Jailbreak (25 page)

We pulled up. They leaned on their tools and stared at us. I said to Lew, “Ask them where their bosses are and how many there are and how many guns they got and anything else you can think of.”

Lew picked him out one that looked to be a cut above the rest and let go with a string of Spanish. They volleyed back and forth for a few minutes and then the peon sort of pointed off toward the northeast corner of the pasture. Lew said, “He says the men are over in a little house they have built taking the
comida,
eating. Or drinking. Or sleeping. He ain’t sure. He says there are two gringos and one Mexican. He says sometimes two other men come to bring cattle but these two stay all the time. He says they got plenty of guns.”

I said, “Well, let’s just walk that way.”

We started through the brush, going slowly and keeping a sharp eye out. I didn’t particularly care to get ambushed on my own land. After a bit we began seeing cattle. They weren’t immediately obvious in the heavy brush, but they were obviously Mexican cattle. I saw a lot of different ear markings which indicated the cattle hadn’t all come from any one herd. That meant they were more than likely stolen.

After a bit we came to the little shack. It was just an adobe affair, but it had a nice roof of those red tiles that Nora had wanted. That give me a pang. But there was no time for such thinking. There was a little clearing around the house and three saddled horses tied out front. I could see several more in a small corral in the back. I said, lowly, “Let’s get down. Norris, you hold the horses. And keep them quiet. Lew, you and Hays spread out and stay down. I don’t want them to see you. I ain’t exactly sure how to flush them out of that house, but I don’t want them to think they are outgunned. Ben, I want you right behind me, but crouched down out of sight.”

He said, “You ain’t just going to walk up there?”

I stood up and stepped into the clearing. I’d already holstered my gun. I said, “You know a better way?”

I took a couple of steps forward and halloed the house. I was only about thirty yards away and I was cold meat for a rifle shot, but so far as I could see, the little cabin didn’t have any windows, at least not at the front. The door was open, but I’d be able to see if anyone tried to sneak a shot around the frame and have plenty of time to hit the dirt before anyone could fire. I stopped and yelled at the house again. A man suddenly appeared in the door opening. He had a rifle in his hand, but he wasn’t pointing it at me. He said, “What the hell you want? And what the hell you doing on this land? Git the hell off.”

I took a couple of steps more forward. I said, “I got a message for you from Sheriff Gadley. Come out and talk. ”

He said, “Yeah?” Then he turned his head and said something to someone inside. He said to me, “I kin hear you from here. Speak yore piece.”

I said, “My name is Justa Williams. You are trespassing on my land. I’ll give you exactly ten minutes for you and your stolen cattle to get off my land.”

He stared at me for a second. Then, suddenly, there was another man in the doorway. He too had a rifle but he was having trouble getting a shot at me because the first man was slightly blocking his way. I fell forward, drawing as I did. Thirty yards is a little long for accurate handgun shooting but I fired three times. I saw the first man go down. Behind me I heard a sudden burst of fire as the others let go. The second man fell, staggering backwards into the cabin. I yelled, “Keep firing through that door before somebody can shut it!”

Even though the cabin was adobe, that mud can get pretty hard, and I was counting on ricochets. We put about fifteen rounds through the door opening and then something white fluttered out. I yelled, “Stop! Hold your fire!”

We waited and then a man came staggering out. I could see blood on his shirt. He had a rifle in one hand and a revolver in the other but they were both over his head. “Don’t shoot!” he said. “I give.”

I eased forward. “Then just drop those weapons and keep walking toward me.”

He done as he was told. As he got closer I could see he wasn’t much more than a kid, eighteen or nineteen maybe. You could tell he was poor white trash and he’d probably—if somebody didn’t kill him first—grow up to be old, poor white trash. I’d seen a hundred of his kind along the border.

He said, in a kind of whiny voice, “I never knowed this was nobody’s land, mister. Honest I didn’t.”

“Keep your mouth shut,” I said. I turned around. “Hays, go help him load his two friends on those saddled horses out front. Ben, you and Lew get a rope on those ponies in the back. We got to get moving.”

The kid started in to whine again. He said, “I cain’t do no work. I’m hurt, hurt bad. Cain’t you see that?”

“You are fixing to get dead if you don’t do as you’re told,” I said.

When the two dead men were loaded and Ben and Lew had brought up the two horses from the back, I told the kid to take off his boots.

He said, “What?”

I said, “You get shot in the ear? TAKE OFF YOUR GODDAM BOOTS!”

Well, that fetched his attention. He sat down on the ground and did as he was bid. With some satisfaction I noticed he wasn’t wearing socks. I said, “Now start walking.”

He stared at me a second. Hays laughed. I cocked my pistol. The boy moved, putting one foot gingerly in front of another on the rocky ground. But he was going toward the river. I said, “No, not that away.” I pointed with my pistol. “North. Straight north. And don’t even look back over your shoulder. Just keep walking. And I don’t reckon I have to tell you not to come back this way.”

He gave me a sullen look. “You stealin’ my horse?”

“He’ll be in town,” I said. “Waiting for you. You are just loaning him to me.”

He wanted to cuss me but he didn’t dare. We watched him making his painful way through the brush until his head had disappeared from sight. I picked up his rifle and revolver and slung them off in the brambles where they’d never be found. Then I said, “Mount up. We got to go to a funeral.”

The
campesinos
went to work on the job of burying the two
pistoleros
with the same patient approach they’d taken toward the irrigation ditch. I watched them making the holes for the late departed and thought about the little adobe house with its tile roof. I had no doubt my house wasn’t finished. A thought kept coming back to me. It was about that time that we heard the sound of horses approaching. We were all still mounted, watching the peons, kind of ringed around the graves. I looked up and here came Sheriff Gadley with two deputies in attendance. He didn’t even bother to say any kind of greeting, just pulled out a pistol and said, “You bunch is under arrest.”

I asked him mildly, “What for?”

He nodded at the two bodies. “Plain as a cat’s ass. Murder.”

Ben said, “How you know it wasn’t self-defense?”

He said, “Don’t give me none of your damn lip, boy! It’s murder ’cause I say it’s murder.”

I spit on the ground. “Then if that’s how you see it they is fixing to be three more. You an’ them two hombres you got there.”

“What? What the hell you talkin’ about, boy?”

I leaned my forearms on the pommel of my saddle and said, “Well,
old man,
I’m talking about a gent who is over in the bushes right behind you with a Winchester carbine pointed right at you and your two grandsons here. And he can fire that thing faster than a Gatling gun. You even look like tightening your finger on that trigger he’s going to let fly.”

It was a bluff. All I was trying to do was get him to look back and then I was going to pull on him. I hadn’t quite decided what I was going to do about the two deputies with the shotguns.

But just then Lew came riding around me. He had his badge on and he showed it. He placed himself between Gadley and me. He said, in that voice he’s got, “I’m Lew Vara and I’m the sheriff of Matagorda County. These men are under my jurisdiction and in my custody. Also, this land belongs to them. Have you got a warrant for being on it?”

Sheriff Gadley stared at him, chewing his cud of tobacco. Finally he said, “How the hell I know you’re the shur’ff of Matagorda County? Anybody can get a badge.”

Lew said, “Well, you can either go back to town and wire Blessing, Texas. Or you can take a chance and find out, to your sorrow, that I am. Now, do one or the other, but get the hell off this land.”

He stared for a while longer, but then he slowly put his revolver away. He said, “All right. But you ain’t heered the last of this yet.”

I said, “Sheriff, let me acquaint you with something you might need to hear. Earlier this morning, in your office, you was telling me and my little brother that since we didn’t have any votes around here we didn’t count for much. Let me make a point clear. Votes seem to count a great amount to you. My family is worth upwards of three million dollars. You give us anymore trouble, or you let anybody spend more than one night on this piece of ground and I guarantee you I’ll come back down here, grab me somebody off the street and spend whatever money it takes to get a crook like you out of office. You follow me, old man?”

He stared at me with hate, but he didn’t do much more than spit tobacco juice on the ground. As he was about to wheel his horse around I said, “One more thing. . . .” I gestured at the peons. “We’ll be taking these men back to Matagorda County with us. The sheriff here has got paper on them.”

Lew gave me a startled look, but Gadley just turned his horse, saying, “I don’t give a damn what you do with them peons.”

Then they were turning their horses and loping along beside the irrigation ditch, not even bothering to look back. Ben said, “Wasn’t very friendly, was they?”

I said to Lew, “Tell them peons to drop their tools and get on these spare horses. Tell them they’re going to take a train ride.”

Lew said, “Just what in hell are you going to do with these boys?”

“Put them to work. They look like master builders to me. That is if there is still a reason to build a house.”

Lew took out a cigarillo and lit it and looked at me. He shook his head. He said, “You beat all, you know that? Do you ever stop thinking?”

“Let’s go. We got a lot of miles to make.”

We got to the train depot just about three o’clock. I was glad to see that Jack Cole was there and that he was looking pretty nearly whole. I asked after Senor Elizandro and he said the
caballero
was coming along nicely. I give Jack fifteen hundred pesos, about two hundred dollars, which was nearly all I had after paying for fares and hiring a horse car for our animals and the peons that we would be taking back with us. Jack protested about the money but I told him it wasn’t nearly enough for what he’d done and I would send him more.

We all sat around having a drink and then it came time to go. I seen that the horses and the peons were made comfortable, making sure to provide the workers with food and something to drink for the five-hour ride to Blessing. They all looked in wonder at these sudden things that were happening to them and I couldn’t blame them. But they’d be all right. They’d do me a job of work and I’d send them back with more money than they’d left with. I just turned the desperados’ horses loose.

We all said good-bye to Jack and then climbed aboard the chair cars for the long ride back. I knew I wouldn’t get back early enough that night to try to see Nora so I pinned my hopes on the morrow. Then I leaned back in the seat and took a long sighing breath and tried to go to sleep. It had been a long, hard trip and I was plenty tired. But I’d got it all done.

Except for marrying Nora.

That night we got off the train stiff and sore from having sat so long. Sitting hadn’t been something we’d got very used to in the past week. I immediately sent Ben and Norris and Hays on back to the ranch, having them get a wagon to carry the Mexican workers in. Lew, of course, lived in Blessing so he went on home. I put my horse in the livery and then went to the hotel my family owned. Down the street I could see Nora’s house. It was dark. So was her daddy’s mercantile. I got a bottle of whiskey and went on up to the room I kept special at the hotel. Lew had offered to keep me company but I’d told him I didn’t want any. The next day was going to come soon enough.

* * *

There were two things I was beginning to think wouldn’t hold up in this world. And that was gunmen who thought they were the fastest and suitors who thought they were the lastest. If you’re a gunman there is always somebody faster than you, and if you are in the running for a lady’s hand, don’t figure on being the last until you got it securely attached to the bedpost of your house with a ring on her finger.

So it was with that thought in mind that I set out the next morning for Lonnie Parker’s mercantile store. I thought I’d get the lay of the land from Lonnie before I ventured to go by the house. I’d had a shave and a bath and was looking as good as I could considering by past adventures. With a kind of beating heart I walked into the cool dimness of Lonnie’s store. He was standing behind his counter and, when he saw me, one look at his face told me how matters stood. Normally Lonnie’s face lit up like a jack-o’-lantern when I come in, mainly because our ranch did so much trade with him. But now he just stared at me glumly. I said, “Hello, Lonnie.”

“Howdy, Justa,” he said. He put out his hand and we shook.

I leaned one elbow on his counter and looked at him. “She pretty mad?”

He cleared his throat. Then he said, kind of miserably, “Well, you know women.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t. If I did I don’t reckon I’d be in this mess. I take it I am in a mess?”

He cleared his throat again. “I couldn’t say,” he said.

“She at home?”

He said, “I reckon I ought not to say about that.”

I give him a hard look. “Lonnie, you wouldn’t pull my leg about this, would you? It’s passing important to me.”

He looked away, looking miserable. He said, “Justa, I’d be much obliged if you wouldn’t put me on the spot like this. Whyn’t you go down an’ talk to Mizz Parker. I’d take it as a favor if you would.”

“So it’s like that, is it,” I said. I pushed away from the counter. I walked toward the door. I said, “Well, I might be seeing you again, Lonnie.”

He said, a kind of pleading tone in his voice, “Now, Justa, don’t take it like that. Hell, I ain’t got the slightest thang to do with it. You know women.”

I walked down the road to the Parker’s house, not even bothering to get my horse out of the livery stable. For a moment I stood by the front gate and looked up at the white-framed, gabled house. Nora might be in there somewheres. It seemed a long ways, looking at that pleasant setting with the shading oak trees and the swing on the front porch, since that desperate flight across the barren plain from Monterrey to Laredo. I walked up the path, stepped up on that front porch and knocked on the front door. There was a considerable wait, one long enough that I knocked again. I had the feeling of someone drawing back the curtains in the parlor to look out to see who it was but I couldn’t be sure. After a moment the front door opened. It was Mrs. Parker. Of course I’d hoped it would be Nora but I knew better. She stood there, looking just as sweet and matronly in her gingham gown and apron as I’d always thought of her. But this time she was wringing her hands in her apron. Without me asking she said, “Justa, Nora’s not here.”

She hadn’t even bothered to open the screen door, just faced me with anguish on her face and her hands in her apron. But I doffed my hat nonetheless and said, “Well, Mizz Parker, where can I find her? Or when can I talk to her?”

That made her look more upset. She said, “Justa, I can’t say. I’m not supposed to say.”

I said, “Couldn’t she have understood? How did she know what was going on? I sent a telegram.”

She said, “I know. But if it had just come earlier. But it coming on the day of the wedding . . . ” She let her voice trail off.

I said, “Mizz Parker, I sent that wire as soon as I could. Before that I was to hell and—excuse me—I was in the middle of the Mexican desert. Wasn’t nothing I could do. I got word as soon as I could.”

True misery was written in her face. She said, “I’m sorry, Justa. There’s nothing I can do. And the house wasn’t even finished. Or the furniture. And then there were all the guests.” She got a look on her face like mothers do. She said, “Oh, it was awful.”

I said, “If I could just talk to her.”

“You can’t.”

“Why not?”

“She’s gone.”

“To where?” Visions of her running off with another man jumped through my head. I felt my temper rising. “Where’s she gone?”

The words come out of Mrs. Parker like they’d been drawn out with tongs. She said, “To Galveston.”

“Where in Galveston?”

She was giving that apron a good workout. She said, “I can’t say. I promised.”

I looked at her a moment now. I said, “Is that all you have to tell me? She’s run off without waiting for word from me? And you’re not allowed to tell me where she’s gone so I can go and explain? Is that about the size of it?”

She said, “That seems to be her wish.”

I doffed my hat again. “Thank you,” I said. Then I turned and walked away.

I stayed in town that afternoon. Lew hung around me, not saying much, just kind of being there. We drunk considerable whiskey and then I got my horse and taken it for the ranch. I’d made sure to eat supper in town so I’d arrive too late for one of Buttercup’s treats. That evening me and Dad and Ben and Norris sat in the office, us having a whiskey, Dad having one of his rare, watered-down versions, and, talking more to Dad than anyone else, I told what had happened about Nora. Dad didn’t say much, just kind of nodded. But Ben said, “Serves her right. She don’t know what she missed.”

I turned a cold eye on him. I said, “Shut your mouth, Ben. You’re my brother or else that remark would have gotten you something you didn’t want.”

Nobody else said anything. I didn’t even have the heart to make any remarks to Norris. Hell, he’d never meant to cause what he had and maybe someday he’d learn what he could handle and what he couldn’t. Until then I’d just have to put up with it.

Next morning I had breakfast and a whiskey and was idling around on the front porch when I saw Norris taking off in a buckboard. I figured he was heading for town to try and erase what mistakes his absence of the last ten days had caused. I wandered back into the office where Dad was sitting. I said, “Howard, did you have this much trouble with our mother?”

“Oh, yes, Justa,” he said. “Oh, yes. The path to truth or to a true woman is never smooth. She led me a merry chase. But the one thing you can depend on, son, is that once you catch a good one she’ll be worth the effort. I wouldn’t give up just now if I was you.”

I taken another drink of whiskey and said, “I don’t see where I got much choice.”

Then about noon a strange thing happened. This contractor I’d hired to build the house for me and Nora come knocking at the front door. I answered it because I wasn’t in no rush to get in and eat Buttercup’s lunch. But this man up and leveled his fist at me and shook it and said, mad as a wet setting hen, “I know I been behind on this house. But by Gawd, sir, you better not send another one of your brothers down to threaten me! We are near to being through, but I can guarantee you that there will be a charge for a man pointing a pistol between my eyes!”

I was that astonished I didn’t know what to say. Finally I kind of fumbled out, “How them new, uh, workers I sent you panning out?”

“They are fine tile men!” he said. “But that in no way excuses your inexcusable behavior! I’m a reputable contractor and I will not be threatened by the likes of you range cowboys. I’ll finish this job. Your furniture is on the way. But then, by Gawd, sir, you will answer to me!”

And with that he turned away and stalked off the porch. I watched him, wondering. Then I went into the dining room shaking my head. Ben and Dad were already at table. I said, “Ben, I wish you wouldn’t go down there threatening that contractor. That house is no good to me without Nora. I don’t reckon I care if they ever get it finished. You go ahead and figure out a way to send them peons back to Laredo. That was just a wild idea of mine. Didn’t come to nothing.”

Ben looked at me, chewing. He said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I said, “That contractor that has been building Nora and my house just said my brother came up and stuck a pistol between his eyes this morning and told him he’d better get high-behind and get that house furnished and finished. Don’t be doing that sort of thing, Ben. That ain’t our style.”

Ben looked over at Dad. Dad just raised his eyes. Ben said, shaking his head, “Wasn’t me, Justa.”

“Man said it was my brother.”

“Wasn’t me.”

“Then who the hell could it have been? Hays wouldn’t do something like that, would he?”

Ben shook his head. With his knife he indicated the glass in my hand and said, “Was I you I wouldn’t be coming to no quick decisions. You been putting away enough of that pop-skull lately to handle an army. You might ought to wait a bit before you go to deciding things.”

For the next couple of days I sort of hung around the house, mostly drinking whiskey. Nobody said much to me. Harley came in to report that they’d got the biggest part of the haying done and were keeping the cattle on fresh grass. He said we’d had some rain and that things had sweetened up considerable. I was glad to hear that, in a sort of hazy way.

Then on the morning of the third day Ben asked if I wouldn’t care to go down and see my house. I told him I reckoned not, but he kept insisting so, about midmorning, we went strolling the half mile down to the place.

Well, it wasn’t quite finished. They were still cleaning up the outside and laying down some carpets and what not, but the contractor was standing out front looking at his handiwork. He said, giving me a look, “Well, there it is. And you will be getting my bill. Pay up promptly or hear from my lawyers.”

I watched him stalk away and then Ben said, “Why don’t you go in and look around, Justa?”

I shook my head. It was what Nora had wanted. Now she wouldn’t be there to enjoy it. I said, “Naw, I reckon not.”

“Go. Just for a minute.”

Well, I did. It was everything we’d planned, big and cool and spacious. The furniture was all in place. The workmen, who were still putting on some finishing touches, quickly got out of my way as I came in. I stood a moment in the big parlor and then I walked through the rest of the house. It was what Nora had wanted. Too bad she wouldn’t have it. I turned out the front door. The contractor was waiting there for me. He said, “Well?”

I shrugged. I said, “You done your part. You’ll get paid.”

He was still livid. He said, “Then next time don’t send your brother down to threaten me.”

I pointed at Ben. “There he is. Ask him if I sent him down.”

The contractor looked at Ben. He said, “That’s not the one. The other was wearing a sack suit. He was bigger and slightly blond.”

I turned and looked at Ben. “Norris?”

He nodded. “I told you to ease up on him.”

Norris rode in that evening with Nora beside him in the buckboard. He just pulled up in front, tied off the horses and walked away. I went out to the steps of the porch. Nora came shyly to me. But the words she spoke weren’t shy. She said, “Justa Williams, if you ever put me through that again I will kill you. I will marry you just so I can kill you.”

I stood looking at her. “What made you change your mind?”

“Norris. He came and talked my mother into telling him where I was in Galveston. Then he came and told me all what had happened.” For a second her face softened. Then she said, “But I could still claw your eyes out. Leaving me holding the bag like that.” She looked around her, taking a long time to study the ranch. She said, “Maybe when I’m really and truly a part of all this I’ll understand better.”

I laughed softly. I said, “A man said that not too long ago in Laredo. After we both thought we weren’t going to make it.”

She finally reached up and kissed me. Then she grabbed me by the hand and, in a brisk fashion, said, “I want to go see my house.”

I untied the reins to the buckboard horses, helped her aboard and then drove down to the house. No one else was there. It was just coming on dusk and it was quiet as it could be. As I’d done, she wandered from room to room. I waited on her in a big Spanish chair in front of the fireplace that needed winter and some wood. When she was through she came and knelt down beside me and took my hand in hers. She said, “Justa, I’m sorry. Norris has told me how I hurt you. I’ll never do that again. I’ll be your wife and not only will I never hurt you, I won’t let anyone else hurt you. Do you forgive me?”

“Reckon I have to,” I said. “You forgave me. After all the disappointments I gave you.”

I heaved myself out of the chair. We walked to this big window that overlooked the back pasture. We didn’t say anything for a moment and then Nora suddenly exclaimed, “Did I tell you? About our wedding?”

“No,” I said. “Did we have one?”

“The one Norris has arranged.”

I looked around at her. “What are you talking about?”

“Norris!” she said. She lifted her hands and her eyes, the movement of her hands making her breasts swell so that I wanted to rush back and try out that marriage bed in advance of its time. She said, “He spent all one day telegraphing from Galveston to our guests. They’ve all agreed to come back. And, Justa, guess what!” Her eyes were dancing like a schoolgirl’s. “He’s chartered a paddle-wheel steamer from Galveston day after tomorrow. We’re to be married on board with all the wedding party. Then we honeymoon in New Orleans! Honey, I’m so thrilled!”