by Geff Moyer
Billy Old
Arizona Ranger
A Historical Novel Based on a True Story
Geff Moyer
© 2016 by Geff Moyer
All Rights Reserved.
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eBook 978-1-61139-476-4
____________________
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Moyer, Geff, author.
Title: Billy Old, Arizona ranger : a historical novel based on a true story /
by Geff Moyer.
Description: Santa Fe : Sunstone Press, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016019250 (print) | LCCN 2016021037 (ebook) | ISBN
9781632931399 (softcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781611394764
Subjects: LCSH: Murder--Investigation--Fiction. | Revenge--Fiction. |
Arizona--History--To 1912--Fiction. | GSAFD: Western stories. | Historical
fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3613.O924 B55 2016 (print) | LCC PS3613.O924 (ebook) |
DDC 813/.6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016019250
www.sunstonepress.com
SUNSTONE PRESS / Post Office Box 2321 / Santa Fe, NM 87504-2321 /USA
(505) 988-4418 / orders only (800) 243-5644 / FAX (505) 988-1025
This book is dedicated to the memory of George F. Moyer who instilled in me a love for American history and the West.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Tom, Paul, Richard, Steve, and Jim
Prologue
October, 1934, Taos, New Mexico
She couldn’t remember the last time she tasted meat, let alone what type of meat it was. Maybe it was the trout Kelsey had cooked up for her several weeks ago. He was always good for at least a few meals a month. Especially if he was horny. He had asked her to marry him three times, but she didn’t need or want a man in her life. She hoped he’d return from his current outing with a deer and share a shank with her. “Share” being the key word because she sure as hell couldn’t pay for it. Until she caught up on her grocery bill, turnip and onion sandwiches would be a staple. Mustard usually helped. Corn was plentiful and cheap, but never sat well with the shrapnel still floating around her innards.
Standing shin deep in mud with a dozen other women who had volunteered to serve as nurses with the Red Cross in France, she was told that her work would be safe and far behind the front lines. The Germans didn’t get the telegram. Sixteen years later whenever a thunder storm would crash across the mountains and attack Taos, she’d find herself cowering under the large table in her work area reminded of how strange life is. It took a war to give her purpose. From its maiming and slaughter she found a calling. From her calling she got her dream: This gallery. But it had been over a month since a customer had entered, two since she had sold a painting. Original art wasn’t at the top of the list of people’s purchases at this dour time. She wondered how many starving artists would end up dead ones before this Depression finally ran its course. She had sworn she wouldn’t be one of them. She had been through too much hell to give up now.
The snow was late and that worried her. Snow brings skiers. Although there had been less and less of them the past few years, she figured the ones who could still afford to come might also be able to afford a painting. Her part time shift at the local clinic rarely helped because she was paid only when the customers could pay, and the local Taos natives were hardly any better off than the struggling little art community. If this place does survive she figures it will be a goddamn miracle.
The chugging of a car engine broke the mid-October silence. Peering out the window she expected to see another local returning from a fruitless job search, or Kelsey’s pickup truck. It was neither, but it did park in front of her gallery. The age of the old Ford was her first hint that the man driving wasn’t a buyer. When he got out wearing a Sears and Roebuck mail order suit, she was sure of it. At least he wasn’t toting a Bible. It angered her how this Depression had given birth to hundreds of door-to-door Bible salesmen all trying to convince millions of hopeless people that buying the Good Book will somehow put food in their children’s bellies.
She left the gallery area and retreated to her work shop to give the stranger a few minutes to browse the paintings. All of which were horses. That was her fervor. She grabbed a rag and wiped the smudges of paint from her hands and face, then released the ribbon to allow her hair to tumble free and cover her missing left ear, courtesy of a vicious Mexican policeman. The bell over the door announced the man’s arrival.
When he saw the subject of the many paintings on the walls of the small gallery he knew he had the right place.
“Anyone here?” he called.
“Yessir,” she answered out from the back room. “Be with ya in a minute.”
The man roamed the small gallery studying the paintings. They were stunning. Dozens of different breeds and colors with every muscle captured. Some were standing on hilltops. Some were rearing. Some were running. Some were grazing. A few had colts by their sides. Some were sweating and foaming with the sun glistening off their hides. Some stood in snow with the cold air puffing from their noses. One he particularly liked showed three of them emerging from a misty fog and running full speed straight at him. It was like they were going to leap out of the painting, stampede through the gallery, and burst out the door. That was also when he realized that none had a rider. Not one human interacted with any horse in any painting. These were free spirits of a time long gone.
Returning to the gallery she eyeballed the man studying her work. He was handsomely familiar but she didn’t know why. In his late twenties or early thirties, she guessed, and a good twenty years her junior. For the first time she noticed he was carrying a flat object about one-foot square wrapped in newspaper and immediately assumed he was just another goddamn door-to-door salesman.
“What can I do fer ya?” she asked impatiently and with an obvious hint of disappointment.
Apparently the man must have been absorbed in the paintings. She could tell her voice had startled him. That pleased her.
“These are wonderful paintings,” he stated.
The woman he was looking at was easily twenty years his senior. Her hair hung loose to her shoulders. She wore little or no make-up, but was still attractive in an earthy way. Her nose had a slight crook to it. He figured it must been broken, probably a childhood accident, but it seemed to give her character. Even under her loose fitting smock he couldn’t help but notice an ample set of breasts, still strong enough to rest high.
“Thank you,” she said, but thinking, “Get yer fuckin’ sales pitch over with!”
Without any further chit-chat the man removed the newspaper from the object he was holding and placed it on the counter in front of her.
“Here it comes,” she warned herself with a sigh.
“Did you paint this?” he asked.
Looking down at the painting she felt the wind leave her chest. The man watched her face form into a pallid expression of both pain and pleasure.
“Where the hell’d ya get this?” she asked.
Sonora, Mexico, 1910
La Bandera was hot enough to melt a lizard’s toenail. Piss in the dirt and it would
suck it up before it could make mud. It felt like August, but was probably March. Maybe still February. The street was empty. That was good. No bystanders. He figured it might be Sunday. Since there was no whorehouse in sight he knew the cantina played double duty, like so many others he had searched. That was good, too—less walking. Every time his boot heel struck ground a shard of pain would whip through his jaw. The toothache that had been making unwelcomed social calls for many moons had finally become a full-fledged squatter.
He had no idea of how many of these pestholes he’d dirtied his boots in. His fifth grade education wouldn’t let him count that high. The towns, barrios, villages, and grottos had all become a blur of baked adobes waiting to see which one would be the first to cry tio and knuckle under to the dead Sonora earth. Their only differences were the size of the bone orchards and the amount of dog shit in the streets.
The sombrero he had donned a few weeks earlier felt like he was balancing a platter of beer mugs on his skull. The serape was a heavy, itchy burden that made him sweat and stink all the more, but did provide a soft landing for the critters that lost their grip and nose-dived from his beard and shoulder-length hair. Staring at the bleached and cracked outside walls of the cantina he knew how its guts would look. A bar would rest a few feet from the back wall. Most times it was simply a few boards ripped from a dying neighbor and stretched across two large, empty barrels that still reeked of rancid rain water. A handful of small tables would be scattered about, each covered in a layer of dust deep enough for a fellow to write his name. Providing anyone in there could write. The only unknown was how many other hombres might be hanging around and if any of them would prove to be a problem.
He hitched Orion by a trough of scum covered water. Not pleased, the testy horse snorted and spewed a glob of snot onto the dry ground.
“Quit bitchin’!” Billy groused at the black stallion with the white star on its forehead. “It’s wet, ain’t it?”
This prickly banter between man and mount dated back to 1905, when both were part of the disbanded Arizona Rangers. The two had just had traveled one-hundred-and-sixty miles southeast from Pedro Conde, very deep into Sonora, deeper than his plan ever intended on taking them. Close to two back-breaking-sore-ass weeks were spent getting to this pus-bucket of a town, costing him the majority of his supplies. He sucked in a mouthful of mescal from his flask, blanketed it around the angry tooth, then spat it onto the ground and watched the dirt inhale it with a wink and a thank you.
Like countless times before, his former captain’s warning rattled through his head: “Only a fool goes into a hostile place ‘lone.” He wondered if his close friend and fellow Ranger Jeff Kidder had heard those words before he stepped into Lucheia’s cantina in Naco, Mexico two years ago. Was he nervous as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark room?
“No!” Billy whispered. He knew Jeff was too fast to be nervous—too smart to be foolish. After all, he was the one with the brains.
“Knowin’ yer surroundin’s,” bellowed Captain Harry Wheeler, “that’s an advantage! A hidden belly or boot gun, an advantage! Shotgun, advantage! When in doubt, shoot first! Ain’t nothun wrong with none of ‘em things. It ain’t cheatin.’ It ain’t bein’ a shitwad. It’s bein’ smart. God knows ‘em shit buckets yer goin’ up agin will have no misgivin’s ‘bout takin’ advantage of you.”
He pulled the Smith & Wesson from its holster and slid a round into the one empty chamber that rested under its firing pin then returned it to its home. Next, he released the thin leather strap that secured a Colt Model 1905 .45 caliber with a seven-round clip in a shoulder holster tucked under his left arm. It was a weapon he had picked up during his Rough Rider days and had come to appreciate for its penetrating prowess. Reaching around to the small of his back he gave the bowie knife a slight tilt to the right so its handle was propped for fast freedom. Years ago a breed taught him the Comanche way of knife fighting. Staying balanced and calm was the key, because panic in a blade fight would get a fellow gutted quicker than shit through a goose. He scooped up a handful of dirt and rubbed it around to best the sweat on his palms.
“Sorry, Cap’n!” he repeated for an untold time, closed his eyes, and stepped into the dark cantina.
The room reeked of urine mixed with the foul odors of warm, stale beer and whores who rarely bathed. Opening his eyes, Billy surveyed the room. The bartender stood at the end of the bar tossing the bones with a fat, drunk puta who needed to lean on its wooden slats to stay upright. Another whore was alone at a table, one foot propped up on a second chair, tinting her toenails. She looked at Billy and winked then returned to decorating her digits. A somewhat fancy dressed man sat at a corner table playing solitaire. His eyes never lifted from the cards. No problem there. Gamblers mind their own business. At another table were the usual two old men playing checkers and nursing smelly warm beers. Dead center of the bar, eating the worm from his empty bottle of mescal, stood a Mexican policeman in a soiled uniform.
“Moises Alvarez?” Billy called out, expecting the policeman to turn and reply.
Moises turned alright, but he turned skinning his shooter and firing.
The speed shocked Billy. The bullet punched a hole in the left side of his serape, missing his ribs so closely he could feel the heat as it hissed past and violated the adobe wall behind him. Billy’s first shot went wild, smashing the empty mescal bottle on the bar. Before Alvarez could pull off a second round, a chunk of flying glass pierced the policeman’s right eye. He screamed and cursed in Spanish, then leveled his pistola for another shot. His last statement, in English, “Fuck you, grin...” was cut short with a bullet to his mouth, taking out the back of his skull and planting pieces of it and brain matter on the already filthy dress of the fat, drunken puta at the end of the bar. Everything happened so fast that no one in the cantina had even made a move for cover. The gambler was frozen in mid-deal. One of the old men held a checker suspended in the air ready to jump a foe. The whore painting her digits had smeared a bright red streak down the length of her big toe. The bartender couldn’t take his eyes off the blood and chunks of brain splattered on the fat puta’s dress. She didn’t seem to notice them.
Keeping his Smith & Wesson in his right hand, Billy pulled a five dollar gold piece from his pocket and held it high in the air with his left.
“Diaz Pasco?” he demanded, turning in a slow circle and brandishing the glittering gold coin. “Diaz Pasco?” he again demanded.
The gambler was the first to regain his voice.
“Back in Naco, Ranger,” he managed to choke out.
Billy squinted. Did he know this man? “You ‘Merican? he asked.
“Used to be,” replied the man. “Ain’t sure now, Ranger.”
“Ain’t no Rangers no more!” stated Billy. “How’d ya know Pasco’s back in Naco?”
“He owes me money and went there to get it from one of his whores. I’m stuck here ‘til he gets back or my luck hops to the better side of the stick. So if yer after him, it’ll save me some ass blisters.”
“It won’t get yer money,” stated Billy.
“Ya kill him, it’ll make me smile,” declared the gambler. “And there ain’t too much to smile ‘bout ‘round here.”
“Señor!” the barkeep exclaimed. “La policía viene!”
Billy flipped the five-dollar gold piece to the gambler and slid a silver dollar down the length of the bar.
“Plant him,” he ordered the barkeep, backing towards the door.
“If you leave a dead man in a town down there,” explained Captain Wheeler during one of his briefings, “always leave a silver dollar fer his funeral. That’ll at least be ‘nough fer a pauper’s burial. It helps keep good relations.”
“Good relations!” Billy spat as he hopped on Orion. “No such fuckin’ thing!”
Before any of Moises’ fellow policemen could stir from their siestas, Billy and Orion were heading north for Naco.
April 3, 1908
Hun
kered down in the corral on the Arizona side of the border town of Naco, Ranger Jeff Kidder was beginning to worry that his informant had sent him up a false trail. Dying men don’t always talk true. Back in December he and fellow Ranger Freddie Rankin had flushed the territory of two gunrunning bandits who bequeathed them a shitload of illegal weapons and over 10,000 rounds of ammunition. One of the hombres lived long enough to gurgle out a couple of his cohort’s names. To no one’s surprise it was two Mexican policemen by the names of Delores Quías and Tomás Amador. Lucheia’s cantina, right across the short, wooden bridge from the corral, was said to be their favorite watering hole. So Kidder waited, alone, and that was how he wanted it to come down. Billy was off safe on an assignment in Patagonia, several miles north. Sparky was sleeping soundly back in the Nogales barracks. Jeff purposely did not tell Captain Wheeler where he was headed. He knew the man would insist on him bringing along another Ranger, but he had to do this on his own hook.
Just as the sun burned orange his hot, sweaty wait was rewarded. Quías and Amador strolled out of the alley next to Lucheias and entered the cantina. Jeff drew his fancy Colt with the mother-of-pearl handle and slid a cartridge into the empty chamber that always rested under the firing pin. He counted the bullets in his cartridge belt—sixteen—plenty enough for two men. Taking a grip on Vermillion’s reins, he led the horse across the bridge that granted the border town of Naco two identities. Simply a dozen weathered wooden planks with a split log railing on each side were all that kept Arizona from flushing into Mexico. Under it was just more of the same rock and sand and dirt that painted the entire landscape. It was simply a symbol, a marker, of where one world ended and another began. He tethered Vermillion to a post in front of an empty water trough. At first he considered entering Lucheias with his Colt holstered. “Maybe,” he thought, “just maybe, they’ll come peacefully.” After all, even though Quías and Amador were gunrunners they were still Mexican police. But a gut feeling said these men placed no value on any oath. He kept the Colt in his hand.