Santa Fe Showdown

by Jory Sherman

  “Me, too,” she said.

  The clouds turned golden, then reddened, finally paling to a salmon with tinges of red, and began turning to ash by the time Lew and Marylynn had gathered dry wood for a fire and laid out their bedrolls. The road to Santa Fe was not visible from the spot Lew had picked for their camp. They were behind a low ridge atop a hill, and if he stood on tiptoe, he could see the road.

  “We’ll maybe warm up some beans and cook some strips off that chunk of beef we brought,” he said, “and then put out the fire before it gets full dark.”

  “Can’t we keep it for warmth tonight? It got real cold last night.”

  “No, it’s too bright an invitation.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “Might be we don’t want anyone to know where we are.”

  “I don’t know anybody in these parts, Lew. Do you?”

  “No, I reckon not. But you never know who might ride up in the night.”

  “Are you expecting someone to ride up to our camp?”

  “Nope. It’s the unexpected someone I’m worried about.”

  She cut the meat and boiled water for coffee, heated the pinto beans from an airtight.

  “You act very strange, sometimes,” she said. “Almost like a criminal.”

  “In the eyes of the law,” he said, “I am a criminal.”

  “But you’re not really.”

  She looked at him as he kicked sand on the fire, putting it out.

  “Are you?”

  He did not have a ready answer for her. There was a price on his head. But he had grown up to believe that a man was held to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. He had not been arrested, and he had not been charged with a crime. Yet, with a bounty on him, many people would think him guilty of some crime.

  “I don’t know, Marylynn. I’m a wanted man. That’s enough for some folks.”

  “Well, not for me, it isn’t. You’re no more a criminal than I am.”

  “Eat,” he said, squatting after one more look down the road. It was empty. They hadn’t seen another traveler for at least two hours.

  She sat and began eating. Every once in a while she looked over at him. He ignored her. She was starting to get under his skin, but he didn’t know why. She just wouldn’t let things be. She wanted to know everything and dig around in him until she found something she was looking for—whatever that was.

  He was impatient to get to Santa Fe and leave her to fend for herself. She was the kind of woman who would throw a rope on a man and brand him the first time he dropped his guard. Well, that wasn’t going to happen to him. Not with Marylynn. He had his own path to follow, and she had hers.

  They slept a few feet apart. Marylynn fell asleep shortly after she pulled the blanket of her bedroll over her. Lew looked up at the dark sky, with its millions and millions of bright winking stars. Coyotes started singing before he fell asleep, a melodious chorus that seemed to sound from one place, then another. It was a beautiful sound, but he knew that it meant they were hunting something and that when they stopped singing, something had died—a rabbit, a bird, a deer, an armadillo, or a mouse.

  Bright streamers of song, the high melodious yips and calls of the coyotes floated on the air, and he felt the wildness in the music, the savagery of the hunting canines. And there was something about it all that made him homesick, homesick for the Ozark hills and the deer that were moseying up from Osage Creek to feed all night in the hardwoods, nibbling on acorns and walnuts and hickory nuts. The coyotes would be bellowing like hounds back home, too, he knew.

  He had listened to their night songs many times over the years and felt the same thrill he felt now, under the stars, so small a man in the immensity of the land and the sky, far from any human settlement, far from the law’s long reach and the blindfolded lady holding a sword in one hand and scales in the other.

  He felt free, but was he, really?

  Lew fell asleep, not knowing the answer to that question.

  Was any man ever truly free?

  The question took him deep down into the ocean of sleep as the silent stars looked on and the moon spread its pale pewter light across the desolate and vacant land.

  11

  THEY DROPPED DOWN OUT OF THE PINES, HAVING PASSED THROUGH a mountainous stretch that brought them a welcome coolness that last afternoon. The sign outside the town, its letters faded from wind and weather, proclaimed it to be Glorieta. It was a small town of adobe dwellings, a tienda, a livery stable, blacksmith’s shop, and a small café that reeked of corn tortillas, chorizo, and frijoles refritos. Marylynn was hungry and wanted to stop. There were some hitch rings buried in the earth outside the café, and they tied their horses to these and walked inside through the open door, where flies buzzed and moths clung to the jamb like tiny mauve bats.

  There was only one other patron inside, sitting at a small counter with a cup in front of him, no saucer, and a pint of tequila next to it. He was talking to a woman behind the counter, a matronly, moon-faced lady with neatly coifed hair streaked with gray. They were speaking Spanish and didn’t seem to mind that they could be overheard.

  “Pepe,” she said, “you must be careful with men like that. You should not cheat such men. He is a bandit, I know that. A killer.”

  “Charley did not care. I have cheated him before.” Pepe had short-cropped hair, black with flour-white sprigs salted in his sideburns, and a moustache waxed to a high black sheen. He was muscular from the waist up, his hands gnarled and scarred from years of manual labor at the blacksmith’s forge.

  They both laughed.

  “I do not like the way he looks at me, Pepe. He takes my clothing off with his eyes.”

  “That is why I made him pay me the five dollars in silver for fixing the shoe of his horse. Charley wanted to give you his sausage, Lupita, and you would have made him pay even more for the privilege of lifting your dress.”

  Lupita’s face reddened and she glanced at the two gringos who slid chairs out from a table near the door.

  “Pepe, you go back to the stables. I do not lift my skirts for such trash as Charley Grimes, that son of bad milk, that white bastard.”

  “Oh, you have customers, Lupita. We will talk about lifting your dress tonight when I have finished my work.”

  “We will talk about that five dollars you have in your pants, Pepe, before there will be any talk of my dress.”

  Pepe rose and stretched his arms out to Lupita, but she backed away and cocked a thumb toward the doorway.

  “Go now,” she said, “and do not drink too much this afternoon.”

  She picked up a slate tablet from below the counter and walked to the table, setting it down in front of Lew. The tablet clacked, and some of the chalk flew off the letters. The bill of fare was in Spanish.

  “Can you read that, Lew?” Marylynn asked. “All I can smell is beans, and I’ve had enough of those.”

  “I can read it. You want steak?”

  “Umm, yes.”

  As Pepe left, he pinched Lupita’s behind and she swatted at him, fanning the air with her hand but smiling at him as he stepped through the doorway.

  “Dos bistecas, senorita, y dos botellas de cerveza, por favor.”

  “Oh, you speak the tongue,” Lupita said in Spanish. “The beer is not cold, but it has coolness. Do you wish to have beans with your beefsteak?”

  “Do you have potatoes or squash?” Lew said, also in Spanish.

  “We have potatoes. They will cost fifty cents over the price of beefsteak and beans.”

  “She will have the potatoes, and I will have the beans with my beefsteak,” Lew said.

  “I will tell the cook,” Lupita said.

  Lew glanced beyond her at the wall between the counter and the front door. There was a large corkboard there, and pinned to it was a flyer with his name on it and a drawing of his face that had resembled him nearly two years before. He saw the word REWARD in large block letters and under that, an amount: $1
000. Beneath that, he read the words Dead or Alive.

  “A moment, senorita,” Lew said to Lupita as she turned to go.

  “Yes? What is that you wish?”

  “I heard you talking with your friend. Was Charley Grimes here this day?”

  “You are a friend of Charley Grimes?”

  “I know him.”

  “He was here. Very early. His horse threw a shoe last night, and Pepe made him a new one. Charley ate his breakfast here and then he left. He said that he was going to Santa Fe. But he is always coming and going.”

  “Yes. Did he look at that flyer over there on the wall?” Lew asked, pointing to it.

  “He looked at it for some minutes, yes, and he asked me for one. I have some more if you would like one. You can get it when you leave.”

  “Thank you.”

  Lupita did not look at the flyer, but headed for the kitchen. There was an opening behind the counter and she disappeared through it. Lew could hear her giving his order to the cook. He strained to see if she said anything about him or Charley Grimes, but she did not. She talked to the cook about Pepe and his five dollars.

  Marylynn leaned over the table and whispered to Lew. “Is that you on that poster?”

  “Are you wanting to claim the reward?” he said, and then instantly regretted his coarse remark.

  “No, of course not. It doesn’t look like you.”

  “It’s the four-day beard.”

  “Do you think that woman recognized you?”

  “People never look at Wanted flyers. The only ones who do are lawmen and bounty hunters.”

  “Who is this Charley Grimes?” she asked.

  “He was one of the men waiting to see me at the hotel in Las Vegas. I think he’s an outlaw. I made him think I was one, too.”

  “Lew, you must be careful,” she said. “That’s an awful lot of money.”

  “Do you want coffee with your breakfast?” he said, hoping to change the subject. Grimes was on his mind, but he didn’t want him ruining his meal.

  Marylynn shook her head.

  “No, just water,” she said.

  When Lupita returned with their breakfast on a tray, Lew ordered two glasses of water.

  “Ten cents a glass,” Lupita said. “We do not have much water here sometimes.”

  “That’s all right.”

  Lupita set the plates before them and then went to draw water. She returned with two glasses as Lew and Marylynn cut their steaks.

  “Thank you for the potatoes,” she said. “They’re a little raw, but a welcome change from beans.”

  “They’re a mite quieter in the stomach, too,” Lew said with a smile.

  He heard whistling from the kitchen, a tune he did not know. A moment later, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the waitress walk to the counter, then a rustle of papers. She went back into the kitchen, carrying one of the flyers that had been on, or under, the counter. The whistling stopped.

  “Better eat up, Marylynn,” Lew said softly. “I think we might have to leave in a hurry.”

  She looked up from her plate, a surprised expression on her face.

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “I think the waitress and the cook might be trying to make a little money.”

  Marylynn looked even more puzzled than before as she chewed on a piece of steak.

  A moment later, the doorway to the kitchen filled and Lew saw a short, burly man come to the counter. He peered at Lew with squinting eyes, a rotund Mexican wearing a white apron stained with grease.

  Lew nodded to him.

  “That must be the cook,” Marylynn said.

  “How is the food?” the cook asked, with a crooked grin.

  “Fine, fine,” Lew said.

  Then the cook walked around the counter. His hands were out of sight until he reached the opening to the dining area. When he came through it, Lew saw a large butcher knife in his hand. He waddled over to the table. Lew rose from his chair, his napkin dropping from his lap.

  “Don’t you move,” the cook said, “or I cut you.”

  The cook swung the knife, slicing the air.

  Lew didn’t hesitate.

  He waded toward the man, crouching low. As the cook lifted the knife to strike, Lew leaped at him and grabbed his wrist. They wrestled. The cook had a strong grip on the knife, and he tried to jab Lew in the neck. Lew squirmed out of his way and kicked the cook in the shin.

  The cook grunted but didn’t cry out. He wrested his arm from Lew’s grip and circled, holding the knife out from his body, feinting, jabbing, looking for an opening. Lew circled with him, then paused.

  The cook lunged at Lew.

  Lupita cried out. “Cuidado, Pedro.”

  Lew backed up, and as Pedro thrust the knife at his belly, he grasped his wrist again and twisted. This time Pedro cried out in pain. But he still held on to the knife.

  Marylynn slid her chair away from the table and stepped to a spot behind Lew.

  “I kill you,” Pedro said, and twisted hard, freeing his knife hand once again.

  Lew kicked Pedro in the crotch, but the blow seemed to have no effect on the man. As Pedro backed up, his breath washed over Lew, assailed his nostrils with the dry musk of mescal or pulque. Lew saw that Pedro’s eyes were glazed and the veins next to his nose stood out like buried red wires or thin worms.

  Pedro swiped the air close to Lew’s face, and Lew backpedaled to escape his rush. As Pedro passed close, Lew drove a fist into his side, his knuckles disappearing into soft flesh. The blow seemed to have no effect on Pedro.

  Pedro whirled, swung around, brandishing the knife at a lower level. He charged Lew, aiming the knife straight at Lew’s groin. Lew twisted out of his way and hammered another fist into Pedro’s bulging neck. He felt the shock explode in his wrist and travel up his arm. As Pedro passed this time, Lew clubbed him with his left fist, smashing his nose. He heard a crack as a bone broke and blood gushed from Pedro’s muzzle.

  Pedro staggered, but regained his footing and came at Lew again, slashing up and down with his knife and straight across, driving Lew back against the counter. Lew slid sideways to escape the onslaught, and Pedro scratched a furrow in the counter.

  Just then, Lupita reached down behind the counter and came up with a sawed-off shotgun in her hands. A double-barreled shotgun, the bluing nearly gone. She brought it up to her shoulder. That’s when Marylynn stepped up to Lew and jerked his pistol free of its holster.

  Lupita put her thumb on one of the shotgun’s hammers, and Marylynn cocked the Colt and stuck it out, aimed straight at Lupita’s face.

  “You cock that shotgun, and I’ll shoot you dead,” Marylynn said. “Drop it on the counter and step back. I mean it.”

  Lupita struggled with the command. Her hand shook, and her thumb hardened over the hammer, rigid as bone.

  “Now,” Marylynn said, and moved closer.

  The expression on Marylynn’s face told Lupita all she needed to know. She set the shotgun down and backed away, holding both hands up in the air.

  Pedro slashed downward and ripped into Lew’s sleeve, slicing his arm with a shallow cut. Blood oozed from the wound. The sight of blood seemed to excite Pedro even more and he followed up with a wild swing at Lew, meant to decapitate him. Lew moved his head just in time, then grappled with Pedro, grabbing both arms right at the elbows and pushing with all his might to throw Pedro off balance and backward.

  Lew felt the muscles, the strength in the man. And Pedro outweighed him by at least forty pounds. Sweat broke out on Lew’s forehead, beaded up in the furrows, oozed from his hairline, streaked his face. Pedro hardly looked winded.

  “Cabron,” Pedro spat and whipped both arms upward, breaking Lew’s grip.

  Marylynn reached for the shotgun and lifted it off the counter. She continued to hold the pistol aimed at Lupita, who stood in the kitchen doorway, her eyes wild and flashing with fear and anger.

  Marylynn held the shotgun in her left hand, the barrels pointe
d downward at the floor. She was as steady as a carpenter’s level.

  Pedro grunted and charged Lew, his nostrils flaring like a bull’s, the veins on his neck pressing against the flesh, his skin sleek with the oil of his sweat.

  Lew feinted, bobbing first one way, then the other. Pedro rushed him and Lew stepped to one side, drew his right arm back as if he were going to hurl a javelin, and drove his fist into Pedro’s temple with such force that he felt the shock all the way to his shoulder. The blow staggered Pedro, and as he fought for balance, Lew stepped in closer and chopped downward into the muscle of Pedro’s arm. Pedro’s fingers opened slightly as an electric charge surged through his wrist. Lew grabbed for the knife and wrested it from the man’s hand.

  Then, as Pedro spun around, Lew drew back his right leg and kicked the cook square in the groin. Pedro doubled over in pain and went to his knees.

  Lew turned, grabbed the shotgun from Marylynn’s hand, and, taking it by the barrel, swung it in a wide arc. The stock slammed into Pedro’s head with a resounding crunch, and they all heard the wood crack. Pedro’s eyes rolled back in their sockets for a moment. He stuck out an arm like a drowning man grasping for a life ring, and then toppled over, unconscious.

  Lew cracked open the breech of the shotgun and ejected the two shells. Then he threw the gun on the floor and turned to Lupita.

  “You’re lucky I didn’t kill you both,” Lew said to her. “Marylynn, hand me my pistol and then pack up our food. We’ll eat on the way out of this town.”

  Marylynn sprang to the table with alacrity and began piling food into a cloth napkin.

  “If anybody follows us out of town, lady,” Lew said to Lupita, “I’ll come back here and blow you and Pedro to kingdom come. Me entiendes?”

  Lupita nodded, her eyes wide with fright.

  Lew grabbed one of the flyers on the way out and tucked it inside his belt. In moments they were back in their saddles and riding west toward Santa Fe.

  Lew kept looking back, but nobody followed them. A few minutes later, he guided them off the road and they followed the sun westward, well away from any would-be pursuers.

  “You really are a wanted man, Lew,” Marylynn said. “I was scared.”