Mr. St. John

by Loren D. Estleman

  “I don’t favor splitting up. Custer was hunting injuns till he busted apart the Seventh Cavalry, and then the injuns was hunting him. It’s a gamble any way you play it, but it’s less of a one this way than the other. Even you can’t read sign under six inches of snow.” He waved a hand toward the windows. Flakes swarmed in the slipstream, too dense to penetrate.

  “You didn’t know it was going to snow when you made the decision.”

  St. John said nothing.

  “Ask me,” George said, “they’re disbanding. They got their pile and they’re smoke.”

  “They aren’t disbanding.”

  “How do you know?” Suddenly George leaned forward, peering at him intently. “You know, don’t you? What you were trying to do back at the soddy, you’ve done it. You know what they’re thinking.”

  “Not entire. I know they’re planning something, but I can’t say what. I knew it the minute I read the telegram. I got a handle on them, George. I haven’t felt like this in ten years. Thought I’d lost it” His voice was slowing again.

  The Indian sat back. “You’ve got big medicine, Ike St. John. I didn’t know better, I’d say you were part Crow.”

  Again there was no response. St. John was asleep.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Los Bandidos

  Paco and Diego Menéndez had no love for gringos, and what they had seen of their companions since joining the posse had done nothing to alter their view.

  They had left Mexico half a step ahead of the rurales after the murder of a Captain Finero, worked for a time herding cattle for a rancher named Sperling outside San Antonio, and departed in the middle of the night after beating their foreman senseless and lifting his poke. Too late they learned that Sperling was close to the governor, who immediately summoned the Texas Rangers. While hiding out in a Spanish settlement on the Brazos they heard rumors that a man in Kansas City, Missouri, named San Juan was paying big dinero to men who could ride and shoot, stole two horses and headed there post haste, keeping to the back trails to avoid los rancheros.

  The hundred pesos the gringo had offered them for each week they rode with him represented the highest wages they had ever earned honestly and was a great deal more than they had seen during many periods in their life in the shadows. For this reason they would continue with him for as long as the money held out, or until someone else offered them more. They were bandidos, soldiers of fortune, lords of the deserts and the plains, and beholden to no cause beyond a full stomach and loaded pistolas. The saddle was their throne.

  Neither of them was named Menéndez, nor were they related so far as they knew. Lean, moustached Paco had been born tenth to a family of sharecroppers on the Mexican plantation of Elfego Contrale, whose sixteen-year-old son had been slain by Paco, who crushed his head with a rock when Paco caught him watching his sister bathing in the creek behind Paco’ s home. In retaliation Contrale sent his men to kill every male he found in their house, rape Paco’ s mother and sister, and torch the building. Sneaking back from hiding to find his father and three of his brothers dead, his mother and sister disgraced, and the survivors homeless, Paco borrowed a rifle from a hunter friend of his father’s and waited for Contrale to appear on horseback on the road to the nearby village. Two days and nights he waited, and when on the morning of the third day the plantation owner came into his sights, Paco shot him six times, reloading between discharges and advancing until the last bullet, fired point blank into his prostrate victim’s face, exploded his skull like a ripe gourd.

  The first of many name changes followed. Paco drifted from province to province, existing on handouts in Juárez and Durango, picking coffee beans in the tierra templada, apprenticing the bricklayers and tailors in the border towns where rich gringos came to buy land from other rich gringos and acquire handcrafted items by the wagonload from peons for a third of their resale value in los Estados Unidos. The scars on his face were put there when a Spaniard with a harelip sent his friends to spoil Paco’s looks after he learned that the former sharecropper was seeing his girlfriend. A week later the harelip was found in his girlfriend’s garden with his throat slashed and his ears and nose cut off.

  Paco was seventeen at the time, and a bandit in everything but name. It was In the caves of Chthuahua that he first donned the bandoleras symbolic of the profession and where he met Papa Villa and Diego, who like him had settled on the name Menéndez. Because Diego liked new man, he undertook to tutor him in the art of cattle rustling. They quickly became friends, and at the end of two years, when the drought ended in Sonora and the ranchers realized that the weather alone was not responsible for their huge losses and Villa elected to disband for the time being, the two fled north together.

  Diego—older, larger, his thin legs bent not from riding but from the same childhood disease that had killed his brother and sister, offered no excuse for his drift into outlawry. He had kissed his widowed mother good-bye at the age of eighteen to seek work across the, border in Texas and returned for a week’s stay less than a year later with three thousand pesos stuffed in a money belt around his barrel middle. After that he came back every year, sometimes with so much silver on his person he chinked when he walked, sometimes with little more than the shirt on his back, and once with enough lead in his side and right ham to weight a lamp. His mother said nothing, accepted a fraction of the money he offered her when he had money to offer, plucked bullets out of him and stitched him up, and lit a candle for him every night in the church three miles down the road until the day her neighbors found her bent stiff and cold over a bowl of half-ground cornmeal in her lap.

  Except to his mother and an occasional authority figure, he had never lied to anyone about what he did for a living. Nor did he, like Paco, make excuses to himself or to others about the nobility of the life he led. Not for him the songs about great bandits who had gone before—he suspected they were like him, feeding like coyotes upon rich men’s scraps—or the tales of buried Juarista gold or dreams of beautiful Spanish women with hair like stretched black satin who longed for a true man, a caballero, to steal them from the fat dons and their girlish sons. The gold was in Papa Diaz’s teeth in Mexico City and the Spaniards’ women had calluses on their backs from the number of times the dons had pinned them to the mattresses with their great loose bellies. They turned away when the wind came from behind men like Diego. A bandido was a thief on horseback, nothing more. He stole because he disliked work.

  San Juan, the gringo grayhead who led the posse, fed them well and did not call them names, but he was still a norteamericano and not to be trusted. The Indian was an Indian; what else was there to say? He was a familiar part of the landscape, like a mountain eroded into a distinctive shape or a deformed cactus, a feature to rely on, comfortable to have around. Some of his blood flowed in their veins. But the Indian was friendly with the chief gringo and so bore watching. The small man in black had the look of a padre, one of those black crows who existed to stamp the rurales’ looting and killing with the seal of God; he would not see a wise man’s back. They reserved their judgment on the quiet ones, the tall man with the beard and the strange accent and the taller one with spectacles, but did not give them the benefit of the doubt for their silence. Weapons that made no noise were the most dangerous.

  Because they rode in trains and did not go hungry, Paco and Diego were content to do their part when it was needed. It had not been at the water stop, where the gringos had moved swiftly and with such organization that the Mexicans were but extra cargo, or at Pinto Creek, where the buggy that needed no horse had bewitched them and given the priest man the opportunity to prove their suspicions about him by shooting that other gringo from behind. Like most untutored peasants they stood in awe of total efficiency. It drew their respect and not a little fear, like that of savages witnessing a cavalry drill. There was a nagging uneasiness that someday that deadly precision would be brought to bear against them. So long as they feared San Juan, they would be l
oyal. The ranch foreman in Texas had not frightened them and had paid the price of a few broken bones and the loss of his dinero. Even coyotes ceased scavenging and turned predators when they sensed easy prey.

  Life above the border fascinated them, particularly the preponderance of wealth. True, there were poor gringos, but the poorest of them wore shoes and ate daily. Beds and glass windows were taken-for granted. Every farmer had at least one hundred and sixty acres of his own to till, and sharecropping was uncommon. Electric lights were everywhere, not just in the big cities. On a Kansas City street corner, for the price of five American centavos, the vacationing bandits had been allowed to peep through a pair of binoculars attached to a machine, turn a crank, and watch two hefty women undressing in a tiny bedroom. When the crank stopped so would they, trapped in their voluminous drawers, each with a garment in one hand; when it was turned backward they would put their clothes back on. The images were fuzzy and orange-tinted. They weren’t real women, just tintypes on a spool, another rich gringo trick. When the man who had taken their five centavos refused to give it back, they had robbed him at gunpoint. His pockets had been full of centavos.

  Denver was as big as Kansas City, and much bigger than either Mexico City or Durango, or indeed any other major population center in Mexico. Perched on a rolling plateau a mile above sea level, it boiled with humanity and machinery against the close solid massiveness of the Rocky Mountains, their snow-covered peaks blocked in on a gray sky, like chalk on a dirty board. Most of the streets were paved, and the occasional pop-pop-pop-pop of a lone automobile dulled the humming and clanging of the electric streetcars and the general steam-age racket of twelve major railroads in confluence. Smoke from the mills, breweries, meat-packing plants, and mint fed a spreading black mushroom suspended hundreds of feet above the stacks. The city throbbed with raw life.

  Alighting from the coach behind the rest of the posse, El Tigre Winchesters in hand, Paco and Diego ignored the curious stares of idle train watchers gathered on the platform as they paused to breathe in the thousand smells of life in the American West. It even stank of prosperity. The whole country was a fat, lazy merchant pleading for some sympathetic bandido to step up and cut his purse strings. They imagined Papa Villa’s round Basque face splitting into its cat’s grin the day they brought him gringo gold.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Gentleman John

  “John Bitsko?” The square man with the graying moustache spoke politely. The shop owner nodded warily, watching him over the top of the four-drawer dresser to which he was fitting a new set of knobs. The old saw that the loss of one sense leads to a greater acuteness in those that remain was especially true in his case; though his hearing was poor, his vision was abnormally sharp, and he had spotted the stranger as some kind of law through his window from across the street. The hand inside the drawer Bitsko was working on held a gun.

  “My name’s St. John. I’d like to talk to you about a fellow you know named Wood.”

  “Who?” He was genuinely puzzled. “Speak up, please. I’m a little hard of.”

  “Wood. Maybe you know him better as Carroll.” St. John described him, speaking loudly. Bitsko recognized Carroll Underwood from the description. He kept a tight rein on his expression.

  “What about him?”

  “Well, to start with, he’s dead.”

  The gun almost squirted out of his grasp. Conscious of the other’s close scruity, he lowered his eyes and worked the muscles in his arm as if twisting a screw. He swallowed surreptitiously to ease his tight throat. “Sorry to hear it, but I didn’t know him.”

  “You got a telegram from him last Thursday.”

  There were others in the shop. A mild-looking old gent in a dusty black suit was studying Bitsko’s patchwork upholstery display on the wall near the door and a tall young man with a red beard was standing just behind St. John. A pair of Mexicans lurked outside the front window, looking nothing at all like the day laborers who haunted lowertown. He relaxed his grip on the smooth wooden butt to let air in between his fingers.

  “If he sent one,” he said, “I never got it.”

  St. John grunted. “I’m fifty years old, Mr. Bitsko. I figure I got maybe ten good years left. I don’t figure to waste any of it jerking around with murderers.”

  “Murder!” Crouched behind the dresser, he had to slap his free hand to the floor to avoid sprawling.

  “Your friend Carroll was shot trying to escape. We think he was planning something, and we think you were part of those plans. In this state, any felony resulting in a death is considered first-degree murder, and you’re an accessory. You could hang, Mr. Bitsko. You want to talk now or wait till you get to the scaffold?”

  The words fell heavily on Bitsko’s thickened eardrums. He felt as if all his blood were draining into his shoes, leaving him lightheaded and dizzy. The counter was between him and the others. He started to get up, curling his finger around the trigger of the gun. Suddenly there was a rustling noise and he was staring up the shadowed bore of a Colt Peacemaker in St. John’s hand. He froze with his weapon still out of sight.

  “I should tell you that if anything but a screwdriver comes up out of that drawer you’re wallpaper,” the old lawman said calmly.

  After a beat the shop owner laid the gun in the bottom of the drawer and rose, keeping his hands well out from his body.

  St. John let out his breath, elevated the barrel of the revolver, and let down the hammer noiselessly. The bearded man strode around the end of the counter and plucked Bitsko’s gun out of the drawer. It was a Wells Fargo Express, a Colt with a short barrel designed for concealing in one’s pocket.

  “It’s getting late,” announced St. John, holstering his own firearm. “What say you close up and we talk over at the hotel?”

  The back room had a service entrance opening out on a blind alley. Bitsko, ever the careful ex-burglar, kept a stout wooden crate at the base of the four-foot board fence that closed it off, suitable for bounding up and over. A pursuer, thinking he might choose the easier route to the street, might turn in the opposite direction. “I’ll just get my coat and hat.” He turned toward the back.

  “Coat and hat, George.”

  In response to St. John’s call, a flat-faced Indian in white man’s clothes came in through the doorway leading to the back room, carrying Bitsko’s outer garments in one hand. A very tall white man came in behind him wearing spectacles. They were both armed. The pockets of the coat the Indian was carrying had been turned inside out.

  “Thank you,” said Bitsko dryly, accepting the items. “Wouldn’t want you catching cold.” St. John stepped away from the end of the counter to let him pass.

  Midian Pierce led the questioning.

  The Sunday school teacher started by telling Bitsko in conversational tones about Lawrence and Centralia, about the capture of Union soldiers and the methods by which Quantrill’s men drew information from them regarding payroll shipments and the location of Yankee gold. The ex-burglar listened grudgingly from his seat on a hard chair with no arms, planted in the middle of St. John’s hotel room, but as the accounts became graphic he squirmed and turned pale. The stories had to do with knives and glowing campfire coals and thin strands of copper wire.

  Most of the posse had never seen Pierce in full evangelistic fury. By the end of the first session he was in his shirtsleeves, collar undone, face scarlet, the words flicking out like whip ends. Though the volume scarcely rose his voice grew thin and sharp. His eyes shone like pinholes in a lampshade.

  While Testament rested, St. John spoke. Without stirring from his overstuffed armchair the old lawman held forth in a soothing rumble, interjecting a question here and there that hung unanswered. Bitsko wasn’t listening to the words; he allowed their gentle cadence to flow over him and massage away the harsh effect of Pierce’s attack. St. John recognized this reaction and felt sorry for him. He knew what was coming.

  Rawlings was fascinated. An admirer of Sigmund Freud, the
Pinkerton had realized early the uses to which the Viennese physician’s theories regarding psychology could be put in detective work, and here was an undeniable example.

  Yet he was certain that Irons St. John, with his public school education, had never heard of Freud or his findings. In spite of himself, he felt a growing respect for Hanging Judge Parker’s loyal outrider.

  The room grew gray. A lamp was switched on, the furnace in the hotel’s cellar cut in with a shuddering of pipes.

  The air smelled of boiled steel from the radiator. St. John fell silent and Pierce picked up here he had left off. The Mexicans, indoors for once, appeared to be listening intently. Like George American Horse, Rawlings was nudged by the suspicion that they knew at least some English.

  Dusk became evening. Wild Bill Edwards dozed sitting on the sofa without removing his glasses. Seated next to him, George dismantled his Starr revolver, cleaned and oiled the components, wiped off the excess, oiled them again, and put it back together, reloading last. Room service brought sandwiches for all of them. The Pinkerton took delivery at the door and paid the bellhop. Bitsko’s hard-boiled egg on rye went uneaten, as did Pierce’s roast beef, but not for the same reasons. Pierce was busy.

  Evening bled into night. Paco stood guard while Diego slept, squatting on his heels against the wall with his chin on his chest. Rawlings sat on the edge of the bed, contemplating his shoes, with his hands clasped between his knees. St. John ate the second half of his sandwich. The bread was soggy from the sliced hothouse tomato and the meat was tough. They all had their coats off now.

  Bitsko broke just after the clock at the head of the corridor outside bonged nine. His shirt had soaked through and his eyes had begun to glaze, and when Pierce stopped talking and produced a flat leather case filled with instruments that glittered in the lamplight, he sprang from his chair, tangled a foot on the rung and fell hard on his face. In the next instant everyone was on his feet. They gathered around the captive, helped him up and righted the chair, and sat him down and wiped the blood away from his smashed nose, and all that time he was talking so fast the words ran together so that they had to go back over it later to get the details.