City of Widows (24 page)

“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

T
HE 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?”

“She went on ahead. You're really leaving?” She closed the door behind me and led the way into the Victorian/Porfiristan parlor. We remained standing, facing each other across the earthen floor.

I nodded. “I'm taking the short route by way of El Paso and catching the train from there. General Crook has Geronimo cornered in Arizona, so it should be safe.”

“What about the Princess?”

“I'm selling out my third for what I paid. If you're interested, you can wire the money to Judge Blackthorne at the federal courthouse in Helena. It was his money to begin with. If you like you can advertise that for a little while you were partners with the Iron Jurist.”

“I think I won't. It would only frighten away business. As it happens, however, I am interested. Eille MacNutt has asked to buy in. I was planning to discuss it with you, but I guess now I won't have to.”

“So that's what you talked about during those long buggy rides,” I said. “I wondered.”

“He has a sound head for business, whatever else you may think of him. With the sheriff dead and county politics in a tangle, Wallace is considering a declaration of martial law. It will be an excellent time to acquire property, as the values are sure to be depressed. When the order is lifted and the immigrants start streaming in, the scramble will be on for every available acre. Eille has the capital. I am the draw. Are you sure you don't want to stay? There will be more than money enough for three.”

“I'd just waste it on food and shelter.” I reached inside my hat. “Eille now, is it?”

“You have a filthy mind, Page. Perhaps law work is best for you after all.”

I gave her the slip of paper I'd removed from the sweatband. “That's the address of Junior Harper's mother in Chicago. I found it in his wallet. You can send his share of the profits to her.”

“Does she know?”

“Yes. I wired her from Socorro City and made arrangements to ship his body north. I'm sure if you offer to buy out his interest she'll go along. She is no saloonkeeper.”

She folded the paper and tucked it inside her sleeve. “I'm sorry about Junior, Page.”

“Are you?”

“Of course. I liked Junior. If it were not for him—”

“If it weren't for him you'd still be married to Frank Baronet and required by law to share your property with him. As his widow you're free and clear, with the added advantage of a little gentlemanly sympathy on the part of the men who challenge your board. That's why you're dressed in black. You wore the ring Baronet gave you to keep them at arm's length. Now you wear mourning to keep them off guard. And you owe it all to Junior.”

“I told you he was drunk! He asked me to marry him, and when he found out Frank was my husband he went crazy. I tried to stop him.”

“Did you tell him Frank beat you?”

“He wanted to know why I left. I told him the truth.”

“You told him what you told me, that you shot Frank out of fear and pain and ran away because you thought you'd killed him. Junior was a romantic. The story made him angry and filled his head with notions of chivalry. He was drunk, but he sobered up on the trail. He'd have turned back then if you hadn't mentioned that beating.

“But he was only part of it,” I went on. “You knew Junior was no match for the sheriff and Jubilo both. You sent him to his death, knowing I'd go after his killers. The beating story worked as well with me as it had with Junior, putting just the right edge on it. Hell, you had an army on your side. It was one hand you couldn't lose.”

“You saw the scar.”

“You got it in a fight with a jealous whore.”

Her skin went transparent. I could see the network of bones and muscles in her face. “Did Frank tell you that?” Her voice was metallic.

“Jubilo did. Frank told me why you shot him.”

She said nothing.

“They were his very last words,” I said. “‘I don't go partners with anyone.' Quite an epitaph.”

“It doesn't prove anything.”

“There's nothing to prove. The only crime you committed was shooting a sheriff in the back, and he's dead by my hand. The only crime anyone can arrest you for in this life, that is. If I were you, I'd look out for Marshal Ortiz in the next. He thinks he's damned too, and all he did was put a bullet in his wife's brain when she begged him to.”

“I was his draw.”

I barely heard her. I asked her to repeat it.

She did. Her voice rose. “I drew his customers to the Orient. There are eleven saloons in Socorro City, and a faro table in each one. Why did they come there if not to play cards with a pretty woman? I herded them in, I fleeced them, and I sent them back out grinning to earn more wages so they could come back. I thought when I married Frank he would deal me in for half. That was my mistake; I should have made certain. He laughed when I asked him about it. Laughed in my face and showed me his back.”

“Never a wise choice where you're concerned.”

She tried to claw my face. I caught her wrists and forced them down to her sides. She struggled fiercely—there was pure sinew under the slender sheathing of her arms and legs, and she was filled with hate—then stopped. I watched her drawing composure from deep inside, like a glacier generating a fresh layer of ice to heal a scar. It would be the same way she handled a bad turn of cards. After a minute I let go. She smiled as she did when a player approached her table and turned toward the door.

“I wish you'd reconsider your decision to leave.” She lifted a small black felt hat from the ledge of the coatrack, an elaborate piece in carved mahogany complete with a built-in umbrella stand and a mirror framed in giltwood, standing next to the plain plank door. If
Señora
Castillo's theories on decorating ever caught on back East, there would be no stopping them. “How many years can a man have to wear the badge, and what does he have when he is through? You are already an old man in your work.”