Winter Kill

by Bill Brooks

  “John Henry Cole,” he said. “I’d recognize that lanky frame of yours anywhere.” He was a short, pudgy man with dark eyes and just recently it looked as if he had begun growing a beard. He dodged two or three mule trains crossing the street. “Holy mother of pearl! What happened to you?” he asked.

  “Fell off my horse.”

  “Ought to learn to ride better.”

  “You look like you’ve fared well for yourself, Roy. Fancy coat and pants like that have to cost a man fifteen, twenty dollars.”

  Bean flushed with pride. “You were right about Texas. More opportunity here than lice on a dog.” He was carrying a book, a big book. “Taken up study of the law,” he said, shifting the book from under his arm to his hands. “Figured I’ve been on one side of the law long enough, I ought to try the other … more money in it than running whores and selling liquor to jaspers. Bought me a patch of land down along the Pecos … lawless country, the kind that needs a man of my adjudication, a word I learned in this here book.”

  “Glad to hear things are working out for you, Roy, but I’ve no time to talk about it right now.”

  “You living in San Antone?”

  “No, just here to find someone.”

  “What about Cleo?” he said. “She still with that gamy-legged fellow she run off with?”

  “He’s dead. She’s fixing to go East.”

  He shook his head, spat the chaw he’d been grinding in his cheek, and said: “Fuss. I wisht she could see me now. She might not want to run off to the East, if she knew I was a prosperous and righteous man.”

  “I’m sure. See you around, Roy.”

  “You need anything, I’m staying at the Alamo Hotel until tomorrow, then down to the Pecos!” he shouted as Cole headed toward the river.

  When Cole reached the spot where he’d been waylaid, he glanced at the ground, saw some dried blood on the rocks near the walking path and knew it was his. He felt like he’d been leaving pieces of himself all along the trail since leaving Cheyenne, but he was close to Ella now—he could feel it—and that was all that mattered.

  Eventually he found the place Doc Holliday had described the night before—Madame Lu’s. He saw a door with a red dragon painted on it. He knocked, waited, knocked again. A small Oriental woman who looked as ancient as time itself opened the door and looked up at him.

  “We close, you come back tonight, OK?”

  “I’m looking for this woman,” Cole said, showing her the tintype.

  She barely glanced at it and said: “She no here.”

  “Look again,” Cole insisted. She started to close the door, but he held it open.

  She looked at him with alarm. “You go now, I find the policeman you don’t go.”

  “I’m looking for this woman, her name is Ella, and I know she’s here. I’m not leaving until I see her.”

  She weighed all of seventy pounds. “Lu, Lu!” Her voice was more like the screech of a barn owl than human.

  Another Oriental woman appeared, younger, good-looking. “What is it, Nana?”

  “Him,” the old woman said. “He cause trouble.”

  “What do you want?”

  Cole showed her the tintype. “Her,” he said.

  She looked at Cole, this beautiful Asian woman whose skin was as smooth as ivory and eyes like black silk. She said first to the old woman: “It’s OK, Nana. You go drink your tea. I take care of the gentleman.”

  Then, when the old woman left, the younger one invited Cole in and led him to a front parlor. “Please, you no cause trouble.”

  “You go bring Ella to me and there will be no trouble.”

  “This is very difficult, what you ask me to do.”

  “Tell me where she is then, and I’ll go get her.”

  “You no understand.”

  “I’ve come a long way to find her. You can go get her or I will.”

  “She not well.”

  “More reason I should find her.”

  “Please,” she said, touching Cole’s wrist as he began to move past her to go and search the house. “Let me explain something, OK?”

  “You’ve got one minute.”

  “This lady, she not free to go.”

  “Time’s up. I’ll find her myself.”

  Cole started to move past her again.

  “You try and take her, he will kill you,” she said.

  “You mean Gypsy Davy?”

  “Yes.”

  “He might not care for the results if he tries. Where is she?”

  The woman wore a dress of green silk that whispered with her every movement. “He will kill me, if you take her.”

  “Not my problem, lady. You should have thought of that before you got involved.”

  “He gave me no choice. He said he would kill me and kill my nana if I didn’t take her in. He said he would cut our throats.”

  “What do you expect, you associate with cut-throats to begin with? Maybe you should find a new line of work.”

  “I can’t ….”

  “I’ll find her myself. Tell me this. Is he with her now?”

  She shook her head. “No, he hasn’t been here for two days.”

  “Where is she?”

  “You take her and go!” she said abruptly. “I show you her, you take her and get her out of here, as far away as you can.”

  Cole followed her to the back of the house, past several doorways, some partly open. Inside one of the rooms Cole saw a woman lying on her side on a pallet on the floor, her eyes half open, her lips wordlessly moving. The pungent odor of opium was thick in the air. When they reached the back of the house, they went out a rear door to a small building where the woman took a key from her pocket and turned it in the lock.

  “You kept her locked up?”

  “He tell me to. He say … ‘You make sure she don’t run away. You make sure nobody get to her.’”

  Cole pushed the woman aside and stepped into the dim interior. He could again smell the pungent stench of opium. Several thin blades of light pierced the cracks between the wallboards. In a matter of seconds his eyesight adjusted enough that he could see the figure huddled in the corner of the room. His heart hammered hard.

  “Ella.” He whispered her name as he crossed the room and kneeled before her. In the stripes of light, he could see glimpses of her eyes. She had the frightened look of a startled animal, one that had been trapped.

  “Ella, it’s me, John Henry.”

  A sob broke from her throat, an utterance of fear as he reached out and touched her arm. She shivered from the touch.

  “She sick,” the Oriental woman in the doorway said. “I told you … very, very sick.”

  Cole started to come closer, to draw her into him, but she recoiled, murmuring words that were unintelligible, small sounds like those of a child that had been whipped. Cole’s hand struck something on the mattress beside her—a glass pipe that shattered—spilling its contents of water.

  “You’ve got her doped,” Cole said over his shoulder to the woman. “No wonder she’s sick. How long has she been like this?”

  “Three days, maybe. Not me, him. He tell me do it, so I do. He tell me make her smoke opium, so I do. He tell me I no do what he want, he kill us all.”

  “Jesus,” Cole muttered, not believing what he was hearing or seeing. “Go get me a blanket,” he said to the woman. When she didn’t move for a moment, he got angry. “Go get me a blanket or what he threatened to do to you will be nothing compared to what I’ll do!”

  She hurried away.

  “Ella, it’s John Henry Cole. You remember me. I know you do.” He touched her hands, took them in his as gently as he knew how, and held them. She tried to resist, but then let herself go limp almost as quickly. She had no real resistance left in her. Cole continued to say her name, telling he
r his, hoping that somehow it would break through her fear and confusion. She sobbed and shook and his heart ached at the sight.

  The woman returned with the blanket, tossed it to Cole, and said: “Here, you hurry, take her, and get out! He come, I tell him you here, tell him you come trying to steal her, I try and stop you. I don’t care he kill you!”

  Cole took the blanket and wrapped it around Ella and picked her up. She was frail, a quaking of bones, and he carried her out of the building and into the light. The anger in him welled up at the full sight of her. She was pale, nearly bloodless except for the darkness around her eyes. Her hair was tangled and dirty; the cotton shift she wore was stained. She was unwashed, and she covered her eyes quickly against the light, crying softly.

  “You better hurry!” the Oriental woman chirped. “He come back soon, find you with her, he kill you, kill all of us!”

  Cole walked the six or so blocks from Water Street to the Alamo Hotel with Ella in his arms, ignoring the looks of passers-by, ignoring everything but his own anger and need to protect Ella from any further depredations.

  The man behind the desk of the Alamo came around and said: “Hey, you can’t bring her in here! Why, looks like she’s in need of a doctor, and this ain’t no hospital!”

  “Which room is Roy Bean’s?”

  “Pardon me, sir, but you’ll have to leave.”

  “Mister, I set this woman down, I’m drawing my pistol and killing whatever son-of-a-bitch happens to be in my sights. Now you tell me where Roy Bean’s room is! Better still, you take me to him.”

  Roy Bean answered the desk clerk’s first knock, saw Cole holding Ella, and stepped aside.

  “Sorry for the intrusion, Mister Bean,” the desk clerk said. “But this feller insisted. Should I call the police?”

  Roy Bean handed the man a pair of silver dollars and said: “No, these are friends of mine. Why don’t you go down to the bar and bring us a nice bottle of whiskey. Charge it to my account. Bring up some hot water and some clean towels while you’re at it.”

  The clerk took his leave as Cole was laying Ella on the bed.

  “Friend of yours?” Bean asked. “She looks in bad shape.”

  “She’s in trouble. She’ll need a doctor.”

  “I’ll go tell the boy to get one of those, too.”

  Roy Bean left the room and Cole was alone with Ella at last, no one and nothing standing between them any longer.

  She lay curled up in a ball under the blanket, still shaking, still whimpering. Cole stroked her hair and spoke to her, told her how sorry he was that this had happened. He wasn’t sure if the words meant anything to her or not. It didn’t matter—they were words he needed to say to her, words he’d been needing to say for a long time. “Ella, I never should have left you when I did. I was a fool.”

  Maybe it was the words, or maybe the simple fact he’d not abused her but sat there and stroked her hair, for she calmed and lay silently beneath his hand. Cole had to fight back tears, seeing her like that. In that moment of peace, of her stillness, he couldn’t even vow vengeance on the man who’d done this to her. All he could do was avow: “Ella, I love you. Don’t leave me.”

  She opened her eyes once, looked at him, then closed them again.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “How long you figure she’ll be like that?” Roy Bean asked.

  They were sitting on the gallery of his place—a wooden courthouse, store front, and whiskey den he’d paid Mexicans to build. It was in an empty, aimless land, except for the nearby Pecos River. A land of mesquite and Gila monsters and enough bad hombres to keep Roy Bean in business as a self-appointed judge with a handful of hired Mexican vaqueros to act as officers of his court. There were a few other buildings nearby that comprised a village of sorts. Upon his arrival Bean had pronounced the place Langtry after the well-known actress, Lily Langtry—a woman he adored but one he’d never met. He kept a photograph of her above his bed and another above the bar.

  Ella preferred to keep to herself in a spare room the judge had fixed up for her. Cole had accepted Bean’s invitation to bring her to this place of refuge. Cole was torn between wanting to protect and care for Ella, and wanting to go find Gypsy Davy and kill him. But Roy Bean had exercised his judgment by stating that if Cole went after Gypsy Davy, he’d be leaving Ella alone with no one to protect her. “That hombre has outfoxed you before, John Henry,” Bean had observed back in San Antone. “There’s nothing to say he couldn’t do it again. It’s best you and Ella come with me down to the Pecos country. Let the hand of fate take care of Gypsy Davy … sooner or later he’ll come to a bad end.” It had been a solid enough argument.

  Now here they were, nearly a month later. Roy Bean had paid a Mexican woman to feed and care for Ella’s every need, and in that respect Ella was thriving. But she continued to remain silent, refusing to talk about what had happened to her and Cole hadn’t pushed it.

  “I wish I knew,” Cole said, in answer to the judge’s question about Ella’s mental condition.

  Bean was ciphering figures in a ledger book held on his lap. “Fines,” he said, wetting the stub of his pencil before each entry. “Figure three dollars if convicted of petty theft. Five for wrongful shooting or stabbing. Ten for illegal whiskey peddling … anything that don’t come through me … twenty for stealing a horse, and twenty-five for contempt of court. That should do her to begin with. I can change it around later if I need to. Now all I need is for some hombres to break the law.”

  Maybe it was the sameness of the day-in, day-out existence they’d come to live, but Cole was feeling restless, worried that Ella might not ever be the same woman she had been, worried that he might not ever find out the truth of what happened to her. He needed to understand. “I think I’ll go in and check on her, Roy.”

  Bean scratched around in his beard, which by now was flourishing into a nest of gray wires. The big straw sombrero pulled down low over his eyes and the silver pistol in his belt made him look like a real hardcase. “Image is everything,” he’d said the first time Cole had seen him in his frontier clothes.

  Ella was sitting by the window, her face to the light, when Cole entered the room. She didn’t turn to look at him—she never did.

  Cole took a chair and pulled it close. “How’re you feeling?”

  “I’m OK.”

  “Would you like to go for a walk? We could walk down by the river.”

  She sat silently, her hands folded in her lap, as though she were posing for a portrait. Perhaps it was the way the light caught in her hair or the way it touched her cheek or the soft curve of her neck, but Cole had never seen her look more beautiful.

  “We could just walk,” he said. “You wouldn’t have to talk. Neither of us would. It might be good to get out of the room for a bit.”

  Still she didn’t move or say anything. Cole stood to leave, his hand reaching for the doorknob when she said: “OK.”

  Roy Bean was telling his Mexican deputies how it was important that they not hang a suspect until after he’d tried them. His Spanish was poor and their English non-existent and he was gesturing a lot with his hands. He stopped when he saw Cole and Ella emerge. Cole thought Bean was nearly as happy as Cole was to see her finally leave the building.

  “We’re just going to take a little walk down by the river,” Cole said. Later he said: “Do you want to take my hand, Ella?”

  She didn’t reach out, so he took hers, and she didn’t resist.

  They walked in silence. When a jack rabbit hopped from one mesquite bush to another, she stopped and stared at it for the longest time. Then she allowed Cole to guide her the rest of the way to the river.

  They found a stand of cottonwoods where leaves fluttered in the warm wind, and sat on a flat rock at the river’s edge. A yellow bird trilled from a perch among the reeds.

  “I like it here,” Cole said. “Q
uiet and peaceful. I come here when you’re sleeping and think to myself this would be a good place to build a little house, raise a few kids maybe. Roy Bean may have discovered something here.”

  Her gaze followed the water’s current. On the far bank, a large branch lay half submerged, tickling ripples, while the dry end made a resting spot for a dozen small turtles. Cole saw plenty mule deer tracks near the water’s edge and the sun dazzled off the river’s surface like diamonds. A fish flopped downstream, and Ella started and said: “Oh.”

  “It’s OK,” Cole said, touching the back of her hand.

  She looked at him and said: “John Henry.”

  “Yes.”

  Her eyes searched Cole’s. “I … I ….”

  “No need to talk just now, Ella. Just enjoy the peace. Listen to the river, hear how sweet.”

  Her fingers closed around his.

  “It will be OK, Ella. Everything will be OK. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  As the shadows were growing long, they returned to Roy Bean’s. It never ceased to amaze Cole, the number of signs the judge had painted and nailed up, advertising his business, one declaring him Law West of the Pecos—a man whose courtroom was an upturned whiskey barrel and a folding table, and if it rained hard, he held court inside instead of out. Bean sat there, peacefully snoozing, dreaming, no doubt, about Lily Langtry, a man content in the world he’d created for himself. Cole realized then that Bean was a lot smarter than most.

  “Would you care to take supper with me outside this evening?” he asked Ella. “The judge would be most appreciative of the company, and it looks like it’s going to be a beautiful sunset.” She seemed uncertain for a moment, then nodded, and Cole felt that possibly, at last, she was starting to come back from whatever dark world she’d plunged into.

  They sat around the long table the judge had his deputies station in the yard while Mexican women served them tortillas, frijoles, pan-fried nopales, steaks from a young steer the judge had ordered butchered just for the occasion, and champagne from his personal stock.