by Lou Bradshaw
He laughed and brushed my apology aside with a wave of his hand and said, “She will be there, and Padre Paulo, Father Paul, is right. There are those who would use darkness to hide evil. And… there are those who hate your people.”
As we walked, I could hear voices coming from doorways and folks sitting out in the cool of the evening. I could make out Emilio’s name and the word gringo used often, so I asked Emilio what it meant. He told me it was not a respectful word, and often used in regard to whites. That’s pretty much what I had figured. We parted just past the last adobe, and I thanked him for his hospitality. He waved it off and was gone.
As I walked on in the dark, I heard, “Oh gringo.” sang out several times from the scrub that grew along the road. I figured someone would just love to see me take off running – he didn’t get to see it.
At the first house of the town the old man called from his bench in the dark, “I been a watchin fer ya, sonny. You all right?”
“Yessir,” I told him, “had a nice long talk with the priest – nice fella.”
“That he is… that he is.” The old guy replied, “Good night, sonny.”
Andy was already in his blankets when I got to the room. I figured he was asleep, so I got into bed as quietly as I could manage in the dark. I was just letting my head hit the pillow when he said, “I thought the booger man might a got you out there, but I figured he’d throw you back, so I came to bed.”
“Nothin like that.” I told him, “I was just roamin around thinkin about stuff.”
“Did you get anything thought out?”
“Not a thing.” I said, “But I met some nice folks. An old man sittin on a bench and a Mexican Padre.”
“A what?”
“A Padre. It’s sort of like a preacher; only he wears something like a dress and he don’t yell all the time about sin. Did you know that they got a whole ‘nother town just outside of town full of Mexicans?” He said something that sounded like a grunt, but surely wasn’t a word. The next thing I heard was a little snort and then his sleep breathing. We had been together for so long I knew what he sounded like asleep or awake.
I laid there a long time thinking about a lot of things. I didn’t relish killing those men we were looking for, but that was all Andy had on his mind and I had promised to see it through – and I would. I wanted to stop here for a while. Not that it was much of a place because it wasn’t as nice as our hometown back in Missouri. I just needed to feel a little rooted. It didn’t make much sense to me, and I’d never be able to explain it to Andy. Most of all I needed something to do. Standing at a bar in a saloon or watching the world go by in front of the ho-tel wasn’t my idea of being useful. Somewhere in the middle of those thoughts, sleep got me.
Chapter 11
Over breakfast, I told Andy about the liveryman wanting to sell our packhorse, and he agreed that we wouldn’t need it anymore. From here on, we would mostly travel fairly light. The price seemed fair, so we decided to make a deal. I asked if he had considered sticking around here or moving on.
“I don’t know, Ben. Something tells me to get on their trail and track ‘em down. But, the smarter side of my head tells me that if we do go chasin’ them, they’ll get wind of it and run or lay for us. I’m thinkin’ if we sit tight for a spell they just might drift back this way. They been here before. What do you think?”
“I think you’re smartenin up as you get older. I was thinkin’ the same way. So I must be smartenin up too.” Andy would be turning seventeen in another month, so I guess he was almost grown.
After we finished eating, I walked down to the stable to tell the liveryman to sell the critter. Bob, which is what he called himself, said he’d make us the best deal he could and take ten percent on it. I thought that was fair. I also told him that we were planning to stick around for a while, and if he knew of any kind of jobs available, that we’d be interested. He said he’d let me know.
Later that morning, I was sitting in the shade of the ho-tel awning trying to scratch out a letter to Elizabeth. I just wanted to let her and her pa know where we were, and tell them a little of what had happened along the way. I was making quite a chore of it with that stub of a pencil tracing out those letters and making up my own spelling. I think she could get the drift of most of it though.
Just as I had put down, “Best regards from your friend Ben Blue” and ended it with a big old dot I heard footsteps in the gravel beside me. I looked up to see Marshal Murdock standing over me.
He pulled up one of the empty chairs and lit a cigar. “Letter to your sweetheart?” he asked with a smile.
“Well, sorta,” I said, “only I don’t think her husband would understand. No, just a very special friend of ours, who kinda helped us get through some shaky times after that day. I just wanted to let her know that we were alright and gonna be here for a spell.”
“That’s what I hear,” he said between puffs, “and you’re lookin’ for work.”
“News must travel around pretty fast in this town.” I said, “We just decided a few hours ago.”
He chuckled, “Well, I do kinda make it my business to know those things.”
I asked him if he cared that we were staying, and he said it wouldn’t bother him as long as we stayed out of trouble. I for one was sure going to try and told him so.
“Where might the Hickory Jack boy be?” he asked.
It took me a second or two to understand what he was asking, and then I remembered the ruckus in the saloon yesterday and told him, “He’s over to the saloon tryin’ to get a line on a job.” With that, the marshal got up and headed up the street toward the saloon. I folded that letter and stuffed it into an envelope to mail.
I was just starting across the street to the general store, which was also the post office when a small tow headed boy in overalls and nothing else came running up to me. “Hey Bub,” he said, “Mister Bob at the stable give me a message for the big overgrown red headed kid at the ho-tel. You be him?”
“Well, Bub, I guess I’m the only one here that fits that description. I be him. Let’s have it.”
“Have what?” the boy asked.
“The message from Mister Bob, you knucklehead” I said grinning at him.
“Oh yeah – he’d like to see you at your con…con…co.”
“Convenience? I finished for him, and he bobbed his head grinning, which showed the gap from a couple of missing teeth. I gave him a penny and you’d have thought he hit the mother lode.
“Thanks, Bub.” He yelled from about the middle of the street, legs churning straight for the general store and the penny candy.
“That’s Mister Bub to you!” I yelled after him. I stuck that letter in my pouch and walked toward the livery stable. I figured he might have got a buyer for that horse or some news about a job. When I got there, he handed me a fist full of greenbacks and said, “Here’s eighteen dollars. I went ahead and sold him the packsaddle for five and deducted my ten percent.”
I thanked him and offered to buy him a beer, but he said he had too much to do and couldn’t get away. “You know,” he said, “I was gonna offer you a job helpin’ out around here. But now that you got some money you probably ain’t interested in workin’.”
“Oh,” I said, “I’m interested in workin’ all right. I ain’t had nothin’ to do for a couple of hours and I’m already about crazy from it. What’ve you got in mind?”
He offered me four bits a day, stalls and pasture for our horses, a discount on grain, and best of all an adobe shack in back of the barn. That was about half what a cowpuncher would make, but we weren’t in need of money, so I took it. It meant we could move out of the ho-tel and do our own cooking. That last part may not have been a blessing, but our money would go a lot farther. Plus, I would be the first person to see most people coming into town.
Bob said, “The misses is sure gonna appreciate it. She only sees me awake about fifteen minutes a day. She’s gettin’ kinder cranky.” He told me to go ahead a
nd get settled into the shack, but be ready to bust my butt in the morning.
I went over to the saloon to give Andy the news and found him jawing with a couple of punchers. What they were telling him was that some of the ranches might need some extra help, but it would only be temporary. Most of the ranchers cut down on riders through the winter. They gave him the names of those who might be looking.
We cleaned out our stuff from the ho-tel and moved into the adobe, which was plenty big enough and only needed a little work. We chased out the mice and snakes, but figured they’d be back. We’d just keep chasing. I started to work as the hostler, and found that it suited me just fine for the time being. There was usually someone coming or going, and it seemed that there was plenty of raking and scooping to do.
Andy rode out to the ranches those punchers had told him about, but it didn’t seem that there was much call for more help, so he bided his time. I don’t think he had near as big a problem with inactivity as I did.
One day when things were pretty slow, I moseyed over to the smithy to tell Bob something. He was working on a piece of red hot metal – I was fixed to it like a bug on a pin. I watched him work the stuff into the shape of a horseshoe turning it and heating it while holding it with those tongs. I pumped up the bellows for him and got her good and hot. When he tossed the finished shoe into a bin with a bunch of other shoes he asked, “You wanna try one?” Did I ever.
He showed me how to get the iron just to the right glow and how to grip it with the tongs. I must admit I made a pretty poor showing, but he laughed and said his first one wasn’t near that good. He said, “You stick around long enough and I’ll make a passable smith out of you.” I was some proud of that shoe. The livery bell clanged, and I had to get back to work. I forgot all about what I wanted to tell Bob.
When I got back to where I was supposed to be I found a gent waiting for me. “You the one they call Hickory Jack?” he asked.
“No sir,” I said, “I’m the one they call ‘the other one’. You’re lookin’ for my partner, Andy.” I had always thought of Andy as a brother, but we look so different from each other that it confuses some folks, so I’ve started calling him my partner.
“Well, where might I find him?” he asked.
I told him where I thought Andy might be and he took off in that direction.
About an hour, later Andy came into the stable and told me he’d got a job driving a freight wagon. The whole idea appealed to him because he was getting tired of sitting, and hauling freight from town to town would give him a chance to pick up a scent on those outlaws. Actually, I hadn’t seen Andy in such a good humor in some time.
That’s how we spent the rest of the summer. We just kind of settled in. Andy found that he couldn’t just go into a town and start asking about those hombres. He had to bide his time and listen to what’s said around him. He was surprised at what he could find out just listening.
Lo and behold, he did pick up a scent at Booker town. He was just resting on his elbows and sipping a beer, when he overheard the fellas next to him talkin about old Onebrow Smith and his partner Turner. Seems they hadn’t been around much lately. One of the men said that they were probably up north on business, and then they both laughed. The other man said, “Either that or Smith’s up there in River Town poundin on that half breed gal again.” The first gent asked what he meant and the other fella said, “Well, Smith likes to get a little mean with his women sometimes. There’s a half breed whore up there that he can beat the hell out of and nobody cares much… ‘ceptin maybe her.” According to Andy, they both thought that was pretty funny.
The only trouble with Andy’s job was he was gone two or three days in a row, and I wasn’t quite sure how to handle things if those hombres showed up while he was gone. I asked Murdock about it and he said, “If you could arrest them, then I’d hold them on a Federal charge and hope it was legal.” I didn’t see how I could get them arrested by myself. I think Murdock was as good a town marshal as there was, but he didn’t know much about the law beyond the town limits.
Andy thought it would be better if I just kept an eye on them and see which way they went when they left. I liked Andy’s idea better than Murdock’s.
When Andy was gone, I had a good deal of time on my hands and made a few more trips down to the Mexican section; it wasn’t really another town just another neighborhood. Father Paul always seemed to find time to talk a little, and I was picking up a few bits of Spanish in the mix. I was making friends in both parts of town and feeling comfortable wherever I went. Oh, there were a few of the Mexicans who seemed to do nothing more than scowl at me. They never returned a howdy, but I kept howdying them anyway. Sometimes I would take the horses out for some exercise. I’d ride one and lead the other.
I had insisted that Andy take my express gun on the road, which meant I went around unarmed, but there wasn’t any need for me to carry a weapon. After all, I spent most of my daylight hours at the stable or just rambling around among friendly folk. Bob had me learning and sweating, with both a scoop shovel and a three-pound hammer. I enjoyed the time in the smithy, and didn’t mind a hot spark now and then. I could tell that I was getting stronger by the way I could handle the hammer and tongs with either hand equally well, and what that hammer could do to a piece of hot iron.
Food was something that I had taken pretty much for granted most of my life. Back home, everything revolved around four things, beef, pork, chicken, and game. Out here, it revolved around of one and a half things, beef and a little game. The eating-house in town served a lot of beef in a lot of different ways, but it was still beef. One afternoon I had a meal with Emilio at the cantina, and food would never be the same for me again. There were peppers, herbs, and spices mixed with that beef piled onto those frijoles the like of which I couldn’t have imagined. I had to learn how to cook like that. Fortunately, with Emilio translating and his mamacita demonstrating, I was able to learn a few things.
He told me later that his people had started using peppers in their food to cover the fact that the meat wasn’t always…fresh. I didn’t care why. They could have said it was to keep the booger men away and it wouldn’t have mattered to me – I liked it.
It was a hot August afternoon when Andy’s freight wagon came into town. Andy was on the seat where he should have been, but he had two horses tied to the back of the wagon. One of the horses carried a man hogtied and slumping, while the other carried a man tied across a blood soaked saddle. I left the stable door at a dead run, but I was the second one to reach him – Murdock was the first.
Andy halted his four-horse hitch in front of the freight barn and climbed down. “Whata ya got there, Hickory?” the marshal yelled.
“Four barrels of flour, coffee, salt, nails, one dead road agent, and one that ain’t quit cryin for the last fifteen miles.”
“Want to tell me about it,” the marshal asked, “or do I have to read it from your manifest?”
“Not much to tell, really. Those two rode out from some rocks with guns in their hands, and the dead one yelled, ‘Stand and deliver.’ Can you believe that?”
There was a few seconds of quiet and Murdock patiently asked, “And then what happened? Did he kill himself yellin at you?”
“Oh, sorry, I thought that was all you needed to know cause he’s dead and I ain’t.” Andy said as a matter of fact. “Well, I just pulled up that express gun and gave him one barrel. Then I turned on the other fella, but he had already thrown down his gun and was screaming like a woman. I just put a loop over him, wrapped it a couple of times, and brought him along. He’s been blubbering ever since.”
Murdock unceremoniously hauled the crying man from his mount and shoved him to the tailgate of the wagon, while he removed the rope. He then started prodding the bandit with his gun to get him moving towards the marshal’s office. He called back over his shoulder to Andy, “When you get your freight taken care of come to the office.”
The freight agent and I helped get the
wagon in the barn, unloaded the freight, and got the horses taken care of before we cut the body loose. The man had taken a load of buckshot in the upper chest and neck – he never knew what had hit him. We covered him with a blanket and I went to take the two horses to the livery corral.
By the time I got back, the undertaker was there, and Andy had gone to the marshal’s office. So I headed that way. Inside the office there was a ruckus going on, with a wailing prisoner and a yelling marshal.
The prisoner was screaming and crying something about, they weren’t really outlaws, but they thought it would be fun to hold up a stage. They didn’t see any harm in it, it was just for fun, and what was he going to tell Thomas’s mother? At that Murdock yelled, “Well, dammit, you’re gonna have about ten years to figger somethin out!” that started the prisoner wailing all over again.
Murdock got a key from the peg, and went to the iron ring that held the prisoner chained to the beam by his ankle. He unlocked it and said, “Red.” and looked my way, and then he cackled, “Red, you take this galoot out and fasten him to the hitch rail. A body can’t hear what he’s thinkin with all that goin on.” Then he started to snicker again.
I went outside pushing the crying man ahead of me. When we cleared the door, he looked back at me and took off. He got about a stride and a half before he ran out of leg chain. His right leg went one way, his left leg went up in the air, and his face went into the dust. I left him sprawled there and snapped the lock shut with the hitch rail at one end and him at the other end.
Back inside the marshal was cussing and pacing with both arms waving. “Them damned cheap novels. Tenderfoots reads ‘em and thinks the west is romantic. Those fools didn’t know the difference between a stage coach and a freight wagon.” He ranted and raved a few more minutes then looked at me and laughed again.
I looked down at myself to make sure I had my pants on or wasn’t wearing my moccasins on the wrong feet, which wouldn’t have much mattered. “What’s so funny?” I asked.