by Bill Brooks
“Truth,” he said, spitting it out like a seed. “The truth is whatever most people want it to be. Lie becomes truth, truth becomes lie. Enough people hear a lie told often enough, they think it is the truth. The real truth becomes buried beneath the lies. That, sir, is what truth is.”
“You mean like what they say about you, Doc?”
He nodded his head. “Yes, what they have said about me is an example of lie becoming truth, and truth being lost because the truth is not nearly as exciting as the lie. The truth is often too boring to repeat.”
“Did you kill them, Doc? Did you have a hand in it?”
“Would you rather know the truth, or would you rather live?” he asked.
Cole thought it was a good question.
Doc coughed suddenly. Cole thought about going for the self-cocker in that fraction of a second—he probably could have, but he didn’t. Doc stifled the cough, swallowed hard against it as it bloated his cheeks, the hand with the Derringer wavering slightly. Then he quickly tossed down the last of what was left in his whiskey glass to drown the sickness that had erupted from his lungs. He lowered the Derringer. “No,” he said softly. “I didn’t have anything to do with the death of those tragic women . . . it’s not my style.”
Cole believed him. “You were supposed to be watching them, though,” Cole said, taking his chances that Doc had decided not to kill him there in the living room.
“I took the job as bodyguard for one reason, and one reason only,” he said. “Liddy.” This time his hands shook as he medicated himself with the liquor. The cough wracked him again; he gripped the edge of the table, fought it until it abated, then took a small linen handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his mouth. The red stain showed through as he balled it up in his fist. He drew breath before speaking again. “Like you, like every man who’s ever met her, I was smitten by her the first time I saw her.” The first sign of anything other than fierce intensity shone in his eyes. “She came to me, asked me if I would be a bodyguard for her and her girls. I didn’t do it because I needed the money or had nothing better to do. I did it because she flattered me. She’s very, very good at that, flattering a man.” He seemed to be remembering it as though it had just happened. “Hell, what did I know about being a bodyguard? What did I want to know about it? Figure it out, man. Wouldn’t you have done the same if she’d asked you? Look what you are doing for her as it is. You are risking your life much more than I ever did. And for what? Only one answer. You were as taken by her as I was, as any man is.”
“You’re overstating it, Doc.”
“Am I? Tell me, sir, would you risk your life this much for a lesser woman, one without an ounce of charm or guile?”
“You’re not going to believe me, Doc, but I’m doing this for a friend, not for Liddy.”
He snorted his disbelief. “Tell yourself what you will, sir. We all like to tell ourselves whatever lie works. We choose to believe that we are too noble to risk our lives for something as simple and base as a beautiful woman. You see, truth becomes a lie, and a lie becomes the truth.”
Cole wondered about that. “Tell me how it was I saw you and Johnny Logan and Irish Murphy talking privately outside the Number Ten the other night, if you and Johnny weren’t involved in something.”
“It was nothing, really,” Doc said, his shoulders slumping visibly beneath the nightshirt. “Johnny heard I had paid you a visit. And Irish had also told him that you had been asking a lot of questions about the killings. They stopped me outside the Number Ten, and Johnny asked me what I knew about you . . . what my business with you was all about. I told them either to go to hell or buy me a drink . . . either way they wanted it. They chose to buy me a drink. I am not inclined to discuss my business with men such as Johnny Logan, not even on the best of days.” A small, persistent cough nagged him and he coughed into the handkerchief again. Then, raising his gaze once more, he continued. “My visit with you was strictly of a personal nature. Even our enmity toward each other is strictly of a personal nature. Johnny wanted to know what it was about. I told him it was none of his concern. That was the end of it.”
“One more thing I need to know, Doc. Did you take that shot at me outside on the street that night?”
He stared into his whiskey glass for a long moment, then said with almost mild amusement: “I thought I’d already clarified that point with you, sir. Had I wanted to kill you, I would have. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to go back to bed. Kate and I are leaving first thing in the morning for Prescott, Arizona. I hear the climate is much better there, in more ways than one. I have lost my appetite for this town. It will come to nothing in the end. There is no promise here.” He stood, but not quite straight, and concluded: “If you don’t mind dropping the latch on the door on your way out . . .” Then he went into the bedroom and closed the door behind him. Cole could hear Kate say Doc’s name.
Stepping back out into the cold, clear night that lay in ghostly whiteness, Cole was relieved to know that Doc hadn’t been part of the murders. There were still plenty of folks in Deadwood that wanted to see Cole dead, but Doc wasn’t one of them. And just knowing that was its own kind of relief. Cole was feeling better about the odds as he headed back to Liddy’s house.
Chapter Thirty-One
In Deadwood, nothing good lasted long. The sound came out of the darkness, a long, punished wail of a sound, something John Henry Cole heard and recognized. He found her, lying in a snowbank behind the Black Hills Brewery. She was struggling to regain her feet, but she was as drunk as he’d ever seen her. A trickle of blood leaked from her nose and she smelled the way no woman should smell, worse than any muleskinner.
“God damn it!” she swore, struggling to climb out of the snowbank. “Jeezus and Mary!” She rose to one knee, tumbled backward before Cole could reach her.
Cole took hold of her, lifted her to her feet. She fought him for a little bit, trying to free herself. “Ya ain’t molestin’ me!” she shrieked. “I ain’t no god-damn’ crib tramp ya think ya can just haul off in the weeds and have at it with! Turn me loose, ya sons-a-bitches!”
Cole locked his arms around her until she became still. It was like holding onto a mustang that would try to kick you to death the minute it was let go.
“Jane, it’s Jack,” he said as reassuringly as he knew how. He didn’t regard drunken wildcats a specialty, but with Jane he was getting used to it. For a few long minutes, she stayed stark still in his arms, just waiting for him to turn her loose so she could kick, bite, or generally lay him out. “You understand, Jane . . . it’s me, Jack?”
He felt her give a little. “Jack?”
“Yeah, you remember Jack, don’t you?”
“Jack?” She twisted her head around to get a look at him. Her breath was noxious. “Jack!” she exclaimed, the light of recognition invading her eyes.
“I’m going to turn you loose now, Jane. Don’t do anything stupid, like try to bite me, OK?”
“Oh, no, Jack, why’d I bite ya?”
He let her go. She nearly fell over. He grabbed her again and held her steady.
“Oh, Lordy,” she gurgled. “I must be a sight fer ya, huh?”
“You’re drunk again, Jane.”
“Oh, hell, don’t I know it, Jack.”
“If you had fallen asleep in that snowbank, they’d have laid you out in the morning, up there on Mount Moriah with Bill.”
“Oh, Jeezus, Jack! What I wouldn’t give to be buried alongside my Bill. It’s what I want, what I pray fer ever night . . . to be with my Billy.”
“Well, you keep drinking that paint thinner, you’ll probably get your wish.” Cole asked himself, as soon as he said it, why he was lecturing to Jane Canary on the evils of drink? Who was he to stop a body from going down the road they chose to go? Except he’d been there and knew there were demons waiting for those who went. And if they were the same demons he’d known, he didn’t want anyone else to have to know them. He’d sort of taken a liking to her in a
way he couldn’t explain, even to himself.
“No! It’s only right I join him,” she declared. “Now that Bill’s gone, there ain’t no reason for me to live. What’ve I got to live fer, Jack? Tell me that.”
“How about that daughter you mentioned, Jane? Isn’t she worth living for?”
Her eyes teared over. The thought had stung her. “She knows how awful terrible I am,” she bawled. “She wouldn’t want a thing to do with me.”
“Maybe you should let her be the judge of that.”
“Oh, Jack, you say the damnedest things to make me feel bad.”
“I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad, Jane. I just don’t think you ought to end it in some damn’ snowbank.”
Her eyes grew large, tears spilling out of them onto her smudged cheeks. “Ya don’t, Jack?”
“No. No one should have to end up like that, not even the worst of us. And you’re not in that crowd.”
Strangely the words seemed to sober her more than if he’d poured a pot of coffee down her, or plunged her head into a horse trough. “Ya know, it ain’t too late for me, Jack. I could start over. I could clean myself up and be a lady again, like the lady I was when me and Bill were an item. I could even go back East, see my baby girl. Did I tell you her name was Janey?”
“I believe you did.”
She smiled sweetly. Cole hadn’t known it was possible, but in that moment he felt some of her great loneliness.
“I’m a damn’ mess, ain’t I?”
“I reckon you are. Why don’t you let me help you home so you don’t freeze to death out here?”
She nodded.
She had a cot behind a lumberyard, a shack no bigger than the length of her bed and not much wider. But it had a small stove and Cole made a fire after he laid her on the bunk and pulled a blanket over her.
“Ya think it’s too late, Jack, me gettin straightened out?”
“No, Jane, I don’t. You’re looking at living proof.”
“Not ya, Jack. Hell, anybody but ya, I’d believe.”
“I don’t have a reason to lie to you, Jane.”
She smiled that sweet smile again, her lids drooping. “Ever’body calls me Jane, but my real name’s Martha. Don’t nobody call me that, though. Just Jane, Calamity Jane, ya know. Sometimes I’d like it if someone would call me Martha.”
“Martha.”
She closed her eyes, the smile still on her lips. “It’s nice to hear, Jack, a man saying my real name like that.”
He waited until she’d fallen asleep, made sure there was enough wood shoved into the stove to last the rest of the night, then closed the door to that little shed she called her home. In a way, Cole reflected, she wasn’t all that different from Rose or even beautiful Liddy, in that she was a woman who just wanted to be loved and cared about. In that way, she was no different from anyone.
He hoped, as he shuffled through the drifts of snow back to Liddy’s house, that Jane would awaken with the same thought she’d gone to sleep with—a fresh start on life. But he’d been around long enough to know that just wanting something wasn’t always enough, and that sometimes the demons are stronger. He hoped for her sake that wasn’t the case.
Chapter Thirty-Two
John Henry Cole entered the house through the back door, the same way he had gone out earlier. It was quiet, dark, except for the ghostly light reflecting off the snow that had begun to pile up in huge drifts outside. He was tired and cold from his trek to Doc’s house and from the day’s events. He went to Liddy’s room and stretched out across the bed without bothering to take off his clothes. In a few hours, it would be daylight again. Everything would start over, and he would confront the men who wanted to kill him. And they would confront him. He figured, if he was to stand a chance, he’d have to make the first move.
He lay there, thinking how he was going to prove that Leo Loop was behind the killings. He didn’t know of any way, except to get him to confess. But getting a confession from him wasn’t going to be as easy as waving Flora’s diary in his face. It would have to be something more formidable, like waving the self-cocker in his face. A man like Leo would understand such directness. His thoughts turned to Suzanne Logan and he wondered if she and Tess had made it far enough south on the stage to have missed the storm. Another day of heavy snow and the gulch would be impassable; no one would get in or out. It was turning into that kind of week. He wondered how Liddy and Rose and Jazzy Sue were doing up in the old man’s mountain cabin, whether they’d have enough supplies to last them through the storm. It didn’t seem like anything came easy in Deadwood, least of all survival.
Somewhere in the night his thoughts turned into dreams as exhaustion closed in on him, only this time the dreams were different. He was in a mountain meadow, playing with a child, tossing him into the air and catching him and listening to his laughter, and it filled him with a great joy, a joy born of bone and flesh. The child’s hair was golden, like the sun, and his eyes were bright blue and full of mischief and cleverness. He called Cole Daddy, and threw his arms around his neck and put his face to Cole’s. Sitting on a blanket was a woman, a woman whose face Cole could not clearly see. She was wearing a white summer dress and a hat made of straw that shaded her eyes and a red ribbon was tied about her waist. He knew that he loved the woman, and that the little boy was their child, and that the world was a perfect place. Then the child began to call his name, only his voice had changed, had become deeper, like a man’s voice.
“John Henry! John Henry Cole!”
Cole opened his eyes.
“Wake the hell up!”
When Cole’s sight adjusted, he could see where the child’s voice had been coming from.
“Don’t even think about it,” Kip Caine said. He had the barrel of the Whitney revolver pressed against Cole’s forehead.
“What’s going on, Kip?”
“Been thinking,” he said.
“About what?”
“About money, what else?”
“I thought we already discussed that. Why the pistol?”
“Just don’t get froggy and try jumping around,” he warned.
“Two thousand isn’t enough for you, Kip, is that it?”
“It might be, if I knew for sure you had it. But I got to asking myself, how do I know you got two thousand, other’n your word you got it?”
“My word’s always been good enough, Kip.”
“No, see, as much as you explained it to me, I still never did see no hard cash in your hand, or no place else, for that matter. Now, was you to show me, say, even half the money, why, I’d put this old hog-leg away and apologize for disturbing your rest.”
“And if I don’t show you the money, what then?”
“Well, now, that’s a good question. You see, one way or the other, I intend on leaving Deadwood with more than empty pockets. The plain truth is, I’ve never been a man to much care who was writing the check, if you know what I mean. So it don’t make a rat’s butt worth of difference to me whether it’s you ’at pays me or someone else. Who do you suppose that someone else might be in this case?”
“You’re thinking of giving me over to Leo and Charley, that it? You think maybe Leo would pay you good money for me?”
“I have to admit, it did cross my mind.” Kip gave a twisted grin.
“You remember what I said about the rules, Kip?”
His grin increased until his teeth showed through the crack in his beard. “Yeah, that was the other thing, them damn’ rules you kept telling me about. I ain’t a man that likes living by no rules, John Henry.” It wasn’t exactly a laugh, the sound Kip made, more like a long grunt.
“I meant what I said, Kip.”
He pressed the barrel a little harder into Cole’s forehead. “Jaysus, John Henry, you forgetting I still owe you for pushing my head in that horse trough? That friggin’ ice water liked to have stopped my heart!”
“Next time, I’ll keep it there, Kip, till it does.”
He
thumbed back the hammer of the Navy. Cole heard the sound it made, the double click, metal against metal. It was the second time in a couple of nights he had heard that sound, and he hadn’t liked it either time. And this time he couldn’t expect Miguel Torres to come through the door, blazing away with his carbine.
“You pull that trigger, Kip, you’ll get no money from either side. Or did you forget to think about that in all the other thinking you were doing?” He could almost hear Kip’s brain moving around, trying to understand it.
Kip eased the hammer down. “See, what I’m going to do is tie you up and leave you here while I go over and have a chat with that Loop fellow. I’m going to ask him how much he’d pay for you. That is, unless you can show me your end of the money now.”
“You either take my word for it, or do what you will. Just remember what the rules were, Kip, what we agreed to.”
He shoved a little harder with the cold steel. “Jaysus! Shut up about them god-damn’ rules, will ya?”
“Tell you what I’m willing to do here, Kip. You slide that Whitney back in your pocket, tell me you’re just having an off day, and you didn’t mean anything by sticking your piece in my face, and maybe I’ll see it as just that, you having an off day.”
“You think I look that dumb?”
“This is a bad game you’re playing, Kip.”
“Get up!” he ordered. “Do it slow, or I might just pop you!”
Cole got up slow, like he wanted. Kip was nervous, operating on the edge. Cole figured it was the ill effects of the opium still worming through his mind.
“In there,” he said, stepping around behind Cole and placing the muzzle of the Whitney against the back of his skull. “It won’t take much, me pulling this trigger, you decide to try anything funny. Remember that. About a second is all it’ll take to pop you.”
