Robert B. Parker's Bull River

by Robert Knott

  “Let me say one thing, Marshal,” Jedediah said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “My brother is vicious,” Jedediah said. “He is a shark, and he will attack, will come from behind, from anywhere.”

  82

  Though there was steady drizzle coming down and it was foggy, Alejandro spotted Captain Chapa’s schooner from where we were positioned on the neighboring dock.

  “That brigantine just there,” Alejandro said. “On the other side of the dock, near the end.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sí.”

  Alejandro removed his sombrero, pulled his mother’s rosary from his pocket, and slipped it over his head. He held the cross.

  “I wish for Captain Chapa’s safety,” Alejandro said. “He is a good man, a borracho, but a good man.”

  Captain Chapa’s schooner was a far distance from us. It was backed into the slip on the far side of the dock, but we could see it clearly. It was a long and wide gaff-rig schooner with a low aft cabin, and compared to most of the rigs around the marina, it looked like a well-kept vessel.

  “Thought the captain’s boat was a fishing rig,” I said.

  “It is,” Alejandro said.

  “Big boat for fishing.”

  “It is also for shipping goods.”

  “What kind of goods?”

  “Not to worry, amigo, nothing illegal,” Alejandro said with a grimace and then lowered his chin to his chest.

  Alejandro was still holding the rosary.

  “You all right?”

  Alejandro kept his head lowered for a moment longer, then looked up and nodded with grim determination.

  “Sí.”

  “Let me see.”

  “Alejandro is okay, amigo,” he said.

  “Alejandro, open.”

  Alejandro reluctantly opened his jacket, showing me his bandaged shoulder. Blood was showing solidly on the outside of the bandage.

  “Have to tend to that.”

  “I will be okay.”

  He pulled his jacket back up on his shoulder as he looked toward Captain Chapa’s schooner.

  “Right now we have el Diablo to reckon with.”

  Alejandro was tough as they come, I thought as I looked back to the schooner.

  “Reckon with him if he’s here,” I said.

  “Sí,” Alejandro said. “If he is here.”

  The dock was quiet, and there was no one moving about in the misty weather. We were in a good spot behind a moored rig, where we could watch the captain’s boat without being spotted.

  “If el Diablo is on this boat,” Alejandro said, “he is in one way, in a good way, and in another way, in a bad way.”

  “How’s that?” I said.

  “Well,” Alejandro said. “There is only one way in and one way out on the dock—that is the bad way.”

  “The good way?”

  “They could sail away,” Alejandro said.

  “He would need the captain.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’d know how to operate that rig?”

  “Sí,” he said. “Well, I have been out before, for a short time. It was a time ago. Alejandro remembers. I have spent much time, too, watching them, the sailors.”

  I looked to Alejandro in his naval jacket and thought maybe he was right, maybe he could operate the schooner on the sea.

  “Well,” I said, “if what you were saying before is right, if Dalton wants a final showdown with his brother, sailing away would be fishy and not sharklike.”

  “Maybe even more sharklike,” Alejandro said. “Torment.”

  “Don’t think so,” I said.

  “Why do you not think so?”

  “Be the end of the trail,” I said.

  Alejandro thought about that some.

  “Maybe, Everett,” Alejandro said. “Maybe, mi amigo.”

  “Here we go,” I said.

  I saw movement on Captain Chapa’s schooner. Then we saw clearly it was a man moving about.

  “That’s not Captain Chapa, is it?” I said.

  “No,” Alejandro said.

  “And you’re certain that schooner we are looking at is Captain Chapa’s.”

  “Sí.”

  “That Dalton?”

  “No.”

  “Gotta be the other fella Jedediah was talking about,” I said.

  “EG,” Alejandro said.

  “Yep.”

  We watched him for a while moving about the schooner. He stopped and looked around as if he was looking for somebody.

  “It’s him all right,” I said. “Gotta be.”

  He went back to busying himself with something, but I couldn’t tell what he was doing. After a moment he ducked back into the cabin.

  “Let’s move,” I said.

  Alejandro had been on one knee, and he was slow to rise. I took his good side and helped him, and we started up the ramp toward shore.

  I glanced back, and I saw the man again out on the schooner deck. We stopped and hunkered down behind another boat and watched. I couldn’t tell clearly, but it looked as though he was putting on a jacket.

  “Maybe he’s about to take that bad way I was talking about, Everett?”

  We watched a little more.

  “Might be,” I said. “Let’s move.”

  I kept looking back as we walked up the dock for the shore.

  “If he does,” I said, “it’d be a good idea to welcome him.”

  83

  Alejandro and I went quickly back to where we left Virgil and Jedediah on the shoreline, halfway between the two docks.

  “It’s them,” I said. “One of them, anyway.”

  “My wife?” Jedediah said. “Did you see my wife?”

  “No,” I said.

  “He might be coming,” I said, pointing to the ramp leading to Captain Chapa’s slip.

  “What’d you see?” Virgil said.

  “Big gringo,” I said. “Long black beard.”

  “That’s him,” Jedediah said, looking in the direction of the ramp. “That’s EG, the other sonofabitch was in our house.”

  Jedediah started to move, but Virgil stopped him.

  “Don’t want to confront him here,” Virgil said. “If he is leaving this dock. He’s of course going somewhere. There is no telling where your brother and wife are, if they are even on that boat, so let’s see what this EG fella reveals to us.”

  “He’s got his razor sharp,” I said. “He was expectant, it seemed, bird necking, scanning about.”

  Virgil turned around, looking behind us, and pointed to a big shop with an open door and a schooner inside resting on its side.

  “Over there,” Virgil said.

  We moved as fast as we could with both injured Alejandro and recovering Jedediah to the shop and positioned ourselves behind the far side of the building. There was a window on that side of the shop where we could look out the shop’s open door to the dock.

  We waited.

  Alejandro leaned against the shop with his back to the wall and looked to the ground.

  I motioned to Virgil.

  “Losing blood,” I said.

  Alejandro looked up at me.

  “I have had bigger cuts in my eye, amigo,” Alejandro said as he moved away from the wall of support.

  “No matter,” I said. “We don’t get you cared for, it will be the last cut you ever have.”

  “That’s him,” Jedediah said softly. “You were damn sure right about this, Alejandro. Damn sure.”

  EG was walking up the dock toward the shore.

  “By God,” Virgil said. “Got himself healed.”

  “He does,” I said.

  He had a bone-grip pistol on his hip and was carrying a long-barrel rifle with
a brass-capped Swiss butt in one hand and a big canvas bag in the other.

  “Looks like he might be going somewhere,” Virgil said.

  “Does.”

  EG was big, not much over six feet, but bulky and tough-looking. He looked like a mountain man with his long beard, huge chest, and arms. He held his bulky arms away from his body with his shoulders back, but he was for sure on guard as he moved.

  We watched him walk away from the dock, then moved to the opposite end of the building to see where he was heading. We kept him in sight as he walked up the narrow dockyard road in the mist and fog.

  Virgil removed his hat.

  “Everett, let me get almost where he is there now before you follow me. Don’t want to walk on after him like pack dogs.”

  I nodded.

  Virgil pulled the collar of his coat up. He placed his hat in front of him and waited for EG to get on a ways farther, then followed him. There were other people on the road, workers going about their business, a few oxen with pull carts, as Virgil did his best to blend in.

  We waited like Virgil said, and then after a moment we followed, walking through the foggy dockside, past salt-packing fish shacks and up the road toward the church, where we tied our horses.

  Virgil turned up a road just before the church. By the time we got to the road Virgil was under the awning of a big stone building.

  “He went into a tavern,” Virgil said. “A ways ahead here.”

  Jedediah cocked his Spencer.

  “Good time to do that waltzing Everett was talking about, don’t you think, Marshal,” Jedediah said. “Walk in there and find out from the goddamn sonofabitch where my wife is.”

  “I do,” Virgil said.

  “And while we are at it,” Jedediah said, “there is no telling what might happen to EG.”

  Virgil looked to me, then back to Jedediah.

  “No telling,” Virgil said.

  84

  Jedediah might have changed his ways, living the high life of the banker Henry Strode, with his good business acumen, customer friendliness, and mild manners, but he still had that hair trigger, that snap that so many away from the simple life carry with them on the makeshift road to redemption.

  We started walking to the tavern.

  Virgil stopped twenty paces from the door.

  “Everett and me will walk in first,” Virgil said. “Don’t want to be too gun-ready. Don’t want him jerking and ending up dead, and no telling what he might do when he sees you, Jedediah. Don’t want to have to kill him first order.”

  “How much time?” Jedediah said.

  “A minute,” Virgil said.

  Jedediah nodded.

  The four of us walked toward the tavern, and as we neared we heard the voices of the patrons talking and laughing.

  “Might be crowded,” I said.

  “Might,” Virgil said.

  Virgil held up his hand, stopping Alejandro and Jedediah. They stayed back, and in a steady move Virgil and I entered the tavern.

  It was a small place. There was a bar to the right, and to the left the room was half full of fishermen and dockworkers sitting at small tables, telling their tales.

  EG was sitting at the end of the bar with a glass of beer in one hand and a chicken leg in the other. He stopped eating when he saw us.

  His long rifle was leaning on the wall next to him, and in his gun hand he had a greasy leg of chicken.

  “I’ll be goddamned,” EG said as he sat back on his bar stool, looking at us.

  “Where are they?” Virgil said.

  The room of people felt something; three gringos with guns was enough to silence their lively talk. A few went out the door as Jedediah entered, followed by Alejandro.

  EG leaned back, looking past Virgil and me, and rested his eyes on Jedediah.

  “Might have expected you,” EG said, looking at Jedediah, “but not you two. You are them marshals come down to Mexico looking for the girl, ain’t you?”

  Jedediah raised the Spencer rifle and pointed it at EG’s head.

  “Where’s my wife?”

  “Whoa there, boy,” EG said, raising his hands in the air. “He fucked us both.”

  “Where?” Jedediah prodded.

  “On that goddamn boat,” EG said.

  “You’re lying,” Jedediah said.

  “No, boy,” EG said. “I ain’t, and if you want to ever see her again you might want to get yourself back over there before they debark or embark or whatever the fuck you call it—leave.”

  “Why would they be leaving now?” Jedediah said fiercely. “Why?”

  “Easy, son,” EG said. “Your brother paid some damn Mexican kids to wait on that beach over yonder and, when you showed, for them little shits to come tell him you were here. There was a whole passel of them. They come back and was talking that Mexico to your brother and told your brother what they’d seen. I don’t speak no Mexico. Your goddamn brother told me it was just you on his trail.”

  EG looked to Virgil and me.

  “Never said a goddamn thing about nobody else,” EG said. “He told me they was gonna take off, and I told him I wasn’t about to go sailing off on no goddamn boat in no fucking ocean.”

  Virgil looked to Jedediah.

  “He told me,” EG said, “if I saw you, to be sure and tell you some good news.”

  “What?” Jedediah said.

  “So far he ain’t fucked her,” EG said.

  I looked to Jedediah, and his bottom lip began to quiver.

  “But no telling how long that will last,” EG said, “with them being out there on that ocean. He also said to tell you he’d send you a letter where they ended up and, bomb voyage.”

  Jedediah lowered the Spencer rifle and turned for the door. When he did, EG dropped the chicken leg and—thinking this was the moment to get the jump on Virgil and me—went for his bone handle. But Virgil pulled, smoke kicked from his Colt, and the lead hit EG in his chest before he touched leather.

  85

  The fog and mist were heavier as we got closer to the marina. Alejandro was slowing significantly and having a hard time keeping up, but we hustled as best we could back to the dock.

  “Stay back,” I said to Alejandro.

  “No, amigo,” Alejandro said. “We have come this far.”

  I thought about that, about all that had happened, all that led us to this mysterious world of Veracruz and Bull River with its storied history of the orphaned boys in their youth. As Constable Holly had put it, this whole saga has been quite the ordeal.

  I was piecing everything together as we walked. This journey we’d been on was all about feelings. I thought about what Virgil always said: Feelings get you killed. And in this case he was damn sure right about that.

  Feelings. This whole goddamn saga started with Alejandro having hurt feelings when he saw Jedediah on the street and Jedediah acting as if he were someone else, someone Alejandro could not know.

  I thought about how Alejandro must have felt when someone he knew so well, so thoroughly, disowned him by assuming another man’s identity and living the life of the happily married bank president in San Cristóbal. It must have made Alejandro feel small.

  Alejandro was right, he would have most likely never thought of contacting Dalton in La Mesilla if Jedediah would have acknowledged him and not rejected him. Alejandro would have never had that shoot-out with the two bandits in cahoots with Dalton, who tried to cut him out of the first robbery attempt last Christmas, if it weren’t for feelings.

  Us tracking Alejandro down, then him escaping, and us finding him again in El Encanto would not have happened if it weren’t for feelings.

  Dalton’s men hold Jedediah’s wife hostage, threaten to kill her unless Jedediah cleans out the vault. Dalton and Jedediah fight and Dalton severely beats Jedediah and runs off wi
th the bank’s money and Jedediah’s wife.

  None of this would have ever happened; Slingshot Clark would not have found Jedediah unconscious on the porch of her Cottonwood brothel.

  Or Jedediah escaping from Doc Mayfair’s office and following the trail left by his brother. Or us tracking Dalton to La Mesilla, where Sheriff Talmadge was killed by Dalton’s men, and Virgil then gunning down two of them who tried to test their mettle. Then we discover Jedediah had been in La Mesilla but was now headed to Mexico in pursuit of his brother and his wife, Catherine. Getting Alejandro out of jail in hopes we could find the especial place Dalton knew about from their childhood. Jantz Wainwright offering a reward for the return of his daughter that pitted Virgil and me up against a renegade band of Federales that goddamn near got us killed. This all was connected to one simple thing: feelings.

  And now, after all that, here we were on the docks of Veracruz. How this would play out, I had no idea, as the four of us walked down the dock toward Captain Chapa’s schooner.

  Jedediah was ahead of us some. He was charged with a composed combination of fear, anger, and rage as we walked through the fog toward the schooner.

  “Let’s not just run down there,” Virgil said. “Ease into this, Jedediah.”

  Jedediah slowed and looked back to Virgil.

  “Everett, you and Alejandro walk that side of the dock and Jedediah and I will be on this side. Let’s take it steady.”

  We did just that. Alejandro and I moved to the left side and Virgil and Jedediah stayed on the right. Alejandro and I were separated from Virgil and Jedediah by about fifteen feet as we approached Captain Chapa’s schooner.

  The first image we saw through the fog as we neared Captain Chapa’s slip was that the schooner’s sails were hoisted but were luffing with the light breeze. The long boat looked ghostly in the misty fog, and EG was right: the schooner was preparing to set sail.

  We heard Dalton before we saw him.

  “Ahoy, little brother!”

  Dalton’s voice was deep and raspy.

  Virgil held up his hand for us to stop, and we stopped.