Quaternity

by Kenneth Mark Hoover

  He knew he would die here.

  “Sheriff Brookstone whomped you with a yoke chain.” The rough voice came from a dark cell across the central passage. “He near beat you to death with it.”

  Marwood made out a vague outline of pale arms hooked through cell bars. The man’s face was covered in warts and boils. His nose was a shapeless mass. Blue and yellow bruising circled his eyes like elaborate South Seas tattooing.

  “Lucky that mud froze near solid before you woke,” the man said. “Come spring, when the water table rises, a man can sink plumb under. My name is Spaw. Lewis Spaw.”

  Marwood made a gesture to show he understood. He dropped his hand, exhausted by this modest exercise.

  Spaw pressed his ravaged face against the bars of his cell. “The deputies wanted for you to run so they could shoot you in the back. But you kept coming straight at the bastards. Brookstone, he wore out his arm on you.”

  “My name is Mar—” His voice rasped, his head ached.

  “Brookstone don’ stick a man in the Pit without thinking on killing him, Mar. You ain’t his first. Prod that mud, you’ll pull up a rib cage.” The ravaged face withdrew from the bars like an animal retreating into its grotto.

  Days and nights passed. Marwood rubbed his hands and feet to keep the blood circulating. When his fever broke a deputy pushed food scraps through the iron grating. For drinking water Marwood pressed a hand into the muck and the water slowly filled the depression. There was no slop bucket. He slept but little. Once, upon awakening, he saw the cell occupied by Spaw stood empty.

  Early the next morning three deputies came for Marwood. They unlocked the heavy grate and hoisted him out by his armpits.

  Another deputy stood down the hall with a .10 gauge Stevens shotgun. He carried a separate gun, a Colt Navy pistol, thrust through his belt. He had the gate open so the gun would not slip through his trousers.

  They handcuffed Marwood and half-dragged him down the hallway. Clots of mud fell from his body. He was too weak to stand. They brought him outside and dumped him beside a water trough.

  “Gotta wash before you see Judge Creighton,” the man with the shotgun said.

  Marwood looked at him and turned away. He drank deep draughts to cleanse his guts from the foul water in the cell. He splashed through the freezing water, used handfuls of sand to scrub himself clean, and threw water over himself again.

  One of the ancillary deputies threw him a rough horse blanket. Marwood dried himself off and dressed in his clothes, boots, and deerskin jacket.

  “Where is my gun?” he asked.

  The man with the shotgun turned his head and spat. He looked at Marwood and shook his head. “Don’t be stupid, mister.”

  They allowed him to visit the jakes. When he came out they brought him back inside the jailhouse. It was much warmer. Marwood felt something akin to human again. He decided he would not kill the entire town of Laredo. Just these sons of bitches would be enough.

  Sheriff Rex Brookstone met them in a well-appointed office fitted with an iron stove and pine walls pasted with county and state maps. He wore a white shirt, pinstriped vest, dark trousers, and polished boots with Spanish heels and gold-inlaid rowels. His long mustache was combed and waxed. His right hand rested on the butt of an 1858 Remington-Beals. It was a good gun. Marwood figured he would enjoy killing the man with it.

  Brookstone addressed the deputy holding the shotgun. “Was he ever out of your sight, Charlie?”

  Charlie looked at the other deputies, shook his head. “He went to the shitter by himself. I didn’t allow as I had to wipe his ass for him.”

  “Search him. Someone may have left a weapon for him in there.”

  “He ain’t got nothing on him, Sheriff,” one of the other deputies said.

  “Do like I say, Charlie.”

  Marwood was searched. The deputies gave way. Charlie eyed Marwood, fingering the trigger of his shotgun. Marwood knew what the deputy was thinking, and he would have done the same, sheriff or no.

  Brookstone approached him. The two men traded hostile stares. Marwood wondered if Brookstone had family and how long it would take to rip that poisonous seed from the earth.

  “I am going to send you through that door to see Judge Creighton.” When Brookstone talked his bottom lip pulled away from his pink gums, revealing tobacco-stained teeth. “He will ask you many questions. You will answer them, and you will listen to what he has to say.”

  “Where is my gun?”

  “When the judge is finished you will be remanded to my custody. What happens then will depend on what transpires inside that room.”

  Brookstone jerked his whiskered chin at an oak door set in frogged brick. “Go on. The Judge is waiting, and he is not a patient man.”

  The black door was polished from stile to rail. A brass-gyred handle gleamed. It did not look inviting. Marwood entered and closed the door behind him. He was in another office, smaller, south facing, with bright windows with mullioned panes of glass. Beyond the windows was a big water fountain in a ramada roofed by withy branches, and the winter Laredo sky, crisp blue. The walls of the office were lined with law books. A separate shelf contained Melville, Defoe, Cooper.

  A ribbed cast-iron stove smoked in one corner. Black soot flaked from the crooked flue pipe. A sideboard held the remains of breakfast: boiled eggs, pork chops, and fried potatoes. The air smelled musty and warm and dangerous, with a hint of cigar smoke and sharp creosote from burning too much green wood.

  A writing desk beside the door was snowed with loose paper and open law journals full of dog-eared pages. Its larger brother was placed in front of the main window with a Morris chair behind it. In the chair sat an older man with the bearing of a statesman, and the watery blue eyes of a stone killer.

  Judge Creighton had on a coal-grey business suit, black string tie, and gold watch chain. He had snow-white hair and a thinning crown, with dark muttonchops and thin eyebrows. His fat chin had a spot of razor burn between the folds. The nails on his red meaty hands were clipped.

  “Sit down,” he said.

  There was a split-pine bench in front of the desk. Marwood sat and was glad to do so. He didn’t think his shaky legs could hold up for a lengthy interview.

  “Those men you killed were ex-Pinkerton agents,” Judge Creighton said without preamble. “Their names were Frank Darling and William Treat.”

  It was not lost upon Marwood that he used the word “killed” instead of “murdered.”

  “Those men were out of San Francisco. They were carrying paper on you. Did you know them?”

  “No.”

  Judge Creighton did not take his eyes off Marwood. “What makes you believe they worked for John Chivington?”

  “Who says that I did?” Marwood asked.

  “Witnesses say you said it before you killed Darling.”

  Marwood didn’t remember. He might have. There was a lot of noise that night. He shrugged. “Colonel Chivington and his political machine didn’t like what I had done. Especially after.”

  “You mean after Sand Creek,” Creighton said.

  Marwood didn’t answer.

  Judge Creighton shuffled the papers on his desk, held one at arm’s length. “You know what this is? It’s a report telegraphed to me from the War Department in Washington, D.C. It states you received an honourable discharge, though you refused a lawful order from your commanding officer on the battlefield.”

  Creighton raised his watery blue eyes. “Most men are shot for less in the United States Army.”

  “I wasn’t alone,” Marwood said. “Captain Silas Soule also refused to fire on that Cheyenne village.”

  “True. But Soule did not spirit Black Kettle out of harm’s way. Nor was Soule charged with desertion when the killing was over.”

  The chair creaked. Judge Creighton leaned back and crossed hi
s long legs. “Do you know the date today?”

  Marwood squinted. “It’s on to December. I lost track in that mud pit.”

  “Today is December fourth,” Creighton said. “A week ago George Armstrong Custer killed Black Kettle on the Washita River. Shot him in the back, which is what Custer does best when he’s murdering aborigines. Whatever you hoped to gain by helping Black Kettle seven years ago was for naught.”

  “I didn’t hope to gain anything,” Marwood said. “It needed doing, so I done it.”

  Creighton didn’t speak for a long minute. He cleared his throat. “You served as a lieutenant under John Chivington in Glorieta Pass. Is that not correct?”

  “During the war.”

  “Yet you refused his direct order at Sand Creek and testified against him during his court martial. Did you think a proud man like Chivington would forget how you disparaged his honour?”

  “Judge, I don’t give a damn what Chivington thought,” Marwood said, “then or now.”

  “Even after what happened to Soule in Denver?”

  “The men who kiss Chivington’s ring killed Soule, or had it hired out. But they won’t kill me. Bet on that.”

  The morning sun poured through the window and crept slow across the carpet while they talked.

  Marwood leaned forward, his hands together. “We put four howitzers up on that hill. We fired fragmenting shells down on the village before we rode in. I saw drunk soldiers bayonet babies and blow the brains out of squalling children. Women bared their breasts to show they were not warriors, and were raped and disemboweled. There was an American flag draped over Black Kettle’s tipi. He thought this country would protect him. I saw that flag burned. I saw Chivington and his men take scalps and cut the breasts off women while they were still alive. One sergeant carried a girl’s private parts around on a forked stick. Another officer had the heads of babies stuck like plums on his cavalry sword.”

  Marwood stared at the older man across the desk. “Don’t lecture me on propriety, Judge. I know the world for what it is. I was at Sand Creek. You were not.”

  “Yet it remains your contention Chivington hired those two Pinks out of California to assassinate you?”

  “If it was not him it was one of his political ass lickers.” Marwood frowned. “Of which he has many.”

  Creighton searched his desk for another sheet of paper, found it. “You are a marked man in more ways than one, it seems. Have you ever been to Waco?”

  “No.”

  “A bank was held up there, and two men killed in the posse.”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  Judge Creighton studied him. He removed a Cuban cigar from a cedar humidor and rolled it between his fingers. The overleaf crisped. He lighted one end with a lucifer and smoked as he came to his decision.

  “Look,” Marwood said, “what do you want with me?”

  “I have a proposition of employment to put to you,” said the judge.

  A hollow pit formed in Marwood’s stomach. “I’m listening.”

  “Simply put,” Creighton removed and examined his burning cigar, “I have need of a man like yourself. I want someone as hard as the spoilers who kill and rape their way across the frontera. I want another murdering son of a bitch who will meet these killers on their own terms, and take them down.”

  Marwood breathed slowly. “I am not a lawman.”

  “You were a range detective in Kansas after the war. That’s on the record as well.”

  “That is not being a lawman and you know it.”

  Their eyes met. “Look, son,” Creighton said, “I need a U.S. Marshal under my employ with your credentials and reputation. I want a hard killer I can send after other killers who keep this country from being tamed and civilized.”

  Marwood stared down at his hands. “I am not a lawman.”

  “I am trying to help you.”

  “I know that.”

  “You keep going and you will wind up on my gallows. You may end up there anyway, even if you take the job. But you will be killing men what need killing.”

  Marwood met Judge Creighton’s gaze. “I am not the man you’re looking for.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I am not the man.”

  “Will you think about it?”

  “I done thought about it.”

  “All right. You can go.” Then, as if he thought the point deserved elaboration, “I will not hang a man who killed assassins that drew on him first. But you must leave Laredo. We catch you here again, you will be put back in Sheriff Brookstone’s mud pit. And you will never get out.”

  “Yes. Yes, sir.”

  “You don’t call many men ‘sir’ do you, son?”

  “Most men don’t deserve it called.”

  “All right, then. I guess we understand one another after all. One more thing: I know you are wondering why I want you on my staff. It’s because of Sand Creek. It’s because, despite the man you are, there are lines you won’t cross.”

  Marwood rose from the bench and quit the office, closing the door behind him. Brookstone met him on the other side.

  “You riding out today?” the sheriff asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Gun’s over there.”

  Marwood found a corner table beneath a large Webb County map. He picked up his gun, knife, and a Mexican holster.

  “Where is my horse?”

  “She’s at the livery stable. The Judge paid full board out of his own pocket.”

  Marwood glanced back at the door. No sound came from the other side. “He did that?” He buckled his holster and made to leave.

  “Be out of town by sundown.” Brookstone leaned his hip against his desk, arms crossed. “I’ll be watching.”

  Marwood put on his hat. “Sheriff, you won’t see me coming. Not you, nor any of your deputies. I am never going to forget that pit.”

  “Take the San Augustin road,” Brookstone said. “It’s the quickest way out of town. You’ll come to a place where you can water your horse.”

  Marwood walked out of the jailhouse and down the steps into cold sunshine. People drew water from the plaza and sold food and wares. He followed a rackety ocotillo fence to the stable and got his mare. He rode down Zaragoza Street past La Posada and hitched outside the cantina. Sunlight flared off the river. Marwood checked the loads in his gun and went inside, let his eyes adjust to the darkness.

  Maypearl served tumblers of mescal from a five-gallon carboy behind the bar. Marwood shouldered through the morning patrons. When the barman saw him his face went white as sacking flour.

  “Señor.” Maypearl tried to say more, but he could not put the words together.

  “I want to ask you something.” Marwood spaced each word. “I want you to think long and hard before you answer.”

  “Señor.”

  “Did you send those Pinks after me?”

  Maypearl licked his lips. “I do not know what you are speaking of, señor.”

  Marwood drew his gun and pointed it at Maypearl’s face. He rolled the hammer back. The men beside him finished their drinks and slid out of the bar by ones and twos.

  They were alone.

  “Remember, I work with the pistola,” Marwood said. “You are the only person who asked me which hotel I was staying at. Tell me about the two men.”

  “Señor, I am a poor bartender, and I know nothing of these serious matters.”

  “You are about to be a dead bartender. And you are correct. These are very serious matters.”

  Maypearl was visibly shaken. “Yes. Two men. Looking for someone of your description.” His voice was high with fright. “They said they would cut off my hands if I did not tell them where you were.” He touched the inflamed knife wound under his ear. “They gave me this. They said they would
cut up my girls. I did not know they wanted to assassinate you, señor. I swear I did not know this. They said you owed them a gambling debt. I did not know they wanted to accomplish murder. You must believe me.”

  Marwood let the hammer down and holstered the gun. Maypearl found a bottle under the bar and poured a shot of rye whiskey. The bottle clinked against the glass. He pushed the drink forward.

  Marwood drained it.

  “Thank you for believing me, señor.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Marwood put the shot glass down. “I am going to do something I have never done before.”

  “What is that?” Maypearl poured again. His face was drained of colour.

  “I am going to let you live.”

  “Señor?” Maypearl took a step away from the bar, holding the bottle by its neck.

  “Another man did me a favour earlier today. He didn’t have to, but he did, and I am paying it back.”

  Marwood drank the second shot. He turned the glass over on the bar. “But I owe no one any favours this day forward. I want that made clear.”

  “Señor, por favor, I do not understand these reasons.”

  “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is I understand them.” Marwood glanced around the cantina. “Where is Adoración?”

  Maypearl raised his hands in abject surrender. “She ran away. I opened up one morning and she did not come downstairs to work. These whores, they cannot be trusted, señor. They are like all women, except they are whores.”

  Marwood left the cantina. He sat on his horse, thinking. He rode out of town following the dirt road north. That evening the Pleiades glittered high in the east. He came upon a dugout at the bottom of a high bluff scoured by wind. The place was in a wooded draw and had a water pump. The ground was littered with dung, both animal and human, and clumps of wiregrass. There was an empty cow pen. A handful of scrawny chickens roosted on the top rail like gargoyles.

  Marwood reined in. A man dressed in filthy rags emerged from the dugout. Marwood asked the owner if he could take on water.

  “Pay a nickel,” the hermit said. His rotting clothes blew about his naked legs. “I can’t make my meat giving it away.”