The Gospel According to Billy the Kid

by Dennis McCarthy

  We stayed in the cottonwoods near a week. We were tucked out of sight from the road and saw only a few hombres. Mangel slept most of the time. I made one trip to Albuquerque. Wasn’t sure if Mangel would stick around while I was gone, but when I returned he hadn’t moved. The swelling had gone down and he let me touch his paw. The next day he was moving around almost like his old self.

  “Looking good, old boy. What do you say we head up the road?” I climbed into the saddle. Mangel wagged his tail and trotted back toward the road. It was good to be moving again.

  We didn’t make much progress the next couple of days. Mangel didn’t have his usual granite, and he rarely left the road, but he walked a solid pace. That suited me. I’d had a fearsome headache for a couple of days and couldn’t shake it.

  Late in the afternoon of the third day we came across a well-traveled crossroad. I figured it might be the Spanish Trail. We followed it to the Río Grande. When we got to the ford another river was flowing in from the west. Figured it was the Chama. We crossed the Grande and headed up the Chama valley. Next day we arrived in Abiquiu.

  Abiquiu’s an old Tewa town. Had an army post then, but it’s gone now. Indians still live there. Mainly Utes and Navajos and Apaches stolen as children by the Comanches and sold to the Spanish. Coyotes they call them.

  Stopped at Gonzales’s store for supplies.

  “Folks ever pass this way from California?”

  “Ever few months. More goin’ than comin’. That’ll be a dollar.”

  “What’s the road like?”

  “Pretty bad I ’spect. Easy to get lost. It’s what I hear anyway.”

  “Any unfriendlies?”

  “Jicarillas are tame. They’s some Comanch up north. In the San Juans. They come down ever once in a while raisin’ hell. Mean sumbitches. You don’t want to run into ’em. But they ain’t been around in six months. You by yourself?”

  “Got me a dog and a horse.”

  “Your biggest threat is Ole Moze. And I do mean big. They say when he rears up he towers over a man on horseback. Unusual color too. You’ll know him if you see him. He’s almost yeller. He’s wrecked a couple of pack trains in the past year. Killed two miners. A trapper too. Killed a soldier I knew personally.”

  “Thanks. I’ll try to steer clear of him.”

  “Good luck on that. If that ole griz’s got your number you won’t see him comin’. A couple day’s ride though and you’ll be out of his territory.”

  I laid a coin on the counter and picked up my supplies. A few minutes later Buck and me and Mangel were headed for California.

  Storm clouds were building as we headed up the Spanish Trail. The sky ahead was the color of worn gunmetal. The canyon was narrow, not more than a hundred paces across. The walls rose sheer a couple of hundred feet. The road worked its way toward the head of the canyon. It climbed out on the rim then dropped into another canyon smaller and narrower than the first. By the time we got to the second canyon the sky looked like the bore of a cannon exploding every few seconds. Thunder came in courses, growing louder and louder. Before I could untie my slicker the rain slammed into me. Rivulets of water rushed down the road ahead then pealed off the side into an arroyo twenty feet below.

  A crack of lightning struck a piñon above my head. Buck reared, almost pitching me over the side. He started at a gallop. I hung on. Mangel raced after us. Ahead was a narrow side canyon. Water was careening out of it like a herd of spooked buffalo. Buck cleared the torrent without losing stride. A second or two later Mangel cried out. I turned in the saddle but he was gone. I pulled hard on the reins. Buck ran another fifty paces before he slowed. I leapt off and peered through the rain into the canyon. Rocks were tumbling into the stream from the side canyon. I called out. The canyon roared back at me. I climbed down the rocks to the flood, scrabbled up to where the side canyon washed into the stream, then headed back downstream, calling Mangel all the time. I climbed back up to Buck. Took the reins and walked down the road looking for Mangel. Half an hour later I’d seen nothing. The cataract there was thirty feet below the road. A sheer drop.

  I wrapped Buck’s reins around a pine and started back up the road. The rain fell like a waterfall. When I got to where Mangel disappeared a river was pouring out of the side canyon. If the timing had been off, Buck and me could of been swept over the side too. The cataract had swelled almost to the road. If Mangel was down there I figured he was buried under a sea of water, or ripped to shreds among the rocks.

  It was still raining as evening set in. Buck and me continued down the road, looking for a place to put up for the night. Just before dark we found a cavity in the cliff wall. The cliff leaned over the road, leaving enough of an overhang to keep us dry. The ground was rocky and sloped toward the flood but it was the best we’d likely find before dark. I took the saddle off Buck and rested it against the rock wall. Pulled out oats for Buck. A bowl in the rock floor a few feet away held enough water to get him through the night. I sat on my bedroll and leaned against the wall. Had no desire to eat. I sat up most of the night listening to the rain.

  When I awoke in the morning, Mangel was lying beside me. He lifted his head and looked at me. I scratched him behind his chewed-up ear. He thumped his tail. He was banged up bad, covered in mud and blood. Cuts on his head and hip and front leg. When I stood up he tried the same. He made it to three legs and held up his front paw, the same one the rattler bit. I fetched a strip of jerky from my saddlebags. He wolfed it whole. I gave him another, then I sat back on my bedroll. He hobbled over and lay beside me, resting his head on my leg. I ate a strip of jerky. He ate a strip. I ate another. He ate another. We kept that up till I got to regarding my supply.

  “Don’t know how you made it, old boy. I’m sure glad you did. You got more lives than an old tom.”

  I used a rag and a pot of water to wash off the mud and blood. When I tried washing his bad leg he slid it back and began licking the wound.

  “You’re a ball and chain, Mangel. We lay up every few days for you to heal.”

  I tousled his head. He thumped his tail.

  “If that’s the way it is, that’s the way it is.”

  He looked up at me. I gave him another strip of jerky.

  We were on a narrow ledge where the trail climbed down the side of the canyon. The stream was forty feet below us. The canyon rose a hundred feet. A thunderstorm blew over the first afternoon but the overhang kept us dry. We stayed there another two days. I didn’t sleep much. By the last morning Mangel was getting around pretty good. He was walking on all fours. Buck and me were batty as flies in a bell jar. The flood-waters had receded to a gentle run. I packed up and we headed west.

  Late that afternoon I felt disoriented and light-headed. The canyon wall beside me raced past whenever I looked at it. I’d been feverish and had trouble sleeping the past few days. My head’d been busting like a pounding mill. Figured sleeping on a rock bed and fretting about Mangel was the cause. This was different. The last thing I remember was Aunt Cat blocking the trail ahead, holding up her hand like she wanted me to stop.

  CHAPTER 14The Monastery

  I’ve never seen anyone that sick still hanging on to life. Brother Jude said Billy would have had to get better before he could die.

  —BROTHER CHARLES, Diary, SEPTEMBER 17, 1881

  WHEN I AWOKE I WAS lying on a cot in a small room. A wooden cross hung on the wall at the foot of the bed. A small table and chair stood in the opposite corner. My clothes were folded on the table.

  I tried to sit up but couldn’t. I could slide my arms and legs sideward but I couldn’t raise them. After a while I drifted back to sleep. When I awoke again an old monk in a black robe and a hood was on the chair near the foot of the bed.

  “Welcome, brother. I am glad to see you alert. We worried we would lose you. You will be alright. I am Brother Jude. You are in the Monastery of St. Anselm and have been for almost a week. How do you feel?”

  Brother Jude was very formal. He had a
strong accent, like John Tunstall. I learned later he was the oldest of the monks. At least seventy.

  I tried to talk but nothing came out.

  “Your voice will come back,” he said. “You have hydrophobia. A Tinde party brought you here. A di-yin has been treating you. Doctors have no cure for hydrophobia. The Tinde have a cure, but even with their medicine few survive. You are a lucky young man.”

  Panic sluiced through me. I’d heard about a wolf with hydro biting trappers at the last rendezvous. They acted drunk, drooled, howled, clawed theirselves, ripped off clothes. One of them was shot when he attacked his partners. The other disappeared in the Wind Rivers. I turned my head from side to side.

  “Try not to move,” Brother Jude said. “The worst is over. Your faculties will return. For now you need rest.”

  When I awoke again Brother Jude was entering the room with a bowl of broth.

  “Good. How do you feel today?”

  “Buck . . . Mangel.” I slurred the words.

  “Your horse and dog? They are fine. When the Tinde brought you here they brought your horse. The dog followed. He was in bad shape. Like he had been in a terrible fight, but he is resting and eating now. His wounds are healing. We have another dog here. Scout. They have become friends. Next time I will bring your dog. For now let us see if you can eat.”

  Brother Jude sat beside the bed and spooned broth into my mouth. I had trouble swallowing. I coughed and sputtered. The old monk waited between spoonfuls, wiping my mouth after each draft. After the soup reached my belly I began to feel better.

  Brother Jude was good to his word. When he opened the door on his next visit Mangel bounded in and leapt onto the bed. He flopped down beside me and laid his chin on my face. His head was almost as big as mine. I could barely breathe but I began laughing.

  Brother Jude talked for the next hour, mostly about the Jicarillas who lived nearby. He called them Tinde. Said they helped build the monastery. Said they were peaceful generous people but they were being harassed by a small band of Comanches who’d run off the reservation and were hiding in the Colorado mountains.

  Over the next couple of weeks the old monk brought me grub twice a day, bathed me, and monitored my progress as my strength returned. I was sitting up by the end of the first week and standing a week later. As my voice came back we had longer talks. I told him who I was, but I left out my adventures at Fort Sumner. He could tell from my wounds that I’d been in a gunfight, but he didn’t ask. I was curious about my cure.

  “How did you contract the disease?” Brother Jude asked. “An animal bite?”

  “I’ve studied on that,” I said. “I’ve cooked lots of game, but only after I killed it. If I ate a critter with hydro could I get the disease?”

  “I do not think so, Billy. The few cases I have known were caused by someone being bitten. Mostly by bats.”

  “Picked up a bat a while back. When it was flopping it hit my arm. Felt a prick but thought nothing of it. My wrist itched some.”

  “I have heard that you can be bitten by a bat and not know it.”

  I showed Brother Jude my arm. We didn’t see no sign of a wound.

  “Ain’t heard of someone surviving hydro. How’d you save me?”

  “We prayed, but our Tinde brothers get the credit. A di-yin named Juan Mundo arrived shortly after the Tinde brought you here. He said the time was propitious because the moon would be full in three days. I don’t know what he did. He shut us out while he performed his rituals. He said it would be harmful if anyone spoke to you. When he came out of your room three days later he had painted a disk on your forehead with a dust made from galena.”

  “Galena?”

  “It’s a shiny gray mineral. It is hard to find. The Tinde have a source in the Manzano Mountains. Juan also painted your face with burnt mescal and he made a cross on your chest with hoddentin.”

  “Hoddentin? Never heard of that neither.”

  “It is a flour made from tule pollen. Juan also gave you a potion. He told us to give you some every day for a week. I suspect it was the potion that saved your life.”

  “What was it?”

  “He did not say.”

  “Did you ask him?”

  “He ignored my question.”

  “It’d sure be good to know.”

  “Yes it would, but I suspect you would have to be a Tinde.”

  “Whatever it was, I’m grateful.”

  “Juan made a sand painting on the floor beside your bed. A snake in the shape of a circle surrounding animals and birds. A bear, an eagle, a bat, a raven. A deer maybe. In reds, yellows, blues. And black. Juan swept it away the next day. He said it absorbed the poison from your body.”

  By the end of summer I was getting out near every day. I used a walking stick but I was grateful to be with Mangel and Buck. Didn’t try to ride. My legs and hands pretty much ignored what I asked of them. I’d liked to of been completely well, but knowing I should of been completely dead improved my mood considerably. Besides, I liked the isolation. Figured I could hide out there indefinitely. The place was special. The canyon was half a mile wide, its walls rising hundreds of feet. The Río Chama, edged with cottonwoods and willows. It split the canyon down the middle.

  I liked the company too. The monastery’s where I met Carlos. He looked a little like you but he was a good bit taller. Brother Jude was a doctor. Padre Romuald was the abbot. He was the only priest. Brother Thomas was the cook. I’d worked in kitchens so I helped Brother Thomas. He didn’t think much of my cooking.

  I had little contact with two of the monks. A nod was about it. They were hermits. I saw them during services and in the garden when I pulled vegetables for dinner.

  Then there was Brother Bede. A penitente. I’ll get to him in a bit.

  The only person not a monk was Raúl, a Jicarilla boy the monastery’d adopted. He had a bad leg. Horse fell with him when he was barely old enough to ride. Comanches killed his folks. There was no one else to look after him. He worked with Brother Thomas in the kitchen.

  During the first few weeks, I spent time with Padre Romuald near every day. There was an aura about him. Holiness I reckon. Even when he was agitated his eyes were peaceful. He looked old, but as I think back on it he was probably about my age now. He was a Black Monk, a member of the Order of St. Benedict. So were the others. He’d been living on the Chama for near twenty years. He said that the first time he saw the Chama valley he knew it was the place he was supposed to be.

  “Half a dozen of us came west in ’63 from St. Vincent Abbey in Pennsylvania,” he said. “After Gettysburg. The war was tearing the monastery apart. Some of us wanted to leave. Our hearts were sick over the shape of the nation. We wanted to move to the desert like St. Antony or the mountains like St. Benedict. We chose here because it had both. We thought we were getting away from the war. We were wrong, of course. Glorieta Pass ended the war in the West, but the aftermath lingered for a decade. So many lost men came of age fighting on one side or the other. Thousands of them lost their families. They had no jobs to return to. They had no skills. All they knew was killing. Hundreds came to New Mexico where there is little law to bridle them.”

  “I know some of them boys.”

  Padre smiled.

  “We came here to find God. God was in Pennsylvania too, but life there was too complicated. Here we have fewer distractions.”

  One afternoon in early fall I told Padre about Pete Maxwell arriving at the monastery.

  “I remember,” he said. “We were a young community. Some of us were homesick. We were happy to see the soldiers, until they took away our friends. The Tinde were more than friends. Without their help we would not have survived. We were happy to see them return a few years later. They helped us clear the land. They helped us build our first houses. Wickiups made of sticks covered in grasses and mud and animal skins. They were cold in winter and they leaked horribly during the summer rains. Later, Mexicans from Abiquiu showed us how to make adobe bricks
. How to make good solid roofs. A crew from Abiquiu came one summer and built the church. We were blessed. We still are. Life this good makes it easier to peel off the layers, see things more clearly.”

  “Know what you mean, Padre. But clarity comes to me when someone’s shooting at me.”

  Over the next few weeks me and Buck and Mangel explored the canyons around the monastery. Sometimes I’d bring back a deer or jackrabbit for the brothers. During the first long cold spell Mangel jumped a mule deer and chased it onto the ice on the Chama. The deer fell through the ice and Mangel went in after it. The deer made it across but Mangel got caught in the current and swept downstream under the ice.

  Me and Buck raced to where the ice broke up in some rapids. When Mangel flushed out, we waded out to get him. I grabbed him by the scruff and hung on while Buck dragged us back to the willows. Built a fire and wrapped Mangel in a blanket. He shook for an hour. I fed him some jerky. By nightfall he was back to his old self and we returned home.

  I call it home because it was beginning to feel like one. There was something about the place I couldn’t peg. A kind of power maybe. Monks said it was God. I wasn’t so sure about that, but whatever it was I could feel it.

  Cutting firewood was a major job at the monastery. As my strength returned, it became one of my tasks. One afternoon when I was returning to the monastery with a load of piñon and cottonwood kindling I met Padre Romuald coming out of the chapel. The monks sat for hours every day in the chapel. Figured it must be boring. I asked him about it.

  “Is that why you’re here, living in this desert like a hermit so you can work at prayer? You’re practically living like an Indian.”

  “Do you know any Indian who would choose to live like a white man?” he said.

  “Can’t say as I do.”

  “I made no sacrifice coming here. I just simplified my life. Monks in the early Church did not go into the desert to sacrifice themselves, hoping God would bestow grace on them. They went into the desert to set aside worldly distractions. Brother Jude comes from a wealthy family. He could have had most anything he wanted, but he found wealth to be a hindrance. Sacrifice is not necessarily a good thing. It creates an expectation that God will reward us. Then the heart is no longer acting out of love. It is seeking a reward. Grace is not a reward. It is a gift. It comes to us unbidden, regardless of who we are or what we’ve done.”