City of Widows (10 page)

“Do you think the president will sign such a bill?”

“Who is to say who will be president when it reaches the White House? Garfield does not appear to be recovering from that assassin's bullet he took last month. Chester Arthur is a Hudson River hack who blows with Tammany, and that Irish crowd will side with Dolan. If we do not move swiftly we may be forced not only to release our covey, but to present them with the net as well in fee simple for the inconvenience.”

He paused a beat in case I cared to jump in. I didn't, and he sat back as far as he ever did, perhaps an inch.

“Grapeshot tore open my belly at the siege of Monterrey,” he said. “My intestines were lying on the ground beside me. A medical officer commanded an orderly to let me die and go help some other wretch who could still be saved. Sergeant Uriah Spooner leveled his musket at the officer and informed the orderly that if I were not removed to the field station immediately the American expeditionary force in Mexico would be shy one brass-buttons. For this offense he was arrested, court-martialed, and sentenced to death. I was too ill to testify at the first hearing, but when another was convened to review the evidence I appeared on a stretcher. I dislike quoting myself. Suffice it to say I found my calling that day and I have cleaved to the law ever since. Spooner's sentence was commuted to five years' penal servitude and a dishonorable discharge.

“I was present at his wedding ceremony and again at the christening of his only son. I missed his funeral two years ago as I was hearing a capital case at the time. When I learned that Ross Baronet and whoever was with him had killed young Dave Spooner and his wife in Lincoln County, the scars of that old injury began to sting for the first time in thirty-five years. They are stinging yet. I can only conclude that they will continue to vex me until justice is served.”

He tapped the arm of his chair. Tension fled from the car like heat through a shattered window. “One man's sore stomach is scarcely grounds for federal action. My jurisdiction does not cover crimes committed in New Mexico. I therefore accepted your badge and papers and wished you Godspeed on your sojourn into private enterprise. The fact that the enterprise should be located in the county where Frank Baronet presides was mere coincidence.”

“Helped along by a good memory,” I said. “Dave and Vespa Spooner were still nursing cattle and enjoying good health at the time Junior approached me. I always did take a while deciding my future.”

We were coming perilously close to an expression of gratitude, but he side-railed it as only a civil servant can who has managed to survive three presidential administrations and an impeachment attempt. “I want the men responsible for these murders arrested, tried, and convicted before the politicians can act. Since the territory was under martial law at the time of the atrocity I want the case heard in federal court where the Dolan influence is less profound. I do not insist that it be my court, but neither will I shirk my responsibilities should the venue shift to Montana to avoid local prejudice. I fear that the delay of even a month may be fatal.”

I uncrossed my legs and circled my hatbrim through my fingers. “Well, we can arrest Ross for the attempted robbery of the saloon. We can try to peg Dutch Tim's death on him. It's a stretch, but if we play him smart he might be persuaded to talk about the raid on the Spooner ranch in return for the promise of a sentence lighter than death.”

“If he pulled the trigger he will hang.”

“He won't talk then. You can bend a rifle barrel over the skulls of these southwestern road agents for twice your month and they will just laugh at you. They all fear the rope, but if it's swing for Dutch Tim or swing for the Spooners I don't see the choice in it. Nor will he.”

He touched his beard. “Life then. But only if he gives up his companions and the name of the man who planned the raid.”

“That would be Frank or I miss my guess. There is the little problem of tracking Ross down. The trail is cold. I had hopes of getting to him by way of Frank's wallet but that will require more time than we have. Also if I take out after him alone it will look wrong. I'm not a lawman down there, remember. As a saloonkeeper I'm only out the price of a burial. The holdup didn't go through.”

“Who keeps the peace in San Sábado?”

“No one. A fat Mexican named Ortiz pins himself to the town star when he is not weeding his roses or shouting at his many children.”

“Ortiz? Intriguing. We captured a young lieutenant by that name at Cerro Gordo. On the second night he strangled one of the sentries guarding him and shot another with the man's musket. He bayoneted a third on his way over the stockade. The following day he was observed fighting alongside his countrymen. I haven't thought of him in years.”

“It isn't the same Ortiz.”

“Likely not. The surname is a common one. You must try to bring this man around. Fewer questions will be asked if you assist him in Ross Baronet's arrest.”

“It will be like assisting a boulder up Granite Peak. One question, sir.”

He read the face of a mantel clock mollusked over with gilt cupids. “Make it brief. You have just time to board the Santa Fe southbound. It leaves at one forty-five.”

“Pinholster is the deputy with all the experience under cover. He was a Wells Fargo agent for four years. Arnsen knows that Socorro country like the clay under his nails and O'Donnell has been with you longer than anyone and has more of your trust than all the rest of us put together. Why did you ask me to help in this?”

“I do not submit my decisions to committee, Deputy. You will miss your train.”

“That's too thin, sir. It works when we are judge and officer of the court, but you said it yourself, this is a personal favor. The question deserves an answer.”

“You may be right. I may even concur. That does not mean I will provide it.”

I rose. “It doesn't signify anyway because I've guessed it. Pinholster and O'Donnell are as straight as a short drop. They bring their men in alive. So does Arnsen, but for a different reason. He's close with his purse and would avoid paying a federal burying fee at the cost of his own skin. I make the effort, but it doesn't always answer and I will kill a man without thought if he brings me grief. That's why you chose me, not because I'm loyal or dependable. The odds are better than even I will spare the United States the bother of a trial, which might delay things long enough for Dolan to get back from Washington City with his box of pardons. This way he will be forced to nail them up in matching coffins.”

“You are misled.”

“I've never thought so.”

“Good hunting, Deputy. Wire me in Helena when you have something worth sharing.”

I left him then surrounded by his borrowed bric-a-brac. You can read about Judge Harlan Amsdill Blackthorne in the florid memoirs of the tenderheel attorneys who pleaded in his courtroom, about his Old Testament views and the forty-six men and one woman he sentenced to hang in their observance, and it's all true. But something he said on the subject of justice while handing down one of those sentences is carved over a doorway at the Harvard School of Law, and the memoirs are all mustering dust and dead flies on some forgotten shelf. The fact that I don't understand those chiseled words any more than I did the man who spoke them is neither here nor there. He had more enemies than Custer on his hill but few peers.

10

T
HE SAME THREE
Apaches, or three from the same litter if not them, locked on to my trail half a day out of Socorro City on the way home, and inside two hours had closed to within a thousand feet. That was close enough to show their long shirts sashed about the waist and their hide leggings, proof against mescal spines and diamondbacks, and too close for me. Two had lances. The third carried a carbine behind his shoulder and what looked like extra cartridge belts slung from the horn of a proper saddle. Sensing them, the claybank told me in a hundred little ways what it thought of the situation, but I held it to a brisk walk, conserving vinegar for when a dash might be required. It seemed to understand and made only a token try at throwing the bit.

Another good reason not to run was I was in no hurry to quit that rolling foothill country west of the Oscuros until nightfall, when I might have a chance to cross the Jornada del Muerto under cover of darkness, which was the only cover that flat desert land offered. That was the plan, and the only thing wrong with it was it depended largely on Indian patience, a commodity rarer there than springwater.

It ran out in another hour. Something struck the parched earth in front of us and to the left with a
tuck
sound and a ball of dust. The report reached me a beat behind, bent in the middle and dulled by distance,
palop,
a pebble dropping into a shallow pool. I didn't look around, but quirted the reins across the gelding's withers and leaned over the pommel, offering less opposition to the wind while reducing the target. The bottom dropped out of the horse's gait. Its long legs chewed up ground and the wind pasted the front of my hatbrim to the crown. I thanked John Whiteside and myself for our taste in mounts. A big rump has all the mechanics necessary to push an animal along.

There may have been other shots. Probably there were. I didn't listen. I was too busy looking for a place to come to ground. You can't outrun Indians, there is no use trying. Apaches especially will overtake you on a bag of buffalo grass and bones no matter if you are riding von Bismarck's finest. They run them on pure mean, of which they have an unlimited supply.

The outlook held small promise. The foothills themselves lay too far to the east and there was nothing handy in the way of a breastwork. I risked a look back and saw all three riders closing, the one with the carbine foremost. He would be coming hardest to give himself time to draw rein and make a stationary shot before I fell out of range. Savages were poor marksmen as a rule and disliked wasting lead on a moving target from a moving platform.

Well, hell. Three hundred dollars doesn't go as far as it used to.

I reached back and unsheathed the curve-bladed skinning knife I'd carried since my winter wolfing days up on the Cut Bank. Shooting horses is preferable to cutting their throats for a variety of reasons, but not when you are in for a long siege and can't spare the ammunition. Next to a clay hill a supine carcass is the best thing in nature for stopping enemy fire.

I was just about to dig in, leap off, and cut when I spotted something sweet to the southwest. This was a long gentle swell of land much like all the others in that region but with the attraction of a line of junipers behind which a man could crouch and give battle without making a bull's-eye of himself into the bargain. I veered that way and raked the claybank's flanks, drawing blood and a squeal of pain and rage and a burst of speed that almost snatched my hat off my head. A spark flew off a flat rock just to my right, a snap shot intended to steer me away from the junipers. I hoped the nearness was a fluke. Trust me to draw the only sharpshooter in moccasins this side of Buffalo Bill's Wild West.

Going around the end of the juniper bank was the long route. I headed straight for it. I hoped the gelding was game and not one of those treasures that set their brakes at the prospect of leaving the earth for any reason. In the end it wouldn't matter, though, because either way I was going over, and if I made the trip alone and landed on my head and broke my neck I'd make a poor subject for the Apache notion of entertainment. I clawed for meat once again. I could tell by the answering shudder that I had made a friend for life. It's just as well they don't have trigger fingers.

And then we were airborne, the drumming gone from below and only the wind whistling past my ears to take my thoughts off what was behind and what might be ahead. The claybank grunted when it pushed off. Only the whites of its eyes showed on the way aloft. A branch brushed my leg and then we were clear. Open ground swept away in front of us. My teeth snapped together when we struck down, a pair of disks scraped against each other in my lower back. I gave the horse a few yards to find its footing and then I leaned back on the reins, turning its head and slipping my left foot out of the stirrup. When it went down I leaped clear, landed on both feet, and snapped the Winchester out of its scabbard. By the time the claybank got up and shook itself I was down on my stomach and drawing a bead between junipers.

The three braves had slowed their approach, reading my mind. At that distance I couldn't tell if they were painted, but then I'd gotten drunk in Helena one night with a former aide of General George Crook's who told me Apaches wore theirs on the inside where it never rubbed off. Resting my forearms on the slight rise, I laid the front sight on the arch of the rib cage of the one with the carbine, took a breath, let out half of it, and squeezed the trigger. A rooster tail of dust bristled in front of his mount's left forefoot.

Damn the duplicity of that sand country. The heat made a long lens of the air near the ground and made everything look closer than it was. All three Indians hauled back on their hair bridles and retreated farther out of range.

While they parleyed I crawled back toward the claybank for my canteen and the extra cartridge boxes in my saddle wallets. The damn beast was still indignant over having been made to soil its coat and shied, but I lunged for a dragging rein and hauled it close hand over hand. When I had what I needed I crawled back to my rise. One of the Apaches was missing along with his horse.

How they manage to move around in open prairie and stay invisible is one for those eggheads in Chicago who take them apart like frogs and study the pieces and publish papers on the subject. It didn't much matter, because I knew where he was going. I measured the height of the sun with my hands and decided there would still be enough light for him to see what he was doing by the time he got behind me. At least I still had a view of the one with the firepower.