The three boys were inseparable. They did everything together. They attended school taught by Luke’s mother at the one-room schoolhouse in town. They helped each other with their chores (Sandy doing most of the heavy lifting), and for much of their childhood pretended to be outlaws like their hero, Bobby Estrella.
In the years immediately following Bobby’s death, the three boys started planning their future. They would be called the Red Star Gang and they would become legends. All the other outlaw bands would fear them and no lawman would dare touch them. Once they were old enough, they left Luna Gorda, telling their parents that they were hiring on with a rancher.
Thus their outlaw career began. The Red Star Gang began to grow their names. They kept their activities to Texas for the most part, trying to keep word from traveling to Luna Gorda for as long as possible. Those next few years were tough on the Tucker household. Sandy rarely came back home and when he did, his visits were hurried. Then something happened; the big job that tore the gang apart.
* * *
It was six months before the train came to Luna Gorda. Sandy, about to turn twenty-four, returned home suddenly, showing up at the back door of the butcher shop with a forced smile on his face. His parents embraced him and brought him upstairs, showering him with questions regarding his whereabouts for the last several months. Sandy told them the usual lie about joining a cattle drive and doing some butcher work for a Texas ranch.
Once his father had gone to bed, Sandy pulled his mother aside.
“Momma, I want to give you something,” he said and handed her a large bundle of cash.
Elizabeth-Ann’s eyes widened, her smile fading slightly on seeing the large sum. “What is this?”
“It’s for you and pa,” Sandy said. “I waited until he was asleep because I knew he wouldn’t take it.” She stared at him and he added, “Do what you want with it. Put it in the bank. Use it for charity. Buy yourself some nice things. Just . . . pay off your debts first.”
Sandy’s parents should have been better off than Tom’s or Luke’s. After all, with the local ranchers and the travelers needing supplies, the butcher shop did steady business. But Elizabeth-Ann was a spender, never able to back away from something pretty. She was also generous to a fault, giving money or meat from the shop when people in the town weren’t able to make ends meet. Alberto took her habits in stride, never complaining where Sandy could hear, but money had always been a secret struggle.
Elizabeth-Ann slowly thumbed through the cash and gave him a concerned look. “Cattle driving pays this well, does it?”
“No,” Sandy admitted, another reason why he hadn’t shown it to his father. “But does it really matter how I got it?”
Part of him wanted to tell his mother what he and his friends had been up to. After all, sooner or later their wanted posters were going to show up in town, probably sooner after this last job. But he couldn’t make himself say it.
Her forehead furrowed, Elizabeth-Ann placed the money in her bag. “Just promise me that you and the boys will be okay.”
He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. “We’ll be fine. I’m sure of it,” he said, though in truth he wasn’t sure of anything at the moment.
The next morning, Sandy woke early. He helped his father in the butcher shop for a few hours. Then he left and went for a walk. Sandy had no destination in mind. He had only the vague hope that walking the streets of his home town would bring him some form of peace to his mind.
Unfortunately, the familiar buildings and faces he saw brought him nothing but a surge of guilt. He stood for a while in front of the old schoolhouse, knowing that Luke’s mother would be inside teaching the current crop of children. His fists clenched, he turned and headed towards the saloon. Sandy wasn’t much of a drinker, but if there was ever a time to fall into a bottle it was now.
Sandy stared at the ground as he walked, the events of the Red Star Gang’s last job playing themselves over and over in his mind. He strode for some time, his thoughts clouded. When he finally looked up he discovered that was nowhere near the saloon. In fact, he was walking down a path that led into the hills outside of town.
He paused for a moment in confusion before he realized where he was. He was on the trail that led towards the old cemetery. Sandy let out a sigh, realizing why it was he had gone this way. This was where they had buried Bobby Estrella. He continued towards the gravesite, wondering what he would find when he got there.
After Bobby’s death, the town had given him a prime spot in the cemetery. It was up on the top of the hill, overlooking the vast plains and mesas in the distance. They had even given him a tall granite headstone and had chiseled a beautiful epitaph and a large tilted star into the face of it. But something had been wrong with the granite the town had used. The stone had quickly pitted, the engravings wearing away unnaturally fast. The last time he had been there, Sandy had found the lettering barely legible.
He walked past the weathered wooden fence that surrounded the graveyard and headed up the long hill, passing the small worn markers left by the decades of Luna Gorda residents. When Estrella’s headstone came into view Sandy expected to see it worn down to a nub like so many of the others on the hill, but to his surprise it stood tall as ever. Stranger than that, the star on the face of it, which had had been worn to nothing just a year ago, had now been turned blood red.
At first he figured someone had painted it on, but it seemed more substantive than that. The wind picked up as Sandy approached. A gust nearly took the battered hat off of his head, but he barely noticed. Sandy raised a hand absently to hold the hat in place and leaned in close to examine the star. To his surprise, it wasn’t painted on after all. The red star was actually a mosaic made of red glass that someone had cemented into place.
Who would have done something like that? The symbol of the red star didn’t mean anything to anyone but his friends, but it didn’t seem like something Luke or Tom would do. Besides, he was certain that neither of them had the skills to put together something as intricate as this. Maybe they paid someone to do it?
“That’s new, ain’t it?” asked a nearby voice.
Sandy’s hand went to his gun and he turned to see an unfamiliar man standing there. The man looked like a middle-aged cowhand just off the trail. He wore a thick handlebar mustache and his clothes were worn and covered in a fine coat of dust. A gun belt hung around his hips and a coiled whip was tied at his waist. He was looking at Estrella’s headstone, a speculative look on his face.
“Uh . . .” Sandy didn’t know how to respond for a moment. How had he not noticed the man on his way up the hill? “Yep.”
The unfamiliar man walked closer and went down on one knee in front of the headstone. He placed a hand on the pockmarked granite and intoned with a wizened drawl, “Here lies Bobby Estrella. Son of Luna Gorda. Our shining star.” The man grunted. “A sweet sentiment, I’ve gotta say.”
“You can read that?” Sandy said. He couldn’t see anything on the stone but the red star.
“The words are worn off, but the intention’s still there,” the man said and ran a finger across the glass mosaic. “This red star, though. It says a lot more than those faded words. There’s real power in that symbol.” He looked back at Sandy. “Strange how you got one just like it on your belt buckle.”
Sandy cocked his head at the man. This person was a little too observant. “Who are you?”
“You know, I never much liked spendin’ time in old boneyards like this,” the man said. “Folks spend too much time lending thoughts to the dead when they should be focused on the living.” He stood and held his hand out to Sandy, a smile on his face. “Name’s Pecos Bill.”
Sandy didn’t shake the offered hand. “Pecos Bill. Like the man in those stories in the paper? ‘That ornery cowpoke, Pecos Bill’?”
The man sighed but his smile didn’t lessen. “That’s my name. Though I’m only ornery part of the time.”
“Uh-huh,” said Sandy dubious
ly. “And you knew Bobby?”
Pecos shrugged. “Sorta. I wouldn’t say we was close, but I kept an eye on him from time to time. He had real potential.”
Sandy’s eyes narrowed as a possible explanation came to him. His hand edged towards his pistol. “You a lawman?”
“I’ve been a lot of things over the years, but that ain’t one of ’em,” Pecos said with a good-natured chuckle. “Naw, I was just keeping an eye out for someone with talent. He happened to choose a different route than the one I offered.”
“Well . . . good day,” Sandy said. He tipped his hat to the man and turned to walk away. He would have preferred to spend some more time at Bobby’s grave, but he’d come back later when he could do it alone, preferably well and drunk as he had originally planned.
“Hold on, son. Where you going?” Pecos asked.
Sandy kept walking, feeling no inclination to keep conversing with the man.
The wind on the hill picked up again. A sudden gust blew right past him, strong enough to make him stumble forward. This time he did lose his hat. Sandy swore as the hat tumbled down the hillside, passing generations of grave markers to land neatly in the hand of the person he had left behind at the top of the hill.
“You dropped this!” Pecos yelled up at him from the bottom of the hill. The man held the battered hat out towards Sandy.
Sandy stopped and looked behind him at the now-vacant hilltop, his eyes wide. How had the man gotten past him so fast? He didn’t look like a sprinter. Sandy strode down the hill to Pecos and snatched the hat back. “What are you about?”
“I’m getting your attention,” the man replied, his voice as good natured as ever.
Sandy frowned at the man. “And how did you get down here so fast?”
Pecos chuckled embarrassedly. “It’s-uh, hard to explain. It’s something people like me can do. We don’t follow the same rules as mortal folk.”
“So . . .” Sandy blinked as he tried to follow what the man had said. A smile appeared on his face. “Mortal folk? You trying to tell me you’re a ghost?”
Pecos wrinkled his nose. “Naw. A ghost ain’t nothing more than a can of memories. What I am is much more than that.”
“I don’t stand around talking to crazy folks,” Sandy replied. He started to walk around the man, but Pecos moved to stand in his way. Sandy reached out to push past him, but his hand passed right through the man’s body.
Sandy jerked his hand back. “The hell?”
“That’s something else about folks like me,” Pecos said. “We’re only as solid as we want to be.”
Sandy took a few steps back. “The saloon.” That was it. He really had gone to the saloon as he had intended in the first place. “I must’ve drunk myself into a stupor and fallen asleep.”
It made sense now. The cemetery. The red star mosaic. The ghost. It was all a bad dream brought about by whiskey and guilt.
“Does everyone else have this much trouble?” Pecos said with a scowl. He reached out and grasped Sandy’s shoulder, digging his fingers in painfully. “Look, son. You ain’t asleep. I ain’t no ghost.”
“Hey!” Sandy tried to slap the hand away, but his hand passed through Pecos’ arm. He tried to back away, but the man moved with him.
“Wanna be stubborn as a mule?” Pecos snapped. “Well breaking a mule ain’t that different from breaking a horse and there ain’t been a horse born that I couldn’t break!”
Finally, Sandy stopped. He kept his voice steady. “Let loose of my shoulder now.”
With a short nod Pecos did as requested. The specter released him and stood back, folding his arms. A burnt out stub of a cigar appeared in the corner of his mouth. “Believe me yet? I can keep on ‘till you do.”
Sandy resisted the urge to rub at his sore shoulder. “Why are you haunting me, ghost that says he ain’t a ghost?”
“I’m here ’cause you need a backer,” Pecos replied.
“I do?” Sandy asked.
“That’s right, son. You want to become a legend, but you have reached a fork in the river,” Pecos said.
“A fork?” Sandy said dully. “In a river?”
“Yes, a dag-gum fork,” Pecos replied in irritation. “I’ve been watching you, son. You got a decision to make. It’s written on your stubborn face plain as day. You can head one way, the way you’re scared of heading, and become a real bastard; someone who needs to be put down. Or you can head the other way. I’m offering to help you do that. Accept my help and you can become a true legend; someone you could be proud of being.”
Sandy leaned back and said nothing for a long moment, absorbing what Pecos had said. He couldn’t fault the specter’s powers of observation. “Exactly how do you imagine you can ‘help’ me?”
Pecos smiled. “Well, the job of a backer is to help their prospect become a legend, simple as that. As for how I can do that? Well son, I’ve been there. I’ve travelled that long road that’s in front of you and I can guide you in the right turns to take.” He spread his arms wide. “And, as you have seen, I have abilities that could be helpful to you along the way.”
That sounded a bit too good to be true. “There’s a catch, isn’t there? You’re gonna want my soul or something.”
“Your ever-living soul?” Pecos snorted. “You can keep it. What would I do with a soul? No, the only catch is that you have to put up with me ’till the end.”
Sandy frowned. He knew very little about this specter and he was supposed to let it stay around him ‘’till the end’? “What about my friends?”
Pecos shrugged. “Your boys, Tom and Luke? I figure one way or the other, your lives are gonna be intertwined. No way around that. It’ll get a bit complicated, though. They won’t be able to see or hear me. Hell, no one will be able to see me but you. So unless you want folks to think you’re crazy, you might want to be careful how you choose to talk to me.”
“You’re making it sound better all the time,” said Sandy glumly. “So what do you get out of this arrangement?”
“That is something that you don’t need to know,” Pecos replied. “Now, I’ll admit that there is a reward waiting at the end for me if you succeed, but don’t worry. You ain’t the one that’ll have to pay it.” He reached into his duster and pulled out a yellowed tube of paper. He held it out to Sandy. “It’s all spelled out in this here contract.”
Sandy took the scroll from the specter’s hand and rolled it open. It was quite long and covered with tight, but legible script. The paper felt a little odd, like no paper he had touched before. It made him feel uneasy. “I’m supposed to sign a contract from a dead man?”
“Well, we can’t just shake on it. This is a binding deal I’m offering you, son,” Pecos said.
Sandy read the first several lines. “The undersigned prospect, Sandy Tucker, being of sound mind, agrees to take ‘The Legend, Pecos Bill’ as his backer . . .” He looked up at the specter. “Are you really the Pecos Bill from the stories?”
The specter scratched his head. “Well, those stories have been getting more and more out of hand lately. Some of it’s true and some of it ain’t. All I can say is that I was and am the original me.”
“Right,” Sandy said. He looked back at the long scroll in front of him uneasily. For such a simple agreement there was a lot of detail to go over, most of it in some archaic form of legalese. “I feel like I should get me a lawyer to look at this.”
“Lawyer?” Pecos spat. “It’s really not that hard to understand. Besides, no one would be able to read it but you.”
“Great. So I’m supposed to stand here in the graveyard and sign a deal with someone that only I can see? Someone that, for all I know, could very well be a devil in disguise?”
“Naw,” said Pecos. He clapped Sandy on the back and took the contract back. He rolled it back up and tucked it into the inner pocket of his duster where it seemed to disappear. “Let’s go down to the saloon. You can peruse the contract with a glass in your hand.”
12:
The Downsides of Power
An excerpt from the Tale of Sandy Tucker
“Never tuch tha stuff! Smokin’s bad for tha lungs! Pecos Bill’s a Red Horse man!” – Declaration made in a popular Red Horse Chewing Tobacco ad that ran throughout the late 1870’s. That Ornery Cowpoke Pecos Bill is depicted spitting into a spittoon while absently firing a bullet at a cigar being offered to him by a disembodied hand. A plug of black chewing tobacco is clutched in his off hand, a large bite having been taken out of it.
The grumbles of Tom and Luke followed Sandy as he left the hideout. He knew they didn’t understand why he had to leave, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that. Defeating Jeb Wickee was something he would have to do on his own.
The specter was waiting for him just outside of the ravine. Pecos Bill was sitting astride his famous stallion, Widowmaker. At least, Sandy assumed it was Widowmaker. Pecos claimed he would never ride anyone else. But the horse never looked quite the same two days in a row, often changing breed or color.
The only consistency was that he was always a powerfully muscled specimen with fierce and intelligent eyes. When Sandy had asked Pecos about the constant change, the specter would only say that it didn’t matter what he looked like. He was still the best damn horse in the U.S. of A. Today he was a black and white spotted Appaloosa.
Pecos’ cheek bulged with a thick wad of chewing tobacco and as Sandy approached, the specter leaned over and spat onto the ground. “I heard what you told your friends about looking for answers. You sure you have to do it alone?”
Sandy gave him a dull glare in response. Like he was ever really alone. Besides, he was fairly certain that Jeb Wickee’s mysterious powers came from having a backer and he couldn’t imagine trying to explain that to his friends. They would never believe it.
“I don’t think you give the two of them enough credit,” Pecos added as if hearing Sandy’s unspoken thoughts. “You might be surprised what they’d understand.”
Noose Jumpers: A Mythological Western Page 12
