A Bullet for Billy (2 page)

I poured the Cap'n a cup of coffee, then poured in some of the whiskey till he waved a hand over the cup. “Good enough,” he said.

Luz threw together our breakfast but he just let his plate sit in front of him, trying to be polite, but only picking at it, saying, “This is real good, ma'am.”

I could tell by the look on Luz's face she had several questions but knew to wait to ask them.
Finally she took up our plates and cleaned them, then put on her wrap and said, “I have to be going, Jim. I'll see you next week.”

I walked her out to her little horse and helped her up after a long good-bye kiss.

“Who is that man?” she asked.

“Just somebody from my past,” I said.

“He looks sick.”

“I'll see you next week then?” I said.

She looked at me in a way that made me wonder if everything they said about a woman's intuition wasn't true.

“Whoever he is or whatever his problem, he feels like trouble,” she said.

“Not far as I'm concerned,” I said.

“I'll bring some silk flowers for the grave, next time I come,” she said.

“That would be nice.”

She clucked the little horse to a start, and I stood and watched her head back toward Coffin Flats.

I went back inside dreading whatever it was that had brought Cap'n Gus Rogers to my front door on a fresh winter day.

“N
ice lady, your friend,” the Cap'n said when I stepped back inside.

“Yeah, you want a refill of that Arbuckle?”

He held out his cup and I filled it with coffee, then my own, and set the pot back atop the stove plate. He looked at the bottle of bourbon.

“Help yourself, Cap'n,” I said.

He spilled in a nice portion and stirred it with his spoon and sipped it.

“So you want to tell me why you came all the way from Texas?”

He took his time sipping the coffee, blowing off the steam, and said, “Thank Jesus for the whiskey 'cause you still can't make coffee worth a holy damn, Jim.”

“Kinda early to be drinking, isn't it?”

He arched his back as though it was aching,
then relaxed. He had lost weight since I'd last seen him, though he never was a big man to begin with: maybe a hundred fifty, tops, but a solidly built man of good coloration and clear keen eyes that seemed to see everything at a glance. Now he was down to a lot less and looking gaunt, his gray eyes sunk back inside their sockets under a ridge of forehead. His cheeks were sunk in and his color an unhealthy pale.

“I came to ask you a favor and you know I don't ever ask them easy,” he said.

“Yes sir, I know that.”

He looked uncomfortable.

“You okay, Cap'n?”

“Depends which day it is. Today's worse than yesterday was.”

“What's the favor?” I said.

He looked grim.

“Got me this real bad problem, Jim. First thing you should know is, I'm dying. Doctors tell me I got five, maybe six weeks left at the outside…”

“Sorry to hear that,” I said, and I truly was. The Cap'n was one of the best men I'd ever met in my life. He waved a hand.

“Didn't come looking for pity, just need to tell you this so you'll know why I come this far and what I come for.”

“Go on with it,” I said.

“You remember I got two grandboys?”

“Seems to me I do.”

“Billy Edward, he's the oldest, and Sam Houston is five years younger, nineteen and fourteen.”

I faintly remembered him speaking of them when I rangered for him.

“They're my Laura Lee's kids, and as you know she's my only child. Never had no boys of my own, just Laura Lee. Had her, then JoAnn died right after and I never married again because there was no use to it. You love a woman as hard as I loved JoAnn, well, what's the use of trying to find something to compete with that. I raised Laura Lee best as I could and she turned out a good woman with poor judgment when it came to men.

“Went through two marriages herself before she met the right man. That's how come the difference in her boys' ages. Billy was fathered by her first husband, Wayne Brown, and Sam was fathered by her second, Orville Cutter. Anyway, neither of them was much count and took off soon as they found out she was pregnant. Then she met this Jardine Frost fellow. They were living together over in Tascosa, her and this Jardine raising the boys together, Jardine adopted them and gave them his last name. From what she'd written me, Jardine was a good, decent man, hard worker, and treated her boys like they were
his own, she said. Then he got himself killed in a dispute over a horse.”

Cap'n Rogers told it with his eyes cast down, remembering it all, and when he mentioned about this Jardine Frost getting killed, he just shook his head slowly.

“Well,” he said, sipping from his cup, “like I said, Laura Lee never did have any luck with men, good or bad. Frost getting himself killed just about done it as far as those boys standing a chance of getting raised right. They just went wild after he passed. I'm sure she did her best to raise them right, but you know when boys don't have no father to discipline them, they can get off the track real fast.

“I didn't learn about a lot of this till later on—till after it was too late for me to do anything about it. Not that there was much I might could have done living three hundred miles away at the time. But maybe if she'd come lived with me and brought those boys with her, I could have been some sort of father to them and taught them the right thing to do…”

He looked pained and he drank down more of the whiskey-laced coffee, and I wasn't sure I wanted to hear more of this story because it just felt like it wasn't going to get any better the more of it he told.

He looked up at me with those gray eyes, and I didn't see in them what I once had: a man too tough to be whipped. What I saw now was a man who had five, six weeks at the outside to live and peck of personal problems.

“The way it turned out was Billy and Sam drifted off and started getting themselves to doing bad stunts.”

“What sort of bad stunts?” I said.

“Mostly minor stuff at first—gambling, drinking, fighting, petty thievery. But like most wild boys who start out slow, they did not stay that way. Pretty darn soon they progressed up the ranks to become true outlaws—stealing cattle and horses and even got accused of robbing a bank in Las Vegas, New Mexico, though they didn't get but pocket change according to the report I got. I heard all this secondhand from Laura Lee through letters had the ink stained with her tears. Broke my heart to hear about it. I went down there to visit with her and get the whole story just after I got word I was in a fix my own self. Cancer of the stomach,” he said with a finality that was like letting his breath out.

“And that's where the real tough news came, when I got down that way.”

I thought about Luz, my life here, how I'd pulled away from the violent life I'd once lived. I looked up at the gravesites of my friend Tom
Twist, on the hill where I'd buried him, and the woman he'd loved and died over, both of them buried side by side now and forever together. I thought about the men I'd already killed and sometimes dreamed about—the dreams always bad, but what told me it was time to quit was when I stopped dreaming about them.

Then for a time I took to drinking hard and fell pretty low on the ladder of humanity.

I drifted for a year or so, mending fence and working for other men and getting into my own sorts of trouble with liquor and women. I got into fistfights because I was good with my fists and I liked how it felt to beat a man down who gave me trouble, like it wasn't so much beating
him
down as it was the trouble that dogged me.

Then I woke up one morning from a hard drunk, lying face up on the high desert with rain in my face and my horse and saddle stole along with my boots. And if whoever it was hadn't also stole my guns, I do believe I would have killed myself then and there because I was a man past forty without a future and I knew I either had to lie there and die or get up and walk.

I was cold and miserable and hung over, and out of nowhere a dog came up and started licking my face, and something made me hug it because it was love I was most in need of, and I guess that old dog was looking for the same thing.

I asked the dog if it was Jesus come to save me and it barked and I said, “Well if you ain't, you're close enough.” And I got up and started walking and the dog followed me and stayed with me for a time, then went off on its own soon as I got to within sights of the next town.

I hated to see that dog go, but I knew we all had to choose our own way and it had to choose its own way as well. That's just the way life is.

I ended up getting hired on as a deputy town marshal and tending bar in some broke dick Texas town that has since burned to the ground and never rebuilt as far as I know of. Then one day a telegram showed up for me from Dalton Stone, the father of the woman buried up on the hill next to my friend Tom Twist.

It said in effect he'd been trying to find me ever since that day I showed him her grave and told him the story of how she and Tom were hunted down by her abusive husband and was killed by him and some of his hired men, and how much he appreciated it that I, in turn, had killed the husband, Johnny Waco, and those same hired men. He'd wanted to do something for me then but I'd refused, because I didn't take pay for doing what was the right thing to do. He went on to say in the telegram the offer of money or whatever I needed was still standing and he'd like to hear from me and know what I was up to, that he'd
feel forever indebted to me and would I please wire him back.

Well, I thought about it for a few days and counted what I had in my savings account—forty-four dollars and seventy-five cents—a dollar for every year I'd lived and change. I remembered there was this little place I'd seen for sale on the Rio Penasco that used to belong to Charlie Bowdre, who'd run with Billy the Kid until Garrett put a bullet in them both.

Charlie's place was a little run down but it had a good view of the river and the grass around it was sweet for grazing horses—a venture I thought I could do well at: catching and breaking wild horses and selling them. So I wired Mr. Stone back and thanked him and said if he wanted to do something, he might consider loaning me the money to buy the place and I'd pay him back as my horse venture grew.

That's how it came to pass that I'm in this place now, with horses in the corral and a woman who comes and cleans my house and has supper with me and stays the night once a week. I built a little porch on the front too. Now here was a sort of trouble I didn't need or want at my kitchen table.

“What is it you're asking of me, Cap'n?”

He leaned forward, setting his cup down, then stood and walked over to the window above the
sink. He stared out for a long few moments, the sun on the glass now so that the frost was melted away.

Without turning to look at me, he said, “This is the part that's real bad, Jim. I have to kill one of them boys.”

I
sat listening as the Cap'n explained it. All the time I'd known the Cap'n, I'd never known him to fail at anything he set his mind to, and I never saw him flinch from danger or falter under fire. But now I noticed his body tremble as he spoke.

“What do you mean, Cap'n, say it plain.”

He turned to face me then, his features drawn into a mask of sorrow.

“They made a big mistake, those grandsons of mine,” he began. “They crossed the border into Old Mexico and something real bad happened—a woman got raped and killed, the daughter of a Ruales general. They caught Billy and Sam at the scene. Billy confessed it was his doing and none of Sam's. And the General would have probably let Sam ride but Billy broke out of jail, and he
was the only one got away. Sam's still locked up down there in their calaboose. Billy made his way back across the border and wired his mother what happened, asking her to wire me and send a company of Rangers down there. I still got some contacts down there and found out who it was, this general. Just so happens I knew old Pancho Toro from back during my border days, back before he
was
a general or even a soldier.

“We worked the same cattle outfit together and used to drink and gamble together, both of us still green kids.”

Cap'n shook his head, remembering.

“He was a hell of a vaquero is all I knew. We grew to be friends. He was even set to marry my sister Alice but she died of the influenza before they could tie the knot. After that we just sort of went our separate ways. Once I got word it was Pancho holding Sam I wired him direct and explained to him who Sam was to me. He wired me back saying he had a lot of sympathy for me but if I wanted to save Sam's skin, I would have to track Billy down and kill him since he and his Ruales couldn't cross the river north and do it themselves…”

Then a great weight seemed to settle on the Cap'n's shoulders, for he visibly sagged.

“He says to prove I killed Billy I had to cut off his head and bring it to him or else he was going
to execute Sam in Billy's stead. Said somebody had to pay, and if not Billy, then Sam. I don't doubt for a minute he'll do it. You know anything about Mexican men, you know they got a lot of pride in their manhood and are real macho types. Says I've got two weeks to get Billy killed. Not much more time than what the doctors tell me I got to live. So you can see I'm in a bit of a tight spot here, Jim.”

Cap'n came back over to the table and sat down and said, “Maybe you could pour me another bit of that forty rod.” And I filled the bottom of his cup with whiskey.

“You want me to find Billy and kill him for you, is that it?” I said.

His face knotted in pain.

“No sir. Not quite.”

“Then what?”

“I'd just like you to go along with me in case my own deal goes bad before I can see it done. You'd be my backup plan.”

“You mean kill Billy in case you don't make it that long, then go get Sam from the General?”

“Yes sir. That's about the way of it. I can't save them both but if I can save one, it will be better than watching them both go down.”

“And you think you can kill your own grandson, do it the way the General wants it done?” I said.

He looked at me level then, with a gaze I'd seen before.

“You know I've always been a man who does whatever needs doing,” he said after taking another swallow of the whiskey. “Even if it is about to be the most terrible thing I've ever done.”

“Can I ask you something?” I said.

“You've every right.”

“How come you want me in on this and not one of your other men?”

“You were right on the way,” he said.

“How come I don't believe that's the real reason?”

“You know that ain't it, but do I have to explain it?”

I shook my head. I knew what he meant: I was as bad as him when it came to killing men. How could I convince him I'd changed, that I'd met Luz and just the pure gentleness of a woman can change a man's heart and make him want more than what he's been used to all his life? Luz's love took all the fighting out of me, all the bloodletting ways I used to have.

His gaze continued to hold mine steady. There was one other reason I think he was asking me, even though he didn't say a word about it: the fact he'd saved my life once. But the Cap'n wasn't the sort of man to come right out and say he was calling in his marker.

“What if we can't find Billy in the time the General's given you and goes ahead and executes Sam?” I said.

“Then I aim to go down there and kill him, and if I ain't able, then I'm asking you go down and kill him for me. But I don't think it will come to all that, because I know where Billy is and how to get him.”

I heard the stud whicker out in the corral. Cap'n looked up, and for a brief moment I saw light in his eyes. He was a pure horseman.

“Well, think about it at least,” he said, standing and turning stiffly toward the door. “I'll be waiting for the afternoon flyer to Tucson. Billy's locked up in jail down near there. All I got to do is go on down there and take him out and…”

He opened the door, and the cold touched my skin like a piece of flatiron.

I walked him out to the hack and watched him struggle to get up and in. He sat there a minute catching his breath, looking off toward the horses.

“That big buckskin stud looks like he'd rip you a new one,” he said. “You tried to ride him yet?”

“Every day since I caught him. Keeps pitching me off and trying to stomp my brains out. Don't know why I just don't cut him loose and let him go on back to where he came from.”

“Where'd he come from?”

I pointed.

“Way out yonder beyond those hills,” I said. “I don't know why I wasted my time catching him in the first place. Should have known better.”

“He'll make you a hell of a horse if you can get him rode.”

“I don't know as he can be rode.”

Cap'n looked at him for a long time, then said, “He can be rode, old son. Any horse can be rode, just like any cowboy can be throwed. It just takes the right man on the right horse to do it is all.”

He snapped the reins and turned the hack back toward the road to Coffin Flats, and I stood watching him go and half wished he'd never come in the first place because I sure as hell hated to see a good man like him so busted down and sick and with such troubles to deal with in his last days.

There was snow on the mountains that would be there all winter no matter how warm it might get down here in the valley. I turned to walk back to the house when my gaze swept the ridge where Tom and Antonia are buried, their headstones with a cap of snow on them.

I walked on up there. It was a bit of a climb. The wind was blowing up from the south now, bringing some warmth.

“Got me a problem,” I said when I reached the
graves, kneeling in front of Tom's. Tom was always a good listener. “Cap'n wants me to go help him kill his grandson, just a kid, really, nineteen, but old enough, I reckon, to pay for his crimes. I don't want to do it. I like it right here just fine. Me and you and Luz and this old place and them horses is about all I ever wanted and all I'll ever need.”

Way off down in the valley the other side of the river, I could see a lone coyote loping along, its rough, rusty fur catching the sun.

I brushed aside some of the snow on the ground and picked up a handful of pebbles.

“I don't want to do no more killing either,” I said. “I go do this thing, I'm right back where I said I'd never go again.”

A gust of wind brushed along the ground.

“And I still got that damn stud to ride so I can get him gentle enough to be bred up with those mares and maybe sell him to a rich man. I got lots of damn things to do right here without running off to Arizona or Old Mexico, or some such.”

I watched the coyote come down to the river's edge, look back the direction from which it had come, then straddle and drink.

“What would you do were you me?” I said.

Tom had been a chaplain's assistant in the Union Army and later a preacher before his wife died and he began to drift in search of answers
to questions he said pressed on him after her death. And by the time I'd met him, he said he hadn't found any answers yet. All I could hope was he found them in that last hour of his life, or he'd found them when he crossed over from this world to the next.

“You're not going to tell me, are you?” I said.

The coyote loped off upriver like something was chasing him but he wasn't scared.

I shook the pebbles in my hand like dice.

“Why the hell did you have to go and die on me?” I said. Another gust of wind caught in my shirt.

I stood and walked back down to the house, but instead of going inside, I went to the shed and got my saddle, then walked to the small corral I had the stud in.

I slung the saddle on the top rail.

The stud eyed me like he knew the jig was up for one of us.

“Today's the day,” I said. “I'm feeling like a dance.”

He whinnied and tossed his head.

“You're going to get rode or I'm going to get throwed, but this is the last day we do this thing if it ain't one or the other.”

He was a block of muscle and fury, a cyclone of a horse the color of the desert, with a line running down his back, black as death. Just stand
ing there looking at him reminded me I still had plenty of bruises from the last several times I'd tried to break him.

I crawled between the lower rails and took my rope and let out a loop. There was no place for him to run except along the back rails. I tossed my rope and let it fall over his head, then wrapped it twice around the snubbing post, and he kicked and screamed like a banker who was being robbed.

“You can raise all the damn hell you want,” I said. I waited till he settled into a stiff-legged stand.

Sometimes you fail at something and you can't understand why you did. You figure you gave it all you had and it still didn't work out and you're ready to quit it all, figuring you got nothing left to give. Then something makes you try one last time. And this time you dig down deep into a place you never even knew was there, just an extra inch more, an extra ounce of strength. Your mind locks down tight on the thing you're determined to do—and suddenly it's just enough to get it done.

So I got my blanket and saddle on him and my bit in his teeth and swung aboard. The first few seconds forked on the stud was like riding a runaway freight train that had crashed off a gorge into a rocky canyon bottom. I thought he was
going to snap my head off and pull both arms out of the sockets. But when he hadn't thrown me on the first several tries, I got into a rhythm with him, and it was like dancing with a crazy woman. Only I felt even crazier this time. Whatever move the stud made I anticipated. It was like I suddenly was part of him and he was part of me.

He kicked down the rails and busted down the gate. He snorted and stomped and kicked and bucked all over what you might call a yard, and then suddenly there went my chicken fence and coop—those hens and that rooster scattering like ten sorts of hell was after them, the coop busted to boards. The stud was just a damn cyclone but I stuck and finally rode him down.

And then he just stood there under me, blowing hard, his whole body quivering, and I waited for him to make another go at it but when he didn't, I touched my heels to his sides and walked him around with that Spanish bit in his mouth, and he learned fast what it was there for. I stroked his powerful sweaty neck and walked him over to the water and let him take a drink, then rode him all the way to the ridge and showed him off to Tom and Antonia. And for a time we just sat there with the wind in our faces. Then I rode him back down and the stud did everything I asked of him, though he still had a lot of strut to him, but
that was okay—it was the way I wanted him.

I had myself a good horse.

And an old man who needed my help.

I went inside and packed a bedroll with a few extra clothes in it: shirts, socks, pair of jeans. Packed my saddlebags with razor, soap, comb, two boxes of shells for the Merwin Hulbert that was in my bottom dresser drawer, pocket knife, general things I'd need. I went and got my pistol and unwrapped it from the towel and slid it into the shoulder rig, then strapped it on before putting on my coat. I took the Henry rifle from the corner by the door and slipped it into a scabbard and walked outside again and rigged everything to the saddle. I looked around at my wrecked yard and thought I should probably try and round up those damn chickens and that rooster, but decided against it. You can always buy more chickens and a rooster.

I rode to Gin Walker's place halfway between my place and town and stopped and asked him if he'd look after my stock—that I'd be gone a few weeks, maybe longer. I knew he'd do it because that's what neighbors do for each other. He said no problem, and I could see him eyeing the brass butt of the Henry sticking out of the scabbard and probably wondering what I was up to, but he didn't say anything.

I thanked him and headed for town.

It was a pretty day.

I figured I'd better stop and tell Luz I'd be gone for a time. It seemed only fair.

I just hoped that, unlike the chickens, she'd be there when I returned.