Chapter Six

Old habit woke Cole early. The light outside the windows was shaded somewhere between darkness and dawn. Cole felt her there beside him, Ella Mims, her hair soft and silky on his shoulder and chest, her face close to his. He didn’t want to disturb her, but Will Harper had said he was leaving at first light and Cole wanted to be leaving with him.

“Ella,” he whispered.

She stirred.

“Ella, I have to be going.”

She opened her eyes, looked at him in the dim gray twilight. Sometime during the night, she had gone into the bedroom and brought back a blanket and they had wrapped up in it. It had felt good to have her there next to him under that blanket. The kind of good that made a man want never to leave. Her fingers traced the curve of his jaw.

“I have to leave,” he said again.

She was a woman who spoke openly with her eyes. “Kiss me before you go,” she said.

He did, a long lingering kiss that sent heat through his veins.

Cole got dressed while she watched him from the warmth of the blanket. The room was cold, the fire long extinguished. He could hear the wind scratching along the outer walls of the house. Outside, it looked cold and dark and uninviting. It seemed he was always leaving what he wanted for what he didn’t want, always moving away from the warm places of the heart to the cold places of the unknown.

“How long do you think you’ll be gone?” Ella asked.

“Hard to say. Will Harper has been chasing this man for more than a month and he’s still chasing him. Will’s the best manhunter I know of, that means the man he’s chasing is going to be hard to catch.” He saw the look in her eyes. “Maybe with two of us, we’ll catch him sooner rather than later.”

“I may be gone by the time you get back,” she said. “That is if you were intending to come back.”

He was reminded of what she had said yesterday about having to leave Cheyenne because of losing everything she owned in the fire. “Where will you go?” This time it was his turn to feel disappointment.

“I have an aunt who lives in Nebraska,” she said. “Perhaps I’ll go there first.”

“I have a friend in Nebraska,” Cole said. “His name is Bill Cody. He lives near North Platte.” He went on to explain that Bill often ran a touring company of actors and did stage plays throughout the country, and in between engagements he led hunting parties for the rich and famous. He also explained that Bill had a jealous wife and plenty of admirers, many of whom were young actresses.

“He sounds like a very interesting man,” she said.

“A lot of people think he is. There’s even been some dime novels written about him.”

“North Platte is not that far from Ogallala,” she said. “My aunt lives in Ogallala.”

“In case you get around to North Platte,” Cole said, “you might stop in and see Bill and tell him you’re a friend of mine. I’m sure if you still need work, Bill would give you a job.”

“As an actress in one of his stage plays?” She smiled.

“Why not, Ella, you’re attractive enough. More than attractive enough.”

“You don’t think that Missus Cody would be jealous,” she teased.

“Probably so.”

“Why do I get the feeling you have lived quite an untamed life?” she said. “You and your friends.”

“You wouldn’t be that far wrong.”

“Do you suppose you could tell me more about it someday? Your untamed life?”

“Maybe someday.”

He rubbed frost from the glass and looked out the window after he pulled on his boots. A blood-red sun was peeking over a slate-gray horizon.

“What are you looking at?” she asked.

“I just hope that thirty-dollar horse of mine hasn’t eaten up all your flowers.”

She laughed. “It wouldn’t matter,” she said. “The frost will have killed them anyway.”

He walked over to where she was, reached beneath the blankets, and took her in his arms again. He could feel the heat of her, the warm sweet scent of her causing him not to want to let go. “You’re an uncommon woman, Ella. I just wanted to tell you that.”

Cole looked into those clear-as-glass gray eyes and knew he’d miss her before he got as far as the town’s limits. But it couldn’t be helped. Will wouldn’t wait for Jesus.

“I have this feeling,” she said, “that I will never see you again. Why do I have this feeling?”

“I think you’re wrong about that.”

She smiled. “I hope that I am.”

He kissed her and walked out into air so cold and brittle you could almost hear it cracking as you passed through it. The speckled bird stood there, asleep, oblivious it seemed to the cold night. But as he came up to her, her ears pricked up, and she rolled those big dark eyes in his direction.

“Don’t ruin the last few good hours of my life by trying to bite a chunk out of me,” he warned. He swung up in the saddle, making sure he kept the bird’s head in check, just in case she was hungry after having spent the night eyeing Ella’s flowers.

Will Harper was adjusting his gear on the pack mule in front of the Inter-Ocean Hotel when Cole rode up. He looked first at Cole, then at the speckled bird.

“Never seen a horse with quite that coloration,” he muttered. “Exactly what color would you call that?”

“Don’t know that there’s a name for it.”

He tightened a knot on his pack. “I seen a dog once in a Comanche camp that was about that color.” He moved around to the opposite side of the mule in order to tighten another knot. “It had a real sweet taste to it, that dog did, when me and those Comanches ate it. ’Course that was before the Comanches started fighting the white man and you could go into their camps and eat dog with them. You can’t do that any more.”

When Will was satisfied the pack was well set, he walked over to have a better look at the speckled bird.

“I wouldn’t get too close to her, Will.”

“Why not?”

“I’m told this mare bites.”

He stopped his advance and simply gazed at her. “Look at her eyes,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that horse won’t someday fall over on you first chance she gets, or kick out your brains. She looks like she hates white people as much as the Comanches do. If you paid more’n ten dollars for her, you paid too much.”

“I paid thirty.”

He simply shook his head and said: “Let’s get going.”

They followed the road northwest toward the Blue Mountains. Even from a long way off, you could see the Blue Mountains had fresh snow on their peaks. Ella had been right. The cold weather would kill her flowers.

Clouds the color of cannon smoke drifted against a light blue sky. Even though it was so late in the year, they could feel the heat from the sun on their backs. A broad plain of silvery sage spread before them, clear to the mountains, and you could smell the sweet scent of the sage whenever the wind came from the right direction.

They rode most of the morning without conversation, then stopped around noon by a small tributary whose waters flowed from high up in the mountains, clear and cold as metal. They built a small smokeless fire, and Will set a pot of coffee on to boil and a pan of bacon to fry.

“I was wondering if we were going to take time to eat lunch,” Cole said.

“I take it you worked up quite an appetite last night,” he said, looking at Cole across the fire like some little devil was whispering in his ear.

“What would you know about where I was last night?”

“Ran into Shorty over to the White Elephant around ten or eleven. He was drinking peach schnapps. He told me you went to see some woman.”

Cole rolled himself a cigarette, waiting for the chuck to be done. He figured he wasn’t interested in holding a conversation about Ella, or what we had done last night.

Wind swept down from the mountains and they ate their lunch in the great silence of that country before mounting up again.

They rode the rest of the afternoon in the same general silence, their gazes fixed on the distant range ahead of them and the Blue Mountains that never seemed to get any closer. Cole figured Will Harper was still recovering from his bout of drinking and maybe his honeymoon with Long Bill’s woman. Cole meant to ask him about that when they stopped for the evening, sort of as a payback for his asking Shorty about where Cole had spent his night.

They found a spot along the same meandering stream they’d been following as it cut through a stand of cottonwoods where the banks had washed away, exposing the roots of some of the trees. Cole tended to the horses while Will prepared the meal. Then, after they finished eating, Cole made himself a cigarette and offered the makings to Will.

Harper took out a pipe instead and smoked that while they sat around the fire, watching the night crawl over them and the little camp. The sky turned from a silvery blue to a soft rose, then to black velvet that began to fill up with stars.

“How far behind Leviticus Book do you reckon we are?” Cole asked.

“Three, maybe four days,” Will said, sucking on the stem of his clay pipe. “Been three, four days behind him for the better part of two weeks. He’s like those Blue Mountains. It don’t seem I ever get any closer, no matter how much traveling I do.”

“He must be a hard man to catch if you haven’t caught him yet.”

“We’ll catch him, just a matter of when.”

“It takes a lot of patience to trail a man,” Cole said.

Will nodded. “Takes the patience of an Apache,” he said. “Ain’t nobody that’s got the patience of an Apache. But I do my best.”

“There’s got to be easier ways to make a living, Will, for a man your age.”

“I suppose there is. I’ve even tried some of ’em. I tried selling Bibles door to door once in Saint Louis. I didn’t sell many Bibles, but you’d be surprised how many lonely wives just sit around the house all day wishing they had someone to talk to and maybe a few other things as well.”

“Well, I wouldn’t think even a good salesman could get rich selling Bibles.”

“No. But after meeting all those lonely women, I can see why some of those drummers do what they do. It may not be good money, but there sure is a lot of potential for having fun.” He grinned like a coyote. “But it won’t do for me, selling Bibles … or most of that other stuff you have to do in the cities to make a go of it. I guess a hard bark like me can’t change much. Hunting men is what I’m best at. ’Sides, it gives me a real good chance to see some real pleasant country.”

“Sleeping on hard ground and eating fried pork would seem to me to get old at some point, Will.”

“Anything can get old.”

“What happens when you run out of desperados to chase?”

He looked at Cole like Cole had just fallen out of a tree. “You think that day’s ever going to come … that there ain’t going to be any desperados to chase?”

“No, but the day may come when you’re not able to chase them any more.”

“Then I’ll chase whores instead.” He laughed. “They’re slower than desperados and only half as dangerous.”

“Speaking of which ….”

“Long Bill’s woman,” he said, tapping the ashes out of his pipe against the heel of his boot. “I was wondering when you were going to ask me about that. Let me tell you, John Henry, she was worth every red cent. Damned voluptuous woman. Lusty, you might say.”

“Did you keep that shotgun handy the whole time?”

“That and other things.” He grinned.

A wolf howled somewhere far off in the great black emptiness, then was answered by another. Pretty soon a chorus of howls raised from the valley floor, and just that quick they stopped, and the sudden silence almost hurt your ears to listen to it.

It snowed sometime during the night and they awoke under white blankets.

Will jumped up and ran to a tree and relieved himself, then ran back and set up a pot of coffee, and began frying bacon.

“Can’t wait until I can get back to Texas,” he said, rubbing his hands. “It ain’t nearly this cold in Texas, ’cept up around Dallas where they get ice storms. Sometimes the ice storms get so bad, a horse can’t stand up and will slide right out from under you. Seen ice so heavy on trees, it’d break ’em. I don’t care much for Dallas when there’s ice there. I prefer a little farther south.”

They got started on the trail as soon as they had finished their meager breakfast. For the first hour of the ride the air was still cold enough that the breath from the men and horses came out like train steam. But by midmorning, the sun had climbed high enough in the sky that they could feel its warmth on the backs of their hands and necks and they ended up having a pleasant ride all the way to a small town named Broken Wheel.

It was just a collection of log huts, whiskey dens mostly.

“How about stopping for a drink?” Will suggested.

“A little something to oil the bones,” Cole replied.

Will nodded. They reined in, tied the horses to the rail, and went inside a low-slung log affair you had to duck down to keep from bumping your head. The light was so dim inside you couldn’t see the other customers, but you could smell a good many of them. Will and Cole stepped up to the bar, a raw plank resting atop two whiskey barrels.

A bulldog wobbled from behind the bar on short thick legs and sniffed at their boots.

“Don’t mind Petey,” the man behind the bar said. “He’s just checkin’ to see if either of you is a bitch.”

“Your dog can’t tell a human from another dog?” Will asked.

“Naw, he’s blind. Happened when he was a pup and I was carrying him around in my knapsack in the war.”

“What war?” Will said.

“How many wars has been fought in the last twelve years?” the barman said.

“You talking the War Between the States?”

“That’s right. Pea Ridge,” the man said. “That’s where Petey got blinded. A Yankee cannon shell blew up half the troop and blinded my dog.”

“That’s a hard story to believe,” Will said.

“Petey’s going to be eighty-four years old come Christmas day,” the man said. “In dog years, that is.”

“Mister, give us a drink and quit fooling around, huh?” Will demanded.

The man rolled his eyes, and Will shook his head. “An eighty-four-year-old blind bulldog,” he said. “I’ve heard everything.”

They drank the whiskey without spilling any of it—the true sign of men who appreciate the scarcity of drinking liquor on the frontier. Then Will asked the barman if he’d seen a black man any time recently.

“The Double X out east of here’s got two or three Negro cowboys,” the man said.

“I don’t mean cowboys,” Will replied. “I mean a lone black man who you ain’t ever seen before, someone like that.”

The man rubbed his knuckles in one eye. “I don’t know, mister. Them colored people all look pretty much the same to me.”

“Like Indians all look the same,” Cole said.

“Yeah, like Indians,” he agreed.

“Mister, maybe that Yankee shell screwed up more than just your dog’s eyes,” Will replied sarcastically.

“Did you see a black stranger or not?” Cole said, beginning to lose his own patience with the man.

“Might have been a colored man through here a few days ago,” he confessed, seeing that neither customer appreciated his stalling or his blind dog sniffing at their heels. “Anyone would know would be Miss Haversham. She runs a cat-house down the street. Got a colored whore works for her. Girl named Jilly Sweet. Guess they named her right, ’cause she’s sweet as sugar.”

“I guess they don’t all look the same to you, then, do they?” Cole said, but the man didn’t get it.

Will took hold of Cole’s elbow and steered him to the door. “That man’s dumber than a knob,” he said.

They found the brothel easily enough. It was between two whiskey dens and had a red-painted front door. Miss Haversham was a heavy-set woman with powdered cheeks and a gap between her two front teeth when she smiled. Will asked her about Leviticus Book and described him. She confirmed that a man fitting Book’s description had visited her house three nights back.

“Could we talk to the girl he was with that night?” Cole asked.

“She’s busy right this minute,” Miss Haversham said. “You boys can wait for her to finish her present business, or you could have your pick of another gal, though I only got one other, not counting me who is indisposed at the present. Monthlies, you know.”

“No, I had me a good whore couple nights back and am still recovering from it,” Will said. “I think I’ll just wait here in the parlor if you don’t mind.”

“How about you, lanky?” she asked, turning to Cole.

“No thanks. I’ll wait in the parlor with Will.”

“Well, you two are the first men that’s ever come in here just wanting conversation,” Miss Haversham said. “You boys ain’t clever, are you?”

“What do you mean, clever?” Will asked.

“You know, the type of men that don’t like girls? The type that likes other men instead?”

“I like girls plenty!” Will growled. “Didn’t I just say I was with a whore two nights back?”

“Well, I don’t mean nothing by it,” she assured. “Just that I know there are some men is clever is all.”

“Well we ain’t like that,” Will declared. “Now, if you’ll inform your girl we’re waiting to talk to her, it’ll be much appreciated.”

After Miss Haversham left them sitting alone in the parlor, Will said: “You imagine that? Her thinking you and me are clever?”

“Takes all kinds.”

“I don’t much care for this burg,” Will opined. “Blind bulldogs and a big jolly whore that thinks any man who don’t want to buy a whore is clever. I’ll be damned.”

They sat with their hats resting on their knees until the Negro girl, Jilly Sweet, came into the room. She was waif-thin, wearing a cotton shift, pretty, with dark freckles across her nose.

“Miss Haversham said you gents wants to see me?”

Will told her the reason.

She sighed, languished on the horsehair settee across from them, and said: “Yas, I remember Leviticus Book. How could a gal forget? He was like a wild stallion.” She sighed again and rolled her eyes.

Will said: “So you got a good look at him?”

Jilly Sweet stopped her swooning long enough to say: “Why, yas, I surely did. I seen more of that man than his mama did the day he was born.”

“Well, then, I guess you got a real good look at him,” Will ventured.

“Why you be wantin’ to know ’bout Leviticus for anyhow?” Jilly asked, one bare leg crossed over the other, her small brown foot swinging back and forth.

“Because he has killed several men and is wanted by the law,” Will told her. “And you’re lucky he took a liking to you, or who is to say you might not have ended up being his next victim.”

Jilly Sweet’s eyes grew large and white, then she giggled. “Oh, no, suh, the only thing that man’d be killin’ is a poor gal’s heart.”

“I don’t suppose he said anything to you about his future plans?” Will asked. “I don’t suppose this heartbreaker told you which direction he was headed?”

“No, but I shore ’nough wished he had,” Jilly Sweet said.

“Why is that?”

“ ’Cause, if I knowed which way he went, I’d go catch up with him and become his reg’lar gal.”

“Then you must have mush for brains, young lady,” Will said.

Jilly Sweet rolled her eyes and said: “Jus’ ain’t no way I can explain his powers over a female.”

“Powers,” Will grumped as he headed for the door. “I’ve seen and heard enough in this town to last me two lifetimes.”

He was still grumbling as they walked back down the street.

“Blind dogs and lovesick whores. I guess I’ve seen and heard everything. Let’s get riding before a pink elephant comes trotting down the street.”