Lucky Billy

by John Vernon

  "That's okay. I'm here."

  "You kill someone and alls you want to do is turn a new leaf over."

  "Is that what you did? Didn't you say you went back to stealing horses?"

  "That's what I mean. You want to but you can't."

  "I don't see why not."

  "Because you can't. You're someone else now."

  "I'm someone else, too, and I never killed a man."

  "It's not the same, Fred."

  When they came to the wagon road, Fred swapped with John Middleton, taking the wagon alone into Lincoln while John took Fred's mare. The main party rode through Pajarito Flats, passing the springs, watching the shadows cast by the mountains grow longer and spread as the sun began to set. Dick Brewer's cattle wintered on these flats, most of them hidden in timber to the west. Brewer rode ahead between Tunstall and Widenmann in the glow of dying light reflected overhead. Once Fred was gone, Billy rode next to Middleton five or six hundred yards behind the others.

  They'd been riding all day. Before them was the rise that fell away to the Ruidoso. When they crested the ridge they saw the Capitans' gray and black profiles ahead in the distance. Overlapping in dusk, receding with the light, the mountains looked scant on a vanishing horizon.

  Riding drag, Billy heard the first shots, then the avalanche of horses galloping behind them, spilling over the ridge they'd just crossed. I le turned and saw Matthews racing at the head of a posse now increased by about a dozen men. Then he thought, We're strung out. We've let the lead get out of earshot.

  He was right. Widenmann and Brewer, ahead of Tunstall now, had spotted turkeys in the brush left of the trail, and in the act of chasing them up a steep slope had debated on their mounts whether hunting wild turkeys wouldn't raise the whole country.

  Rob said, "You're unduly alarmed."

  "They'll be up about our ears."

  "Not likely, Richard."

  Then they, too, heard the gunshots.

  Below them, on the trail, Tunstall found himself alone. By this time he'd attained his hundred and fortieth mile in three days, and had reached the exalted stage of fatigue in which nothing seemed to matter, his body was abuzz, he could feed on air, he weighed less than dust. Seconds later, he felt like a butchered quarter section hanging from a hook. When the shots grew louder he whirled his horse around. The Kid and John Middleton came galloping toward him and, passing the Englishman, urged him to follow. "For God's sake, move!" Middleton shouted.

  "What, John? What, John?"

  The vanguard of Matthews's posse split off from the rest and approached the Englishman. He waited, unable to make out their faces in the granular dark. The horses' hooves, slowing, clattered on seams of gray, pocked limestone running through the yellow grass. Tall ponderosas darkened the field beside a chaparral of Gambel oak and junipers. The three men approaching stayed well below the trail, three indistinct shadows. "Buck?" said Tunstall. His hat looked familiar. "Jesse. Tom." Three of the Boys. He'd brought whiskey to their jail cells! He kneed his horse ahead and held up his hand. Thought he heard Hill say, "Let him get closer," though it could have been, "Looks like the lime-juicer." He could see them better now. Billy Morton, Jesse Evans, and Tom Hill—men he knew well. Enemies, sure, but he saw them as straight, at least they weren't two-faced. Well, let them arrest him. They're a posse after all. At least he won't run. He'll rely on the law, yes, that's the only way. The thought wavered briefly through his picky mind that he was too young to be so exhausted. I'm only twenty-four years old.

  6. April 1881

  Escape

  ON THIS SIDE of the Capitans, the trail grows more sandy, the ponderosas thin out. Now it's junipers and pinons comfortably spaced with scalds of free dirt between isolated trees. Billy Burt's pony has affably managed to cure his own limp—he must sense feed ahead. Around a quick bend in the many folds of hills, the scratch-ankle town of Las Tablas emerges.

  Yginio's house is like the handful of others: the usual adobe with grass on the roof and vigas protruding along the broken roofline. A doorway, a window. Cottonwoods, walnuts, carretas in the yard, sheep in their pens, goats nuzzling the new bunch grass in the brown powdered earth. Chickens. A toddler in a shift. "Viene la gente, Tío!" she shouts.

  The Kid corrects her. "One people."

  Beyond the house, against a bare hill—dark clouds to the north lit by the vanished sun—he spots Yginio running, the oxen and plow abandoned behind him. "Bilito! Nunca, nunca, nunca. It's a ghost. You're in jail, Bilicito!"

  "Not anymore." Billy finds himself clinging to his mount's neck and rolling off the horse in undignified fatigue.

  "What did you do? I can't believe it. You son of a bitch!"

  The two men embrace. Billy keeps muttering, Henio, Henio. "I managed to escape."

  Yginio hefts the free shackle on its chain tucked in the Kid's belt. "Mother of God." He's a handsome young man, Yginio Salazar, younger than Billy, which may be why the elder always took to him. Sometimes you get tired of being the lambkin. "Romolo! Romolo! Billy Bonney's here!"

  "Romo's around?"

  Yginio shrugs. "All the time now." His friend's stepfather, Billy now sees, stands in the doorway. He doesn't approach. Yginio, tall and thin, looks the opposite of Romolo, squat and overweight, although quite strong. Romolo's famous, on holy days and fiestas, for lifting sacks of potatoes with his teeth. Yginio's more wiry; Billy's never seen him sweat. Even caught plowing he's as polished as ever. Soft, distant eyes. A perfect fluke of a mustache that appears freshly combed, brown hair parted neatly, small ears, long cheeks. He can't stop grinning and he's wearing a jacket impervious to dust, or so it seems to Billy. "Adelante!" He takes Billy's arm.

  Romolo still stands in the doorway. "Hello, Uncle," Billy says.

  "I'm not your uncle."

  Glancing at Romolo, Yginio says, "He's just being polite."

  Romolo disappears before they enter the house and can't be seen inside. No sign either of the child from the yard. "First, eat," says Yginio, before passing through a doorway. Billy can hear a chittering exchange in rapid-fire Spanish through that door, then one of the men stomps off through the back. Minutes later, through the room's only window, he sees Romolo in the dusk behind the two oxen heaving up against the forked plow with ferocious contempt when it meets an obstacle.

  Inside, it's growing dark. A bed, some stick chairs, a rough table, its lamp unlit. Walls whitewashed with jaspe sporting obscure chromos in bright tin frames. The floor is beaten earth slicked over with mortar, the ceiling oiled canvas pulled to a point where a rope hangs into the mouth of an olla in the middle of the floor to catch precious leaks.

  Yginio has become a domestic wonder. Empanaditas, a caldillo with goat meat, rueditas, a stack of blue-corn tortillas sprinkled with cheese, onion, and shredded lettuce and covered with red chili. Biscuits, mugs filled with blue atole gruel and salted boiled milk. Mordila made from hog's blood fried with pine nuts and raisins. "I've died and gone to heaven," says Billy. His heart swells out to his friend, his eyes water from the chili, and despite being starved he slows down to savor the carnival of tastes, also out of politeness to his better-mannered host. "You'd of made a great woman, Yginio."

  "That's what my mother said."

  "Mex food beats pig's feet and pickled eggs hands down."

  "We know how to enjoy."

  "We had these empanaditas the last time, no?"

  "I knew you like them."

  "I do. They're just the same."

  "That's because whenever I do something now I always do it the same way exactly."

  "How come?"

  "Something bad will happen if I don't. I do it very carefully."

  "I can understand that. You don't want to rush things."

  The dark grows darker and Yginio lights the oil lamp. He serves the foamy chocolate that Billy loves, spiced with cinnamon and ground pecans, and when they finish that he offers, as though he's been saving them for him, two very fine Tepics.

  "Same as last t
ime. I say let's smoke 'em."

  They smoke the cigars and Billy yawns. Thumps and rattled pots in the kitchen. Romo likes to smoke, too, Billy knows, but he still resolutely fails to appear. Across the table, like a rash, Yginio's grin spreads upon his face again. "How did you escape?"

  "Where's José?" asks Billy.

  "In Santa Fe."

  "What happened to his dream about going to California?"

  "I guess it ain't happen. How did you escape? What happened to the deputies?"

  "Dead."

  "Jesus, Bilito. They won't hang you this time for sure. This time, I believe, they going to crucify you."

  "Well, why not? I'm persecuted too. Those Dolanites and Murphs who murdered all those people—they went scot-free. How come it's always me? I'm tired of playing Bad Man from Bitter Creek. I was supposed to get amnesty too, remember? Give a dog a bad name and he'll be blamed for every bite in the whole damn neighborhood. What I want to know is who betrayed me."

  "Sheriff Garrett came through here yesterday on his way to White Oaks."

  "I know. He left Olinger in charge."

  "So you threw down on him?"

  "I didn't wait, I just killed him."

  "A hard one."

  "Hard is not exactly the word. Olinger's a man, if I didn't have to shoot him, I would have preferred to boil in his own piss."

  "Lucky Billy," said Yginio.

  "How come I'm lucky?"

  "Because you get to kill all those people. You get to shoot the mens you want and most of the time you only have to do it once. The rest of us, what we get, is sit around on our asses and say, What was that you just insulted me? Did you say that to me? Please apologize. You make me feel back Then we get to sit there while they shoot off our toes. You say you shot them both?"

  "I did."

  "Christ almighty, Kid, I wish I could of seen it."

  "I bet he's still lying there. Nobody liked him."

  "Olinger?"

  "Now, Bell, I didn't want to shoot him. But I had no choice. I never shot no one that didn't deserve it. But I feel bad about Bell."

  "He's scum like all the rest."

  "He was good to me."

  "That's just for the looks. He would have shot you like the others."

  "Well, that's true. Someone's always holding a gun to your head." Yginio nods, lowering his eyelids like a knowing tomcat—Yginio, who will die three years short of World War II. "Let's not talk about it," says Billy.

  "Now what will you do?"

  "Go someplace, I don't know."

  "You'll have to leave the territory."

  "I know."

  "Go south. Go to Old Mexico. Garrett can't follow you there."

  "I've got things to do in Fort Sumner."

  "If you know what's good for you—"

  "I know what's good for me. What's good for me is to stick around a pissing while. I plan to kill the man that betrayed me—whoever that is. It must of been a friend. Plus make John Chisum pay me what he owes. I'd love to run into Lew Wallace, too. Break every one of his fucking fingers then he won't write any more books. On top of which I got family in Sumner."

  "You mean Paulita?"

  "Not just that. You know, friends. They might as well be family."

  "Except the one that betrayed you."

  "Do you know who that was?"

  "No."

  "Not Jesús or Juan. Domingo wouldn't do it. Francisco's a true friend."

  "Which Francisco?"

  "Lobato."

  "What about your sweeties? Nasaria, Celsa?"

  "Celsa would never do something like that."

  "Paulita?"

  "She's pregnant! None of them would."

  "You just said someone did."

  "That's why I want to go there. See for myself."

  "But the law will catch up!"

  "We're going in circles, Yginio. The law will catch up regardless. They'd follow me to hell."

  "Maybe to hell but not across the border."

  "I know, I know. I need to think about it. Can I stay here a few days?"

  "Of course."

  "There's no authority in Lincoln."

  "Who's the J.P. now?"

  "I think it's still Wilson."

  "He would take his time. City clerk?"

  "Billy Burt. I got his horse."

  "He'll go to Garrett when he get another one. He might come through here."

  "I expect he'll go by way of Murphy's ranch. On top of he's a coward."

  "Did they know you come here?"

  "They know I hit for the hills."

  That night he can't sleep. He lies awake on the floor beside his friend's bed hearing rare and strange sounds through the buzz of his consciousness: fine, high-pitched crinkles, pink and green in his ears like old brittle oilcloth. He knows Romo is gone, having left him this silence that ripples like an itch in the back of his mind. Yginio's easy breathing above him begins to drive him loco, too, as though the man hadn't a care in the world. Billy's limbs feel unboned from their long meal, his vessels swollen, the blood coursing through them, and his flesh soft as butter, yet even while he remembers, as though in a fever, the times when he was happy before the Lincoln County War, he senses a hardness, a chisel in his mind. The world was better then. The gay old times at Fort Sumner. How he laughed! The girls came from Santa Rosa, Puerto de Luna, Anton Chico, from ranches fifty miles away, with roses in their hair and pendants on their necks and silk handkerchiefs and ribbons tied around their waists, for the weekly bailes. Their bold eyes bluffed then shied behind fans, they made the fans talk, but when he came near them they bunched up like hens. Gallantry flattered them, they didn't get that from waddies. He removed his hat and spoke soothingly low. Feigned ignorance about items on their dresses, embroidered petals and vines, and remarked on colors matching their eyes, or adjusted a ribbon or fingered a locket, even traced a necklace with his gentle fingers across a silky collarbone. Garrett, too, soft-soaped the ladies, and married a beaut)'—then gave up the dances. He and the Kid would sneak into the back room and loop a chain around one of Beaver Smith's barrels and, setting it on blocks with a dishpan underneath, pull the chain tight and sweat out enough whiskey to last them on the dance floor. Or last them at monte or at the faro tables, where Garrett always lost. I gave him the shirt off my back, Billy thinks. I staked that man plenty more than he staked me, but then again I was handy with the cards, or let's call it skill. Yes, skill. I had the touch.

  There's always cheating, said Garrett.

  That takes skill, too.

  Suddenly, the Kid jumps up in a sweat and rouses Yginio and screams in his face, "You were the one! You betrayed me, you bastard! You told Garrett where I was!" Yet, his friend's eyes stay closed and his breathing unruffled. Billy stands there in his socks. The sheer horror of not knowing—or of forgetting in the morning—whether you're sleeping or awake, if it's midnight or three, if you're in the sorry world and can't get out of it or in a sorrier nightmare.

  The next day Billy's stolen horse is gone—back to Billy Burt in Lincoln, no doubt—having pulled loose from the sotol stalk he'd tied him to the day before in hasty fatigue. He can always steal another. He and Yginio work on his shackles with an ax and a rock—Billy's leg resting on a cottonwood stump—and finally get the leg irons oft, and he swings the chain around and lets it fly toward the mountains. Then they free his wrists from the heavy manacles and he chafes and slaps his forearms and throws his arms back and forth. He sets up a target range in Yginio's grama grass facing a broken ridge. One lone cholla swelling with buds from sixty feet away. Townspeople come to watch. Yginio stands behind Billy, pockets full of ammunition, to reload for his friend. He knows this will give him standing in the village. The elders here once had been Mexicans, having lived in the region long before its annexation in '45, but now they are Americans, even though they still call the Anglos Americans as though this honorific were the latter's exclusively. And the Anglos still call the Mexicans Mexicans.

&n
bsp; "Fuck all," Billy mutters after four shots. "This gun don't shoot for shit. I wish I had my old one." He's been aiming for the buds on the waist-high cholla and hasn't hit a single one. The fifteen or so villagers clap politely anyway. The word has spread, they know he's escaped, they've always been partial to El Chivato. To whom is good to Billy, they say, he is good to them. They stand behind a fence of juniper posts at the edge of the lumberyard—the mill smokes behind them—but now and then children followed by their dogs slip between the posts into the field and lie in the new tender shoots of grama grass to get a better look.

  "Whose gun is it?" Yginio asks.

  "Bell's."

  "Are you sure it's the gun?"

  "Of course I'm sure. This gun couldn't hit a barn on the wing." Annoyed, the Kid examines the gun. He runs through the case against it, which he'd snatched from Jim Bell after slabsiding the unfortunate wretch. He'd kicked him down the stairs, fired twice and missed but the ricochet caught him. Blind luck. The gun wasn't cared for, that must be the problem. Neglected guns yaw. No, he hasn't lost his touch. He's heard of hombres who go to ridiculous lengths to correct a failing weapon. Lock it in a vise, heat up the barrel, shove a wrapped poker inside the barrel, and whang it with a hammer. Which queers the bore, of course. "You got a blacksmith here, Yginio?"

  "Pedro Silva."

  He shakes out his arms. He lets them hang by his side. Elbows slightly bent. As the right arm lifts it will seize the pistol's butt on the way up, with economy of motion, assuming the weapon was properly suspended at a suitable height. A gun raised on a belt cinched to ride through a river and not then restored to the optimum location means the barrel will snag on top of the holster and what sort of flowers do you favor then, amigo?

  He whips his hand up but it's just average fast, he knows—catches the hammer with his thumb, slides the forefinger through the trigger-guard, fires, and feels the kick as the barrel comes level. A puff of dust blooms in the dirt beside the cholla. "For shit!" He throws the gun down and, hitting the ground, it jumps like a mousetrap, firing in the air, and strikes a squealing puppy over near the fence. A boy grabs the dog and wraps it in his arms and runs toward a house strewing yips and whines.