Frontier Justice: A John Henry Cole Western

Chapter One

It had been a long hard ride from Deadwood. John Henry Cole stepped from the Deadwood to Cheyenne stagecoach feeling like he had gone twenty rounds with John L. Sullivan—and lost. He waited for the driver to hand him down his Dunn Brothers saddle and his Winchester rifle. He’d made up his mind that he was going to tell Ike Kelly that he was resigning as an operative of The Ike Kelly Detective Agency, Cheyenne, W.T. He’d only been in the detective business a couple of months, since coming north from Texas. Ike Kelly had been kind enough to offer him a job when he’d had none. Kelly had needed a man, and Cole had needed to clear out of Del Rio. They’d both hoped it would work out. But Cole’s last assignment in Deadwood had nearly killed him, and even though he’d been lucky enough to survive and solve the case, he’d also broken the trust of his friend and boss.

Kelly and Cole had been friends ever since their misspent youth when they’d both worked for old José Chisholm, punching cattle, and later driving them north to the railheads in Kansas. It was there that Ike and Cole had learned the rear-end of a cow from the front, and how to ride and rope and shoot pistols. And at the end of the cattle drives, they’d learned how to drink raw whiskey and gamble a bit, and the pleasures of a woman. Just a pair of fuzz-cheeked boys learning to grow up and become men. That’s what old José Chisholm and his cattle operation had done for them. In between the first time and the second time they’d worked for that good man, they’d fought in the War Between the States. Kelly had got shot three different times and Cole twice. They’d both come out of it all right except for the bad dreams. After the war and their second go around with punching cattle, Kelly and Cole had drifted their separate ways. They’d both ended up getting married, and they’d both had sons. And they’d both seen their wives and sons die long before they should have.

Over the intervening years, Kelly and Cole had crossed paths and stayed in touch with one another because good friends weren’t something that fell out of the sky every time it rained. So it was a hard decision for Cole to return to Cheyenne and tell Kelly he was quitting, and the reason why. On the ride back from Deadwood, he’d had plenty of time to think about everything that had happened to him. For one thing, he’d fallen in love with a woman—the wrong woman. And as much as he tried not to, Cole was still carrying a small craziness inside of him—like a bullet too close to the heart. But the real problem was the woman Cole had fallen in love with was also the woman Kelly had once fallen in love with. That was the thing that he’d come back to tell Ike Kelly and the reason he was going to quit. He felt like he’d broken Kelly’s trust in him.

There were some other reasons for Cole’s decision as well. He didn’t care much for getting shot at or threatened or beaten up. All of which had happened to him in Deadwood. He was still sore and hurting in places he wouldn’t speak about in decent company. By the time Cole climbed down off the Concord stage, he felt like he’d been ridden hard and put away wet. And when he looked at his reflection in the big plate-glass window of the telegraph office, he saw a weary man who needed a shave, a hot bath, and a bottle of good Tennessee whiskey. That is exactly what he planned to do before he saw Ike Kelly.

The weather was damp and gray, threatening rain, as he started toward Sun Lee’s where he had a rented room in the back of the ancient Celestial’s laundry. He hitched his saddle over his shoulder and carried the heavy Winchester in his right hand. It struck him that old drifters were always carrying their saddles and rifles to one place or another—drifting, like the wind. A good horse and a good home were hard luxuries to come by, and harder still to keep. But Cole had plans that as soon as he finished settling up with Kelly, the first order of business was to purchase a good horse. He was tired of carrying the saddle. Beyond that—well, beyond that he had no plans.

It began to drizzle. A light cold rain pelted the brim of his Stetson. It was just one more inducement to hurry up and find that hot bath and the comfort of some Jack Daniel’s. Cole hadn’t gone a block when he heard a brass band start to play the first strains of a mournful dirge. Farther up the street, he could see cadaverous Karl Cavandish riding high up top of his new glass-sided hearse that was being pulled by a pair of dappled grays. Cavandish wore a stovepipe hat and a claw-hammer coat over a boiled shirt. His young Mexican assistant, José Hernandez, sat next to him, looking cold and miserable from the drizzle. A six-piece band trooped along behind the hearse, playing a funeral march.

Cole stopped under the eaves of the White Elephant Saloon and waited and watched as the procession passed. He made a cigarette and smoked it and wondered who the unlucky soul was inside the black crêpe-draped coffin. A few of the town’s citizens followed along on foot and in buggies behind the band. The men all wore suit coats, the women black dresses and hats with veils. Cole watched as they headed up the street, turned the corner at the north end of town, and headed for the city cemetery, what some called boothill. A number of people watched the procession from doorways—mostly saloon doorways—having taken a break from their normal activities. Funerals, fires, shootings, and cuttings always drew the curious, and even gamblers and whoremongers would take time out from their activities to witness such events.

Cole stubbed his cigarette and hefted his saddle once more. Only this time, a familiar voice stopped him.

Too bad about your friend, John Henry.

Cole didn’t have to turn around to recognize who it was: Leo Foxx, Cheyenne’s city marshal.

What was that? Cole said, turning to face a man he didn’t like.

Foxx looked at Cole with the flat, pushed-in features of a pug fighter, the dull eyes that could read a card or leer at a woman but could not express even the remotest amount of compassion. Leo Foxx, gambler, pistoleer, man-killer, and lawman was just the sort of man a lot of town councils hired as their marshal. The thinking generally went—it took a desperado to tame a desperado.

I said, it’s too bad about Kelly, Fox repeated. He wasn’t alone; he never was. He had two of his deputies with him, men that were better at getting him a beer or a woman than they were at understanding the law. The one Cole recognized was Bill Longly, a Texas gunfighter sometimes called Long Bill. Longly’s reputation included several dubious shootings while serving as a city marshal in places like Big Springs and Tascosa and other one-horse towns, trying to rid themselves of the bad element by hiring the same.

The Longlys and the Foxxes usually didn’t last long before they were fired. But there was always another town looking for a gun tough to do their dirty work, so such men were never long without jobs—unless someone killed them first. It was apparent that no one had killed Longly yet. Foxx probably enjoyed the idea of having a man like Longly working for him; it was akin to keeping a mean dog around just to see who he would bite next. But it wasn’t Longly that troubled Cole; it was what Foxx had said.

What about Ike? Cole asked.

That’s him that passed by in that meat wagon, Foxx said, picking at his back teeth with the nail of his little finger. Somebody murdered him.

Cole dropped the saddle. His self-cocker was in easy reach, resting on his left hip in a cross-draw holster. He was prepared to pull it, more than prepared.

Who killed him? he asked, feeling the hot anger race through his blood like a prairie fire.

Foxx, for all his deficiencies as a man, was a skilled gunfighter and he knew a man ready to fight him when he saw one. He took an instinctive step backward nearly bumping into Longly. Hold the hell on before you pull that piece, Cole!

Tell me who killed Ike? Cole repeated.

Not me, god damn it!

Cole kept his eye on all three of them. The third man, whose name he didn’t know, was short, squarely built like Foxx, same black mustaches only not as well trimmed and cared for as Foxx’s. Cole could tell by the way Foxx shifted his gaze that he wasn’t up to a fight unless he was forced into one.

I’ll ask you one more time, Foxx, then I won’t ask again.

It happened two nights ago. Me and the boys were in the Blue Star when someone ran in and yelled … ‘Fire.’ We ran outside, saw the blaze. Whoever did it, burned him up in the fire. We found what was left after the ashes cooled. There wasn’t much. Old man Cavandish said he’d bury the remains regardless … him and Kelly were friends. That’s all I know about it. That’s all anyone knows.

I don’t believe you.

Hell, go down and see if his office ain’t burned to the ground. Burned up Ella Mims’s millinery shop next door, too. Town fire department had a hell of a time keeping half the damn’ town from burning down. Lucky it rained that night or it would have.

Maybe it was that Cole just didn’t want to believe that Ike Kelly had been murdered. Maybe he just wanted to take it out on Foxx because he was the one who had told him. Whatever it was, Cole knew he had to get it under control. He stood waiting, looking into their faces, challenging them to make something happen. And when it didn’t, Cole again picked up his saddle and walked away.

Sun Lee looked up from his bowl of soup. Some of the soup still clung to his long thin chin whiskers like yellow dew. Mistah John Henly … you back!

Cole dropped the saddle on the floor and laid the Winchester on the counter without bothering to take them back to his room.

How about taking care of these for me, Sun? he asked. I’ve got to go see about something.

Sun Lee looked sad, sad as an old hound. I sorry Mistah John Henly about what happened to Mistah Ike.

Me, too, Cole said. Hearing Sun Lee confirm it, made it real for Cole, Ike’s death. It put knots in his stomach and something painful pressed against the sides of his temples. He thought he’d left the killing back in Deadwood, but now he was right back in the middle of it again.

Sun Lee stared at Cole with those sad-hound eyes. Cole wondered how much tragedy a man like him had seen in his lifetime to have given him such sad eyes—probably a lot more than anyone suspected.

Poor, poor Mistah Ike, Sun muttered, shaking his bony skull.

I’ll be back in a while, Sun.

The two burned-out lots between the other buildings that showed the scorch of the fire along their walls looked like rotted black gaps between teeth. The charred remains of a few thick timber posts were all that was left, that and the burned smell. Cole headed for the cemetery.

By the time he arrived, the mourners were just leaving, heading back for town. Some raced; a burial was cause for celebration, a reason to get drunk and raise a little hell because you never knew when your time was coming. Only Karl Cavandish and his Mexican assistant, José, remained behind to fill in the grave.

Cole asked Cavandish if he might take over the shoveling from him, and Cavandish allowed he could. Cavandish’s face was sweaty and his hands shook. It took twenty minutes for Cole and the boy to fill in the grave. It had stopped raining by the time they finished. Cole made a cigarette and offered the boy one that he gladly took.

What can you tell me about this? Cole asked Cavandish.

He was a tall, cadaverous man with deep-set eyes and a dark beard. He could have passed for the twin brother of the late President Lincoln. He was checking the harnesses of his team. His tall stovepipe hat was beaded with raindrops.

I know as little or as much as anyone, he said. Our dear friend was … obviously murdered, perhaps shot, his office set afire with him still in it. Whoever did it certainly must have had … some deep anger against him. That, or just plain crazy …. Cavandish’s voice seemed to catch on the rising wind and get carried off.

That’s it … you don’t know anything more?

Cavandish shook his head.

No. Me and José did the best we could, considering … ah … the situation. Ike was my friend, you know. I gave him a good coffin. It’s the best I could do.

I’ll be glad to pay the expenses, Cole offered.

No. It’s not necessary. Do you want a ride back to town?

Cole told him no. Cavandish was wise and experienced enough to understand a person’s need to grieve alone. He and José climbed atop the hearse, and he snapped the reins over the haunches of the grays and started back down the hill, keeping the hearse’s wheels in the same set of muddy tracks they’d cut earlier.

The cemetery was surrounded by a black, wrought-iron fence with a gate and a high arch. The gray tombstones were stained dark from the earlier rain. Some were tilted, their epitaphs worn away by time. They were cold reminders of the fragile mortality of good men and bad alike, the strong and the weak. It seemed odd to Cole that it was the one way he’d never thought about Ike—in death. He’d always been such a solid, enduring man, a man who’d outlived his wife and child and many of his friends as well as enemies. For Cole he hadn’t been the sort of man to whom he would attach the fragility of dying. They weren’t that much different in age, yet, somehow, Ike had seemed much older and wiser.

Ike Kelly had been there for Cole when Zee Cole and Cole’s infant son Samuel had died. He had gotten drunk with Cole and let Cole raise hell and cry about it and feel sad because of it. And when he said he understood, Cole had known Ike had meant it, because he’d lost a wife and a son, too. And after Cole’d shot that Mexican bandit, Francisco Guzman, and had had to leave Texas, it had been Ike who’d offered him a job. Cole felt he owed Ike Kelly a lot, and now he wasn’t going to have the chance to repay him, unless he could find the man who had killed Ike.

Chapter Two

Cole didn’t know where to begin to find Ike’s killer. By the time he had walked back from the cemetery, afternoon had turned to evening under the sunless sky and the on and off rain only added to his bad mood. He needed a bottle of mash whiskey and a bath now, to try and sweat out some of the anger he was feeling and set his thinking straight again. He went back to Sun Lee’s. The old man had left a lantern lit for Cole and the door unlocked. He was nowhere around.

Cole pulled the only clean shirt he had from his saddlebags and headed to Ed Harris’s bathhouse. Wayback Cotton, Harris’s assistant, if you could call him that, was curled up on the floor asleep with his hands between his knees. The old man claimed to have been a fur trapper and Indian fighter in his youth, but he didn’t look like much of either, lying there on the floor with his hands between his knees. He simply looked old and broken-down, a man waiting for the last beaver hunt.

Cole looked around for Ed Harris, didn’t see him, so he rang the bell on the counter. In a few seconds, Harris appeared from behind a curtain, a napkin stuck down the front of his shirt, a piece of fried chicken in his right hand.

John Henry, he said, his voice full of surprise. You back from Deadwood?

What’s it look like, Ed?

He grinned, showing some of his missing teeth. Then he saw Wayback Cotton curled up on the floor asleep and the grin fell off his face. Hey there, you old alky! Harris shouted. But Cotton didn’t so much as wiggle a toe.

Lord, I’m going to fire that old fool someday, Harris declared, coming from behind the counter and kicking Cotton on the soles of his boots until the old man started, and sat up. I’m docking you fifteen cents for sleeping on the job!

I wasn’t sleepin’, Cotton argued. I was just contemplatin’ what work I was goin’ to do next.

Where I come from they call laying down with your eyes closed sleeping, you crazy old coot!

Well, you must come from the moon then ….

I came to get a bath and a bottle, Cole interrupted. He was in no mood to listen to the two of them bicker back and forth like washerwomen.

Cotton said—I’ll get ya a bottle.—as he worked his way up off the floor. He rubbed his eyes and licked his sunk-in lips that no longer had any teeth behind them for support.

Cole gave him $1 for the bottle and 50¢ extra for his trouble. Cotton looked like he might weep at the blessing.

Harris worked at his piece of chicken as he poured into the zinc tub several buckets of hot water he maintained on a big iron stove. I suppose you done heard what happened to Ike? Harris said around a mouthful of the chicken.

I came here for a bath and a little peace, Cole said.

It’s a bad thing, Harris continued. Ike shouldn’t have had to die like that.

Nobody should, Cole said, taking off his clothes. Some of the wounds and bruises he’d received in Deadwood were beginning to heal.

Harris looked at him and said: Looks like you took a beating and then some.

You have a bar of soap I could use to scrub with? Cole asked, choosing to ignore Harris’s curiosity.

Harris said: What’s this world coming to, that somebody would burn up a man like Ike Kelly right in his own office?

Cole didn’t know.

When Harris finished fixing the bath, Cole climbed in. It had the shock of a thousand needles piercing his flesh. You want to go check on that old Indian fighter? he asked. I could sure use that bottle. Harris didn’t look any too happy about leaving the comfort of his living quarters to go out into a cold damp night, but business was business, so he agreed to do it.

He’s probably drunk up that fifty cents you gave him and is working on your dollar, Harris grumbled as he pulled on his coat. Didn’t I tell you once before not to give that old man money before he finishes the job? Hell, he’s liable to have run off to Nebraska with some whore now that he’s got a little money.

I don’t think a man could get all the way to Nebraska on just a dollar and fifty cents.

You don’t know Wayback, then, Harris muttered as he went out the door.

The silence of being alone in the room was welcome to Cole. The bath water was plenty hot and he closed his eyes and welcomed its relief to his bruised and battered body. Somehow, even knowing what he knew, Ike’s death still didn’t seem real. It was as if Ike would come through the door any minute and ask Cole how he’d made out in Deadwood and how was Lydia Winslow, the woman both had fallen in love with at different times. The woman over whom Cole had broken Ike Kelly’s trust. But the door didn’t open and Ike didn’t walk through it. And Cole knew he never would.

Cole had lost his wife and son to the milk sickness several years before. And along the way, he’d lost more than one or two friends to drownings and knives and gunshots. And now he’d lost another friend. The plain truth was, Cole felt, that you never do get used to losing people you love, and you never get over it. And of all the faces that flooded his memory just then, not a one deserved the fate they were given.

Wayback Cotton’s grand and sudden entrance broke the spell that had set Cole to visiting with ghosts. Sweet Jesus! Cotton announced, charging into the room, slamming the door shut behind him. Gettin’ cold as a well digger’s nuts outside!

Did you bring that bottle of Jack Daniel’s I sent you for?

Cotton grinned. It was like looking into a wound, that mouth without any teeth. Got ’er right hyar! He pulled the bottle from his coat pocket and handed it to Cole, then stood there, staring like a dog watching its master eat a ham.

Cole pulled the cork and took a long tug. Ed thought maybe you’d met some whore and run off to Nebraska with her.

Cotton clucked his tongue. Ed’s imagination is the only thing that could run off to Nebraska on a night cold like this. He smacked his lips. It was a strange, debilitating sound.

Grab a glass and I’ll give you a taste, Cole said. Then, I want my privacy.

Cotton was gone and back before Cole could finish a second pull on the bottle. He filled Cotton’s glass. His eyes grew moist. You understand, don’t you? he said.

Understand what?

About how it is for men like you and me.

Tell me, Cole said.

Wayback Cotton held the glass inches from his mouth, his eyes fixed on it like a cat watching a mouse that it was getting ready to pounce on. Me ’n’ you, he said, peering over the glass, we understand about the Big Lonely.

Cole didn’t say anything.

Ed, he don’t understand. Citified. Never been nowhere, never done nothin’. Most men is like Ed, Cotton said, bringing the glass an inch closer to his mouth. They got their warm beds and fat wives to rut around with. They got their workadaddy jobs and their Sunday suit clothes. They got their mean little bastard kids who run around screamin’ and hollerin’ if they don’t get their way. They got ever’thin’ but they don’t got what me and you has got, do they, John Henry?

What have we got, Wayback?

We got ourselves, boy! We got our damn’ freedom. We been places, seen things, done things them talleywackers could only dream about. We knowed women of the wildest variety, and set down to poker games with some of the meanest most notorious bandits in the West. We’ve crossed wild rivers and seen the ocean! We drank likker outta a whore’s slipper and been rich and been busted. Hell, they ain’t none of them ever done some o’ the things we done!

It’s not all been good times, Wayback. Lest you forget.

Cotton looked at Cole then, his eyes narrowing to the seriousness of a man who was near to seeing his last season. No, it sure by God ain’t! That’s the part I’m talkin’ about, you ’n’ me bein’ the same … we both knowed the Big Lonely, all that space in between the good times, di’n’t we?

Yeah, maybe so, Cole said, not wanting to admit that Wayback Cotton knew a lot more about the true state of Cole’s soul than he was comfortable with.

God damn’ right! Cotton declared, and tossed the glass of whiskey down his gullet in one great gulp. See, he said, wiping his soft, caved-in lips with the back of his hand. Men like me ’n’ you ’n’ … God rest his soul … Ike, we done what we done ’cause there wasn’t any other way for us to live. Men like us is just like a bunch of wild horses that goes where they want, does what they want.

Cotton held out his glass again. Cole pointed to his pants that were lying across the chair. Take a dollar and buy your own bottle, Wayback. I’ll need the rest of this.

He winked, slapped his leg, retrieved $1 from Cole’s pants, and headed for the door. Pausing, he turned, his eyes red and rheumy, struggling to hold the light of old fires now burning out in his soul. Thing is, John Henry, a man does all that livin’, what’s he end up with? Can’t ever get it back, can’t ever find it again. Nothin’ left but the Big Lonely. Sometimes it feels like it’s goin’ to swallow me whole …. Then he closed the door behind him and the room was quiet again.

Ed Harris, and some of the other men who knew Wayback Cotton, claimed he was a fraud, that he never did hunt beaver up in the stony mountains, that he had never fought Indians, or done any of the things he claimed to have done. Cole thought maybe they were wrong about Wayback. He thought Wayback knew more about the human condition than a roomful of physicians. He hoisted his glass in the old man’s honor, then drank the rest of the whiskey just to numb his senses.

By the time Cole had finished the bottle and the bath water had grown tepid, he was ready for a warm bed and a long night’s sleep. Anything to keep him from thinking about what Wayback had called the Big Lonely. Sleep tonight, he told himself through the heavy haze in his brain, and tomorrow will take care of itself.

He climbed out of the tub on unsteady legs and dried himself with a rough towel, then dressed. He laid $1 on the counter for the bath, tugged his Stetson down on his head, and headed for his room at Sun’s.

As he sprawled across the small bed in the back room of the laundry and listened to rain peck at the window, he thought of how life had a way of changing one’s plans without one willing it. How it sometimes takes you where you really don’t want to go, but to a place where you need to go in order to find yourself.

He closed his eyes, listening to the rain dancing against the glass and wondering what fates were at work that would bring him back from the killing of innocent women in Deadwood to the murder of his friend. And would those same fates lead him to Ike’s killer, or perhaps to his own death?

Chapter Three

John Henry Cole got lucky. That night he didn’t dream. He wasn’t visited by the haunting images that were usually awaiting him: