Winter Kill

by Bill Brooks

  “A good horse and healed ribs,” Cole said, taking a hard pull from the jug.

  Lottie brought him a plate covered with buffalo meat and red beans cooked in fat, and this time he was up to eating, and that’s what he did. He licked his fingers when he’d finished.

  “Here, I brought you this, too,” she said, handing him the makings.

  “Grateful,” Cole said. “And I didn’t mean to be grumpy with you before.”

  She was as plump as a laying hen and had a round dark face and wore a red kerchief around her head. And when she smiled, she looked like the happiest person in the world.

  Cole leaned back and rolled himself a shuck and offered the makings to Israel. He declined, said he never took up the habit. Cole asked why and he said because of being a poor man. To let himself take pleasure in something he couldn’t always afford, he reasoned, was just another road to more misery and he’d had enough misery in his life that he didn’t want to give himself more by developing bad habits he could ill afford.

  “How about the cider?” Cole said, holding forth the jug. “Isn’t that a bad habit?”

  “Cider’s something a man can always make if he knows where to find apples or berries. A man needs seed for tobacco and the right weather. Seed costs money and the weather you can’t ever count on. I hear back east, they make cigarettes you don’t have to roll that come in a package you can buy for a nickel.”

  “It would take away half the pleasure of smoking,” Cole said, “not being able to roll your own.”

  “That Kid,” Israel said, watching Joe trying to dance to the music even though he didn’t have a partner. “He’s a lively boy. What happened to his ear?”

  “It’s a long story,” Cole said. “You mind passing that jug again?”

  They seemed happy, the lot of them. There wasn’t anything around for miles, no sign of civilization, no towns to gamble or drink or whore in. No churches to pray in, no outsiders to mingle with or bargain with. It was just they, left to their own devices, dependent on one another for their survival and for their joy. They were not so different from their ancestors, the first people God had led into the wilderness in search of the Promised Land. Maybe this was the Promised Land, Cole reflected, and they’d found it. It certainly seemed that way as he sat and smoked and listened to the music and watched them dance. The happiness creased into their dark faces as they laughed and sang. Cole felt something he hadn’t felt in a long time—envy.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Cole busied himself by watching the men and women plant and cultivate their large garden and talking to young Joe. The Kid related to him the story of his past with his brother Henry, who was making a name for himself down in New Mexico.

  “Some call him Kid … some Billy the Kid,” Joe said. “I guess he’s shot some people down there. You said you were a lawman once in Texas, you ever hear of him?”

  “No, he must do all his killing local,” Cole said. “There’s lots of bad men between Texas and the border.”

  “Our real name was McCarty. Mother moved from Cincinnati to Silver City and married a man there named Antrim. Thin-faced son-of-a-bitch, ugly as a boot. My mother was a handsome woman … beautiful Irish, with strawberry red hair and eyes with the green of Ireland in them. She married Antrim ’cause she was sick with the lung fever and desperate and wanted somebody who could take care of me and Henry … his true name … once she’d passed on. Trouble was, soon as she took her last breath, Antrim got shed of us quicker’n a dog tries to shed himself of fleas. Henry ended up stealing a Chinaman’s clothes for a feller named Sombrero Jack. This Sombrero Jack offered him fifty cents to do it, and Henry landed in jail for it. I helped bust him out … dug him out with one of Mother’s old kitchen spoons. Why, that jail wasn’t nothing but some mud slung up on some mesquite poles. That’s the day our life of crime began. He fled to Arizona where he shot his first man, a blacksmith who was molesting him. I took out for Dodge City, where I heard there was plenty of opportunity. Ended up swamping out saloons, emptying the spit of men like Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson. Wild Bill Hickok, too. I suppose you heard of them?”

  Cole generally didn’t go in for a lot of conversation, but since he didn’t have much else to do while waiting for his ribs to heal but sit there and listen, he gave the Kid his head.

  “I’ll tell you something, Mister Cole, spit is spit, don’t matter whose mouth it comes out of.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “I met a gal there in Dodge,” he said. “It was the one good thing that came out of going there. Her name was Maggie and it didn’t matter a lick to me that she was a whore.”

  “She break your heart?”

  “When she drank poison and killed herself, she did. I wanted to marry her, asked her to, but she said I couldn’t offer her much being nothing but a saloon swamper. She was right. I told her I wasn’t always going to be swamping out other men’s spit and she looked at me and said … ‘Why, you’re just a kid and I’m nearly twenty-three. Time you get around to a regular profession, I’ll be old and ugly and worn out.’ That was the saddest moment of both our lives, I believe. I think she loved me, but not enough to keep her from drinking mercury. You ever seen the look on someone’s face that has drunk mercury?”

  Cole shook his head negatively.

  “That’s when I decided to make something of myself. I wanted to go and become an outlaw because I didn’t have no education or skills for nothing else. And I sure didn’t want to end up drinking mercury.”

  “So you met the Canadian River boys and decided to join up with them.”

  “Truth be told, yes.” He squinted into the glare of the slanting sun. “Well, I didn’t know who they were when I came into their camp. And once they told me and what all they’d done, I was a little afraid of getting mixed up with such bad ones. I mean, I wanted to be a regular hombre, a mean blood and all that, but I didn’t take to killing innocent folks. Robbing banks seemed OK, for it’s the rich man who owns the banks and I reckoned it wouldn’t hurt them so much to ‘share a little of the wealth,’ as Henry used to say when we’d talk about becoming outlaws.”

  “So you’ve never committed any actual crimes?” Cole said.

  “No, sir, never did get the chance. I was a member of that gang exactly three hours when we got shot all to pieces by those fellers with the pinned hats.”

  “That tell you anything about being an outlaw?”

  “Tells me I’d better get a damn’ sight better at it or find another occupation to take up.”

  “Now you want to ride the vengeance trail, find the man who cut off your ear, and do him in,” Cole said.

  “Well, what would you do, Mister Cole, was it your ear he’d cut off?”

  “‘An eye for an eye,’ the Bible says.”

  “Exactly, only this time it’s an ear for an ear.”

  “You’re going to cut off his ear?”

  “Cut off both of them, I get the chance.”

  “This man,” Cole said, “he’s a bad hombre. I’d cut my losses, so to speak, and find myself a steady job like clerking, find an honest woman to settle down with, raise some children, a garden. Take a look around you, Kid, what do you see?”

  “Folks hoeing and planting.”

  “Exactly. That’s the way we were meant to live … in harmony with one another, not killing and robbing and cutting off each other’s ears.”

  “You sound like a preacher.”

  “I’m about as far from a preacher as this here place is from the moon, Kid.”

  “I miss Maggie,” he said. “If she hadn’t killed herself, I would be with her today, still have my ear, and maybe an honorable profession.”

  “Most likely she would have broken your heart one way or the other, Kid. Some women are like that. She sounds like she was doomed from the get-go.”

  “Maybe so
.”

  “It smells like rain,” Cole said.

  “They could use it for their crops,” Joe said.

  “That gal you met down by the creek the other night. You still meeting her?”

  “Some,” he said.

  “I’d be careful with that. These are good people here, but I don’t think they’d take well to you courting one of their daughters.”

  “I know, ’cause I’m white. She’s already said that. Still, we sort of are taken with each other.”

  “Then I’d go ask her folks was it OK with them that you meet her.”

  “I know I should.”

  “I ain’t your daddy, Kid. You’ll have to work it out however you work it out. Thing is, these folks are kind enough to let us hole up here until I can step into leather and ride out. I’d not want to abuse their kindness.”

  “I understand,” he said.

  * * * * *

  The rain came that night, hard and slanting, and Cole could hear it ping off the tin roof and spill off the eaves. For some reason, it created a deep loneliness in him. The story Joe had told him about the prostitute who drank mercury crept into his thoughts. The wind picked up and turned into a low, mournful moan, like Ella Mims’s voice calling for him to come find her before it became too late. He didn’t want to think about her being dead.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Another ten days passed before John Henry Cole could stand on the injured knee and take a breath deep enough that he felt like he could ride a full day without falling out of the saddle. In the course of that time, he’d become impatient from sitting in the shade and staring at his toes and Gila monsters. The Kid had busied himself by pitching in with the hoeing and planting and tossing secretive looks at a light-skinned gal, who Cole learned was the daughter of one of Israel’s cousins. Her name was Iris. Cole had oiled his pistol and practiced the art of rolling shucks and tried hard not to think of his compadres, of Ella Mims and Gypsy Davy, of Colorado Charley Utter and his assassins. Ten days was long enough, he figured. It was time to get back on the trail.

  He was about to call the Kid over, tell him he was leaving, when he saw a rooster tail of dust in the distance. He whistled and the bent backs straightened from their hoeing. When Israel’s gaze fell on Cole, Cole nodded toward the dust. Israel wiped his hands on the rump of his jeans, then pulled a green bandanna from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his brow as he watched the dust get bigger.

  He told the men to go get their shotguns and told the women to take the youngsters into the house, then walked to where Cole sat and said: “Could be anybody, could be nobody. Best to be prepared for whoever it is.” Then he disappeared into one of the shacks and came back out again with his shotgun, as did the other men.

  “What should I do?” the Kid said. “I ain’t got a pistol nor even a knife if it comes to a fight.”

  “Might not come to that,” Cole said.

  “Mister Israel and the others sure enough act like it might.”

  “They’ve a right to be cautious, Kid. Maybe it’s better you wait inside.”

  “With the women and children?” The indignation in his voice was sharp, high-pitched.

  “I’ve got my Winchester inside. You can go get that, if you want.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Cole stayed seated, but fixed it so his pistol was handy on his left hip. Joe came out of the house and stood next to him, the long-barreled Winchester, nearly as tall as he was, clutched in his hands.

  Israel took up a position a few feet away. “Looks like it might be half dozen riders,” he said.

  “Maybe them fellers that shot us Canadian River boys to bits,” Joe said.

  “Well, they come down around here shooting, they’ll get all they want,” the older man said, his eyes white with determination under the brim of his straw hat.

  It didn’t take long before they could make out several riders, their ponies lathered, the foam flecking off their chests and forelegs, their tongues lolling against the iron bits.

  “Oh, no,” Israel muttered, when the riders were still a hundred yards out. “Rufus.” He said the name like it was a curse he hadn’t meant to utter.

  Ten feet from the shacks the riders jerked hard on their reins and the dust swirled up around them, then settled slowly, leaving a fine golden coating on their hats and clothes. The one in front had oily dark skin and eyes as black as obsidian that came to rest on John Henry Cole and the Kid.

  “Rufus,” Israel said. “What you doing this far west of the Territories?”

  It took a long, slow moment for the dark eyes to swing from Cole and Joe to Israel. “Uncle,” he said, “me and my boys need something to eat, a place to rest our horses.”

  Israel stood motionlessly for a second.

  “You taking in white people?” Rufus said, jerking his head in the direction of Cole and the Kid. “Slaves, I hope.”

  “Don’t be rude, boy.”

  “Well, can we or can’t we rest our ponies and get some grub from you, Uncle?”

  “Yes, you is welcome to squat and rest up. I’ll have some of the women fix you something to eat. Anybody following you?”

  The dark face turned in Cole’s direction again, the stare as hard as flint. Cole counted seven of them—Indian, Negro, and a mixture of both, all of them bad news and on the dodge, judging by the way they were dressed and the side arms they carried. Not a one in the bunch looked much older than Joe. The one called Rufus might have been nineteen, if that.

  “Them’s some hard-looking hombres,” Joe said in a low voice when the riders walked their ponies to the water tank, then dismounted, and took up places around the long table kept in the yard for purposes of community meals.

  “Keep low now,” Cole said. “Don’t give them cause to start up trouble with you. The way I see it is that after they get through filling their bellies and watering their mounts, they’d probably like nothing better than to dust a white child such as yourself.”

  “What about you?” he said. “I’d say you’re as white as me.”

  “They’d probably want to save me for dessert.”

  The Kid gave a nervous laugh.

  Israel came over after a time of sitting with the bunch.

  “That’s my brother’s boy, Rufus Buck,” he said. “His mother was a Cherokee. He’s got a bad spirit. I’m his goddaddy, else I’d tell him to keep riding.”

  “No need to explain,” Cole said. “Kin is kin.”

  “Better I do,” Israel said. “Thing is, he hates white people, any white people, and lawmen most especially.”

  “He wouldn’t be the first to feel that way. You can tell him we’re not the law.”

  “I told him not to start no trouble with you boys, but he’s got a boil on his butt about seeing you here.”

  “It’s your place,” Cole reminded. “You want us to leave, we’ll leave. You’ve already done more than your share.”

  Israel looked deeply at Cole. “You ’uns turned them buff’, kept them from overrunning our settlement. I owe you for that.”

  “Let’s just call it even, then. Me and the Kid will ride out, save everybody the trouble.”

  “Thing is, you do that, I won’t be able to protect you if Rufus and his bunch decide to take up after you.”

  “What do you suggest then?” Cole said.

  “I don’t know, just trying to let you boys know that they could start some trouble with you.”

  “I don’t mean to insult your family,” Cole said. “But I won’t be laid a hand upon by any man.”

  “Understood,” Israel said. “I’ll do my best to see Rufus don’t kick up no sand ’round here.”

  “Appreciated.”

  “We in for a fight, you reckon?” Joe asked after Israel returned to the table.

  “Could be. You think you can hit anythin
g with that Winchester?”

  “I’m a good shot,” he said. “Me and Henry used to pop rabbits with Antrim’s needle gun, though he wasn’t aware of it or he’d have skinned us.”

  “Popping rabbits ain’t nearly the same thing as popping a man.”

  “I’ll do what needs doing, I reckon.”

  “Anything starts up, let me make the first move. Don’t go shooting anybody over words. We walk away from this thing, if they give us half the chance. Understood?”

  He nodded.

  Cole wasn’t convinced. Fear makes a man jumpy. Lots of fear makes a man very jumpy. Cole had known men in the war who had become so overwrought with fear and the battle raging around them, they’d forgotten to load their muskets. At least the Kid was holding a repeater and wouldn’t have to reload. Cole just hoped, if shooting broke out, the Kid wouldn’t shoot him by accident. He told the Kid to go inside and pack up their gear.

  “Now?”

  “Yeah, unless you’re planning on sticking around and marrying that gal you’re so sweet on.”

  He arched an eyebrow, then ducked back inside the house. Cole turned his attention back to the callow youths sitting at the table, hunched over, feeding their faces, and talking among themselves. Every so often, Rufus Buck would look over his shoulder at Cole. Cole made sure Rufus saw that Cole was watching him, too.

  In a few minutes, Joe returned.

  “All packed and ready to go when you are.”

  “Hold tight, Kid. Let’s see how it plays out.”

  The Kid looked nervous, shifting his weight, stealing glances at the table, seeing them cast hard looks in their direction. “What do you think?” he said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I ain’t scared,” he said, meaning that he was.

  “Go ask Israel if I could speak to him a minute,” Cole said.

  Joe did as asked and Cole saw the hard look Rufus Buck gave the Kid as he stood at the table, talking to Israel—like an owl eyeing a field mouse.

  “What can I do for you, Mistuh Henry?” Israel said, carrying the shotgun in the crook of his arm, his eyes weary because of the tight spot he found himself in.