The Outlaw Josey Wales

by Forrest Carter

  Chato looked at the ground, “I understand, senor,” he mumbled, “I shall tell her.”

  “Well,” Josey said with an air of finality, “let’s git a drink.”

  They left their horses before the store and walked to the Lost Lady. He would have the drink with Chato, and Chato would head north with the packhorses, back to the ranch. Josey Wales would cross the Rio Grande.

  Ten Spot was playing solitaire at the corner table when they came in. Josey and Chato walked past two men at the bar having drinks and took up their places at the end. Rose was seated at a table, alone, and she cast a warning glance at Josey as he tossed her a greeting, “Mornin’, Miss Rose ...,” and was instantly on his guard.

  The atmosphere was strained and tense. Kelly brought the beer to them, but his face was white and drawn. He mopped the bar vigorously in front of Chato and Josey and under his breath he whispered, “Pinkerton man, and something called a Texas Ranger ... lookin’ for you.” Chato stiffened and his smile faded. Josey lifted the schooner of beer to his lips, and over the rim he studied the two men.

  They were talking together in low tones. Both were big men, but where the one wore a derby hat and Eastern suit, the other wore a battered cowboy hat that proved the quality of Mr. Stetson’s work. His face was weathered by the wind, and his clothes were the garb of any cowboy. They both wore pistols on their hips, and a sawed-off shotgun was lying before them on the bar. They were professional policemen, though from two separate worlds.

  Kelly was flicking specks from the bar, finding heretofore unseen spots and industriously rubbing the bar cloth at them. He was between the outlaw at one end of the bar and the lawmen at the other. Kelly didn’t like his position. Now he scowled with a bleary look at a spot near Josey and attacked it with the cloth.

  “Pinkerton man’s federal,” he whispered to Josey, “cowboy feller is Texas ... fer Gawd’s sake, man!” and he moved away, back up the bar, flicking dust from bottles. Chato slid a quick look at Josey as he sipped his beer. The men stopped their low talk and now looked down the bar, frankly and openly, at Josey and Chato.

  The Ranger spoke into the heavy silence, and his tone was calm and drawling, “We’re law officers, and we’re looking for Josey Wales.” There was no hint of fear in either of the lawmen’s faces.

  Chato, on Josey’s left, stepped carefully away from the bar, and his tone was thinly polite, “The shotgun, senores, stays on the bar.”

  Josey didn’t take his eyes from the men, but to Chato, in a voice that carried over the room, he said, “T’ain’t yore call, Chato. Ye’re paid to ride ... reckin thet’s what ye’d better be doin’.”

  The polite voice of Chato answered him, "No comprendo. I ride ... and fight, for the brand. It is my honor, senor.”

  Not a breath was drawn, not a hand moved, except Ten Spot, who dealt his solitaire, seemingly oblivious of it all. Ten Spot laid a black eight on a black nine ... it was the only way to beat the hand. From the corner table, his voice was thin and casual, as though remarking on the weather, “I seen Josey Wales shot down in Monterrey, seven ... maybe eight weeks ago.

  Me and Rose was takin’ a little pasco down that way ... seen him take on five pistoleros. He got three of ’em before they cut him down. Ask Rose.”

  For the first time since he began speaking, Ten Spot looked up and addressed himself to Josey, “I was intending to tell you about it, Mr. Wells ... next time you came in. It was a real hoolihan ... and then to the lawmen, “This is Mr. Wells, a rancher north of here.” Ten Spot broke the deck and started a new shuffle.

  Rose’s voice was high and squeaky, “I was goin’ to tell you ’bout it, Mr. Wells, you remember, last time you was in here, we was ... uh, discussing that outlaw.”

  Behind the bar Kelly was nodding vigorously with encouragement to the speakers. Neither Josey nor Chato spoke ... nor did they move. The lawmen talked in low tones to each other. The Ranger looked at Ten Spot, “Will you sign an affidavit to that?” he asked.

  “Yep,” Ten Spot said and laid a red deuce on a red trey.

  “And you, Miss ... er ... Rose?” the Ranger looked at Rose.

  “Why shore,” Rose said, “whatever that is,” and she took a healthy slug from a bottle of Red Dog.

  The Pinkerton man took paper and pencil from hi? coat and wrote vigorously at the bar.

  “Here,” he said and handed the pencil to Ten Spot who came forward and signed his name. The Pinkerton man looked at the signature and frowned, “Your name is ... Wilbur Beauregard Francis Willingham9” he asked incredulously.

  Ten Spot drew himself up to full height in his tattered frock coat. “It is, suh,” he said stiffly, “of the Virginia Willinghams. I trust the name does not offend you, suh.”

  “Oh, no offense, no offense,” the Pinkerton man said hastily.

  Ten Spot, formally and stiffly, inclined his body in a slight bow. Rose took the pencil and brushed imaginary dust from the paper, hesitated, and brushed again, while her face reddened.

  “The lady,” Ten Spot said brusquely, “broke her reading glasses, unfortunately, while we were in Monterrey. Under the circumstances, if you will accept a simple mark from her, I will witness her signature.”

  “We’ll accept it,” the Ranger said dryly.

  Rose laboriously made her mark and walked with whiskey dignity back to her table.

  The Pinkerton man looked at the paper, folded it, and stuck it in his breast pocket. “Well ...” he said uncertainly to the Ranger, “I guess that’s it.”

  The Texas Ranger looked at the ceiling with a calculating eye, like he was counting the roof poles. “I reckon,” he said, “there’s about five thousand wanted men this year, in Texas. Cain’t git ’em all ... ner would want to. We jest come out of a War, and they’s bound to be tore-up ground ... and men ... where a herd’s stampeded. Way I figger it, what’s GOOD, depends on whose a-sayin’ it. What’s good back east where them politicians is at... might not be good fer Texas. Texas is a-goin’ to git straightened out... it’ll take good men ... Texas style o’ good ... meaning tough and straight ... to do it. Takes iron to beat iron.” He sighed as he turned toward the door, thinking of the long, dusty ride ahead.

  “If yore’re comin’ back this way, stop in,” Kelly invited.

  The Ranger looked meaningfully, not at Kelly, but at Josey Wales. “Reckon we won’t be back,” he said, and with a wave of his hand he was gone.

  For the first time in nine years Josey Wales was stunned. Where a moment before, his future was the grim, tedious trail of outlawry ... of leaving those he had come to love ... the valley he had so bitterly left behind; now it was life, a new life, that staggered his thinking and his emotions. Done, here in a saloon; in a run-down, sour-smelling saloon by people no one would look twice at on the streets of the cities; by men, among men ... as Ten Bears had said.

  Chato laughed and slapped him on the back. Kelly, completely contrary to his practice, set up the house. Ten Spot, thin smile and dead eyes, was shaking his hand, and Rose propped a heavy breast on his shoulder and kissed him enthusiastically.

  Josey walked to the door, followed by the jingling spurs of Chato ... like a man in a dream. He paused and looked back at these who would be judged as derelicts by those wont to judge. “My friends,” he said, “when ye can find a preacher, bring ’em to the ranch. Miss Rose, ye’ll stand up with my bride, and Ten Spot, ye and Kelly will stand with me. Ye’ll come, ’er me and Chato will come and git ye.”

  Ten Spot, Rose, and Kelly watched from the saloon door as the two riders headed north. Suddenly they saw the riders spur their mounts. They whipped their pistols from holsters and shot into the air ... and floating back came the wild yells of exuberant Texans ... exuberance ... and a lust for life.

  “We’ll git the padre from across the river,” Kelly shouted. But the outlaw and the vaquero were too far away ... and too noisy to hear.

  Ten Spot slipped a sidelong glance at Rose, ‘Til buy you a drink, Rose,” he invited ..
. and at her lifted eyebrow, he smiled, “No obligation ... this one is for Texas.”

  Chapter 24

  They came a week later; Ten Spot, Rose, and Kelly. They brought the padre; a fiddlin’ man; two extra vaqueros, one of whom brought his guitar; and three sloe-eyed senoritas, who had come “good timin’ ” across the river. They came loaded down with Texas gifts, like a pair of boots for Laura Lee, bottles of redeye, kegs of beer, and a ribbon for Grandma Sarah’s hair. They came ready... rootin’, tootin’, Texas-style... for a wedding, and got two of them; Josey and Laura Lee, Lone and Little Moonlight.

  Rose was resplendent as Maid of Honor in a sequined gold dress with tassels that shimmied as she walked. The padre frowned briefly at Little Moonlight’s stomach, but he sighed and resigned himself; it was the way of Texas. Little Moonlight enjoyed the white man’s ceremony immensely, and as instructed, shouted “Shore!” when asked to be Lone’s wife.

  The celebration lasted a number of days, in Texas tradition, until the fiddler’s hands were too stiff to pull the bow ... and the liquor ran out.

  The wedding wasn’t decently over and gone, before an almond-eyed girl was born to Little Moonlight... and Lone. Grandma Sarah fussed over the baby and rendered sermon-prayers to Laura Lee and Josey that sich was pleasing to the eyes of God.

  The falls and the springs came, and Ten Bears rested and made medicine with his people, in their way. Until the autumn when Ten Bears and the Comanche came no more. The word of iron had been true. And Josey thought of it ... what might have been ... if men like the Ranger could have settled with Ten Bears ... as he had. The thought came back mostly in the haunting, smoky haze of Indian Summer ... each fall, when the gold and red touched the valley, in remembrance of the Comanche.

  The firstborn to Josey and Laura Lee was a boy; blue-eyed and blond, and now Grandma Sarah relaxed to grow old in the contentment that the seed was replenished in the land. They did not name the baby boy after his father; Josey Wales insisted. And so they called him Jamie.