The Horses

by Bill Brooks

  “The Dollar Café?”

  He shrugged.

  “The other one’s with him.”

  “You’re sure it’s them?”

  “Big man favors one leg, smaller man wearing his gun out like he’s ready to fight. You tell me.”

  Jim felt his chest go tight. He didn’t doubt the breed for a moment, but proving these were the men who killed his horses, well, that might be another matter altogether. And without any law now to back his play, he’d have to play it just right. The other thing was, what was he going to do even if he could prove it was them, get one to confess to it? What was the right punishment except to ask for restitution—to ask them to get the hell out of town?

  Well, there was only one way to find out, go and confront them and play it by ear, be ready to fight if he had to, but he sure didn’t want to kill anybody over horses, but he wasn’t just going to let them walk either.

  “Thanks,” he said to the breed.

  Hairy Legs shrugged again and turned and walked back down the path and out the gate.

  “Jim, don’t go if there are two of them…”

  “Got to, Luz. Can’t let a man just come and destroy your property and do nothing about it.”

  “Then find someone to go with you.”

  “Who? Trout’s dead. His deputies won’t come out of their damn houses.”

  “Then I’ll go with you.”

  “No,” he said. “You will not.”

  “I know how to shoot the ten-gauge, remember?”

  “I remember, but I’ll not have you mixed up in this.”

  “If we’re to be married,” she said. “Then we’re partners—in everything.”

  “No. Not this thing.”

  He went to the bedroom and picked his gun rig off the back of a chair where it had been hanging and shucked into it, settling the weight of the gun just under his left armpit, then put his coat on over it. Then his hat, and he stepped out into the main room again.

  “Not to worry,” he said. “I’m not aiming to let this get bloody.”

  “I don’t want to be a widow again, this time even before I get married.”

  It caused him to smile.

  “I promise not to let that happen.”

  He kissed her and went out, this time taking the ten-gauge with him from where she’d rested it just inside the front door. Just to make sure she wouldn’t get any funny ideas about defending him, and just because it made a statement—the kind of statement even a blind man couldn’t ignore.

  The weight of his guns felt good, made up for the lack of help.

  Set the odds back to even.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The half-wit was working on his second bowl of mush, spooning it in like no tomorrow. The Mortician sat across from him sipping coffee, a lit shuck between his fingers, the smoke curling up around his sharp-boned face.

  “You eat like a hog,” he said.

  The half-wit’s eyes flashed from the big spoon to his brother’s.

  “Why you have to say things like that?”

  “’Cause they’re true. Wipe your mouth, you got mush all over your mustaches. Looks like baby puke.”

  They heard the front door rattle open, close again, without paying much attention to it. The Mortician was thinking about the money in the bank—how much there was, would they be able to carry it all, even with Hatch and Willis?

  “Tell you one goddamn thing, we get us a stake, you’re on your own from now on.”

  “What you gone do, Cicero?”

  “Get shed of this fucken country is what.”

  The half-wit looked suddenly glum as he spooned in the mush he’d been holding. He looked just like a big ol’ baby is what he looked like.

  Man’s voice said, “I need to speak to you boys.”

  They looked up, saw a stranger, six feet tall maybe, gunfighter mustaches, hundred and eighty pounds that looked solid from where they sat. Saw too the heavy shotgun he was carrying.

  “’Bout what?” the Mortician said. He was already feeling a certain tension.

  “Why don’t we go outside and talk.” It wasn’t a question; it was a suggestion.

  “I know you?”

  “No.” The man looked at the half-wit brother. Cicero thinking, This is some shit about those goddamn horses. He wanted to reach across the table and bash the half-wit’s brains in. Here he had lined up this bank job and fucken Ardell has to go and mess it up with some crazy-assed bullshit.

  “Well, if I don’t know you, I don’t see as how we got anything to talk about.”

  “We do.”

  Ardell scarped the bottom of his bowl with the spoon, cleaning up the last little puddle of mush and honey. Then ate it and licked his lips and mustaches with a tongue looked like it belonged in a cow’s mouth.

  Cicero thinking, Man, I sure don’t want to blow this bank job by this goddamn fool’s trouble. He didn’t look slow or old, this fellow. He looked like he could fight and would by the sound and sight of him. And what was that bulge under his coat up high but a fucken gun in a shoulder rig. Only one type of man kept a gun in a shoulder rig—a gunfighter. But it was the sight of that shotgun that troubled him most.

  “Well, all right then,” he said. “Sure, we’ll take this outside if that’s what you want. It don’t make a shit where we talk. Come on, Ardell, let’s go outside. This fellow wants to have a chat with us.”

  Then in she came, that little whore from yesterday, the one who got the old man and the lawman both killed over her. Come in and saw him right away and come marching across the goddamn room yelling at him, calling him ever’ sort of a son of a bitch, letting Jim suddenly know just who he was dealing with.

  He put out an arm as a barrier between Little Paris and the two men.

  “You didn’t have to kill them!” she screamed. “You didn’t have to fucking kill them!”

  “They started it, not me, you damn little tart.”

  “I’ve got business with these men,” Jim said sternly.

  She looked at him with the same furious eyes she’d looked at them.

  “You’re all sons a bitches,” she said.

  Jim nodded toward the door and held the woman off as the two men stepped toward it, Jim set to kill them both right there in the café if it came to that, if they forced his hand. He hoped they wouldn’t force his hand. He said to Little Paris, “I need to deal with these men. After I’m finished, you want to keep cussing them out, that’s up to you.”

  Then all three men were outside on the boards, sun splashing down in the street, Little Paris inside, furious and still cussing up a storm when the German’s wife came over and tried to calm her.

  “Please, please,” she said. “Ve run a respectable business, fräulein…”

  “Is that why you let murderers eat here, because it’s such a respectable business?”

  “No, no…” The German’s wife had been pleasantly thinking about the breed, about when the breakfast crowd had finished coming in and before the lunch crowd started, telling Hans she was going to run an errand and take the buggy and…

  Little Paris knew all her ranting was futile, that nobody understood or cared a goddamn about the dead. What’s past is past, the living go on, things are forgotten, the memory of the dead is a meal eaten by time.

  “So what is it you want to talk about, mister?”

  “I think your friend here killed some horses of mine the other night,” Jim said.

  Cicero looked at the half-wit, feigning surprise.

  “That true, Ardell, you kill this man’s horses the other night.”

  There was a moment of hesitation. Cicero was about ready to let Ardell take the fall for his actions; he was sick of carrying the boy, his dumbness, like a child. Worse than a child. But he’d promised the old lady.

  Ardell shook his head side to side.

  “How’d you get that blood on your sleeves?”

  Ardell looked at his still rolled-up sleeves. Where they bunched at his elb
ows they looked dyed reddish brown, like he’d soaked them in barn paint.

  “Accident…”

  “Look, we can settle this without a lot of heartache and grief,” Jim said. “I’m willing to overlook the fact of what you’ve done if you’ll pay me the damages.” Jim knew the moment he saw the big man he was a half-wit, and as such, he knew it was possible that what may have possessed him to kill the horses was a question even the half-wit might not have the answer to. It was still an ugly goddamn act, but seeing the situation, he was willing to let it slide this time.

  “How much payment you talking about here?” the Mortician said without any sincerity.

  “Those were good horses, worth at least fifty dollars each. Six of them, makes it three hundred dollars. That’s about as fair as I can be on this.”

  “Three hundred, is that all?”

  Jim wanted to smack the wise mouth.

  “Yes, three hundred is what it comes to.”

  “Ardell, give this old boy three hundred dollars, would you, so we can get on with our day.”

  The half-wit patted his pockets, aping, grinning, flecks of porridge still stuck in his bushy mustaches.

  “Nope, got no three hundred dollars. Sorry.”

  “That the way you want to play it?” Jim said. “Like this, like a fool?”

  He’d left enough space between him and the two of them, three, four feet, but not too much. And when the smaller man tried to jerk his pistol, Jim swung the butt of the shotgun, striking him under the jaw and knocking him clear off his feet, then swung the ten-gauge round so fast, all the half-wit could do was stare down the twin muzzles like he was looking into the vacant eyes of death itself.

  “You want to make it easy?” Jim said. “I could kill you both right here and now and nobody in this town would say one damn word because of that stunt you pulled yesterday. In fact, they might even pay me three hundred to rid the earth of you two…”

  Cicero had misjudged his enemy, perhaps for the first time. He had still been tasting victory from killing those two fools yesterday. But now all he tasted was his own blood and the small, hard piece of tooth in his mouth that he spat out like a piece of corn.

  The half-wit began blubbering.

  “Go on, make it easy for me,” Jim said.

  “We ain’t got no fucken three hundred dollars,” the Mortician said, wiping his bloody mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Where are your horses?”

  “You gone steal our damn horses, you son of a bitch!”

  “I’m going to get reparation for the loss of my property, one way or the other.”

  “Like hell!”

  Jim set the hammers back on the shotgun. A crowd had gathered, formed a wide circle of citizenship around the scene, like a drama they’d paid good money to see, standing waiting with anticipation for the next act.

  “What do you folks think I should do with these men?” he said.

  At first nobody spoke, then a man shouted, “Do to them what they did to Trout and Tug Bailey. Don’t give them no sort of chance.” Then others chimed in. “Go on, shoot them no good sons a bitches. We don’t want ’em around here!” This set up the chorus of cries for him to kill them—to rid the town of them, and it felt biblical to him, the way things were with the crowd calling for death and him with the power to deliver it.

  It was a bloodletting wanting to happen. Then Jim saw Luz among the onlookers. Her eyes were sad, worried, her expression one of disappointment, and he knew he could not do it, that he should not do it.

  “Anybody got the key to the jail?”

  “I’ll go get it,” Woody shouted. He among them all, besides Luz, was the only one who had not called for murder.

  After Jim had them locked away in the jail, he said to several of the men who’d tagged along, “Anyone want to volunteer to guard them?”

  Nobody raised his hand except for Woody, the hotel clerk, the poet, the kid with eyeglasses.

  “I’ll do it.”

  Jim nodded and handed him the key.

  “How long do I need to guard them?

  “I don’t know. I need to figure it out. Need to keep them in jail until we can get a judge down here to stand them trial.”

  “Should I have a gun, be armed?”

  “You should.” Jim handed him the shotgun. “You know how to use this?”

  “I used to hunt geese with something similar back East.”

  “Same thing then. I need to find some more volunteers,” Jim said. But nobody who’d followed them to the jail and stood there now in the small space made a move. He shook his head at such unwillingness.

  He pushed his way outside to look for Luz, but she was gone from the crowd.

  He went to the saloon, a gaggle of men trailing behind to see what he’d do next.

  What he did next was ask for a cup of coffee.

  Chapter Twenty

  Jim stood alone while the others stood down along the bar watching him, telling Bilk what had happened. Bilk poured a cup of coffee and walked it down to the man.

  “They say you took down those two killed Trout and Tug Bailey.”

  Jim did not answer.

  “You know I’m also the mayor.”

  Still, Jim did not answer.

  “We need us a new constable.”

  “I know that already. I wonder if you can tell me when the circuit judge is due in town next?”

  “Week from tomorrow.”

  “You care anything about this town?”

  “I’m here, ain’t I, serving as mayor, running a business.”

  “Then use whatever powers you have to hire some men to guard that jail till the judge gets here.”

  “I’m offering you a job.”

  “Hell, I knew that yesterday.”

  “You did what they said you did with them two, you’d be the man I’d want as constable.”

  “I ain’t looking for work.”

  “This something you think is beneath you?”

  “No. I just got my mind on other things than kowtowing to drunks and breaking up fights.”

  “Seems to me you’re out of business for the time being. Must be a good business, horses, for a man not to need no other kind of work.”

  Jim thought about his bank book balance; what was it, something like twelve, thirteen dollars now?

  “Ain’t nobody else in this burg willing to do it,” Bilk said. “If there was, I’d already have hired them.”

  “Not interested.”

  “You just let those men kill your animals, ruin you like that, and you got nothing to say about it?”

  “I did what I needed to do.”

  “You take the job you can hire you some deputies, can make sure those red dogs don’t break out and kill some others of us. How long you think Woody’s going to last standing guard? This town needs a take-charge man.”

  Jim sipped his coffee, recalled the look he’d seen on Luz’s face as she stood in the crowd watching him—the deep disappointment, or was it sorrow, or was it something else?

  “Look,” Bilk said, softening his tone. “Tell you what, hire on till at least I can advertise and get me a steady man, till the judge gets here and holds a trial. I’ll double the normal wages. Sixty dollars, and you can hire who you want to help you out with things till a new man comes. I’ll put an ad in the newspapers in Santa Fe and Bosque Grande, should be able to get a new man in pretty shortly.”

  “I need to think it over.”

  “Sure, sure.”

  Jim took a nickel out to pay for the coffee; Bilk refused.

  “It’s on me.”

  “I’ll be back to let you know.”

  “I ain’t going nowhere.”

  Jim walked out wondering why he hadn’t just turned Bilk down flat. Except sixty dollars was a lot of money for a week or so worth of work. He walked up to Luz’s place, knocked on her door, and she let him in.

  “You okay?”

  “Yes,” she said, still with that concerned
look on her face.

  “It couldn’t be helped,” he said. “What you saw out there on the street.”

  “I know.”

  “I gave them every opportunity to settle up with me.”

  She had a distant look in her eyes, like she was looking at something in her past. He knew she was looking at the corpse of her dead husband, laid out right here in the parlor of this house in a circle of lit candles, the light flickering on that handsome young face. He suspected she did not want to have to sit vigil for any more dead lovers, him included.

  “It could have ended up a lot worse than it was,” he said.

  “What will you do now?”

  “I’ve been offered to be the town constable until Bilk can hire a regular man.”

  “Is that something you want to do?”

  “No, it isn’t. I’m all about horses,” he said. “But I’m down to pocket change in my bank account and it’ll be some quick easy money; he’s willing to pay me double till he gets a new man hired.”

  “And will that quick and easy money do you any good if those men, or others like them, come and kill you?”

  He felt himself stiffen with old pride, pride a man like him always had, pride he couldn’t just give up so easily.

  “I have to do what I think needs doing, Luz. I can’t change that part of me.”

  “I need to confess something to you.”

  “What is it?”

  “When I returned yesterday, my heart was full of light and happiness, but I was also troubled too. So I went to see a woman I know who tells fortunes. I had her tell mine.”

  “What did she say?”

  Luz’s gaze lowered.

  “She said a darkness approaches.”

  “I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean,” Jim said. He had never been a believer in such things. Not before and not now.

  “Let’s find a priest to marry us.”

  “I want to wait until my children are home.”

  “Okay,” he said

  Hairy Legs had watched the man take the other two—the horse killer and the smaller one, saw how he handled them. Unafraid. Okay. Then rode to his place higher up the Pecos, a little money in his pocket, a good horse under him—not bad for not doing much.