Billy Old, Arizona Ranger

by Geff Moyer

Laughing, he swept her up and tossed her onto the bed. “Why would I leave ya, Retta?”

  “You buyme ni’sings, Billy?”

  “Sure!” he replied, unbuckling his gun belt. “I’ll buy ya nice things.”

  “Tomás, son-of-a-pig, he promise me ni’sings then he lea’me,” she ranted and hopped up on her knees to reach the bottle of tequila on the night stand.

  “Tomás?” Billy asked. Even drunk the name stirred some dark waters.

  “Tomás puerco!” the whore spat in a drunken stupor. “He promise me ni’sings then he go ‘way.” She smiled, reached up and wrapped her arms around Billy’s neck. “You promise me ni’sings, Billy?”

  “Sure, Retta.” He pulled her arms from his neck, placed a hand on each side of her face, and asked, “Who’s Tomás?”

  “Amador!” she replied, as if Billy should’ve already known.

  His hands recoiled from her face and he found himself rapidly sobering as the names “Amador, Quías, Alvarez, Pasco, Victoriano...Amador...” plowed through his head.

  “Fuck me, Billy,” she demanded, writhing on the stained sheets. “Then buy me ni’sings.”

  “Where did Tomás go, Retta?” asked Billy, his hammer already soft and his mind already out the door.

  “To fuckin’ putas in Los Pozos!” the girl vehemently spat, then downed a long pull on the bottle of tequila, splashing much of it on the soiled sheets.

  He had been sharing a whore with one of the murderers of his best friend. His guts tumbled. He whipped his gun belt back around his waist.

  Retta sat up and asked, “Whachoo do, Billy?”

  “I gotta go!” he answered, too disgusted to look at her face.

  “Ahora?” she bellowed, rolling out of the bed and staggering towards him. “But I need you, Billy.” She smiled and reached for his privates.

  Pushing the whore away he hissed, “Ranger business!” He was out of the tiny, ugly room in a heartbeat, slamming the door behind him.

  Retta threw open the door and shouted, “Vuelve a mi, Billy! Vuelve a Mi!”

  Without even the slightest of a backward glance he was down the stairs to the back door. With her potential for “ni’sings” gone again, Retta kicked her room door closed, forgetting she was barefoot.

  Billy aired his paunch the second he hit fresh air. Three times, maybe four. He stopped at the saloon and bought a two-bit bottle of the strongest, cheapest, nastiest rot gut they sold and toted it into the Ranger complex. It was late. Everyone was asleep. The place was surrounded by a weathered-grey wooden fence that featured a gate with hinges so rusted it no longer closed. A wide training area was in the center. Stables and a corral were to the north. The south side featured Captain Wheeler’s office, the armory, and the small infirmary, while a run-down barracks filled the east. It was akin to a decade-old, abandoned military post in both size and rotten condition.

  Standing in the open training area Billy slipped out of his high-top leather Justins and put them aside. Then he stripped down to bare skin and tossed his clothes in a heap. Uncorking the retched whiskey, he dumped most of it on the clothing. He filled his mouth with the vile liquid, but didn’t swallow, just swished it around to rinse out the tastes of vomit and Retta then spat it out. He poured the remainder on his private parts. It burned like hellfire, but was an atoning burn. He stepped back from the pile of whiskey-soaked clothes and slipped back into his Justins. Then he lit a match and dropped it on the pile.

  Something stirred a sleeping Sparky. Maybe the igniting whoosh of the liquor soaked clothes. Half awake and groggy he raised his six-foot-ten-inch frame and peered out the barrack’s window. There was a naked Billy Old standing in front of a small fire.

  “Ma, Billy’s necked!” he mumbled and plopped back down to sleep.

  Billy dug a small hole and buried the ashes. It took every ounce of control to not leap on Orion and head for Los Pozos, but he couldn’t. He was still a Ranger. He couldn’t take off on a one man vendetta. Captain Wheeler would never allow it. He had taken an oath and respected it. Besides, all he had on were his boots.

  Knowing his men as he did, for two full months the cagey captain gave Billy no assignments, just kept him around headquarters doing horseshit tasks. He kept asking Wheeler if anything was going on in or around Los Pozos, hoping he could get an assignment that would take him down there.

  “Why there, Billy?” Wheeler asked, having a pretty good idea.

  “Uh, there’s a whore down there I’d like to see agin.” He was not a good liar.

  Wheeler scoffed, “Shit, ain’t got enough of ‘em here fer ya to unload yer baggage?” In very firm words the captain also reminded him that no charges were ever brought against any of the Mexican policemen. No warrant was ever issued. No “special permission” was given by General Torres to go after them. “I hate it as much as you, Billy, but ‘em’s the cards and we gotta play ‘em!”

  So Billy stopped asking and started waiting. For how long he had no idea, but it didn’t matter. He knew the hatred inside him for the hombres who took his friend wouldn’t die soon and wouldn’t die easy. Neither would they. Still, whenever he’d cross paths with a Mexican policeman he’d study his face to make certain he wasn’t “Amador, Alvarez, Quías, Pasco, Victoriano...Amador...” but hoped he was. He knew all of them except Victoriano. That was the only face he couldn’t see. The only name he’d never heard. He’d find out though. All he had to do was get his hands on one of them. And according to Retta, that “one” was enjoying the whores down in Los Pozos.

  For weeks he shoveled horseshit, fed and brushed down livestock, cleaned every rifle in the armory more times than he could count, and swept repeating layers of dust from the barracks. It wasn’t until mid June that he was finally given an assignment. To his dismay it would take him north to the old San Xavier Spanish mission, not south near Los Pozos. Rumor had it that the Mexican priest at the mission was once a notorious cattle rustler named Acosta Benito.

  “Ya want me to a’rest a priest?”

  “I want ya to find out if it’s him,” replied Wheeler. “If it ain’t, fine! If it is, I’ll leave it up to you.”

  It wasn’t like Wheeler to give vague orders. When he sent a Ranger after a man it was damn certain he was to bring him back in the saddle or over it. Another strange part of this assignment was that Billy was sent alone. Rangers where usually sent out in pairs. He had left Nogales late in the day so he and Orion camped outside the barrio of Amado, about half way to the old Spanish mission. The captain’s words kept running through his head. “I’ll leave it up to you.” Again he wondered why he was sent alone. For six years his friend was at his side, ready to defend him, ready to make him laugh, and always dropping little kickshaws of knowledge that Billy would store up like a squirrel. He lit his pipe and stared at the stars.

  “Think Jeff is on one a them stars by now?” he asked Orion. The black snorted and bobbed his head. “Prob’ly up there watchin’ us, don’t ya think?” Orion snorted. “Wish I could figger whichen he’s on.”

  He knew his pa was on the one at the top corner of the cup in the Big Dipper. His friend Henry Anderson was on one he saw only four times a year just before sunrise. His ma was on the first one he saw every night. That comforted him.

  Two days later he walked back into Wheeler’s office. The captain looked up from his paperwork and asked, “Well, was it him?”

  “I asked him flat out, Cap’n, ifin he was Acosta Benito,” answered Billy. “He hung his head a second then looked me square in the eyes and said, ‘Si, Ranger. I have taken the vows of a priest and cannot lie. I hope God can forgive my past.’”

  “The law don’t forgive, Billy.”

  Ya said yer were leavin’ it up to me, so I leaved him be. Want me to go back up there and bring him in?”

  “No,” Wheeler replied. “I needed to see how much hate was still cookin’ in ya, Billy....if ya could still do yer job.” The tall captain sat on the corner of his desk. “Ain’t ya ever wondered why
I teamed ya up with Jeff in the first place?”

  Confused, Billy replied, “Use to! After ‘while it didn’t matter much. We got to be pals. He was the best man at my weddin’.

  “Jeff liked the quick draw,” explained Wheeler. “He was a damn good Ranger, Billy, don’t get me wrong, but quick to pull. Yer not. Ya reason things out. He wanted to be famous. You just want to be a Peace Officer. I figgered it might’ve been a good balance.

  A moment passed as a confusing fog lifted from Billy’s head and he asked, “So ya knew that there priest was Acosta all the time?”

  “I also figgered ya needed a day or so away from shovelin’ horse apples,” the captain grinned.

  Billy stood for a long moment, not knowing exactly what to say. He knew the words that finally left his mouth were probably not what his captain wanted to hear.

  “Cap’n, I ain’t forgivin’ them assholes who put Jeff under.” He turned and left the office.

  February, 1909

  Several of the fat asses up at the territorial seat had their greedy fingers in many pies, always seeking ways to feather their nests if the territory ever became a state. Many didn’t like that the Rangers were being used to break up strikes, even though many were the ones who ordered the Rangers to do just that. Instead of trying to reason things out, they just tore down a wall that stood between the good and the bad. They disbanded the Arizona Rangers.

  It was a dark day when Captain Wheeler crammed the remaining seventeen Rangers into his small office. The men knew right away that something was haywire. Wheeler had never ordered all seventeen men back at headquarters at the same time. Billy saw men he hadn’t seen in years. Some he thought were dead.

  “Em legislature fellas say we done accomplished our jobs, men.” Shocked groans and hisses came from men who had put their lives on the line for the past eight years. “Maybe if ‘em fat assed shitwads would spend a day down here ‘round the border, they’d sing a different tune.” Agreeing shouts filled the room. “But we can’t fight the gov’ment, boys. Orders are orders! All of ya are gettin’ two months pay. He knew that amount would run dry before many found other work, simply because many of them had never known any other kind of work. “I want ya all to know, I’m proud of ya,” he said, finding it difficult to raise his head and look at the men. “One thing I ask of ya: Never forget yer brothers—the ones who died, and the ones in this room right now.” He shook every man’s hand and gave each a personal flask with an engraving that read, “Arizona Rangers, 1901-09.” The men were touched, grateful, saddened, and angered. They dispersed quietly, no one certain of which emotion they should chew on the hardest.

  Billy stormed into the barracks. He had given eight violent years of his life. He had lost friends, including his best friend. It had cost him his marriage and contact with his two boys. He yanked the skinny mattress off his bunk and flung it across the room, knocking the piping from the pot belly stove and adding black soot to the layers of orange dust. He had thought his time with the Rough Riders had been the worst in his life, but this day trumpeted over every one of those mosquito filled jungle days. This was his home, his life, his reason for being, the only thing that made him feel worthwhile and not just some asshole taking up space.

  Sparky walked in a minute later and grinned at the mess Billy had created.

  “Good thing we ain’t gotta clean this place no more.”

  “What the hell ya smilin’ at, Sparky? Ya happy ‘bout this shit?”

  “Course not. Ain’t nothun we can do though. Sometimes ya jist gotta move on, Billy.”

  “Move on to what, goddamn it? What the hell do we move on to?”

  “God’ll guide ya, Billy.”

  “Shit,” Billy mumbled.

  Then Jeff’s voice bounced around his head and five names flashed across his mind: “Amador, Alvarez, Quías, Pasco, Victoriano...Amador...” hated names that were tattooed on the insides of his eyelids. He let that hate cool the burning in his guts and shake his brain back into focus.

  Billy looked at his tall friend and said, “I think maybe He just did, Sparky.”

  Using the Ranger’s private wire service he sent messages to every Arizona border town that had a sheriff, repeating the names...“Amador, Quías, Alvarez, Pasco, Victoriano...Amador...” Then he sent a wire directly to the local policeman in Los Pozos. He knew that was risky. If Tomás Amador was there, it could alert his prey, but he played a hunch. Knowing the Mexican police, he figured the original one in Los Pozos wouldn’t take kindly to another one being forced on him, especially in such a small town. The last thing the man would want is a pissing contest over who was in charge. Besides, there might not be enough whores to go around. Within an hour he got an answer.

  The telegram read, “Still here, still a puerco.”

  It was a little over seventy miles from Nogales to Los Pozos. He went to the bank and withdrew the money he had been squirreling away for ten months and turned it into silver dollars and five dollar gold pieces, along with a couple of twenty dollar pieces. He stashed the coins in a hidden pocket on the underbelly of his saddlebags then gathered a five day supply of oats, beans, bacon, coffee, jerky, and tobacco for his pipe. He was well aware of the little bugs in Mexican water that would knot up a man’s guts and leave him shitting and puking at the same time. He didn’t even trust the well water in the center of the small towns across Sonora. The only safe water down there came from springs, and they were as rare as a flea-less hound. He filled six canteens with fresh water and draped them over the lizzy on Orion’s saddle. The ornery animal snorted a complaint about the added weight.

  “Deal with it, shithead!” he scolded. “Yer a goddamn horse!”

  Their first night on the trail was cold, but he didn’t dare anything but a small fire. No sense in attracting the wrong guests. Even though it was the twentieth century in the rest of the world, Mexico hadn’t figured that out yet. He slipped on his chaqueta and turned up the collar to protect his ears. He pulled out his pipe, tamped in some tobacco, and lit it with a burning twig. Puffing lightly, he leaned back and stared into the small flame. It reminded him of how his mother would sit and pray late at night while staring into the hearth in their farm house. Each night she’d repeat the same words: “I praise good thoughts, good words, and good deeds. I reject all bad thoughts, bad words, and bad deeds.” He always felt those were good words, but it wasn’t until years later that he’d find out why his mother only spoke them into the face of a fire, and only after his father was asleep. He thought about his own two boys, and how it had been quite a spell since he’d seen them. He wondered if they would even recognize him, or he them.

  “When this is over,” he told himself, “gotta go see ‘em.” Then he warmed his palm around the heat from his pipe’s large bowl, a fancy buffalo head carved from a single chunk of ivory.

  March, 1902

  “That’s quite a pipe you got there,” Jeff remarked.

  Wheeler had sent the two up to Flagstaff to escort the murderer and rapist Calhoun Small Toe from a holding facility and down to Yuma prison. Because of the fat asses’ tight budget the two Rangers had to make the eight day ride up to the northern town on horseback, but were allowed to take the train back down to Yuma with their prisoner. This was their first assignment with just the two of them together and their first night on the trail. Billy wondered why Wheeler had paired him up with this new Ranger. Usually on long trips he’d be partnered with someone familiar, like Sparky or Freddie, maybe even Feather Yank.

  “Hand-carved ivory,” Billy proudly stated and held the pipe up for Jeff to see.

  “You carve it?”

  “Naw!” answered Billy as he stretched out on his bedroll. “My pa won it in a horseshoe match. Only thing he left me.”

  “Sorry!” Jeff replied.

  “Yer Pa leave ya anything?”

  “Hope not. Last I heard he was still ‘bove ground.”

  “Up in the Dakotas?”

  “Up in Oregon. My folks di
vorced and he moved up there. My ma moved to Los Angeles. She got tired of all the snow and cold. Made her bones ache. Gets pretty damn cold up in the Dakotas!”

  “Like tonight?” Billy asked.

  “Colder.”

  Billy shivered and said, “Wouldn’t like that!” He tightened the blanket around his shoulders. Nodding towards Jeff’s holstered Colt stretched across the saddle next to his head he asked, “Why ya pack such a fancy piece?”

  “So a certain low element of our society can plainly see I’m wearin’ a gun.” He pulled out the fancy Colt and handed it to Billy. Its metal was darker than usual, but not from age, gunpowder or dirt. It was made that way so the mother-of-pearl handle would glow like an Indian moon.

  “Nice weight!” remarked Billy. He spun the weapon once and returned it to the new Ranger. “Ever use it on a man?”

  “Barrel-cocked a drunk Apache back in Nogales,” answered Jeff. “Thumped him two good ones. Heard he died a day later.”

  “So ya didn’t see him die? Ya weren’t close up?”

  “Nope! But I imagine I will.”

  “Ya won’t like it.”

  “What about you?” Jeff asked. “How many?”

  “One. Just one. Wounded a few—don’t know if they made it—but I do know one didn’t, saw the life leave his eyes. Ain’t easy snuffin’ out a man’s lamp—ain’t a good feelin’—like ya lose a little chunk-a-yer own soul.” Billy’s eyes momentarily wandered up to the sky full of stars. Then he added, “I notice ya ain’t totin’ a long rifle.”

  “Wild Bill Hickok once said there are two times when you need to look a man in the eyes: when you thank him, or when you kill him,” explained Jeff. “Oh, I got nuthun against using a long rifle against a band of crazy, drunken, reservation Sioux. Don’t want those fuckers anywhere near me. Not only do they stink like no other Injun, they’re too damn good at knife fighting. And I’ll use one when I go huntin’—picked off a mule deer at a hundred and sixty yards once—one clean shot, two inches above his brisket.”