The Kid: A Novel (17 page)

Witnesses saw Blazer furiously stare at Bernstein before flatly announcing, “No one can call me a liar and stay alive.”

On August 5, for old times’ sake, a final collection of Regulators rode to Blazer’s Mill to visit the grave of Dick Brewer. The Kid felt overheated, and he was joined by some parched Anglo friends as he veered off to dismount alongside a shaded mountain stream. He and Waite and the Coes knelt to dunk their faces in the water and drink, just as their horses did. And there they heard the gunfire of a disturbance among some off-the-reservation Apaches and Mexican Regulators, among them Atanacio Martínez, the former Lincoln constable. The Apaches thought the Regulators were there for some more horse stealing. Which was not yet true.

“Morris” Bernstein and the Indian agent were allotting salted meat rations to some Apache women when the bookkeeper also heard the gunfire and left his government office to ride out and calm things.

Seeing his opportunity, Dr. Blazer went from the mill to his house to get the Springfield carbine that Andrew Roberts had used to kill Dick Brewer, and he cantered his horse until he was just behind the bookkeeper. The Apaches and the Mexicans were already straggling away from each other and were shocked when they saw Blazer lift the carbine and fire it just inside Bernstein’s left shoulder blade, where he knew the heart was. Bernstein fell dead into the tall blond cheatgrass. Blazer got off his horse and the Apaches and Mexicans got onto theirs, scattering elsewhere. Anglo trouble, not theirs.

Inventing in his head a gun battle with the Englishman as the luckless victim, Blazer used Bernstein’s pistol to kill him three more times, then changed the tale into an Apache robbery, collecting all the bookkeeper’s worldly goods, even turning his pockets out. Then he went back to the hotel, claiming he’d been running the Belsaw in the mill. Was that gunfire he’d heard?

The Kid’s horse had scared with the gun noise and scrambled away, so he had to hop up behind George Coe and latch on to his waist as they loped toward a final three oddly successive gunshots. But they happened into the peeved and shot-at Apaches, who took off after them, rifles raised. Coe spun his horse around, and he and the Kid went to fleeing, hanging off to the side of the horse like trick riders do in Wild West shows to avoid more than fifty zipping bullets until the Apaches got bored with the chase and rode elsewhere, whooping and caterwauling in victory.

And then there was nothing for the Regulators to do but steal all the Indian agency’s horses and mules in what they reckoned was fair trade for the disquietude they’d put up with.

*  *  *

Because it was a federal problem involving the military, Lieutenant Colonel Dudley ordered a thorough investigation, and an Army captain interviewed all those staying at Blazer’s Mill, each with a vested interest in agreeing to the owner’s fiction. The investigator suspected anti-Jewish prejudice was behind the homicide, but only noted in his report that “Dr. Blazer neither expressed surprise nor regret at the murder of Mr. Bernstein, nor sympathy for his friends. He also insinuated to me that Mr. Bernstein frequently tampered with his letters.”

Weighing all the evidence, there was only one thing Lieutenant Colonel Dudley could think to do: indict “the McSween band of outlaws” and “Antrim, known as Kid” for the cold-blooded murder.

Cavalrymen were sent over hill and dale in pursuit of him and were told one night he was holed up in the
jacal
of a Mexican sheepherder and his wife. In spite of their hammering continually on the flimsy door and hollering for access, it took some minutes for the nightgowned wife to let the cavalry in, excusing her tardiness with the claim of deep sleep. Some friction matches were lit. The
jacal
was just one earthen-floored room with some kitchenware, a few pieces of parlor furniture, and a high bed that the couple huddled together on, their stocking feet dangling. There was nothing more to see. “We been duped,” a corporal said, and the hunting party left in a huff.

Hearing the hooves of the horses grow faint, the husband and wife scooted down and hauled the upper mattress that did not belong there off the hiding Kid.

With laughter he admitted, “I just about suffocated.” And then he was too excited to sleep so he entertained them by singing in his Irish tenor “Beautiful Dreamer,” “Aura Lee,” and “Turkey in the Straw.”

In frustration Lieutenant Colonel Dudley recalled his hapless cavalry to the fort.

*  *  *

Jimmy Dolan and his crew rustled a hundred John H. Tunstall cattle that were still being held for probate, so in a tag-you’re-it, the Kid and his crew stole the Jimmy Dolan horses corralled on the ranch owned by kin of the deceased Emil Fritz. Included among the stock was an Arabian sorrel that was branded BB, being the horse that Sheriff Bill Brady rode into Lincoln on the day he was assassinated. The Kid took that sorrel as his own, saying the brand stood for Billy Bonney.

On the Kid’s initiative, they took the herd to John Chisum’s vast Jinglebob Ranch on the Pecos River, Billy presuming Chisum’s hundreds of cowboys would be continually in need of fresh animals, and also hoping Sallie Chisum would still be there. She was. She hugged the Kid with delight and kissed his cheek and called him Willy, Sallie’s proprietary name-changing being his first clue as to her new hankering. She looked over his shoulder at Waite, Folliard, Middleton, and the Coe cousins, still mounted and smirking or squirming over the public display of affection. She called, “We only have room enough for Willy here. But you all can find cots in the bunkhouse.”

There were vulgarities and catcalls from his friends as they urged the stolen horses into a fenced corral.

Sallie linked her forearm inside his to guide the Kid down a wide hallway air-conditioned by a middle ditch of flowing water that was called an
acequia
. Crossing an interior footbridge, she told him he needed to heel his boots off because Uncle John hated filth on his fine Wilton carpets. She told him he could have Uncle’s room as his lair. She’d have the maid heat water for his bath. Were those his only clothes? Well then, she’d find him some nice things in Uncle’s closet. And as he was beginning to get undressed, she paused at his bedroom door to say, “Ever since you sent me that lovely letter from Lincoln, during the outrage, I have been thinking of you with such felicity and fondness.”

Shying a little, he confessed that Susan McSween had helped him with it.

“Really?” she said. “Forsooth? But the sentiments were yours?”

He smiled. “Verily.”

She evaluated him like a worried schoolteacher. “You’re so adult now, so brazen, so something-or-other. I feel like I’m meeting you for the first time.”

“I’ll take real pleasure in getting acquainted.”

She flirtatiously smiled, then turned away with “Ta ta.”

*  *  *

The Kid took a bath in the kitchen with Sallie’s teenage brothers, Walter and William, hunching forward on chairs near his scrubbing-up and questioning him about his storied role in the Lincoln gun battle. Walter offered to use a scullery brush on him but was denied, and William wrapped him in a voluptuous towel as the Mexican and Navajo cooks smiled at his nakedness and Billy scurried to his room. There Sallie had laid out John Chisum’s scavenged “morning wear” of laced-up drawers, knee stockings, an overlarge black frock coat, gray trousers and a silver waistcoat, a white shirt with pleated front and a stiff white collar, and a cravat he chose not to wear to avoid the comments of the five comedians who’d be joining them for dinner.

The loyal friends Billy called Ironclads took off their guns, hats, and boots as instructed, but the noise was not softened as their footfalls shook the silverware and chair legs shrieked with their seatings. Each was as spruced as possible, his hair still wet, and even the Coe cousins’ hillbilly beards had been scissored and combed. Sallie was the lone woman at the feast and reveled in the Regulators’ smitten attentiveness, quietly queenly as she encouraged topics of conversation or ordered food to be passed counterclockwise, affectedly demurring when she was flattered, and often letting a hidden hand rest on the Kid’s thigh. Quoting her uncle, she’d said, “Eat till you get tired, boys.”

“Oh my yes,” Tom Folliard said. “It’s my intention to get stuffed like a turkey.”

Fred Waite announced, “Well, I don’t know where to start first, it all looks so edible.”

“You lead the way and we’ll precede,” Charlie Bowdre offered.

“Proceed,” Doc Scurlock corrected.

“Wasn’t no one dint unnerstand him,” George Coe maintained.

Doc noted in his Louisiana drawl, “But I have a jealous regard for the Queen’s English.”

Billy asked, “Would you like some pot roast, John?”

And Middleton said, “Is it good to eat or will it just do?” And then he said, “Just kidding, Miss Chisum.”

Charlie Bowdre asked Doc, “Taters?”

And Doc said, “Lord no. I’m still gnashing this corn.”

Charlie asked their hostess, “We savin the cobs for the privy?”

Sallie primly said no.

Franklin Coe asked the Kid, “Could you give me just a smidgen of that gravy for this biscuit?”

Billy passed the tureen as Sallie’s hand got ever more personal with him. He was so distracted he did not feel at liberty to speak, nor could he stand without the ridicule of his friends over his evident excitement.

Sallie invited the men to discuss the secretary of the interior’s overdue suspension of Governor Axtell and the gossip that President Hayes would replace him with Indiana’s adjutant general, Lew Wallace.

There were no takers except for Charlie Bowdre, who scoffed, “They’s all so crooked they could hide behind a corkscrew.”

“Look at me just putting these victuals away,” Tom Folliard said. “I cain’t seem to quit.”

George Coe asked, “Would there be pie comin, Miss Chisum?”

She nodded. “There’s pie.”

“And here I’m about to explode,” a hefty John Middleton said.

Charlie Bowdre frowned at Walter and William Chisum. “You boys is awful silenced,” he said.

Sallie lifted her hand from the Kid’s lap as she answered, “According to their uncle, children should be seen but not heard.”

The taller teenage boy groused, “We’re not children.” But he hung his head low.

Sallie dabbed her mouth with a linen napkin and said in a regal way, “I have attained a sufficiency. I do hope you all have enjoyed your dinner.”

The Regulators lavished praise on it.

The Navajo cook carried in two hot apple pies with latticed crusts, and Franklin Coe asked, “How’d you get them pie crusts to do like that?”

The Navajo just smiled since English was not available to her when she was tired.

Sallie rose up, thanked the cook in rudimentary Athabaskan, and softly touched the Kid’s hair, saying, “Willy, will you join me on the veranda?”

Tom Folliard leered as he hooted, “Hoo hoo, Kid!”

*  *  *

She sat next to him in the sloped leather Mexican chairs that were called
butacas
. She seemed about to comment on the flashing riot of stars overhead but instead inquired if the Kid had read William Shakespeare’s
Twelfth Night
.

“Of course not,” he said. Weeks ago, he thought, he would have self-consciously lied that he had.

She said, “There’s a line sung to a girl: ‘Journeys end in lovers’ meeting.’ Which I feel has happened here. With us. And then: ‘What is love? Tis not hereafter.
Present
mirth hath present laughter. What’s to come is still unsure. In delay there lies no plenty, then come kiss me, Sweet-and-twenty. Youth’s a stuff will not endure.’ ”

“You’re the Sweet-and-twenty?”

“Aren’t you the clever one?”

“And I agree with that last part about youth. Ain’t everlasting.”

She hesitated as if second-guessing what she’d say next. She finally got out, “We’re free spirits, we two. Anarchists, even. I’m fairly sure I’d be an outlaw if I were male, and what I’m about to propose is rather illicit.”

The Kid confessed, “I’d tell you I like where this is heading, but I’m afraid I’d spook you off your conclusion.”

She did not smile as she said, “No. You shan’t.” She looked off at nothing at all. “I have to go back to Denton, Texas, soon, and I have decided you should be the one to relieve me of my virginity.”

“Hell yes, Sallie! I feature you in my favorite dreams.”

She seemed far more straitlaced as she inquired, “Are you in possession of a so-called French letter?”

“Weeks ago I got a tin of Merry Widow sheaths at the
farmacia
just in case. Charlie calls them cum-dumbs.”

The Regulators were then loudly trooping out of the hacienda, with Charlie offering all those in the bunkhouse some of his flask of tonsil paint.

Doc Scurlock asked Sallie, “When’s your uncle get back?”

“Tomorrow.”

“We’d sort of like to hire on with his outfit.”

“Like I say: tomorrow.” And when she and the Kid were alone again, she kissed him in a soft, nibbling, playful, pliant way. She said, “I feel like I should thank the girl who taught you how to kiss. You’re far above average.”

“You, too. You got my head reeling.”

She whispered close to his ear, “I’ll go to my room and make preparations. Wait ten minutes and just silently enter.”

*  *  *

He took off Uncle John’s fine clothing and with nothing at all on tiptoed to a door that swung open with just a tap of his finger. Sallie had kept a lacemaker’s lamp lit so he could see her luxuriantly naked on a wealth of pillows like that fleshy female in the harem painting he’d seen years ago at the Two Galoots Saloon. Billy Antrim had called it an odalisque, but said “don’t ask me to spell it.” Sallie’s face seemed concerned, as if she were evaluating the Kid’s evaluation. She’d shaken her blond hair loose and let it fall. Even the hair of the crotch her thighs tightly clenched was blond. Sallie’s breasts were so often confined in high-necked and corseted gowns that the Kid was surprised at how ample they were, but now flattening sideways over her ribs, the pink nipples as wide as dollar coins.

The Kid was so hard he ached.