City of Widows

by Loren D. Estleman

  It was a large parlor, and even through the blue haze I could see that it was elegantly furnished, with a Brussels carpet and overstuffed chairs and a massive old breakfront in the corner, eight feet tall and filled with blue china. Flames were snaffling at the printed wallpaper, blistering and blackening and peeling it as I watched and pouncing across the ceiling with a suckling roar. Orange coals the size of acorns dropped to the carpet and burned black holes on contact.

  Ortiz had provided me with a description of the floor plan, and climbing to my feet I started toward the center of the house and the staircase leading to the tower. On the way there I spotted a corner of the carpet turned back. In the section of floor thus exposed I saw a square outline.

  With only a small trapdoor to defend, a man in that dark hole might withstand a siege of many months.

  Crouching on my heels to avoid silhouetting myself in the opening, I inserted my fingers in the crack between the boards and lifted.

  Something scuffed the carpet behind me. I turned with the revolver. White light, brighter than any of the dynamite blasts, filled my skull. I felt myself tipping, threw out a hand to brace myself, and touched space. Warm moist blackness broke my fall.

  * * *

  A train was champing at the platform, maintaining a head of steam.

  The long hoarse chugs carried me back from wherever I’d been, to gray cold darkness and the beginning of an ache I knew from old experience would be with me for days and possibly weeks. Chiefly it was in my head, a living, breathing pain that bulged out of time with the uneven chugs and the smaller, sharper pains in my knees and elbows. The headache belonged to the blow that had taken me away from wherever I was now. I had acquired the others when I fell or was pushed to the hard smooth stony surface on which I lay. I placed a palm against it. Not stone; too even and, I sensed, not as hard. Not man-made, either; not even enough for that. Clay?

  I turned onto my side. Through the murk I made out the faint gleam of light on glass, rows of curved glass objects stacked one on top of another, as on shelves. Jars? I began to know something.

  Again I turned. I was on my back now, looking up at stripes of light some eight feet above me. I was disappointed in Ortiz. A good carpenter should be able to fit floorboards closer than that. As I was looking, a fall of glowing cinders showered down through the cracks and I threw a forearm across my eyes. The sparks stung my hand and face like hornets. The fire was still blazing. I couldn’t have been out more than a few minutes.

  The chugging continued, accompanied by a stream of dust and fresh cinders from above. Something blocked the light through several cracks. I remembered the big breakfront in the parlor then. Someone was dragging it across the floor in the direction of the trapdoor. I thought I knew who.

  The pain in my head bulged when I sat up, blinding me for a second. I reached up, touched the sticky mass behind my right ear, and snatched my hand away when a fresh bolt shot straight to the top of my skull. I put the hand down to push myself up and felt something I’d missed without even knowing it was gone. The cool solid patient shape of the Deane-Adams made me want to cry out. It must have dropped from my hand through the opening before Baronet could catch it. It was the only thing that had gone wrong with the trap he’d laid; but when a gambler’s streak turns bad it doesn’t stop.

  I curled my fingers around the butt, rose to my knees, breathed, swallowed bile, and stood up. The basement did a slow Virginia reel and rocked to a standstill. I was ready to help move furniture.

  A wooden ladder bolted to the stone wall led to the trapdoor. I holstered the pistol, climbed, and pushed with my hand. It didn’t give. I went up another rung and leaned my shoulder against it. It was latched. I might have shot my way through. I might have cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted for freedom. Either way I would lose my only advantage. I climbed back down.

  The man struggling with the breakfront paused to wheeze. I recognized Frank Baronet’s voice. By now the ground floor would be full of smoke. Soon the boards would catch fire and collapse upon me, followed by the walls and roof. The trap had felt warm against my palm.

  I drew the five-shot and looked up, calculating. Before my peacekeeping days I had spent a winter between roundups freighting iron stoves for a cartage company based in Saint Louis. My partner had a bad back and refused to pull against a weight, explaining that pushing was easier and not as likely to cause injury. His back wasn’t nearly as bad as the sheriff’s, not having a bullet in it. I waited until the breakfront began moving again, noting the angle by the pattern of falling dust and the shadow between the boards, and paced off the distance to the back. I pointed the revolver straight up and emptied the cylinder, spreading my shots in a loose pattern. Smoky light poked down through the holes.

  There was a short space of silence. Then something thudded the floor, hard enough to shake loose a pound of old dirt and dry rot.

  I reloaded from the loops on my belt, stepped beneath the trapdoor, and placed all five bullets in a tight group in one corner. The result was a ragged, fist-size hole. Once again I shook out the empty shells and replaced them with fresh cartridges, the last in my possession. I scaled the ladder, inserted my fingers in the hole, and pushed hard with the heel of my hand. The door gave a little. I mounted the last rung, placed my shoulder against the door and one foot against the nearest joist, and heaved upward. A moment’s resistance, then the agonized shriek of tearing wood, and suddenly I was breathing the hot smoky air of freedom.

  The walls were totally engulfed. Part of the ceiling was gone, having fallen into a pile of flaming debris that blocked the exit. The carpet, which Baronet had rucked back in order to move the breakfront, was burning, and threads of flame were blistering the veneer on that massive piece. Coughing and covering my nose and mouth with one hand, I stepped behind the breakfront. A smear of blood stained the floor and dribbled out into the hall leading to the back of the house. I followed it, gun in hand.

  The drops grew faint and hard to distinguish against the brown leaf pattern on the hall runner. Then I came across a gout of it on the bottom step of the central staircase, as if he had paused there, hemorrhaging and supporting himself on the newel post. The trail continued up the stairs.

  I climbed the first flight, flattened against the banister with the revolver pointed up the well. At the top was a landing and a steep flight of naked wooden steps ending in another trapdoor. This one hung open, releasing a flood of sunlight down the narrow passage from the open sentry tower atop the house. The blood trail led squarely up the middle.

  My head throbbed. It seemed to be saying, Not again.

  A second-floor hallway ran north and south from the landing. I peered in both directions. Through the roiling smoke it seemed to me I saw a faint smear where someone had mopped a fresh spill from the oiled floor in front of the first door south of the staircase.

  Keeping the Deane-Adams in front of me, I backed toward the steep flight of steps and climbed them backward. They creaked loudly.

  The door in the hallway flew open. I took an instant to identify Frank Baronet lunging across the threshold, his big Remington rolling-block pistol trained up the stairs. I fired twice into the thickest part of him. He stumbled, faltered, raised the pistol again. I fired again. He retreated into the room. The door closed.

  I descended the steps. In the hallway I spread-eagled against the wall and stretched a hand toward the doorknob. The latch hadn’t caught. The door opened at a touch. When no shots came from inside I pivoted around and through the opening, clasping the revolver in front of me at arm’s length.

  It was a bedroom, paneled in dark grainy oak and containing a bed with a six-foot carved headboard, a marble washstand, and a dropleaf secretary and matching cherrywood chair. Baronet sat in the chair with his back to the desk and his long legs splayed out in front of him, one arm curled over the back of the chair to prevent him from sliding. He was in his vest and shirtsleeves, just as he was when he dealt faro at the Orient, but his colla
r and cravat were missing and his white shirt was crosshatched with soot. His right hand rested in his lap with the single-shot pistol in it. A .45-70 Springfield rifle leaned in the corner next to the bed. It looked like the same one Ross Baronet had carried into the Apache Princess the night of the robbery.

  “‘Satan’s Sixgun.’” The sheriff laughed wheezily. “That piece doesn’t even hold six.”

  His black hair, dank with sweat, hung in his eyes. His handlebars needed waxing. They drooped at the ends. The front of his person from the notch of his vest to the knees of his striped trousers was stained dark.

  “Right now it’s holding two,” I said. “You should have shot me when you had the upper hand, instead of pistol-whipping me and dumping me into the cellar.”

  “We burn wife-stealers in this county.”

  It wasn’t a subject for that part of the conversation. “You’re all used up, Frank.”

  “I am not alone. There is no leaving this house now, for you or me. I designed it for dying in.” A spasm shot through him, twisting his face into a rictus and tightening his grip on the back of the chair until his knuckles showed yellow. When it passed he was visibly weaker. Oxygen came hard. “I have got to ask why you carried it this far, Murdock. It wasn’t because Ross tried to raid your place in San Sábado. Was it Colleen?”

  “I didn’t know about you and Colleen until a week ago.”

  “What, then? Did I use you so hard that day in Socorro City?”

  “I’ve been used harder, and by worse than you,” I said. “You should have let Dave and Vespa Spooner alone up in Lincoln. They made no difference to the war, and they got you killed.”

  He cast back. His brain was dying and thinking was a slow painful process. “That was months ago. What were the Spooners to you?”

  “To me, nothing. Dave’s father saved Judge Blackthorn’s hide during the war with Mexico. The Judge asked me to come down here and pay his debt.”

  “I don’t credit it. They were not worth all this bother. That’s why I sent Ross to close their eyes.”

  That settled the point. I wondered why I felt no victory.

  “Why did she shoot you?” I asked.

  “The Spooner woman? She never. I don’t believe I ever heard her speak.”

  “I mean Colleen Bower. Why did she shoot you?”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “She said you beat her up.”

  He smiled. It was as glassy-looking as his eyes. I doubted he could still see me. Seeing was becoming difficult for me as well. The air was thick with smoke and growing denser by the minute.

  “Did you credit it?” he asked.

  “I’m asking you.”

  The smile broadened. He raised the big pistol.

  “Don’t, Frank.” I was still holding the Deane-Adams.

  He tried to cock it. His thumb kept slipping off the hammer. He uncurled his other arm from the back of the chair to steady the gun while he tried again.

  I cocked the revolver. “Don’t.”

  He got the hammer back and locked. He raised the pistol. I shot him. He lost his brace and slid to the floor. Turned over on his side. I stepped forward and leaned down over him. “Why did she shoot you?”

  “You still have a bullet.” He pointed the Remington at me. I kicked it out of his grasp. The impact when it landed jarred loose the hammer. A bullet pierced the ceiling.

  “Why did she shoot you, Frank?”

  His lips were moving. I bent almost double, straining to hear the words. His mouth remained open when he stopped talking. His eyes did too.

  * * *

  When I failed to find a pulse anywhere on him I turned to the business of getting out. I got as far as the landing, where flames barred the stairs. I went back into the room, leaped over Baronet’s body, pried at the window, found it painted shut, and kicked out the panes. Fire was chewing at the siding, but I climbed through the opening and stood on the sill, hanging on to the frame with one hand. I realized then I was still holding the Deane-Adams and jammed it into its holster. The drop was thirty feet to hard earth with nothing to slow me down. A pair of broken legs awaited me at the bottom, at the very least; a broken neck was more likely. Behind me the room was growing hot. I braced myself and pushed off.

  Something swished past my ears and froze in front of my eyes, that familiar hang you looked for the instant before you leaned back with everything you had—but that was when you were on the other end. Instinctively I grabbed for it, but I wasn’t fast enough and the loop closed under my arms and constricted my chest. My instinct then was to claw at the rope. Instead I hooked a foot inside the windowsill and turned to grasp the frame once again. As I did I looked up at the man on the other end of the rope. He was standing with his legs spread on the roof of the sentry tower, a thick silhouette against the sky in plain peasant dress without a hat.

  “Miguel Axtaca?”

  “This is my name,” said the Aztec.

  “How the hell did you get up there?”

  “The same way we are going down.” He fed me some slack for my descent and took another dally around the peak of the roof for his own.

  24

  THE BELL IN the church tower was swinging, calling the faithful of San Sábado to Mass. I was scrubbed and shaved and my scrapes and bruises had been seen to, but I wasn’t dressed for worship, having packed everything but my trail clothes. On my way down the main street I encountered Rosario Ortiz coming out the front door of the Mare’s Nest, where he took sourdough and coffee every morning with Eille Mac-Nutt in what was surely one of the most inexplicable friendships on record; what that pair had in common was anyone’s guess. He had on his sombrero and his church suit, too tight in the chest and smelling of moth powder and cedar. He was one man who looked better in work clothes, be they stained overalls or cavalry kit and weapons. When he saw me he inclined his head.

  “Buenos días, Señor Murdock. It is a fine morning to greet the Lord, is it not?”

  “I suppose. I’ll be glad enough to get up in the Bitterroots and greet some snow. I have had my fill of sunshine and adobe.”

  “You are leaving today?”

  “I should have left last week, but I’m punishing Judge Blackthorne. His reply when I wired him about what happened at the Baronet ranch was less than polite.”

  “I think I see. He has guilt that the burden of justice fell to you, who had no personal stake in the matter, instead of to him.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “If I live to be forty-one I’ll never know what goes on under his hat.”

  “What do you intend to do with your interest in the Apache Princess?”

  “That’s what I’m on my way to discuss with Mrs. Bower.” I stuck out my hand. “Vaya con dios, Marshal. I am coming away with that much Spanish at least.”

  He took it. For a moment he seemed on the edge of saying something. Then he ducked his head again and hastened across the street to join the crowd drifting toward the church. We were as ill at ease in each other’s company as a man and woman who had become lovers for one night, only to awaken the next morning to find they had nothing in common but the passion of the moment. I never saw or heard from him again. If he’s dead I hope he made it to heaven despite his convictions to the contrary.

  At the alley I paused to raise my hat to a gaggle of widows hauling a train of dust with their black hems. They looked neither left nor right, turning the corner in a body on their way to church; identical in their weeds, anonymous behind their veils, and as formidable after their fashion as the combined and righteous might of the riders of the Diamond Horn and the Slash W, who had parted company upon delivering their prisoners to Lew Wallace in Santa Fe. By now they would have reverted to their old habits, rustling each other’s cattle and trading shots across the oldest and bloodiest border in the western hemisphere. My last sight of Miguel Axtaca, after he had risked his life to save mine at the Baronet spread, had been of his broad unadorned back riding south between Francisco and Carlos at the head
of Don Segundo’s loyal band of vaqueros. His kind is gone now, if indeed it ever existed outside the early Spanish accounts of the Mexican conquest; even the dust of their bones has settled over the caves and deserts of Chihuahua and Sonora, indistinguishable from the sand. Don Segundo del Guerrero is no less dead now, his ranch divided, the lions he loved to hunt gone the way of the Aztec and the Spanish grandee. We will not see their autocratic like.

  John Whiteside died in Cuba. Against the advice of his friends, including Theodore Roosevelt, he had insisted at the age of seventy-four upon leading his own regiment of hand-picked cowboys into battle with the Spaniards, only to succumb to yellow fever in the stinking hold of a troopship in Havana Harbor without ever having set foot on the island. His body was brought back to New Mexico by some of his men for burial. You can’t miss the monument. It’s the tallest thing in Socorro County west of Chupader Mesa.

  Judge Blackthorne, in forced retirement at the time and diverting his still-prodigious energies into articles for Galaxy and Harper’s Weekly, wrote that the “Cuban debacle” may yet justify its expense by providing a dumping ground for “apoplectic grandfathers who have read Homer and taken him too much to heart.” Then he, too, in excellent health and at the peak of his mental abilities, expired. A number of sanguinary accounts of his years on the bench were published in the years afterward, running about half for and half against. History hasn’t yet decided what to make of him, and neither, by God, have I.

  Colleen Bower answered the door at Señora Castillo’s boardinghouse wearing a plain black dress cinched cruelly at the waist and covering everything from just below her chin to the shiny caps of her patent-leather shoes. Her hair was pinned up in back and she wore no paint, the first time I had seen her that way at that hour of the morning. She looked neither young nor old. Timeless was the word that came to mind. I removed my hat.

  “I haven’t much time, Page. I am late for church as it is.”

  “I won’t keep you long. I just came to say goodbye. Where is the old witch?”