by Bill Brooks
Bean ate with his hat on but with his cuffs rolled up and a napkin tucked in the throat of his shirt. He ate with relish and drank the same way and toasted God and Texas several times over.
“Why Texas is better’n ten Wyomings thrown together,” Roy Bean said. “I don’t know why I didn’t leave that country long before now. This is what I call fat living.”
Ella ate in small bites, her mood silent, as Roy Bean regaled the table guests with tales of Lily Langtry and how he planned on meeting the actress someday to express personally his affections for her beauty and talent.
“Most beautiful woman … present company excluded, Miss Ella … in the whole of the universe.”
Ella smiled at this and the judge clapped his hands.
“Well, you look lovely tonight, Miss Ella. As lovely as the moon and stars all rolled into one. Let’s have us some music! Hector, grab up your fiddle and you and Rodrigo get to playing some.”
The one took up his fiddle and the other a guitar and began to play a Mexican ballad. Ella seemed taken with the music and inclined her head on Cole’s shoulder while Cole held her hand. The judge lit a cigar and smoked it as nightfall descended. In the distance, the song of the river joined the music and for the first time in a long while he felt happy and had a sense of peace.
Eventually Cole walked Ella to her room and kissed her forehead and started to leave, but this time she clung to him and said: “Not yet.”
He held her close to the strains of the music, coming from the yard. Several of the deputies had begun to sing in Spanish. They stood like that, holding each other in the darkness. Cole could feel the ticking of her heart through his shirt as the warmth of her body pressed against him.
“Don’t leave me tonight,” she whispered.
“Are you sure?”
She drew him to the bed, and he lay down with her. She folded herself into his arms and it was enough.
* * * * *
Another week passed. Ella and Cole took daily walks down to the river. Roy Bean always made sure that at least two or three of the Mexican deputies kept them within sight, for he was uncommonly sure that sooner or later Gypsy Davy would make an attempt to get Ella back. Cole was of the same mind but had asked the judge to order his men to maintain a discreet distance.
“We give her the impression we’re worried about Gypsy Davy coming for her,” Cole had said, “it’s likely to push her over the edge.”
“Be my pleasure to try him, find him guilty, and hang him for you, John Henry. First I’d fine him twenty dollars, then hang him.” Cole had asked the judge to be cautious in his comments concerning the madman while in the presence of Ella.
Then one afternoon, as they sat on the rock at the river’s edge, she said: “I want to talk about it … about him.”
It was a moment that Cole had anticipated, but now that it had arrived, he wasn’t certain he wanted to hear about it. “Sure?” he asked.
She nodded, stared for a time at the water, then said: “David is my half-brother and he thinks that he is in love with me.”
Cole understood now about the same last name.
“Before I came to Cheyenne,” she said, “where I met you, I’d lived in Denver. I was still married to a man but had been separated from him for some time.” Images of Teddy Green floated into Cole’s mind. He wondered if he should tell her now or wait.
“I thought I could find a sense of myself,” she continued. “I was foolish, of course. What I was looking for didn’t exist, something I’ve since come to realize. My troubles have been long-standing, David and his unnatural desire for me being the source of many of my troubles. I suppose that when it didn’t work out between my husband and me, it only confirmed my suspicions that I was unworthy of a decent man. Then in Denver, I fell to a new low.”
She took a deep breath. This confession was difficult for her.
“I became a prostitute,” she said. “I had beauty and charm but little else to sustain me. I met a rich man who introduced me to other rich men …”
“You don’t have to tell me this, Ella. I don’t care what has happened in the past.”
“Yes,” she said, “I do need to talk about it.”
He took her hand.
“It wasn’t as bad as you might think. I lived well, was never abused, and was highly thought of by many of these men. My secret was well kept and I got invited to many parties. This life also did something else for me … it helped me forget what had happened, to forget my half-brother. The last I knew he was in the East, attending medical school, and I figured that whatever his childhood fantasies had been about me, he’d probably outgrown them. Anyway, it was a safe world for me, in a sense, and I wasn’t terribly unhappy with it except for one thing … having left my husband.”
“I know.”
She looked searchingly at Cole.
“He came to Cheyenne, looking for you regarding some murder in Denver, your involvement in it. He asked me to help him find you. If it wasn’t for Teddy Green, Ella, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have known.” Before she could say anything further, Cole took the packet with the letter and the tintype he was still carrying and handed it to her. “I took this from him the day he was killed.”
She gasped at the touch of them, held them in her hands as gently as fragile birds. “He’s dead?”
“I’m sorry I have to be the one to tell you.”
Moments passed with only the sounds of the river and the occasional splash of a turtle sliding off a limb into the water.
“Should we talk about this another time?”
She shook her head. “I won’t grieve for him just yet,” she said. “I’ll grieve in private, not in front of you, John Henry. I loved him, and I love you. It wouldn’t be fair to you or respectful of Teddy to grieve openly.”
“I understand.”
“The man I first met in Denver who introduced me around to the others was the son of a federal judge. He also introduced me to the opium dens. In a way, it was an escape from what I’d become … a high-priced whore, but a whore nonetheless.”
“What happened?”
“Life soon turned into a haze for me. And then, Davy showed up in Denver, insisting that he wanted to marry me, insisting that I go away with him. I refused, of course. He wormed his way into the circle I’d been involved with, his charm and wit and cleverness too much for them to resist, just as I had been too much for them to resist. He threatened to expose me, our past, if I made an effort to openly spurn him. But Tyron became jealous of Davy’s attentions toward me and, of course, I couldn’t tell him the truth, nor could I convince my half-brother to leave me alone. It came to a terrible tragic end one night outside an opium den. Davy killed Tyron in a fit of rage, mutilated him.”
The words broke from her as she began to weep. Cole held her in his arms.
“He threatened to expose me, if I didn’t run away with him, and say that the killing was a result of an illicit love triangle, that I’d killed Tyron when he caught me with my lover … my half-brother. He fled then, telling me to meet him in San Francisco. That’s when I went to Cheyenne, hoping that he would not find me again. Then, after the fire, I went to Nebraska.”
“I can figure the rest. He came looking for you in Nebraska, you got word, and asked Tom Feathers to help you escape again.”
“Yes, a wire had arrived at my aunt’s house from Davy, telling me that he was coming for me, that it was useless to try and hide from him. So I went to poor Tom. He was the only one I could turn to.”
“Davy would have you no matter what?”
She nodded, wiped the tears from her eyes.
“No matter what. Even if he had to keep me drugged, even if he had to break my spirit by having other men violate me.”
“It’s over,” Cole assured her. “He won’t touch you again.”
She looked up at
him with her pale green eyes, eyes that no longer trusted. “No, he’ll find me again. Nothing can stop him.”
“You’re wrong, Ella.”
“Promise me something,” she said.
“What?”
“That if he comes, you will kill me, that you won’t let him take me.”
“I won’t let him take you. I promise.”
That night, as Cole lay beside her in the bed, he wondered if he had made a promise he wouldn’t be able to keep.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Two more weeks and nothing out of the ordinary occurred, except that some of Roy Bean’s Mexican deputies caught a wanted felon, a man by the name of Charlie Dick, on whom the judge had a Wanted poster for a Union Pacific train robbery.
Roy Bean was so pleased to have his first real criminal case to preside over that he put on a fresh shirt and combed his hair. The deputies had hog-tied Charlie Dick and had to crow-hop him up the steps to the gallery of the Jersey Lilly, as it was called.
One of the deputies who could speak the best English told the judge they’d caught the man trying to steal a horse, but once Roy Bean took a good look at him, he remembered the Wanted flyer and charged the man with his rightful crime of train robbery.
Charlie Dick was a large, dark-eyed man with black brushy eyebrows and he stared defiantly at the judge. “You ain’t got no legal right to try me,” he said. “That train I was supposed to have robbed was in Kansas. This here’s Texas.”
“I reckon a tally whacker like you would know the law,” Roy Bean said. “I reckon you studied Blackstone, read his book and all, and know all there is to know about the legal system, jurisprudence and all that.”
“Huh?” Charlie Dick said.
“I reckon ’cause you’re so gol-dang’ smart, you got caught trying to steal Hector’s horse whilst he was inside a whorehouse, not knowing of course that Hector’s horse is stone-blind and that he’d walk you around in circles.”
“He was a gol-danged hammerhead, or I’d’ve got clean away.”
“Well, I want to abide by the law,” Roy Bean said, “and see you get a fair trial, so I’m appointing you a defense counsel before we get started.”
“Defense counsel?”
“Hector,” the judge said to his Mexican deputy, the one who could speak English the best, “since it was your horse this man tried to steal and you’re the only one speaks a lick of Americano around here besides myself, I appoint you to defend this crook in my court. You got the floor first.”
Hector Gutierrez was a slender man of some fifty or sixty years of age who had met enough gringos in his time to have picked up a working language.
“Sí, Juez Bean.” Then Hector looked at Charlie Dick as if to say: “I’m sorry, señor, but I don’t understand too much about the law.”
“This is a joke!” Charlie Dick cried. “Might just as well take me out and hang me as to have this damned greaser sum-bitch be my lawyer.”
“I fine you five dollars for use of abusive language in my courtroom,” Roy Bean said, and hammered the folding table with the butt of his pistol. “Any more outbursts in my court by the defendant will result in …” He paused and thumbed through his law book, then said: “Contempt of this court, which will cost you another five dollars.”
“Well, you just as well might fine me a thousand dollars,” Charlie Dick said disgustedly, “’cause I ain’t got a red cent.”
“A thousand it is,” Roy Bean said, rapping his table twice more with his pistol. “And in lieu of cash payment, the court shall confiscate those fancy spurs you’re wearing. Where’d you get ’em … off the heels of a dead man’s boots?”
It went like that for as long as Roy Bean could stretch it out. He didn’t want his first court case to end too soon, not knowing when his deputies might catch another lawbreaker. Finally, however, the judge pronounced the man guilty of robbing the Union Pacific and trying to steal Hector’s blind horse. He ordered his deputies to deliver the man to the jail in Del Río along with a request for the reward money.
“I think the judge’s bark is worse than his bite,” Ella said, having witnessed the trial.
Roy Bean’s spirits were high, having presided over his first real case, and he announced at the supper table that evening that he had decided to go to Chicago to see Lily Langtry perform on stage.
“It’s a dream come true,” he announced, his eyes misting over at the very mention of her name. “Miss Ella, you and John Henry are invited to join me.”
Ella looked at Cole.
“Would you like to go?” he said.
“No.” Then turning her attention to Roy Bean, who was seated at his customary position at the head of the table, she said: “I think that you should go alone and see her.” And he knew exactly what she meant and was grateful for the encouragement.
Later, when Ella was inside, Roy Bean and Cole sat on the gallery and smoked.
“I’ll make sure there’s enough deputies to keep an eye on your back,” Bean said. “I sent half with Charlie Dick, and Ramon has to go down across the border because his mother is dying, but that still leaves Juan, Rodrigo, Hector, and Xavier. All good men who can shoot.”
“Thanks,” Cole said. “But if Gypsy Davy hasn’t shown himself by now, I doubt that he will. I expected him last week, the week before that, but who knows? Maybe he’s dead, maybe in jail somewhere.”
“My thinking, too,” Roy Bean said. “I expected to see him long before now. You say the son-of-a-bitch has long dark hair?”
“That’s the description I have of him. I’ve never met him.”
“Well, I told my boys they see any hombre with long dark hair to shoot first and take depositions later.”
“You looking forward to Chicago, seeing Lily Langtry?”
He sat there, his legs crossed at the ankles, holding the stub of a cigar between his teeth. “In a way I am, and in another way I ain’t. You know how it is. You had this dream all your life, then you get a chance for it to come true. Part of you wants it, but part of you don’t, because once it comes true, it ain’t a dream any more.”
“I understand that.”
“Just thinking about it makes me breathe hard.”
* * * * *
Roy Bean left early the next morning for San Antonio, where he would catch a train to Chicago. Once he’d gone, the whole place seemed quiet as a stone. He’d ordered the bar closed because none of the remaining deputies knew how to make change in case anyone stopped by for an iced beer or cigars. The four deputies drew straws to see which went fishing and which stayed behind to keep an eye on things, meaning—according to the judge’s orders—Ella and Cole.
Ella said: “Let’s pack a picnic lunch and go down to the river and watch the men fish.”
Cole figured she knew the reason all of the deputies hadn’t gone fishing and wanted to give them an opportunity to enjoy themselves while the judge was away. They made sandwiches and took some iced beer, enough for everyone, and walked to the river, the deputies trailing behind, with their rifles and fishing poles.
The sky was as blue as Cole had ever seen it, and Ella seemed happy and held his hand. It was as though none of the past had ever happened, as though they were just a couple who were beginning to fall in love.
They spread a blanket beneath the cottonwood trees and had their picnic while the deputies fished.
“Look,” she said, “Hector has caught a catfish.”
It seemed to delight her as much as it did Hector. Then Hector’s head exploded in a bloody spray and he pitched into the river, the catfish still flopping from the end of his line.
“Run!” Cole commanded, but Ella seemed paralyzed.
The other three deputies dropped their fishing poles and scrambled for their rifles but Rodrigo was cut down by a bullet to his spine. Cole pulled Ella to cover behind one of the cottonwoo
ds as he watched Xavier and Juan snatch up their Winchesters and take a kneeling position of defense.
Across the river from a crop of rocks, Cole saw the glint of a rifle barrel, then it was gone. He called to the deputies in Spanish to lay down a line of fire toward the rocks while he took Ella out of harm’s way and back to the house. They took aim and began firing.
“We have to make the house,” Cole said. She just looked at him. “Ella, he won’t get to you, I promise.”
She nodded, and he took her wrist and told her to move ahead of him and run as fast as she could. He shouted for the deputies to do a slow retreat but to keep up enough firepower to protect themselves. Part of Cole felt like he was running out on a fight, but Ella’s safety was more important to him than any sense of pride and duty. He had only one duty and that was to her.
They reached the house, and he gave her one of his pistols and told her to go inside to her room, lock the door, and stay there.
“John Henry …”
“He won’t get to you.”
She looked at the pistol he’d placed in her hand. “If he does, I know what to do.”
He kissed her and went back outside, running toward the river. Halfway there he met Juan and Xavier who were doing a quick retreat.
“He quit shooting,” Juan said in Spanish.
“I think maybe we killed him or something,” Xavier said.
“What you want us to do, jefe?” Juan asked.
“Get to the house, one in front, one in back, and keep an eye out,” Cole said in Spanish, the only language they knew.
“What about you, jefe?” Juan wanted to know.
Cole looked at them and saw the earnest, loyal eyes of men who Roy Bean was probably paying too little to risk their lives. “The woman,” he said. “If he gets past me, don’t let him get to her. If you can’t kill him, you kill her.”
They exchanged looks, then nodded.