Blood Storm

by Bill Brooks

  “Tell me about your friend,” Cole said.

  She took a long time before she spoke. “Why does it matter to you?”

  “I don’t know why it matters. I’d just like to know what sort of man you find interesting enough to share your time with.”

  She looked at him, withdrew her face several inches, and stared.

  “What sort of man are you?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure I understand the question.”

  “You asked me what sort of man interests me. What sort of man are you?”

  “I meant other than me.”

  “If it is a problem for you . . .” she began, but he stopped her by kissing her gently.

  “It’s not a problem for me,” he said then. “I’m just curious.”

  She waited for a long moment. “His name?” she asked. “Is it his name you want to know, or do you just want to know what he is like?”

  “Both.”

  She sighed, and her hand rested on his chest. “His name is Winston Stevens.” She added: “He’s English.”

  “And probably very handsome.”

  “Yes, I suppose you could say that.”

  “Rich, no doubt?”

  “His family is well off, but if you think that is why . . .”

  “No, I was thinking it is just my luck.”

  “What is?”

  “That’d you be interested in a rich English gentleman.”

  “You’re talking foolishness.” She said it half seriously.

  “Deadwood is a long way from England.”

  “Winston has come here to invest in mining. He seeks to be his own person.”

  “Easy enough to do when you have money behind you.”

  “You’re being unfair to the man. You don’t even know him.”

  Cole started to defend himself. He didn’t think he was being unfair to Winston. He thought he was just calling a spade a spade. But she stopped him by placing her fingertips against his lips. “Do we really have to discuss this?” she asked.

  “Of course not. But I wanted to.”

  She leaned her face closer to his. “Remember, you wanted to know,” she said.

  “Yeah. I had to ask, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “He’s probably gracious and has good manners, too.”

  Her lips brushed the side of his jaw. “All that, yes.”

  “Damn, last time it was a Mexican bandit, this time a charming Englishman.”

  Her fingers crept across his chest. “What are you talking about, John Henry?”

  “Nothing.”

  Her body pressed against his, warm and soft, the way a woman’s body ought to be, and the passion reawakened in him.

  “Let’s talk about something else,” she suggested.

  “No,” he said. “I’m tired of talking.” He pulled her closer.

  She floated above him, her hair dangling against his face. He could smell the scent of her, the womanly scent that could drive a man to madness. Her lips brushed his cheek, floated to his chin, then sought his mouth. “Yes, no more talk,” she said.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Somewhere beyond the passion, Cole sank into a deep, undisturbed sleep. There were no dreams this time, no ghosts, no pain. There was just the sweet nothingness.

  When he opened his eyes again, Liddy was gone. The scent of her lingered there in the bed with him, lavender and female. When he tried sitting up, something sharp and painful pierced itself behind his eyes. Temporarily he had forgotten his encounter with Johnny Logan. He felt around on his scalp, touched the stitches. They were stiff. His head still ached, but the rest of him felt all right.

  He gritted his teeth and sat up, then stood. He felt slightly off kilter, but the pain and dizziness passed in a few seconds and he made his way to the wash basin. He drew water over his face and examined his image in the mirror. He looked like a scruffy hound, but at least a contented one.

  He collected his straight razor out of his saddlebags and shaved, then carefully drew a comb through his hair. He strapped on the self-cocker, pulled the duster over it, and settled the Stetson on his head as best he could. By all appearances, he looked almost normal.

  He left the hotel. The weather over the gulch had cleared and the sky was a flawless blue. The sun sparkled in the puddles of rain, reflected against the windows. The labor in Deadwood had slowed. And for the first time since Cole’s arrival, the boom town seemed to have taken on a casual air. To him at that moment Deadwood didn’t seem like such a hell town. It was Sunday morning. He realized then that he was hungry—hungry in a way he hadn’t been in a long time.

  Cole entered the first restaurant he came to—a place called Lou’s Café. Even at that hour, it was doing a good business. The all-night crowd of red-eyed gamblers, weary prostitutes, and men who’d had their pockets cleaned and their souls tarnished were steeling themselves for another twenty-four hours on earth, if they could just make it through this one more morning. They sat, leaning over plates of yolky eggs and greasy hash and crisp strips of bacon. The steam from their coffee cups rose in tiny clouds and broke against their fatigued faces. Cole took a table near the window—an old habit lawmen get. Outlaws, too.

  A young Irish girl who was plump and apple-cheeked and wearing an apron came and asked him for his order. He took the special.

  He formed a shuck and smoked it and watched the street outside, but his thoughts were on Liddy and last night. A part of him didn’t want to believe what had happened; it didn’t seem real. He wasn’t sure it had been. He wanted to believe that whatever had taken place between Liddy and him was something special, that it wasn’t just another case of two lonely people burning up the night. He tried to think through it over the plate of fried eggs and slab of ham the Irish girl brought him.

  He was still thinking about Liddy when a voice he hadn’t heard in a long time called him out of the pleasantness.

  “John Henry Cole.”

  He looked up and saw a face that didn’t offer him any comfort—King Fisher. He laid his fork down with his right hand, and at the same time slid the self-cocker out of its holster under the table with his left. The red-checked tablecloth hid the action. The only problem, he reflected, was that he had never been able to hit anything using his left hand.

  The dark blunt features of King Fisher were peppered with a wiry beard. Black, pitiless eyes, half hidden by hooded lids, fixed themselves on him. King Fisher was a tall man for one thing, real tall. He wore a greatcoat, dusty and heavy and down past his knees, which made him appear even taller than he was. Cole could see the bulge of his pistols underneath the coat—how many was hard to tell. His gaze drifted over Cole, over his food, like Cole was something he’d never seen before. He drew air through his nose.

  “Why ain’t I surprised you’re in Deadwood?” he said with a voice graveled by too many cigars and snake-head whiskey.

  “You’re standing in my light,” Cole said.

  King Fisher shifted his weight. Cole knew that it’s the hands that’ll kill you, not the eyes, so he made sure to watch King Fisher’s hands.

  “You come for the reward money?” he asked.

  “I like to keep my business my own, King. You can understand that, can’t you? A businessman, like yourself?”

  “It’s why I’m here,” he said, “the money.” Then added: “I don’t much care if you know that.”

  “Well, thanks for sharing the information, King.” Fourth button from the top of his coat, that’s where I’d shoot him if I had to, Cole thought to himself, hoping it wouldn’t go that far.

  “Recall the time you screwed me out of that reward money on Shanghai Doolittle over in Ardmore,” he said. “Twenty-two hundred dollars.”

  “You got a good memory. That was five years ago.”

  “Told myself then I’d never let you screw me outta no more reward money.”

  “I’ve got a sore skull,” Cole told him. “It makes me edgy, the headache I’ve got from it.
I came in here for some coffee, a little breakfast, a little something to take the edge off. Now you show up, stand in my light, talk about the past like I care to hear it. I’m in no mood. What do you want?”

  “I ought to just go ahead and plug you here and now, John Henry. You know, pull my pistols and air you out like a bachelor’s bed sheet.”

  “It’d be a mistake, King.”

  “Mistake?” He grinned the stupid grin of a bully suddenly unsure of himself.

  “I’ve got my self-cocker under the table here, and it’s pointed at your buttons. I couldn’t miss if I tried. Hell, if I was just to fall off the chair by accident, I’d probably kill you. It wouldn’t even be a contest. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

  Some of his features sagged, the hoods lifted over the eyes like shades going up. His gaze fell to the table. “You do, huh?” He cocked his head just a little, as though trying to see under the table but afraid to move too much.

  “Yeah. Primed and ready.”

  Was Cole lying or wasn’t he? That was the question dancing behind King Fisher’s eyes. All that hardware he was carrying under his coat wasn’t worth a tinker’s damn. Even a fast man isn’t that fast. Cole saw the truth of it settle in his gaze, the hard reality that he was beaten this time around. He gritted his teeth, trying to see under the table but not able to, and not sure if or when Cole might pull the trigger on him. Finally he quit trying to see. “There’ll be another time,” he said.

  “My eggs are getting cold,” Cole said.

  His nostrils flared, then he let go of it, the temptation to see if he could jerk the pistols before Cole killed him. Men like King Fisher didn’t wish for death so much as they sometimes invited it. Cole knew one thing, sooner or later he’d have to kill him, or be killed by him. It was just a question of when. Slowly his hands relaxed at his sides. Cole still held the self-cocker aimed at his coat buttons. King Fisher’s mouth twitched.

  “Next time, no talk,” he said, then turned and left.

  Cole let out his breath as he saw him pass by the window and walk out of view. He didn’t know if he could have hit anything or not, holding the pistol in his left hand, but he was glad he hadn’t had to find out.

  He slid the gun back into the holster, and resumed eating. The eggs had lost their taste and the slab of ham was cold—so was the coffee. It was a bad end to what had started out to be a good morning. He reached for the money to pay his bill when something suddenly blocked the sunlight coming through the window.

  Without taking the time to look, Cole threw himself sideways just as King Fisher fired his pistols. The window exploded into a shower of glass. Falling, taking the table with him, Cole saw a gambler grab his neck and slump face down into his plate of food. A ribbon of blood spurted through his fingers. The table Cole threw up as a shield took two of King Fisher’s bullets before Cole could clear his own gun. Over the clatter of plates and tableware and scrambling patrons, he could hear King Fisher say: “It’s time to finish it, Cole. I’ve come back to kill you! Just like I said I would.”

  He said it as calmly as if he were announcing the playbill at the local opera house. A shard of glass had buried itself into Cole’s left wrist; a single drop of blood, bright and red as a ruby, oozed from the wound. Time seemed to stop, and for a long, frozen moment, Cole could hear his own breathing.

  A bullet shattered the air, slammed into the table, splintered past Cole’s face, and bore a hole through the floor. Cole knew when he raised up from behind the table, he’d have one chance, and only one chance, to kill him. Once he raised up, all he had to do was hit the mark. It wasn’t a thought he had much time to dwell on.

  King Fisher fired twice more just as Cole came up over the table. How he missed both shots, Cole never knew. Cole’s shot took him dead center. It was as if some invisible hand had snatched him off the sidewalk and flung him into the street. He landed on his back, flopped in the mud, dead.

  Someone shouted to get a doctor, but it wasn’t for King Fisher. It was for the gambler who’d taken one of King Fisher’s stray bullets in the neck. Cole stepped outside onto the walk and stared down at the body, the boots pointing skyward, the lifeless eyes no longer menacing, the hands no longer quick. He didn’t feel good about it. He didn’t feel bad.

  Johnny Logan came charging up the street, his gun drawn. Cole wondered if maybe it was going to be a day of killing. He turned on him, held the self-cocker straight out, the front sight in a direct line aimed at the center of Logan’s body. “Hold it there,” he ordered.

  Logan stopped short.

  “It was self-defense,” Cole said. “You can ask these others.”

  Logan looked uncertain. Several confirmed Cole’s side of it. Logan slipped his own gun into his pocket. Cole lowered his.

  Logan leaned over, looked at the face, straightened, and said—“King Fisher.”—like a curse that had slipped out of his mouth in church. It sent a buzz through the crowd. Lots of folks had heard of the gunfighter. “God damn it!” Logan swore. “I don’t need this aggravation.”

  “Nor do I,” Cole told him.

  “He won’t be the last to show up,” Logan said, his face patchy with dark bruises. “I want you out of town.”

  “Then you better make it happen here and now.”

  It didn’t occur very often, but when a man tried to kill him, like King Fisher had just tried to do, Cole’s blood got hot in a way that burned up all his reason. He was at that point now, ready to fulfill the destiny of any man who was looking for it, including Johnny Logan.

  “You threatening me?” he growled.

  “Take it how you will.”

  Cole watched Logan’s right hand, the one near the pocket he’d put his gun in.

  “I didn’t come here to raise hell, but I’ll take all of it you want to hand out, Constable. You want to finish it, finish it.”

  They were both at that point, ready to die in order to stand their ground. Neither cared any longer. Then a voice spoke from the crowd of onlookers.

  “You ought to let it go, Constable. I saw the whole thing. This man was just eating his breakfast, just having some runny yellow eggs, when that fellow tried to shoot him through the window. I don’t think you want to die over some piece of dog shit like King Fisher. ’Course, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you do.”

  Cole didn’t have to look to recognize the voice. It was Miguel Torres’s.

  Logan turned his attention to the Mexican-Apache-Caucasian lawman, saw the simple way he was dressed, the cold stare, the carbine cradled in the crook of one arm. “Who the hell are you?”

  “That doesn’t matter, does it?” Torres said. “A fact is a fact, and the plain fact here is, Fisher brought on his own trouble.”

  Torres glanced in Cole’s direction. Nothing in his look told Cole he was being anything other than a truthful witness. He was hard to figure out.

  Johnny Logan let go of it reluctantly, like a dog giving up a bone already chewed clean of its meat. He asked some of the more able-bodied to help him carry the tall, lank corpse of King Fisher over to the undertaker’s parlor.

  “I ain’t known you but less than a week,” Torres said, stepping closer to Cole. “And already I’ve seen you kill two men cold as ice beer. I know why I’m here. You want to tell me why you’re here?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Why the sudden interest?” Cole asked Torres as they walked down the street.

  “I could stand a whiskey, how about you?”

  “It’s early for that,” Cole said.

  “This looks like a good place.”

  It was Nutall and Mann’s Number Ten, the place that had Wild Bill’s bloodstain on the floor and his chair hanging on the wall.

  “Sure, why not?” Cole said.

  Cole noticed Irish Murphy was not yet on duty. Instead, there was another man rubbing glasses behind the bar. He looked tired and miserable.

  “A bottle,” Torres said.

  The man looked at him briefly, just long en
ough to see the hard, frank stare, just long enough to see this wasn’t a man he should ask a lot of questions, questions like why a man would want to drink hard liquor at that time of the morning.

  Torres took the bottle, dropped $1 on the counter without asking the price, and poked his fingers in two empty glasses that the barman had just rubbed and set on the bar.

  “Let’s sit over there,” Torres said, pointing with his nose to a table in the far corner. A man with his trousers rolled up past his knees was sleeping on the pool table.

  Cole waited while Torres filled each of the glasses with Red-Eyed Jim. Torres tossed his down, looked at Cole, then at his untouched glass.

  “Like I said, it’s a little early for me.”

  Torres refilled his own glass, turned it between dark, blunt fingers. “So what’s the story on you, Cole? You sure in the hell didn’t come up here to muck for gold.”

  “You answer my question first,” Cole said. “Why the sudden interest in me?”

  Cole thought he saw something that could’ve passed for a smile play at his lips, but it would be a stretch of the imagination.

  “I’m looking for someone,” he said. “It’s what I’m good at, looking for people.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “Tell me first why you’re here.”

  Cole took a breath, thought about the whiskey, about whether or not he needed a drink this early in the day, decided he didn’t. “There’s been some killings,” he said. “Prostitutes. I came up here to check into it for a friend.”

  Torres didn’t take his eyes off him.

  “The dead girls worked for a woman named Lydia Winslow. She’s the one who wrote my friend, asking for help. I came in his place. He’s in the detective business.”

  Torres still had that look of something near to a smile and his fingers continued to twist the glass of whiskey around between them without spilling any of it.

  “That must be good drinking liquor, the way you’re fondling it,” Cole said.