A Bullet for Billy

by Bill Brooks

  “One more thing,” I said to the liveryman. “There someplace I can buy a gun?”

  He shrugged, said, “Sí, the trading post has guns,” and pointed up the street. We walked our horses up the street to the trading post and tied them off out front.

  I had my Henry rifle and mine and the Cap’n’s pistols. Somehow it didn’t seem enough for the job at hand.

  Inside smelled like wool blankets and beef jerky, dried chilies and coffee. A young, dark-skinned woman stood behind the counter.

  “Sí?” she said.

  “I’ll need to buy a gun,” I said.

  She showed me a tray of pistols.

  “Something bigger—muy grande.”

  She kept her eyes on Billy the whole while. They were compassionate eyes, but also the eyes of a woman in the market for a man. She was maybe thirty and had no wedding band on her finger.

  She led us to another counter and pointed to a rack of guns and right off I spotted something I wanted. A double-barrel ten-gauge L. C. Smith.

  “How much?” I said, pointing.

  She took it down.

  “Fifteen dollars,” she said.

  “I’ll take it.”

  I paid her from the Cap’n’s wallet since I was down to broke. I figured he wouldn’t mind the expenditure knowing what it was for.

  “You got shells for this?”

  She nodded and took a box of shells off the counter behind her.

  “Not these,” I said. “These are for a twelve-gauge. Those.” I pointed to another box and she got them for me.

  I looked at Billy, who was now trading looks with the woman.

  “Anything you need, kid?”

  It took him a moment.

  “Just to go kill that damn Mescan,” he said. I saw the way she flinched. The kid lacked any social graces whatsoever.

  I asked the woman if she had slickers to sell. She didn’t understand my meaning. I tried to explain it but didn’t know the right word. I looked around and didn’t see any, but did see some serapes.

  “I’ll take two of those,” I said, pointing. She got some down, held them up to Billy and me to gauge the right size, then I paid for them too, and we slipped them over our heads.

  I thanked the woman and we went back out again, and I waited till Billy got in his saddle and handed him up the shotgun.

  “Carry this,” I said. “Don’t worry, I wasn’t stupid enough to load it.”

  “Then what’s the point?”

  “To keep you from shooting me in the back, how’s that for a point.”

  “It ain’t as if I ain’t got enough to do just carrying my own damn self without having to haul this piece of iron.”

  “Shut your carping for once.”

  “Ah hell,” he said.

  I mounted the stud and turned him back to the south road.

  The liveryman had been right about the road. The horses sank down into the mud past their fetlocks and after just a few miles they were laboring.

  “We’re going to have to push hard to make it to Ciudad de Tontos in two days,” I said.

  “This shoulder of mine is hurting like a son of a bitch,” he said. “I can’t ride hard even if this damn mud wasn’t slowing us down.”

  “You stay up or I’ll tie you belly down, but either way, we’re going to make these next twenty or so miles by deadline.”

  You couldn’t tell you were in Old Mexico. It didn’t look or feel any different. It was just a place where somebody had long ago decided one side of the river was the United States of America and the other the Republic of Mexico.

  How the hell that got to be determined was way beyond me, and it didn’t matter a spit’s worth because whether I killed a man this side of the river or the other, or he killed me, dying was still dying.

  “This is the worst fucking country I ever been in,” Billy griped. The rain soaked through our serapes and eventually through our clothes and ran down our necks. The serapes became little more than an extra load wet like they were, but still of some unknown comfort.

  “Shoulder feels like it’s been cleaved with an ax,” Billy said a little farther on. I kept thinking, In a little while, kid, nothing’s going to hurt you anymore.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  We rode on like that slow, the rain falling harder like nails spilled from a carpenter’s barrel. The sky grew dark as night and lightning shook through it like fence wire, its flash lighting up the landscape and each other in quick bursts. I could see in those grim moments how much Billy was hurting. We slogged on still, then I heard a whomp! in the mud. I reined in my horse and waited till the next flash of lightning and saw Billy lying there in the road, his horse running past me, spooked by the crash of thunder. I charged off after it and finally caught it up by the reins and led it back.

  I dismounted and lifted Billy from the mire.

  “I’m finished,” he said. “You want to tie me belly down, you’re going to have to ’cause I can’t ride another mile.”

  Then I saw with the next lightning flash his eyes had rolled white. I went and untied my soogins and wrapped it round him after I dragged him off the road into the scrub. He lay there without moving and I hunkered there on my heels, miserable and soaked to the skin. The rain hissed and boiled and took no mercy on us, and I kept thinking how much nicer it would have been to be home in my own bed with Luz’s warm body wrapped against mine. I told myself that maybe I ought to make an honest woman out of her and ask her to marry me when I got back—if I got back. The idea appealed to me more than I thought it ever would. I had my share of women and ladies but none that ever made me want to marry one of them.

  But a man reaches a point where he knows that whatever he’s been doing all his life he can’t go on forever doing. Something happens to you when you hit forty years old, it seems. And I’d hit forty sometime back.

  The rain dripped down the back of my neck.

  The lightning danced all around like it was looking for us to kill us. Anybody who’s ever trailed cattle could tell you the danger of lightning. But still, there was nothing to be done about it.

  Billy was almost dead and I wasn’t feeling too spry myself.

  It was a long, long damn wait sitting out there in that rainstorm, and by the time it quit, the first gray light of a new dawn cut through sky and you could have wrung our clothes out like washrags.

  It took me several moments to waken the kid. But finally his eyes fluttered open like a busted shade in some cheap hotel room.

  “Kid,” I said. “We got to get a move on. “It’s Thursday. By Friday, that little brother of yours is going to be dead if we don’t make it down there.”

  He shook his head.

  “Can’t…go…on…” he muttered.

  I lifted him onto my shoulders and heaved him into the saddle.

  “You die, he dies,” I said. “Is that what you want?”

  He waggled his head.

  “Then take hold of that saddle horn.”

  I mounted my horse and took up the reins to Billy’s and led him out. I didn’t know where we were or how far we’d come or how far we had to go. I had to carry the shotgun across the pommel of my saddle since I couldn’t trust the kid to hold on to it. He was barely able to hold on himself.

  We crossed a swollen creek that had come over the road, and a short way farther on we came upon a sheep camp that lay just off to our right and you could smell the cook pot and coffee.

  “Let’s ride over and see can we get a little something for our bellies and some of that coffee,” I said. Even my bones were cold and soaked from the all-night rain.

  The sheep—and there must have been nearly a hundred of them—were cropping grass contentedly as their herder squatted by the fire. He had three black and white dogs patrolling the flock.

  He looked up at our approach.

  I greeted him in Spanish and with a touch of my hat brim.

  “Don’t suppose I could buy a meal and some of that coffee from you?” I said.<
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  He blinked, looked me over, then looked over Billy.

  “Come, sit,” he said.

  I dismounted and helped Billy out of the saddle.

  “What’s wrong with your friend?”

  “He’s feeling poorly,” I said, helping Billy to ease to the ground by the fire. He looked worse than an orphan.

  The man stood and went to his wagon and came back with two extra tin plates and cups and handed them to me and nodded to the cook pot. I spooned us out each a plate and then poured us each a cup of the coffee.

  “You from around here?” I said, chewing the mutton stew.

  He pointed to a line of mountains.

  “Over there,” he said. “Chipata.”

  I nodded. The coffee began to warm my blood and I was grateful for it and poured myself a second cup. It was strong and black as a crowbar.

  “How’s that suit you, kid?” I said. He was at least eating and sipping his coffee. He glanced my way and then across the fire at the shepherd.

  “I ain’t proud to be eating a Mescan’s food,” he said.

  “You best be grateful he gave you anything to eat at all,” I said. Then to the shepherd, “You’ll have to forgive my young companion’s manners. He ain’t got any.”

  The shepherd laughed.

  “The wild ways of the young,” he said. As though he understood that boys Billy’s age were tempestuous and often ignorant in their ways.

  I asked if he knew how far it was yet to Ciudad de Tontos. He held up the fingers of one hand.

  Smoke from the fire rose in gray wisps.

  “They had some trouble down there not long ago,” he said.

  “What sort of trouble?” I said, believing I already knew but wanting to confirm it.

  “There is a garrison of Ruales there and the General’s daughter was killed, murdered by some gringos. So you better be careful when you go there. They might think you’re the ones who did it.”

  “We’re no sort of killers,” I said.

  “I did not think you were. A man who is so kind to a wounded boy, even a surly one, could not be a bad hombre.”

  The man kept his eyes on Billy when he said that. Billy did not return the man’s gaze.

  I reached into my pocket and took out two dollars for our meal and handed it to the shepherd. He looked at it and said, “No. This won’t do me any good,” and handed it back. “I would have just thrown out the extra coffee anyway and the stew, whatever is left over, I give to my dogs.”

  The sheep bleated whenever the dogs would nip at their legs if they strayed from the flock.

  “Those look like some good dogs,” I said.

  “They keep me company and do a good job with the sheep.”

  I stood then and said, “Thank you for your hospitality. My name is Jim Glass and this is Billy Rogers.”

  “And I am Hernando,” he said and we shook hands.

  “And thanks for the warning about Ciudad de Tontos,” I said.

  He scratched under his sombrero.

  “I think there is a doctor there who could look at the boy’s arm,” he said. “I think maybe he pulls teeth too if you have one that is bothering you.”

  “Let’s mount up,” I said to Billy and watched as he unscrewed himself from the ground. Got him mounted on his horse, and we headed the last five miles to the town where his death awaited him.

  I felt gruesome, like a man taking a sheep to slaughter.

  From what I knew of Mexican manhood, it might not be as simple as exchanging one boy for the other.

  I was glad I had the ten-gauge.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Billy visibly stiffened when we he saw the town rising up before us. At this distance, it seemed innocent enough. But then lots of things, women and towns and men included, seem innocent enough if you’re standing a long way away from them.

  “Hold your water, kid. This might not seem as bad as what you imagine it to be.” I needed to do my level best to keep him calm, to keep the situation contained. Because if it got out of hand, it wasn’t only the kid that might end up dead, and I sure didn’t want to become a corpse in a place called City of Fools.

  “How’d you know how bad it’s not going to be,” he groused. “Anybody ever kill you before? Especially some goddamn Mescan Ruale.”

  “You got a point, kid. I wouldn’t know. But I made your grandfather a promise, and I aim to see it through.”

  “Least give me a gun, give me a fighting chance.”

  “You think having a gun would give you a fighting chance against a company of Ruales?”

  “It’d be something.”

  “Something is all it would be.”

  “How you know they’re not going to kill us all, you included?”

  “I don’t. But if what your grandfather said about him and the General being pals back in the old days is true, maybe he’ll cut some slack for your brother.”

  “Yeah, and maybe that sum bitch won’t either.”

  “Chance we’ll have to take,” I said, feeling about as uneasy as I’ve ever felt riding into an uncertain situation with the only promise being that there’d be some bloodletting.

  I saw a man packing a burro and paused and said, “Dónde está la oficina de los Ruales?”

  He was tying a diamond hitch on a load that looked like all the burro could stand.

  He pointed up the street and said in Spanish that the Ruales were located mid-block center of town. I thanked him and spurred my mount ahead, still leading Billy’s by the reins. He seemed resigned to his fate when I last looked back at him.

  There were Ruales standing out front of the General’s office in tan uniforms when we rode up. Billy said, “The jail’s in back.”

  The Ruales were smoking, talking about something, but stopped when we reined in. One of them seemed to recognize Billy and quick ran inside and returned in a moment with a rifle in his hands and the General on his heels. His hair was uncommonly black for a man his age. His mustaches guarded the corners of his mouth and down past his chin.

  “What’s this?” he said with feigned surprise as he stared at Billy.

  “I’ve come on behalf of Gus Rogers,” I said. “You remember Gus Rogers, don’t you, General?”

  He looked at me with a baleful stare, then signaled to his men, who stepped forward to take Billy off his horse.

  “Not yet,” I said, raising the shotgun from where it had been resting across my pommel to let the stock rest atop my right thigh. “Tell your men to hold off.”

  He raised a hand.

  “He is my prisoner,” he said. “He escaped from my jail after murdering my child.”

  “He will be in your jail once again after we make the exchange for the one you’re holding—young Sam Rogers.”

  The General got a look on his face as if someone had just whispered something pleasant in his ear.

  “Where is my old friend Gus?” he said.

  “Dead and buried north of here, not far if you want to pay him a visit—little town called Gonzales. Ask for the German, he’ll show you the grave.”

  The smile dropped away.

  “Did you kill him?”

  “No, he killed himself.”

  The smile that had gone away turned into a frown.

  “This I find hard to believe, a man like him,” he said.

  “Believe what you will. He asked me to fulfill his mission if he couldn’t. That’s why I’m here instead of back home in a warm bed with a full belly of beef.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Not that it makes any difference,” I said. “But it’s Jim Glass. I’m not here for a social visit. Let’s get this done if we’re going to do it.”

  “First you give me him, then I will give you the other one,” he said.

  “No, that’s not how this is going to work.”

  He snorted his derision.

  “Who are you to dictate the terms? I have enough men here to kill you and take him. You’re just one man.”r />
  I leveled the L. C. ten-gauge so that the thick black barrels were aimed directly at the General’s chest. And when I thumbed back the hammers, it gave you the same feeling you get when you’re walking through the brush and hear the buzz of a rattlesnake real close and you’re not sure where it’s at, whether you’ve taken one step too many.

  “That’s true,” I said. “I am only one man, but I’m man enough to take you and some of these Ruales out with me if that’s what you want. You can go get that boy or go to fighting.”

  The Ruales around him shuffled their feet nervously till he waved them to stand still.

  He showed me both his palms.

  “I done what you asked the Cap’n to do,” I said. “I brought you this boy in exchange for the other one. Now let’s trade or let’s do whatever it is you’ve got in mind, but I’m not sitting here all day in this fucking hot sun.”

  He looked at those empty black holes of the L. C. and I guess it made him rethink his plans just as it surely would mine if he was holding that bad gun instead of me. Finally he assented with the dip of his head toward one of his men.

  “Go and get the boy,” he said.

  “One more thing,” I said.

  He held his chin at a stately angle, raised so that now he was looking down his nose at me.

  “That boy needs some medical attention. I expect you to do whatever it is you’re planning to do it with some sense of decency.”

  “All matters will be done with proper attention,” he said. He might as well have said Queen Victoria ruled England, for all the difference it would make.

  The kid they brought out was smallish, baby-faced, and in a stupor till he looked up and saw Billy astraddle the horse.

  “Billy…” he uttered.

  “Sam. They’re swapping me for you. This fellow will take you home. You’re safe now.”

  “No,” Sam said. “I’m not going to leave you.”

  Billy got down off his horse gritting his teeth and said, “Go on now, get away from here and this dirty business. Do it before something upsets the applecart.”

  Sam began to sob.

  “Be a man,” Billy said sternly. “I taught you anything, it was to be a man. Now git.”