Buscadero

by Bill Brooks

  Billy helped Sister McKnight take the cooking pots and tin plates down to the river to wash them, scrubbing them with sand and the muddy brown water. The whole while, Katie and Pete could hear the couple conversing in a language that was unfamiliar. Once, Sister McKnight laughed and jabbered and waved her finger at Billy and then he laughed too.

  They returned from the river, each laughing, carrying their pots and plates.

  As a way of answering the curious look of their guests, Billy said: “Sister’s in a right good mood. Seems you two eating all of her cooking has made her happy as giggle juice. Sister says she’s wanting that we should go into the wagon now and do a bit of talkin’. Anytime Sister’s in that good of a mood, I best be taking advantage of it. I ain’t getting any younger!” Billy laughed uproariously and squeezed an arm around Sister. Her dark moon face bunched into a smile.

  “See you two in the morning,” said Billy.

  Later, when she and Pete sat under the lean-to, Katie said, “They are like happy children.”

  “Good people,” said Pete. “They seem to know something about living the rest of us are missing.”

  The sky had turned from copper to rose to purple. A full moon perched itself on the horizon for a time, and then slowly lifted in the sky.

  Pete could not help but notice how beautiful Katie looked in the moon’s light.

  “Billy really seems to love her, doesn’t he?” said Katie.

  “He admires her like gold and silver,” said Pete.

  “It would be nice to have something like that.”

  “You mean to be like they are together?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Katie, I think it could be that way with us, if we wanted it to be.”

  She turned to look at him, her eyes searching his face, looking into his gaze.

  “I wish it were so.”

  “I can understand how Billy must love Sister,” said Pete. “I can understand that now ... now that I know you.”

  She sighed, placed a finger to his lips.

  “Don’t say such things, Pete. I will only want to believe them.”

  “What is wrong with that?”

  “You forget that I am a criminal, but I don’t forget that.”

  “I don’t care about that,” he said.

  “You should, Pete, you should.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore, Katie. As far as I am concerned it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “It does to me.”

  “Katie, I think I am in love with you.”

  “I know.”

  “Well?”

  “What do you want me to say, Pete? That I love you too? What difference will it make?”

  “A lot to me.”

  “Pete, don’t love me. Find someone else to love, someone you can have a life with.”

  “I can have a life with you, Katie. I want to have a life with you.”

  She moved against him, took his face in her hands.

  “Do you, Pete. Do you really?”

  “Yes, more than anything.”

  “What if ... when we get to Arkansas ... what if ...”

  “Hush,” he said. “We’re not going to Arkansas. As far as I’m concerned you are innocent of the charges against you. As far as I’m concerned, it is Johnny Montana that is wanted. No one’s going to know who you are, no one will even suspect.”

  “But what about you?” she asked. “What about your job as a lawman?”

  His laugh was without humor.

  “Who ever heard of a one-armed lawman,” he said. “This shoulder will never heal so’s I can use my arm. I’m finished as a lawman, Kate.” She could see, in his sad eyes, that his shoulder was not the only thing wounded.

  “Besides,” he said, putting his arm around her, “there’s other things in life than being a lawman. It doesn’t matter if you’ll be with me.”

  “I will, Pete. I promise you I will.”

  “You won’t mind the fact that I’ll be crippled in this arm?”

  “Why should I,” she said with a smile. “Between us, we have three good arms.” He found himself laughing fur the first time since before their journey had begun.

  “I guess we do at that,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The trail from Mormon Springs proved to be of good grass. The dun had a smooth gait and the battered lawman was grateful for that.

  He had picked up a fresh trail early and stuck with it. The way the sign read, the horse was moving at a gallop, moving hard. A man that rode his horse that way and for that long was in a hurry. He was looking for a man in a hurry.

  The trail left by the outlaw may have been easy to follow, but the ride itself proved difficult. The Ranger’s jaw throbbed with sharp pain, the eye and cheekbone above it were painfully swollen, and the broken ribs seemed to be like knives being thrust into his side.

  The troubling thing about his injuries was that the eye that was swollen closed was his primary eye, the one he used for shooting. If it came to fast gunplay, he would have to rely on instinct—a consideration he found little comfort in.

  Several times, he coughed up blood. But it was old blood and so did not concern him as much as it might have.

  Even though he had the pain killer, laudanum, in his saddle bags, he allowed his pain to become insufferable before reaching for the blue bottle. And even then, he was considerably careful about the amount of the liquid he drank.

  But come the night, when the chill set in, increasing his pain, he relied on the laudanum to bring his ease. The first night, however, brought on terrible nightmares that caused him to come awake in a sweat.

  Then, too, there was the fact that he was unable to chew any food and was only barely able to take in water from his canteen in sips. The lack of nourishment further weakened him. He was a big man, a man that needed the fuel of a full meal.

  By the second day, he wasn’t sure if it was the laudanum, the lack of grub, or the injuries that caused him to feel so light-headed.

  Twice that day he thought he saw towns off in the distance, only to have them disappear, and once he nearly fell from the saddle, coming to just in time to get a grip and pull himself upright.

  He heard strange noises, and possibly voices, that could have only come from within his head.

  On the evening of the second day, he had come upon a trickle of a stream, barely enough for the horse to lower its muzzle and drink from. A lone cottonwood stood sentinel, some of its upper branches burned black from an old lightening strike.

  He eased himself down, and without attempting to unsaddle the dun, sat with his back against the tree. It was an hour until dark, but he could not go on any longer.

  Tying the reins of the animal around his wrist, he took a sip from the blue bottle and closed his eyes.

  Sleep came quick.

  His eyes suddenly opened. A man was standing over him, a pistol in each hand.

  The man had a face that was familiar.

  The man lifted the pistols and pointed them downward. He tried reaching for his own revolver, but it was not there. The man laughed and thumbed back the hammers of his pieces.

  “Come to kill you, you bastard!”

  The blasts from the pistols jarred him from his sleep. His heart beat hard against his chest, it felt as though he was drowning.

  The night was black, the air cool, no moonlight, only the soft trickle of water and the dun cropping grass with slight tugs of the reins tied around his wrist.

  He took several deep breaths, trying hard to shake the sluggish effects of the laudanum and the nightmare.

  The blue bottle was still in his hand, he looked at it and flung it away, heard it shatter against something. “To hell with this,” he muttered aloud. “I’m not putting anymore of this misery into me.”

  He eased himself onto his belly and scooped handfuls of the creek water up to his mouth and splashed it over his neck, loosed his kerchief and wetted it and held it against his jaw until he was fully ale
rt.

  He leaned back against the tree and closed his eyes to the pain.

  He thought about Pete. Pete had been like a kid brother to him. Pete had been like Captain Ben’s own son. It would be hard to have to tell the Captain that Pete was dead, hard to have to bury the boy, just like it had been to bury Jim McKinnon.

  A man shouldn’t have to die so early in life, he thought grimly.

  Carefully, he took his makin’s and rolled a shuck, struck a match to it and inhaled deeply. The hot warm smoke of the cigarette seemed to soothe his jaw and quiet his nerves.

  Damndest time of my life, he told himself.

  He sat and listened to the night; small frogs croaked from somewhere near by like they were protesting one another’s presence and his presence.

  The isolation of the moment caused him to examine himself, his past, his future.

  After nearly forty years of living, his life was down to a single room in a Pecos boarding house, one saddle, one horse, two pairs of boots, a few clothes, a savings account of not more than two hundred dollars, and a dozen or so folks he could call friends. It didn’t seem like a lot for a lifetime of living.

  His thoughts turned to Josepeth Miller. Josie. He wondered how she had received the news of her husband’s death—death delivered by his own hand. How would a thing like that set with her?

  She had been the one true surprise in his life. He remembered how she had struck him the day he rode up to her house and saw her standing there, a plain unhandsome woman. Her plainness had proved her true beauty and she had captured his heart.

  “Josie,” he mumbled through swollen lips. He wished he were with her now. Not because of the pain or the isolation, but simply because he missed being with her.

  His days of cantinas and dancing senoritas were in the past. He thought of Josie and yearned for a home, a place to elevate his feet and sit in front of a warm fire and talk about the day. A place where he could get up in the morning and not have to ride out after some desperado and sleep on the ground and eat trail grub.

  Sitting there with the fire in his jaw and the ache in his ribs, such dreams seemed a long ways off.

  Practically all his life, he had lived alone, worked alone, and stayed alone. Up until now, it had not been a life he minded. But each thought of Josie and what could be was changing that.

  There was one other thing that he thought about as he stared up at the black night, at the distant stars, and wondered what all men, sooner or later, wonder about: his own mortality.

  In some ways it seemed as though he had already lived a long time. But, there were other times when it seemed as though he had only begun to get the hang of living. It sort of seemed like that ever since he had met Josie.

  The cigarette burned down between his fingers and he stubbed it out.

  The only future he could see for himself right now was to track down the man ahead of him, to find Pete.

  He regained enough strength in the resting to be able to unsaddle the dun and put on its hobbles. Finding his place once more against the tree, he pulled the horse blanket up around his shoulders and soon fell into a peaceful, exhausted sleep.

  Morning found him sore but rested. He touched lightly at the jaw, noticed the swelling seemed to have gone down and was able to see a bit more out of the eye. A careful check of his ribs found them still sore, but tolerable.

  He searched through his saddlebags and found a piece of beef jerky, broke off a bit and slipped it into his mouth. Chewing was painful, nearly impossible, but he worked the jerky slowly between his teeth as best he could and gained the flavor from it.

  He walked the dun into the depression of the stream in order to lower the height of raising the saddle onto its back. He had to rest before cinching up. Finally, with one mighty effort, he stepped into the stirrup and swung into the saddle.

  He touched spurs to the animal and walked it out of the creek.

  Once more, he picked up the trail of the galloping horse.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  They had been camped for three days along the river Billy Bear Killer called the Big Muddy. The grass was rich and sweet for the animals—Billy said they needed the rest and graze and that soon they’d be as fat and happy as Indian babies. The whole while the weather had been warm and soothing.

  Pete Winter had, at first, been anxious to go to Mormon Springs, but so pleasant had been their delay along the river with its good grasses, warm sun, and good company, that he found himself enjoying the respite.

  Sister McKnight had twice daily attended to his wound, putting fresh bandages on with a salve she dipped from a tin that smelled godawful, but seemed to have gone a long way in healing the injury. She also spoke words over him—Apache or Arapaho, he was not certain. She also made him take a tablespoon of Sorrowful Plains Elixir six times a day. He wasn’t sure if that did him any good, but it seemed to please her to no end.

  Billy Bear Killer spent his time hunting birds, mending harnesses and greasing the wheels of the wagon. When he wasn’t doing those things, he sat in the shade and twanged a Jew’s harp and tapped his toe.

  The rest had done Katie Swensen good as well. Pete noticed how color had returned to her cheeks, and how she had a tendency to smile and stay close to him. Sometimes, thinking about his crippling wound, he would feel blue. When he did, she would notice and tell him that Billy Bear Killer would throw him in the river if he did not cheer up immediately. It usually brought a smile back to his face.

  At times, they whiled away the hours, sitting under the shade of the lean-to, talking, watching the river’s flow, listening to the sounds of songbirds that flew down to the river to drink and splash at its edges.

  “My arm is useless,” he would sometimes tell her.

  “That don’t mean a thing to me, Pete Winter,” she would say.

  “What good is a one-armed man?” he would say when he was feeling especially blue.

  “Pete Winter,” she would tell him. “I don’t care if you don’t have any arms, that is not what makes you a man, not in my book. And that is not why I have come to feel about you the way I do. Now, if you do not hush such talk, I’ll throw you in the river myself!” And then he would apologize to her for his blue mood and they would go for a walk along the river holding hands and he would feel much better.

  They were sitting around the fire when Billy approached after having had a long and chatty conversation with Sister McKnight.

  “Sister is curious about the redness of your hair, Miss Swensen. She wants to know how you came by it. I tried my best to explain to her that some white folks has got red hair, but it’s a hard thing for her to understand—especially since Indians only have black hair. She said she surely would admire having red hair like yours. She’s much impressed.”

  “Tell Sister that all the women in my family have red hair, Billy. Tell her that if she would like, I’ll cut her a lock of it.” Billy smiled broadly, turned and spoke to Sister. She held out her hand.

  “Seems you have made a friend for life, Miss Swensen. She’d admire the gift.”

  “You mean right this moment?”

  “I believe so—Indians have a way of taking everything to mean right now.” He handed her a knife with a bone handle.

  “It don’t have to be much,” he said. “Be careful of that blade little sister, it’s as sharp as a nagging woman’s tongue.”

  Katie found a good strand in the back of her head, something she figured would not show so much, but yet be enough to satisfy Sister McKnight.

  She handed the hair to Billy who in turn handed it to Sister. Sister seemed pleased and so did Billy. He jumped and clicked his heels.

  “Waugh, I don’t know if anyone can stand it or not, but the last time me and Sister was up to Mobeetie, I swapped me a pair of Mexican spurs for a fiddle!” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together.

  “I’d say it’s time for a jamboree. I ain’t never played anything but my Jew’s harp, but I’m willing to give that old fiddle a s
aw and see what comes out. Katie and Sister can bang pans, and Pete, you can stomp your feet!”

  Billy went to the wagon and dug around beneath the blankets and supplies and pulled out a black leather case. He produced a scarred fiddle and a bow with several strands of hair hanging from it.

  “I don’t suppose you know much except chasing down bad men,” shouted Billy. “But maybe you could get them gals up and dancin’ while I play us a tune.”

  Pete felt a flush of embarrassment.

  “Naw, Billy, I’m not much of a dancer.”

  “Well now son, these gals is goin’ to be mighty disappointed unless you can figure out how to play with one good arm and let me do the dancin’. We can’t have us a dance without music!”

  “Come on, Pete,” urged Katie, reaching for him. “It doesn’t have to be anything fancy—let’s just you and me and Sister step to the music.”

  With a degree of reluctance he gave in to their call. Billy put the bow to the fiddle and scraped once down and once back.

  “Lord almighty!” he yeowed. “That sounds like someone skinnin’ cats—give me a minute to figger this dang thing out.” Billy worked the bow back and forth across the strings, twisted the tuning pegs a little and then, magically, he began a lively reel.

  “That’s a darn miracle!” shouted Pete.

  “I was only fibbing,” grinned Billy, “when I said I never played one of these. I used to play in a professional band that even had a tuba in it. Now come on and let’s get to dancin’.”

  Pete and Katie and Sister McKnight hopped and danced in a circle around the fire. Katie, holding hands with Pete and Sister, demonstrated a few steps they could do. And, at one point, Billy got so caught up in the fun, he laid the fiddle down and joined them, singing out a tune in a rich deep voice that surprised them all.

  “I was a singer, too,” he laughed.

  Once started, Billy was reluctant to let them rest. They wore a path dancing around the fire. Even Pete had to admit that it seemed great fun. For the first time since he had been shot, he had forgotten about his wound. Dancing in the firelight, Katie holding his hand, Billy and Sister’s laughter, Peter Winter realized how happy he was to be with them, to be with Katie. He knew that he loved her and would do anything to preserve that love.