Chapter Five

The pistol shots were like whip cracks. They came from the direction of the Blue Star Saloon, three doors down and across the street from where Cole was sitting. He saw the kid stagger through the doors of the Blue Star, holding his side. The same youth who had earlier helped Cole bury Ike Kelly. He was just a boy, really—young, straight black hair, skin as brown as the desert. He had a wide-eyed look, like he’d been surprised, or maybe had seen something that didn’t exist for others.

Long Bill followed him into the street; a pistol in his left hand trailed blue smoke. The kid seemed lost, staggering this way and that, blood soaking the bottom half of his shirt, spilling through his hands.

Several more people came out of the Blue Star behind Long Bill; they were holding their whiskey glasses and beer mugs. One of them was Leo Foxx, the city marshal, Long Bill’s boss.

Longly continued to follow the kid outside as he staggered into the street, trying to find some direction of escape. A teamster driving his freight down the center of the street had to jerk hard on the reins of his team to avoid running over the boy. José took two more stumbling steps, then fell to his knees. He was muttering in Spanish, asking for his mother, asking for God to save him, praying for his life.

Cole didn’t think it was any of his business, and really it wasn’t, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to put a few rounds into Bill Longly. He was standing over the kid, watching him die. So was Leo Foxx and the others, like it was some sort of stage play or a circus they’d paid money to see.

Maybe Longly was surprised that Cole was interfering with his entertainment. “Why’d you shoot this boy?” he asked.

Longly snorted, looked at Cole much the same way he’d looked at Cimarron Cindy on the balcony of the Blue Star that morning just before he’d slapped her. “Mind your own business, Cole!”

Cole looked at the crowd. “Somebody take this boy to Doc Price’s,” he said. Everyone seemed nearly as disappointed that Cole had interfered as Long Bill did. Then to his credit, Leo Foxx ordered a couple of the bummers to carry José over to Dr. Price’s office. José moaned when they picked him up, moaned and leaked blood all over their boots.

“I’ll ask you again,” Cole said, having never taken his attention from Long Bill. “Why’d you shoot that boy?”

“Go to hell, Cole!”

“One of us is about to.”

Leo Foxx drew an amused look on his fry-pan face. “Better watch it, John Henry. Long Bill’s a fast man with a gun, or didn’t you know that?”

“First him, then you, Foxx.”

He lost the smile. “That a threat? You threatening to take on the entire Cheyenne police department? ’Cause that’s what it’ll be if that’s the way you want it.”

“What the hell kind of law is it that would shoot an unarmed boy?”

“He was stealing a glass of beer … Long Bill’s beer!” Foxx said, as if that justified anything.

“A ten-cent beer and you shot him for that?”

“Yeah, and I’d shoot the little greaser again if he was to try it again. I hate god-damn’ greasers! I had my fill of ’em in Texas!” Longly cursed.

Foxx had moved out to the side of Long Bill, the other deputy had taken a similar position to their right. The rest of the crowd figured they might get their money’s worth after all. Cole didn’t much care. There were just some things he couldn’t walk away from. This was one of them.

“We’ll bury you next to your pard, Ike Kelly,” Foxx said. “How’ll that be, Cole?”

Long Bill was a gunhand, and so was Leo Foxx. The deputy Cole couldn’t be sure of. He’d concentrate on Longly and Foxx and worry about the remainder of Cheyenne’s police force if he was still standing at the end. Longly already had his gun in his hand, but Cole could see it in his eyes. He wasn’t entirely sure that Cole wasn’t fast enough to kill him.

That was the thing about a pistol fight. Few were willing to be the first one to take a bullet. Cole could see it in Longly’s face that he was hoping Leo Foxx would make the first play, and Foxx was waiting for Longly to be the one. Cole supposed the deputy was waiting for both of them, hoping they’d kill Cole in the process so he wouldn’t have to be tested. Time seemed to stand still.

Just then a loud voice from back of the crowd caused it to separate down the center and allow a new player to enter the act. Will Harper was carrying a shotgun with sawed-off barrels. He had it aimed directly at the guts of Longly, but if he pulled the triggers, some of the buckshot would hit Foxx and the deputy and maybe one or two others standing near them.

“I use dimes in my loads,” Will said. “You boys ever seen what a load of dimes will do to a body?”

The three didn’t seem to know exactly how much damage a shotgun loaded with dimes could do. If they did, they weren’t saying. Suddenly it was as quiet as a graveyard.

“Something like this will tear a man up real bad,” Will said. “I know, I seen it done.”

Foxx studied him for a long hard second. “Who the hell are you?”

“Does it really matter?”

Longly started to speak, but Will cut him off with a short wave of the twin barrels.

“Naw, don’t waste your breath, mister. Either get to it, or get the hell on down the street.”

“These men are deputized officers of the law,” Foxx managed to say, though his heart wasn’t any longer in the argument. “And I’m the city marshal.”

“Well, I guess they can put that in tomorrow’s newspaper and on your gravestones so everyone will know,” Will said. “Go on, make your play, my beer’s getting warm.”

Cole could see it in Will’s eyes. Harper was thoroughly drunk, but his hands didn’t shake, and Cole didn’t think he much cared if there was more blood to be shed or not, even if it ended up being his own. He was set for a fight. The others could see it, too, that Will didn’t care, and seeing it cost them their will.

“Come on, Bill,” Foxx mumbled. “We got a poker game to finish. Fred, you go on over to Cavandish’s and tell him his gravedigger’s been in a accident and is over to Doc’s getting taken care of.”

Will waited until they dispersed before cradling the shotgun in the crook of his arm.

“Thanks for the help,” Cole said.

“You change your mind about going with me yet?”

“No.”

“Well, I’m through drinking now. I reckon I’ll go see that whore you told me about … what was her name again?”

“Cimarron Cindy,” Cole said. “But I’d keep that shotgun handy next to the bed if I were you.”

“Why’s that?”

“That tall gentleman you just threatened to deposit that double load of dimes in is Cindy’s common-law husband.”

“Well, now, I’ll just see if I can’t talk her into getting a divorce.” Will grinned. Even drunk, he could be scary.

Cole walked over to Dr. Price’s to see how José was. Cavandish was there when he arrived.

“I’m told you stopped Bill Longly from finishing him,” Cavandish said. “For that, I am grateful. I think of José as my own son.”

“How bad is he?” Cole asked Dr. Price.

“How bad would you be if you got shot twice in the body?” Doc said, without interrupting his treatment.

“I wish I could have stopped it sooner,” Cole told Cavandish. José moaned even though the doctor had put him under with a sponge soaked in ether.

“Why did this happen?” Cavandish’s cadaverous features were stricken with the grief he felt for the boy. His head was full of questions no one could answer, or, if they did, none of the answers would have made any sense.

Cole couldn’t bring himself to tell Cavandish the boy had been shot over the theft of a 10¢ glass of beer. He didn’t need to remind Cavandish of how cheap life had become on the frontier. He’d buried enough men to know that already.

“I wish the boy good luck,” Cole said.

Cavandish looked up from where he’d been staring at his hands. There wasn’t any more words they could tell each other that would change anything, so they didn’t try.

Cole walked over to Shorty’s Diner, intending to have supper before checking on the speckled bird, then going back to his room. But halfway there, he decided that wasn’t what he really wanted to do.

Shorty was standing at the counter with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. His left eye squinted against the smoke.

“John Henry,” he said, “I heard you, Foxx, and Long Bill almost rubbed each other out.”

“If it hadn’t been for Will Harper,” Cole said, “we probably would have.”

“Longly shot that kid who was Cavandish’s helper? José Hernandez?”

“Yes.”

“For what?”

“For a glass of beer.”

Without changing expressions, Shorty said: “Why ain’t I surprised?”

He poured Cole a cup of coffee.

“Let me ask you,” Cole said. “Do you know where Ella Mims lives?”

He squinted through the smoke. “North end of town. A little clapboard house with flower boxes under the winders. Hard to miss. The only place that end of town with flowers under the winders.”

“Thanks.”

“None of my business.”

“Then don’t ask.”

“I won’t.”

Then as Cole got ready to leave, Shorty said: “She’s a nice lady from what I know.”

“Thanks for the coffee. Next time, leave out the arsenic.”

“Next time leave a nickel on the counter.”

Cole figured the speckled bird might like a chance to throw him in the dirt again, or show him how fast she could run if given her head. He stopped by the livery and put his Dunn Brothers saddle on her, then spurred her into a dog trot before putting her into an easy lope. When they both got comfortable with that, he let her have her head. The wind almost took off his hat. She was quick and she was fast, and, if Cole had let her, she might have run clear to the mountains.

“You sure don’t act like any thirty-dollar horse,” Cole told her as he slowed her to a walk on the way back to the town. Of course, she hadn’t taken a bite out of him yet to prove she actually was just a $30 horse. But it wasn’t the speckled bird he was thinking about as the little clapboard house with the flower boxes under the windows came into view.

Cole reined in, dismounted, and tied the bird to the picket fence out front. “Don’t eat the lady’s flowers,” he instructed. The bird simply eyed him like it was he she’d rather try eating.

Cole knocked on the door, and, when it opened, Miss Mims didn’t seem all that surprised to see him. She didn’t say anything, but stepped back to allow him to enter. He remembered to take off his hat. She just looked at him.

“I didn’t really want to spend the evening alone,” Cole said.

“I’ll hang your hat up,” she said.

Cole viewed three-dimensional photographs through a stereoscope in the parlor while she fixed dinner. They ate at a small table sitting across from each other. Cole couldn’t really say what it was she’d fixed; his mind was not on the meal.

Later, they went into the parlor and drank sherry, and he asked her to tell him about herself, and she did. And then she asked him to tell her about himself, and he did, or at least as much as he was able to without revisiting the old places of the heart that still brought too much pain.

The hours went by, and she had to light a lamp, but Cole asked if they could go into the other room, where the fireplace was, and they did, and he built a fire and that was all the light the room needed as far as he was concerned.

They sat on the floor in front of the fireplace, and he told her how, the first time he had seen her, he had thought she was attractive, and she blushed slightly, but he could tell that she knew already, before he’d even said it, what he thought of her.

They talked until the fire burned nearly down, and he offered to go outside and bring in some more wood, and she said that it wasn’t necessary. Then he offered that maybe he should leave.

“I thought you didn’t want to be alone tonight?” she said.

“I don’t.”

“Then why do you want to leave?”

“I just thought ….”

She placed the tips of her fingers on his mouth. “I don’t want to be alone tonight, either,” she said.

The kiss was like something they’d both been waiting for all their lives. Her mouth was sweet, flavored by the sherry. Her hair smelled of soap, and, when he unpinned it, it fell over his hands like strands of silk. And when he pulled his hands away to unbutton her blouse, she kissed them first. He took her face and held it and kissed her mouth again. She made a sound that made him want to kiss her harder.

He felt the coolness of her fingers race over his chest, and he felt her smooth bare skin under the tips of his fingers, velvety and warm in a way that made him weak and hungry for her all at once. And there, in the muted light of a dying fire, he lifted her to him, her hair cascading over his face, her breasts brushing his chest, her bare legs entwining his, and no words were needed to explain or confess their desires. Only the burning coals, only the long sweet night, only the lonely wind outside the door, were to witness their truth.