Jailbreak (3 page)

So I went down to Crooks and had a beer. Since she’d told me not to have too many I didn’t. But since she hadn’t said nothing about whiskey I did have several tumblers of that. I also played a little poker and managed to win about forty dollars. I arrived back at the house at about five, just in time for supper, and got a good eye-scolding from Nora.

Later, when it had cooled down a little, we sat in the swing on the front porch. I was feeling pretty mellow after a supper of fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy. Or at least I was until Nora wanted to know when the furniture was going to arrive. We’d picked it out in Galveston better than a month before and some of it had to come from New Orleans and other points. I said, a little uncomfortably, “It’ll be here right about the time the house is finished.”

She asked, “And when will that be? You keep saying we’ll go see it when it’s finished. And I keep expecting you every day.”

I said, reluctantly, “Well, there’s been a small delay.”

“Oh, no,” she said, and put her hand to her cheek.

“Now, don’t worry,” I said hastily. “It’ll be all right. Fact is we run short of those red Mexican roof tiles you wanted. Said they went with the house. Well, the contractor has gone back to Galveston to get more. Said a boat ought to be in from Vera Cruz right away with another shipment.”

She genuinely looked distressed. She said, “Oh, Justa, don’t tell me it’s not going to be ready in time.”

I said, “I’m not telling you it’s not going to be ready in time. Did I say it wouldn’t? Listen, if I have to I’ll stand over that building crew with a whip in my hand.”

She said, “Justa, it just has to be. The invitations have gone out. Mother and I are working ourself to death to finish my trousseau.”

Well, I didn’t know what that was, but I figured it had something to do with all the sewing and flaying around. I said, “Hell, Nora, even if it’s not finished on the exact date we can always stay in the big house until it’s done.”

I might as well have slapped her across the face the way she jumped back. She said, with plenty of gumption, “Justa Williams, I am not going to be staying in someone else’s house. I’ll stay in my own house or I won’t get married at all.”

I said, “But we’re going on a honeymoon. That’s two weeks.”

“I want it ready before we leave. And that’s that.”

There wasn’t a hell of a lot I could say to that. I just stood up and put on my hat and said I’d better be getting back to the ranch. She gave me her cheek to kiss, which was not a good sign. As I left I said I’d have the house ready if I had to go to Mexico myself and fetch the tiles back single-handedly. It didn’t warm her up over much.

Next afternoon, late, I was sitting on the ranch house front porch worrying about Nora and the house when a rider from town came tearing up with a telegram. We had an arrangement with the telegraph office that they’d send out anything marked important soon as they got it. Of course such a service cost a deal extra, but, some of our dealings being fairly important, it was worth it.

I opened the telegram with dread. I was sure it was from the contractor in Galveston with bad news and words of other delays.

But it was from Norris, sent from Laredo. It said:

Well, that left me a good deal troubled. Nearly all the land in Texas could be traced back to Spanish land grants when Texas was part of Mexico and Spain owned all of it. Spanish land grants were large parcels of land that were given or sold to colonizers who, in turn, would break up the grant and parcel it out to smaller colonists. It was all a pretty tricky business and more than one family in Texas had lost valuable land because of some sloppy paperwork a hundred or so years in the past.

But we weren’t talking about valuable land. I couldn’t for the life of me figure why Norris hadn’t just left the matter in the hands of a lawyer and hied himself home. Plus I didn’t much like Norris messing around in Mexico and certainly not the border. Mexico, if you don’t understand it, is bad enough. You can get in trouble there without half trying. And Norris didn’t understand Mexico.

Much more, he sure as hell didn’t understand the border, a strip of land some forty or fifty miles wide on either side of the Rio Grande. You might as well call it a separate country unto itself. It’s got its own ways and, if you can call them that, its own laws. It’s full of every brigand and thief and swindler and murderer that can squeeze in.

Norris hadn’t any business trying to operate in that part of the country. I got up, cussing out loud, and went in and showed the telegram to Dad. I said, “Now look what he’s gone and done. That damn land isn’t worth a sack of dried beans yet Norris is spending time and effort and money making a fight over it. Back here he can make us more money in one day with one deal than that whole five thousand acres is worth. What has come over him?”

But Dad wasn’t going to be drawn in. He said, “Well, you gave him his orders. It appears he hasn’t followed them. Reckon you’ll have to decide what to do about it when he gits back.”

“Yeah, but what would possess him to go off on such a wild-goose chase?”

Dad shrugged. “Reckon he thought he was doing what he thought was right.”

“What he’s doing,” I said grimly, “is acting like a damn stubborn fool. He’s got his back up about that patch of sand and nothing is going to do until he gets to the bottom of it. And hang the cost. Goddammit, he makes me so angry I feel like knocking his head off.”

Dad gave a slight smile. He said, “Guess you never affected me that way. Listen, what say you and I have a whiskey and forget about all this. Norris will be back in a couple of days. You need to be thinking about your wedding.”

I went and got the whiskey and poured us both out a healthy measure. I said, as I handed him his glass, “You blindsided me on this drink, old man. If I hadn’t been on the prod about Norris you wouldn’t have slicked me as easy as you did.”

He drank off half his whiskey and said, “Aaaaah. In that case I’ve got Norris to thank. Maybe you can get mad at Ben and give me another one?”

I said, “I’ve heard you got the money to start this ranch by being a horse thief. I’m damned if I don’t half believe it.”

“Wasn’t horses,” he said. “Was cattle.”

I was glad to see him having a good day for a change.

We got a break that evening for supper. Buttercup had drunk himself senseless and was sprawled out on his bunk just off the kitchen snoring like a bawling calf. As a consequence the Mexican women served us a good meal of roast beef and gravy and pinto beans and sliced tomatoes. Even as irritated as I was at Norris, I was able to enjoy it.

Ben said, “Oh, Justa, you are always worrying. You reckon if you’re not leading the whole bunch of us around by the hand we’re liable to fall over dead. My Gawd, you are worse than a mother hen.”

Dad had felt well enough to join us at table. He said, “Now, now, Ben. Your brother has got considerable on his mind, what with the wedding and all. I fear he reckons his bossing days are coming to an end and he wants to get his licks in while he can.”

“Very funny, Howard,” I said. But I was glad to see him teasing. It showed his strength was rallying. Though how anyone could have had much strength in the heat wave we were having was beyond me. I said, “Oh, I’m not really worried about Norris. I’m just mad he didn’t follow orders. But, other than getting robbed, I can’t see how he can get in much trouble in Mexico.”

“Whosh in trubble in Mesico?”

It was Buttercup. He’d woke up and come staggering into the dining room carrying a cup of what was supposed to be coffee, but what I suspected was about half whiskey. I said, “Buttercup, get the hell out of here and go sleep it off.”

He said, “You tell me whosh in trubble in Mesico. By Gawd, Ah’ll take my Sharps ’n’ go down ’ere an fis they wagon.”

Ben said, “Hell, old man, you can’t even talk. How you going to fix anyone’s wagon?”

Buttercup wagged a finger at Ben. “You jus’ watch you mouth, young feller. An’ quit ’at Buttercup stuff.”

His real name was Butterfield, Charlie Butterfield, but we’d started calling him Buttercup as soon as we’d found out it irritated him. He had taught every one of us to shoot and he was, without a doubt, the best long-distance shot I’d ever seen. He had an old .50 caliber buffalo gun that, as he said, “killed at both ends.” It would kill whatever you hit with it, be it a cat or a railroad locomotive. It would also make you think you’d been hit in the shoulder by a stump. The few times I’d fired it I’d brushed my teeth left-handed the next morning. How an old, dried-up, scrawny scarecrow like Charlie could still shoot it and make shots of up to four hundred yards was a mystery none of us could solve.

Dad said, “Charlie, why don’t you go on back to bed. Get a little rest.”

Buttercup got up, but he said, “Naw, nearly suppertime. I got to go cook for you boys.”

Then he lurched out of the dining room and into the kitchen.

I got up quickly. I said, “I’m getting the hell out of here before he does manage to cook something.”

Dad said, “Somebody ought to go in the kitchen and get him to bed. That stove would still be hot and he could burn himself.”

I said, “Ben, you do that.”

I left the room before he could say a word.

That evening I sat on the porch in the cool of the night. I was drinking a little whiskey and smoking a cigarillo. Far off in the distance I could hear the nine o’clock passenger train blowing for the crossing outside of Blessing. Between the whiskey and the cool night air I was feeling more than a little bit peaceful. If I could just get those damn roof tiles and get that damn contractor back to work I wouldn’t have a care in the world.

Two days later I got another telegram. Only this one was from Jack Cole. It said:

I looked at it a long time and then I started cussing. Norris had managed to get himself in jail in Mexico. About the worse place to get put in jail in the world. What he’d done or how he’d done it I had no idea. But there it was. I went in and told Dad what had happened. He said, “What are you going to do about it?”

“Go down and get him out,” I said bitterly. “And my wedding less than two weeks off. It’s got to be done fast.”

Dad said, “Better take plenty of money. From what I know of Mexican jails you might have to buy him out.”

“Oh, I’ve already figured on that,” I said. “What I haven’t figured out is who is going to stay after that building contractor while I’m gone.” Boy, was I angry.

Dad said, “Ben can do that.”

I said, “I’m taking Ben with me.”

“You expecting trouble?”

I said, “I don’t know what I’m expecting. How am I supposed to figure from here what damn mess Norris has got hisself in?”

Dad said, “Well, maybe I can oversee that contractor for you.”

“Don’t worry about it, Dad,” I said. “I’ll put Harley to it.”

Harley was our foreman, a steady, dependable man that had been with us for eighteen years.

I said, “My biggest worry right now is who is going to oversee Nora. She’s gonna be mad as hell and I don’t blame her.”

“Then why don’t you just send Ben down with Ray Hays?”

I said, “Because it’s my job. Look, I got to get moving.”

I went out on the porch and called up Ben and Ray Hays. Ben started laughing when I told him about the telegram, but he shut up mighty quick when he seen the look on my face. Ray said, “Lord, boss, this is trouble.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Look, we got to get that southbound train at four o’clock and that don’t leave us no hell of a lot of time. Pick your best horse and figure to be gone at least a week. Don’t waste no time. I want to be gone from here inside of an hour. Ray, have somebody saddle me that new bay gelding I’ve been riding lately. And send Harley to me right away. I’ll be in my room packing.”

Harley found me just about the time I finished shoving some clothes in a roomy pair of saddlebags and checking my .40 caliber saddle gun. It was an odd caliber for a carbine, but it matched my revolver so I only had to carry one caliber of ammunition. My handgun was a .42/.40, a revolver chambered to fire a .40 caliber cartridge but set on a .42 caliber frame. It was my belief that a .40 caliber bullet carried enough wallop to stop nearly anything, and what you lost in hitting power to, say, a .44 caliber or a. 45 you more than made up in better accuracy. And of course I liked the .42 frame because it was heavier and made for better balance in the hand.

Anyway, I told Harley as briefly as I could what had happened and what I had to do. As I said, Harley was a rock-solid, dependable foreman, but he wasn’t all that imaginative when it come to overseeing house building. So I said, “Now, Harley, when that contractor gets back with those roof tiles I want you to send into town and fetch Miss Nora back to the ranch. Then I want you or some other good man to stand over that contractor and make sure he does everything Miss Nora wants done. You understand?”

He was chewing tobacco and he shifted it around a second before he said, “Wahl, I reckon.”

I said, “And if that contractor ain’t back here within three days I want you to send two men into Galveston to drag him back. That house has got to get built.”

Now he really did look uncertain. He said, slowly, “Boss, you kind of throwin’ me in a bind. You takin’ Ben an’ Hays an’ that’ll right off make me shorthanded, not countin’ yo’self. Now you talkin’ ’bout another man fer that house. Boss, you know we got to keep workin’ them cattle from water to fresh grass.”

I said, “Harley, don’t give me no trouble. I got enough as it is.”

But he said, doggedly, “An’ then they is the matter of the hayin’. The way thet grass is curin’ off we might need to git it in at anytime.”

He was right of course. Normally we wouldn’t have even been thinking about hay for another month, month and a half. But between the heat and the drought the grass was drying up fast. If you let it go too far it would burn up and be worthless. But I said, with heat, “Goddammit, Harley, don’t you reckon I know that? Look, I got enough on my plate without you mentioning that damn hay. Now you just do the best you can and let me do the worrying.”

“Well, yessir—” he said.

He sounded like to me he was about to throw a “but” in there right after the “yessir” so I cut him off. Shouldering my saddlebags and picking up my rifle, I said, “Just do it, Harley.”

I left him standing there looking worried. Hell, how did he think I felt? I still had Nora to talk to. And Norris to get out of a Mexican jail.

We made good time into town, arriving there just about three o’clock. I sent Ben to the bank to get two thousand dollars in cash and a letter of credit for five thousand more and I sent Hays down to the railroad station to make arrangements to have a car added to the passenger train to carry our horses. Then I started down to the Parker house. Jogging along, I was about halfway hoping that Nora would be out, that I could just leave a message with her mother and take off.

But that didn’t turn out to be the case. She come to the screen door almost as soon as I’d knocked. She said, “Justa! Whatever in the world are you doing back in town so soon?”

I held the screen door open and said, “C’mon out here a minute. I got to talk to you.”

Her face got all troubled but she came along and took a seat in the swing. I sat down beside her. Lord, she looked pretty. She was wearing a lemon-colored frock, a color that had always looked the best on her. She said, “What’s the matter, Justa? Something’s wrong, isn’t it? Is it about the wedding?”

“No,” I said, “it’s not about the wedding. Just promise me you won’t start getting all upset because everything is going to work out fine.” I was as nervous as if I’d been facing a court trial.

She said, steadily, “Just tell me. Without the buildup.”

So I did. I finished by saying, “You see, it ain’t going to affect the wedding. All it means is that I might not be here for a week while the house is being worked on.”

I had truly expected her to be loving and understanding. But I hadn’t considered the number of times I’d disappointed her and the gathering effect it had had. She got a pout on her face and said, “I don’t see why you’ve got to go. Norris is supposed to be so damn smart. Why can’t he get himself out of jail?”