Dogs curled into themselves, nose to tail, and dozed under their ruffled fur wherever they could find a place out of the wind. Children trudged to school, heads down, their faces wrapped in woolen scarves. They left deep marks in the snow where they trudged and wore their coats inside the schoolroom, along with their gloves and hats. Night winds howled like crazed women, and blew snow into blinding drifts, up to the roofs in some places.

  For three days and nights it snowed, and from the unseen places in the north and in the west the wind shouted down a warning that nothing good was going to come to the people of Red Pony any time soon, that they should keep indoors and not venture forth, that they should not tempt fate. Few of them did. But there was always one who was willing to be a fool and such a man—one of the local drunks—became lost and presumed dead after three days, perhaps buried in one of the drifts, but he was of so little consequence to anyone that nobody went in search of him.

  Through the rage of the storm, John Henry Cole fretted, paced, smoked cigarettes. He wished he hadn’t sworn off liquor, for if there was ever a time he wanted a drink, it was while convalescing from his wounds, while listening to the storm’s howl. It seemed like a portent of worse things to come unless somehow he could stop it.

  He would have liked to have saddled a horse and armed himself with revolvers, a rifle, and a shotgun, and gone after Sam Starr and his gang. He would liked to have tracked them down and wiped them out entirely in order to clear the books, to even the score. But ignoring his wounds, the weather would still have stopped him. Yet Cole was not a man who could stand being idle very well at all.

  The Holt & Banner stage could not get through because the roads into and out of Red Pony were impassable, and therefore Sheriff Birdy Peach and his deputy, Slade Yellowbone, couldn’t get through, either. Cole knew Birdy Peach and held a reserved opinion about the man. Moreover, Slade Yellowbone was about as dangerous a man as any of those he helped Peach hunt.

  There was little doubt about either man’s toughness—between the two they’d probably killed a few dozen men in gunfights. In Cole’s view Birdy was the lesser of the two evils, but there was something about the sheriff’s demeanor that Cole didn’t care for, an underlying venality, no matter that it paled in comparison to that of his deputy. Lou Ford, Red Pony’s town marshal, had summoned them to come, and Cole knew as well as anyone that they would come eventually, considering the amount of reward money on Sam Starr and his gang. Notwithstanding, Cole had already allocated all that reward money once he personally caught, killed, or captured the gang. It would go to the families of his dead comrades and to Charley Hood. There wasn’t so much as a nickel leftover to give to anybody else.

  Cole kept a rented room at Mrs. McCleary’s boarding house, a temporary quarters while he was in Red Pony, but his real home was a two-day ride west across the line into New Mexico, along the Canadian River where it cut through a cañon. He’d built a small cabin there that was in a constant state of needing work, which he did whenever he found time to go there and get around to it. Mrs. McCleary was a kindly woman and a fair cook, but not a great one. She seemed to favor a lot of potatoes and not overly much meat, and when there was meat, it was usually stringy and tough. As a result Cole usually took his meals at the Morning Café.

  The troubling thing was that as kindly as the widowed Mrs. McCleary was, her one and only child—a sixteen-year-old hellion named Rosetta—often took up with the wrong people, including some of the male boarders. Cole figured that the girl sold herself to whoever would pay her, did it on the sly, and knew how to use the power of her young nubile beauty. She was black-haired and coquettish, with large dark eyes and milk-white skin. Men would pay well for such a little scamp, and no doubt did. She had yet to proposition Cole, and he figured that it was not his place to tell Mrs. McCleary about her daughter. Blood was thicker than water, and, when it came down to it, sometimes those of shared blood did not want to accept the truth about their own kind.

  The days turned into weeks and the weather subsided, then loosened its grip enough so a man could conduct his normal affairs. Still, you were a damned fool to venture forth with less than a good heavy Mackinaw and a pair of gloves. Cole went to visit Charley and see how he was doing.

  Charley’s wife Franzetta answered the door of their little rented house at the west end of town. Her countenance changed when she saw who it was standing there, and some old memory passed between them, one that neither wanted to acknowledge.

  “He’s not going with you again,” she said angrily.

  “No, I didn’t come for that. I came to see how he was doing.”

  Charley called from somewhere within, “That you, John Henry?” Then he said, “Let him in, woman.”

  She stepped aside, and Cole stamped the snow from his boots and removed his hat, then entered.

  Charley was sitting in a stuffed chair, his feet propped up on an ottoman covered with brown brocade with fringe around the bottom. He looked like some potentate except for the bandaged legs.

  “How you making it, Charley?” Cole inquired.

  “I’m making it. You want coffee?”

  Before Cole could answer, Charley looked toward Franzetta and said, “Would you mind getting me and John Henry a cup of coffee with some fresh cream in it and some of those macaroons you baked yesterday? You like macaroons, don’t you, John Henry?”

  Cole nodded as he sat in a ladder-back rocker across from Charley. A nice fire crackled in the black wood stove in the center of the room.

  “She’s scared half to death I’ll go with you again and come back like the others … Fred and them. Her and Fred’s wife were awfully close, you know.”

  “No, I expect you’ll not be going out again any time soon,” Cole said.

  “We come close to buying the farm, John Henry.”

  “We got bamboozled, that’s for sure, Charley.”

  “There’s talk running through the town that Sam and his gang will come looking for us and wipe out anyone helping us.”

  “I heard that,” Cole said. “I don’t think it’s going to happen. They’d be damned fools even to think it.”

  Charley shook his head slowly. “Knowing what I know of that son of a bitch, I wouldn’t put nothing past him. You two have always had sort of a vendetta against each other, ain’t you?”

  It was true, but what Charley and none of the others knew was that Sam was John Henry’s half brother. John Henry’s mother had been widowed for two years before she met and married Jake Starr, a marriage of short duration once she learned of Jake’s true nature as a wife-beater, gambler, and worse. She’d run him off with a loaded revolver, but not before she’d become pregnant with Sam. John Henry was five years old when Sam was born, and they’d grown up together until Cole went off to fight in the war. Sam was just thirteen at the time, but it was already apparent he carried his pa’s bad seed in him, first showing when he began torturing cats and other animals. John Henry had whipped him several times over such behavior, and Sam had come to detest his older half brother. It only got worse when Cole got a letter while in the war that Sam had stolen his mother’s silverware and a treasured broach and run off. Cole never forgave the boy, and later when he’d learned that Sam had turned outlaw, he wasn’t at all surprised. So the ambush made sense to Cole now. Sam had tracked him down and set it up.

  Franzetta came in with a tray containing two coffee cups and a plate of macaroons, and set them down on a sideboard, then served them, and left the room again without saying a word.

  “I don’t know, John Henry,” Charley said doubtfully, “but that those damn killers wouldn’t come and try and finish us. They know there’s no law but Lou Ford in this town. I don’t think Lou even stands up to his own wife, much less could you expect him to stand up to the likes of Sam Starr and his bunch.”

  “Lou sent for the sheriff,” Cole said.

  Charley snorted. “Birdy Peach and Slade Yellowbone? I never knew either of them to go far out of his way to help anybody if there wasn’t some money in it for them.”

  “I know it,” Cole agreed. “They’ll come because of the reward money. But I already have plans for that reward money … for you and the others. No damned way am I going to let Birdy or Slade, either one, grab it.”

  Cole felt agitated, itching to do something. He didn’t like sitting around and waiting. Waiting for something meant things weren’t in his control, and he didn’t like it. “I’m going after them,” he said. “I’m patched well enough I can ride.”

  “How you gonna go after ’em, John Henry, when you don’t have a living soul to go with you?”

  “They won’t be expecting it, I reckon. Maybe it’s better one man than many.”

  Again Charley glanced toward the kitchen where his wife had gone. Seemed like, whenever Cole was about, Franzetta made herself scarce. “You know I’d go, if it wasn’t for her, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I know you would.”

  “Reach over in that drawer in the desk yonder,” Charley said.

  Cole stood, went over, and opened the drawer to a small writing desk. In it was a pearl-handled Colt Thunderer .45 with a short blued barrel.

  “You take that,” Charley said. “It’s a good belly gun.”

  “I don’t need any extra guns, Charley, I got plenty.”

  “I know you do, but I’d like to think, if you caught them sons a bitches, you might kill one or two with my piece.”

  Cole pocketed the pistol and said, “I’ll do my best, Charley.”

  He crossed then to where Charley sat, and offered his hand. Charley shook it, his eyes full of regret for a lot of things, not just that he wasn’t going along, but for the dead and the snow and long winter cooped up in the house with Franzetta and not being able even to perform his husbandly duties. He sure enough loved her, but he loved being out on the trail more. And though it was true that he was getting on in years, and it was harder to sit a horse all day and sleep on the hard ground at night without every bone in his body hurting, he still missed not doing it. Trail grub didn’t sit with him too well. It was like Franzetta said, “Sooner or later men have to stop being boys and turn themselves into something a woman can rely on.” But he sure hated watching Cole go out that door alone.

  “Could a feller get another damn cup of coffee?” he called, and Franzetta appeared in the doorway of the kitchen and simply looked at him, her arms crossed under her bosom. She didn’t say anything for the longest time. Then, “I know that you are wounded and hurting, husband of mine, but it gives you no right to be churlish.”

  “Churlish?” Charley said. “I don’t even know what the hell that means, and I don’t know what the hell’s got you in such a state of mind, either.”

  She could not say, could not tell the man she was now married to what it was that had her worked up. For to tell her husband the truth would be plain hurtful and what was in the past, she told herself, should stay in the past. But it still didn’t keep her from remembering, nor lessen the hurt and longing for what might have been. “It means rude in a mean-spirited way,” she said, and turned on her heel, and disappeared again.

  Charley shook his head and thought, Women.

  Chapter Six

  Birdy Peach got the telegram and said to Slade, “Seems our services are required down in Red Pony.” There was the tinge of smugness in his voice, for he had always considered himself superior to most men he knew or could name, which was just about everybody. His deputy, Slade Yellowbone, was a tall, gaunt, and hollow-eyed fellow who wasn’t given much to words, and as dangerous a man as Birdy Peach had ever known. In Birdy’s mind, having Slade as his deputy was sort of like keeping a fighting dog on a chain. One thing that Birdy never told anyone was that he was always fully prepared to put Slade down if it ever came to that—shoot him from behind, in the back of the head. But until that day came, Slade was a good one to take alone to a fight.

  “What they need us for?” Slade asked quite casually as he looked out the window of the Beaver office, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. The view he had was of a dull gray sky that threatened more snow. He hated snow because the cold made his groin ache. Ever since that woman had shot him in Glorietta. These days, if he rode a horse or train or stage anywhere, he sat on a red pillow that had the words home sweet home stitched in yellow. The only thing that would relieve his ache was cocaine pills, which he bought from a Chinamen. It had gotten so that he couldn’t go more than a few hours without one. Of course washing them down with whiskey aided the effect.

  “You ’member John Henry Cole, don’t you?” Birdy said, gazing at the telegram.

  “Sure,” Slade said. “Features himself as some sort of gunfighter extraordinaire.”

  “He is precisely that,” Birdy replied. “He’ll put a plug in you quick if you fool with him.”

  “So, I’m guessing he’s the one who sent that?”

  “No, not him. It was sent by Lou Ford, the town marshal down there. Says John Henry Cole and his bunch of detectives got their asses shot up by the Sam Starr gang. Killed three of Cole’s boys and wounded him and another man. Says that the town’s afraid Starr will come and burn down the town if they find out Cole’s still alive and living there.”

  “Sounds like a bunch of yard chickens,” Slade said. He had his mind on something. It was something he’d had his mind on for a long time. Why that young store clerk with those real blue eyes and those soft features kept preying on him. He kept assuring himself, I ain’t a queer duck.

  “That burg of Red Pony will never amount to nothing if the Northern don’t put in a spur line. It will die and blow away,” Birdy opined.

  “You thinking on going?”

  “I am the sheriff and it’s my duty, when called.”

  Slade looked at his boss skeptically. “Must be some reward money in it.”

  “A good deal in fact now that you mention it,” Birdy said with a sly smile. He spread out the wanted posters on the Sam Starr gang and did a rough calculation of the amount to be collected if he got all of them. “I figure there’s close to two thousand dollars’ worth of killers just out there waiting to be had,” he said. Birdy wasn’t real good with numbers—toting, adding, subtracting, multiplying—but he could count to two thousand dollars, given enough time.

  Slade didn’t say anything. He was thinking about what that clerk had said to him yesterday when he’d gone into the mercantile to buy a new shirt.

  “Say, that will look real nice on you, Mister Yellowbone.” That was just the way he said it, holding it up to him, asking why didn’t he just go ahead and try it on? So Slade had taken off his old shirt and put on the new one. He had seen the way the clerk was watching him when he took off his old shirt and stood bare-chested, saying how nice he looked in that new shirt once he had put it on. Then he’d said, “You’re a beautiful man, Mister Yellowbone.”

  No, there ain’t nothing to it, the lawman told himself. But then the clerk had given him a discount, said he wasn’t supposed to do it, but he wanted to because the shirt looked so good on him, and how he was meant to have it. “Oh, don’t worry,” Jody had said. That was his name, Jody Weatherspoon. How was it, he asked himself, that he had come to care enough to memorize that kid’s name anyhow? “It will just be our little secret, yours and mine, Mister Yellowbone.”

  The boy had this real thick, curly hair he wore long and he was slender as a schoolgirl to boot. Had hairless cheeks and a real soft tiny mouth. What first caught Slade’s attention was that the boy had a limp. Like his right leg would not bend at the knee. He wanted to ask him about it, how it came to be that way, just to keep the conversation going, to justify lingering there in the store and talking to the kid some more. Damn it, stop thinking such thoughts, Slade told himself.

  “Well?”

  It was Birdy asking him something. He turned away from the window, from staring across the street at Mangrove’s Mercantile where the kid worked. “Well, what?”

  “Well, you ready to go earn some money?”

  “I reckon.”

  “Pack you a bag and we’ll head out on the afternoon stage.”

  “Looks like its bound to snow.”

  “Well, if it does, it does.”

  “Might want to wait a day or two, see how this weather’s gonna break.”

  The sheriff merely shook his head. “Time’s money. Go pack.”

  Slade nodded, turned his eyes back to the window, to the mercantile, sighed, then left to pack, get his extra guns, and that new blue shirt. Go get himself a drink or two and see was Fanny in and available over at Ellis’ Hog Palace. The afternoon stage wouldn’t leave for another two hours. He had time. Time to prove there wasn’t nothing wrong with him, that he was normal as any man.

  So he went and he found Fanny and that time of day she was available. Slade dug out the three dollars she charged and another for the bottle to take to her room with them, and he watched her get undressed as he pulled from the bottle. She was all white flesh, roly-poly, oddly enough with big thighs and small breasts. The hair under her arms didn’t match the peroxide blonde hair on her head, but more than matched the dark triangle between her legs.

  “You sure ain’t no true towhead,” he said.

  “Well, hell, gunslinger, there ain’t many of us genuine no more now, is there?”

  “What do you mean by that?” he asked hotly. Was she insinuating something?

  “Just mean to say what we once was we ain’t no more, none of us.”

  He didn’t feel a drop of desire for her but went at it anyway—fast and furious, as if the stage was due in two minutes, instead of two hours.

  He said, “Gun’s going off.”

  She said, “Go ahead and fire that thing.”

  And he did, but without pleasure, then rolled away, and pulled up his trousers and looked at her and said, “How was that?”

 

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