Widowmaker Jones

by Brett Cogburn

  “Oh Lord,” the judge said.

  From the sound of it, Newt guessed that the judge had got himself a sticker from a cactus.

  “Help me,” the judge called out.

  “What’s the matter?” Newt reined his horse around and walked it nearer where the judge was.

  The judge came out of the cactus clump with his pants around his ankles and the trapdoor of his long underwear down. He was holding his left hand cradled in the other.

  “You snakebit?” Newt asked.

  “No, but I’m poisoned.”

  Newt rode closer but he couldn’t tell anything about the judge’s hand, because the judge wouldn’t let go of it and was wobbling in circles. He finally got tangled up in his pants and fell down. He had risen to a sitting position by the time Newt dismounted.

  “I’ll be lucky if I ain’t dead before noon,” the judge said.

  “Let me see that hand.”

  The judge grimaced and let go of it and held it up for Newt to examine. “Scorpion got me.”

  Indeed, the judge’s hand was already swelling, mostly at the base of his thumb, and his skin was red with inflammation.

  “Little scorpion did that?”

  “Little? I bet it’s one of those big black ones,” the judge said. “Oh Lord. I saw a man over in Sonora once when I was young. They got those big black ones there. One of them got in his bedroll and stung him on the nutsack. His balls turned as black as an ace of spades. There were several of us and we were discussing amputation, but it never got to that. The poison had done gone too far. It settled in his neck and choked him to where he couldn’t breathe.”

  “Well, you’re bit on the hand. Maybe it won’t hit you so hard.”

  “That man was dead within an hour of the time he was stung. Go over there and see if you can find it. See if it’s one of those big black ones.”

  Newt dropped his rein and went where the judge had been. Apparently, the judge was stung before he had time to do his business, but Newt did find where the ground was scuffed where the judge had squatted. He brushed a dead stick around in the rocky ground, but found nothing.

  “Did you find it?” the judge asked when Newt came back. “Tell me it wasn’t one of those black ones. They get longer than your finger. Got a stinger on them the size of a roofing tack.”

  “How do you know it was a scorpion if you didn’t see it?”

  “I got a glimpse of it. I think it was black.”

  “Maybe they don’t have the black ones here. Could have been a regular brown little scorpion. Never heard of anybody dying from one of them. It will sting some, but should go away after a while.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. Felt like a knife going in me; like my hand was on fire,” the judge said. “I don’t want to lose my hand. Old Billy Bartholemew—he was a prospector I once knew out in Arizona—he got bit by a Gila monster. They got mouths so nasty they’re pure poison. Billy’s whole hand rotted off by the time he wandered back to where people lived.”

  “You’re jumping the gun a little. We’re talking about scorpions here.”

  “You don’t care because it isn’t your hand. I’ve had this hand a long time and grown partial to it.”

  The judge was sweating profusely. Newt didn’t know if it was because of the scorpion’s poison or because the judge’s hat had fallen off and he was sitting in the sun. The judge put the heel of his hand to his mouth and sucked on it and then spat. He repeated the procedure several times.

  “You getting anything out? I’ve heard of that for snakebites.”

  “I can’t tell.”

  “Put a chaw of tobacco on it and that will draw the heat out.”

  “Would you chew some up for me?” The judge jerked his chin down at his vest pocket.

  Newt squatted and found the judge’s little square of plug tobacco and tore a chunk off it with his jaw teeth. He wasn’t a chewer, and the stuff tasted like tar. He fought off the urge to gag, and as soon as it was moistened a little he took it from his mouth and placed it on the heel of the judge’s thumb.

  “Hold that there and get up.”

  “I’m feeling faint. Things are spinning.”

  “You’ll die of heatstroke if you don’t put your hat back on and get out of the sun.”

  The judge got to his feet with a groan and struggled with the seat of his drawers and tugged his pants up one-handed. He held the other hand gingerly up to the sun as if it were a thing brittle and delicate or some kind of offering of submission.

  Newt picked the judge’s sugarloaf sombrero off the ground and sat it on the judge’s head.

  “Thank you kindly.” The judge scratched at his neck with his good hand. “I’m itching all over.”

  Newt untied the white bandanna the judge was wearing. In doing so, he noticed the ugly scar ringing the man’s neck. It was an old scar, wrinkled and a dull mahogany brown like an old burn; it was like the kind a rope makes sliding hot across your flesh.

  “That must have smarted some.” Newt nodded at the scar on the judge’s neck while he tied the bandanna around the old man’s hand to hold the chewing tobacco poultice in place.

  The judge looked away.

  “Somebody hung you, didn’t they?”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “You, the upstanding judge, the belle of the ball at a necktie strangle party?”

  “It was before I was old enough to have any sense. Nothing but a misunderstanding.”

  Newt went to his horse and climbed on.

  “What are you doing?” the judge asked.

  “That Miguelito might already be with Cortina now and telling him we’re coming. I don’t aim to lose him.”

  “Forget about Cortina for now. Can’t you see I might be dying? I need medical attention.”

  “Get on your horse. There’s nothing the matter with you but a little scorpion sting.”

  The judge made a show of having trouble getting on his horse, but finally landed in his saddle. “I tell you, I’m feeling floaty.”

  “You said you get to feeling floaty when you think about that singer girl you were telling me about. The one you named your saloon after.”

  “I do sometimes get floaty over old memories, and that’s what scares me. Reliving the past is the closest thing to death. Mark my words. Getting floaty is a sure sign we’re hovering on the edge of the hereafter.”

  Newt started his horse toward Zaragoza at a walk. The judge passed him at a hard trot, bouncing in the saddle and mumbling to himself.

  “I think I’ve already got a fever.” The judge wiped at his brow when Newt caught up to him.

  “No wonder you’re sweating. It’s already turning hot as Hades,” Newt said. “I never thought a grown man would carry on so over such a trifle as getting stung.”

  “Anything with a stinger bothers me something fierce. Bees, wasps, hornets, you name it. Never been stung by a scorpion. I’m always careful, but it caught me off my guard this time.”

  “I imagine you’ll suffer through.”

  “My brother hit me over the head with a singletree when we were young. I couldn’t see anything but black for a while, but then I saw these white spots dancing everywhere.”

  “I’ve seen a few stars myself. There’s nothing unusual about feeling punchy after taking a good lick.”

  “Mama said those spots were angels celebrating my coming to the Kingdom of Heaven. Said if a dying man listens close he can hear them sing.”

  “I’ve never heard angels sing when I was hit. Just people shouting at me to get up or cussing me to stay down.”

  “You said you went to school some, didn’t you?” the judge asked.

  “Some.”

  “I was always good at my sums. Never took to the reading primer, but I was quick with my sums. You remember what a fraction is?”

  “I do.”

  “A fraction is a thing all broke up. It’s a thing that’s only a part of a thing. It ain’t whole.”

  “I could do w
ithout the lesson. I wasn’t partial to math myself.”

  “It ain’t math I’m talking about. You didn’t see Billy Bartholemew with his hand rotted off. There wasn’t anything left of him but a fraction—a piece of the man he was—and the thought of that scares me to no end,” the judge said. “Don’t tell me you aren’t scared of anything.”

  “I guess everyone’s scared of something. Some more than others.”

  “You’re too young to understand. I’m already losing my parts and I’m not the man I used to be,” the judge said. “My joints ache and my back hurts most times, and some days I can’t even take a good shit. I’m losing all my powers.”

  “How old are you?” Newt thought he fought off the grin the judge’s complaining brought on.

  “I see you judging me and finding me wanting. Think you’re better than me,” the judge said.

  “I was only thinking about how far is left until we make Zaragoza.”

  “Wait until you get my age and death won’t seem so out of reason. Old Death’s hanging around the corner for all of us and doesn’t care if you’re young or old. I know that much. Seen ’em come and go already.”

  “There’ll be a doctor in Zaragoza if it’s anyplace at all.”

  “You’re not a kind man, Mr. Jones. I saw that the first time I laid eyes on you.”

  “That’s kind of the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it?”

  The judge groaned and studied his wounded hand again. “Never thought I would go this way. I’ve been shot at and knifed and hung, but a scorpion gets me in the end. It ain’t fair.”

  “Nothing’s fair.”

  The judge sighed. “No, I expect you’re right. Specially in Mexico. I should have never let you talk me into coming back down here.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Late in the morning and still four miles from Zaragoza, the judge’s hand was already swollen to twice its size, and he was babbling nonsense and his eyes were swollen slits and his face turned lumpy. Twice he called Newt by some other name, and he held conversations with himself or with others riding along with them that only he could see.

  At first, Newt found it at least something to pass the miles, but the more he thought about it the more it began to bother him. It dawned on him that the judge was talking to ghosts—people who he had known who weren’t anymore. Newt had seen his own share of troubled times, and even the good times scattered in between left memories that a man can’t shake and that come back to visit time to time when someone’s mind is fevered or when they’re clutching at anything they can lay hand to. Newt preferred to leave his ghosts in the past and shut out of his thoughts.

  He was beginning to doubt that the judge would be able to ride the rest of the way to Zaragoza. He didn’t know what to do for him and was considering if he could tie him over his saddle. It also didn’t go without notice that he was going through an awful lot of trouble for an old sharper that he’d sworn to punch in the face and leave behind the first chance he got, but he couldn’t bring himself to abandon a wounded man, no matter how annoying he was. Maybe the scorpion had done him a favor. If he could get the judge to a doctor he was bound to be laid up for a while to recuperate. That would give Newt more than time enough to get shed of him.

  He was thinking those things when he saw the odd-looking and brightly painted wagon. It was crawling along the road at the bottom of a long hill ahead of him.

  The judge groaned again, and Newt grimaced and kicked his horse back up to a trot, heading straight down the road after the wagon. The judge’s gray nag followed him like a faithful hound, picking up its pace to match Newt’s. The judge reeled in the saddle like he was drunk.

  “Onward, my good man,” the judge said.

  Newt shifted over to the upwind edge of the road, trying to avoid the dust the wagon was raising. The first thing that struck him when they had almost caught up to the wagon was that it was pulled by a little brown mule and a black draft horse twice its size. The harness and collar the mule wore were obviously made for a twin to the draft horse, and the little long-ear looked absurd and comical in the ill-fitting gear and walking alongside the horse. Whoever owned the outfit wasn’t one to take much pride in a matched team, nor did they appear to give a damn for appearances.

  The wagon was as odd as what pulled it—paint so bright it almost hurt the eyes with garish scenes, and obviously advertising some kind of snake-oil show or circus. It was probably the circus performers the people back in Piedras Negras had said were robbed of their horses—the same circus people who the rurales were looking for. A big, shaggy dog trotted alongside the wagon, and it stopped in the road with its hackles up when it noticed Newt and the judge nearing it.

  Newt waited until the road widened for a stretch and chose that time to speed up and ride cautiously alongside the wagon. The dog growled and scratched the ground with its back feet and then ducked in behind their horses’ heels, sniffing their smell and with the hair on its back still standing almost straight up.

  The young woman driving the wagon was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen, so beautiful that it was almost disconcerting. She wore a short-sleeved white blouse gathered at the waist with a broad, tooled leather belt, and a bright red skirt that ended right above her brown ankles. Her sandaled feet were propped up on the wagon’s dashboard. She wore no hat, despite the fact that the sun was hitting her full in the face, and her black hair hung long and curly down to the middle of her back.

  “Good morning,” he said when she turned and recognized he was alongside her wagon. The rear axle was squeaking like it hadn’t been greased in a long time, keeping her from hearing his approach.

  He realized something else when he got a full-on look at her face. She had the damnedest eyes. Some called them almond eyes, but that didn’t do hers justice. They were more like a cat’s eyes, or maybe that was the way she had drawn out the outside corners with some kind of blacking or cosmetic liner. It came to him after a while that he was staring and should look away out of politeness, but he couldn’t stop himself. Not with those amber cat eyes staring back at him.

  The dog growled again and the woman hissed at it to shut it up. The Circle Dot horse cocked one hind leg and bluffed a kick that sent the dog scampering away.

  “Hallelujah!” the judge bellowed. “Follow me, boys. There’s whiskey and women in old San Gabriel tonight.”

  The young woman’s eyes shifted slowly to consider the judge, but she said nothing. Newt could tell from the rapid fall of her chest and the purse of her full lips that she was nervous.

  Her companion on the wagon seat leaned forward so that he could better see Newt and the judge. There was, of all things, a silk top hat on his head, and he leaned so far forward at the waist and placed his upper body at such an angle that it appeared that there was no way the tall hat shouldn’t topple from his head. Yet, somehow it defied the laws of gravity.

  He looked as young as she. Maybe the same age or older, but his features were boyish and made it hard to tell. The similarity in their looks led Newt to believe they were kin. The man/boy seemed as nervous as the girl beside him, yet there was a smile on his face.

  “Good morning,” the boy in the funny hat said while he took in the judge.

  Newt couldn’t place the young man’s accent. It was like none he had ever heard. Like the girl, it had more than a hint of the exotic about it.

  “My name’s Newt Jones, and this here is Judge Roy Bean of Langtry, Texas.”

  The man/boy tipped his hat and made a bow from the waist. “Alfonzo Grey, at your service, and this is my sister, Kizzy.”

  “I take it you two are some kind of circus folks.” Newt gestured at the paintings on the side of the wagon.

  “You would be correct,” Fonzo said. “The Grey Family Circus.”

  The apprehensive look was still on the woman’s face, and Newt couldn’t blame her. No doubt, she was on the lookout for the rurales following them, coupled with the fact that he and the judge probably wo
uldn’t inspire confidence in anyone. He hadn’t shaved since he left Fort Stockton many days before, his clothes were filthy, and his face was never one that warmed strangers to him. The crazed judge’s babbling didn’t help matters.

  “We have nothing left worth taking,” she said.

  Maybe not rurales, but no doubt she took them for possible road agents. He assumed that the brother had killed the rurale back in Piedras Negras, but truth be known, you never could tell, and he had been wrong before.

  “We’re peace officers.” As soon as he said it he wondered how they would react to it, being wanted by the law. He had only been around the judge a few days, and already he was taking up his lying.

  The glance both she and her companion cast over him made it plain they were looking for a badge on his person and found none.

  “We had a run-in this morning with some outlaws we’ve been tracking and it got a little rough,” Newt added.

  “What are two American lawmen doing below the border?”

  Her brother whispered something, but she waved him off with an oddly graceful wave of her hand.

  “Texas has papers on the bunch we’re after, and we pursued them across the border,” Newt said. “They’re as bad a gang of cutthroats as you’ve ever seen.”

  “What gang?” The look on her face changed.

  “The Cortina gang.”

  She stopped her team, set her wagon brake, and wrapped her reins around it. She shared a look with her brother.

  “Did you say Cortina?” she asked.

  “That’s right.” Newt stopped his horse.

  “How do we know you’re not making this up and not outlaws yourself?”

  Newt started to get the judge to chime in with his credentials, but noticed that the judge’s horse had wandered off the road and stopped under a shady oak. The judge was staring at his hand and crying.

  “I assure you that we aren’t bandits,” Newt said.

  “What’s wrong with that man? Is he drunk?” Fonzo said, looking at the judge.

  “Scorpion stung him, and he’s bad sick.”

  “Maybe I can help him,” Kizzy said.