Widowmaker Jones

by Brett Cogburn

  “I could say the same about you.”

  The judge cleared his throat and spat in the road. “I’ll go easy and try not to spook him and his compadre. They come out the back, don’t ask any questions. Open up on them.”

  “I’m no lawman, and you don’t have jurisdiction down here.”

  “They know me down here. This is close enough to the border that folks get on both sides of the line regularly. They won’t want to incur the wrath of my court should they ever get north.”

  “Sounds like a sure way to a hanging to go shooting people in a country that ain’t ours.”

  “Ride around back and keep a lookout. I’ll handle this. It isn’t Miguelito we want, but maybe he’ll tell us the whereabouts of young Cortina.”

  “He might have been one of them that was with Cortina when they robbed me and left me for dead.”

  “Maybe. We’ll ask him if you’ll do like I say,” the judge said. “If I had known you were so hardheaded I would have left you back in Langtry. I must say, now that I know you better, it’s no wonder you found yourself in trouble with the law.”

  Before Newt could say anything else, the judge kicked his gray forward and went to the hitching rail in front of the cantina. Two of the little suckling piglets got under his feet while he was dismounting, causing him to stumble.

  “Get out of here, you pigs,” he shouted and waved his arms to shoo them away. “I would never have hogs in front of my saloon.”

  Newt rode around to the back of the cantina, circling around what had once been a hog pen but was in too poor of a state to hold anything anymore. He sat his horse under a cedar tree where he could see the back door to the place.

  He grew impatient after what must have been five minutes, and dismounted and headed for the back door, hoping he might take a peek inside or hear what was going on. He was almost to the door when one of the bandits came running out of it. It wasn’t the fat one, a little man no less, but he was going fast enough to almost knock Newt down when they collided.

  The bandit did go down, but by the time Newt had regained his balance the little Mexican was up on his feet and clawing at the holstered pistol on his hip.

  Without thinking, Newt let go with a right hand brought from way back behind him. The blow struck the bandit square on the side of the chin, dropping him again. Newt barely had time to catch his breath before a gunshot sounded from within the cantina, and then two, three more. He could hear the judge cursing even before he charged into the room.

  The bartender had taken cover behind his bar, and a few other customers were under tables or sucked back against the walls of the room with their eyes big and so startled they appeared afraid to breathe. The judge was down on the floor at the end of the bar nearest the front door. His pistol was in his hand and pointed outside. The sound of a running horse was plain and the dust it stirred floated inside in a cloud.

  “Are you hit?” Newt asked.

  “No, he didn’t get me, but I missed him, too,” the judge said, and then went to coughing. “Help me up. I think I twisted my knee in the fight.”

  Newt helped him up. “What happened?”

  “Miguelito was edgy like I said, and must have recognized me for the law. I barely had time to ask a single question before he pulled on me.”

  “You’re lucky.”

  “I’m lucky Miguelito was slow and a damned poor shot,” the judge said. “I got my feet tangled and fell down, and then I missed a snap shot at him as he ran out the door.”

  Newt glanced at the rusty Colt the judge held. The firearm was so poorly kept that it was a wonder it had fired at all.

  The judge sneezed loudly. “Shit.”

  “Bless you.”

  “Thank you kindly. What about the other one that ran out the back?”

  “I tended to him. He’s lying outside.”

  “Dead?”

  “No, but you might say he’s indisposed at the moment.”

  “Well, let’s go have a talk with him.”

  “What about Miguelito?”

  “We won’t catch him. Did you get a good look at that white horse he was riding? We don’t have anything that will outrun it.”

  The judge shoved past him, and Newt followed him out the back door. The bandit Newt had punched was conscious and had dragged himself up against the wall and was clutching his jaw with both hands. Blood trickled out between his fingers.

  “Did you shoot him in the head?”

  “No, I punched him. He was going for his gun.”

  “Punched him? Why didn’t you pull your own gun?”

  “I didn’t have time to think about it.”

  The judge eyed the groaning bandit and then took a look at Newt’s right fist. “If God had meant for us to fight like animals he would have given us claws and sharper teeth. If you’re going to wear that pistol you’d best learn how to use it. Somebody might not let you get close enough to use those fists of yours, and besides, clobbering a man like that isn’t gentlemanlike.”

  The judge squatted down beside the wounded bandit. He asked a question in Spanish that Newt couldn’t follow. The bandit’s eyes fluttered, and Newt wasn’t sure that he still had his wits.

  “Answer me,” the judge said, and shook the bandit by the shoulder.

  “What did you ask him?”

  “What do you think I asked him? I asked him where Miguelito was headed, and is Cortina with his sweetheart,” the judge replied. “You want to do the questioning, or leave me to it?”

  “No, I don’t speak Spanish.”

  The judge asked the bandit another question, or maybe two. When the bandit didn’t answer him the judge jerked the man’s hands away from his face. The bandit’s jaw immediately sagged and more blood ran from his mouth. A bit of broken tooth was stuck to his lower lip.

  “What did you hit him with?” the judge asked.

  “Nothing but my fist.”

  “Lord, man, I think you busted his jaw.”

  The judge asked the same questions again and the bandit blubbered something.

  “I can’t understand you. Talk plain.”

  The bandit opened his mouth, tears running from his eyes at the strain and pain of it. He pointed inside his mouth and slurred something again.

  “Look at that. He almost bit his tongue in two,” the judge said. “How am I going to interrogate him now?”

  “He came at me quick. It was him or me.”

  The judge pulled out his pistol again and put the barrel against the bandit’s temple. “I won’t ask you again, messed-up tongue or not.”

  The bandit slobbered blood and tried again. Newt was sure that even if he had spoken Spanish he wouldn’t have been able to understand the man.

  “Say that again,” the judge said.

  The bandit repeated his performance before he choked and gagged on his own blood and slobber.

  “He said Cortina went to Zaragoza, and that Miguelito will likely go after him.”

  “Ask him if he was with Cortina when they robbed me.”

  The judge rattled off the question in Spanish, and the bandit did his best to answer him while he strained to keep watch on the Colt held against his temple, his pupils so far to one side that mostly the whites of his eyes showed.

  “Said he’s never seen you before and didn’t join up with Cortina until a few days ago, but he’s probably lying,” the judge said.

  “Ask him if he knows where my gold is.”

  “Already did. He claims he doesn’t know a thing. Said they robbed a circus and stole a set of white horses,” the judge said. “Apparently there was some kind of falling-out with the gang and they split ways with Cortina, and his favorites took a horse apiece to settle things.”

  “I don’t care about circus horses. It’s my gold I’m worried about.”

  “They’ve likely already spent it. Money doesn’t last long when you’re riding the owl hoot.” The judge stood and holstered his pistol. “What do you want to do with him?”


  Newt shrugged. “I don’t want him if he wasn’t with them that robbed me.”

  “Thought you were a hard man.”

  “I’m a fair man.”

  “I counted on you being a hard case.”

  “I’m after Cortina.”

  The judge asked the bandit another question.

  “What did you ask him that time?”

  “I asked if he knows where my jaguar hide is.”

  “And?”

  “That damned Cortina had a vest made out of it.”

  “Miguelito is going to tell Cortina we’re after him.”

  “He doesn’t know we’re after Cortina.”

  “You said yourself you’re a known man, and don’t you think that Cortina is bragging about where he got that cat hide, even if Miguelito wasn’t with him when he stole it from your saloon? It won’t take much thinking to figure you’re down here after him.”

  “Hmph. Stands to reason.”

  “Best we ride hard and see if we can run down Miguelito before he gets to Zaragoza. Might be he’ll camp come dark and give us a chance to catch up.”

  “Odds are against it, but it’s worth a try.”

  Newt turned and went for his horse, expecting the judge to do the same. The sound of the cocking pistol turned him in time to see the judge put the Colt against the bandit’s temple again and pull the trigger. The report of the gun and splatter of gore against the wall were one and the same.

  “He might have come hunting us when he healed,” the judge said, studying the effect of his bullet on the bandit’s skull.

  “We’ll be long out of Mexico before he could have healed.”

  The judge shrugged and took a fresh cartridge out of his vest pocket and exchanged it for the empty hull he thumbed from his pistol cylinder. “These Mexican outlaws don’t have any respect for borders. He could have come waylaid us one night when we weren’t expecting it.”

  “What about the Mexican law? All these gunshots, and they’re bound to already be on their way down here.”

  “Don’t worry about them. I had long enough before Miguelito started shooting at me to learn that the company of rurales stationed here left about an hour ago. Seems they found their captain’s body floating in the river this morning.”

  “You hang around if you want to, but I’m riding right now.”

  “Think you’re leaving me, do ya? May I remind you that you’re in my custody?”

  “You want to keep it that way, you’d best get on your horse and ride. I’m headed to Zaragoza.”

  The judge lingered a moment over the corpse while Newt ran for his horse.

  “Damned Mexico,” the judge said. “Been like this every time I was down here.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  It was only thirty miles or so to Zaragoza, and the road was level and easy where it was carved out of the low brush or wound through various farm fields or open stretches of poor grassland. Newt had little hope that they would catch up to Miguelito before he reached Cortina.

  They alternated the pace of their horses between a long lope and a trot, and Newt wondered if the judge, at his age, could hold up to the rigor. Yet, come nightfall, the judge was still riding beside him, slouched in the saddle as if his spine were a sagging spring, but uncomplaining as if he could go like that all day long.

  Having come about twenty miles, somewhere near midnight they gave up overtaking Cortina’s henchman and staked the horses on a bit of lush grass on the edge of a large, spring-fed marsh and lake—what the Mexicans called a ciénega. They built no fire nor did they eat anything, being too tired to give the effort.

  “Didn’t think we could catch him.” The judge lay down on the ground on the flat of his back, as usual, without so much as a blanket to lie on or cover himself with.

  “Maybe he took another road,” Newt said while he spread his bedroll.

  “My guess is he’s already with Cortina,” the judge said.

  “What next?”

  “Nothing changes.”

  “They’ll be ready for us.”

  “If I had known you were soft I wouldn’t have brought you along.”

  “Do you mean because I didn’t kill that man back in Piedras Negras?”

  “You said you wanted justice, but maybe you don’t have the stomach for it,” the judge said, grunting and trying to find a more comfortable spot on the ground.

  “He said he wasn’t with them when they robbed me.”

  “You trust the word of an outlaw with a pistol held to his head? That man would have cut your guts out for a half-dollar if you gave him the chance. I know his kind.”

  “I never got a look at any of them, except Cortina. He was the one that followed me out of White Oaks and put a bullet in me, and he’s who I want.”

  “Be careful what you wish for. You keep wearing that gun and somebody will come along and make you use it.”

  That the old judge was a killer, Newt had no doubt. Crafty to the point of comedy at times, he hadn’t hesitated to execute the bandit back in Piedras Negras. He’d murdered that man with no more compunction than stomping a spider or twisting the neck on that rooster. Newt knew himself to be a man of black moods, but the judge was the kind that had lost any guilt over laying low those who opposed him. Most men like that tended to look after their own hide first and foremost, and justified whatever they felt they needed to do, no matter what it was. He’d bear watching, and Newt knew he should have cut loose from him the second he was turned loose back in Langtry. He couldn’t say why he was still riding with him.

  “What are you going to do if you actually get your gold back?” the judge asked.

  The question threw Newt off guard. Some things were best kept to oneself, at least in his opinion. Things that seemed special often seemed not so special anymore when you had to talk about them. Vague ideas that excited him when still only thoughts sounded silly when he tried to put them to words. He was put out that the judge had asked such, but knew that if he didn’t answer the judge would keep on talking.

  “I was going to Houston or maybe farther east. Thought maybe I would set myself up in a shop.”

  “What kind of shop?”

  The judge’s tone made Newt even more reluctant to discuss the matter. He didn’t have the whole thing worked out. When he gave an answer it was a quiet one.

  “A wagon shop. Maybe some cabinet and furniture work, too.” Not only did his words sound silly to his own ears, but they came out as if he were hearing his own ideas for the first time.

  “Never would have taken you for a craftsman,” the judge replied. “I’ve guessed some things about you, but never that. Where did you learn the trade?”

  “Never did.”

  “You what?”

  “I said I never did.”

  The judge propped himself up on one elbow. “And what makes you think you would be good at it?”

  “I like wood and I’ve always been good with things I can do with my hands.”

  “Well, I’ve always liked whores, but I never thought I would make a good pimp. Whores are like liquor, and a man who can’t keep from sampling too much of his wares won’t last long in business.”

  Newt made a fuss over making his bed, hoping the judge would let it go. But he didn’t.

  “There’s no telling the ideas some men have rattling around in their heads,” the judge said as if Newt weren’t even there, and as if he were talking to himself.

  “Pa worked wood a little. Not fancy woodwork—only some carving and scrapping together a few pieces of furniture or mending someone’s wagon,” Newt said. “And then I was apprenticed to a wheelwright down in the low country, but that fell through before I was with him a month or two.”

  “That’s not enough time to learn anything.”

  Newt only half heard him, with his mind wandering back to the way fresh wood shavings smelled piled up beneath his father’s feet while he turned a table leg on an old foot-powered lathe he had built himself. And he could still rem
ember the first fancy coach he had seen passing along the road, and he and his father had stood hand in hand on the side of the road and watched it pass, with its high red wheels, varnished wood, and brass lanterns as shiny as gold. He had thought then what a fine thing it would be to ride in something like that or to build such a wonderful coach—something shiny and something that could take you places.

  The judge pointed at Newt’s battered and knocked-down knuckles and then at his face. “A man should stick to what he’s good at.”

  “I’ve had my fill of getting my skull busted or getting paid to bust someone else’s skull,” Newt said. “Never has gotten me anything but headaches.”

  “How’d you get in the skull-busting business?”

  Newt shrugged. He hadn’t said so much all at once in a long, long time, but there he was telling things to an old, worn-out killer like the judge. “I don’t know. I was trying my hand on a little placer claim and having no luck. The whole camp was having trouble with claim jumpers, and a couple of men approached me and said they would pay me fifty dollars in gold if I would guard their claim for a week while they went up to Denver to purchase what they needed to sink a shaft they had planned. I cut myself a big stick and sat on that claim for them for a month.”

  “Anybody give you any trouble?”

  “Some, but I got that fifty dollars.”

  “Did you get those scars then?”

  Newt shrugged. “There and other places. Next boom camp I was in there was a disagreement that got out of hand between some miners and the company they worked for. The miners were a bunch of hard-rock Welshmen and Irishmen. You know the kind—stout workers and every bit as hardheaded. They picketed the gate to the mine one night and weren’t letting anyone in or out. One of those company men had heard about me and came and asked if I could gather some tough men and go up the hill and convince his employees to get back to work. I was broke, so I took the job.”