Streets of Laredo: A Novel (45 page)

Now, the settling had happened. Ben Lily and Goodnight and Roy Bean and, he supposed, himself--for he, too, had become one of the old ones of the West--were just echoes of what had been. When Lily fell, and Goodnight, and Bean and himself, there wouldn't even be echoes, just memories.

Call mounted up, feeling that he had begun to miss Ben Lily, a man he had never liked.

Yet, a time or two in his life, he had even missed enemies: Kicking Bird, the Comanche chief, was one. Missing Gus McCrae, a lifelong friend, was one thing; missing Ben Lily was something else again. It made Call feel that he had outlived his time, something he had never expected to do. Now he had begun to listen for echoes, an unhealthy form of distraction when there were still men in the country who burned people and dogs.

It was an unhappy thought, but soon it might be that the bad men, the Wes Hardins and the Mox Moxes, would be all that was left of the West as it had been. The bad men, in the end, were the ones who wouldn't settle.

A few miles farther on, Famous Shoes showed them the burned dog. It was large--part mastiff, Call reckoned. Its four feet had been tied together, and its mouth wired shut. The fire hadn't been hot enough to consume the animal, but it had been thoroughly seared. Even its teeth were black.

Brookshire looked at the dog, got off his horse, and threw up. Deputy Plunkert took one quick look and rode on by. He stopped fifty yards farther on, but kept his back to the group. Pea Eye looked, and felt more than ever at a loss. He had seen far worse sights than a burned dog, in his days with the Rangers, and he knew men did bad things to other men. That was an old lesson, learned and learned well in the Indian wars.

Pea Eye realized that he was just tired of it, tired of such sights and such memories. He had been feeling tired since he'd had to help pull Captain Call off Sheriff Doniphan.

Pea Eye didn't want to see the Captain beat a person to within an inch of his life, even if the person deserved it, as the sheriff had. He didn't want to see burnt dogs or burnt people, or people with bad gunshot wounds in the belly, or any of that. What he wanted to see was Lorena, his wife, nursing their baby at the breakfast table. He wanted to see his three little boys, and his big girl, Clarie; his big girl, that all the boys were already wanting to court. He wanted to hold his wife in his arms, not bury corpses of people killed by outlaws. It was time for all that to be over. It should have already been over, at least where he was concerned. He had never had the appetite for it, and now he really didn't have the time for it, either. He had different work to do.

Famous Shoes studied the tracks for a while, and Call dismounted and took a look too. The tracks went east--eight men and two extra horses.

"They don't hurry," Famous Shoes remarked.

"No, I guess they wouldn't," Call said.

"If they hurried, they might miss something Mox Mox wants to burn." He felt uncertain as to how to proceed. The killers were within twenty-five miles of them, probably, and there were eight of them. If Mox Mox would take the time to stop and burn Ben Lily's dog, then killing was probably their main object, though no doubt they would rob, too, when the opportunity arose.

Call's instinct was to go after Mox Mox at once. It wasn't the job he had been hired to do, but Mox Mox was between him and the job he had been hired to do. Besides, the eight killers were a danger to anyone they encountered, wherever they were.

If they had the leisure to burn a dog, they were not expecting either resistance or pursuit.

Call was traveling with a largely untried troop, though. Pea Eye would probably fight well enough, when the time came--he always had--but the others might just get in the way. Brookshire had indulged in a good deal of target practice on the trip. He was a fair shot at stationary targets, but of course he had never shot at a living target, much less one that could shoot back at him. Deputy Plunkert was also a question mark.

By his own admission, he had scarcely left Laredo in his whole life. What he would do in a running fight was anybody's guess; get himself killed, probably.

"The manburner has a big man with him," Famous Shoes said. He had found a track that was as deep as any track he had ever seen.

"His horse is tired, from carrying him." "That's good. Big men make easy targets," Call said. "Once we shoot the big one, we'll only have seven to worry about.

We won't be so badly outnumbered." Brookshire felt that the clock of his life had run backward, to the time of the War. The sight of the burned dog did it. In the War, the sight of dead horses, some of them scorched, some with their stomachs burst open or their innards spilled, upset him more than seeing the bodies of men. He didn't know why they upset him more; they just did.

In the time he had traveled with the Captain, Brookshire had thought often about their quarry, Joey Garza. Joey had killed, and in fact, he killed often, but he killed with a bullet. It scared him to think of Joey crouched behind a rock somewhere, looking at him through a telescope sight, ready to end his life with a bullet. Still, it was a bullet; Katie dying of her sickness probably suffered more than he would suffer if Joey Garza did kill him.

But the man who had burned the dog, this Mox Mox, was different. Joey was a killer; Mox Mox must be a maniac. Brookshire had observed Captain Call over a fair stretch of time, and had much confidence in his abilities. The man was a little stiff in the morning, but he kept going. He had no tendency to recklessness, that Brookshire could detect. He consulted Brookshire fully when there were decisions to be made. Brookshire had confidence in the Captain's ability to locate and subdue Joey Garza. He thought Call could do it, and do it handily.

But Mox Mox was a maniac, and he had seven men with him. He wasn't interested in killing with bullets, either. What he was doing went beyond stopped trains, passengers who lost their valuables, and Colonel Terry's profits. The thought of Joey Garza left Brookshire scared, but the thought of Mox Mox left him terrified.

Call knew he had a ticklish decision to make. He could keep the men with him, try to catch up with Mox Mox, and hit him in force, such as the force was. Or, he could go alone, and hope to ambush Mox Mox and the men himself. The fact that he would be one against eight didn't disturb him much. Very few men could fight effectively, and of the eight there might be only one who was formidable. Blue Duck had been formidable, but from what Call could remember of the Goodnight trouble, Mox Mox had merely been mean. No one seemed to think much of his abilities as a killer. He had led Goodnight a merry chase, and had eluded him, but in that instance, he had a week's start. The main problem in attacking Mox Mox and his men alone was to determine which one had the ability. That was the man to kill first.

His only source of information, at the moment, was Famous Shoes. The old tracker had walked off to the east and was squatting on his heels, smoking. Call loped out to where he rested. It was time to decide.

"He's got a giant with him, you said," Call remarked. "Who else has he got?" "Three Mexicans who spur their horses too much," Famous Shoes said. "Their horses jump when they spur them. The manburner himself is small. He makes little tracks when he is burning something." "That's three Mexicans, the giant, and the manburner," Call said. "That's five. What about the other three?" "There's a Cherokee," Famous Shoes said.

"He has the best horse, and his horse is not tired." "What makes you think he's Cherokee?" Call asked.

"Because I know him," Famous Shoes said. "I tracked him once before. He stole a woman that Quanah Parker wanted to marry. His name is Jimmy Cumsa. He is very quick. I tracked him two years ago, and he is still riding the same horse. He takes good care of his horse. I think he is a better killer than the manburner." "If you tracked him, why didn't Quanah get him?" Call asked.

"I don't know," Famous Shoes said. "I tracked him to Taos Pueblo. But Quanah had to go somewhere on a train, for many days. I think he went to see the President. When he came back, he was too busy to go get Jimmy Cumsa." "That leaves two," Call said.

"I don't know where the last two come from," Famous Shoes admitted. "One rides a pacing horse--he is not a good rider and his horse is not strong. The other man is small. He rides a little ways apart. Maybe the manburner doesn't like him too much." The other men came and joined them. Brookshire looked sick. Deputy Plunkert looked scared. Pea Eye was calm enough, but it was clear to Call that the man's heart wasn't in what he was doing.

Call decided not to leave the men. When the time came to strike Mox Mox, he would leave them, but he wanted them to be in a more protected place before he left. If he sent them alone to Roy Bean's, with Famous Shoes to guide them, they might make it and they might not. Even if they traveled by night, they would be vulnerable. Ben Lily had been traveling by night, and he had still lost his dogs, and nearly his life.

"We'll go to Bean's," Call said.

"We'll find out what he knows. Then I may separate from you for a few days and see what I can do about these killers." They started at once, but all morning, Call felt torn. He felt he should break off and go, while he was so close to the killers, but he feared for the men. They were all grown men, and he should let them fend for themselves; he'd often had to leave men in dangerous situations. This time, though, he didn't feel he should leave them. He didn't want to come back and find them burnt, like Ben Lily's dog.

Brookshire was relieved, when the Captain said he would stay with them. Looking around him, he could see nothing but an endless distance. It seemed that the West just kept opening around him, into greater and ever greater distances. When he thought the horizons could get no farther away, he awoke to horizons that were yet farther. Brookshire had a compass, but he didn't use it. Captain Call was his compass. Without him, Brookshire doubted that he could find the will to keep himself going across the empty country, toward the dim horizon. He would simply stop, at some point. He would just stop and sit down and wait to be dead.

Also, he had seen the burnt dog. If the Captain left them, it wouldn't be simply a matter of keeping going, of pursuing the long horizons until they yielded up a town, a place where there might be a hotel and a train. It was no longer just the emptiness, and the blowing-away feeling, that Brookshire had to fear--not anymore.

The manburner was there. Probably he was within the vast rim of horizon that encircled them at that very moment. Brookshire felt deeply grateful to the Captain, for staying with them. He had come to feel that he might not mind dying so much, if dying just meant a bullet.

But Brookshire had seen Ben Lily's dog. He did not want to die as the dog had died. He did not want to be burnt.

"That Indian owes me a nickel--if he's on your payroll, fork it over," Roy Bean said, before Call and his party had even dismounted. He was sitting in the weak winter sunlight, outside his saloon, wrapped in a buffalo robe. He had a cocked pistol in one hand, and a rifle across his lap; the rifle barrel stuck out from under the robe.

A shotgun was propped against the wall of the saloon, within easy reach. "What sort of drink would only cost a nickel?" Call inquired.

"He don't owe me for a drink, he owes me for some lotion," the judge said. "He come up lame one time, and I let him rub some lotion on his foot and forgot to charge him for it. It was a fine lotion. It cures all ills except a weak pecker." Call gave Roy Bean the nickel.

Until he was paid his full bill, whatever it might be, there would be little chance that he would dispense much information.

"I stepped on a little cactus with thorns like the snake's tooth," Famous Shoes said. "He gave me some of his lotion, and I am still walking.

I will pay the nickel, although I don't have it with me right now." "Brookshire's boss will pay the nickel," Call said, not surprised that the first thing they received at the Jersey Lily Saloon was a bill of several years' standing.

"Put it in your ledger, Brookshire," Call said. "I'm sure your Colonel will be glad to contribute a nickel to the man who kept our tracker healthy." Brookshire had lost interest in the ledger, and had not kept it current, although they had made substantial purchases in Presidio. He had, on one or two occasions, even torn pages out of it and used them to help get the campfires started. Somewhere along the Rio Concho, he had stopped feeling that he lived in a world where ledgers mattered. Colonel Terry still belonged to that world, and would always belong to it. The Colonel, like the old judge, would be quick to demand his nickel, even his penny.

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.