Widowmaker Jones (31 page)

“What if they snatch the Gypsies? You'd be back to square one.” The judge looked out the window at the vaqueros and grimaced. “I feel like I'm in a coffin already.”

Fonzo and Kizzy mounted, and Kizzy held the other three horses by their reins. Her face was strained and pale, but she seemed determined.

The judge retrieved Newt's saddlebags and picked up Cortina's head and stuffed it in them, turning his head away and trying not to look directly at the thing.

Newt frowned when he saw what the judge had done, but didn't say anything about it. He took one more look out the window and then started across the room toward the Alvarez girl. “Time to go. Judge, you put her up in the saddle in front of you.”

The Alvarez girl tried to balk when Newt took her by one arm, digging her heels into the floor and leaning back. He snatched her to her feet and passed her to the judge. The judge gave him one last, doubtful look, hung the saddlebags over his shoulder, and then eared back both shotgun hammers and placed the barrel muzzles against the back of her head.

“Move along, girl. Don't cause me any trouble and you'll be fine,” the judge said.

The judge went out the front door with the Alvarez girl preceding him on shaky legs. She walked slowly, not out of fear of an unloaded shotgun, but because she, like the rest of them, knew there was a good chance that the vaqueros would start shooting. If you played out the scene ten thousand times, Newt's plan never worked. None of them had any faith that a bloodbath wasn't about to begin.

The judge kept his shotgun pressed against her body when she mounted his gray, but it was more difficult to keep her covered while he climbed up behind her, especially with his gimpy leg. Kizzy side-passed her horse against his without being asked to and pulled a pistol and held it on the girl while the judge laid the saddlebags across the gray's neck in front of the saddle and somehow managed to get up on the horse behind the girl. Kizzy didn't look Newt's way when he stepped out on the porch, and turned her attention to the river.

The short walk across the porch and down two steps to his horse felt like a long journey, with every one of Don Alvarez's men watching him with guns pointed his way. He swung into the saddle on the Circle Dot horse and turned toward the river. Don Alvarez was standing in the road waiting, and behind him were those three vaqueros, sitting their horses in a line with their rifles propped on their thighs.

Newt rode the Circle Dot horse right at him, with his Smith holstered on his hip and both his hands resting nonchalantly on his saddle horn. The don drew his own pistol and pointed it at Newt.

T
he judge rode up beside Newt and pressed the shotgun into the Alvarez girl's rib cage hard enough that it made her cry out. Don Alvarez hesitated and his pistol aim wavered, his hand suddenly growing unsteady. Newt and the judge kept riding at him, with Kizzy and Fonzo close behind them.

“You stop.” Don Alvarez's voice was shaky and a tear rolled down his leathery cheek.

Newt and the judge split off when they reached him, enough so that they passed to either side of him, and Newt so close that his stirrup brushed against him. Don Alvarez lowered his gun and his shoulders sagged and his chin dropped. The vaqueros called out to him, but he did not answer them. Then they parted slightly and let the group ride on past.

Newt led them toward the river, keeping his horse to a walk. Behind them, Kizzy's white dog growled at the vaqueros while it stopped to hike its leg and urinate on a cactus before loping off after Kizzy. A dust devil danced crazily in the windswept street.

“He's never going to let us cross,” the judge said as their horses entered the shallow water. “Damned but I hate to take it in the back.”

Newt's expression never changed, and they splashed their horses into the river shoal. When they climbed up the low bank on the Texas side, Kizzy stopped long enough to look back. The vaqueros had come down to the Mexican side of the river, but the don was still standing in the street where he had been before, watching them.

The trail up out of the river breaks climbed through a notch in the tableland above, and they were all over the top and out of sight of the vaqueros below before Newt stopped his horse.

“Let her go,” he said to the judge.

The judge dismounted and helped the Alvarez girl down. She took a deep breath and tried to wipe the tear-streaked grime from her face and combed her fingers through her hair.

“Ma'am, I'm sorry we had to do it this way,” Newt said. “Go back to your pa.”

The girl smoothed the front of her dress and turned and started on her way down to the river. They watched her disappear over the lip of the descent, and when she was gone they started northward.

“Think we ought to set a faster pace?” the judge asked. “Soon as they see that girl free of us, those vaqueros are liable to come after us.”

“Let 'em come,” Newt said.

And yet, the vaqueros didn't come. It was someone else entirely that blocked their course, some three or for miles later. Newt pulled them up and stared back at the four Texas Rangers sitting their horses in the trail. They were the very same Rangers he had met in Langtry.

“Sergeant, you boys sure could've showed up sooner, and I wouldn't have complained a lick,” the judge said.

“We've been patrolling the river like you asked. Got two more men at Del Rio watching things there,” the tallest of the Rangers said. “We've been stuck in this hellhole of a country for days, so you ought not complain about the favor we done you.”

“Who are these men?” Fonzo asked.

The sergeant tapped the badge on his vest. “We're the law hereabouts, son.”

“I guess you didn't find Cortina,” one of the other Rangers said.

“Oh, he's a hard one to catch,” the judge answered before any of the others could.

Newt glanced at the judge with a curious expression, but didn't say anything.

“Too bad,” the sergeant said. “That's some kind of reward they've got out for him.”

“Reward?” Kizzy asked.

The judge gave her his most sheepish grin and avoided looking Newt's way.

“The governor of Texas put five hundred dollars on Cortina's head, and the railroad put another five hundred on him, dead or alive,” the sergeant answered.

“Is that a fact?” Newt's attention was solely on the judge.

“It is, indeed,” the sergeant said. “Cortina and his bunch robbed a mail car outside of Fort Worth three months ago and killed the express agent.”

“And how long has that reward been out?” Newt asked.

“Since about a month after the robbery.”

The judge eased his horse forward. “Now see here. Let me explain.”

“I ought to have shot you back there,” Newt said. “I don't suppose you were planning on telling me about this reward?”

The judge spurred his horse toward the Rangers. “Get 'im, boys!”

The Rangers didn't move. When the judge reached them and turned his horse around, the sergeant pointed at Newt.

“We don't have any papers on him,” the sergeant said.

“What about the murder of Amos Redding?” the judge said. “He's wearing Amos's gun and hat.”

The sergeant shook his head. “We sent a man up to Fort Stockton. Seems like the Widowmaker here was telling the truth. Cortina killed Amos somewhere north of the fort, and the way that post commander told it, the Widowmaker brought Matilda to the fort and then saw her on her way to El Paso with a wagon train of freighters.”

Newt relaxed slightly. “I thought there for a minute that I was going to have trouble with you Rangers, and I have enough trouble to do me for a while.”

The sergeant pointed in the direction of the river. “Y'all have trouble over there?”

The four of them looked at one another and shrugged. Newt managed a weary smile and said, “Not much.”

“Who are these two with you?” The sergeant was talking about Kizzy and Fonzo.

“Why, they're good friends of mine,” the judge said. “That boy in the tall hat is Fonzo the Great, and she's his sister, Buckshot Annie, late of the Incredible Grey Family Circus. Ain't you ever heard of them?”

The Rangers led the way north, as they knew the country. Before long, the judge's horse fell back behind the rest, and Newt reined up and slowed until the judge rode alongside him.

“How come you didn't tell those Rangers what you've got in those saddlebags?” Newt asked.

The judge scratched at his whiskers as if he were in deep thought. “Could be they would hit me up for a share of the reward. Money doesn't grow on trees, you know, and a thousand dollars is a hefty sum.”

“Speaking of that reward, how are you intending on splitting it with me?”

“How's fifty-fifty suit you?”

“How about sixty-forty, since I was the one that got Cortina?”

“You're a bald-faced highwayman if you think I would go for that.”

Newt patted the Smith on his hip. “Sixty-forty, and maybe I could forget about how you tried to double-cross me back there with Don Alvarez.”

“There's no way I'm going to be able to keep those Rangers in the dark, and I'll have to give them a cut out of my share, like it or not.”

“You poor thing. Have we got a deal? I'm still of a mind to shoot your sorry ass.”

The judge nodded slowly. “What's a hard case like you gonna do with six hundred dollars? You'll just drink it up in some dive or spend it on a spree. You ought to think on going partners with me. Invest your money, you know, and let it work for you.”

“That'll be the day.”

The judge pulled a cigar out of his vest and spent three matches trying to get it lit. When it was finally going, he shifted it to one corner of his mouth and said around it, “I never should have let you talk me into going to Mexico.”

T
hey waited on the porch of the depot house at Langtry, Texas. Fonzo was helping load the horses into a stock car, and Newt and Kizzy were alone for the moment. She stood with her arms folded across her chest and her back to him on the edge of the decking next to the train. She had long since changed out of her circus costume, and she looked like someone else altogether in her new yellow dress and the prim little bonnet on her head. She looked like any other woman, but he knew she wasn't. A traveling valise lay at her feet.

“You haven't said a word to me since we left Las Boquillas,” Newt said.

“I don't have anything to say to you,” she answered, still not looking at him.

He stepped beside her. “Yes, you do. Say what you've got to say.”

She turned to him. “You cut off that man's head. What kind of man can do that?”

“Don't make it sound like I enjoyed it,” he said.

“And you couldn't have brought Don Alvarez the body?”

“My horse was worn out and half-dead, and barely in shape to carry me. You wanted your brother to live, didn't you?”

“Yes, more than anything. But I couldn't have done what you did.”

He looked away. “I've always been able to do the hard things.”

“Where will you go now?” She turned her back on him again.

“I'm still thinking on it. What about you? What's waiting for you in San Antonio?”

“The newspapers say Bill Cody's company is in Chicago. I'm going to send him a wire, and if he will still honor the offer he made us a year ago, we're going on to join his show.”

“That sounds like a good plan.”

“You ought to go back East, too,” she said. “This wild country isn't good for you.”

“I'll get by.”

“I won't forget what you've done for me and Fonzo.”

“You don't owe me anything.”

“I do.”

“What is it you said about folks like me? Outsiders?
Gadje
? You go on about your business and forget about the likes of me.”

She turned back to him with her eyes wet and unblinking. “Talk your tough talk, Widowmaker Jones. Go ahead, I don't care. You are not Roma, but you aren't
gadje
, either. You're a violent man, but I think you are my friend. I haven't had many friends.”

Newt was about to say something else, but the judge walked up. He looked at the white horses Fonzo was helping the train crew load. “Miss Grey, I'm plumb sorry you didn't get all your horses back. What kind of a circus act are you going to have with only two horses?”

Kizzy looked at Newt instead of the judge when she answered. “I'll get by.”

The judge tipped his hat to her. “I must say, for a Gypsy girl, you aren't half-bad.”

She took up her valise and put a foot on the steps to the passenger car before she hesitated. “For a crooked old judge, you aren't so bad yourself.”

The judge handed Newt a beer while they watched her go inside the passenger car. Newt was surprised how cold the beer was, and the judge noticed his expression.

“Bought a load of ice off the train this morning.”

Newt hesitated to take a drink of the beer. “How much is this costing me? Last time I had a beer in your place, it cost me plenty.”

The judge laughed. “This one is on the house.”

“So long, Judge.”

The judge squinted at him. “What are you going to do in San Antonio?”

“Never been there, and thought I would see the sights.”

“You don't have a clue, do you? You're only going along to see that Gypsy girl on her way, aren't you?”

“Maybe.”

“You remember my offer. I can put in a good word for you with the Rangers.”

“Thanks, but I believe I'll pass.”

“You were a sentimental fool to give those circus kids your share of the reward,” the judge said. “You ain't ever going to have two dollars to rub together if you keep giving your money away.”

Newt took up his bedroll and then he looked to make sure the Circle Dot horse had been loaded in the stock car before he went up the steps into the passenger car. Fonzo was going to ride with the horses, but Kizzy sat on a bench seat alone near the rear of the car. When Newt reached her, she made room so that he could slide past her and sit beside her next to the window. Neither of them said a word.

The window beside Newt was open and he looked down the street at the hanging pole that the judge had put up for Cortina. The judge was still on the depot porch talking to two new arrivals to the town.

“New to the West, are you?” The judge had his arms on both of the men's shoulders, guiding them toward his saloon. “Well, I've got a sight for you. For a dollar, you can look at the head of Javier Cortina, the wickedest bandit that ever drew a breath. While you look, I'll tell you the story of how I ran him down.”

The train started forward with a hiss of steam. Snippets of the judge's conversation drifted to Newt as if in a dream.

“Yes, sir, that's me, the law west of the Pecos . . . law and order every time, that's what I say . . . Cortina wasn't the kind to be taken alive . . . I gunned him down with old Gabriel . . . You bet you can hold that shotgun. Old Cortina was tough, but he weren't no match for . . .”

The judge's voice trailed off as Langtry disappeared in the window, and Newt watched the West Texas scenery roll past with his mind still on the hanging pole.