The Sonora Noose

by Jackson Lowry

  “Where do you go?” The Mexican’s gravelly voice trailed off when he looked up and saw Barker in the mirror.

  “Don’t reach for your iron,” the marshal said. “You won’t make it.”

  “I pay for my drink,” the vaquero said, pressing his finger down on a silver ten-peso piece. He slid it along so that it screeched as it cut a groove in the wood. Barker wasn’t distracted.

  “You robbed the stagecoach a month back,” Barker said.

  “I have only just come to this town. I don’t know of this robbery.”

  “Freeze,” Barker said, drawing his six-shooter.

  “I do not draw my gun. I only scratch my ass.”

  “Pull the six-gun with your left hand and leave it on the bar. We’re going for a little walk.”

  “Where?”

  “I got somebody who wants to see you.”

  “I know this man,” the vaquero said, pointing up and over the bar to the cowering barkeep. “There is no one else in Mesilla I know.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Barker said. He watched the Mexican leave his six-gun on the bar, then adjust the broad-brimmed sombrero before stepping out into the sun.

  “It is a lovely day, no? The sun she shines and the wind is enough to make it cooler.”

  “To your right. March,” Barker said. He stayed several paces behind the vaquero, alert for any trouble. Early on in his career he had learned never to poke a gun into a man’s spine. The six-shooter’s superiority came from distance, not too far but certainly not close up. He had seen more than one fight in a bar where one gunman had shoved a muzzle into another’s belly and fired, more often than not setting the victim’s clothes on fire from the flash rather than the bullet doing serious damage.

  “We go to the general store?” The Mexican sounded uneasy. “I do not want to buy anything. I have what I need.”

  “Nate!” Barker bellowed again. His son came out, still holding the broom.

  “What do you—” Nate stopped dead in his tracks.

  “This the man who sold you the watch?”

  “No, I never seen him before.”

  “You want to show me more of this town, Marshal?” The vaquero looked over his shoulder, a sneer curling his lip.

  “You positive, Nate? He was drinkin’ down the street at the Lucky Lew.”

  “He’s not the Mexican.”

  “Reckon I owe you an apology,” Barker said, but he didn’t put his six-gun back into his holster. Not yet. He waited for the Mexican to turn and face him.

  For a moment Nate stared at the vaquero, then spun and disappeared into the store. Only then did the Mexican turn to Barker.

  “You have made a bad mistake, Marshal, but I am a forgiving man. I will forgive you.”

  “Mighty kind of you. What’s your name?”

  “Why do you ask?” Again the Mexican turned bristly.

  “Being polite, nothing more,” Barker said. “It’s always nice to say a man’s name when you’re eating crow.”

  “You should know this,” the vaquero said. His eyes were cold, and the sneer returned to his lips. Then he laughed and walked away, returning to the saloon. Barker watched him go, then stared hard at the empty doorway leading into the general store. A cold knot formed in his gut, and he didn’t like it one little bit.

  6

  “MIGHTY GOOD MEAL, RUTH,” BARKER SAID. HE pushed back from the dinner table and rested his hand on his bulging belly. Once more he had eaten too much, but that apple pandowdy had hit the spot. He turned a little, and the momentary pleasure of a good meal followed by even better dessert disappeared in a twinge that started in his lower back and radiated upward. There hadn’t been anything but water to drink with the meal. Right about now some medicinal whiskey would work wonders in returning the sated feeling.

  Ruth took the plate from in front of him and scowled.

  “You almost licked a hole in the plate. You’d think I didn’t feed you.”

  “Seems that I spend too much time eating beans and canned peaches,” he said, closing his eyes and drifting for a moment. The pain receded, and he felt comfortable again.

  “All that riding around ought to stop when you get to be chief deputy,” she said.

  “You heard something I haven’t?” Barker opened his eyes and watched Ruth put the plate into the sink. He’d have to fetch water for her soon enough, but right now sitting motionless suited him.

  “The mayor must think you’re not going to be around as much,” she said.

  Barker sighed, then asked, “Has Pendleton finally hired a town marshal?”

  “You sound peeved,” Ruth said. She faced him and put her hands on her hips. “Why’s that, Mase? Mesilla doesn’t pay you a penny for your work. Let them hire a marshal so you can spend more time at home.”

  “It wouldn’t work like that,” he said. “The mayor doesn’t cotton much to me being in town. He’s said so often enough. That means he’ll throw me out of the office at the jailhouse.”

  “But this means less work for you.”

  Barker knew she was right. He got nothing but heart-ache and headache from keeping the peace in town, and he certainly received no pay. But it was his town, and Jacob Pendleton resented the way he tried to mother hen everyone there, thinking it robbed him of influence. For all Barker knew, that was true. It was a matter of some pride for him that the citizens of Mesilla thought more highly of him than they did their mayor.

  “I could always ask to take on that job, too. Double salaries would go a long way toward making life easier for you.”

  “The mayor’s already hired someone, or so Miz Warner said.”

  “She ought to know. She knows everything that goes on in town.”

  “Now, Mase, you hush up about her. She likes to talk, but she listens good. Never once has she been wrong on these things.”

  “It’s still gossip, even if it proves true,” he said. But his wife was right. Kimberly Warner was a stalwart at the church, and her cobbler was almost—almost!—as good as his Ruth’s. She had a way of knowing things before others did and was always the center of attention at the church socials. Barker wished he had a conduit of information as accurate as Miz Warner when it came to the road agents from Sonora.

  “Something’s bothering you,” Ruth said, staring hard at him. “It’s not losing a job you don’t get paid for.”

  “Might be I do mind losing it. I can cadge free drinks from all the saloon owners.”

  “You don’t do that,” she said, but he saw the hint of uncertainty. She must have smelled some of his medicinally used whiskey on his breath when he’d come home after a particularly hard day in the saddle. About now, he wanted a taste, but it wasn’t going to happen, because it would displease her.

  He heaved himself to his feet and went to pump water to wash the dishes.

  Ruth said nothing until he poured the water into the sink.

  “You’re worried about Nate, aren’t you?”

  Barker said nothing for a spell, thinking hard about how to answer. He didn’t want to say a word but had to since Ruth wasn’t going to let it go.

  “I am. He doesn’t seem to be working out all that well at the store.”

  “Mr. Dooley said he didn’t know where Nate was when I went in to buy some coffee today.”

  “I didn’t know you’d gone into town,” Barker said.

  “You don’t know everything that goes on in Mesilla,” she said.

  “That’s for certain sure.” He heaved a deep sigh. “Why didn’t Dooley say something to me? Why to you?”

  “I asked.” Ruth came up behind him and put her arms around him, pressing her cheek into his broad back. Somehow, the warmth of her body so close to his eased the pain, both in his back and in his soul.

  “What’s gone wrong? Nate’s attitude? I warned him about that.”

  “He hasn’t been home in four days.”

  This startled him. He had ridden out to serve process the day before, but that meant Nate h
adn’t been at work for two days prior.

  “Not at all?”

  “No,” Ruth said in a soft voice. “I don’t know where he’s been, but he’s not sleeping in his room.”

  “He knew that vaquero,” Barker said suddenly.

  “Who?”

  “Nothing, just something that came up last week.”

  “He’s doing something wrong, isn’t he? I heard Miz Warner whispering to that nasty old harridan Claire Dupree, and it was about Nate and him stealing.”

  “From Dooley?”

  “I didn’t catch that part, and she pretended to be talking about someone else when I got closer. But I read it in her eyes. She was talking about our Nate.”

  “Our Nate,” he said, more to himself than to his wife. Nate hadn’t been his—or Ruth’s—for years, and he wasn’t quite certain when they had lost their only surviving son. It might have been his brother’s death that had caused the gulf to grow. Mason hadn’t meant to treat Nate any different when Patrick died, but he was only human. The younger boy’s death had hit him hard, especially so because he looked so much like his pa and shared so many of Mason’s interests. Patrick would have loved the book on Italy that now rested on the bedside table instead of in the top drawer in the marshal’s office.

  Nate looked more like Ruth’s pa than anyone else in the family, and Barker denied that it went farther than that. Ruth’s pa had been a rounder, always skirting the edge of danger, smart enough to avoid jail but too drunk and arrogant not to get himself into situations that would get him into trouble.

  He hoped Nate wasn’t taking after his grandpa. Ruth’s pa had been found drowned in an irrigation ditch after going on a weeklong bender a couple months before Nate was born.

  “I’ll track him down,” Barker promised.

  Ruth clutched harder at him. He felt her shaking her head.

  “Don’t. He’d resent you for that.”

  “Can’t resent me more’n he does already.”

  “He’s old enough to make his own way in the world. If he has to take care of himself, well, that’s part of growing up.”

  Memory of how Nate had flipped open the stolen watch haunted Barker. Nate might have bought the watch from the Mexican as he had claimed—they knew each other, Barker was certain, and Nate had lied about it—but Barker worried there was more to it. As much as he tried to deny that Nate could have been one of the outlaws that held up the stage, it was a possibility that haunted him.

  But had the vaquero been his partner on the robbery? Why would Nate give such a good description and then deny it? Barker couldn’t deny that the vaquero had been a rough customer and that he might have cowed Nate, but there hadn’t been that kind of fear on his son’s face. When Mason had come up with the Mexican, Nate’s expression had been something different.

  Like he’d been caught in a lie rather than like he feared the vaquero.

  Barker tried to decide what had gone on, but he couldn’t. There was a chance that Nate was telling the truth, and only a suspicious deputy marshal misreading his own son’s expression was at the center of the furor.

  “Wash the plates,” Ruth said. “I’ve got chores to do before it gets much darker.”

  “Nate ought to be doing them,” Barker said, feeling guilty about that and his own inability to do everything he should to help. If he did too much too fast, his back could lay him up in bed for a week. He couldn’t let that happen, especially with Mayor Pendleton taking away the city marshal duties and giving them to someone else. If the federal marshal caught wind that Barker was free of those duties, he might send him even farther afield on other business.

  Barker knew how Marshal Armijo thought, and in a way, he didn’t blame him. It was only through the federal lawman’s good graces that Barker had been allowed to patrol Mesilla as much as he had. Las Cruces was an up-and-coming town and needed a strong hand, too. Then there were the towns to the west. Barker shuddered at the idea of having to corral the rowdies in Shakespeare. Even the law-abiding citizens there were more than a handful. The stage driver from Shakespeare had sent for him to keep the peace when passengers bound for Tombstone threatened mayhem after entering the depot for a meal and finding a man hanged inside.

  Barker had sorted it all out. The locals had thought it was great fun watching the passengers’ reactions at seeing the body swinging to and fro. Their coming from the bright sun outside had been part of it. The passengers’ vision had adjusted to the dim room only slowly, but when it did, they were quick to realize they shared the room with an executed horse thief.

  After a lot of smoothing of ruffled feathers, Barker herded the passengers back onto the stage. He had dressed down the citizens of Shakespeare responsible for what they called a prank, but entertainment was hard to come by out in the desert. He didn’t doubt that they would find other grisly ways to amuse themselves. Barker hoped he was on the other side of New Mexico when they did.

  A full-time town marshal patrolling Mesilla meant Barker would be in the saddle more on federal business and away from home as a result, leaving Ruth to do more of the chores.

  He washed the dinner dishes with increasing vigor as his ire rose. Life was going against him and Ruth, and he couldn’t help but blame Nate for some of it. The boy ...

  Barker turned when the door swung open.

  “Nate!”

  His son grunted and started toward his room.

  “Hold it, son,” Barker said, fighting to keep down the anger he had been working up as he cleaned the dishes. “Where have you been?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “You had your ma and me worried. She said you haven’t been at work for the past couple days.”

  “Yeah, she said. You never noticed, did you?”

  “I got other concerns, in case you didn’t notice.”

  “No, reckon I didn’t.” Nate stomped toward his door. Barker stepped back and grabbed his son, spinning him around. They stood, faces inches apart, and glared at each other.

  “Why’d you walk away from the job?”

  “Job? Sweeping up? That’s not a job. Old man Dooley doesn’t pay squat. You made me go to work there as punishment.”

  “Punishment?” This took Barker aback. “What are you saying? I want you to make something of yourself.”

  “Pushing a broom around while the wind’s blowing?”

  “What you’re doing is learning to—”

  “To hate you and Dooley and everything about this stinking town!” Nate shoved him back and went into his room. The door slammed, but Barker wasn’t having any of it. He kicked the door open and fought to keep from getting angrier than he was.

  “You keep a civil tongue in your mouth,” he said. “I don’t give two hoots and a holler if you work for Mr. Dooley, but you will get a job and you will pay rent on that bed. If you stay here, you’ll help your ma with the chores, too.”

  Nate started to speak his mind, then saw his father’s clenched fists. He fell into a sullen silence and only nodded.

  “Get outside and help your ma. Now!”

  Barker stepped back as his son pressed past him and went outside. He hoped he had done the right thing having it out like this. The boy was as wild as the spring wind and needed to get his life directed on a better path. Work wouldn’t hurt him none. It would build his character.

  He went back to cleaning the dinner dishes, wondering if Ruth would find something to give Nate to eat later. Probably. And that’d be all right. Barker wanted his son to know this was his home, no matter what.

  Nate packed his gear and left that night.

  7

  “YOU OUGHT TO WELCOME THE CHANGE, MASON,” the mayor said. “This’ll give you more time to be with the wife. You’re always sayin’ how you want to do that.”

  “Mostly just to hear myself talk,” Barker said, looking past Mayor Pendleton down Calle de Guadalupe. He only half listened to what the politician said because something seemed wrong to him. He couldn’t put a finger on it, bu
t over the years he had developed this sense that warned of things going wrong. If he had developed the opposite sense—of things going right—he might have been better off, but what he had kept him alive. More than once he had chosen not to ride into a canyon, only to find later that an Apache ambush would have been his fate. More recently he had gone after a gunman who had shot down a preacher on the Sabbath, in front of his entire congregation. Barker had tracked the killer to a patch of rugged country leading into the Chupadera up north.

  He had drawn rein, studied the rugged, lava-rock landscape, and then ridden to Socorro to tell the marshal of his hunt. He found out that the gunman’s gang had turned on their leader and killed him. If Barker had ridden into the dangerous land alone, he would have found only a dead body—and with the gang so incensed about what their former leader had done, they would probably have added him to the bone pile.

  “You, Mason, you don’t talk to hear yourself speak. Why, you’re the most closemouthed man I’ve seen in years.”

  “Not like you, Mayor, but then you’re a politician and get paid to talk.”

  “I never looked at it that way, but you’re so right. Why—”

  “Excuse me, Mayor. Let me know when you have the new town marshal hired and ready to make his rounds. I’ll be glad to introduce him around, if he’s not from these parts.” Barker left the mayor trying to thank him and be outraged that he was walking off without being properly dismissed and maybe a half dozen other confusing things all at the same time.

  Cutting away from the mayor, Barker crossed the street and lost himself in the deep afternoon shadows cast by the roof over the boardwalk. He walked carefully so the planks wouldn’t creak overmuch and his heels wouldn’t click. When he reached the window of Mr. Dooley’s general store, he peered in. The owner had taken his suggestion about displaying the silk he couldn’t sell and using it as part of a display promoting other products. The harsh New Mexico sun had already faded the silk to a bit pinkish from its original crimson, but Barker looked past it to the vaquero inside.

  The Mexican stood, feet planted wide and hands gripping the lapels of his fancy embroidered jacket. His sombrero dangled on his back, hanging from a string around his neck. Dooley’s face was turned from Barker, but judging from the set of his shoulders, the owner wasn’t liking what the vaquero said to him.