Blood Storm

by Bill Brooks

  When he didn’t move or say anything, he heard her say: “I wouldn’t mind if you were to come and lay here next to me, Mister Cole. After all, it’s your bed.”

  “Miz Smith . . . ?”

  “You don’t have to say anything,” she whispered. “Words aren’t necessary. Not tonight they’re not.”

  He remembered how she looked with the shadows of the light from the lamp edging over her face. She’d proved to be an attractive woman with her hair loose and free like she’d had it. At first, he told himself it was the whiskey, or maybe the exhaustion, or even the whipping he’d taken in the alley. He was hurting and halfway to being drunk and maybe that was all part of it, thinking that perhaps she was offering more than she was, lying next to little Tess in the bed. “It’s been a long day, Miz Smith. I need to sleep.”

  “I must sound needy to you, desperate.”

  “No, Miz Smith. You don’t sound that way to me at all.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “Don’t be.”

  For a long time more she didn’t say anything. He could hear the soft breathing of the child next to her, sleeping the sleep of the innocent, and he thought that must be the way an angel sleeps, soft and still and undisturbed like that.

  “Mister Cole . . . ?”

  “Call me, John Henry, Miz Smith. I guess we’ve gotten to know enough of each other in this short time you can call me that.”

  “I just wanted you to know, I’m not needy. Not like that.”

  “I know, Suzanne.”

  He closed his eyes. Even though the flame had burned out and the room had become dark, he still closed his eyes. Something about her had touched him, her and the little girl. They were like angels that had fallen from the sky, their wings broken, unable to fly any farther, brought down by the false promises of a dishonest man and the unshakable weight of disappointment, their wings broken by hopelessness and despair.

  “Suzanne?” he said. “What’s your man’s last name?”

  “I thought I told you,” she said.

  “No, you just said . . . John.”

  “Oh,” she whispered, “it’s John . . . Johnny Logan.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Cole left the room early, dawn just breaking over the Black Hills. The pine trees along the slopes stood shrouded in a languid mist. That hour of morning, the air was cold and sharp. Suzanne and her daughter had remained asleep as he’d gathered up his things and quietly dressed. Every piece of clothing but the clean shirt he’d put on the previous night was stiff with dried mud.

  He saw a few miners heading off into the hills, their mules loaded down with gear, pickaxes, shovels, tin pans, their beans and bacon and dreams. But with the exception of those few eager men, the town itself was as quiet as the little cemetery up on Mount Moriah where Bill Hickok’s bones were resting the eternal rest. He walked to Nutall and Mann’s Number Ten.

  The place was all but empty, the heelers and loafers having long since fled to their tents and shanties. The smell of stale smoke still clung to the air, stale smoke and stale beer—it was a smell he’d long been familiar with, and first thing in the morning not a smell he appreciated.

  Irish Murphy was there, lying on the bar asleep, stretched out fully on his back, his arms folded across his chest, his shoes lined up neatly by his head, the laces left untied. Cole bounced a silver dollar off the oak.

  Murphy opened one eye, screwed it around until he saw him standing there. “Mister Cole,” he muttered, half sitting up, wiping drool from the corner of his mouth with his shirt cuff. “Are we open yet?” he asked with uncertainty.

  “I’ll have coffee.”

  He looked around the empty room. “I’d say either we ain’t open yet, or we’ve lost all our business.”

  “No jokes this early, Irish. Make the coffee, if you don’t mind.”

  He eased his bulk off the bar. “Damned poor bed, oak is,” he grumbled.

  Cole waited while Murphy got the Arbuckle’s going, then watched as he combed fingers through his thick red hair, saw the muscled forearm as he did, the arm itself thick as a piano leg. He seemed less inclined toward chatter this time. He excused himself to go out back. When he returned, he poured Cole a cup of the pitch-black coffee. It looked and smelled like something other than coffee. “I never claimed to be any sorta cook,” he said as he poured. He pushed the coffee and the silver dollar Cole’s way. “On the house. How could I charge anyone for that poison?”

  “Tell me something, Irish,” Cole said, blowing off the steam. “You a friend of Doc Holliday’s?”

  That opened his eyes a little wider. “I know of the man, yes, sar.”

  “That’s it, you just know of him?”

  “I’ve seen him around, spoken to him once or twice, that’d be about it, sar.”

  “So you’re not a friend of his, then?”

  He shook his head. “No, I don’t think anyone would classify me and Doc as chums.” Then he seemed to think it was his turn to ask questions. “You look like you’ve had yarself a bit o’ trouble, sar?”

  He was staring at Cole’s mud-stiff clothes, the nick above his eye, the nose that was maybe broken from the fight last night—if it could be called a fight—the bruises that were beginning to turn plum color just below his skin. Something told Cole he already knew about the trouble he’d had. “How about Johnny Logan?. You a friend of Johnny Logan’s?”

  Trouble filled his eyes. “Why you so interested in who my friends are, Mister Cole?”

  “Just that I’m trying to get a handle on things around here, Irish, trying to figure out who’s who, who it is I’ve got to watch out for, who I don’t.”

  “Well, sar,” he said, picking up a rag from under the counter and wiping the bar top with it, “I ain’t but fairly new in town myself, like I told you already. I don’t know very many folks I’d call friends of mine.”

  “So you’re not a friend of Johnny Logan’s, either?”

  It wasn’t setting well with Murphy, the questions Cole was asking. Cole could see that by the way he stiffened, the way he pushed the rag over the bar, the coldness that crept into his gaze, the way a man will look if you start to push him too far in a direction he doesn’t want to go. “I know Constable Logan, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Know him well enough to have private conversations with him? How about Doc? You know Doc that well, too?”

  Murphy obviously thought the bar was clean enough, because he stopped wiping it with the rag. He placed both hands on the oak, his thick arms showing through his shirt. “Finish yar coffee, sar, and leave. We ain’t opened yet.”

  It was what Cole had wanted, a place to start. “They in on it?” he said, setting the coffee cup back down along with the dollar.

  “What would that be, sar?”

  “The killings.”

  Murphy’s head twitched, just a little. “You’re trying my patience. I don’t know nothing about the killings of those prostitutes. That’s what yar talkin’ about, ain’t it? Those girls being murdered?”

  “Yeah, Irish, that’s what I’m talking about.”

  Cole figured he could do it one of two ways: he could just come over the top of the bar and brawl, or he could reach below the bar by his knee and snatch the hickory billy. Cole was prepared for him to do it either way. He was surprised when Murphy only spoke: “Looks like you’ve already had your share of misery and hard times, sar. I was the boxing champ of my county, Cork, back home. You wouldn’t want to test me. Not in a fist fight you wouldn’t.”

  Cole figured now he had three choices. He could shoot him, fight him, or leave. He decided he’d gotten enough of what he’d come for. An old Texas Ranger he had once known had cautioned him on the virtue of not becoming greedy by saying in a simple drawl: Hogs get et.

  “Your coffee-making,” Cole said, turning to leave, “it needs practice.”

  He stepped outside, rolled a shuck, and watched as the sun lifted over the Black Hills, its light shatter
ing against the tops of the spiny pines and splaying out in long golden shafts. He thought to himself: I’ve survived another night in Deadwood, thanks to Miguel Torres. The real question is, how many more nights will I be able to survive? He wanted to go see Liddy, ask her about last evening, about the visit of Winston Stevens. But then he thought to hell with it. If she wanted, she could find him and tell him about Winston Stevens and his visit.

  He started down the street, back toward the hotel. Maybe Suzanne and the little girl, Tess, would be up by now, maybe they’d have had enough time to get dressed.

  Miguel Torres stepped out of the front door of the bagnio he’d been standing in front of last night when he saw whoever it was push Cole into the alley. This time, he was still putting on his coat.

  “Torres,” he greeted him.

  Miguel seemed uneasy. He finished buttoning his coat, acting like it was a common occurrence, a man like him coming out of a cathouse. “What’re you doing out this time of morning?” he asked. “You didn’t manage to get yourself shanghaied or killed after I left you last night?”

  “I didn’t know you were given to humor, Deputy.”

  “I ain’t.”

  “How’d you do last night, with the girl? You find her?”

  He shifted his glance. “I might’ve found her.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “I said maybe I did.”

  Miguel shifted his gaze to up the street, refusing to acknowledge much of whatever he’d discovered in the fleshpot, though it was obvious he’d spent the night inside.

  “You find something in there besides information?” Cole asked.

  “Hell, Cole, you’re just full of damn’ curiosity, ain’t you?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with a man needing the company of a woman.”

  Torres looked hard at Cole then. “Jesus Christ, you must’ve gotten your brains scrambled in one of those fights you’re always losing.”

  “Look, Miguel, it doesn’t matter to me what you do . . . in there, or anywhere else. I was just asking if you’d found out any more about your brother, that’s all. You want to take it a different way, go ahead. There’s no shame in bedding a whore.”

  “Well, thank you very god damn much for the lecture,” he said.

  “You know, Miguel, you are about the touchiest man I ever met.”

  Torres shook his head, like a man in disbelief. “I’m starting to hear things about you, Cole,” he said.

  “What sort of things?”

  “All sorts of things. Your name’s become a cuss word in this town. There’s talk you’re dangerous, spoiling for any fight you can get into. Especially since you doused King Fisher’s lights the other day. That lawman, Logan, he’s been throwing your name around to his friends. You wouldn’t exactly get elected mayor if you were to run.”

  “That means I’m stirring the pot.”

  “What pot?”

  “The one where I find out who killed those women.”

  “Yeah, well, if you’re not careful, you’re going to wind up in that pot with them.”

  “Not as long as I’ve got you around watching after me, Miguel.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it, Cole, about my being around next time.”

  “I’ll see you later, Miguel. Good luck with finding Robertito, huh?”

  Torres looked back at the bagnio, the one he’d just come out of, and tilted his head up toward a second-story window, one that had lace curtains hanging in it. Cole saw one of the curtains draw back just a little. A face appeared—young, pretty, dark.

  * * * * *

  Suzanne and Tess were up, sitting there dressed, waiting, by the time Cole reached his hotel room.

  “How about some breakfast?” he offered.

  Tess looked at Cole, looked at her mother. “Mama?”

  “For her,” Suzanne said. “Maybe a little something to eat for her.”

  “For both of you,” Cole said.

  “No, just for her,” Suzanne insisted.

  “Come on,” Cole said, opening the door for them.

  “What about our things?” she asked, pointing to the two small trunks in the corner of the room.

  “Leave them. We’ll pick them up later.”

  They found the café, the one Cole had been sitting in the day King Fisher had tried to kill him through the plate glass. There was a new window already installed, the putty still fresh along the casing. Tess ordered flapjacks and maple syrup and a glass of goat’s milk. Suzanne ate little of her eggs, nibbled at her toast, sipped her coffee. She was prettier sitting there in the light of day. Cole remembered their conversation of the night before. He was struck by how much his opinion of her had changed since the stage ride up from Cheyenne. He enjoyed watching the child eat, hungry, full of energy, the way a person should eat a meal. He watched her pour too much syrup on her flapjacks. It ran off the sides before she cut into them with her fork. She grinned with each mouthful.

  “I’ll find a way to repay you,” Suzanne said.

  “No, you don’t have to concern yourself with that.”

  “But . . .” she tried to persist.

  “Look, Suzanne, it’s really not a problem for me to help you and Tessie out. Why turn it into one?” He saw the way her soft blue eyes searched for an answer to his question. “I had a son once,” he went on. Why he said it, he didn’t know, but he said it as he watched Tess eat her flapjacks. Maybe that was it, watching a beautiful child enjoying herself, thinking how it would’ve been if he’d gotten a chance to watch his own son doing the same thing, pouring too much syrup over his flapjacks. “I’d like to think, if it were my wife and child needing it, someone would be willing to help out,” he said.

  “You said once,” she said. “What do you mean . . . once?”

  “He died of the milk sickness just after he was born. Him and my wife both died of the same thing.”

  She didn’t say anything; she didn’t say the usual about how sorry she was to hear of his loss. She didn’t make words just to make them. She just sat there, looking at him with those soft sea-blue eyes that let him know she understood in ways that words could not.

  “What I mean to say is, Suzanne, it is not a bother to me to help you and Tess. Don’t let it be a bother to you, OK?”

  She nodded. “I accept your kindness,” she said.

  “Good. Soon’s we’re done eating, we’ll go over to the stage line and see about a pair of tickets to Denver.”

  Suzanne reached across the table and touched the knuckles of Cole’s hand with her fingertips. “Mister Cole . . .”

  He didn’t move his hand away.

  “About last night . . .”

  “I know.”

  “I didn’t mean it to sound . . . Her lower lip quivered slightly, the eyes misted over. “I just meant to say that I didn’t want to sound needy to you. . . .”

  “To tell the truth, it felt to me more like needing and not being needy. There’s a difference.”

  “You’re an unusual man, Mister Cole.”

  “No, not so different than anyone else.”

  Tessie asked if she could have a second glass of goat’s milk. Cole ordered it for her.

  “I can’t go to Denver,” Suzanne said.

  “Why not?”

  “What would I do once I got there? I’ve no money, no family, no one there waiting for us.”

  “I’ll give you enough to rent a place, tide you along until you can find something.”

  “No. Why squander the money it would take to travel to Denver when I can stay right here, find work here.”

  “You’ve seen Deadwood, Suzanne. Is this a place you want to raise your daughter in?”

  “It will have to do until I can get myself square again.”

  “Suzanne, I don’t even think they have a school here for Tess.”

  “Then I’ll tutor her myself.”

  “What sort of work do you think a town like this would have to offer a woman? He was blunt. “You’ve seen t
he female population here. What do you think those women do for a living?”

  “There are other things a woman can do besides what you’re referring to, John Henry.”

  “Glad to hear you call me by my first name.” She gave him a weak smile. It felt awkward for him to be lecturing her on the vices of Deadwood. “Suzanne, if it hadn’t been for Tess, I would have kept my opinions to myself. Besides the obvious, what sorts of other things would there be for a woman to do here?”

  “I can take in laundry and sewing,” she said. “I’m a very capable seamstress. With all these bachelors here, I would think there would be plenty need of my services.”

  “And Johnny Logan,” he said. “What about him? He’s still the law in Deadwood, in case he didn’t tell you.”

  “What about him?” she said, stiffening her lower lip.

  “You don’t think that’d make him uncomfortable, to have you and Tessie living here in Deadwood, under his gaze?”

  “I hope it does make him uncomfortable . . . John Henry. Besides, what’s that to me? I have my daughter to look out for, that’s my main concern.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea, Suzanne. That’s all.”

  Now her fingers did more than just glide over his knuckles; they encircled his wrist. “Your wife,” she said. “Did you always give her your opinion on matters you felt strongly about? Did she ever disagree with you?”

  “Yes. Matter of fact I did, and she did.”

  “And how did you take that, when she disagreed with you?”

  “I respected her for having strong beliefs,” he said, unashamed.

  “You see, John Henry, that’s the way good women are. They stick to their beliefs, no matter what anyone else tells them.”

  “You can have my room at the hotel,” he said, not seeing any reason to continue trying to talk her out of leaving Deadwood. “I’ve already paid a week’s rent. It’ll give you time to get settled, maybe find something better, a small house, maybe.”

  “No, I won’t see you out on the streets because of me,” she stated firmly.

  “Just till we find you something better,” he said. “You and Tess.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Cole told the clerk at the hotel the situation, and gave him another $5 to extend the room stay, in case Suzanne needed more time to find her own place.