Blood Storm

by Bill Brooks

  Kip wasn’t happy with the turn of events, but Cole kept reminding him of how much $2,000 was and what it looked like all together at one time—as if he really knew. Kip licked his lips when Cole talked about the money, and drank the coffee and gritted his teeth and drank some more of it.

  The time dragged by, the opium clinging to his brain like ivy on a fence. Several times Cole checked the windows, and once or twice he saw men out on the street, but nearer to the main section of town. They carried torches. Cole could hear them shouting, their voices rising against the night. But it didn’t last long, and after a while they disappeared inside one of the saloons. Cole guessed they weren’t much for hunting down killers when it was cold the way it was and there was still more whiskey to be drunk. He thought: So much for Charley Coffey’s vigilantes. At least for tonight.

  “OK,” Kip mumbled, after he had nearly finished the contents of the big pot of coffee. “Explain it to me once more, about the money, how I get to keep it all. My brain’s starting to unfreeze from where you pushed it down in that god-damn horse trough! Tell me again about the money. And don’t ever do that shit again, huh?”

  “I’ve gone through that part already,” Cole said. “You want me to tell you again?”

  “Yeah, god damn it, I want to hear about it one more time.”

  So Cole explained it to him, again; at least, as much as he thought necessary to explain. He told him the part about Charley and Stevens and Leo Loop wanting Cole put in a plain pine box and have him carried up to the boneyard on Mount Moriah, where Bill Hickok and a lot of other disappointed dreamers were sleeping the long sleep.

  Kip listened and kept interrupting Cole about the money. Having a conversation with Kip Caine, Cole felt, was like trying to fast dance with a one-legged woman.

  “I don’t care nothin’ about that shit,” Kip said impatiently, “them wantin’ to kill you. Just tell me how it is I can get that two thousand dollars.”

  “I’m coming to that,” Cole told him again.

  He nodded and shook his head irritably.

  “All I want from you, Kip, is to back my play with that Navy of yours. I’m going after them full-bore. I need an extra gun. You back me up, you’ll get the two thousand. Is that simple enough for you?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I like . . . simple.”

  “The other thing,” Cole said.

  “What’s ’at?”

  “You decide to switch horses in the middle of the stream, take up with the other side, it’s you I’ll kill first. We clear on that?”

  Kip looked plainly disappointed Cole had brought it up, his allegiance. “What do I look like, John Henry, some damn’ bushwhacker?”

  “Those are the rules,” Cole said. “Remember them.”

  “Rules . . .” Caine muttered.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “When and how do you want to do this thing, John Henry?” Kip Caine moaned.

  Cole had been staring out into the night, watching the snow falling from a sky that still glowed red over the shadowy outlines of the town. He turned to Caine who was holding his head in his hands, leaning forward, his wet hair hanging in loose strands. His muddy boots had soiled the carpet.

  Kip looked up at Cole with reddened eyes when he didn’t answer right away. “Well?”

  “Not tonight,” Cole said.

  Kip looked relieved, dropped his head back into his hands. “Maybe I’ll catch me a little sleep, then,” he muttered. “’At’s what I need, a little sleep.”

  Cole watched Kip stretch out on the divan he’d been sitting on. He walked into the bedroom where Flora’s trunk was. He lifted the lid, took out the diary, and put it in the pocket of the curly coat. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was going to do with the book, but it was all he had to try and tie Johnny Logan to Flora’s murder. But proving that Johnny killed Flora didn’t prove he killed the others, and it didn’t prove Leo Loop was behind it, or anything else, and that was Cole’s real problem. Johnny had already paid for whatever sins he might have committed. It wasn’t he that Cole really wanted.

  He walked back to the window. Kip Caine was snoring, his right arm flung across his eyes. Cole checked the street again. It was still quiet, almost evilly quiet. He pulled his Ingersol and looked at the time. It was nearly 2:00 in the morning. What now?

  He went over what few facts he already knew about the killings. Then he went over what he believed. Cole knew with all certainty that Leo was behind the murders, even though he had no proof. The reason was obvious. Liddy was hurting his business by running a first-class escort service and not the usual rough trade of a frontier town, the sort of trade Leo was good at running. But the question still persisted—why, if Leo wanted Liddy to fold her tent, didn’t he just go after her directly? Why kill three of her young women instead?

  Then there was Doc Holliday. How did he figure into the killings? The way Cole saw it, Doc could have prevented the murders, or he could have been in on them. Doc had had the opportunity for doing either. Doc was like a moving shadow against the night, a man one could easily forget about until the next time he ran into him—or until it was too late. But the questions remained why he would kill the women, what did he have to gain from it? Again Cole considered the possibilities. Doc could have done the killings for money. It takes a special kind of man to be a paid assassin, and Cole had little doubt that Doc possessed such a capability. Then, there was the possibility that he owed a debt to Leo—a gambling debt, perhaps—and Leo was willing to wipe the slate clean if Doc committed the murders. Doc was a notorious gambler, but the problem was Cole had never heard that he was a poor gambler. So it made the odds that Doc might have killed the women to erase a debt seem long. The only other connection between Doc and the killings was Liddy. Liddy had told Cole that first night they had talked that Doc had an interest in her. And he had more or less admitted the same thing himself to Cole. Maybe Liddy had rejected Doc’s advances and it had made him angry, and he killed the girls to hurt her. But that sure seemed a long way around the barn.

  Cole stood there, trying to piece the puzzle together. His reflection looked ghostly in the glass panes, and he wondered if he hadn’t stepped into it, like Bill Hickok had done. According to Jane’s version of the story, Bill had crossed someone in town and paid the ultimate price—a long, eternal sleep. Cole wondered if he might not wind up finding himself sleeping next to Wild Bill. All the odds were stacked against him ever leaving Deadwood alive. And what he had to fight with were only the diary of a dead prostitute and a dope-addicted gunfighter. Somehow, it didn’t seem nearly enough.

  Absently his hands rested in his pockets, the fingers of his right hand touching the grips of the self-cocker. His other hand felt the diary. Doc troubled him the most. And if any of them was going to kill him, Doc would be the one. At least that much Cole was sure of. As far as the others, Cole wasn’t all that concerned. He figured he could kill Charley six days out of seven if it came to a face-to-face showdown. Watching him beat his horse over that ridge after the ambush had told him something about Charley’s nerve. The posse of drunken miners would scatter like quail once Cole either dropped Charley or a couple of them. But Doc was another matter. Feeling Flora’s diary in his pocket gave him an idea, perhaps a way to draw Doc out. Cole had to know the truth about Doc’s involvement in the murders. And if the killing was going to begin, it might as well begin between Doc and himself. It was time he found out who had killed the fallen angels.

  Chapter Thirty

  John Henry Cole went out the back door, leaving Kip Caine stretched out on Liddy’s divan. The snow was nearly knee-deep and crunched under his boots as he sloughed through it. He kept to the back streets and off the main drag as much as possible. With the snow, the night was nearly as light as day and the shadows were few. The sky was still glowing as red as old blood.

  Cole slipped past the Number Ten and the Black Hills Brewery. The hour was late and the town was winding down from its nightly celebration. Miners were
drifting back to their tents and lean-tos and boarding houses and flophouses, wherever they could lay their heads down for another night’s rest before going back into the hills again. He crossed the street just before the Lucky Strike, and turned down an alley. He worked his way along a back street until he came to the narrow, raw lumber house Doc rented for himself and Kate. There was a light showing behind the frosted glass and tattered curtain of the single window in the front of the house.

  He knocked on the door and waited, his hand resting on the butt of the pistol in his pocket. The knob turned, the door opened a crack.

  “I’ve come to see Doc,” he told Kate.

  She was wearing a checked blanket robe, her right hand clutching the throat of it. She stared at him with unflinching eyes. “Doc’s in bed,” she said. “Who’re you?”

  “I need to see him,” Cole said, ignoring her question.

  She shook her head. “He ain’t feeling well. Come back tomorrow, you want to see him.”

  She tried to close the door, but Cole put his hand on it. “Ask him to see me.”

  “Do I know you, mister? Have we met somewhere? I don’t recall ever seeing you and Doc together.”

  “No, Kate, you and I haven’t met, but Doc knows me.”

  She blinked, her face ruddy under the soft light. “It’s still snowing,” she said, looking past him, leaning a little way out to get a better look. That’s when he could smell the liquor on her breath. It was a warm, sour smell.

  “It’s also cold,” Cole said. “Can I come in while you ask Doc?”

  “No,” she said. “Doc don’t like strangers in the house.”

  “Then I’ll wait. You go ask him to see me.”

  “I don’t know . . .” she said hesitantly. “Doc don’t like being disturbed once he’s gone to bed.” She was trying her best to protect him, her man child.

  “This is important, Kate,” Cole said. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t be coming around this time of night.”

  Still she hesitated.

  “It could mean Doc’s life,” Cole said. And in an odd way, it could—except that, if it came to that, he would be the one trying to take Doc’s life, not trying to save it. But it did the trick.

  “Who should I say?” she asked.

  “Tell him John Henry Cole. Tell him I’ve got a book I want to discuss with him. A book with names in it.”

  “Book?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Just a minute,” she said. “I’ll go see if he’s still awake.”

  Cole held the door ajar just so she couldn’t close it and lock it. He wondered how Doc would take the news of his coming for a visit.

  Cole heard Doc cough hard for several minutes. He heard Kate talking to him, saying something he couldn’t make out because they were in another room, with the door closed. Then there was a silence, followed by the sounds of shuffling steps coming to the door. Cole’s hand closed on the Remington. He feared Doc was coming better prepared than he’d been the last time they’d met.

  Kate opened the inner door. “Come in, mister. Doc’s getting something on.” She entered, closing the door behind her.

  Cole stepped into the room. It was a small, spare room without benefit of luxury or any sign of permanence—no pictures on the wall, no glass figurines on shelves, none of the things one would expect to see in a house that’s been lived in for a time. It was the house of a temporary man. In the center of the room stood a table and two chairs, both plain and simply made. On the table a magazine lay open, and next to it a bottle and a half-filled glass of whiskey. An oil lamp gave the room its light. The ceiling was plaster, cracked in places. The dingy wallpaper was peeled loose where it met the wainscoting. It was not a room anyone would want to spend much time in. Doc’s hat hung on the back of one of the chairs.

  “You want to stand or sit?” Kate asked, coming closer.

  “I’ll stand.”

  She kept the robe clutched tightly around her throat; some of her nightdress showed below the hem of the robe. She went over and closed the magazine that was lying open on the table. “It’s the latest issue of Harper’s Bazaar,” she said. “It’s got all the latest fashions and the best stories. I can’t sleep sometimes at nights. It’s why I read, so’s I can get sleepy. Always thought maybe someday I’d write a story about me and Doc, about our life together, and send it in to them. I bet it would make good reading.” It was said in an attempt to be cheerful. “Doc says I’m just foolish. I don’t know, maybe I am.”

  Cole heard something rattle behind the closed door, then watched as it opened and Doc appeared, wearing a long nightshirt, his thin legs exposed below the hem, his feet encased in a pair of carpet slippers. His hair was tousled from where he’d been lying in bed. His eyes darted from Cole to Kate then back to Cole. “Go on to bed, woman,” he said to her.

  “But Doc . . .” she started to protest.

  He gave her a look of impatience. “This is private, Kate. Between men.”

  He hadn’t put a hand on her, but Cole thought she looked as if he had. She went to the table, started to reach for the bottle and the partially filled glass.

  “Leave it, Kate. Don’t you think you’ve had enough . . . reading for one night?”

  Something tugged at the corners of her mouth, some old wound, a hidden hurt or embarrassment. “Not enough, Doc. Not yet. I’m still not very sleepy.”

  “Leave it,” he said, only this time without the same demand in his voice.

  Her hand came away, and she picked up the magazine and carried it with her as though it was her only comfort as she slowly retreated to the bedroom from which Doc had just emerged.

  Doc waited until she closed the door, waited until he heard the bedsprings squeak. Then he crossed the room, shuffling his feet so that the slippers whispered on the bare wood floor. He moved to the table, picked up the glass, and drank its contents.

  “What is it you want, sir?” he said, pouring himself another glass from the bottle. He did not bother to turn his attention to Cole until he had completed the task. Wearing the nightshirt made him look small and old; his spine was curved and bony through the material. “Kate said you told her you had a book with names in it. What does that have to do with me, and at this hour of night?”

  “Flora Pride, Doc. You remember Flora Pride?”

  He raised the glass to his mouth, the heavy, well-trimmed mustaches parting, his eyes not inclined to meet Cole’s as he drank. Then, when he finished, he lowered the glass and said: “What about her?”

  The eyes had finally come to rest on Cole and they showed no sign they recognized anything he was talking about. “She left a diary, Doc. She talked about things, about Deadwood, its dirty secrets. She wrote down names in her diary.”

  It was a long shot, getting Doc to believe that Flora had written his name in her diary and that she had some dirty little secret on him. Cole was playing a weak hand against a man, who by profession, was a gambler.

  “I am surprised she could write,” Doc said. “She didn’t strike me as the type who knew how.”

  “She did, Doc. She had a good hand, and she put down everything Johnny Logan whispered to her on those warm, tender nights when he wasn’t with his wife or his chippy.”

  Doc pulled one of the chairs out and sat on it, the hand holding the glass as steady as a dentist holds his pliers. “Why trouble me with all this nonsense, sir?” His voice was weary but his gaze unflinching.

  Cole was holding a handful of low cards and the stakes were high. It was too late to fold. “She mentions you in her diary, Doc.” He pulled the book from his pocket and held it up for him to see.

  Doc cocked his head slightly as though trying to gauge whether Cole was telling the truth about what was written in the diary. “Really?” he said, almost in a whisper, his voice weak. “What did Miss Pride have to say?”

  Doc was calling Cole’s bluff. He could either raise the ante or toss in his hand.

  “She talks about you and Johnny Logan and Leo Loo
p and Winston Stevens,” Cole said.

  Doc snorted. “What about us?”

  “I’ve got enough here to show it was Johnny that killed her,” Cole said, avoiding a direct answer to Doc’s question.

  “Well, it’s a little late for that,” Doc said, reaching for the bottle again, pouring himself another round. “John Logan has met his fate It’s either an early or late hour for me, depending on how you look at it.”

  “Maybe Johnny can’t be hanged for the killings,” Cole said, “but the others involved sure as hell can be.”

  Doc set the glass on the table gently, with great care and deliberation. “You mean the names you supposedly have in that book?”

  “Yeah, those names.”

  “And I am reported to be one of those names?”

  “She mentions you, Doc, there’s no getting around that.”

  “She says that I was involved in killing those poor, sad women?”

  “Tell me, Doc, were you?”

  “What do you think, sir?” His gaze didn’t waver. “Do I seem to you the sort that would murder women?” The forefinger of his left hand reached up and calmly smoothed the heavy mustache, swiped away the whiskey dew.

  “You have a habit of answering my questions with those of your own, Doc. Why not just give me a straight answer?”

  Kate called his name from the back room: “Doc!”

  He half turned in his chair. Cole was distracted by the sudden plea of her voice. When Doc turned back around again, Cole saw a small double Derringer in his hand, aimed at Cole’s chest. “You accuse me of something so heinous as the murder of prostitutes,” he said, not raising his voice in spite of the anger that flared behind the eyes. “You come into my house, unwelcome, uninvited, disturb my privacy, and make accusations against me. What am I to do about that? What would you do, sir, given the same set of circumstances?”

  Doc had proved himself a prophet. He had said when last they met that the next time the odds would be different. He had been right. There was no way Cole could get to the self-cocker before Doc fired off both loads of the Derringer, and at this short range, maybe eight feet, Cole knew that even the bulk of the curly coat wasn’t going to save him this time. “Give me the courtesy of telling me the truth before you pull those triggers, Doc. Let’s just say that, if I’m going to die, I’d like to think I learned the truth first.”