A Bullet for Billy (13 page)

“G
et up,” I said, tapping the soles of Billy's boots. Billy stirred and sat up painfully, guarding his busted shoulder.

It was just turning daylight outside. A slow, steady rain pecked at the window, fell in through the bottom where it was open, and wet the flooring.

“I can't feel my hand,” Billy said, flexing his fingers.

“Let's go,” I said. I wanted to have sympathy for the boy, but it was damn hard considering.

“I don't think I can stand the jolt of that hack,” he said.

“You'll stand it or else.”

“Else what?”

He was damn defiant, and it took everything in me to keep from busting him one. I took him by the good arm and helped him stand.

We went down the stairs and out the front door. Puddles of rainwater stood in the muddy street dimpled with the falling rain. The sky hung low and gray, the clouds bunched together, and there was nobody out on the streets.

“Let's grab some coffee and breakfast,” I said, and we walked over to the restaurant and took a window seat.

“I ain't hungry,” Billy said.

“'Cause of that?” I said, pointing at his slung arm.

“I had to get up in the middle of the night and puke.”

He seemed to me like a beat dog, and I felt for him the way I would a beat dog. But I'd promised the Cap'n I'd do what I could to save the life of his younger grandson even if it meant letting this one slide into the darkest hell. So I held off letting my emotions speak reason to me.

Rain slid down the window glass, and Billy watched it like it was a thing to behold. I wondered if he was trying to take in all he could knowing he would soon be dead—that he was aware that his last hours were the most precious ones of his young life.

We ate, or at least I did, and drank coffee, something he seemed to tolerate as long as there was enough milk and sugar in it, and the rain continued falling steady on.

“You know something,” he finally said. “I'd shoot you dead if I got the chance.”

“I reckon you would,” I said and paid the bill, and we stood and walked out into the rain and down the street to the livery.

I paid the man for boarding our horses.

“How far to Ciudad de Tontos?” I said.

“Twenty or so miles yet,” he said. “The road is very bad when it rains. It will make it slow going for you. Gets very muddy.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Can I board the buggy here till I get back?”

“Sí, sure.”

I helped the kid get aboard the horse, then got aboard my own.

“One more thing,” I said to the liveryman. “There someplace I can buy a gun?”

He shrugged, said, “Sí, the trading post has guns,” and pointed up the street. We walked our horses up the street to the trading post and tied them off out front.

I had my Henry rifle and mine and the Cap'n's pistols. Somehow it didn't seem enough for the job at hand.

Inside smelled like wool blankets and beef jerky,
dried chilies and coffee. A young, dark-skinned woman stood behind the counter.

“Sí?” she said.

“I'll need to buy a gun,” I said.

She showed me a tray of pistols.

“Something bigger—
muy grande.
”

She kept her eyes on Billy the whole while. They were compassionate eyes, but also the eyes of a woman in the market for a man. She was maybe thirty and had no wedding band on her finger.

She led us to another counter and pointed to a rack of guns and right off I spotted something I wanted. A double-barrel ten-gauge L. C. Smith.

“How much?” I said, pointing.

She took it down.

“Fifteen dollars,” she said.

“I'll take it.”

I paid her from the Cap'n's wallet since I was down to broke. I figured he wouldn't mind the expenditure knowing what it was for.

“You got shells for this?”

She nodded and took a box of shells off the counter behind her.

“Not these,” I said. “These are for a twelve-gauge. Those.” I pointed to another box and she got them for me.

I looked at Billy, who was now trading looks with the woman.

“Anything you need, kid?”

It took him a moment.

“Just to go kill that damn Mescan,” he said. I saw the way she flinched. The kid lacked any social graces whatsoever.

I asked the woman if she had slickers to sell. She didn't understand my meaning. I tried to explain it but didn't know the right word. I looked around and didn't see any, but did see some serapes.

“I'll take two of those,” I said, pointing. She got some down, held them up to Billy and me to gauge the right size, then I paid for them too, and we slipped them over our heads.

I thanked the woman and we went back out again, and I waited till Billy got in his saddle and handed him up the shotgun.

“Carry this,” I said. “Don't worry, I wasn't stupid enough to load it.”

“Then what's the point?”

“To keep you from shooting me in the back, how's that for a point.”

“It ain't as if I ain't got enough to do just carrying my own damn self without having to haul this piece of iron.”

“Shut your carping for once.”

“Ah hell,” he said.

I mounted the stud and turned him back to the south road.

The liveryman had been right about the road. The horses sank down into the mud past their fetlocks and after just a few miles they were laboring.

“We're going to have to push hard to make it to Ciudad de Tontos in two days,” I said.

“This shoulder of mine is hurting like a son of a bitch,” he said. “I can't ride hard even if this damn mud wasn't slowing us down.”

“You stay up or I'll tie you belly down, but either way, we're going to make these next twenty or so miles by deadline.”

You couldn't tell you were in Old Mexico. It didn't look or feel any different. It was just a place where somebody had long ago decided one side of the river was the United States of America and the other the Republic of Mexico.

How the hell that got to be determined was way beyond me, and it didn't matter a spit's worth because whether I killed a man this side of the river or the other, or he killed me, dying was still dying.

“This is the worst fucking country I ever been in,” Billy griped. The rain soaked through our serapes and eventually through our clothes and ran
down our necks. The serapes became little more than an extra load wet like they were, but still of some unknown comfort.

“Shoulder feels like it's been cleaved with an ax,” Billy said a little farther on. I kept thinking,
In a little while, kid, nothing's going to hurt you anymore
.

W
e rode on like that slow, the rain falling harder like nails spilled from a carpenter's barrel. The sky grew dark as night and lightning shook through it like fence wire, its flash lighting up the landscape and each other in quick bursts. I could see in those grim moments how much Billy was hurting. We slogged on still, then I heard a
whomp!
in the mud. I reined in my horse and waited till the next flash of lightning and saw Billy lying there in the road, his horse running past me, spooked by the crash of thunder. I charged off after it and finally caught it up by the reins and led it back.

I dismounted and lifted Billy from the mire.

“I'm finished,” he said. “You want to tie me belly down, you're going to have to 'cause I can't ride another mile.”

Then I saw with the next lightning flash his eyes
had rolled white. I went and untied my soogins and wrapped it round him after I dragged him off the road into the scrub. He lay there without moving and I hunkered there on my heels, miserable and soaked to the skin. The rain hissed and boiled and took no mercy on us, and I kept thinking how much nicer it would have been to be home in my own bed with Luz's warm body wrapped against mine. I told myself that maybe I ought to make an honest woman out of her and ask her to marry me when I got back—if I got back. The idea appealed to me more than I thought it ever would. I had my share of women and ladies but none that ever made me want to marry one of them.

But a man reaches a point where he knows that whatever he's been doing all his life he can't go on forever doing. Something happens to you when you hit forty years old, it seems. And I'd hit forty sometime back.

The rain dripped down the back of my neck.

The lightning danced all around like it was looking for us to kill us. Anybody who's ever trailed cattle could tell you the danger of lightning. But still, there was nothing to be done about it.

Billy was almost dead and I wasn't feeling too spry myself.

It was a long, long damn wait sitting out there in that rainstorm, and by the time it quit, the first
gray light of a new dawn cut through sky and you could have wrung our clothes out like washrags.

It took me several moments to waken the kid. But finally his eyes fluttered open like a busted shade in some cheap hotel room.

“Kid,” I said. “We got to get a move on. “It's Thursday. By Friday, that little brother of yours is going to be dead if we don't make it down there.”

He shook his head.

“Can't…go…on…” he muttered.

I lifted him onto my shoulders and heaved him into the saddle.

“You die, he dies,” I said. “Is that what you want?”

He waggled his head.

“Then take hold of that saddle horn.”

I mounted my horse and took up the reins to Billy's and led him out. I didn't know where we were or how far we'd come or how far we had to go. I had to carry the shotgun across the pommel of my saddle since I couldn't trust the kid to hold on to it. He was barely able to hold on himself.

We crossed a swollen creek that had come over the road, and a short way farther on we came upon a sheep camp that lay just off to our right and you could smell the cook pot and coffee.

“Let's ride over and see can we get a little something for our bellies and some of that coffee,” I
said. Even my bones were cold and soaked from the all-night rain.

The sheep—and there must have been nearly a hundred of them—were cropping grass contentedly as their herder squatted by the fire. He had three black and white dogs patrolling the flock.

He looked up at our approach.

I greeted him in Spanish and with a touch of my hat brim.

“Don't suppose I could buy a meal and some of that coffee from you?” I said.

He blinked, looked me over, then looked over Billy.

“Come, sit,” he said.

I dismounted and helped Billy out of the saddle.

“What's wrong with your friend?”

“He's feeling poorly,” I said, helping Billy to ease to the ground by the fire. He looked worse than an orphan.

The man stood and went to his wagon and came back with two extra tin plates and cups and handed them to me and nodded to the cook pot. I spooned us out each a plate and then poured us each a cup of the coffee.

“You from around here?” I said, chewing the mutton stew.

He pointed to a line of mountains.

“Over there,” he said. “Chipata.”

I nodded. The coffee began to warm my blood and I was grateful for it and poured myself a second cup. It was strong and black as a crowbar.

“How's that suit you, kid?” I said. He was at least eating and sipping his coffee. He glanced my way and then across the fire at the shepherd.

“I ain't proud to be eating a Mescan's food,” he said.

“You best be grateful he gave you anything to eat at all,” I said. Then to the shepherd, “You'll have to forgive my young companion's manners. He ain't got any.”

The shepherd laughed.

“The wild ways of the young,” he said. As though he understood that boys Billy's age were tempestuous and often ignorant in their ways.

I asked if he knew how far it was yet to Ciudad de Tontos. He held up the fingers of one hand.

Smoke from the fire rose in gray wisps.

“They had some trouble down there not long ago,” he said.

“What sort of trouble?” I said, believing I already knew but wanting to confirm it.

“There is a garrison of Ruales there and the General's daughter was killed, murdered by some gringos. So you better be careful when you go there. They might think you're the ones who did it.”

“We're no sort of killers,” I said.

“I did not think you were. A man who is so kind to a wounded boy, even a surly one, could not be a bad hombre.”

The man kept his eyes on Billy when he said that. Billy did not return the man's gaze.

I reached into my pocket and took out two dollars for our meal and handed it to the shepherd. He looked at it and said, “No. This won't do me any good,” and handed it back. “I would have just thrown out the extra coffee anyway and the stew, whatever is left over, I give to my dogs.”

The sheep bleated whenever the dogs would nip at their legs if they strayed from the flock.

“Those look like some good dogs,” I said.

“They keep me company and do a good job with the sheep.”

I stood then and said, “Thank you for your hospitality. My name is Jim Glass and this is Billy Rogers.”

“And I am Hernando,” he said and we shook hands.

“And thanks for the warning about Ciudad de Tontos,” I said.

He scratched under his sombrero.

“I think there is a doctor there who could look at the boy's arm,” he said. “I think maybe he pulls teeth too if you have one that is bothering you.”

“Let's mount up,” I said to Billy and watched as he unscrewed himself from the ground. Got him
mounted on his horse, and we headed the last five miles to the town where his death awaited him.

I felt gruesome, like a man taking a sheep to slaughter.

From what I knew of Mexican manhood, it might not be as simple as exchanging one boy for the other.

I was glad I had the ten-gauge.