by Bill Brooks
“Honest to Christ . . . Cole, it’s the truth!”
Cole wanted to close his eyes and pull the trigger and feel Leo slide away from his gun. “I’m going out there, to Stevens’s place, Leo. And when I’ve finished my business, I’m coming back here. You be ready to ride the stage with me back to Cheyenne to stand trial for the murders of those girls. You try running, I’ll hunt you down and kill you myself. One way or the other, you’re going to pay the check for this.” Cole let down the hammer and took the pistol away from Leo’s neck. A red mark showed against the doughy flesh where he had pressed it with the barrel. “Remember, Leo, what I said about trying to run.”
As Cole turned toward the door, Leo was busy, bent over a spittoon. Cole stepped back out into the bar, where Miguel was still holding Harve by his shirt.
“What’s up?” Miguel Torres asked.
“You can turn him loose now,” Cole said.
Harve staggered backward after Miguel released him. As the two looked at each other, a sharp explosion sounded from behind the door to Leo’s office. Miguel started to go back, but Cole stopped him. “What the hell’s going on, John Henry?”
“I think Leo just paid his bill.”
“For what?”
“His sins.”
Miguel walked over to the front doors, looked out. “What’s the next move?”
“Soon as this weather lets up, we pay a visit to Winston Stevens.”
“Well, this must be your lucky day, then,” Miguel said. “It just stopped snowing.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
They trudged back down to the livery. The old man was awake, repairing a harness with the help of a rusty awl and a bottle of whiskey. He looked up when he saw them walking through the shaft of gray light that filtered through the doors. Hay dust danced in the light.
“We need a couple of horses,” Cole said.
Toole looked at Miguel, then at Cole. “You going up to see Liddy?” His eyes were rimmed red and his hands had been shaking as he tried to work an awl through the leather strapping of the harness.
“Not today, Toole.”
“Who’s ’at you got with you?” He switched his gaze from Cole to Miguel.
Before Cole could answer, Miguel told him who he was. Toole grunted the words—“Deputy U.S. marshal.”—like they were bitter seeds in his mouth.
“How about getting our horses?” Cole suggested.
The old man coughed, laid the harness aside, and stood. “You want that same buckskin?”
Cole nodded.
Ten minutes later, Toole had both horses saddled.
“Eight dollars fer the pair, you don’t mind,” he said, holding the reins in one hand, extending his other.
“Miguel?” Cole said.
Torres looked unhappy at the request for more money but dug down deep into his pockets. “I’ll want a receipt,” he told Toole.
“Receipt?” the old man responded. “What the hell I look like, a bank?”
“I don’t care how you do it,” Miguel stated flatly, “but make me a receipt.”
Toole grumbled, searched through an old wooden box he had in the corner, and found a pencil. He rummaged some more, then looked up. “I don’t have a damn’ piece of paper to write on. What the hell am I supposed to write you a receipt on?”
Cole took the diary out of his pocket, found a blank page, and tore it out. “Write it on this.”
“Two horses, eight dollars . . .” Toole mumbled as he made the marks on the paper. When he finished, he handed it to Miguel. “There’s your damn’ receipt.”
Miguel folded it and carefully placed it in his pocket. “The government is real particular about deputies keeping good books,” he said. “A lawman that don’t keep his books is just a man waiting to go to the poorhouse.”
“Well, we wouldn’t want that, now, would we?” Toole asked, taking a pull at his bottle, clearly put out for the extra effort he had had to make to rent the horses.
“Be glad, old man, that I didn’t just confiscate these horses from you,” Miguel said.
Toole spat. “That’d be the day.”
“Let’s go, Miguel,” Cole said, walking the buckskin toward the doors.
“He’s a feisty son-of-a-bitch,” Miguel said as they started riding out of town.
“He’s an old man with old memories,” Cole said. “He probably got locked up a few times when he was a cowboy and never got over the experience.”
Miguel didn’t reply, but, instead, looped his reins over the horn of his saddle and made himself a smoke. “You want one?” he asked, holding out his makings when he had finished.
“No, I’d just as soon keep my fingers warm inside my pockets.”
They took the north road that wound up through the hills that were now surrendered to the snow and boughs of trees that wore white blankets. The land looked clean and untouched. The heavy snow had given the Black Hills an endless beauty, vast and lonely, as if a man riding into it would be swallowed by it and never found again. The horses chuffed steam through their black, wet nostrils, and ice formed on Cole’s mustaches.
Cole found that somehow he wasn’t bothered by the weather. Maybe the reason was because he was still thinking about what Leo Loop had told him about Liddy and Winston Stevens. He couldn’t stop wondering about the relationship between them. What was she hiding, and why hadn’t she trusted him? It was disturbing in a way that seemed to ache down into his bones and forced him to fight the anger of being deceived. The truth, what was it? Maybe Doc had been right in his assessment of Liddy Winslow. She was a woman so alluring that she could get any man to do just about anything for her. Doc had nearly laughed at Cole’s reasoning when it came to her. He was right that truth becomes lies, lies become the truth. Cold he could ignore, but not this.
“You look like you swallowed a nail,” Miguel said. It was difficult to tell which was cigarette smoke and which vapor coming out of his mouth when he spoke.
“It sort of feels that way, too,” Cole answered.
“Tell me . . . we heading into a big fight up there at Stevens’s place?”
“It could be. It just depends on how much Charley Coffey wants to prove he’s a real gunfighter, and how many others he convinced to throw in with him. Then there’s Stevens to consider. I’d say of any of them, he’s is the one I’d worry about.”
Miguel nodded, smoking his shuck as if Cole was telling him about the new sport of baseball back East.
“Another thing you may want to keep in mind, Miguel. Stevens carries a sporting rifle. I’ve seen similar when Cody took the Grand Duke of Russia out to hunt buffalo. The damned thing could shoot a thousand yards accurately. My guess would be, Stevens sees it as sport, killing a man. It’s another reason I figured he left England and came West. Out here, you can still shoot men for sport. You might want to keep that in mind when we get up there.”
Torres grunted, flicked the shuck aside, and watched it sizzle in the snow. “Yeah, well, I’ve been shot at by some pretty fair men in my time. I reckon some toad from wherever the hell he’s from don’t worry me too much.”
Miguel found a small flask inside his jacket pocket and brought it out. “To hold off the chill,” he said, tipping it to his mouth. Then he handed it to Cole who took a small pull, just enough to feel the warmth course through his blood.
The heavy snow made traveling a slow process. The horses broke through chest-deep drifts in places. In other places, Torres and Cole dismounted and gave them a blow.
“Listen, Miguel,” Cole said as they neared Stevens’s place. “I’m sorry about Robertito.”
“Me, too,” he said.
“Maybe we’ll get all of our questions answered once we have Stevens in hand.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything. A man that didn’t say much when there was much to be said worried Cole. He didn’t want Stevens to die the quick, easy death that Miguel probably had in mind for him. He wanted to see the son-of-a-bitch taken to the nearest circuit court
and stand trial, then face a hangman. That seemed like a lot more pay back than a fast bullet to the brain. They rode the last mile in silence, Miguel with his thoughts, Cole with his.
“There,” Miguel said, checking the reins on the steeldust he was riding.
Cole saw a strand of smoke rising in the distance against the white horizon.
“That must be his place there.”
“Let’s ride in slow until we get a better lay of the place,” Cole said.
Miguel turned his flat gaze on him. “You think I’ve never done this sort of thing before, John Henry?”
“You want to spread out, or go in like we are?”
Miguel seemed satisfied that Cole had deferred to him on the matter. “Ride maybe fifty yards apart,” he said.
Cole angled the buckskin off at a right angle to Miguel until he reached the distance Miguel had suggested. Cole saw Miguel shift the carbine from where he’d been carrying it in front of him. They got to within five hundred yards of the house when the first shots rang out from a stand of ponderosa pines off to their left. The first rounds blew up snow in front of their horses and caused them to buck and kick.
“Up there!” Cole shouted at Miguel, who jerked his mount’s head around to face the trees. He charged without even bothering to wait. Cole kicked the flanks of the buckskin and chased after him, levering rounds and firing the Winchester rifle as rapidly as he could. It is hard to hit anything from a running horse, but then like the old Texas Ranger had once told Cole: What the hell do you have to lose?
They were perhaps twenty yards from the trees when Miguel’s horse took a round in the chest that buckled its forelegs and sent Miguel sailing through the air. Cole pulled up hard on his reins, sliding the buckskin to a stop, and leaped from the saddle just as Miguel hit a snowbank.
Cole fired into the trees from a kneeling position while Miguel scrambled to recover his carbine. His horse kicked its legs and tried to get up, spraying a fountain of red blood across the white snow. Miguel took a hit that spun him around, but he quickly got back up and was firing the carbine, and Cole saw one man pitch forward from the line of trees. Then Cole heard a scream from the direction in which he’d been firing the Winchester, and right after he saw three dark shapes darting away like frightened deer.
The sudden silence lay all around them, with not even an echo of a gunshot. It was like the earth itself was holding its breath. Miguel was fumbling with the breech of his carbine. He made sure there were no more shooters waiting in the trees before crossing the patch of snow that was now stained with the blood of Miguel’s steeldust, and some of his own.
“You hit bad?” Cole asked.
Miguel looked down at the sleeve of his left arm. “Busted my arm,” he said. “I can’t close my hand and load this damn’ Spencer.”
“Leave it. Use the Peacemaker.”
“Yeah. I hate to leave it, though. It’s been a good gun.”
“Christ, Miguel, it only shoots one round at a time,” Cole said, not understanding why any man would want an old single-shot like that in the first place.
“Maybe so,” he said. “But it gives me plenty of time to think what I’m aiming at before I pull the trigger. Not like what I seen you doing with that Winchester, shooting the bark off those trees. Did you even hit anybody?”
“You’re a pisser, Miguel. You think you’re up to more fight with that arm?”
He pulled back the sleeve and looked at it, then packed some snow around it. It was just a small purple pucker, but Cole could see where the bone had been broken underneath the skin, the way it bumped up at an odd angle. Cole pulled his bandanna off and tied it around Miguel’s forearm in an attempt to keep the bone from shifting around too much. Miguel didn’t say much while he did that, just looking off with a tensed jaw.
“I think we got one or two of them,” Cole said, finishing his patchwork. Miguel looked at it. “The rest scattered up through those trees. I don’t think they’ll come back.”
“Who’s that leave, then?” Miguel asked.
“Just Stevens and Charley Coffey and whoever else might be up at the house, as far as I know.”
“Their first line of defense,” Miguel said, walking toward the trees until they found the man he’d shot, lying face down. He turned him over. The face was smallish, the eyes set close together, like a ferret’s. There was black under his fingernails. Then they walked through the trees until they found the other one, the one Cole had hit. Cole found a bottle of whiskey in his coat and $20—probably more money than he had ever made mucking for gold. Well, he didn’t have to muck gold any more.
“Miners!” Miguel concluded. “Charley threw up these half-wits as a first line of defense, hoping they’d get lucky and kill us before we ever reached the house.”
“Well, now they know.”
“What’s that?”
“That they should have stayed miners.”
“I guess the free drinks and a little cash money blinded their judgment,” he said. “It don’t take much to buy a man these days.”
“It never has.”
“You mind helping me make a smoke before we go up to the house?” Miguel asked.
They each had a cigarette. There was no point in hurrying now. It wouldn’t help Stevens’s and Charley Coffey’s nerves any to have to sit up there waiting, wondering if their ambush had succeeded. Miguel glanced over at the downed steeldust. The horse had quit kicking.
“I reckon that old man back at the livery’s going to be mad as hell because I got his horse shot,” Miguel said.
“Maybe you can give him a government voucher for the animal.”
Miguel snorted. “Yeah, right.”
“How do you want to do this the rest of the way, Miguel?” Cole asked, remembering the last time he’d tried to give orders.
“Hell, what’s wrong with just going up there and knocking on the door?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“You don’t, huh?”
“You feel free to go ahead, though, if that’s what you want to do.”
“That sporting rifle,” Miguel said, “how far you say that toad could hit a man with it?”
“I’d say four, five hundred yards easy. And if he’s real good, maybe a thousand.”
Miguel twisted his head in the direction of the house. “What would you say from here to the house? Maybe five hundred yards, maybe six? That’d mean he could kill us without us getting even a step closer than we are right now.”
“If he was that good,” Cole reminded him.
“Well, one of us has to circle around and go in the back way, then.”
“You want to be the one?”
“It don’t matter to me.”
“No, I’ll go, Miguel, you’re liable to bleed to death going that far out of your way. Then where would I be?”
“I’m always pulling your shank out of the fire, John Henry,” Miguel said with a shake of his head. “But just the same, it’s probably a good idea you go this time.”
“See you up to the house, Miguel.”
“Yeah. Up to the house,” he said as Cole broke for the trees.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
John Henry Cole cut through the stand of ponderosa pines, moving at a right angle in order to make an approach to the rear of the house. He saw tracks in the snow of the fleeing men who had tried to ambush them. They were going away from the house, probably toward a remuda of horses they’d kept stashed. Sun broke through the shifting clouds and splayed down through the tall, dark pines. Overhead Cole could see patches of blue sky. Where the sun hit it, the snow sparkled. A large snowshoe hare broke from the cover of a rock and darted away.
It took ten, maybe fifteen minutes for him to cut through the woods and come out the other side, where he could get a clear view of the house. It was a long, low building with a shake roof and a stone chimney. There were several outbuildings and a couple of corrals holding some blooded brood mares whose dark bodies stood in dir
ect contrast to the snow. Their ears pricked up when they caught wind of Cole and they moved around in the corral, coming to stand at the rails nearest his position. He waited until they settled down before moving toward the house.
He let several more minutes pass in case anyone in the house had caught sight of the horses stirring in the corral. Finally the mares lost interest and went back to feeding on the bundles of hay that were scattered on the ground. There was a privy thirty yards from the house. Cole figured to make that his first stop when he left the woods. From the privy, he could make a dash to a small lean-to, and from there to the back wall of the house. Anyone watching from inside would have a clear shot at him through the window. And if they were even half good . . . he didn’t want to think about it.
He rested the Winchester against the trunk of a pine. There was no use carrying it, not if the fighting was going to be up close. He watched the rear windows of the house for another half minute, and, when he didn’t see any movement, he broke for the privy. It seemed like it took him forever, crossing that patch of snowy ground. It was like one of the war dreams he’d sometimes have, the ones where he’d be in the middle of a battle and couldn’t move, as if caught in quicksand. He ran and ran and finally dived behind the outhouse. No one had taken a shot at him. After a couple of deep breaths, he rubbed snow out of the workings of his self-cocker.
The only thing between him and the house now was the lean-to. He could see a bellows and an anvil and a rack of tools hanging from hooks. Snow was ledged up around the opening. If he could make the lean-to without taking a bullet, he could reach the back of the house. Carrying the self-cocker in his right hand, he reached in his pocket and took out the Colt Thunderer with the short barrel and held it in his left. He wanted all the hardware he could get in making that next run. A gunman in the window would have to be blind not to be able to drop him if he saw him coming.
Cole took a deep breath and broke for the lean-to. Suddenly the glass shattered out of one of the windows and a pistol shot rang out. A bullet whined off the anvil just as Cole dropped in behind the thin plank wall of the lean-to. He heard Charley Coffey’s voice, yelling to someone inside the house that he thought he had got Cole. Cole was thinking: Anybody but you, Charley, could have made a killing shot from that distance. The problem was that he was trapped behind the plank wall. It was still a good ten, fifteen feet to the back wall of the house, and even Charley wasn’t likely to miss a second shot.
