City of Widows (20 page)

“You're telling me when you and Frank and Ross left Lincoln, it wasn't the army you were running from.”

“You can always avoid an army. I don't think Jimmy Dolan shot a gun in his life, but if he ever come close to using one on anybody, it would of been Frank. I think the whole reason he got Frank elected sheriff here was to keep him out of Lincoln. I think he thought if he didn't and Frank came back, Dolan would of killed him sure as hell.”

“Frank's living on borrowed time,” I said.

“Not borrowed. Stole.”

“What keeps you with him?”

“What keeps you with the Judge?”

“It's different.”

“For you, maybe. Not me. When you're half greaser and half Comanche and you know one end of a rifle from the other, backing someone like Frank Baronet is as high as you can reach. It's one hell of a lot higher than if you didn't have the rifle.”

“Where were you when Colleen shot him?”

“I don't follow him into bedrooms,” he said. “She told you, I guess. In that case you can take her a message from Frank. Tell her he don't hold what she done against her. He wants her back.”

“So he can finish beating her up?”

He blinked. “Did she tell you he done that? Frank never done that.”

“Just in bedrooms, I guess.”

“I've known Frank right around five years. Rode with him, camped with him, stood up with him when he hitched up with Colleen. He'd maybe kill a woman, but he never beat one up. Should of, some of the ones he run with. He never did. It's a failing.”

“She showed me the scar.”

“Her head, right?”

I said nothing.

“A Mexican whore done that. They called her Juanita Pistola on account of this old pepperbox she carried around to scare folks with. It wouldn't shoot. She tried splitting open Colleen's head with the barrel when she found out about the wedding. Frank shot her.”

“Then why did Colleen shoot Frank?”

“Like I said, I don't follow him into bedrooms.”

I exhaled. All my energy went out with the bad air. I felt bone weary.

“Ride south, Jubilo,” I said. “Don't stop before old Mexico. There's an army coming you can't avoid.”

“I figured out that much when you mentioned Don Segundo. I reckon I'll stick. I got more enemies down there than I do here, and there's nothing waiting for me up north but a rope. What the hell, I never was no good at making a choice anyway. Just where are you riding with this here army?”

I dug the nickel-plated star engraved
DEPUTY U.S. MARSHAL
out of my trouser pocket and pinned it to my shirt. Once again he nodded.

“Out front. I guessed that too,” he said. “By the by, a wire come in this morning from Santa Fe. Garfield died last week.”

“Sorry to hear it. I voted for him.” I waited.

“Point is, if the office of president don't turn away bullets, how much protection do you think you'll get from that tin plate?”

20

T
HE RIFLE REPORT
rang thin and insignificant in the vast night air. I caught the fading phosphorescence of the muzzle flash in a clump of cottonwoods to the north and stood in my stirrups, waving my Winchester over my head. A three-quarter moon washed the open plain in watery silver.

“I'll need a name,” called a voice.

“Page Murdock. Ortiz knows me.”

“Step down and come ahead. Keep your hands in sight.”

He was small and young and well turned out for his work in a pinch hat, leather vest and chaps, and those torturous boots with pointed toes that bowed their legs and made them hobble around when not in the saddle. His rifle was an old Volcanic with scrollwork on the receiver and someone's initials carved into the stock in big childish capitals.

“Your father's?” I pointed at the rifle.

His lips were tight behind his puppy moustache. “Walk ahead.”

The campfire smelled inviting after a week of cold prairie nights without a fire lest I attract the attention of Jubilo or one of Baronet's bandits. I had seen the dust of a large band of horses shortly before sundown and cut a course for the glow of the fire after dark.

“I figure you're with Whiteside,” I said, walking. “You don't look like one of Don Segundo's vaqueros.”

He grunted.

“Bad enough I got to ride with them without getting took for one.”

I spotted Ortiz first, squatting by the campfire with a stick in his hand, drawing designs in the dirt between him and John Whiteside, also squatting on his heels. The marshal had on his slouch hat and cavalry clothes but had removed the bandoliers. The old rancher, built even slighter than his lookout but lean as a salt rind, wore his big sombrero and a sheepskin coat with the left sleeve hanging empty. His whiskers looked grayer in the firelight. Both men were intent on what the Mexican was doing with the stick.

“Chupader,” Whiteside muttered. “I seen easier places to defend but not lately. I and forty men fit eleven Apaches there for a week back in '68. All it takes is one good man with a rifle.”

“They've got that.”

Both men turned their heads my way. Whiteside's blue eyes scarcely lingered on the badge I wore. “Took on weight, I see.”

The young cowboy said, “He come riding up bold as Maggie's nipples, Colonel. Asked for the greaser marshal.”

“I know him. Get back to your watch. Abbott,” he said when the man started to turn.

“Yes, Colonel?”

“You might want to hold off on that greaser talk till we get back home. Half the men you're riding with are greasers and they might not all be as accommodating as Marshal Ortiz.”

“I don't know why we're riding with them a-tall. I guess the men of the Slash W can handle one slippery sheriff without dragging along a bunch of pepper-guts.”

“You were still on the tit the first time I crossed lead with pepperguts from the Diamond Horn. They put better men than you in the ground. If it was a case of one slippery sheriff I'd of done the job alone. Once you've put your first ball through something that can defend itself better than a colicky prairie hen, you can bellyache all you want. Till then, get back to your watch.”

“Yes, Colonel.” He left.

“Pup.”

“He is young.” Ortiz rose, dropping the stick, and pulled his sleeve down over his hand to scoop a two-gallon coffeepot off a flat rock by the fire. “When was the last time you thought you could fight bad
hombres
all the day and make love to bad
mujeres
until the dawn?”

“Cold Harbor. And if I'd had this new batch with me then there would still be slaves in Carolina. Pull up a piece of ground, Murdock. How you getting on with that claybank I sold you?”

“I haven't eaten him yet. He's tied up back there. I fed and watered him before I broke camp.”

“I gelded that one myself. Hated to do it, but there was no help for it. Stallions have a way of catching some Apache filly's scent and blowing just when you're looking for quiet. I was pleased to see he kept his spirit.”

The marshal handed me the tin cup he'd filled from the pot. He searched my face. “Have you seen
Señor
Harper?”

“I saw him. He didn't see me.” I took the cup in both hands, warming them, and poured the hot bitter stuff down my throat. It brought a glow to my stomach like good whiskey.

“
Lo siento.
He was a good man.”

“He was a jackass. I don't know how he lived as long as he did.”

Brushing past me on the way back to his spot by the fire, he laid a hand on my shoulder briefly.

“You said they have a good man with a rifle,” Whiteside said. “That would be Jubilo.”

“I saw him snatch an Apache brave off his pony's back at four hundred yards. If the mesa's as good a perch as you say, he could take his time and pick us all off one by one like ticks.”

“Not at night.”

Miguel Axtaca had slid from the shadows outside the firelight, making no noise at all in a pair of soft Apache boots designed to pull up over the knees in cactus country; the flaps were secured around his calves with thongs. His square features, less flexible, were unchanged from when I had seen them last in El Paso del Norte on the way back from the Guerrero ranch. As always he appeared to wear no weapon.

“We have a hundred men,” Whiteside told him. “You cannot move a party that size in the dark. They would trip over each other.”

“One man alone has no one to trip over.”

“Only himself. What will you do when you get there? It's a big mesa and you don't know where he will be.”

“I will once he starts shooting.”

“What then? Do you intend to place a hex upon him with that medicine bag you carry?”

“The bag is for the protection of my soul. For the protection of my body I use this.” He reached behind his neck and produced a knife with a nine-inch blade, its handle bound with rawhide.

I said, “That's close work. Are you any good at it?”

“Ask Francisco and Carlos.”

“How are you with that rifle?” Whiteside asked Ortiz.

The marshal had picked up his stick and resumed making marks in the earth. “A Henry is not a Creedmoor. Within its range I am adequate.”

“Just so you're good enough to shoot this Indian son of a bitch if he cannot do all he claims.”

Axtaca returned the knife to its sheath without another word. The animosity between the Aztec and the old campaigner was as thick as the woodsmoke in the air.

“Baronet took over the old Sherman spread,” said the rancher. “The headquarters was just a dugout shack last time I was there.”

“He has built a fine house with many rooms with good lumber from the Oscuros,” Ortiz said.

“How do you know this?”

“I built it.”

“Well, now, that's right handy.” Whiteside was disgusted.

“I am a carpenter,
señor.
I am the son of a carpenter and if just one of my sons proves to be less worthless than I fear, he, too will be a carpenter. You are a cattleman.
Señor
Murdock is a saloonkeeper. Miguel is a ranch foreman. We are none of us warriors, yet we have all made war and we are all still living. In the light of this I do not see cause to defend what each of us does when he is not fighting.”

“Save it for Sunday. What's the layout?”

While we had been talking the marshal had drawn a floor plan in the dirt. Now he used the stick as a pointer. “It is a house a man might conceive whose conscience is troubled. This is a tower room of three stories, open on all sides, from which a man with good eyes may observe a rider approaching from a great distance. The windows on the ground floor have oak shutters two inches thick, with gun ports. All of the roofs are pitched steep, that none who is not part fly can hope to scale them. Of course there is no ground cover within rifle range of the house.”

I said, “Is that all?”

“
Lo siento,
no. The basement is eight feet deep, lined with stones and mortar, and has many shelves and cabinets for the storage of provisions. The well is there. With only a small trapdoor to defend, a man in that dark hole might withstand a siege of many months.”

Whiteside stared at him. “Didn't any of this make you curious?”

“The sheriff said he wished to secure the house against an Indian attack. I thought it was excessive.”

“It shouldn't, but it always surprises me,” I said. “The lengths some men will go to in order to stay out of jail.”

“Even build one of his own.” Axtaca eyed the plan gravely.

“It
is
a jail,” Whiteside said. “Ain't it?”

We looked at him. His eyes were as bright as pennies.

*   *   *

Axtaca left camp twenty minutes later. Francisco and Carlos, unchanged from when I had last seen them at the Diamond Horn, wanted to go with him, but he rebuffed them in harsh Spanish, bundled his sorrel's hoofs in rags torn from his only other shirt, and rode off at a walk armed with only his knife and medicine bag. Whiteside had turned in by then, having dispatched a rider to the Slash W on an errand, and the entire encampment was settling in for the night. Men snored, spoke in low rumbling voices of past battles won and lost in and out of town, cleaned and loaded weapons, and scraped mud off their boots in the glow of dying fires. I poured myself a second cup of coffee and drained the pot's remaining contents into Ortiz's.

“Any trouble getting Whiteside to throw in with Guerrero's men?” I sat down beside him.

“Very little. When two men have been fighting as long as they, the thing they share is not so different from love. It was this way with my wife and me.” He crossed himself and drank.

“You said you killed her.”

“I took no pleasure in it. She pleaded with me to do it. I swore the day we married that I would deny her nothing.”

“She asked you to kill her?”

“She said if I did not agree to do this thing she would find a way to do it herself. I could not let her soul go to hell and so I agreed.”

“Was she ill?”

“Her body was healthy. In here…” He touched his head and shook it.

I said nothing. The wood in the fire separated slowly into coals, and I thought the conversation was ended.

“It was in the church,” he said then. “She knelt before the Virgin, and as she was praying I shot her once in the back of the head. She died in a state of grace.”

“I'm sorry.”

He moved one of his heavy shoulders. “I lost her long before that day. My sorrow is that we cannot be together in the next life. The bullet that spared her from hell has damned me.”

“Did you confess to the padre?”

“No. If one is to be forgiven, he must first be repentant. I would do this thing again.”

“The rumor around town is you found her with another man.”