by John Vernon
Fred asked, "Flow much is that, then?"
"Foot it up yourselves. I trust all you boys. Put it in writing and show me your figures. Not today—do it when we're out of this."
The children ran off. The Kid thought of Macky's this— the thing they weren't out of—the final, decisive, stick-to-one's-guns, never-say-die, holdout for ascendancy, once and for all between Dolan's boys and Tunstall's avengers. You'd think clearing Macky's name would have made a difference. Two weeks after Dick Brewer's death the grand jury in Lincoln had found Mac and Rob Widenmann innocent of all charges, including embezzlement. And public opinion had swung to Macky's side! Widenmann, just the same, had fogged out to Mesilla, in fear of his life, for the war still continued as though nothing had changed, and now Billy thought maybe Rob had been wise. On Dolan's side, ruddy George Peppin, confirmed as sheriff by the governor, had augmented the Boys with men from Seven Rivers, a town south of Lincoln near the Texas border. These desperadoes and hoodlums had been cowing the populace even before Sheriff Peppin had them deputized, and those of them who were vets of the Modoc War in California had scornfully applied a new name to the Regulators: the Modocs. Billy swore it wouldn't stick. The Modocs were a tribe of bloodthirsty Indians and the Regulators were righters of wrongs. The red devils in this business weren't the Tunstall loyalists but these new Irish savages from Texas, who had robbed old ladies, ripped the roofs off of stores, thrown the goods into the streets, and shot the horses outside. They'd ambushed Frank McNab at the Fritz ranch and chased him up a gully and shot him in the back. No wonder people were fleeing the territory. Squire Wilson, after offering the courthouse and its land for sale to Taylor Ealy for two thousand dollars, and after Ealy demurred, had lowered the price to seven hundred dollars and a span of mules but still hadn't made a sale. Meanwhile, McSween had mortgaged his wife's brand-new nine-hundred-dollar piano, and where had he found the money to buy it in the first place? He'd mortgaged it to pay his loyal men, and still they hadn't seen a cent. "Kid, when this is over, I'll set you up pretty. You, Jim, and Fred. You'll get that ranch Mr. Tunstall promised."
"What about Tom?"
"Tom, too. The whole lot." Across the table from Billy, Tom O'Folliard raised one furry eyebrow—the outer limit of his silent eloquence. He was Billy's new mate, the factotum who followed him everywhere he went, much to Fred Waite's amusement. Billy still ran with Fred; but the six-foot-one Tom with a torch of red hair and moribund eyes who brought the Kid his coffee, who loaded his weapons and wiped down his horses, what wouldn't he do?—now was Billy's shadow, and Fred had become more like an older brother. Tom patiently watched, even held, Billy's bay outside gambling dens, whore-wallows, and saloons.
"Did you have a place in mind?"
"In what respect?" asked Macky.
"That ranch," said the Kid.
"They'll be ripe to pluck when Dolan's ring is broken. His men dead or in jail. There'll be plenty of opportunities then, boys. Land and stock galore."
From the dining room came the screams of bored, trapped children and the sound of a crash.
Nearly two dozen Regulators had forted up in Mac's house. They slept on his floors and ate his food and filled his bedpans. Others occupied the grain warehouse in the back of Tunstall's store while Taylor Ealy and his family inhabited the living quarters in front. Many of Billy's Mexican friends had camped inside José Monta~o's store and Juan Patrón's house further down the street, and a dozen more Regulators, including Frank Coe, Charlie Bowdre, and John Middleton, were at the Ellis store. Total Modocs: sixty-three.
The Dolanites, on the other hand, numbered only forty, but their cutthroat ways made them doubly effective. Only blood for blood would stop them, Billy knew. Between the Boys and Peppin's crew from Seven Rivers, Dolan had assembled as nasty a collection of human spittoons as the Kid had ever seen. Even their names were grotesque: Lallycooler Crawford, Roxy Rose, Rustling Bob Bryant, Ameredith Olinger. Or what about "the Dummy," who passed for deaf and dumb but looked for all the world like a stitched-together hybrid of Irish gorilla and hump-shouldered, bloody-eyed ox? The Kid pictured these murderers diked out in chicken claws, dead crows, and the teeth of Texas Rangers. He'd never seen monsters like them in Arizona. They were the muscle, Dolan and his inner circle the cunning. They fought with guns and knives, Dolan with affidavits and warrants. Words could serve as effectively as bullets, as James Dolan had shown, words, lies, and tricks—he walked the lie straight. They'd do anything, the Dolanites; they'd avail themselves of law, of the governor, the D.A., the army, Judge Bristol, to exceed restraint of law. Why, thought the Kid, did sliminess have such passionate advocates and surrender no quarter whereas fair play and justice, under Macky's supervision, was always willing to negotiate and compromise? They had holed up at the Wortley Hotel across from Dolan's store.
Sporadic firing had occurred on both sides for the last several days. Apron-men and bystanders had been wounded in the street. Dolan had had the nerve to send Jack Long calling on McSween the first day of the siege with arrest warrants for the Kid and nine or ten others but the Regulators met him with a fusillade of bullets and he turned tail. Messengers had gone back and forth between Dolan's crew and Fort Stanton ten miles away, McSween had informed them; but thus far only one trooper had showed up in town, and claimed to have been fired upon from Mac's house. Meanwhile, snipers surrounded McSween's, some behind other houses, some in the hills. Once everyone was up and the morning was over, no one dared go outside to the privy anymore—except Sue McSween. Her theory was that even savages and barbarians would not shoot a woman. The others used bedpans that Macky's Negro servant, George Washington, crept out at night to empty.
George Washington now entered the kitchen to start the first shift of breakfast. Behind him strutted fifteen-year-old Yginio Salazar.
"Ah," said McSween. "Comes die leaden messenger."
Yginio announced that Mrs. McSween would like to see her husband right now in the parlor. Looking plucky and gay, Mac strolled to the door. "Henio," said Billy. "Sit. Have some coffee."
Someone had managed to smuggle an old Las Vegas Optic into the house, and Yginio held it up. "Hey, Kid. Says in here an outlaw named Billy the Kid robbed a buckboard down at Captain Pope's Crossing. Was that you?"
"How could it be me? I'm here, ain't I?"
"This was last week. Says he's from Silver City."
"Lots of people are from Silver City."
Yginio shrugged. He looked at the door. "Is the yoo-hoo still safe?"
"That's not what we call it, Yginio."
"Mrs. Macky Swain calls it a yoo-hoo."
"We just call it the jakes. She was being cute."
"Is it safe?"
"I wouldn't go out there," said Billy.
"She may be cute but she's a tough one," said Fred. "Tough as leather. She stands up to the Dolanites."
"She's got balls," said the Kid. Yginio laughed. "How come do you suppose she never had children?"
"Maybe she ate them."
"Two weeks ago, did you hear what happened, Fred? She found out the Boys stolen Macky's horses and thought one of them was her mare, Pet. Then she thought Macky's dead—that must be it. He was holed up in San Pat at the time and that's where they got the horses. So she grabs her Greener and loads both barrels and runs down to Dolan's store and screams she wants her Pet back or someone will die."
"So she was more upset about Pet than her husband, is that your point? I know she dotes on that horse."
"That could be true but they assumed she meant Mac. John Kinney told her, I haven't killed him yet. But I've killed fourteen men and I'll get to him presently."
"He didn't know she don't care about Mac. It was the mare that drove her there."
"I disagree. If nothing else, she's loyal to her husband."
"What do you think, Tom?" Fred looked across the table.
"I don't think."
"The Dolanites have a man called the Dummy," said Fred. "That's what we ought to call you."
>
"Talk's overrated," said the Kid.
"Is it true what they said about Tunstall?" asked Fred. He lowered his voice and looked toward the parlor door. "You know. Him and Sue?"
"It's true about Francisco Gomez."
"I thought she didn't like greasers."
"She's just after her greens," said Billy. "If it has a cock, she'll take it. In the mouth or up the ass—that's all she likes."
"Not so loud," said Fred. He sounded peeved. "How do you know?"
"A little bird told me."
"That just goes to show she's never been properly fucked."
"They say he found her in a whorehouse. He was bent on redeeming her."
"That's not how she tells it. How she accounts for it, she was living in a convent. Where was this whorehouse?"
"Near St. Louis."
"That's where the convent. And what the hell was Macky Sween doing in a whorehouse?"
"Preaching the gospel. Ramming the fear of the Lord into the girls."
"McSween couldn't ram a goat with his boots on and its rear legs inside them."
"Can't you just see it? Feeding her pussy and reading the good book."
"Plus, where do you think she picked up those airs? Not in a whorehouse."
"She got them from Macky."
"Oh sure. Mr. Fumblemump."
"Minnie!" said Yginio, minatorily loud. The girl had appeared beside them at their table as though suddenly embodied. Fred and Billy glanced at each other and Fred changed horses.
"Now we're the Trojans, Kid."
"What do you mean?"
"We're holed up in here. We're the ones under siege from the Greeks out there." Fred sipped his coffee. The smell of ham had filled the room, mixed with the piñón smoke from the stove. George Washington waved at the smoke with his spatula.
"I thought you said before that we were the Greeks."
"Not anymore. And Sue McSween—she's Hecuba."
"Who's that?"
"The Trojan queen."
Minnie stared at Tom O'Folliard, who couldn't help smiling. Mule-faced Tom had found a sweetheart. "Can I see your gun?" she asked. She climbed into his lap and he lurched to one side to reach for his holster but Fred lurched across the table and clamped Tom's arm.
"Christ almighty, Tom, don't be such a fool. She's just a child."
"Oh."
"I may be crazy but you take the cake."
Tom sat there, tongue-tied. He was a large pile of shoulders, arms, and head, with a monolithic face - slit-eyed, thin-lipped, jug-eared, iron-chinned—but he, too, was just a child, the Kid thought. His head might have been twice the size of little Minnie's but it was honeycombed. All of us are children. "Tom, where were you when they passed out the horse sense?"
Tom said nothing.
Yginio circled the table to Tom and lifted Minnie from his lap. I Ic took her by the hand and led her out of the kitchen just as Doc Scurlock and Charlie Bowdre walked in and poured themselves coffee. Next door, at Tunstall's store, Punch was barking like a bell that would never stop ringing. With Rob Widenmann gone, no one fed him anymore on a dutiful basis, and no one living at the store dared to approach and muzzle the beast, so he barked all day, especially mornings. It had become a leitmotif; it made them think of the Englishman. "Mr. Tunstall would have liked Minnie," said the Kid. "His sister was the same age."
"Tom, you really don't have to rob the cradle," said Fred. "There's always Mrs. McSween."
"She's not as cute as Minnie. Right, Tom?" Billy grinned.
Tom stood then sat, blushing red as a carrot. Yginio came back and he and Doc and Jim stood around the table. "There's a soldier on the street."
"So now they're rousting up the soldiers."
"You know what this is like?" asked Fred. He looked around. "It's like two groups of porcupines. It gets cold, we close in and huddle together but right away both sides feel the other's quills so we have to move away. But then we're cold again and decide to come together and we get stabbed again and have to move apart and it's the same damn thing over and over. We can't be together and can't be apart."
"You means us and the Dolanites?" said Doc.
"Well. It's universal. It could equally apply to Macky Sween and Sue."
"To Minnie and Tom."
"Learn to laugh. That's the answer."
"Who could have made such a ballcd-up world?"
"Some pin-butt," said Fred. "It wasn't exactly made, in my opinion. Or if it was, they left out a few pieces or employed defective goods. The world's a mistake, that's what I think. It should have been one thing or the other; God or Satan; clean living or devilment. Instead, what you got is this muckheap, this mess. You got honey from corpses and rot from pretty mouths. Each day, it gets made over again and each night the darkness comes back and takes charge. Somewhere along the line I guess something happened. Some sort of malice aforethought, someone did something wrong. A fly in the ointment, I suppose—I don't know. It's like the rocks and the dirt and the wind by themselves stopped pulling their freight and just went to smash. Myself, I'm broke of trying to mend it. You just have to go along. Learn to laugh. That's the answer."
***
IN THE PARLOR, McSween avoided watching his wife as though she were the sun, but she looked bullets at him. He was tall and foggy, Sue short, pert, and puffy. "And something else. Your nephew is terrorizing his sister with a dead rat. Kitty wants to know would you get rid of the thing."
"His father's prerogative."
"His father is in Santa Fe." Everything Sue said had the sting of common sense laced with curt civility. "He has broken an oil lamp."
"Which one?"
"The Swiss. Vicente swept up the pieces. It warms my heart to see the old and the young, the brown and the white, getting along so well."
Her faint white mustache lifted when she smirked. Mac knew she didn't like so many Mexicans about. After five years of marriage, he and Sue no longer bothered to correct, or even object to, each other's behavior, they just referenced it icily. The machinery of courtesy they'd gradually constructed took over when they talked, with the odd squeak and thump. They even smiled—sometimes. But Sue, his bona roba, always made up and corseted like a big doll, and carefully composed, hair rigidly curled, bubble-eyed, lace-collared, upright, beflowered, her round cheeks saucy, her smile inviting, her warm neck lovely, had not been intimate with her chalky husband for over two years. Instead, they talked business, and the makeshift engine clanked. They'd once loved each other; then hated; then both. Then, with accusatory lapses, spasms of blame for lost affection, and periods of silence, they slowly passed into indifference. At first, their cold politeness seemed to function only in the vicinity of others; now they were the others. Poor Mac; his wife's bosom heaved in his presence but he knew it wasn't desire. It was laced-mutton willfulness, pride, her preeminence, plus her high dudgeon at being married to a sponge. He was taller than her by a good foot yet he withered in her presence. His long ropy mustache felt incidental. His handsome good looks—the big chin, the sharp nose, the wide eyes, the empurpled Scottish complexion—didn't seem to help. He'd seen chromos of Victorio, the renegade Apache, whose mustache looked like a parody of Mac's, bitter and thin. And if the red devils really were a lost tribe of Welsh—even of Israelites—perhaps there was a Celtic-Semitic-Apache blood connection in the matter of facial hair...?
The other thing about Sue was her uncanny ability to read his every thought. "Hairless little monkeys," she observed now. Her niece and nephew?
"And what are we? The hair)' sort?"
In drifting apart, he and Sue had created a third thing in their wake, a straw man between them. Their toxic knowledge of each other occupied this being, hence their wary small talk and refusal to touch. Lately, Mac had realized that the straw man was himself. It didn't exist when they weren't together but when they were he was the scarecrow caught in the middle. It was not unlike this war, he thought—a collective lunacy jointly upheld by all involved, a hopeless mess of maniac
s of the deepest dye, and Macky caught in the middle, always in the middle. He'd seen cattle pile up crossing a river and the weak ones get climbed on and die in a line, not being able to go any further, consequently forming a bridge for the living to cross upon. That was him, Macky Sween—crushed by the mindless need of others. Nail me to the cross, boys. And they put me as boss. The water climbs, the earth moves, the cattle panic, and I'm boss.
How long had Kitty been standing in the doorway? Sue's sister Elizabeth was nothing like his wife. Flatiron face, sunken eyes, high brow. Short and squat, she hardly suited his conception of a woman, never having flirted with Mac, or with anyone for that matter. Perhaps he should have married her. She had Davy by the collar and led him to McSween, who'd have to search the boy's pockets and find the dead rat. "Mac, this boy needs a talking-to. I'm blue in the face."
Mac felt an utter lack of control. At the same time, he had to affect authority. And he was broke, he thought now, descending headlong into his mind's last pit. Their money was gone, every last penny; he'd hit bottom at last. Even Sue didn't know. The piano was the last straw. Mac had been euchred, that's what it came clown to. His creditors would get him if the Dolanites didn't, and his creditors were mostly Dolanites anyway. He slapped the boy's pockets, feeling for the rat. Reached into one, felt a string, gave a tug. It was down his leg. Davy had cut a hole in his pocket. Handy for many things, as Mac discovered, to his chagrin—the boy had an erection.
