by Leif Enger
I said, “Let me go down and talk to them. I know Hood. I can bring him to reason.”
“Reason? More likely they’ll take you hostage. I’ll pass on that particular bag of snakes.”
He had laid out half a dozen small tubes of powder and now took from the packet a length of iron plumbing threaded and capped on one end. The cap had a small hole and a groove across its center. He took his clasp knife and set its spine in the groove and twisted counterclockwise until the cap loosened. Squinting against dust, he blew into the pipe to clean it.
“Hood trusts me,” I said. “He knows I want the best for him. Let me go down to the cabin.” Even now, you see, I had hope for Hood Roberts. His killing of poor Ern was an accident. The fire in Spigot had outrun his modest design for it. Another accident! I remembered what the Odd Fellows had said, how Hood ran to and fro with buckets of water, fighting the flames alongside them—a mitigating factor, certainly.
You see how quickly I forgot about the poor tracker Ericsson, killed that very morning at his jam and pekoe—I forgot him just like that, though his bereft spaniel even now sat sighing beside us in the willows.
“Suppose you do go down,” Siringo said. “What do you know about the principles of negotiation?”
As he seemed quite serious I replied, “That I need to offer them something real. That I cannot betray them.”
“That would be a noble start if you were meeting union thugs on strike terms, but it’s poor fare here.” With that Siringo bent down and gently heaved me up. It brought a sweat to my brow, yet he brushed the grass and twigs from my shirt and straightened my shirt collar, taking special care about the collarbone he’d ruined. Like a sage old papa he spoke kindly to me; like windy Polonius he instructed me. As he talked he cut the tops off waxen cylinders of gunpowder and sampled each with a fingertip to test for aridity.
“Remember first that he is not a boy. He has killed three men we know of so his standing there has changed. When you walk down to the shack, watch your bearing. You carry what he most wants, another day of life. Therefore walk like a man with the goods. Know your own mind and what you can truly offer. Safe conduct to Columbus, New Mexico aboard a horse of my choosing. Trial by a jury of his legally chosen peers. Nothing more nothing less. It’s a charitable proposal.”
“It’s only proper,” I said.
“No, it is generous. Think and you will see I am right. It is his noteworthy good luck to be offered anything at all.”
He had emptied a number of the cylinders into the iron plumbing and was tamping a fuse into the powder with his bent thumb. It occurs to me now that Siringo was fully enjoying the story he was part of. He lifted the cap toward the failing sun and squinted into it—a drop of light came through the tiny hole and made a bright mark on his cheekbone. He fished the fuse up through the hole and threaded the cap tight. He said, “Also, you must admit no argument. There is no time today for nuance. In truth there is no negotiation to be made. Look at the sun, Becket. There’s only the offer and its acceptance or rejection.”
“If it is that simple, call out the offer yourself and spare me the walk.”
“No, amigo, you requested this opportunity. Besides, I agree the terms might be more appealing from your mouth than mine.”
“Suppose he tries to redraw the terms?”
His plumbing job finished, Siringo laid it aside saying, “What is this to you? Would you call it a mission of mercy?”
“I suppose so.”
“Mercy is a detour. Your mission down there is to get what I want, which is Hood Roberts. Alive is better but dead will do.”
I said, “The sun is setting. Give me your word.”
“My word?”
“That you won’t harm them, either one. Hood gets his trial and no abuse from you.”
“What do you think I am?” he asked again.
“I think you lie if lying suits you.”
“Let us say you are correct. It suits me now to tell the truth. Get the boy out and no harm will come to him.”
And so I called out, “Hood. It’s Monte Becket. I’m coming down,” and not waiting for a yes or no I stepped from the willows and crossed the clearing. The windmill screeled away in the orange breeze, cicadas droned, the dying heat came up off the brown grass.
At the entrance I called hello again and pounded on the door. It drifted open under my hand. The cabin was a single room and it was empty. My instinct was to cry out they’re gone but I checked myself. I went in closing the door and walked through to the back and unbolted a shutter. There were the four rusty cross-wired legs of the mill tower, the heat-struck prairie grass greening where the creek jolted through. There was no root cellar, no adjoining outbuildings. It was a marvel, a clean disappearance under scrutiny. I looked around the cabin at the sturdy trestle table in the middle of the room, the Edison machine with its wax tube in the middle of the table, the four Windsor chairs of excellent build finished in dark oil. A deck of cards lay on the table and I sat down and dealt myself a hand.
“Becket,” called Siringo. “Are you coming out?”
“We are in negotiations,” I replied, which struck me so funny I nearly wrecked it laughing. I looked at my cards and quietly reshuffled them and dealt another try.
“Becket!”
“Be patient,” I shouted, but Siringo couldn’t be patient. Maybe he heard strangeness in my voice, or maybe he just had the celebrated intuition of the ancient plainsman. Next thing I heard him coming like a rock rolling downhill. The door flew open and in he came with his hitching step to rifle-butt my stomach. I crumpled inward with my collarbone rubbing against itself and even when breath returned it came with difficulty since his boot was on my throat.
So complete was his rage that it made him mute and he might have simply choked me, but a noise distracted him and he moved to the door. The noise was the earth ringing as several horses pounded away. Siringo leaned against the doorframe in the day’s last sunlight. Our horses were gone; even I knew it. We would find the other horses gone too, their tracks confused; the animal identified as Ericsson’s horse would appear the next day on the outskirts of Columbus, a milk-can lid tied behind to keep him running.
Siringo came back in—I hardened my stomach muscles, just in case, but his energy was spent. Down he sat in a Windsor chair. He looked exactly like a man who should say, I’m too old for this.
But I could never predict Siringo. What he actually said was, “Get up, Becket. We’re walking back to town.”
14
Gimping through Columbus I sighted a moonlit clock in a bank window—it was 4:30 A.M. Ericsson’s poor spaniel was still with us, though from time to time he looked back whimpering. Who knew how many miles we’d covered but my feet were burgeoned lumps and my gait irregular; collarbone and left shoulder had calcified so my shadow sloped apelike up the road. The El Paso & Southern was arriving, dark except for the lamplit engine and caboose and one coach window, where a frosty gentleman toiled at papers by a kerosene flame. When the train sighed to rest a knot of soldiers tumbled down and away toward Camp Furlong on the skirts of town. Siringo, sagging also, prodded me before him up the street—past the post office and adjacent newspaper facade, past the Hoover Hotel and the lonely grocer’s, and also past Ravel Brothers, dealers in arms and ammunition. Lastly we stood at the window of a lit bakery; it was still closed, but seeing us standing at her glass the proprietor, a big agile blue-eyed Norsewoman, opened the door and in we went. The dog too—he padded wearily away to the kitchen and that was the last we saw of him.
Siringo crumpled at the table. I’d have dozed if I could, but the collarbone prevented it, and after a while I purchased from the woman a half sheet of yellow paper and got a lead stub from my pocket and wrote Dear Susannah at the top. That’s as far as I got just then. Siringo woke murmuring, I sat becalmed. Presently the woman carried out a tray of buxom doughnuts; the door slapped and a butcher came in, betrayed by his unseemly apron. With him was a slow-moving fellow in
a cleric’s collar and behind them several officers from the army camp to whom Siringo complained disjointedly about being robbed of his horses. The officers paid him little heed but cast glances at each other as though he were simple. We paid for the doughnuts and went out into the dusty sunrise and back up the street.
Just as we passed Ravel Brothers, Hood Roberts came strolling out.
He recognized me and smiled widely, only to recognize Siringo a moment later.
“You are no more,” said Siringo, dropping his bags.
Hood shook his head and reached with clear reluctance for his revolver. He’d begun to wear it down low on his right leg—I suppose someone had told him all declared bandits wore their guns in this manner.
“Don’t do that, Mr. Siringo,” Hood said, as the old man unslung his rifle.
But do you think Charlie listened?
In the time it took Siringo to lever up a cartridge Hood drew his revolver and shot four times. Four shots! At a distance of no more than ten feet!
It sounds foolish, but all I could do was throw my hands over my ears like a boy frightened by firecrackers.
Siringo meantime paid no attention to the shots but shouldered the rifle and thumbed back the hammer and fired. The bullet struck slightly left of the sternum; Hood half spun and fell on his left side. I couldn’t hear anything but a teapot whistle, so shocked were my ears by these concussions; I couldn’t even hear Hood’s revolver fall to the dirt, though I watched it topple and bounce. The air nipped with powder and Siringo’s jacket and shirtfront were aflame in places—it was an odd sight, him patting out the flames with his hand. Stepping forth he picked up Hood’s pistol and looked at it curiously; he opened the cylinder and emptied the unused cartridges into his palm and put them in his pocket. He brushed at his jacket and the smoke lifting off it. The shop door opened—a sallow man came out, knelt at Hood’s side a moment and retreated whence he’d come. Siringo found me and grasped my ailing shoulder bones like a surgeon. “Look at my face, Becket.” I think that’s what he said. His cheeks were mapped with powder burns. I think he said, “Is my face all right?”
I knelt at Hood’s side. He was breathing. My ears rang like wire. Hood’s eyes were open but I don’t know what he saw. Me, fading? The next world? Whatever it was his tongue refused to report. He did not seem to struggle against death, nor did he appear surprised. Death arrived easy as the train; Hood just climbed aboard, like the capable traveler he was.
15
When the teakettle finally died away, I could hear the other men smacking flies and playing cards in the short row of cells down the hall. It didn’t really bother me to be in jail—I was grateful, in fact, because a physician appeared and arranged a brace that put my collarbone at ease. Also the solitude was a respite. I had a cell to myself, with a narrow cot and tiny square window and a jailer who let me have paper and pencil.
For a long time I could do nothing but stand looking out at the dust pluming in that merciless sun, and mourn my young friend. It’s said grief is more easily borne in company—well, I didn’t want to bear it easily. I wanted to think of Hood laughing and meadowlark free; to recall how he tried to warn Glendon with an owl sound, or the way he drew near Alazon with the stolen teacup in his hands. Never mind his violent trail, his orphaned goodness, the gun on his leg, he was very like my own son in those startling moments.
When it became too much, I sat on the cot with the paper on my knees and wrote to Susannah. Bleak colors of sandstone and dust were all I had to offer her, but offer them I did, and it helped me to do so.
To back up: when the echoes settled, there stood Siringo in front of a small but deeply impressed crowd. Twenty people are enough to make a legend, as I said before; here in front of their eyes a young desperado had shot four times into the body of an oldster at point-blank distance. They saw the barking pistola. They saw the flames catch in Siringo’s clothing even as he levered a shell into the chamber of his rifle. What bravery! they thought, and they were right—I would never dream of disputing it. In days to come the people of Columbus attributed all sorts of outlandish powers to the old Pinkerton; they pronounced him a rough angel, a defender of innocence under the protection of God, or at least a possessor of the most bounteous luck.
Of course there was more to it than that, as you will see.
In the meantime, Siringo’s courage was every credential a man could want. By the time he’d unloaded Hood’s revolver and set it empty on the boardwalk, Hood’s spirit was taking its first sip of eternity and people were beginning to press. Siringo gave them immediate answers. The boy was Hood Roberts, famed outlaw, murderer of the screen star Ern Swilling and the renowned police tracker Rupe Ericsson; perpetrator too of the conflagration that destroyed Spigot, Texas, and killed Felix Fly, a fine left-handed pitcher and dedicated Odd Fellows Lodge 225.
“I heard about that fire,” said a man pushing to the front of the gathering. “I heard a youngster started it.”
“Yonder’s your boy,” said Siringo.
“And who’s this,” asked the man, indicating me, “a deputy of yours?” As it turned out, this curious fellow was the night jailer in Columbus just coming off shift.
“No, sir, a charge of mine: a confidence man, Jack Waits by name, who I am delivering to justice.”
And that is how I ended up in the restful cell, on the same street as the unofficial coroner who arrived to take charge of Hood Roberts. I met him briefly when he came asking for my version. He too was puzzled at Hood’s close-range ineptitude but informed me a sharp young army lieutenant was studying the scene. “He was a police detective, before he joined up,” said the coroner. “I saw him on the way over here—down on his hands and knees, right there on the street.”
In the meantime Siringo was a living hero, rising from the smoke like a leathery old god out of Homer. Two days I stayed in that jail while Siringo was feted and dined and photographed alongside Hood’s propped and pallid corpse. I still have a copy of the newspaper article citing his heroics but can’t bear to read it—my eyes are drawn to Hood, his face flat and foreshortened, his jacket pinned shut over the wound. I don’t think they should use such pictures in newspapers, which youngsters might pull out and look at. It isn’t good. To this day I cannot pick up a book and gaze at the poor posed dead of history.
While I sat in the jail and Siringo ate braised beef and onions at others’ expense, someone went to the trouble of putting Hood on display in the window of the furniture store. I could see people gathering there from my cell. At first it was unclear what the commotion was, but when the crowd thinned there was Hood positioned in an armchair with his legs thrown forward on an ottoman and a pillow under his neck. Like a young man just come in from a long day. Just resting his eyes. Someone had placed a small blackboard on an easel beside him. There was printing on the blackboard but I couldn’t read it from my window.
I spoke to no one else in that jail, except a man one cell over who’d fed his neighbor’s dog a poisoned fish. He told me the fish was a fine channel cat he meant to smoke for himself, but then he thought of the dog. “A demon, a barker at all hours,” he said. “It had a shrill yip, but I oughtn’t have done it.” He’d hated that dog for keeping him awake; now, having killed it, he was even more wakeful. Two nights I spent on that thin cot, and both nights noticed the poisoner moving to and fro behind his bars, whispering to himself or God.
I didn’t sleep well either. The tugging question was this: Why was Hood in Columbus anyway? With a good horse under him and Mexico so close, why did he come back to this little town?
The answer, I was to learn, was for pastry. On their way south, he and Alazon had stopped at the bakery that had so generously opened early for Siringo and me. One of the pastries was a triangle-shaped bit of dough filled with such strong cinnamon you had to close your eyes when you ate it. This treat so captured Hood that he insisted they go back for more. Aswagger with triumph, having scattered the horses of his enemy, Hood had his mind set. Me
xico was a large nation. You could spend years there and not find another cookie like that! And so they went back. No doubt they thought we’d be busy tracking our dispersed mounts—how could they know we would walk a dozen miles at night through snake country and find them still in town? It was Alazon who revealed these things—much later, after her capture. Convicted as an accessory, she was briefly imprisoned in a facility for women. I am told she kept her dignity there, which wouldn’t surprise me.
Released finally into Siringo’s custody, I walked past the furniture window. This was my last look at Hood Roberts. I wouldn’t have known him. I can see why some people refuse to believe they are seeing the body of a loved one; there is an immediate wrongness, a sense that a switch has been performed. The printing on the blackboard said:
HOOD ROBERTS
NOTORIOUS BOY ASSASSIN
Killed Here by the Prominent Detective
CHAS. SIRINGO
of the Pinkerton Agency
Propped beside the blackboard was a framed photo of Siringo. His eyes were bright as Venus. That is how you want to be remembered, my friends. Take a picture in your moment of conquest, when your luck is high and bullets still bounce off. That will do for the ages.
16
The army lieutenant was straw-haired and burnt, with shy humor and curious eyes—you could see the farm boy he had been. He was waiting for us on the platform as Siringo and I prepared to board the train for California.
“Good day, Mr. Siringo, I’ve been needing to speak with you,” he said.
“At your service, Lieutenant.”
“Thank you.” The young man looked at me as though unwilling to divulge a confidence in my presence.
“What is it, then?” said Siringo. “This train won’t wait forever.”
“Of course. Do you have his cartridges, sir?” asked the lieutenant.
