Chapter Two

A letter lay spread out upon Ike’s desk. He motioned to it.

“What is it?” Cole asked.

“The rest of the bad news,” he said. “I got it just before the shooting at the Inter-Ocean. It’s from a woman I once knew. Go ahead, read it.”

“Looks personal,” Cole said, before reaching for it.

“No, it’s just more trouble,” Ike said.

Cole looked at the name on the return address on the envelope before reading the letter. It was from a woman named Lydia Winslow, although at the bottom of the letter she’d signed it Liddy.

Dear Ike,

I can’t explain to you how wonderful it was to hear of you residing in Cheyenne. And to receive the news at such a fortuitous time! Dodge seems so long ago.

I hope this letter finds you well & in good spirits. Now for the tragic news I bear you in this letter.

You see, this past summer, I, and a few young women who work for me, arrived in Deadwood. A business venture, but not entirely what you may think. I won’t go into details so much at this time. But if you decide to accept my invitation, offer really, to come to my aid, then I will tell you everything.

I will take the chance that we meant something special to each other once. Enough so that you will hear me out, read this to its conclusion before making up your mind as to whether you are willing to risk your life for me. I won’t blame you if you refuse.

I won’t belabor this longer. Three of my young women have been murdered since our arrival. At first, it was believed the deaths of two of the girls was accidental. But when the third girl (her name was Flora) was found last week—it was unmistakably murder. Without a great deal of proof at my disposal, I am now of the belief that the other two girls were also murdered and made to look like accidents.

I know that it must seem insensitive of me to come to you with my problems after all this time of separation. But when I found you again, I had to take the chance you would hear me out.

However, I’ve taken the precaution to advertise for someone of experience in this line with the territorial newspapers on the chance that you might not be able to help me.

I hope this letter finds you well and I hope that I hear from you, even if you choose not to come. I understand. Take care, dear Ike. You will always have a place in my heart.

Yrs. affectionately,

Liddy Winslow

No. 24 Front St.

Deadwood, D.T.

Cole placed the letter back on Ike’s desk.

“Who is she, Ike?”

“The only woman I ever loved, other than Hester,” he said. Cole saw in his stare the pain a man can have in remembering a woman he’s loved and lost. He saw it because he’d had the same pain come and go ever since Zee Cole.

“She was young, Irish, beautiful,” Ike said as though he’d been asked to describe her. The pain melted into wistfulness. “It was in Dodge City, the last herd I took up there,” he continued. Cole listened as Ike let the words flow out, carrying his thoughts, his memories of her. He looked up, his blue-gray eyes watery, hurt. “You know I lost Hester in ’Sixty-Eight, then three years later I lost Wayne . . . you remember Wayne, don’t you?”

Cole did. Wayne had been a handsome boy, good-natured, russet hair like his mother, sea-green eyes like hers. He had been killed in Wichita, Kansas on a hot summer afternoon by a deputy city marshal who had said the boy was drunk and firing his pistol off in a dangerous fashion. A coroner’s inquest was held and the shooting was termed justifiable. The deputy had quit and left town right after and just before Ike had arrived.

Ike picked up the tintype that was sitting on the corner of his desk and stared at it for a time; the pewter frame shone dully in the low light. Cole of course had seen the picture before; it’d been taken in a Denver photographer’s gallery: Wayne sitting against a painted background, wearing a pair of Angora chaps and a wide-brim hat, a cigar in one hand, a Colt Peacemaker in the other—photographer’s props. A sly grin on the boy’s face revealed just how innocent he had been. He had been a sweet and gentle boy who the prairie came to claim long before it had a right to him.

“Anyway, I went a little crazy after that,” Ike said. “After Wayne’s killing, I turned to whiskey, and I went looking for the lawman that killed him, only I couldn’t find the man. So I found other men instead and took it out on them. Didn’t matter who. I just needed to take it out on somebody.”

Cole knew that, but he didn’t say anything, just listened.

“I took one last herd up to Dodge, that’s when I met Liddy. She was working out of one of the houses, you know the ones I’m talking about. I had my pay and my saddle and a bottle, and it was all I figured I needed. Then I met her.” He set the tintype back down carefully from where he’d taken it. His eyes still held onto it long after his fingers set it free. “She was different, Liddy was. For one thing, she was smarter than most. She had dreams and ambition. Dreams was something I’d long forgotten about. But she had something else, too. She had a special way about her, a tenderness I couldn’t touch with my anger. And that broke me down.” He finally looked away from Wayne’s image and down to his own hands. “You know what it’s like, a woman that can do that to you? That can be all the things you need, that can see into places so dark in your soul you’re afraid to look at them yourself?”

There had been one for Cole, too, his late wife, Zee. “Yeah,” he said. “I know what it’s like to be with a woman like that.”

“Then you know why I fell so damn’ in love with her?”

Cole nodded, pulled the makings from his shirt, rolled a shuck, and smoked it there in the dimness of his office, the quiet sucking at their bones for a little while.

“I asked her to marry me,” Ike said, his lips curving slightly. “You know what she said?”

“No.”

“She said she wouldn’t marry a cowboy if a cowboy was the last living man on earth. I asked her why not, and she laughed till she cried. She said she loved me. She said I was the first man to come along that took her heart, but she wouldn’t marry me. I asked her why not, and she said . . . ‘Don’t ask me that if you don’t already know.’ Well, I already did know. I mean, hell, what’d I have to show for my life? What’d any cowboy have to show?” He was staring at something in the room only he could see. “The truth was, John Henry, she had brains and ambition and wasn’t about to settle for anything less in life than what she wanted, and I couldn’t hold that against her. How can you fault a person for knowing what they want? She changed me. Changed me in ways I didn’t expect. And by the time we parted, I had lost my hate and taste for getting drunk and mean. I did it because I couldn’t touch a person like her with all my force and will, and I knew then and there that there was no point for me trying to go on like I had been. It was time to get up and get moving. Do something worth a damn in my life. It’s when I decided to become something, make something of myself, just like she wanted to do for herself. I couldn’t fight that. Hell, I admired her.”

Then he reached in a drawer and took out a bottle, wiped the dust off with his hand, and handed it to John Henry Cole.

He took it and looked at Ike Kelly.

“I quit drinking for the wrong reasons,” Ike said. “This one’s for her.”

They each took a pull, and then he corked it and placed it back in the drawer.

“You still love her?” Cole asked.

He looked at Cole for a long, full moment, thinking about what he’d just said. Then he smiled and answered: “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t, but I can’t say I love her in the same way. Too many years have passed.”

“Are you going to go and help her with her problem?”

“I want to, but the thing is, I’ve got several commitments I need to attend to right here. I’ve given my word to men, and my word is my bond. I’ve agreed to handle certain matters for them. I can’t just drop everything and go to Deadwood, not just yet.”

Cole could feel it coming. “You want me to go?”

His look said it all.

Cole thought about the last part of her letter, the part that talked about how she would advertise in the papers. Then Cole thought about the type of men an advertisement like that would attract. He looked at the postmark on the envelope. “This was mailed nearly a month ago,” he said.

Ike nodded gravely. “I know.”

“I was thinking about men like Fisher and Kip Caine,” Cole said.

“Just to name a few,” Ike responded. “If Liddy has advertised in the territories, that’s the sort of men that will show up. That’s another reason why I’d like you to get up there as soon as you can.”

“I was thinking mostly of Fisher,” Cole said. “He swore he’d kill me the next time we clashed.”

“Then I guess, if you run into him, you better shoot him first,” Ike said.

“I was hoping I’d left that sort of business behind me in Del Río,” Cole said.

Ike smiled politely and said: “You don’t ever leave it behind you, John Henry. Not entirely.”

Cole knew he was right, of course. A man does what he needs to do, and along the way he makes enemies. King Fisher was one Cole had made in Caldwell, Kansas several years back when Fisher was the law and Cole was a cowboy. It was their first run-in. Then, a year later in Tascosa, Cole was the law and Fisher was the cowboy, and that time Cole had returned the favor by busting him over the skull with a self-cocker for being drunk and disorderly. Fisher hadn’t said it to Cole directly, but word spread around later that the next time they met, Fisher would finish him. The last Cole had heard, King Fisher was doing stock detective work up in the Montana Territory, shooting rustlers in the back with a long-range rifle. It was the sort of work that fit him, shooting men in the back.

“Maybe if you could just go and buy me some time,” Ike suggested. “Until I can break free here and come up myself.”

Cole knew Ike Kelly wasn’t a man to ask favors lightly. “I suppose you want me leaving on the next stage out?” he said, half as a joke.

He smiled. “The ticket will be waiting for you.”

His handshake was enough to let Cole know Ike appreciated the decision. But something also told Cole they might not see each other again.