by Bill Brooks
It was a little more information than they needed, but they took it and left. Cole could feel Morgan Earp’s gaze on them.
“Looks like the Earps are the entire police force,” Teddy Green said.
“They usually are, from what I’ve heard about them,” Cole said.
They found the third brother dealing faro.
“I’d like a word with you, Marshal,” Teddy Green said, interrupting the game. Several players grew scowls and one started to protest the interruption, but Teddy Green cut him off with a hard stare. Earp, on the other hand, shuffled the deck between the fingers of one hand; the other hand, Cole suspected, was holding a self-cocker somewhere below the table.
“I’m off duty,” Earp said. “Come see me in my office tomorrow if you want to talk.”
“I’m a Texas Ranger, looking for someone,” Teddy Green persisted. “I’d appreciate your co-operation as a fellow lawman.”
Cole saw a half smile on Wyatt Earp’s lips.
“This is Kansas, son. Texas is two states down.”
“I know where Texas is,” Teddy Green said. “I’ll ask you again for your co-operation, then I won’t ask a third time.”
Earp’s gray-eyed stare was cold and calculating. Cole could see he was taking the measure of Teddy Green, just as Green had already taken the measure of him. Cole knew by reputation that Earp wasn’t a shooter. He was known for striking men across the head with the barrel of his Peacemaker, what they called buffaloing a man. Cole thought he knew after a moment of contemplation that Earp wasn’t going to buffalo Teddy Green without paying a heavy price for the trying.
“All right,” Earp said. “Charley, take over.”
A man with a patch over his left eye and garters on his sleeves took Earp’s place and the three of them walked over to the bar where Earp ordered whiskey and branch water.
“So, what’s so all-important you need me to leave my business?” Earp asked after tossing back half the glass of liquor.
Green said: “We’re looking for a woman and two men who might have passed through here two, three days ago. One of the men is a colored. They would be driving a hack, maybe the colored on a horse outriding, a bodyguard. You seen anybody fit that description?”
“Yeah, I saw them. They came in a few nights ago, stayed at the Dodge House, except for the Negro, who stood watch out front. Left first light the next morning.”
“Which direction?” Cole asked.
Earp looked at him. “We met?” he said.
“No,” Cole said.
“What’s your name?” he said.
“John Henry Cole.”
“The name sounds familiar,” he said, “but I can’t place where I’ve heard it.”
“Wyatt,” Mattie Blaylock said as she approached. She glanced at Cole and smiled. “John Henry, how have you been?”
Earp gave her a hard look.
“Wyatt, this is John Henry Cole, a second cousin of mine from back in Illinois.”
Earp’s jaw muscle twitched.
Cole showed no reaction to the lie. He knew her, yes, but not as a second cousin. She had nursed him back to health after a colored prostitute had shot him, thus trying to prevent him from taking a man to jail. Cole remembered Mattie telling him how the man who he assumed was her husband had run out on her and left her alone on the frontier. Now, here she was.
“I’d heard you’d gotten married, Mattie,” Cole said, going along with the fabrication.
“Yes, Wyatt and I have been married for quite some time.”
Teddy Green was getting restless with all this small talk. “We’ve got work to do, John Henry.” He turned his attention back to Earp. “Which way did they go when they left here?”
“South road,” Earp said without taking his gaze from Cole.
“You see anybody else come through here, a lone man wearing a string of ears around his neck?” Green asked.
“Ears?” Earp said.
“I guess you haven’t, or it wouldn’t surprise you. How about a bunch of riders got their hats pinned up, you see them?”
“Saw some riders, yesterday … United States deputy marshals.”
“Hats pinned up?” Teddy Green repeated.
“Yeah, hats pinned up. What about them?”
“They’re not lawmen,” Cole said.
“They had the papers and badges to prove it,” Earp replied. “I checked.”
Cole exchanged looks with Teddy Green.
“Judge Beam made them official by deputizing them,” Green said. “To make it look like less than a squad of assassins.”
“What the hell is this all about?” Earp demanded.
“Nothing,” Teddy Green said. “Leastways, nothing that should concern you.”
Earp was getting red around the gills.
“I hope you are taking good care of my cousin, Marshal,” Cole said. “I wouldn’t want to think that she’s not well cared for here on this rough frontier.”
Earp’s gaze narrowed, uncertain what Cole might know or not know about Mattie and him.
“Blood runs thick in our families,” Cole added. “Always did, always will. One thing … we take care of our own.”
Mattie gave a light-hearted laugh and touched Cole’s wrist.
“Did I ever mention, dear Wyatt, how serious some of my cousins can be about family?”
“You gents ought to get moving if you’re after that woman and her friends,” Earp said. “They got a good three, four days jump on you.”
“You’re right,” Teddy Green agreed, and turned to leave. Then he paused and said: “You coming, John Henry?”
Cole gave it one more second to see if Earp wanted to take it further, but nothing happened, and Mattie kissed Cole’s cheek and said: “Tell the folks hello for me when you get back home, John Henry. Tell them everything is fine and that I miss them.” The look in her eyes appealed to Cole to let the matter drop and so he did.
“You take care of yourself, Mattie, you know how we all worry about you.”
“I will,” she assured.
Teddy Green was already tightening the cinch on his saddle when Cole caught up with him.
“Well, did you get all your good byes said?” he asked. “And where is Grumpy?”
Harve was just coming out of the Long Branch, carrying several bottles of liquor.
“We leaving?” he asked.
“What’s it look like?” Teddy Green said.
“Looks like we’re leaving.”
As they rode past the Alhambra, Cole saw Mattie and Wyatt and Wyatt’s two brothers, standing on the walk, and thought to himself that someday Wyatt Earp was going to give her untold heartbreak.
“You boys learn anything?” Harve wondered.
“Yeah,” Teddy Green said.
“I learned something, too,” Harve said.
“What’s that?” Green snapped.
“That a man can’t hold his hand against a glass jar that has a rattlesnake in it when the snake strikes.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“In that saloon they had a rattlesnake thick as your arm in a glass jar and the bartender was taking bets you couldn’t hold your hand against it and not jerk it away when the snake struck the glass. I bet him a dollar I could. I lost.”
“Next time you want to throw a dollar away,” Teddy Green said, “throw it my way.”
“I could have won five,” Harve said. “Seemed like good odds at the time.”
“Men who fool around with rattlesnakes are foolish, indeed,” Teddy Green said. “I knew a preacher down in Tascosa who believed you could let a rattlesnake bite you and not kill you if you had enough faith in the Lord. To prove it, he let one bite him one day in a church full of women and children and died on the spot.”
“That’s
foolish!” Harve said. “Do not tempt the Lord, the Bible says.”
“I guess maybe that preacher didn’t read that part. After that he never got another chance,” Teddy Green opined.
“Maybe, if we spent less time talking about paint horses and rattlesnakes and preachers,” Cole said, “we might concentrate better on the task ahead of us.”
“He’s a mite touchy,” Harve remarked to Teddy Green.
“He found out his cousin is married to Wyatt Earp.”
“Hmmm … I saw Earp bust a cowboy’s skull in Abilene once with his pistol. Then he horsewhipped him.”
“I doubt he’d horsewhip a woman,” Teddy Green said.
“I’d almost as soon be horsewhipped or snake-bitten than to listen to the two of you jabber all the way to Texas,” Cole said, and put the spurs to his mount.
Harve was right. John Henry Cole was definitely a mite touchy.
Chapter Eighteen
The bodies were found an hour after breakfast. They were lying in a circle around a cold fire of buffalo chips—eight, maybe ten men sprawled out.
“Christ and Jesus!” Harve said.
“Massacre,” Teddy Green said, “is what it looks like.”
“You notice?” Cole said.
“Yeah,” the Ranger said. “I noticed first thing.”
“Their ears are cut off,” Harve said.
Cole dismounted and took a closer look. “That’s not what killed them,” he said. “These men were shot.”
“How could one man shoot this many men without himself getting killed?” Teddy Green asked. Gypsy Davy wasn’t among the lot.
Turkey vultures wheeled in the sky above.
“A smart piece of shooting, if one man did it,” Harve said.
“Looks like perdition,” Teddy Green said. “Like Armageddon, like these men were smote by the hand of God.”
“Or the devil,” Cole said.
One of them had a tintype clutched in his hand. It showed the picture of a woman with dark ringlets of hair, her eyes staring into the camera.
“They won’t meet in this world again,” Teddy Green said, taking the tintype and looking at it before placing it back in the dead man’s hand.
Then they heard a moan.
Harve jumped two feet and stared at the bodies. “Which one said that?”
A hand twitched and Cole rolled the man over. Harve took his canteen and spilled water over the man’s lips. His head was bloody; one of his ears had been sliced off; his face was black from gunpowder.
He rolled his eyes when the water touched his lips and he moaned again. There was a knot in the middle of his forehead the size of a turkey egg.
“This boy’s been cold-cocked, it looks like,” Harve said. “Look at the size of that knot on his head.”
“Cold-cocked and cut,” Teddy Green said, “but I don’t see a bullet hole in him.”
“Then he’s lucky,” Harve said.
“What’s your name, son?” Cole asked. He looked young—eighteen, maybe not even that old.
He blinked several times, licked his lips, and stared up at them.
“They call me the Cincinnati Kid,” he said. “But my true name is Joe McCarty.”
“The Cincinnati Kid, huh?” Green repeated.
He nodded.
“What happened here?” Cole said.
“Turrible bad fight, mister.”
“We can see that, boy,” Green said. “How’d it come about?”
“Was camped,” he said. “That’s all. Then these fellers rode down on us like blue hell and started shooting us to ribbons. We didn’t stand a chance.”
“Why did they shoot you to ribbons?” Harve asked.
The boy waggled his head. “I guess they thought we were the Canadian River boys done all that bank robbing and killing. We figgered they was the law come to do us in.”
“Canadian River boys?”
“Yes,” the Kid said. He looked around, saw the dead, and added: “God, they’re all kilt but me.”
Harve snorted, looked around at the gaggle of dead men, and said: “You boys sure as hell don’t look like no serious outlaws. Why, take a gander … there ain’t one among the bunch looks like he’s old enough to shave.”
The boy looked at Cole, blinked again, sat up, let out a groan, and felt the knot on his head.
“Yes, sir, I’m admitting it, that’s who we were … the Canadian River boys, worst bunch of outlaws in three states. Robbed and killed everybody we could … shot em, stabbed ’em, dragged ’em, even run over some with our horses. We were mean, mean, mean. Wasn’t nobody or nothing that we ever feared until yesterday.” Then he rolled his eyes and groaned.
“You don’t look like a yahoo that could even kill time,” Harve said. “Why you can’t be more’n a dang’ child.”
“Well, sir, I was part of these here dead boys, all right. I may have even been the worst of the bunch, truth be told. I’ve done things I’m nearly shamed to admit.”
“I ain’t buying it,” Harve said. “You don’t look like you could whip a schoolgirl, much less rob and murder folks.”
The boy looked contrite.
“I don’t know,” Teddy Green said. “It’s been my experience that killers and thieving trash come in all ages and stripes. Maybe we ought to take this boy to the nearest town and see him hanged for his crimes.”
The boy nodded. “Yes, sir, you’d be right in doing it. I deserve to hang for what I’ve done.”
“Hell, maybe we ought to just shoot him and leave him here for those turkey vultures,” Cole said.
Harve looked up, saw the swarm of dark-winged birds circling overhead. “First they pluck out your eyes,” he said. “And you don’t even have to be dead yet. Birds like that find eyes to be the tastiest of morsels. Then the wolves come and tear open your guts and eat them.”
Green said: “Seems to me, that’s a better fate for a killing, thieving, no-account rascal such as yourself.”
“They’ll probably chew off your other ear, too,” Harve added.
The boy reached up and felt the ragged fringe where his ear had been, winced, and pulled away bloody fingers. “I thought it was a dream I was having,” he said, his eyes wide with astonishment. “I thought I was only dreaming that a feller was cutting off my ear. Oh, Lord, I’m violated!”
“That’s nothing compared to what’s going to happen to you,” Teddy Green said. “Let’s go.”
They turned to mount their horses when the Kid shouted. “Don’t leave me for the buzzards to pluck out my eyes and the wolves to eat my guts!”
“You said it yourself, boy,” Green said, putting a foot to the stirrup. “You are the worst kind of breed there is. Best you die hard … maybe you’ll get your reward in heaven but not here on this earth.”
“I was lying!” the boy shouted. “I ain’t no killer. Why, I ain’t hardly fired my pistol at nothing but jack rabbits, and even then I didn’t hit nothing.”
Teddy Green strolled over to the boy and looked down at him.
“Honest, mister. I just joined up with these fellers yesterday, ran across their camp here, and asked could I stay for some coffee and hardtack. I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, that’s all.”
“Why’d you make up that story then?”
The boy dipped his head, moaned, looked up again. “Me and my brother Henry come two thousand miles with our ma,” he said. “She died and Henry went to New Mexico to seek his fortune. Me, I stayed right here in Kansas, seeking my own. Henry’s made a big name for himself as an outlaw and I wanted to be wild and wooly just like him. So when these boys told me who they were and what all they’d done and asked me to throw in with them, I couldn’t hardly say no. That ’un there … the one with the greasy pants … he was the leader. Called himself Sunny Jim. He’s the
one said I could either throw in with them or taste lead, meaning he’d shoot me down like a yellow dog if I didn’t. That ’un next to him is Muddy Water Bill. Those others I hardly remember their names.”
“These riders that sent you boys to perdition,” Harve said, “what’d they look like?”
“Hats pinned back,” the Kid said. “That’s about all I remember … that, and they could shoot awful good. Killed us all in about ten minutes, except for me.”
“How come they left you?” Green asked.
“I guess they thought I was kilt like all the others. How it happened was, Muddy Water Bill swung about to shoot one of them and knocked me senseless with the barrel of his Winchester. I reckon I was standing too close behind him. Next thing I know I’m dreaming of some yahoo leaning over me with a knife.”
“One of the pinned hats?” Cole asked.
“Uhn-uh,” the Kid said. “This feller wasn’t wearing a hat. Fact is, he had long dark hair. And another thing. He was wearing a …”—his eyes grew wide—“a string of ears around his neck.”
“No pinned hat?” Harve repeated.
“No hat.”
“Gypsy Davy,” Cole said. “And the others were Colorado Charley Utter and his bunch.”
“Why you reckon they shot us?” the Kid asked.
“Practice,” Teddy Green said.
“Practice?”
“There was no way they could have known you were outlaws. My guess is they just got restless to shoot someone and you boys were it. You are a lucky man, Kid,” Green concluded.
“Well, why’d that feller come along and cut off my ear, you reckon?” The Kid had buckteeth and his eyes were slightly crossed. He again touched the side of his head gingerly. “What’d make a body do something like that?”
“Souvenir,” Harve said. “He’s got a thing for ears. Be glad he didn’t cut off both your ears or you wouldn’t have no way to hold your hat. As it is, it will fall to one side more’n the other, but that’s not so bad. Lots of men with two ears wear their sombreros like that.”