The Outlaws (35 page)

The baby whimpered and she sighed. “Vincente,” she murmured. “Name him Vincente after my father.”

Ezra crouched beside her, with the baby wrapped in his shirt. Held awkwardly in one arm. He grasped her hand with the other. Despite the July heat, her hand was cold. Outside, evening shadows deepened into night.

* * *

“I’m going over to talk to Pete Maxwell,” Garrett said to his deputies. “He got us here to begin with, so maybe he’ll give us some idea where to look next, because Billy sure as shooting wasn’t at the baile. I got my mind made up, come hell or high water, I’m going to get the Kid if he’s in Sumner.”

“I promised Pete I wouldn’t let anyone know he told me Billy was in Summer,” Poe said.

“We’ll just slip over to his place easy-like and no one’ll notice.” Garrett said. “It’s close to midnight.”

They circled toward the Maxwell house from the peach orchard. Garrett spotted the room where Pete slept, off the south porch of the house. His door was open to let in the cool night air.

No lights,” Poe whispered. “Reckon he’s asleep.”

“I’ll go in and wake him up,” Garrett said. “You two wait out here.”

Tip leaned against the picket fence and Poe followed Garrett onto the porch and sat beside a post. Garrett tiptoed across the splintered planks of the porch and eased inside the open door.

After a moment he saw the bed was to his right, against the wall. Someone was asleep on it. Garrett edged closer, finally sat on the edge. He made out Maxwell’s round figure under the cover, leaned over and touched the sleeping man’s shoulder.

“Pete,” he whispered.

* * *

Billy headed his bay toward the sheepherder’s hut where he’d been hiding off and on since he broke jail, but just past the outskirts of town he reined up. Violet would be there waiting.

He didn’t want to go back to her. All his other girls had understood there was a time for fun and for loving and a time when it was all over. Violet couldn’t seem to learn this.

Having her in that miserable hut with her swollen belly and accusing eyes wasn’t something a man could take for long. She had a place to stay, a nice, comfortable room with Manuela. Why did she insist on being with him?

He’d thought of lighting out for Mexico, but all his friends, male and female, were at Sumner and he hated to leave them. Maybe he’d have to go anyway, if he couldn’t get Violet to listen to reason. He sure as hell didn’t plan to take her with him.

Trouble was, she made him feel guilty. Like he ought to be doing something for her when he didn’t want to. He looked back toward town. Garcia’s baile had broken up--the fiddler was gone and the men were climbing into bed with their wives or sweethearts.

What he had to look forward to was a girl too far gone with child to touch, one he didn’t want to touch in any case. He recalled Celsa’s slim waist and warm lips and the way she’d arched to him in the peach orchard earlier. If Celsa wasn’t available, there’d be one of the girls from the cantina.

Billy wheeled his horse and headed back into town. He went directly to the long adobe where Celsa lived, but her husband Zaval had come home and so he bid her a quick buenas noches. On the way back to his horse, he saw a lamp burning in a friends’ room and poked his head through the open door.

“Up late, Bob,” he said.

Billy went in, took off his vest and boots and relaxed in a chair. “Got anything to eat?” he asked

Bob shook his head. “Pete’s got a quarter of beef on his north porch you could go get a slice or two of that. Here.” He tossed Billy a knife.

Without bothering with his boots, Billy ambled out the door and across the yard toward Maxwell’s.

He put one foot on the steps and froze. A man lounged against the post on the porch. He saw another by the fence. Billy jerked out his Colt.

“Quien es?” he demanded.

The man by the fence started to straighten, staggered and nearly fell.

Billy relaxed slightly. Somebody from the baile, a little borracho, drunk. He tensed again when he saw the man had a Colt slung on his hip.

“Quien es?” he repeated.

Neither man answered but they made no attempt to draw. Who the hell were they? He’d never seen them before.

Pete’s friends? Billy leaped up the steps and ducked inside Pete’s bedroom. “Wake up,

Pete,” he said. “Who’re those fellas outside?”

Someone on the bed moved and Billy saw a man sitting there. He made out Pete lying in the bed. Billy reached to touch the covers at the foot.

“Pete!” he said urgently. “Quien es?”

Pete stirred. Muttered something Billy couldn’t hear. The man sitting on the bed shifted. Billy aimed his fully cocked pistol at him. Hesitated. Wouldn’t do to throw down on a friend of Pete’s.

“Quien es?” he asked again, finger on the trigger.

A
roar. A blow to his chest.

Billy tried to pull the trigger but was falling, falling…

Garrett fired a second time as the man fell to the floor. He lay unmoving. Garrett jumped off the bed and raced for the porch, bumping into Poe who stood with his Colt drawn.

“That was the Kid in there” Garrett shouted, “I think I got him.”

“Why would he come here?” Poe asked. “Pat, you must have shot the wrong man.”

Garrett stared back toward the room. Could he have been mistaken? Maxwell had whispered to him it was Billy. The voice had certainly sounded like Billy’s.

Pete plunged from the room, dragging a blanket with him. Garrett saw Poe aim and

yelled, “No! Don’t shoot Maxwell.”

Poe bolstered his Colt. McKinney joined the three men, all of them watching the open doorway to the bedroom but standing well to the side of it.

“I think he’s dead,” Maxwell whispered. “Dying, anyway,” he amended.

Was Billy dead? Garrett wondered. It would be like the Kid, even badly wounded, to be waiting until someone stepped into the room to let fly.

He was damned if he was going in there.

Finally Maxwell got a candle from another room, lit it and held it up to the open window farther along the porch, Garrett, trying to stay back and look at the same time, caught a glimpse of a man inside, lying face up on the floor.

“It’s him,” Pete said.”

Garrett took the candle from Maxwell and strode into the room.

Billy lay on his back, eyes open, but unseeing. Blood trickled from a hole over his heart. A knife lay on the floor beside him. He still had a pistol gripped in one lifeless hand. Billy the Kid was dead.

Chapter 25

After a half-dozen fumbling attempts to fold his bedroll blanket into a baby carrier that he could sling over his back as he’d seen Apache women do, Ezra managed to arrange the folds so that the baby was supported and yet not suffocated.

Walking gingerly, with the blanket in place over his shoulders, he lifted Violet’s limp body and carried her to his horse. She roused as he started to lay her across the animal’s back.

“It’s all right,” Ezra told her. “I’m taking you and the baby into Sumner.”

He was certain she’d die if he didn’t get her out of here before the sun rose to scorch the land, while at the same time he feared that moving her might make her worse.

He swung into the saddle and shifted Violet, lifting her so she sat across his lap with his arm supporting her.

“Can you hold on to me?” he asked.

“My baby?” she asked weakly.

“Little Vince is fine.”

As if in answer, the baby began to cry, the sound partly muffled by the blanket. Violet tried to reach for him, but Ezra stopped her.

“He’ll have to wait until we get to Sumner.”

He kneed the pinto into a smooth trot and soon the baby’s wails subsided. Despite his worry over Violet and the awkward weight of the blanket, Ezra felt almost peaceful as they rode in the coolness of the night under the stars.

Just before dawn they approached the outskirts of town. Somewhere a dog barked. Lights showed in almost all the buildings. Ezra heard a faint sound of hammering. Sumner seemed unusually active for the early hour.

Violet stirred in his arms. She raised her head to look around. “What is happening?” she asked. Her voice sounded stronger, more alert. “Quien sabe?” he said, “Who knows?” He swung the pinto toward Manuela’s.

“No!” Violet eased herself higher. “Something is wrong. We must find out.” “First I’ll take you to--”

“Please!” Her fingers tightened on his arm. “Take me with you, I have to know.”

“You ought to rest.” he said, a terrible suspicion of what might have happened tensing him.

“I couldn’t rest. Not until I know.”

He realized she had the same fear and so he nodded. She had the right to come with him.

As they rode into the plaza, the sky was pink with dawn. Men stood in the street, eyeing them as they passed, No one called a greeting, but he saw them whisper to one another. The sound of hammering grew louder.

What made a man get up before dawn to use a hammer and nails? Ezra swallowed and headed for the sound.

He reined in the pinto when he caught sight of men fitting planks together beside what he knew was a carpenter’s shop.

A coffin.

He looked at Violet, “Let me take you to Manuela’s,” he said.

She shook her head. ‘‘Find out,” she whispered, “Who’s it for?” Ezra asked the men.

“The sheriff shot Billy,” one of them said.

“Don’t be so blunt,’’ another man warned him in Spanish.” See who it is you speak to.”

“Where is Billy?” Violet said. “I want to know.”

The first man jerked his head toward the open door of the carpenter’s shop.

“Take me there,” Violet said to Ezra.

Reluctantly, he eased the horse toward the door. The dead man lay just inside, stretched out on a bench. Billy wore a white shirt far too big for him. His face was unmarked, his eyes closed, making him look as young as Jules. Ezra’s eyes stung.

“Yes, he is dead,” Violet whispered. “I always knew it would happen.” She turned her face into Ezra’s chest and clung to him.

Ezra swung the pinto and rode away.

When Violet had been put to bed at Manuela’s, the baby at her breast, Ezra headed back to the plaza.

Billy’s body, in its rough coffin, had been hauled to the old military cemetery where, by the time Ezra arrived, a grave had been dug in the barren earth. He saw Billy would be laid to rest between Tom O’Folliard and Charlie Bowdre.

I could be lying six-feet-under right here myself, Ezra realized. It’s only luck that kept me from it. A man came up beside him. Pat Garrett.

“Word’s around you helped deliver Billy’s son,” the sheriff said, “I suppose she named him after the kid.

Ezra shook his head. He set his teeth and forced himself to answer. No good would come of making a ruckus at Billy’s funeral.

“Vince is my son,” he heard himself saying. The words coming out totally unplanned,

“Violet and I will be married as soon as we can.”

Garrett raised his eyebrows. “You could have fooled me”

“Things aren’t always what they seem. I take care of my own.”

Garrett eyed him a moment, clapped him on the shoulder, then walked away.

More and more of the townspeople, nearly all Mexicans, crowded around the grave as the coffin was lowered. They crossed themselves and bowed their heads in prayer.

Suddenly a woman burst through the mourners, her black hair wild, her cheeks wet with tears. She flung herself at Garrett

“You son-of-a-bitch!” she screamed, clawing at his face.

Hands reached for her, dragged her away, still shrieking. Garrett hadn’t moved or even changed expression.

Ezra knew she was Delufina, a Navajo woman who worked for Pete Maxwell, She’d always had a soft spot for Billy.

Ezra stared at Garrett. No one stood between him and Garrett. He could drop the hammer on him easy. Avenge Billy. And be killed himself, shot on the spot. Or hanged later. Then what would become of Violet and little Vince? But that wasn’t what stopped him when it came right down to it. He’d never liked Pat Garrett—he was a cold fish of a man—but Garrett had only been doing his job. What he was paid to do.

As the ugly caliche dirt thudded onto the lid of the coffin, Ezra raised his head so as not to see. Tears swimming in his eyes blurred the sun’s morning light so it made a shimmering golden pathway across the far hills he and Billy had ridden over so many times.

A faint smile touched his lips as he remembered Browning’s words:
And straight was a path of gold for him, And the need of a world of men for me
.

“Adios, mi amigo,” he murmured. “Goodbye, my friend, goodbye.”