Robert B. Parker's Bull River

by Robert Knott

  “This bullet was a long way from your heart, son,” Virgil said, then glanced to Jedediah. “No matter what this Mexican fella here says about you, for a banker, you’re a fair hand with that Spencer.”

  “You know me?” Jedediah said.

  “Course we do,” Virgil said.

  Jedediah was clearly trying to piece together what was happening and what had just happened. He looked back and forth between Virgil and me. He looked at the ground for a moment, then to the Federales.

  “These Federales here?” Jedediah said, shaking his head, “They . . . ?”

  “Bad hombres,” Virgil said. “With bad intentions.”

  “And you are marshals?”

  “We are,” Virgil said. “I’m Marshal Virgil Cole, this is my deputy marshal, Everett Hitch.”

  Jedediah offered a slight nod to Virgil and then me.

  We finished wrapping Alejandro’s shoulder. He was in a great deal of pain, but he was tough as hell and was doing a good job of not showing how bad he hurt.

  “Not only do we know you,” Virgil said, “we know you ain’t who you claimed to be.”

  Jedediah looked to Alejandro.

  “We know you’re Jedediah McCord,” Virgil said. “We know you got a brother, Dalton, that led you here. Been following you for a long way.”

  Jedediah looked to Alejandro, shaking his head, confused.

  “Why? And Alejandro? You are here?” Jedediah said.

  “Sí,” Alejandro said. “Alejandro is here.”

  “How did you . . . why did you come? How did you know?”

  “Alejandro led us here. We’ve been trailing you,” Virgil said, “trailing you and your brother all the way from San Cristóbal.”

  “I saw you walking down here to this house,” Jedediah said, “with Alejandro and the Federales and I, I was . . . We were here, so long ago . . .” Jedediah trailed off, turning to Alejandro.

  “Sí.”

  “I wasn’t sure I would remember how to get here,” Jedediah said.

  Jedediah didn’t know what else to say. He was confused and at a loss for words. He stared at Alejandro.

  “Damn good of you to throw in with us here,” Virgil said.

  Jedediah looked to the dead men, then looked back to Virgil.

  “You know about the robbery?” Jedediah said.

  “We do.”

  “Then you know it was not me,” Jedediah said.

  “Know that, too.”

  Jedediah shook his head a little.

  “And . . . you know about my . . .”

  Jedediah went silent, but it was clear what was on his mind. Words he could not get out easily.

  “We know some about your wife, too,” Virgil said.

  78

  Jedediah looked at Virgil for a long moment and didn’t say anything.

  “We’re here to find her,” Virgil said, nodding toward me a bit.

  “Thank you . . .” he said. “He’s insane, you know?”

  “Seems,” Virgil said.

  “The crazy, out-of-his-mind sonofabitch,” Jedediah said.

  Virgil didn’t say anything.

  “I didn’t know what to expect when I got here,” Jedediah said. “I thought about it the whole way down here.”

  Jedediah looked around at the dead Federales.

  “I didn’t expect this. I expected this place would look like it looked when we were kids. I envisioned finding my killer brother here, getting rid of him once and for all,” Jedediah said. “And I’d hoped, I wished, and I prayed I would find my, my wife, but now this . . . What now?”

  “We keep looking,” Virgil said.

  “Where, Marshal?” Jedediah said.

  “You’ve not laid eyes on him at all?” I said.

  “No.”

  He looked to the pitchfork in the man’s gut, then to Alejandro.

  “He’s damn sure here, though.”

  “Know him?” Virgil said, looking at the big dead man.

  “Yes,” Jedediah said. “His name is Drummer. He’s one of Dalton’s men. He was at my house the night before the robbery.”

  “What was he doing at your house?”

  “Holding us hostage.”

  Virgil looked to me, then back to Jedediah.

  “How’d this robbery of the Comstock Bank go down?” Virgil said.

  He pointed with the Spencer rifle to the big dead man in the chair.

  “This man, and another man,” Jedediah said. “They held my wife.”

  “Demanded you get the money?” Virgil said.

  Jedediah nodded.

  “My wife Catherine and I went out to a café for supper,” Jedediah said. “When we returned, this man Drummer and another man, his name was EG. They were in our home. They held us at gunpoint through the evening and in the morning told me to clear out the vault or they would kill her.”

  “Dalton was not there at your house with the men?” Virgil said.

  “No,” Jedediah said. “But they’re his men, and this was Dalton’s plan.”

  “Why not rob the bank that night,” Virgil said. “Why in the morning?”

  “That’s Dalton,” Jedediah said. “Wanted to make sure it was me, people saw me taking the money.”

  “Then what?”

  “They wanted me to meet them south of town and give them the money in exchange for my wife.”

  “Why didn’t you alert Sheriff Hawkins?”

  “Bad idea when you’re dealing with Dalton,” Jedediah said. “I could not take the chance.”

  Jedediah looked to Alejandro.

  Alejandro nodded a bit, agreeing.

  “I got to where I was to meet them with the money, and Dalton was there with Catherine and the two men,” Jedediah said with a crack in his voice. “She was scared to death. I told Dalton to take the money and leave, but he had other ideas.”

  “Beat the hell out of you?” Virgil said. “And take your wife.”

  Jedediah nodded.

  “How did you know to go to La Mesilla to look for them?”

  “I knew Dalton had been in La Mesilla for a long time,” he said.

  “How?”

  “I had a man come into the bank I’d known from my younger days. Like Alejandro, he recognized me, and told me my brother was in La Mesilla. I knew it was just a matter of time before Dalton found me.”

  Alejandro tossed his bloody white shirt aside and put on his jacket.

  “Maybe if you knew me,” Alejandro said, getting slowly to his feet. “If you had not acted like you were someone else, pretending not to know Alejandro, maybe this would never have happened.”

  Jedediah looked to Alejandro and nodded slowly.

  “Maybe.”

  “We were together for such a long time,” Alejandro said. “We were brothers, here, so many years ago. We did so many things.”

  “So many things I needed to get away from, Alejandro,” Jedediah said. “I needed to forget.”

  Alejandro shook his head.

  “Everyone has things they want to forget,” Alejandro said, “things they want to get away from, but that is not how life goes, Henry Strode. You cannot escape.”

  79

  “When did you arrive here, at this hacienda?” Virgil said.

  “This morning,” Jedediah said. “Not long before you.”

  “You had a day’s jump on us,” Virgil said. “What took you?”

  “I’ve been moving as fast as I could,” he said. “Train broke down, horse went lame. It has not been without incident getting here.”

  “Where is your horse?” I said.

  Jedediah pointed away from the river.

  “I heard you coming,” he said. “He’s over there in the trees.”

  “Dalton tell you he was com
ing down here?” Virgil said.

  Jedediah looked to Alejandro, then back to Virgil.

  “No,” Jedediah said. “He would not do that.”

  “How did you know, then?” Virgil said.

  “He told my wife about this place,” Jedediah said as he looked to Alejandro. “He charmed her. That is his way of getting to me. Hints, clues, signs. Life between us was nothing but a mean and dangerous game to Dalton. The more mean, the more dangerous, the better.”

  “Sí,” Alejandro said.

  “He told her about this place. The sonofabitch. He told her it was the most beautiful place and that she should see it someday,” Jedediah said. “Dalton knew she would tell me. But hell, now . . .”

  Jedediah looked around the burnt-out shell of the building.

  “Not so beautiful anymore, is it?”

  Jedediah shook his head and walked toward the front of the structure and looked out to the ocean.

  “And now what?” Jedediah said dejectedly. “God only knows . . .”

  “Bullshit,” Alejandro said.

  Jedediah looked back to Alejandro.

  “God has nothing to do with this,” Alejandro said. “Don’t be a stupid ass. Banking has made this Henry Strode soft, wearing fancy suits and sitting on polished pews . . . God helps those who help themselves.”

  Alejandro moved toward Jedediah.

  “Dalton did not get you down here for you to give up,” Alejandro said. “This is about him winning. You know that. He does not give a care about your beautiful wife. She is bait. He got you down here for one razón and one razón only, and that is for you to lose and for him to win.”

  Alejandro walked close to the big dead man now known to us as Drummer.

  “Right now, Drummer is God,” Alejandro said. “This dead fucker here, with the horca up in his gut and the fishhook in his lip, he is talking to you. He will tell you what to do and where to go.”

  Jedediah was listening. He moved a few steps toward Alejandro and looked to Drummer.

  “You did not come this far to give up, did you?” Alejandro said. “He wants you to find him. He’s got you just where he wants you.”

  “Where is that?” Jedediah said.

  “Where you are ready,” Alejandro said.

  “Ready?”

  “Sí.”

  “Ready for what?”

  “To kill or be killed.”

  80

  A wish to die by the sword of your brother, a grim tale, it seemed; a Cain and Abel legend, brothers united by loss and separated by envy and greed, and ultimately driven to revenge and murder. Following Alejandro’s theory, the only way for Jedediah to win in the eyes of his brother Dalton was to walk away from killing him.

  “This is no longer a stolen horse with a bridle left tied to a tree,” Alejandro said.

  Alejandro looked to the big hombre, Drummer, and the table strewn with the various items.

  “This,” Alejandro said, “all this, is a path to a story that means something absolute. You kill him or he kills you.”

  Jedediah looked at Drummer, with the pitchfork in his gut and the fishhook in his lip.

  “The cruel pitchfork,” Jedediah said. “A blatant reminder of Dalton’s youth.”

  “Of our youth,” Alejandro said.

  “Of his sacrifice,” Jedediah said.

  Jedediah walked near Drummer and looked at him. Then walked around the table, looking at the items littered across its top, the seashells, the busted oar, the can of peaches.

  “This can,” he said, shaking his head. “These peaches are from my home.”

  Jedediah looked at the seashells, then picked up the newspaper. He turned a few pages, stopped, and turned the page back. He squinted some, looking at the page. He turned the page, looking at it from the front and then from the back.

  “This article is cut out,” Jedediah said. “The headline is still here, but the story is missing, been cut out.”

  Jedediah held up the paper. There was a square cut from it.

  He handed Alejandro the paper.

  “What does this say?” Jedediah said.

  “This story about fishing,” Alejandro said. “It has been cut away carefully to leave the heading, but no story.”

  Alejandro handed the paper to me.

  I read it once through.

  “The basic grind of it says,” I said, “the first great northern of the year blew down the coast, bringing strong winds, rains with rough seas, but the aftermath brought fish?”

  Nobody said anything for a moment, then Jedediah spoke up.

  “He’s the great northern, no doubt,” Jedediah said without looking at us.

  His comment was followed by another moment of silence, then: “And you,” Alejandro said, “the pescado.”

  “Yes,” Jedediah said, “me, the fish.”

  “And him the shark!” Alejandro said with some urgency to his voice. “The great northern!”

  “What?” Jedediah said.

  Alejandro looked quickly to Virgil, then to me, then back to Jedediah.

  “You remember the captain?” Alejandro said.

  “Captain?” Jedediah said with a frown.

  “Yes! Captain Chapa! Something I always remember,” Alejandro said. “Dalton remembered it, too! When we were in prison he said to me what the captain said.”

  Virgil looked to me.

  “If you are not the shark,” Alejandro said, “you are the fish.”

  Alejandro looked at us and nodded.

  “Dalton,” Alejandro said. “He said when he got out, he would never be the fish.”

  “So you think this is where?” Jedediah said. “You think this is what this means? All this?”

  “Yes!” Alejandro said. “Must be!”

  Jedediah looked to the table.

  “It was a place where Dalton knows!” Alejandro said.

  “All this,” Jedediah said. “The oar, the hook, the fish story . . . you think that is what this is, what he is trying to say?”

  “It makes the most sense to me!” Alejandro said, looking back and forth between the three of us. “Virgil Cole?”

  Virgil thought for a second as he looked to Alejandro.

  “And you know where this is?”

  “¡Sí!”

  “Captain got a home,” Virgil said. “Or does he live on his boat?”

  “Boat,” Alejandro said. “That is the fisherman’s life. Boat to cantina, no more.”

  “Worth a try,” I said.

  “By God,” Virgil said.

  81

  We left the dead Federales and Drummer gutted with the pitchfork in Villa del Toro just past noon, a fitting requiem for the conspirators. We took four of the best horses the Federales were riding, stripped the others of their saddles and set them free.

  We crossed Bull River without any trouble and rode west. As we journeyed down toward the coast, a layer of warm rain rolled in off the ocean. The rain was light but steady by the time we turned north back to Veracruz.

  When we arrived back to the city, Alejandro led us to a mooring area that was on the opposite side from the waterfront where we’d hoteled and sat in the cantina with the now dead and gone Federales.

  The dock where Captain Chapa had a slip was at a smaller port on the opposite side of the bay. By the time we neared the dock, the rain had let up some, but there was a layer of fog hovering low above the coastline.

  We tied the horses behind a tall old church made of pink stone that looked to have been riddled with old lead ball pockets from a fight centuries ago.

  “How do you want to go about this, Virgil?” I said.

  “How far to the dock, Alejandro?” Virgil said.

  “Not far,” he said, “just through the work yard here.”

  “Let’s get
down there,” Virgil said. “See what we can see, figure out our options.”

  We walked through the misty fog, making our way through the dockyards, where the salty sea air mixed with smoke from the drying houses, curing fish. We made our way though some dockworkers going about their chores of repairing dry-docked vessels.

  “Hold up,” Virgil said.

  We stopped just before we got to the waterside. A few men working on the hull of a schooner watched us.

  No doubt we were an unusual sight on the wharf, three tall gringos and equally tall Alejandro with his naval jacket, concho breeches, and fancy sombrero, and all of us carrying weapons.

  “This the dock here?” Virgil said.

  “Sí,” Alejandro said. “Captain Chapa’s boat is on the far end of this landing ramp just ahead of us here.”

  “Everett?” Virgil said. “What do you figure?”

  “Well, it’s not too foggy,” I said, “and in this particular instance, I’d say that’s a bad thing.”

  “It is,” Virgil said.

  “Why?” Jedediah said.

  “Not a good idea the four of us just go waltzing down there to the boat,” I said.

  “It’s not,” Virgil said.

  “Night would be better,” I said.

  “It would,” Virgil said.

  “What do you propose, Marshal?” Jedediah said. “We wait?”

  “Alejandro, that dock over there,” Virgil said with a point. “Is there a way to have a look at the captain’s boat from that dock?”

  “Maybe,” Alejandro said. “I would think so, but with this weather it might be hard to see the boat from there. We can try.”

  Virgil nodded.

  “Let’s do,” Virgil said. “Everett, why don’t you and Alejandro get to that other dock.”

  The dock looked to be more than a hundred yards from where we were standing.

  “See what you can see,” Virgil said. “See if the boat is even there. See if you see any people. Be better if just the two of you moved about. Don’t want to appear like a herd around here. Jedediah and me will stay right here, near the end of this dock.”