Chapter Seventeen

The cowboys were half drunk, and Calamity was completely so. They had pinioned her up against the wall of a harness shop just inside an alley. It was the supper hour and there was hardly anyone on the street except for Jane Canary and those two cowpokes.

“God damn ya to hell, mister!” Jane was saying as they held her there.

“Look here, gal,” one of the cowboys said back, as he struggled to hold her wrist and keep from getting kicked in the groin.

“Look here yarself!” Calamity screeched.

“We paid you five damn’ dollars for what you’re wearing under them buckskins. Five dollars and a whole lot of good liquor, now it’s time you paid up.”

Jane was stomping at their feet with her heels and thrusting her legs out in kicks, and every time she cursed them spittle flew from her lips and sprayed their faces. John Henry Cole could tell they weren’t enjoying it much.

“What kinda gal ya think I am?” Jane cried.

“Hell, darling, we already know what kinda gal you are,” one of them said, trying to hold her and wipe some of Jane’s spit from his eyes. “It’s just a case of proving it, that’s all.”

“Let her go,” Cole said.

Their heads jerked around like he’d roped them. “Who the hell . . . ?”

“A friend,” he said. “I’m a friend of this woman’s, and I hate to see her being abused.”

Jane smiled hugely in that sloppy way a drunk will when she recognized him.

“Jack!” she shouted. “Get these apes off me, will ya?”

They were just boys, bare-cheeked, freshly shorn boys just off the range, with their new haircuts and big bandannas hanging from their necks. The haircuts made their ears stick out from under the brims of their Stetsons. Tricked by Jane, their big ears were red with anger. One was buck-toothed, and Cole would’ve been willing to bet, neither of them had ever had a woman before. Now they’d picked the wrong one to marry for an hour. “She’s got five dollars of ours, mister,” the buck-toothed one said. “Said she take us both on for five dollars cash.”

“Yeah, and we bought her drinks all afternoon, too,” the other one said.

“You gentlemen new in town?” Cole asked.

“Got here today,” Buck-Tooth said.

“Kansas, somewhere like that?” Cole asked.

They traded glances.

“How’d you know we was from Kansas?” Buck-Tooth’s friend said.

“Just a guess.”

“Well, that don’t change anything,” Buck-Tooth said, “just ’cause we’re from Kansas.”

“Just that you’ve been bamboozled by the best,” Cole said.

They blinked hard, like startled owls.

“You gents know who you’re holding there?”

“Damn’ flim-flam artist,” Buck-Tooth said.

“That, gents, is Calamity Jane Canary. She can outdrink, outfight, outshoot, and probably outlove any man in the territory. You are both lucky you didn’t get what you paid for. And equally lucky all she got from you was five dollars.”

They seemed uncertain. Jane was grinning like a weasel.

“Jane, give these boys back their earnings,” Cole said, “and maybe they’ll turn you loose.”

“Ain’t got but three damn’ dollars left, Jack!” she shrieked.

“I’ll make up the difference, if that’s all right with you gents.”

“Well, what about all the whiskey we bought and poured in her?” Buck-Tooth’s friend asked.

“What about it? You want her to puke it up?”

Still they seemed reluctant to let it go at something that simple.

“Take your money and go over to the Number Ten,” Cole said. “Ask for Irish Murphy. Tell him to line you up with one of the regular girls, one that won’t cheat you or have her pimp knock you over the head. Tell him John Henry Cole sent you. You’ll both feel better for it come tomorrow morning.”

“Wadda you say, Elbert?” Buck-Tooth asked his friend.

“Sounds good to me.” Then, looking at Jane: “Probably beat this homely sot any day.”

“Say! Watch yar god-damn’ mouths!” Jane cursed.

“Go ahead, turn her loose,” Cole said. “Jane, give them the money.”

She looked at Cole like he’d just announced her sister had died, but dug down into her greasy buckskins and produced three silver dollars. Cole gave the cowboys two more and watched them head off for Nutall and Mann’s.

“Well, hell, Jack,” Jane blubbered. “I’d ’a’ whipped them boys’ butts, ya hadn’t come along and stopped me.”

“Yeah, I know, Jane. That’s why I did it. I just couldn’t stand by and watch those two youngsters take a whipping.”

She laughed, slapped her leg with her miner’s cap, and said: “Hot damn, let’s go have ourselves a drink. Whadda ya say?”

“I need to ask you some questions.”

“Honey Jack, ya can ask me any damn’ thing ya wanner, just buy me a round first. Wrasslin’ them boys has made me as dry as a dead man’s pecker. They was damn’ lucky ya showed when ya did, or I’d ’a’ whupped ’em like puppies.”

The Zenobia Saloon was just across the street.

“How about over there?” Cole suggested.

“Sure, sure,” she said, “any ol’ damn’ place ’at’s got a fresh bottle of ol’ John Barleycorn will do.” She tried hooking her arm in Cole’s, but he side-stepped her effort. She didn’t seem to notice.

It was a big open room, the Zenobia. Full of blue smoke and noise. The usual kind of noise heard in a saloon: glasses clinking, rough talk, laughter, the sound of a piano being played by a professor. Jane slapped a few of the gents standing along the bar as they made their way to an empty table toward the rear. Some of the ones she slapped on the back turned and greeted her and tried to grab her, others tossed her angry looks.

Cole ordered a bottle and one of the bartenders brought it over to their table along with two glasses that were still wet from the last washing. Cole didn’t think she needed anything more to drink, but it was plain she talked best when her tongue was being oiled. She eyed the operation while Cole poured them each a jigger’s worth of mash, then her hand snaked out, and snatched up one of the glasses. She downed it like she was desperate, then set the glass back down all in one swift, sure motion.

“’Nother,” she said.

“I need to talk to you, Jane.”

“Sure, Jack, like I said, ’nother if ya damn’ please.”

“Can’t talk if you’re passed out on me, Jane.”

She licked her lips and spread her fingers atop the green felt of the table. The nails were dirty, the ends blunted. “Ya married, Jack?” Her voice went from high-pitched to nearly hoarse when she spoke slowly, which was seldom.

“Let’s discuss other things,” Cole said, taking a sip of his drink.

She took the bottle from his hand and poured a good portion of it into her glass. “Handsome racehorse like ya. I wouldn’t be ’tall surprised ya was married to two er three women. Har! Har!” Her laughter was harsh, unpleasant to the ear.

“I’m not one of those fresh-faced cowboys,” Cole said.

“Whadda ya mean, Jack?”

“I mean, I’m not going to sit here all night buying you drinks and not get anything for it.”

She grinned lasciviously. “What is it ya want there, Jack?”

“You know what I’m referring to.”

She offered him a sly, hesitant look. “Go ahead, ask me anything ya want, Jack.”

Cole watched the knot of her throat slide up and down as she guzzled another glass of the liquor. It gave him time to take her in more carefully. She was larger than she first appeared. And when her hand reached out for the glass, he could see her forearm was knotted with muscle. But she was thin, too, sickly. “Back in the jail, when we were locked up, you mentioned something about how Jack McCall was put up to killing Wild Bill. . . .”

She looked at Cole over the rim of her glass without removing it from her mouth, her eyes wide, staring. “I said that?” She lowered the glass an inch or two.

“Yeah, that’s what you said, Jane. You were hung-over at the time, a little drunk, maybe, but that’s what you said.”

“It’s true, god damn it!” she blurted suddenly, then looked around, then jerked her eyes back in Cole’s direction.

“Tell me,” he said.

She looked around again, squinted as though trying to see through the haze of the miners’ cigars. “Gotta be careful what ya say around this place,” she said, lowering her voice.

“Why?”

She looked at him dumbly. “’Cause, ya get heard by the wrong people, ya wind up dead like my darlin’ Billy.” She leaned forward across the table, nearly spilling the bottle. “Oh, Judas,” she said through a short, hard sob, “they killed him. And they’ll kill me, too, I don’t clear out soon.”

“Who are they, Jane?”

She blinked several times. “See, that’s the damn’ worst of it, Jack, ain’t nobody knows who they are.”

“But somebody suspects something, don’t they, Jane?”

She looked around again. “Names,” she said. “Lots of names get said around.”

“Like which ones?”

Her hands shook. She poured another glass, downed it, wiped some of the dribble from her chin with the heel of her hand. “All kinds of names.”

“Come on, Jane.”

“Why ya want to know for?” she said, suddenly sounding wary of him.

“Just interested, that’s all.”

She scoffed at that. “Not ya, Jack. Ya don’t seem like no kinda man that’d ask questions just to be askin’ ’em.”

“I’m looking into it for a friend of mine,” he said. “He’s the one that’s curious.”

Cole could see he was losing her to the whiskey again. Her gaze had grown suddenly unsteady and her lids drooped and her jaw became slack.

“Jane!”

Her eyelids snapped open. She looked at Cole. “What?”

“Names. Tell me what names you’ve heard.”

“God damn, Jack, I loved ol’ Bill. I surely did. He had his ways, god damn if he di’nt. Fussy about his appearance, fussy about his hands being clean, fussy about his guns. Fussiest man I ever knew. But god damn if I di’nt love him much as I ever loved any man.”

“Then why not help me out here and give me the names you’ve heard?”

“McCall,” she said. “He was in on it.”

“Not McCall. Everyone knows he shot Bill. Give me some other names.”

Her eyelids were drooping again and her head lolled to the side. “Loop,” she muttered.

“Loop? Who is Loop?” Cole asked, shaking her by the arm.

Her eyes came open part way, began to close. “I heard maybe Leo had some hand in it. . . .”

Her hands slid off the table, dangled by her sides. Cole wasn’t going to get anything more from her.

“Come on, Jane,” he said, lifting her under the arms. It didn’t take much effort, as thin as she was.

He hustled her out the door and down the street to the Custer Hotel, a one-story flophouse catering mostly to miners. The desk clerk looked up when he saw them enter and laid his copy of DeWitt’s Ten Cent Romances face up on the counter. The cover featured a story about Wild Bill: Wild Bill, The Indian Slayer. He looked at Cole and he looked at Jane.

“It’s not what you think,” Cole said.

He grinned sheepishly.

“She’ll need a room for the night,” Cole explained.

“Two dollars if you bunk up together,” he said.

“It’s just for her,” Cole told him flatly.

“Dollar,” he said.

Cole paid him, took the key, and dropped Jane on the bed in the room, then covered her with a blanket.

“See she gets some breakfast in the morning,” he told the clerk on his way out.

“You ain’t staying?”

“Does it look like I am?”

Maybe it was the long day or his own weariness, but when Cole stepped back outside again, the wind seemed cold and his duster too little protection against it. If he was going to stay in Deadwood, he’d need a better coat. He made a cigarette and smoked it on his way back to his own hotel room. The name Jane had given him rolled around in his mind. Leo Loop. Who the hell was Leo Loop?