Widowmaker Jones (29 page)

“Come on, Widowmaker, if you want to play,” Cortina called out again. “I think I will shoot a little straighter this time.”

If he went up the street they were going to have him in a cross fire and he wouldn't stand a chance. And he wasn't sure that there wasn't a third man who had yet to speak up. Cortina had survived too long to chatter so and to be foolish enough to show all the aces he had up his sleeve.

Newt draped the rein he was holding over the Circle Dot horse's neck with the other one, and slapped the horse on the rump with the flat of his hand. It took only two steps and then looked back at him. He hit it again and took off his hat and waved it. The horse took two more trotting steps and then slowed to a walk and continued down the middle of the street.

“Good horse,” Newt whispered to himself. “You keep right on going.”

The village was so quiet that Newt could plainly hear the creaking of his saddle and the dull hoof sounds of his horse's hooves on the street. He waited to make sure the horse was going to keep walking toward the tavern, and then ducked down the fence between the houses until he reached the back of them. There was a goat pen between where he was and the rear of the tavern, and he put a hand on top of it and vaulted into it. He crossed the pen keeping low, and easing through the bleating goats. When he reached the far side he rested his rifle on the top of the fence and studied the back of the tavern. There was a horse corral and a lean-to, brush-roofed shed behind it, and two unsaddled horses stood under the shed. Through a gap between the side of the tavern and the blacksmith shed next to it, he could see a little patch of the street. The Circle Dot horse was standing there.

Newt vaulted the fence again and ran to the corner of the horse corral. It was made of stacked stone, little more than waist high. He stopped again with his rifle resting on its top and aimed at the back door to the tavern.

“Ah, gringo, I never thought you were so tricky.” Cortina sounded like he was still at the front of the tavern. “Did you think I would shoot at your horse?”

Newt found the gate to the horse pen and swung it open. He backed into the corral, keeping an eye on the door to the tavern while he got behind the loose horses, intending on driving them out the open gate. He was almost there when a bullet struck one of the shed posts next to his head.

His ears were still echoing with the sound of the shot, and he was slapping at the sting of splinters and grit hitting the side of his face and dropping to the ground when a second shot smacked into the rock fence behind him. The horses milled around him, and he used the cover of them bolting out the gate to rise to his knees. He didn't know where the gunman was, but the first thing he saw was that the back door to the tavern was cracked open. He worked the lever on the Winchester as fast as he could, sending two rounds into the doorway and another one into the single window next to the door. He rose and ran to his left and went over the rock fence in a long dive, rolling and scrambling back against it for cover as soon as he hit the ground on the other side.

Another gun boomed somewhere on the street, and it sounded like the judge's shotgun. A different gun cracked, and then the shotgun again.

He took off his hat and eased it above the fence, but whoever was in the back of the tavern was too smart to fall for such a trick. On his belly, he crawled to the corner of the corral. The last thing he wanted was to peep his head around that corner, and he couldn't make himself do it. Never lead with your head, was a thing any fighter should live by. He got his legs under him and stood quickly and glanced at the back door to the tavern before he dropped behind the fence again.

In that brief glance, he thought he saw an arm stretched out through the open door. He chanced another look, this time with his Winchester taking quick aim. It was a white shirtsleeve that he had seen, and whoever was wearing that shirt looked to have taken one of his bullets. He started around the corner of the horse corral without dropping his aim on the doorway. A few steps closer and he saw the pistol lying in the dirt off the end of that dead man's hand.

The body was blocking the door from swinging inward, and he placed a hand against it and shoved. It opened enough to barely give him room to pass through. He glanced down at the dead man, but it wasn't anyone he recognized—just an old face missing teeth and staring up at him with a leering death grin. It was probably the tavern keeper that the judge had spoken of.

Newt shoved the barrel of his Winchester into the crack in the open door and let it lead the way. He was only partway inside when a gun roared and a bullet struck the forearm of the rifle, knocking it from his hands. Two more bullets splintered the door, and he ducked out of the way and hugged against the outside wall with his back to it. He could hear Cortina laughing inside.

“Come on,
cabrón.
Here I am.”

Newt slid the Smith .44 from its holster and circled the building, approaching one corner of the front porch. When he reached the street, he glanced across it at the chicken pen where Miguelito had hidden.

“You out there, Judge?” he called out.

“I'm still alive and kicking,” the judge called out from somewhere behind the chicken pen. “I put some lead in Miguelito.”

Newt craned his neck around the corner of the tavern and chanced a glance down the front porch. The instant he did it one of the front window shutters was knocked open, and Cortina fired off two shots at the sound of the judge's voice.

“You come for me if you want me, Bean!” Cortina's voice had lost all its mocking calm. “I kill you if you do!”

“You come out, Javier,” the judge called back.

“I don't think so, Bean.” Cortina fired twice more.

Newt could see the end of Cortina's pistol protruding outside the window and the blossom of flame each time he fired. He snapped a quick shot at the window, but the angle was too sharp. His bullet splintered the window frame and brought on a round of cursing from Cortina.

“We'll smoke you out if we have to,” the judge shouted.

“You do what you must. I'm in no hurry.”

“Keep an eye on the back side,” the judge called across the street to Newt.

“I already turned his horses loose,” Newt answered.

“Listen to me, Cortina,” the judge said. “Don Alvarez is going to be here before long. You know what he'll do to you. You come with me and I'll see to it that you get a fair trial.”

“Trial for what?”

“For burglary and theft and anything else I can find on you in the state of Texas.”

“What, because I stole your jaguar hide?”

“Nobody steals from me.”

“You are nothing.” There was a period of silence before Cortina spoke again. “No, I tell you how it's going to be. I stay here, and if I see you I will put a bullet in your
cabeza
.”

“Suit yourself. Old Don Alvarez will be along, and you'll wish you had surrendered when you had the chance.”

Newt could hear Cortina moving around and could tell that the man had changed positions to the window on the far side of the front door. He took the opportunity to step up onto the porch, and peered into the open window Cortina had just vacated. He could see only a slice of the gloomy room inside, and he waited with his pistol ready for Cortina to come into sight.

And then he heard the horse inside the tavern, its hooves loud on the floor. The double doors of the tavern were painted a bright green, with huge wrought-iron straps to reinforce them, and no doubt barred from the inside with more such blacksmith work from back in the days when the place had been a trading post. Both doors were made to swing to the outside, and to prop open on warm days.

Newt had taken only one step toward them when both doors burst open, the near one crashing into him and knocking him backward. Cortina charged out of the doorway on the back of a white horse, ducked in the saddle to avoid the porch roof over his head, and with a pistol blazing in his fist. He didn't know Newt was nearby, and focused his aim on the judge's position.

The judge's shotgun boomed again, and Newt could hear the buckshot rattling off the tavern front as Cortina's horse leapt high into the air off the porch and landed in the street. The bandit's move was so bold and unexpected that Newt barely had time to right himself and snap off a single shot from his Smith. Before he knew it, Cortina was racing away toward the river.

Newt holstered the Smith and ran for the Circle Dot horse. The judge was hobbling across the street toward him, shoving two more shells down the barrels of his shotgun. There was blood all over his lower right leg.

Newt swung into the saddle and slapped the Circle Dot horse across one hip with his hat. The horse squatted for an instant on its hindquarters and exploded forward in a dead run like he was shot out of a cannon.

It was two hundred yards to the river, and Cortina was already splashing across the other side by the time Newt rode into sight of him. The bandit spurred his horse up a break in the side of the escarpment on the Texas side of the river, raising a trail of white dust up the steep slope. A bullet splashed in the water next to Newt, as he charged the Circle Dot horse into the shallows. He was almost across the river when he looked up and saw Cortina on the rise above him with his pistol aimed down at him.

K
izzy flinched when she heard the sound of the first gunshots. The Alvarez girl at her feet yawned and rubbed sleepily at her eyes with doubled fists. Kizzy listened to the men shouting back and forth down the street, and went to the horses and checked their saddles and tightened their cinches.

“What are you doing?” The Alvarez girl had come fully awake, and there was the hint of panic in her voice.

“We might need to run.”

The Alvarez girl rose to her feet. She recognized Cortina's voice calling out to the judge and tried to run toward him. Kizzy caught her by the wrist and jerked her back. The girl swung wildly and clawed at Kizzy's face. Kizzy pivoted and swung her by the arm against the fence. A gush of air went out of the girl's lungs at the impact, and that gave Kizzy time to kick her ankles from under her. The girl landed on her rump.

“You stay put.” Kizzy shook her fist in front of the girl's face.

“Javier will kill your men, and then he will come for me.”

“You little fool.”

Kizzy shushed her and listened to the fight going on up the street. The gunfire had gone quiet. After a while she heard a horse coming her way. She couldn't see anything of the village beyond her position, for the high fence blocked her view. All she could see was the road leaving the village to the south. Maybe it was Newt or the judge coming back for them.

When the horse was near she could make out bits of it through the cracks in the picket fence. It was a white horse.

She drew her right-hand pistol and backed nearer to the Alvarez girl. A man appeared around the fence corner. He was riding Solomon, and there was blood all over the bandit's right side, from his thigh to the side of his face.

He saw her and turned his horse out of the road and came toward her at a walk. He held a pistol dangling at the end of his wounded arm, and he rode slumped and weary in the saddle. She recognized the fat bandit as the one Cortina had called Miguelito, and she wondered if the leer he gave her was meant to be a smile.

“You, me. We meet again,” Miguelito said in bad English.

Kizzy raised her Colt to shoulder level and pointed it at him.

He stopped the horse. His breathing was heavy and ragged. He looked down at the Alvarez girl and then back at Kizzy. “You come with me.”

“Go away,” Kizzy said.

He studied the pistol she held, still smiling as if the weapon were a toy and she were a small child offering it to him. “You shoot good,
chica
. But can you shoot men?”

“Leave now, or I will kill you.”

Miguelito shook his head somberly. “I don't think so. You no have the guts to kill me.”

“I said for you to leave.”

“Javier, he stingy with the women. He have this Consuela, but he don't share her with us. Now, maybe, I have two señoritas, and I don't share with him.”

The Alvarez girl dug her heels into the sand and shoved herself against the fence, looking up at the bandit with loathing and fear, as if she already knew things about him.

Kizzy stared down the top of her Colt, sighting it on the bandit's forehead. She tried every way possible to force her finger to pull the trigger, but she couldn't do it.

Miguelito laughed at her. “You gonna make me some good loving. You drop that
pistola
and get on your horse.”

Again she told herself to shoot him then and there. He was no better than a mad animal that needed to be put down.

His pistol rose slowly at the end of his bloody arm. “Put your
pistola
down.”

She dropped the Colt Lightning and it clattered on the ground.

“See, not so hard,” he said. “Now get on your horses.”

Kizzy helped the Alvarez girl to her feet and they walked to the horses tied to the fence. The Alvarez girl looked back at Miguelito.

“We can't go with him,” she said. “He tried to buy me from Javier.”

“She can't help you. She's too scared,” Miguelito said. “I told Javier we should have taught her a lesson at Piedras Negras, but those rurales interrupted us. Now I have time. She gonna love me now. You both gonna love me. When I get tired of you I'm going to sell you to the Indios.”

Kizzy turned and faced him, and the Alvarez girl fell at her feet, crying and clutching the fence as if she couldn't be pried away from it.

Kizzy stepped away from her horse. “You go on before the Widowmaker comes back.”

“The Widowmaker? He don't scare me.” He nodded down at his bloody wounds. “I've been shot many times, but no bullet can kill me.”

“I won't go.”

“Then I shoot you and take Consuela.” Miguelito's aim had sagged due to his wounded and weakened arm, but he started to raise the pistol again, still smiling like a madman.

Kizzy's left-hand Colt jumped from its holster and she shot him between the eyes. He tottered in the saddle with his head tilted backward and his arms hung limply at his sides, like something impossibly balanced and teetering at the whim of a breeze. The startled horse beneath him took an unsure step forward, and he fell from the saddle, dead.

Kizzy caught the horse's bridle, hugging it to her and staring at the dead bandit. She had practiced drawing and firing her pistols thousands of times, shooting at glass balls, tin cans, and paper targets. But never at a living thing. Never at a man. She wasn't a killer, yet now she was. It was more horrible than she ever imagined it. She holstered her pistol, stooped to pick up her other, and forced the Alvarez girl to stand, all the while avoiding looking at Miguelito's body.

“I can't believe you killed him,” the Alvarez girl said.

“Come on. Newt and the judge might need our help.”

Kizzy put her up on the horse Miguelito had been riding. The gelding was the one the Grey family called Mithridates, slightly smaller than the others and the least steady, but her father's personal favorite.

She mounted Herod, and the Alvarez girl followed her onto the street. She could see the judge standing ahead of them on the street, looking at something in the direction of the river.