Widowmaker Jones (14 page)

T
he horsemen passed below their camp right after sunup. The judge was still nursing his mug of coffee and carried it with him to a better vantage point. Newt leaned against a boulder beside him and peered over it at the road along the river.

“That white horse is easy to spot,” the judge said. “Fine-looking horse, but I wouldn't have him. Pick him out of the brush a mile away.”

The other of the two travelers rode a normal-colored bay, and they were going down the road at a high lope. Newt wished he had a set of binoculars or a spyglass, for it was at least three hundred yards to the road. But apparently, the judge had wonderful eyesight.

“That fat one on the white horse is Miguelito,” the judge said. “I'd know him anywhere.”

“Is he one of Cortina's gang?”

“Yep, and he's going somewhere in a hurry.”

“You figure?”

“He never bought a horse like that. I'd imagine he stole it and is headed as fast as he can away from its rightful owner.”

“Who's that other one?”

“Can't tell, but if he's with Miguelito he's bound to be bad.”

Newt ran for his horse, but the judge seemed content to watch the bandits ride away.

“Come on,” Newt said.

“No hurry. They'll hit Piedras Negras in a couple of miles. We can have a talk with them then.”

“I don't share your calm.”

“Patience. I don't have any use for Miguelito, and he's too fat to haul all the way back to Langtry to hang,” the judge said. “You can kill him when I'm through talking to him.”

* * *

The white horse, along with its bay counterpart, was tied in front of the first cantina they came to when they reached Piedras Negras. The town was busy and full of people on the street, and that made Newt nervous for what it was they had to do. He was a foreigner in a strange land, and could only guess how the native citizens would look on a gringo accosting one of their own.

The cantina was no more than a picket jacal—slim wooden posts set butt-end in the ground with adobe dobbed over the outside of it. The roof wasn't seven feet off the ground, and a sow and her litter of little pigs were resting in the mud hole off to one side of the door.

“This Miguelito isn't picky about where he drinks,” Newt said, pulling up his horse.

“No. Being picky will get you nowhere in Mexico,” the judge said. “How about you ride around back in case there's a back door? I'll go in the front and see if I can talk to these boys.”

“Why don't I go in the front with you?”

The judge rubbed out his cigar on the cap of his saddle horn and put it in his vest pocket. He then took out his watch and checked the time, as if it mattered for what he had planned. “No, Miguelito's dumb as a box of rocks, but that doesn't mean he won't be edgy. He sees me come in the door and he's liable to start shooting and ask questions later. Especially if you're with me. Your looks don't exactly inspire trust.”

“I could say the same about you.”

The judge cleared his throat and spat in the road. “I'll go easy and try not to spook him and his compadre. They come out the back, don't ask any questions. Open up on them.”

“I'm no lawman, and you don't have jurisdiction down here.”

“They know me down here. This is close enough to the border that folks get on both sides of the line regularly. They won't want to incur the wrath of my court should they ever get north.”

“Sounds like a sure way to a hanging to go shooting people in a country that ain't ours.”

“Ride around back and keep a lookout. I'll handle this. It isn't Miguelito we want, but maybe he'll tell us the whereabouts of young Cortina.”

“He might have been one of them that was with Cortina when they robbed me and left me for dead.”

“Maybe. We'll ask him if you'll do like I say,” the judge said. “If I had known you were so hardheaded I would have left you back in Langtry. I must say, now that I know you better, it's no wonder you found yourself in trouble with the law.”

Before Newt could say anything else, the judge kicked his gray forward and went to the hitching rail in front of the cantina. Two of the little suckling piglets got under his feet while he was dismounting, causing him to stumble.

“Get out of here, you pigs,” he shouted and waved his arms to shoo them away. “I would never have hogs in front of my saloon.”

Newt rode around to the back of the cantina, circling around what had once been a hog pen but was in too poor of a state to hold anything anymore. He sat his horse under a cedar tree where he could see the back door to the place.

He grew impatient after what must have been five minutes, and dismounted and headed for the back door, hoping he might take a peek inside or hear what was going on. He was almost to the door when one of the bandits came running out of it. It wasn't the fat one, a little man no less, but he was going fast enough to almost knock Newt down when they collided.

The bandit did go down, but by the time Newt had regained his balance the little Mexican was up on his feet and clawing at the holstered pistol on his hip.

Without thinking, Newt let go with a right hand brought from way back behind him. The blow struck the bandit square on the side of the chin, dropping him again. Newt barely had time to catch his breath before a gunshot sounded from within the cantina, and then two, three more. He could hear the judge cursing even before he charged into the room.

The bartender had taken cover behind his bar, and a few other customers were under tables or sucked back against the walls of the room with their eyes big and so startled they appeared afraid to breathe. The judge was down on the floor at the end of the bar nearest the front door. His pistol was in his hand and pointed outside. The sound of a running horse was plain and the dust it stirred floated inside in a cloud.

“Are you hit?” Newt asked.

“No, he didn't get me, but I missed him, too,” the judge said, and then went to coughing. “Help me up. I think I twisted my knee in the fight.”

Newt helped him up. “What happened?”

“Miguelito was edgy like I said, and must have recognized me for the law. I barely had time to ask a single question before he pulled on me.”

“You're lucky.”

“I'm lucky Miguelito was slow and a damned poor shot,” the judge said. “I got my feet tangled and fell down, and then I missed a snap shot at him as he ran out the door.”

Newt glanced at the rusty Colt the judge held. The firearm was so poorly kept that it was a wonder it had fired at all.

The judge sneezed loudly. “Shit.”

“Bless you.”

“Thank you kindly. What about the other one that ran out the back?”

“I tended to him. He's lying outside.”

“Dead?”

“No, but you might say he's indisposed at the moment.”

“Well, let's go have a talk with him.”

“What about Miguelito?”

“We won't catch him. Did you get a good look at that white horse he was riding? We don't have anything that will outrun it.”

The judge shoved past him, and Newt followed him out the back door. The bandit Newt had punched was conscious and had dragged himself up against the wall and was clutching his jaw with both hands. Blood trickled out between his fingers.

“Did you shoot him in the head?”

“No, I punched him. He was going for his gun.”

“Punched him? Why didn't you pull your own gun?”

“I didn't have time to think about it.”

The judge eyed the groaning bandit and then took a look at Newt's right fist. “If God had meant for us to fight like animals he would have given us claws and sharper teeth. If you're going to wear that pistol you'd best learn how to use it. Somebody might not let you get close enough to use those fists of yours, and besides, clobbering a man like that isn't gentlemanlike.”

The judge squatted down beside the wounded bandit. He asked a question in Spanish that Newt couldn't follow. The bandit's eyes fluttered, and Newt wasn't sure that he still had his wits.

“Answer me,” the judge said, and shook the bandit by the shoulder.

“What did you ask him?”

“What do you think I asked him? I asked him where Miguelito was headed, and is Cortina with his sweetheart,” the judge replied. “You want to do the questioning, or leave me to it?”

“No, I don't speak Spanish.”

The judge asked the bandit another question, or maybe two. When the bandit didn't answer him the judge jerked the man's hands away from his face. The bandit's jaw immediately sagged and more blood ran from his mouth. A bit of broken tooth was stuck to his lower lip.

“What did you hit him with?” the judge asked.

“Nothing but my fist.”

“Lord, man, I think you busted his jaw.”

The judge asked the same questions again and the bandit blubbered something.

“I can't understand you. Talk plain.”

The bandit opened his mouth, tears running from his eyes at the strain and pain of it. He pointed inside his mouth and slurred something again.

“Look at that. He almost bit his tongue in two,” the judge said. “How am I going to interrogate him now?”

“He came at me quick. It was him or me.”

The judge pulled out his pistol again and put the barrel against the bandit's temple. “I won't ask you again, messed-up tongue or not.”

The bandit slobbered blood and tried again. Newt was sure that even if he had spoken Spanish he wouldn't have been able to understand the man.

“Say that again,” the judge said.

The bandit repeated his performance before he choked and gagged on his own blood and slobber.

“He said Cortina went to Zaragoza, and that Miguelito will likely go after him.”

“Ask him if he was with Cortina when they robbed me.”

The judge rattled off the question in Spanish, and the bandit did his best to answer him while he strained to keep watch on the Colt held against his temple, his pupils so far to one side that mostly the whites of his eyes showed.

“Said he's never seen you before and didn't join up with Cortina until a few days ago, but he's probably lying,” the judge said.

“Ask him if he knows where my gold is.”

“Already did. He claims he doesn't know a thing. Said they robbed a circus and stole a set of white horses,” the judge said. “Apparently there was some kind of falling-out with the gang and they split ways with Cortina, and his favorites took a horse apiece to settle things.”

“I don't care about circus horses. It's my gold I'm worried about.”

“They've likely already spent it. Money doesn't last long when you're riding the owl hoot.” The judge stood and holstered his pistol. “What do you want to do with him?”

Newt shrugged. “I don't want him if he wasn't with them that robbed me.”

“Thought you were a hard man.”

“I'm a fair man.”

“I counted on you being a hard case.”

“I'm after Cortina.”

The judge asked the bandit another question.

“What did you ask him that time?”

“I asked if he knows where my jaguar hide is.”

“And?”

“That damned Cortina had a vest made out of it.”

“Miguelito is going to tell Cortina we're after him.”

“He doesn't know we're after Cortina.”

“You said yourself you're a known man, and don't you think that Cortina is bragging about where he got that cat hide, even if Miguelito wasn't with him when he stole it from your saloon? It won't take much thinking to figure you're down here after him.”

“Hmph. Stands to reason.”

“Best we ride hard and see if we can run down Miguelito before he gets to Zaragoza. Might be he'll camp come dark and give us a chance to catch up.”

“Odds are against it, but it's worth a try.”

Newt turned and went for his horse, expecting the judge to do the same. The sound of the cocking pistol turned him in time to see the judge put the Colt against the bandit's temple again and pull the trigger. The report of the gun and splatter of gore against the wall were one and the same.

“He might have come hunting us when he healed,” the judge said, studying the effect of his bullet on the bandit's skull.

“We'll be long out of Mexico before he could have healed.”

The judge shrugged and took a fresh cartridge out of his vest pocket and exchanged it for the empty hull he thumbed from his pistol cylinder. “These Mexican outlaws don't have any respect for borders. He could have come waylaid us one night when we weren't expecting it.”

“What about the Mexican law? All these gunshots, and they're bound to already be on their way down here.”

“Don't worry about them. I had long enough before Miguelito started shooting at me to learn that the company of rurales stationed here left about an hour ago. Seems they found their captain's body floating in the river this morning.”

“You hang around if you want to, but I'm riding right now.”

“Think you're leaving me, do ya? May I remind you that you're in my custody?”

“You want to keep it that way, you'd best get on your horse and ride. I'm headed to Zaragoza.”

The judge lingered a moment over the corpse while Newt ran for his horse.

“Damned Mexico,” the judge said. “Been like this every time I was down here.”