Chapter Thirty

John Henry Cole went out the back door, leaving Kip Caine stretched out on Liddy’s divan. The snow was nearly knee-deep and crunched under his boots as he sloughed through it. He kept to the back streets and off the main drag as much as possible. With the snow, the night was nearly as light as day and the shadows were few. The sky was still glowing as red as old blood.

Cole slipped past the Number Ten and the Black Hills Brewery. The hour was late and the town was winding down from its nightly celebration. Miners were drifting back to their tents and lean-tos and boarding houses and flophouses, wherever they could lay their heads down for another night’s rest before going back into the hills again. He crossed the street just before the Lucky Strike, and turned down an alley. He worked his way along a back street until he came to the narrow, raw lumber house Doc rented for himself and Kate. There was a light showing behind the frosted glass and tattered curtain of the single window in the front of the house.

He knocked on the door and waited, his hand resting on the butt of the pistol in his pocket. The knob turned, the door opened a crack.

“I’ve come to see Doc,” he told Kate.

She was wearing a checked blanket robe, her right hand clutching the throat of it. She stared at him with unflinching eyes. “Doc’s in bed,” she said. “Who’re you?”

“I need to see him,” Cole said, ignoring her question.

She shook her head. “He ain’t feeling well. Come back tomorrow, you want to see him.”

She tried to close the door, but Cole put his hand on it. “Ask him to see me.”

“Do I know you, mister? Have we met somewhere? I don’t recall ever seeing you and Doc together.”

“No, Kate, you and I haven’t met, but Doc knows me.”

She blinked, her face ruddy under the soft light. “It’s still snowing,” she said, looking past him, leaning a little way out to get a better look. That’s when he could smell the liquor on her breath. It was a warm, sour smell.

“It’s also cold,” Cole said. “Can I come in while you ask Doc?”

“No,” she said. “Doc don’t like strangers in the house.”

“Then I’ll wait. You go ask him to see me.”

“I don’t know . . .” she said hesitantly. “Doc don’t like being disturbed once he’s gone to bed.” She was trying her best to protect him, her man child.

“This is important, Kate,” Cole said. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t be coming around this time of night.”

Still she hesitated.

“It could mean Doc’s life,” Cole said. And in an odd way, it could—except that, if it came to that, he would be the one trying to take Doc’s life, not trying to save it. But it did the trick.

“Who should I say?” she asked.

“Tell him John Henry Cole. Tell him I’ve got a book I want to discuss with him. A book with names in it.”

“Book?”

“Yeah.”

“Just a minute,” she said. “I’ll go see if he’s still awake.”

Cole held the door ajar just so she couldn’t close it and lock it. He wondered how Doc would take the news of his coming for a visit.

Cole heard Doc cough hard for several minutes. He heard Kate talking to him, saying something he couldn’t make out because they were in another room, with the door closed. Then there was a silence, followed by the sounds of shuffling steps coming to the door. Cole’s hand closed on the Remington. He feared Doc was coming better prepared than he’d been the last time they’d met.

Kate opened the inner door. “Come in, mister. Doc’s getting something on.” She entered, closing the door behind her.

Cole stepped into the room. It was a small, spare room without benefit of luxury or any sign of permanence—no pictures on the wall, no glass figurines on shelves, none of the things one would expect to see in a house that’s been lived in for a time. It was the house of a temporary man. In the center of the room stood a table and two chairs, both plain and simply made. On the table a magazine lay open, and next to it a bottle and a half-filled glass of whiskey. An oil lamp gave the room its light. The ceiling was plaster, cracked in places. The dingy wallpaper was peeled loose where it met the wainscoting. It was not a room anyone would want to spend much time in. Doc’s hat hung on the back of one of the chairs.

“You want to stand or sit?” Kate asked, coming closer.

“I’ll stand.”

She kept the robe clutched tightly around her throat; some of her nightdress showed below the hem of the robe. She went over and closed the magazine that was lying open on the table. “It’s the latest issue of Harper’s Bazaar,” she said. “It’s got all the latest fashions and the best stories. I can’t sleep sometimes at nights. It’s why I read, so’s I can get sleepy. Always thought maybe someday I’d write a story about me and Doc, about our life together, and send it in to them. I bet it would make good reading.” It was said in an attempt to be cheerful. “Doc says I’m just foolish. I don’t know, maybe I am.”

Cole heard something rattle behind the closed door, then watched as it opened and Doc appeared, wearing a long nightshirt, his thin legs exposed below the hem, his feet encased in a pair of carpet slippers. His hair was tousled from where he’d been lying in bed. His eyes darted from Cole to Kate then back to Cole. “Go on to bed, woman,” he said to her.

“But Doc . . .” she started to protest.

He gave her a look of impatience. “This is private, Kate. Between men.”

He hadn’t put a hand on her, but Cole thought she looked as if he had. She went to the table, started to reach for the bottle and the partially filled glass.

“Leave it, Kate. Don’t you think you’ve had enough . . . reading for one night?”

Something tugged at the corners of her mouth, some old wound, a hidden hurt or embarrassment. “Not enough, Doc. Not yet. I’m still not very sleepy.”

“Leave it,” he said, only this time without the same demand in his voice.

Her hand came away, and she picked up the magazine and carried it with her as though it was her only comfort as she slowly retreated to the bedroom from which Doc had just emerged.

Doc waited until she closed the door, waited until he heard the bedsprings squeak. Then he crossed the room, shuffling his feet so that the slippers whispered on the bare wood floor. He moved to the table, picked up the glass, and drank its contents.

“What is it you want, sir?” he said, pouring himself another glass from the bottle. He did not bother to turn his attention to Cole until he had completed the task. Wearing the nightshirt made him look small and old; his spine was curved and bony through the material. “Kate said you told her you had a book with names in it. What does that have to do with me, and at this hour of night?”

“Flora Pride, Doc. You remember Flora Pride?”

He raised the glass to his mouth, the heavy, well-trimmed mustaches parting, his eyes not inclined to meet Cole’s as he drank. Then, when he finished, he lowered the glass and said: “What about her?”

The eyes had finally come to rest on Cole and they showed no sign they recognized anything he was talking about. “She left a diary, Doc. She talked about things, about Deadwood, its dirty secrets. She wrote down names in her diary.”

It was a long shot, getting Doc to believe that Flora had written his name in her diary and that she had some dirty little secret on him. Cole was playing a weak hand against a man, who by profession, was a gambler.

“I am surprised she could write,” Doc said. “She didn’t strike me as the type who knew how.”

“She did, Doc. She had a good hand, and she put down everything Johnny Logan whispered to her on those warm, tender nights when he wasn’t with his wife or his chippy.”

Doc pulled one of the chairs out and sat on it, the hand holding the glass as steady as a dentist holds his pliers. “Why trouble me with all this nonsense, sir?” His voice was weary but his gaze unflinching.

Cole was holding a handful of low cards and the stakes were high. It was too late to fold. “She mentions you in her diary, Doc.” He pulled the book from his pocket and held it up for him to see.

Doc cocked his head slightly as though trying to gauge whether Cole was telling the truth about what was written in the diary. “Really?” he said, almost in a whisper, his voice weak. “What did Miss Pride have to say?”

Doc was calling Cole’s bluff. He could either raise the ante or toss in his hand.

“She talks about you and Johnny Logan and Leo Loop and Winston Stevens,” Cole said.

Doc snorted. “What about us?”

“I’ve got enough here to show it was Johnny that killed her,” Cole said, avoiding a direct answer to Doc’s question.

“Well, it’s a little late for that,” Doc said, reaching for the bottle again, pouring himself another round. “John Logan has met his fate It’s either an early or late hour for me, depending on how you look at it.”

“Maybe Johnny can’t be hanged for the killings,” Cole said, “but the others involved sure as hell can be.”

Doc set the glass on the table gently, with great care and deliberation. “You mean the names you supposedly have in that book?”

“Yeah, those names.”

“And I am reported to be one of those names?”

“She mentions you, Doc, there’s no getting around that.”

“She says that I was involved in killing those poor, sad women?”

“Tell me, Doc, were you?”

“What do you think, sir?” His gaze didn’t waver. “Do I seem to you the sort that would murder women?” The forefinger of his left hand reached up and calmly smoothed the heavy mustache, swiped away the whiskey dew.

“You have a habit of answering my questions with those of your own, Doc. Why not just give me a straight answer?”

Kate called his name from the back room: “Doc!”

He half turned in his chair. Cole was distracted by the sudden plea of her voice. When Doc turned back around again, Cole saw a small double Derringer in his hand, aimed at Cole’s chest. “You accuse me of something so heinous as the murder of prostitutes,” he said, not raising his voice in spite of the anger that flared behind the eyes. “You come into my house, unwelcome, uninvited, disturb my privacy, and make accusations against me. What am I to do about that? What would you do, sir, given the same set of circumstances?”

Doc had proved himself a prophet. He had said when last they met that the next time the odds would be different. He had been right. There was no way Cole could get to the self-cocker before Doc fired off both loads of the Derringer, and at this short range, maybe eight feet, Cole knew that even the bulk of the curly coat wasn’t going to save him this time. “Give me the courtesy of telling me the truth before you pull those triggers, Doc. Let’s just say that, if I’m going to die, I’d like to think I learned the truth first.”

“Truth,” he said, spitting it out like a seed. “The truth is whatever most people want it to be. Lie becomes truth, truth becomes lie. Enough people hear a lie told often enough, they think it is the truth. The real truth becomes buried beneath the lies. That, sir, is what truth is.”

“You mean like what they say about you, Doc?”

He nodded his head. “Yes, what they have said about me is an example of lie becoming truth, and truth being lost because the truth is not nearly as exciting as the lie. The truth is often too boring to repeat.”

“Did you kill them, Doc? Did you have a hand in it?”

“Would you rather know the truth, or would you rather live?” he asked.

Cole thought it was a good question.

Doc coughed suddenly. Cole thought about going for the self-cocker in that fraction of a second—he probably could have, but he didn’t. Doc stifled the cough, swallowed hard against it as it bloated his cheeks, the hand with the Derringer wavering slightly. Then he quickly tossed down the last of what was left in his whiskey glass to drown the sickness that had erupted from his lungs. He lowered the Derringer. “No,” he said softly. “I didn’t have anything to do with the death of those tragic women . . . it’s not my style.”

Cole believed him. “You were supposed to be watching them, though,” Cole said, taking his chances that Doc had decided not to kill him there in the living room.

“I took the job as bodyguard for one reason, and one reason only,” he said. “Liddy.” This time his hands shook as he medicated himself with the liquor. The cough wracked him again; he gripped the edge of the table, fought it until it abated, then took a small linen handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his mouth. The red stain showed through as he balled it up in his fist. He drew breath before speaking again. “Like you, like every man who’s ever met her, I was smitten by her the first time I saw her.” The first sign of anything other than fierce intensity shone in his eyes. “She came to me, asked me if I would be a bodyguard for her and her girls. I didn’t do it because I needed the money or had nothing better to do. I did it because she flattered me. She’s very, very good at that, flattering a man.” He seemed to be remembering it as though it had just happened. “Hell, what did I know about being a bodyguard? What did I want to know about it? Figure it out, man. Wouldn’t you have done the same if she’d asked you? Look what you are doing for her as it is. You are risking your life much more than I ever did. And for what? Only one answer. You were as taken by her as I was, as any man is.”

“You’re overstating it, Doc.”

“Am I? Tell me, sir, would you risk your life this much for a lesser woman, one without an ounce of charm or guile?”

“You’re not going to believe me, Doc, but I’m doing this for a friend, not for Liddy.”

He snorted his disbelief. “Tell yourself what you will, sir. We all like to tell ourselves whatever lie works. We choose to believe that we are too noble to risk our lives for something as simple and base as a beautiful woman. You see, truth becomes a lie, and a lie becomes the truth.”

Cole wondered about that. “Tell me how it was I saw you and Johnny Logan and Irish Murphy talking privately outside the Number Ten the other night, if you and Johnny weren’t involved in something.”

“It was nothing, really,” Doc said, his shoulders slumping visibly beneath the nightshirt. “Johnny heard I had paid you a visit. And Irish had also told him that you had been asking a lot of questions about the killings. They stopped me outside the Number Ten, and Johnny asked me what I knew about you . . . what my business with you was all about. I told them either to go to hell or buy me a drink . . . either way they wanted it. They chose to buy me a drink. I am not inclined to discuss my business with men such as Johnny Logan, not even on the best of days.” A small, persistent cough nagged him and he coughed into the handkerchief again. Then, raising his gaze once more, he continued. “My visit with you was strictly of a personal nature. Even our enmity toward each other is strictly of a personal nature. Johnny wanted to know what it was about. I told him it was none of his concern. That was the end of it.”

“One more thing I need to know, Doc. Did you take that shot at me outside on the street that night?”

He stared into his whiskey glass for a long moment, then said with almost mild amusement: “I thought I’d already clarified that point with you, sir. Had I wanted to kill you, I would have. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to go back to bed. Kate and I are leaving first thing in the morning for Prescott, Arizona. I hear the climate is much better there, in more ways than one. I have lost my appetite for this town. It will come to nothing in the end. There is no promise here.” He stood, but not quite straight, and concluded: “If you don’t mind dropping the latch on the door on your way out . . .” Then he went into the bedroom and closed the door behind him. Cole could hear Kate say Doc’s name.

Stepping back out into the cold, clear night that lay in ghostly whiteness, Cole was relieved to know that Doc hadn’t been part of the murders. There were still plenty of folks in Deadwood that wanted to see Cole dead, but Doc wasn’t one of them. And just knowing that was its own kind of relief. Cole was feeling better about the odds as he headed back to Liddy’s house.