The Outlaws (29 page)

“Do you think that doctor knows what he’s doing?” he asked her, turning his face away.

“Dr. Greenway said you had to have patience,” she reminded him. “The wound is healing from the inside out and that takes time. Besides, I think it looks better since he washed out those chips of bone.”

“I was figuring on getting to Sumner before now to see how Violet’s doing at

Manuela’s.”

“You know you can’t ride yet.”

“Yes, but Violet needs someone to look after her.”

“Manuela’s very kind to Violet. I suspect she’s more concerned about her than ever, now that Charlie’s dead. Having Violet there gives her someone to fuss over.”

Ezra couldn’t explain his continuing worry to Tessa. Sure, Manuela would see that Violet ate and such, but there was more wrong with Violet than that. She’d started acting strange after Billy shot her father, and everything was bound to be worse now that Billy’d been captured and was in jail in Santa Fe, hundreds of miles from Sumner. She didn’t have anyone at all now.

“I wish she’d have come to Lincoln with us,” he muttered.

Tessa finished tying on the new bandage, straightened and looked at Ezra, “I asked her, even begged her. She refused. What more could we have done?”

“If I’d’ve felt better I could’ve made her come along.”

“Kidnapping the poor girl wouldn’t be any solution.”

Tessa was probably right, but Violet’s pale face haunted him. He’d had dreams where she was Juanita, alone and frightened in a tendejon, and he couldn’t save her.

“Damn it, I’m fed up with being an invalid!” he shouted at Tessa.

“Well, don’t take it out on me,” she snapped, marching from the room and leaving him alone.

After a few minutes Jules bounced in with his harmonica. “Mark taught me a new one,” he said. “Do you wanta hear ‘Camptown Races’?”

Without waiting for a yes or no, he put the instrument to his mouth and began to play.

Jules carried a tune well, but Ezra was heartily sick of listening to that damn harmonica. Mark ought to suffer being shut up in a house for a month with Jules playing it constantly—see how he liked it!

Mark didn’t drop by much, though, even when he was in town. When he did visit, he and Tessa seemed more like enemies than friends, eyeing one another warily, once in a while skirmishing briefly. Yet, in her way, Tessa really paid more attention to Mark than she did to Calvin Rutledge when he came to call, which was too damn often to suit Ezra.

He plain didn’t like the man--he guessed he never had. There was something too smooth about him that set his hackles on end.

Rutledge kept asking Tessa if she’d made up her mind.

“Calvin’s willing to bring you with us, Ezra,” Tessa had told him the week before. “That’s if I marry him and move to Santa Fe. He says he can find you a job, maybe a clerk’s position since you can write and cipher.”

Ezra had grunted. Him, a clerk? Beholden to Rutledge for the job besides? Never in a million years. If his wound would ever heal, he might consider scouting for Mark, he wasn’t sure yet.|

“How did you like it, Ez?” Jules asked, breaking in on his thoughts.

“Huh? Oh, the song. Lively. I like that kind of tune.”

“You didn’t look as if you liked the song. You looked kind of mad.”

“I wasn’t mad at you or your playing. You do fine.”

“Was it because of Billy? Are you mad ‘cause he’s locked up in jail?”

Ezra sighed. “It doesn’t seem right, him in jail, when there’s worse walking the streets free as birds.”

Jules’ eyes widened. “Who?”

“Mathews, for one. I’ve never forgotten he was in that posse of Brady’s when they shot

Tunstall.”

“You gonna go after Mathews?” Jules asked excitedly. “I’ll help you!”

“Hey, wait a minute. I don’t aim to go after anyone.”

“When you get better, I mean.”

Ezra shook his head. “Not then either. I promised Pat Garrett I’d stay out of trouble and I plan to keep that promise. There’s been enough killing.”

“What if Billy breaks out of jail? You told me there wasn’t a jail that could hold him very long.”

“I don’t know, Jules. I reckon the jail in Santa Fe ain’t the kind a man breaks out of easy.”

“But what if he does?”

Ezra didn’t answer and Jules poked at his arm.

“What if he does?”

Ezra grabbed Jules and tousled his hair. “Put all the what-ifs in the world end-to-end and they’ll take you nowhere, just like Papa used to say.”

Jules squirmed away from Ezra. “Did Papa really used to say that? I don’t remember. I remember the wagon and the Apaches and all, but not Papa.’’ “He was a good man. Better than I’ll ever be.” “I think you’re okay, Ez,” Jules said earnestly.

“Play me another tune,” Ezra said hastily, embarrassed by Jules’ solemn approval.

The melancholy strains of “Danny Boy’’ filled the room. Ezra closed his eyes. When Jules finished, Ezra felt the prick of tears behind his lids and blinked, clearing his vision. “That’s a sad one. Mark teach it to you?”

Jules shook his head. “I listened to Buck McDaniel’s sing it so many times—you know he sings the same song every time he gets to drinking. You can’t help hearing him, he’s so loud, and it just sort of came to me what notes to play.”

Ezra stared at him. His brother truly had a gift for music, he ought to go someplace where he could get schooling. St. Louis, maybe. I’ll help him, Ezra decided. I’ll get work as soon as I can, take that scout job Mark offered me, and I’ll save money.

By the end of February, Ezra’s wound was practically healed, with only a little drainage. He could ride pretty well, if he didn’t go too far. Then his hip would start hurting so bad he could hardly get off the horse. When Mark returned from Roswell, the first week in March, Ezra waited until he came to the house.

“I reckon I’m ready to scout for you, if you’ll still have me,” he told Mark.

Mark nodded. “I have to ride to Mesilla at the end of the month to be on hand when the court convenes. You could come with me. After the court session we’ll go looking for Harry Yarrow; I heard he’s thinking of leaving his hole-up in Mexico. He’s wanted for robbing the U.S. Mail.”

“I’ve heard of Yarrow,” Ezra said. “Be glad to help you hunt him.”

“One thing, Ezra. They ‘re trying Billy at that session of the court.”

“Figured as much.” Ezra glanced at Mark and half smiled. “You looking for my word I don’t aim to help him escape?”

“If I thought you’d do that, I wouldn’t take you.”

On April sixth Ezra walked into the Mesilla courthouse, an old adobe that doubled as a school when court wasn’t in session. He took a seat on a wooden bench along with the other spectators.

A Mescalero squatted on one side of him; a pony soldier from Stanton slouched on the other. Billy, silent and handcuffed, sat near the side of an empty desk with armed guards watching him. Ezra tried to catch Billy’s eye, but Billy was staring at the door.

It opened and Judge Bristol swept in, his black robes trailing the dusty floor. As he took his seat behind the desk, a soft warm breeze blew in the open window to his left, ruffling the papers on the desk. The day seemed made for being out in the open, enjoying life.

The judge listened to the lawyers read the federal charges against Billy, quickly dismissing the one that accused him of shooting Bernstein on the Indian reservation. Insufficient evidence.

Leonard, Billy’s court-appointed lawyer, questioned the jurisdiction of the United States in the other indictment— Roberts’ killing.

Judge Bristol readily agreed that Blazer’s Mill, where the killing had occurred, was not the property of the government and so dismissed the second charge. Ezra’s heart lifted. Was it possible Billy might walk out of here a free man?

“I order the United States marshal to deliver William Bonney to the territorial authorities since I understand they also have an indictment,” the judge said. “Trial set for two days hence.”

Two more days in jail for Billy, waiting to find out what would happen. Ezra had heard the Mesilla jail ranked among the worst in the Territory. But Billy had been born lucky, so maybe the coming trial would go as well.

On the eighth the courtroom was so crowded with spectators that Ezra couldn’t find a seat and had to stand just inside the door. The twelve jurymen were already in their places. All Mexicans, he saw. A good sign. Mexicans liked Billy.

This time Billy noticed him and smiled.

The charge was the murder of Sheriff Brady.

On the tenth a stunned and disbelieving Ezra heard Judge Bristol pass sentence on Billy, The jury had found him guilty.

“William Bonney, alias Billy the Kid, alias William Antrim, being found guilty of murder in the first degree, will, on Friday, May thirteenth, 1881, in the town of Lincoln, be hanged by the neck until his body be dead.”

“It’s not fair!” Ezra told Mark later. “There were five others shooting at Brady besides Billy. Anyway, he told me himself he was aiming at Mathews, not Brady, and was real put out ‘cause he missed.”

“They found him guilty, Ezra. The judged passed sentence. Nothing
you can do or say will change it.”

“But he’s my friend. I thought they’d keep him in jail for maybe a couple of years, but I never believed what Garrett said about hanging Billy.”

The man they were after, Yarrow, turned out to be still in Mexico, so Ezra and Mark rode back to Lincoln empty-handed.

Billy arrived under armed guard in Lincoln a few days afterward, on the twenty-second of April, and was incarcerated in the old “House of Murphy,”
Dolan’s store, now serving as a courthouse and jail.

That night Ezra couldn’t sleep. He pictured Billy hand-cuffed and in leg irons. Wouldn’t he find it hard to sleep, a man sentenced to hang in less than a months’ time?

It’d be more Billy’s style, though, to be joking with his guards, saying something like, “Hanging ain’t my idea of a fun Friday.”

Ezra eased from his bed, hoping not to rouse Jules, and went out into the April night. He stood by Maria’s corral, staring up at the Milky Way, He’d heard some of the Indians thought that warriors went there when they died.

He didn’t know what he believed anymore. His father’s God seemed to belong to another time and another country.

“Nesbitt.” The whisper was as startling as a snake’s hiss.

Ezra reached for his Colt, remembered he didn’t have his gun belt on.

He flattened himself against the corral rails.

“Who is it? Quien es?”

“Never mind.” The man spoke in Spanish, his voice low and rapid.

“I’m leaving a package by the back door. I tried to get it to Billy. Couldn’t. Now it’s up to you.”

Ezra searched the darkness for the speaker, saw a dark figure slip from the yard and disappear. He hurried after the man, but there was no one to be seen in the street. Ezra returned to the back of the house to search for the package. Someone sat on the back stoop. “Who’s there?” he demanded. “It’s me,” Jules said. “Did you know someone left a Colt with a silver handle all wrapped up in a newspaper here?”

Only then did Ezra realize he’d been talking to Jose Chavez.

* * *

Early on the morning of the twenty-eighth Mark trotted up the stairs of the courthouse toward the rooms used as jail cells. Most of the prisoners were confined in the room at the head of the stairs that had once quartered the housekeeper. But Billy was locked up separately. You had to go through the sheriff’s office to get to the northeast corner room, where Billy was shut away in solitary confinement, and then pass an armed guard sitting on a bench just inside the doorway.

The guard today was another deputy marshal, Bob Olinger. He looked up as Mark approached. Between his knees his shotgun was propped, breech broken open.

“Howdy, Mark,” he said. “Just loading her up for the day.” He dropped a slug with eighteen grains of buckshot into each barrel, winked at Mark and, looking toward Billy, who was chained to the floor some yards away, commented, “The man that gets one of these is going to feel it.”

Billy grinned at Mark, ignoring Bob.

“I reckon it’s too much to hope you brought a bottle,” Billy said to Mark.

“Sorry.”

Garrett had made a flat rule—nothing was to be given to Billy except by his guards. Mark was damn sure Olinger, who’d hated Billy since the McSween-Dolan feud, gave Billy nothing.

“Only fifteen more days to Friday the thirteenth,” Olinger said. “Hanging day. That’s the day I plan to celebrate.”

“I came up to ask if you know where Garrett’s got to,” Mark said to Olinger.

“The boys said something about him collecting taxes.”

Olinger laughed. “Naw. He ain’t advertising it, but what he’s doing is buying the lumber over in White Oaks for the gallows. Ain’t that so, Kid?”

Billy shrugged. “They never did like me in that town.”

He looked small and defenseless, handcuffed and with his leg irons chained to a bolt in the floor. Mark had no illusions--Billy had to be tightly corralled and closely watched, but he didn’t enjoy seeing him this way. Nor did he care for the way Olinger taunted Billy.