Widowmaker Jones

by Brett Cogburn

  Newt went to his saddlebags and brought her a little string of dried peppers that had been in the supplies Don Alvarez had equipped them with. He watched as she ground a couple of the peppers between two rocks.

  “Maybe we can resupply at Las Boquillas,” he said.

  She shrugged again. “We’ll make do.”

  “Nothing at Las Boquillas but a tiny peasant village,” the judge said. “We’ll be lucky to find anything but goat meat and frijoles, or burro meat if we aren’t lucky.”

  “They eat burros?” Kizzy asked.

  “Sure, haven’t you ever ate one? Let me tell you about one time when I was hauling freight on the Santa Fe Trail. We got caught in a blizzard, and hadn’t had a bite to eat in days. There was this . . .”

  Newt cut him off. “I assure you, Miss Grey, that’s a story you don’t want to hear.”

  The judge let out a big breath of air in a grumpy harrumph. He glanced at the white dog lying not far from where Kizzy was preparing their meal. The dog had appeared shortly before nightfall, footsore and limping.

  “We could always eat the dog,” the judge said.

  The dog growled when it noticed the judge staring at it.

  “I think you’re only trying to get to me,” Kizzy said. “Nobody would eat a fine dog like Vlad.”

  The dog growled again.

  “Dog is tough eating anyway.” The judge gave the dog a final glare and lay back with his hat over his eyes. “Let me know when the vittles are ready.”

  “All your talk of Indians has me thinking we ought to take turns standing watch tonight,” Newt said.

  “Good idea. You and the girl take the first two watches, and I’ll stand guard after that,” the judge said.

  In a matter of minutes the judge was snoring.

  “Is he really already asleep?” Kizzy asked.

  “I wouldn’t put it past him to play possum to get out of standing watch, but yes, I think he’s really asleep,” Newt said.

  “Doesn’t he ever use a blanket?”

  “The judge is real careful about what he puts any effort into.”

  “You mean he’s lazy?”

  “I mean he’s peculiar.”

  “In what way?”

  “In every way, and most of them irritating. Seems like everything about this trip is peculiar.”

  “So why do you ride with him?”

  Newt thought about that before he answered. “Man like me doesn’t often get to be picky.”

  “Why does the judge sometimes call you the Widowmaker?” She sliced up the last of the skirt steak and dropped it into the bean pot.

  “Think nothing of that. You should have seen by now that the judge is a little windy.”

  She took a seat on her saddle. “Are you some kind of outlaw? I heard the judge say something about you being in his custody.”

  “You ask a lot of questions.”

  “I’m too tired to sleep and need something to do to keep my mind off food until the beans finish cooking.”

  “I’m no outlaw. A hard case, maybe, but there are many a lot worse than me.”

  “I know the rurales wanted you for killing a man on the road to Zaragoza.”

  “The rurales were looking for you and your brother, too.” He watched her carefully to see how she took that.

  She nodded, and shoved the hat back off her head, letting it hang against her back by the braided rawhide chin string. Without the ridiculous hat, he was reminded how pretty she really was.

  “I saw you beat that vaquero with your pistol,” she said.

  “That man got what was coming to him. You wrong someone, you can’t expect it not to come back on you. I won’t be wronged. You let people run over you and there’s no end to it. There’ll come a time when you aren’t going anywhere except backing up. I don’t back up for anyone.”

  “You don’t have to call me Miss Grey. Kizzy will do fine.”

  “All right, Kizzy. Seems like I’ve been in one kind of a fight or another since I was big enough to walk.”

  “You’ve killed two men since I’ve known you, and Cortina will make three if you find him again.”

  Newt grimaced. “Cortina and his men tried to kill me some time back, and took everything I owned. They shot me down like a dog and left me to rot.”

  “So you intend to kill him, and that will make up for everything he did to you?”

  “It’s his head that will get your brother’s fat out of the fire, so don’t you high-and-mighty me.” Newt had let the coffee in the bottom of his cup go cold, and he pitched it in the fire in frustration. Who was she to be questioning him? She was a chatterbox like the judge, and most talkers didn’t understand that there aren’t words for everything.

  “I didn’t mean to make you mad.” She checked the beans and gave him an apologetic look when she sat back down on her saddle.

  “I’m not mad.”

  “Tell me why they call you the Widowmaker.”

  “It’s not much of a story.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “Are you always this nosy?”

  “Pardon me, but the one thing I enjoy about traveling is hearing people’s stories. I can never lay hand to enough good books, but I’ve found that the truth, as they say, is often stranger than fiction.”

  “We’d best eat and get some sleep. We’re liable to have another hard pull in front of us tomorrow.”

  “The beans aren’t done yet.” She arched one eyebrow and played with the bracelets and bangles on her wrist while she awaited his next excuse.

  Newt asked himself why he was talking to the girl about such things. His business was his business, and that was the way it had always been. True, she was uncommonly pretty, especially by the firelight, but he had been around pretty women before and wasn’t such a fool to think a woman of her beauty would ever look twice at a man like him. He checked to make sure the judge was still asleep before he spoke again.

  “I knocked around for a long time when I first came west. I was laying track and swinging a sledgehammer for the Katy railroad through Indian Territory up north of Texas. I was the only one on the crew that wasn’t an Irishman, and those Irish boys surely liked to fight.” A slight smile came to Newt’s mouth, but faded as quickly as it had appeared. “I got in a fight with one of them on the railbed. You know, it was hot and things weren’t going well. Tempers got the best of everyone. I was the outsider, and a kid to boot, and they thought I was easy pickings. Kid or not, I was holding my own against that fellow until a couple of his friends decided to lend him a hand.”

  “You whipped them all?”

  “No, not even close, but I made a good enough showing that they left me alone after that. And the crew boss saw the fight and came to me the next day and asked to look at my fists. He’d been a boxer back in New York City, and said I had the makings to be a prizefighter if I wanted to learn how to really fight. I spent every evening for a few months with that man schooling me. I’d fought some back in the hills where I come from and thought I knew a thing or two about fighting, but that man could make me look foolish without even breaking a sweat.”

  “So you turned prizefighter?”

  “Not right off. The man that was training me was run over by a wagon loaded with railroad ties and killed. I went on west and did one odd job after another. Wasn’t long before I took the gold fever like every other fool, and if you’ve ever been in one of those mining camps you know how rough they can be. Those miners liked to see a good bare-knuckle match on the holidays. I never did have a nose for picking a good claim, but I found I could make a few dollars if I was willing to step into the ring. I never fought in any kind of big match, not then. Just little rough-and-tumble bouts against other amateurs or local tough men.”

  “So that’s where you got the name?”

  “No, word got around that I wasn’t afraid to fight, and before long I got other offers. You know, mine guard and such. Most times there wasn’t anything to do but stand around and look m
ean while the big bosses told their men how things were going to be, and it was a lot easier work than busting my back in some mine shaft or freezing my feet off in some cold stream bent over a gold pan.

  “I was working as a mine and payroll guard in Shakespeare up in the New Mexico Territory. It was a company town, and they ran a tight operation. You know, paid cheap wages and shook down their miners after every shift to make sure they weren’t high-grading. Come payroll days at the company store most of the miners ended up owing the company money instead of having any pay left over. That didn’t set well when those men saw all the ore coming out of the mines. Some that spoke up got on the wrong side of the company and were roughed up a little. The word came to me one night that the miners were down at one of the saloons putting a load on and working themselves up to a riot. Half the boys hired to handle such trouble were gone on the trail guarding a silver shipment, and that left only a handful of us to handle things in camp.

  “That mob finally drank enough courage and came down the street on the warpath. It got ugly real quick. Every man jack of them was packing lengths of chain, clubs, hammers, knives, and anything else they could lay hand to. Some of the big talkers among them had them worked up to a frenzy over how the company was mistreating them, and they came down the street fifty men strong, toting torches and swearing they were going to burn the company office and kill anyone that stood in their way.”

  “And what did you do?” Kizzy asked.

  “I had my men go inside the store and grab them each a brand-new pick handle, and then we went out on the street and waited for that mob. Like I said, that bunch was crazy drunk and slobbering mad, but I could see the main fellow egging them on was right up front. I knew him from other places, and he was always one to talk big and stir things up. By then, they were throwing bottles and rocks at us and shouting all kinds of threats, and I knew if we let things go any further there was going to be no stopping them. That’s how I got my name.”

  “How? I don’t understand.”

  “It wasn’t much. Nothing worth the name.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I walked right up to that one stirring them up and put a pick handle upside his head. Then I hit the next one foolish enough to open his mouth. After that, they decided none of their complaints was worth all the trouble.”

  “You must be a brave man.”

  “No, I was young and foolish and bad to drink. The liquor always made me mean, and I hadn’t figured out that the fifty dollars a month I was being paid wasn’t worth one bit of it.”

  “So they gave you the name after that?”

  “The rest of the company guards showed up right after the riot, and they dragged me inside the nearest bar to celebrate. Sometime during the night, a big Welshman I worked with stood up on a table with his beer sloshing all over him and shouted that name at me. I thought at the time that it wouldn’t stick, but it did. I was a known man wherever I went, and it got worse as time went on and I fought boxing matches with some professional sorts brought into the camps to entertain the labor.” Newt paused over that last word. “Labor. That’s what those companies called us. Nothing but gristle and muscle and bone to use up and throw away, as long as the ore kept coming.”

  “My father boxed some when he was younger, back in England,” she said.

  “Then maybe he would understand what I’m telling you. I never had anything to work with but my two good fists. A man gets hungry enough, and he’ll do about anything to feed himself. And now look at me with nothing to my name but a dead man’s horse and a dead man’s gun.”

  “People don’t have to stay the same. My papa said that we write our own stories.”

  “No one gets to write their own stories.”

  “We can all change.”

  “It wasn’t too long ago that I was thinking the same thing. I thought I might go back East and set myself up in a carriage shop.”

  “And who’s to say you can’t?”

  “I know it wouldn’t be easy, especially not at first. I thought I might build a place with quarters in the back, and stay there until I got the shop on its feet.”

  “And then what?”

  He shrugged and looked down at the ground. “You know, maybe build a house and live like an honest citizen. Can you imagine a bruiser like me living like that, with the regular folks passing me on the way to church and tipping their hats and saying ‘Good morning, Mr. Jones. Fine day, isn’t it?’”

  “Sounds like a fine dream to me. What kind of house would you build?”

  “Nothing fancy, but neat and trim, you know. My ma was always partial to flowers, even though we laughed at how she fretted over them. Might be I could plant some of my own flowers. I close my eyes and sometimes I can still smell those flowers of hers.”

  She turned her back to him and took the bean pot off the fire.

  “You’re laughing at me, aren’t you?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer immediately, but finally spoke. “No, I’m not laughing. We had a real house once, but Papa gave it up and we went back on the road full-time. It didn’t bother Mama that much. She had the wandering heart more than Papa did.”

  “What happened to your folks?”

  “Mama took ill in Louisiana. Some kind of fever. The doctors never could tell us exactly what it was, but we lost her three days later. Papa never was the same after that.”

  “And your papa?”

  “Fonzo shouldn’t have told you.”

  “You don’t have to say.”

  “They hung Papa. Hung him like a common thief.”

  “Who hung him?”

  “We did a show in Austin and camped on the roadside on our way to San Antonio. A group of men rode up in the night and dragged us from our wagon.” She wiped at one eye with the back of her hand. “Somebody back in Austin had stolen a horse, and they thought Papa did it, even though we didn’t have the horse.”

  Newt had seen more than one lynch mob, and he could easily imagine the scene. The ugliness and terror were written plain on her face as she relived it.

  “They were all drunk. Papa tried to reason with them, but they wouldn’t listen. All they kept saying was that the no-good thieving Gypsies were going to learn to stay out of their county. They held us while they put Papa on a horse and led him under a high tree limb. Fonzo fought them, but they only laughed and knocked him down. I told him to look away when they hung Papa, but he wouldn’t.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “They left Papa hanging. We cut him down and loaded him in the wagon. Didn’t bury him until we crossed the river into Mexico. I wasn’t about to bury him in Texas.”

  “You didn’t go to the law?”

  “Who’s going to listen to a Gypsy? I saw how they treated my Papa, and him a gentle man who never hurt anyone. I never thought such cruel men existed, and we came to Mexico thinking things might be different.”

  “And they weren’t, were they?”

  “Not one bit.”

  “I . . .”

  “I know you mean well, but there’s nothing you can say. This whole country is filled with nothing but callous, coldhearted ruffians.”

  “Like me?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .”

  “No offense taken.”

  “What about your parents?” She wiped at her eyes again and tried to take on a happy face.

  “They’re both gone. Pa went before I came west, and I got a letter two years back that said Ma had passed away.”

  “Any other family?”

  “One brother, but I haven’t seen him in years. He and I never saw eye to eye on anything. My sister married a missionary and the two of them moved off to Nicaragua, or some such jungle place. Last I heard from her was when she wrote me the letter about Ma.”

  “Do you miss your family?” she asked.

  “Some. We had hard times, but lots of good times, too.”

  “Fonzo is all I have left, and those horses are all
we have left of Papa.”

  An awkward silence settled between them. Newt tried to catch hold of something he could say, but by the time something witty came to him the judge interrupted his intentions.

  “Are those beans ready?” The judge lifted his hat off his face. “I’m nigh to famished, and all this courting talk is keeping me from my rest.”

  Newt stood and walked off into the dark to check the horses.

  “Touchy, ain’t he?” The judge propped himself up on one elbow and looked at Kizzy. “Don’t you be getting any fool ideas about that fellow yonder. I’ve seen his kind before.”

  “I was only talking to him,” Kizzy said.

  “You listen close and you’ll hear him out there—the sound of that pistol of his pulling out of leather and him practicing with it over and over. Maybe he means well and talks well sometimes, but you notice the way his eyes change when you mention Cortina. They don’t call him the Widowmaker for nothing. He’s mad-dog mean.”

  Kizzy spooned some beans on a plate and set them on Newt’s saddle for him when he came back. She put some on a second plate and walked over to the judge. He rose to a sitting position and brushed a hand through his whiskers and smacked his lips expectantly.

  “Be a good girl and fetch me that canteen, if you don’t mind.” The judge held out his hands for the plate of beans.

  She turned and dropped the plate on the ground in front of the dog. The judge leaned forward, intending to snatch the plate up, but the dog was already standing over it and growling.

  “Why, you no-good, spiteful varmint.” The judge scooted back to his former position and glared at the dog while it ate his supper. “I swear I’m going to kill that mutt if you don’t keep him away from me.”

  Kizzy bent over the pot and scooped out the last of the beans for herself. She sat down on her saddle and took the first mouthful while she stared into the dark and listened for the sound of Newt out there with the horses.

  After a while, she looked to the dog, who was licking up the last of the judge’s beans. “Good Vlad. Good boy.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Breakfast consisted of nothing but hot coffee, and Newt waited while the judge nursed a third cup and squinted up at the stars overhead. It was still two hours before sunup, but Newt already had his horse saddled. He wished the judge would hurry up. Don Alvarez was probably already gaining on them, and the night’s conversation with Kizzy had him feeling awkward in her presence. She glanced his way several times, but he looked away or found something to busy himself with.