Rides a Stranger

by Bill Brooks

I figured when we got there, I’d send a telegram to Chalk letting him know the plan had been successful, if nothing else to give him the satisfaction that Waco no longer had possession of Antonia. Small comfort, I’m sure, but comfort nonetheless I guessed.

  I finished the second drink—not as good as the first, because the first of anything is always better than what comes after it—and walked back to the car. She was sitting in the corner of the couch, her feet and bare legs tucked up underneath her, her trousers and boots lying on the floor. She held a silver flask in her right hand and I could see whatever she was drinking was already starting to take its effect, for her face was flushed and her eyes dreamy.

  “What the hell is that?” I said.

  “Absinthe,” she said, holding it to me. “Have some.”

  “No. I know all about it.”

  She smiled warmly.

  The valise was open next to her and I could see lots of loose money in it—so much so it didn’t even seem real.

  “Tell me about the women you never loved but almost did,” she said.

  The sky outside was gray again and little drops of rain streaked the car window even as the world seemed to be moving one way and we another. The two whiskeys I’d had were just enough to make me reconsider her—the wan and almost vulnerable creature, half naked, all that money, daring me to play the game.

  I sat down across from her.

  “Is that what you really want to do, talk about the women I almost loved but never did?”

  “Or something like it,” she said.

  She leaned over and placed the hand holding the flask in my lap and let it rest there.

  “Are you sure you won’t have some?” What I saw in her gaze was the promise of all things.

  Everything about it was wrong. But then temptation always has a wrongness to it. We ended up falling asleep pressed together but that was all, the rhythm of the train stealing our resistance to sleep—stealing it like money.

  We awoke to the rapping of our door, the conductor calling, “Refugio ten minutes!”

  I fumbled around in the dark for my boots, found a match and struck it to the small lantern above the couch. I tried not to stare at her while she dressed. The feelings I had were the same feelings I had when I found out Fannie had been keeping time with me and Junior Bosch at the same time. Only instead of Junior doing it to me, it felt like it was something I was doing to Chalk Bronson, coveting his woman, the woman he entrusted me to save, even though by all accounts she wasn’t his woman at all. She was legally Johnny Waco’s woman and I didn’t know how I felt about that part.

  “What will you do when we get off the train?” I said.

  “I thought we weren’t going to tell each other.”

  “That was about where we’d go once we hit Refugio.”

  “I don’t know what I’ll do,” she said. “Possibly see my father again.”

  “He a good man, your father?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mother?”

  “Dead,” she said. “Long time.”

  “Brothers or sisters?”

  She shook her head.

  “Five minutes to go in our coexistence,” she said, “and we’re having a real conversation. That usually comes before what we did.”

  “I apologize.”

  “For what?”

  “It felt like I wanted to take advantage of you, Antonia.”

  “Maybe you should have.”

  I offered her my best leer. “Another time and place, different circumstances, who knows.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Who knows…”

  We felt the train slowing and then at one point it lurched ahead after we’d thought it stopped and it threw us together and we held each other not knowing if the damn train had finally stopped or not or if we should unhand each other or what.

  Finally we did.

  “Good luck,” she said as we stepped off the train into a cloud of steam, the night dark around us except for the lights of the town up ahead.

  “You too,” I said.

  What we didn’t know was there was only one hotel in town and we both ended up taking rooms there—but not together.

  “You hungry?” I said as we climbed the stairs.

  “Yes, you?”

  “Starved.”

  “I guess taking a meal together wouldn’t commit us to anything.”

  “Don’t see how it would.”

  “You buying?” she said after we’d set our things in our rooms and locked the doors and gone down to the dining room and been given seats.

  “You are,” I said. “I paid for the train tickets, remember.”

  She smiled and we ordered steaks and I could still see that dreamy doped look in her eyes and wished it wasn’t there, but it was what it was and there was nothing I could do about it except maybe privately grieve that a woman with such potential wanted to waste herself.

  We ate slowly and I asked her to tell me more about herself.

  She shrugged. “What is there to tell, really?”

  “How did you end up with Johnny Waco, for instance? He seems the complete opposite of Chalk Bronson.”

  “Long story, but the short of it is, I thought Chalk had been killed in the war. I waited a long time without hearing anything from him and finally gave up hope that I ever would. The selection of men wasn’t much as you can imagine in a place like Coffin Flats. Johnny had a big-time reputation of being a powerful man and at first he was charming as hell. You probably don’t know it, but most of the real bastards can be charming as hell when they want to be.” The look she gave me didn’t fail to register.

  “Yeah, some gunfighters are like that too.”

  She smiled again and sipped the last of the wine in her glass and waited for me to refill it for her and I did, reluctantly.

  “You’re pretty charming yourself when you want to be,” she said.

  “You think so?”

  “You see, that right there, that boyish innocence you sometimes put on.”

  “Well, it’s worked in the past a time or two, I won’t deny it.”

  “Me, I like to deal straight off the top of the deck, Mr. Glass.”

  “You sure know how to take the starch out of a man.”

  Her laugh was short, sharp, as she lifted her wineglass.

  “To scoundrels and women like me,” she said.

  And when I didn’t toast, she smiled and drank half the glass.

  She went on to tell me about her father, an attorney for the railroad at one time who’d made a lot of money through wise investments and was now semiretired. She said his name was Dalton Stone and that he lived in Denver where he took on cases he mostly couldn’t win but ones he believed innocent men had been convicted of crimes they didn’t commit or where there was a real sense of injustice. I thought it interesting.

  “How did you meet Chalk?” I said.

  She smiled warmly, the candlelight infusing her eyes.

  “Him,” she said. “He was part of a medicine show that came to Denver when I was nineteen. Doc Rainey’s Patent Medicine Wagon. Chalk was driver and helper to Doc Rainey. They even had an Indian princess who claimed she’d been healed from crippling diseases…” She shook her head, remembering. “Chalk was dressed in a bright blue bib shirt with white buttons and a pair of woolly chaps.” She clapped her hands happily. “God, he had a hat on big enough to block out the sun. But he was so handsome I couldn’t take my eyes off him. And after the show my father took me to meet Doc Rainey—who also performed magic tricks. Chalk was there by Doc’s wagon lounging around spinning a rope.”

  She sighed and took another sip of her wine.

  “He was young and handsome and shy as a colt and that’s what attracted me to him. I went back to the show the next day alone and made it a point that we meet.”

  “A case of love at first sight?” I said.

  “Yes, exactly. We’d decided to elope, have a preacher marry us and go off to Niagara Falls for our honeymoon. I knew
my father wouldn’t be happy, even though he’d come to like Chalk quite well…”

  “It must have hurt when he went off to the war and didn’t come back.”

  “Like you can’t even imagine. I met Johnny and thought I could be happy again, but all I was was miserable and eventually I started doing this stuff.” She held up the wine. “Then a friend introduced me to cocaine pills—washing them down with whiskey. It took some of the heartache away—quite a bit of it. I discovered the pleasures of opium after…”

  “Hooking up with Pink,” I said.

  The pleasantness of her face changed to something other.

  “I didn’t mean to pry,” I said.

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Not to dredge up hurtful things.”

  “I want to write Chalk a letter. One last letter to let him know I’m sorry for all that’s happened to us. Do you think that would be all right?”

  “Don’t see what it could hurt.”

  “I wish I could go back and change everything to the way it was,” she said.

  “We all do—sooner or later.”

  We finished dinner and went up the stairs together and I walked her to her door and she paused for a moment as though wanting to say something, but then put the key in the lock and said only, “Good night.”

  I walked down to my room and did the same thing.

  I kept telling myself I shouldn’t be thinking what I was thinking.

  The last thing on my mind was Johnny Waco and his bunch.

  It should have been the first thing.

  Chapter Twelve

  Morning light had filled the room and I was sitting on the side of the bed rubbing the sleep out of my eyes when the door caved in. Three men, two of them with shotguns aimed at me, suddenly made it crowded. The shorter one with the sugarloaf hat, holding only a short black revolver, said, “If you reach for that hogleg there won’t be enough left of you to put in a cigar box.” My Merwin Hulbert resting in my holster that hung from the bed frame above my pillow looked a mile away.

  Then he turned over the lapel of his coat to show me the badge.

  “Sheriff Joe Bike,” he said. “You’re under arrest.”

  “For what?”

  He looked at me as if I’d just asked if his mama was still a virgin.

  “How about wife stealing? We take that shit ’round here fairly serious, mister.”

  I could hear voices out in the hall, one of them Antonia’s: “Turn me loose you dirty bastard!”

  I started to rise off the bed.

  “I’d move real fucking slow I was you,” the lawman said. “These boys are the nervous types, seeing how they’re new on the job.”

  I looked from the one to the other. They did indeed look nervous.

  “Got her, boss,” a fourth man said from out in the hallway, and Sheriff Bike turned his head to have a look then turned his attention back to me.

  “Well, at least you got good taste,” he said. “Take her on down to the jail, Tobe.” Then to me, “Get dressed.”

  Twenty minutes later I was sitting in the man’s jail, such as it was. I could hear Antonia cursing our captors in another room.

  “Let me go, you son of a bitches.”

  “Holding you till they come get you, woman. You might as well shut that foul mouth of yours.”

  She continued to curse them and they continued to try and settle her down. This went on for nearly an hour.

  Finally Sheriff Bike came back to where I was—a small eight-by-eight-foot (I measured by stepping it off) cell with naught but an iron cot.

  “Real she-cat Johnny got himself,” he said.

  “You know Johnny Waco?” I said.

  He looked at me with cornflower blue eyes you’d expect to see on a woman.

  “He’s my cousin,” he said.

  “How’d you track us down?”

  “Telegraph, son. You heard of the telegraph, ain’t you?”

  “Yes, but how’d he know we were coming here?”

  “Easy enough. That flyer you all took out of Coffin Flats—there’s only one town between here and there worth even getting off at. Guess which one? You’re in it.”

  “You know anything at all about your cousin?”

  “Know he’s rich and is generous to those who lend him a hand.”

  “He’ll kill her if you send her back.”

  He looked toward the door and the room beyond it, where I’d heard Antonia’s voice.

  “True love,” he said. “Never does run smooth, they say. It ain’t my place to get into a man’s marital affairs. It ain’t yours neither.”

  “I was just trying to do her a favor. Trying to save her life. Seems to me that should be the job of the law, not the other way around.”

  “Real philosopher, ain’t you?”

  He turned and went out again, slamming the door closed behind him, shifting the bolt.

  I waited all day for nothing to happen. Every so often I could hear Antonia laying into whoever it was and the one male voice said, “Now ma’am, there ain’t no use to talk to me like this. I’m a Christian. There ain’t no use to you abusing me so…”

  Time dragged mercilessly.

  Finally, sometime very late in the day, I heard new voices. Male voices. A shuffling of boots on wood, a door clanging open, Antonia’s voice, then a slap then nothing. More doors closing again then silence.

  An hour or so more and the door to where my cell was opened and dull light fell in and Sheriff Bike came in with two of his men.

  “Well, she’s on her way back home to her worried husband, exactly where a woman ought to be,” he said. “Lucky thing for you is, Johnny don’t want to press charges.”

  I waited for him to open the door and let me go, but knew it wasn’t going to be that simple.

  He nodded and one of the deputies stepped forward and then Bike opened the door and said, “He’s just goin’ put these handcuffs on you. Don’t give him no shit, now, hear.”

  “Why handcuffs if you’re letting me go?” I said.

  “Because we’re gonna ride you out a little ways then turn you loose, make sure you don’t come back here no more. You look like the dangerous type. It’s a precaution.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” I said. “I’ve got no reason to come back here.”

  “No, you sure as hell ain’t,” he said. “We just gone make sure is all.”

  I had a bad feeling—maybe the worst one I’d ever had.

  “You try and fight this,” he said, “I’m gonna shoot you in the head and say you tried to escape.”

  I let the kid deputy put the handcuffs on me.

  “Now walk out the back there,” Bike said.

  They escorted me out the back door, where four saddle horses stood waiting. I was ordered to wait until two of them mounted their horses, and then Bike told me to do the same and then he mounted his too. Then one rode over to me and said, “Turn your head.” And when I did he tied a kerchief over my eyes.

  The air was chill and the wind tunneled down the alley where we were. The two riders in front led out. One of them had taken the reins and my horse followed. I could hear Bike behind me saying, “Let’s take him to the meeting place, boys.”

  That bad feeling I had only got worse.

  I tried to time in my mind how far we’d ridden or in which direction, but it was impossible. We rode for what seemed a goodly amount of time. I settled into the rhythm of life itself, figuring if they were going to kill me, there wasn’t much I could do about it, and it sure seemed like that was exactly what they aimed to do take me somewhere out into the backcountry and kill me.

  We rode along to the creaking of saddle leather, the jingle of bits, the clop of hooves against the hardpan.

  Seemed at some point we rode down a slight incline and back up again after going through some water. Not long afterward Bike said, “Hold up here.”

  One rode up and took off my blindfold and I could see we were standing under a big spread
ing cottonwood, its leaves all but shed, its branches low. I figured it was a hanging tree.

  “Get him down from there,” Bike said, and they came and took me off my horse, my wrists still cuffed.

  “This where you let me go, right?” I said, half mocking because I knew they’d not ridden me this far just to let me go.

  “Something like that,” Bike said and nodded at the two with him, who took hold of my arms. Bike made a show of it, pulling a pair of leather gloves he had hooked on his belt and putting them on.

  “Hold him steady, boys,” he said, then slammed his fist into my belly and almost as soon as it doubled me slammed another into my jaw and my world tipped over.

  “You understand I’m doing this for your own good,” he said. I tried to shake the ringing out of my ears. “So’s you’ll know there is always a penalty for doing wrong.”

  He hit me again and I think he broke a rib because it hurt like a son of a bitch, like something sharp going into my lung, and then hit me in the face again, his blow catching me just above my right brow so that blood leaked into my eye. The guy knew what he was doing, snapping off the punch so it’d cut.

  I almost went black from it and his voice seemed far away.

  “Go bust a nice limb,” I heard him say to one of them. They turned me loose and I dropped to my knees trying to wipe the blood out of my eye while trying to breathe. Bike stood there rubbing his hands together, looking at them like they were something he just discovered.

  I heard a limb breaking, a splintering crack like a pistol shot.

  “Stand him up and take off the cuffs,” Bike said. They were like faithful dogs, those two. Once they had me uncuffed, they stretched my arms out to my sides and tied my wrists to the heavy thick limb they’d broken from the tree.

  “Why hell,” Bike said when they finished. “You look like Jesus—paying for your sins. Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s wife, ain’t that right?”

  I figured now was when they’d shoot me.

  “You’re free to go,” Bike said, and I lifted my head as much as I could with the limb yoked to me and pressing into the back of my neck.

  They mounted their horses and sat there looking down at me, the land falling to night all around, the stinging of my face, the blood from the cut above my eye drying to a crust.