Widowmaker Jones (5 page)

“I'm going to my wagon alone, so don't you be getting any ideas,” she said.

“I don't know what you mean.”

“I saw you looking at me. Might be you're a good man, and Lord knows I'm twice your age. But I saw you looking like that just the same.”

“I never.”

“Might be that I'll have to take another husband one of these days, but don't go getting notions that you can take advantage of me. My Amos was a good man. I'll be a long time forgetting him.”

“Yes, ma'am, but I never . . .”

“Oh, don't blubber and dodge around it. I saw the urge building in you. My Amos was a man of urges himself. There were times when Amos was younger that I felt like I was married to a rutting billy goat.”

Again, Newt didn't know what to say and felt his face and neck growing warm with embarrassment. No woman he had ever met talked like that.

She stared at him, as if weighing a solemn matter. “I'm about half a mind to take you to my wagon, as sinful and horrible as that sounds. It's going to be a long night, and I don't relish being alone.”

“Ma'am . . .”

“Oh, don't go to stuttering again. You come in my wagon on the sneak, and I'll show you the business end of my Sharps.”

“I'll stand guard. You rest assured that me or nothing else will bother you tonight.”

“Don't mind me. I guess I've gotten so old that I'm not embarrassed to be thinking aloud,” she said. “My mother used to say that I was too forward for a proper lady, but I found it was helpful to keep men off guard. A man off guard is easier to get to do what you want him to and less likely to bother you. A sharp tongue will vex many a man.”

“You're the vexingest woman I ever met.”

Her laugh was as dry and crackly as the wind through the grass. “Oh, you'll meet some young thing that will vex you worse. That'll be how you know she's the one to marry.”

She went to her wagon without another word to him. He led her team and the Circle Dot horse on a long walk to the river to water them, and all the time while he was going out of camp he was expecting her to hear him and think he was stealing her horses. He believed her when she said she knew how to use that Sharps rifle.

She didn't raise any protest, so he assumed she didn't hear him leave. But unknown to him, she did hear him and sat up waiting for him to come back to see if she had been right about him. She was peering out of a slit in the wagon cover when he finally returned an hour later.

“What's your name? I never asked it,” she whispered from inside the wagon.

“Newt Jones.” He rigged some hobbles out of a length of rope he found lying on the ground and hobbled her horses and turned them loose to pick at whatever grazing they might find.

“Somehow, I thought you would have more name than that.”

“How do you mean?”

“I expected you to have a name worth remembering.”

“A name is what you make it.”

“It is at that. My name is Matilda Redding.”

“Good to meet you.” He kept the Circle Dot horse on the end of a long rope, one hand holding it while he lay down on his thin army blankets. The horse could move about a bit, but he intended to keep it handy.

“Same here.” She sounded like she might have been crying.

“You get you some sleep,” he said. “We'd best head out at first light.”

“Good night, Mr. Jones.”

Sometime in the night he awoke with the fire burned down to only a thin bed of coals. It took him a moment to realize what had pried him from his sleep, and that the Circle Dot horse was standing astraddle of him with its belly blocking out the stars overhead. The horse was asleep with its neck sagging and one hind leg cocked. The thought of the horse accidentally stepping on him wasn't a pleasant one, but he was too tired to scoot out from under it and seek a new place for his blankets. He couldn't for the life of him imagine why the horse had decided to stand over him, and fell back asleep before he came up with any theories. The horse was truly odd, but everything had been peculiar the last few days.

T
hree days later he stood with Matilda Redding alongside her wagon on the parade ground at Fort Stockton—not much of a fort or a parade ground at all, and only a U-shaped cluster of adobe buildings strung together around a patch of dusty ground, beaten bare by the continual comings and goings of horses and the close-order drills of infantrymen.

There was a little wagon train there of freighters headed to El Paso, and they said she could travel that far west with them. The army offered to escort her to the train tracks at the new railroad town of Sanderson, but she wouldn't hear of selling her outfit to ride the rails.

“Me and my Amos set out to reach Arizona by wagon, and that's what I'll do,” she told them.

To say that she was a woman of strong opinions was putting it lightly. She bought him a used stock saddle for the Circle Dot horse and a new set of clothes at the sutler's post store. She smiled when she first saw him shaved, washed, and wearing his new clothes.

“You don't look like the same man,” she said. “You clean up pretty good.”

“You didn't have to do that.”

“No, nobody ever made me do anything, but I wanted to. You did me a good turn out there, and this is the least I could do to return the favor.” She glanced at her former husband's pistol hanging on his hip. “At least you'll make a better-dressed corpse if you're still determined to go after those Mexican outlaws.”

For the better part of a day he had wandered around the post and through the nearby town of hardscrabble farmers. Nobody he had questioned knew anything about Cortina, although the owner of a saloon said that a man matching the bandit's description and five other Mexicans had spent a day in his establishment almost a week before, drinking whiskey and telling stories. They hadn't spent any gold, and they hadn't stayed the night. The six of them rode south toward Sanderson at sundown instead of taking the old mail route east or west.

Two rough-looking men came walking across the parade ground in their direction while Newt and Matilda were talking. One was a bearded, stooped man in a sweat-stained, sagging hat, and the handle of a big knife shoved inside his waistband the only thing keeping a portion of his flopping shirt tucked in. He was carrying a Springfield trapdoor carbine in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other.

The second of the pair was a half-breed Indian. Moccasins stuck out the end of his frayed canvas pants, and he wore no hat on his head and no shirt under his surplus army vest. A yellow lanyard ran from the butt of his flap-holstered pistol and draped across his chest.

From the look of them, Newt guessed them to be army scouts. And from the smell of them and their unsteady swagger, it was plain that they had been off post at one of the hog wallows sampling the whiskey at two bits a shot. Neither of them was taking any pains to hide the leering looks they cast at Mrs. Matilda, but most of their interest seemed to be aimed at him.

“Where'd you get that horse?” The white scout pointed at the Circle Dot horse standing behind Newt.

“None of your business.” Newt reached for Matilda's arm.

“The Comanche gave it to him,” she butted in.

“Like hell,” the white scout said. His hat was cocked crooked on his head, as if it might be some gauge of his drunkenness—the drunker he became, the more it tilted. Besides the whiskey, he smelled liked horse sweat and manure. “Pardon the language, ma'am, but I think this man is telling tall tales. Comanche don't give anyone anything except a sharp stab in the guts. I said to Wildcat here when this man first rode in here, that he looked like one of those Comanchero traders.”

“Let's go,” Newt said to Matilda.

“That you, boy?” the scout continued, spittle spraying from his whiskered face while he swayed in place. “Anything I hate worse than a Comanche is those that deal with them. Trading guns and whiskey to them red heathens.”

The breed hadn't said anything while his partner talked, but his coal chunk eyes took in everything. Newt had heard that a band of Kickapoo, Delaware, and Seminole renegades had fled down south of the border, sometimes hiring out as scouts to the Mexican army and sometimes selling the same services to the Americans.

“Not another word out of you,” Newt said. “I'm not looking for trouble.”

“Ride easy, Mr. Jones,” Matilda said quietly. “Your wound has got you on edge.”

The white scout turned slightly to look at his comrade and then jerked a thumb in Newt's direction. “He talks like he's plumb tough. Might be he needs a lesson.”

The white scout smiled at the breed with his head turned away from Newt, hoping to relax him and put him off guard. He started a punch way down by his right hip, but it was a lazy, slow punch, and it never got halfway home. The sound of Newt's fist impacting on the man's chin sounded like the crack of an ax in a cured mesquite stump.

“Hold up there!” someone shouted.

Newt stood over the downed man with his eyes on the breed, daring him to make a move. The half-breed scout didn't flinch, but held his ground. Newt finally turned to see who was yelling at him.

It was a young cavalry lieutenant and his sergeant, and neither of them looked too happy.

“What happened here?” the lieutenant asked.

“Ask him.” Newt pointed at the man he had downed.

The breed stepped forward and booted his partner in the ribs. “He don't talk for a while. He's out cold, and I think his jaw is broken.”

“Lieutenant, these men were giving Mr. Jones here a hard time. They're drunk and accused him of being a Comanchero,” Matilda said.

The officer scowled at the breed. “I don't doubt that. Both of these men have a penchant for the bottle.”

For the first time, Newt noticed that a crowd had gathered. Soldiers stood in small groups around the parade ground watching him, and more civilians and enlisted alike watched from under the shade of the porch verandas fronting the buildings.

“You pack quite a wallop, Mr. Jones,” the lieutenant said.

“I didn't like what they had to say.”

“Just like that?” The lieutenant twisted at one end of his half-grown, wispy mustache. “Kind of sudden, aren't you?”

“I warned them twice, and that's twice more than I'm used to.”

The breed spoke again. “No Comancheros anymore. Not enough Comanche left to trade with. No money in it.”

The lieutenant turned and surveyed the crowd watching them, weighing some decision. “Normally, I wouldn't tolerate fighting on this post, but as it happens I saw the whole thing from a distance, and this isn't the first time these two have caused me trouble. If Wildcat here wasn't such a good tracker I would run them both off.”

“I only drank a little whiskey,” the breed said, trying his best to stand steady and appear to the lieutenant to be more sober than he was.

The sergeant kicked the bottle that had fallen from the white scout's hand when Newt knocked him down, and passed his lieutenant a look. “Only a little whiskey.”

The lieutenant frowned. “Mrs. Redding, I'm sorry if these men bothered you.”

“Then I'll be on my way,” Newt said.

The lieutenant held up a hand. “Hold on there. Everyone on the post is talking about you and how you claim to have come by that horse.”

Newt frowned at Matilda. He hadn't said a thing to anyone about how he came by the horse.

She gave him a sheepish look. “Maybe I let it slip to a few people.”

“Maybe?”

“You say some Comanche gave you that horse?” the lieutenant asked.

“It was Indians. Might have been Comanche, but I wouldn't know one for sure even if I met them. Hunting party found me after I was shot and half-dead. Nursed me some and left me with nothing but this horse.”

“Unusual.”

“Well, it was an unusual situation and he's an unusual horse.”

“What did he look like? The one that gave you the horse.”

“Short and stocky. Ugly scar down the side of his face. Two bullet scars here and here.” Newt pointed to two places on his own torso. “Was another one that was with him talking to me—older man and some kind of shaman. Acted like he could talk to spirits.”

“No offense, but that makes your story even more incredible,” the lieutenant said. “That scarred buck could be none other than Dog. Half the soldiers in the state are after him. He's got a special hate for Texans.”

“Could be that's it. I ain't from Texas.”

“Yes, sir, that's quite a story. The only Comanche left running wild are a handful of scattered renegade camps mixed up with outlaw Kiowa and a few other tribes. The army put the rest of them on the reservation years ago, but those left are some of the worst. They would as soon kill a white man as look at him. Hard to believe they let you live.”

“I don't claim to know anything about them. Believe me when I say I was as perplexed as you.”

The lieutenant held up both palms. “Go easy. I believe you. There's no figuring any kind of Indian. The same one that invites you into his camp one day, might meet you out on the prairie the next and take your scalp.”

“I'll take your word for it.”

“Which way were those Comanche headed? I received a telegram three days ago that a Mexican village was raided down south of the railroad on our side of the river. We thought it might have been Mexican banditos from across the border, but the rumor is that it was an Indian raid.”

“I don't remember which way they were headed.”

“You realize that those are hostiles we're talking about? Dog and his band have raped and killed and stolen livestock for years.”

“Maybe so, but he treated me square. Wouldn't feel right leading you to him.”

“You're a stubborn man.”

“That's been said before. I don't have many principles, but I try to stick to the few I have.”

“Wouldn't matter anyway, probably. Hostiles are hard to run down, even when you know where they're headed.”

“Are we finished?”

Before the lieutenant could answer him, the sergeant leaned close to relay something else in the officer's ear. He had been glaring at Newt the entire time, and obviously if it had been his decision, he wouldn't have let Newt off so easily for smacking an army scout.

“I should have known it the moment I saw that punch of yours,” the lieutenant said.

“What's that?”

“Are you a pugilist, Mr. Jones? A professional?”

“I'm a man that minds his manners and expects the same from others.”

“Sergeant Fagan here says he recognizes you. Said he saw you fight in Denver.”

“No offense to the sarge there, but could be he's mistaken.”

“Widowmaker Jones,” the sergeant said. “That's what they called you. I saw you knock out a big Swede twice your size that they called Rocky Mountain Jim. Lost a month's pay betting against you.”

“You're a well-known man. Are you the same one that broke up that riot in Shakespeare?” the lieutenant asked. “They say that's where you got your name.”

“You can hear all kinds of rumors.” Newt went to the Circle Dot horse and stepped up in the saddle.

“You should be careful with that horse,” the breed said.

“I'm careful with any kind of horse.”

“I know that horse, and he's bad medicine. I know Dog, too. He likes his jokes and probably thought it was funny to give that horse to you.”

Newt ignored the breed and looked down at Matilda. “So long, ma'am.”

“Cortina has you outnumbered. Best thing you can do is to forget about what they did to you and what they took from you. Get on with your life,” she said.

“This is my life. Feels like trouble is my middle name.”

“I intend to move on. What's done is done, and there's no fixing it,” she said.

“To each their own.”

“You ever hear of turning the other cheek?”

“My own ma used to remind me of that. Wasn't too many years before she gave up and went to reminding me to lead with my left and keep my guard up.”

“Widowmaker. I knew there was more name to you than you let on.”

“It's a silly name. Them that gave it to me never asked if I wanted it.”

“Like you said last night, a name is what a man makes it. There's lightning in that right hand of yours, but that won't be enough. Those Mexicans killed my Amos and he was as tough as they come. They'll kill you just as quick.”

She went to her wagon and came back carrying her buffalo gun and a sack of cartridges. “You take this.”

“You've already done enough for me.”

“You take it, and don't say another word about it. It's too heavy for me, besides. Giving you guns that I don't need and that are liable to get you killed is no favor at all.” She also held out a handful of money. “You take this, too. It's not much more than a few dollars, but it might feed you for a while.”

“I've fought and scratched for what little I can lay hand to for most of my life, and I don't take gifts lightly.”

“It's nothing.”

“I'm obliged. Maybe someday I can repay you.”

“You ride careful, Mr. Jones.”

“I will.”

“Don't you start lying to me now. I'm guessing there isn't a careful bone in your body.” She stood with one hand shading her eyes and watched him ride off, going south across the barrens. She waited and watched until he disappeared, and when she was sure he was gone a sigh escaped her.