Chapter Fifteen

Cole helped Will back inside the wagon and warmed him with blankets until the color came back into his face and he could stop his teeth from knocking together long enough to tell him what had happened.

“We were going along just fine,” Will said. “Then all of a sudden I feel the wagon stop and I hear some voices outside. I figured it to be a lynch party. But before I could look out and see who it was, the back door throws open and standing there, big as you please, is Leviticus Book. His face looked like a black moon and he was pointing the biggest damned Sharps buffalo gun at me I ever seen.” Will motioned toward one of the bottles Bart kept in a wooden crate. “You mind?”

Cole pulled the cork on one and gave it to him. He took a good swallow, then leaned back again. “Damn if this ain’t the coldest I ever been.” Then he took another drink, and licked the dew from his lips. “I looked him straight in his god-damn’ eye and said … ‘You are just the man I’m looking for. You might just as well put that Big Fifty down and give yourself up.’”

“Well, that must have made him sweat like hell, Will.”

“It was worth a try, John Henry.”

“I take it he didn’t abide by your order.”

“He laughed is what he did and said … ‘Mister, why you tryin’ to catch me anyway?’ I told him why. Then he laughed some more and said … ‘First off, ain’t nobody can catch Leviticus Book iffen he don’t want to be caught. Second, I ain’t never kilt no innocent men, so I ain’t guilty of nothin’. And third, if I was ever plannin’ on killin’ a man, you just might be the first, the way you been houndin’ me around.’” Will shook his head. “I came close, John Henry. I could see it in his eyes. All he had to do was pull the trigger and I’d have been dog scraps.”

“Why didn’t he?”

“That’s a hell of a good question, why didn’t he? Instead, he just made me get out of the wagon so he could tie me to the wheel. Maybe he thought it would be more painful for me to freeze to death than to eat a bullet.”

“What about Bart? What happened to Bart?”

“They took him, John Henry. Book and that young whore, Jilly Sweet. They unhitched the mule and set him on it and took him.”

“Hostage?”

“Most likely.”

“Doesn’t make sense, Will.”

“It might not, but what does any more?” Will sipped some more from the bottle. “What now?” he asked.

“Well, I can’t go after them and just leave you here,” Cole conceded. “The nearest town that’s safe for me to take you to is back to Cheyenne. I figure it to be about a hundred miles from here.”

“Ain’t that where we started from in the first place? Or am I confused?”

“You have a better idea, Will?”

“This has been a long haul for nothing,” he grumbled.

“Is it just the pain in your hip, or have you gone back to complaining just for complaining’s sake?”

“We’ve been defeated,” Will said sourly. “Been beat by a damn’ killer and a lovesick whore.”

“You want me to take you back to Cheyenne, or leave you here?”

Will was still muttering when Cole went around to the front of the wagon. He walked over to the speckled bird and said: “You’re not going to like this very much.” Then he took off her saddle. She rolled back her eyes as he hitched her in the traces.

Will was right, Cole thought, as he tied his saddle to the top of the wagon and took up the reins. They had been defeated by the killer and it wasn’t setting with him any better than it was with Will. Cole climbed down from the wagon seat and went around to the back again and opened the door.

“What now?” Will growled.

“Toss me a bottle of that cure-all,” Cole said. “I think I’m going to need it.”

It took them three days to arrive back in Cheyenne. To their good fortune the weather had cleared, and Will had not bled to death, although he wasn’t in the best shape by the time they reached the town’s limits.

Leo Foxx and Long Bill Longly and the other deputy were walking near Shorty’s Diner when Cole drove the wagon past them.

“You take up a new profession?” Foxx called. “Peddling snake oil?” Longly and the other man seemed to enjoy Foxx’s humor the way dull men will enjoy something stupid.

Cole continued on down the street without bothering to acknowledge the jibes of the Cheyenne police force. He pulled up in front of Dr. Price’s house and climbed down from the wagon. He helped Will out of the back. He was thoroughly intoxicated, lying among several empty bottles of Bledsoe’s patent medicines and unhappy about having to move.

“Well, at least you didn’t suffer,” Cole said as he helped Will to walk.

“I suffered aplenty,” Will muttered. “In ways you wouldn’t understand. Did you miss any damn’ big rocks on the way here that we ought to go back and run over again?”

“I can see that Bledsoe’s medicines are good for everything but good temperament,” Cole concluded as he tackled the steps to the front door.

Dr. Price answered his knock. He was wiping his hands on a towel. He looked first at Will, then at Cole. “Is it your mission in life to bring me every shot-up son-of-a-bitch in the territory?” he asked.

“Just the ones who can’t defend themselves, Doc. Where do you want me to put him?”

The doctor directed Cole to the same back room and table where he had taken the young Mexican gravedigger that Long Bill had shot over a 10¢ beer.

“How did that kid make out?” Cole asked Dr. Price as he helped Will up onto the table and began stripping off his boots and pants.

“He’s alive, but he’ll be a cripple the rest of his life.” He asked Will: “Did you shoot yourself in the hip, or did someone do it for you?”

Will looked at him through unsteady eyes. “What does it look like?”

“A man in your condition, I wouldn’t be surprised you shot yourself. It happens all the time. Only most of you drunkards shoot yourself in the foot, or shoot your peckers off trying to show what a fast-draw artist you are with a gun. It takes a special talent to be able to shoot yourself squarely in the hip.”

“I didn’t shoot myself in the hip or the foot, or nowhere else for that matter,” Will declared. “Someone else did it for me.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Dr. Price wondered. “A man with your disposition. Now just shut up for a minute and let me see what we have here.”

Will looked at Cole and said: “All the places in the territory, you had to bring me here?”

Dr. Price did something with his metal probe that made Will yelp. “If you cannot be quiet and remain still,” he warned, “then this is going to end up hurting a lot more than it has to.” Cole headed for the front door. “Don’t bring me any more patients,” the doctor called after him, “especially grumpy ones!”

Cole walked down the street to Cavandish’s Funeral Parlor. Karl Cavandish was sitting at an expansive oak desk with a pile of papers in front of him. He wore gold-rim spectacles that were perched on the bridge of his bony nose. He looked up when Cole entered.

“John Henry,” he said, “yours was a short trip. Were you able to find Ike’s killer?”

“Not yet,” Cole said. “We ran into some bad luck.”

Cavandish looked disappointed, removed the spectacles, and pinched the place on his nose where they had been resting. “That’s too bad. I was hoping for justice to be done.”

“It will be,” Cole promised. “It’s just going to take a little longer than planned.”

“Can I get you something, a drink perhaps?”

“Coffee, if you have it.”

“I keep some going,” he said. “Back here.”

They went to a rear apartment that had a bed and a potbelly stove throwing off heat. Cavandish took a tin cup from a hook and poured Cole a cup of hot black coffee. Cole wished he had a cigarette to go with it, but he’d run out of tobacco several days back.

“How’s the boy?” he asked.

Cavandish had small grayish eyes, and, when Cole asked him about the Mexican kid, the eyes watered. “An invalid … poor José.”

Cole had seen kids maimed during the war, kids without arms and legs, kids missing an eye, or both eyes, or a foot. Flesh and bone were no match for lead and steel.

“Where’s he at, Karl?”

“In the back. I fixed up the summer kitchen into a room to better accommodate him, and I pay a local woman to come in twice a day to care for him. The rest I do myself.”

“He’s lucky, then.”

“Not so lucky,” Cavandish said.

“He’s got you to take care of him. That’s more than a lot of kids like him would have.”

“But what happens when I’m not around any more? Who’s going to take care of him then?”

“Doesn’t he have family?”

“He has an uncle in Sonora, but he doesn’t know where in Sonora. That’s it. I’m his family. But I’m not a young man any more. I’ve got a few years left, if I’m lucky. I was counting on José to dig my grave and put me in it and take over the business.”

“You do what you can,” Cole said. “Let tomorrow worry about tomorrow.”

“I guess so.”

“It’s a good thing you’re doing here, Karl.”

For a long time he didn’t reply. “The really sad irony of it is,” he finally said, “if Longly had killed José, perhaps some charges could be brought against him for murder. But with José alive, there isn’t even a legal recourse for what he did.”

“I know. But I’m a real firm believer in what goes around comes around, Karl. And I think Bill Longly will pay the price for his sins someday. Men like him always do.”

“That’s little consolation to that boy in there, the fact that his shooter is up walking around every day, enjoying himself, and José needs help just to go to the toilet.”

“Bill Longly won’t always be walking around, enjoying himself. Someday he’ll know what it’s like to be on the other end of a bullet.”

Cavandish tried rubbing the weariness from his face with his bony fingers. “I’d like to believe that, John Henry, I truly would. Fact is, every time I see Longly out on the street, I want to kill him myself.” His words were as tired as his eyes. “You really think there’s any justice left in this world?”

“I have to believe so, Karl. Why else would any of us keep going if we didn’t believe there was still some justice to be had?”

“Maybe the only true justice is what each of us takes into our own hands.”

“Sometimes that’s true, Karl. But let the thing with Longly go.”

He looked at Cole and sniffed.

“It’s not your way to kill a man, Karl … that’s one thing. The other is, he’d most likely kill you in the trying. That kid in there needs you, like you said. Let it go with Longly, he’ll get his some other way.”

They shook hands and Cole left.

He walked to the house Ella Mims had rented. He knocked on the door and waited, then knocked again. A man wearing a paper-collar shirt answered the door. He had heavy dark mustaches and was holding a newspaper in his hand.

“Ya,” he said.

“I’m looking for Ella.”

“No Ella here,” he said. He had a German accent.

“Ella Mims.”

He shook his head. Then his eyes showed he recognized who it was Cole was asking for. “Oh dat voman! No, she’s gone away, mister. Me and my vife live here now! Since last veek.”

“Did she say where she was going?”

He shook his head. “Sorry, she didn’t say notting.”

Cole thanked him for his trouble and then headed for Shorty’s Diner.

Shorty was wearing an apron and waiting on tables when Cole walked in. He nodded his head and told Cole to take a seat and he would be with him as soon as he finished waiting tables.

Cole sat by the window so he could watch the street.

In a few minutes Shorty came over. “Did you catch Ike’s killer?”

“No. Not yet.”

He seemed as disappointed as Cavandish had. “Trail gone cold?” he asked.

“Worse than that,” Cole admitted. “Will Harper was shot in the hip and I had to bring him back here to get patched by Doc Price.”

“That colored do it?”

“No, but the difference is slim.” Then Cole told Shorty about Book stealing Bart Bledsoe.

“You want some coffee?”

“That and tobacco, if you’ve got any.”

“My waitress, Mary, she didn’t show up for work today. That’s why I’m wearing this apron.”

“It looks good on you.”

“Please,” he said, and went off to get the coffee.

Cole saw Bill Longly going into the Blue Star Saloon across the street. No one was with him. The sudden thought came over him that if he got up now, walked over there, and shot him, what was the worst that could happen to him? He thought of the kid, José, lying in his bed all day not able to move, thought of how many years he would be like that before he just gave up and died. Maybe the only true justice was what you took into your own hands sometimes. The thought that Long Bill was walking around free, going into the saloon to take a little pleasure from the bottle and from the woman he enjoyed slapping around just made the urge in Cole all that much stronger. Somehow, life seemed about as twisted as it could get.

Shorty returned two coffees and some tobacco and papers and sat down across from him. “You want to tell me how that colored stole a friend of yours?” he said. “Or do I have to guess?”

Cole explained what had happened. Shorty sat there, drinking his coffee, listening like he’d heard it all before, the smoke from his cigarette curling up into his squinting eyes.

“So the thing is,” Shorty said, after Cole had finished, “this Book fellow can find you anytime he wants, but you ain’t able to find him. That what you’re telling me?”

“Pretty much.”

Shorty shook his head in disbelief. “And he’s traveling with a young gal to boot?”

Cole nodded by way of explanation.

“Well, if you and Will Harper can’t find him, I doubt anyone can. What now?”

“Soon as Will’s able, we’ll go looking for him again.”

“Maybe he’s just too smart to be caught, John Henry.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Well, if you’re going out again, so am I.”

“No, Shorty, that’s not necessary.”

“I know it ain’t necessary,” Shorty protested. “But look at me. I’m wearing a damn’ apron.”

“You’ve also got a bum leg, Shorty.”

“Well, from what you tell me, Will’s going to have one, too. So being a little crippled up ain’t no excuse for you not to let me go along. ’Sides, I used to be a damn’ good tracker. And the way it sounds, the two of you could stand to have a damn’ good tracker along next time.”

“What about your business, Shorty? You just going to close up?”

“What the hell kind a business is it for a man to be wearing an apron, anyhow?”

“Beats starving, ending up in an old soldier’s home back East somewhere.”

“Hell, I can always get a job burning eggs and cowboy hash if I have to.”

“I know. Let tomorrow worry about tomorrow, right?”

“Right.”

“I’ll have to run it past Will.”

“You do that, John Henry.”

Another customer came in, and Cole watched as Shorty hobbled off to wait the table. He concluded that Shorty was a good man in a world where there weren’t many good men to be found. He saw Bill Longly exit the Blue Star and knew, in spite of what he’d just been thinking about doing, that he wasn’t going to walk up to him and put a bullet in him just because he knew Longly deserved it. A little part of him still wanted to believe that he, too, fell into that category of good men, men like Shorty and Ike Kelly and Karl Cavandish. What he was going to do, now that he had a couple of weeks to wait around until Will could recover enough to travel again, was take a trip over to Nebraska and see an old friend, and maybe in the process he might find Ella Mims.