Winter Kill

by Bill Brooks

  “We won’t let him get her, jefe,” Xavier promised.

  “Good, get going.”

  Cole made his way to the river and took up a position behind one of the thick cottonwoods where he could take clear aim at the rock outcropping. Hector’s body had already floated downstream and Rodrigo lay face down as though he were taking a siesta there on the warm bank.

  Cole waited for any sign of movement from the rocks and asked himself after an hour what the hell was going on until he realized that Gypsy Davy wouldn’t still be there. He was too crafty for that. He’d eliminated two of them, then in the confusion had made his escape. Cole cursed himself for not having figured Gypsy Davy’s next move and retreated back to the house.

  That’s where he found them, Juan and Xavier, their throats slit, and his heart sank.

  The door of the courthouse flew open and Gypsy Davy stepped out onto the gallery, one arm around Ella’s waist, a small but deadly blade pressed to the side of her neck.

  “Don’t be foolish,” he said. “Throw down that rifle and rid yourself of those pistols.”

  Ella looked at Cole, her eyes reflecting utter despair. Cole had failed her again.

  “Seems we all want her,” Gypsy Davy said. “Enough that we’re willing to die for her. Are you willing to die for her, sir? Better yet, is she willing to die for you?”

  “What sort of man would kill the woman he supposedly loves?” Cole asked.

  Gypsy Davy’s face flashed anger, then amusement. “Love? What would you know about it? Love is not wanting to live without the object of your affection. If I cannot have Ella, then nobody will.”

  “You’re a coward,” Cole said. His anger boiling as much at himself as it was at Gypsy Davy.

  He laughed. “Do you think by calling me names that will somehow save your life or hers? Honestly, Ella, what sort of rustic have you taken up with? A man who can’t even protect you, just as the last one and the one before that weren’t able to protect you. Only I can do that, my darling. You should know …”

  It was as though his knife-hand simply exploded, followed by the sound of rolling thunder. The blood splatter covered Ella and instinctively she screamed as Gypsy Davy was knocked backward, releasing his grip on her. Cole was on him in an instant, hammering his face, the bloody stump of his hand flailing wildly, trying to hold Cole off.

  Whether from pain or fear or both, Gypsy Davy drove his full weight against Cole in one mad charge, and they went over the railing and landed on the ground, hard, with him atop Cole. The force knocked the wind from Cole’s lungs and in that instant Gypsy Davy grabbed a Derringer from his pocket and stuck it in Cole’s face. Cole slapped the hand away just as he pulled one of the triggers, the shot grazing Cole’s cheek. Gypsy Davy’s strength, however badly wounded he was, was unbelievable.

  Cole struck him twice in the jaw, knocking him off, and scrambled to his feet. Gypsy Davy was coming up with the Derringer when Cole slammed a forearm to the side of his head at the same time as he drove a knee into his face. Gypsy Davy flopped on his back and lay still.

  Cole staggered to Ella’s side. “Are you all right?”

  She was desperately wiping the blood from the side of her face. “Yes, yes!” Her voice was filled with terror. “What happened …?”

  Cole didn’t know. Then he heard the sound of a rider, the soft clop of hoofs on the hardpan, and looked around. It was Harve Ledbettor! He dismounted, carrying a Winchester. “Hell of a shot for a one-armed man,” Cole said.

  “Not such a good shot, considering I was aiming to blow off his pumpkin,” Harve said. He looked at Cole, then at Ella. They both knew the risk he’d taken. An inch or two off the mark, she would have been dead. Cole tried not to think about it, because he knew that sooner or later Gypsy Davy would have killed Ella—if not with a knife, then some other way not as kind. As though he had read Cole’s mind, Harve said to Ella: “I didn’t have a choice. I hope you know that.” She gave him a knowing look, and he said: “Well, I guess we’re done here. I guess we can all go home now …”

  A bang like the slap of a screen door sounded, and Harve spun sideways, sinking to the ground. Cole came around instinctively, drawing the Deane Adams, and shot Gypsy Davy, the little pearl-handled Derringer clutched in his fist. His body jerked once, then lay still.

  Harve sat there in the dust, clutching his hip, blood trickling through his fingers.

  “Damn it to hell and gone,” he moaned. “He’s as bad a shot as me.”

  “Why’d you come back?” Cole asked, kneeling beside him, stuffing his fancy red kerchief in the wound in his hip.

  “Aw, hell, John Henry. When’d I ever listen to anybody?”

  “Maybe you will now.”

  Harve looked at the patch job, grinned weakly, and said: “You think Cleo would cotton to a one-armed man who’s got himself a limp?”

  “It’s what’s in here, partner,” Cole said, tapping his shirt pocket. “I think she’ll like you clear down to her shoes.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll stop in Cheyenne on my way back to Denver and see does she like soirées.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Roy Bean asked: “Where’s all my deputies?” John Henry Cole told him what had happened. He sat down on the top step of the gallery and said: “Holy Jesus … they’re all dead?”

  “They didn’t have to die,” Cole said. “They stayed because they were loyal and good men.”

  Bean removed his top hat, the one he’d worn to Chicago with the fancy suit, and fanned air on himself. “Hector was the only one could speak any English,” he said. “I’ll miss him something terrible. The others, too. They might not have spoke English, but they played dominoes good and knew how to catch fat catfish.”

  “I hope you’ll see if they got families, that they’re taken care of, Roy.”

  “Not to worry, we’re all like family here. Got to be, we’re all we got … just each other.”

  “I didn’t mean to visit harm on you or your men,” Cole confessed.

  Bean shook his head. “I invited you, remember?” They sat there for a few moments, then he said: “Ella, she OK?”

  “She’ll make it, Judge.”

  “She inside?”

  “No. She went back to Nebraska. She had an aunt who lived there. There’s a home waiting for her. Some place peaceful. The only one here besides me is Harve Ledbettor, still healing up.”

  “What about you?” Bean asked. “You going to join Ella?”

  “Maybe someday, Judge. She needs time to bury the dead.”

  He took a deep breath, let it out. “Damn if I couldn’t stand a drink. You?”

  They drank liquor on the gallery and watched the first rain in weeks drip off the eaves.

  “I never got to see Lily,” Bean admitted. His cravat was twisted, his fancy shirt dusty. “She’d gotten ill and the performance got canceled. I paid a stagehand to let me sit in the theater even though I knew she wasn’t coming. In my mind I could see her up on the stage, singing a song just for me. Later I’d take her flowers and ask her to escort me to dinner where we’d eat oysters and drink fine champagne and laugh and talk the night away.”

  “I’m sorry you didn’t get to see Lily.”

  “I am, too, in a way. Thing is, I still got her here,” he said, tapping a stubby finger to his heart. “She’ll always be there. I don’t suppose you can probably understand that … a man foolish as me?”

  “I understand what you mean, Judge.”

  “What’re your immediate plans?”

  “Hadn’t thought about it, Roy. Why do you ask?”

  “Well,” he said, “it’d be nice to have a deputy that spoke some Americano, somebody I could play dominoes with whilst waiting for lawbreakers.”

  “You offering me a job?”

  “You needing one?”

  the end


  About the Author

  Bill Brooks is the author of twenty-five novels of historical and frontier fiction. After a lifetime of working a variety of jobs, from shoe salesman to shipyard worker, Brooks entered the health care profession where he was in management for sixteen years before turning to his first love—writing. Once he decided to turn his attention to becoming a published writer, Brooks worked several more odd jobs to sustain himself, including wildlife tour guide in Sedona, Arizona, where he lived and became even more enamored with the West of his childhood heroes, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. Brooks wrote a string of frontier fiction novels, beginning with The Badmen (1992) and Buscadero (1993), before he attempted something more lyrical and literary in the critically acclaimed: The Stone Garden: The Epic Life of Billy the Kid (2002). This was followed in succession by Pretty Boy: The Epic Life of Pretty Boy Floyd (2003) and Bonnie & Clyde: A Love Story (2005). The Stone Garden was named by Booklist as one of the top ten Westerns of the decade. After that trio of novels, Brooks was asked to return to frontier fiction by an editor who had moved to a new publisher and he wrote in succession three series for them, beginning with Law For Hire (2003), then Dakota Lawman (2005), and finishing up with The Journey of Jim Glass (2007). The Messenger (Five Star, 2009) was Brooks’s twenty-second novel. Blood Storm (Five Star, 2011) was the first novel in a series of John Henry Cole adventures. It was praised by Publishers Weekly as a well-crafted story with an added depth due to its characters. Brooks now lives in northeast Indiana.