by Geff Moyer
“Lemme help ya,” insisted Jeff.
“No!” snapped Sparky.
Billy hoped Jeff didn’t read the look in Sparky’s eyes that said, “Wish it had been you.”
“I’ll do it ‘lone,” Sparky insisted.
With great ease and reverence Sparky slid his small friend’s body off the horse, cradled him in his arms, and walked towards the infirmary. Freddie looked like a child in the big man’s arms. Billy had never seen Sparky so sorrowful. He and Jeff led the two horses to the corral and began to strip their saddles.
“Bullet just came out of nowhere,” Jeff explained again as he pulled off Vermillion’s saddle. His voice was shaking and his eyes were still watery.
“Ya didn’t see a muzzle flash?” asked Billy.
Jeff sniped at his friend, “Don’t ya think I’d be out there lookin’ if I did, goddamn it?” A moment passed in silence. “Sorry! Didn’t mean to piss at ya! I just...I just feel worthless right now. We had come outta the vaudeville theater and were standin’ by the barber shop, just standin’ there talkin’, and the shot came outta nowhere.”
Billy pointed to the blood on Jeff’s shirt. “You hit?”
“Huh?” Jeff looked down at his shirt. “No. No. I...I caught him when he fell. He was dead before I even caught him, Billy.”
Billy stared at his tense friend then asked, “What’d ya wanna do?” He was ready for anything Jeff would suggest. “I’m with ya whatever ya wanna do!”
“Nuthun we can do tonight. Got him square in the heart, Billy!” He yanked off his hat and threw it to the ground. “Outta nowhere! Square in the goddamn heart!”
“Ya think it was just a stray bullet from somewhere?” asked Billy.
“A gut feeling tells me it wasn’t.”
Since the time Jeff and Freddie caught those two gunrunners who implicated the Mexican police, they knew they were potential targets, but not even Jeff thought the greasy assholes would stoop to bushwhacking on the U.S. side of the border. Certainly not in the town that housed the Ranger’s headquarters. So not only was Freddie’s death painful, it was insulting.
The next morning Freddie’s body was shipped by train to his parents in Bisbee. Sparky rode with it in the boxcar. Billy made sure his harmonica was placed in a special package and sent to his daughter Isabel. He wondered how she would handle the news and was glad he wasn’t the one who had to deliver it. He had met her twice: a year ago when Freddie’s folks brought her down for a visit, and again just a few weeks ago when he and Freddy visited her school in Bisbee. She was a pretty little thing, not a bit shy, and definitely her daddy’s girl. He wondered if his two boys would mourn him going under. But how could they, he thought. “They don’t even know me.”
Jeff and Billy watched the train disappear into the distance.
“We got some detective work to do,” Jeff finally said. “We gotta figure out where the hell the shot came from.”
“Then what?”
“We’ll see when we find it.” Soon they were standing in front of the barber shop. Jeff looked at the ground and calculated precisely where Freddie was standing. “The bullet hit him square in the heart. We were both facin’ thataway. “He placed his hand on his heart then stretched it out straight, trying to trace the angle of the shot. “I figure from the sound it had to come from about a hundred yards,” he added, gazing down the length of his arm to the end of his pointed finger.
“That’d mean a long rifle,” added Billy.
“Yep!” replied Jeff, and pulled a spent bullet from his pocket. “I took this out of him last night.”
Billy could tell by his friend’s voice that that had to have been painful. He had dug a few bullets out of friends...but never a dead one...and never one as close as Freddie.
“Looks like a fifty,” observed Billy, “maybe a Sharps.”
Jeff’s eyes were scanning a ridge overlooking the buildings across the street. “Since we were facing north, it couldn’t have come from a rooftop. Too close! The round would’ve passed through him. Let’s take a look up on that ridge.”
Billy eyeballed the location. “Be one hell of a shot at night.”
“That barber shop light outlined us perfectly.”
They both stood in silence for a long minute, staring at the ridge.
Finally Billy said, “You know this was an assination!”
“I know!” agreed Jeff, not bothering to correct his friend’s pronunciation.
“Means they ain’t got no qualms ‘bout crossin’ the border and dry gulchin’ you, too!”
“I know. When Freddie fell into my arms I dropped to my knees, cradlin’ him. That took us both out of the light. Otherwise there might’ve been a second shot. If he hadn’t fallen towards me, you might’ve been plantin’ both of us.”
“Knowin’ Freddie he pro’bly did that on purpose to get ya outta the line of fire. Ya know they won’t stop at doin’ ya in the back!”
“Guess you’re just gonna have to watch it for me.” With a forced half grin Jeff added, “Ain’t exactly how I imagined bein’ famous.”
“I told ya to not spit out yer name to ev’ry crooked beaner policeman ya harnessed.”
“Okay, fine!” Jeff shot back at his friend. “I fucked up! And it got my friend killed. Don’t ya think I know that? What I don’t know is why the sumbitch didn’t target me?”
The two Rangers tethered Orion and Vermillion to a tree near the top of the ridge and hiked to its crest. They strolled among the craggy rocks until Jeff finally stopped and stared down towards the buildings.
“Good line of sight from here,” he stated and pointed towards the barber shop in the distance.
Both men knew this was the work of a killer with the eye of a hawk. Billy tried to imagine how Jeff was feeling at that moment, knowing he was being targeted by someone who could make that kind of shot. Someone he couldn’t even see, that it could come from anywhere at any time. It would be like living on the edge of cliff in earthquake country. It angered him that he didn’t know how to protect his friend. Then he spotted something glistening a few feet away.
“There!” He picked up a spent cartridge.
Glancing at the piece of brass, Jeff said, “You called that one right, Billy! Sharps! Bushwhacker’s weapon!”
After a long moment of just standing and staring down the hill at the barber shop, Billy finally said, “Ya know, he ne’er told us her name.”
“Who?”
“His little dressmaker.”
The only funeral Billy had ever attended was for his pa, so he hated them. At least it wasn’t raining at Freddie’s. Any Ranger not on assignment made the trip up to Bisbee for the service. It was more crowded than Billy thought it would be. Freddie had a lot of friends in the town, or his parents did. As he scanned the black-dressed mourners he noticed the school marm Miss Hannipy among the group. She caught his eyes, smiled sadly, and subtlety waved. Her hair was piled up, not hanging loose like the first time he saw her in Isabel’s classroom. She still reminded him of a pretty dove with a broken wing. He also searched for anyone who might resemble a dressmaker, but then wondered how he could even tell. “Maybe the huge udders,” he thought, then chastised himself for having that thought at such a dour time.
With the exception of the sobbing coming from Freddie’s mother and daughter the crowd was mostly silent. A preacher who was too young to even have known Freddie read from the Good Book and talked about what a wonderful father, son, and God-fearing man he was. Captain Wheeler presented Freddie’s parents with a plaque recognizing their son’s service. Billy wondered which star his little friend would end up on. It wouldn’t have to be a big one. He also kept a close eye on Jeff, knowing it was tearing his friend’s guts apart that the killer picked Freddie and not him. He was the one who had the most run-ins with the crooked police. He was the one who had ventilated most of them. He was the one who constantly upset their flow of pesos. And when Jeff saw Isabel sobbing on her daddy’s casket, his guilt was so pow
erful he had to walk away. Billy followed him.
“Ya can’t let this shit et you up inside, Jeff,” stated Billy when he caught up to his friend. “Where ya goin’?”
“I’m bad medicine, Billy. Best you steer clear of me.”
“That ain’t gonna happen! We done had each other’s back fer six years and I ain’t ‘bout to shy away now.”
Jeff stopped walking and turned sharply to his friend. Through gritted teeth and angry eyes he hissed, “Then yer gonna die.” He turned and walked towards the nearest saloon.
Later that day when Billy and the other Rangers boarded the train back to Nogales Jeff wasn’t there.
“He said he wanted to stay here ‘nother day,” Wheeler explained. “He’d catch tomorrow’s train.”
“Why?” Billy asked.
“Dint say and I dint ask,” replied Wheeler. “Ya know how hard he’s takin’ this. I figger maybe he wants to spend some time with Freddie’s folks, since he was there when it happened.”
The next day Billy went to the station to meet Jeff, but he wasn’t on the train from Bisbee. He went straight to Wheeler’s office.
“Ain’t heard nuthun,” stated the captain. “Billy, ya know sometimes a fella’s gotta handle things in his own way.
“Ifin ya mean by bein’ ‘lone, Cap’n,” all that’s gonna do is get him kilt.”
Over the years Billy had seen his share of fellows deal with pain in many ways. Not the kind of pain from a gunshot or knife wound, or broken arm or leg from getting thrown from a testy mount, but the kind of pain that leaves a hole inside of them. A hole they try to fill with alcohol, or whores, or solitude, none of which do the job.
Two days later Jeff returned to Nogales. He had rode a freight wagon back and said it gave him time to think.
“Ya, well, whiles ya was thinkin’ I was growin’ grey hairs! Fraid ya was laying in a ditch somewhere with a fifty caliber round through yer goddamn stubborn head.”
After the two had found an empty table at the saloon closest to the freight station and were nursing a beer, Jeff explained, “I talked with his folks...told them how it happened...told them it was my fault.”
Billy was angry. “Why the hell’d ya do that? It weren’t yer fault.”
“They’re gunnin’ for me, Billy, and that makes anyone near me a target, too. Freddie was alongside me. And I tell ya this right now, I will not let another friend die because of me.”
“Freddie didn’t die because of you. He died because he was a Ranger doin’ his job.”
Jeff was silent for a long moment before he replied, “You remember our first night on the trail together, back in o-three?”
“When we was haulin’ Calvin Small Toe?”
“You told me you lose a bit of your soul with every man you kill. ‘Member that?”
“Yeah.”
“You also lose a good chunk of it when a friend goes under. You want vengeance. You wanna reap some damage...and it’s so damn frustrating when you can’t.”
“We’ll find him, Jeff. We’ll get him.”
“I think you better change that ‘him’ to a ‘them.’
“Then we’ll kill ‘em all!”
Jeff looked at his friend. Billy saw the usual tobacco stained grin slowly spread across Jeff’s face. They clanked their beer mugs together.
Unless they were on separate assignments, for the past six years hardly a day had gone by without the twosome at least having a palaver, even a short one in passing. For the next few weeks after Freddie’s funeral Jeff had been shying away from everyone, including Billy. He requested only missions he could handle alone. Most nights he’d return to the barracks long after the others were asleep. Some nights he wouldn’t return at all. It was after midnight on the last day of March when he finally crept into the barracks. Sparky was snoring away on his two mattresses on the floor and Freddie’s bunk had yet to be filled with a new recruit. Jeff quietly sat on his bed and removed his Justins, wiggled his freed toes, then stripped down to his long johns. He stretched out on the thin mattress and stared at the ceiling. Suddenly he felt a hard poke push through the mattress from under his bunk and jab his back. Knowing it was a gun he froze.
From beneath the bed a voice asked, “How the hell can I cover yer back if I ain’t got no fuckin’ idea where yer goddamn back is?”
The first emotion that swept through Jeff was anger, but it was quickly replaced with a long exhale coming from the knowledge that he wasn’t about to have his spine blown in two. He sat up on his bunk as Billy slid out from beneath. “You haven’t anything better to do then scare the shit outta me?” asked Jeff with a relieved laugh.
“Gotta get the message through that thick skull of yers some how.”
“What the hell ya doin’ here? Anna kick you out again?”
“Why ya been shunnin’ me?” asked Billy as he sat down on Freddie’s empty bunk and purposely ignored Jeff’s question.
Jeff bit off a chunk of chew and replied, “I been trying to find Quias and Amador.”
“Four eyes are better than two.”
“Gotta do it alone, Billy. I’m not going to get another friend...”
“Goddamn it, Jeff, stop sayin’ that!” yelped Billy. “You did not get Freddie kilt! An asshole with a Sharps did it, and from the distance of his shot he pro’bly couldn’t even tell who the hell he was aimin’ at—just knew it were two Rangers.”
“Then why did he pick the smaller target, and how did he know where the hell we were to begin with?”
Billy strained his brain for an answer. Finally he said, “Ya say you and Freddie just came outta the vaudeville show?”
“Yes.”
“Did ya notice anyone? Ya know, anyone seedy in there? Any pepper bellies?”
“This is Nogales, Billy. Besides, we were too busy laughin’ at the skits and gapin’ at the nudie dancers.” Jeff chuckled and added, “Freddie kept whisperin’ to me ‘bout how his little dressmaker had bigger tits than any of them.” Again he sat for a long silent before finally saying, “If those shitwads get me before I get....”
Before Jeff could finish his statement Billy said, “Ya got it. I’ll finish it, but there’s a better chance of them not getting’ ya at all with me around. I done lost one friend by not being there. It’s a shitty feelin’ I don’t want agin.”
Jeff looked straight into Billy’s eyes and said, “Neither do I.”
That statement should have been a hint to Billy of what was to come, but it flew over his head like a bat at twilight.
“We been doin’ this job together fer neigh under six years, Jeff. Ya ain’t got me kilt yet. And I don’t aim to let ya.”
The two friends talked and laughed until around three in the morning. Sparky continued to snore away. After Jeff promised to stop being so reckless Billy finally relaxed and dozed off on Freddie’s old bunk. The next morning Jeff was gone again. Already dressed, Billy quickly headed into Wheeler’s office. It was early and the captain hadn’t made coffee yet, so Billy did.
“All he said was he had some ‘vestigatin’ to do,” explained Wheeler.
“Where ‘bouts?” asked Billy as he waited for the coffee to brew.
“Wouldn’t tell me.”
“Thought we was all su’posed to let ya know where we was all the time.”
“Sometimes fellas take on guilt that ain’t really theirs, Billy. Ain’t nuthun ya can do to stop ‘em.”
“So yer sayin’ he’s out lookin’ fer them two Mex police gunrunners, thinkin’ one of them mighta put Freddie under?”
“That’d be my guess.” The captain whiffed the freshly brewed coffee and poured himself a cup.
“Why the hell’d ya let him go ‘lone?”
“Hey, don’t jump up my ass, Billy!! That’s how he called it. Said ifin I don’t let him do it he’d take some pers’nal days off and do it anyways.”
Billy crossed to the window, and gazed at the rusted gate for a long moment. “Think he crossed to the Mex side of town?�
�
“That’s where I’d go.”
“And I thought I was the fuckin’ dumb one,” declared Billy as he started to leave the office.
“If yer goin’ down there grab a street howitzer from the armory, ‘cause I ain’t got no one to send with ya. Advantage, Billy!”
“Yessir!” With that last statement he was just about to close the office door behind him.
“Grab two!” Wheeler called out.
Billy stopped at the door. “Thought ya said there ain’t no one to go with me.”
“There’s me. I could use a little sun.”
Billy smiled and left the office. He found himself excited. He didn’t know the old captain still had the urge.
Wheeler took a sip of the fresh coffee. “Holy shit,” he mumbled. “This could kill a sidewinder!” He dumped it out the window and watched a cactus gasp and shrivel into dust.
Fifteen minutes later the two Rangers were crossing over to the Mexican side of Nogales. No one gave them a second gander as they walked towards the closest cantina, but when they entered the smelly place, all heads turned their way. The two pump action shotguns each housing a fine collection of twelve-gage rounds kept any stares from holding too long. The little old men went back to their checkers game, the whores returned to their usual customers, and the hombres turned their bellies back towards the bar. Only a Mexican policeman badly in need of a shave, haircut, and bath, and dressed in the typically soiled uniform approached them. He didn’t wear a pistol, but sported a very fancy black belt about three inches wide and studded with silver coins. Tucked into it was a machete.
With a surly tone in his voice he asked, “Problemo, pelados?”
“Habla inglés?” asked Wheeler.
“Si,” the man answered with an irritated grudge.
“Any Rangers been in today?”
“No!”
“Ya know two policia called “Tomás Amador and Delores Quías?” asked Wheeler.
“No,” answered the policeman. He turned and bellied back up to the bar.
