Pistolero

  The wound in his side was seeping badly, and the strip of torn shirt he wore as a bandage was soaked through. He leaned over to take the bed sheet from the line and almost fell off his horse. Weak and dizzy. Blood loss, he knew.

  He caught himself and teetered back in the saddle. There was the sound of commotion behind him, the bellowing of an unhappy woman. He reined around.

  A fat, pretty Señora of middle years, shrieking a stream of invective and waving a broom about like a battle guidon. It all went by too fast for Matthews to understand, but a couple of words leaped out: bastardo, the meaning of which seemed clear enough, and ladrón, robber.

  He draped the bed sheet over the horse’s neck and nudged the bay a few steps forward. He fumbled a hundred peso note from his shirt pocket, leaned down, and extended it to her.

  Her eyes widened at the sight of it. She went silent. Her expression softened. “Dios mío,” she whispered.

  She reached up to take it, and he fell from the saddle and hit the ground hard.

  ~

  He awakened to find himself shirtless, in a bed, on a bed sack that was lumpy and felt a little brambly. Full of straw.

  Two little niños – one about five years old, the other maybe three – stood a few feet away staring at him, the smallest one with a finger in his nose.

  Matthews propped himself up on one elbow with a gasp of pain, and felt with his other hand for the makeshift bandage, checking to see how wet.

  There was no bandage. There was no wet.

  He sat up straight and looked down at himself. The skin was dry, and the wound had been sewn together. Ragged, prickly little stitches made of a woman’s light black sewing thread drew the hole in his side into a tight little pucker. Clean and dry.

  The little ones continued to stand and stare.

  He looked about the place. It was smaller and more humble even than Isela’s tiny adobe had been. There was no stove, just a cooking pit in one corner; no furniture to speak of, just a small, rough hewn table and a couple of chairs. Another bed sack, on the floor and across the room, presumably for the bambinos. And no shelves or cupboards; he didn’t know where she kept the food. If there was any food. His Schofield hung in its shoulder holster on the back of one of the chairs.

  He looked across to a window. The light coming in from outside was mid-morning light, which meant either that he had been unconscious only a short while, or he had slept around the clock. He felt pretty well rested, so he judged that he had been out for eighteen hours or more.

  He looked back to the niños. They gazed impassively at him, the one with a finger in his nose digging at something now. He didn’t know what to say to them. His life had involved amost no time with children, and he felt awkward around them.

  “Will you be our father?” one of them said to him in Spanish, and then, across the room, the door to the tiny place opened.

  Mamacita. Back from somewhere, a little fatter and a little prettier than he remembered, in a simple white dress and bare feet in lace top sandals. She held his shirt in her hands, freshly washed and dried on the outside line. She looked down at the children. “Salir a jugar,” she told them. Go outside and play.

  They turned and sprinted for the door.

  She walked a little toward him smiling a slight, tentative smile. “Hablas Español?” she asked softly.

  He swung his legs around and put his feet on the floor, which hurt the side a little. His boots sat on the floor next to the bed. And at least he still had his pants on. “Un poco,” he said, and ran the fingers of one hand back through his hair. “Hablas Inglés?”

  She shook her head.

  He looked around the tiny place some more. No telling if there had ever been a husband, so he didn’t ask where her’s was. He looked back at her.

  She draped his shirt over the back of the chair, pulled it over, and sat down.

  They sat looking at each other for a few moments, he on the bed, she on the chair, their knees only a foot apart, and then she said, “Mi nombre es Soledad.”

  He smiled. “That’s very pretty,” he told her in Spanish, thinking that it was, and then sat just looking into her pretty eyes for a few moments.

  “Y usted?” she said.

  “Oh,” he said. “Cole. Mi nombre es Cole.”

  “Eres un bandido?” she asked. Are you a bandit?

  Wearily, he shook his head.

  “Un pistolero?” A gunfighter?

  He sighed. “Sí,” he said, and let it go at that.

  She smiled, seemed to like that answer.

  He looked down at his side, put a finger on the stitchery. “Tú?” he asked. You?

  She nodded.

  “Gracias,” he said.

  She shrugged. It was nothing.

  “La bala?” he asked. The bullet?

  She looked uncomprehending.

  He sighed again. “Ah, well,” he said, “muchas gracias anyway.”

  She reached out and put a hand on his knee. Her smile was sad. Will you stay? it asked. Just for a while?

  He reached for a boot and put it on. Then the other. Then he rose to his feet and looked down on her. He took her head gently in his hands and leaned down and kissed her on the forehead.

  He took his shirt from the chair and put it on, began to button it up. He had to be going. Had to. The stitches in his side were stopping the bleeding now, and that was a good thing, but the bullet had to come out and come out soon, or he would die from the inside out. He had to find a doctor or a midwife or something, someone with a knowledge of infection to open the wound, get the bullet out, and then sew it all up again. He didn’t know how to tell her this in Spanish so he was silent, and tucked his shirt in and twisted into the shoulder holster.

  He was still a little dizzy as he made his way to the door. Outside, he found the bay, still saddled, tethered to one of the clothesline posts.

  It looked like nothing had been touched; his weapons, anyway, were all in their places.

  He went to the army saddlebags that lay across his saddlehorn, unbuckled one and brought up the flap. He could tell from the lay of things inside that it hadn’t been opened. He took out two packets of hundred peso notes – twenty thousand pesos in all, a huge fortune – and buckled the bag again.

  He turned back to the little adobe. Plump, pretty Soledad was standing in the open doorway, her two little niños pressed in close beside her, each holding tightly to a leg. She had a hand down on each of their heads.

  He went to her. He handed her the thick bundles of green and brown money and looked for the last time into her pretty eyes.

  “Cuidado con esto,” he told her. Be careful with this.

  - 2 -

  He came to the second of the two unnamed little places late in the afternoon. There was no help for him there.

  The town seemed deserted. People and animals were all inside, under one roof or another, taking what shelter they could from a broiling sun. Nothing stirred. The streets had a haunted, abandoned feel.

  The place consisted of but a few buildings scattered about, and none bore signs or markings denoting that here was a saloon, or there was a livery. Just a huddle of plain brown adobes. He wondered how these people got by.

  There was a watering trough in front of the largest of the buildings. He rode over and dismounted. He splashed warm, murky water on his face and the bay dipped his nose.

  He looked about the dusty, forlorn little ville as the horse drank. How far was it back to Santa Marta and poor little – what was her name? – Isela? He wasn’t sure of either thing.

  He rode on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Chapter Seven
teen

  - 1 -

  He had no recollection of getting back to Santa Marta; he awoke to find himself there.

  There were darting, lancing pain spasms in his side where the bullet was, and he sucked in his breath and opened his eyes. An old, bewhiskered Mexican man who stank of tequila sat hunched on the bed beside him, worrying the wound with a pocket knife and a pair of pliers. A woman stood behind him, peering, fretful, watching from over his shoulder.

  The bed? He felt with one hand. A bed. But not like the last one. Not a rude sack stuffed with straw, but a great, luxurious mattress, and a thick, feathery quilt that covered him to the waist. Pillows were about; one was under his head.

  He looked past the man and tried to focus on the woman, but his vision was blurry.

  The Mexican did something with the pliers, and then the knife, and a new stab of pain rocked him. Then a wave of nausea, and then he was unconscious again.

  ~

  He awakened and squinted at the sunlight that flooded the room by way of an open window. He brought up a hand to shield his eyes and looked about.

  Drapes and silken wall coverings... A huge mirror, and cherry and walnut furniture... Paintings in heavy, ornate frames... A Mexican Army bayonet was in a frame on the window wall. Where in God’s name was he?

  A gentle hand covered his own and he turned. Isela. In an armchair next to the bed. She smiled. Looked relieved and happy. So very pretty.

  He took her hand and then was back asleep.

  ~

  When he awoke the third time, she was still in the chair and sat leafing through a large, colorful magazine of some kind. Godey’s Lady’s Book, Mexico City edition, it looked like. If there was such a thing. He turned his head and watched for awhile as she turned pages, looking at this and that.

  He broke the silence. “Have you learned to read?” he asked.

  She turned to him. She looked tired, worn, like she had been holding a vigil for days, but she smiled happily. “I’m learning,” she said. “I hired what you call a – a teaching person.”

  “A tutor,” he prompted.

  “Sí,” she said. “Sí, a tutor. To teach me.” She shrugged. “It is hard. Mostly I look at the pictures. But I will learn.”

  He smiled. “I’m proud of you.”

  She dropped the magazine to her lap. “Are you hungry? What would you like? I will have it sent up.”

  “No,” he said, throwing off the quilt and sitting up straight. “I mean, yes, I’m hungry. I’m starved. But no to breakfast in bed.” He felt with his fingers the clean white bandage that wrapped his waist. “I feel better. It’s time I got back on my feet.”

  She pursed her lips in a disapproving little frown.

  He glanced at the Schofield, wrapped in its shoulder holster, on a table on the other side of the bed. “Where is my horse? My – things?”

  She put a hand on his leg. “Your big friend is being cared for,” she said. “Un establo de caballos por la calle.” A livery stable down the street. “Your other guns and saddlebags and things are in a room downstairs.”

  He relaxed a little.

  She smiled and caressed his leg. “Nadie va a tocar ellos, mi querido,” she said softly. No one will touch them, my darling.

  “How long have I been here?”

  “Tres días,” she said.

  He groaned. Three days. How the time does fly when you’re having a wonderful time. He looked around at the flowery wallpaper and the dark, sumptuous furniture. “And where exactly is here?” he asked. “Where the hell am I?”

  “Esta es mi casa,” she said. This is my house.

  - 2 -

  They sat at one of the tables in the cantina. It was late morning, just before noon, and they had the place to themselves but for a sad-eyed girl working at polishing shot glasses behind the bar.

  He tossed back the last of the brandy in his glass and looked around. The wall separating the cantina from the hotel had been opened up, torn down for the most part, and now the two places were one; a wide, framed walk-through gave access to the hotel lobby, which made it now the foyer of a cantina and whorehouse. A piano sat where the hotel check-in desk had been, and there were paintings and tapestries on the walls.

  She saw that his glass was empty and signaled the girl to bring him another.

  He leaned back in his chair and adjusted the hang of his shoulder holster. He looked around some more and smiled and made an airy little gesture with his hand that said, Looks better in here now...

  She smiled at him.

  The girl with the sad eyes sidled up with a bottle and tilted it over his glass.

  Isela waved her away. “Déjalo, por favor, Maria.” Leave it.

  “Sí, Patrona,” said the girl. She set the bottle on the table and was gone.

  Matthews reached over and picked it up. Turned it in his hand and examined the label. “Courvoisier,” he said, surprised and impressed.

  She shrugged but looked pleased. A little shy. “I ordered it, special,” she said. “In case you ever came back.”

  He began to fill his glass. Looked at her over the bottle as he poured. “So, Patrona,” he said, leaning a little sarcastically on the word – a word of deference and respect – “where is the big asshole who runs the place?”

  She reached for her mug of hot tea. “Enorme Jorge?” she said, “Oh, I keeled heem.”

  He set the bottle down. “You killed him?”

  She looked at him matter of factly. “Sí.”

  “Why?”

  “He was a peeg,” she spat. Un animal.”

  Matthews brought the glass to his lips and took a mouthful of brandy.

  She took a sip of her tea. “He beat the girls. He beat me. He took our money.” She set the cup down on the table with both hands. “He didden deserve to live.”

  Matthews figured that was true. “How?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “How did you do it?”

  “I shot him,” she said.

  She reached down into the folds of her dress and came up with a short, heavy revolver. “With this,” she said, and laid it on the table with a thud.

  Matthews reached over and picked it up. A Brazilian Gerard, Model of 1873. The last time he saw it, it had been in a shoulder holster, under the left arm of the late, apparently unlamented, previous proprietor of the place.

  It was a pitted, clumsy thing with an awkward grip and an unreliable double action trigger. A mechanism on the frame would unlatch to swing up not only the barrel, but the cylinder as well, for loading and to initiate the extractor. There was no front sight; the barrel had been shortened by two or three inches. Weighed exactly two and a half pounds before somebody cut the barrel.

  He opened it up for a look at the cylinder. Five Brazilian .32s, one empty chamber. The sixth round, presumably, was in Big George’s head. The Gerard closed with a snap and he glanced up at her.

  She was looking him straight in the eye. “It was for Verónica,” she said. “To save her.”

  “Verónica?”

  “A sweet little chica de granja who never hurt nobody.”

  “Chica de granja?”

  She furrowed her brow. “A – how you say it – farm girl?”

  “Okay.”

  She looked away, across the room, furious again just thinking about it. “One day he got crazy fucking mad with her and beat her bad. Beat her to death almost. Punched her and kicked her. Knocked a tooth out. Broke ribs. Broke her arm.”

  She looked back at him. Her jaw was rigid, both fists clenched tight.

  Matthews took a sip of his brandy.

  She shrugged again. Seemed to slump a little. “His gun fell on the floor and I grabbed it up and shot him in the head.”

  He smiled. In his mind, could see her again plunging a bayonet into a dying soldier’s chest. He ex
tended the Gerard. “Good for you,” he said.

  She sat looking at the revolver in his hand for a moment, then she took the weapon and it disappeared back into the folds of her dress.

  “And the body?”

  “Sí?”

  “What did you do with the body?”

  She brightened. “Oh,” she said, “we fed it to the pigs behind the hotel.” She brought up her cup for another sip of tea.

  Cole Matthews laughed. “Good job,” he said.

  ~

  He was six weeks healing up. But in days to come, he remembered it as a good time, a fine part of his life. Rest, and sex, and Courvoisier.

  And he never ceased to be astonished at the deference Isela was paid – at the remarkable esteem in which she was held – not only by the girls of the brothel, but by seemingly everyone in the little town. And he – as her chosen man – was equally deferred to and received the same exaggerated respect. Padron, they murmured, and they courteously tipped their hats to him. It was surreal. The memory of her as raped and battered, the vulnerable, grief stricken peasant wife, was strong.

  But it turned out that she owned most of the town now. Legal niceties and title deeds being what they were, no one objected when she simply took over the cantina and the adjoining “hotel” when Enorme Jorge disappeared one day; in fact, her ownership of the place was quickly accepted as the natural order of things and everyone simply moved on. And interestingly, the fact that she had sent Big George on his way to hell seemed to be common knowledge as well, and was, it seems, the cornerstone of her prestige.

  With first profits, she had made a down payment on the general store that sat on the main street of town, and then, later, had purchased a half interest in the livery alongside. A deal was pending for her to buy the little eatery down the street. He had to shake his head when he thought about it all; it had surpassed amazing. His aggrieved little campesina was now la reina, the queen. It made him smile.

  And it turned out the tequila soaked old man who had tended his wound with a pocket knife had been a doctor once, and so – much as it might have looked otherwise – when it came to bullets and the infection gunpowder brings, he knew what he was doing. The old man came by to clean and check on the wound every few days, and Isela paid him with coins from the cash drawer and occasional half-pint bottles of tequila. On the eighth day, he took out the stitches; at the end of two weeks, he didn’t come around anymore.