Streets of Laredo

by Larry McMurtry

  The next morning, she saw the ribbon of river shining far ahead. But she saw no town. She had found the Rio Grande, but where was she, north or south of the town and the Rio Concho? She didn't know. When she tried to nudge Call out of his delirium, she failed again. He couldn't see, for his eyes were hot with fever.

  Lorena crossed the river. She remembered that Call had said Pea Eye was half a day to the south. He had mentioned an old scout named Billy Williams who was staying in a little village in Mexico. The old scout might tell her the way or even lead her. Call had told her about Billy Williams before she cut his leg off. He must have known that he would be useless to her, even if he lived.

  Lorena crossed the river and looked both ways. There was nothing to see in either direction but the gray land. She had hoped for a spiral of smoke or an adobe hut, but there was nothing.

  The choice was a coin toss: Lorena had to choose between two emptinesses. She chose to go north, for no better reason than that she was right-handed. For six hours she led the Captain's horse north, feeling more and more despairing, more and more convinced that she had made the wrong choice. She became seriously frightened. She had eaten the last of the bacon that morning, and had only enough coffee for two more camps. If she didn't find a settlement or a dwelling soon, she would wear out and give up. Her nerves had not recovered from the amputation, and she was exhausted but unable to sleep. She could not get warm, no matter how close to the fire she slept, and she had troubling dreams about her children when she did sleep. They were vague dreams, and she could not remember them clearly, but in all of them her children were under threat. Laurie was sick, or a horse was running away with Clarie, or Georgie had fallen down a well.

  Lorena stuck close to the riverbank. If she wandered off and lost the river, it would probably be the end. Toward evening, as the weak sun began to sink, she thought she saw a movement near the river. There was a little rapid, and just above it she thought she saw a brown rock move. She had been nodding in her fatigue, perhaps even dreaming.

  Brown rocks didn't move.

  When Lorena rode a little closer, she saw that an old Mexican woman sat by the river, just above the little rapid. She was wrapped in a brown serape and looked from a distance like a rock, but she was a woman. Call was slumped over his horse's neck, unconscious.

  "I have seen that man before," the old woman said.

  "He was in our village. Who cut off his leg?" "I did," Lorena said. "I had to." "He is the famous Texas Ranger. He killed Maria's father," the old woman said.

  "He killed her brother, too. That was a long time ago, when my children lived with me." "He was a lawman," Lorena said. "I need food and I need a doctor. He has a bullet in him. I need to find a doctor who will take it out." "There is no doctor in our village," the old woman told her. "The butcher might take the bullet out--his name is Gordo. But he is lazy, I don't know if he would want to help a gringo. Maria can do many things. She might take the bullet out. But this lawman killed her father and killed her brother. Maria may not be willing to help him." "I'll have to take the chance," Lorena said.

  "I'm out of food. Where is your village?" "Go on the way you are going, it isn't far," the old woman replied.

  Lorena wondered why the old woman had chosen to sit by the river. The dark was coming, but she was making no move to go home. Lorena thought she might be sick, and she felt she should offer to help her.

  "If you're tired, you can ride my horse," Lorena said to her. "I can walk, if the village isn't too far." "No, I want to stay here tonight," the old woman said. "My children live here. If you listen, you will hear their voices." Lorena did listen, but all she heard was the splashing of the water in the little rapid. She decided the old woman must be crazy.

  She rode on another mile, and soon saw the village. The setting sun shone on it. There were only some eight or ten small buildings, but after days of seeing nothing but the gray land, the sight of even one building would have been welcome.

  It was welcome to the horses, too; they were hungry. Both of them tried to speed up, but Lorena held them back. She was afraid that a faster pace might jar the Captain and cause worse bleeding.

  As she rode into the village, a few goats walked out to meet her, bleating. She saw a large boy and a small, slight girl standing with the goats. Both children were barefooted, despite the cold. The little girl was very pretty, but she moved oddly, holding her head to the side like a bird.

  Lorena was only a few feet away from them, when she realized that the little girl was listening, not looking. She was blind.

  Behind the children, in the doorway of a small house, Lorena saw a woman with a butcher knife in one hand--probably she had been cutting meat for supper. A tall, older man with a slight limp came out and stood beside the woman. He looked American. Perhaps he was the scout Call had mentioned, the one who might take her to find her husband. She stopped, and the woman and the tall man came out to greet her.

  "I have a wounded man," Lorena said to them.

  "I need help. If there's a doctor here, I'd appreciate it if someone would find him.

  This man has a bullet in him that needs to come out." Billy Williams took the reins of Call's horse. He was shocked at how the man looked. He had seen many wounded men, but could not recall seeing anyone still breathing who was in worse shape than Call was in.

  "It's Woodrow Call," Billy said, to Maria. "Somebody's about finished him." Maria had the knife in her hand. She walked up to the horse and looked at Call. For years, when she was younger and the sting of her father's and her brother's deaths had been sharper, Maria had promised herself that she would kill Captain Call if she ever got the opportunity.

  Now the opportunity was an arm's length away. They were planning to kill a goat, and Billy Williams had just sharpened the butcher knife. Maria hadn't spoken--Billy always grew nervous when Maria didn't speak. Her angers matured in silence. Then they came boiling up.

  But Maria didn't raise the knife and she didn't strike. She looked at the blond woman on the other horse. It was easy to see that the woman had come a long way, for she looked cold and she looked tired. She looked as exhausted as Maria had felt when she got back from Crow Town.

  "Get down," she said, to the woman. "Come into my house and eat." Maria looked only briefly at the man tied to the black horse. He was an old man, and so wounded that he was only just barely alive.

  Though he bore the name of the man who had killed her father and her brother, Maria knew he was no longer that man, the one she had wanted to kill.

  She had wanted to kill him in his power because he had used his power wrongly. She wanted him to know that he could not simply kill people, good people, and be excused.

  But the man who had wielded the power and done the killing was not the old, sick man on the black horse. To stab him now would be pointless--for she would not be stabbing the Captain Call she had hated for so long, but only the clothes and the fleshy wrappings of that man. She began to untie the knots that held him to the horse. The knots were slick with his blood.

  "Take him in," she said to Billy. "Put a blanket down by the fire and put him on it.

  I want to look at his wounds." Billy cut the bloody knots and lifted Call off the horse. Call moaned when his wounded arm bumped against the saddle horn. Teresa came over and stood beside Billy as he lifted Call.

  "Is that the man who was here before?" Teresa asked. "I hear him breathe--is he sick?" "Yes, he's sick," Maria said. She was unsaddling Call's horse. "Tell Rafael to drive the goats to the pen. We don't want the wolves getting them." Lorena was stiff. She hadn't yet dismounted.

  She was trying to adjust to the fact that she had actually found the village. She had stopped believing that she would find any settlement, anyplace with people in it.

  "Get down," Maria told her. "Billy will take care of your horse. You need to wash and you need to eat." Lorena eased off the horse.

  "I've come a long distance," she said. "I'm tired." "Who cut his leg off?" Maria aske
d. Not until Billy lifted Call down did she notice the missing leg.

  "I did," Lorena responded. "It was that or let him die." "No wonder you are tired," Maria said.

  "Come into my house and rest." It was a small house. There was a table with a lamp on it, two plain chairs, and some blankets spread on the dirt floor. But it was a house, so warm inside that before Lorena had been there five minutes, she began to nod.

  The large boy brought in a bowl full of cold water for her from the well. Lorena splashed it on her face, trying to wake up. She saw Maria bending over Call. The old scout was there, too.

  They cut his shirt off and examined the wound in his chest. Then they looked at his arm.

  "You should have cut the arm off, too," Maria told her, when Lorena squatted beside her.

  "I was just too tired," Lorena answered.

  "It was just too much cutting.

  "You have a pretty daughter," she added. The little blind girl was ladling food out of a pot. The girl moved around the house lightly, like a moth.

  "Thank you," Maria said.

  "Well, I ain't going in after that bullet," Billy Williams said. "That bullet is lodged in a bad place. Whoever takes it out needs to know what he's doing, and I don't." "There's no doctor here?" Lorena asked.

  "Just the butcher, and he's a butcher," Maria said. "Who shot this man?" "Joey Garza, I guess," Lorena said.

  "Neither of us ever saw who it was. The man shot from under a horse. Captain Call said he thought it was Joey Garza, though." Maria was silent. Her son would be very famous now; he had brought down the great manhunter.

  All the girls on the border would want him, though that would make little difference to Joey. He didn't like girls.

  But Joey had avenged her father and her brother.

  He had crippled their killer, and there was no need for her to do more. She could even help the old man a little, though she knew she was not skillful enough to remove the bullet from his chest. She could probably cut off his arm if the butcher couldn't be persuaded to do it. Or they could send across the river for the doctor in Presidio. He didn't like coming to Mexico--the people were too poor to pay him --but he might come to treat Captain Call.

  He was a famous Ranger, not a poor Mexican.

  "Do you know Joey Garza?" Lorena asked.

  She had seen the woman stiffen a little, when she said the name.

  "He is my son," Maria said.

  Lorena thought she must have misheard. Surely she hadn't carried Captain Call for three days across the wastes, only to bring him to the house of the boy who had tried to kill him.

  "I am Joey's mother, but I am not like him," Maria said. She saw that Lorena was frightened.

  "You need to rest," she added. "There is a bed in the other room. You can sleep without worrying.

  We will take care of your friend. We are not going to kill him. If I had meant to kill him, I would not have brought him into my house." Lorena was so tired that she wasn't thinking or even hearing very well. She had to sleep soon, no matter what happened to Captain Call.

  "Teresa, take her," Maria said.

  Lorena followed the little blind girl into the other room.

  "I cleaned your bed," the little girl said. "When you wake up, I will tell you a story." "Why, thank you," Lorena said. "I like stories." Then she stretched out on the low bed.

  "Do you have any children?" Teresa asked, as Lorena stretched her stiff limbs.

  "Five ... I have five," Lorena said. Then, in a blink, she went to sleep.

  Teresa sat on the bed beside her for a few minutes. She had ladled up some posole, but she knew the woman hadn't eaten any.

  "You didn't eat your posole ... wake up," she said, touching the woman. But the woman didn't wake up.

  Teresa sat on the bed listening to the woman breathe. She was thinking about the story she would tell her when she woke up. It would be a story about the big spider that lived by their well. Sometimes she would put her hand on the ground and let the spider crawl over it. The spider never bit her, though a scorpion had bitten her once. She could hardly wait for the woman to wake up so she could tell her the story about the spider.

  When he robbed the train outside San Angelo, Joey made a discovery. What he discovered was that it was more interesting to him to frighten people than to kill them. He had made the passengers stand outside for an hour after he robbed them. He told them he would be watching through his spyglass, and he assured them he would kill the first one who moved before the hour was up. The people stood in terror for a long time. He had taken their watches, and he told them to look at the sun and mark the hour by its movements. But the people stood in the cold for almost three hours before any of them dared to move. They were afraid of being shot. In the end, Joey didn't shoot any of them. Through the spyglass he could see that the people were shivering--from fear, not from cold.

  Two of the men wet themselves. They were too afraid of his bullets even to move behind a bush.

  Watching the passengers tremble was more satisfying than killing them. None of them were people of importance, and there was no distinction to be gained from killing people of no importance. Making people dead was easy, but it was no longer interesting to him.

  Wounding Captain Call so badly and so easily was a triumph Joey knew he would never be likely to equal. But he would never need to equal it, so potent was the reputation of the man he had wounded. Even if he never shot another person or robbed another train, his reputation would grow and grow along the border and all through the West. He had ended the career of the most famous manhunter of all. People would still be talking about Joey Garza when he was an old man, even if he never killed or robbed again.

  He planned to kill again, though, and quickly.

  He wanted to shoot Captain Call's three deputies. They were probably too inept to be a nuisance, but Joey wanted it known that he had wiped out Captain Call's whole party. That would build his reputation even higher.

  Joey followed the blond woman all the way to Ojinaga. From time to time, he took out his spyglass and trained it on the horse carrying Captain Call. He expected to see that the old man had died. But every time he looked, he saw movement. Somehow the old man still lived.

  When he saw the woman lead the horse upriver toward the village, he let her go and rode off a few miles into Mexico, where he made camp. He meant to travel up the Rio Concho and locate the deputies.

  The next morning, a little before midday, he found their camp. They were almost a day's ride inside Mexico, and they seemed simply to be waiting.

  They were probably waiting for Captain Call.

  They didn't know what had befallen him.

  Joey was surprised to see that there were now only two deputies and old Famous Shoes. He saw no reason to kill the old man.

  Probably the third deputy had met with an accident of some sort.

  Joey studied the camp for a while with his spyglass, trying to decide on a method of attack that would provoke the utmost fear. After giving it some thought, he decided to shoot the horses and the two pack animals first. Maybe he could scare the men out into the desert. If he frightened them badly enough, he might not even have to shoot them. He could simply chase them into the desert, shooting now and then to scare them farther away from the river. When he had them exposed and lost, he could simply go away and leave them to freeze or starve to death.

  Joey decided to wait until the next morning. Captain Call would not be coming to their rescue. Unless Famous Shoes happened to be wandering around tracking some animal, no one would know he was there. His shots would come as a complete surprise.

  The next morning, Joey's first shot killed a pack mule just as Brookshire was trying to extract some coffee from one of the saddlebags.

  The mule fell in Brookshire's direction, knocking him back several feet and causing him to spill the coffee. Before he could scramble to his feet, a second shot killed the other pack mule.

  Pea Eye had been frying bacon. A third shot kicked the
frying pan into the air, causing sizzling grease to burn his hands and wrists. He got to his feet and began to run to his horse, only to have a fourth shot kill the horse before he could even grasp the bridle reins.

  Brookshire's big horse was the only mount left, but before Pea Eye could step over his own horse, which was down but still kicking, Brookshire's mount was knocked to its knees.

  It scrambled up and was shot again. Pea Eye was in agony from the pain of the sizzling bacon grease, but he knew he had to run for cover or he would be dead and past worrying about a little thing like burned hands.

  "Run!" he yelled to Brookshire, who sat amid the spilled coffee, looking dazed. "Get a gun and run to cover!" As he said it, Pea Eye realized he didn't have a gun himself. He had taken his pistol off because the scabbard was rubbing his hip raw, and his rifle was propped against his saddle. The pistol was closer, so he turned and grabbed it.

  Brookshire had picked up the big shotgun and was stuffing shells into his pocket.

  "No, get a rifle, we need rifles," Pea Eye yelled.

  Brookshire just looked addled. Pea Eye decided to try for his own rifle, so he ran back and grabbed it. Then he turned and headed down into the riverbed. Soon he heard Brookshire stumbling after him. Pea Eye ran for a hundred yards or more, then stopped and waited for Brookshire to catch up. He listened, but he could hear nothing other than Brookshire, as he stumbled on the rocky ground.

  "Reckon it's him?" Pea Eye asked, when Brookshire caught up. "Reckon it's the Garza boy?" "I don't know who it is," Brookshire said. The dying mule had slammed into him, knocking the breath out of him. He had somehow grabbed the shotgun and made it into the riverbed without having quite regained his breath. He stopped by Pea Eye and gasped for air. He realized he had not made a good choice in taking the shotgun. Carrying it was like carrying a small cannon. But he couldn't immediately spot his rifle or his pistols, and he didn't want to just stand there with a killer shooting mules and horses to death on either side of him.