Billy Old, Arizona Ranger

by Geff Moyer

  Realizing he was truly referring to only her safety, two unfamiliar feelings crept through Abbie, two emotions that had been buried for years. She found herself grateful yet deflated. She had forgotten what it was like having someone actually be concerned about her well-being, and being a whore, rejection had always been just part of the business. So why did this rejection sting her?

  “Okay,” she replied softly.

  The Clover was prepped and ready. Billy placed it over Pasco’s face.

  “What did he say when ya told him Victoriano sent ya?” Billy asked.

  “Nothun’special!” Abbie answered quickly. “Ya gonna smother him? Here?”

  “I told ya, damn it, this lets out a gas that knocks ya cold. Now what did he say about Victoriano?”

  “Uh...” She had to think; it had been a long night. “Uh, he just said...Ahh, the Chief! He still love me!’ That stuff smells funny!”

  “The Chief?” replied Billy, pumping the Clover. “What the hell’s that mean?”

  “Pretty plain! That stuff gonna make me pass out, too?” she asked, more fascinated with the Clover than the question at hand.

  “No! What’s pretty plain, damn it?” demanded Billy, still holding the black cup over Pasco’s face.

  “That Chief Amador still loves him.” She pointed to the Clover. “How long do ya keep...?”

  “Who?”

  “Chief Amador. How long do ya keep that...?”

  “Naco Chief of Police Amador?” He stopped pumping.

  “Yeah,” answered Abbie.

  Billy was stunned. “His name is Victoriano?”

  “Why the hell else would ya have me tell Pasco that Victoriano sent me?” an exasperated Abbie asked. “I swear, Billy Old, I truly do think yer brain was fried out in that desert!”

  A stampede thundered through Billy’s skull. All this time he thought Jeff was repeating names in his delirium, starting his list over...“Amador, Quías, Alvarez, Pasco, Victoriano...Amador...” but he was saying there were two Amadors—Tomás and Mexican side Naco Chief of Police Victoriano Amador. Billy never knew his first name, only addressed him as Chief Amador. How simple it would have been, he thought, if he’d known that at the beginning—Chief Amador and gunrunning. It makes perfect sense. All those other policemen couldn’t have been so ballsy unless their boss knew what they were doing and was getting his cut...and the asshole has an office. He began pumping again, vigorously. Why didn’t he think of it? Jeff would’ve! Maybe he did! Sure he did! Jeff was smart!

  “Fifth fucking grade,” he whispered. A few moments later he removed the Clover and broke his angry self-deprecation with a question, “Got a pin, something pointy?”

  Abbie reached for a pearl nestled between her bosoms in the center of her corset. With her thumb and forefinger she unsheathed a four-inch hat pin and held it out to him.

  “Jesus,” he muttered, eyeing the deadly spear. He had thought it was merely a pearl for decoration.

  “What?” she asked. “It’s quieter than my boot gun and jabbed in the right place, does the job.”

  He took the pin and plunged it into Pasco’s arm. Abbie stifled a shriek.

  “Good lord, Billy!”

  Pasco didn’t even flinch. Billy handed back her pin. She studied it momentarily, making certain it was still wickedly straight.

  “That is some deep sleep,” she mumbled.

  Billy heaved the limp body of the killer over his shoulder and grunted, “Told ya!” With his free hand he scooped up the Clover. “Get the door fer me, will ya?”

  “Where ya takin’ him?”

  “Gonna plant him just like I told him and just like I dreamed.”

  “Dreamed?”

  “A man without a dream ain’t worth a horse apple,” he said with a smile. Knowing she would keep asking questions he cut her off quickly. “Enjoy the room, Abbie!”

  He was out the door and down the steps before she could open her mouth again. Now he knew about Victoriano, so he could just put a bullet in Pasco’s brain pan. Simple! Clean! No! That’s not the way it was supposed to happen. He’d worked very hard at digging that hole. Suddenly he wondered if anyone ever dug a hole for Alex MacDougal’s burned body in that box canyon. Just as suddenly he knew no one did. Billy had a lot of practice digging holes during his time with the Rangers. Surprisingly though, only a few Rangers were in those holes. Most of the ones he, Jeff, Freddie, and Sparky dug were for lost prospectors who got themselves butchered by the few remaining hostiles. Or families of farmers and ranchers who’d been killed by marauders and border bandits. It was dirty duty, but it had to be done. He just hated digging the small holes.

  February, 1902

  The train ride from Flagstaff to Yuma Prison was slow, hot, and dirty. Leave the windows closed and they roasted. Open them, and they’d choke on black soot from the smokestack. The prisoner Jeff and Billy were transferring was Calhoun Small Toe, a murderer and rapist who had somehow escaped the noose but would be spending the rest of his days in a Yuma iron cage. After discarding the criminal, the two Rangers were on another slow, hot, and dirty train ride from Yuma to Nogales. Billy was gazing out the window. The track ran parallel to and slightly above a long stretch of green river bottom. The scenery wasn’t anything he hadn’t eyed before, but this time it had a more peaceful feel to it. Maybe it was because their tedious mission was finally over and they were on the way back to headquarters in Nogales, or maybe because he and this new Ranger from Dakota were beginning to become good friends. He had decided he liked this fellow, despite some of his views.

  Jeff was reading the Yuma Sun newspaper and would occasionally mumble “Shit” to himself. It made Billy chuckle.

  Somewhere within the droning and clacking sounds of the train Billy thought he heard coughing. After a while the sound grew louder. He realized it was coughing, the cough of a child, and more than one child. The few people in the passenger car began to move to vacant seats further from the hacking noise. Soon the conductor entered the car and a woman passenger stopped him and pointed towards the seats from where the coughing was coming. The conductor stepped over to the area, looked down, then recoiled and pulled the overhead brake cord. The train jerked violently and began to squeal and grind to a halt.

  Billy rose and asked the conductor, “What’s goin’ on?”

  “Just remain seated, sir!” responded the conductor. “We got the problem under control.”

  “What problem?” Billy asked as he started towards the conductor, balancing and bracing himself on the backs of seats. The train continued to screech and jerk its way to a stop.

  The conductor held up his hand and said, “I wouldn’t go near ‘em, sir.”

  “Near who?”

  Billy inquired as he pushed his way past the conductor.

  Huddled together in one seat were three Indian children aged about six to ten, all dressed in their finest white man apparel, obviously a school uniform. They were sweating and chilling and coughing.

  “That’s typhus!” stated the frightened conductor. “I seen it hun’erds a times!”

  “Ya didn’t notice they was sick when they got on?” asked Billy.

  The conductor frowned and said, “I don’t pay no ‘tenshun to their kind!”

  “Why are we stopping?” Billy asked in a foreboding tone as if he knew what was on the conductor’s mind.

  “Ya crazy? They’re infected! We gotta get ‘em outta here!” The train was still slightly moving when the conductor opened the door that led to the small platform between the connecting cars. “Ya kids git on outta here, now!” he ordered.

  Billy couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Ya can’t put them off here!”

  “Damn right I can! I’m responsible for the folks on this train. They could infect us all!”

  “There ain’t nuthun out there.”

  “That’s their problem.” When the train had finally groaned to a complete stop the conductor shouted his orders at the shivering children again. “Git
now!”

  Terrified and slightly delirious the three children rose and crossed to the open section between the cars. The two older ones had to practically carry the youngest.

  Billy hurried over to Jeff and said, “We can’t let this happen!”

  “Not our train, Billy!” Jeff calmly replied. “And they’re Injuns!” He went back to reading his paper.

  “They’re kids, and they’re sick.”

  Without lowering his newspaper Jeff replied, “Then their folks shouldn’t have put ‘em on the train in the first place.”

  If Billy’s eyes could’ve shot fireballs Jeff’s paper would’ve been blazing in his hands.

  “I ain’t leavin’ them out there ‘lone!” he said, then walked up to the conductor and told him he was getting off, too.

  “I tell ya, fella, it’s typhus!” exclaimed the conductor. “Ya wanna die, too?”

  “No! I want my horse outta yer fuckin’ boxcar!” He was angry at both the conductor and his new friend. He and Jeff had just spent ten days together picking up and delivering Calhoun Small Toe. He thought they were getting to know and respect each other, but figured he must be wrong. No decent human being would do this to children.

  Frustrated at Billy’s stubbornness, Jeff tossed the newspaper aside.

  “There’s nothing you can do for them, Billy,” Jeff said. “Come on back and sit down!”

  Billy took one quick, hard glance back at Jeff then hopped off the standing train behind the three sick children.

  “Ya kids stay right here!” he told them.

  He hurried to the boxcar, forced open the door, and carefully removed Swiss, his chocolate gelding.

  The conductor leaned out from the platform and waved to the engineer. This was followed by two quick toots of the train whistle. Jeff was now standing on the platform watching his friend lead his horse to where the three children clung to each other in the dirt.

  “Billy,” Jeff shouted, “Get back in here! They’re Injuns for crissake!”

  “I’ll meet ya in Nogales!” Billy shouted back.

  “Aw shit!” muttered Jeff as he hopped off the train. He turned and spoke to the conductor. “Hold it a minute,” he ordered. Then he hurried to the boxcar to getVermillion.

  The conductor leaned out and held up his hand to keep the engineer from moving the train. After Vermillion had left the boxcar the conductor waved the engineer forward. Two more toots came from the engine’s whistle. The train’s wheels spun and sparked on their steel road to regain traction, then slowly strained to move.

  “Yer crazy!” the conductor shouted as the train began picking up momentum. “Both a ya! It’s typhus, I tell ya! Ya gonna kill yerselves o’er some damn injuns?”

  Jeff listened to the conductor’s voice sink under the noise of the train. Soon he was staring at the butt end of the caboose as it grew smaller.

  “Shit!” he mumbled again.

  Billy had already taken a shirt from his saddlebags, ripped it into three strips and was dousing it with water from his canteen. He placed it on the foreheads of the children.

  “We gotta make a litter.”

  Jeff looked at his new friend for a long moment then said, “I swear to god, Billy Old, if I catch typhus and die, I’m comin’ back to haunt yer ass.”

  It took them close to an hour to find and gather enough wood to make a sizeable litter and stretch and secure the tarps from their bedrolls across its frame. The children’s coughing had grown worse.

  “Ya know it’s twenty miles back to their rez,” Jeff reminded him, “and we’re runnin’ outta daylight!”

  “I saw some arrowweed shelters ‘bout five miles back ‘long the river bottom,” Billy stated. “We’ll take them there fer the night!”

  “What the hell’s that?”

  “The Quechan live in them during their harvest time, make them outta arrowweed.”

  “Then what, Billy? Huh, then what?”

  For a moment he wasn’t sure how to answer that question. “Then we...we doctor them.”

  “With what?” demanded Jeff. “We don’t have any medicines and typhus is caused by lice.”

  “Then we...we gotta bathe them real good in the river. Ya still got that fancy smellin’ soap in yer saddlebags?”

  “That’s expensive stuff. You ‘spect me to use it on them...them?

  “Kids, Jeff! Kids! They’re fuckin’ kids!”

  The going to the arrowweed shelter was rough and long. Five miles felt like five hours. By the time they reached it, the youngest of the children had gone under.

  Jeff frowned as he entered the small, dark, domed shaped thatch hut.

  “They live in these pieces of shit?”

  “Take those two down to the river and put yer fancy soap to work! I’ll take care of the little one.”

  Shit!” Jeff muttered again.

  “Would you rather dig the grave?”

  “No! I don’t wanna bury a kid, even an Injun kid.”

  Billy started digging his first small hole.

  Bitching and mumbling most of the time, Jeff stripped the other two Indian children and soaked them and their discarded uniforms in the river. He scrubbed them down hard with his fancy, expensive soap then started to lather their clothing.

  “Don’t bother with the clothes,” Billy shouted from the tiny gravesite. “Burn ‘em! We’ll wrap the kids in our camas.”

  “Our what?”

  “Bedrolls!”

  “Aw, come on, Billy, not our bedrolls!”

  “Just do it, goddamn it, Jeff!”

  “Means we’ll have to burn them, too.”

  “Supply will give us new ones. Ain’t no big deal.”

  Jeff grumbled to himself, “Goddamn new ones itch like hell.”

  After he buried the little one Billy built a fire inside the small domed shelter and the Rangers burned the children’s clothing. It warmed up fast as the smoke drifted out of the hole in the center of its roof. Soon they had the two remaining children wrapped in the bedrolls and as close as they could get them to the heat, hoping it would help break their fevers. The coughing was ugly and deep. A couple hours after dusk, a second child died.

  Billy dug his second small hole.

  The Indian girl was the oldest of the three and the strongest. She managed to make it through the night. At dawn the Rangers placed her on the litter, burned their bedrolls, and started the slow ride to the Quechan Reservation outside of Fort Yuma. Since they could follow the river back to the reservation, about every half hour they’d stop and soak the rags on her head with fresh, cool water.

  “Thank you,” the girl exclaimed as Jeff placed the cool rag on her forehead.

  He was shocked. “Did ya hear that, Billy? She thanked me, in perfect English.”

  Billy reminded him, “Them clothes they was wearin’ meant they was prob’ly on their way to the Injun school in Nogales. They’re mission Injuns.”

  “Learnin’ the white man’s ways, huh?” replied Jeff, pleased that these Indians were at least making an effort to conform. “Good for them. For her. That’s what every goddamn one of them should be doin’!”

  Billy fixed his eyes on his new friend and decided it was time to impart a bit of wisdom. “I ain’t gonna claim to know what it’s like up in them Dakotas, but down here, Jeff, in this part of the country, there’s just too many Injuns to try hatin’ them all. Ya’ll use up all yer hate in a day. Yer gonna need some fer the assholes who really deserve it.”

  It was late afternoon when the Quechan reservation came into view. Billy fired a shot to get their attention. Four braves quickly rode towards them. One spoke Spanish so Billy was able to explain the situation. They isolated the girl in a sweat hut. The two Rangers were greeted with gratitude and fanfare.

  “They wanna treat us to a pansaje,” said Billy.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a sit-down dinner, outside, on blankets with the chiefs and elders.”

  “Is it safe?”

 
“Oh, yeah!” answered Billy. “We’re heroes, even if we did only save one of them.”

  Several blankets were placed on the ground. The tribal elders seated themselves in a circle around them, gesturing for Billy and Jeff to join them.

  Jeff leaned to Billy and whispered, “I’ve seen these gut eaters up home wolf down nasty beef entrails. Is that what we’re gonna have to eat?”

  “If it is, smile and chew!”

  The first item passed around was a small bowl of salt from which each man took a pinch and placed it in his mouth. Before the bowl reached Jeff he leaned over to Billy.

  “We don’t sprinkle it on nothing?” he whispered.

  Billy whispered back, “Salt’s like gold to the Injuns ‘round here. It’s a big honor that they’re sharin’ it with us.”

  When the bowl reached him, Jeff took a pinch of the salt, licked it from his fingers, nodded and smiled at the elders and passed the bowl to Billy. Next was the peace pipe. It, too, was passed around the circle as each man took a toke. Several squaws appeared from nowhere with platters of tarantulas deep fried in bear fat. Jeff stared at the serving for a long moment then looked up at the Indians happily devouring the eight-legged delicacies. They smiled and nodded at him. Billy was breaking off spider legs and eating them like candy. It took another couple of moments and some inner fortitude for Jeff to finally sample the strange treat. After one bite he was hooked. His face lit up as the spider’s flavor exploded in his mouth.

  “These are mighty tasty,” he declared. “I thought they’d be crunchy, but they’re chewy.” He ate the entire platter and snatched two more from Billy’s plate.

  A tray of prickly pears heavily seasoned with cayenne pepper came next. To calm the fire from the pepper each man was given a cup of pulque, which can get a man drunk quicker than a lightning strike. The final serving was a very tasty rabbit.

  “What’d ya think they season this jackrabbit with?” asked Jeff as he discarded bones cleaned of any and all meat back onto his plate. “It’s mighty tasty, too.”

  “Rattlesnake venom,” Billy casually answered.

  Jeff stopped eating and looked at his friend, wide eyed.

  “Just kiddin’!”