Silence the Dead

by David Crossman

  “I know.”

  “You do?”

  “It was Poke Bradley and Leonard Sandoval. He’s Jicarilla Apache,” he added in an aside.

  “Drunk?” Regan speculated.

  “As skunks. So they weren’t so much shootin’ at each other as shooting toward each other.” He and Regan laughed.

  Maryellen failed to see the humor. “Well, regardless, they could’ve killed somebody.”

  “Anybody dumb enough to stand around while a couple of drunks’re shootin’ don’t get a whole lotta sympathy from me,” said a man who, unnoticed by Maryellen, had sat at the table from which Tiffin had taken the chair. It was Art Daggett.

  “‘noon, Art.”

  “How goes it, boys? Miss?” He nodded and tipped his over-worn hat at Maryellen, then turned to Regan. “How you doin’, son?”

  “Fine, thanks to you and the other guys, I’ve been told.”

  “Yup. Owe us your life,” Art said, leaning back in his chair and sticking his thumbs in his belt. “Never let you forget it, neither. Or you could buy me a cuppa coffee and we’ll call it even.”

  “You’re on. Juanita!”

  “I don’t see how you could say that,” Maryellen protested. “What if a bullet had hit me? I was just glancing out the window!”

  “I was just teasin’, missy,” Art said by way of apology.

  Maryellen reddened a little further. “Yes, well . . . the thought of gunfights frightens me. If that kind of thing goes on around here with regularity . . . which seems to be the case . . . I’m going to reconsider taking on the teaching job.”

  “No, don’t do that!” Regan and Tiffin protested more or less in unison.

  “Gunfights are things of the past . . . pretty much,” said Tiffin. “Right Art?”

  “Oh, right. Right. Sure.”

  “Honest?”

  Tiffin hesitated. “They were pretty common once, though. When the town was just a railhead, mostly saloons, dance halls, and pool parlors.”

  “That’s so,” said Art. “Matter of fact, we had us a famous outlaw up Cañones way. Ain’t that right, Tiff?”

  “Really?” said Regan. “I haven’t heard anything about that. You been holding out on me?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t nothin’ much. Just this fella tried to steal Grampa Tom’s horse once, up on the ridge.”

  “Who was it?” Maryellen asked in spite of herself.

  “Billy the Kid himself,” Art blurted before Tiffin could respond.

  “Billy the Kid!”

  “The same.”

  Both Maryellen and Regan turned toward Tiffin. Regan, figuring it would be a while before he had to talk again, took his last bite of hamburger.

  “Well, the way I understand it,” Tiffin began, “the Kid had been sentenced to hang for the murder of Sheriff Brady. He was in jail down in Masilla, but he escaped.”

  “Killed two guards,” Art interjected.

  “That’s so. That much is fact. Now, as far as actual history goes,” Tiffin continued, “what happened the next three months ain’t too clear. A lot of folks said they seen him here or there, but none of ‘em did. ‘Cause he come ridin’ right up the Chama River Valley and hid out up on Canyon Ridge – it was called Brazos Ridge in those days. An’ that’s where him and Grampa Tom crossed ways.”

  Maryellen, enthralled – whether by the story or the teller it was impossible to say – leaned so far forward that her breast brushed her plate and she got ketchup on her shirt. All of the men saw it, but none knew quite how to go about bringing it to her attention without embarrassing her, so they just let it be for the moment.

  “What happened?” she demanded.

  Tiffin, doing his best to ignore the stain, plowed on. “I’ve told you about all I know. It was April, thereabouts. Gramp an’ this other fella – I don’t remember who it was off the top of my head – they was camped up there, cuttin’ ties. Ol’ Bill Bonney steps outta the shadows and demands Gramp’s horse.”

  “Did they fight?” said Regan.

  Tiffin shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Didn’t your grandfather tell you?”

  “Shoot no. Grampa Tom never told anyone anything about his past.” He nudged Regan in the ribs. “Good thing, ain’t it, Ray? Else you might have to get a real job.”

  Maryellen looked from one to the other of them as they laughed and wondered the kind of things a single young woman might wonder in the presence of two young men, each very appealing in their own way.

  “I remember Ma bringin’ it up one night; you know, ‘tell us how we got to Chama from Ireland, pa’, that kind’ve thing,” Tiffin continued. “I wasn’t no more than seven or so at the time, but I ‘member there was this silence for a minute so thick you could walk on it, then he says ‘Let the dead past bury its dead, Becky.’ That’s all, an’ that look in his eyes said the subject was closed, far’s he was concerned. Too many painful memories, I guess.

  “For Ma, though, that was like a challenge. She figured she could get the story from Sadie, who was still around in the early 40‘s. She ended up ownin’ the Ocean Hotel down in Hillsboro.”

  The name struck Maryellen as odd. “Ocean Hotel . . . in New Mexico?”

  “Grampa said she was gonna name it Crimea, but settled on Ocean because she liked the way folks screwed up their faces when they heard it. Just like yours did.” The smile Tiffin leveled at her sent shockwaves to her toes.

  Maryellen cleared her throat. “So, what did she find out?”

  “Not a thing. She said Sadie told her that if Thomas said he didn’t want to talk about it, he must have his reasons and that was good enough for her.”

  “Strange,” said Maryellen. “She doesn’t seem the type to keep a good story to herself.”

  “I think she’d have done anything for Thomas,” Regan said. “I figure she was sweet on him.”

  “Sadie?” said Art. “Bein’ sweet on men was her profession.”

  “You don’t mean she was a. . . ” Maryellen sat up straight and, coincidentally noticed the ketchup stain. “Oh, shoot. I’ll be back in a minute. Hold that thought.”

  Both young men were holding thoughts very much their own.

  “What makes you think she was sweet on Gramps, Ray?”

  Regan shrugged. “Just a thought. There was this Chinaman she hired to work her hotels. His name was Ang Ling, but she called him Tom all her life. Could be coincidence.”

  When Maryellen returned, her sweater was buttoned over the water spot marking where the ketchup stain had been.

  “Anyway,” said Tiffin, “Gramps never told no one about Billy the Kid. It was the fella who was with him. Who was that, Art, you remember? Spanish, wasn’t he?”

  “Italian. Amadeo Lucetti from Monero.”

  “That’s a little mining town just west of here on the way to Dulce,” Regan explained.

  “Ghost town, you mean,” said Art. “Or will be, soon.”

  “That’s right. Amadeo Lucetti. Wouldn’t think I’d forget that name, would you? Practically built Monero, later on.

  “Anyway, him and gramps wasn’t much more than kids back then, workin’ up there. He’s the one who told his family what happened. Gramps found out and made him promise never to tell another livin’ soul. Said if the only glory he got in this life was from his association with a murderer, he’d rather do without it.”

  “But he survived. Your grandfather? Well, obviously he did. What am I saying?” said Maryellen. “But don’t you wonder what happened?”

  Tiffin wet the end of his finger and dabbed a spot on his boot. “Guess we’ll never know.”

  Brazos Ridge, New Mexico

  May 6, 1881

  Somehow, Thomas Conllan and Amadeo Lucetti formed a fast friendship; which was next to miraculous in view of the fact that neither of them understood much of what the other said. The bond between them was that Thomas talked very little and Amadeo talked without ceasing. He didn’t flatter himself that Thomas was listening, because he
spoke mostly Italian, but they both seemed to take comfort in the noise.

  To Thomas, Amadeo’s constant chatter was almost musical. If the words didn’t make any sense, the melody was full of meaning. It was the song of every immigrant, full of the homeland, family, the New World, injustice, hope, opportunity.

  And so tonight, like every other night since they’d joined forces to wrest a living from the ridge nearly a month ago, Amadeos talked while he cooked, and Thomas, after he’d fed and watered the ox and horses, let his thoughts sift dreams onto the high country.

  Simple economic necessity had drawn him to this place. The D&RG railroad, in a race with the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe to push a spur into the Chama River valley, was paying premium for ties. That made everyone and his Uncle Charlie a tie-cutter, rushing out into the forests up and down the valley to lay claim to a bit of green gold they could call their own, making everyone very particular about who cut where. Newcomers like Thomas were welcomed to the neighborhood with a single warning shot. After that, the warning was over. So, he’d been driven to virgin timber on the hard-to-access high ground toward Los Brazos.

  He and Sadie had arrived in early spring, 1881 – a year and a half after setting out from Boston – with Flanigan’s saddle bag, Uncle Theo’s pistol, a whip, his father’s boots, a lock of his mother’s hair, and Tiffin’s diary between them, apart from the clothes on their backs. Half starved, Thomas had the choice of spending their last seventy cents on food or a second-hand ax.

  He bought the ax.

  At the end of the first day he’d been chased off five cut claims, but he’d managed, despite his weakness, to carve out three ties in six hours of hard labor. He was paid forty cents apiece for two of them. The third – his first attempt – had been rejected. It was Amadeo, slying a couple of ties of his own nearby, who taught him how to do it right. Net profit at the end of the day? Ten cents. He and Sadie ate that night.

  Every night since – between his work in the woods, which had improved to six finished ties a day, and her job as a ‘girl-of-all-work’ for T.D Burns wife, Josefa, in Los Ojos – they’d had more than enough for food.

  They lived rough for the first couple of weeks, sleeping under the stars as they had most nights since fleeing Junction City, Missouri in November of ’79, just half-a-step ahead of railroad authorities. Passing winter on the plains had conditioned them for hardship, and Chama had a ready crop of that. And it was always harvest season.

  The Ridge – at least according to the latest claim – belonged to Burns and, in consideration of his wife, who asked on behalf of Sadie, who had done the same of her on behalf of Thomas, permission was granted to cut ties, with certain restrictions, and in consideration of fifty percent of the profits.

  After walking the property, Thomas and Amadeos had settled on a place called Indian Camp to set up their tent. It was a small level area at the base of a meadow sweeping up to a forest of aspen and Ponderosa pine, and covered with blue flax, scarlet gilias, and brilliant fuchsia-colored locoweeds. They were surrounded by food. Deer, rabbit, elk, and bear in the forest, but they didn’t have a rifle and neither of them had been raised to hunt, so they settled for what the stream had to offer – brook trout, cutthroat, and browns. They gave thanks and ate well.

  It was about an hour’s uphill walk to the stand of trees where they cut. They had no animals, except Amadeos’ burrow Esmerelda, but come Friday they’d go down and spend the night in Los Ojos and, next morning, pick up Rascal, Burn’s brawny ox, and the wagon, trek back up the mountain, load up their cache of ties, take it back down to Los Ojos and sell it to T.D. at a fifty percent discount. Then, about as whipped as men could be, they’d get a bath while women washed their clothes, and they’d collapse into a genuine goose-down bed in anticipation of Sunday, the day of rest.

  Monday, it started all over again. It was hard work, but they made a living out of it, and Thomas couldn’t imagine a more pleasant place on God’s green earth to go about the act of life.

  A horse shied in the darkness, instantly recalling Thomas from his reverie. Amadeos looked up. Whether human or animal, something was out there.

  Thomas was at once reminded that a bear had dragged off a shepherd’s horse in the middle of the night down in T.A. not a week ago. It was found next morning, half-eaten, more than half a mile away. Anything that could drag a dead, full-grown horse half a mile through dense undergrowth was not something he wanted to meet at night, unarmed. But all he had was Theo’s gun. Still with no bullets. And a bear wouldn’t be impressed with the quick-draw he’d practiced under the tutelage of Lewis Garrett all those months crossing the plain. Nevertheless, he strapped it on.

  “Hello, the fire,” said a voice among the ghostly aspens.

  Relief swept through Thomas’s veins like whiskey. If it was a bear, at least it was well-spoken. Amadeos relaxed his grip on his ax handle. He nodded.

  “Come on ahead, friend,” said Thomas.

  A figure slowly materialized in the irregular light of the fire. “Smelled your coffee even ‘fore I saw the light.”

  The visitor was no more than a boy, really. Thomas’s own age. Maybe younger. His face was clean shaven and its components seemed to favor the left side, which was the direction his head tilted. His eyes were narrow and surveyed the campsite in darting glances. He was slim in the shoulders, broadening somewhat at the beltline, mostly due to the artillery strapped there, and the softness of his hands testified that, whatever he was, he was no logger.

  “Pull up a stump,” said Thomas, shaking out his cup and filling it from the pot on the coals. He handed it to the stranger. “We’ve got some biscoche, if you want it.”

  “Biscoche? Been to the plains, have ya?” said the man, pulling a half-trimmed tie up to the fire and sitting on it. He took the hard biscuit and dipped it in the coffee to soften.

  Thomas nodded. “You?”

  “Not lately,” said the man. He studied Thomas and Amadeos and their equipment. “Cuttin’ ties?”

  “Yup.”

  “Good money?”

  “Fair.”

  The man nodded and, in the full firelight, Thomas recognized the face from posters he’d seen his last time in T.A. Billy the Kid, in the flesh. He tried not to let the recognition register, but the Kid had already seen it.

  “Name’s Henry,” he said, extending his hand. “Henry Antrim.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Henry.” Thomas returned his tepid grip, but not the piercing stare of his cold eyes. He looked away. “I’m Thomas Conllan. This here’s Amadeos Lucetti, but he don’t speak English.”

  Antrim nodded at Amadeos, who nodded back and spouted a couple of paragraphs in Italian, at the conclusion of which Antrim said. “Is that so?” and retrieved the biscuit from his coffee.

  While Amadeos was talking, Thomas had the chance to scrutinize the outlaw who, he knew, was wanted for murdering two guards while making his escape from jail. He wore his gun high on his waist. That was unexpected. From what Gerrard had told him on the wagon train from St. Louis, gun fighters generally wore their firearms low, the way he’d been taught to wear his, to shave an extra fraction of a second off the draw.

  The Kid was on the run, sentenced to hang, so what had made him run the risk, the likelihood, of being recognized?

  Nobody said anything for a while. At least not in English. Amadeos kept kind of a running commentary with whatever Italian-speaking Saint or ancestor hovered within his intellectual orbit, but it wasn’t really audible. Antrim finished his biscoche and coffee.

  “Got some bacon, if you want it,” said Thomas when he’d had enough of silence and pretending to stare at the fire. “Won’t take a minute to cook up.”

  “No, thanks,” said Antrim, standing up. “But I am gonna have to trouble you for one’ve your horses.”

  Thomas stood up, too.

  “ ‘fraid we can’t part with ‘em,” said Thomas, praying his adam’s apple wasn’t bobbing in his throat the way it felt. He didn�
��t think it would do much good to say they all they had was one scrawny burrow. He’d just think they were holding out on him and get mad.

  “I’m gonna have to insist.” Antrim rested his palm on the butt of his pistol. “Mine’s pulled up lame.”

  “I wouldn’t do that, if I was you,” said Thomas. Suddenly he felt curiously calm. He’d envisioned himself in this position thousands of times. Coming across the prairie, he’d practiced ‘til his hands bled. ‘If you’re fast enough,’ Gerrard had said, ‘you’ll never have to kill a man.’

  Good advice for a man with no bullets.

  “You wouldn’t, would you?”

  “Nope.”

  Amadeos was just beginning to catch the drift of what was happening. At the same moment, he recognized their visitor. “Billy Kid!”

  “Caught me out, young fella,” said Antrim. “You know,” he continued, his eyes sweeping both of them within his gaze, “ain’t nothin’ I hate more’n killin’ folks.” He backed a step away. “But they keep makin’ me do it.”

  “Not this time,” Thomas said calmly. Gerrard’s second lesson, say something to nudge your opponent off balance, put the faintest shadow of doubt in his mind and you’ll buy yourself another fraction of a second, and that might be all you need. As he spoke, he subtly presented his right side to his opponent – narrowing himself as a target and keeping his heart as far as possible out of harm’s way. “You’ll be shot between the eyes ‘fore you clear leather.”

  Antrim huffed through his nose. “That so?” But, for the first time, the cocksureness dimmed in his eyes.

  “Guess we’ll see.”

  “Guess so.”

  Gerrard’s third lesson, look for the ‘tell’, a subtle something in your opponent’s eye that told you he was about to make his move. No adversary worth the name would do anything as obvious as a blink. But there would be something: a tensing of the eyelids as undetectable as the tremor of a butterfly’s wing, unless you were looking for it.