Streets of Laredo: A Novel (37 page)

Mox Mox decided to overlook the insult. He wanted to get to know Wesley Hardin, but more than that, he wanted Hardin to accept him as a peer.

Being called a cross-eyed runt was nothing new anyway. In his years at sea, when he was often the smallest man on the ship, he had been called worse things.

The epithet was inaccurate, of course. His eyes didn't cross. One was pointed at an angle to the other. People who called him cross-eyed were not very observant.

"Now, be friendly, Hardin," he said. "I've got seven men here, and we're after the Garza boy." "As to that, seven is not enough," Hardin said.

"Well, counting me, it's eight," Mox Mox said.

"No, you have to subtract the Mexicans, because they undoubtedly can't shoot," Wesley Hardin informed him. "Then, you subtract this giant, who's blocking my light, and the reason you can subtract him is because I'm about to kill him if he don't sit down. I won't stand for dim light. I killed a blacksmith on that very spot a few days ago, and he wasn't near as tall as this lunkhead, and didn't block near as much light." "Sit down, Gardt, don't you hear Mr.

Hardin?" Mox Mox said.

"Going outside would be even better," Wesley Hardin said. "That way, I wouldn't have to look at three hundred pounds of stupidity while I'm trying to concentrate on my cards." "I'll play you cards, if you're shorthanded for a game," Jimmy Cumsa said. The man John Wesley had a droll habit of speech. If he had been offering employment, Jimmy would have accepted it on the spot.

There was little conversation to be had out of the present gang, although Pedro Jones became garrulous at certain times.

"I guess you would, you goddamn Cherokee," Hardin said. "Or are you Choctaw?" Jimmy Cumsa just looked at him. The man had a surprisingly rough tongue. He didn't seem to realize that he was badly outnumbered, or else he just didn't care.

"Is the Garza boy here?" Mox Mox asked. With a man as unpredictable as John Wesley, it seemed best to come to the point. He might fly off the handle and kill Hergardt, and Gardt was useful when there were heavy things to lift.

"The boy ain't, and what's more, his mother ain't, either," Hardin said. "She came here and killed the big pig that was eating the corpses, and then walked out of here with all the cunt, except that old thing you just killed with your damn nags." "Why, that old Comanche woman was too old to pester," Mox Mox said.

"Old or not, and Comanche or not, she was the last woman left in Crow Town, and your action was unwelcome," Wesley Hardin said. "We don't like strangers who trample our women." "You're a sonofabitch," Mox Mox said-- respectful as he was of Hardin, he was beginning to be riled by his tone.

"You must have run wild so long, you don't realize you can be killed," Hardin said. "I've done been hung twice, to the point where I passed out, only they cut me down too soon.

I could be killed by a knife if it was stuck in my liver or my jugular. I could be shot by a bullet, and if it was thirty-caliber or heavier, it would probably do the job and I'd be dead. I could be bit by a snake that was filled with poison spit, or I could ride under a lightning bolt or fall down drunk and split my head on a rock." He paused, but only to peer hard at a card that had come out of the deck he had just been shuffling.

"That ace don't belong in this deck, it's got six or seven already," he said, laying the card aside.

"What I doubt is that I'll be killed by a damned squint like you, or a Choctaw boy, or this damn ignorant anvil of a German you brought in," Hardin said.

"Maybe you ought to leave the anvil here," he added, considering Hergardt for a moment.

"We need a blacksmith, and he's got the heft for it.

"I won't kill him till he thinks it over," he added, in a charitable tone.

"Then you'll never kill him, because he'll never think it over," Jimmy Cumsa said. "Gardt can't think, and he couldn't shoe a horse if he had a week." "He can't even shoe himself," Mox Mox said.

"Well, if he's useless, move him out of the light, then," Hardin said.

"Move, Gardt," Mox Mox said. "Go outside and dig a hole or something." "Ain't you the man Charlie Goodnight chased to Utah?" Wesley Hardin asked, looking at Mox Mox. "Old Charlie's still kicking. I expect when he hears you're in Texas, he'll come and chase you back to Utah again." "No, we're going to get him," Mox Mox said. "I intend to kill the Garza boy first, because he's costing me money." "Get Woodrow Call, while you're getting," Wesley Hardin said. "They sent him after Joey Garza." "Who did?" Mox Mox asked, surprised.

"The railroad, of course," Hardin replied. "I expect him to show up, any day.

Call won't bother me because there's no money in it, but he'll probably catch you and hang you properly." "Who's he talking about?" Jimmy Cumsa asked.

"An old Ranger," Mox Mox said. "He don't worry me. He never caught Duck, and he'll never catch me." Wesley Hardin suddenly sprang up from the table and hit Hergardt in the temple with his pistol as hard as he could. He hit him accurately.

Hergardt fell right behind Jimmy Cumsa's chair. Hardin glared at Mox Mox. Jimmy Cumsa almost pulled his gun, but decided at the last second that it might not be a wise move.

"That was like whacking an ox, I hope my weapon's intact," Hardin said. He was calm again. He looked his pistol over, and then cocked it and put it back on the table, in front of him.

"Call never caught Duck, but he caught me a couple of times, back in my feuding days," Wesley Hardin said. "I was pretty disagreeable, in my feuding days. Then Call went off and hung the Suggs brothers, up in Kansas. The Suggs were as mean as you, if not meaner." "You don't have no idea how mean I am, you scabby sonofabitch," Mox Mox said. He was tired of insults. Besides, Jimmy Cumsa was hearing it all. He had to speak up, or let Jimmy think he was afraid of Hardin.

"Oh, you cook some chicken you drag off a train now and then," Hardin said. "I expect most of them are just fat Yankees. You could fry a hundred of them and it wouldn't impress me." He seemed amused by Mox Mox's anger.

"What would impress you?" Jimmy asked.

He could tell Mox Mox wasn't going to stand for much more. He wanted to ask a few questions before the killing started, if it did.

"Well, you've got three problems," Hardin said. "Joey Garza, Charlie Goodnight, and Woodrow Call. Take 'em in any order you like. When you've killed any one of the three, come back, and I'll buy you and all your damn Mexicans a drink." "You don't think we can manage it, do you?" Jimmy asked.

"No, I don't," Hardin said. "You're just a bunch of chicken fryers." "We've been in the papers," Jimmy said.

"The papers say we're the worst gang ever to hit the West." He was becoming annoyed himself at John Wesley Hardin's evident lack of respect.

"I guess you want me to bow to you, because you got your name in some damn newspaper," Hardin said.

"I wouldn't give a nickel's worth of dogshit for the whole bunch of you, and I don't care what it says in the papers. If you want to sit here and drink, do it quietly. Maybe I won't have to whack you like I whacked that lunkhead." "No, if we ain't wanted, we'll depart," Mox Mox said, standing up. "When I come back, I'll bring you three heads, and then I'll expect an apology for your rude behavior, Mr. Hardin." Hardin was studying his cards. He didn't look up.

Mox Mox waited, but Wesley Hardin seemed to have forgotten their existence.

"Why don't we go back in and kill him?" Jimmy Cumsa asked, when they were outside. The horses had all been dumping; several piles of horseshit steamed in the dirty snow. Pedro, Peon, Manuel, and Oteros all looked drunk. They had gone to the back of the saloon and helped themselves to some liquor in Patrick O'Brien's storeroom. Each of them had drunk a bottle.

"The way to think about Hardin is that he's crazy," Mox Mox said. "Having him alive is like having another weapon. He might kill anybody, at any time. If Call wandered in here, Hardin might kill him for us. Or, he might kill Goodnight." "I thought you wanted to kill Goodnight yourself," Jimmy said.

"I'd like to, but if Wesley Hardin happens to kill him first, I wouldn't shit my pants." "I thought you wanted to do it yourself," Jimmy repeated.

Mox Mox took his horse and walked off.

He led his horse behind the saloon and helped himself to two bottles of Patrick O'Brien's whiskey. Patrick came out while he was doing it, and held out his hand.

"That's six bottles you owe me for," he said.

"Your men took four. I sell a lot of whiskey out my back door." "It's convenient, I guess," Mox Mox said. He handed over the money. He wanted to stay friendly with the Irishman. In his experience, it was bad policy to offend saloonkeepers.

The real reason Mox Mox led his horse behind the saloon was because he needed a place to mount that wouldn't require him to jump for his stirrup in front of the men. He found just the thing, too, a little lump of sand about two feet high. Usually he managed to mount from the uphill side, so he wouldn't have to jump for the stirrup. That was the awkward thing about being short, he could never forget it. If he was mounting out on the flats, where there was no uphill side, he had to jump for the stirrup, whether he liked it or not.

When he rode back around the saloon, all the men were mounted except Hergardt, who had just crawled out the door. He sat in the snow, crooning a German song he sometimes sang when he was unhappy. Some blood ran out of his ear, on the side where Hardin had hit him.

"Get up, Gardt. We're off to catch that Mexican boy," Mox Mox said.

Hergardt stumbled up, but fell flat down again before he could reach his horse. Manuel and Oteros managed to hoist him to his feet, but Pedro Jones and Jimmy Cumsa had to help, in order to get him flopped over his horse. Hergardt caught his reins, but dropped them. Pedro Jones had to lead Hergardt's horse.

The mesquite limbs from what had once been old Naiche's hut were still smoldering as Mox Mox and the seven men rode out of Crow Town. The crows were cawing, and the bitter wind still blew.

Brookshire had attended Princeton College for a year. He hadn't the head for it, and knew he hadn't the head for it, but his mother had ambitions for her children: she was determined that he become a college man. She made him a suit, so that he would not look so much like a plain Hoboken boy, and she scraped and scrimped to save the money to send him.

They were not rich, but his father had a decent job on the railroad. He was foreman of the railroad yard in Queens; it had not been Colonel Terry's yard, not then.

Brookshire had only stayed a few months at Princeton College. Even his mother was forced to accept the sad fact that he didn't have the head for it. In later years, it was only in her bitterest moments, after she discovered that his father, like the Colonel, had a Miss Cora tucked away in Queens, that she railed about her son's failure at Princeton.

As he rode up the Rio Concho, with Captain Call and Deputy Plunkert, Brookshire had occasion to remember Princeton College, and to reflect on it. The wind grew colder, and what might have been only a soft snow in the East became a sharp sleet that bit at his face like bees.

In Princeton College, they had talked a good deal about civilization. Those who attended Princeton College were, of course, among the civilized. The New Jersey countryside had been civilized too, though Brookshire hadn't thought much about the civilized New Jersey landscape, or civilization in general, until he found himself freezing on the Rio Concho with Captain Call.

Up to that time, civilization had just been a fancy word that preachers and professors and politicians bruited about.

It wasn't just a word to Brookshire anymore. It was something he had left, and it involved comfortable beds and gas heaters and snug brick buildings, to keep out the wind. It involved meat that had been sliced by a well-trained butcher, and purchased at a butcher shop and cooked by Katie, his wife, now sadly gone, leaving him with no one to cook his chops for him.

Nothing that the professors at Princeton College would have been prepared to call civilization existed on the Rio Concho. Indeed, on the cold stretch where they were, nothing human existed, except themselves. At least the old women in Chihuahua City, staring out of their dusty shawls, had been human. Here, there was only the earth, the sky, and the wind. When night came, it took them an hour to gather enough scanty brushwood to make a decent fire.

The night the ice storm hit, it was so cold that even Captain Call didn't pretend to sleep. They all huddled by the fire, trying to keep it alive. At times, the wind surged so that it seemed the fire might blow away.

Brookshire had never expected to be this cold, and yet, he reflected, only a month before he had been sweltering in Laredo.

"A few weeks ago, I was the hottest I've ever been," he told the Captain.

"Now, I'm the coldest. It ain't ever moderate down here, is it?" Deputy Plunkert had given up talking.

Every time he opened his mouth, the air came in, so cold that it made his teeth hurt down to the roots.

"No, it's not moderate, much," Call said.

His knee pained him. The morning before, he had let a mule kick him. Usually he was quick enough to sidestep such kicks, but he hadn't sidestepped this one.

More worrisome to him was the fact that the joints of his fingers had begun to swell, when it got cold.