Streets of Laredo

  But Brookshire had passed beyond the world of ledgers, into a world of space and wind, of icy nights and brilliant stars, of men who killed with bullets and men who burned dogs. In order to keep his accounts at night, Brookshire would usually have had to thaw out the ink, and then thaw out his fingers sufficiently to be able to write. It was hard to see the lines on a ledger by the light of a small campfire, and it was hard to be correct in one's penmanship when one's fingers were frozen.

  The Colonel was a stickler for good penmanship, too. He didn't like to squint or puzzle over entries when he was examining a ledger, and he had said so many times.

  Now, looking back into Mexico from the front of Judge Bean's saloon, the Colonel's strictures no longer seemed to matter.

  Brookshire had other disciplines to concern himself with, such as making campfires that would last the night without wasting wood. Captain Call was as strict about campfires as the Colonel was about penmanship.

  "Are you expecting a war party?" Call asked the judge. "You seem to be thoroughly armed." "I expect perdition, always have," the judge replied. "I keep this building at my back, and several guns handy, in case perdition arrives in a form that's susceptible to bullets. I expect it will come in the disease form, though. I'm susceptible to diseases, and you can't shoot a goddamn disease." "If this is still a saloon, we'd like whiskey," Call said. "We've had a cool ride." They had scarcely left the canyon before another norther had sung in behind them. The cold cut them badly, although they rode with their backs to the wind.

  The judge reluctantly took them inside the saloon. Once settled warmly into his buffalo robe, he hated to be disturbed. Most conversations, even in the coldest weather, were conducted outside, with him speaking from inside his robe.

  The saloon had only one table, and it was so tilted on its crooked legs that a drink placed on the uphill side would quickly slide to the downhill side and off onto the floor, unless the drinker kept a grip on his glass.

  Call bought whiskey for everyone; only Pea Eye refrained. Lorena was very severe with him, in the matter of drink. In his lonely cowboy days in Montana, he had taken to drinking for an hour or two every evening. Once married, he continued the practice for a while, from nervousness, but Lorena soon put her foot down. Since the day she had put her foot down, Pea Eye had very few drinks, norther or no norther. He did take a beer, though. Fortunately, Judge Bean had a few. Famous Shoes requested tequila--the judge also had plenty of that substance--and drank almost a pint, as if he were drinking water.

  Deputy Plunkert fell asleep just as the judge was refilling his whiskey glass. It promptly slid toward the edge of the table, but the judge himself caught it at the last minute.

  "I'll pour this back in the bottle until your man wakes up," Roy Bean said.

  The judge had quick, crafty eyes. Rumor had always placed him on the wrong side of the law.

  Call had not been the only one surprised when Roy Bean assumed his judgeship. To be fair, though, no one seemed to quite know what laws the new judge had broken. Some thought he smuggled gold for powerful Mexicans; others thought he stole gold from the same Mexicans.

  Call thought the gold rumors were probably exaggerations. For one thing, Roy Bean lived a long way from anyplace where gold could be used or deposited, and gold was heavy. To Call, Roy Bean had more the manner of a skillful gambler.

  Becoming a judge, in a region where few people had much fondness for the law, was in itself a gamble.

  "I hope you catch the Garza boy next week," Roy Bean said. "This week wouldn't be too soon, neither." "I'll catch him, but I doubt it will be this week," Call said. "The last train he robbed was near San Angelo, and I imagine he kept traveling. We'll have to see if Famous Shoes can pick up his track." "There are very few competent marksmen in this part of the country," Roy Bean said. "This boy is a competent marksman and he's affecting my profits.

  "The truth is, my profits are way down," he added, glumly.

  "Oh, how's that?" Call asked.

  "The Garza boy shoots people who might come here and drink," the judge replied. "There's other problems, too. I used to be able to sit outside and concentrate on business matters, without having to worry that somebody a mile away on a hill might plug me while I'm concentrating." "There's no hill within a mile of you, and half a mile would be a more likely distance for a rifle shot, anyway," Call said. "No rifle I've ever seen will shoot accurately much farther than half a mile." "Yes, but you ain't a competent marksman yourself, and you don't know everything!" Roy Bean said sharply. "Charlie Goodnight has always thought he knew everything, and so did your damn partner, and so do you." "Well, I've known a few fine shots," Call replied, mildly. "I've never known you to worry about killers, before. There are safer places to live than along this border if you're the sort to let killers disturb your naps." "I have weathered a number of killers, but I resent Mexican boys with rifles that can shoot that far," Roy Bean said. "If you catch him for me, I'll hang him in a wink." "That boy ain't the only reason you ought to start napping indoors, with your door locked," Call said. "Have you heard of Mox Mox?" "Yes, Wes Hardin said he was around," Roy Bean said. "Who's he singed now?" "Ben Lily's best dog," Call replied.

  "Not Flop," Roy Bean said, visibly startled. "Why would the sonofabitch burn a dog?" "Why would he burn a person?" Call asked. "Because he likes to, that's why." "Did he get Ben?" the judge asked.

  "No, but they killed every dog he had," Call said. "I'm thinking of going after him first, before he causes any more harm." "Go get him," Roy Bean said. "Leave these men here. They look like they need to thaw out. I'll cut the whiskey to half price while they're visiting with me." Guarding you, you mean, Call thought, but he didn't say it.

  "Mox Mox has seven men with him," Call remarked.

  "Hardin says the Cherokee boy is the only one with any fight," Roy Bean said. "Take a slow aim and eliminate him first. That would be my advice." "Quick Jimmy," Famous Shoes said.

  "Yes, Hardin said he had a rapid way about him," Roy Bean said.

  "I didn't know you were friends with John Wesley Hardin," Call said.

  "I ain't--nobody is," Roy Bean replied. "He come down here to see if I had a whore. Joey Garza's ma went to Crow Town and walked off with all the women. Hardin got restless for a whore and came to see me." "When?" Call asked.

  "Last week," Bean said. "He says Crow Town's emptied out, since the women left." "Joey Garza's mother went to Crow Town and took the women?" Call said. "Took them and went where with them? She wasn't home when we came through Ojinaga. Billy Williams was looking after her other children. She has a pretty little girl, but the child is blind." "I ain't met the woman, but I expect she's a beauty," Roy Bean said. "Billy's been in love with her most of his life, but she won't bend. Olin Roy's partial to her, too, but she won't have Olin, neither." "I would have thought Huerta or somebody would have finished Olin by now," Call said. "Dabbling in Mexican finance is chancy work." Call remembered the little blind girl with the quick expresion, standing with Billy Williams. He rarely noticed children, but he not only remembered the blind girl, he could picture her vividly in his mind. He wondered about the mother. Few women would be bold enough to go to Crow Town. This woman had not only gone, she had led the women of the community away. She had produced the blind girl, the idiot boy, and Joey, and if Bean was to be believed, had captured and held the affections of Billy Williams and Olin Roy, two men who had not been noted for the constancy of their attachments. Olin was a smuggler who spoke good Spanish, and Billy Williams was more or less a roving drunk.

  Still, some women seemed to be able to get holds on the most unlikely men. Pea Eye, for example, had never seemed to be the marrying kind. He had never sought out women, that Call could remember, when they were in towns. But here was Pea Eye, married, and happily so, it seemed.

  "I don't understand the business about the women," Call said. "She just rode into town and rode out with them?" "Nope," Bean said. "She rode in on a spotted pony, but Joey stole it and left he
r afoot. She and the women walked out." "I met her on the road when she was almost there," Famous Shoes remarked. "She got very cold in the sleet storm, crossing the Pecos.

  I built her a fire, but she was angry with me and wouldn't let me stay." "Did she know you were working for me?" Call asked.

  "Yes, and she don't want you to kill Joey," Famous Shoes said. "She don't want me to track him for you." "I didn't know you knew her," Call said.

  "Her name is Maria," Famous Shoes said.

  "She saved my life the first time the hard sheriff wanted to hang me.

  "She was too angry when I met her this time," he repeated. "I built the fire and left her." "He's an ungrateful son, if he stole her horse and left her afoot in a place like Crow Town," Call said. "Not many women would ride into Crow Town." "Or cross the dern Pecos, either," Pea Eye said. "Not when it's icy. I'd call that brave." "Well, the boy is her son," Call said.

  "Even if he stole her horse, you can't expect her to want him dead." "I don't know the woman--she can like it or lump it," Roy Bean said. "Her son's a thieving, murdering lawbreaker. You better go catch him, and plow Mox Mox under, too, if you have the time." "This is your jurisdiction, Judge," Call reminded him. "I was just hired to catch Joey Garza. What I'd like to know is where his mother took the women." "Wesley said she took 'em to the railroad," Roy Bean said. "He was upset.

  He said he would have shot her on sight if he'd known she was going to take away the whores." "Where is Hardin, while we're talking about killers?" Call asked.

  "No idea--he left," Roy Bean said.

  "I ain't his butler." The judge had produced one bottle of brandy and asked an inordinate price for it, but Brookshire bought it anyway. He drank it until the edges of the little room became blurred, which didn't take long. Now the Captain was talking about yet another killer, a famous one this time. Even in Brooklyn there were people who had heard of John Wesley Hardin.

  Brookshire kept drinking the brandy. He drank until he could hardly see the Captain, who was sitting not two feet from him. Deputy Plunkert was snoring; the warmth of the room had put him right to sleep. It seemed to Brookshire that they were traveling in circles. Every curve took them farther from civilization and produced another killer. The whole thing had started with a train robbery; now it involved three men who, among them, had killed the equivalent of a company of soldiers. Killers were multiplying, whereas Captain Call wasn't. There was still only one of him.

  "They say the Garza boy has a cave full of valuables, down in Mexico," Roy Bean said. "They say he takes everything he steals and hides it there." "I expect that's a rumor," Call said.

  "It's nice to think about, though," Bean said.

  "If I could find myself a cave full of treasure, I could retire from the bench and move to England, and if I was in England, I could watch Miss Lily Langtry perform on the stage every night of the week." Call paid no more attention to Judge Bean.

  The only interesting information he possessed came from John Wesley Hardin, and it concerned Joey Garza's mother. If there was a way to find Joey, it probably involved the mother, not the cave.

  Sooner or later, Joey might come home. The fact that he had stolen his mother's horse might not mean much. Mothers had been known to overlook worse behavior than that. Joey might decide to bring the pony back someday. He knew he was being chased, and might want his mother to hide him.

  Soon all the company was asleep, except for Pea Eye. Famous Shoes had drunk a second pint of tequila. He curled up under the table and slept soundly.

  Brookshire was out, his head fallen into his arms.

  Deputy Plunkert was snoring soundly, his head tipped so far to one side that his hat had fallen off. Pea, who'd had only one beer, seemed a little glum, but he was not drunk.

  The smelly old judge had taken his buffalo robe and gone back outside.

  Call motioned to Pea Eye, and the two of them went out into the cold air.

  "I'm going to split off," Call said. "I hate to do it, but we've got two different threats to deal with, and I don't think they'll line themselves up like dominoes and wait for us to knock them over." He'd had a feeling that the Captain might be about to leave. It always made Pea anxious when the Captain left to perform some task alone. When the Captain wasn't around, things were apt to go wrong.

  Several horses might turn up lame at the same time, or a man might develop pleurisy, or the hunters might be unable to bring in any game.

  "I guess it will upset Brookshire," Pea Eye said. It was easy to see that Brookshire set great store by the Captain's judgment.

  "Yes, I expect so," Call said. "But he's a grown man, and he knows how to make a fire.

  "You'll have to watch that you don't fall asleep on guard duty," he added, mildly. "The others haven't had your experience. You don't want to let anybody slip up on you." "Not with the manburner on the loose," Pea Eye said. "Where do you want us to go?" "Go back to where we were, only circle down into Mexico," Call said. "You'll be safer, at least from Mox Mox. That village just across from Presidio is where Joey Garza's mother lives. I think that's where we'll catch him." "What if he gets there before you do?" Pea Eye asked.

  "Wait," Call said. "Circle south of the village and camp on the Rio Concho about half a day away. I'll find you." "That don't sound too hard," Pea Eye said.

  But the melancholy wouldn't leave him; it only got stronger. The Captain was going one way, and sending him another. It was a sign of trust, that the Captain would leave him in charge of the men. There was nothing exceptional about splitting up a company, either. That had happened many times, in the old days.

  "This is not the end of the world," Lorena often told him, when she was trying to boost his spirits after some quarrel or mistake. "It's not the end of the world, Pea. Just pick up and keep going." Pea Eye felt that Lorena didn't understand how much their fights or his mistakes saddened him.

  She would get busy with the children, or start studying her schoolwork, and the quarrel would go out of her mind.

  She would become cheerful again so quickly that it would make Pea Eye feel a little lonely. Hurts didn't go out of his mind that quickly, particularly if he was the cause of them. They seemed to settle in his throat, like gravel in a chicken's craw. Often, his feelings of absence or confusion would linger so long in his breast, while Lorena and the children went on with their lives, moving around him as if he wasn't there, that Pea Eye had a hard time feeling he was in their lives at all. He would begin to feel he was just some stranger who happened to be staying where his family lived.

  Often, too, it would not be until the next day, when some child jumped in his lap or came to him with a problem, that he would recover a sense of being connected to them.

  As the Captain went about preparing to leave--they had bought a couple of extra rifles in Presidio, and the Captain took one of them and a good supply of ammunition--Pea Eye felt the same sadness tightening his throat that he felt at home when Lorena tried to assure him that his world wasn't coming to an end.

  Lorena could say that to him all she liked, but her saying it didn't take away Pea Eye's feelings that the world might be coming to an end anyway.

  As he grew older, he felt more keenly how hard it was to know anyone. Lorena and the Captain, in turn, let him stay with them and share their lives. But Lorena and the Captain were complete, in a way that he wasn't, and being complete, they didn't realize how partial he felt. He was not as good as they were, not as smart and not as strong.

  They might know him, but he felt he would never be much good at knowing them. Often, in bed at night, listening to Lorena breathe and feeling her body warming his, tears would come to his eyes, from the sense that he didn't know his Lorena. He didn't, and he never would. He felt grateful, though, that she was letting him stay with her, and glad that they had the children and the farm.

  But it didn't mean that the world wasn't coming to an end, or that it wouldn't.

  Pea Eye didn't attempt to tell the Captain how he felt, though. The
Captain was preparing to leave, and he didn't linger when he had someplace to go.

  "I'll meet you on the other side of the river," Call said. "If I don't have too much aggravation with Mox Mox, I wouldn't think I'd be gone much more than a week." "Don't neglect any killers," Roy Bean admonished. He was swaddled in his buffalo robe, the cocked pistol still in his hand.

  "You oughtn't to leave that pistol cocked," Pea Eye said, as they watched the Captain lope away to the east. "You might have a bad dream and jerk and shoot your knee off." "It might rain whores out of the sky, too, but I doubt it," Roy Bean said.

  Joey Garza watched Captain Call's departure through a telescope he had taken off the train from San Angelo. The telescope had belonged to an old man with stringy gray hair, who protested so much when Joey took it that Joey shot him. He had not intended to kill anybody when he stopped the train; he'd only wanted to add to his treasures. If the old man had surrendered the telescope peacefully, Joey wouldn't have killed him. The old man claimed to be a teacher. He said he taught about the stars, and needed the telescope in order to study the stars.

  He was bound for Fort Davis, where the stars were easier to see, or so he said. He offered to give Joey all his money if Joey would leave him the telescope.

  "You see, I can't get another, not in these parts," the man said. "I had to send to England for this one." Joey thought he was just a disagreeable old man, so he shot him and took the telescope and the money, too. Apart from two or three good watches, the telescope was the only thing on that particular train that Joey felt was worth stealing. He hoped that by going east, closer to the cities of the Texans, he would find better things on the trains he robbed. But if San Angelo was any example, this theory was no good. The train mainly held cowboys, who were being sent to some large ranch. None of the cowboys had anything of value. Sometimes Joey took fine spurs, but the spurs these cowboys wore were of no interest.

  Even their saddles were poor. So he took the telescope, and the little stand that it rested on, killed the old man, and left.