Falcon looked back at the snow-covered wagon. “I hope it’s a fair jury. Be a shame to hang an innocent man.”
“I know the Kid,” Garrett said. “One thing he isn’t is an innocent man. He’s done more’n his share of killing in this county. But all that’s over now.”
Oddly, MacCallister grinned. “I wouldn’t be too sure of that, Sheriff.”
“And just what do you mean by that, Falcon?”
Falcon shrugged. “Some men are just natural born hard to kill, either by a gun or a rope. I wouldn’t start dancing on his grave or spending any of that reward money until you’ve got the grave dug.”
“There are half a dozen witnesses who’ll swear the Kid shot Brady.”
“Half a dozen Murphey and Dolan men?”
“That’s a false accusation. It will be citizens of the town who actually saw the killing.”
Again, MacCallister grinned and wagged his head. “I’d be real sure of that before I took him to trial. He’s got lots of friends.”
“They won’t save him from justice.”
“From what I hear tell, Sheriff, it may not be justice, after all.”
Garrett looked back at the wagon. “We’re wasting time here, Falcon. You’re entitled to your opinion, but a judge and jury will decide the final outcome.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Falcon said, swinging his horse away to ride to the back of the wagon where he halted his mount again.
He looked into the Kid’s eyes. “You ride quiet up to where Sheriff Garrett’s taking you, son. Don’t try anything that’ll give him a reason to gun you down.”
“I didn’t kill Brady,” the Kid said, his teeth chattering in the cold.
“Never said you did. Just bide your time, and maybe things will change.”
Falcon rode off at a trot, and soon his outline was lost in sheets of windblown snow. The wagon jolted forward, wheels creaking over frozen ground.
Rudabaugh asked, “What did he mean, maybe things will change?”
“Can’t say for sure,” the Kid replied, “but if there’s one feller in Lincoln County who could make things change, that was him.”
“He didn’t come right out an’ offer to change the circumstances we’re in right now.”
The Kid covered his freezing ears with the shawl the Navajo girl gave him. “From what I know about him, that ain’t his way of handlin’ things.”
Rudabaugh made a face. “Looks to me like he’s gonna ride off an’ let us hang.”
Tom Pickett spoke up. “He’s supposed to be one bad hombre with a gun, but he didn’t show much of it here today. He coulda got the drop on Garrett an’ let us loose.”
“He’d be breakin’ the law,” the Kid replied. “If we get any help from him, it’ll come another way.” He paused, then said in a low voice, “Like the other night at the ambush.”
Rudabaugh’s expression did not change. “My money says we’ll never set eyes on him again. We’ll be facin’ a hangman’s noose all by our lonesome.”
The Kid rested against the side of the wagon, deciding it was no use to try to convince the others that Falcon MacCallister might offer them a way out. At the moment, even the Kid had no idea how the big gunman could help.
One thing the Kid was certain of . . . he wasn’t going to let anybody hang him. Somehow, he’d find a way to cheat the hangman out of his chance to make him swing at the end of a rope.
Twenty-nine
Roy walked over to Falcon at his table and handed him the early edition of the Las Vegas Gazette and his morning coffee.
“Boss, there’s a couple of pages ’bout the Kid in the paper this mornin’.”
“Thanks, Roy.”
Falcon poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot on the table, lit a cheroot, and leaned back with his boots on the table while he smoked and drank and read.
J.H. Koogler, editor of the Gazette had obtained an interview with the Kid in jail. Falcon read on ...
Through the kindness of Sheriff Romero, a representative of the Gazette was admitted to the jail yesterday morning. Mike Cosgrove, the obliging mail contractor who often met the boys while on business down the Pecos, had just gone in with five large bundles. The doors at the entrance stood open, and a large crowd strained their necks to get a glimpse of the prisoners, who stood in the passageway like children waiting for a Christmas tree distribution. One by one the bundles were unpacked, disclosing a good suit for each man. Mr. Cosgrove remarked that he wanted ’to see the boys go away in style.’
Billy ’the Kid’ and Billie Wilson, who were shackled together, stood patiently while a blacksmith took off their shackles and bracelets to allow them an opportunity to make a change of clothing. Both prisoners watched the operation which was to set them free for a short while. Wilson scarcely raised his eyes and spoke but once or twice to his compadres, Bonney, on the other hand, was light and chipper and was very communicative, laughing, joking, and chatting with the by-standers.
Falcon threw back his head and laughed at this description. The Kid will be grinning and joking with the noose on his neck and his feet over nothing but air, he thought with some affection. The more he found out about the Kid, the more he realized they were kin in their souls. Now, if only he could help the Kid get out of this scrape and off somewhere to start a new life.
He shook his head. Wishful thinking, he thought, and began to read the rest of the article.
“You appear to take it easy,” the reporter said.
“Yes! What’s the use of looking on the gloomy side of everything? The laugh’s on me this time,” he said. Then, looking around the placita, he asked, “Is the jail in Santa Fe any better than this?”
This seemed to trouble him considerably, for, as he explained, “This is a terrible place to put a fellow in.” He put the same question to everyone who came near him, and when he learned that there was nothing better in store for him he shrugged his shoulders and said something about putting up with what he had to.
He was the attraction of the show, and as he stood there, lightly kicking the toes of his boots on the stone pavement to keep his feet warm, one would scarcely mistrust that he was the hero of the ’Forty Thieves’ romance which this paper has been running in serial form for six weeks or more.
“There was a big crowd gazing at me, wasn’t there?” he exclaimed, and then smilingly continued, “Well, perhaps some of them will think me half a man now. Everyone seems to think I was some kind of animal.”
He did look human, indeed, but there was nothing very mannish about his appearance, for he looked and acted a mere boy. He is about five-foot, eight or nine inches tall, slightly built and lithe, weighing about 140; a frank and open countenance, looking like a schoolboy, with the traditional silky fuzz on his upper lip; clear blue eyes, with a roguish snap about them; light hair and complexion. He is, in all, a handsome looking fellow, the imperfection being two prominent front teeth, slightly protruding like squirrels’ teeth, and he has agreeable and winning ways.
A cloud came over his face when he made some allusion to his being made the hero of fabulous yarns, and something like indignation was expressed when he said that our Extra misrepresented him in saying that he called his associates cowards. “I never said any such thing,” he pouted, “I know they ain’t cowards.”
Billie Wilson was glum and sober, but from underneath his broad-brimmed hat we saw a face that had by no means bad look. He is light-complexioned, light hair, bluish grey eyes, is a little stouter than Bonney, and far quieter. He appears ashamed and is not in very good spirits.
Falcon snorted. Reporters, he thought, only one rung above lawyers on the social scale, but sometimes they can write something so dumb it defies description. He smirked as he read on . . .
A final stroke of the hammer cut the last rivet in the bracelets, and they clanked on the pavement as they fell.
Bonney straightened up. Then, rubbing his wrists where the sharp edged irons had chafed him, he said, “I don’t suppose you fe
llows would believe it, but this is the first time I ever had bracelets on. But many another fellow had them on, too.”
With Wilson he walked toward the little hole in the wall to the place which is no “sell” on a place of confinement. Just before entering he turned and looked back and exclaimed: “They say, ’a fool for luck and a poor man for children’—Garrett takes them all in!’ ”
We saw them again at the depot when the crowd presented a really warlike appearance. Out of one of the windows, on which he was leaning, he talked freely with us of the whole affair.
“I don’t blame you for writing of me as you have. You had to believe others’ stories. But then I don’t know as anyone would believe anything good of me, anyway,” he said. “I wasn’t the leader of any gang. I was for Billy all the time. About that Portales business, I owned the ranch with Charlie Bowdre. I took it up and was holding it because I knew that sometime a stage line would run by there, and I wanted to keep it for a station.”
[It was rumored that the ranch at Los Portales which the Kid had homesteaded with Bowdre was a rendezvous for stolen stock, but none was ever found there.]
“But I found there were certain men who wouldn’t let me live in the country, so I was going to leave. We had all our grub in the house when they took us in, and we were going to a place about six miles away in the morning to cook it and then light out. I haven’t stolen any stock. I made my living gambling, but that was the only way I could live. They wouldn’t let me settle down. If they had, I wouldn’t be here today.” He held up his right hand, on which was the bracelet. “Chisum got me into all this trouble, and wouldn’t help me out. I went to Lincoln to stand my trial on the warrant that was out for me, but the Territory took a change of venue to Doña Aña, and I knew that I had no show, and so I skinned out. When I was up to White Oaks the last time, I went there to consult with a lawyer, who had sent for me to come up. But I knew I couldn’t stay there, either.”
The conversation then drifted to the question of the final round-up of the party.
“If it hadn’t been for the dead horse in the doorway I wouldn’t be here. I would have ridden out on my bay mare and taken my chances at escaping,” said he. “But I couldn’t jump over that, for she would have jumped back, and I would have got it in the head. We could have stayed in the house but there wouldn’t have been anything gained by that, for they would have starved us out. I thought it was better to come out and get a square meal—don’t you?”
The prospect of a fight (at the train) exhilarated him, and he bitterly bemoaned being chained. “If I only had my Winchester I’d lick the whole crowd,” was his confident comment on the strength of the attack party. He sighed and sighed again for a chance to take a hand in the fight, and the burden of his desire was to be set free to fight as soon as he should smell powder.
As the train pulled out, he lifted his hat and invited us to call and see him at Santa Fe, calling out “Adios!’”
Falcon smiled, thinking that if the Kid’s brains were as large as his cojones, he would probably be president some day.
He folded the paper and laid it on the table, taking out another cigar and lighting it. He knew he could do nothing to help the Kid unless he survived his trial in Santa Fe and was brought back to Lincoln to stand trial for the killing of Sheriff Brady.
He poured more coffee and sat there, smoking and thinking. It was a perplexing problem, but he would figure some way to help the Kid, whatever it took.
Roy walked over and took the coffeepot to refill it.
“You think the Kid’s gonna come out of this all right, boss?”
“We’ll see, Roy, we’ll see.”
Thirty
After their capture at the old house in Stinking Springs by newly elected sheriff Pat Garrett, the Kid and his comrades were still hopeful that a new governor, Lew Wallace, would soon release them.
The Kid, Dave Rudabaugh, Charley Bowdre, Billy Wilson, and Tom Pickett had been prisoners at Las Vegas, the New Mexico Territory, to be charged in Mesilla for various crimes. But the Kid, now known across most of the region as Billy the Kid, was set to stand trial for the murder of Sheriff William Brady at Lincoln and it was there where he was headed to be hanged, after his conviction for the murder in the territorial court in Santa Fe.
The Kid had come by wagon to Lincoln. He was chained to the floor upstairs at the Lincoln County Courthouse, guarded by two men, Bob Olinger, and Deputy James Bell. Billy was lodged on the second floor in the northeast corner of the building.
Olinger enjoyed taunting the Kid. “You’re gonna die by a rope, Billy Bonney,” he often said.
Bell, on the other hand, seemed less antagonistic. “I know you’re a desperate character,” Bell said on one occasion, “but it seems you have a good reason for nearly everythin’ you’ve done in New Mexico.”
Sheriff Garrett stated publicly that the Kid was “daring and unscrupulous, that he would sacrifice the lives of a hundred men who stood between him an’ what he wanted.”
A friend of Olinger’s came by to give Bob a similar warning that would prove to be fateful. “You think yourself an old hand in this business. But I tell you, as good a man as you are, that if that man Bonney is shown the slightest chance on earth, if he is allowed the use of one hand, or if he is not watched every moment from now until the moment he is executed, he will effect some plan by which he will murder the whole lot of you before you have time to even suspect that he has any such intention.”
Olinger simply smiled and said, “The Kid has no more chance of escaping than of going to heaven.”
Two days after his arrival, Falcon walked into the Lincoln County Courthouse and asked Olinger if he might have a word with his old friend, the Kid.
Olinger sneered. “The Kid ain’t receivin’ no visitors today. . . nor any other day, MacCallister.”
Falcon fixed Olinger with his cold, blue eyes. “You know, Olinger, the Kid still has a lot of friends around here. I’ll bet if I were to go back to Fort Sumner and tell everyone that came into my saloon that the Kid was really having it rough over here, that you were mistreating him something awful, why, it wouldn’t be too long before your horse would go lame, or your dog would get killed, or a rock would fall out of the sky onto your head. You get my drift, Olinger?”
A tiny sheen of sweat appeared on Olinger’s forehead, and he shifted his gaze, afraid to look Falcon in the eye.
“Okay, gambler, but I’m gonna be standin’ right behind you, listenin’ to every word. I don’t want no talk of escape, you hear?”
Falcon nodded, contempt for the man in his every look.
Olinger followed Falcon upstairs, after searching him and removing his sidearm. The man was so incompetent that he failed to find the derringer hidden behind Falcon’s belt, but it didn’t matter. Falcon had other plans for the Kid.
As they entered the upstairs room where the Kid was chained to a bolt in the middle of the floor, Falcon grinned and walked over to shake his hand.
“Howdy, Kid. How’re things?”
As their hands met, Falcon slipped a folded piece of paper into the Kid’s palm. The Kid didn’t hesitate, just took it and stuck it in his pocket without looking at it.
“Why, I’m doin’ fine, Falcon. How’re you?”
“I’m well, also, Kid. Anything I can do for you, to make things easier while you’re here?”
“Sure, Falcon,” the Kid said, evidently in high spirits, “Just grab and hand me Bob’s gun for a moment.”
“My boy,” Olinger said, softening his tone at a sharp glance from Falcon, “you’d better tell your friend here good-bye. Your days are short.”
The Kid quipped, “Oh, I don’t know—there’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip.”
Falcon took out a cigar and lighted it with a lucifer. “How’d things go up in Santa Fe, Kid? The newspaper reports were kind of sketchy.”
The Kid gave Falcon his cocky grin. “They had two federal indictments against me, one for killin
’ Buckshot Roberts, the other for the murder of Morris Bernstein. I got off on both of those.”
Falcon nodded, blowing smoke from his nose toward Olinger, who coughed and moved a slight distance away, his hand remaining on his pistol.
“Then Judge Bristol put me on trial for the killin’ of Sheriff Brady, with a hand-picked jury and a defense attorney who was a member of the Santa Fe Ring, a lodge brother of Dolan’s. It didn’t take the jury long to figure out which way the wind blew in Santa Fe. They sentenced me to hang. And,” he said spreading his arms, “here I am.”
Falcon nodded again. “I figured it was something like that. By the way, Kid, you’ll be glad to know your old friend Pat Garrett has been having trouble getting his hands on the five hundred dollar reward for bringing you in.”
The Kid grinned again. “Oh? I’m awful sorry to hear that. Why?”
“The acting governor, Rich, said his claim was without merit because the reward was for delivering you to the sheriff of Lincoln County, and Garrett never turned you over to Kimball.”
The Kid threw back his head and laughed, long and loud. “Ain’t that a hoot? Garrett goes to all the trouble to help frame me for a murder I didn’t commit, and it ends up costing him his blood-money.” He laughed again. “I just love a story with a happy ending, don’t you Falcon?”
Falcon tipped his hat. “Don’t you forget to keep up on your reading, you hear, Kid?”
The Kid slipped his hand in his pocket and winked where Olinger couldn’t see him. “You bet, Falcon. I’ll get right on it as soon as you leave.”
Olinger followed Falcon to the door, grinned, and said, “Your boy don’t have much time left, gambler.”
Falcon turned to stare at Olinger, making the fat man break out in a sweat again.
“Tell you what, jailer,” Falcon said, pulling a hundred dollar bill from his wallet. “I’ll bet you a hundred and give you two to one that the Kid outlives you.”
Song of Eagles Page 19