. I don’t know what I’m going to do now. Bobby, he didn’t want me doing this. Most men don’t care.”
“Yeah.”
“I guess they don’t want someone to get something decent from life, they just kill them, that’s all . . .” She broke off.
“Do you have people somewhere you could go live with?”
Her cheeks were stained with her sorrow and bitterness. “No, I don’t have no one. My people are all gone from around here.” She didn’t elaborate where her people had gone, whether she meant they had died or simply left, or the circumstances of how she had come to prostitute herself in a Deadwood whorehouse at such a young age.
“I know it sounds a little late, but is there anything I can do?”
“No. There’s nothing nobody can do. Just don’t tell them men who killed Bobby what I said, OK? I don’t want no more trouble. This ain’t no kind of life, mister, but it’s all the life I got.”
“I won’t tell them.”
She nodded her head.
Cole turned to go, but there was one last thing he wanted to ask her. “Is Josephine your real name?”
She shook her head, a small light of something remembered coming into her eyes. “No, it’s a name Big Annie gave me ’cause it sounded more like a white girl’s name. Big Annie said some of the men wouldn’t pay as much for an Indian as they would for a white girl. She made me change it to Josephine. She said it was a name that’d remind men of their sweethearts.”
“What was it before?”
“Blue Water Dancing,” she said.
“It’s a nice name.”
“My grandmother gave it to me.”
“Maybe someday you will meet another man like Bobby.”
“Maybe.”
“And maybe he will call you by your real name.”
She offered a weak smile. “I almost forgot my name,” she said shyly. “Nobody ever calls me that any more.”
“It’s too pretty to forget,” Cole said.
She shrugged. “Living like this, it don’t give a girl much hope of having pretty things. Maybe, someday, I’ll save a little money and go see my people. They went off to Canada. I’d like to see my grandmother again.”
“Blue Water Dancing,” Cole said.
She looked at him, her eyes full of curiosity now.
“You shouldn’t forget.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Miguel Torres was checking the heel on his right boot when Cole came down the stairs from Josephine’s room. The heel was run-down, as were the soles of his boots. He looked up.
“Well, did you do any good up there?” he asked, lowering his foot to the floor.
It struck Cole that, if Torres had paid for that child’s services, he wasn’t quite the man he’d thought him to be. “Tell me something, Miguel?”
His eyes narrowed. “You want to know did I buy her?”
“Yeah.”
His nostrils flared. “No, I didn’t buy her. I bought her some whiskey and we talked and she tried to get me to go upstairs with her and I did. But I didn’t pay her for what you’re thinking.”
Cole didn’t know whether to believe him or not. A man like Miguel, not accustomed to women, maybe he had paid her and just didn’t want to admit to it. “I can see where a man might be tempted. Given the right circumstances, I can understand a man paying her.”
He stood up, settled his battered sombrero on his head. “That what you think, that I went to bed with a child like that?”
Cole knew then he hadn’t. “No, I just thought, if you had, it might have complicated things a little.”
“You’re a damn’ suspicious man,” he said, his jaw working into a knot.
“She told me some things about Robertito. But maybe we’d better take it outside.” He wasn’t sure who might be listening on the other side of the curtain where Big Annie had appeared from earlier.
They stepped back out into the storm that hadn’t slowed at all. The winds whipped gusts of snow down the streets and plastered it to the sides of buildings and support posts and piled it deep in front of doorways.
“Where to?” Torres asked.
“Some place private.”
Miguel scrunched his hat down a little more on his head to keep the wind from blowing it away. Cole did the same. “Some place private’s going to be a little hard for you, isn’t it?” he asked Cole as they trudged down the street. “What with half the town wanting to arrest you.”
“I know a place that might work.”
He was silent, just walking alongside Cole until they reached the old man’s stable. “In here.”
“You want to hold court in a barn?”
“Why not? It’s at least out of the weather.”
Toole was out cold, lying on a bed of straw, a bottle lying near his outstretched hand.
“Who’s that?” Torres asked.
“Name’s Toole. He owns the place.”
“You reckon he’d mind if we shared his bottle?” Torres said, bending and picking up the liquor bottle. He held it up to check how much was remaining. “Two, three good swallows yet,” he said, holding the bottle out to Cole.
“No, thanks.”
Torres didn’t bother to make a second offer but instead finished it off in one long pull, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “So, what’d she tell you?” he asked, when he had finished off the old man’s liquor and tossed the bottle aside.
“She told me what happened to Robertito.” Cole was careful to watch the reaction in Miguel’s eyes while he repeated what he’d heard. Miguel already was sure that Robertito was dead, but hearing it said caused his eyes to narrow and his shoulders to slump.
“She say who it was killed him?”
“She didn’t know for certain.”
“Then you wasted your time.”
Cole then told Miguel about Johnny Logan’s arresting Robertito, and how the next day he was found in an alley with his skull caved in. He told him the part, too, about Josephine having gone to see him at the undertaker’s, and that it was she who had sent his belongings home.
“Well, it was damn’ civil of her, don’t you think?” he said sarcastically.
“Hold on, Miguel. Robertito was going to marry her. She loved him.”
He snorted his disgust. “I don’t want to hear that shit. You seen what she was. My brother wasn’t going to marry a damn’ who- . . . !”
Cole came up close to him and put his hand on his chest. “Don’t! Don’t say it!”
Miguel jerked back, surprised that Cole had challenged him. “What the hell’s got into you?”
“She’s maybe all of sixteen years old and she fell in love with your brother, who had promised to marry her and take her out of the life she’s living. She had the common decency to send his belongings home. She didn’t have to take the trouble. So don’t say what you were going to say about her, not in front of me, Miguel. Not in front of me.”
It was a long moment of waiting. Finally he turned away and walked to the front of the barn, where the doors allowed a crack of dull light in from the outside. A long finger of snow lay along the hard-packed dirt floor. “She say where Robertito was buried?” he asked with his back to Cole.
“Up on Mount Moriah, at the little cemetery.” Miguel’s hands opened and closed several times. “She said Robertito had some troubles with his claim. The same thing you heard . . . he’d had some sort of dispute.”
“You think it had something to do with the Englishman?”
“I can’t say for certain, but if what I’ve heard is true, that he claims to own a good part of
that country north of here and has several mining claims already up there, then it might be a place a man would want to look for gold. And maybe Robertito and his partner did just that.”
“How could the Englishman own land that belongs to the Sioux?” Miguel asked.
“That’s a good question, Deputy. But who’s to stop him, who’s to throw him off the land? Think about it.”
“Those two you killed the other day, his men,” Torres said, “maybe they were the ones, maybe they had a hand in killing Robertito.”
“It’s real possible, Miguel.”
“Only one god-damn’ way to find out.”
“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.”
“You want to go take care of Charley Coffey and his bunch first?” Miguel asked, still with his back to Cole. He looked dark and menacing, standing there in the unlit building with the single blade of winter light knifing through the crack in the doors.
“Well, as much as we both want to head up there to Stevens’s place, we wouldn’t get far in this storm.”
“No, we wouldn’t get a mile,” he agreed.
“Then let’s walk down the street and see if we can find Charley.”
“Yeah, let’s.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
They pushed their way through the snowdrifts and the bone-chilling winds on a direct line to the Lucky Strike. There was something fearsome in it, the way they were going about taking on Charley and his bunch and whoever else decided to get in the way. It was a feeling Cole hadn’t had in a long time. He didn’t know exactly how to explain it, the coldness that took over his thinking, the little extra with which his heart was beating because he knew that he was walking into a fight. His mind was fixed on just that one event, the fight he knew was up ahead waiting for them, and everything else was forgotten. All he could think about was doing what he knew he had to do, and nothing else was of consequence. That was the way he was feeling, and, if he had to guess, he’d say that was the way Miguel Torres was feeling, too.
They didn’t talk or discuss it beyond the decision they’d made before they left the old man’s stable. Miguel had thumbed a fresh cartridge into his carbine and checked the loads in the Peacemaker Colt he had taken off the stage robber. Cole changed loads in both his pistols, then placed them in the pockets of the curly coat so he could reach them easily. The wind bit their faces and snapped at their clothes and tried to take their hats. But none of that seemed to matter, because as cold as the mind tends to become in a fighting situation, the blood feels like it’s running hot in your veins. They reached the Lucky Strike, exchanged glances, and went in prepared to do what they had come for.
There were a few of the town’s citizens, mostly miners, sitting around, but overall the place was quiet. Those sitting around looked up when Miguel and Cole stepped into the room. The small talk came to an end; someone coughed. “I’m looking for Charley Coffey,” Cole said.
No one said anything for a moment. Then Harve, the barman, stepped out of the shadows from behind the bar. The swelling around his eyes from the fight he and Red had had gave him the look of an Oriental. “Coffey’s gone,” he said.
“Where?” Cole asked.
Harve placed the palms of his hands atop the bar, looked from Cole to Torres then back to Cole.
“Where?” Cole asked again.
Harve shrugged.
Miguel crossed the room and took hold of Harve’s shirt front and nearly pulled him over the top of the bar. “He asked you a question, mister!” he growled.
“I don’t . . . know,” Harve stammered.
“God damn you don’t!” Miguel said. “And you better be faster with an answer than I am with this Peacemaker.” Miguel showed him just enough of the big pistol to get his attention. Cole kept an eye on the others in the room, in case there were any who thought they had a reason to get involved. No one moved. Miguel put his face up close to that of Harve’s, and Harve tried to close his eyes, but was having difficulty because of the swelling. “I bet it’d hurt like hell I was to punch you in that face of yours,” Miguel threatened.
“Please don’t do . . . that,” Harve begged.
Cole noticed Red, Harve’s partner, standing there behind the bar, his hands hanging at his sides. He didn’t seem to be in a fighting mood, watching the way Torres was handling Harve. Miguel looked like he was going to do it, hit Harve in his tender face, when Cole stopped him by asking Harve: “Then where’s Leo?”
Harve shifted his swollen eyes toward the back, where Leo’s office was.
“Keep him and these others out here while I pay Leo a visit,” Cole told Torres. “I’ll get Leo to tell me what Harve says he doesn’t know. I come back without an answer, you can go ahead and bust him in the face.”
Harve grunted, but Miguel held him in a bulldog grip, pulled halfway over the bar top, his toes barely touching the floor.
Cole didn’t bother to knock on Leo’s door before he went in. He had a chippy kneeling before him, his head back, his eyes closed against the pleasure she was giving him. “Leave off with that,” Cole ordered. They both jumped.
“What the hell . . . ?” Leo started to protest, but Cole showed him the self-cocker.
“Go on, lady, find something else to do,” Cole told her. She looked grateful and slid out of the room, closing the door behind her. Leo sat there, sputtering and trying to button up his front. “Leave it be,” Cole said. Leo’s hands stopped. “Time for the truth, Leo.”
He looked at Cole, his piggish eyes full of anger and fear. “Truth about what?” he squealed, his face flushed.
“Everything, Leo. Start with the reasons you had those girls murdered, then go on to the part about where Charley Coffey is hiding.”
“You don’t know . . . what you’re . . . saying,” he stammered.
Cole thumbed back the hammer on the Remington. “Christ, Leo, it would be so damned easy to kill you, I have to fight the urge to keep from doing it.” The piggish eyes shifted to the pistol in Cole’s hand. “Only thing is, I want to do it slow, maybe shoot you in the legs first. What do you think that would be like, getting shot in the legs, Leo?”
Leo lost most of his color when Cole said the part about shooting him in the legs; the flesh around his neck and jowls was ashen gray as the winter sky; his face was a sheen of sweat, and the thin strands of his oily hair couldn’t hide the glisten of his scalp. “You . . . can’t do . . . this, Cole. It’d be murder.”
“You think I give a damn what anyone in this town would call it, Leo? Do you want to know who’s backing my play out there in your bar right now? A deputy U.S. marshal. Do I look like a man that’s worried about being charged with murder?”
“You can’t do this . . .”
Cole put the front blade of the self-cocker just under the sag of neck that spilled down from Leo’s chin. “Go ahead, Leo, tell me again how I can’t do this.”
He swallowed hard enough that the flab of neck pushed against the barrel of Cole’s pistol. “It wasn’t just me . . .” he muttered.
“Go on.”
“It was . . . Johnny who did it . . . he’s the one that killed them.”
“But you ordered it done.”
He was trying to hold the bile down, choking on it, tasting it. He swallowed two or three times, and every time he did, the barrel of Cole’s gun moved under the bobbing of his Adam’s apple. “OK . . . all right!” he cried, throwing up his hands.
“You had Johnny kill those women because you didn’t want the competition from Liddy’s operation, is that it, Leo?” His eyes rolled until they showed white. “Wasn’t there enough lonely miners to go around? You had to get all the trade, cut everyone else out?”
He snuffled, a thin line of mucous leaking from his right nostril. “She didn’t . . . go along with the . . . operation. She wouldn’t pay up . . . it was the principle of the . . . thing.”
“Principle!” Cole was having a hard time holding in his anger. “You had those women killed for something as l
ittle as that?” Leo nodded again, unable to speak because the bile was right there in his throat, and, if he tried to say anything, it was all going to erupt out of him. “I don’t get it, Leo. Why go after the women? Why not just kill Liddy instead? If you wanted her out of business, why not just take her out?”
He was shaking now, shaking and sweating and leaking through his nose. “He wouldn’t let me . . .” he managed to mumble.
“Who wouldn’t let you?”
“Stevens!” he blurted. “He wouldn’t let me have Johnny . . . do her.”
Cole felt he had finally got the truth. “Tell me exactly how he fits into this, Leo.” He shoved the front sight of the self-cocker a little harder into the doughy flesh. Leo was clamping his jaws shut, trying to keep from losing his breakfast all over his gaiters. “We had a deal . . . I run things around here . . . he controls most of the big mining claims. He said between the two of us . . . we could control it all.”
“He was already a rich man, Leo. Why bother?”
Leo swallowed again, like he couldn’t get enough air. “It ain’t . . . about money with him. It’s the . . . power.”
“So you supplied the guns and he supplied what, Leo, the brains?”
“Yeah . . . something . . . like that.”
“Until Stevens came along with his schemes and money, you were just nickel-and-dimeing it, that the way it was, Leo?”
He nodded his head. “Nickel-and-dimeing it . . . that’s right.”
“I still don’t get murdering the women. Why didn’t Stevens just let you kill Liddy and be done with it? Why go to all that trouble to try to scare her off?” Leo was having a hard time coming up with enough words. “Let me guess.” Cole was losing patience. “Stevens was in love with her, that’s why he wouldn’t let you kill her?”
“Not just . . . that.” Leo groaned.
“What else?”
“She’s his sis-sister, you know . . . they’re related for Christ’s sake. Jeezus . . . can you quit poking me in the neck with that?”
Cole held the barrel against his soft flesh while the revelation sank in. It was a big fact Liddy had forgotten to mention in their conversations both in and out of bed. The whole thought of it was doing a slow dance in Cole’s head. “I should kill you for lying, Leo.”