by Jane Toombs
“Why, I wouldn’t have stood still for any such shenanigans,” she said tartly. She nestled closer to Mark, who stroked her hair.
“We’ll be married as soon as my father can get here from St. Louis,” Mark said to her.
“You’ll like the Judge.”
“Of course I will,” she murmured.
“I’ve got to see to my horse,” Ezra said. He left them in the main room and walked through the kitchen to the back door, knowing they wanted to be alone together and that he was in the way.
He stayed with the pinto, rubbing him down, for a long time, tired, yet knowing he wouldn’t sleep.
In a way he was to blame for Violet getting mixed up with Billy, just like he was to blame for Jules. There wasn’t any way to bring Jules back. Maybe he couldn’t do anything about Violet either.
But he sure as hell had to try.
“I hear you’ve sent your so-called assistant off again,” Pat Garrett said to Mark around noon the next day.
“Ezra? No, he’s back from Santa Fe.’’
“Ain’t what I heard. Fellow dropped in from Sumner about an hour ago, said he passed Nesbitt at dawn, heading north. Got anything to tell me about that? You wouldn’t be hankering to get your hands on Governor Wallace’s five-hundred-dollar reward, would you?”
“I’m not hunting Billy. Neither is Ezra if he’s headed north. Billy’s in Mexico.”
“Garrett shook his head, “I got a message from a friend that says he ain’t. Didn’t know what to make of it, then figured you’d heard the same, seeing as how Nesbitt lit out for Sumner right after coming home from there.’’
“I haven’t heard a word about Billy.”
“Reckon you just lost yourself one assistant then. My guess is Billy got a message to
Nesbit and he’s off to join the Kid, just like the old days. Once they turn bad, you can’t trust ‘em.”
“Ezra wouldn’t do that.”
Garrett smiled. “You willing to bet on that?”
Chapter 24
The July sun was still hot, though only a quarter of its red disk still showed above the western hills. The brown water of the Pecos was running low--there’d been no rain for a month. Tomorrow would be another sizzler. Cooler to travel at night. Pat Garrett tightened a strap on his saddlebag and turned to Mark.
“I got to admit I’m glad you ain’t coming with us any farther,” he said.
“I didn’t plan to go past Roswell,” Mark said. “I told you that when we left Lincoln. I got business here, not in Sumner.”
“I wasn’t sure you wouldn’t find more pressing business in Sumner.”
Mark shook his head. “This is my last run as a deputy marshal. Once I’m finished here, that’s it. Tessa and I are getting married next month. I’m opening a law office in Lincoln and settling down.”
“Congratulations. We’ve had our differences, but I don’t carry a grudge.” Garrett stuck out a hand.
Mark shook it. “I wish you luck, Pat.”
Garrett patted the wooden butt of the pistol in his holster. “I got a feeling this is my lucky gun.” He slid the .44-40 Frontier Colt out and turned it over in his hands. Got it off Billie Wilson at Stinking Springs, if you recall.”
Mark nodded. “Only trouble is, the cartridge sometimes sticks in the barrel in those.”
“Haven’t had that trouble.” Garrett slid the Colt back into the holster and looked over to where his two deputies were mounting up. “Looks like Poe and McKinney are about ready to go. “I don’t make any promises, but I ain’t planning to cut down on young Nesbitt unless I have to. Course, I didn’t plan to shoot Charlie Bowdre, either. Ezra’ll have to take his chances if I find him with Billy.”
As Garret and his two deputies rode north up the Pecos, he turned to wave at Mark. “Adios.” he called.
By the thirteenth, when long evening shadows promised a night’s relief from the July heat, the three men made camp in the sand hills five miles south of Sumner.
“You know,” Garrett said as they laid down their bedrolls,” the Kid’s a damn fool if he’s really hanging around here. Hell, he speaks Spanish as good as any Mexican--he’d do fine in old Mexico.”
“Pat, you know Pete Maxwell as good as I do, “John Poe said. “What’d he be sending me word about Billy being in Sumner less’n it was true? From what I hear, he doesn’t want Billy making up to his sister Paulita.”
“Last I heard, Billy was sweet on somebody’s wife up this way only nobody’d tell me whose.” Pat shook his head. “He has a way with the ladies all right.”
Poe nudged McKinney. “He ain’t the only one, ain’t that so, Tip? Some say the Lincoln
County Sheriff’s doing all right with the fillies.”
“Hell, you know I’m an old married man,” Garrett protested.
Poe and McKinney both grinned.
“How about if you go into town in the morning,” Garrett said to Poe. “Sort of mosey around, ask a few questions. They won’t recognize you as quick as me or Tip. Poe came back in the late afternoon.
“I think the Kid’s somewhere around,” he said. “No one’d tell me a damn thing, but they
acted like they got reason not to.”
“You didn’t get a single lead?” Garrett asked.
“They’re hiding something,” Poe insisted. “It’s more than them being Mexican and me not. Hell, they questioned me as much as I did them.”
“We’ll slip into town tonight without letting anyone see us,” Garrett said. “Take a look at what’s going on. I got doubts it’ll do much good, but we’re here and we’ll check it out.”
* * *
Ezra crouched in the dimness of the sheepherder’s tiny adobe hut. Sweat beaded his face, sweat from the heat as well as fear. On a blanket spread on the ground beside him, Violet moaned, her eyes closed.
She lay on her back, knees drawn up, her belly grotesquely huge. She looked exhausted,
Her eyes flew open and she reached for his hand, clutching it and screaming as another spasm of pain began. After it eased, she told him she’d been having these pains since before noon and now it was evening, but still the baby hadn’t come.
He knew she was in labor. He’d seen cows and horses give birth. They usually had an easy time, but every so often something when wrong—like a leg coming out first instead of the head. He didn’t know much about human birthing, only that his mother had died having Jules. Obviously it could be a dangerous business for women.
He’d discovered Violet here this morning after an old herder, who knew he was Billy’s friend, stopped him as he rode near Sumner.
“The senorita, she is alone, the white-haired man had said, shaking his head. “No good to be alone with her time coming close.”
Ezra had found Violet in this rude hut, lying curled on a filthy blanket. She sat up when she saw him.
“Where’s Billy?” he asked.
She shook her head. “He didn’t want me with him”
“He’s right. “It could be dangerous if Garrett comes hunting him, how could you get away?”
She shook her head again. “No. Billy doesn’t want me. He’s in town with Celsa
Gutierrez. Or Paulita Maxwell.”
Ezra said nothing. It was probably true.
“I thought he needed me,” she said, “I was wrong.”‘
“You can’t stay here, Violet. “I’ll find a wagon and get you into town.”
She grabbed his hand. “No! Don’t leave me alone. It’s too late for a wagon. Promise me you won’t leave me, Ezra. You’re the only one I can count on.”
Then she’d grimaced with pain and he understood she was already beginning to deliver the baby,
If only Tessa was here. Or Manuela. Women knew about this. He sure as hell didn’t.
“Help me, Ezra,” Violet cried, writhing on the blanket. Her hair was in tangles, her brown eyes sunken and pain-filled. There was no trace of the piquant beauty that had drawn him to her so long ago.
He had no idea what to do.
“Help me,” she begged.
Blood stained her dress, rucked up above her knees by her twistings. He swallowed,
trying to think.
He tried to remember all he could about the mare birth he’d once watched, hoping to find some clue of how to help Violet. Would such knowledge be of any use? He had to do something.
Ezra took a deep breath. “Violet, I’m going to take off your dress. I need to see what’s going on.”
“I don’t care,” she moaned. “Anything.”
He left her clothed only in a loose camisole top. Steeling himself, he knelt, pushed her legs apart, and 1ooked at the birth opening. He saw a tiny hand thrusting from it.
That had to be wrong because one of the men at the mare’s birth he’d watched had told him that foals came head first just like babies did. “So we have to push this leg back in and try to get the head in the right place,” the man had added. “It can’t come out otherwise.”
Ezra chewed on his lip, remembering what they had to do with the mare. He couldn’t do that to Violet!
She screamed as another pain wracked her.
Ezra took off his shirt. He looked at his hands, then at Violet. She certainly wasn’t a mare, but he didn’t have a choice.
“Violet,” he said, “try to trust me. I’m going to help you, going to do all I can for you. Take it easy. Don’t be frightened.”
He kept talking in a soothing monotone, not knowing what he said as he reached out and touched the tiny hand of the baby. Taking a deep breath he tried to ease the hand back inside Violet and somehow try to get the baby’s head in position, so it could come down properly. If he couldn’t Violet might die.
The baby’s hand and arm slid up inside Violet’s body with surprising ease. She moaned as he tried to feel inside her for the head. She was having another spasm of pain. The hand began to slide out again, but he held it back.
When Violet’s pain subsided, he groped again and this time he caught hold of what felt like the baby’s feet. In desperation, he pulled gently. As the feet slipped into the birth channel, Violet screamed and suddenly the baby was pushing against his hand, pushing down. He let go.
Withdrew his hand.
The baby’s feet appeared in the opening. The legs.
Violet grunted with effort. So suddenly that he wasn’t prepared, the entire baby slid through the opening, followed by a gush of blood. Ezra grabbed the baby to get it away from the blood, being careful of the cord that was still attached inside.
The baby was blue and looked to be dead. He used his shirt to clean the tiny face, felt the body shudder under his hands. Fluid oozed from its mouth.
Ezra, his hands sliding on the slippery baby, upended it so that the fluid would drain out. He realized for the first time that it was a boy. The baby choked and sneezed. Gave a gasping cry.
Violet tried to sit up. “My baby?” she whispered.
“He’s okay. Lie still. You’re not done yet.”
Ezra wrapped the baby in his shirt and laid it atop Violet’s belly. The baby wailed weakly.
Ezra gazed with alarm at the clots of blood flowing from Violet. There was an afterbirth with horses and, he guessed, with women, too. Would she keep bleeding until it came out? And what if it didn’t?
* * *
The peaches were not quite ripe, but Pat Garrett could smell them as he and his deputies cased in the cover of the orchard behind the Garcia house where a baile was going on. If they were seen at all, it would be as shadows in the gathering darkness.
The noise almost masked a murmuring ahead of Garrett. He stopped and held up his hand to warn the other two.
“Querida,” a man said softly. A woman said something in reply.
Garrett groaned under his breath. He’d counted on the baile raising enough racket to cover any noise deputies might make as they crept closer to see if the dance had attracted Billy. Garrett well remembered how Billy always enjoyed a baile.
Now they’d almost stepped on this courting couple. The sounds of lovemaking began and Garrett decided to wait, hoping the two would leave once they were satisfied.
After long minutes a man rose from the ground, clapped a sombrero on his head, sauntered toward a fence, vaulted over and disappeared. The girl walked slowly toward the dancers.
“The Kid?” Poe asked in Garrett’s ear.
“Don’t think so. Some caballero, more than likely.”
“Well, you’re gonna have to spot him—neither Tip or me know him from a red cow in a trail herd.”
Could it have been Billy? Garrett wondered. He shrugged. Too late to do anything about it now.
* * *
Nothing Ezra did slowed the bleeding. He was afraid to pull any harder on the cord in case it broke off and left the afterbirth still attached inside. He asked Violet to try to push as she had when the baby came out, but she was too weak.
Suddenly something came into his mind. A conversation he’d overheard between Susie McSween and her sister when he’d lived at the McSween house. He’d come into the room without them seeing him.
“I’ve heard the Apache squaws stand up to have their babies. Susie was saying. “Some old wise woman uses an eagle feather to tickle their throats to make them gag. It’s said to speed up the process.”
“Heavens! I’m glad I’m not a ...” Elizabeth Shield had begun, then caught sight of Ezra. Both women had reddened and quickly changed the subject.
He didn’t have an eagle feather, but he had straw sticking out of the hut’s adobe bricks, Ezra broke off a straw.
“Open your mouth,” he told Violet.
It took three attempts to make her gag. He tried it again and again until she retched dryly.
Moments later a mass of purplish-blue slid from the birth opening. The afterbirth. A great gush of blood came with it, but then the bleeding lessened.
Ezra removed a lace from the bodice of Violet’s dress and tied it tightly around the cord connecting the baby to the afterbirth. Taking his knife, he sliced through the cord. He picked up the baby and tried to lay him in Violet’s arms, but she was too weak to hold him. She lay still, eyes closed. A pulse fluttered thinly under his fingers when he felt her throat.|
“Violet,” he said. “Violet?”
“Ezra,” she whispered. “I knew you’d come to me.”
The baby whimpered and she sighed. “Vincente,” she murmured. “Name him Vincente after my father.”
Ezra crouched beside her, with the baby wrapped in his shirt. Held awkwardly in one arm. He grasped her hand with the other. Despite the July heat, her hand was cold. Outside, evening shadows deepened into night.
* * *
“I’m going over to talk to Pete Maxwell,” Garrett said to his deputies. “He got us here to begin with, so maybe he’ll give us some idea where to look next, because Billy sure as shooting wasn’t at the baile. I got my mind made up, come hell or high water, I’m going to get the Kid if he’s in Sumner.”
“I promised Pete I wouldn’t let anyone know he told me Billy was in Summer,” Poe said.
“We’ll just slip over to his place easy-like and no one’ll notice.” Garrett said. “It’s close to midnight.”
They circled toward the Maxwell house from the peach orchard. Garrett spotted the room where Pete slept, off the south porch of the house. His door was open to let in the cool night air.
No lights,” Poe whispered. “Reckon he’s asleep.”
“I’ll go in and wake him up,” Garrett said. “You two wait out here.”
Tip leaned against the picket fence and Poe followed Garrett onto the porch and sat beside a post. Garrett tiptoed across the splintered planks of the porch and eased inside the open door.
After a moment he saw the bed was to his right, against the wall. Someone was asleep on it. Garrett edged closer, finally sat on the edge. He made out Maxwell’s round figure under the cover, leaned over and touched the sleeping man’s shoulder.
“Pete,” he whispered.
* * *
Billy headed his bay toward the sheepherder’s hut where he’d been hiding off and on since he broke jail, but just past the outskirts of town he reined up. Violet would be there waiting.
He didn’t want to go back to her. All his other girls had understood there was a time for fun and for loving and a time when it was all over. Violet couldn’t seem to learn this.
Having her in that miserable hut with her swollen belly and accusing eyes wasn’t something a man could take for long. She had a place to stay, a nice, comfortable room with Manuela. Why did she insist on being with him?
He’d thought of lighting out for Mexico, but all his friends, male and female, were at Sumner and he hated to leave them. Maybe he’d have to go anyway, if he couldn’t get Violet to listen to reason. He sure as hell didn’t plan to take her with him.
Trouble was, she made him feel guilty. Like he ought to be doing something for her when he didn’t want to. He looked back toward town. Garcia’s baile had broken up--the fiddler was gone and the men were climbing into bed with their wives or sweethearts.
What he had to look forward to was a girl too far gone with child to touch, one he didn’t want to touch in any case. He recalled Celsa’s slim waist and warm lips and the way she’d arched to him in the peach orchard earlier. If Celsa wasn’t available, there’d be one of the girls from the cantina.
Billy wheeled his horse and headed back into town. He went directly to the long adobe where Celsa lived, but her husband Zaval had come home and so he bid her a quick buenas noches. On the way back to his horse, he saw a lamp burning in a friends’ room and poked his head through the open door.
“Up late, Bob,” he said.
Billy went in, took off his vest and boots and relaxed in a chair. “Got anything to eat?” he asked
Bob shook his head. “Pete’s got a quarter of beef on his north porch you could go get a slice or two of that. Here.” He tossed Billy a knife.