He sighed a Mexican sigh, full of revolutions and piety, and climbed down the ladder. On the ground he picked up an Arbuckle’s sack and expectorated the nails into it, then handed it and the hammer to Arturo. He stood in front of me, waiting, with his feet splayed and his hands open at his sides. I tried to picture him as a soldier but couldn’t. Well, the Army of the Potomac had succeeded in spite of the excess baggage in its ranks.
“I’m just back from old Mexico and the Diamond Horn Ranch,” I said. “Don Segundo has agreed to provide men for the posse and will meet us in Las Cruces on the twenty-second.”
“Why do you pursue this, señor?” He sounded like the despairing father. “This thing that happened at the saloon, out here it is like a flood or a high wind, a thing that no one can predict or control. You cannot chase the wind.”
“I spent six years chasing it up in Montana. Your problem is you think because you can put on and take off that star the job’s the same way. You don’t stop just because the coyotes have returned to the hills. You have to follow them there and finish them off. Otherwise they’ll just come back, and then they won’t stop at digging up the garden and disrupting services.”
“I think you forget you are in business with Ross Baronet’s brother. What will happen to our new prosperity when he learns what you are about?”
“Which do you represent, the law or the chamber of commerce? You agreed to head up a posse once I had Guerrero’s support.”
He folded his arms across his chest. It was a large expanse and they barely reached.
“I have given my word. I require truth in return. It is a small enough request when a man of my family responsibilities offers his life. What is your difference with the Baronets? I reject the robbery attempt.”
I nodded. I’d been expecting something of the sort. “That’s fair. Two years ago in Lincoln County, Ross gunned down a rancher named Spooner and his wife. Spooner’s father saved the life of the man I work for at the time of the war with Mexico. The man I work for believes Frank was involved in the shooting, either as a participant or as the man who planned it. He wants to try them both in Helena and see them hang.”
For a long time the Mexican said nothing. Then he unfolded his arms.
“This I understand. I know of Judge Blackthorne, and of his character, since long before he was Judge Blackthorne. You should have told me this at the beginning.” He rummaged inside his pocket and hung the battered star on the front of his coat.
“What have you to offer besides that hunk of tin and your old cap-and-ball?” I asked.
“I shall go to see John Whiteside, with whom I am friendly. He too has reasons to see the soles of the feet of both Baronets. He and Don Segundo have been stealing each other’s cattle for fifteen years, but I think this is a business in which they can set aside their quarrel. He will match the don in men and horses and guns.”
“You’d better get started. We have less than a week.”
He barked at Arturo, who picked up his father’s toolbox in both hands. It was three feet long, made of solid maple, and filled to the handle with iron implements. Ortiz stepped up onto the floor of the building and bent to roll up his bedding. I joined him, curious about something he’d said.
“Where do you know Blackthorne from since before he became a judge?”
“I too fought in the war you mentioned, señor. I was a prisoner for a time. He was among the norteamericanos who held me.”
A light dawned. “Cerro Gordo?”
“Sí, that is the place where I was captured.” He tied the bedroll.
“He told me about a young Mexican lieutenant who killed three of his guards and escaped to resume fighting the next day. He said the man’s name was Ortiz. I didn’t think it could be you.”
“We grow old and fat, Señor Murdock. We change. But on the outside only. The eagle does not die a swallow.”
Of course, I thought. And I am President Garfield.
* * *
I rode the claybank into town, turned it over to the Yaquí at the livery for a rubdown and feeding, and carried my gear over to the Apache Princess and my room upstairs. I looked at the bed, wanting it down to my toes, but when you reach forty it’s a sound idea to lubricate the aching joints if you expect them to work properly the next day. I went downstairs for a shot, but I never got it. Colleen Bower got up from her table when I entered and intercepted me on the way to the bar. The cowboy she’d been playing with scowled at me and counted his chips.
“Where have you been?” she asked. “I thought you’d gone back to Helena.”
“I went south for Señora Guerrero’s tortillas and a talk with Geronimo. You look like you’re rigged for church.” It was a sober dress for her, dark blue and buttoned at the throat. Her black hair was tied back and there were tiny fissures at the corners of her eyes where she’d missed with the powder.
“I expected you back before this. Junior’s gone. I think he went to Socorro City to kill the sheriff.”
I didn’t credit it. “Why would he want to do a thing like that?”
“Right after you left he started drinking. It made him sick, but he’d go out back and throw it up and come back in and order another. I told Irish Andy to cut him off. Look what he did to him.”
The bald German was polishing the bar, holding his head at an awkward angle to watch his progress. One eye was swollen almost shut and gone rainbow-colored.
“He’s lucky. Junior’s been known to break jaws when he’s on a tear. That little frame of his fools you.”
“He got it in his head somehow the sheriff had come between you. If he weren’t around you’d forget about upholding the law and take care of business here. It didn’t make sense so I didn’t pay much attention.”
“That’s when you have to pay attention to him most. But you couldn’t know that. When did he leave?”
“Yesterday early. I wasn’t up yet but the stable hand at the livery said he hired a buckskin. He had on a duster and he was carrying a Spencer rifle.”
“I know the one.” I’d traded it to him in ’72 for a bay mare that splintered its right foreleg in a prairie dog hole the following spring.
“Where are you going?”
“To find Ortiz.” This from the door.
“What good is a carpenter going to do you in this situation? Page?”
He was at the mercantile, shoveling food tins from the counter into a canvas sack while the clerk, a schoolmaster by trade and a dish-chested consumptive forced into commerce in the absence of a house of learning, totaled up the order in his ledger.
“I’m glad I caught you,” I said to the marshal.
“There was no need for haste, señor. I cannot leave before morning. The days grow short.”
“There’s been a change in plans. I won’t be meeting you and Don Segundo’s men in Las Cruces. I’ll be waiting for you in Socorro City.” I told him about Junior.
He frowned, the ends of his tobacco-stained moustaches nearly meeting. “Frank Baronet is not a man to call out. It is more than just his badge that makes him sheriff. I hope that you and your friend did not exchange cross words before you parted. Surely he is dead. All that remains is for him to fall down.”
“You haven’t seen him use that Spencer. He’s a good man with a rifle.”
“Jubilo is better, and he is always within rifle range of his friend Baronet.” He paid for his purchases—in silver dollars—and gathered up the sack. “You have not told me where I should look for you in Socorro City.”
“I’ll find you. It shouldn’t be so hard with all that firepower you’ll have along, with or without John Whiteside. When you see him, tell him he did a fine job with the claybank.”
“I will do this.”
I went back to the Princess, truly too tired now to sit up and drink. Instead I climbed the stairs to my room with no thought beyond sleep; concern for Junior, with dusk rolling in and my bones turning to lead, would serve neither of us. I felt as if I’d walked all the
way from El Paso.
Someone knocked while I was climbing into bed. I pulled on my trousers, hooked the Deane-Adams out of its holster hanging on the bedpost, and took aim at the door from the far corner. “Who is it?”
“Colleen.”
I took the revolver off cock and went over and opened the door. She was dressed as she had been earlier, but either she had done something about her makeup or the failing light canting in through the window had decided to be kind to her. She looked little more than school age.
“There’s gray in your hair but not on your chest,” was the first thing she said. “I’ve wondered about that.”
“I use my brain a lot more than my heart. Is anything wrong?”
“No. Yes.”
I closed the door behind her, returned the gun to its holster, and set fire to the lantern. Orange light spread.
“I didn’t tell you everything today,” she said. “Junior proposed to me.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“It happened in the saloon the day you left. He caught me off guard. I didn’t realize he felt anything toward me more than one partner to another.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“He was drunk at the time. I didn’t think he was serious. I laughed. I told him I was already married.”
“Did you tell him who?”
“Yes.” She licked her lips; something I had never seen her do. “That’s when he started talking about killing Frank Baronet.”
I’ll be damned.
18
“FRANK BARONET.” IT was as if I had never heard or said the name before. Like Billy the Kid he was something I had not known existed until recently and already he was filling my life.
She said nothing. There was murk in the blue depths of her eyes, as if something had stirred near the bottom, churning up silt. Just what it was, I had no hopes of ever understanding.
I felt my head nodding. I had the impression it had been doing so for some time. “I don’t know why I didn’t guess. When I met you, you were the mistress of a dead city marshal. Then you started keeping company with me. You always did feather your nest by latching on to the local law.”
“You were different,” she said. “I’ll never make you believe it but it’s true. I don’t apologize for the others. You don’t know what it’s like for a woman on the circuit. When you fall into a fix you can fight your way out of it and if the odds don’t favor fighting you can jump into the saddle and ride hard. I cannot fight, and I cannot jump in these petticoats. I’ve been beaten and jailed and raped. That can happen to you only so many times before you realize you need the same edge in life you look for in cards.”
“What became of your edge in El Paso?”
“There is too much law there and it is all split up.” She changed the subject. “In Socorro City, where I set up last year, you either dealt faro at the Orient or you cut Frank Baronet in for fifty percent. I chose the Orient. It turned into something.”
“It generally does, although not always marriage. How did that come about?”
“You wouldn’t notice, but Frank is an attractive man, and wealthy. Jim Dolan has his eye on him for governor when statehood comes.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I did then. I do now. That old fool Fremont did less for Garfield than Frank did for Dolan before Lew Wallace came, and now Fremont is territorial governor in Arizona. I was in a tight, Page. The Civic Betterment League ran me out of Leadville with nothing but the clothes on my back and a pearl necklace that got me as far as Santa Fe. I picked a pocket there and took another train. The pocket belonged to a Dolan man who wired my description to Frank. He was waiting for me when I got off in Socorro.”
“Is that when he proposed?”
She was silent for a moment.
“I cannot talk to you,” she said then. “I could in Breen. You’ve changed.”
When she started to turn away I grasped her arm and pulled her into the room. She tried to pull free. I took her other arm and held on. The material of her dress touched my naked chest.
“So it was jail or a table at the Orient,” I said. “Baronet is not a man to overlook a good draw. And he favors a corner, so he dangled a wedding ring. You liked his chances, and marriage to the biggest gun in the county comes in handy when those cowboys and miners forget what side of the table they’re supposed to sit on. Then Wallace settled the war up north and Baronet’s chances didn’t look so good, so you left. You never were one to hang around when the glitter wore off a thing.”
She tried to knee me in the crotch. I let go of her to make distance. She backed up a step, but she didn’t leave. Instead she raised her hands to her head and spread her hair to the left of the part. There was another part there, jagged and white and freshly healed. It would be a long time before hair grew along it, if it ever did. She said:
“I don’t even remember what the argument was about. He slapped me around, not for the first time, and then he drew that big rolling-block pistol and backhanded it. If I hadn’t turned my head it would have split my face open from forehead to chin. He tried again, but I got hold of my bag and the pocket Remington. At first he was surprised. Then he laughed, called me a whore, and turned his back on me. His back. I shot him. He fell on his face. I guess I should have made sure he was dead, but I had blood in my eyes. I was afraid he’d cracked my skull.
“It happened in my room over the Orient,” she went on. “It was Saturday night, the place was noisy. No one heard the shot. I went down the back stairs and bled all the way to the doctor’s office, where I got my scalp sewn back together. I said I fell. Doc Sullivan was no idiot—he’d patched me up before after Frank and I had words—but he didn’t say anything. He gave me something to make me sleep, but I poured it out when he wasn’t looking. His wife gave me some old clothes to wear back to my room and they left me alone to change. I let myself out the window. I never stole a horse before, but I was sure I’d be hunted for a murderess. I caught up with the train in San Marcial and rode it to El Paso.”
“He told me he hurt his back when a horse threw him.”
“Would you expect him to say a woman shot him?”
“Why did you come back to New Mexico?”
“By the time Junior Harper came to town to buy fixtures for the Princess, I’d heard Frank had recovered, which meant I wasn’t wanted since he’d never admit what happened. ‘Unknown assailant,’ the wire reports said. My run was going sour and I had just enough capital left to take Junior up on his offer to buy in. You could argue that I was just swimming back into the same net, but it was a net I knew. You don’t always have choices. You almost never have choices.”
“You didn’t put up an argument when I suggested cutting the sheriff in on the Princess.”
“His money spends just like anyone else’s. And I was curious to know if getting shot by me had changed his outlook.”
“Risky.”
She moved a shoulder. “That’s why they call it gambling.”
“Not when you throw someone like Junior into the pot. Then it’s called something else.”
“We both did that, Page.”
I said nothing, agreeing.
She turned her head slightly, reading me like a deck. “You love him, don’t you?”
“We go back.”
“Maybe he’ll turn around when he sobers up.”
“He never has.”
“What are you going to do when you get to Socorro City?”
“What I should have done the first day I saw the place.” I had turned and was thumbing cartridges out of a Union Metallic box into the empty loops on my gun belt. “Vote the sheriff out of office.”
19
FOR A MILE under the creeping crimson in the east, my route and Marshal Ortiz’s were the same, and we rode together. He sat a well-fed gray with a brand I didn’t recognize and his sack of provisions knotted unceremoniously to the horn of a Mexican cavalry saddle. The saddle’s fenders had been trimmed and pared man
y times for leather to make repairs. A brass-framed Henry rifle hung from the ring.
If we hadn’t been the only things stirring in town when we encountered each other in front of the livery, I wouldn’t have known him. He’d traded his overalls for faded cavalry breeches with a stripe up the side and a knitted blue pullover of a type I hadn’t seen since my last skirmish with the guerrillas in Missouri. The greasy somberero was gone, replaced by a slouch hat with all the nap worn off the brim in front where he gripped it to tug it down over his eyes, and on top of the cavalry coat he wore crossed bandoliers crammed with .44 cartridges with only their blunt lead noses showing so as not to catch the sun on the brass. The curved butt of a Schofield .44 fitted with black walnut grips showed above a plain holster worn in front like an Elizabethan codpiece. With his high-topped riding boots sporting long jingly Mexican spurs, he looked taller and fitter in the outfit than he had at any time previously, and more a part of the land; one with the snakes and scorpions and lean rangy beasts of prey that slunk among the shadows carved by the rocks in the desert.
“That rig hasn’t been sitting in any trunk since Cerro Gordo,” I said by way of greeting.
“I scouted for Colonel MacKenzie in 1874.” He handed the sleepy stable boy a coin and took charge of the gray.
“You fought Quanah Parker?”
“He was just Quanah then. Parker came with the reservation.”
I had been riding the line at the Harper Ranch with Junior when the news came of Ranald MacKenzie’s defeat of the Comanche Nation in Palo Duro Canyon in 1874. It had brought a sudden end to more than thirty years of fighting in Texas. Nearly everyone involved in the engagement had been decorated for valor. On the road he made a coarse noise when I asked him about the battle.
“It was a slaughter of horses. I do not talk about it.”
Where the road forked we drew rein. I told him again I’d see him near Socorro City and offered my hand. He hesitated, then took it.
“I hope Señor Harper is all right.”
“Me too.”
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