Chapter Eight

Will woke with a hoot. “Hey, damn!”

Cole came up with the self-cocker in his hand, thinking there was trouble, that maybe they were under attack by road agents or renegade Indians. It was nothing as dramatic as that. Will was bucking out of his blankets along with the young prostitute, Jilly Sweet.

“What the devil you doing here?” Will cawed.

She stood there, shivering in the cold dawn. “I want to go with you to find Leviticus,” she said through chattering teeth. She wore an old Army campaign coat and a flop-brimmed hat and loose trousers that fluttered about her ankles. She looked for all the world like some poor sodbuster, standing there in a pair of run-down brogans.

“Find Leviticus!” Will swallowed several times in exasperation over the surprise package.

“Yas, suh,” Jilly Sweet said, chattering like a squirrel.

“Do you intend on arresting him and collecting the reward money, too?” Will asked, not at all happy with the unexpected turn of events.

“No, suh,” Jilly Sweet said. “I want to find him ’cause I’s in love with him. There ain’t never been no man make me feel like Leviticus do.”

“What does this look like?” Will declared, flinging his arms out. “An expedition for the lovelorn?”

Jilly Sweet just stood there shivering, the whites of her eyes showing little fear from under the soft brim of her hat.

“And what were you doing in my bedroll?” Will demanded.

“Trying to get warm … it mighty cold out here, or ain’t you noticed?”

The wind was whistling through the holey parts of Will’s drawers, and a big Colt pistol now in his hand. Will Harper ought to have been a man embarrassed, but he wasn’t. “Well, who said you could climb in my bedroll anyhow? Why didn’t you climb in John Henry’s bedroll, instead?”

The girl looked at Cole. “I would have, if I’d known you was goin’ to be such an ol’ grump about it. Most mens wouldn’t mind if I’s to climb in their bedrolls wid ’em. I remember now, Miss Haversham sayin’ how she thought maybe you was a clever man.”

“Don’t say that!” Will warned. “I ain’t clever!”

“Will, maybe you ought to get some clothes on,” Cole suggested. “The girl’s right, it’s mighty cold. You’re liable to freeze off some of your vital parts.”

Will looked down at his condition and said—“Oh.”—then quickly started putting on his clothes. Jilly Sweet giggled when Will tried to get his pants on, having put his boots on first, and this caused him to stumble and fall over his saddle. He gave her a fearsome look because of the giggle.

Will finally got on his clothes and said: “You go on back to town now, child, and leave us alone.”

“No, suh, I ain’t goin’ back to town. I come to find Leviticus.”

“Well, do you see him anywhere around here?” Will scowled.

“No,” Jilly Sweet said, “but I know you is lookin’ for him, and I aim to follow you until you find him.”

“Follow me?”

“Yas, suh.”

“You can’t follow me,” Will argued.

“Why not? It’s a free country, ain’t it?”

Will walked around in tight little circles, tugging and pulling on his hat, taking it off, and putting it back on again. “I won’t allow it. And that’s that.”

“Can’t stop it nohow,” Jilly said. “I ride where I wants, goes where I wants, same as you.”

Will walked a little way from camp, then walked back again. “Jesus, John Henry, can’t you do something here? Can’t you try talking to her?”

“I don’t know what I can say that you haven’t already. I guess, if she wants to ride all the way to the Blue Mountains, she can. But I figure she’ll go just a little way, then turn back. What else can be done?”

Will rolled his eyes, shook his head, and walked over to his gear and started packing it on the mule, muttering the whole while.

“He say he goin’ try to stop me?” Jilly Sweet asked.

“No,” Cole said, “but I don’t think you’re going to be welcomed with open arms in his camp. You sure you don’t want to ride back to town?”

“No,” she said, watching Will pack his mule. “I’ll just tag along back yonder a ways. Don’t want to be in his ol’ camp, anyhow. Grumpy ol’ man.”

“You probably just gave him a start, waking up and finding you there in his blankets, is all.”

“Humph!” Jilly grunted, and with that she marched to a little sorrel staked out on a long rope and climbed aboard, prepared to go wherever Will and Cole went.

Cole looked at Will, who was tying knots in his ropes. He was paying no attention to either of them. Cole went over to Jilly Sweet.

“You know, it’s not safe out here for a woman alone. Hell, there’s every kind of sorrow and danger.”

“I won’t exactly be alone.”

“I don’t think Will is going to slow down just so you can keep up, Miss Sweet. In fact, he’ll probably travel a little faster just because of you.”

“He won’t have to do no slowin’ down for me. Me and little Cheater here can keep right up wid anywhere that big ol’ sassy man wants to go.”

Cole gave up, and walked back over to Will.

“I guess we don’t have much choice,” Cole stated.

“Lovesick whores …,” Will muttered. “What next?”

Finally he finished his packing, then turned to Cole and said irritably: “Do you know how to make coffee? Because I sure could use some coffee on a cold dreadful morning like this.”

Will refused to budge from camp until after he had drunk three cups of black coffee and eaten several strips of burned bacon. Cole fixed Jilly Sweet some of the coffee and bacon and carried them over to her. Will stared off at the Blue Mountains, refusing to acknowledge her presence in camp.

“This sure is some good grub,” Jilly Sweet said. “Good coffee, too.”

It just seemed to irritate Will all the more to hear Jilly Sweet compliment Cole on the coffee and bacon.

Finally Will was prepared to leave. Jilly Sweet mounted her little sorrel. Will acted like she wasn’t there. Cole gave the girl his blanket to wrap over her shoulders.

“Thank you kindly,” she said, and took the blanket.

“There’s a lot of empty country out there,” Cole told her, “and all of it’s cold. Least back in town, you’d be warm.”

“I don’t reckon I would, seein’ as how I told Miss Haversham I quit last night,” she announced stubbornly. “Miss Haversham don’t like her girls quittin’ on her. Ever’ girl that quits, means Miss Haversham got to take up the slack for her. Miss Haversham said she gettin’ old and her back be hurtin’ her from all them cowboys ridin’ her. I thinks maybe it’s jus’ ’cause she’s fat and can’t get her wind and move around like them young rascals want. Either way, Miss Haversham don’t take kindly to her girls leavin’ her. Reckon I won’t be goin’ back there, even if I wanted to.”

Will, paying no attention to the girl or Cole, set out toward the Blue Mountains at a quick pace. Jilly Sweet put her little sorrel into a choppy trot.

Cole spurred the speckled bird ahead until he caught up with Will.

Later, after several miles without bothering to turn around to look for himself, breaking the silence between them, he growled: “She still back there?”

“She is, Will.”

He rode along glumly for several more miles. Occasionally he would ask Cole for a report on the girl’s location, and, when Cole would tell him that she was still on their heels, he would grunt and knee his mount to a little faster pace.

“You’re going to wear out your horse,” Cole said at one point.

“It wouldn’t be no great loss to the world if that flea bag you’re riding was to wear out,” Will declared.

But the speckled bird was doing just fine. In fact, she seemed to enjoy the quick pace and the clear cold air of the high country. Cole couldn’t say the same for Will.

The sun followed them and the air turned pleasantly warm, and they stopped by a small creek for their noon meal. Jilly Sweet halted her little sorrel a hundred yards from the resting spot. She dismounted and sat on the ground, watching them.

“We can’t just ignore her, Will,” Cole said as he unwrapped some beef jerky and hardtack.

“Why can’t we? Feed her and it’d be just like feeding a stray cat. I don’t want to encourage her. I want to discourage her.”

“Well, she can have my portion,” Cole said.

“That’s up to you,” Will snapped. “You keep feeding that gal your food and pretty soon you’ll end up looking as flea-bitten as that ugly horse of yours.”

“Careful, Will, I think the speckled bird understands human talk.”

Will tossed Cole a look, then settled into making himself a sandwich of jerky and hardtack, what Cole once heard a captured young Rebel call ’possum cake.

Cole walked out to where Jilly Sweet sat on the ground and gave her his portion of the beef jerky along with the hardtack. She took it without a word and chewed it.

“He still bein’ mean about my comin’ along?” she said after a few minutes of chewing her ’possum cake.

“He’s still not happy that you’re following us.”

“Why’s he so mean an’ contrary, and you so nice?”

“He’s not so mean. He’s just got his ways.”

“He really goin’ to take Leviticus back to get hung?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because Book is wanted for murder. In fact, the reason I’m riding with Will is that one of the people Leviticus Book murdered is a friend of mine.”

She shook her head. Will was sitting with his back to them, facing the Blue Mountains. “Leviticus ain’t never killed no mens except maybe one that was trying to kill him furst.”

“How would you know that?”

“Mans got such tender hands an’ a tender heart. Couldn’t be no way a mans wid such tender hands and heart be killin’ nobody.”

“Well, I’m afraid you’re wrong, Miss Sweet.”

She quickly turned her attention to Cole, her large dark brown eyes flashing with determination. “No, suh. I ain’t. I’s a woman, and womens knows about mens. An’ me, I seen all kinds of mens. Been wid all kinds … good an’ bad. Womens know. I know.”

“Well, that may be. But I know Will well enough to know he wouldn’t be wasting his time chasing after an innocent man.”

“Jus’ cause that mean ol’ boot say Leviticus guilty, don’t mean he is.”

“It’s not just him that says Book is guilty,” Cole reminded her.

“Who else say he is?”

“The law.”

“Huuuh! Law don’t know more’n I know. Law ain’t never felt those tender hands o’ Leviticus’s. The law ain’t never looked into his sweet brown eyes or heard the tender way he talks.”

Jilly Sweet stopped chewing on her jerky and was just sitting there, her eyes big and round, remembering.

“Well, I’m sure the law doesn’t care much about those things, Miss Sweet. I know Will doesn’t, and to be honest with you, I don’t, either.”

“Leviticus ain’t what you think he is,” she said, staring up at Cole like an awe-struck child.

Cole walked back to where Will was sitting, cross-legged, staring at the Blue Mountains. “You talk her into going back to Broken Wheel yet?” he asked.

“No.”

“Damn’ fool girl. Well, let’s get going.”

“It’d make sense to allow her into camp,” Cole suggested as they mounted their horses. “She could cook and clean the plates as payment for her meals.”

“Next thing you’ll want me to do is stop at the nearest town and buy a fiddle so we can have dances every night,” Will growled.

“It might not be a bad way to pass the evenings,” Cole said, only this time Will wasn’t in the mood to be humored.

They arrived in Laramie, a rugged frontier town seated on a high plateau near the Snowy Range, just at dusk. They could see the lights twinkling against the rosy glow of distant sky.

“We’ll check around here,” Will said, reining his horse and mule in front of a saloon. “I’ll ask around and see if anyone’s seen Book.”

“What about her?” Cole asked.

Will looked around. Jilly Sweet was sitting astride her tired little sorrel half a block distant.

“Aw, hell, John Henry, go and see if you can get a couple of rooms for the evening. Meet me back here.”

Cole went back to where Jilly Sweet was sitting her horse and said: “I think you’re starting to grow on him.”

“I hope I ain’t,” she answered.

Cole asked a man, standing out front of a billiard parlor, where he could find a hotel. The man looked at Cole, but mostly he looked at Jilly Sweet.

“Up ’at way.” He pointed with his nose after he’d gotten a good enough look at the girl.

They tied up out front and went inside.

“Need to rent a couple of rooms,” Cole said to a pocked-face kid sitting behind the desk. He was reading the latest issue of the Police Gazette. His feet were propped up on a crate and he hadn’t noticed their arrival. He had carrot-red hair that was wild and uncombed. All that wild red hair and a sharp bony beak made him look like a rooster.

When Cole told him about needing rooms, he looked up, but right away his attention went to the girl. “Huh?”

“I said we’ll need a couple of rooms for the night.” Cole couldn’t be certain he had heard him the second time because his attention stayed on Jilly Sweet.

She leaned over the desk and smiled brightly at him. “You see somethin’ you like, child?”

Cole thought the boy might swallow his tongue. “Rooms,” he said a third time, now with a little more force. “Two of them.”

The kid fumbled getting a set of keys from a box, while Cole scratched the name Billy Cody on the register with a nib pen.

“You wait here in the room,” he said to Jilly when they got inside one of the rooms. Then he tossed her one of the keys. “I’m going to go scout up Will, then we’ll all go get some supper together.”

She said: “You want rest there on the bed for a little bit first?”

“Why?”

Then she laid her hand on Cole’s forearm and said: “Jus’ wonderin’ if maybe you wasn’t lonely for a gal. You was awful nice to talk ol’ grumpy into not runnin’ me off and bringin’ me food and gettin’ me this room ….”

“No, Jilly. I’m not lonely for a gal.”

She looked half disappointed, half relieved. “You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Well, if you change your mind later, jus’ give a little knock, OK?”

Another time, another place, Cole thought as he went back down the stairs, he might have taken Jilly up on her offer. But fortunately he was no longer a man that lonely, or that young.