City of Widows

by Loren D. Estleman

  Once we parted I began paying special attention to the irregularities in the landscape, rock piles and buttes and thickets that held so much appeal for hostiles who didn’t wish to be observed. By midday, however, the absence of Apaches had begun to become obvious, and when eight hours later I made camp I felt certain I was alone. Well, Geronimo and his band had been headed somewhere when Axtaca and the vaqueros and I encountered them below the border, and there were rumors that the Apaches were concentrating on Arizona. That placed them in General Crook’s wheelhouse, which was good enough for me. There was a strong case to be made in favor of all the tribes but that one. If they were alone on the planet they’d have picked a fight with the moon.

  On the ridge overlooking the county seat I paused to gaze down at the teeming sprawl at my feet. Hammering and sawing, the heartbeat and respiration of civilization birthing in the wilderness. While it was going on, life glowed. When it stopped, decay set in. Only sometimes the rot was present in the fresh lumber, growing unheeded during the construction, spreading to the healthy timbers and eating away at the joints and pegs, so that six months or even six weeks later the entire structure collapsed, taking lives with it. Often that rot was human. Sometimes it wore a badge.

  I conferred with my dented pocket watch, the posthumous gift of a Confederate captain. Unless Frank Baronet had altered his routine, he would be dealing faro at the Orient about now, leaving Jubilo No-Last-Name in charge of the jail. It seemed a likely place to start.

  * * *

  The gate leading inside the board fence that enclosed the gallows and surrounding courtyard was latched as simply as possible, with a piece of lath secured by a nail. I’d been counting on that, breaking into jail not being as popular a practice as breaking out. On the other side, the scaffold threw a shadow that clasped the back of my neck like a clammy hand. The back door to the building was solid oak, set flush to the frame, and probably bolted and padlocked inside, but that wasn’t how I was planning to get in so I ignored it. The single barred window on that side of the building, designed to allow light into the cells rather than to let the residents see outside, was nearly seven feet from the ground. I grasped the brick sill in both hands and chinned myself up.

  No lamps burned inside and the sun was coming in at a flat angle. In the murky light I couldn’t tell if any of the cots in the cells were occupied. I tried tapping on the thick glass.

  “You won’t find him in there.”

  I didn’t turn my head at the sound of the voice behind me. I let go of the sill and spun when I landed, gripping the butt of the Deane-Adams.

  I didn’t take it out. The tunnel I was looking down belonged to Jubilo’s Creedmoor. Its owner was standing at the other end with the butt against his shoulder and his finger on the trigger. The gallows rose gaunt and empty at his back.

  “Well, toss it over.”

  I slid the five-shot out of its holster between thumb and forefinger and gave it a low flip so that it landed gently at his feet. He lowered the rifle but kept it balanced along his forearm as he crouched to pick up the revolver. He found the catch and thumbed the cylinder around, tipping the cartridges out onto the ground. His eyes remained on me. They were almond-shaped after his Indian ancestors. The face under the flat brim of the Stetson, with darts of black whisker at the corners of the wide mouth, was unreadable. He handled the long-barreled rifle in one hand as easily as a sidearm. So far I had never seen him make use of the Russian on his hip, and I decided it was an ornament of office.

  “Always keep a live round under the hammer?” he asked.

  “Empty chambers attract drafts. I catch cold easy.”

  “Shoot your dick off someday.”

  “That’s what everyone says. But it’s still there and I’m still here.”

  He tossed it back. I caught it. “I guess you know where the gate is.”

  The rifle was resting on his shoulder now. I blew dust out of the pistol’s action, returned it to its holster, and preceded him into the alley. Behind me he paused to set the latch on the gate.

  On the street we walked side by side to the end of the block. He carried the rifle with the muzzle angled down. He stopped in front of a new brick building, opened the door, and held it. The lettering on the plate glass show window read:

  P. JOHNS & SON

  UNDERTAKERS

  It was a dark, heavy room, thickly carpeted and swaddled in wine-colored velvet and black oak. A mahogany casket with brass handles lay open on a padded dais with a bald-headed geezer propped up inside wearing a morning coat and a stiff collar. Another one, nearly as old and dressed similarly but more lively looking, with a rubber face and small bright eyes like shirt studs, bustled out of a back room at the sound of the entry bell, buttoning his vest. Jubilo pointed at the curtains the man had just come through and kept walking. I accompanied him.

  The back room was nearly as large as the parlor but made no pretense at ornamentation. Large windows set near the ceiling allowed sunlight to pour in onto a bare plank floor strewn with packing material, a long oilcloth-covered workbench at the back, and sawhorses. Two of the sawhorses supported a plain pine box without a lid. The air was thick with ammonia and formaldehyde.

  Jubilo hung behind while I stepped forward and looked down inside the box. The undertaker had done little more than wash his face. There was dust in the creases of his Prince Albert and fancy vest—he hadn’t bothered to change clothes for the long ride—and a couple of stitches had been taken in the hole in the silk where the bullet had either gone in or come out, but nothing had been done about the bigger hole in his left sock where two of his long sharp-nailed toes stuck through. His dark hair was plastered back with water, accentuating the narrowness of his skull, the caverns in his cheeks, the long treadle jaw and the bulbous eyes, barely closed, resting like billiard balls in their sockets. Those eyes had never warmed the air with their moist glow. That face had never slid off-kilter to illuminate a room with its crooked grin. His skin had the gray translucence of paraffin.

  “Two questions.” My own voice sounded hollow, like someone else speaking in a room at the end of the house.

  “Me,” Jubilo said. “He was standing in the street in front of the Orient, waving a Spencer and calling the sheriff every kind of a son of a bitch. That made him a public menace. I shot him from a window on the second floor of the Chicago House. I couldn’t wait for him to turn around. I guess that’s the second question.”

  “Did Baronet even get up from his table?”

  “Hell, he wasn’t even in town. He’s off collecting taxes. I hated to do it, if it means anything. I liked the little guy right off when we met in San Sábado. He didn’t make no secret what he thought of Frank even when he was asking him for a loan.”

  I turned to face him. “How far out is Baronet’s ranch?”

  After a pause he showed his eyeteeth.

  “Well, all he told me was to say he’s out collecting taxes. He didn’t say nothing about anyone guessing. Head straight east for a day. Keep Chupader Mesa square in front and you can’t miss it. It’s a thousand acres. I won’t ask who told you about it.”

  “The White Lion of Chihuahua.”

  His face didn’t change. “You do get around,” he said. “Might could be there is something to this Satan’s Sixgun business after all.”

  “What happens now? Am I under arrest?”

  “What for, trespassing on public property? Go back to the Widow City, Murdock. Socorro County will bury your friend.”

  “Tell the undertaker to put him in the icehouse. I’ll be back for him.”

  “Don’t go after him, amigo.”

  His tone made me turn back. “How many guns does Ross have?”

  “Ross is dead.”

  “That train pulled out a long time ago, Jubilo.”

  “Habit.” He moved his shoulders. “A dozen. More, maybe. They drift in and out. Not all as good as those two you killed in San Sábado, but good enough to side the Baronets is good enough for
anyone, and they know the ground. But they are not Ross’s guns. They answer to Frank. Always did. Ross never pulled up his britches but that Frank gave him leave.”

  “Don’t read over me just yet. I should have been dead twenty years ago and a hundred times since. Others keep taking my place.”

  “I just hope it isn’t me kills you,” he said. “It wouldn’t be the first time I done it to someone I liked. I can do without what comes after.”

  “Did you like the Spooners?”

  Light dawned. Absently, he nodded. “That’s what this is about. I wondered. What was Dave Spooner to you?”

  “To me, nothing.” I told him about Judge Blackthorne, Sergeant Uriah Spooner, and the siege of Monterrey. He nodded again.

  “I was there when Dave and Vespa got it,” he said. “I didn’t pull the trigger. Ross done that. It was Frank sent us out there. A lot of Chisum’s men looked up to Dave. Frank thought if we killed both of them the rest would see Dolan meant business.”

  “Did they?”

  “It never works that way. Dolan got mad as hell. He didn’t order it or know about it until it was over and done with. He said if there was ever a chance of Wallace not bringing in the army and spoiling everything, that chance went into the ground with Dave and Vespa Spooner.”

  “You’re telling me when you and Frank and Ross left Lincoln, it wasn’t the army you were running from.”

  “You can always avoid an army. I don’t think Jimmy Dolan shot a gun in his life, but if he ever come close to using one on anybody, it would of been Frank. I think the whole reason he got Frank elected sheriff here was to keep him out of Lincoln. I think he thought if he didn’t and Frank came back, Dolan would of killed him sure as hell.”

  “Frank’s living on borrowed time,” I said.

  “Not borrowed. Stole.”

  “What keeps you with him?”

  “What keeps you with the Judge?”

  “It’s different.”

  “For you, maybe. Not me. When you’re half greaser and half Comanche and you know one end of a rifle from the other, backing someone like Frank Baronet is as high as you can reach. It’s one hell of a lot higher than if you didn’t have the rifle.”

  “Where were you when Colleen shot him?”

  “I don’t follow him into bedrooms,” he said. “She told you, I guess. In that case you can take her a message from Frank. Tell her he don’t hold what she done against her. He wants her back.”

  “So he can finish beating her up?”

  He blinked. “Did she tell you he done that? Frank never done that.”

  “Just in bedrooms, I guess.”

  “I’ve known Frank right around five years. Rode with him, camped with him, stood up with him when he hitched up with Colleen. He’d maybe kill a woman, but he never beat one up. Should of, some of the ones he run with. He never did. It’s a failing.”

  “She showed me the scar.”

  “Her head, right?”

  I said nothing.

  “A Mexican whore done that. They called her Juanita Pistola on account of this old pepperbox she carried around to scare folks with. It wouldn’t shoot. She tried splitting open Colleen’s head with the barrel when she found out about the wedding. Frank shot her.”

  “Then why did Colleen shoot Frank?”

  “Like I said, I don’t follow him into bedrooms.”

  I exhaled. All my energy went out with the bad air. I felt bone weary.

  “Ride south, Jubilo,” I said. “Don’t stop before old Mexico. There’s an army coming you can’t avoid.”

  “I figured out that much when you mentioned Don Segundo. I reckon I’ll stick. I got more enemies down there than I do here, and there’s nothing waiting for me up north but a rope. What the hell, I never was no good at making a choice anyway. Just where are you riding with this here army?”

  I dug the nickel-plated star engraved DEPUTY U.S. MARSHAL out of my trouser pocket and pinned it to my shirt. Once again he nodded.

  “Out front. I guessed that too,” he said. “By the by, a wire come in this morning from Santa Fe. Garfield died last week.”

  “Sorry to hear it. I voted for him.” I waited.

  “Point is, if the office of president don’t turn away bullets, how much protection do you think you’ll get from that tin plate?”

  20

  THE RIFLE REPORT rang thin and insignificant in the vast night air. I caught the fading phosphorescence of the muzzle flash in a clump of cottonwoods to the north and stood in my stirrups, waving my Winchester over my head. A three-quarter moon washed the open plain in watery silver.

  “I’ll need a name,” called a voice.

  “Page Murdock. Ortiz knows me.”

  “Step down and come ahead. Keep your hands in sight.”

  He was small and young and well turned out for his work in a pinch hat, leather vest and chaps, and those torturous boots with pointed toes that bowed their legs and made them hobble around when not in the saddle. His rifle was an old Volcanic with scrollwork on the receiver and someone’s initials carved into the stock in big childish capitals.

  “Your father’s?” I pointed at the rifle.

  His lips were tight behind his puppy moustache. “Walk ahead.”

  The campfire smelled inviting after a week of cold prairie nights without a fire lest I attract the attention of Jubilo or one of Baronet’s bandits. I had seen the dust of a large band of horses shortly before sundown and cut a course for the glow of the fire after dark.

  “I figure you’re with Whiteside,” I said, walking. “You don’t look like one of Don Segundo’s vaqueros.”

  He grunted.

  “Bad enough I got to ride with them without getting took for one.”

  I spotted Ortiz first, squatting by the campfire with a stick in his hand, drawing designs in the dirt between him and John Whiteside, also squatting on his heels. The marshal had on his slouch hat and cavalry clothes but had removed the bandoliers. The old rancher, built even slighter than his lookout but lean as a salt rind, wore his big sombrero and a sheepskin coat with the left sleeve hanging empty. His whiskers looked grayer in the firelight. Both men were intent on what the Mexican was doing with the stick.

  “Chupader,” Whiteside muttered. “I seen easier places to defend but not lately. I and forty men fit eleven Apaches there for a week back in ’68. All it takes is one good man with a rifle.”

  “They’ve got that.”

  Both men turned their heads my way. Whiteside’s blue eyes scarcely lingered on the badge I wore. “Took on weight, I see.”

  The young cowboy said, “He come riding up bold as Maggie’s nipples, Colonel. Asked for the greaser marshal.”

  “I know him. Get back to your watch. Abbott,” he said when the man started to turn.

  “Yes, Colonel?”

  “You might want to hold off on that greaser talk till we get back home. Half the men you’re riding with are greasers and they might not all be as accommodating as Marshal Ortiz.”

  “I don’t know why we’re riding with them a-tall. I guess the men of the Slash W can handle one slippery sheriff without dragging along a bunch of pepper-guts.”

  “You were still on the tit the first time I crossed lead with pepperguts from the Diamond Horn. They put better men than you in the ground. If it was a case of one slippery sheriff I’d of done the job alone. Once you’ve put your first ball through something that can defend itself better than a colicky prairie hen, you can bellyache all you want. Till then, get back to your watch.”

  “Yes, Colonel.” He left.

  “Pup.”

  “He is young.” Ortiz rose, dropping the stick, and pulled his sleeve down over his hand to scoop a two-gallon coffeepot off a flat rock by the fire. “When was the last time you thought you could fight bad hombres all the day and make love to bad mujeres until the dawn?”

  “Cold Harbor. And if I’d had this new batch with me then there would still be slaves in Carolina. Pull up a piece of gro
und, Murdock. How you getting on with that claybank I sold you?”

  “I haven’t eaten him yet. He’s tied up back there. I fed and watered him before I broke camp.”

  “I gelded that one myself. Hated to do it, but there was no help for it. Stallions have a way of catching some Apache filly’s scent and blowing just when you’re looking for quiet. I was pleased to see he kept his spirit.”

  The marshal handed me the tin cup he’d filled from the pot. He searched my face. “Have you seen Señor Harper?”

  “I saw him. He didn’t see me.” I took the cup in both hands, warming them, and poured the hot bitter stuff down my throat. It brought a glow to my stomach like good whiskey.

  “Lo siento. He was a good man.”

  “He was a jackass. I don’t know how he lived as long as he did.”

  Brushing past me on the way back to his spot by the fire, he laid a hand on my shoulder briefly.

  “You said they have a good man with a rifle,” Whiteside said. “That would be Jubilo.”

  “I saw him snatch an Apache brave off his pony’s back at four hundred yards. If the mesa’s as good a perch as you say, he could take his time and pick us all off one by one like ticks.”

  “Not at night.”

  Miguel Axtaca had slid from the shadows outside the firelight, making no noise at all in a pair of soft Apache boots designed to pull up over the knees in cactus country; the flaps were secured around his calves with thongs. His square features, less flexible, were unchanged from when I had seen them last in El Paso del Norte on the way back from the Guerrero ranch. As always he appeared to wear no weapon.

  “We have a hundred men,” Whiteside told him. “You cannot move a party that size in the dark. They would trip over each other.”

  “One man alone has no one to trip over.”

  “Only himself. What will you do when you get there? It’s a big mesa and you don’t know where he will be.”

  “I will once he starts shooting.”

  “What then? Do you intend to place a hex upon him with that medicine bag you carry?”

  “The bag is for the protection of my soul. For the protection of my body I use this.” He reached behind his neck and produced a knife with a nine-inch blade, its handle bound with rawhide.