Widowmaker Jones

by Brett Cogburn

  The Alvarez girl was seated in the back of the room at a round table. There was a long bar to the left of the door, and he went to it first and took down a bottle of tequila from the wall behind it. He carried the bottle to the table and set the saddlebags in the middle of it with a thump. He laid his Winchester beside it and took a seat beside the Alvarez girl, facing the front door. His hand rubbed absentmindedly at the splintered forearm stock of the rifle, where the tavernkeeper had shot it from his hand the day before.

  “Don Alvarez is here.” Kizzy took a seat on a bar stool.

  “Saw him.” Newt cocked the Winchester and adjusted how it lay on the table, pointing the barrel toward the door. He opened the bottle and took a long pull of tequila.

  “He’s got Fonzo with him,” she added.

  Newt took another pull of tequila. “Go tell him to come down here.”

  She rose and went to the front door, pausing there as if she had something to say, but had thought better of it. She passed out the door, and the judge hobbled into the vacant space, his injured leg giving him trouble. He had split his right pants leg well past his knee, cut a chunk out of his boot top to shorten it, and wrapped the injured calf in some kind of filthy rag for a bandage. He glanced at the saddlebags on the table while he took a seat on one of the bar stools with his back to the bar and facing Newt to one side and out of the way of the open door.

  “What happened to your leg?” Newt asked.

  “Miguelito got in a lucky shot and clipped my calf.”

  “Are you up for another fight?”

  The judge slapped his bandaged leg. “Right as rain. The wound’s too far from my heart to kill me, and too far from my pecker to worry me.”

  Newt took another drink.

  “Alvarez has got us cornered,” the judge said. “He ain’t moved a muscle since he got here or threatened us, but we’ve been under siege since you left. I think he’s been waiting to see if you would come back.”

  Newt nodded. “We knew he was coming.”

  “He’ll be coming all right, and he ain’t gonna come down here alone.”

  “Let him bring whoever he wants.”

  A fly buzzed around the room, and Newt swatted at it when it landed on the mouth of his tequila bottle. He stared at the open door with bloodshot eyes and waited.

  “I take it you caught Cortina, or did he get away?” The judge asked.

  “I caught him.”

  “What did you do with him?”

  “I’m guessing the buzzards are at him by now.”

  The judge made a low whistle. “You’re one hard, wicked, mean son of a bitch, Widowmaker. Knew that when I first laid eyes on you.”

  Newt gave the judge a nasty look, as if daring him to call him by that name again, but Kizzy came back before the judge could say anything else. She immediately ducked to the opposite side of the room from the bar, taking a stand in a corner. Newt could hear the sound of boots and spurs on the porch, and Don Alvarez and three of his vaqueros came into the room behind her. They stopped inside the door, three-wide and shoulder to shoulder. Beyond them, through the open doorway, Newt could see more men sitting their horses in the street. He also noticed that the don was wearing a pistol.

  “I’ve come for my daughter,” Don Alvarez said.

  “Papa!” The Alvarez girl started to get up.

  “Where’s the boy?” Newt reached out and took hold of the Alvarez girl’s arm with his left hand to keep her in her chair. His right hand rested on the Winchester.

  Don Alvarez glanced at Newt’s Winchester, and then at the judge and the shotgun he was holding. “I have him outside.”

  “Bring him in here,” Newt said. “That’s the only way this works.”

  “You are a vile man, indeed, if you would hurt a woman.”

  “You play nice, and she won’t get hurt. Start shooting at us and she’s just as liable to get hit as we are.” Newt turned the bottle up and watched the don’s reaction while his throat worked down another big swallow of the Mexican firewater.

  “Señor Bean,” the don said quietly. “We had an agreement.”

  While the judge gave the don an uncertain look, Newt let go of the girl and reached forward slowly across the table. One of the vaqueros beside the don eased his hand toward his holstered pistol. Newt ignored him and unfastened one of the saddlebags. He reached inside and took out Cortina’s head, dragging it out by the hair. He turned it so that it faced Don Alvarez, and then leaned against his chair back.

  “There’s my end of the bargain,” he said with his pointer finger tapping the Winchester’s receiver with a nervous tic. “Now bring in the boy.”

  Kizzy gasped at the sight of Cortina’s head, and the Alvarez girl started crying again.

  “You animal!” the Alvarez girl screamed.

  Don Alvarez stared unflinching at the grisly trophy staring back at him. “Señor Bean, are you a man of your word?”

  The judge lifted his shotgun, first pointing it at Don Alvarez and then slowly shifting his aim until the double bores of it covered Newt. “Sorry.”

  “I shouldn’t have expected any less from you,” Newt said.

  “A man has to look out for himself,” the judge replied. “And you ain’t given me much choice.”

  “What was the deal? Don Alvarez lets you ride if you held me for him?”

  “That, and I get to take Cortina with me.” The judge made a small movement with the end of his shotgun to gesture at Cortina’s head on the table. “There’s a lot less of him left than I was planning on, but I reckon I can make do with what’s left.”

  Newt took up the tequila again, had another drink, and then used the butt end of the bottle to shove Cortina’s head off the table. It hit the floor and rolled a few feet toward the judge. “Take it, and be damned.”

  Don Alvarez glanced at Kizzy in the corner. “There is no need to risk the women. This thing is between us. Take your hand off the Winchester and let my daughter go. This circus woman can go, too. Do that, and I promise you that your death will be quick.”

  “You bring the boy. Now.” Newt sat the bottle on the tabletop and eased his left hand to his lap.

  “Easy there,” the judge said, shoving his shotgun forward. “You got me feeling twitchy, and old Gabriel here has a hair trigger.”

  “Do you think you can take us all?” the don asked.

  “No, but I’m going to take you with me.” Newt’s voice lowered to barely more than a whisper. “That’s all that matters. I die, but I’m going to get you first.”

  Whisper or not, Don Alvarez heard him plainly. “I think you are bluffing.”

  “Try me. What have I got to lose?”

  Don Alvarez studied Newt’s face and then the Winchester pointed at his belly with Newt’s hand on it. A dry, bitter chuckle escaped his throat.

  “Bring the Gypsy boy,” he said to one of the vaqueros with him.

  All three of the nervous vaqueros gave Don Alvarez reluctant looks until he gave another order in rapid-fire Spanish, ending the argument.

  “Sí, mi jefe,” one of the vaqueros said, heading out the door.

  “Judge, you better put down that shotgun or use it. You pointing that thing at me is beginning to grate on me,” Newt said without taking his eyes from Don Alvarez.

  The judge lowered the shotgun and let down the hammers. He slumped on the bar stool and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the bandanna around his neck. “You crazy fool.”

  The same vaquero who had gone out the door came back inside, shoving Fonzo in front of him. Fonzo looked no worse for the wear and, in fact, looked in better shape than he had when Newt last saw him in the Zaragoza jail. His bruises had faded to yellow, and someone had stitched up the bad cut on his face. He saw Kizzy standing in the corner and went to her. The two of them embraced, whispering things to each other.

  “Consuela, come here.” Don Alvarez ignored the family reunion going on in the corner of the room and held out his hand to his daughter.


  The girl started to rise.

  “You stay right there.” Newt’s voice was hard and low.

  “You said you wanted a trade,” Don Alvarez said with his voice as flat and hard as Newt’s had been.

  “You get the girl when we’re across the river.”

  “Come to me, Consuela.”

  “No harm will come to your daughter. I’ll turn her loose on the other side of the river. Everybody wins.”

  The Alvarez girl looked from one of them to another, wanting to get up out of her chair, but unsure and afraid. One of the vaqueros leaned close to Don Alvarez and whispered something in Spanish.

  “You tell these men with you to keep their hands away from their pistols, or I’m going to blow a big, wide hole in you,” Newt said.

  Don Alvarez’s jaw trembled ever so slightly, his nostrils flaring. He spun and marched out the door without looking back, his vaqueros backing out of the room, guarding him.

  “You just got us all killed,” the judge said when they were gone.

  “Give me that shotgun.” Newt stood so fast that his chair rattled and skidded across the floor behind him. He held out his left hand for the judge’s gun, his right hand still on the Winchester on the table.

  “You’ve got to understand the predicament I was in,” the judge said.

  “Give me the shotgun.”

  “I’ll be damned if I’ll be shot with my own gun.”

  “I ought to shoot you, but I need you to get across the river.”

  The judge pitched the shotgun to him, and Newt caught it one-handed. He noticed that the judge’s hand had inched up near the rusty Colt in his waistband while he was busy catching the flying gun. He broke the shotgun open and pulled out the two brass cartridges, then snapped the breeches closed and tossed the gun back to the judge. The judge fumbled it and almost dropped it, so great was his surprise.

  “What good is an unloaded gun?” the judge asked.

  “You’re going to keep it against this girl’s head when we leave here,” Newt said. “The don won’t know it’s unloaded, and you won’t get nervous and accidentally shoot her.”

  “What if I need it to shoot someone else? Alvarez ain’t going to let us ride out of here.”

  “I don’t aim to be the one you shoot.”

  “I wasn’t ever going to shoot you. I was biding my time until I saw how you wanted to play things.”

  Newt ignored him and looked at Kizzy. Fonzo had his arm around her shoulders, and she was staring at Cortina’s head on the floor and then at Newt with horror and revulsion on her face. She looked out the window when he tried to meet her gaze.

  “Miss Grey, I need you to go out and saddle the horses. Fonzo, you cover her from the back door.”

  Kizzy didn’t move.

  “I need you to get the horses now. Bring them around to the porch.”

  Fonzo gently moved her out of her tracks. The two of them headed for the back door, with Kizzy once more staring at Newt like he was a thing she had never seen before. Newt held out the Winchester to Fonzo when they were beside him, and Fonzo took the rifle without speaking.

  “Those vaqueros are going to shoot you the instant you step out the front door,” the judge said. “They’re going to bust you up like a kid’s piñata.”

  “Maybe not,” Newt said. “You’re going to go outside first with the girl.”

  “Why do I have to go out first? This is your idea.”

  Newt took another swallow of tequila, staring at the distorted image of the judge through the bottle’s amber contents. He threw the half-empty bottle across the room, and it busted against the far wall.

  “We could wait for dark,” the judge said.

  Newt eased to one of the front windows, staying well to one side of it. He glanced out onto the street and noted the vaqueros taking positions among the houses across from the tavern.

  “Alvarez ain’t going to let you do this,” the judge said. “Can’t you see that?”

  Newt shifted quickly to the other side of the window and saw that three of the vaqueros were sitting their horses in the middle of the road between the village and the river crossing.

  Kizzy soon came around the corner of the tavern, leading the horses. She seemed oblivious to the attention on her from Don Alvarez’s men.

  “Where’d she get the other white horse?” Newt asked.

  “She killed Miguelito,” the judge answered. “Drew on him and shot him stone-cold dead.”

  Fonzo came up behind them. His face was pale and he held the Winchester awkwardly.

  “Stiffen up, boy,” Newt said. “Go out there and get on your horse.”

  “What if they snatch the Gypsies? You’d be back to square one.” The judge looked out the window at the vaqueros and grimaced. “I feel like I’m in a coffin already.”

  Fonzo and Kizzy mounted, and Kizzy held the other three horses by their reins. Her face was strained and pale, but she seemed determined.

  The judge retrieved Newt’s saddlebags and picked up Cortina’s head and stuffed it in them, turning his head away and trying not to look directly at the thing.

  Newt frowned when he saw what the judge had done, but didn’t say anything about it. He took one more look out the window and then started across the room toward the Alvarez girl. “Time to go. Judge, you put her up in the saddle in front of you.”

  The Alvarez girl tried to balk when Newt took her by one arm, digging her heels into the floor and leaning back. He snatched her to her feet and passed her to the judge. The judge gave him one last, doubtful look, hung the saddlebags over his shoulder, and then eared back both shotgun hammers and placed the barrel muzzles against the back of her head.

  “Move along, girl. Don’t cause me any trouble and you’ll be fine,” the judge said.

  The judge went out the front door with the Alvarez girl preceding him on shaky legs. She walked slowly, not out of fear of an unloaded shotgun, but because she, like the rest of them, knew there was a good chance that the vaqueros would start shooting. If you played out the scene ten thousand times, Newt’s plan never worked. None of them had any faith that a bloodbath wasn’t about to begin.

  The judge kept his shotgun pressed against her body when she mounted his gray, but it was more difficult to keep her covered while he climbed up behind her, especially with his gimpy leg. Kizzy side-passed her horse against his without being asked to and pulled a pistol and held it on the girl while the judge laid the saddlebags across the gray’s neck in front of the saddle and somehow managed to get up on the horse behind the girl. Kizzy didn’t look Newt’s way when he stepped out on the porch, and turned her attention to the river.

  The short walk across the porch and down two steps to his horse felt like a long journey, with every one of Don Alvarez’s men watching him with guns pointed his way. He swung into the saddle on the Circle Dot horse and turned toward the river. Don Alvarez was standing in the road waiting, and behind him were those three vaqueros, sitting their horses in a line with their rifles propped on their thighs.

  Newt rode the Circle Dot horse right at him, with his Smith holstered on his hip and both his hands resting nonchalantly on his saddle horn. The don drew his own pistol and pointed it at Newt.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  The judge rode up beside Newt and pressed the shotgun into the Alvarez girl’s rib cage hard enough that it made her cry out. Don Alvarez hesitated and his pistol aim wavered, his hand suddenly growing unsteady. Newt and the judge kept riding at him, with Kizzy and Fonzo close behind them.

  “You stop.” Don Alvarez’s voice was shaky and a tear rolled down his leathery cheek.

  Newt and the judge split off when they reached him, enough so that they passed to either side of him, and Newt so close that his stirrup brushed against him. Don Alvarez lowered his gun and his shoulders sagged and his chin dropped. The vaqueros called out to him, but he did not answer them. Then they parted slightly and let the group ride on past.

  Newt led them to
ward the river, keeping his horse to a walk. Behind them, Kizzy’s white dog growled at the vaqueros while it stopped to hike its leg and urinate on a cactus before loping off after Kizzy. A dust devil danced crazily in the windswept street.

  “He’s never going to let us cross,” the judge said as their horses entered the shallow water. “Damned but I hate to take it in the back.”

  Newt’s expression never changed, and they splashed their horses into the river shoal. When they climbed up the low bank on the Texas side, Kizzy stopped long enough to look back. The vaqueros had come down to the Mexican side of the river, but the don was still standing in the street where he had been before, watching them.

  The trail up out of the river breaks climbed through a notch in the tableland above, and they were all over the top and out of sight of the vaqueros below before Newt stopped his horse.

  “Let her go,” he said to the judge.

  The judge dismounted and helped the Alvarez girl down. She took a deep breath and tried to wipe the tear-streaked grime from her face and combed her fingers through her hair.

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry we had to do it this way,” Newt said. “Go back to your pa.”

  The girl smoothed the front of her dress and turned and started on her way down to the river. They watched her disappear over the lip of the descent, and when she was gone they started northward.

  “Think we ought to set a faster pace?” the judge asked. “Soon as they see that girl free of us, those vaqueros are liable to come after us.”

  “Let ’em come,” Newt said.

  And yet, the vaqueros didn’t come. It was someone else entirely that blocked their course, some three or for miles later. Newt pulled them up and stared back at the four Texas Rangers sitting their horses in the trail. They were the very same Rangers he had met in Langtry.

  “Sergeant, you boys sure could’ve showed up sooner, and I wouldn’t have complained a lick,” the judge said.

  “We’ve been patrolling the river like you asked. Got two more men at Del Rio watching things there,” the tallest of the Rangers said. “We’ve been stuck in this hellhole of a country for days, so you ought not complain about the favor we done you.”