Winter Kill

by Bill Brooks

  WINTER KILL

  A John Cole Story

  BILL BROOKS

  Copyright © 2013 by Bill Brooks

  Published in 2016 by Blackstone Publishing

  Cover design by Alenka Linaschke

  Published by arrangement with

  Golden West Literary Agency

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition: 2016

  ISBN 978-1-5047-2574-3

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  Blackstone Publishing

  31 Mistletoe Rd.

  Ashland, OR 97520

  www.BlackstonePublishing.com

  Chapter One

  All the horses froze that winter. All the cattle. They froze to death where they stood, caught in the teeth of a seven-day storm that rattled windows and doors and killed every living thing that stood in its path. The snow and wind closed all the roads leading into and out of Cheyenne. You could have shot a pistol in any direction and not hit a living soul. Temperatures plunged to sixty below and the cold was so bone-deep, even whiskey couldn’t fight it. Men went crazy and women wept with fear because it was like a white death had descended on that place. Children stared wide-eyed as if they were frozen, too.

  Nothing moved among the drifts of snow, and the wind howled like mourning women. Horses and cattle weren’t the only creatures that died that winter. They found Wayback Cotton frozen to death in a snowbank; the only thing exposed was his head, the eyes a milky glaze of white. And when they dug him out, they found the neck of a shattered whiskey bottle in one hand, the snow stained brown around him. Someone said his craving for liquor had finally killed him. He was the first one the winter killed.

  Shorty Blaine’s wife Cleopatra grew sick and took to her bed, and Shorty wrapped her in blankets and a mangy buffalo robe and placed warmed bricks at her feet, trying to save her. She cried in her delirium that the angel of death rode a pale horse and was coming for her. Against good sense, Shorty went out in the midst of the storm to fetch the town’s only doctor. When he slammed the door behind him, an icicle rattled loose from an overhang and pierced Shorty’s neck and bled him out; his blood froze and formed an irregular pool of crimson ice beneath him.

  Bart Bledsoe, performing his duties as city marshal, braved the killer storm to go and quell a fight between two prostitutes who were fighting over a miner snowed-in on his way to the gold fields in the Black Hills. The whores had gone into a rage from opium and greed to get the miner’s poke, and that, along with the storm that had forced them to stay together, had turned them crazy. One of the whores had a straight razor and slashed the other, cutting the miner in the act. Bart Bledsoe made the mistake of getting between them just as the miner pulled a belly-gun to kill the whore. Bart was felled with a bullet through his eye and a razor cut to his throat. His dying finger squeezed off a shot and killed the other whore.

  John Henry Cole was three miles away on his small ranch, waiting out the storm that was quickly killing his cattle and horses, and starting to feel a little crazy himself. Everything he owned was dying before his eyes and there wasn’t anything that he could do about it. There wasn’t anything he could do about his friends, either. He might as well have been a thousand miles away.

  When the storm finally blew itself out and the Chinook came, he surveyed his losses and knew there was nothing left for him in Cheyenne. He had spent every dime he had buying the ranch and a herd of longhorns whose bodies lay facing south in dark clumps amid the dissipating drifts. His dreams of a settled life were as dead as everything else. The winter had killed them all in one way or another. He knew it was time to move on.

  He put the ranch up for sale and watched as the gray wolves and coyotes came and made short work of the carcasses of his cattle and horses. He watched the ice dripping from the eaves and drank bitter black coffee and weighed his options. He was down to thin pockets and no future, a situation he had become well accustomed to for most of his life. He knew one thing, though. Cheyenne and John Henry Cole were quits. Any reason he had to stay was gone. When finally the weather grew warm enough, he took one last walk up the hill to the cemetery with Cleopatra because she’d asked him if he would. The warm winds tugged at their clothes and the sun lay at low angles across the winter landscape and made the slopes of ice look blue in places. As they climbed the grade to the little boothill, they could look back and see snow on the roofs of the town and black wisps of smoke curling from stovepipes. It was a peaceful scene, if you didn’t know better. Death was surely as present among the living as it was on that little cemetery ridge.

  “I’d as soon it had been me that died than him,” Cleo said, her voice quavering like a wire in the wind. She coughed into a small silk hankie and it tinged red. “All these years, I waited for a good man to come along ....” Her voice lost its strength and she coughed again and knuckled the dampness from her eyes. Her pale features stood in stark contrast to the black mourning dress she wore.

  Cole understood what it felt like to be willing to trade places with the dead. He counted the graves of his friends and it was like ticking off time, each one representing a memory, a good time, a shared glass of liquor, a laugh, a sense of indescribable loss.

  “I know he loved me,” Cleo said, standing before the rock cairn of Shorty Blaine’s final resting place. The ground was still frozen and the dead had to be buried under rocks until the thaw, when graves could be dug. Shorty Blaine, Wayback Cotton, Bart Bledsoe. Three good men had come to a bad end.

  “I know he loved you, too,” Cole said to Cleo.

  “He left me the café,” she said. “But I don’t know that I’ll stay. I was thinking of selling it and moving east … Boston, maybe.” Cleo had been a prostitute that Shorty had met and married only a few short months before. Maybe she thought she needed to run it past Cole, her plans to leave Cheyenne, since Shorty and Cole had been friends for the better part of twenty years.

  “You don’t need my permission,” Cole said. “Shorty would want you to be happy. Slinging hash for cowboys and living up here in this high lonesome country isn’t much of a future for a woman.”

  She put her hand through the crook of his arm. “Thank you for saying that, John Henry,” she said. “Walk me back down the hill to town and I’ll fix you a good breakfast before you go off to wherever it is you’re planning on going.”

  * * * * *

  John Henry Cole was staring at his reflection in the mirror of the Arbuckle’s coffee in his cup while Cleo was in the kitchen fixing up what she called a “hellacious” breakfast, when the door to the café rattled open before closing hard against the hard wind. A man wearing a greatcoat and a bowler stood there, looking about.

  “We’re not open for business yet, mister,” Cleo said, popping her head out from the kitchen. “There’s been a death in the family.”

  “I didn’t come here to eat,” he said. Then, looking directly at Cole with dark, feral eyes under a massive brow, he said: “You John Henry Cole?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  Cole noticed he had a slight limp as he approached the table.

  “Teddy Green,” he said. He looked at Cleo just long enough to make an appraisal, but it wasn’t the usual sort of look a man gives a woman; there was nothing to indicate he had that sort of hunger in him.

  “I don’t know you,” Cole said, taking his makings from his waistcoat to roll a shuck.

  The man’s gaze switched back to Cole. �
�You’ve heard of me, though,” he said.

  Cole had. Teddy Green had a legendary reputation as a cowboy, lawman, buffalo hunter, and Indian fighter. “Yes, I’ve heard of you, Mister Green.”

  “You mind?” he said, indicating the empty chair across from Cole. Cole nodded, and Green took the seat, setting his bowler atop the table. Cole noted the rings he wore—silver and gold, one on each of his pinky fingers. He unbuttoned the greatcoat and Cole saw the butt of a pistol in a shoulder rig under his left arm. Walnut grips and a brass strap hung in the well-oiled leather.

  “I saw a lot of dead cattle and horses on the way up,” he said. “Saw the same thing once before in the winter of ’68. You could walk clear across Montana on the backs of dead beeves and never once set foot on the ground.”

  “I know you didn’t come here to talk about the weather,” Cole said.

  He twisted his mouth like maybe he had a tooth that was aching. He had a face like granite that had withstood the weather for some time.

  “I’m looking for a woman,” he said.

  “A lot of men are.”

  “I’m looking for a particular woman,” he said. His eyes lacked amusement, but, then, it wasn’t an amusing time.

  “What does that have to do with me?” Cole asked.

  Cleo came out of the kitchen, carrying a plate of eggs, salted slabs of ham, hot biscuits, and a jar of sorghum, and set it down without taking her eyes off Teddy Green.

  “Did we meet somewhere before?” she said.

  He looked at her again, those dark eyes registering everything about her, every curve and wisp of hair and the way she stood there with her fists balled on her broad hips.

  “I think I would have remembered,” he said.

  “Kansas, maybe,” she said. “Perhaps Dodge City.”

  “No. Least not whenever I was there.”

  “I have a good memory for faces,” Cleo said. “And you sure look like someone I met once.”

  “You got me confused, sister. Sorry to say.”

  That seemed to satisfy her curiosity. Cole was splitting open the warm biscuits and drowning them in sorghum. Seven days waiting out the storm and doing his own cooking had left him famished for a regular meal, something that wasn’t burned black or whang-leather tough.

  “She looks sickly, that woman,” Teddy Green said after Cleo had retreated to the kitchen.

  “It’s been a hard winter,” Cole said. “Her man died, and now she’s got lung fever.”

  Teddy Green smoothed the sides of his hair with the palms of his hands, then lightly rested them atop the table next to his bowler. They were hands that had seen hard work, but none lately. The lining of the hat was white silk.

  “I never liked it this far north,” he said. “Hard country to carve out a living.”

  “Then why did you come?”

  He watched Cole cut into the biscuits with his fork, watched the sorghum run to the edges of the plate and soak into the eggs.

  “Like I said, I’m looking for a woman.”

  Cole put down the fork.

  “You want to tell me what this has to do with me, Mister Green? I’d like to have at this meal before it grows cold.”

  “I’d like to hire you to help me find her,” he said.

  “You believe it takes two men?”

  “Two men with grit and a reason to find her. I know she came here, know about the two of you. Figured you could lead me to her.” He had a rather sure way of speaking, as though he’d done it a lot—used his voice to command attention and to strike bargains.

  “This woman,” Cole said, “what’s her name?”

  He waited for Green to tell him the name and, when he did, something the size of a fist caught in his chest.

  “Ella Mims,” he said. “That’s the woman I’m looking for. At least that’s the name she was using from what information I’ve been able to gather.”

  “You want to tell me why you’re looking for her?”

  “You knew her, didn’t you, Mister Cole?”

  “If you already know that, why ask?”

  He cocked his head slightly, twisted his mouth again. He was clean-shaven but the shadow of a beard darkened his chin and cheeks. A small scar cut through his left eyebrow and another the shape of a quarter moon welted his right cheek.

  “She’s not who you think she is, Mister Cole. So, if you think you’re protecting her from me, you’ve got it wrong.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what I don’t know, Mister Green?”

  “She’s wanted for murder. That’s why I’m looking for her.”

  He pulled back the flap of his greatcoat to reveal a Texas Ranger badge pinned to his waistcoat. Cole could also see that the pistol hanging from the shoulder rig was a double-action .44, a Colt Frontier model.

  “You’re a little out of your territory,” Cole said, and went back to concentrating on his breakfast.

  “I go where I need to go,” Green said.

  “Well, good luck in your search.” Cole made an effort to keep his voice level, to act unaffected by the news Green had brought, but his mind was turning over the information fast.

  “You haven’t heard me out,” Green said.

  “I’ve heard enough.”

  “If you fell in love with her,” Green said, “you wouldn’t be the first. Ella’s an easy woman to love.”

  “How would you know that?”

  “I know because she’s my wife,” he said.

  Suddenly the eggs and everything else seemed as cold and uninviting as the waning winter to Cole. A light rain began to peck at the window.

  “Her married name is Ella Jane Green,” he said. “It has sort of a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”

  Cole wasn’t buying it. If you share intimacies with a woman the way he had with Ella Mims, you don’t just throw it all away because of a stranger’s accusations.

  “Look, I’ve run out of trail. I’m willing to pay for your help to find her. Five hundred for the information, or your gun to back me up, depending on what you know.”

  “Five hundred or five thousand, it won’t buy anything from me,” Cole said.

  “I’m not the only one looking for her, Mister Cole. If I find her first, she’ll get safe transport back to Denver and a fair trial. If the others looking for her find her first, they’ll make sure she doesn’t make it back to Denver.”

  Suddenly he had Cole’s full attention.

  “Who are these others and why do they want her?” Cole asked.

  “She was involved in the killing of the son of an important man.”

  “Who’s the man?”

  “A federal judge by the name of Thaddeus Beam.”

  “What does Ella have to do with it?”

  “She was reportedly in the escort of another man at the time, a real wild wind. They both knew the dead man and had been seen in his company the night of the killing.”

  “For being married to her,” Cole said, “it doesn’t sound like you kept a tight rein on her.”

  Green shifted his weight in the chair, touched the brim of his upturned bowler, and seemed to study it for a moment. “We were married a long time ago, Mister Cole. It didn’t work out. She went her way. I went mine. Trouble is, we never actually got around to a divorce.” His gaze fell into the hat like he was looking inside it for something, a lost marriage perhaps.

  “So this judge hired you to find her?” Cole said.

  “No. He hired others to do that. I got word of it and decided I’d better round her up before his hired men did.”

  “Why trouble yourself?”

  “Because she’s still my wife and I know the assassin the judge hired to find her.”

  Cole waited for him to give a name.

  “You ever hear of Colorado Charley Utter?”

  A
ll Cole knew of Colorado Charley Utter was that he had paid for Wild Bill Hickok’s funeral and a grave marker to have the notorious gunfighter buried in Deadwood, that they’d been pals for a short time, and that right after the funeral, Utter had disappeared. That wasn’t much to know about the man.

  “What about him?” Cole asked.

  “He’s deadly, and intolerant of wayward women. Rumor has it”—Green leaned a little over the table—“that he doesn’t like any kind of women.”

  “You seem to know a lot about him.”

  “I ran into him and Wild Bill in Kansas one time. Bill was the law there before they fired him for shooting his deputy. Charley was there and there was some talk about his unnatural desires.”

  “You get around.”

  “I was a lot of things and have been to a lot of places before I turned to rangering. I know most of the worst of humanity that roam this frontier. I’ve put my share of men in the ground or in prison. I’m good at what I do, Mister Cole, make no mistake about it.”

  He stood then, took up his bowler, replaced it atop his head, and tapped it lightly.

  “I’ll be staying the night at the Inter-Ocean and leaving first thing in the morning. I could stand your help in finding Ella,” he said. “And you look like a man who could use a stake. And in case you know where she is and are thinking about getting a jump to warn her, just remember, Mister Cole, there’re others that are after her … and they’re all professional gun artists. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be riding with Colorado Charley. You’ll not want to go up against them alone. If you care at all about her safety and welfare, you’ll throw in with me. The two of us might stand a chance, at least a better chance than if we go it alone.”

  “I wish I could help,” Cole said.

  Green turned as he reached the door. “Another thing you ought to know,” he said. “That man I told you Ella was involved with, the one I believe had a hand in the killing of the judge’s boy … his name is Gypsy Davy and he broke jail before they could hang him. My suspicion is that he’s also looking for Ella, probably to make sure she keeps her mouth shut about what happened the night of the murder.”