The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones

by Charles Neider

  “You go and tell the Kid about this,” said Curly Bill to Modesto’s boss. “Tell him this is what he’s going to get too.”

  Francisco Romero crossed himself. As he later said, his blood froze at the horror of it. When they left he saddled up a horse and tore off for the Punta.

  I can still see the two of them in front of the Kid’s place, the sea behind them, the Kid looking delicate beside the large Romero, his gun thonged around his thigh. He wore dark woolen trousers and a soft white shirt and black boots and Romero bulked large and dusty beside him in his work clothes, gesturing violently, crossing himself, covering his eyes with his hands, trembling and beginning to sob. The Kid stood motionless with his slightly bowed legs, his pink hands resting on his gunbelt. But then his face looked tired and I can see it now, the weariness that came into it, into the eyes and under the eyes and around the nose, the taut weariness of luck going sour, and I reckon from that moment on things were never the same for him, it was that moment that really began the rolling downhill which ended as it could only end, in his own untimely and mysterious death.

  I walked over and said, “Trouble?”

  “The Dedrick boys have killed Modesto,” he said grimly.

  We saddled up and rode out to the valley to Francisco Romero’s ranch. Modesto lay just as they had left him. The Kid pulled his horse up short a little way from the body, dismounted and walked up quietly. I followed him. Romero stood a way off, crossing himself and sobbing. Glancing at the body, I began to feel sick to my stomach. It is really something what a load of buckshot can do to the human face at close range. You would not see such a sight in a slaughterhouse. Modesto was no longer the young kid we had known but a mess of blood and flesh and bone, all mixed up in a kind of paste and lather, some still oozing, some already dried black and beginning to crack. I turned away, not able to bear it, and accidentally caught a glimpse of the Kid’s face. I was shocked by what I saw.

  He was rolling a cigarette with a steady hand but his eyes were full of tears and his lips were trembling. It hit me in the stomach to see him like that.

  “That Bob,” he said.

  I knew then that Bob was done for, that the Kid was blaming him for jinxing his luck, but I had done all I could for Bob and it was now too late for me to do any more. Bob had just insisted on bucking his luck and now he would have to take the consequences. Well I wasn’t going to lose any sleep over him. I still remembered how he had tried to steal my horses the first time we met and I had no doubt he would have killed me then if I hadn’t beaten him to the draw. And maybe the Kid was right—maybe Bob had jinxed us all.

  *

  That night the Kid and I rode down to Monterey in the fog and went over to the Dedrick house. There were no lights showing. We dismounted. While I covered the Kid from behind an old adobe wall he went up to the door and knocked. No answer. We settled down behind the wall, our Winchester barrels resting on the ledge. At about ten o’clock Curly Bill came along. By then the fog had lifted. He was on foot. I wondered where Cal was.

  He was prematurely gray, was lean and tall and wore his hair short. He did not swagger like Lon and wore only one gun, thonged and low down and well forward on his thigh. His upper lip was caved in a little and he wore a wide mustache to hide it. That was all there was to him and that little didn’t last long. When he got close to his door the Kid fired twice and dusted him off on both sides, the bullets kicking up dust on his back where they entered and on his chest where they came out. He dropped with a grunt and never knew what hit him. The Kid went over to him and shot him through the head to make sure.

  Then we rode over to Shotgun Smith’s and waited in a clump of trees near by. There was no light in the adobe. After waiting awhile the Kid went to the door and knocked on it but there was no answer. In about a half hour Shotgun Smith came along, a heavyset fellow with a thick beard and a beaked nose and a smile that twisted to one side. The Kid suddenly stepped out of the shadows and faced him, his right hand hanging by his side. Shotgun recognized him and stopped dead, sucking in air.

  “Go on go to shooting,” said the Kid quietly.

  But Shotgun could not bring himself to reach for his gun. He kept staring at the Kid’s right hand. Then he began walking toward the Kid, coming closer and closer, and the Kid said, “Make your play and quit wasting my time.”

  Shotgun went for his gun but before it was half out the Kid had drilled him through the heart. He went over to Shotgun and shot him through the head too.

  There was a fine mist falling when we returned to the Punta. We came to my place, where I made a fire. We were hungry. I rustled up a chunk of meat which I roasted. We had a couple of drinks.

  “One to go,” the Kid said.

  But he never did get that Cal. Cal got out of that country. I understand he was killed in Tombstone a couple of years later.

  Of course there was hell to pay with Nika. When she heard of her brother’s killing she just went crazy—screaming, kicking—until she had to be held down by some women. She blamed the Kid for it, calling him Modesto’s murderer. You’d have thought, the way she carried on, that she had never heard of anybody getting killed before. But some women are like that.

  *

  The next afternoon, Friday, July fifteenth, exactly six weeks since the Kid had escaped, the Kid and I rode down to Old Man Richardson’s ranch. Bob was up and about and feeling pretty good. We told him about Harvey. It did not seem to upset him. I suspected from the way he took the news and from the way he was behaving in general that he had made up his mind to take off. I thought: Bob your farting days are over but you don’t know it. You should have taken off when I told you. We did not mention the Modesto killing.

  Old Man Richardson had received a report from one of his hands that Longworth was going to be in Monterey the next day. It was what the Kid had been waiting for. He instructed the Mexican to ride into town the next morning and give Longworth a message. What that message was I never did find out.

  “What are you telling Dad?” I asked.

  “That I’m back.”

  “That all?”

  The Kid laughed.

  “What else?” I asked.

  “You want to know too much,” he said. “You’ll find out.”

  “So will Dad.”

  “You bet,” he said, grinning.

  The Kid did some snap shooting and then went off to have a talk with Old Man Richardson. When he returned Bob suggested we go off hunting but the Kid said he wanted to rustle some steers over at Rancho Canada Honda and asked us to come along with him. I said I couldn’t because my right shoulder, which had been shot up a couple of years back, was acting up and that the pain was bad and that I would have to booze up to kill it. I actually felt some pain in my shoulder but it was not that bad. I saw that the Kid understood and that Bob didn’t. They rode off.

  Old Man Richardson and I sat around outside, talking. It was very hot. We had been having some good sunsets and on this day we sat and watched one. The sky was empty except for a thin cloud on the right, with a tip like an arrowhead, and the top of this cloud was violet and the bottom pink. The colors kept changing all the time and under them the ocean was glassy and green and seemed to give off its own light. The country on the right was so dark you could make out no details except for some trees showing up against the neat blue sky.

  We sat there and talked and the long cloud turned gray and the shadows and silhouettes got deeper and the ocean looked like a huge abalone shell with the mother-of-pearl side facing the sky. There was a smell of seaweed in the air and the breakers looked like burning oil. Everything turned gloomy and blue and the trees stuck out black against the ocean light.

  The Kid returned alone, without any steers. I knew he had killed Bob. I made up my mind to say nothing about it. We slept together in a shack behind the barn. In the early part of the night I awoke to hear him talking in his sleep. It sounded like, “Take your medicine Bob.” Then he began to cuss and toss. I went over to hi
m. It was a very hot night and he was sweating heavily. He was sleeping in his pants and socks, without a blanket. Several times he groaned as if he was being tortured and muttered what sounded like, “Take your medicine Bob.” I shook him and he opened his eyes.

  “Easy Kid,” I said. I lit a candle. We sat drinking whiskey and saying nothing. His face looked thin and tired and old. I was sure then that he would never leave that country, that he would be buried there.

  We went to sleep after a while and I had a dream. In the middle of it I opened my eyes. I could see nothing but I felt uncomfortable. I wondered what was wrong, if a spider had run across my face or if a scorpion had scuttled on the floor. Then I saw the Kid standing there and I could not believe my eyes.

  He was standing there slightly crouched, like a cat waiting to spring, and by the bright moonlight drifting in from the doorway I caught the shine of his blond hair and the glint of his blond stubble. I saw his wiry muscular chest, with the blond hair glinting in the bluish light. He had a gun in his hand, pointing it at me.

  I just lay there, looking at him, not even thinking of reaching for my gun under the pillow, and waiting for the bullet which would end the suspense. I wondered in a flash if the real reason he had killed Bob was that he suspected him of having something to do with Nika, and I wondered if Bob had told him about Nika and me. I wanted him to say something but he didn’t. I kept watching his eyes, knowing that I had to hold them as long as possible. Ordinarily, if I had a chance for my life, I would have watched his right hand.

  He was rolling down that well-known street all right. He was tired, deathly tired. When I had first met him he was like a boy, believing the bullet hadn’t been made that had his number on it. His face was tight and clean, his whoops loud and frequent. But that seemed very long ago. I thought: Doc you’re done for, the game’s over. Take your medicine. But then I saw something and my heart jumped, but I was not sure what I had seen.

  He seemed to have been standing there like that for years. The memory of it seemed to have been branded into my mind: the Kid crouching like that, with his gun pointing at me and my heart afraid to beat for fear it would set the trigger off, my eyes glued to his eyes, and he just standing there, legs apart, and pointing that forty-four at me.

  And then I caught the flash of that thing again, the thing in my mind, and I thought: he’s not all there. By this I meant that his attention, or the main part of it, was somewhere else, somewhere he himself didn’t know where. I pinned my hope on it. It was what saved me, I think. Suddenly I got tired of the whole thing.

  “Go on. Get it over with,” I said, sitting up.

  He sat down on an old chair, looking at his feet. He offered me the gun, butt first, meaning for me to shoot him. I shook my head to say I wouldn’t. He began to sob. So you see he had really changed.

  It was still early—about nine o’clock. I didn’t want to sleep on that ranch any more that night. I suggested we go over to the Punta. He liked the idea. There was a light on in Old Man Richardson’s house. We told him we were leaving.

  “Take it easy boys,” he said, waving.

  “Sure,” I said and we rode off.

  As we rode along I saw by the bright moonlight how tired the Kid’s face was. There was a funny tired expression in his eyes and I realized now I had seen it for some time. He was just plumb tired of being on his guard, I reckon. I was tired in that way too. Whenever we used to sit down to a meal it was never side by side but around the fire, facing each other. That was the way we always ate or sat around, so we could see behind each other’s backs and guard against being surprised. When we ate, our rifles were always across our laps or lying handy close by. It was always like that. Eating is very dangerous when you are being hunted.

  In the old days it had been fun to live like that, but now we were tired. The Kid looked so tired I was greatly surprised. The life of being always hunted was really changing him. And changing me too, I had no doubt.

  We went up to the cypress head and went to sleep, the Kid in his adobe and I in mine. And the craziest part of it all is that around midnight Nika, who had not known that we had gone back to the ranch, left her own place, with Miguel asleep, and went to the Kid’s and without a word got into bed with him. You figure that one out if you can. I heard them whispering. I don’t know what they were talking about. The sound got twisted on the way between the two adobes and there was always the noise of the cove. But I knew it was Nika all right and I wished I had myself a woman too for a change.

  Well, that’s about the end of this story. You know the end as well as I do. Given the circumstances, how could it have been any different?

  *

  There was this fellow Brazil, a drunken old geezer, who was getting himself handouts over in Salinas, and Whitey Pearce, the same fellow that shot Dad Longworth in the back of the head a couple of years later, and had himself a hayloft there, would let Brazil sleep in it now and then. On Friday afternoon, the fifteenth, when Whitey thought Brazil was asleep he and his brother Jim were talking about the Kid in that barn and about how the Kid was back in those parts and about how they would ride over to see him in a day or two and make some business propositions to him. Brazil was not asleep. Drunk as he was he knew he had himself an interesting piece of information. He went out to hunt up Longworth’s new deputy, a fellow out of Texas by the name of Andy Webb.

  He was a damned old coot, this Brazil, a dry tall stoopshouldered man with a small dry mouth, black hair combed back and a reddish vandyke streaked with gray. He wore some old black pants somebody had given him, some broken- down boots, and a brown shirt with the sleeves torn off, showing his flabby pale arms, and he went squinting around, unshaven, down the bright dirt streets, and in the saloon next to Johnson’s Hotel he found Webb and said, “May I see you a minute Mr Webb? I got something I want to talk to you about.”

  Webb, who was standing at the bar, looked at this fellow and pursed his small mouth. He knew that Brazil was “addicted to habits of dissipation,” as he liked to put it, but that he was “a man of good principles on the side of law and order.” They went outside and Brazil told him what he had overheard.

  “Hell the Kid’s in old Mex,” growled Webb, spitting off to one side.

  But he reached into his pocket and gave Brazil a three- dollar gold piece.

  “You know what’ll happen to me if they found out I told you,” said Brazil.

  Webb nodded and walked away.

  “Goodbye Mr Webb,” said Brazil.

  But Webb did not seem to have heard.

  *

  The fact is I never did cotton to this fellow Webb and I’ll tell you why. He did get married later on and so he did find at least somebody who liked him, although even that’s not necessarily so, because so many women will marry a fellow for so many reasons and anyhow I’ve noticed that the strangest birds will find birds of a feather.

  I ran into him many years later over in Fresno and he was a banker by then and to look at him you’d never have believed he had once been a cowhand and a deputy. He wore tight striped trousers and a morning coat, mind you, and a black bowler and a hard collar and if I hadn’t recognized Andy Webb I’d have sworn I was looking at a fancy embalmer. There he was in a swelterpot like Fresno and wearing the hard collar and the coat.

  He had changed, all right. His once dark and gaunt face was now sallow and pouchy and he didn’t walk like a cowhand any more but straight and stiff, as though he’d had the kinks and curves taken out of his legs by some high-classed doctor, and when I asked him if he ever rode saddle any more he smiled and said, “Regrettably not”. Regrettably my foot: he had never talked like that in the old days.

  I could see he was as fascinated with me as I was with him and I wondered what I looked like—but I knew what I looked like, I hadn’t changed much with the years and if I was a funny sight to some people at least it was because I had never turned coat, you might say. I had money then too—most of us old fellows who had managed to stay alive
also had managed to get hold of some money—and my hair was white and long, coming down almost to my shoulders, and I wore a long white goatee and black clothes of the kind we had used to wear in the Kid’s day on going into town, and a black wide-brimmed Stetson and shiny black high-heeled boots. It was what I’d been wearing all along in those years and I had no meaning behind it, I just felt comfortable in them and it was like old times. Besides which, it was still California, and the place hadn’t changed that much. But the bowler and the hard collar—imagine a fellow wearing those things in a place like Fresno.

  “Andy,” I says, meaning to be polite, “I guess we’ve both changed a bit.”

  “We sure have,” he says, looking me up and down.

  “And how’ve you been?” says I.

  “Very fine thank you,” he says, and never once during that meeting did he mention my name, so that after a while I suspected he couldn’t remember who I was.

  “Me too,” I says. “Very fine.”

  And after a little more chitchat we broke away. There was just lots of no good in that fellow. He had always looked like an embalmer, all the way back, with that long narrow dark face and those large owl eyes. You never knew exactly where he had come from or where he was heading and it made you kind of mad. Not that you expected to know much about a fellow in those days. There were lots of us who wouldn’t have given you our right names or told you much of anything about ourselves even if you had asked, and if you had insisted we might have given you a little taste of lead for your trouble. But Webb was the sort of fellow you just felt you had a right to know something about, and yet there wasn’t anyone I met back in that time that ever knew much about him. He was unmarried as far as we knew and a pretty good shot, a fair cowhand, a quiet fellow who liked to do an honest job—and that was about all we knew about him. But even then I didn’t like him much. He was not a fellow to drink much or to talk much or to go with women so as you’d know about it, and besides which he was a deputy—although, come to think of it, that was all he must have been good for: a deputy or a banker.