Dorothy Garlock - [Colorado Wind 03]

“THE RAREST OF ALL GIFTS . . . DOROTHY GARLOCK BRINGS AN OBVIOUS LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING TO THE MEN AND WOMEN WHOSE COURAGE AND SPIRIT OPENED THE FRONTIER.”

—“Ann’s World,”
Hurst Cablevision

Books by Dorothy Garlock

A
lmost
E
den

A
nnie
L
ash

D
ream
R
iver

F
orever
V
ictoria

A G
entle
G
iving

G
lorious
D
awn

H
omeplace

L
onesome
R
iver

L
ove and
C
herish

L
arkspur

M
idnight
B
lue

N
ightrose

R
estless
W
ind

R
ibbon in the
S
ky

R
iver of
T
omorrow

T
he
S
earching
H
earts

S
ins of
S
ummer

S
weetwater

T
enderness

T
he
L
istening
S
ky

T
his
L
oving
L
and

W
ayward
W
ind

W
ild
S
weet
W
ilderness

W
ind of
P
romise

W
ith
H
ope

Y
esteryear

Published by

WARNER BOOKS

To a special man, with special love—
my husband, Herb

ROCKY MOUNTAIN WIND

Blowing through the towering crags of hard rock;

across blossoming but wild blankets of nature;

bringing seasonal and occasional violent changes in weather;

the billowing wind of the Rockies—the wind of promise.

Adam Mix

Only death would end it now.

The cheering crowd in front of the Dodge House watched the primitive game called lap jacket being played by two Negroes. It was said to be an African sport. In reality it was supposed to be a way to settle a dispute without a killing if one of the participants cried uncle while they lashed each other with a bullwhip. The fight had turned into a murderous duel; blood flowed freely, ears had been lopped off, jawbones exposed. Now each was aiming at the private parts of the other while the crowd, worked into a frenzy by the vicious fight, cheered them on.

Kain DeBolt leaned against the porch post and watched the duel. It was easy to see that the town marshal, who was overseeing the settling of the dispute, had no intention of stopping the fight. Kain turned away in disgust, stepped off the porch, and ran headlong into a woman in a dark sunbonnet with a basket on her arm. He reached out to steady her to keep her from falling. As soon as she regained her balance, furious blue eyes blazed up at him and she jerked her shoulders from his grasp.

“Get you hands off me!” she hissed.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am.” Kain was surprised by the venom in her voice. The collision had been as much her fault as his, and he was tempted to tell her so. Instead, he put his fingers to the brim of his hat and moved aside so she could pass. He watched her walk away, head up, shoulders erect, indignation expressed in every line of her slender body. He couldn’t suppress the grin that played at the corners of his wide mouth as her quick steps took her down the boardwalk. She swept past a drunk who had just been tossed out of a saloon, holding the skirt of her blue calico dress aside so it didn’t touch him, and then turned the corner.

In 1873, Dodge City, Kansas was living up to its reputation of being a wicked little town.
The Kansas City Star,
which Kain had tucked inside his coat pocket, proclaimed it the “Gomorrah of the Plains.” “Dodge City,” the reporter wrote, “is the beautiful bibulous Babylon of the frontier. In truth, Dodge City is hell in a loosely tied package.”

Less than a year before the Sante Fe Railroad had arrived and a station was opened in a sidetracked boxcar. At that time the infant town already had two saloons under tents and a general store. Within a month track workers, teamsters, rawhiders, whores, pimps and gamblers had flocked into town and mixed it up with the tough frontier soldiers from nearby Fort Dodge. Frame houses and false-fronted stores sprang up along Front Street. Dozens of boxcars arrived each day with grain, flour and provisions, and left again filled with buffalo bones and hides. The hides were shipped to the eastern tanneries, the bones to manufacturers for all manner of products from fertilizer to bone china. Buffalo hunting was the pillar of the town’s economy, and the bull whackers who brought in the hides, the soldiers, and the railroad gangs its populace. Both the hunters and the freighters had about them a peculiar smell from their dead cargo, and remarks made about those unpleasant odors often led to gang fights and killings.

As Kain passed the Lady Gay Saloon, an overweight trollop leaned out of one of the upstairs windows and wheezed, “For five bucks I can give ya a mighty fine time.”

He looked up at the bloated face and decided a man would have to be desperate, crazy, or both to relieve himself with a crib girl from the Lady Gay. He shook his head and walked on.

“Piss on ya, then,” she yelled. “You probably ain’t got nothin’ but a little ole bitty, nohow!”

Kain grinned, reached into his pocket for a cigar, bit off the end, and paused on the street corner to light a match. People, he told himself, were the same world over. Those same words, or a cruder version thereof, had been flung at him in a hundred towns such as this. He glanced at the reflection of himself in a darkening store window. His eyes could make out no detail, but he knew what was there. A tall man, lean of body, wide of shoulder. His face was narrow and clean shaven, his cheekbones high, and his jaw strong. A bullet scar on his jaw gave his face a somewhat sinister look until he smiled. His hair was brown and wavy, and his eyes, beneath straight dark brows, were a light tawny gold. He wore a black frock coat, a fancy vest and a flat-crowned, black hat. Yet Kain DeBolt saw a great deal more than what was reflected in the window. He saw a restless man, seeking to fill an emptiness inside him.

At any time, day or night, there were about a hundred freight or light wagons in the streets of Dodge City. Now, in the late afternoon, a wagon carrying a crude wooden coffin turned off a side street, and Kain paused to let it pass. A black man playing a moaning tune on a squeeze box sat on the tailgate of the wagon and a whiskered man in black broadcloth coat and high silk hat drove the black-draped team of horses. Another resident for Boot Hill was making his last journey. The cemetery, reserved for the many characters who died with their boots on, had received its first resident only six months before and already had a population of twenty.