Widowmaker Jones (24 page)

The purple storm cloud blew a gust of wind and dust across the valley. They found a good place to leave the creek bed and set out along the length of the valley, riding three abreast. Kizzy led the black draft horse behind her, and the judge was turned in the saddle with a watch on their back trail and his shotgun propped on one thigh.

“I hope those vaqueros aren't riding good horses,” Newt called to the judge.

“Oh, everyone knows that Don Alvarez raises the finest horses in the state of Coahuila,” the judge called back.

“Great.” Newt kicked the Circle Dot horse to a run.

T
hey had followed a well-worn mule trail over a low mesa at the western end of the valley. The mountains went on and on to the north, as far as Newt could see. It was a rough, broken, desolate landscape, with numerous game trails and steep valleys offering possible byways to Texas if a man knew his way through them. They had picked up no sign of Cortina, and were traveling west only at the judge's say-so that the bandit would head for the road to the river crossing at Las Boquillas. Newt thought it as likely that Cortina might keep to the rough country to make his way to Texas, if that was where he was going at all. They were riding on nothing more than a hunch, and Newt had learned long before that hunches often weren't worth much.

Dark caught them on the western edge of the mountains and overlooking a vast lay of open desert and low mesas and hills to the west. Weary and hungry, and with their horses played out, they made camp on a flat not far off the road north to Las Boquillas. The same thunderclouds Newt had seen earlier must have passed over their campsite, for there were a few big mud puddles in the bottom of an arroyo. That stingy offering of moisture would soon sink into the sand, but it was enough to water their horses and to fill their coffeepot, even if they had to strain the water through the judge's neckerchief to make the coffee.

They kept the fire tiny, unsure if Cortina might be nearby, and because of the judge's continual talk about bloodthirsty Apache Indians being partial to raiding the area. Newt started to handle the cooking chores, but Kizzy shouldered him aside without asking. They were down to a double handful of beans, a few stale tortillas, and a small piece of skirt steak that had grown so dry that it looked more like jerky than steak.

“I'm sorry that we're not better supplied,” Newt said.

Kizzy shrugged and smiled. “I assure you, I've eaten worse meals. Now, do you have any peppers to spice these beans up? I've found the trick to not having enough to eat is to make sure that the little bit you have tastes good.”

Newt went to his saddlebags and brought her a little string of dried peppers that had been in the supplies Don Alvarez had equipped them with. He watched as she ground a couple of the peppers between two rocks.

“Maybe we can resupply at Las Boquillas,” he said.

She shrugged again. “We'll make do.”

“Nothing at Las Boquillas but a tiny peasant village,” the judge said. “We'll be lucky to find anything but goat meat and frijoles, or burro meat if we aren't lucky.”

“They eat burros?” Kizzy asked.

“Sure, haven't you ever ate one? Let me tell you about one time when I was hauling freight on the Santa Fe Trail. We got caught in a blizzard, and hadn't had a bite to eat in days. There was this . . .”

Newt cut him off. “I assure you, Miss Grey, that's a story you don't want to hear.”

The judge let out a big breath of air in a grumpy harrumph. He glanced at the white dog lying not far from where Kizzy was preparing their meal. The dog had appeared shortly before nightfall, footsore and limping.

“We could always eat the dog,” the judge said.

The dog growled when it noticed the judge staring at it.

“I think you're only trying to get to me,” Kizzy said. “Nobody would eat a fine dog like Vlad.”

The dog growled again.

“Dog is tough eating anyway.” The judge gave the dog a final glare and lay back with his hat over his eyes. “Let me know when the vittles are ready.”

“All your talk of Indians has me thinking we ought to take turns standing watch tonight,” Newt said.

“Good idea. You and the girl take the first two watches, and I'll stand guard after that,” the judge said.

In a matter of minutes the judge was snoring.

“Is he really already asleep?” Kizzy asked.

“I wouldn't put it past him to play possum to get out of standing watch, but yes, I think he's really asleep,” Newt said.

“Doesn't he ever use a blanket?”

“The judge is real careful about what he puts any effort into.”

“You mean he's lazy?”

“I mean he's peculiar.”

“In what way?”

“In every way, and most of them irritating. Seems like everything about this trip is peculiar.”

“So why do you ride with him?”

Newt thought about that before he answered. “Man like me doesn't often get to be picky.”

“Why does the judge sometimes call you the Widowmaker?” She sliced up the last of the skirt steak and dropped it into the bean pot.

“Think nothing of that. You should have seen by now that the judge is a little windy.”

She took a seat on her saddle. “Are you some kind of outlaw? I heard the judge say something about you being in his custody.”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“I'm too tired to sleep and need something to do to keep my mind off food until the beans finish cooking.”

“I'm no outlaw. A hard case, maybe, but there are many a lot worse than me.”

“I know the rurales wanted you for killing a man on the road to Zaragoza.”

“The rurales were looking for you and your brother, too.” He watched her carefully to see how she took that.

She nodded, and shoved the hat back off her head, letting it hang against her back by the braided rawhide chin string. Without the ridiculous hat, he was reminded how pretty she really was.

“I saw you beat that vaquero with your pistol,” she said.

“That man got what was coming to him. You wrong someone, you can't expect it not to come back on you. I won't be wronged. You let people run over you and there's no end to it. There'll come a time when you aren't going anywhere except backing up. I don't back up for anyone.”

“You don't have to call me Miss Grey. Kizzy will do fine.”

“All right, Kizzy. Seems like I've been in one kind of a fight or another since I was big enough to walk.”

“You've killed two men since I've known you, and Cortina will make three if you find him again.”

Newt grimaced. “Cortina and his men tried to kill me some time back, and took everything I owned. They shot me down like a dog and left me to rot.”

“So you intend to kill him, and that will make up for everything he did to you?”

“It's his head that will get your brother's fat out of the fire, so don't you high-and-mighty me.” Newt had let the coffee in the bottom of his cup go cold, and he pitched it in the fire in frustration. Who was she to be questioning him? She was a chatterbox like the judge, and most talkers didn't understand that there aren't words for everything.

“I didn't mean to make you mad.” She checked the beans and gave him an apologetic look when she sat back down on her saddle.

“I'm not mad.”

“Tell me why they call you the Widowmaker.”

“It's not much of a story.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“Are you always this nosy?”

“Pardon me, but the one thing I enjoy about traveling is hearing people's stories. I can never lay hand to enough good books, but I've found that the truth, as they say, is often stranger than fiction.”

“We'd best eat and get some sleep. We're liable to have another hard pull in front of us tomorrow.”

“The beans aren't done yet.” She arched one eyebrow and played with the bracelets and bangles on her wrist while she awaited his next excuse.

Newt asked himself why he was talking to the girl about such things. His business was his business, and that was the way it had always been. True, she was uncommonly pretty, especially by the firelight, but he had been around pretty women before and wasn't such a fool to think a woman of her beauty would ever look twice at a man like him. He checked to make sure the judge was still asleep before he spoke again.

“I knocked around for a long time when I first came west. I was laying track and swinging a sledgehammer for the Katy railroad through Indian Territory up north of Texas. I was the only one on the crew that wasn't an Irishman, and those Irish boys surely liked to fight.” A slight smile came to Newt's mouth, but faded as quickly as it had appeared. “I got in a fight with one of them on the railbed. You know, it was hot and things weren't going well. Tempers got the best of everyone. I was the outsider, and a kid to boot, and they thought I was easy pickings. Kid or not, I was holding my own against that fellow until a couple of his friends decided to lend him a hand.”

“You whipped them all?”

“No, not even close, but I made a good enough showing that they left me alone after that. And the crew boss saw the fight and came to me the next day and asked to look at my fists. He'd been a boxer back in New York City, and said I had the makings to be a prizefighter if I wanted to learn how to really fight. I spent every evening for a few months with that man schooling me. I'd fought some back in the hills where I come from and thought I knew a thing or two about fighting, but that man could make me look foolish without even breaking a sweat.”

“So you turned prizefighter?”

“Not right off. The man that was training me was run over by a wagon loaded with railroad ties and killed. I went on west and did one odd job after another. Wasn't long before I took the gold fever like every other fool, and if you've ever been in one of those mining camps you know how rough they can be. Those miners liked to see a good bare-knuckle match on the holidays. I never did have a nose for picking a good claim, but I found I could make a few dollars if I was willing to step into the ring. I never fought in any kind of big match, not then. Just little rough-and-tumble bouts against other amateurs or local tough men.”

“So that's where you got the name?”

“No, word got around that I wasn't afraid to fight, and before long I got other offers. You know, mine guard and such. Most times there wasn't anything to do but stand around and look mean while the big bosses told their men how things were going to be, and it was a lot easier work than busting my back in some mine shaft or freezing my feet off in some cold stream bent over a gold pan.

“I was working as a mine and payroll guard in Shakespeare up in the New Mexico Territory. It was a company town, and they ran a tight operation. You know, paid cheap wages and shook down their miners after every shift to make sure they weren't high-grading. Come payroll days at the company store most of the miners ended up owing the company money instead of having any pay left over. That didn't set well when those men saw all the ore coming out of the mines. Some that spoke up got on the wrong side of the company and were roughed up a little. The word came to me one night that the miners were down at one of the saloons putting a load on and working themselves up to a riot. Half the boys hired to handle such trouble were gone on the trail guarding a silver shipment, and that left only a handful of us to handle things in camp.

“That mob finally drank enough courage and came down the street on the warpath. It got ugly real quick. Every man jack of them was packing lengths of chain, clubs, hammers, knives, and anything else they could lay hand to. Some of the big talkers among them had them worked up to a frenzy over how the company was mistreating them, and they came down the street fifty men strong, toting torches and swearing they were going to burn the company office and kill anyone that stood in their way.”

“And what did you do?” Kizzy asked.

“I had my men go inside the store and grab them each a brand-new pick handle, and then we went out on the street and waited for that mob. Like I said, that bunch was crazy drunk and slobbering mad, but I could see the main fellow egging them on was right up front. I knew him from other places, and he was always one to talk big and stir things up. By then, they were throwing bottles and rocks at us and shouting all kinds of threats, and I knew if we let things go any further there was going to be no stopping them. That's how I got my name.”

“How? I don't understand.”

“It wasn't much. Nothing worth the name.”

“What did you do?”

“I walked right up to that one stirring them up and put a pick handle upside his head. Then I hit the next one foolish enough to open his mouth. After that, they decided none of their complaints was worth all the trouble.”

“You must be a brave man.”

“No, I was young and foolish and bad to drink. The liquor always made me mean, and I hadn't figured out that the fifty dollars a month I was being paid wasn't worth one bit of it.”

“So they gave you the name after that?”

“The rest of the company guards showed up right after the riot, and they dragged me inside the nearest bar to celebrate. Sometime during the night, a big Welshman I worked with stood up on a table with his beer sloshing all over him and shouted that name at me. I thought at the time that it wouldn't stick, but it did. I was a known man wherever I went, and it got worse as time went on and I fought boxing matches with some professional sorts brought into the camps to entertain the labor.” Newt paused over that last word. “Labor. That's what those companies called us. Nothing but gristle and muscle and bone to use up and throw away, as long as the ore kept coming.”

“My father boxed some when he was younger, back in England,” she said.

“Then maybe he would understand what I'm telling you. I never had anything to work with but my two good fists. A man gets hungry enough, and he'll do about anything to feed himself. And now look at me with nothing to my name but a dead man's horse and a dead man's gun.”

“People don't have to stay the same. My papa said that we write our own stories.”