Billy the Kid (3 page)

"Because the Christian boys don't get off their wooden butts an' look for 'em," Willie stormed.

Sam's eyes narrowed. "Okay, you gonna raise hell with me, or find out why a lot of people think you oughta step down?"

Willie took a deep breath and settled back. "Sorry, Sam."

"You've been sheriff nine months now. Things have happened. First one was that loco man from Deming. You let him shoot all 'round you, till he ran out o' bullets, then took him with your hands. People thought it was somethin' that night. But next day they began to wonder why you let him sling all that lead at you..."

"He was ravin' mad; you know that."

Sam nodded. "So were you—to let him pump out six."

Willie threw his feet back up on the desk in frustration.
The job isn't worth it. You take guff and make no money. Get shot, and there's just a line in the paper: We all hope the sheriff will recover.

Sam droned on. "We've had two train robberies this year, an' don't have anything to show for 'em. I said
we.
"

Willie answered disgustedly, "Those people were from out of the territory. They came in, got it, and ran. God knows we tracked 'em far enough."

"A lot of people don't believe that."

"Well, they can go suck eggs."

"What I think really did it was that Paiute."

Willie's head snapped around. "That scrawny horse thief?"

Sam held up a hand. "It Just takes little things, Willie. You said he got away, and I know he did. But somebody started a rumor that you felt sorry for him an' sneaked him out of town."

Willie replied gutturally, "I did feel sorry for him. Wasn't much proof. But I didn't turn him loose."

His eyes strayed over to the holding cell. He'd had in mind turning the drunk free after he sobered. "You want to take that one up to the prosecutor in the morning? What'll we do, make sure he gets a year for gettin' drunk?"

Sam turned silent.

Willie rose up tiredly and looked around. The small office on the ground floor, under the courtrooms, clerk spaces, and territorial attorney's offices, had a big safe in it for storing evidence, a gun locker, Sam's desk, Andy Barnes's desk—he was off in Albuquerque to bring a man back—two wooden filing cabinets, and a brass spittoon. Suddenly it seemed enemy ground.

Sam watched, knowing what the sheriff was thinking:
Who needs it? Sam
had occasionally felt the same way himself.

Willis Monroe was big, rangy more than heavyset, six three without boots, and no paunch. He had hands almost the size of dinner plates when his fingers were spread. Several times he'd stopped fights down on Saloon Row by simply showing up, standing there loose and looking on, those hands hanging midway down his thighs like inert mauls.

Sun and wind had punished his face when he was a cowhand, leaving early weather wrinkles around his eyes and on his forehead—creases that got deeper when he laughed, which wasn't too often. At twenty-two he was more apt to be a serious man than youthful. But the lines went well with his taffy-colored hair and brown eyes and large nose. Willie was not a candidate for anybody's beauty contest unless that beauty was found in long crags up at Granite Gap.

Sam said, with genuine understanding, "Look, Willie, all you got to do is now an' then fix somebody's meat wagon in public. Fellow like that Deming man, blow his damn head off. Then don't feel sorry about it later."

"That'll make 'em happy, huh?" Willie asked, staring at his deputy.

Sam laughed softly. "Yeh. Yeh, that'll do it."

Willie muttered, "Human wolves." He walked over and got his hat, but then lingered by Pine's desk. "You think any of this has anything to do with that ambush?"

For some reason his shoulder had been bothering him more than usual this night. The bullet hole, back to front, was four months old. He'd been shot riding home.

"Might," Sam said, looking up.

"I asked you once whether or not you thought Earl Cole did it."

"Same answer." Sam shook his head slowly. "Earl's a bad boy sometimes, but I don't think he's a bushwhacker. Too much to lose. He wants your job, Willie. He's got six thousand acres now and wants sixty thousand. He can't have your blood on his hands."

Willie said speculatively, "Maybe he hired Frank Dobbs?" Dobbs was 9 hired gun from Tombstone who worked for Earl Cole running cattle.

Sam said, "That's always a good guess. But can you prove it, Willie?"

"No. But I tell you no night goes by that Cole doesn't think how much money he's lost by not bein' able to assess property like I do. He'd tax it, an' then take it at auction using a buddy to front him. You separate that part of the job from slappin' Chinese and Mexicans around, an' I'll give it to Cole tomorrow."

"Never happen," said Sam. "I been in the territory sixteen years an' the sheriff's always been the tax collector an' auctioneer, any county. Some got rich."

"Little good it did Sheriff Metcalf."

Sam nodded. "He was bushwhacked, too. Maybe you ought to start ridin' with your ass facin' the horse's head."

Willie laughed heartily and stretched. "Thanks for the talk, Sam. See you tomorrow." He paused a moment. "Reckon Earl Cole got rid of Metcalf?"

Sam shrugged.

The tall man went out the back door, trying to hide the funk he was in, and strode to the stable. He slung a saddle up on Almanac, carrying the blanket with it, then murmured to the strapping gelding and got a fling of white head. He cinched the saddle down, mounted, and rode out of the courthouse stable.

He let Almanac set the pace. The big horse settled to a steady, easy trot. Strong-hocked, heavy-muscled with a fine, silky coat, he seemed glad to be off and away, head high, tail flowing gracefully.

Willie thought:
If sheriffing means busting Chinese necks or shooting up some poor lunatic out of a crazy house, then they can gladly have it. Their terms.

The quarter moon had risen.

Willie always felt a sense of serenity riding the winding road toward the Double W. He tried to put out of his mind any chance of another bullet crashing into his back. If Cole had really engineered it, with Dobbs pulling the trigger, he'd try another way next time. The Cave Flat rancher was shrewd, if little else.

Willie was sure that on that bushwhack night he'd heard a cough above the
clop-clop
of Almanac before the shot rang out and that bullet hit him. It had been moonlit like tonight, and he was certain he would have been hit by the second shot if Almanac hadn't veered and plunged off the trail. Supposedly, Dobbs had come to Arizona to get rid of his cough.

Cottonwoods and willows jumped out at him now and then, shadowy in the silver light. An antelope spooked ahead, flashing away. Almanac broke trot, and then regained it. There wasn't prettier country anywhere in Arizona Territory, he often thought. Nor was there a better small spread than his DW, above Tuckamore Creek.

High-tabled in the granite mountains, the DW grass sometimes grew so tall it would lick the spurs of a rider. The upper meadows were thick with it, and it filled in shallow valleys and swales down to the Tuckamore. The water was swift but low and seldom claimed a calf, even in spring runoffs. Summer and fall rains merely quickened the clear water, freshening the already pine-cleansed air.

Timber—plenty for homes and stores in Polkton, which was growing steadily due to the mines—stood on the slopes above the upper meadows in blue-green patches. On south and over east were pockets of copper, lead, and zinc, even a little gold and silver. In the distance, above red slits of canyons brush-choked with catclaw for bulls to sharpen their horns, were peaks that climbed twelve or thirteen thousand feet, usually snowcapped. Between were stark buttes.

The first time that Willis Monroe had seen Tuckamore Flats, six years before, riding stirrup to stirrup with cousin Billy Bonney, he'd declared it was where he wanted to be. That was all right with Billy because he liked the sight of it, too. Billy just hadn't planned on settling down so soon.

Willie had inherited four thousand dollars from his late father, Judge Willis Walker Monroe, and with it bought the Tuckamore land. He decided the cattle brand would be two Ws, big end to big end—the Double W. He worked it with kid Billy.

BILLY COULDN'T HELP
but think of Willie and Kate as the train wound slowly upward. At Wickenburg he'd stayed at the back of the station platform as Polkton passengers got aboard. With his luck Willie and Kate might have been traveling this day. But he didn't recognize anyone from Polkton—although some of the passengers might have gotten on before Wickenburg.

He'd always had a crush on Kate, who was a schoolteacher when he'd first met her and worked at the dry goods store in the summers. A pretty blond with long legs, almost as tall as Billy, she seemed too nice and refined for the likes of Willis Monroe. She wore silk stockings and white gloves to church. She and his cousin hadn't had more than three or four dates before she got Willie to go with her.

She'd come to Polkton from a little town in Missouri, brought out by her preacher brother. She'd finished a year of college back there, which was enough to qualify her for an Arizona teaching job. She'd lived with her brother and his family until she found another teacher to share a cottage. Once, Billy thought he had a chance with her when she suggested that he come to the church picnic—only to find that she'd brought along her seventeen-year-old teaching mate to meet him. What he wanted from Kate Mills was a kiss.

Annoyed, Billy had said, "Kate, I really like to pick my own women."

"I've noticed that," she said with a cool smile.

Billy knew what she was talking about—his tendency to have fun with the girls at Ashby's saloon, where a willing Willie had previously gotten just as drunk as he had. What was plain to hear and see that day at the picnic was that Kate Mills had set her warm blue eyes on Willie—and she was surely going to change him from a fun-loving cowpoke into a churchgoing, noncussing, nondrinking puritan.

Oh, she was so smart, Billy knew, that Kathryn Mills. Never said a word to Willie about his enduring friendship with cousin Billy; always had a sparkling smile when she saw Billy; asked how he was, invited him over for chicken dinner after church. Made it so he could never say a bad word about her to Willie. But she had to know how he felt about her stealing big Willie from him. She never did call him into a corner and say, "Billy, I know you're jealous that I'm coming between you and Willie, but 111 make a good wife for him."

Finally, after nearly a year from the time she got to town, Willie had said, "I'm going to marry Kate. Nothing will change between us." Well, everything did change.

The old hewn log shack that Billy and Willie had lived in (and raised some good hell in when Willie took over the acres) had been replaced by a new neat two-bedroom plank house, home to Willis and Kate Monroe. The shack was now used for tool storage, he'd heard from Willie.

TWelve hundred head of whitefaces and shorthorns bore the Double W mark, grazing open, mostly for local sale. Miners ate a lot of beef. The winters were never too bad, and there weren't many fences from the Verde banks all the way to the Colorado. It was a cattleman's paradise. Willie and Kate had it made.

Billy and his cousin now rode in different directions and there seemed to be only one way for Billy to make his own grab at a future—robbing a train.

***

SWAYING WITH THE JERKY
train motion, Billy said idly, "Roadbed's rough, Perry. Rougher'n I remember, by far. I swear they ought to send those coolies back with some new ties."

Perry made no reply. Nor did he bother to turn his head. He hadn't spoken since they left Wickenburg. He peered unhappily out at the slow parade of mountain terrain. They had come through rolling mesquite and chaparral land and were now over the four-thousand-foot level. The gentle sierra was covered with stands of pine, and, here and there, clumps of juniper, cedar, and fir—beautiful scenery.

Billy studied Perry.
Don't even know what you're looking at, you big, dumb Texan,
he thought. Truly, it was hard to know what a man like Perry appreciated. Not that it really mattered. But it wasn't cool mountains, pine trees, and drifting clouds.

Without thinking, Billy raised his left hand to scratch his chin. Perry's thick, hairy wrist came up with it. They were shackled together with Youngstown steel. Perry glared over at the "deputy sheriff." That was Art's idea, a crazy one, Billy playacting as the law.

Billy answered the glare with a carefree grin, taking vast pleasure in it. Then he decided it wouldn't be prudent to further needle the shaggy moose Under the circumstances, starting a commotion on the train wouldn't be wise. Perry seemed ready for it, cat nervous. He'd been fuming almost from the time Art proposed him riding the train in shackles.

Billy felt great. In the ten days since meeting Art and his sons, he had come soaring out of his wallow. He felt like his old self again. Reflecting on it, he admitted to himself it was odd that it took a man like Art Smith to break him out. Yet it seemed to be the truth. And he actually felt a tick of excitement about the robbery.

The northbound daily, carrying the monthly cash shipment to Polkton National Bank, crawled upward through the high hills, making all sorts of aching iron noises, creaking and groaning under the cars, now in shadow and now in sun under a sky rippled with fast-running clouds. An old Brooks wood burner built especially for the Santa Fe, Prescott & Phoenix Railway, it had six driving wheels, a potbellied stack, and a huge brass headlight. It ground along steadily, its wet whistle disturbing the calm, its coiling woodsmoke insulting the tops of the trees and sometimes floating into the two coaches. The passengers slept or munched on prenoon lunches or read the
Arizona Pioneer.

Billy settled back, thinking he should be concentrating on what would happen within the next hour. Art was probably expecting him to do just that. Yet almost every time he'd thought about it, McLean and meeting the Smiths, he'd been tempted to tell them to get lost. This robbery was such a wild scheme.