by Jane Toombs
“Who is it? Quien es?”
“Never mind.” The man spoke in Spanish, his voice low and rapid.
“I’m leaving a package by the back door. I tried to get it to Billy. Couldn’t. Now it’s up to you.”
Ezra searched the darkness for the speaker, saw a dark figure slip from the yard and disappear. He hurried after the man, but there was no one to be seen in the street. Ezra returned to the back of the house to search for the package. Someone sat on the back stoop. “Who’s there?” he demanded. “It’s me,” Jules said. “Did you know someone left a Colt with a silver handle all wrapped up in a newspaper here?”
Only then did Ezra realize he’d been talking to Jose Chavez.
* * *
Early on the morning of the twenty-eighth Mark trotted up the stairs of the courthouse toward the rooms used as jail cells. Most of the prisoners were confined in the room at the head of the stairs that had once quartered the housekeeper. But Billy was locked up separately. You had to go through the sheriff’s office to get to the northeast corner room, where Billy was shut away in solitary confinement, and then pass an armed guard sitting on a bench just inside the doorway.
The guard today was another deputy marshal, Bob Olinger. He looked up as Mark approached. Between his knees his shotgun was propped, breech broken open.
“Howdy, Mark,” he said. “Just loading her up for the day.” He dropped a slug with eighteen grains of buckshot into each barrel, winked at Mark and, looking toward Billy, who was chained to the floor some yards away, commented, “The man that gets one of these is going to feel it.”
Billy grinned at Mark, ignoring Bob.
“I reckon it’s too much to hope you brought a bottle,” Billy said to Mark.
“Sorry.”
Garrett had made a flat rule—nothing was to be given to Billy except by his guards. Mark was damn sure Olinger, who’d hated Billy since the McSween-Dolan feud, gave Billy nothing.
“Only fifteen more days to Friday the thirteenth,” Olinger said. “Hanging day. That’s the day I plan to celebrate.”
“I came up to ask if you know where Garrett’s got to,” Mark said to Olinger.
“The boys said something about him collecting taxes.”
Olinger laughed. “Naw. He ain’t advertising it, but what he’s doing is buying the lumber over in White Oaks for the gallows. Ain’t that so, Kid?”
Billy shrugged. “They never did like me in that town.”
He looked small and defenseless, handcuffed and with his leg irons chained to a bolt in the floor. Mark had no illusions--Billy had to be tightly corralled and closely watched, but he didn’t enjoy seeing him this way. Nor did he care for the way Olinger taunted Billy.
Bell, the deputy sheriff who relieved Olinger as guard, was very different, a quiet, pleasant sort of fellow. Billy must look forward to the times Bell was with him.
“I’ll see Garrett when he gets back then,” Mark said. He waved to Billy and started to turn away.
“Mark.”
He looked back at Billy, eyebrows raised.
“Could you arrange for Ez to come see me?”
“It can’t be done. Sorry. Sheriff’s order.”
Garrett was taking no chances of some old companero slipping anything to Billy before he died.
* * *
“Jules, have you seem Ezra?” Tessa asked just before noon. “He didn’t come home last night. Did he tell you where he was going?”
Jules looked away from her. “I don’t know where he is.” “Are you sure?” He nodded.
“I suppose I can’t expect him to stay home now that he’s feeling better, but-- “ She broke off, biting her lip. “Oh, I wish they hadn’t brought Billy to Lincoln to hang.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t know where Ezra went,” Jules said, picking up a bandanna-wrapped bundle and heading for the kitchen door.
“And where are you going?”
“Out to Banks’. Bob and me are gonna practice roping. I’m bringing my lunch.”
“Be home for supper.’’
“I will.”
Jules climbed onto his buckskin, shoving the bundle underneath his shirt. As the horse
ambled along, Jules pulled his harmonica out and began to play.
“Darling, I am growing old,
Silver threads among the gold Shine upon my brow today Life is fading fast away…”
Over and over he played the plaintive melody, stopping when he came by the courthouse. He reined in and dismounted. With his back to the building, he tethered the buckskin by Whortley’s Hotel.
Sauntering across the street, he began to play the same song. He skirted the wall around the yard of the courthouse, moving slowly, heading for the rear, for the gate that led to the outhouse.
The privy was used by the public as well as the prisoners. Jules went inside the small shed and hooked the door shut.
When he came out of the privy, Jules moved faster but still didn’t hurry.
He got back in the saddle and walked the buckskin west, out of town, where he stopped and again tethered the horse in the cottonwoods along the Rio Bonito.
Quickly Jules made his way along the river bank as he headed back toward town. He wore the bandana around his neck.
At noon, in the jail, Bell relieved Olinger, who left his shotgun in the sheriff’s office before going down the stairs and across the street to eat lunch at the hotel. “How about taking me outside to the privy?” Billy asked Bell.
Chapter 21
Just after noon Tessa went out to help Maria take clean clothes off a line strung from the chinaberry tree to the back door. People riding past on the street called a greeting and she saw they were the Banks—mother, father, Bob and his older sister, Mabel. They were heading east and their horses all carried packrolls.
“Tell Jules I’ll be back next Tuesday.” young Bob called.
Tell Jules? Hadn’t he been going to Bob’s?
Tessa stared after them. She recalled how Jules hadn’t met her eyes, how he’d slid out the kitchen door. She twisted her hands together. Jules seldom, if ever, lied to her.
What was going on? It must be connected to Ezra’s disappearance. Where was he? She’d assumed Ezra had finally gone to Sumner to look in on Violet. What if he hadn’t? What if he was involved in something outside the law?
Like trying to arrange Billy’s escape?
“Not with Jules!” she said aloud.
“Pardon?” Maria asked.
Tessa shook her head. She untied her apron and flung it atop the clean clothes in the basket. Without pausing to go inside for a bonnet, she hurried through the gate and ran down the street toward the jail.
She heard two shots. She ran faster, saw a man stagger from the side door of the courthouse into the yard and fall to the ground.
Men ran from inside Whortley’s onto the porch of the hotel. One hurried across the street toward the gate into the courthouse yard. Godfrey Gauss, the caretaker appeared around the far
corner of the building, yelling at the oncoming man, “The Kid has killed Bell!” Tessa stopped abruptly.
“Hello, Bob!” a familiar voice called.
Tessa knew then the man crossing the street was Bob Olinger. He halted, glanced up at the second story windows where the voice had come from, Tessa followed his gaze, saw shotgun barrels thrust from an upper window.
“He’s killed me, too!” Olinger cried.
The shotgun blasted. Olinger dropped. Lay motionless on the ground.
Tessa saw the barrels of the shotgun pulled back from the window.
Moments later a figure appeared on the second-story porch Billy!
He carried a shotgun and was moving awkwardly to the railing. He looked down at the man he’d just shot, then fired the second barrel of the gun.
The body on the ground jerked when the buckshot struck. Billy broke the gun across the rail and flung it at the body.
“Take it, damn you!” he shouted. “You won’t follow me around
anymore with that gun.” She saw the caretaker peering cautiously around the corner of the building.
“Gauss, throw me up something to get these leg irons off with” Billy shouted to him. “Hurry, damn it!”
Gauss tossed him what looked like a miner’s pick. Billy disappeared into the building. At
last Tessa was able to move. She stared all around, but didn’t see either Ezra or Jules in the street. Or anyone else. She stood alone.
Men were sheltered behind barrels and wagons. They looked from the hotel doorway. Tessa hurried toward the hotel porch, glancing from one face to another, searching for her brothers, “The Kid’s done for both Bell and Olinger,” a man said.
“I sure as hell ain’t going after him,” another put in.
“How’d he get loose anyways?”
She ducked inside the hotel, but there was no sign of the boys, so she hurried back out, not knowing what to do next. Where to look. Could they be inside the courthouse with Billy?
She took a deep breath and started to step off the hotel porch. A man grasped her arm.
“Certain death out there, miss.”
“Billy won’t shoot me.”
But she let him pull her back onto the porch, thinking that Ezra and Jules wouldn’t be in the courthouse. They wouldn’t have been allowed inside, For Ezra had tried more than once to visit Billy and had been turned away.
Likely they were waiting with horses and supplies somewhere outside of town. Waiting for Billy to join them. She might as well forget trying to find them.
She couldn’t bring herself to leave and stared across at the courthouse with the others, waiting to see what would happen.
“Gauss is saddling a horse,” a blond-bearded man said. “Look, there’s Billy coming out!” Tessa drew in her breath. Watched as Billy climbed clumsily onto the horse.
He’d hacked through the chain connecting the leg irons, but the irons themselves were still around his ankles.
Colt in hand, he turned the horse to the west. As he urged the animal into a gallop, a small figure ran from between buildings into the street. A boy. At the same time men jumped out from shelter, pistols drawn. Billy looked back, Colt aimed.
Tessa heard three shots, not knowing who fired them. The boy fell. Billy galloped on. She ran, heart hammering in her chest, toward the small body lying in the street. Fell on her knees beside him. Gathered him into her arms. Blood trickled from a hole in his chest. His gray eyes stared blankly at her.
“Jules!” she cried, closing her eyes and holding him to her breast as she rocked back and forth. “Oh, Jules.”
Hands touched her, tried to take him from her arms. She fought them, clutching him closer. She heard horse’s hooves, heard a man call her name.
“Tessa,” he said, over and over. “Tessa.”
She finally recognized Mark’s voice and opened her eyes. He crouched next to her. “Tessa,” he said gently, “let me have Jules. Let me see to him.” Reluctantly she relinquished her hold and Mark took Jules from her.
He stood up, carrying the boy. She rose to her feet.
The sun seemed too bright, the voices unnaturally loud, the rattle of wagon wheels too harsh to be borne.
“We’ll take him to Maria’s, “Mark said.
Tessa trailed after him, refusing help from anyone. It took forever to walk the short distance to Maria’s and yet they were there all too quickly. She followed Mark into the house.
He strode into the boys’ bedroom and laid Jules carefully on the bed.
When she started to bend to Jules, Mark put his arms around her, holding her away.
“Let me go!” she cried. “I must help him.”
“He’s beyond help, Tessa,” Mark said into her ear. “Jules is dead.”
She struck at him with her fists. “No! It isn’t true. You’re lying.” She struggled to free herself, but he held her tightly against him.
All at once she went limp.
Jules was dead. Her baby was dead.
She’d known it as soon as she touched him there in the street.
Shot, like her father. Like John Tunstall. Like Alex McSween. And like Vincente Gabaldon.
Tessa leaned against Mark and began to weep.
After a time he disengaged her and led her to where Maria stood by the door, tears running down her cheeks.
“Take care of her,” he said. “I’m going after Billy.”
Calvin hurried in shortly after Mark left. It was Calvin who persuaded her to notify the undertaker and talk to the minister, Calvin who dealt with the people who came by to offer condolences.
It would always be like that, she thought dully. Calvin nearby, Mark off someplace.
By evening Tessa was moving in a daze of exhaustion.
“You must rest,” Calvin told her. “I’ll come by first thing in the morning.” She lay on her bed, more tired than she could ever remember, but sleep refused to come. After a time she thought she heard noises in back, by the corral.
Had Ezra returned?
Tessa rose and put a robe over her cotton nightdress. She slipped out the kitchen door and looked toward the corral.
“Senorita,” a man whispered from her left.
She jumped back.
“Do not fear. I bring a message.”
Tessa saw he was holding a folded paper. She took it.
“I am to wait for your reply,” he said.
Tessa hurried into the house, lit the kitchen lamp and read the note.
“Need money. Send with messenger.” Ezra’s name was scrawled at the bottom.
She stared at the words until they seemed to crawl like snakes across the paper.
She had no doubt at all that Ezra was with Billy. Send money to help Billy escape? Tessa tore the note into scraps and flung them away. She whirled to go and vent her rage on the messenger, but before she reached the door, she halted.
The messenger would be heading back to Billy and Ezra once he left Lincoln. He knew where they were. She nodded to herself.
Tessa slipped quietly into her bedroom and, with trembling fingers, picked at the threads holding her small hoard of money in the hem of a petticoat she never wore. After working out two silver coins, she laid them on the chest.
Tessa dressed quickly, throwing on the old shirt and pants she’d worn on her ill-fated trip to Sumner. She thrust her feet into boots. In the drawer of her wardrobe was her father’s old hunting knife from England, one she’d been saving to give to Jules on his twelfth birthday. She took the knife and sheath out and fastened them onto her belt.
Putting her robe back on to hide what she wore, Tessa picked up the money and tiptoed through the house to the back door. She eased the door open. The messenger crouched by the back steps.
“I’m sorry I took so long,” she said. “I keep the money hidden.” She handed him the two coins.
“Gracias, senorita,” he said, rising. His horse, she saw, was tethered to the chinaberry tree.
She hurried into the kitchen, flung off her robe and ran for the front door. Raced across the road and untied a horse hitched to the rail at Donaldo’s cantina. Mounted him.
What difference did one more thief in the family make? It would take her too long to saddle her own horse.
She saw the rider lead his horse from Maria’s yard, climb into the saddle and head west.
Tessa followed him.
She soon realized they were going toward Capitan Peak northeast of Lincoln. She tried to stay back so the messenger wouldn’t spot her and once or twice she was shaken with the fear she’d lost sight of him.
After some time she began to suspect she knew where they were going. Ezra had told her about staying with Billy at a goat ranch once in the foothills of these mountains with a friend of Billy’s. She was certain she was right when she finally smelled the unmistakable odor of goats. The messenger was still in sight when she reined into a corral, but somewhere ahead a dog barked furiously. She dismounted, tethered the horse and headed for a glimmer of li
ght.
She heard a man shouting in Spanish at the dog, telling him to be quiet. Tessa edged forward cautiously, and as she neared the light, she saw it was a lantern in a stable. Four men and a dog were inside, the dog showing its teeth and snarling, holding one of the men at bay.
“I’ll take him to the house and tie him,” another man said. He left, his hand grasping the dog’s back fur to pull him along.
Tessa eased closer to the three who remained. The messenger. Ezra. And Billy.
Billy was squatting, working at filing off his remaining leg iron. The messenger handed Ezra the coins she’d given him.
“Did my sister give you a note?” Ezra asked.
“No, nothing except the money.”
“Did she say anything?”
The messenger shook his head. There was a silence. Tessa could hear the rasp of Billy’s file and the calling of frogs from a nearby river. A goat bleated from somewhere in the spring night.
“Muchas gracias, Pablo,” Ezra said.
The messenger shrugged, “De nada. I do it for Billy. Adios.” He turned and Tessa drew back deeper into the shadows as he went past her and then disappeared into the darkness. She heard horse’s hooves going away.
When she was certain he was gone, Tessa walked toward Billy and Ezra.
Neither saw her until she was almost upon them. Billy dropped the file and sprang to his feet as Ezra yanked his Colt free, only to slide it back when he realized who she was. Both he and Billy gaped at her.
“I followed the messenger,” she said.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Ezra grumbled.
Billy smiled at her. “If you’ll excuse me, I got pressing business.” He dropped down to continue filing at the iron.
She stared at him for a long moment. Was it possible he didn’t know what had happened
as he fled from town?
“They shot at you,” she said tentatively.
“Missed me.”
“You killed those two deputies.”
“Had to. Olinger got what was coming to him. Sorry about Bell, but it was me or him.”
“How did you manage it?”
“Let’s say a friend left me a pistol and I was lucky enough to find it.”