Widowmaker Jones

by Brett Cogburn

  “They don’t want him as bad as I do.”

  “You only beg for your life.”

  “How bad do you want Cortina dead?”

  Don Alvarez began to pace again, casting an occasional glance at Newt in passing.

  “You let us out of here, see these circus folks safely on the road, and I’ll get Cortina for you.”

  The don stopped in front of Newt again. “There are the rurales to think of.”

  “You’re some kind of big shot around here. I’m sure you can change their minds.”

  “You have killed a man with many friends.”

  “He wasn’t much of a man.”

  “Favors granted require favors on my part. It can cause difficulties and complexities in the future that can’t be calculated. Intrigue and politics often weave a tangled web.”

  “You want your daughter back, don’t you? I’ve got a notion that some of those rurales, if not all of them, might have connections to Cortina. Are you going to trust them to run him down?”

  “That rurale company is a joke. I count on them for nothing,” Don Alvarez said. “I have over fifty vaqueros that ride for me. Those are the men I count on.”

  “You said yourself that they’ve already lost Cortina’s trail. I’ve followed him this far, and I’ll follow him as long as it takes.”

  “I want him brought back to me alive, or I want his head in a sack.”

  Newt held up his shackled hands. “Let me and young Fonzo there go, and I’ll get Cortina.”

  “The circus boy stays. I will see to it that he is looked after and that no harm comes to him or his sister while you are gone.”

  “I want to go with him.” Fonzo grabbed his cell bars, clutching them until his knuckles were white. There was panic written all over him. “Those rurales will kill me. My sister has no one else.”

  “The rurales will leave you alone. I will see to it that you are turned loose if this man does as he says,” Don Alvarez said. “If this man does not come back, I will leave you to whatever justice the rurales wish to inflict on you.”

  Newt started to ask another question, but was interrupted by two of the vaqueros busting into the corridor. One of them had a set of keys and opened Newt’s cell door. Newt marched out with one in front of him and one in back, with Don Alvarez leading the way. Newt cast one look behind him at Fonzo, but the circus boy had already turned away from him.

  When they stepped outside at least twenty riders were waiting for them, sitting their horses in a semicircle fronting the jail. The rurales were off to one end of the line, slightly apart from the vaqueros. The judge and the girl were standing in front of the posse.

  The vaquero with the keys unlocked Newt’s handcuffs, and Newt noticed that he was the same one who had busted him in the kidney with a rifle barrel the day before.

  The judge was holding Newt’s gun belt and held it out to him. Newt rubbed his chafed wrists and took his gun and swung the belt around his hips. He looked from the judge to Don Alvarez.

  “You already had this deal thought out before you came in the jail, didn’t you?” he asked Don Alvarez.

  “Judge Roy will go with you,” Don Alvarez said.

  “Thought you said you tried to kill the judge the last time you saw him.”

  “We have settled those matters.”

  “I don’t need his help.”

  The judge started to bluster something, but Don Alvarez cut him off. “I set the terms. He will go with you.”

  Newt looked at the judge. “You seem to be on the mend.”

  The judge held up his hand, and most of the swelling was gone. His face almost looked normal, too. “The priest said I’m over it, but it was a close call.”

  Newt buckled his gun belt and scowled at the don and the judge. He didn’t trust either of them.

  “Where’s my horse?” he asked.

  “I have ordered that he be destroyed,” Don Alvarez said.

  “That’s my horse, and I want him. If you want this done, you have him brought to me.”

  “I have many other horses that you can choose from, and you are in no position to bargain.”

  “You want Cortina, you bring me that horse.”

  “He is cursed.”

  “Then we’re a pair.”

  Don Alvarez looked mad, but made a motion to his men. One of them took off in a run.

  “You have one week to either bring me Cortina or his head,” Don Alvarez said. “If you aren’t back by then, I will turn the boy over to the rurales, and I will do everything in my power to hunt you down.”

  The rurale company looked none too happy about the deal in the making. Newt assumed that the rurales, and probably Don Alvarez’s vaqueros, would hang back a little, but follow him after Cortina.

  “I never even met these circus people until yesterday afternoon, and they have nothing to do with me,” Newt said. “Why don’t you let them go now?”

  “The boy stays locked up until you return. That is our pact.”

  Kizzy was looking at Newt the whole time with those odd, lovely eyes. She seemed to expect him to say something else, but there was nothing more to be said. She gave him one last look and ran inside the jail.

  At that same moment the vaquero came back leading the Circle Dot horse. The horse already had Newt’s rig on it, with the Sharps buffalo gun tied to the saddle strings on one side and shoved under the stirrup leather.

  The judge was already getting on his gray nag. Newt took one of the bridle reins offered him and tightened his cinch. He started to mount, but hesitated and turned back.

  “One more thing,” he said.

  “What’s that?” asked Don Alvarez.

  “Hey, you.” Newt pointed at the vaquero who had hit him in the kidney with his rifle, and waved him over.

  The vaquero looked sullen, but walked up to Newt. The rest of the men gathered around stopped talking when they noticed what was going on.

  “You like hitting a man in the back?”

  The vaquero didn’t understand English, but he put his hand on a big knife sheathed on his belt and said something back in Spanish. Some of the men laughed, and the vaquero smiled as if it were a funny thing.

  Newt smiled back, and then he drew his pistol and swung it in a slashing blow. He was aiming for the vaquero’s pox-pitted nose, but was a little off and the end of the pistol barrel hit the vaquero right between the eyes. The vaquero ended up flat on his back with his eyes rolled back in his head, mumbling something, and slobber running out of one side of his mouth.

  Metal rasped against leather as several guns were drawn at once. A gambler would have been hard-pressed to lay odds on which one of them was going to shoot Newt first. He ignored the guns pointing at him and shoved the Smith back in its holster. He hovered over his victim, daring the man to get up.

  “Nothing I hate worse than a backbiter.” Newt spat on the fallen vaquero and then headed to his horse.

  Don Alvarez shouted orders and stepped between Newt and the mounted men. The vaqueros and rurales didn’t put away their guns, but they did hold their fire.

  “Do you have a death wish?” Don Alvarez asked. “Are you a fool?”

  Newt didn’t answer until he had mounted his horse. He pointed at the vaquero on the ground. “He ought to be careful who he pokes.”

  “You had better find Cortina. These men would like nothing better than if you didn’t.” Don Alvarez waved him away.

  Newt reined the Circle Dot horse around and shoved his way through the crowd of men. The judge soon pulled up beside him.

  “Son, you’re a fool for trouble,” the judge said. “What kind of crazy stunt was that, pulling your shooter in front of all of them? We’re lucky you didn’t get us both killed.”

  “Keep it to yourself. I’m not in the mood.”

  “You think you really did something, striking a deal with Don Alvarez, don’t you?”

  “What kind of deal did you make?” Newt asked. “Doesn’t surprise me that you two are
old chums.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly say we’re friends. Far from it,” the judge said.

  “What’s he have against you?”

  “I came through this country once when I was younger. Had a little shooting scrape over a señorita.”

  “What did that have to do with Alvarez?”

  “The man I shot was some distant cousin of his, and Alvarez set in after me. I don’t think he was close enough kin to try too hard to catch me, but I outran him to the border anyway.”

  “And he’s letting you come with me? Just like that?”

  “Alvarez would as soon have me killed as he would you, but he’s a practical man. He sets store by that girl of his. The likes of Cortina even talking to her is what Alvarez would consider defiling her, and now to rub salt in the wound, that sassy bandit has run off with her. Alvarez would have his head for the insult to his family name, if nothing else.”

  “It was good luck on our part that Cortina did what he did,” Newt said.

  “You realize you struck a deal with the Devil, don’t you? Don’t let all those fancy manners fool you. You ain’t any more than a flea on a dog’s ass to that man. He’s got his own angles to work, and we looked useful to him for the time being.”

  “Those vaqueros are going to follow us.”

  The judge nodded. “Sure as the world. I’d do it that way if I were him. There’s no reason he thinks we can track any better than his boys, so he must think we know something about where Cortina might go.”

  “Do you?”

  “I don’t have a clue.”

  “I don’t trust Alvarez to keep his word. I think he still thinks I had something to do with his son’s death.”

  “It’ll be a chancy thing. Those vaqueros know the country and we don’t.”

  “He’ll hand that circus kid over to the rurales, even if I bring him Cortina’s head, won’t he?”

  “A man like Alvarez is hard to figure. He sets store by his word, but then again, that might only hold in a gentleman-to-gentleman situation. You ain’t no gentleman, and neither am I.”

  Newt noticed that the judge had a new gun hanging by a strap from his saddle horn. It was a short, double-barreled coach gun—a ten-gauge with stubby Damascus steel barrels and mule-ear hammers on the side locks. Those side plates were engraved, and faint traces of silver work were barely visible. At one time it might have been some rich man’s bird gun before somebody sawed it off to make it handier for shooting men. There was a handkerchief bundle knotted at the top and hanging beside the shotgun, and the brass cartridges inside it jingled occasionally with the judge’s horse’s stride.

  “Where’d you get the street cannon?” Newt asked.

  “Couldn’t find any cartridges for the carbine I took off that bandit you killed, and I thought our work might be close up and better suited to a scattergun,” the judge said. “Traded that carbine and the Navy Colt you took for the shotgun, straight across.”

  Newt hadn’t even noticed that the dead bandit’s pistol was gone from his gear. “Better have them close. That thing won’t pattern at all at any distance.”

  The judge patted the shotgun’s butt stock. “It’s been my experience that a shotgun can save some shooting and can get a man to go easy when nothing else will. You point old Gabriel at someone, and they look into the business end of him and get afraid he’s going to toot his horns.”

  “Old Gabriel?”

  “That’s what I named it. Didn’t you ever read the Bible?” The judge scoffed. “I swear, I’m riding with a heathen.”

  They pointed their horses north following a wagon road to the Rancho Alvarez. It was two more miles before either of them spoke again.

  “I don’t know what kind of deal you and Alvarez made, but don’t you cross me,” Newt said. “I’ve got enough troubles without worrying about you.”

  The judge did his best to look offended. “Same deal as you made. We have to catch Cortina. And besides, you haven’t exactly been honest with me, either.”

  The judge reached inside his vest pocket and pulled out a folded, badly wrinkled sheet of paper. He unfolded it and held it out, reading it. He grunted after a while and passed the paper to Newt. It was a flyer advertising a boxing match in the mining camp of Granite Gap.

  “Think I didn’t know who you are?” the judge asked. “You’re a known man, and one of the Rangers recognized you back in Langtry.”

  “Where did you get this?”

  “You might say I’m a bit of a boxing fan.”

  “I told you I fought in the ring a few times.”

  “You’ve got a name for more than that, Widowmaker Jones,” the judge said. “They say you’ll hire out to anyone that will pay your price. Tear a man down for fifty dollars, and don’t care who it is. The company decides they want a claim, and the man that holds it disappears.”

  “That’s a damned lie.” Newt stopped his horse.

  The judge yanked his pistol from his belt and leveled it on Newt. “You won’t do me like you did that Mexican cowboy back there.”

  Newt stared into the bore of the gun. “Use it if you’re going to.”

  The judge eared the pistol’s hammer back. “You think you’re some kind of good man? I saw the way you were looking at me back there in Piedras Negras, like you were better than me. Well, I judge folks for a living, and I knew you for what you were at first glance. You’re a thumper for hire that hasn’t done a good deed since you were weaned off sour milk. Widowmaker Jones, that’s who you are.”

  Newt straightened in the saddle. “Don’t you ever call me that again, and you use that gun or I’m going to make you eat it.”

  The judge uncocked the pistol and shoved it back behind his belt. “We get Cortina and you can go your merry way. Go build wagons and pick flowers and give them to old widow ladies, or kiss babies and preach sermons for all I care.”

  “I thought you wanted to hang Cortina. Don Alvarez wants his head.”

  The judge made a clicking sound with a suck of his cheek. “I admit I was looking forward to stretching that devil’s neck, but maybe Don Alvarez will let me have the head. I could pickle it and keep it in ajar on my bar for a conversation piece. They did that with old Joaquin Murrieta after he killed my brother Josh out in California. I would have paid a pretty penny to have that horse thief’s head. The California Rangers charged people a dollar to look at Murrieta’s pickled noggin.”

  Newt twisted in the saddle and looked back toward town.

  “You’re thinking about that woman, aren’t you?” the judge asked. “You’re too ugly for a pretty little thing like that, but I can see you’re worrying over it.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about her.”

  “To hell you weren’t. You’d best mind your own business. Always strikes me funny that even the most sensible men turn fool over the littlest things,” the judge said. “With some it’s money or gambling, and with some it’s women. Wouldn’t have took you for a romancer, but you never can tell.”

  “Those rurales are a rough bunch. They might give her trouble,” Newt said. “She’s a pretty little thing.”

  “I wouldn’t have thrown any rocks at her in my younger years, I’ll give you that, but Don Alvarez won’t let anything happen to her. And besides, she struck me as a girl that can take care of herself.”

  “I can most certainly take care of myself.” Kizzy stepped her horse out of a gully on the side of the road ahead of them.

  Both men noted how she parked her horse broadside in the road, as if to block them like some kind of road agent out to rob their purses. Apparently she had been waiting for them, and they had been arguing too much to notice her. Newt hoped she hadn’t heard him mention that she was pretty.

  She was riding the black draft horse that had been hitched with the little mule to her wagon. Her saddle looked undersized and tiny on its broad back. The big white dog stood at the horse’s feet.

  But it wasn’t so much the horse and the huge dog that made her an od
d sight. It was the way she was dressed. She was wearing some kind of buckskin dress, bone-white, with beading and fringe all over it. Where her dress ended Newt could see the lower legs of a pair of men’s canvas pants tucked into fancy riding boots. Dainty, nickel-plated gal leg spurs with brass star rowels sat above their heels. The hat on her head was a high-crowned, preposterous thing, as white as her dress and with a wide brim. Newt hadn’t seen anything like it except ones worn by the performers in some of those traveling Wild West shows.

  “Go back to town, girl,” the judge said.

  The dog growled and took two threatening steps forward, causing the judge’s horse to shy backward.

  Kizzy shoved the front of the brim of her hat up against the crown so that she could see better. “Don Alvarez will let the rurales have my brother if you don’t get Cortina.”

  “We can take care of that,” the judge said. “Go back to your circus wagon and tend to some sewing or such.”

  “I can ride or shoot with any man.” She patted one of the pearl-handled pistols on the double rig she had belted over the dress.

  “All right, if you don’t like women’s work, play some checkers and chew tobacco with your brother while he waits.”

  “Cortina has our horses. We need those horses,” she said. “Fonzo would go with you if it was me that was locked up.”

  “There’s no place for a woman where we’re going.” The judge looked to Newt to confirm his opinion. “Tell her to get her ass back to town.”

  The dog growled again, and the judge cursed and fumbled for his pistol. “You get that dog back, or I’ll shoot the damned thing.”

  “Mind your language in front of the lady,” Newt said.

  “Lady?” the judge exclaimed. “She’s nothing but a Gypsy wench. Can’t you tell?”

  “I won’t ask you again.” Newt was talking to the judge, but kept a watch on the brute of a dog. He had never seen its like. It was the size of a yearling bear cub.

  “He’d better not shoot my dog,” Kizzy said. “Vlad’s not really mean, but he can be a little overly protective of me.”

  “Where did you get that outfit you’re wearing?” Newt asked.

  She looked bashfully down at her dress. “I use it in our show. It was the only thing I have that I thought durable enough to hold up on a long horseback trip.”