Widowmaker Jones (30 page)

C
ortina fled across the desert, and Newt followed him. The white horse Cortina rode was faster than the Circle Dot horse, and during the first half hour, Newt lost sight of anything but his occasional dust trail or glimpses of him in the distance. Cortina seemed willing to risk running his horse to death in an all-out attempt to leave Newt behind in an initial sprint. But the Circle Dot horse was tough. His hooves hammered on in a steady rhythm, through the tortured windings of the canyons, beneath the high, eroded mountains streaked with chalk and bloodred smears, and across the scrub-dotted desert basins with the fine dust of the land adhering to his dark, sweaty hide, and the laboring of his lungs and the pound of his heart like a steam engine piston chugging away.

The sun moved toward high noon, and the air burned like the insides of an oven, until heat waves danced everywhere you looked. By that time, the chase had changed into less of a mad dash and more of a long, grueling test of endurance. Cortina alternated his pace between a trot and a long lope. Newt's mind was lost to anything but the thought of the man and horse ahead of him, and even if he wasn't gaining on them, the distance between them was remaining the same. Once, on a long stretch across a valley floor that went for miles, he could plainly see Cortina trotting a mile ahead of him, like a ghost shimmering tantalizingly out of reach, and perhaps not a real thing at all.

Cortina then took to the roughest country, perhaps hoping that the fear of him waiting somewhere in ambush would cause Newt to hesitate and fall behind, or perhaps seeking a way to lose him. But Newt came on, paying little heed to places where Cortina might waylay him, and risking everything to bring it all to an end. Occasionally, he stopped to give the Circle Dot horse a drink from his canteen—little handfuls poured into his palm, or to wipe its nostrils clean with a cool, damp rag. He sipped sparingly from the canteen himself, knowing the horse needed the water most. And then the canteen was empty.

When the sun was tilting over in the furnace sky, Newt followed a set of white-scarred hoof marks on the face of a red rock slope. The Circle Dot horse was heaving and lathered by the time they reached the top of the climb, and Newt slid from the saddle. His legs were rubbery after so long in the saddle, and he leaned against the blowing horse.

He took the saddle from the horse and left it behind to lighten the animal's load. It had come to the point where every pound mattered, and he was a big man.

He rode bareback off the little mountain and down into the maze of buttes and tabletop mesas stretching miles before him. A half hour later, and the Circle Dot horse couldn't be kicked into anything faster than a walk. The calves of Newt's pants legs were soaked in horse sweat, and the sweat salt running off his brow stung his eyes. As it was, it took him a bit to recognize the white horse lying in the mouth of a canyon only a few yards ahead of him.

The horse wasn't dead, but it wasn't far from it. Its rib cage rose and fell slowly, and it lay with its neck outstretched on the ground and the one eye he could see was closed. It was so dehydrated that there wasn't a wet spot on its hide, even lying in the full sun. When the horse breathed he could hear the raspy roaring from its windpipe and lungs. Even if it lived, it would never be worth riding again. It was wind-broken and perhaps foundered. He pulled his pistol and shot the horse between the eyes, rather than let it suffer any longer. The gunshot echoed off the badlands, dying away in the far distance.

He rode on, more carefully now, and came to a narrow canyon, more a crack in the side of a low, bald mountain, breaking it into two fingerlike buttes. The way up the slash was choked in places with scattered brush and littered with slabs of stone slid down from above. He left the Circle Dot horse at the foot of the slide and went forward on foot, climbing or crawling when and where he had to. The top of the mountain and the head of the little canyon loomed hundreds of feet above him.

Sweating and cursing under his breath, he eventually found where the rains from an occasional thunderstorm had worn a smooth trough into a long sheet of solid sandstone at the bottom of the canyon. Giant boulders had come to rest on its surface, and he picked his way through them. The sun in the west was shining right in his eyes, and he squinted at the heights above him, searching for Cortina.

“Here I am,” Cortina called to him softly.

Cortina stood above him near the head of the canyon, atop one of those big slabs of stone only thirty yards away. He stood with his legs wide apart, and with the hot wind blowing across the desert lifting the flaps of his open wildcat vest. In the instant Newt looked up at him, Cortina's pistol was already roaring.

Cortina was fast on the trigger, but he was too angry and wild in his urgency to put Newt down. As it was, his first bullet spanged off the rock to one side of Newt, and seeing that he had missed, he cursed in Spanish.

Newt dodged a step to the right, and his hand went to the butt of the Smith while he was still on the move. A second shot stung him with rock fragments, but by then the Smith was already lifting to shoulder level. Newt couldn't recall drawing his gun, and it seemed to do so on its own, as if it were a live thing with a deadly will of its own.

A third shot from Cortina went wilder than the previous two, and Newt forced himself to hold steady and to lock the soles of his boots into the smooth stone beneath his feet, as if he were an indomitable thing as steady and immovable as those giant slabs of stone around him. He was sure he was going to die, but he intended to take Cortina with him. One shot might be all he was going to get, and come hell or high water, he was going to make that one shot count.

He turned slightly sideways with his right shoulder turned to Cortina and the Smith held at the end of his arm like a duelist or some target shooter, instead of a man in a frantic, deadly fight to the death. His eyes watered and strained against the sun burning before him atop the mountain. The long barrel of the Smith shifted ever so slightly and the front sight found the bandit outlined and skylined with the sun behind him, like a glowing shadow drawn on a canvas of sunlit, blazing sky.

The Smith bucked hard in his hand, and Cortina hunched over as if punched in the guts. Newt waited for his recoiling pistol to fall back on target again and drove a second shot into Cortina. Cortina's body sagged, and his pistol clattered on the rocks below him. He remained standing, for only a brief instant, teetering and staggering slowly at the edge of the boulder top. Another gust of wind blew up from the valley floor and Cortina reeled before it, until he finally toppled headfirst off his perch.

Newt climbed up to his body, the Smith held ready for another shot. But there was no need to shoot again. His first bullet had punched into Cortina right above his gun belt, and the second one had hit him dead center in the breastbone. Beneath Cortina's body, blood was sleeping slowly out onto the rocks, as if the stone itself were bleeding. And Cortina stared up at him, his eyes wide open, yet not seeming to recognize Newt standing there. Newt had heard tales of bold bandits dying with reckless smiles on their faces, at least that was the way the newspapers always wrote about such men's demises. But there was nothing but pain and hard living on Cortina's face. He let out one more sigh and then he was dead.

Newt fell to a sitting position beside the bandit, wrists resting on his upraised knees, and looking down the mountain. In time, he searched Cortina's body and found a single gold ingot in the bandit's vest pocket. He hefted the gold trinket in his palm and stared off the mountain once more, thinking about what he needed to do, and knowing that no good man could do such a thing at all.

* * *

He waited until the cool of darkness before he came down the canyon. He found the Circle Dot horse waiting for him and led it back to where the body of the dead white horse lay. He took Cortina's saddle, and when he was through cinching it on the Circle Dot horse, he tied Cortina's spotted vest behind it. The other thing he carried, he put in the saddlebags.

T
he judge and the women were waiting for him when he crossed the Rio Grande again and rode back into Las Boquillas a day later. They stood on the porch of O'Malley's tavern, watching him ride down the street, with Kizzy shading her eyes to better make him out. The judge was sitting in a chair with his bandaged leg propped up on a nail keg and his shotgun laid across his lap. Down at the far end of the village, at least twenty horses were tied in front of a house, and several of Don Alvarez's vaqueros loitered about, watching him. None of the village's regular inhabitants were to be seen anywhere, as if they knew the trouble coming and weren't about to be caught on the streets.

Newt dismounted wearily and untied the spotted vest and his saddlebags. He pitched the vest to the judge and set the saddlebags on the porch. He led the Circle Dot horse to the back of the tavern and turned it in the corral and forked it some hay from the stack there. When he came back to the porch he was carrying his Winchester, and he took up his saddlebags and went inside without a word. Kizzy followed him.

The Alvarez girl was seated in the back of the room at a round table. There was a long bar to the left of the door, and he went to it first and took down a bottle of tequila from the wall behind it. He carried the bottle to the table and set the saddlebags in the middle of it with a thump. He laid his Winchester beside it and took a seat beside the Alvarez girl, facing the front door. His hand rubbed absentmindedly at the splintered forearm stock of the rifle, where the tavernkeeper had shot it from his hand the day before.

“Don Alvarez is here.” Kizzy took a seat on a bar stool.

“Saw him.” Newt cocked the Winchester and adjusted how it lay on the table, pointing the barrel toward the door. He opened the bottle and took a long pull of tequila.

“He's got Fonzo with him,” she added.

Newt took another pull of tequila. “Go tell him to come down here.”

She rose and went to the front door, pausing there as if she had something to say, but had thought better of it. She passed out the door, and the judge hobbled into the vacant space, his injured leg giving him trouble. He had split his right pants leg well past his knee, cut a chunk out of his boot top to shorten it, and wrapped the injured calf in some kind of filthy rag for a bandage. He glanced at the saddlebags on the table while he took a seat on one of the bar stools with his back to the bar and facing Newt to one side and out of the way of the open door.

“What happened to your leg?” Newt asked.

“Miguelito got in a lucky shot and clipped my calf.”

“Are you up for another fight?”

The judge slapped his bandaged leg. “Right as rain. The wound's too far from my heart to kill me, and too far from my pecker to worry me.”

Newt took another drink.

“Alvarez has got us cornered,” the judge said. “He ain't moved a muscle since he got here or threatened us, but we've been under siege since you left. I think he's been waiting to see if you would come back.”

Newt nodded. “We knew he was coming.”

“He'll be coming all right, and he ain't gonna come down here alone.”

“Let him bring whoever he wants.”

A fly buzzed around the room, and Newt swatted at it when it landed on the mouth of his tequila bottle. He stared at the open door with bloodshot eyes and waited.

“I take it you caught Cortina, or did he get away?” The judge asked.

“I caught him.”

“What did you do with him?”

“I'm guessing the buzzards are at him by now.”

The judge made a low whistle. “You're one hard, wicked, mean son of a bitch, Widowmaker. Knew that when I first laid eyes on you.”

Newt gave the judge a nasty look, as if daring him to call him by that name again, but Kizzy came back before the judge could say anything else. She immediately ducked to the opposite side of the room from the bar, taking a stand in a corner. Newt could hear the sound of boots and spurs on the porch, and Don Alvarez and three of his vaqueros came into the room behind her. They stopped inside the door, three-wide and shoulder to shoulder. Beyond them, through the open doorway, Newt could see more men sitting their horses in the street. He also noticed that the don was wearing a pistol.

“I've come for my daughter,” Don Alvarez said.

“Papa!” The Alvarez girl started to get up.

“Where's the boy?” Newt reached out and took hold of the Alvarez girl's arm with his left hand to keep her in her chair. His right hand rested on the Winchester.

Don Alvarez glanced at Newt's Winchester, and then at the judge and the shotgun he was holding. “I have him outside.”

“Bring him in here,” Newt said. “That's the only way this works.”

“You are a vile man, indeed, if you would hurt a woman.”

“You play nice, and she won't get hurt. Start shooting at us and she's just as liable to get hit as we are.” Newt turned the bottle up and watched the don's reaction while his throat worked down another big swallow of the Mexican firewater.

“Señor Bean,” the don said quietly. “We had an agreement.”

While the judge gave the don an uncertain look, Newt let go of the girl and reached forward slowly across the table. One of the vaqueros beside the don eased his hand toward his holstered pistol. Newt ignored him and unfastened one of the saddlebags. He reached inside and took out Cortina's head, dragging it out by the hair. He turned it so that it faced Don Alvarez, and then leaned against his chair back.

“There's my end of the bargain,” he said with his pointer finger tapping the Winchester's receiver with a nervous tic. “Now bring in the boy.”

Kizzy gasped at the sight of Cortina's head, and the Alvarez girl started crying again.

“You animal!” the Alvarez girl screamed.

Don Alvarez stared unflinching at the grisly trophy staring back at him. “Señor Bean, are you a man of your word?”

The judge lifted his shotgun, first pointing it at Don Alvarez and then slowly shifting his aim until the double bores of it covered Newt. “Sorry.”

“I shouldn't have expected any less from you,” Newt said.

“A man has to look out for himself,” the judge replied. “And you ain't given me much choice.”

“What was the deal? Don Alvarez lets you ride if you held me for him?”

“That, and I get to take Cortina with me.” The judge made a small movement with the end of his shotgun to gesture at Cortina's head on the table. “There's a lot less of him left than I was planning on, but I reckon I can make do with what's left.”

Newt took up the tequila again, had another drink, and then used the butt end of the bottle to shove Cortina's head off the table. It hit the floor and rolled a few feet toward the judge. “Take it, and be damned.”

Don Alvarez glanced at Kizzy in the corner. “There is no need to risk the women. This thing is between us. Take your hand off the Winchester and let my daughter go. This circus woman can go, too. Do that, and I promise you that your death will be quick.”

“You bring the boy. Now.” Newt sat the bottle on the tabletop and eased his left hand to his lap.

“Easy there,” the judge said, shoving his shotgun forward. “You got me feeling twitchy, and old Gabriel here has a hair trigger.”

“Do you think you can take us all?” the don asked.

“No, but I'm going to take you with me.” Newt's voice lowered to barely more than a whisper. “That's all that matters. I die, but I'm going to get you first.”

Whisper or not, Don Alvarez heard him plainly. “I think you are bluffing.”

“Try me. What have I got to lose?”

Don Alvarez studied Newt's face and then the Winchester pointed at his belly with Newt's hand on it. A dry, bitter chuckle escaped his throat.

“Bring the Gypsy boy,” he said to one of the vaqueros with him.

All three of the nervous vaqueros gave Don Alvarez reluctant looks until he gave another order in rapid-fire Spanish, ending the argument.

“
Sí, mi jefe
,” one of the vaqueros said, heading out the door.

“Judge, you better put down that shotgun or use it. You pointing that thing at me is beginning to grate on me,” Newt said without taking his eyes from Don Alvarez.

The judge lowered the shotgun and let down the hammers. He slumped on the bar stool and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the bandanna around his neck. “You crazy fool.”

The same vaquero who had gone out the door came back inside, shoving Fonzo in front of him. Fonzo looked no worse for the wear and, in fact, looked in better shape than he had when Newt last saw him in the Zaragoza jail. His bruises had faded to yellow, and someone had stitched up the bad cut on his face. He saw Kizzy standing in the corner and went to her. The two of them embraced, whispering things to each other.

“Consuela, come here.” Don Alvarez ignored the family reunion going on in the corner of the room and held out his hand to his daughter.

The girl started to rise.

“You stay right there.” Newt's voice was hard and low.

“You said you wanted a trade,” Don Alvarez said with his voice as flat and hard as Newt's had been.

“You get the girl when we're across the river.”

“Come to me, Consuela.”

“No harm will come to your daughter. I'll turn her loose on the other side of the river. Everybody wins.”

The Alvarez girl looked from one of them to another, wanting to get up out of her chair, but unsure and afraid. One of the vaqueros leaned close to Don Alvarez and whispered something in Spanish.

“You tell these men with you to keep their hands away from their pistols, or I'm going to blow a big, wide hole in you,” Newt said.

Don Alvarez's jaw trembled ever so slightly, his nostrils flaring. He spun and marched out the door without looking back, his vaqueros backing out of the room, guarding him.

“You just got us all killed,” the judge said when they were gone.

“Give me that shotgun.” Newt stood so fast that his chair rattled and skidded across the floor behind him. He held out his left hand for the judge's gun, his right hand still on the Winchester on the table.

“You've got to understand the predicament I was in,” the judge said.

“Give me the shotgun.”

“I'll be damned if I'll be shot with my own gun.”

“I ought to shoot you, but I need you to get across the river.”

The judge pitched the shotgun to him, and Newt caught it one-handed. He noticed that the judge's hand had inched up near the rusty Colt in his waistband while he was busy catching the flying gun. He broke the shotgun open and pulled out the two brass cartridges, then snapped the breeches closed and tossed the gun back to the judge. The judge fumbled it and almost dropped it, so great was his surprise.

“What good is an unloaded gun?” the judge asked.

“You're going to keep it against this girl's head when we leave here,” Newt said. “The don won't know it's unloaded, and you won't get nervous and accidentally shoot her.”

“What if I need it to shoot someone else? Alvarez ain't going to let us ride out of here.”

“I don't aim to be the one you shoot.”

“I wasn't ever going to shoot you. I was biding my time until I saw how you wanted to play things.”

Newt ignored him and looked at Kizzy. Fonzo had his arm around her shoulders, and she was staring at Cortina's head on the floor and then at Newt with horror and revulsion on her face. She looked out the window when he tried to meet her gaze.

“Miss Grey, I need you to go out and saddle the horses. Fonzo, you cover her from the back door.”

Kizzy didn't move.

“I need you to get the horses now. Bring them around to the porch.”

Fonzo gently moved her out of her tracks. The two of them headed for the back door, with Kizzy once more staring at Newt like he was a thing she had never seen before. Newt held out the Winchester to Fonzo when they were beside him, and Fonzo took the rifle without speaking.

“Those vaqueros are going to shoot you the instant you step out the front door,” the judge said. “They're going to bust you up like a kid's piñata.”

“Maybe not,” Newt said. “You're going to go outside first with the girl.”

“Why do I have to go out first? This is your idea.”

Newt took another swallow of tequila, staring at the distorted image of the judge through the bottle's amber contents. He threw the half-empty bottle across the room, and it busted against the far wall.

“We could wait for dark,” the judge said.

Newt eased to one of the front windows, staying well to one side of it. He glanced out onto the street and noted the vaqueros taking positions among the houses across from the tavern.

“Alvarez ain't going to let you do this,” the judge said. “Can't you see that?”

Newt shifted quickly to the other side of the window and saw that three of the vaqueros were sitting their horses in the middle of the road between the village and the river crossing.

Kizzy soon came around the corner of the tavern, leading the horses. She seemed oblivious to the attention on her from Don Alvarez's men.

“Where'd she get the other white horse?” Newt asked.

“She killed Miguelito,” the judge answered. “Drew on him and shot him stone-cold dead.”

Fonzo came up behind them. His face was pale and he held the Winchester awkwardly.

“Stiffen up, boy,” Newt said. “Go out there and get on your horse.”