Chapter Twenty-Five

Roy Bean called the warm winds that blew over the country the next two days a Chinook. “Happens,” he said about the unusually warm weather. Water dripped from the roof, trickled into wood rain barrels Bean had set out. The warm winds melted a lot of snow over the next two days—enough snow that they could make a show of leaving.

Cleopatra had talked Shorty into taking her with him in spite of Bean’s protests. At first, Will was against Cleo’s going as well, but when Shorty argued that the more of them there were, the more of a show they could make of it, Will relented and said: “I hope you two will be real happy serving burned eggs and cleaning up spilled milk.” Cleo said it beat getting rode like a Quarter horse at the races once a month and paying all her earnings out to Bean in bed and board.

Bean said his business enterprise would be ruined and that he would probably be forced to pack up and move to Texas where he heard there was a great need for cold beer. Cole told Bean that Texas already had plenty of cold beer, but that there was probably still room for him if he decided to go and be a justice of the peace.

Ab and Lum, the two domino players had put in their first appearance since the snowstorm began. They didn’t say much, just sat down near the stove and began playing dominoes.

“Where you goin’, Cleopatra?” Ab asked when he saw her carrying a hatbox and Shorty carrying out one of her trunks.

“To Cheyenne,” she said.

“What’s in Cheyenne they ain’t got here?” Lum asked.

“Honest work for one thing,” Cleo replied.

“Oh,” said Lum. Then both men went back to their domino game as if there was nothing unusual about the town’s only whore leaving for a far-off place like Cheyenne.

“They don’t seem too upset about your departure,” Will said, watching Shorty tie Cleo’s hatbox to his saddle horn.

Cleo said: “If I had to depend on either one of those two to earn a living, I would have starved to death years ago. They’re just a pair of cheap old ranchers who wouldn’t know a woman from a sheep. Lord knows, they probably prefer the sheep.”

Shorty grinned at that and said: “Are you about ready, hon?”

“Soon’s I get my other dress trunk,” Cleo said. “Can you give me a hand with it?”

Shorty followed her back inside Roy Bean’s.

Will Harper was watching the distance.

“He’s out there somewhere,” Cole said.

“Let’s hope he’s watching,” Will said.

“I’ll ride for a day, then circle back,” Cole said.

“No need, John Henry. I can handle him.”

“As insurance,” he said. “Just in case.”

“What about Shorty and Cleo and Bart?”

“I’ll send them on to Cheyenne. Shorty’s in love and wouldn’t be much good to us anyhow now that Cleo’s running his show.”

Will half smiled. “For the rest of his natural life, the way it looks,” he said.

“Yeah, well, I guess as long as Shorty is willing to pay the fiddler, he’ll get to enjoy the dance.”

“Glad it’s him and not me,” Will said.

“You sure changed your mind in a hurry.”

“I’ve had time to consider it. I’d just as soon not be seen with a hatbox dangling from my saddle.”

“Or anything else for that matter, is that it?”

Will grinned, and then they stepped back inside Roy Bean’s. Will proposed to trade his hat and coat with Bart Bledsoe, only Bart’s hat and coat were too small for him.

“Why do I have to trade you my hat and coat, Mister Harper?” Bart asked, looking out from under the brim of Will’s hat, which set low on his head because of its large size.

Will explained how he wanted Leviticus Book to think they were all riding out of Paint Town together. “Book’s got good eyes,” Will said. “I want him to think you’re me. Wearing my hat and coat will add to the ruse. Even with his good eyes, he can’t see that good to tell it ain’t me wearing them duds of mine.”

Bart sighed heavily and tried to push the hat out of his eyes as he put on Will’s greatcoat.

Bean made one more offer to Cleo in order to get her to change her mind about leaving: “I’ll bump up your cut to sixty-five percent. And I’ll even cut the price on your room and board, if you’ll stay.”

“You can bump it up to a hundred percent, Roy, and feed me fried chicken on a blue plate, and I’d still be leaving. A few more years of hanging around this place and I’ll be as useless as Homer’s dog.”

Bean rested his chin in the palm of his hand, his gaze full of dejection. “I’ll probably go to Texas and be murdered by some mad-dog gunman,” he said. “It’ll be on your conscience, if I am, Cleo.”

“Nobody said you have to go to Texas, Roy Bean,” Cleo said. “You could go to California or Ohio if you wanted to. What is the big attraction about Texas?”

“I think there is more opportunity in Texas,” he said. “That’s where I’ll go, unless you change your mind. I guess, if some gunman does get me, it will be because of you leaving.”

Cleo rolled her eyes and gave him a kiss on the cheek and said: “If I was you, Roy, I’d go somewhere where there ain’t any gunmen that mean. I’ll write you a letter when I get to Cheyenne.”

“Good luck in getting your man, Will,” Shorty said, offering Will his hand. “I hope there is no hard feelings about me winning Cleo away from you.”

Will shook Shorty’s hand. “No, there ain’t. Sometimes things have a way of working out for the best.”

“Well, I never expected to go after a killer and come back with a sweetheart,” Shorty said out of the hearing of Cleo who had gone into the back room for something. “I guess I’m as surprised as anybody.”

“Most men would be,” Will said. “All the times I’ve hunted for desperados, I never once came back with a sweetheart instead.”

Cleo appeared, carrying a yellow parasol and a pair of high-button shoes. “You think there is room enough on the back of your horse for these?” she asked Shorty. “I hate to leave them behind.”

Shorty rolled his eyes and said: “Is that about the last of it?”

Cleo offered him a pout, then a peck on the cheek. “I just want to look my best when I walk the streets of Cheyenne. Wearing high-button shoes and having a parasol to keep the sun off is what real ladies do.”

“It’s just a lot of extra things to carry is all,” Shorty said half-heartedly.

Cleo gave him a look that wilted the rest of his resistance.

“Be sure you make a good show of it,” Will said to Cole as he got ready to leave with the others. “I want that black scoundrel to believe that we’ve all left and are not coming back. I want him to think he can waltz in here and get a full belly and a peaceful night’s rest without having to worry about one single thing. Then, I intend on stepping up behind him with one of these big Colts of mine and surprising him.”

“Don’t misjudge his ability,” Cole cautioned.

Will offered Cole the knowing look of a man who had spent his lifetime hunting down hardcases and desperados. “Like I said, John Henry, it ain’t necessary, you doubling back.”

“I’ll be back,” Cole said. “You can count on it.”

Will remained inside while the four of them mounted up, looking for all the world like they were quitting the town and quitting the chase. And in a way, they were. Cole told Shorty to lead the way, followed by Cleo, then Bart. Cole brought up the rear. He wanted them strung out so that, if Book was watching, he could easily count their number. Like Will, he wanted him to feel completely confident the town was his.

“The weather is very pleasant,” Bart commented as soon as they had cleared the town. “I find it hard to believe that just a few days ago I nearly froze to death in deep snow.”

“That’s the way this country is,” Shorty said. “One minute everything is hunky dory, and the next you’re froze stiff as a board in some snowbank. You are a very lucky man, Bart.”

The sky was so bright and blue it hurt to look at it. Cole had a feeling crawling up his spine that they were being watched. He could almost feel Book watching them through the scope mounted on his Sharps. He didn’t look back or act in any way concerned even though he knew it was likely Book had his sights trained on Cole’s back.

They arrived at a creek by midmorning and rested there. Cleo said she was getting chafed from riding and went off into the bushes with a tin of salve to rub on her thighs.

“She’s more delicate than you might imagine,” Shorty said, staring off toward the bushes.

They hunkered long enough to give the horses a blow, and Cole smoked a cigarette and kept thinking he should be back in Paint Town with Will. The fact that Will had been bested by Book once already kept nagging his thoughts, that and the fact that Will had a tendency to drink heavily gave him the urge to climb aboard the bird right then and ride back to the town. The only reason he didn’t was the fact that they hadn’t been gone long enough, and a man with a scope in open country could spot a jack rabbit if he were watching. He’d just have to wait long enough for Book to drop his guard, then hope like hell he could make it back before it was too late.

When they remounted, Cole spurred the speckled bird alongside the dusty bay Bart was riding, one Will had purchased from Roy Bean. “Tell me what you think, Bart,” he said.

Bledsoe looked at Cole from under Will Harper’s big hat. “About what, Mister Cole?”

“About Leviticus Book,” he said. “Tell me what you think about him.”

“As I told Mister Harper,” he said with a shrug of his slight shoulders, “Mister Book seemed a pleasant enough fellow and treated me well.”

“That’s plenty strange.”

“How so?”

“It doesn’t fit with what I’ve heard about him. The man is accused of a lot of bad killings. Why would he let you just walk away? Doesn’t make sense.”

“I’ve thought about that, too, in light of what you and Mister Harper have told me. In point of fact, he could have killed me easily. In fact, he was big and strong enough to have snapped my neck with his bare hands. But he never even once threatened me.”

“He had a higher purpose for you.”

“Yes, I agree, to carry the note proclaiming his innocence.”

“I don’t put much stock in that, Bart. Every man in a state prison claims to be innocent. I’ve never known a man to admit his guilt yet.”

“He was very compassionate and kind to the girl as well,” Bart said. “She seemed to dote on him.”

“Jilly Sweet.”

“There’s no doubt she’s as in love with Mister Book as much as Shorty is with Miss Cleo.”

“I guess, as they say, Bart, love is blind.”

“I can only guess that it is. I’ve never had the experience of being in love myself. Though, Miss Cleo is quite attractive, don’t you think?”

Under that big hat he looked rather dopey to Cole, dopey and forlorn and out of place in this hard country. But he had pluck and was willing. Cole had to give him that much.

They rode along across the wide sweep of valley that was still white in places, brown in others from the melt off. In the far distance the Blue Mountains rose against the pale edges of sky, and a hawk caught the warm air rising up from the ground and rode it on stiff, outstretched wings as it scouted for a winter hare or field mouse.

They camped at noon by a stand of cottonwoods, the limbs and trunks darkly wet. Shorty made a meal out of some smoked beef packed in tin cans that he had purchased from Bean before they had left—smoked beef and crackers and peaches.

“I figured we’d at least eat well on the trip home,” Shorty said.

Cleo sat next to him on a blanket and said: “This reminds me of a picnic I once went on when I was married.”

Shorty said: “I didn’t know you were married, hon.”

“I was once,” Cleo said. “But you don’t have to worry. My husband was killed in a train wreck.”

“Train wreck?”

“He was a engineer on the Rock Island railroad back in Illinois and his train went off a bridge and killed him.”

“That’s a sad story,” Shorty said.

“It left me a widow and me not yet twenty,” Cleo said. “I guess after it happened, I just sort of lost my way for a time. That’s how I ended up in the life.”

Shorty cleared his throat. Plainly he was uncomfortable with Cleo’s public revelations about her past. “Well, you’ll just have to tell me all about it sometime when there is just the two of us,” he said.

“It’s damned hard for a gal to make a living and be on her own in this country,” Cleo continued, undeterred by Shorty’s suggestion that she refrain from further details of her past. “When Eldon died in that train wreck, all he left me was seventy dollars and a house with rent due on it. Why, what was I to do? I didn’t know no skills such as sewing or cooking or teaching. I was young and pretty. Those were my skills.”

“Yes, well … ummm,” Shorty said.

“I’m surprised that an attractive woman such as yourself didn’t remarry,” Bart said with avid interest in Cleo’s tale of woe.

Ever since they had carried him in from the cold that day back at Roy Bean’s and Cleo had spoon-fed him soup, Bart had had a difficult time keeping his eyes off her. He took every opportunity to speak with her and share her company, though Shorty made sure he never left Cleo alone for very long in Bart’s presence.

“Why, yes, darlin’, I had plenty of marriage proposals,” Cleo said, perking up a bit now that she had two men showing a great deal of interest in her. “But the more I thought about marrying again,” she continued, working her words around a slice of peach, “the more I realized that there wasn’t a thing in the world to keep the next man I might marry from plunging off a railroad bridge with a thousand tons of steel on top of him just like the first one … or something equally disastrous. I’d just be putting my fate back into the hands of undependable and unreliable men if I was to marry again without any more skills than what I had … being young and pretty. I have since learned that men are weak creatures and can be killed in any number of ways. I have been a widow once and do not recommend it.”

Shorty was squirming on the blanket as Cleo related her views on marriage and men. “Maybe this conversation is better suited for another time, sweets,” he muttered.

But Cleo paid no heed. Instead, she leaned a little closer to Bart and said: “It ain’t that I don’t like men, you understand. I do. I like ’em about as well as a woman can like anything. But marriage? No, sir, I’d just as soon pass on that subject.”

“I suppose I can easily see your point, Miss Cleo,” Bart said.

“Of course you can,” Cleo declared, patting Bart on the knee. He nearly swooned from her touch.

Shorty gritted his teeth at the gesture. “Maybe we should stretch our legs for a bit before we get back on our horses,” he suggested to Cleo, rising.

“Naw, you go on ahead, hon. I think I’ll just sit here and rest. My thighs are chafed from riding. I don’t feel much like walking … it’d just chafe me more.”

“Well, then maybe I’ll just sit here as well,” Shorty said, plopping back down beside her on the blanket.

Cole saw the hope that Shorty would take a walk by himself and leave Cleo unattended quickly fade from Bart’s expectant eyes. Cleo was enjoying the attention and the peaches equally. It caused Cole to think briefly of Ella Mims and Tom Feathers, and the way he’d felt about them sharing company, and he realized that Shorty Blaine and Bart Bledsoe weren’t the only men in this world who knew the bitter taste of jealousy. He walked over to the speckled bird and stroked her neck and checked her hoofs just for something to do. Then he jerked the Winchester from its boot and checked its loads before seating it again.

He rolled himself a fresh cigarette, watched as the little party sat around eating peaches and vying for one another’s attention. He was a long way from home, wherever that was, and wasn’t getting any closer. He was tired of being outfoxed and sleeping in cold, lonely places, and missing the company of a good woman. He wanted to put Ike Kelly’s death to rest and bring his killer to justice.

“This is where I turn around,” he announced.

They all looked at him.

“You want me to go back to Paint Town with you?” Shorty asked.

He was a good man, but his heart was no longer in the chase. One of the reasons it wasn’t was sitting beside him on the blanket. Cole couldn’t really blame him for wanting what any man wanted. “No, you three go on to Cheyenne. Will and me can handle this now that we know where Book is.”

“I hate to quit on you like this,” Shorty said.

“You’re not quitting on me,” Cole told him. “Go on back to Cheyenne.”

“Yeah, well ….”

Cole walked over and shook hands with Shorty to assure him it was all right.

Bart lifted Will’s big hat from his head and said: “Here. Take this back to him and tell him it’s too big for me. He probably misses not having his hat.”

“I’ll see that he gets it, Bart.”

“I wish I had a bottle of my patent medicine to send along, too,” Bart said. “Mister Harper seemed to be very fond of my patent medicine.”

“Maybe next time we meet, you’ll be back in business,” Cole said. “Then Will can buy a bottle or two from you.”

Bart hunched his shoulders. “Maybe.”

Cleo said: “When you see Roy Bean, tell him I’m truly sorry that he feels like he has to go to Texas on account of me, and that I hope some gunman don’t kill him.”

Cole told Cleo he’d pass along her message as he swung up on the bird and turned her head toward Paint Town. He wasn’t exactly sure what, if anything, a horse thinks about, but it wouldn’t have surprised him if the speckled bird was thinking she’d seen that same country before. He hoped to be back just after dark.