Blood Storm

by Bill Brooks

  Cole could hear Charley yelling for Stevens to come have a look, but there was no reply. Charley was saying how maybe he was already dead and that maybe Mr. Stevens ought to come have a look for himself. Then Cole heard the roar of the sporting rifle as it echoed out into the frozen silence and he knew then why Stevens hadn’t come to the back of the house. He had been watching the front, waiting for Miguel to come from that direction.

  Cole heard Charley shout: “What the hell!” His voice trailed away from the rear of the house. That’s when Cole charged to the back wall and slammed hard against it, just below the window out of which Charley had shot when he’d tried to kill Cole.

  “Your man . . .” Cole heard Stevens shout from inside. “Did you get him?”

  Charley said: “Sure did. What’d you shoot at out there, Mister Stevens?”

  “The ultimate game,” Stevens said, his manner cool, assured. “There, can you see him lying in the snow, just about where we had those miners set up in the woods? I waited for just the right moment, Charles . . . that’s quite important, waiting for just the right moment.”

  Cole didn’t wait any longer. He crashed through the back door just as Charley was returning to check his own handiwork. He had a dumb, startled look on his face when he saw Cole. He was carrying his pistol down by his leg, not expecting company. He was way too late. The force of Cole’s slug carried him halfway across the room and slammed him against the wall. He still had the dumb, startled look on his face when he slid to the floor, his legs out in front of him.

  “Charles!” Cole heard Stevens call. “What’s going on back there?”

  Cole stepped into the main room just as Stevens was turning away from the open window. Smoke was still curling from the blued barrel of his sporting rifle. He turned his eyes down to the expensive gun in Cole’s hands.

  “Don’t!” Cole said.

  Some of Stevens’s cool manner fell away and his teeth clenched.

  “Lay it there on the floor and kick it away.”

  “It’s a two-thousand-dollar custom-made weapon, sir,” he protested.

  “I don’t care if Queen Victoria gave it to you in payment for stud services, lay it down and kick it away.”

  He did, a pained look on his face as his gaze followed it across the floor.

  “Move away from the window.”

  As soon as he stepped aside, Cole went over and glanced out the shattered maw of glass. Lying there in the snow, at a distance of a hundred and fifty yards, was Miguel Torres, face down. He couldn’t see any movement. “It’s over, Stevens. Get your coat.”

  “Whatever are you talking about?”

  Cole walked over and slapped him hard across the face with the back of his hand. He staggered back, then Cole slapped him again, and he fell to one knee. “It’s not a debate,” he said. “Get your coat!”

  Stevens was bleeding from the lips and from the nostrils and his smoothly shaven flesh was scarlet where Cole had hit him. He struggled to stand, still wobbly from the blows. His hand reached up to his mouth and came away smeared with his blood. “You killed them?” he said. “All the men I’d posted in the woods?”

  “Just the ones that needed it. The others got smart and ran.”

  Stevens walked in a slow, pained manner to the coat rack and took down a greatcoat and put it on. “What now?” he said.

  “Out that way.” Cole nodded toward the front door.

  They walked the hundred and fifty yards to where Miguel was lying.

  “Stand off a little,” Cole told Stevens. He waited until Stevens walked off about twenty feet before he rolled Miguel onto his back. Miguel groaned when he did. The bullet had punched a fist-sized hole through him.

  Miguel looked up at Cole, coughed. “Reach me my . . . flask . . . would . . . you?”

  Cole reached inside his coat, pulled out the metal flask, smeared and sticky with his blood, unscrewed the cap, and handed it to him.

  Miguel looked in Stevens’s direction. “That the son-of-a-bitch that . . . shot me?”

  “Yeah, that’s the son-of-a-bitch.”

  Stevens flinched, but Cole didn’t think it was from the cold or from having been slapped a couple of times.

  “Ask him, will you?” Miguel said, then coughed.

  Cole turned his full attention to Stevens. “He wants to hear you say it.”

  “What is that, may I ask?”

  “He wants you to say that you had a hand in his brother’s killing.”

  Stevens shrugged. “I don’t even know this man,” he said.

  “His name is Miguel Torres and his brother was Robertito Torres and the other man’s name was Shag Hargrove. You had Robertito killed because of a gold claim up around here somewhere.”

  Miguel was sipping the whiskey and coughing up blood and most of what life he had left was staining the snow beneath him. His eyes were a little glazed and he was slipping fast.

  “Sorry,” Stevens said. “I don’t know the man of whom you’re speaking.” The sad truth for Cole was he believed Stevens probably had not known Robertito Torres, at least not by name. But the rest of it was true—that either he or Charley Coffey had killed Robertito and scared off Shag Hargrove. Cole was willing to bet the bank on that.

  “What’d . . . he say?” Miguel sputtered.

  Cole looked at Stevens, hard. “Go on, tell the deputy here that you had his brother killed over a claim.” It wasn’t a request but a flat-out threat on Cole’s part.

  “Maybe there was a man,” Stevens said. “I believe I remember Charley saying something about it.”

  “There you go, Miguel. We got your man. Robertito’s killer. You can rest now.”

  Miguel’s eyes widened as though he’d suddenly thought of something, or seen something. He stiffened. “Killed us . . . both,” he muttered. “God-damn toad like . . . that.” Then Miguel Torres died much as he had lived, without fanfare. He simply closed his eyes.

  Stevens was standing there, shivering, looking on. Cole stood up from the body of the lawman.

  “I need to know something,” Cole said.

  “Well, I guess you are in the position to ask whatever questions you wish,” Stevens said in that way that made Cole want to slap him again.

  “You and Liddy Winslow,” Cole said. “She’s your sister?”

  He nodded.

  “Funny she would lie to me about it.”

  His right eyebrow arched. “Are you so certain that is what she did . . . lie to you, Mister Cole? Or was it more that she left out certain parts of her story when she was convincing you to do her bidding?”

  “I’m not buying it, Stevens.”

  He smiled with his busted lips. “Well, I suppose a man of your low sensibilities would be blinded by a woman that was far beyond your station. I mean, look at you, a frontiersman!”

  Cole didn’t say anything. He just crossed the space between them and knocked him down, only this time he didn’t slap him. He hit him and felt his jaw snap. Then he dragged Stevens to his feet, put him on a horse, and prayed he would do something to make Cole kill him before they got back to Deadwood. Go on, Stevens, he kept thinking the whole ride back, make this easy for all of us. Run!

  Chapter Forty

  The old man was standing out in front of the livery, chewing his cud and spitting brown rings in the snow. His eyes fixed on Cole and Stevens and the body of Miguel Torres when they pulled up. He wiped a hand across his wet mouth and said: “You not only leave dead men out on the streets, now you’re bringing ’em into town.”

  Toole looked at Stevens’s busted lips and nose and saw how the blood had dried on the front of the expensive white shirt. Then he paid closer attention to Torres. “That the lawman?”

  “It is.”

  The old man took notice of the stud. “Nice horse.”

  “You want to do me a favor?” Cole asked the old livery man.

  “What’s ’at?”

  “Take Mister Stevens over and lock him up in that little log dungeon Jo
hnny Logan kept out back of his office.”

  “You want me to lock up this rich man?” Toole asked, showing enough of a grin that some of his remaining teeth stuck out like old corn kernels.

  “Yeah, that’s what I’d like you to do.”

  “What about him?” Toole asked, pointing toward Miguel Torres.

  “I’ll take care of him myself.”

  “You leave anybody alive back up in them hills, Cole?”

  “A few.”

  “I wisht I’d been there. Damned if I don’t.”

  “How about it? You want to take Stevens over to the jail and lock him up?”

  “Did somebody elect me to office?” he asked, scratching a face that hadn’t seen a razor in a long time.

  “You want, I’ll vote for you.”

  He shrugged. “Might not hurt if I had some authority.”

  “Maybe if you were to take Johnny’s job, become the new constable, how would that be?”

  “I reckon that’d be all right,” he said, his eyes glittering with the prospect.

  “OK,” Cole said. He searched through Miguel Torres’s pockets until he found his badge. “I’m appointing you the new town constable.”

  Toole rolled his eyes. “Just like that? I don’t have to apply or nothing?”

  “Look around. You see anybody else rushing to take the job?”

  “’At’s about right,” he said, swiping the badge alongside his pant leg to polish it. “Anybody that’d have the nerve or was crazy enough for the job is either dead, or has left town. The last of ’em left just this morning . . . Doc Holiday. Seen him and Kate boarding the stage just before the snow got really bad.”

  “Raise your right hand,” Cole said. When Toole did, he said: “You’re hired.”

  Toole jerked his head, took the badge, and pinned it to his frayed coat. “How’s it look?” he asked, when he got it pinned on just right.

  “Looks like they better get the women and children off the streets.”

  His grin touched both ears. “Come along, Mister Stevens,” Toole said, taking the reins of the man’s horse.

  “Oh, another thing I forgot to mention!” Cole called after him.

  He stopped, turned around, and said: “What’s ’at?”

  “As an officer of the court, you have the right to confiscate that horse as evidence. And if they hang Stevens here, you can make a claim to the horse and keep him.”

  Toole squinted. “You’re tugging my peaches,” he said.

  “Look at it this way, Toole. Being the only damn’ law there is around here, who’s going to stop you from setting the rules?”

  “’At’s true.” He nodded. “You’re a pisser, John Henry Cole. I’ll give you that.”

  Cole found the undertaker, a man named Clovemyer, and gave him instructions for Miguel’s burial. He asked him to buy Miguel a new suit and a shirt.

  “A man ought to look his best,” Clovemyer agreed. “You want paid mourners?”

  “No, I don’t think Miguel cared much for strangers. But get him a headstone with his name marked on it.”

  Clovemyer said that, if the ground was frozen, he wouldn’t be able to bury Miguel until the spring. “I might have to keep him in the icehouse till the ground thaws,” he stated. “Winter’s a bad time to die.”

  “I didn’t know there was a good time.”

  “Huh?”

  Cole turned to leave as Clovemyer began stripping the body.

  “What about his personal effects, his money belt and rifle and pistol?” Clovemyer pointed at the belt tied around Miguel’s waist.

  Cole asked how much money was in the belt. Clovemyer opened it and counted out the money. “Nearly four hundred and eighty dollars. Should I take my fee out of this?”

  “No. A man pays all his life for the living he does, he shouldn’t have to pay for the dying. You take that money over to the Miners’ Retreat . . . you know the place?” Clovemyer nodded. “You give the money to a girl name Josephine, tell her it’s from Miguel Torres, Bobby’s brother. She’ll know. Tell her Miguel wanted her to go see her people up in Canada. Tell her that’s what the money’s for. That and whatever else she needs.”

  “And his weapons?”

  “Sell them if you like, he won’t be needing them.”

  Cole rode up into the hills, following the directions Toole had given him to the cabin. It looked peaceful the way it was nestled in a narrow valley. A curl of black smoke rose from the stone chimney and the long shadows of the pines stretched across the sparkling snow.

  Jazzy Sue opened the door and offered Cole a warm greeting, saying how she was happy to see him as she let him into the cabin. Rose rushed to greet him like she was his daughter. “I was worried about you,” she said. “I’m glad you came back.”

  Lydia Winslow sat in a high-backed rocker by the fireplace. She had not moved, but her gaze met Cole’s. “John Henry,” she said as she stood, smoothing her skirts, then the loose strands of hair around her face. She seemed slightly flushed.

  “We need to talk, Liddy.”

  She blinked like she already knew what he had come for. She looked at the other two women. The room was small, not a place to hold a private conversation.

  “I’ll get my cloak,” she said. “We’ll go for a walk.” She was wearing a checked shirt and breeches and boots that laced up. She put on a gray woolen capote that draped over her shoulders.

  The clouds had lifted and been replaced by a dome of blue sky and a warming sun that seeped through their clothes. The weather had turned surprisingly mild, and it was a welcome relief. Maybe the worst of it really was over, Cole told himself.

  They walked a short distance from the cabin. Cole was trying to figure out the best way to ask her about the truth and the lies.

  “Tell me,” she said, breaking the great silence that surrounded them in that place. “Is it finished?”

  “All but one thing,” Cole said.

  She didn’t say anything for a time and they walked in among some pines. The air was thick with their scent. “Winston told you about us,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you know my secrets.”

  “I know it’s damn’ confusing. And I sure as hell don’t appreciate being lied to.”

  She turned and put her hand on Cole’s wrist. “Don’t. Don’t accuse me of things you don’t fully understand.”

  “Then explain it.”

  She sighed and removed her hand. “My mother was once an actress,” she said. “In New York. She was quite beautiful, but not very talented. Her beauty earned her parts in plays that she might not otherwise have got. She was smart enough to know it wouldn’t always be that way. One evening, a man came to see a play she was acting in. He immediately became smitten with her and began to pursue her. He was very wealthy, very charming, and very attentive to her, sending her rooms full of flowers after each performance. Mother found it impossible to resist him, and in short order he asked her to marry him and return with him to his home in England. She agreed because she’d fallen in love with him, and because she’d become pregnant with me.”

  The sun collected in her hair as she talked, and they weaved in and out of the light that splintered down through the pines.

  “His name was Arthur and he had a small son waiting for him to return. The boy’s mother had died giving birth to the boy. I was born shortly after Mother and Arthur arrived in England. So, you see, the timing was good.” She had tried to make light of it, but the effort was painful. She moved among the trees, touching them as she talked, lost in a world of memory she had not visited in a long time, judging by the sound of her voice as she recalled the past. “For several years I lived a very charmed life as the daughter of a rich man. We lived in a large house on a bluff that overlooked the Thames. And in the summer we could see the young college men racing their boats through the green water. It was such a happy time for me.”

  Her voice broke slightly as she stopped long enough to turn and look at Co
le. “As I grew into a young woman, my half-brother, Winston, began to prevail upon me for my affections. At first I thought very little of it. It started out as a game we played whenever no one was around. Winston said he was my handsome knight and I was his fair maiden. He would sometimes pretend to rescue me, and then kiss me. And the more we played the game, the more serious he became. After a time, I thought of myself as being in love with him.” Her hands trembled as she averted her gaze. “As it turned out, on one occasion when everyone was gone from the house, I allowed myself to be taken by him. It was a house with such large rooms. I remember at one point hearing the hall clock sounding as if it were the heartbeat of an old man beating in the great silence. . . .” Her voice trailed off and a gust of wind swept over a ridge, lifting a tail of snow high in the air.

  Cole wasn’t sure he wanted to hear any more, but Liddy seemed compelled to tell him everything, as though she had to say the secrets she bore or they would suddenly kill her.

  “He came into my room. I was watching the boats on the river. He came up behind me and touched me through the fabric of my dress. . . .” She raised her chin, her eyes staring into Cole’s. “I won’t say that I didn’t like it, I did. I was fourteen, he was nearly twenty. I lived in a land of castles and tales of brave knights who slew dragons for the honor of maidens.” She shook her head, biting down into her lower lip. “I had grown to believe that Winston really was my brave knight.”

  “You don’t have to tell me any more,” Cole said.

  “No. You asked. I will tell you.”

  Cole found his makings and rolled a cigarette. His hands felt heavy and he seemed to have run out of words to say to her that would make a difference in her pain.

  “As soon as it was over,” she went on, “I knew what a terrible mistake it had been. The next time Winston approached me, I tried to deny him. But by then he had already made up his mind that he was no longer going to be my knight. It happened several more times after that. Each time I tried to fight him. I begged mother to take me away, back to America, to New York, the place she’d told me so many wonderful stories about. I saw it as a way out of my situation. At first she refused. But then I told her what had happened. She went to Arthur and he sided with his son. He looked straight at me and said that I was tramping around with the local boys, that Winston was too well bred to have done such a thing. Then he accused Mother of having lied to him about her pregnancy. He said that I was not his child to begin with. . . .”