Chapter Twenty-Seven

John Henry Cole was forced to wait until daybreak before starting after Book and Jilly Sweet. Chasing after them at night would have been futile. Even though Bean had indicated they were heading west when they left his place, they could have veered off in any of a hundred directions along the way. At first light, he should be able to track them easily enough across the thawing, muddy ground.

Bean fell asleep atop his counter and Homer and his dog eventually left once the beer barrel was tapped dry. Cole slept as much as he could in a chair most of the night and thought about the last several weeks of his life, ever since he’d received Ike Kelly’s letter down in Del Rio. One minute he’d been a lawman in that dusty little border town, and the next he was on his way to Cheyenne to work for his old friend in a small detective agency that Kelly had begun. Detective! It seemed about as strange a notion to Cole as being a stage actor, according to Bill Cody, had been for Wild Bill Hickok. Funny where life leads, he thought as he sat there with his eyes half closed, listening to the wind creep along the eaves of the store and Bean’s snoring.

Cole’s life in that sleepy little Texas border town had been fairly simple, an easy way for man to earn a living. The winds were warm, the women pretty, and the mescal freely flowing. Then, as they are wont to do, things changed. A Mexican bandit named Francisco Guzman—a man with whom Cole had become friends and a drinking companion—grew jealous over a sloe-eyed señorita in whom they both had taken an interest. He should have known better. Whiskey and women shared between friends never have a happy ending. Francisco Guzman ended up pulling his pistol on Cole and Cole had shot him. It didn’t sit well with the mayor or town council or the many cousins Francisco had just across the river. He had left for Cheyenne the same day Ike’s letter had asked him to come and join the detective agency. Hell, what did he have to lose but his life?

Then after he had arrived, Kelly asked him to go to Deadwood and that’s where he had met a woman named Lydia Winslow, and she and the murdering mob there had nearly become his undoing. By the time he had arrived back in Cheyenne, he had been ready to look for a new line of work. But Ike Kelly’s murder had changed all that. So here he was, sitting in a chair, listening to the creeping wind and the snores of a man named Roy Bean and waiting for another cold sunrise. It left a metallic taste in his mouth and a throbbing pain behind his eyes. Between fits of sleep, he counted the dead and missing of his past—his late wife Zee, his son Samuel, Ike Kelly, Francisco Guzman, and Will Harper. Lydia Winslow, Ella Mims, Bill Cody—they were among the missing. And there were others as well.

The world with which he had long been familiar was changing a lot faster than he wanted it to with each passing year. He told himself that once he caught Leviticus Book and delivered him to Fort Smith, he would go and find his own peace, a place where the wind didn’t howl so much and a man didn’t have to walk around with two pistols on his person, a place with a porch where a man could sit and have his morning coffee and watch the world go by. And a woman like Ella Mims, sitting there on the porch with him, didn’t hurt the image any. He’d had enough of the hard life. There had to be better ways of living than tracking down killers and hardcases.

Daylight broke and a rooster crowed and Bean sat up and stretched his arms and back. “I guess you’ll be leaving now that it’s light enough to see,” he said, testing his jaw bone.

“I’d like to stay around and see that Will gets a proper burial,” Cole said. “But maybe now that Book thinks he’s not being followed any more, he won’t have his guard up.”

“I’ll see your friend is treated properly,” Bean assured. “Then I think I’m going to pack up and head for Texas.” He looked around. “Without Cleo here to entertain the cowboys on pay day, I’ll go bust in two, three months.”

“Good luck to you down in Texas,” Cole said, and shook his hand.

“How are the señoritas down that way?” he asked. “Pretty, I hope?”

“Be careful of the pretty ones, Mister Bean. Find yourself a plain-looking woman and you’ll be OK.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Mister Cole.”

Bean stepped out on the porch and watched as Cole saddled the speckled bird, then mounted up.

“That is an unusual color for a horse,” Bean commented. “I’ll give you fifty dollars for her and even throw in that long-necked bay out yonder in the corral.”

“No, thanks, Mister Bean,” Cole said. “I think I’ll stick with what brought me here.”

He grinned. “That’s good advice, whether it’s horses or women.”

“I agree.”

On the trail Cole found that the tracks were fresh, dark clots of mud thrown against the patchwork of snow following the road westward toward the Blue Mountains. Tracking Book and the girl should be easy.

He followed the tracks all that day. They stopped once by a little stand of pines and had a lunch of sardines and crackers, judging by the empty tins lying around. Cole stayed long enough to chew a strip of jerky and have a smoke before continuing after them.

As the day drew to a close and the light turned blue-silver in the east and smoky rose to the west, Cole topped a rise and saw a single light flaring up out of the growing dusk down below him. He knew it was their camp.

He dismounted and waited. There wasn’t anything to do but wait. He waited a long time. Then, when he figured they were settled into their blankets for the night, he decided it was time to take them down. He jerked the Winchester from its boot, took Will’s set of wrist irons he had been carrying in his saddlebags, and ground-reined the bird before starting the long walk down the hill toward the camp.

He took his time, bending low so that he wouldn’t stand out against the skyline. It took him close to half an hour to reach the outer edge of their camp. There he squatted and listened. He was hoping to hear the heavy breathing of sleeping, only that’s not what he heard.

Cole stepped into the ring of fire light and said: “That’ll have to wait!”

Book jerked bolt upright. Jilly Sweet was beneath him, her naked breasts small, exposed to the dancing light of the fire.

“If you go for your weapon,” Cole said to Book, whose eyes shifted toward the Sharps leaning against a saddle, “I’ll kill you here and now.”

Jilly Sweet pushed herself to a sitting position, bringing the blankets up to cover her nakedness. “It’s him,” she said to Book. “That’s one of the mens was with Will Harper.”

“Cole … in case you forgot, Jilly, the name’s Cole.”

“What you got to do with all this?” Book said. “You after reward money, that it?” He was a big man, muscular. The light danced off his black taut skin; his eyes glittered like wet coals.

“Will Harper was a friend,” Cole said. “So was Ike Kelly, the man you shot and burned up back in Cheyenne.”

“Whoa up!” Book said. “I ain’t never shot and burned no man. Cheyenne or no place else.”

“Yeah, well I guess you can plead your case in front of Judge Parker in Fort Smith. I don’t care to hear it.”

There was a long drawn-out instant when he thought Book might reach for the Sharps and try Cole, just as Will had tried Book back at Roy Bean’s. Right at that moment, it didn’t make that much difference to Cole if he did. He was tired and could still see the stone-cold face of Will Harper, lying on that little cot back at Bean’s place. If Book was foolish enough to force Cole to take his life, then he was more than willing to oblige.

“Please don’t shoot my man!” Jilly Sweet pleaded. “He ain’t never hurt nobody!” She clung to him, her small thin arms gathered around his thick shoulders.

Cole saw the heavy look of defeat in his eyes, the fear in hers. “What’s it going to be, Book? You want to do this the hard way or the easy way?”

“You let her go,” he said, “and I’ll go back peaceful.”

“She can go where she wants,” Cole said. “I’ve got no business with her.”

“Go’n, Jilly,” he said. “Scat on outta here. Take one of them horses and the money in my pants and go’n.”

“Ain’t leavin’ you, Leviticus.”

His eyes jerked in his head, twisted to the side to look at her. “Gal, do what I tell you … this here ain’t nothin’ but trouble.”

She shook her head. “Ain’t goin’, can’t make me.”

His stare slowly came around to Cole again. “I ain’t killed nobody, mister. This’s all been a bad mistake. What you doin’ is makin’ it worse.”

“You killed some friends of mine. Tell me you didn’t.”

“It was his doin’, not mine. All I did was ask him to leave off on me. He jerked his piece. I did what I had to do.”

“He’s dead, Book. That’s what I know.”

He slowly shook his head, his eyes lowered. “Ain’t nobody understands nothin’,” he said. “Specially no white man, I guess.”

Cole picked up Book’s Sharps, kicked over the blankets, saw no other weapons. He took the buffalo gun by the barrel and brought the stock down hard against a large rock and flung the pieces off into the dark. Then he tossed the wrist irons toward Book and they landed near his feet.

“Put them on. One around your wrist, the other around your ankle.”

Book picked them up slowly, cautiously. Cole saw something painful come into his eyes as he looked at the manacles. “Been chained afore,” he said.

“Price you pay for your crimes.”

He swallowed hard, blinked. “Like I told you, mister, I ain’t committed no crimes.”

“That’s for Judge Parker to decide, unless you want me to right here. Put them on.”

“White men … that’s all that’s in them courts … that’s all what them judges are … white men.”

“Save the lecture. I can take you back or bury you here. You choose which white man you want to deal with, me or the judge.”

He locked the irons onto his right wrist and ankle, stared at them, then lifted his gaze to Cole once more. “You doin’ a wrong thing here, mister.”

“I don’t think so, Book. Two of my friends are dead because of you. I’ve had lots of time to think about that.”

“He didn’t do nothin’!” Jilly Sweet cried.

“You ought to put some clothes on,” Cole commented. Then he gathered their horses and started back up the hill to where he’d left the bird.

“You just leavin’ Leviticus an’ me here?” Jilly Sweet asked. “Him all chained up like a dog … you jus’ leavin’ us here?”

“Going to get my animal and a little rest. I suggest you do the same. I’ll be back down in the morning.”

She started to protest but Book told her: “Hush. Go’n do what the man says, Jilly.”

Cole looked at him; his stare was unflinching.

“It’s a long way back to Fort Smith, mister,” Book said.

“Yeah,” Cole replied, “plenty of time for a man to talk himself into trying something dumb.”

Cole walked their horses back to where the bird was ground-reined and tied them all off before spreading his blankets on the ground. He could see the dwindling campfire down below. He wasn’t worried about Book and Jilly Sweet going anywhere the way Book was cuffed. He made himself a cigarette and smoked it, and wondered why he wasn’t feeling very victorious at having captured him. Maybe it was because it was like Book said—there was still a long way to go until they reached Fort Smith. It flashed through his mind as briefly as dry lightning that there was maybe one chance in a thousand Book was telling the truth about his being innocent, but Cole thought to hell with that notion. Still, the way Book had looked at Cole when he had told him to put the cuffs on, that was a hard thing to do, to look into a man’s eyes who had been chained before.

Cole told himself he was tired, worn out from the chase, and that was why he was letting things creep into his mind that had no right being there. The most dangerous man in the world is the one who can make a lie seem like the truth. He drew both pistols and would sleep with them at the ready that night. He’d come too far to make a mistake. When he finally stubbed out the smoke and closed his eyes, he closed out all thoughts of any possibility that the black man was innocent.