“You’re a frog’s hair away from bad things, boy. A frog hair,” the big man said. “You let go of that gun, or I promise you it’s going to hurt.”
The Mexican kid let go of his pistol like it was red hot and crabbed backward, shaking his head. “Por Dios, no me dispare! No me mate! ”
“I ain’t going to kill you.” The big man kept his aim for a long moment, then uncocked that Smith with another clack. “Might save somebody some trouble someday if I did, but I ain’t going to.”
He kicked the kid’s pistol into the fire and then went over and toed the bald fellow’s corpse over to make sure he was done for. Satisfied, he bent over and scooped up the man’s Colt and pitched it in the fire with the other.
When he turned back to the kid he gestured once more to the picket line. “You go saddle my horse. Ensille mi caballo. Pronto.”
The Mexican did as he was told, stumbling twice because he didn’t want to turn his back on the big man, and giving the wounded outlaw on the ground near the horses wide berth. Nervous or not, he had the horse saddled quickly and soon led it back to the fire while the big man snapped the Smith open and let his empty cartridges eject on the ground. He replaced his spent rounds with three from the loops on his cartridge belt. The Mexican stood holding the bridle reins of the horse.
It was a plain, brown gelding, with not a single white mark on him. The only distinguishing or unusual feature on the animal was the brand burned on his left hip revealed in the firelight—a circle the size of your palm with a dot in the center of it. The gelding cocked one ear and eyed the body of the bald fellow cautiously, but held its ground.
The big man holstered his pistol and walked to where he had shot the man at the picket line. The gut-shot outlaw quit moaning and took one bloody hand off his belly to reach for the big man’s pants leg.
“Damn you, help me or finish me. I can’t take this hurt,” the outlaw said.
The big man brushed free of the wounded man’s grasp without stopping. “You asked for it.”
He picked up the big-bore ’76 Winchester rifle laying on the ground where the gut-shot outlaw had dropped it, and then he examined it before coming back and shoving it in the rifle boot hanging from the saddle on the brown horse.
“Sorry man that will try and shoot you with your own rifle,” the big man mumbled while he took the reins from the Mexican and put a boot in the stirrup and swung up astride the horse.
“Cómo se llama, señor?” the Mexican asked softly in Spanish, and then in halting and heavily accented English. “I would like to know your name.”
The big man seemed to think that over before he answered. “Jones.”
“Jones? No mas?”
The big man gave the brown gelding’s belly a bump with his heels, and the horse left the firelight at a trot.
“You no tell me your real name,” the Mexican repeated.
From the darkness and almost muffled by the sound of the horse’s shod hooves on the rocky ground, the big man called back to him. “Some call me the Widowmaker, but I never set much store by that.”
“Widowmaker Jones.” The Mexican repeated it as if it explained much. And then he looked at the bodies of his friends and made the sign of the Cross before he saddled another horse and rode in the opposite direction that the big man had taken. He crossed himself three more times on his way out of the canyon.
Chapter Two
Two nights later, Newt Jones, the man some out West called the Widowmaker, slept in a rundown, abandoned adobe warehouse on the outskirts of San Antonio, Texas. It was raining and near to midnight when he rode into town, and he didn’t have the price of a room in his pockets. So he led the Circle Dot horse under what remained of a section of roof that hadn’t collapsed and then lay down in one corner and wrapped himself in some newspapers he found there.
It was a restless night, and he awoke early and rode out into a drizzly morning. He found the private train car not long after daylight—parked on a siding a hundred yards from the depot house—and he rode straight to it.
A man in a fancy Prince Albert coat and smoking a cigar stepped out on the platform at the end of the car. He propped one of his button boots on the ornate cast iron banister and puffed on a cigar while Newt dismounted and draped a bridle rein over the railing. He went to the foot of the stairs and looked up.
“I take it you’re the one she’s waiting for,” the man with the fancy shoes said, then he inhaled deeply and let out another cloud of smoke. “You don’t look like much.”
Newt stared back at him through the rainwater running off the brim of his hat. “I don’t feel like much. She in there?”
The fancy man took his boot down and stepped a little to the side so Newt could come up on the platform under its awning and out of the rain. “We’ve been waiting for you for three days.”
Newt went up the stairs and stopped at the top of them. He took in the fancy man’s oiled and combed hair, the silk ascot tie adorned with a diamond stick pin, and then took another glance at those patent leather button boots. “Well, you ain’t waiting no more.”
“I take it you had some trouble getting here.”
“What? No trouble.”
The fancy man ground his cigar against the handrail and pitched it to the ground, and then he opened the door and went into the Pullman. Newt followed him, stepping aside when barely through the door and putting his back to the wall. The interior of the private passenger car was as fancy as the man who led him inside, all ornate brass and exotic wood. Newt was suddenly conscious of the fact that his rundown boots were muddy and that he was dripping water on the oriental carpet.
A woman in a high-collared, plain black dress came through the doorway of another room at the far end of the car. She was a comely woman. Although most of her blond hair had turned to gray, she was of a kind and beauty that made it hard to guess her age beyond that she was somewhere past her middle years. “Hello, Newt.”
Despite what one would guess about a woman who could command such rich surroundings, there were pieces to her that didn’t fit. Her skin had seen too much sun for a gentlewoman, and there was a country twang to her accent that no amount of money could refine.
She gave him a careful examination, and took a long while doing it. He knew what she saw: a big man, not a giant, but well past six feet tall; more big boned and raw frame than heavy, with a face as battered and worn as the raggedy clothing covering him. He didn’t even have a coat or a rain slicker.
“You look almost as tired and down on your luck as the last time I saw you.” She put some effort into the smile she gave him, a smile that was somewhere between weariness and genuine happiness to see him.
“I came as fast as I could. Your telegraph didn’t find me until a week ago.”
“I think we sent that telegraph across four states and three territories. I had no idea where you might be.” She took a seat on a sofa under a crystal chandelier in the center of the room, at the same time gesturing at a table to his left. “You’re probably hungry. Help yourself.”
He went to that table and lifted a silver lid. The dish below it held the cold leftovers of their apparent breakfast. There were scrambled eggs and a few sausage patties. He took a piece of the sausage and worked at it while he turned back to her. The fancy man had closed the door, and he went and took a seat beside her on the sofa.
Another man came from the back of the coach, dressed as impeccably as the first, and the only difference between the two was that he was black and he had some kind of a white napkin or towel draped over one forearm. The black man gave a polite nod to the woman and the gentleman on the couch before he went to the table and poured a mug of coffee. He offered the coffee to Newt with an air of servitude, and Newt guessed him to be some sort of a butler. He’d heard of such, but he had never seen one.
“That will be all, Hiram,” the fancy man on the couch said. “Leave us now.”
Newt took the mug of coffee, and the butler disappeared into the back
room where he had come from.
“We were about to give up on you,” the fancy man said.
Newt finished the sausage and wiped the grease from his fingers on his leg, quickly aware and ashamed that he had done so. “Like I said, it took a while for me to get that telegraph. I was down to Laredo waiting on a boxing match they were trying to get up for me.”
“The newspapers said you were on a weeklong drunk and they had to cancel the match,” the fancy man replied.
“I was under the weather for a spell, had the croup or something, you know. They should have waited until I was up on my feet again.”
The woman gave both of them a glance, noting that they had taken an instant dislike to each other. “What do the papers know?” She focused her attention solely on Newt once again. “I see you’re still wearing my Amos’s hat.”
He took off the black felt hat he wore and turned it by the brim in his hands, examining it and the hitched horsehair hatband around its crown. It was a fine hat, almost too fine for the rest of his rundown outfit. “It’s been a good hat. I’ve tried to take care of it, but it’s seen a bit of hard living since you gave it to me.”
She nodded, and it was plain to him that she, like him, was thinking back to the day she’d given it to him a year before, standing over a freshly dug grave on a lonely stretch of the Pecos River. He’d been half starved that day, too, and with a bullet wound in his chest to make things worse.
Not that Matilda Redding didn’t have troubles of her own at the time. He’d found her by herself and with a lawman husband recently murdered by the very same Mexican outlaws who had put the bullet in Newt’s chest.
“I also see that you don’t have his pistol anymore,” she added.
“Oh, I’ve still got it.” He gestured out the door behind him with a nod of his head in that direction. “It’s rolled up in a piece of oilcloth in my saddlebags. Didn’t want to get it wet.”
“I halfway regret that I ever gave you that gun, and I don’t know if I should be happy that you take care of it so or if I should be disappointed that you don’t let the thing rust away. My Amos always stood on the side of law and order, but a pistol isn’t anything but the Devil’s right hand, no matter who’s packing it. Carrying one is like carrying your sin in a holster, and a man that gets used to wearing one usually finds he has a hard time putting it aside.”
“Matilda, you didn’t send me that telegraph because I’m a gentle man. You don’t need a gentle man for this thing.”
She nodded in reluctant agreement. “Back when I was a girl, folks used to have a term for a man like you. They’d say you were a man with the bark on, and I need a man with the bark on in the worst kind of way.”
“How long ago did the Apaches get your grandson?”
“Seven days ago.”
“How did it happen and where?”
The fancy man leaned forward on the couch. “This is all a waste of time. I don’t know what you think he can do—”
Newt interrupted him with an upraised palm. “I don’t know who you are, fellow, but me and Ms. Matilda were having a conversation. I can’t figure you and this fancy train car, or what business this is of yours. But you can have the good manners to stay quiet while I’m talking to the lady.”
The fancy man stiffened, and when he spoke he was almost stammering. “What business is this of mine? The child you speak of is my son, and the woman you are speaking to is my mother.”
Newt frowned.
“Newt, this is my son, William,” the woman said. “And this train car is courtesy of the Southern Pacific. William owns considerable stock in the company.”
Newt nodded to the fancy man and gave a grimace that was meant as an apology, and then his attention went back to Matilda. “Never would have guessed you for a rich woman back when I met you.”
“Oh, I’m nothing but a farm girl at heart. Just a lawman’s widow biding her years,” she said. “It’s William here that’s rich.”
“What about the boy? Your grandson?”
The fancy man looked to the woman and shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “You tell it, Mother.”
She nodded, then took a deep breath and gestured for Newt to take a chair across from them. When he did, she began, “Very well. Among William’s other holdings is a mine near Tombstone, Arizona Territory. William Jr., Billy we call him, was to travel with his mother from Tombstone to meet his father at that mine. They went overland by buggy with three mine guards escorting them, but they never arrived. A search party found the burned ruins of their buggy and the bodies of the escort where the Apaches ambushed them.”
“The boy’s mother?” Newt immediately regretted asking that question, because the look on both of their faces confirmed the worst.
Matilda needed time to gather herself, so her son took over. “A posse sent out from Tombstone lost the trail of the renegades south of Skeleton Canyon. Currently, the army has patrols out all over the border from Arizona to Texas, and their leadership is trying to get permission to pursue the hostiles into Mexico.”
Newt looked to Matilda. Once more, she took a deep breath before speaking. “And how many times has the army ever recovered a captive child? Oh, yes, they occasionally barter for one years later and make sure they get plenty of press for it, but I put no faith in them.”
Newt could tell that this wasn’t the first time they had argued over how to best handle their predicament, and he didn’t envy them the decision making.
Matilda once more focused her intense blue eyes on Newt. “I’ve got no right to ask you this, but I will anyway. Get that boy.”
“You have every right to ask,” Newt answered.
“You owe me nothing.”
“Have you a photograph of him?”
She nodded and looked to her son, who produced a cardboard-backed photograph from the inside pocket of his coat. Newt took it from him and studied it.
“That photograph was taken three months ago,” William Sr. said.
“How old is he?” Newt asked.
“Ten.”
“Is he a strong boy?”
William paused as if a little perplexed. “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
“I’m asking if he’s strong, ’cause he doesn’t have a chance if he isn’t.”
“He’s a good boy. Reminds me of my Amos sometimes,” Matilda said.
Newt got up out of the chair, and William stood to face him.
“Miz Matilda says you’re a railroad big shot,” Newt said. “Can you get me and my horse on a boxcar going west?”
“I can.”
“Well then, anything else is wasting time that we don’t have.” Newt made as if to go.
“Hold on,” William said.
Newt stopped with one hand on the doorknob. “What is it?”
“There are ten men waiting at the Menger Hotel. They’re well-armed, well-equipped, and ready to ride at a moment’s notice.”
“What men?”
“I hired them personally, and they’ve been waiting for your arrival. Anything you need in the way of equipment you may purchase here, and I will give you a letter of credit and some coin should you incur further expenses along the way.”
Newt shook his head wryly. “You got any idea where I’ll be going?”
“I assume you’ll be going to Mexico.”
“Do you think your letter of credit is going to get me anything down there? And it won’t be money or equipment, or all the men in China, that will get your boy back. You can’t buy what it will take. No sir, I’ll need your credit about as much as I’d need a piece of paper to start a fire in hell.”
“Lead the posse he’s put together, Newt,” Matilda said in a soft voice.
“No, I figure to take the train as far as I can and then go overland to one of the Apache reservations and hire a tracker.”
“Alone?” William asked. “I’ve voiced my opposition to my mother’s plan to hire you many times. As I understand it from my sources, you’re li
ttle more than a barroom brawler, pistol-fighter, and small-time pugilist with no qualifications as a tracker other than a gory tale that claims you hunted down some Mexican bandit. That’s enough to give me due pause as to your character, but now, sir, you give me fear that not only are you incapable of recovering my son, but that you could endanger any chance that we may have of regaining him.”
“I’ll get your boy back, or I’ll see to it that those that did this pay for it.”
William Sr. looked to his mother and held in whatever he had been about to say. Instead, he smoothed the passion in his voice. “Have your try then. My mother and I don’t always agree, but she thinks very highly of you. Despite my objections, you misjudge me if you think I wish you anything but the best in this endeavor. I love my son very much.”
He turned and walked to the far end of the salon before Newt had a chance to reply. Matilda came to the door and took his place.
“Take the men,” she said. “Don’t be stubborn.”
“Good-bye, Matilda.”
He stepped out the door and went down the steps. She followed him outside but stayed on the platform. She tried to cover her laughter with a polite hand on her mouth when she saw what he was looking at. The Circle Dot horse had lain down on its side, never mind that it was raining and that it was saddled.
Newt toed the gelding gently in the rump three times before it would get up. When it did, Newt’s saddle was coated in mud.
“I see you’re still riding that crazy Indian horse,” she said. “And I see he’s still vexing you.”
“He suits me most of the time. The other times I try my best not to scold him, and he does the same for me.” He swiped the worst of the mud from his saddle seat, tightened his cinch, and swung aboard.
“Take this.” She held out a leather wallet to him. “William was going to give it to you, but he’s upset and forgot.”
“I’m not doing this for pay. That’s not why I came.”
“I know, but you might need money along the way. And knowing you, you don’t have the price of a piece of rock candy in your pockets.” Her smile and her sincerity stopped short the refusal he was about to give.
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