Lucky Billy (11 page)

He nearly fell off Mormon Pussy but clung to her mane. When his eyes flew open they were facing the sun, cold as a pearl yet sharper than an ice pick. Every joint, every fiber of muscle in his limbs felt hung with sordid weights. Back and forth his mind slogged like an angry piece of music, soothing itself, lashing out, licking wounds, indulging the brutal yet comfortable sorrow of his sole forbidden fruit, self-pity. John Henry Tunstall, upright and square, on the finest California saddle you could imagine, with his blankets rolled and tied and his mahogany travel box nattily secured, in English riding pants and leggings, big-hearted, free—a fine-looking chap, forthright yet modest—but regrettably the victim of Irish savagery and greed...

The sun looked to be an hour from setting now. The trail dipsy-doodled up over ridges, back clown across the river. Cannonball-sized rocks in the riverbed with platforms of ice and tents of snow between them. His resolve began to stiffen. He counted the times his trail crossed the river, after twelve he'd be there. Here, the river had cut a brown corrugated wall at the base of one hill and he found himself ascending through white earth, then red, then dun-colored, brown, then back clown through white. The dry brown grass in alluvial valleys was a foot high in places, forage enough for a hundred thousand cattle. We're rich, Beloved Father! He crested a rise and looked clown at bare cottonwoods and his bunkered ranch house. Meager as it was, nonetheless it made a start. And the boys there squatting around a merry fire, his faithful honest gunmen for three dollars a day. And the wide rising valley of brown and yellow earth swaled by the river and filled with dying sunlight.

***

BILLY COULDN'T BELIEVE
how ravaged his boss looked, how changed and beaten down. If you rode a hundred miles nonstop for two days you'd look wappered, too, said Fred. "His spirit's beat," said the Kid. "Look at him there with his head in his hands."

Tunstall raised his head and stared into the fire. He'd aged, Billy thought, his mouth appeared crusty, his eyes were dark and sleepy, and the flesh on his face looked as though you could just pull it off piece by piece. He was only, what?—twenty-three or -four years old. His corrugated hair fell in corkscrews to his ears and his fair cheeks and the bottom slope of chin showed erratic burrs of hair. It could be his heart was weak. When your heart's weak your head begins to falter and your strength goes away. The living breathing shadow who used to be Mr. Tunstall had already announced he wouldn't countenance bloodshed. We'll give up the damn horses, he'd said—surrender them to Brady. If we have to fight this out we'll do so in the courts. "Don't worry, boys. We'll best those cowards yet. It may take a while."

Rob Widenmann, too, had recently arrived, having failed to find Tunstall in Lincoln. He listened to his friend and his gospel of surrender with obvious dismay. Like Tunstall, he'd been two long days on the road but this seemed to stir him up instead of weigh him down. Billy thought they compensated for each other; Rob did his damnedest to become Tunstall's courage. I Ie slapped his own shoulders, fisted the air, began uncompleted thoughts of justice and defiance with words like
By George,
then looked sheepishly at "Harry."

Dusk. Overhead, the sky had gone pale with a few strewn stars but their house and barricade of heavy earthen sacks now lay at the bottom of featureless dark. In this dogmatic solitude, the utter silence of the universe was commonplace and enduring. As darkness spread, Brewer divvied up a watch in case the Dolanites tried a night raid.

Billy took the second shift. While the men behind him snored, he sat on the barricade facing a crushing excess of stars. They made the planet seem irrelevant, a mere swirl of shadows. His Winchester lay on his lap. A few of the men slept inside the ranch house, the rest between the barricade and the front door. Footsteps scraped; someone was up. A shape propped its elbows on the wall beside the Kid and took a deep breath. "I can't sleep," said Tunstall. "It's remarkable. I've been on the road for two entire days and am
thoroughly
exhausted yet sleep eludes me."

"Sometimes you're so tired you come out the other side."

"Yes, that's it. I feel utterly depleted yet I'm wide awake. The night air feels so intensely cold and pure it's almost absurd. Do you mind if I stand here? I'll keep my voice low. The cold for some reason hardly seems cold at all. Aren't you tired, I ask myself. Tired?
The devil!
" Tunstall's fist thumped the barricade; it made a distant sound. His mouth moved queerly in its gunny sack of darkness, and his voice sounded corky, very British, and twangless yet fitful in the way it randomly pinched words. "There's a kind of
madness
in scraping back and forth across desert wastes ten thousand miles from home, in quest of what?—I could have married any number of widows back in England if it's money I wanted. Leave those pigs to their wallowing, I said to myself, the pigs who marry wealthy widows. There's more credit for a man when he makes his
own
way, on his
own
hook. Wouldn't you agree?"

"Sure."

"Don't you worry, Kid. We've hit a rough patch but we'll be out of it soon. No need for gunplay. Is it Antrim or Bonney? I get them mixed up."

"Bonney."

"Upon my word, I have faith in our future just as strong as ever. This is a country where penniless shepherds become millionaires. I met one in California, a former bankrupt named Hollister, who at the outset had just a few acres. With every
penny
he could spare he bought more land and stocked it with sheep. I dare say he's now worth more than three million dollars. He did nothing that is not as well within my reach. I'll be as rich as him and not before long. I look around, I look—on the miseries of others and compare them to my own and regard myself as fortunate. Old chap, I tell myself, these may be rough times but you'll get
your
turn of luck before very long. Really, luck seems to follow me wherever I go."

"The same goes for me. I'm generally lucky. Only, luck mostly happens when you don't need it. When you need it, it jumps to some other lucky fellow standing nearby."

"As at the gaming tables? So luck is paradoxical, eh? You may be right, Kid."

Billy said nothing. He didn't wish to give away not being acquainted with the word
paradoxical.

"We make a pair, don't we? Smart chap. We'll win this game yet." Tunstall's head shook in the dark as though expelling doubt. The Kid couldn't help it, he felt like a schoolboy whose brand-new teacher was boarding at his house and wished to make the lad's acquaintance. "Look at you, you were born in this country.
Were
you born in this country?"

"Born in New York, come west with my mother."

"New York? Is that so? I landed in New York on the liner
Calabria
when I was nineteen years old. Fearfully ill on that voyage from England—thought I would die. Thank God for champagne!—it settles the stomach, fortifies the heart. I stayed in the St. Nicholas on Broadway."

"I've been on Broadway."

"Splendid pile, upon my word. A fine bath apparatus. Had my first warm bath in ten days there. Have you been inside it?"

"I was just a boy."

"Gad, they had everything. A hairdresser, hosier, glover, hatter, a billiards room with eight tables. A lift going up and down all the day. A marvelous façade, elegant, yes? Upon my word, what a splendid city! The tide of life on Broadway goes at a racing speed. Our Cheapside in London proceeds at such a pace, but your horses are better—I saw that in New York and think it even more true in New Mexico. I suppose you can see that I'm no mindless Chauvin. The first time I walked down Broadway I thought all the men had a restless, hungry look."

"My father liked to lead me and my brother up and down Broadway. Had all we could do to keep up with the man. Smoked a big cigar. Threw the stub on the sidewalk and my brother and me foughten over it but the cattle got snippy. There's so many people traipsing up and down Broadway, every time I see a cattle drive that's what I think of. I like it better here."

"Room to breathe, eh? Did your father come west?"

"Just my mother and me. And my brother Josie."

"And where is she now?"

"In her grave in Silver City."

Tunstall paused. "I am sorry to hear it. I sometimes feel unworthy of a mother's love. We all do, I suppose. Were you close to your mother?"

"She's in my mind a lot."

"What sort of woman was she?"

"She enjoyed life. It was hard to watch her die. Full of vinegar. Pushy. Always trying to keep me up to the mark when I was a boy. I'm afraid I bucked."

"How did she die?"

"Consumption."

"And is your father living?"

"I suppose he died. I never saw him again after leaving New York. My stepfather, Antrim—he's in Silver City."

"Some people have both their father and mother yet grow up devoid of parental affection. My father's gruff and distant but he listens to reason. He lends support to my cause. I've told him repeatedly,
now's
the time to jump in. Land in New Mexico will be
treble
its value at this time next year. New Mexico offers as fine a field to rake in a few dollars as anyone could wish for. This is a
golden
opportunity. Upon my word, when I contemplate the future, it all falls into place. My mind runs ahead, I can
scarcely
catch up. After you boys see me through this crisis, each of you shall have your own little ranch. I promise you that. Some of us, you see, have title to a sufficient number of spots as to allow those whom we favor to settle themselves upon the intervening spaces. It's a patchwork quilt. You boys will fill it in. I dare say we'll make a powerful association. Me, you, Brewer, Waite, Middleton, Brown. You are sensible men of the highest courage and firmness and ambition. I am willing to assist you all as to money. By Jove, we'll be princes! I can buy all the county scrip available at one dollar and sell it at a dollar-fifty. I intend to control it all if I can. County scrip, land and cattle, loans on cattle. Mercantile goods sold at a nice profit. Government contracts for flour and corn. Absolute control of the price of grain—this means cornering the market. Can you imagine it, Kid? The acquisition of titles to a
great
many ranches. We move forward like an army as broad as the land, taking all of the various paths to wealth. I feel like an old bachelor, my mind runs on nothing but dollars and cents and, of course, dodging bullets,
hem hem.
It's a rum business, yes, but we
must
defend ourselves. I am opposed to any violence that isn't absolutely necessary. Fear of my life has never occurred to me. I keep my hand on my—what do you call it?—'shooting iron'—should trouble arise but that isn't very likely. Did you know I'm nearly blind in my right eye? I dare say, no one knows it. The eye looks
perfectly
normal when you see it. It's quite an advantage, I think, in many ways. Suppose I ever marry—the possibility is not remote—I shall look at my wife with that eye alone in order to believe that she is perfect and unblemished. This is
policy,
not fancy,
hem hem.
All men should do the same. One might call it
zoology.
My mother is a dear, poetical, religious, warmhearted darling. We differ on religion. Hers is the usual C of E claptrap, mine is selfish and hard. My principle is best expressed by Shakespeare: 'To thine own self be true.' As regards to a hereafter, my ideas are cold. I call on no names, past, present, or to come. I
can
say that regarding self-control I have not met my equal, or at least I think not. I'm afraid I talk a lot. Sometimes I can't stop. I know what they say about me, they say that
brown-coated, beef-eating
Englishman and his plans and all his proud talk—"

Tunstall went silent. Billy glanced toward his boss. His half-moon profile, ragged with shadows, flickered into shape inside the night's emulsion. His smile looked hideous. His normally lidded eyes, or eye—only one was visible—had swollen in its socket and the white was even whiter than his pale skin, white inside white. His talk, the Kid sensed, was full of nervous rattle but nonetheless it stirred his young soul—
Can you imagine it?
Yes, I can imagine it. My own ranch and cattle, horses galore. Tunstall had opened a curtain in his mind and the spectacle on stage confused him with excitement. Then again he was tired, both of them were tired. "You need some rest, Mr. Tunstall."

This restarted him. "We're on the homestretch, Antrim. All it takes is holding our heads above water while the land rises and the railroad lays tracks and the people pour in. We'll settle on our ranches, each on his own, and take wives and raise children. It's true, however—
wives!
" Tunstall was nodding his head in the dark. "It's true the female sex is scarce in these parts."

"There's plenty of Mexes."

"You like the Spanish women, eh? Tell me, how do you do it? How do you manage to get them alone? They never leave their daughters five minutes alone, even with a gentleman. A minute after you're ensconced with the lovely one an old hag comes in and sits against the wall and gazes into vacancy." He paused. "By the powers, I'm spent. I'm on my last legs."

"They sneak out at night."

"Who?"

"The daughters. That's how I get them alone."

"Then you know how to obtain the suet from the pudding. I'm afraid I can't ignore their imperfections myself. Their love of display, their slight knowledge of economy. They invariably possess a tribe of poor relations. I know, I know. The young Spanish women are
mighty
nice looking. And a
lusty
young man like yourself—" Tunstall laughed. "I tell all inquiries that I love horses and dogs and that's enough for me."

"It's enough for me, too."

"Then you see lovemaking as quite a waste of time?"

"I wouldn't go that far."

"What you ought to do is marry a girl whose family still holds a Spanish land grant. You'd secure two things at once. But take care she doesn't lower and degrade you, Kid. The proudest man alive can wind up a brute." His voice had grown fainter and now lapsed into silence. Both men allowed their gazes to drag behind the stars pouring over the horizon. They watched without speaking and Billy's fatigue flowered, grew heavy.