Chapter Twenty-Four

The skies over Deadwood had turned almost black, the clouds bunching up like they were trapped. Then it began to snow. Cole excused himself from the company of Liddy and Rose. Jazzy Sue brought him his duster, most of the mud brushed out, and he put it on before going outside. He thought again about needing a heavier coat, now that the weather had turned bad.

The wind kicked up and the snow swirled down in large flakes and some of the town’s citizens came out on the street to watch. Kate Elder and Doc Holliday were among the spectators. Kate was dressed in a long ash-gray coat with a black fur collar and black fur trim around the cuffs. She wore a small gray matching hat. She had an arm through Doc’s, looming over him. He seemed frail by comparison.

“Oh, look, Doc! It’s snowing!” she said jubilantly as Cole came within earshot.

“I can see that, Kate,” he said, his voice barely audible. He coughed and she supported him against the spasms.

The way she looked at him during that moment was with the same wistful look of love a woman has for a child. She looked at Doc like he was her man-child. Doc’s face was ashen, with a bluish tinge to it, and his hands shook as he fought the coughing spell and Kate kept saying: “That’s all right, Doc, that’s all right, baby.”

Cole didn’t know if they had seen him or not, and he didn’t much care. He felt sorry for Doc, but they weren’t friends, and they were never going to be friends. As he started across the street, he saw another old face from the past. It was like someone had called a convention in Deadwood for every gun hand, pistoleer, and shootist in the territories. It was a credit to the damnable advertisements Liddy had put in the territorial newspapers.

Kip Caine rode a tall piebald mare. He drew back on the reins when he saw Cole.

“John Henry,” he said, sitting there high up on that sixteen-hand horse.

“Kip.”

“You come too, huh?”

“Not for the same reason.”

“Not the money? Then why?”

“As a personal favor for a friend. You know him, Ike Kelly.”

“Yeah, I know Ike. How’s he play into this?”

“It’s a long story, Kip, and it’s snowing, and I’d just soon get down the street to the mercantile and see if I can find me a warmer coat.”

“I talked to that lady yesterday,” he said. “That Lydia Winslow. She’s a looker, damned if she ain’t.”

“Yeah, well, Kip, like I said, I’d like to see about that coat, if you don’t mind.”

Caine walked the tall piebald alongside Cole as he continued down the street. It was already beginning to turn muddy, that’s how heavy and fast the snow was falling.

“Heard you killed King Fisher,” he said.

“News travels fast,” Cole said, without any interest in discussing the matter with a man that was cut from the same cloth.

“Well, I don’t suppose the world’s going to mourn his loss,” Caine said in a joking manner.

“I wouldn’t know,” Cole said, trying his best to keep the conversation between them at a minimum.

“I guess it couldn’t be helped,” Caine said.

“He brought it on himself.”

“That’s what I heard. Tried to shoot you through a winda glass.” Kip’s laugh broke through the crust of his beard. “Son-of-a-bitch never did have much sense. Shoot at you through a winda glass!”

Cole arrived at the mercantile only to find a sign hanging in the window: Having a Tooth Pulled, Come Back Tomorrow. Just my luck, Cole thought, to run into Kip Caine the same day the only man I could buy a coat from was having his tooth pulled.

“Looks like you’re outta luck on that new coat,” Kip offered. “Cold as a sucker, ain’t it?”

“Let me ask you something.”

“What’s that?”

“What would it take to get you to leave town?”

Caine stood in his stirrups, stretching his legs, scratching at his backside. “Carbuncles,” he said. “I get carbuncles rubbed on my ass from these long rides.” Cole waited for him to answer the question. Finally, after he’d stretched his legs enough, he said: “It’d take me getting that reward money that woman’s offerin’. I come all the way from Oglalla. You know how far a ride that is, Oglalla? Especially for a man that’s got carbuncles?”

“How much would it take, Kip?”

“Two thousand, that’s what she said.”

“How about five hundred and you don’t have to do a thing but leave town? How would that be?”

He sat down again in the saddle, the snow collecting on the shoulders of his capote, in his beard. “Well, now that’s a tempting offer,” he said. “But it still ain’t no two thousand, is it? It’s a dang’ long ways from two thousand.”

“So is a bullet in the back of your skull,” Cole said.

His eyes grew larger under his heavy lids. “You ain’t trying to scare me, are you?”

“You know this business. You’re not the only gun in town wanting to collect that money.”

Caine’s mouth curled up through the hair of his face. “I’ll take my chances, same as you,”

“I’m here for a different reason, Kip, like I told you. I’m not here for the reward money.”

“Yeah, and I don’t piss yellow, John Henry. Same as you.”

“Suit yourself,” Cole told him. “Five hundred for leaving Deadwood isn’t the worst offer I ever heard of.”

“See you around, John Henry,” he said, and turned the piebald’s head back toward the direction of the saloons and whorehouses.

Kip’s presence in Deadwood was just one more complication, the way Cole saw it. But what else was new? He continued on to the livery. The old man was standing out front, staring at the storm. He had an old wood burner pulled out front, its door busted off, the flames cooking a pine log he’d been feeding it.

“Hey, sonny,” he said. “Look at that damn’ snow, would ya?”

“How much for that coat?”

He looked at Cole, the watery eyes pulled back within the bony brow of his skull. “How much fer the coat?”

“Yeah, the one you’re wearing.”

He looked at it, back at Cole. “Hell, I wouldn’t take a hunner dollars fer it . . . can’t you see it’s snowing? It’ll be colder than a well digger’s nuts around here, now that the snow’s come.”

“Tell you what,” Cole offered, “I’ll give you twenty-five for the coat, and, when I leave here in a few days, I’ll sell it back to you for five. How’ll that be?”

The old man twisted his lips, thinking about it. “That for sure?” he said. “You leaving in a few days?”

“For sure,” Cole said, and meant it.

“Done!” he said.

It was a lot of coat, heavy as hell, but it was warm. The main trouble for Cole was that it would take some doing to reach the self-cocker under all that curly hair. So, he took the pistol out and slipped it into the pocket of the coat.

He left the old man counting his new money. He didn’t seem to mind that it was snowing and he was only in his shirt sleeves.

Cole decided to go pay Irish Murphy another visit. He needed to find out who was doing Leo Loop’s killing for him.

“Irish ain’t here,” the man behind the bar said, when Cole asked for him.

“When will he be here?”

The man was of slight build, nervous with a bad tic just below his right eye. His hair was long and straight and plastered down with rosewater. Cole could smell the cheap scent of the rosewater.

“About never,” the man said. “That’s when Irish’ll be back. He left town this morning on the stage for Cheyenne.”

The bartender’s manner was like that of a small, unpleasant dog.

“He say anything?” Cole made one final attempt. “Irish . . . why he was leaving?”

“Yeah, he said . . . ‘See you around, sucker.’ That’s what he said.”

“Just like that? Irish ups and leaves his job?”

“You think pouring drinks for miners and whores is some sort of a plum job?” he said, his arms crossed over his chest, “standing on your feet ten hours a day, cleaning up men’s puke ’cause they don’t know when to give it a rest? You think that’s a job a man would hate to leave?”

Cole had grown a little tired of the man’s attitude; he was a man easy to dislike the instant you met him.

The doors suddenly blew open to a gust of cold wind and swirling snow trailed by a lone figure who stood for a moment in the quadrant of pewter light. He paused long enough to let his eyes adjust; the carbine he carried rested in the crook of his arm. Then, when he saw Cole standing there at the bar, he crossed the room. He ordered a whiskey and drank it, then ordered a second before turning his attention to Cole.

“That little gal on the stage, the one dressed in buckskins pretending to be a fellow,” Miguel Torres said. “She just blew out Johnny Logan’s lights. Thought you might want to know.”