The Outlaw Josey Wales (19 page)

Chapter 21

Kelly, the bartender, swatted bottle flies in the Lost Lady saloon. Sweat dripped from the end of his nose and down his pock-marked face. He cursed the stifling noontime heat; the blazing sun that blinded the eye outside the bat wings at the door … and the monotony of it all.

Ten Spot, frayed cuffs and pencil-dandy mustache, dealt five-card stud at the corner table, his only customers a rundown cowboy and a seedy Mex vaquero.

“Possible straight,” Ten Spot monotoned as the cards slapped.

“Nickel ante,” Kelly sneered under his breath and splattered a bottle-green fly lit on the bar.

“Goddamned tinhorn,” he muttered loud enough for Ten Spot to hear … but the gambler didn’t look up. Kelly had seen REAL gamblers in New Orleans… before he had to leave.

Rose came out of a bedroom at the back, yawning and snatching a comb through bed-frowzed hair.

“To hell with it,” she said and tossed the comb on a table. She rapped the bar, and Kelly slid a glass and bottle of Red Dog expertly to her hand.

“How much’d he have?” Kelly asked.

Rose disdained the glass and took a huge swallow from the bottle. She shuddered. “Two dollars, twenty cents,” and she slapped the money on the bar. Her eyes held the hard, shiny look of women fresh from the love bed, and her mouth was smeared and mottled.

“Crap,” Kelly said as he retrieved the money and spat on the floor.

Rose poured a three-finger drink in the glass to sip more leisurely. “Well,” she drawled philosophically, “I ain’t a young heifer no more. I might ought to paid him.” She looked dreamily at the bottles behind the bar. She wasn’t … young, that is. Her hair was supposed to be red; the label on the bottle had proclaimed that desired result … but it was orange where it was not streaked with gray. Her face sagged from the years and sin, and her huge breasts were hung precariously in a mammoth halter. There was no competition in Santo Rio. The last stop for Rose.

Rose was like Santo Rio, dying in the sun; used only by desperate men or lost pilgrims stumbling quickly through; refugees from places they couldn’t go back to … watching the clock tick away the time. The end of the line; a good horse jump over Texas ground to the Rio Grande.

Josey walked the roan past the Majestic Hotel, presumptuous in the name of a faded sign; a one-story ’dobe with a sagging wooden porch. There was a horse hitched in front, and he ran his eyes over its lines and its rigging. The sorrel was too good for the average cowboy, the lines too clean … legs too long. The rigging was light. There were only two other horses in town, and they stood, tails whipped between their legs by the wind, hitch-racked before the Lost Lady saloon.

He passed the General Merchandise store and slip-knotted the reins of the roan on the hitch rail beside the two horses. They were cow ponies, rigged with roping saddles. Nobody showed on the street. Santo Rio was a night town, if anything; a border town where the gentry did their moving by night.

When Josey Wales stepped into the Lost Lady, Rose moved instinctively farther back along the bar. She had seen Bill Longley and Jim Taylor, once, at Bryan, Texas … but they looked tame beside this’un. A lobo. Tied-down .44’s and he stepped too quickly out of the door’s sunlight behind him, scanned the room, then walked directly by Rose to a place at the bar’s end, so that the room and door were in his line of vision.

Hat low as he passed, hard black eyes that briefly caught Rose with a flat look … and thunder! … that scar, brutal and deep across the cheek. Rose felt the hair on her neck rise stiff and tingly. The cowboy and the vaquero twisted in their chairs to watch him, then hastily turned back to their cards as Josey took his place.

Kelly signified his tolerance of all humanity by placing both hands on the bar. Ten Spot appeared not to notice … he was dealing.

“Whiskey?” Kelly asked.

“Beer, I reckin,” Josey said casually, and Kelly drew the beer, dark and foaming, and placed the schooner before him. Josey laid down a double eagle, and Kelly picked it up and turned it in his hand.

“The beer ain’t but a nickel,” he said apologetically.

“Well,” Josey drawled, “reckin ye can give the boys at the table a couple bottles o’ thet pizen … the lady here might want somethin’, and have one ye’self.”

“Well, now,” Kelly’s face brightened, “mighty decent of you, mister.” The feller was high roller … added class, easy come, easy go … it was with them fellers.

“Thankee, mister,” Rose murmured.

And from the card table the cowboy turned to wave a friendly thanks, and the vaquero touched his sombrero. “Gracias, senor.” Ten Spot flickered his eyes toward Josey and nodded.

Josey sipped the lukewarm beer, “I’m lookin’ fer ropin’ hands. I got a spread hunnerd miles north an’…

The vaquero rose from his chair and walked to the bar. “Senor’’ he said politely, “my compadre,” he indicated the cowboy who had stood up, “and myself are good with the cattle and we … he laughed musically, white teeth flashing under the curling black mustache, “are a little … as you say, down on the luck.” The vaquero extended his hand to Josey, “My name, senor, is Chato Olivares and this,” he indicated the lean cowboy who came forward, “is Senor Travis Cobb.”

Josey shook hands with first the vaquero and then the cowboy. “Proud t’strike up with ye,” he said. He judged both of them to be in their middle forties, gray streaking the black hair of the Mexican and fading the bleached, sparse hair of the cowboy. Their clothes had seen hard wear, and their boots were heel-worn and scuffed. The faded gray eyes of Travis Cobb were inscrutable, as was the twinkling light of half humor in the black eyes of Chato.

They both wore a single pistol, sagging at the hip, but their hands were calloused from rope burns; working hands of cowboys. Josey made a snap decision.

“Fifty dollars a month and found,” he said.

“Sold,” drawled Travis Cobb, and his weathered face crinkled in a grin, “You could’a got me and Chato fer the found. Cain’t wait to git my belly roundst some solid bunkhouse chow.” He rubbed his hands in anticipation. Josey counted five double eagles on the bar.

“First month advance,” he said. Chato and Travis stared unbelieving at the gold coins.

“Hola!” Chato breathed.

“Wal, now,” Travis Cobb drawled, “ ’fore I spend all of mine on sech foolishness as boots and britches, I’m a-goin’ to buck the tiger agin.”

Chato followed the cowboy back to the corner table … and Ten Spot shuffled the deck.

Kelly was in an expansive mood. He slid another schooner of beer, unasked, before Josey, and Rose moved closer to him at the bar. Kelly had noticed the scar-faced stranger had not given his name when he shook hands, but this was not unusual in Texas. It was accepted, and considered, to say the least, highly impolite to ask a gent his name.

“Well,” Kelly said heartily, “rancher, huh, I’d never have thought… he paused in midsentence. His eyes had strayed to a piece of paper on the shelf below the bar. He choked and his face turned red. His hands fluttered down for the paper, and he placed it on the bar.

“I ain’t… it ain’t none of my business, stranger. I ain’t never posted one of these things. Bounty hunter … called hisself a special deputy … left it in here, not an hour ago.”

Josey looked down at the paper and saw himself staring back from the picture. It was a good likeness drawn by an artist’s hand. The Confederate hat… the black eyes and mustache …. the deep scar; all made it unmistakable. The print below the picture told his history and ended with: extremely quick and accurate WITH PISTOLS. WILL NOT SURRENDER. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DISARM. WANTED DEAD: $7,500 REWARD.

The name JOSEY WALES stood out in bold letters.

Rose had moved close to read. Now she edged away from the bar. Josey looked up. There was no mistaking the man who had stepped through the door. His garb was dandy leather; tall and lean-hipped; and his holster was tied low on his right leg. Josey took one look and held it steady, locked in challenge with the pale, almost colorless eyes. He was a professional pistolman … and he obviously knew his trade.

Josey took a half step from the bar, and his body slid into the half crouch. Rose had stumbled backward into a table, and she half leaned, half stood, in a frozen position. Kelly had his back against the bottles, and Ten Spot, Chato, and Travis Cobb were turned, motionless, in their chairs. The old Seth Thomas clock, pride of Santo Rio, ticked loud in the room. Wind whined around the corner of the building and whipped a miniature dust cycle under the bat-wing door. The bounty hunter’s speech was expressionless.

“You’d be Josey Wales.”

“I reckin,” Josey’s tone was deceptively casual.

“You’re wanted, Wales,” he said.

“Reckin I’m right popular,” Josey’s mouth twitched with sardonic humor.

The silence fell on them again. The buzzing of a fly sounded huge in the room. The bounty hunter’s eyes wavered before those of Josey Wales, and Josey almost whispered, “It ain’t necessary, son, ye can leave … and ride.”

The eyes wavered more wildly, and suddenly he whirled and bolted through the bat wings into the street.

Everyone came to life at once … except Josey Wales. He stood in the same position, as Kelly exclaimed and Rose plumped down in a chair and wiped her face with her skirts. The moment of relief came quickly to an end. The bounty hunter stepped back into the saloon. His face was ashen, and his eyes were bitter.

“I had to come back,” he said with surprising calm.

“I know,” Josey said. He knew, once a pistolman was broken, he was walking dead; the nerve gone and reputation shattered. He wouldn’t last past the story of his breaking, which would always go ahead of him wherever he went.

Now the bounty hunter’s hand swept for his holster, sure and fluid. He was fast. He cleared leather as a .44 slug caught him low in the chest, and he hammered two shots into the floor of the saloon. His body curved in, like a flower closing for the night, and he slid slowly to the floor.

Josey Wales stood, feet wide apart, smoke curling from the barrel of the pistol in his right hand. And in that smoke, he saw with bitter acceptance … there would be no new life for Josey Wales.

He left him there, face down on the floor, after arranging with Ten Spot and Kelly for his burial… and their split of the dead man’s meager wealth in payment for the task. It was the rough decency and justice of Texas.

“I’ll read over him,” Ten Spot promised in his cold voice, and Josey, Chato, and Travis Cobb forked their broncs north, toward the Crooked River Ranch; past the spot where the bounty hunter would be buried, nameless; but with the simple cross to mark another violent death on the wild, windy plains of West Texas.

Chapter 22

Chato Olivares and Travis Cobb took to the Crooked River Ranch, as Lone said, “like wild hawgs to a swamp waller.” They were good ropers and reckless riders … and enthusiastic eaters at Grandma Sarah’s table. The two riders lived in the comfortable bunk-house but took their meals in the kitchen of the main house with everybody else. Grandma Sarah was flustered, then pleased at the courtly, Old World manner of Chato Olivares. She thanked the Lord for it in one of her open Sunday prayer-sermons, adding that “sich manners brangs us to notice of civilization, which some othern’s hereabouts might try doin’.”

Josey and Lone rode with the cowboys, searching the cows out of brush-choked arroyos and back in:: the valley. It was hard, sweating work, rising before dawn and moving cattle until dark. They built a fanshaped corral in one of the arroyos and narrowed down the high fencing until only a single cow could come through the chute. Here, in the chute, they slapped the Crooked River Brand of the Comanche sign to their hides and turned them loose, snorting and bawling, back into the valley.

Only yearlings and mavericks had to be roped and thrown, and Chato and Travis were experts with their long loops. They disdained “dallying”; the technique, after roping the cow, of whipping the rope in a tripping motion about the cow’s legs. They were two expert, prideful workmen at their trade.

Josey lingered on through the long summer months. He knew he should have left already … before the men came riding for him; before those who loved him were forced into violence because of their loyalty. He silently cursed his own weakness in staying … but he put off the leaving … savoring the hard work, the lounging with the cowboys after the day’s work ended; even the Sunday “services”; the peacefulness of summer Sunday afternoons, when he walked with Laura Lee on the banks of the creek and beside the waterfall. They kissed and held hands, and made love in the shadows of the willows, and Laura Lee’s face shone with a happiness that bubbled in her eyes, and like all women … she made plans. Josey Wales grew quieter in his guilt; in his sin of staying where he should not stay. He could not tell her.

Josey gradually pushed Lone to the ramrod position of the ranch and took to riding more alone, leaving it to Lone to direct the work. He sent Travis Cobb east on a week’s ride in search of border ranches for news of trail herding; where they might bunch their cattle with others … in the spring … for the drive north. Travis returned and brought good news of the Goodnight-Loving Trail through New Mexico Territory that bypassed Kansas and ended at Denver.

Once, at supper, Josey had almost told them, when Grandma Sarah abruptly proposed, before everyone, that Josey accept a fourth interest in the ranch. “It ain’t nothin’ but right,” she had said.

Josey had looked around the table and shook his head, “I’d ruther ye give any part of mine to Lone … he’s gittin’ old … maybe the ol’ Cherokee needs a place to set in the sun.”

Little Moonlight had laughed … she had understood … and stood up at the table and boldly ran her hand over a suspiciously growing mound of her shapely belly, “Old … Ha!” Everybody joined in the laughter except Grandma Sarah.

“They’s goin’ to be some marryin’ up takin’ place ‘round here … with several folks I know.”

Laura Lee had blushed red and shyly looked at Josey … and everybody laughed again.

Late summer faded softly, and the first cool nip touched the edge of the wind, putting the early glow of gold on the cottonwood trees along the creek. Josey Wales knew the word had gone back from the border …. from Santo Rio … and he knew he had stayed too long.