by Bill Brooks
Among these denizens rode Sheriff Jeff Carr. Tall, broad-chested, and mustachioed, he looked like a man who could kill you for the slightest provocation and probably would. He rode a dapple-gray gelding, and his rump settled down in a Texas double rig and tapaderos on the stirrups to keep the toes of his boots from getting muddy.
He was there astride his horse as the passengers of the train debarked. It was his custom to look over new arrivals, trying as he might to spot the gun artists and those who might bring with them trouble to his town. Jeff Carr didn’t care for trouble, and he made sure those departing the train saw the badge pinned to his coat and the double-barrel Whitney shotgun balanced across the pommel of his saddle.
Teddy Blue didn’t fail to notice the lawman, and the lawman didn’t fail to notice him.
It was late afternoon and plates of ice were reforming in the large puddles of the street. The sun was sunk low enough to throw its light along the ground, and where it struck ice, it turned it blue. A sharp wind chased in from the north. Teddy pulled his collar up. Even though it was close to the end of March, it wasn’t close enough yet by a long shot to being spring to that country.
The cold nibbled at the cut above his eye, stung the swollen places of his face, and troubled the broken bone in his chest.
He entered an establishment called Allen’s Variety Theater and asked the bartender if he’d ever heard of hot toddies. The man said of course he had, he was from New Jersey, and asked did he want a single or a double, and Teddy said, double.
It was amazing what a hot drink could do for a man’s disposition.
He looked around thinking there was an off-chance he might see Wild Bill among the club’s denizens. Then he realized a man of Wild Bill’s disposition probably didn’t engage in business much before noon.
He finished his drink and asked where the telegraph office was, then went there to send a telegram to George Bangs.
HAVE ARRIVED IN CHEYENNE THIS DAY. WILL MAKE CONTACT WITH SUBJECT AT FIRST OPPORTUNITY. SEND MORE EXPENSE MONEY—ANOTHER ONE-HUNDRED DOLLARS—THE DOVES HERE ARE A LOT MORE EXPENSIVE THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE. T. BLUE.
The clerk looked at him when he got to the last part.
“A joke,” Teddy said. “Where can a man get a decent room in this town?”
The clerk expressed his doubts that a man could get a decent room at any of the hotels.
“About every yahoo that can carry a pick and shovel is in town waiting for the weather to break to go north. Most of ’em brought their own tents, some wagons.”
“Surely must be some place a man can lay his head.”
The clerk shook his head.
Teddy made the rounds at the hotels anyway in hopes he might find something, but soon learned there wasn’t a room to be had. He was beginning to think that taking the job with Pinkerton’s had been a mistake. After all, what could he truly expect to accomplish, given the circumstances? The last of the sunlight winked out beyond a treeless shelf of land, and a cool, black silver night came creeping in. If it had had teeth it would have eaten them all.
He went back to the Gold Room in the Variety and ordered a meal after finding a table off in one corner.
“You want the special?” the waiter asked.
“What is the special?”
“It’s the same as it always is—elk steaks and beans.”
“Why is it called a special if it’s always the same?”
The waiter simply looked at him.
“Okay,” he said. “Bring me an iced beer as well.”
He ate without enthusiasm and studied the crowd. Rowdy men in close quarters drinking liquor and gambling. It was like a match waiting to be struck. Sure enough, a fight broke out, and he wasn’t surprised. It was quelled by a thickset barkeep with a hickory club who knocked the combatants senseless and threw them out the door. It wasn’t just the liquor that put men in such a quarrelsome mind-set. It was also a handful of rather homely women those men vied for. The men were lonely, far from home and wives and girlfriends, so far in fact that the women didn’t look nearly as homely as they were, and so were prized. The upper part of the establishment contained rooms divided off by nothing more than red curtains—nests for quick and cheap love, a place a miner could work off his liquor and loneliness and the girls could support themselves.
A kid selling newspapers came up to this table. “You want to buy a Leader?”
“Sure,” he said, and handed the kid a nickel.
“How about buying me a beer,” the kid said.
“You’re too young to drink beer.”
“No I ain’t.”
He was a spunky brat, buck-toothed, about five feet tall and eighty pounds.
“Tell you what, I’ll buy you a meal, you look like you could use it.”
“I’ll have what you just had,” the kid said, looking at Teddy’s half-eaten supper.
The waiter came over and asked Teddy if the kid was bothering him, said, “Goddamn you, Bonney, how many times I have to tell you to leave my customers alone.”
“He’s not bothering me,” Teddy said. “Bring him the special.”
The kid ate like a wolf.
“It must be hard having a girl’s name,” Teddy said as a way to make conversation.
The kid glared at him. “It’s my last name, not my first.”
“My apologies.”
“You see that fat bastard standing over there at the bar?”
Teddy looked around, saw a tall man with a big belly hanging over his belt, sooty features. “What about him?”
“Someday I’m going to blow a hole through that fat gut of his.”
“What for?”
“None of your business.”
“You’re a feisty little monkey.”
“I ain’t no monkey, and if you ain’t careful, I’m liable to blow a hole in you as well.”
“Where’s your folks to let you hang out in saloons this time of night and make threats on people you don’t know?”
“What’s it to you?”
“Nothing. You done with that meal, you can say so long. You’re starting to wear out your welcome.”
“Thanks for nothing, mister.”
Teddy watched the kid work his way through the crowd, trying to sell the last of his newspapers, saw the waiter go over and berate him and chase him out of the place.
“What’s with that kid?” he asked the waiter when he returned to his table.
“Pain in the ass. He’s headed for a rope if anybody ever was. Bad kid. You check your wallet to see if it’s missing?”
Out on the streets again, Teddy wasn’t sure exactly what he should do about accommodations. The air had become colder, the wind a song of bitterness. The moon now shone through shattered clouds but there wasn’t any warmth or comfort in it. He walked up the street toward the railroad hotel thinking if worse came to worse, he could possibly camp out in the hotel lobby.
He hadn’t gone a block when he saw several people scuffling, heard their grunts and curses. Judging by the size of them, they were kids. He stepped in close, grabbed one by the collar, flung him aside and snatched another.
“Break it up!”
They scattered except for one—the kid with the buckteeth and what remained of his newspapers, some torn and others being whipped down the streets before the wind.
“Jesus, you look for trouble or does it just find you?”
The kid had a bloody nose, wiped at it with the sleeve of his coat. “You didn’t have to butt in, I had ’em about whipped.”
“Yeah, it looks like you did.”
“Shit, they stole my money,” the kid said, looking at his ripped pocket.
“You best get on home.”
The kid stood there watching the last of his papers blow away. “She won’t believe me,” he said.
“Who won’t?”
“My ma.”
He seemed in that moment simply a boy who’d gotten into trouble, but Teddy reckoned he had enough of his own problems
to get involved.
“She’ll think I gambled it away or drunk it up or spent it on some dove.”
“You’re what, all of twelve years old?”
“Near fifteen…”
“I hardly think your ma will believe you spent your money on liquor and doves.”
“She knows me, knows I’m wild. We need every cent I make. She’s a widow runs a boardinghouse.”
Maybe it was fate, or just plain luck.
“She wouldn’t happen to have a room for rent, would she?”
The kid looked at him. “Tell you what, mister. You vouch for me those tramps beat me and took my money, and I’ll see she rents you a room.”
It was a simple house, nothing fancy, just on the edge of the town’s limits, set off by itself. One story, flat roof, unpainted walls. A broken picket fence with dead vines strung through it.
The kid called her name, letting Teddy follow him into the front door.
She came from another room and stood there looking at the two of them.
“Man needs a room, Ma.”
She was pretty, with light red hair, a sprinkling of freckles across her nose, eyes full of tired.
“What happened to you, William?”
“Some tramps jumped me, took my money.”
She looked skeptical.
“It’s true,” Teddy said. “I came along and broke it up. And it’s also true I could stand to rent a room if you have one available.”
She shifted her attention to him. “It’s a very small room at the rear. It might not suit you well.”
“I’ll take it.”
“It’s ten dollars a week. In advance.”
He took the money out of his wallet and handed it to her.
“Breakfast is included if you get to the table before eight o’clock.”
“Thank you,” he said. He looked at the kid.
He could hear her talking to the boy through the thin walls, hear her coughing, the boy saying how he didn’t do anything wrong, how he was tired of this dunghill of a town, how he was going to run away. He heard her later in the night crying, but the tired had closed on him fast and he fell into a sleep pounded with dreams, none of them good.
Chapter 8
“I am the woman who loved Phil Coe,” she said.
The man reading the Bible looked up. “What’s that to me?” he said.
“You are the Preacher, the one I’ve heard about?”
She was taller than most women. Taller than most men. He guessed her to be well over six feet and slender as a reed. And not what generally would be considered a beauty.
“My lover was killed in Texas by Wild Bill,” she said.
“I’m sorry to hear.”
“It’s been six years ago this month. I thought I could get over it, but I can’t.”
“You must have loved him terribly.”
“We were to be married.”
“Again, my condolences.”
“Your condolences are not what I’ve come to ask for.”
He closed his Bible and set it next to him on the bench there in front of the hotel. El Paso held onto its heat like a miser to dimes. Sun baked the street, and everything moved slow that time of day. The wiser men were inside the saloons drinking, decent women did not venture out, and even dogs found shade and stayed in it.
“Would you care to have a seat?” he said, and she sat next to him. He could smell that good clean smell of freshly washed skin and hair.
“It has taken me this entire time to save up the money,” she said.
“Money for what?”
“For you, if you’ll take it.”
“And why would I take your money, Miss…”
“Just call me Olive,” she said. “That and the fact I can pay you is all you really need to know about me.”
“Olive,” he said, testing the sound of the name.
She took from her reticule a small sack weighted with what he saw as twenty-dollar double eagles when she opened it.
“Five-hundred dollars,” she said. “It’s all I have.”
“Again, I’d ask you for what purpose would I take your money.”
“To kill Wild Bill, of course.”
He smiled and watched a lone rider trot a big piebald stallion down the street, rein it in front of the Coney Island Saloon, dismount and go inside.
“May I ask why you come to me with such a proposal?”
“Because you’re the Preacher, the one they say kills men for money.”
He laughed, but not very hard nor very loudly. “You are an innocent, Olive. What makes you think I won’t just take your money and disappear and not shoot anyone?”
“I’m not so innocent as you might think,” she said.
“Still…”
She pulled the drawstring tight around the purse of coins and dropped it back inside her reticule, stood and said, “I am going to go to my house now. No one lives there but me. If you change your mind, you can follow me home, or find me later on your own. And if not, then I’ve wasted our time and come out into this dreadful heat for nothing. Good-bye, sir.”
He watched her walk away, took out his Bible and began reading again in the book of Ecclesiastes: To everything there is a season…A time to kill…a time to embrace…a time to dance.
She opened the door for him on the first knock, stood away, and he entered. A hundred candles burned in the room she led him into. They looked like fireflies in the otherwise darkness.
“You took your time deciding,” she said, “it’s nearly midnight.”
“I’m a careful man, Olive.”
“You will take the job then?”
“Yes,” he said. “But it will take more than five hundred dollars in gold eagles for me to kill the likes of Wild Bill.”
“I figured as much. Do you like wine?”
She undressed slowly as he sat and watched, the light of the candles flickering soft arabesque shadows over her milk white flesh. He wondered if Heaven offered as much pleasure for a man’s eyes, doubted he’d ever find out.
Finally she stood in a simple cotton chemise. Her hair unpinned gave her an attractiveness he’d not noticed before. She came and stood before him, and he undid the chemise and let it fall away.
“Are you sure you want to pay such a price to see a man dead?” he said.
“For every time there is a season,” she said. It spooked him a little.
He awoke sometime during the night. All but a few of the candles had guttered out, and he thought they were eyes staring at him. Olive was asleep next to him on the pallet. Earlier she had whispered the name “Phil” then apologized for the faux pas. It didn’t matter to him, really. She was a curiosity, a strange creature full of sorrow with wounded eyes. And afterward she’d said to him, “I give myself gladly to you in payment of revenge.”
He fell back asleep, then awoke to see her staring at him.
He said, “You should forget this nasty business and let what has happened here this night be left at that. I understand the business of desperation and hatred and death. It is something you’ll have to live with forever.”
“Do you think I care?”
“No.”
She clung to him. “Tell me your name before you go,” she said.
“Does it matter?”
“Perhaps, a little, it does…”
“Paris Bass,” he said.
“You can have me again, if you want.”
So he took her, and she gave herself to him in a straightforward way and did not speak Phil Coe’s name again but seemed rather to suffer in silence because he could feel her tears falling on his skin as she lay against him.
As he was dressing she said, “Have you killed many men?”
“I’ve killed enough to know how it’s done,” he said. “And I will kill Wild Bill.”
“How will you find him?”
“Men like him aren’t hard to find. They dote on the notoriety. They are vain, and in their vanity lies their weakness. They
think everyone is an admirer and everyone is afraid. It is why they are easy.”
“Why do they call you the Preacher?” she said.
He knotted his tie, then shook out his jacket and put it on. She noticed the pockets sewn into the inner lining were heavy with small pistols.
“It’s a long story,” he said, and held out his hand. She took it, moved in close to him. “That’s not what I want. The five hundred, remember?”
“Oh,” she said, and went and got the purse and gave it to him.
“You didn’t think…”
“No.”
“There surely must be plenty of men who would be interested in you, Olive.”
“I’m sure there are, if that is what I wanted.”
“You know how to pleasure a man.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
He settled his hat on his head and turned to go.
“How will I know when it is done?” she said.
“Everyone will hear about it when it’s done. After all, how many are there like him?”
“Will you come back this way afterward?”
“No, Olive, I won’t.”
“I trust you won’t take advantage of me…”
“I already have.” He saw the look on her face and added, “But I’m a man of my word when it comes to these things. Do you think your Phil Coe went to his heavenly home?”
“I hardly would think so.”
“Then he’ll be there with the Devil to welcome our William.”
As he made preparations to leave in search of Wild Bill, the Preacher did not concern himself with matters of time. If it took him weeks or even months to find Wild Bill, eventually he would, as he always did, find his man. And if someone else were to kill the gunfighter before he found him, well, either way, Olive would have her revenge. And when the wind shuffled just right, he could still smell that washed hair of hers, and he would, at least until the next one like her came along and struck a new bargain with him.
He rode along the El Paso road at a leisurely pace, reading his Bible, this time opening to the book of James.